title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: The second wave arrived on 4 May, but was intercepted by the navy and local police; the attackers were all captured. Two other suspects were detained in Puerto La Cruz later that day. Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López later said that one of the landing boats had been sunk by the navy, and the country's military sent ships to look for survivors.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: On 4 May, Maduro said Venezuelan forces had detained 13 mercenaries, including two Americans working with Goudreau; Airan Berry and Luke Denman. Goudreau said that eight of his soldiers had been captured on 4 May, the two Americans and six Venezuelans, and that an unknown number had been captured on 3 May. Goudreau gave an interview by telephone from Florida to a reporter from the Associated Press on 4 May. Goudreau said that his intention in launching the raid was to "introduce a catalyst", acknowledging that it is impractical to believe "60 guys can come in and topple a regime". Despite the long odds, Goudreau expressed his belief that "60 guys can go in and inspire the military and police to flip and join in the liberation of their country, which deep down is what they want."


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: It was reported that "dozens" of mercenaries had been captured on 5 May. Regarding the detainees, Goudreau told the AP, "I've tried to engage everybody I know at every level ... Nobody's returning my calls. It's a nightmare." Another three mercenaries were arrested on 6 May. Seized items from the mercenaries included weapons and uniforms embroidered with an American flag. Venezuelan Prosecutor General Tarek William Saab later announced that 25,000 national troops were mobilized in a Venezuelan military mission named "Bolivarian Shield" (Spanish: "Escudo Bolivariano") to protect the country from similar attempts.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Robert Colina Ybarra (alias "Pantera" or "Panther"), the former captain alleged to have directed one of the training camps in Riohacha, was killed in action. Adolfo Baduel, son of former Chávez Defense Minister, Raúl Baduel, was among the detainees.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: By 6 May, the Defense Minister announced an additional three arrests via his Twitter account, publishing a photo of the purported detainees with pixelated faces on their knees with their wrists zip-tied together without disclosing the names or any other additional details regarding the accused. The same day, Trump announced his intent to appoint James B. Story as Ambassador of the United States to Venezuela.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Former Captain Javier Nieto Quintero, one of the organizers of the operation, said on 7 May that the events were only an "advanced tactical reconnaissance" and that the Carive group had 3,000 troops. The Venezuelan Operational Zone of Integral Defense (Zodi) of La Guaira announced that Russian Special Operations Forces were assisting Venezuelan soldiers with surveillance from unmanned aerial vehicles, saying that they carried a joint inspection of the facilities of Maiquetia Airport where they made a technical evaluation that showed it was not possible to operate the equipment from here because there were obstacles. However, the announcement was deleted afterwards.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: The Colombian government informed that on 2 September it had arrested four Venezuelans related to Operation Gedeon. Óscar Pérez denounced in 2017 that both Rayder Alexander Russo (alias "Pico") and Osman Alejandro Tabosky, both arrested by Colombian officials and the latter also accused as intellectual author of the 2018 Caracas drone attack, were "infiltrated agents" in the resistance movement against Maduro.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: In October, opposition deputy Wilmer Azuaje submitted a report to the International Criminal Court, which included 164 forensic photographs taken by the Venezuelan Scientific, Penal, and Criminal Investigation Service Corps (CICPC), that argues and concludes that after the operation was infiltrated by the Maduro investigation, there was not an armed confrontation and that the "victims were tortured and extrajudicially executed". Azuaje also submitted the report to the European Parliament.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Goudreau would later say that the Trump administration had knowledge of the operation before starting and even that the plotters held meetings in the Trump Doral west of Miami. Goudreau sued J. J. Rendón in October in a $1.4 million breach-of-contract lawsuit.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: In May 2021, three Venezuelans were sentenced in Colombia to six years in prison for their relation to the operation.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: On 6 May, Nicolás Maduro held a virtual press conference broadcast on state television in which he presented portions of Luke Denman's interrogation. In introducing the video, Maduro said that both Americans had "confessed, and we will ensure that justice is done and the truth surfaces". In the video, Denman states that his instructions were to seize Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía and fly Maduro to the United States, which Maduro cited as proof that the orders came directly from United States president Donald Trump. The video shows Denman answering questions that were asked in English, also indicating that he was hired through Goudreau and that they trained 50 combatants in Colombia in January 2020.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Ephraim Mattos, a Navy SEAL who had visited the rebel training camps in Colombia but was not involved in the operation, noted that Denman made an unusual and exaggerated gesture with his eyes during his recorded interrogation, noting that it may have been a covert signal, that "special operation soldiers are trained to find creative ways to discredit any propaganda videos they are forced to make if captured by the enemy" and that the odd eye movement immediately after saying Trump was Goudreau's boss is "a clear sign from Luke that he is being forced".


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Denman, who was 34 years old at the time of the incident, is a former Army Special Forces communications sergeant who left the Army in December 2011. During his five years in the Army, Denman was trained in field medicine and deployed to Iraq at least once. Texas Monthly wrote that after his separation from the Army, Denman "seemed, like many combat veterans, to be unable to find excitement and meaning in post-military life, missing his closest buddies and the fulfilling ideal of service to country". He had worked jobs as a security guard, and then as an offshore welder out of Louisiana before moving to Oregon in the fall of 2019. Denman's home town is Austin, Texas.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Denman reportedly believed the United States government backed the naval attack. Denman's childhood friend, Daniel Dochen, told "The Wall Street Journal" that Denman believed the operation had personal approval from President Trump. A lifelong friend of Denman also reported that Denman indicated in October 2019 that one of his friends from the military was in the process of obtaining government approval for training operations or operations aimed at paving the way for more substantial engagement by the United States government.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Denman reportedly told his father "that he had a job offer in Florida that he couldn't talk about", though he did not disclose it had anything to do with Venezuela. He did say, however, that "it was the most meaningful thing he's ever done". Denman's mother told reporters that she "had no idea" of his intention to participate in a military operation in Colombia. Similarly, Luke's girlfriend since 2014, told the "Military Times" she was unaware of the planned operation. Denman's girlfriend reported she "didn't know very much, other than Luke trusted [Goudreau] and that he had a job opportunity with him".


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: In the weeks following the attack, Luke's brother, Mark Denman, an attorney, took on the task of advocating for the release of both Luke Denman and Airan Berry.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Airan Berry, who was 41 years old at the time of the raid, was a special forces engineer sergeant in the Army from 1996 to 2013. Berry deployed to Iraq in from March to June 2003, from November 2004 to June 2005, and from February 2007 to March 2007. During his career, he obtained a multitude of decorations and designations, including the Ranger tab, the Parachutist Badge, and the Special Operations Diver and Diving Supervisor Badges. Berry was also subject to interrogation which was videotaped and presented in parts on state television on 7 May, during a press release presented by the Vice President of Communication, Tourism, and Culture, Jorge Rodríguez, from Miraflores Palace. Venezuela's state-run media aired footage of Berry saying that the operation's planners met with Elkin Javier López Torres, whom the Maduro government described as a "drug trafficker". During his interrogation, Berry said that he was to advise the capture of an airport and the extraction of Maduro along with his officials. The video ends with Berry showing a document allegedly signed by Guaidó and Goudreau.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Berry is married to his wife of 19 years, Melanie, who is German-American. In the aftermath of the event, among the identity documents exhibited on television by Maduro's officials was a driver's license issued to Berry in Schweinfurt, Germany, where Berry, his wife, and two children lived since 2013. Berry's home town is Fort Worth, Texas, where his father lives. Berry also had previously made several social media posts in support of QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory centered on U.S. President Donald Trump that has been linked to several violent incidents.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: On 8 May, the Attorney General appointed by the Constituente Assembly, Tarek William Saab, announced that Luke Alexander Denman and Airan Berry would face charges for terrorism, conspiracy, "illicit trafficking of weapons of war" and "(criminal) association". These charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 25 to 30 years. Saab also announced that his office requested arrest warrants for Jordan Goudreau, Juan José Rendón, and Sergio Vergara. Speaking on state television, he said that the three persons were involved in the "design, financing and execution of this war action against the territory, the authorities and the people of Venezuela". He elaborated that "given that they are outside the country, we will request their inclusion in the Interpol system, as well as their extradition to Venezuelan territory."


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: William Saab announced on 15 May 2020 an arrest warrant against Popular Will politician Yon Goicoechea. Goicoechea rejected the accusations of any involvement with Operation Gideon, and accused Maduro's administration of paying and leading the uprising attempt to victimize itself and "persecute political dissent".


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: On 16 May 2020, according to a press release published by Venezuela's highest court, several trial courts dedicated to terrorism-related crimes ordered that some 40 individuals alleged to have participated in the raid be remanded to preventive detention. Antonio Sequea Torres was also in pretrial confinement and charged with commission of aggravated intentional homicide in connection with his alleged attempt to assassinate Maduro. The Supreme Tribunal of Justice also indicated that most of those involved in the operation are alleged to have committed the crimes of treason, rebellion, arms trafficking, criminal conspiracy, and colluding with a foreign government. Local newspaper "El Pitazo" reported that the mother of one of the accused had demanded assurance that her son was alive after receiving a phone call from her son requesting his brother's telephone number "so that they would stop torturing him".


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Five individuals who have been accused by the Maduro administration of participation in the operation, including the two detained American mercenaries, had not been publicly charged as of 16 May.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: State television aired an additional video of Airan Berry on 18 May, in an orange jumpsuit, answering questions about the planning of the raid. According to Berry's videotaped statement, Antonio Sequea Torres and the drug trafficker Elkin Javier López, better known as "Doble Rueda" [], also referred to as "la silla" [] – met multiple times during the planning period of the operation in order to coordinate logistics. The estate of López Torres in the Colombian Guajira is alleged to be the point of departure for the two boats involved in the raid. The Valledupar-based López Torres was arrested in December 2019 and his extradition was requested by the United States.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: An additional interrogation video depicting Luke Denman in an orange jumpsuit was also aired on state television on 18 May 2020. In the video, Luke indicates that his objective in embarking on the operation, as relayed by Jordan Goudreau, was to arrive in Colombia to train Venezuelans, accompany them to Venezuela for the landing, and once the Venezuelan dissidents' objectives had been achieved, "put Maduro on a plane", and provide support at the airport in order that humanitarian aid could arrive.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: As of 21 May, 66 arrests took place and 99 arrests warrants had been issued, 63 of which remained outstanding.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab put forth a request to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice to declare Guaidó's political party Popular Will a terrorist group due to the attempted sea incursion. Saab's request asked for the tribunal "to determine if the Voluntad Popular political organization is a terrorist organization". Guaidó responded to the charges, stating that Maduro defends "irregular groups" like the National Liberation Army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia."


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: After Luke Denman and Airan Berry, admitted to "conspiracy, association (to commit crimes), illicit trafficking of war weapons and terrorism" a Venezuelan court sentenced the two to 20 years in prison for their part in the attack aimed at overthrowing President Nicolás Maduro. The sentencing took place on 6 August 2020.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: The "Los Angeles Times" wrote that "For Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, it's the propaganda gift that keeps on giving, buoying a leader long in Washington's crosshairs" and that the failed operation "quickly became a Maduro rallying cry, a Bay of Pigs in miniature, complete with a pair of captured U.S. gunmen". Human Rights Watch criticized Maduro for alleging that the human rights NGO PROVEA had connections to the United States Central Intelligence Agency after the organization called for due process of the captured militants. Human Rights Watch wrote: "An international community that's closely watching what happens in Venezuela needs to send the message loud and clear: subjecting human rights defenders to politically motivated prosecution, detention or other abuses would be crossing a line for which those responsible will have to answer".


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: The Maduro administration accused the United States and Colombian governments of masterminding the attack, which both denied. Goudreau has also denied receiving any help for his operation from US and Colombian authorities. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez called Goudreau "a supremacist fanatic" and warned that "the Venezuelan women are waiting for you, for free, but with deep homeland passion."


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza criticized foreign governments and international organizations for their "deafening silence in the face of the mercenary aggression against Venezuela" and said that "the same people who always condemn us immediately based on biased or false information, today remain silent in the face of such a serious and full case of evidence." He added that "all those involved in the armed aggression against Venezuela confess that they trained in Colombia, with the knowledge of the Bogotá government and the financing of drug traffickers from that country."


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Luis Parra, the president of the pro-Maduro National Assembly, stated "Deputy Juan Guaidó must give an explanation to the parliament and the country, about his alleged participation in Operation Gideon, according to the testimonies of those involved in it and the contract with his alleged signature" and said that his National Assembly would investigate Guaidó regarding the allegations.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Juan Guaidó has accused the Maduro administration of "trying to create a state of apparent confusion, an effort to hide what's happening in Venezuela", citing recent events like the gasoline shortages, the Guanare prison riot, a violent gang battle in Caracas, and the COVID-19 pandemic in Venezuela. Guaidó also demanded that the human rights of the detainees be respected.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: Iván Simonovis, security and intelligence commissioner for the Guaidó administration, stated that the events in Macuto would be used by the Maduro government as a pretext to harass opponents and intensify repression, saying that Guaidó's administration would investigate the events and clarify its details. According to J. J. Rendón, the operation was compromised for months and that intelligence gathered by the Maduro government allowed the Venezuelan armed forces to set the militants up for an ambush, in order to create a "montage" of the events.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: The opposition political party Justice First demanded that Guaidó immediately dismiss the officials involved with the plot and charged that they "used his government's name for individual purposes". Julio Borges, Guaidó's foreign minister, called for the dismissal of all officials related to the plot, stating "we worry that energies are put into the creation of a bureaucratic caste and not into political change." J. J. Rendón and , who initiated talks with Silvercorp about the operation, resigned from Guaidó's team on 11 May, with Guaidó thanking the two for "dedication and commitment to Venezuela". According to a Guaidó aide, the two officials "sacrificed themselves" in order to prevent "further embarrassment" towards the opposition.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: The human rights NGO PROVEA asked about the well-being of the people arrested in Macuto and in Chuao and indicated that the Attorney General appointed by the Constituent Assembly, Tarek William Saab, and the Ombudsman appointed by Maduro, Alfredo Ruiz, would be responsible for possible forced disappearances or torture of the detainees, while stressing that it would only support and promote peaceful and constitutional means that lead to the "restoration of democracy in the country". Maduro accused PROVEA of being "financed by the CIA" and giving coverage to "terrorists" as a response, accusations that PROVEA rejected.


title: Operation Gideon (2020)

text: The "Futuro Presente" Foundation was accused by Maduro's administration of financing the operation. "Futuro Presente" categorically rejected the accusations of the participation of the organization and any of its members, alleged they were being persecuted, asked for it to end, and said that it was based on "completely false and unfounded accusations".


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Oswald (; c 604 – 5 August 641/642) was King of Northumbria from 634 until his death, and is venerated as a saint, of whom there was a particular cult in the Middle Ages.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Oswald was the son of Æthelfrith of Bernicia and came to rule after spending a period in exile. After defeating the Welsh ruler Cadwallon ap Cadfan, Oswald brought the two Northumbrian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira once again under a single ruler, and promoted the spread of Christianity in Northumbria. He was given a strongly positive assessment by the historian Bede, writing a little less than a century after Oswald's death, who regarded Oswald as a saintly king; it is also Bede who is the main source for present-day historical knowledge of Oswald. After eight years of rule, in which he was the most powerful ruler in Britain, Oswald was killed in the Battle of Maserfield while fighting the forces of Penda of Mercia, who then himself was defeated by Oswald's brother Oswiu.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Oswald's father Æthelfrith was a successful Bernician ruler who, after some years in power in Bernicia, also became king of Deira, and thus was the first to rule both of the kingdoms which would come to be considered the constituent kingdoms of Northumbria. It would, however, be anachronistic to refer to a "Northumbrian" people or identity at this early stage, when the Bernicians and the Deirans were still clearly distinct peoples. Oswald's mother, Acha of Deira, was a member of the Deiran royal line whom Æthelfrith apparently married as part of his acquisition of Deira or consolidation of power there. Oswald was apparently born in or around the year 604, since Bede says that he was killed at the age of 38 in 642; Æthelfrith's acquisition of Deira is also believed to have occurred around 604.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Æthelfrith, who was for years a successful war-leader, especially against the native British, was eventually killed in battle around 616 by Raedwald of East Anglia at the River Idle. This defeat meant that an exiled member of the Deiran royal line, Edwin (Acha's brother), became king of Northumbria, and Oswald and his brothers fled to the north. Oswald thus spent the remainder of his youth in the Scottish kingdom of Dál Riata in northern Britain, where he was converted to Christianity. He may also have fought in Ireland during this period of exile. It has been considered that Oswald is one of the three Saxon princes mentioned in the Irish poem Togail Bruidne Dá Derga, being named as 'Osalt' in that work.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: After Cadwallon ap Cadfan, the king of Gwynedd, in alliance with the pagan Penda of Mercia, killed Edwin of Deira in battle at Hatfield Chase in 633 (or 632, depending on when the years used by Bede are considered to have begun), Northumbria was split into its constituent kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. Oswald's brother Eanfrith became king of Bernicia, but he was killed by Cadwallon in 634 (or 633) after attempting to negotiate peace. Subsequently, Oswald, at the head of a small army (possibly with the aid of allies from the north, the Scots and/or the Picts), met Cadwallon in battle at Heavenfield, near Hexham. Before the battle, tradition says Oswald had a wooden cross erected; he knelt down, holding the cross in position until enough earth had been thrown in the hole to make it stand firm. He then prayed and asked his army to join in.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Adomnán in his "Life of Saint Columba" offers a longer account, which Abbot Ségéne had heard from Oswald himself. Oswald, he says, had a vision of Columba the night before the battle, in which he was toldBe strong and act manfully. Behold, I will be with thee. This coming night go out from your camp into battle, for the Lord has granted me that at this time your foes shall be put to flight and Cadwallon your enemy shall be delivered into your hands and you shall return victorious after battle and reign happily. Oswald described his vision to his council and all agreed that they would be baptised and accept Christianity after the battle. In the battle that followed, the Welsh (Brytons) were routed despite their superior numbers; Cadwallon himself was killed.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Following the victory at Heavenfield, Oswald reunited Northumbria and re-established the Bernician supremacy which had been interrupted by Edwin. Bede says that Oswald held "imperium" for the eight years of his rule (both Bede and the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" say that Oswald's reign was actually considered to be nine years, the ninth year being accounted for by assigning to Oswald the year preceding his rule, "on account of the heathenism practised by those who had ruled that one year between him and Edwin"), and was the most powerful king in Britain. In the 9th-century "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" he is referred to as a Bretwalda. Adomnán describes Oswald as "ordained by God as Emperor of all Britain".


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Oswald seems to have been widely recognized as overlord, although the extent of his authority is uncertain. Bede makes the claim that Oswald "brought under his dominion all the nations and provinces of Britain", which, as Bede notes, was divided by language among the English, Britons, Scots, and Picts; however, he seems to undermine his own claim when he mentions at another point in his history that it was Oswald's brother Oswiu who made tributary the Picts and Scots. An Irish source, the Annals of Tigernach, records that the Anglo-Saxons banded together against Oswald early in his reign; this may indicate an attempt to put an end to Oswald's overlordship south of the Humber, which presumably failed.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: The Mercians, who participated in Edwin's defeat in 633, seem to have presented an obstacle to Oswald's authority south of the Humber, although it has been generally thought that Oswald dominated Mercia to some degree after Heavenfield. It may have been to appease Oswald that Penda had Eadfrith, a captured son of Edwin (and thus a dynastic rival of Oswald), killed, although it is also possible that Penda had his own motives for the killing.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Oswald apparently controlled the Kingdom of Lindsey, given the evidence of a story told by Bede regarding the moving of Oswald's bones to a monastery there; Bede says that the monks rejected the bones initially because Oswald had ruled over them as a foreign king. To the north, it may have been Oswald who conquered the Gododdin. Irish annals record the siege of Edinburgh, thought to have been the royal stronghold of the Gododdin, in 638, and this seems to mark the end of the kingdom; that this siege was undertaken by Oswald is suggested by the apparent control of the area by his brother Oswiu in the 650s.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Oswald seems to have been on good terms with the West Saxons: he stood as sponsor to the baptism of their king, Cynegils, and married Cynegils' daughter. Her name is reported by only one source, Reginald of Durham's 12th century "Vita S. Oswaldi", which says that it was Kyneburga. Although Oswald had one known son, Æthelwald, it is uncertain whether this was a son from his marriage to Cynegils' daughter or from an earlier relationship—since Æthelwald began ruling in Deira in 651, it has been argued that a son from this marriage would have been too young at the time to be trusted with this position, and therefore may have been older, the product of a relationship Oswald had during his exile.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Although Edwin had previously converted to Christianity in 627, it was Oswald who did the most to spread the religion in Northumbria. Shortly after becoming king, he asked the Irish of Dál Riata to send a bishop to facilitate the conversion of his people. The Irish at first sent an "austere" bishop who was unsuccessful in his mission, and subsequently sent Aidan, who proposed a gentler approach. Oswald gave the island of Lindisfarne to Aidan as his episcopal see. Aidan achieved great success in spreading the Christian faith. Bede mentions that Oswald acted as Aidan's interpreter when the latter was preaching, since Aidan did not know English well and Oswald had learned Irish during his exile.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Although Oswald could be interpreted as a martyr for his death in battle, Bede puts a clear emphasis on Oswald being saintly as a king. Bede does not focus on his martyrdom as being primary to his sainthood—indeed, it has been noted that Bede never uses the word "martyr" in reference to Oswald. Bede's portrayal of Oswald stands out as unusual as a king regarded as saintly for his life while ruling, in contrast to a king who gives up the kingship in favour of religious life, or who is venerated because of the manner of his death. Bede recounts Oswald's generosity to the poor and to strangers, and tells a story highlighting this characteristic: on one occasion, at Easter, Oswald was sitting at dinner with Aidan, and had "a silver dish full of dainties before him", when a servant, whom Oswald "had appointed to relieve the poor", came in and told Oswald that a crowd of the poor were in the streets begging alms from the king. Oswald, according to Bede, then immediately had his food given to the poor and even had the dish broken up and distributed. Aidan was greatly impressed and seized Oswald's right hand, stating: "May this hand never perish." Accordingly, Bede reports that the hand and arm remained uncorrupted after Oswald's death.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: It was a conflict with the pagan Mercians under Penda that proved to be Oswald's undoing. He was killed in 642, by the Mercians at the Battle of Maserfield, in Oswestry (although other candidates for the location of the battle have been suggested) and his body was dismembered. Bede mentions the story that Oswald "ended his life in prayer": he prayed for the souls of his soldiers when he saw that he was about to die. Oswald's head and limbs were placed on stakes.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: The traditional identification of the battle site with Oswestry, probably in the territory of Powys at the time, suggests that Penda may have had British allies in this battle, and this is also suggested by surviving Welsh poetry which has been thought to indicate the participation of the men of Powys in the battle. It has also been considered that, if the traditional identification of the site as Oswestry is correct, Oswald was on the offensive, in the territory of his enemies. This could conflict with Bede's saintly portrayal of Oswald, since an aggressive war could hardly qualify as a just war, perhaps explaining why Bede is silent on the cause of the war—he says only that Oswald died "fighting for his fatherland"—as well as his failure to mention other offensive warfare Oswald is presumed to have engaged in between Heavenfield and Maserfield. Oswald may have had an ally in Penda's brother Eowa, who was also killed in the battle, according to the "Historia Britonnum" and "Annales Cambriae"; while the source only mentions that Eowa was killed, not the side on which he fought, it has been speculated that Eowa was subject to Oswald and fighting alongside him in the battle, in opposition to Penda.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Oswald soon came to be regarded as a saint. Bede says that the spot where he died came to be associated with miracles, and people took dirt from the site, which led to a hole being dug as deep as a man's height. Reginald of Durham recounts another miracle, saying that his right arm was taken by a bird (perhaps a raven) to an ash tree, which gave the tree ageless vigour; when the bird dropped the arm onto the ground, a spring emerged from the ground. Both the tree and the spring were, according to Reginald, subsequently associated with healing miracles. Aspects of the legend have been considered to have pagan overtones or influences—this may represent a fusion of his status as a traditional Germanic warrior-king with Christianity. The name of the site, Oswestry, or "Oswald's Tree", is generally thought to be derived from Oswald's death there and the legends surrounding it. His feast day is 5 August. The cult surrounding him even gained prominence in parts of continental Europe; cf. Ožbalt in Slovenia.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Bede mentions that Oswald's brother Oswiu, who succeeded Oswald in Bernicia, retrieved Oswald's remains in the year after his death. In writing of one miracle associated with Oswald, Bede gives some indication of how Oswald was regarded in conquered lands: years later, when his niece Osthryth moved his bones to Bardney Abbey in Lindsey, its inmates initially refused to accept them, "though they knew him to be a holy man", because "he was originally of another province, and had reigned over them as a foreign king", and thus "they retained their ancient aversion to him, even after death". It was only after Oswald's bones were the focus of an awe-inspiring miracle—in which, during the night, a pillar of light appeared over the wagon in which the bones were being carried and shone up into the sky—that they were accepted into the monastery: "in the morning, the brethren who had refused it the day before, began themselves earnestly to pray that those holy relics, so beloved by God, might be deposited among them".


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: In the early 10th century, Bardney was in Viking territory, and in 909, following a combined West Saxon and Mercian raid led by Æthelflæd, daughter of Alfred the Great, St Oswald's relics were translated to a new minster in Gloucester, which was renamed St Oswald's Priory in his honour. Æthelflæd, and her husband Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia, were buried in the priory, and their nephew, King Æthelstan, was a major patron of Oswald's cult.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Oswald's head was interred in Durham Cathedral together with the remains of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (a saint with whom Oswald became posthumously associated, although the two were not associated in life; Cuthbert became bishop of Lindisfarne more than forty years after Oswald's death) and other valuables in a quickly made coffin, where it is generally believed to remain, although there are at least four other claimed heads of Oswald in continental Europe. One of his arms is said to have ended up in Peterborough Abbey later in the Middle Ages. The story is that a small group of monks from Peterborough made their way to Bamburgh where Oswald's uncorrupted arm was kept and stole it under the cover of darkness. They returned with it to Peterborough and in due time a chapel was created for the arm – Oswald's Chapel. Minus the arm, this can be seen to this day in the south transept of the cathedral. When creating this chapel the monks of Peterborough had thought of how they had acquired it and built into the chapel a narrow tower – just big enough for a monk to climb to the top by an internal stair and stand guard over Oswald's arm 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The monk had to stand because the tower is not large enough for him to sit – sitting could lull him to sleep – and they knew what could happen when no-one was watching.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Several churches bear the name of St Oswald, including The Church of Saint Oswald on the location of the wooden cross left by Oswald at Heavenfield, the night before the battle. This was rebuilt in 1717. The site is visible from the B6318 Military Road. St Oswald's Grasmere is purportedly on one of the sites he preached on, on a bank of the River Rothay. William Wordsworth's grave is located in the cemetery here. St Oswald's Church, Compton Abdale in Gloucestershire was dedicated to St Oswald following Æthelflæd's foundation of St Oswald's Priory in 909. St Oswald's Catholic Church lies to the north of Peterborough City Centre.


title: Oswald of Northumbria

text: Some English place names record his reign, for example it has been claimed that Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire – meaning the twistle of Oswald – is linked to the saint, although it's more likely to be the name of the owner of the land. Kirkoswald in Cumbria is so named because it is believed that his body was taken there after his death. The local church is ascribed to him. Another Kirkoswald in Scotland also commemorates him.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional acoustic guitar, in which the performer's fingertips press the strings against frets, the pitch of a steel guitar is changed by pressing a polished steel bar against plucked strings (from which the name "steel guitar" derives). Though the instrument does not have frets, it displays markers that resemble them. Lap steels may differ markedly from one another in external appearance, depending on whether they are acoustic or electric, but in either case, do not have pedals, distinguishing them from pedal steel guitar.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: The steel guitar was the first "foreign" musical instrument to gain a foothold in American pop music. It originated in the Hawaiian Islands about 1885, popularized by an Oahu youth named Joseph Kekuku, who became known for playing a traditional guitar by laying it across his lap and sliding a piece of metal against the strings to change the pitch. The instrument's distinctive portamento sound, characterized by a smooth gliding between notes, became popular throughout the islands. American popular culture became fascinated with Hawaiian music during the first half of the twentieth century – to the degree of becoming a musical fad. Americans were curious about the lap steel instrument featured in its performance, and came to refer to it as a "Hawaiian guitar", and the horizontal playing position as "Hawaiian style". Hawaiian music began its assimilation into American popular music in the 1910s, but with English lyrics; a combination Hawaiians called "hapa haole" (half-white). In the 1930s, the invention of electric amplification for the lap steel was a milestone in its evolution. It meant that the instrument could be heard equally with other instruments, that it no longer needed a resonance chamber to produce its sound, and that electrified lap steels could be manufactured in any shape (even a rectangular block), with little or no resemblance to a traditional guitar.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: In the early twentieth century Hawaiian music and the steel guitar began to meld into other musical styles, including blues, jazz, gospel, country music and, particularly, the country music sub-genres Western swing, honky-tonk, and bluegrass. Lap steel pioneers include Sol Hoopii, Bob Dunn, Jerry Byrd, Don Helms, Bud Isaacs, Leon McAuliffe, Josh Graves, Pete Kirby, and Darick Campbell.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Conceptually, a lap steel guitar may be likened to playing a guitar with one finger (the bar). This abstraction illustrates one of the instrument's major limitations: its constraint to a single chord that is not changeable during a performance without re-tuning the instrument. An early solution was to build lap steel guitars with two or more necks, each providing a separate set of differently-tuned strings on a single instrument. The performer's hands could move to a different neck at will. Although in the early 1940s, elite players recorded and performed with these multi-neck guitars, most musicians could not afford them. The problem was addressed in 1940 by adding pedals to the lap steel to change the pitch of certain strings easily, making more complex chords available on the same neck. By 1952, this invention revolutionized how the instrument was played, in many ways making it virtually a new instrument, known as a "pedal steel". An overwhelming majority of lap steel players adopted the pedal design, and, as a result, the lap steel became largely obsolete by the late 1950s, with only pockets of devotees in country and Hawaiian music remaining.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Spanish guitars were introduced into the Hawaiian Islands as early as the 1830s. The Hawaiians did not embrace the standard guitar tuning that had been in use for centuries. They re-tuned the guitars to make a chord when all the strings were sounded together, known as an "open tuning". This was called "slack-key", known in Hawaiian as ""kī hōʻalu"", because certain strings were "slackened" to achieve it. Hawaiians learned to play fingerstyle this way, creating melodies over the full resonant tones of the open strings, and the genre became known as slack-key guitar. About 1885, after guitar strings made of steel became available, Joseph Kekuku, on the island of Oahu developed and popularized playing an open tuning while seated with the guitar across his knees while pressing a steel bar against the strings. Following Kekuku's lead, other Hawaiians began playing in this new manner, with the guitar laid across the lap, instead of in the traditional way of holding the instrument against the body. Once the horizontal style became popular throughout the islands, the technique spread internationally, and was referred to (typically outside of Hawaii) as "Hawaiian style".


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Hawaiian music, with the sound of the steel guitar as a marked featured of it, became a popular musical preoccupation or fad in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1916, recordings of indigenous Hawaiian music outsold all other U.S. musical genres. This popularity initiated the manufacture of guitars designed specifically to be played horizontally. The archetypal lap steel guitar is the acoustic Hawaiian guitar. Despite incorporating a resonant chamber in their body, these early acoustic versions of the instrument were not loud enough relative to other instruments. However, in the early 1930s a steel guitarist named George Beauchamp invented the electric guitar pickup. Electrification not only allowed the lap steel guitar to be heard better, but it also meant that their resonance chambers were no longer essential, or even required. The result was that steel guitars could be manufactured in any shape – even in the form of a rectangular block bearing little or no resemblance to the traditional guitar shape. This led to table-like instruments in a metal frame on legs called "console steels".


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Over centuries in Western countries, the traditional Spanish guitar developed a near-universal tuning of ascending fourths (and one major third) consisting of E–A–D–G–B–E; however, no such standard existed for the Hawaiian "open tunings" (guitar tuned in a chord). The Hawaiians simply tuned to a chord that suited the singer's voice. Beginning in the days of slack-key guitar in the 1850s, Hawaiian tunings came to be as closely guarded as any trade secret, handed down in families. Many players de-tuned their instruments when they were not playing them to keep others from discovering their tuning.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: The tuning chosen for these instruments is a crucial foundation on which steel guitar style is built. The tuning used determines the notes that the player has available in a chord, and affects how notes can be played in sequence. Experimenting with different tunings was a widespread practice of the Hawaiian music of the 1930s and provided templates that became a foundation for the playing style of later musicians. Scores of tunings are available for lap steel players. The addition of a sixth interval into a tuning had a dramatic effect on the steel guitar because it created numerous positions and playing pockets which were not accessible in a simple major chord. The C was a common tuning for six string lap steels in the 1920s and 1930s. Tunings with a sixth interval are popular in Western swing and jazz, while tunings containing sevenths are often chosen for blues and rock music.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: A fundamental challenge of lap steel guitar design is the inherent constraint it places on the number of chords and inversions available in any given tuning. To address the meagre array available to them, some early players would simply have a second lap steel at hand, with a different tuning, ready when needed. Another strategy was to increase the number of strings on the instrument (the more strings available, the smaller the pitch intervals between them, and therefore more notes available when the bar is placed straight across the strings). A third strategy was to add additional necks to the same instrument, thus providing separate sets of strings that could each be tuned differently.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: In the U.S. Mainland in the early 20th century, after the 1898 annexation of Hawaii, the Hawaiian "craze" was in full force, as evidenced by radio broadcasts, stage shows, and motion pictures featuring Hawaiian music. Hollywood films perpetuated the musical image of an idealized island lifestyle. Hawaiian guitars and lessons for youth were widely available. For example, the Oahu Music Company sold their "Oahu"-brand guitars and lessons to young people by door-to-door sales, canvassing nearly every city in the United States.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: The steel guitar was the first "foreign" musical instrument to gain a foothold in American pop music. Pioneer lap steel players between 1915 and 1930 included Sol K. Bright Sr., Tau Moe, Dick McIntire, Sam Ku West and Frank Ferera. Ferera was the most-recorded of any lap-style guitarists in that time period. Hawaiian music began to meld into American popular music in the 1910s – a combination Hawaiians called "hapa haole" (half-white) – which was essentially Hawaiian music, sung in English, intended for white audiences. As an example, Honolulu-born Dick McIntire and his "Harmony Hawaiians" recorded Hawaiian songs sung by American pop crooner Bing Crosby in 1936. Tin Pan Alley obliged the demand for Hawaiian songs by publishing a large supply of "hapa haole" music. Many amateur and professional musicians throughout America formed Hawaiian combos in the 1930s and 1940s. The introduction of electrified guitars in the 1930s had a profound effect, boosting commercial Hawaiian music.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: In the development of lap steel guitar in the early twentieth century, many innovators contributed; among the most prominent were:


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Sol Ho'opi'i (pronounced Ho-OH-pee-EE) was perhaps the most famous Hawaiian musician whose work spread the sound of instrumental lap steel play worldwide. He was the first steel guitarist to combine Hawaiian music with American jazz. Born in Honolulu in 1902, Hoopii was a gifted talent on lap steel from an early age. When he was a teenager, he stowed away on a Matson liner on its journey from Hawaii to San Francisco. After his arrival in California, he formed a trio and became well known in clubs, theaters, movie appearances and recordings from 1925 to 1950. He combined Hawaiian music with the jazz he heard from clarinet and horn players. He was a trendsetter in his use of the metal-bodied National Tricone guitar and, later, the Rickenbacker Bakelite ("see photo above") and Dickerson electric steels.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Bob Dunn was the first steel guitarist of renown playing Western swing. Born in 1908 in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, he quit school in the eighth grade to join traveling musical troupes. Considered a musical revolutionary, according to music writer Michael Ross, Bob Dunn played the first electrified instrument of any type on a commercial recording. It was a Western swing tune released in 1935, performed by Dunn in collaboration with "Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies". The guitar he played was a Rickenbacker A22, nicknamed the "Frying Pan". Formerly a trombone player, Dunn's guitar playing introduced horn-like solos, with the staccato phrasing of jazz players, and, according to historian Andy Volk, was of indelible influence on subsequent generations of steel players.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Jerry Byrd was born in Lima, Ohio, in 1920. As a youth, he attended a traveling tent show that came to town; it was a troupe of Hawaiians playing Hawaiian music and featured a polished National steel guitar. Byrd was smitten by the sound as well as the physical appearance of the instrument and said, "That was the day that changed my life". In a musical career divided between Hawaiian music and country music, Byrd helped lay the foundation for the Nashville steel guitar sound. He is credited with developing the C tuning that became the standard of C pedal steels. With Hank Williams, Byrd recorded songs like "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", "Lovesick Blues" and "A Mansion on the Hill". Byrd also recorded with Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb and others. After his Nashville career, Byrd made Hawaii his permanent home.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: In the early 1930s, the newly electrified lap steel guitar took a prominent position in a type of dance music known as "Western swing", a form of jazz swing that combined elements of country music and Hawaiian music. Pioneers of the genre include bandleaders Milton Brown and Bob Wills. Wills in turn hired and nurtured innovative players, who subsequently influenced the genre, including Leon McAuliffe, Noel Boggs, and Herb Remington.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: In October, 1936, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys and McAuliffe, performing with a Rickenbacker B–6 lap steel, recorded the remarkably well selling record, "Steel Guitar Rag". Due to the need to have different chords or voicings available, the design of the lap steel and the way it was played underwent continual change as the style evolved. McAuliffe had two Rickenbackers, each tuned differently. The instrument's constraints caused leading steel guitarists to add additional necks with different tunings on the same instrument. Lap steels were the first multi-neck electric instruments. The added size and weight meant that the instrument could no longer be reasonably supported on the player's lap and required placement in a frame with legs known as a "console" steel guitar, that is still ostensibly a lap steel. Prominent players of that era, including Herb Remington and Noel Boggs, accommodated by instrument maker Leo Fender, eventually played instruments with four different necks.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: By the late 1940s, the steel guitar featured prominently in the emerging "honky-tonk" style of country music, developed in Texas and Oklahoma bars and dance halls (called honky-tonks). The style features a simple two-beat sound with a prominent backbeat. Honky-tonk singers who used a lap steel guitar in their musical arrangements included Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Webb Pierce.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Don Helms (1927–2008), born in New Brockton, Alabama, played a double-neck Gibson lap steel using an E and a B tuning on recordings by all three of these artists, as well as on more than 100 Hank Williams songs, including "Your Cheating Heart", "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)" and "Cold, Cold Heart". Helms' playing style helped move country music away from the hillbilly string-band sound popular in the 1930s and toward the more modern electric style that took over in the 1940s. His guitar intros, leads, and fills have been widely imitated for 50 years. Other classic country recordings featuring Helms' work were "Walkin' After Midnight" (Patsy Cline) and "Blue Kentucky Girl" (Loretta Lynn). Many recordings of that era (1950s) were made using a steel guitar tuning in a sixth chord, often a C, which is sometimes called a "Texas tuning".


title: Lap steel guitar

text: The Dobro or resonator guitar is a uniquely American lap steel guitar with a resonator cone designed to make a guitar louder. It was patented by the Dopyera brothers in 1927, but the name "Dobro", a portmanteau of DOpyera and BROthers, became a generic term for this type of guitar. The dobro never became popular with blues players, who generally prefer the National guitar, which has a similar resonator design but uses a metal body. In the opinion of music writer Richard Carlin, the dobro probably would have disappeared from the musical scene had it not been for two influential players: Pete Kirby and Uncle Josh Graves (Buck Graves).


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Beecher "Pete" Kirby (1911–1992), known as Bashful Brother Oswald, was born in Sevierville, Tennessee. As a member of Roy Acuff's "Smoky Mountain Boys", in 1939 his dobro playing on the Grand Ole Opry helped define country music in its formative years. Kirby introduced the instrument to a nationwide radio audience. He played a Dobro Model 27, and sometimes a steel-bodied National guitar. He was known to perform a comedy act dressed as a yokel, wearing a wide-brim slouch hat and overalls. His dobro attracted interest and fascination; he said, "People couldn't understand how I played it and what it was, and they'd always want to come around and look at it." He stayed with Acuff for 53 years.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Buck "Josh" Graves (aka "Uncle Josh Graves"), born in 1927, played dobro in the pioneering Bluegrass band "Flatt and Scruggs" in 1955. Graves played a role in establishing dobro as a common fixture in a bluegrass band. He honed a style that elevated his dobro skills to rival the prowess of his bandmates. To do so, he abandoned Hawaiian stylings and adopted hammer-on and pull-off notes to combine open strings with fretted notes rapidly; additionally, he adopted a three-finger picking style taught to him by Earl Scruggs. Dozens of other bluegrass groups added a dobro after hearing Graves' lightning-fast solos that fit into the bluegrass instrumental style. He took lap steel guitar to a new level, able to complement the banjo, fiddle, and mandolin.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Dobro fell out of favor in mainstream country music until a bluegrass revival in the 1970s brought it back with younger virtuoso players like Jerry Douglas, whose Dobro skills became widely known and emulated.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: This gospel music tradition, now called "sacred steel", began in the 1930s church services in the "House of God", a small African-American denomination where the steel guitar emerged as an alternative to the church organ. Darick Campbell (1966–2020) was a lap steel player for the gospel band, The Campbell Brothers, who took the musical tradition from Pentecostal churches to international fame. Campbell played a traditional Hawaiian lap steel: a Fender Stringmaster 8-string (Fender Deluxe-8). He regulated the volume up on top of the guitar with his hand as he played and used a wah pedal. Born in Rochester, New York, Campbell was a master at mimicking the human singing voice with his guitar. He said, "My method is to always think of my guitar as a voice". Campbell played many music festivals, but his renown in rock and jazz circles was not well-received by church leaders. The Campbell Brothers parted ways acrimoniously with the Nashville-based House of God Church, Keith Dominion, because the Pentecostal church wanted to keep the band's music within the church walls. Campbell recorded with The Allman Brothers and Medeski Martin and Wood.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Lap slide guitar is not a specific instrument, but a style of playing lap steel that is typically heard in blues or rock music. Players of these genres typically use the term "slide" instead of "steel"; they sometimes play the style with a flat pick or with fingers instead of finger picks. Pioneers in lap slide include Buddy Woods, "Black Ace" Turner (who used a small medicine bottle as a slide), and Freddie Roulette. Turner played a National Style 2 squareneck Tricone guitar on his lap.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Another blues guitar playing style is called "slide guitar", a hybrid between steel guitar and conventional guitar. It is played with a conventional guitar held flat against the body, fretting the bass strings in the usual way (for rhythm accompaniment), while using a tubular slide (or the neck of a bottle) placed on a finger of the same hand to slide against the treble strings. In 1923, Sylvester Weaver was the first to record this style. In the 1940s, blues players like Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker popularized electric slide guitar this way, using a traditional guitar in standard tuning. The term "bottleneck" was historically used to describe this type of playing. Early blues players used open tunings, but most modern slide players use both standard and open.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: The expense of building multiple necks on each guitar made lap steels unaffordable for most players and a more sophisticated solution was needed. Many inventors sought a mechanical linkage to change the pitch of strings on the steel guitar. Gibson introduced a pedal steel guitar as early as 1940, but it never caught on. About 1946, Paul Bigsby created a new design for the pedal action, greatly improving it. Bigsby, working alone in his shop, made guitars for leading players of the day, including Joaquin Murphey and Speedy West. Nashville guitarist Bud Isaacs received one of Bigsby's two-pedal guitars in 1952. It was a wooden double–eight string model. Isaacs experimented with the new pedals in an E tuning, trying to imitate the sound of two fiddles playing in harmony. In doing so, he came upon something new – he innovated pushing the pedal "while the strings were still sounding". This practice had been strictly avoided by other players of the era, because it was considered poor technique and "un-Hawaiian". Isaacs' intent was to use the pedal mechanism itself as a feature of the music. The technique created a triad chord, where two lower notes bend up in glissando counterpoint from below, to harmonize with a third note on top that remains unchanged. The pedal facilitated the move in perfect synchronization and pitch, which was consistent and reliable.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Isaacs tried it in a 1953 recording session on a Webb Pierce song called "Slowly". The song became one of the most-played country songs of 1954 and was No. 1 on the Billboard's country charts for seventeen weeks. Isaacs' guitar became the first pedal steel guitar on a hit record. More importantly, the sound was immediately recognized by lap steel (non-pedal) guitarists as something both unique and impossible to produce on a non-pedal lap steel. Dozens of instrumentalists rushed to get pedals on their steel guitars to imitate the unique bending notes they heard in Isaacs' play. In the months and years after this recording, instrument makers and musicians worked to duplicate the innovations of Bigsby and Isaacs. Even though the instrument had been available for over a decade before this recording, the pedal steel guitar emerged as a crucial element in country music after the success of this song. The pedals allowed playing more complex and versatile music than it was possible on lap steel.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: The pedal steel design was adopted by an overwhelming majority of lap steel players in the early 1950s. The resulting new and distinctive style of playing became a defining characteristic of the country music coming out of Nashville for decades thereafter. In accordance, the "non"-pedal lap steel became largely obsolete, with only pockets of devotees remaining in country and Hawaiian music.


title: Lap steel guitar

text: Jimmy Day was an example of an established lap player who was able to make a successful switch to pedals in mid-career. Other prominent lap steel players—including Noel Boggs, Jerry Byrd and Joaquin Murphey—refused to switch. According to music historian Rich Kienzle, this decision hindered Boggs' later career. Speaking about the pedal steel in a 1972 interview, Jerry Byrd said: "Mechanically, there were a lot of bugs, you couldn't keep them in tune, and that drove me crazy" ... So I decided to stay with what I had and keep my identity and ride it out... I never made the change-over." Joaquin Murphey stayed with the non-pedal lap steel long after his contemporaries had switched over, and with his C tuning. He felt that the Nashville-standard E was, in his words, a "gimmick". He stated in a 1995 interview, "I can't do all that fancy Nashville stuff and I hate it anyhow".


title: Iraqi Airways

text: Iraqi Airways Company, operating as Iraqi Airways ( "al-Xuṭūṭ al-Jawwiyyah al-ʿIrāqiyyah, Kurdish: ھێڵی ئاسمانی عێراق"), is the national carrier of Iraq, headquartered on the grounds of Baghdad International Airport in Baghdad. It is the second oldest airline in the Middle East. Iraqi Airways operates domestic and regional services; its main base is Baghdad International Airport.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: Iraqi Airways was founded in 1945 as a department of the Iraqi State Railways and started operating on 28 January 1946 using five De Havilland Dragon Rapides on a service to Syria. With the help of the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), the new airline ordered three Vickers Viking aircraft. While waiting for the Vikings to be delivered, it leased four Douglas DC-3 aircraft from BOAC in December 1946. In 1947, the airline ordered the de Havilland Dove to replace the Dragon Rapides; the Doves were delivered in October 1947. The three new Vikings were delivered at the end of 1947 and the DC-3s returned to BOAC. A fourth Viking was bought second-hand.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In 1953, the four-engined Vickers Viscount turboprop was chosen to replace the Vikings and an order for three was placed in July. The Viscounts entered service in 1955 and operated all of Iraqi Airways' international services, including a new route to London with intermediate stops. On 1 April 1960, the airline was split from the railway company. In 1961, it placed an order for two Boeing 720Bs for delivery in 1964, but the order was later cancelled.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In the 1960s, Iraqi Airways bought Russian Tupolev Tu-124 planes as well as Hawker Siddeley Trident aircraft. These jets allowed the airline to increase services across the Middle East, to Africa and Europe. At the time, cargo aircraft such as the Ilyushin Il-76 were also purchased. During the 1970s, Iraqi Airways needed a bigger jet for a new route to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York; it purchased the Boeing 707 and, soon after, the Boeing 747. Airfare was kept artificially low through state subsidies under the Iraqi Ba'athist government.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: Attempts were made to restart domestic services after the Gulf War in May 1991, and permission was granted by the United Nations to operate helicopters on limited domestic services. Fixed-wing flights were banned under the ceasefire terms, although the UN Security Council agreed to the resumption of domestic flights. These restarted in January 1992 from Baghdad to Basra, using Antonov An-24 aircraft. Operations were suspended shortly after, following a UN ruling.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: However, domestic flights became a rarity too, because of the no-fly zone imposed by the United States and United Kingdom over Iraqi skies. During the 1990s, Iraqi Airways would occasionally fly pilgrims to Muslim religious cities.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: After the War in Iraq, on 30 May 2003, Iraqi Airways announced plans to resume international services. The rights to the Iraqi Airways name was transferred to a new and separate company called Iraqi Airways Company, which would establish a new airline and protect it from the legal problems tied to Saddam Hussein's regime. Operations restarted on 3 October 2004, with a flight between Baghdad and Amman.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: Iraqi Airways operated the first domestic commercial scheduled service since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, from Baghdad to Basra, with 100 passengers in a Boeing 727-200, on 4 June 2005. On 6 November 2005, Iraqi Airways operated a flight from Baghdad to Tehran, Iran, for the first time in twenty-five years. The aircraft, as with the rest of the fleet, was operated on its behalf by Teebah Airlines of Jordan. Services to Erbil and Sulaymaniyah were added in summer 2005.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In June 2009, it was revealed that Iraqi Airways had struck a deal with British aviation authorities to resume direct from Baghdad to London Gatwick Airport; the flights were supposed to begin on 8 August 2009 using a Boeing 737-400 leased from Tor Air and would eventually have seen the Airbus A320-200 operating the route. This did not happen as planned, however. The airline said at the time that they intended on a bigger expansion into the UK and Europe.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In November 2009, Blue Wings, a German airline, began operating flights to Düsseldorf and Frankfurt, Germany on behalf of Iraqi Airways.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: On 25 April 2010, Iraqi Airways launched flights to Gatwick Airport via Malmö, Sweden. When the first flight landed at London, a Kuwaiti lawyer had the General Director Kifah Hassan's documents and passport seized, as well as the plane itself. There were no developments, however, as the plane was owned by the Swedish company Tor Air. The plane returned to Baghdad. However, Kifah Hassan was not allowed to leave the United Kingdom and went up in court on 30 April. Kuwaiti officials demanded £780 million for the planes stolen by Saddam Hussein in the 1990 invasion.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: On 26 May 2010, Amer Abdul-Jabbar, Iraq's transport minister, said the cabinet had decided on Tuesday to dissolve the company over the next three years and pursue private options to avoid asset claims made by Kuwait over their 1990–91 war.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In February 2012, Iraqi Airways announced that it would resume flights to India, with services to Delhi or Mumbai from Baghdad.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In April 2012, it was announced that Iraqi Airways had ordered 40 new Boeing aircraft, the order consisting of 30 737-800 and 10 787. The first aircraft would be delivered in December 2012. Airbus in early December delivered its first A330-200 to Iraq, while Boeing delivered a Boeing 777 around the same time as well.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: On 14 August 2013, Iraqi Airways took delivery of their first Boeing 737-800 directly from Boeing Company.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: On 5 August 2015, Iraqi Airways received a ban from flying in Swedish Airspace consequent to not meeting safety standards required to fly within the European Union.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: On 10 August 2015, an EU-wide ban was imposed on the airline, suspending all EU based flights from Iraqi Airways indefinitely. Iraqi Airways responded by stating that the ban was more of a "temporary suspension" caused due to bureaucracy issues and that the matters would be resolved as a matter of urgency. Since then, the airline resumed limited service to some EU destinations by wet-leasing services from Aerovista. More recently, these flights have been operarated by AirExplore in a modified Iraqi Airways livery.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: On 8 September 2015, Iraqi Airways received a loan of $2 billion from a Citibank to finance the purchase of 40 modern aircraft type Boeing 777 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: The airline opened a Request For Proposals (RFP) to European airlines with a valid AOC certification in late 2019. The goal was to obtain agreements to wet lease aircraft that can serve routes between Iraq and Europe.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In 2008, Iraqi Airways introduced a new blue colour livery, replacing the previous green shades associated with the Saddam era. The new scheme was only applied to a single Bombardier CRJ; later on, another CRJ received the former green livery, apparently reverting to the previous one. However, in 2012 Iraqi Airways adopted a new green livery which was applied fleet-wide.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In October 2009, Iraqi Airways resumed flights to Karachi, Pakistan. The airline also started seasonal (Hajj) flights to Jeddah.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: After revealing the previous month that it had applied for rights to fly to Malmö, Sweden, Iraqi Airways commenced flights to the city on 28 November 2009.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In May 2008, the Iraqi government signed a $2.2 billion contract with Boeing for 30 Boeing 737-800s with an option for an additional 10. It was also working on a deal involving the order of ten Boeing 787 Dreamliners aircraft for long-range service.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: Another contract worth $398 million was signed for ten Bombardier CRJ-900ER aircraft with ten options. The first CRJ-900ER was delivered in October 2008. This resulted in a lawsuit against Bombardier by Kuwait Airways. Kuwait claims to have won $1.2 billion in judgments against Iraqi Airways as a result of the Gulf War. The Canadian judge ruled that he did not have jurisdiction because the case involved a foreign government, given that the purchaser of the aircraft was the government of Iraq, not Iraqi Airways. The lawsuit by Kuwait Airways was settled in 2009, with Iraq agreeing to pay $300 million.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: In February 2010, Iraqi Airways announced major fleet plans, including converting 10 of the 30 orders for the Boeing 737-800 to additional wide bodies as well as bringing the delivery date forward to September 2011, and changing the 10 Boeing 787 Dreamliner orders to Boeing 777 aircraft.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: Five Kuwait Airways Airbus A310-200s were seized in 1990 and re-registered in Iraq as part of Iraqi Airways; however, these never flew any commercial flights for the airline. Iraqi Airways also ordered five Airbus A310-300s in the late 1980s, but war-related sanctions prevented their delivery.


title: Iraqi Airways

text: Iraqi Airways' last fatal incident occurred on 25 December 1986. The airline has had the following incidents, accidents and hijackings since it began operations in 1945:


title: Life with Louie

text: Life with Louie is an American animated sitcom television series that ran on the FOX Network from 1994-1998. The series was based on the childhood of well-known stand-up comedian Louie Anderson, growing up with his family in the town of Cedar Knoll, Wisconsin during the early 1960s, although Anderson himself was actually from Saint Paul, Minnesota, also situated in midwestern U.S.


title: Life with Louie

text: The first two episodes aired in primetime on Fox in late 1994, before moving to Saturday morning on Fox Kids from 1995 to 1998.


title: Life with Louie

text: Ownership of the series passed to Disney in 2001 when Disney acquired Fox Kids Worldwide. The series is not available on Disney+.


title: Life with Louie

text: The show's intro for Seasons 2 and 3 involved the main character running toward a TV set, turning one of the set's dials, and showing a live-action video of Louie Anderson as an adult saying, "Let me tell you about my family." This was followed by clips of the show from Andy Anderson being pulled by sled dogs, Louie sticking chopsticks in his nose, to Louie jumping off a diving board at a swimming pool nearly wasting all the water and getting most of the other participants wet due to the fact of him being overweight. Then the show's logo (in pink) appeared on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, while the main character (wearing sunglasses) ate a dot while sitting on a raft while watching TV on a tire. Season 1 episodes used a live-action intro by Louie Anderson talking to the audience about his childhood, then dissolving into the show.


title: Life with Louie

text: Based on the popularity of the show, various merchandise was released including apparel, videos of various episodes, a "Lake Winnibigoshish" CD-ROM comic book, and a book series for children. The book series was based on the various episodes of the show and contained six books in total. Kids' meal toys were also produced for several fast-food restaurant chains including Taco Bell (1996), Hardee's (1997), Jack in the Box (1997), and Dairy Queen (1999).


title: Life with Louie

text: In early January 2006, TVShowsOnDVD.com posted a news story that "Life with Louie" was going to be released on DVD in the US. The information came from Louie Anderson himself who mentioned this news on a radio program he was a guest on, KQRS-FM. There has been no other news since then and it is now unknown if this series will ever be released on DVD in the United States since Louie Anderson's death in 2022. However, three 2-episode sets were released in the United Kingdom in summer 2007 as "Life with Louie: Volume 1", "2", and "3". The sets were released through Boulevard Entertainment as part of the Jetix programming brand.


title: Life with Louie

text: The series won two Emmy Awards. It also won the Humanitas Prize three times, which is more than for any other animated series.


title: Commander Azeez

text: Babatunde Łukasz Aiyegbusi (; born May 26, 1989) is a Nigerian-Polish professional wrestler and former football player. He is currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the NXT brand under the ring name Commander Azeez. He previously played for a number of teams in the Polish American Football League and German Football League, and had a stint with the Minnesota Vikings during the 2015 preseason.


title: Commander Azeez

text: Born in Oleśnica, Wrocław Voivodeship (now part of Lower Silesian Voivodeship) of South-West Poland on May 26, 1989 to a Polish mother and an immigrant Nigerian father, Aiyegbusi began playing American football in 2005 as an offensive lineman. He played in the Polish American Football League for the Giants Wrocław (formerly known as The Crew Wrocław) and the Warsaw Eagles and in the German Football League for the Dresden Monarchs. In 2015, Aiyegbusi was signed by the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League and he participated in their preseason program, playing three preseason games before being released as part of roster cuts prior to the 2015 NFL season.


title: Commander Azeez

text: On April 12, 2016, Aiyegbusi joined the WWE Performance Center as part of a new class of recruits. He made his professional wrestling debut under his birth name, portraying a face, at a NXT house show in Orlando, Florida on September 30, 2016, competing in a battle royal. In April 2018, Babatunde started to accompany Lio Rush to the ring at NXT live events until Rush was called up to the main roster as part of "205 Live". Babatunde made his televised debut on April 27 at the Greatest Royal Rumble, entering the match as the 37th entrant and being eliminated by Braun Strowman.


title: Commander Azeez

text: On August 3, 2020, Babatunde would make his return to television and his "Raw" debut. He would debut as part of a Raw Underground segment under the ring name Dabba-Kato. He would develop a winning streak on Raw Underground defeating several local wrestlers until he was defeated by Strowman on the September 21 episode of "Raw". As part of the 2020 Draft in October, Dabba-Kato was drafted to the Raw brand. However following the draft, he would not make a single appearance on the brand.


title: Commander Azeez

text: On Night 2 of WrestleMania 37 on April 11, 2021, he returned to help Apollo Crews win the Intercontinental Championship from Big E. Crews would then re-introduce him as Commander Azeez the following Friday on "SmackDown", with no mention made of his previous time as Dabba-Kato on "Raw", thus transferring to the SmackDown brand. As part of the 2021 Draft, both Crews and Azeez were drafted to the Raw brand. In June 2022, Crews and Azeez were sent to NXT.


title: Commander Azeez

text: On May 10, 2019, Babatunde made his debut for Evolve (a WWE affiliated promotion) at "Evolve 127", defeating Adrian Alanis. He would go on to feud with The Unwanted, led by Eddie Kingston. This came about at "Evolve 130", when Kingston and Joe Gacy interfered in the title match between Babatunde and JD Drake, resulting in a no-contest. After a post-match beatdown, The Unwanted then ran to the back, while Babatunde chased after them. Later that night, Babutunde reappeared and was about to perform a double chokeslam on Kingston and Gacy, until Colby Corino and Sean Maluta came out to make the save, resulting in another beatdown. In the coming months, Babatunde mostly faced members of The Unwanted. At "Evolve 131", Babatunde defeated Corino in a squash match, and at "Evolve 132", he gained a disqualification win over Gacy. He returned at "Evolve 135" facing Austin Theory, which ended in a no-contest, after an attack by The Unwanted, continuing the feud. At "Evolve 137", the match between Babatunde and Kingston went to a no-contest, and at "Evolve 138", he defeated Maluta and allied himself with The Skulk. At "Evolve 139", he defeated Kingston in a relaxed rules match. Babatunde's last interaction with The Unwanted was at "Evolve 141", where he teamed with Anthony Gutierrez and Arturo Ruas in a losing effort.


title: Commander Azeez

text: Babtunde's final appearance for the promotion came at "Evolve 142", when a singles match between him and Anthony Greene was changed to a tag team match involving him and Josh Briggs and The In Crowd. This ended in a disqualification win for The In Crowd, when Briggs hit Greene with a kendo stick.


title: Dothraki language

text: The Dothraki language is a constructed fictional language in George R. R. Martin's fantasy novel series "A Song of Ice and Fire" and its television adaptation "Game of Thrones". It is spoken by the Dothraki, a nomadic people in the series's fictional world. The language was developed for the TV series by the language creator David J. Peterson, working off the Dothraki words and phrases in Martin's novels.


title: Dothraki language

text: , the language comprised 3163 words, not all of which have been made public. In 2012, 146 newborn girls in the United States were named "Khaleesi", the Dothraki term for the wife of a "khal" or ruler, and the title adopted in the series by Daenerys Targaryen. Dothraki and Valyrian have been described by "The Economist" as "the most convincing fictional tongues since Elvish".


title: Dothraki language

text: The Dothraki vocabulary was created by David J. Peterson well in advance of the adaptation. HBO hired the Language Creation Society to create the language, and after an application process involving over 30 conlangers, Peterson was chosen to develop the Dothraki language. He delivered over 1700 words to HBO before the initial shooting. Peterson drew inspiration from George R. R. Martin's description of the language, as well as from such languages as Estonian, Inuktitut, Turkish, Russian, and Swahili.


title: Dothraki language

text: David J. Peterson and his development of the Dothraki language were featured on an April 8, 2012 episode of CNN's "The Next List". He went on to create the Valyrian languages for season 3 of "Game of Thrones". Peterson and his development of Dothraki were also featured on the January 8, 2017 episode of "To Tell the Truth".


title: Dothraki language

text: The Dothraki language was developed under two significant constraints. First, the language had to match the uses already put down in the books. Secondly, it had to be easily pronounceable or learnable by the actors. These two constraints influenced the grammar and phonology of the language: for instance, as in English, there is no contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops.


title: Dothraki language

text: David Peterson has said, "You know, most people probably don't really know what Arabic actually sounds like, so to an untrained ear, it might sound like Arabic. To someone who knows Arabic, it doesn't. I tend to think of the sound as a mix between Arabic (minus the distinctive pharyngeals) and Spanish, due to the dental consonants."


title: Dothraki language

text: Regarding the orthography, the Dothraki themselves do not have a writing system—nor do many of the surrounding peoples (e.g., the Lhazareen). If there were to be any written examples of Dothraki in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" universe, it would be in a writing system developed in the Free Cities and adapted to Dothraki, or in some place like Ghis or Qarth, which do have writing systems.


title: Dothraki language

text: There are 23 consonant phonemes in the Dothraki language. In the following IPA chart, each sound in Dothraki is given with approximate English equivalent in brackets.


title: Dothraki language

text: In the "A Song of Ice and Fire" books, never occurs as a vowel, appearing only after , and only in names, as in "Jhiqui" and "Quaro".


title: Dothraki language

text: In sequence of multiple vowels, each such vowel represents a separate syllable. Examples: "shierak" ('star'), "rhaesh" ('country'), "khaleesi" ('queen').


title: Dothraki language

text: Though prepositions are also sometimes employed, the language is foremost inflectional. Prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes are all used. Verbs conjugate in infinitive, past, present, future, two imperatives and (archaic) participle; they also agree with person, number and polarity. Nouns divide into two classes, inanimate and animate. They decline in five cases, nominative, accusative, genitive, allative and ablative. Animate nouns also decline according to number.


title: Dothraki language

text: The basic word order is SVO (subject–verb–object). In a basic sentence, the order of these elements (when all three are present) is as in English: first comes the subject (S), followed by the verb (V), and then the object (O).


title: Dothraki language

text: Adverbs normally are sentence final, but they can also immediately follow the verb. Modal particles precede the verb.


title: Dothraki language

text: In the episode "Andy's Ancestry" from the United States television show "The Office", Dwight Schrute created the Dothraki phrase "throat rip" by putting "throat" in the accusative and placing it in front of the transitive verb. Compounds of this sort are a form of object incorporation. Peterson adopted this technique and called it the "Schrutean compound".


title: Isaac Babel

text: Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (; – 27 January 1940) was a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of "Red Cavalry" and "Odessa Stories", and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry." Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage, and executed on 27 January 1940.


title: Isaac Babel

text: Isaac Babel was born in the Moldavanka section of Odessa, Russia, to Jewish parents, Manus and Feyga Babel. Soon after his birth, the Babel family moved to the port city of Nikolaev. They later returned to live in a more fashionable part of Odesa in 1906. Babel used Moldavanka as the setting for "Odessa Stories" and the play "Sunset".


title: Isaac Babel

text: Although Babel's short stories present his family as "destitute and muddle-headed", they were relatively well-off. According to his autobiographical statements, Babel's father, Manus, was an impoverished shopkeeper. Babel's daughter, Nathalie Babel Brown, stated that her father fabricated this and other biographical details in order to "present an appropriate past for a young Soviet writer who was not a member of the Communist Party." In fact, Babel's father was a dealer in farm implements and owned a large warehouse.


title: Isaac Babel

text: In his pre-teens, Babel hoped to get into the preparatory class of the Nicolas I Odesa Commercial School. However, he first had to overcome the Jewish quota. Despite the fact that Babel received passing grades, his place was given to another boy, whose parents had bribed school officials. As a result, he was schooled at home by private tutors.


title: Isaac Babel

text: In addition to regular school subjects, Babel studied the Talmud and music. According to Cynthia Ozick, "Though he was at home in Yiddish and Hebrew, and was familiar with the traditional texts and their demanding commentaries, he added to these a lifelong fascination with Maupassant and Flaubert. His first stories were composed in fluent literary French. The breadth and scope of his social compass enabled him to see through the eyes of peasants, soldiers, priests, rabbis, children, artists, actors, women of all classes. He befriended whores, cabdrivers, jockeys; he knew what it was like to be penniless, to live on the edge and off the beaten track."


title: Isaac Babel

text: His attempt to enroll at Odesa University was blocked for ethnic reasons. Babel then entered the Kyiv Institute of Finance and Business. There he met Yevgenia Borisovna Gronfein, daughter of a wealthy industrialist, whom he eventually married.


title: Isaac Babel

text: In 1915, Babel graduated and moved to Petrograd, in defiance of laws restricting Jews to living within the Pale of Settlement. Babel was fluent in French, besides Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish, and his earliest works were written in French. However, none of his stories in that language have survived.


title: Isaac Babel

text: In St. Petersburg, Babel met Maxim Gorky, who published some of Babel's stories in his literary magazine "Letopis" ("Летопись", "Chronicle"). Gorky advised the aspiring writer to gain more life experience; Babel wrote in his autobiography, "I owe everything to that meeting and still pronounce the name of Alexey Maksimovich Gorky with love and admiration." One of his most famous semi-autobiographical short stories, "The Story of My Dovecote" ("История моей голубятни", "Istoriya moey golubyatni"), was dedicated to Gorky.


title: Isaac Babel

text: There is very little information about Babel's whereabouts during and after the October Revolution. According to one of his stories, "The Road" (""Дорога"", ""Doroga""), he served on the Romanian front until early December 1917. In his autobiography, Babel says he worked as a translator for the Petrograd Cheka, likely in 1917. In March 1918 he worked in Petrograd as a reporter for Gorky's Menshevik newspaper, "Novaya zhizn" ("Новая жизнь", ""New Life""). Babel continued publishing there until "Novaya zhizn" was forcibly closed on Lenin's orders in July 1918.


title: Isaac Babel

text: Babel later recalled, "My journalistic work gave me a lot, especially in the sense of material. I managed to amass an incredible number of facts, which proved to be an invaluable creative tool. I struck up friendships with morgue attendants, criminal investigators, and government clerks. Later, when I began writing fiction, I found myself always returning to these 'subjects', which were so close to me, in order to put character types, situations, and everyday life into perspective. Journalistic work is full of adventure."


title: Isaac Babel

text: During the Russian Civil War, which led to the Party's monopoly on the printed word, Babel worked for the publishing house of the Odesa Gubkom (regional CPSU Committee), in the food procurement unit (see his story "Ivan-and-Maria"), in the "Narkompros" (Commissariat of Education), and in a typographic printing office.


title: Isaac Babel

text: After the end of the Civil War, Babel worked as a reporter for "The Dawn of the Orient" (Заря Востока) a Russian-language newspaper published in Tbilisi. In one of his articles, he expressed regret that Lenin's controversial New Economic Policy had not been more widely implemented.


title: Isaac Babel

text: Babel married Yevgenia Gronfein on August 9, 1919, in Odesa. In 1929, their marriage produced a daughter, Nathalie Babel Brown, who grew up to become a scholar and editor of her father's life and work. By 1925, the Babels' marriage was souring. Yevgenia Babel, feeling betrayed by her husband's infidelities and motivated by her increasing hatred of communism, emigrated to France. Babel saw her several times during his visits to Paris. During this period, he also entered into a long-term romantic relationship with Tamara Kashirina. Together, they had a son, Emmanuil Babel, who was later adopted by his stepfather Vsevolod Ivanov. Emmanuil's name was changed to Mikhail Ivanov, and he later became a noted artist.


title: Isaac Babel

text: After the final break with Tamara, Babel briefly attempted to reconcile with Yevgenia and they had their daughter Natalie in 1929. In 1932, Babel met a Siberian-born Gentile named Antonina Pirozhkova (1909–2010). In 1934, after Babel failed to convince his wife to return to Moscow, he and Antonina began living together. In 1939, their common law marriage produced a daughter, Lydia Babel.


title: Isaac Babel

text: According to Pirozhkova, "Before I met Babel, I used to read a great deal, though without any particular direction. I read whatever I could get my hands on. Babel noticed this and told me, 'Reading that way will get you nowhere. You won't have time to read the books that are truly worthwhile. There are about a hundred books that every educated person needs to read. Sometime I'll try to make you a list of them.' And a few days later he brought me a list. There were ancient writers on it, Greek and Roman—Homer, Herodotus, Lucretius, Suetonius—and also all the classics of later European literature, starting with Erasmus, Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, and Coster, and going on to 19th century writers such as Stendhal, Mérimée, and Flaubert."


title: Isaac Babel

text: In 1920, Babel was assigned to Komandarm (Army Commander) Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, witnessing a military campaign of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. He documented the horrors of the war he witnessed in the "1920 Diary" ("Конармейский Дневник 1920 года", "Konarmeyskiy Dnevnik 1920 Goda"), which he later used to write "Red Cavalry" ("Конармия", "Konarmiya"), a collection of short stories such as "Crossing the River Zbrucz" and "My First Goose". The horrific violence of "Red Cavalry" seemed to harshly contrast the gentle nature of Babel himself.


title: Isaac Babel

text: Babel wrote: "Only by 1923 I have learned how to express my thoughts in a clear and not very lengthy way. Then I returned to writing." Several stories that were later included in "Red Cavalry" were published in Vladimir Mayakovsky's "LEF" ("ЛЕФ") magazine in 1924. Babel's honest description of the brutal realities of war, far from revolutionary propaganda, earned him some powerful enemies. According to recent research, Marshal Budyonny was infuriated by Babel's unvarnished descriptions of marauding Red Cossacks and demanded Babel's execution without success. However, Gorky's influence not only protected Babel but also helped to guarantee publication. In 1929 "Red Cavalry" was translated into English by J. Harland and later was translated into a number of other languages.


title: Isaac Babel

text: Argentine author and essayist Jorge Luis Borges once wrote of "Red Cavalry", The music of its style contrasts with the almost ineffable brutality of certain scenes. One of the stories—"Salt"—enjoys a glory seemingly reserved for poems and rarely attained by prose: many people know it by heart.


title: Isaac Babel

text: Back in Odesa, Babel started to write "Odessa Stories", a series of short stories set in the Odesan ghetto of Moldavanka. Published individually between 1921 and 1924 and collected into a book in 1931, the stories describe the life of Jewish gangsters, both before and after the October Revolution. Many of them directly feature the fictional mob boss Benya Krik, loosely based on the historical figure Mishka Yaponchik. Benya Krik is one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature. These stories were used as the basis for the 1927 film "Benya Krik", and the stage play "Sunset", which centers on Benya Krik's self-appointed mission to right the wrongs of Moldavanka. First on his list is to rein in his alcoholic, womanizing father, Mendel.


title: Isaac Babel

text: According to Nathalie Babel Brown, ""Sunset" premiered at the Baku Worker's Theatre on October 23, 1927 and played in Odesa, Kyiv, and the celebrated Moscow Art Theatre. The reviews, however, were mixed. Some critics praised the play's 'powerful anti-bourgeois stance and its interesting 'fathers and sons' theme. But in Moscow, particularly, critics felt that the play's attitude toward the bourgeoisie was contradictory and weak. "Sunset" closed, and was dropped from the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theatre.


title: Isaac Babel

text: However, "Sunset" continued to have admirers. In a 1928 letter to his White emigre father, Boris Pasternak wrote, "Yesterday, I read "Sunset", a play by Babel, and almost for the first time in my life I found that Jewry, as an ethnic fact, was a phenomenon of positive, unproblematic importance and power. ... I should like you to read this remarkable play..."


title: Isaac Babel

text: According to Pirozhkova, filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein was also an admirer of "Sunset" and often compared it to the writings of Émile Zola for, "illuminating capitalist relationships through the experience of a single family." Eisenstein was also quite critical of the Moscow Art Theatre, "for its weak staging of the play, particularly for failing to convey to the audience every single word of its unusually terse text."


title: Isaac Babel

text: Babel's play "Maria" candidly depicts both political corruption, prosecution of the innocent, and black marketeering within Soviet society. Noting the play's implicit rejection of socialist realism, Maxim Gorky accused his friend of having a "Baudelairean predilection for rotting meat." Gorky further warned his friend that "political inferences" would be made "that will be personally harmful to you." According to Pirozhkova, "Once Babel went to the Moscow Art Theater when his play "Mariya" was being given its first reading, and when he returned home he told me that all the actresses had been impatient to find out what the leading female role was like and who would be cast in it. It turned out that there was no leading female character present on the stage in this play. Babel thought that the play had not come off well, but ... he was always critical of his own work." Although intended to be performed in 1935, the "Maria"'s performance was cancelled by the NKVD during rehearsals. Despite its popularity in the West, "Maria" was not performed in Russia until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.


title: Isaac Babel

text: According to Weber, "The play is very controversial. [It] shows the stories of both sides clashing with each other during the Russian Civil War—the Bolsheviks and the old society members—without making a judgment one way or another. Babel’s opinion on either side is very ambiguous, but he does make the statement that what happened after the Bolshevik Revolution may not have been the best thing for Russia."


title: Isaac Babel

text: In 1930, Babel travelled in Ukraine and witnessed the brutality of forced collectivisation and dekulakisation. Although he never made a public statement about this, he privately confided in Antonina, "The bounty of the past is gone—it is due to the famine in Ukraine and the destruction of the village across our land."


title: Isaac Babel

text: As Stalin tightened his grip on the Soviet intelligentsia and decreed that all writers and artists must conform to socialist realism, Babel increasingly withdrew from public life. During the campaign against "Formalism", Babel was publicly denounced for low productivity. At the time, many other Soviet writers were terrified and frantically rewrote their past work to conform to Stalin's wishes. However, Babel was unimpressed and confided in his protégé, the writer Ilya Ehrenburg, "In six months time, they'll leave the formalists in peace and start some other campaign."


title: Isaac Babel

text: At the first congress of the Union of Soviet Writers (1934), Babel noted ironically, that he was becoming "the master of a new literary genre, the genre of silence." American Max Eastman describes Babel's increasing reticence as an artist in a chapter called "The Silence of Isaac Babyel" in his 1934 book "Artists in Uniform". However, according to Nathalie Babel Brown, his life was tolerable: "The young writer burst upon the literary scene and instantly became the rage in Moscow. The tradition in Russia being to worship poets and writers, Babel soon became one of the happy few, a group that included Soviet writers who enjoyed exceptional status and privileges in an otherwise impoverished and despotic country. In the late 1930s, he was given a villa in the writer's colony of Peredelkino, outside Moscow. No secret was ever made of his having a wife and daughter in Paris. At the same time, hardly anyone outside of Moscow knew of two other children he had fathered. As a matter of fact, Babel had many secrets, lived with many ambiguities and contradictions, and left many unanswered questions behind him."


title: Isaac Babel

text: In 1932, after numerous requests, he was permitted to visit his estranged wife Yevgenia in Paris. While visiting his wife and their daughter Nathalie, Babel agonized over whether or not to return to Soviet Russia. In conversations and letters to friends, he expressed a longing of being "a free man," while also expressing fear at no longer being able to make a living solely through writing. On July 27, 1933, Babel wrote a letter to Yuri Annenkov, stating that he had been summoned to Moscow and was leaving immediately.


title: Isaac Babel

text: Babel's common-law wife, Antonina Pirozhkova, recalled this era, "Babel remained in France for so long that it was rumored in Moscow that he was never returning. When I wrote to him about this, he wrote back saying, 'What can people, who do not know anything, possibly say to you, who knows everything?' Babel wrote from France almost daily. I accumulated many letters from him during his 11-month absence. When Babel was arrested in 1939, all of these letters were confiscated and never returned to me."


title: Isaac Babel

text: After his return to the Soviet Union, Babel decided to move in with Pirozhkova, beginning a common law marriage which would ultimately produce a daughter, Lidya Babel. He also collaborated with Sergei Eisenstein on the film "Bezhin Meadow", about Pavlik Morozov, a child informant for the Soviet secret police. Babel also worked on the screenplays for several other Stalinist propaganda films.