<snip>

One of the new technologies brought back to Japan was photography.

In 1908, Herbert Geddes, a manager for Canadian import/export corporation G.R. Gregg and Company, was sent to work in Yokohama, a major hub of foreign trade.

While posted there, he made many photographs of the land and people, which were hand-colored and sold as fanciful postcards to foreign tourists.

Taken from a Western eye, the photos focus on traditional and “timeless” signifiers of Japanese culture, from carefully landscaped gardens to diligent craftsman and artisans. Less prominent are the newly adopted technological advances that were rapidly creating a new way of life for many Japanese as the Meiji era ended and the Taishō era began.



Four women pose for a picture through latticework.

Image: Herbert Geddes/University of Victoria Libraries




People travel in boats near the base of Mount Fuji.

Image: Herbert Geddes/University of Victoria Libraries




A rickshaw driver on a forest road.

Image: Herbert Geddes/University of Victoria Libraries




An elderly woman works with a grinding stone while young girls look on.

Image: Herbert Geddes/University of Victoria Libraries




A series of wooden Torii gateways.

Image: Herbert Geddes/University of Victoria Libraries




A high-ranking courtesan in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter of Tokyo poses with her attendants.

Image: Herbert Geddes/University of Victoria Libraries

London’s Big Dig Reveals Amazing Layers of History

Spurred by a building boom, archaeologists are plumbing the deep past of one of Europe’s oldest capitals.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/artifacts-found-under-london-archaeology-text

BURNS – The evening was supposed to be a prelude to Christmas for a local pastor and his family, but now more than three weeks later, they keep their curtains closed, doors locked and a sharp lookout for the strangers who haunted their holidays that night.

Fear of the militants occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and roaming the communities of Burns and Hines sits like a heavy winter fog over the area.

More than a dozen local residents have reported to authorities that they were harassed in the weeks leading up to the occupation and in the days since. Different trucks, SUVs and other vehicles — most with out-of-state licenses — have followed the residents.

Four of the people who filed reports agreed to share their accounts with The Oregonian/OregonLive only if their names and identifying information were withheld because they feared further harassment. Law enforcement sources confirmed each had reported the episodes.

It may have looked spontaneous, but the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge a week ago was part of a plan Ammon Bundy and a trusted associate developed largely in secret over the past two months.

Bundy, the son of controversial Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and Ryan Payne, a militia leader from Montana, came to believe that an armed occupation was the only way to bring enough attention to a pair of local ranchers heading to prison and change the underlying problem: federal land ownership.

Even as a wider network of anti-government groups and community members rejected taking action stronger than holding a public rally, Bundy and Payne privately strategized an occupation they felt was necessary to spread their message.

The Oregonian/OregonLive conducted dozens of interviews with Bundy, Payne, their supporters and federal officials that show how the leaders worked parallel tracks. They encouraged local organizers to plan a peaceful rally to back the ranchers -- Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven Hammond -- while they scoped out potential sites for a takeover.

Bundy and Payne were calculating and charismatic. The Hammonds' plight hit at the heart of their belief system. As Payne cased several federal offices in Burns and visited the refuge on multiple occasions, Bundy spent his time interviewing the Hammonds and pulling court files associated with their case.

Their presence in Burns, and the growing support for the Hammonds online, rattled the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service enough that it began making safety arrangements for its 17 employees at the refuge -- a horseshoe-shaped bird sanctuary that surrounds the Hammonds' ranch. A photo of Payne was posted in a refuge building for workers to be on the lookout.

But still no one appeared to know specifically about a planned occupation -- not the FBI, not Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward, not the Hammond rally organizers.

Man’s World, the first original Y-Films series.

The full four-part series will also have an exclusive premiere at the Jagran Film Festival, Mumbai’s largest film festival, on October 1 at 8.30 pm at Fun Cinemas, Andheri. For more information, log on to www.jff.co.in

The series supports Goal 5 of the United Nations’ Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Goal 5 is about achieving Gender Equality and empowering all girls and women, everywhere. To find out how you can help, log on to www.globalgoals.org

SYNOPSIS: Man’s World, a comedy, is a what if. What if women treated men, the way men treat women. It is a story about walking a mile in their shoes, in that world.

Man's World- Episode 01:

Living in a Man's world- Episode 01:

Brooklyn, a German shepherd from Michigan, will be featured on Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl. (Photo: Keith Barraclough/Animal Planet)


She lives in Pontiac, was discovered in Clarkston, got her TV break in New York City and is named Brooklyn.

Meet the German shepherd rescue dog who's representing Michigan in the 2016 "Puppy Bowl XII" from Animal Planet.

The adorable Brooklyn was found by the cable network through Canine Companions Rescue Center in Clarkston, an all-volunteer, foster-based group that rescues dogs from the state's animal shelters and works to place them in loving homes.

It was one of 44 animal shelters and rescue organizations that connected Animal Planet with players for this year's Team Ruff and Team Fluff.

Austin Reed learned to write as a juvenile prisoner. His handwritten manuscript runs 304 pages. (Robert Reed, The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict, Yale Collection of American Literature / Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library /Yale University.)


In the fall of 2009, an unusual package arrived at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, at Yale University. Inside was a leather-bound journal and two packets of loose-leaf paper, some bearing the stamp of the same Berkshire mill that once produced Herman Melville’s favorite writing stock.

Joined together under the title The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict, the documents told the story of an African-American boy named “Rob Reed,” who grew up in Rochester, New York, and had been convicted, in 1833, while still a child, of arson. Reed spent nearly six years in the House of Refuge, a juvenile home in Manhattan; he was released in 1839, but, accused of theft, he was soon behind bars again, this time at New York’s Auburn State Prison.

Reed never denied his guilt. But he was appalled by the conditions at the House of Refuge and especially at Auburn, an early example of the so-called “silent” detention model, which would become the basis for the modern prison system—inmates labored by day and spent their nights cooped up, often alone, in a small cell. In Reed’s day, the slightest infraction was grounds for a lashing or a trip to the “showering bath” (an early take on waterboarding). “The high and noble mind which God had given to me [was] destroyed by hard usage and a heavy club,” Reed laments. His account ends in 1858, with his discharge from Auburn.