title: Bryan Brown

text: Brown returned to Australia to make "The Umbrella Woman" (1987) with Ward and then a new version of "The Shiralee" (1987). He supported Tom Cruise in "Cocktail" (1988) and Sigourney Weaver in "Gorillas in the Mist" (1989).


title: Bryan Brown

text: In Australia he played the lead in a World War Two drama, "Blood Oath" (1990), directed by Wallace and did a romantic comedy based on a story by him and Tony Morphett, "Sweet Talker" (1991), directed by Mike Jenkins.


title: Bryan Brown

text: In the US he did "F/X2" (1991), a sequel to "F/X", where he was also executive producer, and the TV film "Dead in the Water" (1991).


title: Bryan Brown

text: He did a comedy with Dudley Moore, "Blame It on the Bellboy" (1992), followed by some thrillers: "Devlin" (1992), "The Last Hit" (1993), and "Age of Treason" (1994); in the latter he was a detective in Ancient Rome.


title: Bryan Brown

text: Brown had the lead in a short lived British TV series "The Wanderer" (1994) and starred in the popular cable film "Full Body Massage" (1995).


title: Bryan Brown

text: Brown returned to Australia to star in "Dead Heart" (1996), which he also produced. He produced and starred in "Twisted Tales" (1996) which led to an anthology TV series. He played Ned Land in the 1997 mini series "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" with Michael Caine, then did a TV film for Ken Russell, "Dogboys" (1998) and a thriller "On the Border" (1998). In 1999 Brown starred in the romantic comedy "Dear Claudia" and had a support role in "Two Hands" (1999) with Heath Ledger and Rose Byrne.


title: Bryan Brown

text: Brown starred in "Grizzly Falls" (1999), and "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1999). In Australia he had a support role in "Risk" (2000) and the lead in "On the Beach" (2000) and "Dirty Deeds" (2002) which he also produced. He produced a short film by his wife, "The Big House" (2001). Brown had support roles in "Footsteps" (2003), "Along Came Polly" (2004), "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" (2005), "Spring Break Shark Attack" (2005), and "The Poseidon Adventure" (2005). He produced a short feature directed by his wife, "Martha's New Coat" (2005) and made "Two Twisted" (2005). Back in Australia Brown was in "" (2007), and "Cactus" (2008), which he also co produced. He was in "Dean Spanley" (2008), and had a small role in "Australia" (2008).


title: Bryan Brown

text: Brown produced and had a small role in "Beautiful Kate" (2009), directed by his wife. He was in "Limbo" (2010) and "Love Birds" (2011) and guest starred on "The Good Wife". He had the lead in "Better Man" (2013) and appeared in "An Accidental Soldier" (2013) also directed by his wife. He and his daughter did a short, "Lessons from the Grave" (2013). He starred in the ghost film "The Darkside" (2013) and had the lead in a TV series "Old School" (2013). In 2014 he appeared on stage for the Sydney Theatre Company at the Wharf Theatre with Alison Whyte in David Williamson's play "Travelling North".


title: Bryan Brown

text: He was in "Kill Me Three Times" (2013), "Cocktails & Dreams" (2015), "Deadline Gallipoli" (2015), "Gods of Egypt" (2015), "The Light Between Oceans" (2016), and "" (2016). He had roles in "Australia Day" (2017), and "Sweet Country" (2017) and is in "Palm Beach" directed by his wife, and the 2019 TV series "Bloom".


title: Bryan Brown

text: His 2021 crime novel, "Sweet Jimmy", was published by Allen & Unwin in print and as audio book, narrated by Brown.


title: Bryan Brown

text: Brown's production company made the series "Twisted Tales" and "Two Twisted" (similar to "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"). The second series had an additional twist: both stories in each episode were connected in some way, and the audience was invited to try to spot the connection.


title: Bryan Brown

text: Brown was inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame in 1989. He received the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for "Breaker Morant" (1980) and for "Two Hands" (1999).


title: Bryan Brown

text: In June 2005, Brown was made a Member of the Order of Australia "for service to the community through a range of charitable organisations committed to providing assistance and support to families and young people and to the Australian film and television industry."


title: Bryan Brown

text: The Bryan Brown Theatre & Function Centre in Bankstown, Sydney, was named after him in 2013. He won Longford Lyell Award at the AACTA Awards in 2018.


title: Bryan Brown

text: When Bryan Brown was first introduced to Rachel Ward on the set of the TV miniseries "The Thorn Birds" in 1983, he read her palm and predicted she would have three children. They married a few months after filming wrapped. They have three children, Rosie, Matilda and Joe.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Roberta Cleopatra Flack (born February 10, 1937) is a retired American singer. She topped the "Billboard" charts with the No. 1 singles "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly with His Song", "Feel Like Makin' Love", "Where Is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You", the latter two duets with Donny Hathaway. Flack is also noted for her influence on the subgenre of contemporary R&B called quiet storm, along with her interpretations of songs by various songwriters, such as Leonard Cohen and members of the Beatles.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Flack was the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in two consecutive years: "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" won in 1973 and "Killing Me Softly with His Song" won in 1974.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Flack was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, to parents Laron Flack, a Veterans Administration draftsman, and Irene (Council) Flack a church organist, on February 10, 1937 (some sources have cited 1939 but the 1940 Census gives Roberta's age as 3 years old) and raised in Arlington, Virginia.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Growing up in a large, musical family, she often accompanied the choir of Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church by playing hymns and spirituals on piano, but she also enjoyed going to the "Baptist church down the street" to listen to contemporary gospel music, such as that performed by Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke.


title: Roberta Flack

text: When Flack was nine, she started taking an interest in playing the piano, and during her early teens, Flack so excelled at classical piano that Howard University awarded her a full music scholarship.


title: Roberta Flack

text: By age 15, she entered Howard University, making her one of the youngest students ever to enroll there. She eventually changed her major from piano to voice and became an assistant conductor of the university choir. Her direction of a production of "Aida" received a standing ovation from the Howard University faculty.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Flack became a student teacher at a school near Chevy Chase, Maryland. She graduated from Howard University at 19 and began graduate studies in music, but the sudden death of her father forced her to take a job teaching music and English in Farmville, North Carolina.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Before becoming a professional singer-songwriter, Flack returned to Washington, D.C., and taught at Banneker, Browne, and Rabaut Junior High Schools. She also taught private piano lessons out of her home on Euclid St. NW. During this period, her music career began to take shape on evenings and weekends in Washington, D.C. area night spots. At the Tivoli Club, she accompanied opera singers at the piano. During intermissions, she would sing blues, folk, and pop standards in a back room, accompanying herself on the piano. Later, she performed several nights a week at the 1520 Club, again providing her own piano accompaniment. Around this time, her voice teacher, Frederick "Wilkie" Wilkerson, told her that he saw a brighter future for her in pop music than in the classics. She modified her repertoire accordingly and her reputation spread. Flack began singing professionally after being hired to perform regularly at Mr. Henry's Restaurant, on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., in 1968.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Les McCann discovered Flack singing and playing jazz in a Washington nightclub. He later said on the liner notes of what would be her first album "First Take" noted below, "Her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I've ever known. I laughed, cried, and screamed for more...she alone had the voice." Very quickly, he arranged an audition for her with Atlantic Records, during which she played 42 songs in 3 hours for producer Joel Dorn. In November 1968, she recorded 39 song demos in less than 10 hours. Three months later, Atlantic reportedly recorded Flack's debut album, "First Take", in a mere 10 hours.


title: Roberta Flack

text: In 1971, Flack participated in the legendary "Soul to Soul" concert film by Denis Sanders, which was headlined by Wilson Pickett, along with Ike & Tina Turner, Santana, The Staple Singers, Les McCann, Eddie Harris, The Voices of East Harlem, and others. The U.S. delegation of musical artists was invited to perform for 14th anniversary of African independence in Ghana. The film was digitally reissued on DVD and CD in 2004 but Flack declined permission for her image and recording to be included for unknown reasons. Her a cappella performance of the traditional spiritual "Oh Freedom" retitled "Freedom Song" on the original "Soul to Soul" LP soundtrack is only available in the VHS version of the film.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Flack's cover version of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" hit number 76 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972. Her Atlantic recordings did not sell particularly well, until actor/director Clint Eastwood chose a song from "First Take", "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" written by Ewan MacColl, for the sound track of his directorial debut "Play Misty for Me"; it became the biggest hit of the year for 1972, spending six consecutive weeks at #1 and earning Flack a million-selling Gold disc. It finished the year as Billboard's top song of 1972. The "First Take" album also went to #1 and eventually sold 1.9 million copies in the United States. Eastwood, who paid $2,000 for the use of the song in the film, has remained an admirer and friend of Flack's ever since. It was awarded the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1973. In 1983, she recorded the end music to the Dirty Harry film "Sudden Impact" at Eastwood's request.


title: Roberta Flack

text: In 1972, Flack began recording regularly with Donny Hathaway, scoring hits such as the Grammy-winning "Where Is the Love" (1972) and later "The Closer I Get to You" (1978), both million-selling gold singles. Flack and Hathaway recorded several duets together, including two LPs, until Hathaway's 1979 death.


title: Roberta Flack

text: On her own, Flack scored her second #1 hit in 1973, "Killing Me Softly with His Song" written by Charles Fox, Norman Gimbel and Lori Lieberman. It was awarded both Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female at the 1974 Grammy Awards. Its parent album was Flack's biggest-selling disc, eventually earning double platinum certification. In 1974, Flack released "Feel Like Makin' Love," which became her third and final #1 hit to date on the Hot 100. That same year, Flack sang the lead on a Sherman Brothers song called "Freedom", which featured prominently at the opening and closing of the movie "Huckleberry Finn". That same year, she performed "When We Grow Up" with a teenage Michael Jackson on the 1974 television special, "Free to Be... You and Me".


title: Roberta Flack

text: Flack had a 1982 hit single with "Making Love", written by Burt Bacharach (the title track of the 1982 film of the same name), which reached #13. She began working with Peabo Bryson with more limited success, charting as high as #5 on the R&B chart (plus #16 Pop and #4 Adult Contemporary) with "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" in 1983.


title: Roberta Flack

text: In 1986, Flack sang the theme song entitled "Together Through the Years" for the NBC television series "Valerie", later known as "The Hogan Family". The song was used throughout the show's six seasons. In 1987, Flack supplied the voice of Michael Jackson's mother in the 18-minute short film for "Bad". "Oasis" was released in 1988 and failed to make an impact with pop audiences, though the title track reached #1 on the R&B chart and a remix of "Uh-Uh Ooh-Ooh Look Out (Here It Comes)" topped the dance chart in 1989. Flack found herself again in the US Top 10 with the hit song "Set the Night to Music", a 1991 duet with Jamaican vocalist Maxi Priest that peaked at #6 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 charts and #2 AC.


title: Roberta Flack

text: In 1999, a star with Flack's name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year, she gave a concert tour in South Africa; the final performance was attended by President Nelson Mandela. In 2010, she appeared on the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, singing a duet of "Where Is The Love" with Maxwell.


title: Roberta Flack

text: In February 2012, Flack released "Let it Be Roberta", an album of Beatles covers including "Hey Jude" and "Let It Be". It was her first recording in over eight years. Flack knew John Lennon and Yoko Ono, as both households moved in 1975 into The Dakota apartment building in New York City, and had apartments across the hall from each other. Flack has stated that she has already been asked to do a second album of Beatles covers. In 2013, she was reported to be involved in an interpretative album of the Beatles' classics.


title: Roberta Flack

text: At age 80, Flack made her most recent recording, "Running", the closing credits song of the 2018 feature documentary "" with music and lyrics by Michael A. Levine.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Flack's minimalist, classically trained approach to her songs was seen by a number of critics as lacking in grit and uncharacteristic of soul music. According to music scholar Jason King, her work was regularly described with the adjectives "boring", "depressing", "lifeless", "studied", and "calculated"; in contrast, AllMusic's Steve Huey said it has been called "classy, urbane, reserved, smooth, and sophisticated".


title: Roberta Flack

text: In 1971, "Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau reported that "Flack is generally regarded as the most significant new black woman singer since Aretha Franklin, and at moments she sounds kind, intelligent, and very likable. But she often exhibits the gratuitous gentility you'd expect of someone who says 'between you and I'."


title: Roberta Flack

text: Reviewing her body of work from the 1970s, he later argued that the singer "has nothing whatsoever to do with rock and roll or rhythm and blues and almost nothing to do with soul", comparing her middle-of-the-road aesthetic to Barry Manilow but with better taste, which he believed does not necessarily guarantee more enduring music: "In the long run, pop lies are improved by vulgarity."


title: Roberta Flack

text: Writer and music critic Ann Powers argued in a 2020 piece for NPR that "Flack's presence looms over both R&B and indie "bedroom" pop as if she were one of the astral beings in Ava DuVernay's version of "A Wrinkle In Time."" Jason King argued that she occupies a complex place in popular music, as "the nature of her power as a performer — to generate rapturous, spellbinding mood music and to plumb the depths of soulful heaviness by way of classically-informed technique — is not too easy to claim or make sense with the limited tools that we have in music criticism."


title: Roberta Flack

text: Flack is a member of the Artist Empowerment Coalition, which advocates the right of artists to control their creative properties. She is also a spokeswoman for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; her appearance in commercials for the ASPCA featured "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". In the Bronx section of New York City, the Hyde Leadership Charter School's after-school music program is called "The Roberta Flack School of Music" and is in partnership with Flack, who founded the school, which provides free music education to underprivileged students.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Between 1966 and 1972, she was married to Steve Novosel. Flack is the aunt of professional ice skater Rory Flack. She is also the godmother of musician Bernard Wright, who died in an accident on May 19, 2022.


title: Roberta Flack

text: On April 20, 2018, Flack was appearing onstage at the Apollo Theater at a benefit for the Jazz Foundation of America. She became ill, left the stage, and was rushed to the Harlem Hospital Center. In a statement, her manager announced that Flack had suffered a stroke a few years prior and still was not feeling well, but was "doing fine" and being kept overnight for medical observation.


title: Roberta Flack

text: On November 14, 2022, it was announced by a spokesperson that Flack had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and had retired from performing, due to the disease making it "impossible to sing", according to a spokesperson.


title: Roberta Flack

text: Flack’s collaboration with Donny Hathaway is mentioned in the song "What A Catch, Donnie" on Fall Out Boy's fourth studio album, "Folie à Deux".


title: Roberta Flack

text: American experimental producer Flying Lotus had a song named after her ("RobertaFlack") on his "Los Angeles" album.


title: Roberta Flack

text: In 1991, Hong Kong singer Sandy Lam recorded a cover version of "And So It Goes" called "微涼" on the album "夢了、瘋了、倦了". Although it was not officially promoted by the record company, it was played by many DJs.


title: Roberta Flack

text: In the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song "My Lovely Man", on the album "Blood Sugar Sex Magik", Anthony Kiedis sang "I listen to Roberta Flack, but I know you won't come back."


title: Roberta Flack

text: She is a favorite singer of Vic Wilcox, in David Lodge's novel "Nice Work", winner of the "Sunday Express" Book of the Year award in 1988.


title: Roberta Flack

text: In the 2014 Marvel movie "", her hit "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" is playing when Hugh Jackman's character, Wolverine's consciousness initially arrives back in 1973. The song also appears in Marlon Riggs's 1989 experimental documentary "Tongues Untied".


title: Roberta Flack

text: Her song "Compared to What" plays over the opening credits to the 2015 movie "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." The song also appears in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 film "Boogie Nights".


title: Roberta Flack

text: On May 11, 2017, Roberta Flack received an honorary Doctorate degree in the Arts from Long Island University.


title: Roberta Flack

text: On March 12, 2022, Flack was honored with the DAR Women in American History Award and a restored fire callbox in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington DC commemorating her early-career connection to nearby Mr. Henry's neighborhood bar.


title: Roberta Flack

text: The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Flack has received four awards from thirteen nominations.


title: Roberta Flack

text: The American Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony created by Dick Clark in 1973. Flack has received one award from six nominations.


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: An arrow is a graphical symbol, such as ← or →, or a pictogram, used to point or indicate direction. In its simplest form, an arrow is a triangle, chevron, or concave kite, usually


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: affixed to a line segment or rectangle, and in more complex forms a representation of an actual arrow (e.g. ➵ U+27B5). The direction indicated by an arrow is the one along the length of the line or rectangle toward the single pointed end.


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: Use of the arrow symbol does not appear to pre-date the 18th century. An early arrow symbol is found in an illustration of Bernard Forest de Bélidor's treatise "L'architecture hydraulique", printed in France in 1737. The arrow is here used to illustrate the direction of the flow of water and of the water wheel's rotation. At about the same time, arrow symbols were used to indicate the flow of rivers in maps.


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: A trend toward abstraction, in which the arrow's fletching is removed, can be observed in the mid-to-late 19th century. The arrow can be seen in the work of Paul Klee. In a further abstraction of the symbol, John Richard Green's "A Short History of the English People" of 1874 contained maps by cartographer Emil Reich, which indicated army movements by curved lines, with solid triangular arrowheads placed intermittently along the lines.


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: Use of arrow symbols in mathematical notation is still younger and develops in the first half of the 20th century.


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: The double-headed arrow representing logical equivalence was introduced by Albrecht Becker in "Die Aristotelische Theorie der Möglichkeitsschlüsse", Berlin, 1933.


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: Arrows are universally recognised for indicating directions. They are widely used on signage and for wayfinding, and are often used in road surface markings.


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: Upward arrows are often used to indicate an increase in a numerical value, and downward arrows indicate a decrease.


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: In mathematical logic, a right-facing arrow indicates material conditional, and a left-right (bidirectional) arrow indicates if and only if, an upwards arrow indicates the NAND operator (negation of conjunction), an downwards arrow indicates the NOR operator (negation of disjunction).


title: Arrow (symbol)

text: Additional arrows can be found in the Combining Diacritical Marks, Combining Diacritical Marks Extended, Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols, Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms, Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B, Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, Miscellaneous Technical, Modifier Tone Letters and Spacing Modifier Letters Unicode blocks.


title: Daria

text: Daria is an American adult animated sitcom created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn. The series ran from March 3, 1997, to January 21, 2002, on MTV. It focuses on the title character, Daria Morgendorffer, an intelligent, cynical high school student, voiced by Tracy Grandstaff.


title: Daria

text: It is a spin-off of Mike Judge's earlier animated series, "Beavis and Butt-Head", in which Daria appeared as a recurring character. Although Judge allowed the character to star in a spin-off, he had no involvement in the production of "Daria" himself, as he was busy working on "King of the Hill".


title: Daria

text: In June 2019, MTV announced a "Daria" animated spin-off series, "Jodie" (originally "Daria & Jodie"), with actress Tracee Ellis Ross voicing the titular character and serving as an executive producer. The network characterized the series as the first in multiple projected "Daria" animated spinoffs. In June 2020, Comedy Central announced it had picked up the spinoff series along with "Beavis and Butt-Head". In May 2022, it was announced that "Jodie" would instead be an animated film.


title: Daria

text: The series focuses on Daria Morgendorffer (voiced by Tracy Grandstaff), a smart, acerbic, somewhat misanthropic/cynical teenage girl who, along with her best friend, aspiring artist Jane Lane, observes the world around her. The show is set in the fictional suburban American town of Lawndale and is a satire of high school life, full of allusions to and criticisms of popular culture and social classes. As the show's eponymous protagonist, Daria appears in most scenes with her immediate family (mother Helen, father Jake, and younger sister Quinn) and/or Jane. It is set during Daria's high-school years and ends with her graduation and acceptance into college. The principal location used for the show (outside of the Morgendorffer home) is Lawndale High School, a public-education institution filled with colorful and dysfunctional characters. The dynamics among the two lead characters changed during season four, when Jane began a relationship with Tom Sloane. Though Daria is hesitant to accept Tom at first, fearing she will lose her best friend, she and Tom find themselves becoming closer, culminating in a kiss in the season finale. The emotional and comedic turmoil among Jane, Tom, and Daria was the centerpiece of the TV movie "Is It Fall Yet?", and the relationship between Tom and Daria fueled several of season five's plotlines.


title: Daria

text: The plots of "Daria" largely concern a juxtaposition between the central character's jaded, sardonic cynicism and the values/preoccupations of her suburban American hometown of Lawndale. In a 2005 interview, series co-creator Glenn Eichler described the otherwise unspecified locale as "a mid-Atlantic suburb, outside somewhere like Baltimore or Washington, D.C. They could have lived in Pennsylvania near the Main Line, though". For comedic and illustrative purposes, the show's depiction of suburban American life was a deliberately exaggerated one. In "The New York Times", the protagonist was described as "a blend of Dorothy Parker, Fran Lebowitz, and Janeane Garofalo, wearing Carrie Donovan's glasses. Daria Morgendorffer, 16 and cursed with a functioning brain, has the misfortune to see high school, her family, and her life for exactly what they are and the temerity to comment on it."


title: Daria

text: Daria Morgendorffer, the show's title character and protagonist, first appeared on MTV as a recurring character in Mike Judge's "Beavis and Butt-Head". MTV senior vice president and creative director Abby Terkuhle explained that when that show "became successful, we ... created Daria's character because we wanted a smart female who could serve as the foil". Daria's original design was created by Bill Peckmann while working for J.J. Sedelmaier Productions during Beavis and Butt-Head's first season. During production of "Beavis and Butt-Head"s final seasons, MTV representatives, wanting to bring in a higher female demographic to the channel, approached story editor Glenn Eichler, offering a spin-off series for Daria. In 1995, a five-minute pilot, "Sealed with a Kick", was created by Eichler and "Beavis and Butt-Head" staffer Susie Lewis (although written by Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil). Among 4 other animated pilots pitched to the channel, Daria performed the strongest in focus groups, especially among middle school-aged participants. A fact that bothered MTV initially, as they felt their core audience at the time was instead 18-to-24 year olds. But after show staff argued that college students don't really watch much television, MTV approved a series order of 13 episodes; both Eichler and Lewis were signed onto the series as executive producers.


title: Daria

text: The first episode of "Daria" aired on March 3, 1997, roughly nine months before "Beavis and Butt-Head" ended its original run. Titled "Esteemsters", the episode established Daria and her family's move from fictional Highland, the setting of "Beavis and Butt-Head", to the new series' equally fictional locale of Lawndale. As well as introducing Daria's parents and younger sister as principal supporting characters, the first episode also introduced Jane Lane, Daria's best friend and confidante. Other than a brief mention of Highland, "Daria" did not contain any references to "Beavis and Butt-Head".


title: Daria

text: The series ran for five seasons, with 13 episodes each, as well as two TV movies and two TV specials. The first movie, "Is It Fall Yet?", aired on August 27, 2000, and took place between seasons four and five. MTV planned an abbreviated six-episode sixth season, but, at Eichler's request, this project was cut down to a second movie, "Is It College Yet?", which served as the series finale on January 21, 2002.


title: Daria

text: No other characters from "Beavis and Butt-Head" appeared on "Daria"; the only direct reference to them was in promotions. Glenn Eichler, in an interview conducted after the series' run, explained:


title: Daria

text: B&B were very strong characters, with a very specific type of humor and very loyal fans, and of course they were instantly identifiable. I felt that referencing them in "Daria", while we were trying to establish the new characters and the different type of humor, ran the risk of setting up false expectations and disappointment in the viewers – which could lead to a negative reaction to the new show and its different tone. So we steered clear of B&B in the early going, and once the new show was established, there was really no need to harken back to the old one.


title: Daria

text: In the TV movie "Is It Fall Yet?", several celebrities provided guest voices. Talk show host Carson Daly played Quinn's summer tutor, female pop punk singer Bif Naked played Jane's art camp companion, and rock musician Dave Grohl played Jane's pretentious art camp host. Several songs by the band Foo Fighters (for which Grohl is frontman) were featured in the series.


title: Daria

text: There have been 65 episodes of "Daria", spanning five seasons, each with thirteen episodes. The series first went into production with a pilot episode, titled "Sealed with a Kick". The first season was broadcast between March 3 and July 21, 1997, while season two was aired from February 16 to August 2, 1998; season three was shown from February 17 to August 18, 1999; season four from February 25 to August 2, 2000, and finally, season five between February 19 and June 25, 2001.


title: Daria

text: The series also includes two feature-length television films; the first, "Is It Fall Yet?", which aired between seasons four and five, and chronicles the lives of the characters during summer break, and the second film, "Is It College Yet?", which followed the fifth season, serving as the official finale to the series.


title: Daria

text: Two specials were also aired; "Daria: Behind the Scenes" was hosted by Janeane Garofalo and aired on February 18, 2000, one week prior to the season four premiere, and featured how the show was created, the making of the show, and the voices behind the characters. The second special, "Look Back in Annoyance", aired on January 14, 2002, and is a retrospective hosted by Daria and Jane and highlights all the major events from the series before the lead-up to the television film finale, which was aired one week later.


title: Daria

text: "Daria"'s theme song is "You're Standing on My Neck", written and performed by Splendora. The band later created original themes for the two "Daria" TV movies, "Turn the Sun Down" (for "Is It Fall Yet?") and "College Try (Gives Me Blisters)" (for "Is It College Yet?"), along with some background music.


title: Daria

text: The show itself had no original score. Though elements from Splendora's theme were used on occasion, "Daria"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s incidental music was taken from pop music songs. Most of these were contemporary, inserted over exterior shots and some scenes, with rarely any story relevance or awareness from the characters. For example, one episode depicts characters dancing to Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy wit It" mere weeks after the song's release, whereas the sequence itself was designed and animated months earlier.


title: Daria

text: Some story points were built around specific songs, such as in "Legends of the Mall", where Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" became a major plot point for a fantasy sequence. The closing credits also featured a licensed song on all but a few occasions, the lyrics or concept of which often reflected some aspect of the preceding episode.


title: Daria

text: For the 1998 and 1999 VHS releases of some "Daria" episodes, incidental music was replaced, and "You're Standing on My Neck" was only played over the closing credits. However, for the bonus episodes included on the DVD releases of the two TV movies, the music was removed almost entirely.


title: Daria

text: In the DVD release "Daria: The Complete Series", creator Glenn Eichler says in the notes that "99 percent of the music has been changed, because the cost of licensing the many music bites we used would have made it impossible to release the collection (and for many years did)." He compared it to an episode of "The Twilight Zone" where the astronaut comes home, and his wife can't figure out what's different about him, "... until it dawns on her that instead of a cool song from 1997 playing ... it's some tune she's never heard. Yeah, it's just like that."


title: Daria

text: The song "Heart's on Fire" by 38 Special also enjoyed a brief comeback on some late 1990s radio stations because of the popularity of the series as well as the Amy Grant b-side hit "I Love You" (from her popular crossover album "Unguarded"), "Silent Running" by Mike and the Mechanics, and "Stand and Deliver" by Mr. Mister.


title: Daria

text: "Daria" premiered to positive reviews, with John J. O'Connor of "The New York Times" writing in March 1997, "As far as MTV and "Beavis and Butt-Head" are concerned, "Daria" is an indispensable blast of fresh air." "Daria" continued to receive positive reviews during the course of its run and was one of MTV's highest rated shows, with the network's manager Van Toffler viewing the character as "a good spokesperson for MTV, intelligent but subversive".


title: Daria

text: During the program's run on MTV, Daria was part of the Cool Crap Auction, giving an overview of the goods for auction and talking "live" to the winner of one prize. Daria and Jane also hosted MTV's "Top Ten Animated Videos Countdown", poking fun at MTV's cheap animation. At the end of the series run, she had an "interview" on the "CBS Early Show" with Jane Clayson. "Daria" received a ratings share between 1 and 2 percent, about 1 to 2 million viewers.


title: Daria

text: G.J. Donnelly of "TV Guide", writing about the series' finale, lamented, "I already miss that monotone. I already miss those boots. ... Even at its most far-fetched, this animated film approaches the teenage experience much more realistically than shows like "Dawson's Creek"." On the same occasion, Emily Nussbaum wrote at "Slate" that "the show is biting the dust without ever getting the credit it deserved: for social satire, witty writing, and most of all, for a truly original main character". She particularly singled out for praise that all the characters were heading "to very different paths in life, based on their economic prospects," giving the show an ambiguous end; "[the finale is] a bit of a classic: a sharply funny exploration of social class most teen films would render, well, cartoonish."


title: Daria

text: In 2002, "TV Guide" ranked Daria number 41 on its "50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time" list. In December 2013, the UK newspaper "The Daily Telegraph" included Daria in its list of "best female cartoon characters".


title: Daria

text: In April 2017, in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the series, co-creator Susie Lewis and character designer Karen Disher were contacted by the "Entertainment Weekly" magazine to reimagine the lives of the main characters 20 years after the events of the series. During that interview, Lewis admitted that she would "love to bring Daria back to TV".


title: Daria

text: In June 2018, Hulu acquired rights to stream "Daria". The show was removed from Hulu at the end of September 2020 before it became available for streaming on CBS All Access (now known as Paramount+) from November 2020.


title: Daria

text: On June 21, 2018, it was announced that a reboot series titled "Daria & Jodie" was one of several revival projects in development at MTV Studios, a production studio which intends to sell new series to over-the-top media services. The title was later changed to "Jodie". In May 2022, it was announced that "Jodie" would instead be an animated film that will air on Comedy Central and be animated by Awesome Inc


title: Daria

text: On October 21, 1997 Sony released "Daria" on VHS, and on August 31, 1999, released "Daria: Disfranchised" on VHS.


title: Daria

text: In July 2004, co-creator Glenn Eichler said of possible DVD releases, "There's no distributor and no release date, but what there is very strong interest from MTV in putting "Daria" out, and steady activity toward making that a reality".


title: Daria

text: By July 2009, a DVD release for the series was planned for 2010. In January 2010, MTV released a teaser trailer on its website for "Daria"s 2010 release. That May 11, "Daria: The Complete Animated Series" was released on DVD in North America by Paramount Home Entertainment. All 65 episodes and both TV movies are included in the set. Extras include the pilot episode, the music video "Freakin' Friends" by Mystik Spiral, "Daria Day" introductions as well as a top ten video countdown on MTV by Jane and Daria, cast and crew interviews, and a script for an unproduced Mystik Spiral spin-off show. The set, with all special features intact, was released on Region 4 PAL DVD on June 1, 2011. The Region 4 set was found to be encoded region free.


title: Daria

text: In late 2010, following the DVD release, "Daria" was licensed as a voice for Garmin and TomTom GPS systems; original putdowns and jokes were recorded.


title: Black cat

text: A black cat is a domestic cat with black fur that may be a mixed or specific breed, or a common domestic cat of no particular breed. The Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA) recognizes 22 cat breeds that can come with solid black coats. The Bombay breed is exclusively black. All-black fur pigmentation is slightly more prevalent in male cats than female cats. Most black cats have golden irises due to their high melanin pigment content. In popular myths, witches are believed to be associated with black cats.


title: Black cat

text: Any cat whose fur is a single color, including black, is known as a "solid" or "self". A "solid black" cat may be coal black, grayish black, or brownish black. Most solid-colored cats result from a recessive gene that suppresses the tabby pattern. Sometimes the tabby pattern is not completely suppressed; faint markings may appear in certain lights, even on a solid black cat. A cat having black fur with white roots is known as a "black smoke".


title: Black cat

text: Black cats can also "rust" in sunlight, the coat turning a lighter brownish-red shade. Eumelanin, the pigment required to produce the black fur, is somewhat fragile, so the rusting effect can be more pronounced in cats that frequently spend time in the sun. A rarer situation that can also cause rusting is a deficiency of the amino acid tyrosine, which is required to produce eumelanin.


title: Black cat

text: In addition to the Bombay, the Cat Fanciers' Association allows solid black as a color option in 21 other breeds. The color description for those breeds is:


title: Black cat

text: The superstitions surrounding black cats varies from culture to culture, but black cats have positive associations in the Celtic nations and Japanese folklore. Black cats were sacred in Celtic mythology. Scottish lore holds that a black cat's arrival at a new home signifies prosperity, while Welsh lore states that a black cat brings good health:


title: Black cat

text: However, both the Gaels and Celtic Britons had traditions of feral and sometimes malevolent black cats. In Scottish mythology, a fairy known as the Cat sìth takes the form of a black cat, while in Welsh mythology the monstrous Cath Palug grew from a black kitten. In England, as with other Germanic cultures, some areas would associate black cats with witches and bad luck.


title: Black cat

text: The mix of positive and negative associations in Great Britain may have given rise to the later belief that black cats were omens of both good and bad luck. One tradition states that if a black cat walks towards someone, it is said to bring good fortune, but if it walks away, it takes the good luck with it. This tradition was reversed at sea where 18th century pirates came to believe that a black cat would bring bad luck if it walks towards someone, and good luck if it walks away from someone. It was also believed that if a black cat walks onto a ship and then walks off it, the ship is doomed to sink on its next trip. Furthermore, it is believed that a lady who owns a black cat will have many suitors.


title: Black cat

text: Black cats are often a symbol of Halloween or witchcraft. In most Western cultures, black cats have typically been looked upon as a symbol of evil omens, specifically being suspected of being the familiars of witches, or actually shape-shifting witches themselves. Most of Europe considers the black cat a symbol of bad luck, particularly if one walks across the path in front of a person, which is believed to be an omen of misfortune and death. In Germany, some believe that black cats crossing a person's path from right to left, is a bad omen, but from left to right, the cat is granting favorable times.


title: Black cat

text: The black cat in folklore has been able to change into human shape to act as a spy or courier for witches or demons. When the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, they brought with them a devout faith in the Bible. They also brought a deepening suspicion of anything deemed of Satan and were deeply suspicious of other Christians, including those of the Catholic, Quaker, Anglican and Baptist denominations. The Pilgrims viewed the black cat as a companion, or a familiar to witches, who were said to "use black cats as an integral part of their craft". These superstitions led people to kill black cats. There is no evidence from England of regular large-scale massacres of "Satanic" cats, or of burning them in midsummer bonfires, as sometimes occurred elsewhere in Europe. In the present day many Westerners, including Christian clergy, have black cats as pets, and very few people attach superstitions to them anymore.


title: Black cat

text: In contrast, the supernatural powers ascribed to black cats were sometimes viewed positively; for example, sailors considering a "ship's cat" would want a black one because it would bring good luck. Sometimes, fishermen's wives would keep black cats at home too, in the hope that they would be able to use their influence to protect their husbands at sea (see Ship's cat).


title: Black cat

text: In the folklore of Chiloé of southern Chile, black cats are an important element that is needed when hunting for the treasure of the carbunclo.


title: Black cat

text: In the early days of television in the United States, many stations located on VHF channel 13 used a black cat as a mascot in order to make sport of being located on an "unlucky" channel number.


title: Black cat

text: Since the 1880s, the color black has been associated with anarchism. The black cat, in an alert, fighting stance was later adopted as an anarchist symbol.


title: Black cat

text: More specifically, the black cat—often called the "sab cat" or "sabo-tabby"—is associated with anarcho-syndicalism, a branch of anarchism that focuses on labor organizing, including the use of wildcat strikes.


title: Black cat

text: In testimony before the court in a 1918 trial of Industrial Workers of the World leaders, Ralph Chaplin, who is generally credited with creating the IWW's black cat symbol, stated that the black cat "was commonly used by the boys as representing the idea of sabotage. The idea being to frighten the employer by the mention of the name sabotage, or by putting a black cat somewhere around. You know if you saw a black cat go across your path you would think, if you were superstitious, you are going to have a little bad luck. The idea of sabotage is to use a little black cat on the boss."


title: Black cat

text: When the Space Shuttle program naming system for missions was reworked to avoid a Space Transportation System (STS)-13, some sourced this to superstition and Apollo 13. The crew for what would have been STS-13 (what turned out to be STS-41C) made a humorous mission patch that included a black cat and a number 13. The mission was successful and even landed on Friday the 13th. The other main reason for the new numbering system was to better accommodate a much higher number of launches.


title: Black cat

text: The UK Government has adopted several cats from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home as mousers. Gladstone is known as Chief Mouser of HM Treasury. India, also known as Willie, was a presidential cat owned by George W. Bush and Laura Bush who lived with them at the White House.


title: Black cat

text: Trim sailed with Matthew Flinders as he mapped the coastline of Australia between 1801 and 1803. Trim now accompanies him on several statues in Australia and England. Hodge (fl. ) was a cat belonging to Samuel Johnson. Most of what is known about Hodge comes from James Boswell's biography and a statue of Hodge stands outside Dr Johnson's House.


title: Black cat

text: Oscar the "bionic" cat had his back legs sliced off by a combine harvester whilst sleeping in a field in Jersey. He was flown to the UK and received prosthetic limbs in an innovative operation in 2010.


title: Black cat

text: Black cats have been found to have lower odds of adoption in American shelters compared to other colors except brown, although black animals in general take more time to find homes. Some shelters also suspend or limit adoptions of black cats around Halloween for fear they will be tortured, or used as "living decorations" for the holiday and then abandoned. Despite this, no one has ever documented in the history of humane work any relationship between adopting black cats and cats being killed or injured. When such killings are reported, forensic evidence has pointed to natural predators, such as coyotes, eagles, or raptors as the likely cause. Limiting or suspending adoptions around Halloween also places more cats of all colors at risk of dying in shelters due to overcrowding.


title: Black cat

text: October 27 has been designated 'Black Cat Day' by Cats Protection in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to celebrate the virtues of black cats and to encourage people to adopt an unwanted black cat. Cats Protection's own figures suggest that black cats are more difficult for them to find a new home for than other colors. In 2014, the RSPCA reported that 70% of the abandoned cats in its care were black, suggesting a possible reason was that people considered black cats "un-photogenic".


title: Black cat

text: In the United States, August 17 is "Black Cat Appreciation Day". Wayne H. Morris created the day in honor of his late sister, June, who had a black cat, Sinbad. The day was chosen in memorial of June's passing. Research by the ASPCA shows that black cats are the least likely to be adopted from shelters of any type of cat. This can be partly because of the superstition behind black cats such as their association with witchcraft or bad luck, or because they appear dull next to more colorful cats. In 2014 Toronto, Canada's largest city, held an event on Black Friday during which people could adopt a black cat without paying the usual $75 adoption fee, in order to encourage the adoption of black cats. This trend has now spread across the United States, with many shelters offering free adoption of black cats on Black Friday.


title: Black cat

text: With the success of the 2018 African-themed superhero film, "Black Panther", there was a fad of adopting black domestic cats as pets and naming them after various characters of the film, such as T'Challa and Shuri. It has been observed that usually people were not going out of their way to follow this fad, but visited animal shelters to simply adopt a pet under normal circumstances and were inspired by the Black Panther to adopt a black cat when they see one. Regardless, to reduce the chance of such cats being abandoned when the fad fades, reputable animal shelter personnel took the usual precautions of having potential adopters fill out questionnaires to weed out potentially abusive guardians and have them read literature about the needs and responsibilities of such a pet to dissuade the less conscientious.


title: Community

text: A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighbourhood) or in virtual space through communication platforms. Durable good relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties also define a sense of community, important to their identity, practice, and roles in social institutions such as family, home, work, government, society, or humanity at large. Although communities are usually small relative to personal social ties, "community" may also refer to large group affiliations such as national communities, international communities, and virtual communities.


title: Community

text: The English-language word "community" derives from the Old French "comuneté" (Modern French: "communauté"), which comes from the Latin "communitas" "community", "public spirit" (from Latin "communis", "common").


title: Community

text: Human communities may have intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, and risks in common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.


title: Community

text: Archaeological studies of social communities use the term "community" in two ways, paralleling usage in other areas. The first is an informal definition of community as a place where people used to live. In this sense it is synonymous with the concept of an ancient settlement - whether a hamlet, village, town, or city. The second meaning resembles the usage of the term in other social sciences: a community is a group of people living near one another who interact socially. Social interaction on a small scale can be difficult to identify with archaeological data. Most reconstructions of social communities by archaeologists rely on the principle that social interaction in the past was conditioned by physical distance. Therefore, a small village settlement likely constituted a social community and spatial subdivisions of cities and other large settlements may have formed communities. Archaeologists typically use similarities in material culture—from house types to styles of pottery—to reconstruct communities in the past. This classification method relies on the assumption that people or households will share more similarities in the types and styles of their material goods with other members of a social community than they will with outsiders.


title: Community

text: In ecology, a community is an assemblage of populations - potentially of different species - interacting with one another. Community ecology is the branch of ecology that studies interactions between and among species. It considers how such interactions, along with interactions between species and the abiotic environment, affect social structure and species richness, diversity and patterns of abundance. Species interact in three ways: competition, predation and mutualism:


title: Community

text: The two main types of ecological communities are major communities, which are self-sustaining and self-regulating (such as a forest or a lake), and minor communities, which rely on other communities (like fungi decomposing a log) and are the building blocks of major communities.


title: Community

text: The concept of "community" often has a positive semantic connotation, exploited rhetorically by populist politicians and by advertisers


title: Community

text: to promote feelings and associations of mutual well-being, happiness and togetherness - veering towards an almost-achievable utopian community, in fact.


title: Community

text: In "Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft" (1887), German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies described two types of human association: "Gemeinschaft" (usually translated as "community") and "Gesellschaft" ("society" or "association"). Tönnies proposed the "Gemeinschaft–Gesellschaft" dichotomy as a way to think about social ties. No group is exclusively one or the other. "Gemeinschaft" stress personal social interactions, and the roles, values, and beliefs based on such interactions. "Gesellschaft" stress indirect interactions, impersonal roles, formal values, and beliefs based on such interactions.


title: Community

text: A "sense of community index" (SCI) was developed by Chavis and colleagues, and revised and adapted by others. Although originally designed to assess sense of community in neighborhoods, the index has been adapted for use in schools, the workplace, and a variety of types of communities.


title: Community

text: Studies conducted by the APPA indicate that young adults who feel a sense of belonging in a community, particularly small communities, develop fewer psychiatric and depressive disorders than those who do not have the feeling of love and belonging.


title: Community

text: The process of learning to adopt the behavior patterns of the community is called socialization. The most fertile time of socialization is usually the early stages of life, during which individuals develop the skills and knowledge and learn the roles necessary to function within their culture and social environment. For some psychologists, especially those in the psychodynamic tradition, the most important period of socialization is between the ages of one and ten. But socialization also includes adults moving into a significantly different environment where they must learn a new set of behaviors.


title: Community

text: Socialization is influenced primarily by the family, through which children first learn community norms. Other important influences include schools, peer groups, people, mass media, the workplace, and government. The degree to which the norms of a particular society or community are adopted determines one's willingness to engage with others. The norms of tolerance, reciprocity, and trust are important "habits of the heart", as de Tocqueville put it, in an individual's involvement in community.


title: Community

text: Community development is often linked with community work or community planning, and may involve stakeholders, foundations, governments, or contracted entities including non-government organisations (NGOs), universities or government agencies to progress the social well-being of local, regional and, sometimes, national communities. More grassroots efforts, called community building or community organizing, seek to empower individuals and groups of people by providing them with the skills they need to effect change in their own communities. These skills often assist in building political power through the formation of large social groups working for a common agenda. Community development practitioners must understand both how to work with individuals and how to affect communities' positions within the context of larger social institutions. Public administrators, in contrast, need to understand community development in the context of rural and urban development, housing and economic development, and community, organizational and business development.


title: Community

text: Formal accredited programs conducted by universities, as part of degree granting institutions, are often used to build a knowledge base to drive curricula in public administration, sociology and community studies. The General Social Survey from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and the Saguaro Seminar at the Harvard Kennedy School are examples of national community development in the United States. The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York State offers core courses in community and economic development, and in areas ranging from non-profit development to US budgeting (federal to local, community funds). In the United Kingdom, the University of Oxford has led in providing extensive research in the field through its " Community Development Journal," used worldwide by sociologists and community development practitioners.


title: Community

text: At the intersection between community "development" and community "building" are a number of programs and organizations with community development tools. One example of this is the program of the Asset Based Community Development Institute of Northwestern University. The institute makes available downloadable tools to assess community assets and make connections between non-profit groups and other organizations that can help in community building. The Institute focuses on helping communities develop by "mobilizing neighborhood assets" – building from the inside out rather than the outside in. In the disability field, community building was prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s with roots in John McKnight's approaches.


title: Community

text: In "The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace" (1987) Scott Peck argues that the almost accidental sense of community that exists at times of crisis can be consciously built. Peck believes that conscious community building is a process of deliberate design based on the knowledge and application of certain rules. He states that this process goes through four stages:


title: Community

text: In 1991, Peck remarked that building a sense of community is easy but maintaining this sense of community is difficult in the modern world.


title: Community

text: The three basic types of community organizing are grassroots organizing, coalition building, and "institution-based community organizing", (also called "broad-based community organizing", an example of which is faith-based community organizing, or Congregation-based Community Organizing).


title: Community

text: Community building can use a wide variety of practices, ranging from simple events (e.g., potlucks, small book clubs) to larger-scale efforts (e.g., mass festivals, construction projects that involve local participants rather than outside contractors).


title: Community

text: Community building that is geared toward citizen action is usually termed "community organizing". In these cases, organized community groups seek accountability from elected officials and increased direct representation within decision-making bodies. Where good-faith negotiations fail, these constituency-led organizations seek to pressure the decision-makers through a variety of means, including picketing, boycotting, sit-ins, petitioning, and electoral politics.


title: Community

text: Community organizing can focus on more than just resolving specific issues. Organizing often means building a widely accessible power structure, often with the end goal of distributing power equally throughout the community. Community organizers generally seek to build groups that are open and democratic in governance. Such groups facilitate and encourage consensus decision-making with a focus on the general health of the community rather than a specific interest group.


title: Community

text: If communities are developed based on something they share in common, whether location or values, then one challenge for developing communities is how to incorporate individuality and differences. Rebekah Nathan suggests in her book, "My Freshman Year", we are drawn to developing communities totally based on sameness, despite stated commitments to diversity, such as those found on university websites.


title: Community

text: A number of ways to categorize types of community have been proposed. One such breakdown is as follows:


title: Community

text: The usual categorizations of community relations have a number of problems: (1) they tend to give the impression that a particular community can be defined as just this kind or another; (2) they tend to conflate modern and customary community relations; (3) they tend to take sociological categories such as ethnicity or race as given, forgetting that different ethnically defined persons live in different kinds of communities —grounded, interest-based, diasporic, etc.


title: Community

text: In response to these problems, Paul James and his colleagues have developed a taxonomy that maps community relations, and recognizes that actual communities can be characterized by different kinds of relations at the same time:


title: Community

text: In these terms, communities can be nested and/or intersecting; one community can contain another—for example a location-based community may contain a number of ethnic communities. Both lists above can used in a cross-cutting matrix in relation to each other.


title: Community

text: In general, virtual communities value knowledge and information as currency or social resource. What differentiates virtual communities from their physical counterparts is the extent and impact of "weak ties", which are the relationships acquaintances or strangers form to acquire information through online networks. Relationships among members in a virtual community tend to focus on information exchange about specific topics. A survey conducted by Pew Internet and The American Life Project in 2001 found those involved in entertainment, professional, and sports virtual-groups focused their activities on obtaining information.


title: Community

text: An epidemic of bullying and harassment has arisen from the exchange of information between strangers, especially among teenagers, in virtual communities. Despite attempts to implement anti-bullying policies, Sheri Bauman, professor of counselling at the University of Arizona, claims the "most effective strategies to prevent bullying" may cost companies revenue.


title: Community

text: Virtual Internet-mediated communities can interact with offline real-life activity, potentially forming strong and tight-knit groups such as QAnon.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: TriStar Pictures, Inc. (spelled as Tri-Star until 1991) is an American film studio and production company that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, part of the multinational conglomerate Sony. It is a corporate sibling of Sony studio Columbia Pictures.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: The concept for Tri-Star Pictures can be traced to Victor Kaufman, a senior executive of Columbia Pictures (then a subsidiary of the Coca-Cola Company), who convinced Columbia, HBO, and CBS to share resources and split the ever-growing costs of making movies, leading to the creation of a new joint venture on March 2, 1982. On May 16, 1983, it was given the name Tri-Star Pictures (when the new company was formed and did not have an official name, the press used the code-name "Nova", but the name could not be obtained as it was being used as the title for the PBS science series). Tri-Star became the first new major Hollywood motion picture studio to be established since RKO Pictures was founded in 1928. Tri-Star embarked on a 12 to 18 feature film slate per year, with a combined budget of $70 to $80 million and signed producer Walter Colbenz as vice president of the Tri-Star feature film studio, and signed initial development deals with director John Schlesinger and producers Jeffrey Walker and Michael Walker. Tri-Star's first project to roll out was "The Muppets Take Manhattan".


title: TriStar Pictures

text: On May 11, 1984, the studio's first produced film was released, "The Natural" starring Robert Redford. Tri-Star's first release, however, was the film, "Where the Boys Are '84"; a 1984 remake of the 1960 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture, "Where the Boys Are" that was co-distributed on behalf of ITC Entertainment after Universal rejected it; the film was a commercial flop.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: Many of Tri-Star's productions were released on VHS by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, HBO/Cannon Video, or CBS/Fox Video. In addition, HBO owned exclusive cable distribution rights to the films, with broadcast television licenses going to CBS.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: On May 8, 1984, Tri-Star Pictures secured North American distribution rights for the film "Supergirl" from Warner Bros., which enabled the film to be ready for distribution by Christmas 1984. On May 15, 1984, the studio hit big through its association with Carolco Pictures, with the distribution of second part of the Rambo franchise, "", which eventually became a smash hit for the studio the following year. The company once partnered with Producers Sales Organization to handle theatrical distribution of the PSO titles.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: Early in the 1980s, Tri-Star Pictures and Columbia set up a film partnership with Delphi Film Associates and acquired an interest in various film releases. In 1984, Delphi Film Associates III acquired an interest in the Tri-Star and Columbia film slate for 1984, which included $60 million in financing for film production.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: CBS dropped out of the Tri-Star venture in 1985, though they still distributed some of Tri-Star's films on home video until at least 1992. In 1986, HBO also dropped out of the venture and sold half of its shares to Columbia Pictures. That same year, 1986, Tri-Star entered into the television business as Tri-Star Television. Tri-Star television was formed when the studio joined forces with Stephen J. Cannell Productions and Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions and created a television distribution company called TeleVentures. Carolco would eventually expand its relations with Tri-Star Pictures and decide to distribute films such as "Rambo III" and "Air America". Carolco was able to retain all foreign, cable, TV and videocassette rights. On August 20, 1986, Tri-Star Pictures and Taft/Barish Productions, a joint venture of Taft Broadcasting and Keith Barish Productions, signed a $200 million domestic distribution deal, where they would receive four to six pictures a year, with ten pictures total, with options to do more, with ancillary rights being handled for cable TV by HBO and on video by Vestron Video.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: In 1987, they had proposed a home video label, Tri-Star Video, to release Tri-Star material, with Saul Melnick serving as president of the unit. Tri-Star had plans to convert into a major film studio, growing enough by the success of TV syndication and home video, in order to start a new umbrella distribution Tri-Star Telecommunications Group, to take over videocassette distribution of Tri-Star films from RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, beginning in 1988, and the plans for the first three Tri-Star films to go on home video was "Sweetheart's Dance", "Like Father, Like Son" and "Sunset", and Arnold Messner became president of the Tri-Star Telecommunications Group, handles up to 15 Tri-Star titles and 15-20 additional titles from the outside. The television side of Tri-Star Telecommunications Group is the syndication unit TeleVentures, and represents its interest in the joint venture, and locked up rights to 36 CBS television movies, as well as "Sha Na Na," and distribution of Stephen J. Cannell product and handle syndication of Tri-Star's theatrical product which was effective to go production that year. Tri-Star Telecommunications Group has plans to assume worldwide distribution of its product instead of preselling them in the past. In 1987, Tri-Star International was set up with former head of Columbia Pictures International, S. Anthony Macke to be hired as executive vice president in charge of production for the newly created international division, the company already had worldwide rights to its product in order to need up its international apparatus.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: Also, in July 1987, Tri-Star Pictures made a pact with CPI Film Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Coca-Cola Company, whereas the latter had bought out 3.3 million shares at $15 per share for a total purchase price of $50 million, boosting its stake in Tri-Star to 29.3%, and Victor Kaufman said that the new capital would "enhance our ability to continue to expand our business activities", and decided to maintain our goal of achieving a dividend payout of 40%. In September 1987, Hemdale Film Corporation had signed an agreement with Tri-Star Pictures whereas Tri-Star would allow Hemdale to release fifteen major motion pictures over the next three years, and the company would receive a 17% free for donations that would be handled jointly by both Tri-Star and Hemdale, and more specialized productions could go to the company's distribution arm.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: On December 21, 1987, Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. was renamed as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. when Coca-Cola sold its entertainment business to Tri-Star for $3.1 billion. Both studios continued to produce and distribute films under their separate names.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: That year, once Coca-Cola sold its entertainment business, Tri-Star's television division was consolidated into a single operating entity with Columbia/Embassy Television to form a new incarnation of the Columbia Pictures Television. Merv Griffin Enterprises would continue to operate separately.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: On April 13, 1988, CPE spun off Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. as a reformed company of the Tri-Star studio. Around that time, Tri-Star has shut down its video division, absorbing it into RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: In 1989, Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. was acquired by Sony Corporation of Japan, who re-merged Columbia and Tri-Star, but continued to use the separate labels. On July 11, 1990, Tri-Star Pictures dissolved and sold its venture in TeleVentures to Stephen J. Cannell Productions and TeleVentures became Cannell Distribution Co. Most of the series and the Tri-Star film packages that were distributed by TeleVentures were transferred to Columbia Pictures Television Distribution. Sony Pictures Entertainment later revived TriStar Television as a television production banner in 1991 and merged with its sister television studio Columbia Pictures Television to form Columbia TriStar Television on February 21, 1994. Both studios continued to operate separately under the CTT umbrella until TriStar folded in 1999 and CPT in 2001.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: In addition to its own slate, TriStar was the theatrical distributor for many films produced by Carolco Pictures (the rights to only one of its films, "Cliffhanger", has been retained by TriStar). TriStar also theatrically distributed some FilmDistrict movies. In 1992, the deal with Carolco lapsed when TriStar, along with Japan Satellite Broadcasting signed an agreement with The IndieProd Company to distribute movies produced by the pact in order to fill the void.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: Around summer 1998, SPE merged Columbia and TriStar to form the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, but just like Columbia Pictures Entertainment, both divisions continued producing and distributing films under their own names. Some of the movies slated to be released by TriStar, including "Stepmom" would go to its flagship label Columbia Pictures following the merger.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: TriStar was relaunched on May 13, 2004, as a marketing and acquisitions unit that had a "particular emphasis on genre films". Screen Gems' executive vice president Valerie Van Galder was tapped to run the revived studio after being dormant. However, the release of its 2013 film "Elysium" represented the label's first big-budget release since "The Mask of Zorro "in 1998.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: The same year, former 20th Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman joined Sony Pictures and created TriStar Productions as a joint venture with existing Sony Pictures executives. The new TriStar will develop, finance and produce up to four films per year, as well as television programming and acquisitions, starting on September 1. Sony's TriStar "Pictures" unit will be retained for "other product, including titles from Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions", and will distribute product from the new TriStar.


title: TriStar Pictures

text: TriStar's logo features a Pegasus (either stationary or flying across the screen). The idea came from executive Victor Kaufman and his family's interest in riding horses. The original logo was created with the assistance of Sydney Pollack, who was an adviser at Tri-Star. The horse in the original filmed logo was the same one used in Pollack's film "The Electric Horseman".


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Teresa of Ávila, OCD (born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada; 28 March 15154 or 15 October 1582), also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, was a Spanish Carmelite nun and prominent Spanish mystic and religious reformer.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Active during the Counter-Reformation, Teresa became the central figure of a movement of spiritual and monastic renewal, reforming the Carmelite Orders of both women and men. The movement was later joined by the younger Spanish Carmelite friar and mystic John of the Cross, with whom she established the Discalced Carmelites. A formal papal decree adopting the split from the old order was issued in 1580.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Her autobiography, "The Life of Teresa of Jesus", "The Interior Castle", and "The Way of Perfection", are prominent works on Christian mysticism and Christian meditation practice. In her autobiography, written as a defense of her ecstatic mystical experiences, she discerns four stages in the ascent of the soul to God: mental prayer and meditation; the prayer of quiet; absorption-in-God; ecstatic consciousness.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Forty years after her death, in 1622, Teresa was canonized by Pope Gregory XV. On 27 September 1970 Pope Paul VI proclaimed Teresa the first female "Doctor of the Church" in recognition of her centuries-long spiritual legacy to Catholicism.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada was born in 1515 in Ávila, Spain. Her paternal grandfather, Juan Sánchez de Toledo, was a or , a Jew forced to convert to Christianity or emigrate. When Teresa's father was a child, Juan was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith, but he was later able to assume a Catholic identity. Her father, , was a successful wool merchant and one of the wealthiest men in Ávila. He bought a knighthood and assimilated successfully into Christian society.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Previously married to Catalina del Peso y Henao, with whom he had three children, in 1509, Sánchez de Cepeda married Teresa's mother, Beatriz de Ahumada y Cuevas, in Gotarrendura.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Teresa's mother brought her up as a dedicated Christian. Fascinated by accounts of the lives of the saints, she ran away from home at age seven, with her brother Rodrigo, to seek martyrdom in the fight against the Moors. Her uncle brought them home, when he spotted them just outside the town walls.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: When Teresa was eleven years old, her mother died, leaving her grief-stricken. This prompted her to embrace a deeper devotion to the Virgin Mary as her spiritual mother. Teresa was also enamored of popular fiction, which at the time consisted primarily of medieval tales of knighthood and works about fashion, gardens and flowers. Teresa was sent to the Augustinian nuns' school at Ávila.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: After completing her education, she initially resisted the idea of a religious vocation, but after a stay with her uncle and other relatives, she relented. In 1534, aged 20, much to the disappointment of her pious and austere father, she decided to enter the local easy-going Carmelite "Convent of the Incarnation", significantly built on top of land that had been used previously as a burial ground for Jews. She took up religious reading on contemplative prayer, especially Osuna's "Abecedario espiritual" ("Third Spiritual Alphabet," 1527), a guide on examination of conscience and "spiritual self-concentration and inner contemplation, known in mystical nomenclatura as ." She also dipped into other mystical ascetical works such as the of Peter of Alcantara.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Her zeal for mortification caused her to become ill again and she spent almost a year in bed, causing huge worry to her community and family. She nearly died but she recovered, attributing her recovery to the miraculous intercession of Saint Joseph. She began to experience bouts of religious ecstasy. She reported that, during her illness, she had progressed from the lowest stage of "recollection", to the "devotions of silence" and even to the "devotions of ecstasy", which was one of perceived "perfect union with God" (see ). During this final stage, she said she frequently experienced the rich "blessing of tears". As the Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sin became clear to her, she came to understand the awful horror of sin and the inherent nature of original sin. She also became conscious of her own natural impotence in confronting sin and the need for absolute surrender to God.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Around the same time, she received a copy of the full Spanish translation of Augustine of Hippo's autobiographical work "Confessions", which helped her resolve and to tend to her own bouts of religious scruples. The text helped her realize that holiness was indeed possible and she found solace in the idea that such a great saint was once an inveterate sinner. In her autobiography, she wrote that she "was very fond of St. Augustine[...] for he was a sinner too."


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Around 1556, friends suggested that her newfound knowledge could be of diabolical and not of divine origin. She had begun to inflict mortifications of the flesh upon herself. But her confessor, the Jesuit Francis Borgia, reassured her of the divine inspiration of her thoughts. On St. Peter's Day in 1559, Teresa became firmly convinced that Jesus Christ had presented himself to her in bodily form, though invisible. These visions lasted almost uninterruptedly for more than two years. In another vision, the famous "transverberation", a seraph drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing her an ineffable spiritual and bodily pain:


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The account of this vision was the inspiration for one of Bernini's most famous works, the "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" at Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. Although based in part on Teresa's description of her mystical transverberation in her autobiography, Bernini's depiction of the event is considered by some to be highly eroticized, especially when compared to the entire preceding artistic Teresian tradition.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The memory of this episode served as an inspiration throughout the rest of her life, and motivated her lifelong imitation of the life and suffering of Jesus, epitomized in the adage often associated with her: "Lord, either let me suffer or let me die."


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Teresa, who became a celebrity in her town dispensing wisdom from behind the convent grille, was known for her raptures, which sometimes involved levitation. It was a source of embarrassment to her and she bade her sisters hold her down when this occurred. Subsequently, historians, neurologists and psychiatrists like Peter Fenwick and Javier Álvarez-Rodríguez, among others, have taken an interest in her symptomatology. The fact that she wrote down virtually everything that happened to her during her religious life means that an invaluable and exceedingly rare medical record from the 16th century has been preserved. Examination of this record has led to the speculative conclusion that she may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Over time, Teresa found herself increasingly at odds with the spiritual malaise prevailing in her convent of the Incarnation. Among the 150 nuns living there, the observance of cloister, designed to protect and strengthen spiritual practice and prayer, became so lax that it appeared to lose its purpose. The daily invasion of visitors, many of high social and political rank, disturbed the atmosphere with frivolous concerns and vacuous conversation. Such intrusions in the solitude essential to develop and sustain contemplative prayer so grieved Teresa that she longed to intervene.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The incentive to take the practical steps inspired by her inward motivation was supported by the Franciscan priest, Peter of Alcantara, who met her early in 1560 and became her spiritual adviser. She resolved to found a "reformed" Carmelite convent, correcting the laxity which she had found at the Incarnation convent and elsewhere besides. Guimara de Ulloa, a woman of wealth and a friend, supplied the funds for the project.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The abject poverty of the new convent, established in 1562 and named St. Joseph's (San José), at first caused a scandal among the citizens and authorities of Ávila, and the small house with its chapel was in peril of suppression. However, powerful patrons, including the local bishop, coupled with the impression of well ordered subsistence and purpose, turned animosity into approval.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: In March 1563, after Teresa had moved to the new convent house, she received papal sanction for her primary principles of absolute poverty and renunciation of ownership of property, which she proceeded to formulate into a "constitution". Her plan was the revival of the earlier, stricter monastic rules, supplemented by new regulations including the three disciplines of ceremonial flagellation prescribed for the Divine Office every week, and the discalceation of the religious. For the first five years, Teresa remained in seclusion, mostly engaged in prayer and writing.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: In 1567, Teresa received a patent from the Carmelite General, Rubeo de Ravenna, to establish further houses of the new order. This process required many visitations and long journeys across nearly all the provinces of Spain. She left a record of the arduous project in her "Libro de las Fundaciones". Between 1567 and 1571, reformed convents were established at Medina del Campo, Malagón, Valladolid, Toledo, Pastrana, Salamanca, and Alba de Tormes.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: As part of the original patent, Teresa was given permission to set up two houses for men who wished to adopt the reforms. She convinced two Carmelite friars, John of the Cross and Anthony of Jesus to help with this. They founded the first monastery of Discalced Carmelite brothers in November 1568 at Duruelo. Another friend of Teresa, Jerónimo Gracián, the Carmelite visitator of the older observance of Andalusia and apostolic commissioner, and later provincial of the Teresian order, gave her powerful support in founding monasteries at Segovia (1571), Beas de Segura (1574), Seville (1575), and Caravaca de la Cruz (Murcia, 1576). Meanwhile, John of the Cross promoted the inner life of the movement through his power as a teacher and preacher.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: In 1576, unreformed members of the Carmelite order began to persecute Teresa, her supporters and her reforms. Following a number of resolutions adopted at the general chapter at Piacenza, the governing body of the order forbade all further founding of reformed convents. The general chapter instructed her to go into "voluntary" retirement at one of her institutions. She obeyed and chose St. Joseph's at Toledo. Meanwhile, her friends and associates were subjected to further attacks.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Several years later, her appeals by letter to King Philip II of Spain secured relief. As a result, in 1579, the cases before the inquisition against her, Gracián and others, were dropped. This allowed the reform to resume. An edict from Pope Gregory XIII allowed the appointment of a special provincial for the newer branch of the Carmelite religious, and a royal decree created a "protective" board of four assessors for the reform.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: During the last three years of her life, Teresa founded convents at Villanueva de la Jara in northern Andalusia (1580), Palencia (1580), Soria (1581), Burgos, and Granada (1582). In total, seventeen convents, all but one founded by her, and as many men's monasteries, were owed to her reforms over twenty years.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Her final illness overtook her on one of her journeys from Burgos to Alba de Tormes. She died in 1582, just as Catholic Europe was making the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, which required the excision of the dates of 5–14 October from the calendar. She died either before midnight of 4 October or early in the morning of 15 October, which is celebrated as her feast day. According to the liturgical calendar then in use, she died on the 15th. Her last words were: "My Lord, it is time to move on. Well then, may your will be done. O my Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time to meet one another."


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: She was buried at the Convento de la Anunciación in Alba de Tormes. Nine months after her death the coffin was opened and her body was found to be intact but the clothing had rotted. Before the body was re-interred one of her hands was cut off, wrapped in a scarf and sent to Ávila. Gracián cut the little finger off the hand and – according to his own account – kept it with him until it was taken by the occupying Ottoman Turks, from whom he had to redeem it with a few rings and 20 reales. The body was exhumed again on 25 November 1585 to be moved to Ávila and found to be incorrupt. An arm was removed and left in Alba de Tormes at the nuns' request, to compensate for losing the main relic of Teresa, but the rest of the body was reburied in the Discalced Carmelite chapter house in Ávila. The removal was done without the approval of the Duke of Alba de Tormes and he brought the body back in 1586, with Pope Sixtus V ordering that it remain in Alba de Tormes on pain of excommunication. A grander tomb on the original site was raised in 1598 and the body was moved to a new chapel in 1616.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: In 1622, forty years after her death, she was canonized by Pope Gregory XV. The Cortes exalted her to patroness of Spain in 1627. The University of Salamanca had granted her the title (Latin for "Doctor of the Church") with a diploma in her lifetime, but that title is distinct from the papal honour of Doctor of the Church, which is always conferred posthumously. The latter was finally bestowed upon her by Pope Paul VI on 27 September 1970, along with Catherine of Siena, making them the first women to be awarded the distinction. Teresa is revered as the Doctor of Prayer. The mysticism in her works exerted a formative influence upon many theologians of the following centuries, such as Francis of Sales, Fénelon, and the Port-Royalists. In 1670, her coffin was plated in silver.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: In 1626, at the request of Philip IV of Spain, the Castilian parliament elected Teresa "without lacking one vote" as copatron saint of Castile. This status was affirmed by Pope Urban VIII in a brief issued on 21 July 1627 in which he stated:


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: More broadly, the 1620s, the entirety of Spain (Castile and beyond) debated who should be the country's patron saint; the choices were either the current patron, James Matamoros, or a pairing of him and the newly canonised Saint Teresa of Ávila. Teresa's promoters said Spain faced newer challenges, especially the threat of Protestantism and societal decline at home, thus needing a more contemporary patron who understood those issues and could guide the Spanish nation. Santiago's supporters ("Santiaguistas") fought back and eventually won the argument, but Teresa of Ávila remained far more popular at the local level. James the Great kept the title of patron saint for the Spanish people, and the most Blessed Virgin Mary under the title Immaculate Conception as the sole patroness for the entire Spanish Kingdom.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The Spanish nuns who established "Carmel" in France brought a devotion to the Infant Jesus with them, and it became widespread in France.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Though there are no written historical accounts establishing that Teresa of Ávila ever owned the famous Infant Jesus of Prague statue, according to tradition, such a statue is said to have been in her possession and Teresa is reputed to have given it to a noblewoman travelling to Prague. The age of the statue dates to approximately the same time as Teresa. It has been thought that Teresa carried a portable statue of the Child Jesus wherever she went; the idea circulated by the early 1700s.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The autobiography, "La Vida de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús" ("The Life of the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus") was written between composed at Avila between 1562 and 1565, but published posthumously. Editions include:


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: "The Way of Perfection" ("") was published in 1566. Teresa called this a "living book" and in it set out to teach her nuns how to progress through prayer and Christian meditation. She discusses the rationale for being a Carmelite, and the rest deals with the purpose of and approaches to spiritual life. The title was inspired by the devotional book "The Imitation of Christ" (1418) which had become a favourite expression of Teresa much before she wrote this work, as it appeared at several places in her autobiography, "The Life of Teresa of Jesus". Like her other books, "The Way of Perfection" was written on the advice of her counsellors to describe her experiences in prayer during the period when the Reformation was spreading through Europe. Herein she describes ways of attaining spiritual perfection through prayer and its four stages, as in meditation, quiet, repose of soul and finally perfect union with God, which she equates with rapture.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The "Interior Castle", or "The Mansions", ("" or "Las Moradas") was written in 1577, and published in 1588. It contained the basis for what she felt should be the ideal journey of faith, comparing the contemplative soul to a castle with seven successive interior courts, or chambers, analogous to the seven mansions. The work was inspired by her vision of the soul as a diamond in the shape of a castle containing seven mansions, which she interpreted as the journey of faith through seven stages, ending with union with God. Fray Diego, one of Teresa's former confessors wrote that God revealed to Teresa:


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Christia Mercer, Columbia University philosophy professor, claims that the seventeenth-century Frenchman René Descartes lifted some of his most influential ideas from Teresa of Ávila, who, fifty years before Descartes, wrote popular books about the role of philosophical reflection in intellectual growth. She describes a number of striking similarities between Descartes's seminal work "Meditations on First Philosophy" and Teresa's "Interior Castle".


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: St. Teresa's mystical experiences have inspired several authors in modern times, but not necessarily from Teresa's Christian theological perspective.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The 2006 book "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert recognizes St. Teresa as "that most mystical of Catholic figures" and alludes to St. Teresa's "Interior Castle" as the "mansions of her being" and her journey as one of "divine meditative bliss". Gilbert was raised a Protestant Christian, but her book describes her path to God through yoga.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The ultimate preoccupation of Teresa's mystical thought, as consistently reflected in her writings, is the ascent of the soul to God. Aumann notes that "the grades of prayer described in "The Life" do not correspons to the division of prayer commonly given in the manuals of spiritual life," due to the fact that "St. Teresa did not write a systematic theology of prayer." According to Zimmerman, "In all her writings on this subject she deals with her personal experiences [...] there is no vestige in her writings of any influence of the Areopagite, the Patristic, or the Scholastic Mystical schools, as represented among others, by the German Dominican Mystics. She is intensely personal, her system going exactly as far as her experiences, but not a step further."


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: In her autobiography she describes four stages, in which she uses the image of watering one's garden as a metaphor for mystical prayer:


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The "Interior Castle" is divided into seven mansions (also called dwelling places), each level describing a step to get closer to God. In her work, Teresa already assumed entrance into the first mansions by prayer and meditation.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: The first four grades of Teresa's classifications of prayer belong to the ascetical stage of spiritual life. These are vocal prayer, meditational or mental prayer, affective prayer, and acquired or natural recollection.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: According to Augustin Poulain and Robert Thouless, Teresa described four degrees or stages of mystical union, namely the prayer of quiet, full or semi-ecstatic union, ecstatic union or ecstasy, and transforming or deifying union, or spiritual marriage (properly) of the soul with God. TWhile Augustin Poulain and Robert Thouless don't mention the "Prayer of Supernatural (or passive) Recollection" as a separate stage, Aumann discerns infused contemplation as a separate stage in the fourth mansion of the "Interior Castle". Together, these "five grades are infused prayer and belong to the mystical phase of spiritual life."


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Thomas Merton disagrees on a fine-cut distinction between acquired contemplation and the prayer of quiet, noticing the Carmelite tendency of systematization, whereas Teresa herself was just describing her personal experiences. Commenting on Teresa's writings and the scholarly discussions on the precise stages, Thomas Merton comments: "with all these divisions and distinctions, comings and goings and varieties of terms, one tends to become impatient with the saint."


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Mental prayer is a form of prayer "performed without aid of any particular formula." It is distinguished from vocal prayers, "prayers performed by means of a given formula," Prayer is mental when the thoughts and affections of the soul are not expressed in a previously determined formula. According to Teresa of Ávila, mental prayer is meditational prayer, in which the person is like a gardener, who, with much labour, draws the water up from the depths of the well to water the plants and flowers. According to Teresa of Avila, mental prayer can proceed by using vocal prayers in order to improve dialogue with God. According to Lehodey, mental prayer can be divided into meditation, more active in reflections, and contemplation, more quiet and gazeful.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: For Teresa of Avila, in natural or acquired contemplation, also called the prayer of simplicity there is one dominant thought or sentiment which recurs constantly and easily (although with little or no development) amid many other thoughts, beneficial or otherwise. The prayer of simplicity often has a tendency to simplify itself even in respect to its object, leading one to think chiefly of God and of his presence, but in a confused manner.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: In the words of Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, acquired contemplation "consists in seeing at a simple glance the truths which could previously be discovered only through prolonged discourse": reasoning is largely replaced by intuition and affections and resolutions, though not absent, are only slightly varied and expressed in a few words. Similarly, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, in his 30-day retreat or Spiritual Exercises beginning in the "second week" with its focus on the life of Jesus, describes less reflection and more simple contemplation on the events of Jesus' life. These contemplations consist mainly in a simple gaze and include an "application of the senses" to the events, to further one's empathy for Jesus' values, "to love him more and to follow him more closely."


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Definitions similar to that of Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori are given by Adolphe Tanquerey ("a simple gaze on God and divine things proceeding from love and tending thereto") and Saint Francis de Sales ("a loving, simple and permanent attentiveness of the mind to divine things").


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: Natural or acquired contemplation has been compared to the attitude of a mother watching over the cradle of her child: she thinks lovingly of the child without reflection and amid interruptions. The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" states:


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: According to Hardon, infused contemplation is "A supernatural gift by which a person's mind and will become totally centered on God. Under this influence the intellect receives special insights into things of the spirit, and the affections are extraordinarily animated with divine love. Infused contemplation assumes the free co-operation of the human will." According to Poulain, it is a form of mystical union with God, a union characterized by the fact that it is God, and God only, who manifests Himself. According to Poulain, mystical grage may also manifestat as visions of the humanity of Christ or an angel or revelations of a future event, and include miraculous bodily phenomena sometimes observed in ecstatics.


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: In Teresa's mysticism, infused contemplation is described as a "divinely originated, general, non-conceptual, loving awareness of God." According to Dubay:


title: Teresa of Ávila

text: According to Thomas Dubay, infused contemplation is the normal, ordinary development of discursive prayer (mental prayer, meditative prayer), which it gradually replaces. Dubay considers infused contemplation as common only among "those who try to live the whole Gospel wholeheartedly and who engage in an earnest prayer life". Other writers view contemplative prayer in its infused supernatural form as far from common. John Baptist Scaramelli, reacting in the 17th century against quietism, taught that asceticism and mysticism are two distinct paths to perfection, the former being the normal, ordinary end of the Christian life, and the latter something extraordinary and very rare. Jordan Aumann considered that this idea of the two paths was "an innovation in spiritual theology and a departure from the traditional Catholic teaching". And Jacques Maritain proposed that one should not say that every mystic necessarily enjoys habitual infused contemplation in the mystical state, since the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not limited to intellectual operations.