The Jardin du Luxembourg known in English as the Luxembourg Gardens, is located in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was created beginning in 1612 by Marie de' Medici, the widow of King Henry IV of France, for a new residence she constructed, the Luxembourg Palace; the garden today is owned by the French Senate. It covers 23 hectares and is known for its lawns, tree-lined promenades, model sailboats on its circular basin, picturesque Medici Fountain, built in 1620; the name Luxembourg comes from the Latin Mons Lucotitius, the name of the hill where the garden is located. In 1611, Marie de' Medici, the widow of Henry IV and the regent for the King Louis XIII decided to build a palace in imitation of the Pitti Palace in her native Florence, she began construction of the new palace. She commissioned Salomon de Brosse to build a fountain, which still exists. In 1612 she planted 2,000 elm trees, directed a series of gardeners, most notably Tommaso Francini, to build a park in the style she had known as a child in Florence.
Francini planned two terraces with balustrades and parterres laid out along the axis of the chateau, aligned around a circular basin. He built the Medici Fountain to the east of the palace as a nympheum, an artificial grotto and fountain, without its present pond and statuary; the original garden was just eight hectares in size. In 1630 she bought additional land and enlarged the garden to thirty hectares, entrusted the work to Jacques Boyceau de la Barauderie, the indendant of the royal gardens of Tuileries and the early garden of Versailles, he was one of the early theorists of the new and more formal garden à la française, he laid out a series of squares along an east-west alley closed at the east end by the Medici Fountain, a rectangle of parterres with broderies of flowers and hedges in front of the palace. In the center he placed an octagonal basin with a fountain, with a perspective toward what is now the Paris observatory. Monarchs neglected the garden. In 1780, the Comte de Provence, the future Louis XVIII, sold the eastern part of the garden for real estate development.
Following the French Revolution, the leaders of the French Directory expanded the garden to forty hectares by confiscating the land of the neighboring religious order of the Carthusian monks. The architect Jean Chalgrin, the architect of the Arc de Triomphe, took on the task of restoring the garden, he laid out a long perspective from the palace to the observatory. He preserved the famous pepiniere, or nursery garden of the Carthusian order, the old vineyards, kept the garden in a formal French style. During and after the July Monarchy of 1848, the park became the home of a large population of statues. In 1865, during the reconstruction of Paris by Louis Napoleon, the rue de l'Abbé de l'Épée, was extended into the park, cutting off about seven hectares, including a large part of the old nursery garden; the building of new streets next to the park required moving and rebuilding the Medici Fountain to its present location. The long basin of the fountain was added at this time, along with the statues at the foot of the fountain.
During this reconstruction, the chief architect of parks and promenades of Paris, Gabriel Davioud, under the leadership of Adolphe Alphand, built new ornamental gates and fences around the park, polychrome brick garden houses. He transformed what remained of the old Chartreux nursery garden, at the south end of the park, into an English garden with winding paths, planted a fruit garden in the southwest corner, he kept the regular geometric pattern of the paths and alleys, but did create one diagonal alley near the Medici fountain which opened a view of the Pantheon. The garden in the late nineteenth century contained a marionette theater, a music kiosk, greenhouses, an apiary or bee-house; the garden is devoted to a green parterre of gravel and lawn populated with statues and centred on a large octagonal basin of water, with a central jet of water. The garden is famed for its calm atmosphere. Surrounding the bassin on the raised balustraded terraces are a series of statues of former French queens and copies after the Antique.
In the southwest corner, there is an orchard of apple and pear trees and the théâtre des marionnettes. The gardens include a large fenced-in playground for young children and their parents and a vintage carousel. In addition, free musical performances are presented in a gazebo on the grounds and there is a small cafe restaurant nearby, under the trees, with both indoor and outdoor seating from which many people enjoy the music over a glass of wine; the orangerie displays art and sculptures. The École nationale supérieure des Mines de Paris and the Odéon theatre stand next to the Luxembourg Garden; the central axis of the garden is extended, beyond its wrought iron grill and gates opening to rue Auguste Comte, by the central esplanade of the rue de l'Observatoire the Jardin Marco Polo, where sculptures of the four Times of Day alternate with columns and culminate at the southern end with t
Gary Taylor is an American academic, George Matthew Edgar Professor of English at Florida State University, author of numerous books and articles, joint editor of The Oxford Shakespeare and "Oxford Middleton" The first member of his family to graduate from high school, Taylor won scholarships that led to bachelor's degrees in English and Classics from the University of Kansas and to a doctorate in English from the University of Cambridge. With Stanley Wells, he worked for eight years as the "enfant terrible" of the Oxford Shakespeare, a project that generated much controversy through editorial decisions such as printing two separate texts of King Lear and attributing a poem known as "Shall I die?" to Shakespeare. He has taught at Oxford University, Catholic University of America, Brandeis University, the University of Alabama. In 2005, he joined the English Department at Florida State University, where he became founder and first director of the interdisciplinary History of Text Technologies program.
Taylor has written extensively on Shakespeare, early modern culture, canon formation and ethnicity, gender and masculinity. Four of his works are included in the Random House list of the hundred most important books on Shakespeare, he is best known for his work as an editor, textual critic, editorial theorist, for which he has received fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He has written for Time, The Guardian, other periodicals, spoken to many theatre audiences, been interviewed on radio and television. Taylor devoted twenty years to The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, published by Oxford University Press in 2007. With John Lavagnino, he led a team of 75 contributors from 12 countries to produce "the Middleton First Folio," designed to establish Middleton’s status as "our other Shakespeare." Among other works and Lavagnino chose to print the entire texts of William Shakespeare's plays Macbeth and Measure for Measure, on the theory that Middleton revised both of these plays after their original composition.
They include Shakespeare's Timon of Athens as well, but in this case postulating that it was a collaboration between the two authors. Included in the volume are such anonymous plays as A Yorkshire Tragedy, The Second Maiden's Tragedy and The Revenger's Tragedy, which are though not universally, credited to Middleton by modern scholars. BooksGary Taylor and Michael Warren, eds; the Division of the Kingdoms. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett and William Montgomery, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present. Gary Taylor and John Jowett, Shakespeare Reshaped 1606-1623. Cultural Selection. Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood. Buying Whiteness: Race and Identity from Columbus to Hip Hop. William Shakespeare, Complete Works, eds. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett and William Montgomery. John Fletcher, The Tamer Tamed, ed. Celia R. Daileader and Gary Taylor. Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, gen. eds.
Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, gen. eds. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. Florida State University, Department of English, Faculty Page for Gary Taylor Oxford Middleton website History of Text Technologies at Florida State University “True Is It That We Have Seen Better Plays”, Time Europe, March 27, 2006. “No Holds Barred”, February 21, 2006. “We have to protect People”, December 9, 2004
Gibeon is a village in Gibeon Constituency in the Hardap Region of Namibia. Gibeon known by the name Khaxa-tsûs, received its name from Kido Witbooi, first Kaptein of the ǀKhowesin, a subtribe of the Orlam, he arrived with his followers in about 1850, shortly after a Rhenish mission station was established here. Gibeon has been the home town of this group, subsequently known as the Witbooi Nama since. Gibeon Railway Station is located in the village; the station is a stop on the TransNamib Railway. It is home to a public sports stadium; the stadium was built in 1986 and fell into disrepair by 1993. In 2003, the Ministry of Sport of Namibia budgeted N$450,000 for repairs and awarded part of the public tender to Namibia Renovations, but the company disappeared days after winning the tender and their whereabouts could not be confirmed; as of December 2007, none of the repairs been completed. When the stadium was operational, it was known for its "excellent" gravel playing surface, which attracted teams from larger towns in southern Namibia.
Gibeon receives an annual average rainfall of 148 millimetres, although in the 2010/2011 rainy season 494 millimetres were measured. Gibeon is known for the Gibeon meteorite that crashed over a 275 km long and 100 km wide area in prehistoric times, it is an iron meteorite belonging to the chemical group IVA Gibeon meteorites are made of an iron-nickel alloy, but contain cobalt and phosphorus. The crystalline structure of this meteorite is a classic example of fine octahedrite and the Widmanstätten pattern aesthetically appreciated both by collectors and jewel designers. However, collecting meteorites or damaging them is illegal, as all meteorites found in Namibia are automatically protected as National Monuments. About 100–150 different fragments have been collected over time, additional pieces are still found occasionally; the largest collection of Gibeon meteorites is displayed on a fountain in Windhoek's Central Business District. Gibeon is governed by a village council that has five seats.
Johannes Isaaks was the first Mayor of Gibeon as well as prominent political activist. In the 2004 and 2009 national elections, Gibeon has given the ruling SWAPO party less support than the national percentage, though SWAPO was still the highest vote getter in both elections; the 2015 local authority election was won by the SWAPO party which gained four seats. The remaining seat went to the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance. In the 2004 National Assembly election, 4,956 residents of Gibeon constituency voted; the COD received 29.3% of the vote and the DTA received 9.3%. Of the remaining 6 parties, the UDF received 3%, the NUDO received 2.1%, the RP received 1.8%. The MAG, NDMC and SWANU combined to receive the remaining 2.3%. In the 2009 presidential election, voter participation declined to 3,669, a 26% drop from the previous national election. Gibeon voters supported incumbent President Hifikepunye Pohamba's candidacy but less than the national average; the closest candidate was Hidipo Hamutenya of RDP, who received 20% of Gibeon's votes, above his national vote percentage of 11.1%.
The next closest candidate was Frans Migub ǀGoagoseb of the NDMC, who received 207 votes in the constituency. Gibeon's support for /Goagoseb equaled nearly 12% of the candidate's total support nationally. David Isaacs of the DP received around 9 % of the national vote total. Henk Mudge of the RP, Katuutire Kaura of DTA and Ben Ulenga of COD received a higher percentage of votes in Gibeon than their national averages. Gerhard Tötemeyer, professor emeritus and retired politician Hendrik Witbooi, politician Lucia Witbooi and schoolteacher Solomon Witbooi, ambassador to Zambia