Tag Archives: Mysteries

Creatures from beyond, Mysteries

Creatures from beyond part XI, The Ropen

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Now some new episodes in the Creatures from beyond series. First one is a large bird, lost dinosaur or demon called The Ropen. Here we go again:

The Ropen is a flying cryptid[1] alleged to live in the vicinity of Papua New Guinea.[2] According to the book Searching for Ropens, it is “any featherless creature that flies in the Southwest Pacific, and has a tail-length more than 25% of its wingspan.” On Umboi Island the word “ropen” refers to a large nocturnal creature that glows briefly as it flies.[3] The ropen is the subject of folklore (like a man but also like a spirit) but it’s believed by some natives to be a real animal.[4] Descriptions vary, but it is often said to be batlike,[5] and sometimes, Pterosaur-like;[6] although pterosaurs are generally accepted to have been extinct.[7][8] The ropen is believed to be nocturnal and to exhibit bioluminescence.[9][10] Purportedly it lives on a diet of fish,[11] though there have been some reports of the creature feasting on human flesh, especially grave robbery.[12][13][14]

Investigations

As an attempt to discredit mainstream scientific views on universal common descent or the age of the Earth, several American creationists, including Carl Baugh, Paul Nation, Jonathan Whitcomb,[15] David Woetzel, and Garth Guessman have embarked on expeditions[16] in Papua New Guinea.

In late 2006, Paul Nation, of Texas, explored a remote mountainous area on the mainland of Papua New Guinea.[17] He videotaped two lights that the local natives called “indava.” Nation believed the lights were from the bioluminescence of creatures similar to the ropen of Umboi Island. The video was analyzed by a missile defense physicist who reported that the two lights on the video were not from any fires, meteors, airplanes or camera artifacts. He also reported that the image of the two lights was authentic and was not manipulated or hoaxed.[18]

In 2007, cryptid investigator Joshua Gates went to Papua New Guinea in search of the Ropen for his TV show Destination Truth. He and his team also witnessed strange lights at night and could not confirm what they were.

In 2009, the television show Monster Quest conducted an expedition in search of the “demon flyer” but found no evidence of the creature. Later, they had a forensic video analyst examine the Paul Nation video. The analyst could not definitely conclude what was causing the lights, but ruled out vehicles and campfires believing the footage was of a pair of bioluminescent creatures perched in a tree that later take flight.

Identity

As is often the case with cryptids, the Ropen’s true identity is subject to debate. Some believe it to be a rhamphorhynchoid-like creature (a long-tailed pterosaur, which went extinct in the late Jurassic), while others suggest that the Ropen is a misidentified bat (e.g. flying foxes, which are large fruit bats than can have wingspans up to 2 metres (6.6 feet), or frigatebird. Flying lights in Papua New Guinea have been reported by not only natives but by Western visitors. Evelyn Cheesman, an entomologist, mentions them in her book The Two Roads of Papua (published in 1935): “baffling” lights that lasted “about four or five seconds.” The book Searching for Ropens says that the “ropen” light of Umboi Island lasts for about “five seconds.” There is also said to be a creature called “Duah” that is said to be another kind of ropen, but according to Searching for Ropens the correct word is actually “duwas,” and it is just another name, in a different language, for the same creature.

Source

Here’s a the History Channel’s documentary:

 

 

So do we have dinosaurs among us? You decide. Stay tuned for more CREATURES FROM BEYOND!!!

Mysteries, Universe / Sun / Comets

Scientist Claims Mars Moon Phobos Is Hollow and artificial!

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I have been always interested in Space and all it’s oddities. One of them is the moons of Mars. They are just full of mystery and it feels that something is not right. Same thoughts have Dr. Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky and here they are, enjoy:

Astrophysicist Dr. Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky calculated the orbital motion of Martian satellite Phobos and came to the jaw-dropping conclusion that the moon is artificial, hollow, and basically a titanic spaceship.

Phobos is spaceship says famous scientist Dr. Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky

The scientist is world-renown for penning the classic science book, “Intelligent Life in the Universe” with famous Cornell University professor, the late Carl Sagan of PBS and Voyager space probe fame.

Fear and Horror

Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos, translate into “fear” and “horror.” As Mars is named after the god of war, the names seem appropriate. Both satellites were discovered in 1877 by U.S. astronomer Asaph Hall who never guessed they were artificial.

Both moons are extremely odd, especially the tumbling moon of fear: Phobos. Shklovsky puzzled over them.

Deeply troubling facts

Two facts deeply troubled Shklovsky.

First, both moons are too small. No other planet in the solar system has moons as tiny as the Martian moons. They’re unique.

Second, their origin bothered him. Were they captured asteroids as others assumed? No, they could not be! Their orbital plane was all wrong. And they’re too close to Mars. Much too close. Even more amazing–Phobos changes its speed from time to time.

Impossible, yet true!

Russian astronomer Dr. Cherman Struve spent months calculating the Martian moons’ orbits with extreme accuracy early in the 20th Century. Yet, Shklovsky astutely noted, as the years progressed into decades the mystery moon’s orbital velocity and position no longer matched its mathematically predicted position.

After lengthy study of the tidal, gravitic, and magnetic forces, Shklovsky came to the inescapable conclusion that no natural causes could account for the origins of the two odd moons or their bizarre behavior, particularly that exhibited by Phobos.

The orbit of that fantastic moon was so peculiar, so bizarre, that Phobos had to be a gigantic spaceship.

Every other possible cause was carefully considered and resignedly rejected. Either alternate explanations had no supporting proof or the math was wildly off.

So, Phobos had to be accelerating as it lost altitude, yet could the outer fringes of the thin Martian atmosphere be affecting it? Was the atmosphere actually causing a braking action like the deteriorating orbit of a slowing Earth satellite?

Phobos is a hollow, empty tin can

During an interview about the peculiarities surrounding Phobos, Shklovsky said, “In order to make this braking action so significant, and taking into account the extremely rarefied Martian atmosphere at this altitude, Phobos should have very small mass, that is, very low average density, approximately one thousand times smaller than the density of water.”

A density that low, less than an Earth cloud, would have dispersed Phobos eons ago. That could not be the solution.

“But can a continuous solid have such low density, probably smaller than that of air? Of course not! There’s only one way in which the requirements of coherence, constancy of shape of Phobos, and its extremely small average density can be reconciled. We must assume that Phobos is a hollow, empty body, resembling an empty tin can.”

A tin can indeed! Like a spaceship is a tin can in the cosmos. For all intents and purposes, the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module was a tin can exceedingly smaller than Phobos, of course.

“Well, can a natural celestial body be hollow? Never! Therefore, Phobos must have an artificial origin and be an artificial Martian satellite. The peculiar properties of Deimos, though less pronounced than those of Phobos, also point toward an artificial origin.”

Alien spaceships the size of small moons orbiting Mars? That makes the so-called “Face on Mars” look ridiculously feeble by comparison!

Strange monolith on surface of Phobos

Yet, no less than the United States Naval Observatory weighed in on the Russian astrophysicist’s amazing revelation, stating: Dr. Shklovsky quite correctly calculated that if the acceleration of Phobos is true, the Martian moon must be hollow, since it cannot have the weight of a natural body and behave in the prescribed manner.

Thus, even that august American institution conceded that mysterious alien ships might be orbiting Mars…the objects’ strange origins and ultimate purposes completely unknown.

Speculations over what the giant artificial spaceships might be have ranged from massive Martian space observatories, to half-completed generational interstellar spaceships, or even gargantuan planet-killing space bombs left over from an interplanetary war waged millions of years ago.

Source

Shklovsky’s “Hollow Phobos” hypothesis

In the late 1950s and 1960s, the unusual orbital characteristics of Phobos led to speculations that it might be hollow.

Around 1958, Russian astrophysicist Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky, studying the secular acceleration of Phobos’s orbital motion, suggested a “thin sheet metal” structure for Phobos, a suggestion which led to speculations that Phobos was of artificial origin.[44] Shklovsky based his analysis on estimates of the upper Martian atmosphere’s density, and deduced that for the weak braking effect to be able to account for the secular acceleration, Phobos had to be very light — one calculation yielded a hollow iron sphere 16 kilometers (9.9 mi) across but less than 6 cm thick.[44][45] In a February 1960 letter to the journal Astronautics,[46] Fred Singer, then science advisor to U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, said of Shklovsky’s theory:

If the satellite is indeed spiraling inward as deduced from astronomical observation, then there is little alternative to the hypothesis that it is hollow and therefore Martian made. The big ‘if’ lies in the astronomical observations; they may well be in error. Since they are based on several independent sets of measurements taken decades apart by different observers with different instruments, systematic errors may have influenced them.[46]

Subsequently, the systemic data errors that Singer predicted were found to exist, and the claim was called into doubt,[47] and accurate measurements of the orbit available by 1969 showed that the discrepancy did not exist.[48] Singer’s critique was justified when earlier studies were discovered to have used an overestimated value of 5 cm/yr for the rate of altitude loss, which was later revised to 1.8 cm/yr.[49] The secular acceleration is now attributed to tidal effects,[47] which had not been considered in the earlier studies.

The density of Phobos has now been directly measured by spacecraft to be 1.887 g/cm3.[4] Current observations are consistent with Phobos being a rubble pile.[4] In addition, images obtained by the Viking probes in the 1970s clearly showed a natural object, not an artificial one. Nevertheless, mapping by the Mars Express probe and subsequent volume calculations do suggest the presence of voids within the moon and indicate that it is not a solid chunk of rock but a porous body instead.[50] The porosity of Phobos was calculated to be 30% ± 5%, or a quarter to a third of the moon being hollow. This void space is mostly on small scales (millimeters to ~1-m), between individual grains and boulders.[6]

Source

And because I am also interested in remote viewing of course I had to find something about that too. So here remote viewer Edwrd Riordan remote views Phobos:

 

And here Richard c Hoagland talks about Phobos on Coast To Coast:

 

So again it’s up to you make the decision what is the Truth.

Mysteries, Spirituality

What are you doing? Oh just reading your Akashic records…

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Have you ever heard that everything what is happened and what will happen in the reality Matrix have been stored in the “usb memory” of the Universe? It means that if you have the ability to view those records, you can see all the past and the future. Pretty interesting idea and there is this guy who says, that he can read those records and see peoples past lives and the current life mission. This post is about a man called Andrew Bartzis, who can read the memory of the Universe as it was yesterday’s newspaper:

Galactic Historian Andrew Bartzis has the rare ability to view the Akashic records, both Universal and individual. Right now, there are a group of people who are called ‘The Dreamers’ and they are working on creating a new age for humanity while other people are finding members of their soul groups and are connecting with one another on multiple levels of consciousness.

Please bookmark this page and find the time to hear all three parts of this interview. More information will be released soon and will be updated here on In5D.

>> Andrew’s website



Source

 

Here is the description of Akashic records:

Akashic records

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In theosophy and anthroposophy, the akashic records (from akasha, the Sanskrit word for ‘sky’ ‘space’ or ‘aether‘) are a compendium of mystical knowledge supposedly encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the astral plane.

Background

The akashic records – akasha being a Sanskrit word meaning “sky”, “space” or “aether” – are described as containing all knowledge of human experience and all experiences as well as the history of the cosmos encoded or written in the very aether or fabric of all existence. The records or The Book of Life in the Bible (Psalm 69:28, Philippians 4:3, Revelation 3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 20:12, 20:15 and Revelation 21:27) are described as being in a non-physical plane described as a library; other analogies commonly found in discourse on the subject include a “universal supercomputer” and the “Mind of God”. People who describe the records assert that they are constantly updated automatically, and that they can be accessed through astral projection or under deep hypnosis. The concept was popularized in the theosophical, a 19th century occult Victorian orientalism movement founded by Madame H. P. Blavatsky, writer of several books. According to the doctrine, there is no end to all things – merely a convergence or return to a light body of consciousness. Various views are held according to study, because this is not a religion. It is derived from Hindu philosophy of Samkhya as well as ancient Tibetan scrolls and Buddhist writings. It is promulgated in the Samkhya philosophy that the Akashic records are automatically recorded in the elements of akasha – one of the five types of elements visualized as existing in the elemental theory of Ancient India, called Mahabharta which is not a religious book, but rather a collection of colorfully historical stories spanning millions of years, from a period of prehistory and pregenesis (an esoteric biblical dogma) period of a long dead advanced civilization, wiped out by war and other calamity.

In the Mahabharata mention is made of Chitragupta (lit. “hidden picture”). He is the son of Brahma and a minister of Dharma and his duty is to examine a list of the good and evil actions of men (the Agrasamdhani) after their death. “Nothing is lost of either piety or sin that is committed by creatures. On days of the full moon and the new moon, those acts are conveyed to the Sun where they rest. When a mortal goes into the region of the dead, the deity of the Sun bears witness to all his acts. He that is righteous acquires the fruits of his righteousness there.” (Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva, Section 130, Ganguli trans.)

Accounts of purported akashic access

C.W. Leadbeater, who claimed to be clairvoyant, conducted research into the akashic records. He said he inspected them at the Theosophical Society headquarters in Adyar (Tamil Nadu), India in 1910 and recorded the results in his book Man: How, Whence, and Whither? The book reputes to record the history of Atlantis and other civilizations as well as the future society of Earth in the 28th century.[1]

Alice A. Bailey is not part of orthodox Theosophy but branched off in her own Bailey group known as The Lucis Trust formally the Lucifer Trust. She wrote in her book Light of the Soul on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali – Book 3 – Union achieved and its Results:

“The akashic record is like an immense photographic film, registering all the desires and earth experiences of our planet. Those who perceive it will see pictured thereon: The life experiences of every human being since time began, the reactions to experience of the entire animal kingdom, the aggregation of the thought-forms of a karmic nature (based on desire) of every human unit throughout time. Herein lies the great deception of the records. Only a trained occultist can distinguish between actual experience and those astral pictures created by imagination and keen desire.”

Rudolf Steiner referred to the Akashic Records and reported about Atlantis, Lemuria, the evolution of man and earth, et cetera. [2][3]

In The Law of One, Book I, a book purported to contain conversations with a channeled “social memory complex” known to humans as Ra, when the questioner asks where Edgar Cayce received his information, the answer received is,

“We have explained before that the intelligent infinity is brought into intelligent energy from eighth density or octave. The one sound vibratory complex called Edgar used this gateway to view the present, which is not the continuum you experience but the potential social memory complex of this planetary sphere. The term your peoples have used for this is the “Akashic Record” or the “Hall of Records“.”[4]
I would like to have that ability. It would be awesome to know ALL the answers and of course the Truth.

“Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so.”
MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain’s Notebooks

Mysteries, Time Travel

Time travelers part VI, Bruce Gernon

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Small update to “Time travelers” series a man named Bruce Gernon. Bruce Gernon is the only person in the world to witness what creates the Bermuda Triangle. Others have seen parts of this phenomenon and some have seen it but vanished. Gernon is the only one to see this from its birth stage through its mature stage and enter the heart of the Timestorm and escape through a Tunnel Vortex and experience a time warp of 30 minutes forward in time and 100 miles forward in space.

Traveler: Bruce Gernon
Traveler type: Unofficial time traveler
Evidence: Disappeared on radar, traveled through 100 miles of space and 30 minutes of time in a little more than three minutes
Status now: Alive and tells the same story

Here is his story:

My dad and I had been flying our own plane in the Bahamas since 1967, and had made at least a dozen flights to and from Andros Island. Everything seemed normal on that fateful day in December, just after 3 p.m., when my dad and I and Chuck Lafeyette, a business associate, lifted off the runway at Andros town Airport in a brand new Beechcraft Bonanza A36.

It was shortly after takeoff when I noticed an elliptical cloud directly in front of us about a mile away, hovering only about 500 feet above the ocean. It was a typical lenticular cloud, but I had never seen one that low.

How the lenticular cloud appeared from
Gernon’s vantage point while flying over Andros
Island.
Courtesy of Bruce Gernon.

Unexpectedly, it caught up and engulfed the Bonanza. After 10 minutes of climbing in and out of this cloud, the airplane finally broke free at 11,500 feet and the sky was clear.

Soon we noticed a cloud building directly in front of us, near the Bimini Islands. It looked a great deal like the cloud that we had just left, except that its top was at least 60,000 feet high. When we came with a few miles of it, we saw that it appeared to emanate directly from the surface of the Earth.

Upon entering the cloud we witnessed an uncanny spectacle. It became dark and black, without rain, and visibility was about four or five miles. There were no lightning bolts, only extraordinarily bright white flashes that would illuminate the entire surrounding area. The deeper we penetrated, the more intense the flashes became, so we made a 135-degree turn to the left and headed due south out of the cloud.

We had been flying for 27 minutes.

Contrails form while exiting the tunnel. Courtesy of Bruce Gernon

Thirteen miles later, I noticed a large U-shaped opening on the west side of the doughnut cloud. I had no choice but to turn and try to exit through the opening. As we approached, we watched the top ends of the U-gap join, forming a hole. The break in the cloud now formed a perfect horizontal tunnel, one mile wide and more than 10 miles long. We could see the clear blue sky on the other side.

We also saw that the tunnel was rapidly shrinking. I increased the engine RPM, bringing our speed to the caution area of 230 miles per hour. When we entered the tunnel, its diameter had narrowed to only 200 feet.

I was amazed at what the shaft now looked like. It appeared to be only a mile long instead of ten-plus as I had originally estimated. Light from the afternoon sun shone through the exit hole and made the silky white walls glow. The walls were perfectly round and slowly constricting. All around the edges were small puffs of clouds of a contrasting gray, swirling counterclockwise around the airplane. We were in the tunnel for only 20 seconds before we emerged from the other end.

When I looked back, I gasped to see the tunnel walls collapse and form a slit that slowly rotated clockwise. All of our electronic and magnetic navigational instruments were malfunctioning. Suddenly the fog started breaking apart, in a weird sort of electronic fashion. Long horizontal lines appeared in the fog on either side of us. The lines widened into slits about four or five miles long. We saw blue sky through them. The slits continued expanding and joined together. Within eight seconds, all the slits had joined, and the gray fog had disappeared.

The “electronic fog” dissipates and Miami
Beach comes into view.
Courtesy of Bruce Gernon

Then, I saw the barrier island of Miami Beach directly below. The remarkable thing is that we did not come out of the storm 90 miles away from Miami as we should have.We had traveled through 100 miles of space and 30 minutes of time in a little more than three minutes.

Source

Here is the Ancient Aliens document and they study The Bermuda Triangle. One part of this documentary is Bruce Gernon story:

 

Clip from a documentary about the Bermuda Triangle (Devil’s Sea). Bruce Gernon tells a pretty bizaar story about his 1970 experience as a pilot flying in the area. It deals with time travel, the fabric of space time, that kind of stuff that theoretical physicists talk about.

 

“Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.”
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Mysteries, Secret sites

Mystery places: Eternal Silence (sculpture)

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This mystery place has a sculpture, which is very haunting and we don’t know what it is about. So here is a Eternal Silence:

According to folklore looking into the eyes of the statue will give the viewer a vision of their own death.
Location: Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA
Built: 1909
Built by: Jules Bercham
Architectural style: Art Nouveau
Sculptor: Lorado Taft
Governing body: Graceland Cemetery
Part of: Graceland Cemetery (#00001628)
Added to NRHP: January 18, 2001

Eternal Silence, alternatively known as the Dexter Graves Monument or the Statue of Death,[1] is a monument in Chicago’sGraceland Cemetery. It is a bronze sculpture set on and backdropped by black granite. It was created by American sculptor Lorado Taft in 1909.

History

Eternal Silence is a monument in Graceland Cemetery to Dexter Graves, who led a group of thirteen families who moved to Chicago from Ohio in 1831.[2] He died in 1844, and the monument was commissioned from sculptor Lorado Taft in 1909 by Graves’ son Henry Graves.[3] In Ada Bartlett Taft’s 1946 Lorado Taft; Sculptor and Citizen, it was listed as one of his most important works.[4] Images of Eternal Silence have been used in other artworks, including works by Claes Oldenburg.[4] One folktale claims that if an unsuspecting viewer were to look into the eyes of Eternal Silence’s hooded figure, the viewer would be shown a vision of his or her own death.[1]

Design

Hooded bronze figure

Eternal Silence has been called “eerie”,[3] “somber”,[3] “grim-looking”,[5] “mysterious”,[6] and “haunting”.[6] The bronze figure, based on traditional depictions of the Grim Reaper, is set against a black granite base and stands ten feet tall upon that base.[3] The black granite provides contrast for the bronze statue, which is heavily oxidized because of its age.[3][7] The hooded figure was influenced by Taft’s own “ideas on death and silence”.[4] Historically speaking, the figure in Eternal Silence is related to the sculpted funeral procession around the tomb of Philip the Bold in Dijon, France and the Adams Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Washington, D.C.[4] The statue is considered famous and has been noted as Graceland Cemetery’s most “unforgettable” monument.[1][3][7] The monument was designed by Taft and cast by Jules Bercham.[8][9] On its base, Taft inscribed the north side with his signature; the south side is inscribed with Am. Art Bronze Foundry J. Bercham -Chicago-.[3] The monument falls within Art Nouveau style.[4]

Source

Here is something about the sculptor Lorado Taft:

Lorado Taft.jpg
Born April 29, 1860
Elmwood, Illinois
Died October 30, 1936 (aged 76)
Chicago, Illinois
Nationality American
Field Sculpture

Lorado Zadoc Taft (April 29, 1860 – October 30, 1936) was an American sculptor, writer and educator. Taft was born in Elmwood, Illinois in 1860 and died in his home studio in Chicago in 1936.[1]

Early years and education

After being homeschooled by his parents, Taft earned his bachelor’s degree (1879) and master’s degree (1880) from the University of Illinois where his father was a professor of geology.[2] The same year he left for Paris to study sculpture, he continued to maintain his connections with the university in Urbana and his sculpture of Alma Mater at Urbana has come to symbolize something significant.[citation needed]

In Paris, Taft attended the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts from 1880 to 1883, where he studied with Augustin Dumont, Jean-Marie Bonnassieux and Jules Thomas. His record there was outstanding; he was cited as “top man” in his studio and twice exhibited at the Salon. Upon returning to the United States in 1886 he settled in Chicago. He taught at the Art Institute of Chicago, a post he was to remain at until 1929. In addition to work in clay and plaster, Taft taught his students marble carving, and had them work on group projects. He also lectured at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois.[3]

In 1892, while the art community of Chicago was preparing for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, chief architect Daniel Burnham expressed concern to Taft that the sculptural adornments to the buildings might not be finished on time. Taft asked if he could employ some of his female students as assistants (it was not socially accepted for women to work as sculptors at that time) for the Horticultural Building, Burnham responded with the classic reply, “Hire anyone, even white rabbits if they’ll do the work.” From that arose a group of talented women sculptors who were to retain the name “the White Rabbits.” These included Enid Yandell, Carol Brooks MacNeil, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Janet Scudder, and Julia Bracken. Later another former successful student who emigrated to Canada, Frances Loring, noted that Taft used his students’ talents to further his own career, a not uncommon observation by students regarding their teachers. In general, history has given Taft credit for helping to advance the status of women as sculptors.

In 1898, Taft was a founding member of the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony in the small town of Oregon, Illinois. Taft designed the Columbus Fountain at Union Station in Washington, D.C., in collaboration with Daniel Burnham.

Later years

In 1903 Taft published The History of American Sculpture, the first survey of the subject. In some settings, Taft is perhaps better known for his published writings than for his sculpture. The revised 1925 version of this text was to remain the standard reference on this subject until Wayne Craven published “Sculpture in America” in 1968. Taft also wrote Modern Tendencies in Sculpture (1921).

As Taft grew older, his eloquent speaking skills and compelling writing led him, along with Frederick Ruckstull, to the forefront of sculpture’s conservative ranks, where he often served as a spokesperson against the modern and abstract trends which developed in sculpture during his lifetime. Taft’s frequent lecture tours for the Chautauqua also gave him a broad, popular celebrity status in this period.

In 1921, Taft published Modern Tendencies in Sculpture, a compilation of his lectures given at the Art Institute of Chicago. The book continues to be regarded as an excellent survey of American sculpture in the early years of the 20th century; and it offered a distinct perspective on the development of European sculpture at that time.

Taft was a member of the National Academy of Design, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters; he headed the National Sculpture Society in the 1920s and served on the Board of Art Advisors of Illinois. He received numerous awards, prizes, and honorary degrees, served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1925 to 1929, and was an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects. His papers reside in collections at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, the University of Illinois, and the Art Institute of Chicago.[4].

Taft was active until the end of his life. The week before he died, he attended the Quincy, Illinois dedication ceremonies for his sculpture celebrating the Lincoln-Douglas debates.[1]

He left unfinished a vast work to be called the “Fountain of Creation” which he planned to place at the opposite end of the Chicago Midway from the “Fountain of Time.”[5] Parts of this work were donated to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and are now at the library and Foellinger Auditorium. The University named a dormitory and a street in Taft’s honor.[6]

Sculptor’s body of work

Lorado Taft was a member of the National Sculpture Society and exhibited at both their 1923 and 1929 shows. Today Taft is best remembered for his various fountains.

Following more than a dozen years of work, Taft’s Fountain of Time was unveiled at the west end of Chicago’s Midway Plaisance in 1922. Based on poet Austin Dobson‘s lines – “Time goes, you say? Ah no, Alas, time stays, we go.” – the fountain shows a cloaked figure of time observing the stream of humanity flowing past.

Pioneer & Patriot Groups for the Louisiana State Capitol Building

The last major commission that Taft was to complete in his life was two groups for the front entrance to the Louisiana State Capitol Building, dedicated in 1932.

Here’s a YouTube mini document about Taft’s statues:

 

 

So here you have a nice little mystery place called “Eternal Silence”. Check it out if you live nearby.