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Home » ICC’s Vaughn Wicker Retires After 23 Years of Service to Code Industry
ICC’s Vaughn Wicker Retires After 23 Years of Service to Code Industry
Longtime ICC staff member Vaughn Wicker, an integral member of the ICC government relations team since 2003, will retire at the end of this month. Known for his quick wit, easygoing manner and Carolina drawl, Wicker has spent 23 years doing what he enjoys best – working with people from diverse backgrounds.
"I thoroughly enjoy working for an organization whose staff is so dedicated to meeting the needs of its members," Wicker said. "I'm extremely fortunate to have a more interactive experience with our members than the majority of our staff. Our members are dedicated and passionate professionals who are very often underappreciated for the services they provide, and I am blessed to have met and developed friendships with so many of our staff and members."
Currently a vice president of state and local government relations, Wicker serves as the primary staff liaison for the states of North Carolina and South Carolina, part of ICC Region VIII. More recently, he was the ICC staff liaison for the Building Official Membership Council, helping to organize and coordinate the activities of its Governing Committee and helping with its new Raising the Profile Task Group.
In recognition of his unparalleled service to ICC, he received the 2013 William J. Tangye Staff Recognition Award. Granted by the chief executive office for meritorious service to the association, the award is given in honor of William J. Tangye, the first chief executive officer of ICC. Wicker made such an impression on Tangye with his knowledge and desire to learn more from his peers across the South that Tangye asked him to speak on the first code change on the agenda at the 1980 Southern Building Code Congress International conference.
"Vaughn has been an exemplary role model with a strong work ethic, unwavering sense of loyalty and a skill for bringing people together through his love of golf," said ICC CEO Dominic Sims, CBO. "We thank him for all the contributions he made to the success of ICC, for his commitment to public safety through the adoption of the I-Codes, and for the strong professional relationships he created and nurtured with our members, chapters and other stakeholders."
Wicker started his career in the construction industry working for a general contractor as a project manager. He took his experience and love of people and applied for a vacancy in the building department in the city of Greenville, S.C., where he was hired to work under the deputy building official. After working for the Portland Cement Association as a codes and standards representative, he realized that he needed to be with people: learning, teaching and simply conversing. He rejoined the city of Greenville.
His experience in Greenville led to his involvement on SBCCI codes committees, becoming a member of the South Carolina Building Code Council, and involvement with the Building Officials Association of South Carolina (BOASC). When he left the city of Greenville in 1994, his work with BOASC and SBCCI committees led to the opening of a new SBCCI regional office in Greenville and his employment as regional manager. He served as secretariat for one of the five committees that developed the International Building Code and met many code officials from across the country in the process. During the last few years leading into the 2003 merger that formed the International Code Council, he met Sara Yerkes who was hired to handle government relations for the newly formed ICC. As a result of the merger of the legacy organizations, Wicker and other member services staff in the three organizations were moved into the government relations department. When informed of the change, he was eager for the chance to work with Yerkes to help develop an effective field staff to respond to the challenges facing ICC at the time.
"Vaughn has been an amazing colleague and friend," said Yerkes. "We are losing someone with a lot of institutional history, and I will miss him very much. But, I know how to get a hold of him so he can expect that I will be calling him if I need to pick his mind."
Wicker's experience as a code official makes him an excellent member advocate. He has always been focused on providing great service and support to our members with a philosophy of adaptability. "I liked talking with the architects, contractors and building owners, and asking, 'what can we do to reuse these buildings?'" Wicker recalled. "I worked hard to portray the image of a building official as a partner in the process, so the code wasn't an obstruction to be overcome."
An avid golfer well-known for his annual golf trip to Myrtle Beach, S.C., once retired, Wicker plans to focus on his favorite activities — elevating his golf game and spending time with his family.
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Interior Designer The practice: An opportunity has arisen for a talented...
Clifton Gray, Manchester
Oldham town centre hotel and resi set for green light
A proposed 70-bedroom hotel and 42 apartments on a site off Rock Street in Oldham is set to be discussed at a committee meeting next week with planning officers recommending the scheme for approval.
Developer Smart Homes has lodged an outline planning application for the site in the town centre, which is bordered by Rock Street, Hopkin Street, and Bradshaw Street.
The four-storey building on the site is home to a former nightclub, a restaurant, and a dance school, alongside a car park. The property will be demolished to make way for a five-storey, 70-bedroom hotel, with a restaurant, café and roof terrace.
It will be a three-star hotel, although the operator is yet to be confirmed.
The developer also plans to build 42 apartments in a four-storey building, as well as above-ground and basement car parking for around 140 vehicles.
The U-shaped, brick-clad building’s hotel will front Bradshaw Street while the residential apartments will face Rock Street and Hopkin Street.
There will be 16 one-bed, 20 two-bed and six three-bedroom apartments, as well as a courtyard for residents.
Stephen Charles Architects designed the scheme with PWA acting as planner.
In a report to the planning committee, Oldham planning officers said the loss of the building on the site, which currently has a number of vacant units, was not considered harmful, and said the change of the site’s use to residential and a hotel would lead to job creation as well as “economic and social benefits”.
Oldham’s planning committee is due to meet on 22 November.
The proposals include 42 apartments and a courtyard for residents
Looks great! Oldham town centre is a ghost town at the moment past 6pm, some of the empty spaces above shop units need converting into flats then hopefully some more life will be breathed into the place.
November 15, 2017 at 2:22 pm By Aaron
Fantastic!!!!!!!! just what oldham needs. This is excellent…
November 15, 2017 at 3:39 pm By Stephen lloyd
Woohoo, Oldham will have a 3* hotel!
November 15, 2017 at 4:12 pm By Pip
Most of these ex industrial towns in the NW are way behind their Yorkshire equivalents.
November 15, 2017 at 4:48 pm By Ome
Most of the hotels are on the outskirts of the town accessible mainly by car, nothing within the main town centre with evening entertainment that I am aware of and with the new metrolink this development makes a lot of sense, this will give the area a much needed boost as will the new metro. anything higher then a 3* would not really work the design looks like it will age well in the future I wonder who the operator is?, Oldham is finally looking up hopefully. There has clearly been more movement in this last year then 10 years previous. The metrolink has opened the door to much needed investment, this may never of been considered if the metro was not introduced in my view. About time,,, seems finally after decades of neglect things are starting to move in the right direction,……
November 15, 2017 at 7:48 pm By J. Burgess
Very good for Oldham. I like it
November 15, 2017 at 11:33 pm By Maria
Give an example Ome
November 16, 2017 at 10:13 am By Logenberry
another hotel? they cannot even build their first idea “hotel future” one near the old civic hall.
you need activities and attractions for visitors to want to stay in the town. yet there isnt much in oldham at all?
this scheme is part of the gran masterplan of ombc to revamp the town centre. but in a lot of cases its just replacing building that haven’t even been around 50 years yet??
its a very huge sum of money that i would really like to know where it is coming from? the council has already got massive debts due to the overspend on the town hall cinema!
November 16, 2017 at 12:11 pm By jayb
Putting that there is destroying my dance school so no it’s not great!!
November 16, 2017 at 7:51 pm By Anonymous
^ Nimby alert
November 17, 2017 at 8:35 am By Anonymous
jayb – You do realise that different developers do exist?
The restaurant and other business in the building hire a lot of staff about 20 to 30 staff at certain times of the year and serve thousands of customers per year through out oldham and further a field and will be a big lost not just to the staff but to the local families who eat in the restaurant and teach there children to dance in the dance studio and hold weddings and funerals in the cotton rooms destroying this building is destroying the oldham spirt .
February 04, 2018 at 10:53 am By Tom
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About PACCIN
Featured Member Profiles
G.R. Smith: A Life Lived
Remembered by colleague and friend Kurt Christian
On a cold day this past February, while walking down the street during my second week in my new home of Philadelphia, I received word that my good friend G.R. had slipped away after only three days in hospice care. I knew the inevitable was happening but still wasn’t braced for the impact it would have on me at that moment. G.R. had been diagnosed with what was to be, a very aggressive form of colon cancer just seven months earlier and was only 45 years old at the time of his death.
I first met G.R. Smith in 1996 while I was working in the New York office of Fine Arts Express (F.A.E.). I worked in the crate shop and G.R. worked in the warehouse. He seemed like a serious and quiet guy and we said hello to each other and worked in close proximity to one another, but it was really only during my second year there, when G.R. joined the crate shop that we became fast friends. We were both a long way from home with me being from Oklahoma and G.R. from Tennessee so our lives in NYC were both new, completely foreign, and exciting. Two things were clear after my first week of working with him; he was an incredible craftsman, and he had a wickedly dry and quick sense of humor. A week after I left F.A.E. to begin a new job at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1998 I called to speak to G.R. and was told he had an accident in the shop and had been taken to the hospital. Apparently a nail gun with a tendency to double fire had done so into G.R.’s thumb, sending a 2 ½” ring shank nail into the top of it with the point coming out somewhere near its base. The crate shop manager who was in the office at the time said G.R. casually walked in with the thing lodged in his thumb and calmly said, “Ronnie, what should I do about this?” Classic G.R.
G.R. started working for Artex, which was just a block from the Whitney’s off-site storage where I worked. We would have lunch most days and sometimes beers after work and would talk about our lives, art, literature, film, and music, always with a lot of laughs. After two years at Artex, G.R. also joined the Whitney where he stayed until 2008. G.R. was ultimately promoted to the position of art handler supervisor of packing and crating while he was at the Whitney and was a key contributor to the design, fabrication, and implementation of a very ambitious and long term project to create safe re-housings for Alexander Calder’s, Circus components. G.R. was also a pivotal figure in every major Whitney exhibition during these years (including several biennials, which is no small feat), and continued to make contributions to the design and fabrication of re-housings, packing, and crating of the museum’s permanent collections (including authoring a concise document of packing and crating specifications). In his own words, the most memorable exhibitions he worked on at the Whitney, were artist surveys of Sol Lewitt, Richard Tuttle, and Tim Hawkinson.
Also, and very importantly, it was during this time that G.R. met Brooke Gowen, who was later to become his wife and life partner.He was making art, working with incredible art that he admired at a major institution, and living his dream in New York City. It was a rich time in his life, with many important connections and experiences.
G.R. And Brooke, Chicago 2012
In 2006 I left the Whitney to take a job at the Saint Louis Art Museum and two years later convinced G.R. to apply for a newly created position of Senior Preparator. In 2008 Brooke and G.R. made their way west in his beloved Scion for a new life in the Midwest. Unfortunately for me, his stay in Saint Louis was brief as he was lured to a more lucrative position as Senior Preparator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in that same year. G.R. And Brooke settled into a new life in Chicago where they stayed and made their home. At the MCA Chicago, G.R. led the installation of major exhibitions by Alexander Calder, Simon Starling, Mark Bradford, and Doris Salcedo, to name just a few.
In the fall of 2014 G.R. came to Pittsburgh to be part of a panel discussion that presented at a workshop on packing and crating co-sponsored by PACCIN and ARCS. I was living in Pittsburgh, had helped organize the event, and was working at the Carnegie Museum of Art, so was lucky to spend some quality time with him before and after the event. G.R. was an avid cyclist (see bottom of PACCIN article London Calling: Interview with Mark Slattery) and I think I took him to almost every bike shop in Pittsburgh over the course of a single day. Sadly, it was the last time I saw him.
G.R., Chicago 2012
Caitlin Bermingham, Greg Gahagan, and GR at PACCIN/ARCS packing and crating workshop, Pittsburgh 2014
Throughout all of these years G.R. and I had routine phone calls that went well into the night. We chatted about what was happening in our lives and all those other topics we had always discussed. The week before he passed away we were texting back and forth and he still had a sense of humor and joked about eating fettuccini Alfredo. If you knew him you could actually hear in your head the way he would say that and it would crack you up. It was all in the delivery and I’ll always be able to hear his voice. He was completely engaged as a museum professional, a caring and loving husband to his wife Brooke, and father to his son Logan, and also one of my very best friends. For all of us who had the pleasure of working with and knowing him, his passing is a difficult thing to accept and process. An acknowledgement of him and his contributions to our profession is both fitting and necessary. Goodnight my brother, you are missed more than you could ever know.
GR leaning back 2.jpg (98.8 KB, 648 views)
G.R.jpg (67.2 KB, 2669 views)
GR on Panel.jpg (63.1 KB, 2710 views)
GR on bike.jpg (38.3 KB, 2576 views)
GR w bike final.jpg (67.0 KB, 2676 views)
GR leaning back final.jpg (97.3 KB, 3125 views)
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What does a journalist do?
Interview with a journalist
Journalists (or news correspondents) gather information, prepare stories for print or websites, or make broadcasts that inform us about local, national and international events; present points of view on current issues; and report on the actions of public officials, corporate executives, interest groups and others who exercise power. They spend a lot of time in the field, with constant demands to meet deadlines and to be the first to publish a news story on a subject.
In covering a story, journalists investigate leads and news tips, look at documents, observe events at the scene and interview people. They take notes, which they use to determine the focus or emphasis of their stories. Many journalists electronically submit the material to their offices from remote locations. Radio and television news correspondents often compose stories and report ‘live’ from the scene. At times, they later tape an introduction to or commentary on their story in the studio.
Nkepile Mabuse | NEWS CORRESPONDENT | CNN
Why did you choose this profession?
I didn’t choose it, it chose me. That may sound clichéd but it’s the truth. After school I studied civil engineering at Witwatersrand Technikon in Johannesburg. It took me five years of working in the field to realise that it was not for me and I quit. In my search for any job that would pay my bills, I landed an insignificant position at a current affairs show and fell in love with journalism.
What training did you undergo?
On-the-job training. Some say it’s the best way to learn and I believe acquiring formal training in something you love is half the journey travelled. It is through experience that most of us learn the most important lessons that end up shaping our lives.
What kind of personality suits journalism?
You have got to love people and be patient – most good stories come to those who wait. Most importantly, you have to care about the people and events you report on.
I learn something new every day and meet incredibly interesting people. If a story about illegal organ transplants breaks, for example, I have to quickly familiarise myself with the laws that regulate operations in the country concerned. It’s important to be able to locate people or information that can help me become an instant expert.
What don’t you like?
Sometimes dealing with government officials can be extremely frustrating. Many of them do not return calls, have no sense of urgency and generally feel they should not be answerable to anyone. Journalists are the last people they want to deal with.
What’s been the highlight of your career to date?
I’ve had many. Barack Obama’s African roots made covering the 2008 American presidential elections extremely exciting for me. I was in his father’s village, Kogelo, in Kenya. People who had never seen a television set, never mind followed a US election, were glued to screens brought into the village for all to witness history unfold. When the announcement was made that he had won, old ladies danced alongside school children as the whole community erupted in jubilation – truly unforgettable scenes. Obama’s visit to Ghana comes a close second for me. His motorcade drove past us while I was live on air and it was really special to witness the enormous admiration and love that ordinary people have for him.
Any advice to impart?
Work hard. Be humble and keep learning. Learn from those you admire and also from those you regard as intellectually inferior.
My biggest personal goal is to shape my seven-month-old son into a responsible and open-minded young man who will make a positive contribution to his country, community and fellow man. Careerwise, I would like to tell more stories that change the lives of those they are about and alter the thinking of those watching.
Your job in three words
A constant thrill!
Mpumelelo Mkhabela | JOURNALIST | Sunday Times Parliamentary Bureau Chief
What does your job involve?
I am the senior political journalist responsible for the Sunday Times parliamentary coverage.
When I was younger, I liked reading anything I could get my hands on. As I grew up, I began to enjoy debates on political, social and economic issues. It was always my dream to report and analyse issues that affect people on a daily basis and I couldn’t imagine a better platform than journalism.
Bachelor of Arts (with majors in English, Politics and Geography); BA Honours (Political Science); Bachelor of Journalism (Honours); and a BA Honours (International Politics).
Is there a type of personality best suited to this job?
You have to be very inquisitive, have the ability to withstand criticism (a thick skin) and most importantly, you mustn’t be a clock-watcher.
How does experience weigh up with formal training?
Formal training is very important, I don’t think I would have made it to this level without it. But training need not be the same as mine. Many journalists have trained in various other fields before they trained in journalism, some trained as journalists immediately after grade 12. Once you get started you learn every day, thus, experience is also crucial.
Describe a typical day on the job
A normal day begins at my house… while having breakfast, I tune into a radio news programme. On arrival at the office, I read the morning newspapers and browse local and international news websites. By then I have a good idea of what is going on and proceed to make phone calls, or attend meetings with news sources. When Parliament is in session, I normally scan the parliamentary programme for the day: it indicates what is under discussion in Parliament’s committees, and in the parliamentary chambers, the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. I then decide on the most important parliamentary activity to follow. On average, I attend no less than five meetings a day. When a matter under discussion requires no further research, I will immediately write and publish it on The Times website or file it for publication in The Times the following morning. If a story requires further investigation, I will gather more information on the subject. On really hectic days, I usually forget to have lunch (a bad habit). I’m supposed to knock off at 5pm, but I can’t recall the last time I left before 6pm.
What aspect do you enjoy the most?
I get to know a lot about what is going on in the world because I interact with political decision-makers on a daily basis. I know more than I ever write about. The more you grow, the more influential you become. Journalists are the most influential people in the world – alongside government officials and judges.
What’s been the highlight of your career?
Every time my name appears in the newspaper makes for a career highlight because each time I write, I keep a number of people informed about political developments. I inform the public about, among other things, government’s ability – or lack thereof – to deliver on its promises to the people after an election.
Any advice for young people starting out as journalists?
Don’t expect to be a millionaire. If you work hard, you will live reasonably well, but you certainly will not be rich. You have to love the job. Journalism is also addictive if you really have passion for it. Be ready to make as many enemies as you will friends: not everyone in government, opposition parties, civil society groups and among the ordinary members of the public will appreciate your harsh and honest pen.
Can you describe your job in just three words?
Fascinating • Knowledge-intensive • Challenging
It is not necessary to have an academic background to work in journalism, though employers generally prefer people who have a diploma or bachelor’s degree in journalism or communications. A National Senior Certificate that meets the requirements for a diploma or degree course is a prerequisite for these courses. It is also important to have practical experience from an internship or from working with print or broadcasting in an organisation. Some employers offer on-the-job training learnerships, which combines theory and practical training.
• Geography
• Language
Bachelor of Arts: Languages (Journalism)
National Diploma: Journalism
University of Rhodes
Bachelor of Arts: Journalism and Media Studies
www.ru.ac.za
Bachelor of Arts: Communication Studies (Journalism)
Boston City Campus and Business College
Bachelor of Arts: Communication Science (UNISA)
www.boston.co.za
Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Bachelor of Technology: Journalism
www.cput.ac.za
Damelin Education Group
Certificate: Professional Journalism
www.damelin.co.za
MAPPP-SETA – www.mappp-seta.co.za
Institute for the Advancement of Journalism – www.iaj.org.za
National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa – www.nemisa.co.za
The Professional Journalists’ Association of South Africa – www.frayintermedia.com
www.bls.gov
www.collegegrad.com
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Home > Discover > The Orchestra > Strings > Jason Schooler
Jason Schooler
Jason has been playing bass with orchestras and chamber ensembles since 1992, and joined the Oregon Symphony’s bass section in October 1999. As an orchestral musician, he has performed with the West Virginia Symphony, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Ft. Wayne Philharmonic, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the Oregon Bach Festival. Jason plays with several local chamber ensembles, including Third Angle New Music Ensemble, 45th Parallel, Classical Up Close, and the Lewis & Clark Faculty Chamber Players.
Jason is also a busy teacher. In addition to maintaining a private studio, Jason holds music faculty positions at Lewis & Clark College, University of Portland, and Concordia University. He is also a music instructor with the Portland Youth Philharmonic, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, Chamber Music Camp of Portland, and many Portland-area schools.
Mr. Schooler received a B.M. in Performance and Music Education at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He also attended the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado for six years.
Jason plays an Abraham Prescott double bass with a Dearborn and Sons label, made c. 1850. Find out more about Jason at jasonschoolerdoublebass.weebly.com
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PokerJunkie > Poker News > Cheadle & Macdonald in Celeb Shootout
Cheadle & Macdonald in Celeb Shootout
26 June 2015, By: Pokerjunkie.com
The Super High Roller Celebrity Shootout at Aria in Las Vegas kicks off this weekendwith top poker stars such as Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth and Vanessa Selbst along with celebs Don Cheadle and Norm Macdonald.
Nominations for the 2015 Poker Hall of Fame are also now being accepted at WSOP.com. Fans can vote on the players they think deserve to be finalists in the selection process.
Brunson, Negreanu, Selbst to Participate in Celebrity Shootout
For weeks buzz has been building for the Super High Roller Tournament Series at the Aria starting this weekend. Now an added attraction should appeal to fans of both poker and Hollywood.
The Super High Roller Celebrity Shootout will play from June 27 through 28 at the Aria in Las Vegas and will feature some of the biggest names in poker and Hollywood.
Don Cheadle, Norm Macdonald, Brad Garrett, Kevin Pollack and Hank Azaria will join Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Vanessa Selbst and Antonio Esfandiari for a fun "winner takes all" event.
In this event, the pros will play the pros until one pro remains while the celebrities do the same. The winner from both groups will then face off on Sunday for a best-of-three format to determine the champion.
The prize to the winner will be $1 million.
"These Hollywood celebrities are about to face off in the hardest game of their life, for more than they've ever played for before, against some of the world's best players," said CEO of Poker Central Clint Stinchcomb. "This exciting, high pressure poker will be riveting to watch."
This will be a televised event and will be carried by NBCSN. Episodes will begin airing on July 29 at 9 PM EDT with subsequent episodes on August 5 and August 12.
Nominations for the 2015 Poker Hall of Fame Being Accepted
It's that time of year again. Nominations for the 2015 Poker Hall of Fame are now being accepted at WSOP.com. Every year, poker fans get to put in their nominations for the player that they think is most deserving of enshrinement.
The criteria for the Poker Hall of Fame are as follows:
♠ A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition ♠ Played for high stakes ♠ Be a minimum of 40 years old at time of nomination ♠ Played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers ♠ Stood the test of time ♠ Or, for non-players, contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker, with indelible positive and lasting results.
Fan voting will continue through August 15 and the ten players receiving the most votes will become finalists to be voted upon by the Hall of Fame Selection Committee.
Last year, Daniel Negreanu and Jack McClelland were enshrined into the Hall of Fame. Negreanu turned 40 last year and got in on his first time appearing on the ballot.
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View of the Acropolis from the Plaka, Athens, Greece
A city named after a goddess, a place that abounds in ancient sites and world-class museum, a destination filled with restaurants, bars, and contemporary culture! Athens overwhelms, dazzles, and enchants! Explore Athens to discover a capital like no other filled with captivating tales and fascinating sights. Visit Athens with an open mind and heart! After all, this is the cradle of democracy, the land of wise men like Socrates and Plato, and the place where theater flourished.
Beautiful view of Erechtheion with the panorama of Acropolis in summer in Athens, Greece
Back in the 5th century BCE, Athens was already a glorious city-state adorned with breathtaking architecture and home to geniuses whose words and knowledge continue to echo into the present and will probably inspire and shape minds for hundreds of years from now. Explore Athens to learn about history and civilization, be in awe with its ancient ruins, and embrace the relaxed lifestyle of its people. The city is crowded and full of life, but there also is a certain fascinating peacefulness to it.
Temple of Hephaestus in Agora, Athens
Ancient ruins and museums
Regardless of how hard one might try, there’s no avoiding Athens’ ancient history. Ruins of its long gone past will just sneak up on you and appear where you least expect to find them. You’ll probably spot them near the gyros place where you’ll be waiting in line, in a subway station or underneath an office building. Everywhere you look, you’ll discover reminders of Athens’ great past, casually intertwining with modern Athens to create the captivating city you’re exploring today.
Acropolis at night
The spectacular Acropolis dominates the city’s skyline. A UNESCO World Heritage site, the grandiose Acropolis is the original settlement of Athens and home to four ancient Greek temples that date back to 461-429 BCE, a period known as the Golden Age of Pericles. The largest and most majestic structure on site is the Parthenon, an icon of Western civilization, built entirely from marble. The temple was dedicated to Athens, the goddess of wisdom. Nearby the Acropolis, you’ll discover the New Acropolis Museum, a captivating destination for those who want to learn more about ancient Greek history while having access to 21-century technology. If you want to admire the finest collection of Ancient Greek artifacts, add a visit to the National Archaeological Museum to your itinerary.
The Temple of Olympian Zeus
Just a ten-minute walk from the Acropolis awaits what was once one of the largest temples in the ancient world. Olympieion, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, dates back to the 6th century but took about 640 years to be completed. It had 104 marble columns. Most of them were destroyed during an earthquake that took place in the medieval era. However, you can still admire 16 of the columns and, with a little imagination, you will be able to picture its greatness.
Take a break from ancient ruins and step back into the present with a walk around the Plaka district. The area is one of the most popular neighborhoods in Athens and for good reasons. A picturesque district adorned with cute little streets, shops, and cafes, and the usual ancient ruins here and there, Plaka is the perfect place for a short break, a coffee accompanied by a baklava. Or try the bougatsa, a delicious filo pastry with custard filling. If you’re on the run, a koulouri, a bread ring spread with sesame seeds, will load you up with carbs so you can continue to explore Athens.
Monastiraki Square and Acropolis
Continue your journey of exploration with a tour of the Monastiraki, an area dedicated mostly to flea markets, and then, if you’re up for a shopping session, you’ll easily reach the crowded avenue of Ermou Street. If shopping didn’t make it on your itinerary, continue to explore Athens and head to Psiri, a district situated west of Monastiraki, where you’ll discover an impressive selection of bars and taverns. When the night comes, visit the post-industrial area of Gazi to explore the center of Athens’ nightlife.
Athens, Greece – Roman Agora
More ruins and museums
If you haven’t had enough of ancient ruins, you’ll be happy to know there are more! Visit the Ancient Agora of Athens, once the place where city life happened in all its glory. This is where ancient Greeks had their law courts, temples, and public offices, as well as where the merchants and stallholders were selling a variety of goods. The Ancient Agora was also the place where philosophers, politicians, and officials spent most of their days. Today, you can admire the Temple of Haephaistos, one of the best preserved ancient temples in the country, as well as visit the Museum of Ancient Agora.
History buffs shouldn’t miss a visit to the Byzantine Museum, especially if they want to learn more about the birth and evolution of Byzantium. The museum is housed inside a beautiful neoclassical villa and boasts an impressive collection of about 25,000 items, including frescoes, sculptures, and mosaics. Dedicated to Greek art, the Benaki Museum is an interesting stop for tourists who want to admire ceramics, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, and costumes that illustrate the artistic facet of Greece and follow its journey from the Stone Age up to the 20th century.
If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy this: https://www.purevacations.com/venice-italy/
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[Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing] Province...
Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville
[Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing] Province De Kiang-Nan
Paris / 1735
Decorative map of the Kiang-Nan Province, centered on the Yangtze River.
D'Anville's map covers much of the modern Jiangsu Province and Shanghai Municipality. Based on Jesuit sources, D'Anville's maps remained the definitive European rendering of China's provinces until the end of the 19th century.
The map encompasses the Yangtze River delta and the area that would include Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing.
Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville Biography
Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782) was one of the foremost French geographers of the eighteenth century. He carried out rigorous research in order to create his maps, which greatly developed the technical proficiency of mapmaking during his lifetime. His style was also simpler and less ornate than that of many of his predecessors. It was widely adopted by his contemporaries and successors.
The son of a tailor, d’Anville showed cartographic prowess from a young age; his first map, of Ancient Greece, was published when he was only fifteen years old. By twenty-two, he was appointed as one of the King’s géographes ordinaire de roi. He tutored the young Louis XV while in the service to the Crown. However, royal appointment did not pay all the bills, so d’Anville also did some work for the Portuguese Crown from 1724. For example, he helped to fill out Dom João V’s library with geographical works and made maps showing Portugal’s African colonies.
D’Anville disapproved of merely copying features from other maps, preferring instead to return to the texts upon which those maps were based to make his own depictions. This led him to embrace blank spaces for unknown areas and to reject names which were not supported by other sources. He also amassed a large personal map library and created a network of sources that included Jesuits in China and savants in Brazil. D’Anville’s historical approach to cartography resulted in magnificently detailed, yet modern and academic, maps. For example, his 1743 map of Italy improved upon all previous maps and included a memoir laying out his research and innovations. The geographer also specialized in ancient historical geography.
In 1773, d’Anville was named premier géographe de roi. In 1780, he ceded his considerable library to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be used for as a reference library for diplomats. D’Anville is best known for several maps, including his map of China, first published in 1735, and then included with Du Halde’s history of that country (the Hague, 1737). His map of Africa (1749) was used well into the nineteenth century.
Antique Maps / Asia / East Asia / China
[Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Suzhou] Carte du Tche-kiang dressee ar les Missionaires sous la direction de Mgr Guierry de la Congregation de St. Lazare Vicaire Apostque du Tach-Kiang
Rare Missionary map of China, showing the region from Shanghai in the north to Ningde.
(Ningbo / Zhoushan area) Paskaart van de Eylanden Cheuxan Lowang en alle deselss onderhoorige Eylande met alle dieptens, droogtens, en ankergronden, deleeen aen de kust van China strek kende van C. Avarellas of Montagne tot aan Lingpo te bekomen . . .
From the Secret Atlas!
Tartaria sive Magni Chami Imperium
An attractive antique map of China, Tartary, and Central Asia. This map covers a vast area in intriguing detail which reflects European knowledge about the world at the time during which it was made. The detail shown includes many rivers, mountain ranges, cities, and more. The Great Wall of China appears prominently. The map includes an attractive title and scale cartouche.
Australien (Sudland) auch Polynesien oder Inselwelt, insgemein der funfte Welltheil . . . 1802 (Sea of Korea)
Exquisitely-Detailed Map of Australasia and the South Pacific -- Sea of Korea
A Rare Variant!
China as Surveyed by the Jesuit Missionaries between the Years 1708 & 1717 with Korea & the adjoining parts of Tartary
Based on a Jesuit Map of China
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Is Childhood Obesity Also Child Abuse?
What should the state do if a child’s weight becomes life threatening? Recently, South Carolina authorities dealt with just such a situation by arresting the mother of a 14-year-old boy who weighed 555 pounds, reported USA Today.
The mother, Jerri Gray, had fled the state with her son, Alexander Draper, after a hearing was scheduled to determine whether she was “medically negligent” in caring for her child. She was arrested in Baltimore, and her son was placed in protective custody once police returned the two to South Carolina.
With childhood obesity rates soaring, the case garnered national attention. Gray’s attorney, Grant Varner, said that if his client is found guilty of “criminal neglect,” it will set a precedent “that opens a Pandora’s box” in the area of child abuse.
Last year, a report by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), a nationwide group devoted to the well-being of vulnerable American children, indicated that state courts in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, New Mexico, Indiana and California fought to address the issue.
As a result, all of those state courts (except the one in California) expanded their legal definition of “medical neglect” to now include morbid obesity. They ruled that the children involved in these cases were victims of neglect.
And although the parents involved in these cases were not sentenced to jail time, the courts in California and Indiana did file criminal charges against them.
Linda Spears, vice president of policy and public affairs for the CWLA, said that she thinks criminal charges should be a last resort.
“I think I would draw the line at a place where there are serious health consequences for the child and efforts to work with the family have repeatedly failed,” Spears told USA Today.
Gray’s attorney said his client followed the nutritional guidelines the South Carolina Department of Social Services set for her son, but he ate fast food when he was unsupervised.
Varner indicated that while in school Gray’s son could eat whatever he wished. “The big question is: What is this kid doing when he’s not in Mom’s care, custody and control?” Varner asked.
Spears also indicated that most often health problems linked to childhood obesity do not become chronic conditions until a child reaches adulthood. This makes it difficult to charge parents with child abuse, she said.
But while state courts ponder the legal ramifications of childhood obesity, reports on the topic continue to cite the rising statistics.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said that the number of obese children ages 6 to 11 has more than doubled in the past 20 years.
Read more about the dangers of childhood obesity here.
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2021 Best Four Year Colleges in Kansas
Prepler rankings are based on rigorous and in-depth analysis of key statistics from the U.S. Department of Education. Discover 2021 Best Four Year Colleges in Kansas ranked by Prepler.
4 Year • Lawrence, KS •
University of Kansas is a public university based in Lawrence, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 4,153 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 93%.
#1 in 2021 Best Four Year Colleges in Kansas
4 Year • Manhattan, KS •
Kansas State University is a public university based in Manhattan, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 3,350 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 94%.
4 Year • Wichita, KS
Wichita State University is a public university based in Wichita, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 1,598 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 93%.
Baker University
4 Year • Baldwin City, KS
Baker University is a private not-for-profit university based in Baldwin City, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 258 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 85%.
4 Year • Topeka, KS
Washburn University is a public university based in Topeka, Kansas.
MidAmerica Nazarene University
4 Year • Olathe, KS
MidAmerica Nazarene University is a private not-for-profit university based in Olathe, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 223 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 65%.
Southwestern College
4 Year • Winfield, KS
Southwestern College is a private not-for-profit university based in Winfield, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 189 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 96%.
Newman University is a private not-for-profit university based in Wichita, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 212 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 63%.
4 Year • Atchison, KS
Benedictine College is a private not-for-profit university based in Atchison, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 438 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 97%.
Pittsburg State University
4 Year • Pittsburg, KS
Pittsburg State University is a public university based in Pittsburg, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 995 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 87%.
#10 in 2021 Best Four Year Colleges in Kansas
4 Year • Emporia, KS
Emporia State University is a public university based in Emporia, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 606 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 82%.
Kansas Wesleyan University
4 Year • Salina, KS
Kansas Wesleyan University is a private not-for-profit university based in Salina, Kansas. It is an institution with an enrollment of over 183 bachelor’s degree candidates. The admission criteria is somewhat competitive with the acceptance rate of 53%.
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Home Private Equity News & Analysis Investors PA SERS slashes target to private equity
PA SERS slashes target to private equity
The $24.4bn pension has cut its long-term allocation target to private equity from 24.5% to 15% as it follows a strategy of only committing capital to existing managers.
Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System, once an active private equity investor, has dramatically slashed its target allocation to the asset class as it works to boost its exposure to fixed income investments.
PA SERS, a $24.4 billion system, is cutting its target allocation to alternatives, which includes private equity and venture capital, from its target of 24.5 percent to a long-term target of 15 percent. The pension system's actual allocation stands at roughly 25 percent.
The pension is “gradually” increasing its exposure to fixed income “to meet the liquidity needs arising from a projected increase in benefit payouts as the system matures”, a spokesperson told PEO. “This is a measured process that will be done through cash flows and distributions. Because we are not making new commitments to private equity and venture capital at the same levels as in the past, as we receive distributions from existing PE/VC funds, much of that money will be available to be reallocated elsewhere over the next five years.”
Meanwhile, through the second quarter, the system's private equity portfolio has produced a .5 percent return, the pension said in a statement.
PA SERS resolved to only commit capital to its existing private equity managers, and has followed that strategy this year, sticking to re-ups. Recently, the pension committed $75 million in re-ups to BC Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and SFC Energy Partners.
It's unclear if the pension is using the secondaries market to sell off some of its private equity holdings. The spokesperson didn't respond to questions about secondaries sales.
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Home Private Equity News & Analysis Investors Peter Dolan leaves Harvard
Peter Dolan leaves Harvard
The long-time, influential LP stepped down from his post in April, leaving behind a legacy of tough due diligence and a willingness to speak his mind.
Peter Dolan has left his long-time post running private equity at Harvard Management Company. His last day was 10 April, and he has been replaced on an interim basis by John Shue, who is heading up the private equity and venture capital portfolios, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
It’s not clear why Dolan left Harvard or if he has taken a role somewhere else. He did not respond to an email to his Harvard email address. Fortune reported on Dolan’s departure earlier Friday.
Dolan ran Harvard’s private equity portfolio for 18 years, prior to which he worked at Cambridge Associates and Liberty Mutual Insurance Company. Interim head Shue will report to managing director and head of alternative investments Andrew Wiltshire. Jane Mendillo is the chief executive officer and president of Harvard Management Company.
People very much respect his opinion and he has always been very outspoken.
Maria Boyazny
Dolan has been described in the past as exacting in his due diligence work on funds, so much so that his recommendations had a certain amount of influence over other investors. He was known to turn a “dark crimson as he vociferously airs his opinions on the private equity market”, according to a 2003 profile in Private Equity International, which named him one of the 30 most influential LPs in Europe that year.
“He has been an outspoken critic of GP avarice, particularly where oversized funds and excessive management fees are involved,” the profile said.
Dolan has been in the business a long time and got to know a lot of managers, and had access to managers that other LPs didn’t have, according to Maria Boyazny, founder and chief executive officer of MB Global Partners, who has known Dolan over the years.
“People very much respect his opinion and he has always been very outspoken,” Boyazny said. “He’s a really good guy and very fair. It’s the end of an era at Harvard and the beginning of a new era for Peter,” she said.
Another former LP who was close to Dolan characterised him as, “funny, smart, kind and outspoken”.
This year, Harvard has increased its allocation target to private equity to 16 percent from the 13 percent it had followed since 2005. The endowment’s target allocation to private equity was 12 percent in 1995.
The endowment, with about $35.6 billion in net assets as of September 2012, had a private equity return of 1.99 percent for fiscal 2012, under its 4.04 percent benchmark.
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Imprint: Penguin General UK
Anne Brontë's powerful novel is an exploration of a woman's struggle for creative freedom and domestic independence, and disturbed many readers on first publication, including her own sister Charlotte.
A beautiful edition of Anne Brontë's most enduring novel, to accompany her sisters' greatest books in Penguin Clothbound Classics.
Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read her diary that the truth is revealed and the shocking details of the disastrous marriage she has left behind emerge. Told with great immediacy, combined with wit and irony, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful depiction of a woman's fight for domestic independence and creative freedom. The Penguin Classics edition of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has been designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith and is edited with an introduction and notes by the novelist Stevie Davies.
Anne Bronte was born at Thornton in Yorkshire on 17 January 1820, the youngest of six children. That April, the Brontës moved to Haworth, a village on the edge of the moors, where Anne’s father had become the curate. Anne’s mother died soon afterwards. She was four when her older sisters were sent to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, where Maria and Elizabeth both caught tuberculosis and died. After that, Anne, Charlotte, Emily and Branwell were taught at home for a few years, and together, they created vivid fantasy worlds which they explored in their writing. Anne went to Roe Head School 1835–7. She worked as a governess with the Inghamfamily (1839–40) and with the Robinson family (1840–45). In 1846, along with Charlotte and Emily, she published Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. She published Agnes Grey in 1847 and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848. That year, both Anne’s brother Branwell and her sister Emily died of tuberculosis. A fortnight later, Anne was diagnosed with the same disease. She died inScarborough on 28 May 1849.
Anne Bronte, who was born in 1820, was brought up in the Yorkshire village of Haworth where her father was curate. She was educated at home and, as a child, she invented with her sister Emily the imaginary world of Gondal, for which she wrote copious chronicles and poems.
She held two positions as governess, with the Inghams at Blake Hall and, from 1840-45, with the Robinson family at Thorp Green. As a religious lyric poet, Anne Brontë's hymns and lyrics rank with those of Cowper. Her first novel Agnes Grey (1847), published under the pseudonym Acton Bell, is in the tradition of fictional spiritual autobiography, written with conciseness, integrity and irony. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) is a powerful feminist testament, attacking the marriage laws, double standards of sexual morality and the education of men and women.
Anne Bronte died at Scarborough in 1849. She was the youngest of the Brontë sisters, whose extraordinary gifts are only now receiving just appraisal.
Also by Anne Bronte
F Scott Fitzgerald
Homer Homer, Homer, Geraldine McCaughrean
The Iliad
Homer Homer, Homer
There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness
Carlo Rovelli
Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition
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Cremation Merchandise
Kreighbaum-Sanders Funeral Home
Sanders Funeral Home
Honoring a Life Well Lived
Robert R. Sanders
Deceased (1943-2002)
Robert R. Sanders, was a life resident of the Canton area and a Graduate of Lincoln High School. He attended the Ohio State University and Graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Cincinnati College of Embalming. Bob was a member and past president of the Ohio Funeral Directors Association District 16. Charter member and past president of the Canton South Rotary where he was a recipient of the Paul Harris Fellow. He was a charter member and board member of the Canton South YMCA and a recipient of the Red Triangle. Member of the Canton South Lions Club, Stark Wilderness Center, and the Lincoln Alumni. Bob was a life member of the 38th Street Church of Christ where he had served as a Deacon. Bob served as a licensed Funeral Director and Embalmer with the Kreighbaum-Sanders Funeral Homes for 37 years, at the time of his death; he was the owner/operator and president of the corporation.
R. Scott Sanders
Funeral Director & Embalmer
R. Scott Sanders, a second generation licensed Funeral Director, Embalmer, and pre-need counselor, president of Kreighbaum-Sanders and Sanders Funeral Homes. Scott is a life resident of Canton and East Canton and a graduate of Canton South High School. He attended the Ohio State University and Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science, where he received a degree in Mortuary Science. He is a member and past president of the Ohio Funeral Directors Association District 16. Scott has volunteered for 26 years with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Festival where he served as Chairman for various committees and in 2002 was the General Chairman of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Festival. He was active in the former East Canton Lions Club and an active member of the East Canton Rotary Club where he is a charter member and past president. Scott also is a member of the Boy Scouts of America, Buckeye Council Advisory Board, and was the chairman of the Osnaburg Township Citizens Fire Department Committee. Scott had served as a wrestling coach with the Canton Local School System for 6 years. He is the recipient of the 1999 Canton Jaycees Distinguished Service Award, 2014 Osnaburg Citizen of the Year and the Stark County Grange Community Volunteer of the Year. He is a member of Indian Run Christian Church. Scott operates a small hobby farm where he raises beef cattle which started out as a 4-H project for his children. Scott and his wife, Julie, have three sons, Chase, Brock and Drew.
Randall J. Sanders
Randall J. Sanders, a second generation licensed Funeral Director, Embalmer and pre-need counselor for the Kreighbaum-Sanders and Sanders Funeral Homes. Randy serves as Secretary-Treasurer for Sanders Funeral Homes, Inc. Randy graduated from Canton South High School in 1985 and attended Bowling Green State University. He graduated Cum Laude from the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science in 1988 where he received his bachelor of Mortuary Science degree. He is a member and past president of District #16 Ohio Funeral Directors Association. He is a member of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Bolivar. Randy and his wife Heidi have two sons, Adam & Jack.
Julie L. Sanders
Julie L. Sanders, Administrative Assistant for the Kreighbaum-Sanders and Sanders Funeral Homes. She was born in Coshocton, Ohio and spent most of her childhood in the Canton area. She is a graduate of Canton South High School, and received her bachelor degree in Foods and Nutrition from The University of Akron. Julie is a member of Indian Run Christian Church where she serves as a Sunday school teacher and volunteers with the local school districts. She and her husband Scott have three children Chase, Brock and Drew. When not working, Julie enjoys gardening, outdoors, sports, spending quality time with her family and pets.
William E. Slish
General Operations & Information Technology Manager
William E. Slish was born in Canton, Ohio, one of six children, he and his wife Kendra and his daughters reside in Dover, OH. He graduated from GlenOak High School in Canton, and Kent State University. He honorably served in the United States Air Force. He has been employed with the Sanders Funeral Homes for 18 years. He currently is a member of the Kent State University Alumni. His hobbies include computers, woodworking, remodeling, swimming, photography Photoshop, video and web design.
Brian D. Lowery
Assistant of Operations
Brian D. Lowery, Assistant of Operations for the Kreighbaum - Sanders and the Sanders Funeral Home. He was born in Canton, Ohio one of two children. He has been a life resident of the East Canton community and a 1979, graduate of East Canton High School and attended Stark State College. He has four children and two grandchildren whom he is extremely proud of. Brian is an active member in the Indian Run Christian Church. He is the former owner operator of Town and Country IGA, in Waynesburg, OH, where he received numerous Excellence Awards for his efficiency and community involvement. He was appointed Fiscal Officer for Osnaburg Township in 2013 and elected to that position in 2015. He enjoys spending time with family, church activities, hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities and volunteering his time to help others.
Richard R. Mohr
Funeral Associate
Richard is a lifetime resident of the Canton area graduating from Glenwood High School in 1971, residing in the East Canton community for the past 36 years. Richard and his wife Deborah have been married for 47 years, they have two children Renée and Michael and four grandchildren all of whom he is very proud of. He is retired from Aultman Hospital after 18 years of service within the maintenance department specializing in HVAC. He actively attends the Indian Run Christian Church, where he proudly serves as a Deacon. Richard has also served as a missionary to several countries, last being Columbia. He strongly believes in helping and supporting those at need in the community.
Richard Wessels
Rick is a lifetime resident of the Canton South area along with his wife Debbie and daughters Sarah and Kelly. He is a graduate of Canton South High School and M.A.T.C. where he earned his degree in Natural Resources Conservation.
He is a former employee of Duncan Press and Lowry Lithograph Company in downtown Canton where he spent the last 40 years in the commercial printing industry. He currently works full time for Canton Local School District as a custodian at Faircrest Memorial Middle School. He is the former Scoutmaster of Troop 203 where he served for 30 years. Both he and his wife attend Peace Lutheran Church and enjoy camping, the outdoors and spending time with family and their new grandson Jase.
Caroline C. Gerber
Apprentice Funeral Director/Embalmer
Caroline C. Gerber a graduate of Marlington Local Schools. She earned her associate degree at Stark State College and a bachelor’s degree at Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science in 2019. She is currently serving her funeral director and embalmer’s apprenticeship. She is also a certified funeral celebrant. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music and volunteering at Habitat for Humanity construction sites. She is the daughter of Christon and Heather Gerber and sister to Claire.
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The Master of Arts (M.A.) in Government – American Government will equip you with the history, context and insight to analyze political issues and systems from a constitutional foundation and promote healthy governance.
Healthcare Policy & Ethics
The Master of Arts (M.A.) in Government – Healthcare Policy & Ethics will equip you to navigate regulations and sharpen your policymaking skills for greater impact in your community, the U.S. and the world.
The Master of Arts (M.A.) in Government – International Relations will equip you to aid in the creation and analysis of international policy to foster strategic relationships around the world.
Law & Public Policy
The Master of Arts (M.A.) in Government – Law & Public Policy will expand your knowledge of policy, competitive politics and the law while you learn the history and inner-workings of government.
National Security Studies
The Master of Arts (M.A.) in Government– National Security Studies will equip you with in-depth knowledge in national security affairs and cyber technology, so you can predict and address emerging threats to the U.S. and its interests.
Code Name Credits
ENGL 500 Graduate Academic Writing Seminar 0 - 1
Development of the scholarly writing skills of entering graduate students, including consistent standards in grammar and punctuation, academic style, avoiding plagiarism, and learning to critique academic works.
GOV 511 Career Management
A comprehensive overview of career management principles and practices to more effectively equip students for employment and career advancement from a Christian worldview perspective.
GOV 603 Research Methods 3
Qualitative and quantitative reasoning, the basic principles of the philosophy of science, and positivist and reflexivist approaches to knowledge creation.
GOV 604 Christian Foundations of Government 3
Offers a biblical perspective of the religious, philosophical, and cultural foundations of Western civilization as expressed in education, law, ethics, biology, politics, science, psychology, sociology, economics and history. It will contrast biblical Christianity with the other principal worldviews in Western civilization: Secular Humanism, Marxism/Leninism and Cosmic Humanism (New Age), and will analyze public policy issues using each worldview.
GOV 614 American Politics 3
Foundational seminar for graduate work in American politics. Introduces behavioral, reflexivist and institutional approaches to study of key concepts in American politics – including the presidency, Congress, voting and the judiciary.
GOV 623 Public Policy Initiatives 3
Covers the basic aspects of various current policy initiatives. Each topic has a class devoted to biblical principles, guest lecturers from experts in the related fields and brief oral reports presented by students.
GOV 625 International Relations Theory 3
The major approaches and methodologies of international relations, examines the First, Second and Third Debates within the field, reviews emerging topics and identifies research questions.
GOV 658 American Political Thought 3
Examination of the philosophical and religious roots of early America from the colonial era to the formation of the Constitution.
Note: The deadline for international applicants applying to attend on campus is March 15.
Applicants for the Master of Arts in Government must possess an earned undergraduate degree from a regionally accredited institution or an equivalent degree from a foreign university.
1. Complete Your Online Application
Note: If you are unable to complete our application due to a disability, please contact our Admissions Office for assistance.
2. Pay Your $50 Application Fee
3. Submit your Unofficial College Transcripts*
Unofficial transcripts from a U.S.-based school, indicating successful completion of a bachelor’s degree program, can be used for an admissions decision. Email your unofficial transcript to apply@regent.edu using the subject line: RSG Master’s Application Pieces.
Non-U.S. transcripts must be evaluated by an NACES-approved company. See the International Admissions Checklist for details.
4. Complete an Admissions Questionnaire Regarding Your Professional Goals and Interests
5. Submit Your Government-Issued ID
6. Submit Your Professional Resume (Optional)
Your professional resume or curriculum vitae should include:
Employment history with details of responsibilities, skill sets, and results
School, community, and church leadership positions
Service activities in which you have been involved
Academic and non-academic honors and distinctions you have received
Email your resume to apply@regent.edu using the subject line: RSG Master’s Application Pieces.
7. GRE or LSAT Score (Optional)
Test scores may strengthen your application file and improve access to scholarship opportunities. Official scores should be sent directly to Regent University by the testing agency.
8. International Applicants
Visit the International Students Admissions page for additional admission requirements and to determine if you qualify as an international student.
University Services Fee (On-Campus Students) $700
Whether you are a prospective student or a current student, your questions matter. Please take a few moments to skim our Frequently Asked Questions. If you cannot find the answer to your question, please contact us.
A.A. in History
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“Regent provided valuable internship experiences — from working for a Congressman to work in Iraq with the Kurdish government.”
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“"My online degree allowed me to incorporate my academics with my profession making my graduate experience at Regent incredibly relevant."”
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“The whole concept at Regent was, if you are pursuing administration in the public interest, you aren't just doing it to be a bureaucrat, but to serve those around you. You have to be engaged and know what you believe when you go into it, to stand up for what you think is right.”
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“Regent’s online model provided an unparalleled combination of high-quality instruction, flexibility and specialization.”
Kassie Dulin, M.A., 2014 American Government
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Home » Learning assessments — impossible to teach effectively without them
Learning assessments — impossible to teach effectively without them
Competency assessments: Handling them effectively
Tips to teach nurses to do neuro assessments
Using learning needs assessments with children
Educators must learn assessment skill to know how to teach the patient
During new employee orientation, Kathy Ordelt, RN-CPN, CRRN, patient and family education coordinator at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta asks those present how they would determine what to do for a patient if she were to blindfold them, plug up their ears, take away the tools of their trade such as a stethoscope, and put thick leather gloves on their hands. They tell her that if they can’t see, hear, or touch the patients, they can’t care for them.
Ordelt responds, "All the tools of assessment are gone. You would not know where to start. The same thing holds true for learning."
She says health care providers cannot begin to educate patients and families until they determine what patients already know, how they like to learn, and if there are any factors that will interfere with the teaching or learning.
It is important to remember that learning is not simply memorizing information — it is comprehending what was taught and being able to apply the information, says Kimberly Crosby, RN, director of guest services at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
"We do an assessment because we want people to comprehend and apply the information. The goal of teaching is to impact the outcome in some way. We want them to be able to make better decisions, acquire skills, know what to do in a particular situation, or just gain additional knowledge about a topic," she explains.
Learning assessments are done so the brief time available to educate the patient can be used in a way that will best help him or her, says Laura Seuferling, MPH, a health educator in patient & family education at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.
"If I don’t do an assessment, I am blindly spewing out information [that] is wasting the patient’s time, and my time and I am not helping him or her," she explains.
The skill of assessing learning needs is one of those interpersonal communication skills essential for all health care providers. Some people are just better at interpersonal skills than others, but coaching and learning from experience can improve everyone’s skills, says Fran London, MS, RN, health education specialist, The Emily Center at Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
"Working with the health care team is one way to get better at assessment. Team members can learn from one another what works and what doesn’t," she says.
Role-playing also is a good way to teach educators how to do learning assessments, says Cheryl A. Goddard, RN, a clinical educator at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. In addition to helping those who educate patients gain assessment skills, it is important to make sure they know what teaching tools are available so they can use the ones that match a patient’s preferred learning style, she says.
Health care providers also need to know what tools are available to help overcome any barriers that might hinder the teaching. For example, there are 105 ethnic groups in Atlanta and, while educators cannot be culturally competent in all of them, they can know where to go to find the answers, says Ordelt. There are libraries at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta that have cultural information, and the institution also has a multicultural coordinator who oversees interpretation, translation, and cultural competency.
Skills for assessing
"Mostly, health care providers need to learn to listen and pick up on learners’ cues of discomfort, resistance, misunderstanding, or confusion," says London. She teaches health care providers that whenever they feel frustrated or whenever they feel the learner isn’t listening or isn’t getting it — that’s a sign that more assessment is needed. Frustration means educators are not individualizing the teaching enough to meet the learner’s needs, explains London.
If there are barriers to education, the health care provider must figure out how to give the information to the patient or family in the correct way, says Ordelt. "Our responsibility is to find the right way to reach them so those barriers are minimized," she adds.
To determine how to best teach a patient, the learning assessment should evaluate what the patient would like to learn, how much the patient already knows, the patient’s readiness to learn, how the patient likes to learn, and the issues that have to be addressed to best teach the patient, such as language or cultural and religious barriers. "All the things that can cause us to stop and take note and think about how we can provide the information so that the learner will receive it," says Ordelt. The information can be gleaned by both observation and asking appropriate questions, she adds.
One of the first things to note is whether the patient is ready to learn, says Terry Barlow, RN, a patient educator in the learning center at Fairview-University Medical Center in Minneapolis. Barlow, who works with transplant patients, says she gauges readiness to learn by observing the patient as he or she enters the learning center. She notices whether the patient makes eye contact, asks questions, or is smiling.
Patients are sent to the learning center by referral by their physician or the nurses on their unit. "If a patient does not want to be there I ask to reschedule the appointment — otherwise I am wasting my time and the patient’s," says Barlow.
Although Seuferling now works with clinicians, at one time she worked at a wellness center where she taught patients about diet and exercise. During this time she observed that, if patients were not ready to change their behavior, teaching them how to reduce saturated fat in their diet or providing an exercise program would not motivate them to alter their lifestyle.
To assess readiness to learn, Seuferling asked them why they came to the center. If they said their physician, dietitian, or spouse wanted them to come, that would be a sign that they might not be ready to learn.
Or she might ask them what they had already done to start an exercise program or change their diet. For example, Seuferling would ask, "Have you thought about what days of the week you will exercise and what time of day?" or "Do you have exercise shoes or clothes?" If they answered that they were very busy, that could indicate they were not ready to learn, she says.
The questioning Seuferling used was based upon the stages of change theory authored by James Prochaska, PhD, and Carol DiClemente, PhD. According to this theory, people may be in one of five changes that impact whether their behavior will change:
1. Pre-contemplative — no intention of taking action within the next six months
2. Contemplative — intends to take action within the next six months
3. Preparation — intends to take action within the next 30 days and has taken steps in this direction
4. Action — has changed overt behavior for fewer than six months
5. Maintenance — has changed overt behavior for more than six months
If patients are not ready to learn, it is important to try to motivate them to learn and get them to a stage of readiness. This might be accomplished by asking them why they think their physician sent them and then by going over why the changes are necessary. It might be helpful to give them a preliminary task such as keeping a food diary to track the saturated fat in their diet. In this way — instead of cutting out saturated fat — they could find substitutes. By meeting the patient halfway, they might be motivated to learn, says Seuferling.
To know where to begin teaching it is important to learn how much a patient already knows. "If patients have skills in an area, such as diabetes, we can build upon them. And if they have no previous experience, there is a different starting point," says Goddard.
Sometimes questionnaires can be used to gather information on how much a patient already knows. At St. Louis Children’s Hospital, there is a quiz available for families with a history of diabetes. The quiz can be used to determine how much the family already knows about managing diabetes.
Questionnaires also can be used to determine what patients want to know. However, most of the learning assessment gives insight into the learner so that educators can sense how to frame the information, how much detail the learner needs, and how best to teach it. "This is done best in conversation, observing the learner’s responses and listening to what is said," says London.
For more information about conducting learning assessments, contact:
Terry Barlow, RN, Patient Educator, Learning Center, Fairview-University Medical Center, 420 Delaware St. S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail: tbarlow1@fairview.org.
Kimberly Crosby, RN, Director of Guest Services, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, One Children’s Place, St. Louis, MO 63110. Telephone: (314) 454-2767. E-mail: kac1293@bjc.org. Web site: www.stlouischildrens.org.
Cheryl A. Goddard, RN, Clinical Educator, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, One Children’s Place, St. Louis, MO 63110. Telephone: (314) 454-4135. E-mail: cag2170@bjc.org.
Fran London, MS, RN, Health Education Specialist, The Emily Center, Phoenix Children’s Hospital, 1919 E. Thomas Road, Phoenix, AZ 85016-7710. Telephone: (602) 546-1408. E-mail: flondon@phoenixchildrens.com.
Kathy Ordelt, RN-CPN, CRRN, Patient & Family Education Coordinator, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, 1600 Tullie Circle, Atlanta, GA 30329. Telephone: (404) 785-7839. Fax: (404) 785-7017. E-mail: Kathy.ordelt@choa.org.
Laura Seuferling, MPH, Health Educator, Patient & Family Education, University of Washington Medical Center. 1959 N.E. Pacific St., Box 358126, Seattle, WA 98195. Telephone: (206) 598-3473. E-mail: seufer@u.washington.edu.
Patient Education Management Archives
Patient Education Management 2005-04-01
Tailor education by using information assessment
Techniques to improve classroom instruction
‘Culture Clues’ help staff understand diverse patients
End-of-life communication hard for discharge planners
Work with interpreters to plan discharge at admission
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Trump administration enacts another obstacle to asylum cases
By Daniel Trotta
(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration imposed another obstacle for asylum-seekers on Monday, finding that being persecuted on the basis of threats against a family member is usually not enough to be granted asylum in the United States.
Attorney General William Barr issued a ruling that will set the standard for all immigration judges, using the same power his predecessors Jeff Sessions and Matthew Whitaker used to try to narrow the field of people potentially eligible for asylum.
The Trump administration is actively seeking to reduce the number of asylum cases, saying the system is overwhelmed by fraudulent claims. The number of people apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border has surged under Trump, with many Central Americans asking for refuge in the United States even though the vast majority of their claims are ultimately denied in court.
Unlike the federal judiciary, U.S. immigration courts fall under Justice Department jurisdiction, and the attorney general can intervene in cases to set national legal precedent. Trump's attorneys general have been more active than previous administrations in this practice. (tmsnrt.rs/2XmGDDg)
As part of a wider efforts to clamp down on immigration, the Trump administration has taken a series of measures recently to restrict asylum claims, including by issuing a rule requiring asylum candidates first to seek safe haven in a third country.
A federal judge in San Francisco blocked the new rule last week by issuing a preliminary injunction pending trial. The government on Monday filed a motion asking the judge to suspend the injunction.
In the family ties case, known as “Matter of L-E-A,” Barr overruled a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals, finding that the board improperly ruled a Mexican was eligible for asylum protection because the threats against him came about only after a drug cartel first threatened his father.
Asylum law requires that claims be evaluated on a case-by-case basis if they can show their persecution was based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a “particular social group.”
An immigration lawyer who represented L-E-A said immigration courts for decades have considered families to be a particular social group, “so suddenly reversing that trend is likely to affect thousands of cases,” said Bradley Jenkins, a litigator for Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc.
But Barr’s decision found that virtually every asylum-seeker is a member of a family and that, “There is no evidence that Congress intended the term ‘particular social group’ to cast so wide a net.”
Decisions like the one Barr issued Monday can ultimately be appealed to federal appellate courts. In December, a U.S. judge struck down a previous Trump administration decision aimed at denying asylum to victims of gang or domestic violence.
For a graphic on How Trump’s attorneys general are transforming U.S. immigration law, click tmsnrt.rs/2XmGDDg
Reporting by Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Mica Rosenberg, Alistair Bell and Dan Grebler
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Franciscan center in Rome preserves St. Maximilian Kolbe's room
The International College of the Conventual Franciscans in Rome houses the room where St. Maximilian Kolbe founded the Militia of the Immaculata. M...
Latin Grammy winner for best Christian album: "My message is Jesus"
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“I could sing of love, but God is love. I could sing of hope, but He is hope. Singing about God brings all these things together in a special way,” says Alex Campos. His name is Alex Campos. He is one of the winners of the 13 Latin Grammys that Colombia took home in the 2020 edition. He says that his melodies are inspired by one name.
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The International College of the Conventual Franciscans in Rome houses the room where St. Maximilian Kolbe founded the Militia of the Immaculata. More than 100 years ago, this simple room in what is now the International College of the Conventual Franciscans in Rome marked one of the most importa...
Pope on Epiphany: Set aside complaint...
“Worshiping the Lord is not easy; it isn't something that just happens. It requires a certain spiritual maturity,” he said. The Mass on the feast of the Epiphany began with a short procession in St. Peter's Basilica.
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“We should feel violated when the legacy of freedom enshrined in that building is disrespected and desecrated,” declared the Archbishop of Washington. On Wednesday, Jan. 6, the US capital witnessed moments of unprecedented chaos and violence. A large group of pro-Trump protesters infiltrated the...
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AndroidiOSNews
Kou-Kyou-Sei Million Arthur is Ending Service on May 12, 2020
By Sato March 11, 2020
Square Enix announced that it is ending service of its smartphone action RPG Kou-Kyou-Sei Million Arthur on May 12, 2020.
The game was first announced in February 2018 as a “character hunt action RPG”. The setting is Britain’s far future of Kai-Ri-Sei. Camelot has been taken over by somebody, and a young girl named Merlin rises up to retake Camelot. With a new Excalibur in hand, Merlin begins choosing new “Arthurs”.
As far as gameplay goes, it’s an action RPG that allows players to create their own characters to explore 3D fields. In battle, characters can perform special attacks in tandem with other party members.
After its launch in Japan in October 2018, the game continued its service with regular updates and events.
Square Enix thanks all fans for the longtime support and apologized for the short notice. After consideration. the company decided it would be too difficult to continue providing a satisfactory service for the customers.
Lastly, micro-transaction crystal sales have already ended in Japan as of 3:00pm JST today. Those with crystals remaining can use them until the end of service date on May 12, 2020 at 3:00pm JST.
Kou-Kyou Sei Million Arthur is currently available for iOS and Android devices in Japan. Check out its opening animation here.
Kou-Kyou-Sei Million Arthur
Editor-in-Chief at Siliconera. Gamer, avid hockey fan, and firm believer in the heart of the cards.
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Sincere Florist & Gift Shop
Sincere Florist & Gift Shop | 02 9564 5964 | | 213 Marrickville Road | Marrickville | NSW | 2204
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Our Marrickville store delivers to a number of public institutions in the area, in addition to private residences and offices. We understand that you�re busy, which is why we offer to bring your orders directly to the location of your choice so you don�t have to worry about it. Whether it�s a church, cemetery or funeral home, or a hospital, nursing home or alternative assisted-living centre, we�re able to deliver your order promptly and efficiently. We service most of the major locations in Marrickville, and we also service suburbs and areas located nearby.
The last thing you should be worrying about on the day of a wedding or funeral is getting the flowers to the church, and with our florist, you don�t have to. We happily deliver to locations such as St. Brigid Catholic Church, Marrickville Road Church, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, Marrickville Uniting Church and Church of Christ Marrickville. The local funeral homes and cemeteries we service include Simplicity Funerals, Walters & Son Funerals, Elite Funeral Directors, Camperdown Cemetery and Moorefields Cemetery.
We service many of the major public medical centres in the area, including MetroRehab Hospital, The Sydney Private Hospital, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Wesley Hospital Kogarah and Wesley Hospital Ashfield. Among the assisted-living facilities that we deliver to are Columbia Aged Care Services - Acacia Centre, Willandra Aged Care, Maronite Sisters Of The Holy Family Village, Catholic Healthcare Lewisham Nursing Home and Opal Stanmore.
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The suburb of Marrickville sits in Sydney�s Inner West, a short seven kilometres away from the city centre. Marrickville enjoys diversity, and features a mixture of commercial, industrial and residential properties.
Marrickville is named after a village in North Yorkshire, England, and today serves as a hub for the local artistic community. The suburb is the most prominent area involved in the Sydney Fringe Festival, and also takes part in Art Month Sydney. Live music is another favourite pastime in the area, and a number of live venues can be found within its borders.
Our shop serves the following areas:ADDISON ROAD (2204), ALEXANDRIA (2015), ALWYN HOSPITAL STRATHFIEL(2135), ASHBURY (2193), ASHFIELD (2131), BARDWELL PARK (2207), BARONOR PRIVATE HOSPITAL (2040), BEACONSFIELD (2015), BERALA (2141), BERRYS BAY (2060), BEXLEY (2207), BLUE CROSS COMPLEX (2208), BLUES POINT (2060), BREAKFAST POINT (2137), BROADWAY (2007), BURWOOD (2134), BURWOOD HEIGHTS (2136), CABARITA (2137), CAMPERDOWN (2050), CANADA BAY PRIVATE HOSP (2137), CANTERBURY (2193), CENTENNIAL PARK (2021), CHIPPENDALE (2008), CLEMPTON PARK (2206), COCKATOO ISLAND (2000), CONCORD (2137), CONCORD HOSPITAL (2137), CONCORD REPAT GENERAL HOS(2137), CROYDON (2132), CROYDON PARK (2133), DARLING HARBOUR (2000), DARLINGHURST (2010), DARLINGTON (2008), DAWES POINT (2000), DIAMOND BAY (2030), DOVER HEIGHTS (2030), DULWICH HILL (2203), EARLWOOD (2206), ELIZABETH BAY (2011), ENFIELD (2136), ENFIELD SOUTH (2133), ENMORE (2042), ERSKINEVILLE (2043), EVELEIGH (2015), FLEMINGTON (2140), FOREST LODGE (2037), GARDEN ISLAND (2000), GLEBE (2037), GOAT ISLAND (2000), GROSVENOR PL PO (2000), HAYMARKET (2000), HOMEBUSH (2140), HURLSTONE PARK (2193), KING GEORGE MEM HOSP (2050), KINGS CROSS (2011), KINGSGROVE (2208), KINGSWAY WEST (2208), KIRKETON RD CENTRE HOSP (2011), LAVENDER BAY (2060), LEICHHARDT (2040), LEWISHAM (2049), LIDCOMBE (2141), LILYFIELD (2040), MARRICKVILLE (2204), MASCOT (2020), MASCOT AIRPORT (2020), MASONIC HOSPITAL (2131), MATER HOSPITAL (2060), MATER PRIVATE HOSPITAL (2060), MCMAHONS POINT (2060), METRO EYE HOSPITAL (2131), METROPOLITAN REHAB HOSP (2049), MILLERS POINT (2000), MISSENDEN ROAD (2050), MOORE PARK (2010), MORTLAKE (2137), NEWTOWN (2042), NORTH STRATHFIELD (2137), NORTH SYDNEY (2060), NORTH SYDNEY COMM HOSP (2055), NORTH SYDNEY PRIVATE BOXE(2059), PADDINGTON (2021), PARLIAMENT HOUSE SYDNEY N(2000), PETERSHAM (2049), POTTS POINT (2011), PYRMONT (2009), ROOKWOOD (2141), ROOKWOOD CEMETERY (2141), ROOKWOOD MEM GARDENS CEM (2141), ROSE BAY NORTH (2030), ROYAL PRINCE ALFRED HOSP (2050), ROYAL WOMENS HOSPITAL (2021), ROZELLE HOSPITAL (2040), RUSHCUTTERS BAY (2011), SHEAS CREEK (2044), SPECTACLE ISLAND (2000), ST JOHN OF GOD BURWOOD (2134), ST LUKES HOSPITAL (2011), ST MARGARETS HOSPITAL (2010), ST PETERS (2044), ST VINCENTS PRIV HOSPITAL(2010), ST VINCENTS PUB HOSP (2010), STANMORE (2048), STRATHFIELD (2135), STRATHFIELD PRIVATE HOSP (2135), STRATHFIELD SOUTH (2136), STRATHFIELD WEST (2140), SURRY HILLS (2010), SYDENHAM (2044), SYDNEY AIRPORT (2020), SYDNEY CITY (2000), SYDNEY EYE HOSPITAL (2011), SYDNEY HOSPITAL (2000), SYDNEY PRIVATE HOSPITAL (2131), SYDNEY SOUTHWEST PRIVATE (2131), TAVERNERS HILL (2040), TEMPE (2044), THE ROCKS SYDNEY (2000), THE SCOTTISH HOSPITAL (2021), TRESSILIAN MOTHERCRAFT H (2049), ULTIMO (2007), UNDERCLIFFE (2206), VAUCLUSE (2030), WADDELL HOUSE PRIV H (2131), WATSONS BAY (2030), WAVERTON (2060), WESLEY PRIV HOSPITAL (2000), WESLEY PRIVATE HOSPITAL (2131), WESTGATE (2048), WESTSIDE HOSPITAL (2137), WOOLLOOMOOLOO (2011)
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Eddie Gallagher, Estevan Bruins
Prior to the Christmas break the Estevan Bruins struggled to find their offensive groove, but since returning from the holidays they have done just that and as a result are on the cusp of not only nailing down a playoff spot, but possibly moving up a rung or two more in the standings.
One of the players who has taken his game to another level is 19-year-old forward Eddie Gallagher. The St. Albert, Alta., product has collected 21 of his 41 points since the calendar flipped to 2020 including six multi-point outings. As a result, the 5-foot-8, 165-pound forward has obliterated his totals from last year when he registered 18 points in 43 games as a Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League rookie.
Gallagher’s output this season is the most since his first year of midget hockey when he had 41 points in 36 games with the St. Albert Minor Midget AAA Flyers. For the next two years Gallagher toiled with the St. Albert Raiders of the Alberta Midget AAA Hockey League and in 56 games over that span he tallied 12 goals and added 24 assists.
This season has seen Gallagher given more responsibilities as four of his goals have come on the power-play and a similar number of his tallies have been game-winning markers. He has also been perfect in shootout-attempts converting both of his opportunities with one of those also being a game winner.
The Bruins will be hoping his play continues to improve as they move towards making the playoffs and a run at a Canalta Cup championship. Gallagher will undoubtedly be a big part of their plans next year and if his birthday had been three days later he would certainly have been a cornerstone for the club that will host the 2022 Centennial Cup presented by Tim Horton’s. For now his focus is on what is in front of him and that is getting Estevan into the playoff mix.
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Football: Roy, Marazzi to be honored
March 8, 2016 Updated: June 7, 2019 7:14 a.m.
The 56th anniversary of the Casey-O'Brien New Haven County Chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame Scholar Athlete dinner will be held on Friday April 8 at Fantasia, 404 Washington Ave, North Haven.
A reception will begin at 5:30 p.m. with the march to the head table at 6:30 p.m.
Twenty-eight high school and prep school scholar athletes who play football will be honored for academic excellence, leadership and citizenship.
"These young men never cease to amaze us", said chapter president Bill O'Brien. "Their accomplishments in the classroom, on the field and in the community are exemplary. All they have achieved makes their family and school very proud".
In addition, other award winners include Michael Barbaro of Wallingford, senior vice president of Town Fair Tire and a former football official who retired at the end of the 2014 season after 35 years on the field. He has been a member of the New Haven Football Officials Association for 36 years serving as president in 1989. He was elected to the Connecticut Football Officials Hall of Fame in 2010.
Also being recognized are chapter member, author and former radio talk show host Rich Marazzi of Ansonia with the Chapter Award of Merit. Marazzi is well known as the first rules consultant in major league baseball history. He is affiliated with 10 different teams including the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers. He also authored "A Bowl Full of Memories: 100 Years of Football at the Yale Bowl", published in 2014.
Shelton coach Jeff Roy who led the Gaels to consecutive 12-1 records, as well as appearances in the Class LL State championship games in 2014 and 2015, will receive the' Chapter Coach of the Year Award' and former 30+ year football official John Manzi of Hamden will receive the 'Official Recognition Award' as selected by the New Haven Football Officials Association. More recently Manzi serves as Assistant to the Commissioner for the NHFOA, aiding Commissioner Steve Narracci in building schedules and making assignments for the organization members.
Tickets can be purchased for $50 by sending a check payable to 'National Football Foundation' to Donna Limone, 10 Ludlow Court, Branford 06405 or by calling her at 203-481-8375.
See www.newhavenfootballfoundation.com for further information.
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29 July 2020|In World News, Interviews, Education, Headlines, United Kingdom, Society|8 Minutes
'Government was unable to support those in need'
By Gabriel Daudy
I got a better sense of how well our government handled the recent lockdown after speaking with Nicola Spurr, a volunteer in Bayswater Covid-19 Mutual Aid. Nicola is part of a community-based charity formed in March as a response to the national lockdown.
We spoke community spirit, governmental responsibility and the importance of charity.
I see that Bayswater Covid-19 Mutual Aid is very community-based? How do you feel the community has come together for those in need?
We have only really existed as an organisation since we formed in March of this year. We were created as a response to the pandemic and the lockdown. In our very nature, we are community-based in that we are people who live in the area in which they are helping and organise the group as a community. At our core we are helping people who are struggling in the lockdown. But this is not only about us and this community. Mutual aids mushroomed across the UK, and most of them operating in a very local and community-based area. Therefore, there has been a kind of momentum of people helping each other throughout the country
Especially in London, people couldn’t shop, couldn’t be helped with their carers etc. Therefore, it was really necessary that the vulnerable received support, otherwise their only options were to risk their lives leaving their home or literally not eat or be looked after at home. There is really an ethos of radical solidarity and an idea that we need to build community strength and resilience. We believe that if you build a community structure, communities are [then] better placed at looking after themselves and dealing with threats such as Covid-19.
How do you think that we can build this community spirit in practical terms?
To be clear, I think that we already have a sense of community throughout the country. We have social clubs, sports clubs, religious groups etc. all of which operate on a local scale. These small neighbourhood groups already foster a sense of community.
However, we need to do more to look out for neighbours who are vulnerable. We really have a problem with social isolation where people don’t leave their homes and also have problems with physical and mental health. Due to the fact they don’t leave their homes, neighbours cannot know and cannot help people to get the help they need. We need to build a culture of not only gathering with like-minded people but to also look outside of our own social bubble and interact with people that may need help.
Mutual aids have helped encourage this sense of community, but it is a question of how to continue it. I think that already many people who are usually too busy are starting to get to better know their neighbours due to working at home, which is already an improvement. We also need local councillors to help develop a better sense of community. They have the resources which are needed to encourage this, such as community buildings, staff and funds — which make it easier for people to know and interact with each other. Councils also have a duty of care to their wards and ensuring that the people who live in their area well looked after and included in society.
On the topic of the responsibility of the council; how has the council helped you and your organisation?
They were helpful to an extent. To start off with I ensured that I knew the councillors in the three wards in which we were operating. This was important to establish the credibility of our group as we were working with the government. Additionally, councillors have the authority to ask questions in the council such as, ‘Why have the homeless not been housed yet’ or ‘Why are some council facilities not available for use’ — which have been issues that we needed to deal with.
Having access to the council and the power that they have to change things in the community was really important for us. I call this an ‘enabling environment’ where we are able to change local issues quicker and more efficiently. Finally, in cases where specific people had certain unusual problems, councillors who worked in that area were able to better deal with those issues. But this is really what government ought to do: facilitate ideas, provide resources and encourage civil society to be able to deal with these issues.
Do you think that local community-led initiatives are more effective than larger more centralised groups at dealing with problems facing local areas?
To answer this question, I am going to look at our specific community. When the Town Hall shut in the lockdown, we soon found out that a large proportion of people working for Westminster Council did not live there as it is too expensive. Therefore, in the lockdown, they were unable to get onto the streets and address the local problems that people were facing. They only managed to get Westminster Connect, the support network for the borough, up and running several weeks into the lockdown.
Only mutual aids mobilised and were operating during these few weeks where there was no help available except for these organisations. As they are hyper-local, they are more flexible and responsive to the issues — characteristics which were extremely useful in the lockdown due to the ever-changing nature of the problems that we were facing.
Having said that, in an ideal world, tackling these problems should be the role of government. We pay taxes for a social system to support people in times of need such as this lockdown. It is far from ideal that you have untrained and unpaid volunteers dealing with often very complex issues.
In the lockdown the government relied on us to provide lots of support and continues to do so. The broad civilian response showed how government was unable to support those in need.
Bayswater Covid-19 Mutual Aid Covid-19 lockdown volunteering
Gabriel Daudy
Anti-Woke is not Anti-Progress or Anti-Minority
by Thomas Flisher
How An Outdoor Gym Enriches A School’s PE Programme
‘Woefully Inadequate’: Photos of pitiful food packages circulate online as the free school meal debate rages on
by Jacob Taylor
© 2021 Shout Out UK. All rights reserved
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How does the work history requirement for SSDI work in San Diego?
— How does the work history requirement for SSDI work in San Diego?
On behalf of Law Office of Jennifer Zorrilla | Mar 27, 2014 | Social Security Disability |
The Social Security Administration says that one out of every four people who are 20 years old will suffer from a disabling condition before reaching retirement age. The statistic may seem rather staggering to some people. But, many baby boomers felt invincible at age 20 and are now receiving Social Security disability insurance benefits. In general, workers earn credits for this important federal insurance program throughout their work history.
The SSDI program is funded through payroll taxes, commonly referred to as FICA deductions from a paycheck. Workers can earn up to four credits each year. To qualify for retirement benefits, a worker generally must have 40 earned credits, with 20 of the credits earned within the ten years ending with the year the worker became disabled.
However, for the SSDI program, the rules allow for a person to qualify based upon their age and work history when he or she becomes disabled. For workers under the age of 31, the SSA understands that it would be unfair to require as many credits and younger workers may qualify with fewer credits than required under the general rule. A worker who has become disabled before the age of 24, for example, may qualify with six credits.
Although there is a work history component to a SSDI application, the medical condition does not have to be work related as in a workers’ compensation program. San Diego workers who suffer a permanent disabling condition (which may involve a mental or physical impairment) may qualify for SSDI benefits. Essentially, the medical condition must have lasted for at least one year, is expected to last at least one year, or is expected to be a terminal condition to qualify as a permanent disability under the SSDI program.
In addition, the condition must sufficiently impair the person’s ability to continue to work. There are several moving parts to an SSDI claim. A Southern California SSDI lawyer may provide workers with disabilities with advice and assistance in seeking an SSDI claim.
Source: Tyler Morning Telegraph, “Disability benefits are good for what ails you,” Leo Rossler, Feb. 22, 2014
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Saving For Someday
Stop Wishing. Start Doing.
Memorial Day Weekend Movie Fun with Pixar
With the summer movie season heating up, four popular Disney•Pixar movies are returning exclusively to AMC Theatres for the Memorial Day holiday weekend. From May 25 through May 28, “Toy Story 3,” “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “WALL•E” will be featured at AMC locations around the country. Each film will be accompanied by a classic Pixar short film and an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming movie, “Brave.” I’m thinking of going to check out these movies to catch the behind-the-scenes look at Brave, which looks like such a great movie!
“There are some great films coming out Memorial Day weekend but nothing specifically for families and young children,” said Sun Dee Larson, vice president of Film Marketing at AMC. “We’re excited to provide our guests with an opportunity to take the whole family out to the theatre to enjoy some of the most treasured movies of all time, plus give our guests the chance to see a behind-the-scenes look at ‘Brave.’”
Priced at $6 per movie (pricing may vary), each movie will play once every day on a rotating schedule. Participating locations, showtime information and advance tickets are available now at AMC Theaters.
Author SaraPosted on May 26, 2012 June 16, 2020 Categories MoviesTags movies1 Comment on Memorial Day Weekend Movie Fun with Pixar
Sprinkles Cupcakes Teams With ‘People Like Us’ To Bring You Free Cupcakes!
People Like Us is about a family, inspired by true events, starring Chris Pine (Star Trek) as Sam, a twenty-something, fast-talking salesman, whose latest deal collapses on the day he learns his father has suddenly died. Against his wishes, Sam is called home, where he must put his father’s estate in order and reconnect with his estranged family. In the course of fulfilling his father’s last wishes, Sam uncovers a startling secret that turns his entire world upside down: He has a 30-year-old sister, Frankie, whom he never knew about (Elizabeth Banks). As their relationship develops, Sam is forced to rethink everything he thought he knew about his family—and re-examine his own life choices in the process.
DreamWorks Pictures is teaming up with Sprinkles Cupcakes to promote their film “People Like Us” with events at the ten Sprinkles Cupcakes stores around the country. The promotion will run from May 2-June 29, 2012, and is centered around five family-themed holidays: Brothers and Sisters Day (May 2), Mother’s Day (May 13), Visit Your Relatives Day (May 18), Father’s day (June 17) and National Forgiveness Day (June 26).
On the designated People Like Us holidays, Sprinkles Cupcakes in all ten locations will give out a free cupcake to each customer who comes in between the hours of 12 noon and 2 p.m. and says, “People Like Us.” Any customer can vote online for the official “People Like Us” flavor and the winning cupcake will be announced the week of the film’s opening. Customers can also pick up punch cards in Sprinkles Cupcakes stores, redeemable on the selected ‘People Like Us” holidays for a free cupcake. Follow People Like Us on Facebook for more details.
People Like Us-branded coffee trucks or carts will be at various locations on Brothers and Sisters Day, May 2, to kick off the start of the promotion with free coffee. Visitors to facebook.com/PeopleLikeUs can take the Brothers and Sisters quiz and enter the “Celebrate Family” sweepstakes to win a trip to visit their family.
A DreamWorks Pictures presentation, People Like Us is directed by Alex Kurtzman, produced by Roberto Orci, Bobby Cohen and Clayton Townsend, and written by Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci & Jody Lambert.
The film releases in U.S. theaters on June 29, 2012, and is rated PG-13.
Check out the trailer. Do you think you’ll go see the movie? If you’re near a Sprinkles Cupcakes will you go in and get your free cupcake?
Author SaraPosted on April 26, 2012 May 13, 2019 Categories Freebies, MoviesTags movies, PeopleLikeUs3 Comments on Sprinkles Cupcakes Teams With ‘People Like Us’ To Bring You Free Cupcakes!
May The 4th Be With You – The Complete Star Wars Saga on Blu-Ray
THIS, is definitely Year of Awesome-worthy! Just in time for my birthday (thanks Mr. Lucas!) Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment have announced that STAR WARS: THE COMPLETE SAGA is on its way! The collection will be released September 12 internationally and on September 16 in North America. The nine-disc collection will bring our favorite Star Wars moments straight to our homes in gorgeous high definition and with pristine, 6.1 DTS Surround Sound. An unprecedented 40+ hours of special features, highlighted by never-before-seen content sourced from the Lucasfilm archives will be the best reason to take a few days off while the kids head back to school in the fall.
This is a must have for the Star Wars lover! What a great way to bond with the kids, relive your youth or get together with friends. This comprehensive collection will feature many deleted, extended and alternate scenes, new documentaries and a cross-section of the countless Star Wars spoofs that have appeared in pop culture over the past three decades. Marking the first time ever that the full Saga is available in one complete collection, STAR WARS: THE COMPLETE SAGA ON BLU-RAY also features a coveted peek into the making of the Saga with vintage documentaries, audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes moments, interviews, prop and costume turnarounds, retrospectives and more.
One of the first film companies to reach out directly to core audiences by way of fan conventions, Lucasfilm will return to ComicCon this year to showcase the full evolution of the epic story with a special first look at STAR WARS: THE COMPLETE SAGA ON BLU-RAY.
You can pre-order today and Amazon will guarantee that if the price goes down you will get that new lower price! Pre-order STAR WARS: THE COMPLETE SAGA ON BLU-RAY.
ABOUT STAR WARS
The May 25, 1977 theatrical debut of Star Wars – on a scant 32 screens across America – was destined to change the face of cinema forever. An instant classic and an unparalleled box office success, the rousing “space opera” was equal parts fairy tale, western, 1930s serial and special effects extravaganza, with roots in mythologies from cultures around the world. From the mind of visionary writer/director George Lucas, the epic space fantasy introduced the mystical Force into the cultural vocabulary, as well as iconic characters such as evil Darth Vader, idealistic Luke Skywalker, feisty Princess Leia, lovable scoundrel Han Solo and wise Obi-Wan Kenobi. Since its 1977 debut, Star Wars has continued to grow, its lush narrative expanding from modest beginnings into an epic, six-film Saga chronicling the fall and redemption of The Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker.
ABOUT TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTANMENT
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC (TCFHE) is a recognized global industry leader and a subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, a News Corporation company. Representing 75 years of innovative and award-winning filmmaking from Twentieth Century Fox, TCFHE is the worldwide marketing, sales and distribution company for all Fox film and television programming, acquisitions and original productions on DVD, Blu-ray Disc Digital Copy, Video On Demand and Digital Download. The company also releases all products globally for MGM Home Entertainment. Each year TCFHE introduces hundreds of new and newly enhanced products, which it services to retail outlets from mass merchants and warehouse clubs to specialty stores and e-commerce throughout the world.
Lucasfilm, STAR WARS™ and related properties are trademarks and/or copyrights, in the United States and other countries, of Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or its affiliates. TM & © Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. All other trademarks and trade names are properties of their respective owners.
Author SaraPosted on May 4, 2011 October 9, 2012 Categories Online ShoppingTags Blu-Ray, DVD, movies, Star Wars
Fox Home Entertainment: $3 off and Free Shipping on DVDs and Blu-Ray
To celebrate Mother’s Day this coming Sunday Fox Home Entertainment is offering a 24hr exclusive discount, valid May 4th ONLY, on a selection of Family Friendly titles.
To receive your $3 off your purchase and FREE shipping in time for Mothers Day, visit Fox Home Entertainment and enter the promotion code MOMMY
Treat yourself or your Mom to a favorite films from a very large array of titles including:
Ice Age: Meltdown
Hurry fast though as DVD purchases are first come first served.
Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. I have not received any compensation nor does it contain affiliate links.
Author SaraPosted on May 3, 2011 February 23, 2013 Categories DiscountsTags Blu-Ray, DVD, Fox Home Entertainment, movies
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Joseph F. Sullivan
Born in Jamaica, Queens to working class parents, Joseph Sullivan became the second member of his family to attend college and the first to obtain an advanced degree. He graduated cum laude from Temple University School of Law. While there, he was a writer and editor of the Temple Law Review.
"There is no challenge that cannot be overcome with commitment, hard work and perseverance."
- Attorney Sullivan
Joseph started his legal career defending insurance companies and corporations, which gave him valuable trial experience. In fact, he went up against and beat some of the top trial lawyers in New York City. He also saw firsthand how individuals could be outgunned in such litigation.
In 2001, Joseph left his former partners and began focusing on representing individuals who were injured due to the wrongful acts of others. His experience as a defense attorney for insurance companies and corporations has given him a unique and extremely valuable understanding of how the opposition operates. This, in turn, has given him greater leverage when it comes to securing maximum settlements and verdicts for the wrongfully injured.
Joseph has obtained numerous significant settlements for clients injured in automobile accidents, construction accidents, scaffolding accidents, fall-down accidents, sexual assaults, and more. He has also secured compensation for individuals who were injured due to medical malpractice, defective products, barroom assaults, and violations of the liquor law. He has tried cases in the trial courts of Suffolk County, Nassau County, and Westchester County, as wells as in all of the boroughs of New York City.
Walking down Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens toward the courthouse, Joseph is never far from his humble roots. It was on this very street that his father shined shoes as a kid in the 1950s to help support his family and overcome homelessness. It was the lessons learned there, and passed down a generation, that have provided the foundation for the values upon which Joseph's law practice has been built. These values include respect and compassion for working-class people, appreciation of the challenges and struggles that underprivileged people face, and commitment to providing common folks representation that is normally reserved for the wealthy and powerful.
Temple University School of Law, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
J.D., cum laude
Law Review: Temple University School of Law, Writer & Editor
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About SON
Approach to Education
SON E-mail
Vision of Adolescence
Students enter adolescence, also known as youth, in Secondary school. This is a period of life characterized by blossoming capacities, strength and vigour.
Youth have many wonderful powers, and channeling them properly is an important concern, for when misdirected or manipulated by others, it can cause much social distress.
We believe youth possess great potential to bring about constructive change and have an expanding capacity for meaningful service. Their sense of purpose and thirst for knowledge finds expression through greater ownership of their learning and growth.
They are often eager to arise to take responsibility for the development of those younger than themselves—and do so capably.
In line with this vision, our secondary programme aims to assist students to further develop their intellectual capacities along with the qualities, attitudes, and understandings that will enable them to make growing contributions to society.
Through rigorous academic training spanning a variety of subjects, they are prepared to succeed in internationally-recognized IGCSE exams, the IB Diploma Programme, and their further studies.
Students also receive training and opportunities to engage in meaningful service as mentors of groups of junior youth within and outside the school.
School of the Nations was the first IB World School in Macau and we provide our students with both the Full Diploma track and the Certificate track of the IB Diploma Programme, depending on individual needs.
Form 5 and Form 6 are the two final years of the Secondary programme at School of the Nations. All students study in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme during these two years. This programme is designed as an academically challenging and balanced programme that prepares students, typically aged 16-19, for success at university and life beyond.
Visit our IBDP Page
The Secondary programme begins at initially to Form 3 and Form 4 with the Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE).
The IGCSE is the world’s most popular international qualification for 14 to 16 year olds. It develops successful students, providing excellent preparation for their next steps in education, including progression to higher level study or immediate employment. The Cambridge IGCSE is recognised by schools, universities and employers worldwide. In addition, it is one of the prerequisites of the IB Diploma Programme at the School of the Nations.
School of the Nations is the first Cambridge International School in Macau administering the Cambridge IGCSE and A-Level Examinations under the Cambridge Assessment.
Cambridge Assessment provides these qualifications to develop students’ skills in creative thinking, enquiry, problem solving, and to give them excellent preparation for the next stage in their education. Students typically take the examinations and coursework for 8 to 9 IGCSE subjects by the end of Form 4. The school currently offers the following syllabi to the Form 3 and Form 4 students:
First Language Chinese
Chinese as a Second Language
Foreign Language: Mandarin Chinese
Serving as METL Animator
In Forms 3 and 4, students are trained and supported to serve as mentors to groups of middle school students.
Through the Moral Empowerment through Language (METL) Programme, they assist the middle school students to study and discuss meaningful themes such as the purpose of life, making persistent effort towards noble goals, and maintaining hope in the face of difficulties, and explore together opportunities for service to the community.
Creativity, Action and Service
In Forms 5 and 6, students participate in the Creativity, Action and Service (CAS) element of the IB Diploma Programme. Through CAS, students have the opportunity to design and carry out their own activities in the areas of the arts, physical activity or service.
Some students carry out their service as mentors of groups of junior youth through the METL Programme.
“The environment at SON isn’t as competitive at other schools. It is more about your personal development for the direction you want to go in, instead of the environment pushing you all the time.”
Kai Zen
Graduate, Class of 2019
“SON has developed my interest in studying language ever since my participation in the Speaking contest for English and Mandarin. Since then, I have been trying to learn other different kinds of languages and later on led to my enthusiasm in studying linguistics in my Bachelor degree.”
Isadora Leung
Student, 1997
Join SON
School of the Nations
聯國學校
Rua Do Minho, Taipa, Macau S.A.R.
澳門氹仔米尼奧街
admin@schoolofthenations.com
School of the Nations, Macau © 2021 / All Rights Reserved
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Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche in The Unbearable Lightness of Being
And now for something completely... unexpected. In retrospect, it makes total sense that the critics would have collectively chosen Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being as their Best Picture of 1988. Yet their year-end picks both before and since have generally hewn closer to the major industry awards, particularly the Oscars, and so this, only their second ever CCA Best Picture winner not to have been nominated for the top Oscar, marks a significant break from convention. Indeed, so too does their Best Director pick, Chris Menges for A World Apart - a movie nominated for not a single Academy Award. Menges' movie also placed second in Picture and Screenplay, while Clint Eastwood's Bird was a near winner in two categories where it too failed to score Oscar nods: Supporting Actress (for Diane Venora) and Director (it actually tied for first here, but there are tie-breaker rules that put Menges out in front). And after David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers in third, one has to look as far down as fourth to find our first Oscar nominee in Picture: Mississippi Burning. Alan Parker's misguided drama is the only '88 title to win two awards (Frances McDormand's first, and Gene Hackman's record-setting third in Leading), meaning that Unbearable Lightness is our first CCA Best Picture winner with no other awards to its name here, in our 20th year. All the results below.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman and Saul Zaentz)
Chris Menges (A World Apart)
Jodie Foster (The Accused)
Gene Hackman (Mississippi Burning)
Frances McDormand (Mississippi Burning)
Alec Guinness (Little Dorrit)
Ron Shelton (Bull Durham)
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Five Key Questions
What Does the Ending Mean?
Jonas’s Father
Jonas’s Mother
Quotes By Theme
Quotes By Section
Chapter 7-9
Quotes By Character
Characters Jonas’s Father
Jonas’s father is one of the only characters in the novel, besides the Giver and Jonas, who seems to grapple with difficult decisions and complex emotions. Although Jonas’s father does not have access to the memories that give Jonas and the Giver insight into human relationships and feelings, he displays many of the characteristics that were valued in pre-Sameness societies. As a Nurturer, he feels a strong connection with the babies he cares for and a deep concern for their welfare. Although he agrees with Jonas’s mother that “love” is a meaningless, obscure word, the feelings he displays toward the newchildren and his family seem very much like love: he delights in taking care of them and playing with them, he worries about them, and he makes minor and major sacrifices for their benefit, from indulging his daughter’s fondness for her comfort object to bringing baby Gabriel home to his family every night in the hopes of saving him from being released. His concern for the newchildren might be concern about his own personal failure as a Nurturer, but he obviously feels pain and regret when children are released. He also has an independent streak that is unusual in the community, demonstrated when he breaks a rule and peeks at Gabriel’s name in the hopes that it will help the child.
In the end, however, Jonas’s father is a product of his society. Under other circumstances, he probably would have loved the newchildren passionately and fought against all odds for their survival. But having grown up in a society where release, though an occasion for sadness, is not considered tragedy, Jonas’s father cannot access the deeper feelings that might be available to him. He regrets the release of newchildren, but he performs releases himself: not knowing the value of life as Jonas does, he cannot appreciate its loss, and never having felt intense pain, he cannot summon it for the death of a baby.
Previous section The Giver Next section Jonas’s Mother
Take the Analysis of Major Characters Quick Quiz
Popular pages: The Giver
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SMA Security
Security Services, Alarms & Guarding in Cape Town
Electronics Division
SMA SECURITY COMPANY – Guarding, Special Services, Training, Cleaning Services, Electronic Division
INTRODUCTION – Cape Town Security
SMA Security – Cape Town Security – are dedicated to providing the best and most professional advice in every possible field within the security industry, we have therefore chosen to enlist the help of some expert sub-contractors.
We have handpicked a group of superb sub-contractors, all experts in their fields, to work hand-in-hand with us, so as to answer any questions or provide any service you may request: whatever the problem; wherever the location.
Spence Mouton – founder of company. Spence joined Safety Patrol (PTY) LTD, one of the largest privately armed security firms in the Western Cape, in the late 1970’s as a junior Director and acquired a 50% shareholding within eight months. He acquired 100% shareholding during the next five years.
In late 1981 he sold Safety Patrol to Peninsula Security while retaining Managing Directorship. He
resigned his Directorship at the end of February 1984.
He was a Director of Speurkor (PTY) LTD from March 1984 until July 1985. He then joined Metro
Cash and Carry as Divisional Loss Control Manager during July 1985 and was promoted to Group
Loss Control Manager on 1 October 1986.
In 1988 he resigned from Metro and established Spence Mouton and Associates (Pty) Ltd: “SMA”.
SMA Security was established in 1988 to serve a niche market in business intelligence and
investigations. The company has grown from what was originally a family staffed cc, to a well-known multi-disciplinary company offering top-class service.SMA has built up an enviable reputation and track record for professionalism and superior service in the security industry. The ultimate goal is to maintain this image by providing every client with a personal, professional, cost-effective and totally confidential service.
SMA consists of the following five divisions:
* Guarding
* Special Services
* Training
* Cleaning Services
* Electronic Division
SMA Security Site
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Celebrating the 24 hours of Le Mans Virtual
Studio 397 Announcement, News
The 24 Hours of Le Mans, an iconic event, representing the best of endurance motorsport. A real challenge lasting 1440 minutes of pure concentration. Even though racing for 24 hours sounds impressive enough already, this event is way more than that. It is a huge project with hundreds of people involved, all with the same passion: bringing one of the greatest and most demanding challenges in motorsport to the virtual world and into homes all around the globe. Without the help of those passionate people from our partners like ACO, WEC, FIA, Motorsport Games, Alkamel and, of course, our very own team here at Studio 397 this event would not have been possible. Thank you to all our partners, helpers, teams, drivers, engineers, admins and everyone involved in bringing to life the first ever virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans! We’re eager to share with you part of the journey that led to this historic weekend. What an adventure!
So how do you actually prepare an event that gets broadcast worldwide by big name channels such as ESPN, Sky Sports, Eurosport and online channels such as Youtube and Twitch? In total over 14.2 million people enjoyed the 24 hour show in 57 different countries worldwide on linear TV, with another 8.7 million views online, making this the biggest esports sim racing event and ranking right up there with the biggest esports events of all times.
When we started our discussions with Motorsport Games and the other partners about the virtual edition of Le Mans, it soon became clear that we all wanted to pull out all the stops in every single department. It was not enough to just call it the official virtual event, we wanted it to feel absolutely special. As we all know, teamwork makes the dream work, so we started bringing the first pieces together. The real teams had been contacted and let in on the plan, while Motorsport Games worked on a distribution plan, with us concentrating on the “venue”. Just like the real track that has to be prepared for its big moment, we went back to the drawing board and started to rework our virtual Le Mans. It looked good. We had been happy with it when it was released, but with our recent development and improvements within the graphics engine, we knew we could do better. So we got to work. New materials, updated textures, new lighting features, new color balance and so much more. Our internal communication platform was full of discussions, pictures, side-by-side comparisons and a buzzing atmosphere, with everyone trying to push it even further than on the previous build. While textures might seem to be an obvious update, we went way more into detail than just that. Did you see the reflecting cat-eyes on the track? Our new car headlights? No? Then all that racing action probably kept you too busy to notice. Go and check it out!
Hans Bossenbroek, CEO of Luminis, explains: “From the first moment that the virtual Le Mans was official, we knew that we had to do everything we could to make this a great success. Colleagues from Studio 397 and the parent company Luminis have worked hard to prepare everything. The entire infrastructure for such an event is very complex. Many parties are also involved, so organizing and communicating quickly and effectively is important. These kinds of processes demand the utmost from us, which is extremely satisfying.”
But it wasn’t just about eye candy. While the art team and designers kept busy with the rework of the track, another team worked on the code, adding features and working on the robustness of the code. Several aspects of the race were run in automated test configurations and we made sure to be prepared, whatever happened. At the same time our vehicle dynamics experts, developers and modelers worked together to upgrade the cars, ensuring a proper BOP, adding extra data to the dashboards and building a brand new safety car. But we didn’t stop there. With countless cups of coffee as our fuel, we powered through code fixes, bringing in the official liveries, adding a server restart feature and much more was on our list leading up to the 13th of June.
Marcel Offermans, head of Studio 397: “The virtual 24 hours of Le Mans was organized in record time by ACO, FIA, Motorsport Games and Studio 397. We have been asked to provide the simulation and online infrastructure for this virtual edition. In recent weeks, a lot of hard work has gone into preparing everything. The Ferrari 488 GTE was added to the existing cars so that the Ferrari factory drivers could also participate. We added a unique hydrogen-powered safety car by Green GT to head the field. The track has been modified with new sponsors, and all 50 teams have provided their cars with unique color schemes for this competition.”
There comes a time when the phase of preparation ends and where all the pieces finally come together. Several test races with the participating teams of the event had helped prepare our partners and us for what was about to come: a weekend full of virtual racing at the absolute top level. But it isn’t just booting up a server and then watching the race unfold. Several teams worked throughout the entire race to keep everything in check and create probably the most immersive sim race event of all time. A big crew in Paris, led by Motorsport Games, worked on the actual studio broadcast with several task forces handling things such as communication, driver support and many other small bits and pieces. In addition, the WEC took care of race control and marshaling, just like in the real race! A constant flow of information was exchanged to keep everyone up to date and to enable us to work to our maximum potential.
Motorsport is in a unique position in terms of esports as it is one of the very few sports where the skills from esports transfer to the real world and vice versa. This allowed an unprecedented number of drivers from professional racing classes, including Formula 1, Formula E and WEC, to participate in the event and be competitive. A total of 200 drivers and many more race engineers and other support staff participated in the event.
With teams working from all around the globe, this was truly an international race. The Ferrari teams gathered in Maranello, teams used their official training simulators, and others set up big video calls with team managers, engineers and their drivers in order to really function as a team and work towards reaching the finish, preferably before any of the other teams.
Most people probably think of the winners of the race when it comes to celebrating. But without taking anything away from Rebellion Williams Esports and the GTE class winning Porsche, there was plenty more to be happy about in the Studio.
The first moment we were stunned was probably the start of the broadcast and the beginning of the race. It is one thing to plan such an event, hear what it should look like, work on it to make it happen, but a completely different story to then see the labour of our love not just on online channels everywhere, but also on TV in nearly every country. The feelings of that moment are hard to describe, which is why we will just share with you what happened in our internal communication tools. As soon as the broadcast got underway everywhere, pictures were uploaded in our chats. Everyone watched the race on a different platform or channel and wanted to share their joy with the rest of the team on how amazing it is to see rFactor 2 on channels such as Sky Sports or Eurosport. A fully professional broadcast and amazing presentation with the software we put our heart into each and every day. Our chat felt like a big party! Although that feeling never really faded away during the next 24 hours, we knew that we still had to focus on the tasks at hand, so everyone went back into full concentration mode. Until the sun went down!
You might wonder “why until then” but it’s fairly simple. While nearly all of us had been aware of the changes to the lighting and other “polish” work to the track, most people had never seen it in action at this scale. So when the sun started to set, everyone could finally witness the latest improvements of our engine. That was another remarkable moment for us, and we probably flooded our art team a bit with “OMG!!!” messages and chats. But hey, they deserved their moments of fame!
The event received a lot of positive feedback from media outlets, teams and manufacturers. Here’s a selection:
Michelin press release: “Not only did the realism of the rFactor 2 software employed for the inaugural Le Mans 24 Hours Virtual provide endurance racing fans with a welcome chance to enjoy their favorite discipline once more after the recent halt to real-world motorsport, but it also cool video game fans an opportunity to discover motor racing from a fresh perspective that introduced them to the important role that tires play in motorsport.”
Joshua Rogers, pole-sitter and GTE winner with the Porsche Esports Team: “The result shows how much we’ve put into this. The competition was insanely strong. I think it’s without a doubt one of the strongest grids in a sim race ever.”
FIA WEC: “This race has surpassed our greatest expectations”
Frits van Eldik: “It is really impressive how good the virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans looks. Initially, the only downside I could find was the light at the beginning of the race. But from the moment the end of the day approached, that light became incredibly realistic.”
Leclerc: “Now I just want to do the real Le Mans“
Race Highlights
Overall Race Results
Race Results per Class
Fun Facts, did you know?
The race was opened by 4-times NBA Champion Tony Parker.
The winning LMP2 team drove 371 laps.
We saw 84 lead changes across the classes.
32 penalties had been given out by the race director.
The Porsche esports works team used the Coanda Simsport HQ in Germany as hub for the race.
Aston Martin Racing went big and drove the race with their official half-cut car simulator.
Simon Pagenaud did a full rig-swap during his stint.
Charles Leclerc enjoyed his yogurt live on stream while going down Mulsanne Straight.
On race weekend, the event accumulated 823 million reach online on its channels.
Currently we are going through an approval process to release all the beautiful car liveries and updated 2020 version of Le Mans to our community. We expect that to be done next week, at which point these will all be added. If you already own these cars, you will of course get the skins for free. The updated layout will become part of the existing Le Mans track. For people who don’t own the content yet, we’re working on releasing it as a pack, just in time for the upcoming summer sale!
Needless to say, after almost a week has passed, we are beginning to realize the full scale of the event. It was a great moment for the sim racing community, and it motivates us to keep pushing and improving rFactor 2 for many years to come!
Official Statement about the 24 hours of Le Mans Virtual Steam Summer Sale 2020
Announcement, News
Competition System Blog | Week 2
Roadmap Update | December 2020
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A BC Centre for Disease Control map outlining total COVID-19 case counts by local health area from Dec. 6–12. Dark red areas mean the area has an average daily rate of more than 20 cases per 100,000 population. (BC CDC photo)
Weekly COVID count down in Penticton, up elsewhere in the South Okanagan
Cases are down 32 per cent in Penticton compared to the previous week
Jesse Day
There were 34 new cases of COVID-19 recorded in Penticton between Dec. 6 and Dec. 12.
There have been a total of 150 recorded cases in Penticton since the start of the pandemic, with 50 of those being identified from Nov. 29 to Dec. 5.
More than half — 56 per cent — of the total cases in Penticton have been recorded over the last two weeks.
Starting with data from the week of Nov. 29 to Dec. 5, the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) began providing weekly updates for local health areas throughout the province.
The health areas in the South Okanagan are broken down as Penticton, Keremeos, and the South Okanagan (Oliver and Osoyoos).
While numbers are down in Penticton compared to the previous week, the same cannot be said about towns elsewhere in the South Okanagan.
There were 54 new cases recorded in the South Okanagan area that encompasses Oliver and Osoyoos. Many of the cases can be attributed to an outbreak at McKinney Place long-term care home in Oliver.
There are 57 cases at the care home since the outbreak was first declared Dec. 6.
A resident of McKinney Place died from COVID-19 on Dec. 13.
READ MORE: One in hospital, one dead and several sick from outbreak at Oliver home
In Keremeos there was one new case recorded between Dec. 6 and Dec. 12. Keremeos also recorded one case in the previous week.
According to Interior Health, they are testing from 700 to 800 people a day at the region’s testing centres.
The BCCDC noted that the numbers are from a live database, so adding the weekly updates to the 11-month total will not give a precise count of total numbers. Cases with missing address information or those from out of province aren’t mapped.
In Penticton there have been noted cases at Village by the Station long-term care home as well as both high-schools.
Across the province, Surrey recorded the most cases per 100,000 people from Dec. 6 to 12. The city identified 1484 new cases last week.
In the Okanagan, the most cases were seen in the Central Okanagan area.
The BC CDC will now be releasing the number of COVID-19 cases recored in local areas weekly. This map shows cases recorded in areas across the province from Dec. 6 to 12. (BC CDC)
READ MORE: Central Okanagan had more than 60% of Interior Health’s COVID-19 cases last week
jesse.day@pentictonwesternnews.com
Central Okanagan union members donate $15,000 to local charities
Horses seized near Princeton suffered cruelly: BC SPCA
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Nascar Nextera Energy Resources 250 Race Live
2016 Nextera Energy Resources 250 Online
Nextera Energy Resources 250 Truck Series Race is the most popular and biggest event of the NASCAR will be held on Friday, Feb. 19, 2016 At 7:30 PM ET At Daytona International Speedway. You can watch this most thrilling race live on your screens and enjoy every moment of this leading NASCAR race. National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) organizes number of races across the whole season to entertain their fans whole year by adventuring races live. Many famous and talented NASCAR drivers are participating in the race but it is hard to predict that who will become the champion this season 2016 NASCAR race
Live Nextera Energy Resources 250 Truck Series Race, Live Nextera Energy Resources 250 Truck Series Race Stream, Live Nextera Energy Resources 250 Truck Series Race Coverage,
<iframe width="789" height="444" src="https://www.sprintcuponline.net/Article/1160/Nascar-Nextera-Energy-Resources-250-Race-Live/" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen> </iframe>
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Michael Dickson wins Nefesh B'Nefesh Prize
StandWithUs-Israel Executive Director Michael Dickson Wins Sylvan Adams Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Prize April 1, 2019 Which Recognizes English-Speaking Olim Who Have Greatly Contributed To The State of Israel
Photography: Jared Bernstein
(JERUSALEM, Israel -- April 1, 2019) Seven outstanding Olim (immigrants to Israel) from English-speaking countries have been awarded the 2019 Sylvan Adams Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Prize, recognizing Anglos who have made a major contribution to the State of Israel www.boneizion.org.il.
StandWithUs is proud that Executive Director of StandWithUs – Israel, Michael Dickson is named among them as the recipient of the award in the field of Israel Advocacy.
StandWithUs – Israel Executive Director Michael Dickson said: “I am humbled to be a recipient of the 2019 Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Prize. It is a joy to be able to live in the Jewish State and a privilege to be able to contribute to it. I am honored to be receiving this alongside incredible men and women. I am deeply grateful to the founders and Board of StandWithUs for their constant faith in me, and especially to Roz Rothstein, Jerry Rothstein, Esther Renzer and to our exceptional, mission-driven staff. I also express deep thanks to my wife and my amazing family and to all the proud Zionists who have joined our movement and who stand with Israel unequivocally.”
CEO and co-founder of StandWithUs, Roz Rothstein said: “We are so proud of the work and passion of Michael Dickson, who has been with us since he arrived in Israel, in 2006. He has worked hard to build our wonderful offices in Jerusalem, across from the King David Hotel. Under his leadership, we are reaching over 25,000 students and people of all ages each year from that office. Our post-army Israeli Fellowship has become an incredible force with over 2,000 graduates since he came on board. He has all the right ingredients of leadership, creativity and passion for Israel's well-being. He continues to be one of the great treasures of StandWithUs."
Hundreds of Olim from English-speaking countries – including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, and USA - were nominated for the prize. The prize recognizes outstanding Anglo Olim who have helped Israel in a meaningful way by encapsulating the spirit of modern-day Zionism and contributing in significant ways towards the State of Israel. Recipients were chosen by a prestigious panel of committee members.
The other honorees are: Dr. Ora Paltiel, Director, Hadassah Center for Research in Clinical Epidemiology and Professor, Braun School of Public Health in the field of Science; Leah Abramowitz, Co-Founder of Melabev and Coordinator of the Institute for Studies in Aging in the field of Community & Non-Profit; Dr. Beverly Gribetz, Principal of the Evelina de Rothschild—Tehilla Secondary School for Religious Girls in Jerusalem in the field of Education; and Danny Hakim, Founder and Chairman of Budo for Peace and Chairman of Kids Kicking Cancer Israel in the field of Culture, Art & Sports.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded to Harold ‘Smoky’ Simon for his decades of service to the Jewish State – his role in the founding of the Israeli Air Force as well as acting Chairman of World Machal and his contributions to Israel’s insurance and pension arenas. In addition, the Young Leadership Prize has been given to Miriam Ballin, Founder of the United Hatzalah’s Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit.
This year’s prizes, announced today, are sponsored by Sylvan Adams, a Nefesh B’Nefesh Oleh and Canadian real estate developer, who is committed to developing the State of Israel. Sylvan is dedicated to showcasing the impact and achievement of Israelis to the world, viewing the Bonei Zion Prize as an integral piece of this mission.
“It is an honor to be able to recognize these incredible Olim for the significant and meaningful impact they have had on the State of Israel,” said Nefesh B’Nefesh Co-Founder and Executive Director Rabbi Yehoshua Fass. “The Bonei Zion Prize recipients exemplify the endless professional opportunities available in this country, and serve as shining examples of the undeniable contributions Olim make in their respective fields in Israel.”
Bio for Michael Dickson:
Israel Advocacy - Michael Dickson is Executive Director of StandWithUs-Israel. He assumed his position in 2006 after making Aliyah from London with his family .
Michael leads a dynamic team in Jerusalem for the international non-profit, which is a respected provider of Israel educational material and programs. His role includes pioneering innovative Israel educational initiatives, running campaigns to counter discriminatory BDS boycotts of Israel, overseeing the organization’s significant social media presence and hosting delegations of politicians, diplomats, academics and other people of influence in Israel.
Michael helped establish the StandWithUs Israel Fellowship, which has become the go-to public diplomacy program on Israeli campuses and has graduated over 2,000 of the country's future diplomats and leaders. These outstanding Israeli young adults have gone on to staff major corporations, political parties in the Knesset, government ministries and embassies, and NGOs worldwide.
Michael has led diplomatic, academic and journalist missions to Israel and has advocated for Israel in different forums, including at the UN “Durban II” conference, in the Knesset, in Europe, the US, and in the Far East. Michael has helped pioneer the organization’s social media activity, which now has a weekly peak reach on Facebook of over 105 million people. He has been instrumental in setting up “social media situation rooms” as far back as in 2009 during Operation Cast Lead. Michael has amassed a large following on social media and his personal output reaches millions of people each month.
Under Michael’s leadership, StandWithUs’s operation in Israel has grown exponentially, empowering people in Israel and internationally to be active advocates for Israel and countering efforts to impose commercial, academic and cultural boycotts on Israel. Michael oversaw the construction of the new StandWithUs Educational Center in Jerusalem, which hosts 30,000 students and tourists a year, participating in educational programs.
Michael regularly addresses audiences and broadcasts on issues pertaining to Israel and public diplomacy. He is an accomplished writer, with many published articles, TV appearances and he is writing a book due to be published soon. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Communication of Bar Ilan University, is an Honorary member of Alpha Epsilon Pi, and was appointed to the Spectrum Forum of leading Executive Directors in Israel under the age of 40. In 2016, he was named as the 14th most influential Jew on Twitter and also one of the “30 Israelis Making a Difference” by Channel 10 TV. Michael was listed in the Top 30 of "The Aliyah 100 List" of British immigrants to Israel as one of the "flag bearers who shape the state of Israel and made a significant contribution".
About StandWithUs
StandWithUs is an international non-profit Israel education organization. We are inspired by our love for Israel and the belief that education is the road to peace.
StandWithUs is dedicated to educating people of all ages about Israel and to combating the extremism and anti-Semitism that often distorts the issues. We believe that knowledge of the facts will correct common prejudices about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and will promote discussions and policies that can help promote peace in the region.
We educate via cutting-edge campaigns, materials, speakers, programs, conferences and missions to Israel. We reach millions of people globally via a multitude of social media platforms in 18 different languages. We ensure that the story of Israel’s achievements and ongoing challenges is told in middle schools, in high schools, on college campuses and in communities around the world.
Headquartered in Los Angeles, StandWithUs has eighteen offices and chapters across the U.S., Canada, Israel and in the UK, with our flagship Education Center in the heart of Jerusalem. We also host programs in Latin America, South Africa, China, Europe and Australia.
For the last six years, StandWithUs has the highest Charity Navigator rating - 4 out of 4 stars - and the highest rating on GuideStar - platinum level.
SWU International
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Golden Globes not a hit with TV viewers
David Germain
BEVERLY HILLS (AP) – The Hollywood writers strike took the glitz, the glamour and roughly two-thirds of the audience from this year’s Golden Globe Awards.
NBC’s no-frills, one-hour presentation of the winners Sunday night drew a 4.8 rating and 7 share, according to preliminary estimates from the nation’s 55 largest metered markets by Nielsen Media Research.
That left NBC fourth in the hour, behind CBS’ miniseries “Comanche Moon,” ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and the Fox comedies “Family Guy” and “American Dad.” For the hour, “Comanche Moon” had almost twice the audience as the NBC awards announcement, Nielsen said Monday.
Last year, the Golden Globes ceremony on NBC had a 16.0 rating and 23 audience share, Nielsen said. A ratings point represents 1,128,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 112.8 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
Nielsen didn’t immediately have an estimate of how many people actually watched the show on NBC or on other networks that carried the announcement of the winners.
Unlike the months-long writers strike itself, Hollywood’s first big awards show was over in a flash, with no key winners, no stars in sight and no real fun for show biz fans.
The Golden Globes honored such films as the tragic romance “Atonement,” the crime saga “No Country for Old Men,” and the bloody musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
Yet no one film gained critical momentum that might set it ahead of the pack for the Academy Awards on Feb. 24, and a compressed Globes show highlighted what a joyless awards season this is for Hollywood.
The two-month-old strike by the Writers Guild of America scuttled the big celebrity bash at the 65th annual Globes, which was replaced by a bizarre and speedy news conference to announce recipients, without any winners around to gush their thanks.
“I wish circumstance would allow me to be there,” Cate Blanchett, who won the supporting-actress prize for the Bob Dylan tale “I’m Not There,” said in a statement.
With the Globes left in shambles, everyone in Hollywood was left wondering if the same fate might befall the town’s big prizes come Oscar night on Feb. 24.
“I just hope this whole thing gets cleared up before the Academy Awards, because it would really be a tragedy if a similar fate transpired for them,” said Richard Zanuck, producer of “Sweeney Todd,” which won the Globe for best musical or comedy.
“Sweeney Todd” also earned Johnny Depp the Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy for his title role as the bloody barber who slits the throats of customers in his quest for vengeance.
Normally one of Hollywood’s brightest nights, with stars carousing into the wee hours, the Globes this year became a mild curiosity as TV entertainment show hosts announced the winners in half an hour.
The guild, on strike since Nov. 5, had planned pickets outside the show if organizers tried to move ahead with their usual televised ceremony. With nominees and other stars refusing to cross picket lines, Globe planners had to scrap their glossy show and hope for better times in 2009.
“Rest assured that next year, the Golden Globe Awards will be back bigger and better than ever,” said Jorge Camara, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which hands out the prizes.
Along with “Sweeney Todd,” three other films received two prizes, with the tragic romance “Atonement” winning the top honor for best drama, plus the Globe for musical score.
The crime saga “No Country for Old Men” came away with the screenplay award for writer-directors Ethan and Joel Coen and the supporting-actor Globe for Javier Bardem, who offers a chilling performance as a killer tracking a fortune in wayward drug money.
The other double winner was “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” which received the directing prize for Julian Schnabel and the foreign-language film honor.
The Globes did virtually nothing to sort out the Oscar picture, with the main prizes up for grabs among “Atonement,” “No Country for Old Men” and other critical favorites such as “There Will Be Blood” and “Michael Clayton.”
A historical epic set in California’s oil-boom days of the early 20th century, “There Will Be Blood” earned Daniel Day-Lewis the Globe for dramatic actor.
Other winners included Marion Cotillard, best musical or comedy actress for the Edith Piaf saga “La Vie En Rose”; Julie Christie, best dramatic actress for the Alzheimer’s drama “Away From Her”; Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, best original song for “Guaranteed,” from Sean Penn’s road drama “Into the Wild”; and the rodent tale “Ratatouille,” best animated film.
Talks between writers and producers have been stalled for a month, though the weekend brought a new development that some in Hollywood sense could be an ice-breaker. The Directors Guild of America began its own negotiations with producers, and any deal the union negotiates might prompt writers to follow suit.
On the Net:
Golden Globe Awards:
http://www.goldenglobes.org
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Local torchbearers to be announced
Selections for prospective 2002 Olympic torchbearers are expected to be made by next month, Salt Lake City Organizing Committee officials confirmed this week.
Three judging committees are reading essays from Lake Tahoe residents wishing to carry the symbol of unity, peace and human expression. Forty South Shore residents will be chosen to run the torch two-tenths of a mile through town in January.
The torch makes its way here from 1960 host Squaw Valley on its 46-state, 65-day journey. Half a world away, the flame will be ignited by the sun’s rays in Athens, Greece, before making its 13,500-mile trip from coast to coast.
The theme for February’s Olympic Games is “Light the Fire Within.”
What started out as a flicker of torchbearer interest from the Lake Tahoe Basin months ago turned into a torrent of heartwarming letters – many sent at the last minute, committee spokesman Mark Walker said Monday.
South Shore residents Kathleen Farrell and Paul Middlebrook, who carried the torch in 1984, described the event as one of the most rewarding of their lives.
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“You never wanted me to get that tattoo,” sings Nashville recording artist Elise Hayes. “I’m going to get that tattoo.”
This the start to her new single “Giving Up,” (co-written with Johnny Mo) which is about not giving up, an ode to post-relationship defiance. There is freedom in being your own person again, even if you were the one dumped.
The music itself is a tapestry of sorts: sonic styles patchworked together into a compact yet pleasing mix. Pounding drums and sitar give way to softer guitar, then back to drums, which sometimes beat rapidly as a door knock. A wake up call. The song often stops and starts as if her thoughts are coming to her in jagged fits as she’s singing them.
“You never wanted me to have that haircut / Well, now I do…”
It’s a hard style to pull off but Hayes does it effortlessly. She is a strong singer/songwriter, doubtlessly helped in her confidence from being featured in TV shows, such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” MTV’s “Siesta Key,” and others She has also written songs for major recording artists while working as backup singer for the likes of Carly Pearce and Blake Shelton.
“You don’t get to hold me like you used to,” she sings, her voice a pop-style alto. “You don’t get to call me up / You don’t get to feel the way I loved you / You don’t get a safe place you could run to / You don’t get to write my side of the story…”
The subject of the song’s ire seems to have been a rather pathetic prospect in the first place, especially when she mentions him having his mother do his laundry and pay his water bill. Who needs a parent pay their damn water bill? That’s really about as sad as it gets. Who wouldn’t be better off?
Speaking about the tune, Hayes mentions “this song acts as a reminder to everyone who has ever been broken up with, that you’re worth so much more and sometimes someone leaving you is the greatest gift, even if it’s hard to see it at the time.”
alphabet pony Elisa Hayes giving up independent music independent music release independent music review independent song indie music indie rock music blog song release song review
Labels: alphabet pony Elisa Hayes giving up independent music independent music release independent music review independent song indie music indie rock music blog song release song review
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Home / Health Ailments / How the Internet May Have Contributed to the Recent Measles Outbreak
How the Internet May Have Contributed to the Recent Measles Outbreak
Our fast-paced world is often complicated by the ubiquity of technology and the Internet, which touch every aspect of our lives, from our relationships to our finances, and even our health. In many ways, these tools make our lives easier: longer life spans, swift communication with relatives and friends near and far, and real-time news updates, for example.
Unfortunately, the abundance of information available on the Internet and the ease with which we can access it can also have significant negative repercussions.
An old-fashioned viral outbreak
One way the Internet has possibly harmed our health-care decisions may appear in the dramatic increase in measles outbreaks over the past decade. As recently as 2000, health officials had declared measles virtually eradicated in the United States.
But this month New York City has identified at least 20 cases of measles — six that required hospitalization. Since measles is highly contagious and most health-care providers have never seen a case of the disease before, this outbreak has been difficult for infectious disease professionals to track and quarantine.
Of the 20 cases, 11 are adults and nine are children. Seven of the nine children were too young to be vaccinated or were within the recommended ages for vaccination but had not yet received the shots. The other two children had not been vaccinated because of their parents’ religious or philosophical objections.
The percentage of children who remain unvaccinated against the measles has risen dramatically in the last decade. That’s partly due to a growing number of parents concerned about scientifically unproven claims that the MMR vaccination may lead to autism.
How the Internet spread ignorance
Prominent anti-vaccine activists such as actress Jenny McCarthy have been vocal about the issue, and many parents believe what they see in the media and read on the Internet. For example, surveys conducted in 2008 showed that about 1 in 4 adults reported they were familiar with McCarthy’s views about vaccines; and 40 percent of these adults also said her claims have called into question their own views about vaccine safety.
While New York has been experiencing its outbreak, Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler and his wife, former reality TV star Kristin Cavallari, said they wouldn’t vaccinate their children because of fears about autism.
Unfortunately, unvaccinated individuals put the rest of the public at risk. Just last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report warning that anti-vaccine beliefs have fueled a rise in measles cases.
Unscientific notions endanger lives
In the report, researchers noted that 2013 saw the highest number of measles cases in nearly 20 years, and 80 percent of those cases occurred among unvaccinated people, most of whom claimed “philosophical differences” with the MMR vaccine.
On the other hand, the Internet is not just a source of misinformation. For those concerned about symptoms of disease or other issues of health, sites such as www.iCliniq.com enable you to talk directly with a licensed online doctor for free. This unique online service offers phone and video consultations to build trust with patients while still offering the convenience of technology and the Internet.
Parents who wish to determine wherther their child’s fever, cough, runny nose, or emerging rash is the first sign of measles or something more benign can be reassured by a qualified health-care professional just a few clicks away.
style 2014-11-24
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Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/highlights-seattle-international-film-festival/)
Teenage Russian rock stars, 90-year-old Italian women, and Norwegian Nazi zombies: Highlights from SIFF, coming to MSP
By Jim Brunzell III (TC Daily Planet) | June 8, 2009
Sounds Like Teen Spirit. Image courtesy Intandem Films.
SEATTLE—Having spent a week at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), I took in close to 30 films and have more than plenty to share about the highlights and some must-see films. But one of the highlights didn’t even happen on screen: it was director David Russo’s Q&A after the screening of his movie The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle. At SIFF, Russo saw something that really bothered him. “Has any festival ever done this?” he asked. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Russo was talking about seeing a trailer of Humpday (see below), which screened before his film; like Humpday, Little Dizzle was filmed in Seattle. “They already have distribution; my film doesn’t. They’re using my film to promote another film in the festival? I mean, my screenings are done, so whatever!” Russo does make a great point, and other festivals, including MSPIFF, should take note. Can’t films in festivals stand alone any more? Everyone loves seeing new trailers before films that are already in wide release, but are trailers before festival films really necessary, considering the four to five minutes of festival trailer, promotional partners, and sponsorship acknowledgments we already sit through? Anyway…enough of the commentary. What about the films?
I can hardly contain my excitement over Kathryn Bigelow’s vigorous Iraq masterpiece, The Hurt Locker. This film had me hooked and pinned to my seat within the opening minute. The film opens with the quote “war is a drug,” and from that moment on, we’re thrown into battle (and other situations) with the U.S. anti-bomb squad Bravo Company, a unit who work on diffusing bombs in Baghdad, 2004. Bigelow captures excruciating tension not only in the opening moments but throughout the film’s entire two hours. Along with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd and dual editors Bob Murawski and Chris Innis, she creates a war film that plays like a suspense thriller. Newly added to Bravo Company, Sergeant William James (a stunning Jeremy Renner) plays the new bomb diffuser who has no fear in the field; in every scene, Renner’s lunatic calm will have you gripping your arm rest. For a film opening in the middle of the summer blockbuster season—it will appear in the Twin Cities on July 17—it should be an cinch for some Oscar nominations by mid-January.
Two stop-motion animated films caught my attention: the Australian/Israeli film $9.99 and the latest Wallace & Gromit short, A Matter of Loaf & Death. $9.99 is based on the writings of Israeli writer Etgar Keret but features voice work by mostly Australian actors such as Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia. Over the course of a few days, different people living in a Tel Aviv apartment complex contemplate the meaning of life and start dealing with their own lives in mysterious ways. The different stories intertwine and feature some of the most absurd and surreal scenes of the year; the movie also features a touching story of a young boy learning to save money with his new piggy bank, given to him by his dad as a way to save up and buy a soccer toy. There is more clarity about childhood in this short segment than in most feature-length films. ($9.99 opens locally on July 31.)
Nick Park’s latest Wallace and Gromit adventure, A Matter of Loaf & Death, doesn’t have the creative juice of some of Park’s previous efforts—including my favorite, The Wrong Trousers—but is sure to make anyone crack a smile. The premise is simple. Wallace and Gromit have opened a new business, Top Bun Bakery, and different bakers across town are being murdered. Enter Piella Bakewell, who takes a charm to Wallace; soon they begin dating, but Gromit isn’t so sure about Ms. Bakewell and her attentions. Park’s animation is top-notch again, and watching loaves of bread being thrown into mailboxes like newspapers is as funny as it sounds; the last five minutes, where everything comes together, are proof that Park needs to get another feature-length back in the works.
Speaking of death, newcomer Paul Solet’s effectively creepy Grace is going to draw comparisons to Roman Polanski’s classic chiller Rosemary’s Baby, but does add a new twist. When pregnant Meredith (a flawless Jordan Ladd) and her husband Michael get into a car accident, Michael and the baby don’t survive but Meredith decides to carry the baby to full term, giving birth to a stillborn baby. Moments later, little Grace begins to cry—and that’s when the real horror starts. Solet’s precisely plotted script provides plenty of gross-out moments and gives new meaning to the words “living hell.” Grace deserves a theatrical release and hopefully will make its bloody way to the Twin Cities.
On the other hand, Dead Snow, the Norwegian Nazi zombie film that I saw at Sundance, which was fun the first go-round, was a bit of a disappointment on second viewing. When eight Norwegian medical students go away to a remote cabin deep in the mountains, a hiker visits them and tells a tale of Nazis who occupied the sacred land years ago. When the students find a box of gold in their cabin, the Nazi zombies not only know it’s been tampered with, they want vengeance. If you can withstand the laborious snail pace of the first 45 minutes, you’ll be rewarded with guts flying out, heads ripped in half, and limbs sawed off—but that doesn’t even include the most disgusting part. Zombie destruction aside, try watching a despicable drunken sex scene in an outhouse with two coeds before the slaughter begins. Now that’s horror!
I thought that nothing would top that unpleasant memory, but then along came Dead Girl, a completely vile and unnecessary addition to the already well-populated torture/porn genre. Skipping school one day, tough guy JT and passive Rickie go to an abandoned mental hospital, and in its basement they find a naked woman strapped to a gurney and covered in plastic. When they pull the cover off, they find that she is still breathing—and actually disagree about whether to take advantage of her or go immediately to the police. What happens next is supposed to be a disturbing story of innocence lost but comes across as a narcissistic and misogynist cautionary tale about becoming a man—or, more precisely, becoming a pervert. A clever twist in the last five minutes was slick, but the basement of an abandoned asylum is exactly where the first 95 minutes of this film belong.
A different kind of horror marks The Cove, a beautifully-shot documentary about the dolphin trade market in Taiji, Japan. Director Louie Psihoyos, a National Geographic photographer and diver, follows Richard O’Barry, an activist who is trying to expose the secret slayings of some 23,000 dolphins per year in Japan. The irony in The Cove is that O’Barry was the dolphin trainer for the TV show Flipper in the 1960s and feels responsible for taking free-range dolphins out of their natural habitat and turning them into captive performers. But not only are dolphins being captured and shipped out across the world to zoos and Sea World for lucrative cash, many dolphins are killed for their meat and being distributed into supermarkets and schools, despite the fact that their meat contains dangerous amounts of Mercury. One can only hope that Psihoyos’s film—which opens in the Twin Cities on August 7—will help end this practice.
Another excellent documentary is Jamie Johnson’s exhilarating Sounds Like Teen Spirit: A Popumentary. It could be called the junior version of American Idol, but without the boring and robotic performances. Not only are the performers between 10-15 years old, they write and perform their own songs as they compete in the annual Eurovision Song contest in Rotterdam. Johnson follows competitors from Belgium, Georgia, Cyprus, and Bulgaria. The band from Belgium, a foursome called “Trust,” have a street named after them in their hometown, while Mariana, a 14-year-old girl from Bulgaria, displays numerous magazine clippings of Sarah Michelle Gellar on what she calls “the Buffy Wall.” The film contains SIFF’s best single line: as the show is about to begin, the show’s host exclaims, “I am nearly wetting myself with excitement!” Imagine those words coming from Simon Cowell.
Overall there weren’t too many disappointments, but the biggest had to be Barbet Schroeder’s Inju: the Shadow in the Beast. The film leaves so much potential on its plate, I wonder whether the source novel by Edogawa Rampo was too ambitious to put on screen or if Schroeder just got lazy with the material. The young French novelist Alex Fayard (a bland Benoit Magimel), whose writing style is similar to that of his favorite suspense author, Shundei Oe, goes to Kyoto for a book tour stop and wants to meet Oe. Oe has never been seen in public—not even his publisher has ever seen the reclusive writer—but Fayard is determined to find Oe. Fayard becomes attracted to a geisha who is having problems with a former ex and some of her current clients. This sounds interesting enough, but many of the scenes were flat, lifeless, and a bit corny. The film doesn’t live up to its intriguing premise.
I figured out much of my schedule before the festival even began, but nothing could have prepared me for Mid-August Lunch, an often hilarious and rewarding Italian dramedy that wasn’t on my radar until about midway through the festival. In his directional debut, writer/director Gianni di Gregorio (co-writer of the Italian crime drama Gomorrah) stars as Gianni, a middle-aged man who takes care of his 90-year-old mother in a small Rome apartment. When his landlord arrives and offers him a chance to repay some back debt by watching his own 90-year-old mother, Gianni agrees. Unexpectedly, the landlord not only brings his mother, but he also brings his aunt—and the guests don’t stop there. Gianni’s doctor comes to the apartment for a house call, and he asks if he can bring his mother over so he can attend to a personal matter. Each woman has her own issue, which leaves Gianni responsible for not only watching these women, he has to make them all dinner—and not all the women can eat everything he makes, leading to mishaps. Deadpan humor at its finest, and genuinely touching in many scenes, Mid-August Lunch goes down easy and hopefully will find distribution in the U.S. or will find a place at a local festival.
The centerpiece of SIFF was a gala screening of the Seattle-made Sundance hit Humpday. Director Lynn Shelton’s film is a based on a contest that is organized by Seattle’s alt-weekly paper The Stranger; the contest, entitled “Hump,” is an amateur porn competition. The premise is based on a dare that goes beyond the words “bro-mance.” Humpday works as buddy comedy but goes further into exploring the limitations of friendship, marriage, loneliness, and commitment. Shelton keeps Humpday refreshingly unpretentious. I was able to speak by phone with Shelton about Humpday; the interview will appear soon in the Daily Planet. There is currently no Minnesota opening scheduled, but Magnolia Pictures did pick up the film for distribution.
Lastly, a final surprise came in the form of a film that wasn’t even in SIFF but was screening at one of the festival venues, Northwest Film Forum. The original Taking of Pelham One Two Three was screening. A remake directed by the haphazard Tony Scott is coming out next week—I haven’t seen it and have low expectations for it—but director Joseph Sargent’s original is still as cynical and sharp in 2009 as it was 35 years ago; it’s a quintessential film of the 1970s. Seeing Pelham on the big screen was icing on the cake to an already tremendous festival that offered gigantic portions of films that couldn’t be resisted, no matter the lack of sleep or the distance traveled.
Jim Brunzell III (djguamwins@yahoo.com) writes on film for the Daily Planet and hosts KFAI’s Movie Talk.
Support people-powered non-profit journalism! Volunteer, contribute news, or become a member to keep the Daily Planet in orbit.
Jay Gabler
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Stew Leonard's Marks 25 Years in Danbury
DANBURY, Conn. — Stew Leonard's yesterday celebrated the 25th anniversary of its store here, the second of four stores that have attracted international attention for their merchandising innovations.
Michael Garry 1 | Oct 06, 2011
DANBURY, Conn. — Stew Leonard's yesterday celebrated the 25th anniversary of its store here, the second of four stores that have attracted international attention for their merchandising innovations.
The original location, opened by founder Stew Leonard in Norwalk, Conn., in 1969, became a destination location in Southwestern Connecticut, known for its fresh foods; milk made on the premises; animatronic characters; single, serpentine aisle featuring all of the store’s products; and outside petting farm.
In 1986, Stew’s son Tom Leonard and nephew Dan Arthur began selling Christmas trees under a tent on Federal Rd. in Danbury, eventually adding produce and other products. The current 130,000-square-foot store opened in 1991. The company opened a store in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1999 and one in Newington, Conn., in 2007.
"They're one of our major employers," said Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton after a ceremony in which he proclaimed Oct. 5 as Stew Leonard's Day in the city. "If you have a cause, at some point Stew Leonard's is involved in some way, shape or form."
Though the Danbury store has many of the features of the Norwalk location, Stew Leonard Jr., president and chief executive officer, said it also caters to local ethnic groups, including Brazilian and Lebanese populations. "The customers are different in Danbury and the food they like is different," he noted.
Leonard said the company is looking into opening a store on Long Island, N.Y., though he declined to provide a timetable. A previous attempt to open a store in Farmingdale, N.Y., fell through. "We don’t want to grow fast but we want to keep the momentum going," he said.
TAGS: Retail & Financial
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What is Presidents rule
What is Presidents rule On December 10, 1973, Jalagam Vengala Rao was made the chief minister and Central rule ended. The state was briefly under President’s Rule for 135 days, from November 15, 1954, to March 28, 1955, when the government of the then chief minister Tanguturi Prakasam was reduced to a minority.
Under President’s Rule the state will come under the direct control of the Central government, with executive authority exercised through the Governor instead of a Council of Ministers headed by an elected Chief Minister accountable to the state legislature. During President’s Rule, the Governor has the authority to appoint retired civil servants or other administrators, to assist him. The advisers assume the functions of the Council of Ministers.
According to the Constitution, President’s Rule will be for six months. If necessary, it may be extended for a further six months and under certain circumstances for a maximum of three years.
What’s in the constitution?
The article 356 of the constitution which focuses on the failure of the Constitutional machinery of the State is often termed as the President’s rule. There are various reasons for which President’s rule can be imposed on a State. The failure of the State government to function as per the constitution is the first step towards this. Other factors include the loss of majority, break down of law and order, indecisive outcome of elections, no alternate claimant to form the government, insurgency, defections and break-up of coalition. It can be imposed initially for a period of six months.
Shift in role
The state comes under the direct control of the Central government. The authority shifts from the Chief Minister and the council of ministers to the Governor. The assembly is kept in suspended animation (temporary cessation). The Governor gets the power to appoint retired civil servants and some administrators to assist him who will take on the role and responsibilities of the Council of Ministers.
Landmark judgement
There was widespread belief that imposition of President’s rule was more to do with the priorities of the Central government than the constitutional crisis. The judgement of the Supreme Court in 1994 gave a clear definition as to when the President’s rule can be imposed on a state thereby paving the way for the state governments to challenge the Centre if it feels that it has been unduly removed.
The Supreme Court held that a state government could be dismissed only under justifying circumstances and laid down guidelines for the same.
This judgement is called the Bommai judgement after the former Karnataka Chief Minister S R Bommai whose government was dismissed by the Centre and the President’s rule was imposed.
The verdict was in response to his challenging the dismissal. Thereafter further pronouncements by the Supreme Court helped limit the number of cases where the President’s rule is imposed drastically.
Filed Under: Telangana News Tagged With: Article 356(1), Pranab Mukharjee, president, President's Rule in AP
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You are here: Home / Front Page News / Fed Cup Semifinals to Air Live on Tennis Channel and Tennis Channel Plus This Weekend
Fed Cup Semifinals to Air Live on Tennis Channel and Tennis Channel Plus This Weekend
LOS ANGELES, April 19, 2018 -Tennis Channel and Tennis Channel Plus will provide complete live coverage of the U.S. Fed Cup team’s semifinal competition against France in Marseille, France this weekend, with telecasts Saturday, April 21, beginning at 8 a.m. ET, and Sunday, April 22, beginning at 7 a.m. ET. Five-time Grand Slam doubles champion and former World No. 1 doubles player Bethanie Mattek-Sands will join US Open champion Sloane Stephens, finalist Madison Keys and semifinalist CoCo Vandeweghe as they attempt to lead America to back-to-back Fed Cup finals appearances for the first time since 2009-10. Reigning champion United States won its record 18th Fed Cup title last November in Minsk, Belarus.
The battle between the United States and France will consist of two singles matches Saturday, and two singles matches and a doubles match Sunday. The winner of the semifinal matchup will advance to the championships in November to play the winner of this weekend’s Germany-Czech Republic competition (complete schedule below).
Tennis Channel’s digital subscription service, Tennis Channel Plus, will also provide live coverage of the other Fed Cup semifinal between Germany and Czech Republic in Stuttgart, Germany, starting Saturday, April 21, at 6 a.m. ET. Among the stars set to play for Czech Republic are 2016 US Open finalist Karolina Pliskova and two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, with Germany featuring two-time Grand Slam champion Angelique Kerber and Julia Goerges.
Award-winning announcer Steve Weissman (@Steve_Weissman) will call the U.S. Fed Cup competition for Tennis Channel, joined by Hall of Famer and former U.S. Fed Cup player Tracy Austin (@thetracyaustin). Austin’s contributed to three Fed Cup championships (1978-1980) during her career. The network’s on-air team will also include former player and renowned sportscaster Mary Carillo and Chanda Rubin (@Chanda_Rubin). As a player, Rubin competed on the U.S. Fed Cup team in 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2003-2004.
Viewers can also catch semifinal Fed Cup matches on-demand on Tennis Channel Plus. The service is available to everyone in the United States, regardless of whether they currently subscribe to the television network.
Tennis Channel’s live Fed Cup coverage is as follows (all times ET):
Saturday, April 21:
6 a.m. – Singles Germany v. Czech Republic (Tennis Channel Plus)
8 a.m. – Singles USA v. France (Tennis Channel, Tennis Channel Plus)
Sunday, April 22:
5 a.m. -Singles, Doubles Germany v. Czech Republic (Tennis Channel Plus)
7 a.m. -Singles, Doubles USA v. France (Tennis Channel, Tennis Channel Plus)
The United States holds a 11-2 advantage over France. The most recent meeting between the two nations was in 2014, when France beat the United States 3-2. In 2003, the French defeated the Americans in the Fed Cup finals to win their second title. The United States leads all nations with 18 Fed Cup championships.
The U.S. Fed Cup team is captained by retired American tennis player Kathy Rinaldi, who last year lead the Americans to their first Fed Cup title since 2000. Mattek-Sands, former World No. 1 doubles player, returned to competition last month after suffering a knee injury during a singles match at Wimbledon in July. This month Stephens cracked the top 10 for the first time in her career when she beat defending French Open champion and World No. 5 Jelena Ostapenko at the Miami Open. Keys also advanced to the quarterfinals at this year’s Australian Open before falling to former World No.1 Kerber. Vandeweghe, who was a member of last year’s championship-winning team, went 8-0 in singles and doubles play on the way to the 2017 U.S. title. The United States enters this weekend’s first-round competition after overpowering the Netherlands 3-1 in Asheville, N.C., in February.
France earned its spot in this weekend’s matchup after a 3-2 victory over Belgium in its first round, and is in its third semifinal appearance in the last four years. The French were crowned Fed Cup champions in both 1997 and 2003. The team is captained by Yannick Noah and features Kristina Mladenovic, Pauline Parmentier and Amandine Hesse.
Filed Under: Davis Cup/Fed Cup, Front Page News, tennis news Tagged With: Fed Cup, tennis, Tennis Channel, Tennis Channel Plus, tennis news
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What Happened When O'Malley Pitched His Debt-Free College Plan to HBCUs?
The presidential candidate said the schools have played an important role in higher education.
Emily DeRuy and National Journal
Democratic presidential candidate and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley speaks to guests at the Iowa Democratic Party's Hall of Fame Dinner on July 17, 2015 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He recently met with leaders of historically black colleges and universities to talk about making college debt-free. National Journal
College affordability has already become a key talking point for presidential candidates looking to reel in elusive young voters and their families.
Martin O'Malley, the Democrat who knew Hillary Clinton would emerge as his party's front-runner early but probably didn't expect Bernie Sanders to develop such a following, is looking to set himself apart from the rest of the field.
While most of the candidates have made general overtures to would-be college-goers about the need to rein in college costs, the former Maryland governor has published a fairly detailed proposal to help people attend public universities debt-free in the next five years,
The plan involves tying student-loan repayments to borrowers' income, slashing tuition, expanding Pell grants, incentivizing colleges to help students graduate on time, and promoting online and other nontraditional learning models.
It's a smart move on O'Malley's part, since much of the conversation around making college affordable centers on how to expand access to populations who have traditionally been left out — students of color among them.
On Tuesday, O'Malley headed to South Carolina to pitch the idea to historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs.
Touting his record as governor, O'Malley has sought to paint himself as a candidate who recognizes the importance of HBCUs. While tuition growth in Maryland during his tenure was low compared to other states and he increased funding to HBCUs, the state has faced criticism for historically underfunding the schools.
"[W]e must be mindful of their role, especially given the fact that greater numbers of those who traditionally attend historically black colleges and universities are the first in their family to go to college," he said after a lunch with HBCU leaders that included representatives from schools like Benedict College and Allen University.
"They face greater economic burdens and come from families of more humble means. So in our plan we were very mindful of that, and as we continue to refine it, I think it important that we always link the cause of our community college to the cause and mission of our historically black colleges and universities."
The meeting was closed to press. Phone calls and emails to six of the state's HBCUs requesting comment from people who attended the meeting were not immediately returned, but a spokeswoman from Allen University said she heard it went well and that O'Malley "answered their questions."
While HBCUs have for decades provided a haven for black scholars, they've struggled in recent years to maintain enrollment as other universities have opened their doors, and to operate in the face of cuts to aid and revenue (HBCU students take out loans at higher rates than college students in general).
The schools and their students could use an infusion of hope, and O'Malley would like to provide it.
He'd also like them to believe his debt-free college plan is more feasible long-term than Sanders' free college proposal, which O'Malley has panned as merely a tuition voucher. In a Democratic field of candidates who have all called for a higher-education overhaul, the more support O'Malley can garner early on, the better his chances of staying in the race. Reaching out to often-overlooked HBCUs is a smart place to start.
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Home News Winnie-the-Pooh exhibition gives intimate insight into Milne's 'magical' world
Winnie-the-Pooh exhibition gives intimate insight into Milne's 'magical' world
Published December 4, 2017 by Heloise Wood
The UK’s largest exhibition devoted to Winnie-the-Pooh for 40 years is to launch this weekend aiming to inspire children to “write their own stories or...
The UK’s largest exhibition devoted to Winnie-the-Pooh for 40 years is to launch this weekend aiming to inspire children to “write their own stories or draw their own pictures”.
Original drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh are displayed for the first time at the V&A Museum in London along with a section on the ‘The Art of Narrative’ exploring the “thrilling interplay between text and image”.
"Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic," which opens on Saturday (9th December), also provides “glimpses of the imagined world” from author A A Milne and illustrator E H Shepard, according to curator Annemarie Bilclough. Meanwhile, the show's co-curator Emma Laws has described how it sequentially takes “visitors from the real world of ‘The Nursery’ and ‘The Studio’ to... the imagined space of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends and the adventures that they have here.”
She told assembled press at the preview on Monday (4th December) that the exhibition, which features interactive elements and audio, is intended to be an “inspiring place” for young people. She said: “This is the first V&A exhibition at south Kensington specifically for younger families so this is a fun, multi-sensory space.
“One of the things we wanted to do was inspire children to become enthused about storytelling, as well as Winnie-the-Pooh, [and] feel inspired to write their own stories or draw their own pictures.”
The ‘Art of Narrative’ section provides an insight into “how all this magic gets created” and features the “thrilling interplay between text and image” including some of Milne’s manuscripts.
Laws said: “What’s so important about the manuscript is seeing Milne’s early ideas for the story and you can see his playfulness, you can see the words jumping on the page as Tigger is jumping up and down in Kanga’s pocket so ideas like that were there from the very outset.”
Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh manuscript (originally published by Methuen & Co in London in 1926) and pages from the manuscript of House at Pooh Corner from Trinity College, Cambridge are both featured along with Shepard’s first Winnie-the-Pooh character portraits, made by copying Milne’s son Christopher’s real toys, and original sketches of the forest landscape.
Laws praised Shepard’s “genius at visual storytelling, his ability to tell a story through a picture… the way that he interprets text ironically, his characterisation, the way he can paint a picture of a character in just a few lines”.
Other highlights among the 90 drawings displayed are two lent privately, bought together side-by-side for the first time: the pencil and pen-and-ink versions of one of the characters playing the famous game of ‘Pooh sticks’.
The exhibition which was first announced in September, features 230 works from 1920 to the present day from the archives of Egmont, the V&A itself, the Walt Disney Company, the Shepard Trust and the University of Surrey. Artefacts will include original illustrations, manuscripts, proofs and early editions, letters, photographs, cartoons, ceramics and fashion.
A Christopher Robin nursery tea set from the Royal Collection which was presented to the Queen in 1928, aged two, is also featured along with various recordings such as a 1929 recording of Milne reading Winnie-the-Pooh, in a typically “deadpan” way according to Bilclough.
The final section, ‘Pooh Goes to Print’ explains the printing process, a touch-screen presentation showing the history of the characters in newspapers, print and books.
Tom Piper, the designer of the field of poppies artwork "Wave and Weeping Window",worked with RFK architects on the show’s design.
Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A, said: "This is our first exhibition specifically for younger families and we look forward to welcoming another generation into A A Milne's magical, intimate, joyous world."
"Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic" will take place in the V&A’s Gallery 38 from 9th December 2017 until 8th April 2018.
All photos: © Victoria and Albert Museum
E H Shepard
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Kear impressed by Wales as they begin World Cup planning
Wales head coach John Kear has admitted he has been impressed with his players and their “energy and enthusiasm” during their first day in training earlier this week.
The Dragons began their preparation for the 2017 Rugby League World Cup Qualifiers and full international against Jamaica at Deeside Leisure Centre and on the first day of camp, Kear said: “I’m really pleased with what I’ve seen so far. I think the players have come in full of energy and enthusiasm.
“There’s been an attitude and focus about them and the team meeting that we had afterwards has broken the ice.
“I’ve been impressed with the new lads. The rest of them are comfortable in themselves and they’ve enjoyed the success and experience with Wales, but the new lads who have come in have shown that they want to replicate that.”
“It’s the end of the season and you wonder whether there will be any physicality left, but that was certainly there,” he continued.
“When we played the final game against Ireland last year, there were 12 true blood Welsh players. It really does appeal to me.
“There was one player who qualified through residence and four through heritage. There are a lot of players who qualify through grandparents and it means a lot to them to represent Wales.”
← TEAM NEWS: O’Loughlin ruled out of Grand Final, but Sandow returns for Warrington
Sheffield Eagles CEO resigns →
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Good News from Slovenia
Published: Wednesday, 20 November 2013 03:16
Reading room at the Theosophical library in Slovenia
The Theosophical Society Jivatma in Slovenia is operating the first public Theosophical library in Slovenia. The Theosophical Library and Reading Room of Alma M. Karlin was started in 2010 and is dedicated in memory of the great Slovenian female traveler, writer, poet, collector, hyper polyglot and Theosophist Alma Maximiliana Karlin (12 October 1889 – 15 January 1950). Between 1919 and 1928, Alma made a nine year journey around the world. She was an inspiration for many members of the first theosophical circle in Slovenia (which was part of Yugoslavia at the time) called “Krishnaji”, which started functioning in 1927 in Celje and was led by Konrad Konec, a priest in the Liberal Catholic Church (LCC).
Read more: Good News from Slovenia
Good News from Portugal
The Portuguese blog Lua em Escorpião celebrated its second year on November 11, 2013. This outstanding blog is edited by Paulo Baptista with the help of two other contributors: Luísa Garcês de Lima and Ivan Silvestre.
Lua em Escorpião’s main feature is the publication of translated texts authored by Theosophists who belong to the different traditions within the Theosophical movement. Jan Kind, Odin Townley, David Pratt, N.C. Ramanujachary, Barend Voorham and Pablo Sender are some of the Theosophists who agreed to have their articles published on Lua em Escorpião.
It is a delight to read this blog, very well taken care of and filled with interesting articles and commentaries.
The blog’s address is http://lua-em-escorpiao.blogspot.pt.
Good News from the Indo-Pacific Federation (IPF)
Indo-Pacific Federation Conference
The Indo-Pacific Federation of the Theosophical Society (IPF) was held in Bali, Indonesia from the first to the sixth of November 2013. Over 90 representatives from Asia-Pacific region took part in the conference with the theme of the conference Practising Theosophy. Many of the presentations focused on answering the question of how we as an organisation and as individuals can turn the Theosophy we understand from an intellectual concept to one that informs and becomes an active part of our lives.
The conference was inspired by the words of the Mahachohan: “We have to preach and popularize a knowledge of Theosophy.” We are living in times when it is more difficult to attract new members to our meetings and perhaps the time is upon us to go where there is a need, into our communities where the popularisation of theosophical values can be a true means of change. We discussed the importance of developing Self-awareness as part of our practical approach to living, by each of us becoming an example of Theosophy, which of course requires us to bring our own lives into harmony with the universal values, such as nonviolence, honesty, respect, Brotherhood and Sisterhood and being willing to undergo our own transformation as part of this process.
Read more: Good News from the Indo-Pacific Federation (IPF)
Good News from FOTA
WHY THEOSOPHICAL ARCHIVES NEED FRIENDS
On Oct 21 2007, a fire near San Diego destroyed the stock, library and archives of Point Loma Publications. (Fortunately, much of the archives had already been copied by Alexandria West.) A year or two later, heavy rain came through the roof of a London library. It stopped one floor short of the bookcase containing Madame Blavatsky’s own copy of “Spiritual Scientist” with her handwritten comments about the medium D.D. Home. Less fortunate were the birth records of Dr Eric Dingwall (biographer of Home) which had already been eaten by termites in Ceylon. Meanwhile, peacefully hundreds of Theosophical pamphlets rested in lodge bookcases in five continents. In silence their modern paper began to disintegrate, and their staples rotted.
There is a crisis facing Theosophists, as the original records since 1875 decay. There is a race against time to digitize and preserve electronically. Although there are handful of properly curated Theosophical archives, the general picture is serious. So a group of scholars, archivists, and prospective donors have joined forces to launch the Friends of Theosophical Archives which will take formal shape in various countries.
To learn more, and sign up for the free FOTA newsletter go to:
www.hypatia.gr/fota/
Good News from Adyar
Last October, Gene Jennings, vice-president of the International Theosophical Conference Inc., while touring India, came over from New York to the Theosophical Society in Adyar, visiting TS Head Quarters for one day. He had a quick tour organized by the Theosophical Publishing House. He met with the International President, visited the Library, Leadbeater Chambers’ restaurant and Head Quarters Building and walked over Adyar beach. He is affiliated with the United Lodge of Theosophists.
Gene Jennings (left), N.C. Ramanujachary, Ramu Sudarsan and…
a small dog on the far left in Head Quarters building
In the evening he attended a meeting of Adyar Lodge the subject of Theosophical Organizations all through history and participated in very lively discussions with some twenty people present.
After a short introduction on the different Theosophical organizations from the past, like Plato, Pythagoreans, Phylatheleans of Ammonius Saccas, Jacob Boehme etc., an exchange of opinion took place.
Read more: Good News from Adyar
Good News from the IPF
Published: Friday, 20 September 2013 05:57
The Indo Pacific Federation Conference, Bali, Indonesia, November 1– 6, 2013.
The Indo-Pacific Conference will be held in Bali, Indonesia from 1 to 6 November 2013, starting with arrivals on 1 November and 6:00pm dinner, and finishing with breakfast on 6 November and departures.
This special Triennial event is hosted by the Indonesian Section.
Guest Speakers to include Ravi Ravindra from Canada and Vicente Hao Chin, Jr. from the Philippines with further distinguished speakers from many of the Indo-Pacific Sections.
Ravi Ravindra
Vincente Hao Chin Jr.
Read more: Good News from the IPF
Good news from the EFTS
You are invited to the
European Congress 2014
Bridging Science and Spirituality
30 July to 3 August
(Opening: 30 July morning–Closing: 3 August before lunch)
Working languages of the Congress are English and French
Read more: Good news from the EFTS
The Portuguese Section of the Theosophical Society (Adyar) expresses its happiness for having received Miss Trân-Thi-Kim-Diêu, Chairman of the European Federation of the Theosophical Society, from the 23rd to the 28th of May, 2013. Miss Kim-Diêu is very well-known among the members of the Portuguese Section, and the wisdom which she has shared with all in the last ten years has been always a great source of inspiration.
Miss Kim-Diêu visited Porto, Lisbon and Évora.
At Porto a talk was delivered to the members and sympathizers of Dharma and Horus Lodges. The theme was “The Dharma of the Theosophical Movement.” About 25 participants attended the session.
Read more: Good News from Portugal
Good News from Switzerland and Italy
From March 15th to 17th in 2013, an annual seminar of TS Switzerland and TS Italy took place in a quiet and beautiful Hotel, Ascona, situated in Tessin, Switzerland.
Hotel Ascona, Tessin
It has become a tradition over the years that members and sympathisers from both Switzerland and Italy gather in Ascona to investigate and to ponder deeply on Theosophical principles.
Read more: Good News from Switzerland and Italy
Good News from ITC
The 15th Annual International Theosophical Conference held from August 8 - 11, 2013 in New York was a grand success with more than 250 registered participants.
Intercommunication among all Theosophical traditions is a fact and that is good! The 2014 Conference will take place at the International Theosophical Centre in Naarden, Holland from August 15 - 18. Next year`s theme title will be:
Theosophy, Unity and Helping the World .......where do we go from here?
More details will follow soon,
Participants of the 15th Annual International Theosophy Conference in New York
Watch all the recorded talks of the ITC Conference in New York, including the Convivium that preceded it.
Good News from Bhubaneswar, India
Educating about violence to women in Bhubaneswar, India
We are happy to announce a TOS project that we are adopting for international support over the next two years. We invite you to share the information with your fellow TS and TOS members and friends.
As the media show relentlessly, violence against women continues to know no boundaries. The TOS has decided to reinforce its activities to defend women who are being subjected to unthinkable abuse.
Read more: Good News from Bhubaneswar, India
Good News from New Zealand
[Pamela Zane Keys is learning via a mystic path leading through an early and valuable Christian experience to special interests in the Sufi Way, Gnosticism and Buddhism. Theosophy, she says, ‘made sense’ of her life. Pamela’s formal studies included Education, Psychology and Theology. She has also travelled widely.]
Pamela Zane Keys
Pamela’s teaching has spanned more than 50 years and she enjoys editing TheoSophia, the magazine of the Theosophical Society in New Zealand.
In Finding A Different Way – Part 1, Pamela wrote, “While we may think of the latent powers referred to in the Third Object of the Theosophical Society as extraordinary and spectacular, I have recently realized that they may also be small and outwardly indiscernible yet inwardly life changing.” In Part 2, she talked of how important it is to allow other people into the learning and healing process.
Finding a Different Way – Part 3
It has been a year since I found the lumps in my breast that sent me to see the doctor who confirmed I had breast cancer for the second time and needed a full mastectomy. Around the same time, I lost a dear friend to cancer. The burden of that combined grief threatened to crush me and it was only through the re-discovery of the power of forgiveness that I was able to shed past hurt and grief to better cope.
Read more: Good News from New Zealand
Good News from East & Central Africa
From the outgoing General Secretary M. Navin B. Shah, Theosophy Forward received the following:
Navin B. Shah
East & Central African Section of the T.S. held its 46th Convention from Friday 17 to Sunday 19 May 2013 at Nairobi Lodge.
At this Convention, which is held every two years, a new General Secretary was elected for the next 2 years. Term of our Section is 2 years and there is no limit on number of terms one can stand for.
I have served 3 two year terms - total 6 years. I did not want to continue as G.S. as it is right that, even though there is no limit, to have a change of guard.
Read more: Good News from East & Central Africa
Good News from the I.S.I.S. Foundation
A message from Herman C. Vermeulen – Blavatsky House, The Hague, The Netherlands
We would like to present to you our first digital edition of the magazine Lucifer, the messenger of Light in English. Click here
In 1979 some members of the Dutch section of The Theosophical Society Point Loma Blavatskyhouse took the initiative to start a Theosophical magazine. We did not want to write about ‘technical’ Theosophy. Primarily, we wanted to show the practical value of Theosophy.
Read more: Good News from the I.S.I.S. Foundation
In Finding a Different Way, Part 1, Pamela wrote, “While we may think of the latent powers referred to in the Third Object of the Theosophical Society as extraordinary and spectacular, I have recently realized that they may also be small and outwardly indiscernible yet inwardly life changing.” In Part 2, she talks of the healing effects of making inner harmony her first priority.
Good News from Moscow
Second All-Russian Theosophical Conference
On March 23 and 24, 2013 the Second All-Russian Theosophical conference took place in Moscow. The theme was Spiritual Human Regeneration and it was organized by the Theosophical Society.
This year’s conference really became international. In addition to the delegations from several Russian cities, St. Petersburg, Smolensk, Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladivostok and others, as well as from Ukraine and Belarus, the conference was also attended by Jan Jelle Keppler, General Secretary of the Belgian section of the Theosophical Society, and Monique Ver Poorten who is the secretary of the Leuven Lodge in Belgium. Attendance was about 100 people, coming from 12 cities and 5 countries.
Jan Jelle Keppler and Monique Ver Poorten from Belgium
Read more: Good News from Moscow
Good News from Kiev, Ukraine
Good News from Israel
Good News from International Theosophy Conferences (ITC)
Good News from Ireland
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What Are Infinitives? Types And Examples
An infinitive is the most basic form of a verb. You’ll usually see it with the word to, as in to eat or to think. An infinitive phrase is an infinitive plus complements and modifiers. To eat vegetables daily and to think about a solution are infinitive phrases. While infinitives themselves are verbs, infinitive phrases can be used as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs.
Adverbial Infinitives
Adverbial infinitive phrases can modify verbs, adjectives, or adverbs. For example: “Lily was ready to go to the movies.” You could just say “Lily was ready,” and it would make perfect sense. But what was she ready for? That’s where the infinitive phrase, to go to the movies, comes in. It modifies the main adjective ready, providing more detail.
You might also see an adverbial infinitive at the beginning of a sentence, as in “To make a long story short, we decided to go to the party.”
Nominal Infinitives
The word nominal means something can act as a noun in a sentence. Nominal infinitive phrases can be the subject of a sentence, the direct object, or the object of a preposition. For example, “To visit Italy had been her dream for years.” Here, the infinitive phrase to visit Italy functions as a noun, and is the subject of the sentence.
Tired of embarrassing typos? Let Grammar Coach™ do the heavy lifting, and fix your writing for free! Start now!
Adjectival Infinitives
An adjectival infinitive phrase modifies a noun or pronoun. In other words, it acts like an adjective. For example: “As long as she’s here, I’ll always have a friend to talk to me.” The infinitive phrase to talk to me modifies (or describes) the noun friend.
Voice and Tenses in Infinitives
You can form the passive voice by combining an infinitive with be and a participle. For example: “The clothes need to be washed.” The passive voice describes something happening to a noun (a person place or thing), rather than the noun itself doing something.
Infinitives also appear in perfect tenses, where they’re used with have and a participle. For example: “I would’ve liked to have left the park much earlier.” To have left is a present perfect infinitive.
Split Infinitives
A split infinitive is when a modifier shows up between the word to and the main verb. One of the most famous examples of a split infinitive is from the opening of Star Trek: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.” Here, the infinitive is to go. The word boldly appears in the middle of it, “splitting” it.
Not everyone okay with split infinitives. So in formal writing, it’s best to avoid them. Some grammarians do agree that split infinitives are acceptable under certain circumstances. They suggest that the modifier should appear where it makes the most sense or has the strongest impact.
Infinitives Without To
While the word to is the general marker of an infinitive, it’s sometimes omitted. For example, “Rip Van Winkle did nothing but fish all day without a murmur.” This sentence is understandable without the word to before the verb fish. Infinitives without to are called bare infinitives.
Infinitives Phrases vs. Prepositional Phrases
Not every phrase that begins with to is an infinitive phrase. The word to is a preposition, and can also begin prepositional phrases. For example, “He sent a letter to his parents.” Here, to begins a prepositional phrase, not an infinitive phrase.
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Jay County backstrokers not alone in success
Sam Wilson
swilson@muncie.gannett.com
PORTLAND – When Anne Vormohr finished fifth in the 100 backstroke at the state meet this year, fellow Jay County swimmer James Keen was in the stands with her family, cheering her on. But as Vormohr was crowned a medalist and celebrated her accomplishment, the girls swimming postseason was nearing its end. The boys postseason was getting set to begin the following Thursday, when it would be time for Keen, also a backstroker, to go after his own success.
Like Vormohr, Keen also got into the championship heat of the 100 backstroke, reserved for the top eight finishers in the state preliminaries. He finished sixth, ensuring Jay County had a state backstroke finalist in both boys and girls swimming. Vormohr, a junior, has been named The Star Press girls swimming Athlete of the Year and Keen, a senior, has been named The Star Press boys swimming Athlete of the Year.
The two swimmers have known each other for years, often competing against each other in club practices. But the idea of one day both being state finalists didn't really cross their minds when they were younger.
"I had no idea at all," Keen said.
Vormohr quickly agreed.
"No, I didn't either," she said. "I guess it had always been a dream, like, 'Oh, we'll get up there and we'll be on the podium and stuff.' But then now it's actually happened and it's kind of surreal."
For both swimmers, their finish this season was a bit of redemption. Keen finished 17th in the 100 backstroke preliminaries as a junior. The top eight finishers in the prelims get invited back for the championship heat, and finishers 9-16 come back for a consolation finals. As a junior, Keen was the top Friday night finisher among swimmers not invited back Saturday.
But as a senior, he burst through, not only getting into the second day, but doing so in the championship heat. He swam a time of 51.37 seconds to get into the finals, then turned in a time of 51.42 on Saturday to finish sixth.
"I was really happy," Keen said. "I couldn't explain what I felt, knowing that I finally medaled. I feel like the feeling was better on Friday, knowing that I was going to medal, then it was on Saturday. But it was still amazing."
Vormohr reached the championship heat as a freshman in 2013, when she also finished fifth. But as a sophomore, she didn't experience the same success. She reached the consolation finals, finishing 11th.
Her junior year provided a chance to get back to the championship finals, and she took advantage. She turned in a time of 56.39 seconds in the prelims to clinch a spot in the finals, then swimming 55.79 to claim fifth place for the second time in her high-school career.
"It was like the same, yeah," Vormohr said, comparing her finish with Keen's. "Because I think last year, you (talking to Keen) had a good year, but my year was just kind of like, 'OK, yeah, you did all right,' but I wish I could have done better."
As the pair conduct an interview with a reporter, it's clear their years of swimming together have helped them develop an easy rapport, and they're able to trade barbs. One of their running jokes revolves around their differing philosophies regarding timing in practice. Vormohr is fanatical about leaving the block on time to maintain accurate numbers for herself and whoever might be swimming in the lane behind her, while Keen has a more laid-back approach.
The pair recently went on a school trip to various European countries with other Jay County students, with Keen listing Rome as his favorite stop. Vormohr preferred Monaco and Orvieto, a smaller city in Italy.
Their trip back was complicated by a delayed flight that forced a new itinerary, and Keen accidentally left a bag on a conveyor belt at a security checkpoint. He eventually realized what he had done, but felt it was too late to go back and retrieve it. A woman at the checkpoint asked if anyone knew the owner of the bag, and Vormohr looked down at the tag and saw the name of her school's other state-finalist backstroker.
She made sure the bag reached its rightful owner.
Contact prep sports reporter Sam Wilson at (765) 213-5807. Follow him on Twitter @SamWilsonTSP.
Winter AOYs
For all of the winter sport Athlete of the Year honorees, see page 3C.
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UK universities: from excellence to omnishambles
A raft of short-sighted policies are causing harm, says Sir Roderick Floud
Source: Eduardo Fuentes
We need to look at the system as a whole, and think seriously about how many universities we have, what they do and how we pay for teaching and research
It is now some 50 years since British higher education began to expand. More has unambiguously meant better. Without expansion, we would not have ended discrimination against women, allowed millions of our fellow citizens to fulfil their potential, or achieved our place as the leading country in Europe for research.
There is much to celebrate. But, as I retire from my final job in British higher education, I also feel frustrated. The system could, I believe, be much better still.
The successes of UK higher education have been achieved with very little conscious planning, and problems remain. Entrenched privilege has changed little since the 1960s; it is now clear that anyone in government who believed that the new student loans system would save money will be proved wrong; and the government is hell-bent on destroying the sector’s success in recruiting international students. We have universities that are supposedly autonomous but in reality are entirely dependent on public money, that are supposed to compete but cannot increase tuition fees. It is not only the fee system but the whole system that deserves the term “omnishambles”.
There is an argument, bolstered by the sector’s successes, for letting things muddle along. But higher education is too important to our economy and society. We need to take a look at the system as a whole. We need to think seriously about how many universities we have, what they do and how we pay for teaching and research.
I believe that we have too many universities, that they are trying to do too many different things, and that the way we fund their research is fundamentally flawed.
We don’t need two or more universities in each of our major cities, glowering at each other and competing to attract the attentions of businesses and local authorities. Why does Leeds or Sheffield or Oxford, for example, need two vice-chancellors, registrars or groups of governors? In London, the situation is even more bizarre, with some 40 universities within the M25 and more arriving by the day. The Higher Education Funding Council for England has remained supine in the face of evidence that all this is unnecessary and inefficient. The Welsh government stepped in to reduce the number of universities in Wales; maybe the next English government will have to do the same.
At the same time, universities are trying to do too many things at once. They are trying to be conference organisers, caterers, sporting promoters, careers advisers, pastoral counsellors; they run great estates, research institutes, theatres and concert halls; sell souvenirs and T-shirts, act as property developers and invest on the stock market. They set up overseas subsidiaries, finance start-up companies, develop science parks, maintain some of the most beautiful buildings in Britain, run some of our greatest museums, art galleries and libraries. They even run buses.
Yet there is a strong argument for specialisation. Some universities could concentrate entirely on postgraduate education. This would allow them to make better use of the best researchers – who are already, in many places, concentrating on master’s and PhD students and leaving undergraduate teaching to junior staff.
We would need to modify the way research is funded – but reform is badly needed.
While I have no objection to the principle of research assessment, the practice of it is a different matter. Each assessment costs somewhere between £20 million and £100 million, yet 75 per cent of the funding goes every time to the top 25 universities. Moreover, the share that each receives has hardly changed during the past 20 years.
It is an expensive charade. Far better to distribute all of the money through the research councils in a properly competitive system. After all, the US, a world leader in research, has no equivalent of the research excellence framework.
Universities should also forget about fundraising. It has been 20 or 30 years since the pressure to fundraise began, and after large sums of money have been invested in “development”, the results have been frankly pitiful, except among a very select group of universities.
Vice-chancellors are now expected to be supplicants for gifts rather than academic leaders or university managers. We now have the bizarre spectacle of Hefce setting universities a target of raising £2 billion a year to substitute for cuts in public funding. The fundraisers are rubbing their hands; we’ll need, they say, to double the number of staff in development. That would mean having more fundraisers than academic staff in architecture and planning or in agriculture and veterinary science. This is sheer madness.
Instead of fundraising, universities should be allowed to charge a fair price for the services they provide. This was the solution advocated by Lord Browne in his review of student fees, but the government refused to accept it.
Higher education is one of the best investments that the state and individuals can make. We already spend less on it than do many comparable countries. It is adding insult to injury to tell us that the state will not support this success story and that we should spend our time going cap in hand to hedge fund millionaires to fund such vital public services.
British higher education deserves, and can justify, much greater funding than our blinkered politicians seem ready to give it.
University funding/finances
#1 Submitted by Fanis on June 19, 2014 - 5:57am
I take a glimmer view of the present situation, though the title and certain moderation coming from an eminent figure pointing out the multitude of problems facing UK Universities are appropriate. http://fanismissirlis.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/ukacademy/
Stop the harmful flip-flopping and give students a fair deal
With new lockdowns upon us, it’s time students received the financial relief they deserve, says David Green
By David Green
Post Doctoral Research Associate
Research Fellow - Business School
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Anti-Racist Water Fountain Finally Gives People of Color a Break from White Supremacy
It’s being called a breakthrough that’s sure to change America. It’s also being called by another name, and that name is progress. That’s because a Portland based inventor has come out with a new anti-racist water fountain design today, and the critics are loving it.
“This will gave people of color a much needed break from white supremacy,” explained the inventor, “Having two separate water fountains will allow indigenous people and people of color to have access to clean drinking water without having to compete with whites on the terrain of white supremacy. The idea of separating the water fountains came to me in a dream, and I just had to make it a reality.”
The state of Oregon has already mandated the water fountains be installed in all public buildings and other states are following suite. Hopefully, someone in Washington will get the memo and make these babies national!
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This Old Tanker Looks Like It's About To Sink, But It's Just Doing Its Job For The Marines
The antique ship has an odd way of doing its business, but it's still one of the best assets for supplying Marines with gobs of fuel ashore.
By Tyler Rogoway September 24, 2019
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The SS Petersburg (T-AOT-9101), a 56-year-old Chesapeake class tanker operated by U.S. Maritime Administration, put to sea as part of a month-long exercise to demonstrate amphibious logistical capabilities that can be put to use in the Arctic environment. Arctic Expeditionary Capabilities Exercise (AECE) 2019 is mainly taking place in and around Alaska, including the Aleutian Islands, but elements of it are also being executed much further south. In SS Petersburg's case, it left its mooring in Suisun Bay off Benicia, California, to exercise its core mission set—that being moving huge quantities of fuel from sea to shore—off of Coronado, California as part of the exercise. Exactly how it goes about doing this is pretty bizarre and looks even stranger to the average landlubber, to say the least.
Pentagon Orders Sudden Deployment Drill Of Unprecedented Size For Its Sealift Ships By Joseph Trevithick Posted in The War Zone
Marine Boss's Audacious Plan To Transform The Corps By Giving Up Big Amphibious Ships By Chris "Ox" Harmer Posted in The War Zone
The Army Wants Its Brigades To Be Able To Fight For An Entire Week Without Resupply By Joseph Trevithick Posted in The War Zone
Marines Riding On Cargo Ship To Pacific Exercises A Sign Of A More Flexible Deployment Strategy By Joseph Trevithick Posted in The War Zone
Vital Logistics Ships Will Be Without Critical U.S. Navy Escorts In A Major Conflict By Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone
The antique ship uses a massive device called a Single-Anchor Leg Mooring (SALM) buoy to work as a nexus of sorts that conveys fuel from ship all the way to the shore. The system's barge-like apparatus sinks to the seafloor while leaving a buoy on the surface connecting it to the ship. Lines then carry large quantities of fuel from the ship to the barge and then to a weighted conduit that extends out all the way to shore—up to four miles away—laying along the bottom of the sea. That conduit ascends up the beach to a mobile receiving and distribution installation called a Beach Termination Unit (BTU) that is ferried ashore. The SALM can support up to four tankers offloading their fuel at once.
At first glance, it's an odd and complex system, but it's also effective and well-proven. Similar counterparts exist in the commercial world, as well. Petersburg can move a staggering 1,200,000 gallons of refined petroleum to an austere beachhead in a single day. But before the SALM can be put to work and the ship's 225,000 barrels of fuel—as well as fuel from other tankers—can be sent ashore persistently, the huge SALM barge has to get from the ship's deck into the ocean. That's where the whole listing maneuver comes in to play.
The ship is built to be able to trim itself to list up to 15 degrees to port so that the SALM barge and buoy system can be shifted from its tilting deck platform into the ocean. The whole affair is bizarre if not downright unnerving looking:
Petersburg is one of five Offshore Petroleum Discharge System (OPDS) tankers that were built in the late 1950s and early 1960s that eventually found themselves assigned to the Ready Reserve Force. The tiny fleet was divided between three classes. Today, SS Petersburg is the last of the OPDSs, with her sistership SS Chesapeake, having been taken out of service in 2009.
SS Chesapeake listing 14 degrees in order to get her SALM barge into the water. The photo was taken in 2008, not long before she was put out of service for good.
The USMC currently relies on a number of methods for moving vast amounts of fuel from ship to shore. Remember that without gas, the modern Corps can't fight and all of its vehicles and generator-dependent systems require copious amounts of fuel on a daily basis. A single new commercial ship under Military Sealift Command's control, the MV Vice Adm. K.R. Wheeler, was introduced in 2007 to accomplish a similar role as SS Petersburg, but it is not a tanker and relies on other vessels to supply the fuel, acting as a node for transferring it from their holds to shore.
The Marines also leverage Navy LCAC hovercraft and landing ships to move fuel bladders and tanks ashore. The Navy's new Expeditionary Transfer Docks will also come in handy for quickly transferring gas to the beach as needed. For higher volume, sustained operations, the Amphibious Bulk Liquid Transfer System (ABLTS) is used. It's a far more modular and adaptable system—it can also pump fresh water—than what the SS Petersburg represents, but it isn't as powerful and doesn't have as long of a reach. It can be installed on different ships and can be rapidly deployed around the globe as required.
Amphibious Bulk Liquid Transfer System (ABLTS) in use during an exercise off of South Korea in 2017.
Still, even with these newer capabilities, as it sits now, the SS Petersburg's combined tanker and fuel transfer capabilities are unique and will cease to exist within the Pentagon's portfolio when she is finally retired sometime in the future. The Marines have posited other concepts to replace some of this capability and to augment the capabilities they already have, but no firm plans for the Pentagon to procure additional dedicated vessels, and especially anything like the Petersburg, appear to be in place at this time.
A USMC document from 2016 displays a possible future concept for moving large amounts of fuel from ship to shore and then distributing it throughout an island system located within a contested environment.
In many ways, SS Petersburg is a relic of times that may have finally passed us by—an age when massive beach landings were still seen as a highly plausible eventuality in a time of war. Fast forward to today and even smaller beach landings are becoming far less plausible. In fact, after years of debate, those at the top of the USMC's power structure are admitting this and redesigning their procurement and combat strategies to focus less on amphibious landing operations and more on distributed forms of warfare across the maritime environment. You can read all about this new and controversial initiative in this past feature of ours.
Regardless of the highly questionable possibility of huge amphibious landings in the future, the need to move fuel from sea to shore without elaborate dock and transfer facilities hasn't and won't go away. In fact, the ability to do so more flexibly and numerously with smaller vessels and teams will likely define such a capability going forward, and not just for combat operations, but also for disaster relief and other contingency operations.
But until the Kennedy-era SS Petersburg pumps her last gallon, in the event that gobs of fuel are needing to be transferred from the sea to the beach, it's still among the very best ships, if not the best ship for the job—even though it looks like it is about to sink while doing it.
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‘Why I quit as a barrister to follow my dream job’
Image copyright Mowgli Street Food
Image caption Nisha Katona was a barrister before she became a restaurateur
The BBC's weekly The Boss series profiles business leaders from around the world. This week we speak to 48-year-old Nisha Katona, founder of Mowgli Street Food - a contemporary Indian restaurant chain in the UK.
When Nisha Katona decided to quit her successful career as a barrister after 20 years to open a restaurant, her friends and family thought she was having a mid-life crisis.
Nisha knew the move would come with risks as she would be giving up a well paid job and had a mortgage to pay.
But she had long had a dream to become a professional chef and it was starting to give her sleepless nights. So while she was still working full time in 2014, as a family and child law barrister in Liverpool, she decided to take the plunge and opened Mowgli.
Image caption Nisha says the food at Mowgli is a "far cry" from what's served at traditional curry houses
The Liverpool restaurant, which specialises in "authentic" Indian cuisine, quickly took off and has since grown into a UK-wide chain with sales of £10m.
"Mowgli is a pet name I have for my two teenage girls which literally means feral child," Nisha says of the name, which is not, as some people think, linked to the famous Jungle Book character.
"My daughters chose the logo and the restaurant was named after them."
The daughter of Indians who emigrated to Lancashire in the 1960s, Nisha was always obsessed with Indian cuisine and even used to plan her holidays around trying new foods.
She says she has taken cookery lessons all around the world, but never from professional chefs, only home cooks and "usually grandmothers".
Before she launched Mowgli she gave cookery lessons herself, launching her own Youtube channel. And she did lots of market research - for instance, standing in the corner of restaurant kitchens at night to see how they operated.
Image caption There are now seven Mowgli restaurants across the UK
Nisha says Mowgli is about showing how Indians eat at home and on the streets, which is a "far cry" from what you find at traditional UK curry houses.
She says her dishes, which are all based on family recipes, are "simple, fresh and delicate" while having a modern twist.
"What I want is people to understand how my grandmother cooked. This is how we, as Indians, eat at home. We don't have a balti or a bhuna, and we don't have naan breads and poppadoms."
Her passion for Indian cuisine has also led her to write three of her own cookbooks - Pimp My Rice, The Spice Tree and Mowgli Street Food.
Image caption Nisha has written several cook books
"I still remember when I wrote my first cook book. I'd never written a book in my life, so I thought how do I publish this? I looked in the Jamie Oliver cook book and Googled some of the names in his acknowledgments.
"One was his agent and so I sent her my proposal, and within 10 minutes she wrote back to me and said 'can we meet on Monday'? And she signed me on."
But despite her success, Nisha says starting her first restaurant wasn't easy. As a second-generation immigrant living in 1970s Britain, she had developed "a thick skin" early on in life, and she had been the first female Asian barrister in Liverpool.
But she was still unprepared for the pressures she faced as a woman entering the male-dominated restaurant scene.
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"As I was building Mowgli, at times I was met with disdain from friends and family as I threw myself into the business and had less time to spend with my daughters.
"It struck me that if I were the husband, or simply the man, I wouldn't receive this criticism. And unfortunately, in this day and age, I still must fight my corner as a businesswoman."
The fact there were so few female role models in the industry didn't help, she says, as she would have loved a woman to have "guided her or been a mentor".
Today the entrepreneur runs seven successful Mowgli restaurants in cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Oxford.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption Nisha Katona was given an MBE this year
"The fact that Nisha has opened not one or two but seven restaurants in the UK, in just over four years, means she is definitely doing something right, especially in today's highly competitive food industry," says Mr Yawar Khan, head of the Asian Catering Federation.
He also says giving up her job and starting a new career in her 40s took "courage and guts".
"South Asian women need more role models like Nisha to encourage them to start restaurants and curry houses."
Earlier this year Nisha achieved another milestone when she made The New Year Honours list and was awarded an MBE in recognition of her services to the British food industry.
"It just felt like a blessing. It was almost as though we got royal assent for my mother's dhal," she says.
"It was the most moving moment and what it meant to my mother, who came to England 50 years ago with nothing, is beyond words."
Read more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47774302
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Trump’s Tax Plan Would Cost Trillions, but the Numbers Are a Moving Target
Rick Wilking
An analysis of Donald Trump’s proposal for overhauling the federal tax code found that, depending on which version of Trump’s promises you choose to believe, it will cost the Treasury at least $2.9 trillion in lost revenue over ten years, and possibly as much as $5.9 trillion. While an enormous sum, which the Republican presidential candidate has made no serious attempt to offset with spending cuts or other revenue increases, the plan would add less to the federal debt than a previous Trump proposal, which weighed in at around $11 trillion.
The plan would consolidate the personal income tax bracket system and lower the top rate to 33 percent. While it would eliminate many deductions, it would also hike the standard exemption and place limits on deductions for high income individuals. Many low-earning people would owe no federal income taxes at all. However, the percentage change in after-tax income due to the proposal would be much higher among the wealthiest than it would among the poorest. It would also eliminate the estate tax, which affects only a small percentage of the wealthy.
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Businesses would benefit from a dramatic rate cut and would have new options for reducing taxes by expensing investments immediately.
Many of the provisions are fairly straightforward, whether you agree with them or not. But the overall impact of the plan on the national debt remains unclear.
The reason for the wide range in estimates put forward by the Tax Foundation on Monday is two-fold. As is its practice, the non-partisan but conservative-leaning group did two different analyses. One is based on a static model, which predicts a loss to the Treasury of between $4.4 and $5.9 trillion over ten years. The second analysis uses what’s known as a dynamic model, which tries to take into account the effects that the plan might have on economic growth and the follow-on impact on tax revenues and other factors. That estimated the range of losses to the Treasury at between $2.6 and $3.9 trillion.
The reason for the range within each of the estimates produced by each individual model is confusion over whether and how Trump plans to tax “pass-through” business income under his plan. Pass-through income is earned when the profits from a business are all passed directly to the owner and are taxed as personal income rather than business income. Trump’s plan would slash the business tax rate paid by C corporations from 35 percent to 15 percent, which is less than half of the top marginal income tax rate for individuals.
Vague language in the materials released by the Trump campaign makes it unclear whether pass-throughs would be eligible for the 15 percent rate on business income or not. And the Trump campaign did little to resolve the situation last week, sending different signals to different constituencies.
So, rather than try to make the call on their own, Tax Foundation researchers presented figures for each of the possible scenarios.
Related: Trump Has a New Economic Plan, but the Numbers Don’t Add Up
“The Trump tax plan as outlined in September 2016 is a large tax cut, mostly on individual and corporate income,” the Tax Foundation concluded. “This plan would significantly reduce the cost of capital and reduce the marginal tax rate on labor. These changes in the incentives to work and invest would increase the U.S. economy’s size in the long run, boost wages, and result in more full-time equivalent jobs.
“On a static basis, the plan would reduce federal revenue by between $4.4 trillion and $5.9 trillion, depending on policy assumptions about business tax rates. However, due to the larger economy and the significantly broader tax base, the plan would reduce revenue by between $2.6 trillion and $3.9 trillion over the next decade, depending on those same policy assumptions. In all cases, it would increase after-tax incomes for all income groups, but reduce revenue to the Treasury.”
However, the Tax Foundation also notes that the analysis doesn’t make any assumptions about how the tax cuts would be paid for, or what the impact of sharply reduced federal spending or a large increase in the national debt would have on the economy.
“This plan is a large net tax cut, and therefore, the need to finance it is likely to have macroeconomic impacts of its own,” they found. “These macroeconomic impacts could vary depending on how and if the tax cut is financed.”
And so far, Trump has shown no indication of how the plan would be paid for.
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'This bowling alley just wanted to live again': Clarksville woman reopens Skyline Lanes with a new vintage vibe
Jennifer Babich
Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle
Becky Diaz is passionate about a few things in life, including her teaching job and her favorite pastime of bowling.
It's that love of bowling and the camaraderie she found at her favorite Clarksville bowling alley that led Diaz to buy in as a partner a couple years ago at Skyline Lanes, a converted grain mill that become home to a bowling alley back in 1959.
"I've bowled here for over 20 years. This is like all of our homes. We've all bowled here forever," said Diaz of herself and her fellow Skyline Lanes regulars. "I bowl here four days a week. It's a passion. It's in my heart all day long."
The longtime Clarksville institution was in danger of shutting down when Diaz first invested two years ago. That danger emerged again when the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to close their doors in mid-March. Her partner wanted out, so Diaz once again jumped into action to save the bowling alley.
"I didn't want it to close. It's been here as a bowling alley since 1959, and as a grain mill even longer," she said.
This time, however, Diaz had an ambitious plan to bring the bowling alley back to its former glory.
"I love this place. I wanted it back to the way it was," said Diaz, days before the bowling alley was set to reopen on Saturday, Aug. 1, after shedding its once-shabby interior and featuring a new, retro vibe.
"I just felt this old building wants someone to take care of it," she said.
So that's exactly what Diaz spent her time doing during the shutdown ... researching the look of the original bowling alley and working to recreate that nostalgic '50's feel with the help of her staff, including managers Kristina Cornell and Bri Scumate, as well as fellow bowlers.
"I just love the vintage feel. We brought all this back. This is the way the masking units were back in the '60's," she said of the original Brunswick machines, painstakingly brought back to their original look. "Everything is going to back to the way it was."
Diaz said it's been a team effort from the start.
"We've been here day and night cleaning, painting. But I've had so many bowlers in their free time come and help clean," she said. "Everybody has been instrumental in making this place successful. It's not just me, it's we. I couldn't have done it without everybody.
Diaz has also been working closely with her mechanic, Jose Alvarado - who's worked in bowling alleys from New York to California for 30 years - to bring back some unique features, including 2 lanes that will utilize an original 1940 Brunswick manual scoring table and feature the original hardwood bowling lanes.
"These lanes haven't been running for about 18 years. People got used to the fancy computer scoring, and nobody wanted to write it by hand anymore," said Diaz, pointing out lanes 15 and 16 in the center of the bowling alley. "So they shut them down and over the years, the parts have been stripped to use on other lanes. So now we got them back together, and we're going to go old school."
"We're going to make it so people can come here and bowl and manual score, which you won't find anywhere. It's very unique," Diaz said.
"This is why I wanted to help," said Alvarado. "It's old school. I like that. I've worked in multi-million dollar centers with all the fancy stuff. It's cool, but I'd rather do this. I'd rather help out a center that's older that might need my skills."
Diaz said Alvarado's expertise has been invaluable.
"God sent him to us. He saved this bowling alley, because if you don't have a good mechanic, you can't do anything else," Diaz said. "You've got to have a good mechanic to keep the lanes running."
"You've got to think these (Brunswick bowling) machines were made in the '50's, and some machines are running 15 hours a day and have 1,000 moving parts," explained Alvarado, who said he's also personally restoring the wood for lanes 15 and 16, which will allow the bowling alley to join an exclusive group.
"We're also going to make it so you can bowl on the original wood lanes. There are only 18 maybe 20 centers in the United States that are still wood lanes," said Diaz.
Alvarado explained that's because wood lanes are expensive to maintain. Their long-term goal is to return to the original hardwoods in all lanes.
"The rest of them will stay covered until we get some revenue in. It's going to be about $20,000 dollars to get it done," said Alvarado. "But these 2, because they're going to be special lanes, I'm going to do them myself. So that way if you come bowling and go old school, you'll be able to bowl on wood lanes."
Diaz also brought in vintage seating purchased from a going-out-of-business sale in Virginia, added new games in the game room, had the pool tables re-felted, and has spruced up the snack bar offerings.
"We had to upgrade. Things just weren't changing with the times," said Diaz, adding the snack bar specialty is the Barnburger. It's named for the bowling alley's nickname, 'The Barn,' a nod to the building's unique barn-lake shape.
"It's a double cheeseburger with everything on it, and bacon. It's amazing," said Diaz with a laugh. "
It's all being done with the hope that others will also be drawn in by the nostalgia of the '50's-era bowling alley in the heart of Clarksville that's been dubbed by some in the bowling community as a 'hidden gem.'
"That's the goal, to keep this place going and alive. It's historical," said Diaz, noting there's even still a line on the floor where a wall once stood before the bowling alley was desegregated in the '60's. "There's a lot of history here. The majority of people here who are older, grew up bowling here."
Diaz said the plan is to allow their previous 4 leagues from March to finish up play in August to generate revenue. Then, in September, new leagues will start up. Already, she's planning tournaments and booking special events, all with the proper COVID-19 precautions in place, including masks, social distancing, player limits, and enhanced cleaning procedures.
"I'm hoping for everyone's patience, because this is a smaller bowling alley. But it's worth the wait," said Diaz.
While she's sunk her entire life savings into the venture, Diaz said she's more excited than scared.
"This has been all my own money. It's my house and my retirement that I've put in it. But I have faith," Diaz said. "In my heart, if I was scared, I would be nervous ... but I'm not. I think it's the right thing to do. I'm excited. This place means a lot to a lot of people."
For Diaz, the reward truly is breathing new life into this old Clarksville institution.
"In my heart, this bowling alley just wanted to live again," said Diaz. "It was suffocating because nobody was helping it and it was just deteriorating so bad that we were losing leagues, we were losing bowlers. That's my goal, to build these leagues back up."
Her passion is already paying off. Before their opening day, Skyline Lanes already had nearly a dozen teams signed up for their Friday fun leagues.
Skyline Lanes is located at 201 Kraft Street in Clarksville. 931-645-2456. Visit Skyline Lanes online at skylinelanesbowling.com or on Facebook at Skyline Lanes 'The Barn.'
Aug. hours: Mon., Wed. 5-10 pm; Fri. 5-11 pm; Sat. 12-11 pm; Sun. 12-10 pm. Open Tues., Thurs. for special events. Hours will expand in Sept.
Reach Jennifer Babich at 931-245-0742 or by email at jbabich@gannett.com. To support her work, sign up for a digital subscription to TheLeafChronicle.com.
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How you can help in school partnership to gather supplies for students
Valerie Guzman
Contributed, United Way
Did you know over 10,000 students in the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System are considered economically disadvantaged?
That’s why CMCSS, United Way of the Greater Clarksville Region, and the Clarksville-Montgomery County Education Foundation have partnered in a project called Prepped for Success .
Prepped for Success is a large scale, community-wide initiative to give schools supplies to students whose parents are unable to afford the basic supplies to start school.
Some students don’t even have a pencil to do their homework, said James O’Bryant, Executive Director of the Clarksville-Montgomery County Education Foundation. It’s hard to imagine not having a pencil at home, but for some of our students, that is their reality.
“Approximately 30 percent of our students are considered economically disadvantaged,” said Anthony Johnson, Director of Community Relations and Continuous Improvement for Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools. “We want every student to start the school year off on the same sheet of music as their peers. In order to meet such a huge need, we knew we had to partner with the community.”
The three partners are working with local residents, churches and businesses to raise the funds needed to provide the essential tools the students need to do their work and not carry the burden of not having the right supplies.
There are three ways the community can be involved, which include making a financial contribution, donating supplies and volunteering to pack over 10,000 bags on June 21st and 22nd.
“Community members are already showing up and getting behind this project,” said Valerie Guzman, United Way CEO. “Our city and county governments are conducting a supply drive competition to see which can collect the most of their assigned items.
"Community support is critical to the success of this program," said Guzman. "I believe our community will give 11,000 students the supplies they need."
Current Gold Level Sponsors include Altra Federal Credit Union, Community Action Agency and Fortera Credit Union. Current Silver Level Sponsors include F&M Bank, First Advantage Bank and Wyatt-Johnson.
To join in this effort to advance educational opportunity for the students of our community, contact United Way of the Greater Clarksville Region to learn more about contributing financially or signing up to volunteer, visit www.liveunitedclarksville.org/prepped-for-success/ . You can also text PREPPED to 41444 to make a donation.
Contributions are processed through United Way for Prepped for Success, and 100 percent of proceeds go toward purchasing supplies.
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Get to know the Chefs teaching in our kitchen! Better yet, come on down and take a class with them!
Andrew Vogel
Chef Andrew Vogel was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Northern Kentucky University and Midwest Culinary Institute and holds a Certified Chef de Cuisine certification from the American Culinary Federation. He has been an adjunct culinary instructor at Midwest Culinary Institute for more than 11 years, and has worked with Jean-Robert de Cavel for more than 12 years -- first at Jean-Robert at Pigall's and currently at Jean-Robert's Table. When not cooking, eating, or thinking about food, he enjoys playing tabletop board games with his wife, riding bicycles, their 4 cats, travel, and movies. He maintains a culinary library with more than 700 titles -- and don't even ask how many board games he owns!
Elaine Berrios
Chef Berrios is a Puerto Rico Island native. She had the privilege of growing up around a vast culinary influence of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Spanish cuisines from her mother and grandmothers. Her family ran a successful catering business for over 30 years in Puerto Rico, which helped her develop an intense love and passion for cooking and baking and a respect for food and all types of cuisines. In her professional career she had the opportunity to live in Mexico for 3 years where she fell in love with the authentic local cuisine and learned the craft of making homemade tortillas, tamales etc. Being a military wife gave her the opportunity to learn different cuisines and local dishes from Brazil, Chile, Peru, England, Ireland and from many regions of the USA. She has taken culinary classes from different chefs in the areas of pastry, cake baking and decorating and bread baking classes from a Master French Pastry Chef. Inspired by her mother and her grandmothers she says that she is looking forward to start teaching and being able to share her culinary knowledge and learn as well from the students at TLK.
Gabi Odebode
Chef Gabi Odebode was born and raised in Ghana in the western part of Africa. She has been cooking for 15 years. She has learned from great home cooks and chefs both from America and Africa. Gabi has taken culinary courses in food, nutrition, and international cuisine. In the courses she took, chefs and home cooks not only taught her how to cook, but helped her to understand the art of food, flavor profiles, textures, and other culinary skills. In her 15 years of cooking, she spent most of her years learning how to cook African food in Ghana and continued when she immigrated to the United States. In the United States, Chef Gabi learned how to cook other meals from different African countries. Aside from cooking African meals, Gabi also loves to develop and experiment with different recipes. She also enjoys fusing different cultural food together to create a new recipe. She has introduced and taught many Americans and non-Americans African food and cooking and the response was great. Gabi is always excited to give individuals the African experience through her cooking!
Gerrie Bielefeld
Chef Gerrie has over 35 years of experience as a culinary instructor, executive chef, hospitality expert, and culinary consultant and is a proud graduate of The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York and holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management from The Conrad Hilton College of The University of Houston, Texas. She was also the Senior Culinary Instructor for The International Culinary School at The Art Institute in Cincinnati.
Chef Gerrie is a culinary expert, “seasoned” teacher, and hilarious kitchen adventurer. She has hilarious stories that you'll have to hear to believe...nothing's off the table when you're with her! Leave your inhibitions behind and let Chef Gerrie be your guide to combining food, flavor, and fun. You may just like it (and her) too much!
James Hanser
Chef James grew up in rural northwest Ohio, moved to Cincy in 1998 and started working in the restaurant industry. He fell in love with the craft. Mostly self-taught, he has honed his skills over the years working for nearly every restaurant group in town... Jeff Ruby's Steakhouses, Boca Restaurant Group, Orchids at Netherland Plaza, Whole Foods Market, Hyatt Regency Cincinnati, and many independently owned restaurants along the way. In 2018, James started his own company called "Have Knives. Will Travel." as a personal chef, caterer, and in home instructor. He loves all types of food, but he is totally obsessed with braising, curing, and smoking meats and pickling. Inspired by his mother, a lifelong teacher, he began teaching at The Learning Kitchen and is loving every minute of it!
Jason Louda
Chef Jason Louda was born and raised in Cincinnati, but has never strayed far from his Eastern Kentucky, Appalachian roots. Beginning at the age of 15, Chef Jason has built his career from the ground up with one motto in mind..."Cooking should be fun. After all, it's just food." Working in many of the city's, best known farm to table restaurants, including La Soupe, Metropole and Chalk Food + Wine, and as the newest Culinary Adjunct at The Midwest Culinary Institute; Chef Jason has placed an emphasis on quality food being both accessible and inviting to all people. His food passions are for the simple dishes of his childhood, homemade pickles, preserves, smoked meats, and anything cooked over an open fire. Chef Jason's hope is you will leave his class with a smile on your face and a heart as full as your belly.
Kristin Rose
Kristin Rose is a personal chef out of Blue Ash. Her food philosophy is using whole, high quality, unprocessed foods. Over 8 years ago, she decided to start a second career and follow her love of cooking healthy food. She went to culinary school at the Midwest Culinary Institute here in Cincinnati and earned a Culinary Arts Certificate. Now, she works with her clients to provide them with good healthy options. Come join one of her classes!
Madhu Sinha
Originally from India, Madhu Sinha is passionate about cooking from scratch. She not only has extensive experience in both cooking and teaching cooking, she is also the co-author of a book on the global ecopolitics of food consumption. She strongly believes that knowledge of ingredients and cultures are both important for us to appreciate the foods we consume. All her classes teach you to cook delicious Indian foods informed by a knowledge of Indian culture and history.
Patrick Aylward
Chef Patrick Aylward started working in the food industry as a young boy at the age of 14. After going to college for marketing and economics, he dropped out to become a chef. He started at Jeff Ruby’s Precinct, and shortly after moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin working for bakeries, Italian and new American restaurants. Upon moving back to Cincinnati, he worked at Salazar where he learned a respect for food and vegetables that will be instilled in me for the rest of my life. Patrick then worked for Panino, a local salumerie, and learned a respect for animals that will also last a lifetime. He currently works for Tano Bistro in Loveland, teaches at The Learning Kitchen, and run a small private dining/catering business. He loves to cook peasant foods, things with a short ingredient list, that require care, and attention to yield a scrumptious result. He aims to empower people who step through our doors of the learning kitchen. Picking up a knife and turning the heat on can be very intimidating. He hopes that through his experience and excitement he can empower you to cook new things, buy new ingredients, and explore the limits of your kitchen after taking a class.
Rebecca Denney
Rebecca Denney is the chef and owner of Paleolicious and the Modern farmhouse Kitchen. Her specialties include gluten free, paleo, seasonal and vegetarian entrees. She is passionate about working with families to help them discover that healthy food should always be delicious.
Samantha Wickham
Chef Sam is a Dayton, Ohio native. She graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York with a degree in Culinary Arts, and got her experience on the line in restaurants in New York and Washington D.C. While working at Chef Dan Barber’s Blue Hill Restaurant, she fell for the farm to table concept and eventually for the lifestyle and vocation of farming. Sam has now been farming for 9 years with her husband Rich, who together own and run Foxhole Farm in Brookville, Ohio (along with their little girl Marion). They feed the Dayton community via Oakwood and Centerville farmers markets, Dorothy Lane Market, and various restaurants. Sam also offers private chef services via her second business, Farmer to Table. Her culinary specialties include farm-to-table cooking, and Spanish, Italian, and French cuisine. Teaching others how to cook is one of Sam’s favorite outlets.
Timmy Kirk
Chef Timmy is a Cincinnati native, and a born roamer. He has lived in a few places around the US and lived and worked in Asia for 5 years. While there he traveled as much as possible, and every time he traveled, his goal was to study the cuisines and cultures of the regions he visited. He has taken more than 40 cooking classes throughout China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, India, and more. He learned the authentic flavors and techniques, and now he is bringing them back home to share the secrets with you. In Denver, Timmy was part of the team that won Q House Modern Chinese the title of "Best Restaurant Denver 2018" by Eater Magazine and helped earn a nomination for “Best New Restaurant in America” by the James Beard Foundation. Although Asian cuisines are his specialty, his knowledge and skills of world cuisines is extensive. Recently, he earned his Level 1 Sommelier Certification.
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Surfing is coming to the Tokyo Olympics. For these women athletes, it’s the recognition they’ve been waiting for.
The sport will join karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and baseball/softball in their debut
Amanda Loudin
The WNBA’s new collective bargaining agreement paves the way for ‘the next generation of athletes’
The breakthrough is significant for all women athletes
Alicia Jessop
We broke down 4 common arguments about equal pay in women’s pro sports
Here’s what to say next time someone tells you men’s sports are more interesting
Julie DiCaro
It looks like the wage gap closed significantly this year. Here’s why it actually didn’t.
New survey methods under the Trump administration tell a misleading story
Caroline Kitchener
Adele Lim was celebrated for bringing authenticity to ‘Crazy Rich Asians.’ She’s leaving the sequel over pay disparity with her male co-writer.
According to sources, Lim’s starting offer was $110,000 — a little more than one-tenth of the $800,000 to $1 million offered to her white, male co-screenwriter
The Lily News
‘We’re trying to do this on behalf of women everywhere’: Rapinoe says USWNT won’t accept anything less than equal pay
The comments came a day after mediation efforts broke down in the team’s lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation
Does the U.S. women’s soccer team actually earn less than the men’s?
With all of the talk of equal pay, here are the facts
The one thing that needs to change for the U.S. women’s soccer team to be paid equally
Title IX increased women’s participation on the field, but also carried an adverse effect
Lindsay Parks Pieper and Tate Royer
‘The double-earn’: The U.S. women’s soccer team fights for greater equity while gearing up to play for a fourth World Cup title
In March, the squad filed a class action, gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation
The pay gap persists for reasons legislation can’t fix. Here’s why, plus what you can do about it.
Embedded in the very DNA of Americans’ understanding of work is a devaluation of women’s time and skills
Emma Goldberg
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Phone: (03)9747 9085
Felipe Cornejo
Drums, Congas, Djembe, Guitar, Bass.
Felipe Cornejo has been one of the most in demand percussionist in Australia for the past 15 years.
Born in Chile in 1979 and then moved to Australia at the age of 5.
Felipe musical education began with Javier Fredes (Percussion Legend in Australia),Gerry Pantazis (one of Australia’s most sought after drummer) and Jose Hernandez (Member of Wemilere-Sacred Drum and Teacher of School of Felix Varela, Cuba), also studied a Diploma of music at NMIT.
Felipe has performed/recorded and toured with some of Australia’s top musicians and bands, Los Cabrones(Australia) a member for 15 years of one of most admired bands in Australia with arguably the top jazz musicians in Australia, Felix Baloy(Buena Vista Social Club, toured around Australia’s east coast), Odequis Reve(Orquesta Reve, performed for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Rumberos(Australia), Sam Keveers(Jazz group called the Nonnetts), Julian Wilson, Carlitos Way, Saskwatch, Daniel Gassin Sextet, Kenny Lopez, Del Barrio, Clavemania,
Felipe has also performed at a number of festivals, Melbourne International Jazz Fest(2007,2016), Wangaratta Jazz Festival(2016), Woodford Festival, Port Fairy Festival, St Kilda Festival, 4 Days on the Island, and he has also traveled international with performances in Shanghai(China) and New Zealandand and many more.
Adem Koci
Beginning at the age of seventeen and Having Two and a half decades of playing experience in various bands, recording and session projects, as well as musical academic excellence in the ANZCA system, Adem is a versatile musician who has been teaching the drums for nearly twenty years. He emphasises a strong musical foundation, teaching music reading, basic musical history and leans heavily on the motto: “crawl before you walk, walk before you run”. Adem currently plays with local cover band “Funkshun” and Ballarat based combo “The Darbys “.
Steven Prince
Steven Prince is a musician with wide experience. He has been a guitarist for over 44 years and a teacher for over 26 years. Steven's experience includes many years playing guitar and singing in bands, being a songwriter both for himself and other singers as well as recording, releasing and producing albums. He has been the band leader of a number of bands and the Music Director of two contemporary style churches, coordinating various musicians, singers and choirs.
Mark Robson
Guitar, Bass Guitar, Ukulele, Mandolin, Banjo
Mark is a lively enthusiastic and engaging full time instrumental teacher. An excellent motivator tailoring his teaching to the individual requirements of his students. Using his natural empathy for people, Mark is able to create a strong bond with his students to enable them to be the best they can be. With over 28 years experience as a Teacher and musician Mark has collaborated with a variety of musicians gaining all the knowledge required to bring his teaching to new levels that are based on real life playing experiences.
Mark employs a technique known as “active listening” - a technique that is used in counselling and training. Active listening enhances both the listener and speaker’s ability to fully concentrate, understand, absorb and pass on the information given during the exchange with greater clarity and empathy.
Mark specialises in a number of different styles, “metal” being a personal favourite and can assist you with sight reading, AMEB, ANZCA, VCE, song writing, music theory, effective practice techniques, style analysis, and on the spot transcribing and playing your favourite songs. Mark uses a score writer program called Sibelius 7.5 for creating, editing and printing music scores for each session
Julia Tran
Piano, Viola, Cello and Violin
Julia has been playing Viola since she was a child and has been teaching for a number of years. Her "forte" is viola, but also she teaches Cello, Piano and Violin. Teaching is a very important part of her life as she truly enjoys bringing the gift of music to people of all ages. Whether you wish to accomplish exams through ANZC or simply learn to play an instrument for your own enjoyment, Julia will accommodate all levels of ability.
Nyssa Sanguansri
Piano and Violin
Nyssa began playing the violin and piano from age 5 and has since never stopped. She completed her Bachelor of Music with Honours at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music in 2018 and is currently a member of Invictus Quartet, with whom she has performed both in Melbourne and internationally.
Although classically trained, Nyssa has had the pleasure of collaborating with local jazz and fusion artists around Melbourne, such as Phoebe Day and Billy Davis, as both a performer and an arranger. She is passionate about connecting with people creatively and aspires to make all music celebrated, regardless of genre.
Simon Tran
Born and Raised in the suburbs of Melbourne. Started learning piano at the age of ten, Learning piano was always encouraged by his mother after learning of his interest for the instrument. Playing at Church learnt hymnals and also for his own pleasure. Has a vast understanding of theory and reading and a variety of styles.
themusichubacademy@gmail.com
Monday-Friday 12:00pm-8:00pm
School Holiday's Opening Hours
Monday to Friday 12pm to 4pm
46 Smith St, Melton VIC 3337
© Copyright The Music Hub Acadamey 2018
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West Augustine Sub
© 2021 St. Augustine & St. Johns County Board of Realtors.
1265 Kings Estate Road
840 Lot 14 W 10Th St , Lot 14
931 N Clay
Downtown St. Augustine
Vilano Beach
St. Augustine Shores
The Newcomer Group is North East Florida's most innovative real estate team.
2225 A1A South Suite B7, St. Augustine, FL 32080
© 2021 Northeast Florida Multiple Listing Service, Inc. All rights reserved. The data relating to real estate for sale on this web site comes in part from the Internet Data Exchange (IDX) program of the Northeast Florida Multiple Listing Service, Inc. Real estate listings held by brokerage firms other than The Newcomer Group | Ancient City Real Estate are marked with the listing broker’s name and detailed information about such listings includes the name of the listing brokers. Data provided is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed. Data last updated 2021-01-15T16:24:10.783.
© 2021 St. Augustine & St. Johns County Board of Realtors. IDX information is provided exclusively for consumers' personal, non-commercial use and may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties consumers may be interested in purchasing. Information is believed to be accurate but not guaranteed by the MLS or The Newcomer Group | Ancient City Real Estate. Data last updated 2021-01-15T16:30:50.94.
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Nathan Lucas
Maternal grandfather of Charles Kingsley, whose mother was Mary Lucas (b. 1787). Thomas Louis (q.v.) was awarded the compensation for the Mount Clapham estate in Barbados as administrator of the estate of Nathan Lucas. Nathan Lucas owned The Content plantation in Demerara from at least 1803 when he visited the property, returning to the estate again in 1806-7.
Nathan Lucas of Manchester Square was listed as a fellow of the Linnaean Society in 1804.
Brandow's Genealogies of Barbados Families pp. 402-403 has a brief entry on the Lucas family, including Nathan Lucas, from which the life-dates are drawn. The ODNB has entries both for Charles Kingsley (Norman Vance, ‘Kingsley, Charles (1819–1875)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15617, accessed 28 Dec 2014]) and for his father Charles Kingsley (Roger Steer, ‘Kingsley, Charles (1781–1860)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/59874, accessed 28 Dec 2014]).
The first of these says of Charles Kingsley the writer 'His mother, Mary Lucas (1787–1873), was born in Barbados, the daughter of a judge who had inherited slave-run sugar plantations. But any prospect of substantial wealth from this source eventually passing to the Kingsley family vanished with the decline of the West Indian sugar trade and the abolition of slavery in 1833.'
The latter says of Charles Kingsley senior 'He then retired to Battramsley House near Lymington in the New Forest, where he devoted himself to the pursuits of a country gentleman before discovering, at the age of twenty-six, that all his money had gone', whereupon he married Mary '(1787–1873), the daughter of Nathan Lucas of Barbados and Rushford Lodge, Norfolk. Mary's organizing ability was a great asset to Kingsley after his funds ran out; when, almost certainly following her advice, he eventually made his career in the church it was Mary who did most of the parish visiting.'
Email from Dr P. A. K. Covey-Crump, 15/11/2017, sourced to the detailed journal Lucas kept of his visit to Demerara in 1803. Dr Covey-Crump adds, "He had only recently acquired the estate as maps held by the Dutch National Archives list the owner of The Content as J Kendall in 1798 and as Ashburner in 1799." Transcripts of the journal are held at the Library of the Linnaean Society and the Natural History Museum in London.
List of the Linnaean Society of London (London, 1804) p. 5; Transactions of the Linnaean Society (London, 1808), vol. 9 p. 5. We are grateful to Dr Covey-Crump for his assistance with compiling this entry.
Mary Crookenden
Mary; Elizabeth; Sarah Ann; Nathan
1803 [EA] - 1817 [LA] → Owner
Content [ British Guiana | Demerara ]
Mount Clapham [ Barbados | St Michael ]
1832 [SY] - → Previous owner
Lucas deceased at the point of the 1832 slave register but entered as owner.
Unknown [ Barbados | Christ Church ]
Unnamed but Valley [Mapps] [ Barbados | St George ]
Valley [Mapps] [ Barbados | St George ]
Linnean Society of London......
Son-in-law → Mother-in-law
Brother-in-laws
Thomas Crookenden
Father → Son
Nathan Lucas junior
Manchester Square, London, Middlesex, London, England
Rushford Lodge, Rushford, Suffolk, East Anglia, England
Cultural [1]
Phillip Thompson
1805 - ????
'Nathan Lucas', Legacies of British Slave-ownership database, http://wwwdepts-live.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146632191 [accessed 15th January 2021].
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Published on Thursday, March 9, 2017
By: Annie Oeth at 601-984-1122 or aoeth@umc.edu.
Published in News Stories on March 09, 2017
Mia Nasif immersed herself in play, naming each of the residents of a two-story doll house.
“There's mommy, and daddy, and grandma,” she said before the doll family began a pretend adventure involving a raccoon and a bear.
“Mia, share the little girl (doll) with me,” her mother Sarah said. Mia hesitated for a few seconds, but then complied.
It may sound like imaginative play between a child and parent, because it is, but for the Nasif family and others, it is so much more.
Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, or PCIT, offered at the Center for the Advancement of Youth at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, is that instruction book that parents may wish their children came with, said psychologist Dr. Dustin Sarver, assistant professor of pediatrics.
The therapy puts the child in a play situation with a parent, who is wearing an earpiece to hear coaching from psychologists in the next room. The doctors watch, by way of a two-way glass, and listen to the interaction between parent and child, coaching the parent through the situation as it unfolds.
The evidence-based treatment for young children with emotional and behavioral disorders places emphasis on improving the quality of the parent-child relationship and changing interaction patterns between parents and their children.
“It minimizes the amount of time parents get upset in the moment and gives parents specific skills to enhance their parenting,” Sarver said.
Sarver coaches parents in a separate room, giving them feedback through an earpiece on their interactions with their children.
PCIT is funded by a grant from the Mississippi Council on Developmental Disabilities, which awarded $50,000 for the first year of therapy service. The project is now in its second year of funding, with MCDD awarding a $54,000 grant.
“The Mississippi Council on Developmental Disabilities seeks to improve the quality of life for people with developmental disabilities. Bringing evidence-based practices such as PCIT to treat emotional and behavior challenges can improve quality of life for parents, caregivers, and children with developmental disabilities,” said Charles Hughes, MCDD executive director. “Preparing professionals to offer these services is critical for families who need access to additional health provider options across the state.”
Mia's parents, Sarah and Chris, learned that their daughter has a neurological disorder that can be challenging to her physically, leading to behavior issues.
“It can give her a lot of frustration,” Sarah Nasif said, “and she can be a very strong-willed child.”
Sarah Nasif asks daughter Mia to share a doll during a therapy session.
The Nasifs, of Madison, learned about CAY and PCIT from neighbors and started therapy in October 2016. “It's been a wonderful experience,” she said. “I was feeling out of control before October. Mia was running the house.”
“It takes time,” Chris Nasif said of the therapy, “By the end of December and early January, though, we could see a huge difference.”
During each weekly session, psychologists and parents track children's behavior and positive parenting and discipline skills during therapy, Sarver said, “so progress can be measured individually from the start through the end of treatment.”
Playtime interactions are used throughout treatment at CAY to coach parents in situations ranging from easy to challenging. Therapy begins by teaching positive interaction skills that build the relationship, but then progresses to learning how to use effective discipline techniques. Good behavior is practiced in the clinic before outings because, “if you can't obey your parents in the playroom, then you won't at McDonald's either,” said Sarver.
Parents learn how to handle challenging interactions in the safety of the clinic but then learn to do the therapy skills at restaurants, shopping malls or other public venues before the patient “graduates” out of care.
PCIT includes Child-Directed Interaction, during which parents encourage and attend to their children's positive social behaviors and learn to strategically ignore minor negative behaviors, and Parent-Directed Interaction, a time where positively stated commands are given in a normal tone of voice with effective follow-through. When commands aren't followed, a thorough time-out procedure follows.
“So much of PCIT is about training the parents as well as the child,” Sarver said. “PCIT is fueled by good, positive reinforcement to good behavior and a solid attachment between children and their caregivers.”
Keeping parents from having their own meltdowns when dealing with their children's emotional or behavioral disorder means more positive interactions between children and parents, he said.
“In general, parents can be overly harsh when dealing with children with behavioral disorders,” said Sarver. “It is easy to forget to balance out punishment with warmth.”
Sarver and his wife, psychologist Dr. Nina Wong Sarver, also an assistant professor of pediatrics at UMMC, along with psychologist Dr. Dorothy Scattone, associate professor of pediatrics, and licensed clinical social worker Genevieve Garrett, offer the therapy to children with behavioral difficulties after referrals to CAY.
The Nasifs were quick to note that PCIT only works when parents are committed to participating and learning.
“I wish every family could be as committed to participating and experience the successes the Nasifs have had,” Sarver said, praising Chris and Sarah.
As for Mia, who is nearly 5 and is soon to graduate from therapy, she's getting ready for school, where her increased cognitive, language and social skills gained through PCIT will help her adjust well to kindergarten.
Family time for the Nasifs, since therapy, is more a source of joy than stress, something all parents want. Said Sarah Nasif: “We now have peace in our home.”
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Story of the Martyrdom of the Bab
READ > 26 Useful Resources for the Martyrdom of the Bab Commemoration
Barracks Square in Tabríz - Close-up view of the Barracks Square in Tabríz where the Báb was martyred. Photos taken in the dead of winter of a later year
Mirza Ali Muhammad was born in Shiraz in 1819 and was executed in Tabriz in 1850, at the age of 31. His title, the Bab, means “the Gate.” Similar to John the Baptist, He foretold of a Mighty Messenger of God that was coming soon. This Messenger was Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet and Founder of the Bahá’í Faith. The Bab, however, was also a Prophet in his own right; He revealed a Holy Book, the Bayan, as well as many tablets and prayers. Although His Dispensation lasted only 6 years, from 1844-1850, He had many followers, thousands of whom gave their lives for His Cause.
Shoghi Effendi wrote that posterity will recognize the Bab’s life as “standing at the confluence of two universal prophetic cycles, the Adamic Cycle stretching back as far as the first dawnings of the world’s recorded religious history and the Bahá’í Cycle destined to propel itself across the unborn reaches of time for a period of no less than five thousand centuries.” He depicts the Martyrdom of the Bab in this way:
“It can, moreover, be regarded in no other light except as the most dramatic, the most tragic event transpiring within the entire range of the first Bahá’í century. Indeed it can be rightly acclaimed as unparalleled in the annals of the lives of all the Founders of the world’s existing religious systems.” - Shoghi Effendi
“The Bab’s isolation and captivity had produced the opposite effect to that which the Amir-Nizam had confidently anticipated. Gravely perturbed, a more drastic and still more exemplary punishment, he felt, must now be administered to what he regarded as an abomination of heresy which was polluting the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of the realm. Nothing short, he believed, of the extinction of the life of Him Who was the fountain-head of so odious a doctrine and the driving force behind so dynamic a movement could stem the tide that had wrought such havoc throughout the land. He dispatched his order to the governor of Adhirbayjan, instructing him to execute the Bab.
Deprived of His turban and sash, the twin emblems of His noble lineage, the Bab, together with Siyyid Husayn, His amanuensis, was driven to yet another confinement which He well knew was but a step further on the way leading Him to the goal He had set Himself to attain. That day witnessed a tremendous commotion in the city of Tabriz. The great convulsion associated in the ideas of its inhabitants with the Day of Judgment seemed at last to have come upon them. Never had that city experienced a turmoil so fierce and so mysterious as the one which seized its inhabitants on the day that the Bab was led to that place which was to be the scene of His martyrdom. As He approached the courtyard of the barracks, a youth suddenly leaped forward who, in his eagerness to overtake Him, had forced his way through the crowd, utterly ignoring the risks and perils which such an attempt might involve. His face was haggard, his feet were bare, and his hair dishevelled. Breathless with excitement and exhausted with fatigue, he flung himself at the feet of the Bab and , seizing the hem of His garment, passionately implored Him:
“Send me not from Thee, O Master. Wherever Thou goest, suffer me to follow thee.”
“Muhammad-’Ali,” answered the Bab, “arise, and rest assured that you will be with Me. Tomorrow you shall witness what God has decreed.”
Two other companions, unable to contain themselves, rushed forward and assured Him of their unalterable loyalty. These, together with Mirza Muhammad ‘Aliy-i-Zunuzi, were seized and placed in the same cell in which the Bab and Siyyid Husayn were confined. I have heard Siyyid Husayn bear witness to the following:
“That night the face of the Bab was aglow with joy, a joy such as had never shone from His countenance. Indifferent to the storm that raged about Him, He conversed with us with gaiety and cheerfulness. The sorrows that had weighed so heavily upon Him seemed to have completely vanished. Their weight appeared to have dissolved in the consciousness of approaching victory. ‘Tomorrow,’ He said to us, ‘will be the day of My martyrdom. Would that one of you might now arise and, with his own hands, end My life. I prefer to be slain by the hand of a friend rather than by that of the enemy.’ Tears rained from our eyes as we heard Him express that wish. We shrank, however, at the thought of taking away with our own hands so precious a life. We refused, and remained silent. Mirza Muhammad-’Ali suddenly sprang to his feet and announced himself ready to obey whatever the Bab might desire. ‘This same youth who has risen to comply with My wish,’ the Bab declared, as soon as we had intervened and forced him to abandon that thought, ‘will, together with Me suffer martyrdom. Him will I choose to share with Me its crown.’”
Early in the morning, Mirza Hasan Khan ordered his farrash-bashi to conduct the Bab into the presence of the leading mujtahids of the city and to obtain from them the authorization required for His execution. As the Bab was leaving the barracks, Siyyid Husayn asked Him what he should do.
“Confess not your faith,” He advised him. “Thereby you will be enabled, when the hour comes, to convey to those who are destined to hear you, the things of which you alone are aware.”
He was engaged in a confidential conversation with him when the farrash-bashi suddenly interrupted and, holding Siyyid Husayn by the hand, drew him aside and severely rebuked him.
“Not until I have said to him all those things that I wish to say,” the Bab warned the farrash-bashi, “can any earthly power silence Me. Though all the world be armed against Me, yet shall they be powerless to deter Me from fulfilling, to the last word My intention.”
The farrash-bashi was amazed at such a bold assertion. He made, however, no reply, and bade Siyyid Husayn arise and follow him.
The Bab was, in His turn, brought before Mulla Muhammad-i-Mamaqani. No sooner had he recognised Him than he seized the death-warrant he himself had previously written and, handing it to his attendant, bade him deliver it to the farrash-bashi.
No sooner had the farrash-bashi secured the necessary documents than he delivered his Captive into the hands of Sam Khan, assuring him that he could proceed with his task now that he had obtained the sanction of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of the realm. Siyyid Husayn had remained confined in the same room in which he had spent the previous night with the Bab. They were proceeding to place Mirza Muhammad-’Ali in that same room, when he burst forth into tears and entreated them to allow him to remain with his Master. He was delivered into the hands of Sam Khan, who was ordered to execute him also, if he persisted in his refusal to deny his Faith.
Sam Khan was, in the meantime, finding himself increasingly affected by the behaviour of his Captive and the treatment that had been meted out to Him. He was seized with great fear lest his action should bring upon him the wrath of God.
“I profess the Christian Faith,” he explained to the Bab, “and entertain no ill will against you. If your Cause be the Cause of Truth, enable me to free myself from the obligation to shed your blood.”
“Follow your instructions,” the Bab replied, “and if your intention be sincere, the Almighty is surely able to relieve you from your perplexity.”
Sam Khan ordered his men to drive a nail into the pillar that lay between the door of the room that Siyyid Husayn occupied and the entrance to the adjoining one, and to make fast two ropes to that nail, from which the Bab and His companion were to be separately suspended. Mirza Muhammad-’Ali begged Sam Khan to be placed in such a manner that his own body would shield that of the Bab. He was eventually suspended in such a position that his head reposed on the breast of his Master. As soon as they were fastened, a regiment of soldiers ranged itself in three files, each of two hundred and fifty men, each of which was ordered to open fire in its turn until the whole detachment had discharged the volleys of its bullets. The smoke of the firing of the seven hundred and fifty rifles was such as to turn the light of the noonday sun into darkness. There had crowded onto the roof of the barracks, as well as the tops of the adjoining houses, about ten thousand people, all of whom were witnesses to that sad and moving scene.
As soon as the cloud of smoke had cleared away, an astounded multitude were looking upon a scene which their eyes could scarcely believe. There, standing before them alive and unhurt, was the companion of the Bab, whilst He Himself had vanished uninjured from their sight. Though the cords with which they were suspended had been rent in pieces by the bullets, yet their bodies had miraculously escaped the volleys. Even the tunic which Mirza Muhammad-’Ali was wearing had, despite the thickness of the smoke, remained unsullied.
“The Siyyid-i-Bab has gone from our sight!” rang out the voices of the bewildered multitude. They set out in a frenzied search for Him, and found Him, eventually, seated in the same room which He had occupied the night before, engaged in completing His interrupted conversation, with Siyyid Husayn. An expression of unruffled calm was upon His face. His body had emerged unscathed from the shower of bullets which the regiment had directed against Him.
“I have finished My conversation with Siyyid Husayn,” the Bab told the farrash-bashi. “Now you may proceed to fulfill your intention.”
The man was too much shaken to resume what he had already attempted. Refusing to accomplish his duty, he, that same moment, left that scene and resigned his post. Sam Khan was likewise stunned by the force of this tremendous revelation. He ordered his men to leave the barracks immediately, and refused ever again to associate himself and his regiment with any act that involved the least injury to the Bab. He swore, as he left that courtyard, never again to resume that task even though his refusal should entail the loss of his own life.
No sooner had Sam Khan departed than Aqa Jan Khan-i-Khamsih, colonel of the body-guard, known also by the names of Khamsih and Nasiri, volunteered to carry out the order for execution. On the same wall and in the same manner, the Bab and His companion were again suspended, while the regiment formed in line to open fire upon them. Contrariwise to the previous occasion, when only the cord with which they were suspended had been shot into pieces, this time their bodies were shattered and were blended into one mass of mingled flesh and bone.
“Had you believed in Me. O wayward generation,” were the last words of the Bab to the gazing multitude as the regiment was preparing to fire the final volley, “every one of you would have followed the example of this youth, who stood in rank above most of you, and willingly would have sacrificed himself in My path. The day will come when you will have recognized Me; that day I shall have ceased to be with you.”
The very moment the shots were fired a gale of exceptional severity arose and swept over the whole city. A whirlwind of dust of incredible density obscured the light of the sun and blinded the eyes of the people. The entire city remained enveloped in that darkness from noon till night. Even so strange a phenomenon, following immediately in the wake of that still more astounding failure of Sam Khan’s regiment to injure the Bab, was unable to move the hearts of the people of Tabriz, and to induce them to pause and reflect upon the significance of such momentous events. They witnessed the effect which so marvelous an occurrence had produced upon Sam Khan; They beheld the consternation of the farrash-bashi and saw him make his irrevocable decision; they could even examine that tunic which, despite the discharge of so many bullets, had remained whole and stainless; they could read in the face of the Bab, who had emerged unhurt from that storm, the expression of undisturbed serenity as He resumed His conversation with Siyyid Husayn; and yet none of them troubled himself to enquire as to the significance of these unwonted signs and wonders.
In Shiraz an “earthquake,” foreshadowed in no less weighty a Book than the Revelation of St. John, occurred in 1268 A.H. which threw the whole city into turmoil and wrought havoc amongst its people, a havoc that was greatly aggravated by the outbreak of cholera, by famine and other afflictions.
In that same year no less than two hundred and fifty of the firing squad, that had replaced Sam Khan’s regiment, met their death, together with their officers, in a terrible earthquake, while the remaining five hundred suffered, three years later, as a punishment for their mutiny, the same fate as that which their hands had inflicted upon the Bab. To insure that none of them had survived, they were riddled with a second volley, after which their bodies, pierced with spears and lances, were exposed to the gaze of the people of Tabriz. The prime instigator of the Bab’s death, the implacable Amir-Nizam, together with his brother, his chief accomplice, met their death within two years of that savage act.
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17-year-old arrested after 2 killed during unrest in Kenosha
by: STEPHEN GROVES and SCOTT BAUER Associated Press
Posted: Aug 27, 2020 / 09:18 AM EDT / Updated: Aug 27, 2020 / 12:10 PM EDT
A protester kicks a smoke canister Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020 in Kenosha, Wis. Anger over the Sunday shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by police spilled into the streets for a third night. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — A white, 17-year-old was arrested Wednesday after two people were shot to death during a third straight night of protests in Kenosha over the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake.
EDIT: The original article from the Associated Press labeled the 17-year-old as a “police admirer.” We have removed that as part of the description. It was in reference to his social media accounts which are addressed later in the article.
Kyle Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Illinois, about 15 miles (24.14 kilometers) from Kenosha, was taken into custody in Illinois on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide in the attack Tuesday that was largely captured on cellphone video. The shooting left a third person wounded.
Stay up to date with the latest National coverage with WJMN Local 3
“I just killed somebody,” the gunman, carrying a semi-automatic rifle, could be heard saying at one point.
In the wake of the killings, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers authorized the deployment of 500 members of the National Guard to Kenosha, doubling the number of troops in the city of 100,000 midway between Milwaukee and Chicago. The governor’s office said he is working with other states to bring in additional National Guard members and law officers. Authorities also announced a 7 p.m. curfew, though protesters ignored it again Wednesday.
Protesters marched past the intersection where two people were shot Tuesday night, stopping to gather around the spot where one person was shot, and to pray and lay flowers. Daijon Spann said he decided to join the demonstration because one of those killed the night before was a friend.
“I couldn’t take it any more,” he said. “I couldn’t just sit there and watch my friend die.”
Evers, a Democrat, issued a statement asking those who wanted to exercise their First Amendment rights to “please do so peacefully and safely” and urging others to “please stay home and let local first responders, law enforcement and members of the Wisconsin National Guard do their jobs.”
“A senseless tragedy like this cannot happen again,” Evers said.
As of early Thursday, the protests were mostly peaceful, in contrast to the violent clashes that marked earlier nights of protests. There were no groups patrolling with long guns as they had on previous nights, and protesters stayed away from a courthouse that had been the site of standoffs with law enforcement.
3 shot, 2 killed in 3rd night of unrest over Blake shooting
In Washington, the Justice Department said it is sending in more than 200 federal agents from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The White House said up to 2,000 National Guard troops would be made available.
The dead were identified only as a 26-year-old Silver Lake, Wisconsin, resident and a 36-year-old from Kenosha. The wounded person, a 36-year-old from West Allis, Wisconsin, was expected to survive, police said.
“We were all chanting ‘Black lives matter’ at the gas station and then we heard, boom, boom, and I told my friend, `That’s not fireworks,’” 19-year-old protester Devin Scott told the Chicago Tribune. “And then this guy with this huge gun runs by us in the middle of the street and people are yelling, ‘He shot someone! He shot someone!’ And everyone is trying to fight the guy, chasing him, and then he started shooting again.”
Scott said he cradled a victim in his arms, and a woman started performing CPR, but “I don’t think he made it.”
According to witness accounts and video footage, police apparently let the gunman walk past them and leave the scene with a rifle over his shoulder and his hands in the air as members of the crowd were yelling for him to be arrested because he had shot people.
Father of black man shot by Kenosha police says son paralyzed from waist down
As for how the gunman managed to slip away, Sheriff David Beth described a chaotic, high-stress scene, with lots of radio traffic and people screaming, chanting and running — conditions he said can cause “tunnel vision” among law officers.
Rittenhouse was assigned a public defender in Illinois for a hearing Friday on his transfer to Wisconsin. The public defender’s office had no comment. Under Wisconsin law, anyone 17 or older is treated as an adult in the criminal justice system.
Much of Rittenhouse’s Facebook page is devoted to praising law enforcement, with references to Blue Lives Matter, a movement that supports police. He also can be seen holding an assault rifle.
In a photograph posted by his mother, he is wearing what appears to be a blue law enforcement uniform as well as the kind of brimmed hat that state troopers wear.
The sheriff told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that militia members or armed vigilantes had been patrolling Kenosha’s streets in recent nights, but he did not know if the gunman was among them. However, video taken before the shooting shows police tossing bottled water from an armored vehicle to what appear to be armed civilians walking the streets. And one of them appears to be the gunman.
“We appreciate you being here,” an officer is heard saying to the group over a loudspeaker.
Before the shooting, the conservative website The Daily Caller conducted a video interview with the suspected gunman in front of a boarded-up business.
“So people are getting injured, and our job is to protect this business,” the young man said. “And part of my job is to also help people. If there is somebody hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle — because I can protect myself, obviously. But I also have my med kit.”
Wisconsin Governor, Lt. Governor address Kenosha shooting
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black, said in an interview with the news program “Democracy Now!” that the shootings were not surprising and white militias have been ignored for too long.
“How many times across this country do you see armed gunmen, protesting, walking into state Capitols, and everybody just thinks it’s OK?” Barnes said. “People treat that like it’s some kind of normal activity that people are walking around with assault rifles.”
In Wisconsin, it is legal for people 18 and over to openly carry a gun without a license.
Witness accounts and video indicate the gunman first shot someone at a car lot just before midnight, then jogged away, fell in the street, and opened fire again as members of the crowd closed in on him.
A witness, Julio Rosas, 24, said that when the gunman stumbled, “two people jumped onto him and there was a struggle for control of his rifle. At that point during the struggle, he just began to fire multiple rounds, and that dispersed people near him.”
“The rifle was being jerked around in all directions while it was being fired,” Rosas said.
Blake, 29, was shot in the back seven times on Sunday as he leaned into his SUV, three of his children seated inside. Kenosha police have said little about what happened other than that they were responding to a domestic dispute.
On Wednesday, three days after the shooting, state authorities identified the officer who shot Blake as Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the Kenosha Police Department. Sheskey shot Blake while holding onto his shirt after officers first unsuccessfully used a Taser, the Wisconsin Justice Department said. State agents later recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard of the vehicle, the department said.
Kenosha delayed body cameras for years before Blake shooting
The man who said he made the widely circulated cellphone video of Blake’s shooting has said he heard officers yell, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” before the gunfire erupted. He said he didn’t see a knife in Blake’s hands.
State authorities did not say Blake threatened anyone with the knife.
On Tuesday, Ben Crump, the lawyer for Blake’s family, said it would “take a miracle” for Blake to walk again. He called for the officer who opened fire to be arrested and for the others involved to lose their jobs. State officials have announced no charges.
Vice President Mike Pence, speaking on the third night of the Republican convention, called for an end to violence in Kenosha and “law and order on the streets of this country for every American of every race and creed and color.” But Pence made no direct mention of Blake or other Black Americans shot or killed by police this year.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden posted a video saying he had spoken with Blake’s parents and other family members.
“What I saw on that video makes me sick,” Biden said. “Once again, a Black man, Jacob Blake, has been shot by the police in broad daylight, with the whole world watching.”
Elsewhere, the Minnesota governor activated the National Guard on Wednesday night to help quell unrest that broke out in downtown Minneapolis following what authorities said was misinformation about the suicide death of a Black homicide suspect. The unrest comes three months after the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer touched off a nationwide reckoning over racial injustice.
A motorist raises his fist in solidarity with a march protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
A protester takes cover during clashes outside the Kenosha County Courthouse late Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis., during a third night of unrest following the shooting of a Black man whose attorney said he was paralyzed after being shot multiple times by police. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
A protester takes cover during clashes outside the Kenosha County Courthouse late Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis. Protests continue following the police shooting of Jacob Blake two days earlier. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
A protester tosses an object toward police during clashes outside the Kenosha County Courthouse late Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis., on third night of unrest following the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, whose attorney said he was paralyzed after being shot multiple times by police. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Law enforcement in riot gear line up against protesters during clashes outside the Kenosha County Courthouse late Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis. Protests continue following the police shooting of Jacob Blake two days earlier. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
A person, front right, is consoled Wednesday night, Aug. 26, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis., as she talks about one of the two people who were fatally shot Tuesday night, whom she described as the “love of her life,” near the scene of Tuesday’s shooting. A white, 17-year-old police admirer was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of first-degree homicide in Tuesday’s shootings. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Delta Animal Shelter granted adoption rights from puppy mill investigation
Convalescent plasma therapy – COVID antibodies saving lives
James Fillmore
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Second stimulus check: Trump says ‘very generous’ payments could be announced soon
by: Nexstar Media Wire and Associated Press
With job losses and COVID-19 cases mounting across the country, President Trump said in an interview Monday that there will be a second round of stimulus payments to Americans.
“We will be doing another stimulus package,” President Trump said in an interview with a Scripps correspondent.
The president offered few details, however, saying only, “It will be very good. It’ll be very generous.”
When asked how much the payment might be, Trump said, “You’ll find out about it. You’ll find out.” Trump added that he thought the relief funds would receive bipartisan report and could be announced “over the next couple of weeks.”
VIDEO: President Trump commits to 2nd stimulus. He says details would be announced in the coming weeks. The President would not tell me how much of a check Americans will receive. pic.twitter.com/Abd5E8P3Au
— Joe St. George (@JoeStGeorge) June 22, 2020
A White House official told NBC News that no decisions had been made yet, but a second stimulus payments is “part of something the economic team is studying.”
In late March, President Trump signed a stimulus package into law that included one-time payments of up to $1,200 for eligible Americans. As the weeks have turned into months since the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was passed, many Americans are wondering if, and when, a second check or prepaid debit card will arrive as the pandemic continues.
One proposal currently on the table is the HEROES Act, a $3 trillion bill, that includes $275 billion for testing and healthcare worker hazard pay, and a trillion dollars for state and local governments.
The HEROES Act was passed by House Democrats in May and would offer another round of $1,200 checks to American adults and children. It also expands the number of people who are eligible to receive government aid by including college students and older teenagers. The payments would be capped at $6,000 per household.
Persistently high layoffs suggest a slow US economic rebound
Three months after the viral outbreak shut down businesses across the country, U.S. employers are still shedding jobs at a heavy rate, a trend that points to a slow and prolonged recovery from the recession.
The number of laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits barely fell last week to 1.5 million, the government said Thursday. That was down from a peak of nearly 7 million in March, and it marked an 11th straight weekly drop. But the number is still more than twice the record high that existed before the pandemic. And the total number of people receiving jobless aid remains a lofty 20.5 million.
The figures surprised and disappointed analysts who had expected far fewer people to seek unemployment aid as states increasingly reopen their economies and businesses recall some laid-off people back to work. The data also raised concerns that some recent layoffs may reflect permanent losses as companies restructure their businesses, rather than temporary cuts in response to government-ordered closures.
The report is “telling us that the scars from the job losses in the recession will be longer-lasting than we expected,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.
At the same time, Thursday’s figures may have raised as many questions about the state of the job market as they answered. Jobless claims generally tracks the pace of layoffs. But they provide little information about how much hiring is occurring that would offset those losses. In May, for example, employers added 2.5 million jobs — an increase that caught analysts off-guard because the number of applications for unemployment aid was still so high.
Some likely factors help explain why applications for jobless benefits remain so high even as businesses increasingly reopen and rehire some laid-off workers. For one thing, many businesses that deal face-to-face with customers — from restaurants and movie theaters to gyms and casinos — remain strictly limited to less-than-full capacity. Some of those establishments are still cutting jobs as a result.
Casinos in Louisiana, for example, can open at half-capacity. But Boyd Gaming Corp., which operates five casinos in the state, has informed 1,500 of its workers that with financial losses mounting, they could be laid off by early July.
And in some especially hard-hit sectors, like the hotel and travel industries, corporations are now slashing white-collar workers because their business remains far below pre-pandemic levels. This week, Hilton Hotels said it would cut 22% of its corporate global workforce — about 2,100 jobs.
Although consumer spending, the primary driver of the U.S. economy, is recovering from its low in mid-April, it remains far below its pre-pandemic level, according to data compiled by Opportunity Insights. That trend may be forcing changes at some companies that managed to withstand the initial shutdowns. AT&T, for instance, said this week that it plans to cut 3,400 technical and clerical workers over the next few weeks. It also plans to permanently close 250 of its Mobility and Cricket Wireless stores.
“We’re starting to see more job losses among higher-skilled positions that are harder to recall,” said Brad Hershbein, a senior economist at the Upjohn Institute.
And some states may still be clearing backlogs of applications from weeks or months ago.
Corinne Cook, who lives in Kissimmee, near Orlando, just received her first unemployment payment last week, after being laid-off from her job in mid-April. Cook, 28, moved to the area in September for an 18-month contract position as a 3-D modeler for Walt Disney, a job involving sculpting character prototypes that were printed on 3-D printers. She lost her job when the parks closed down.
She’s receiving the minimum state unemployment benefit from Florida, $125 a week, because the state has no record of her prior earnings in New Jersey, even though she said she has uploaded, mailed and faxed her documents from her job there. If her previous earnings were properly credited, her state benefits would more than double. She is grateful, though, for the extra $600 in federal unemployment benefits, which have allowed her to pay some bills.
Dealing with the state’s bureaucracy “was very stressful,” she said.
Daco of Oxford Economics said he still expects the June jobs report, to be released in early July, to show another hiring gain. But these figures will be particularly hard to forecast. Tens of millions of people may be flowing in and out of work each month, he noted, making it much more difficult to forecast where the job market is headed.
The jobs report for May had suggested that the damage might have bottomed out. The unemployment rate declined from 14.7% to a still-high 13.3%.
Even so, nearly 21 million people are officially classified as unemployed. And including people the government said had been erroneously categorized as employed in May and those who lost jobs but didn’t look for new ones, 32.5 million people are out of work, economists estimate.
Thursday’s report showed that an additional 760,000 people applied for jobless benefits last week under a new program for self-employed and gig workers that made them eligible for aid for the first time. These figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal variations, so the government doesn’t include them in the official count.
Other recent data have been more encouraging and suggest that the lifting of shutdown orders has sparked some pent-up demand from consumers. Most economic gauges remain far below their pre-pandemic levels, though, and some analysts question whether the recent gains can be sustained, especially if the virus were to surge back.
Last month, retail and restaurant sales jumped nearly 18%, the government said Tuesday, retracing some of the record plunges of the previous two months. Still, retail purchases remain a sizable 6% below their year-ago levels.
One key reason why consumer spending has somewhat rebounded is that government aid programs, from one-time $1,200 stimulus checks to $600-a-week in supplemental federal unemployment aid, have helped offset the loss of income for laid-off Americans. Yet nearly all the stimulus checks have been issued. And the supplemental federal jobless aid is set to expire July 31.
“Recently, some indicators have pointed to a stabilization, and in some areas a modest rebound, in economic activity,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday in testimony to a Senate committee. Yet “until the public is confident that the disease is contained, a full recovery is unlikely.”
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AppointmentsEditor's PicksNorth Wales Growth Bid
Ambition Board unveils new Programme Director to lead £1bn North Wales Growth Deal
By Rhys Gregory October 31, 2019
Alwen Williams, former Director of BT Wales, is the new Programme Director for the North Wales Growth Deal.
ALWEN WILLIAMS is “coming home” to help drive forward the £1bn North Wales Growth Deal.
After 24 years with telecoms giant BT, Alwen will begin a new role as Programme Director for North Wales Economic Ambition Board in January.
Originally from Gwytherin, near Llangernyw, she is looking forward to leading a Programme Office that will coordinate the Growth Deal from 2020 onwards.
Now living in Mold with husband Damian, Alwen is relishing the challenge and eager to get started.
“It is a big step leaving BT and the private sector after almost a quarter of a century, but this is the right position at the right time,” said Alwen.
“I get to come home after being away for many years. Personally, this has always been home but professionally I’ve been in Cardiff and London for more than a decade so it will be fantastic to return.”
She added: “I’m very excited about the programmes and already feel invested in the vision because I am from the region and determined to help make it a success.
“It matters to me in every sense, particularly boosting the North Wales economy.”
Currently Senior Area Manager for BT Openreach in London and the South East, and previously Director of BT Wales, Alwen says the digital connectivity programme is one close to her heart.
However, the former pupil at Ysgol Dyffryn Conwy, Llanrwst, insists every project is of significant value to the six counties.
“In my work with BT I have always been on the private sector side of the table; this role means collaborating with all industries, working to bring about jobs, revenue and having a positive impact on the environment, transport, education and many other areas,” said Alwen.
“The key themes support long-term economic growth, so the challenge is to channel them in partnership with our stakeholders.
“Led by the Ambition Board – which has worked so hard to get to this point – and alongside the UK and Welsh Governments, the sense of collaboration and unity that has been fostered throughout gives us a firm foundation on which to move ahead.”
Alwen is also keen to garner further feedback and consult with myriad arenas and the general public.
“The Growth Deal and wider vision for North Wales is not a one-way dialogue, it’s an opportunity to involve all of the citizens who live here and encourage real discussion on what works for them,” said Alwen.
“North Wales is a great place in which to invest, and as we put the infrastructure of the programmes in place that engagement will be crucial.”
She added: “The £240m committed by the UK and Welsh governments is a small proportion of the overall £1bn ambition, so we will be aiming to garner more investment from the private sector and do so in a strategic way, so we see growth across multiple industries.”
Among the other roles that will make up the Programme Office will be a Digital Programme Manager, an Energy Programme Manager, a Land and Property Programme Manager and an Operations Manager.
They will help to oversee programmes in low carbon energy, advanced manufacturing, land-based industries (agriculture and tourism), land and property, skills and employment, digital connectivity, and strategic transport, which will have a positive impact on tens of thousands of households, businesses and organisations across the region.
“When we have the team in place, we can start to sharpen plans and bring the projects to fruition,” said Alwen.
“We aren’t going cap in hand to businesses, it’s about working together for the economic benefit of the entire region, and future generations.”
She added: “The Ambition Board and I want people to come along with us on this journey.
“There are challenges ahead but I’m passionate about the Growth Deal and confident in the programmes and themes they’ve put forward; there is a fire in my belly, and I can’t wait to get started.”
Dyfrig Siencyn, chair of the Ambition Board and Leader of Gwynedd Council, welcomed Alwen and said she will be an inspiring figurehead for the Growth Deal.
“Alwen has made her mark on the private sector in her many years with BT, and I’m sure she will do the same as Programme Director,” said Cllr Siencyn.
“She is engaging, a strategic thinker and her love for North Wales shines through. I look forward to working with her and on behalf of the Ambition Board would like to congratulate her on this pivotal new role.”
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Editor's PicksEducation
How GCSEs and A-levels will be assessed this summer in Wales
By Rhys Gregory March 27, 2020
Credit: Welsh Government
The Education Minister, Kirsty Williams, has announced how current Year 10 and 12 learners in Wales will be assessed, as alternative arrangements are introduced following the outbreak of the coronavirus and the cancellation of summer exams.
The Minister has decided that Year 10 and 12 students who were due to sit exams this summer will not be required to sit these exams at a later date.
The Minister’s decision was based on detailed consideration of the options available and advice from Qualifications Wales and the Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC).
AS levels
In Wales, as well as being stand-alone qualifications, AS levels also contribute to A level qualifications. AS units are usually taken in Year 12, with A2 units taken in Year 13.
This year’s AS learners will still receive an AS grade. However, it will be calculated using a range of evidence, including teacher assessed grades.
In summer 2021, current AS learners will have two options for their A level award. They will choose whether to:
only sit the A2 units, with the A level grade based on their performance in the A2 units;
or sit both the AS and A2 units. They will be awarded the best grade from either route.
Year 10 learners who were due to sit exams that would have led to a GCSE this summer will be issued a grade in the same way as those in Year 11. The grade will be based on evidence including teacher assessments during the academic year to date.
Those who were due to sit units that will lead to GCSE results next summer will not receive a unit result. Instead, those learners will have two choices, to either:
sit only the units they plan to take in summer 2021, with their GCSE grade based on that performance only;
or sit the Year 10 units in summer 2021, along with the Year 11 units. They will be awarded the best grade from either route.
Kirsty Williams said:
“In these unprecedented times, it’s vital we provide as much certainty to young people as we can, especially those who were due to sit important exams this summer. This has not been an easy decision, but I’m confident these measures for Years 10 and 12 are the best way forward and will provide clarity for those students who were anxious about how their hard work would be recognised.
“Since the decision to close schools and cancel this summer’s exams, we have worked as quickly as possible to develop the detailed information students need.
“I would like to thank students for their patience and I will continue to provide updates to students as soon as I can.”
Philip Blaker, Chief Executive Qualifications Wales, said:
“We welcome the Minister’s decision, which provides greater clarity on this summer’s exams for everyone involved in these qualifications. In very difficult circumstances we think this offers the best approach for learners studying for AS and those in Year 10.
“Beyond this, there is more work happening to find solutions across other qualifications. We remain focused on doing the right thing to protect learners at this disruptive time and we will continue to update as often as we possibly can.”
Ian Morgan, Chief Executive of WJEC:
“Following the Minister’s decision last week about school closures and the cancellation of this summer’s exams, we have been working closely with Qualifications Wales to consider the impact for all learners.
“We welcome today’s announcement on the options available to year 10 and 12 learners. We will work as swiftly as possible to put all the necessary actions in place and ensure that learners receive recognition for all their hard work, are treated fairly and receive the qualifications they deserve.”
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VVN Music
Looking Back at the Music of the Last 65 Years
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Passings: Iain Shedden, Australian Music Writer and Member of The Saints
by Paul Cashmere, Noise11
Iain Shedden, the music writer for The Australian and one time member of The Saints, has died at the age of 60.
Shedden had been with The Australian since 1993 and was the drummer for The Saints in 1982, 1984-1985, 1988-1990, 2002, 2004 and 2016 until now.
Iain played on The Saints albums I Thought This Was Love, But This Ain’t Casablanca (1982), A Little Madness To Be Free (1984) and Prodigal Son (1988).
In the U.S., the Saints are best known for the songs "Grain of Sand" and "The Music Goes Around My Head", both from Prodigal Son, which made the Alternative top twenty in 1988 and 1989.
Iain Shedden was born in Scotland. He started his musical career with his band The Jolt at age 17. The band moved to London after being signed to Polydor. After the band split Iain joined the Small Hours with bass player Kym Bradshaw. That lead to a meeting with Chris Bailey who recruited him into The Saints.
In 1992 Iain moved to Sydney. He is survived by his wife Christine and daughters Molly and Conor.
-Passings- Iain Shedden Passings Saints
Labels: -Passings- Iain Shedden Passings Saints
The Top Albums by Veteran Artists of 2020
The following are the albums by veteran artists that have placed the best on over 100 year end charts:
Fetch the Bolt Cutters - Fiona Apple
Rough & Rowdy Ways - Bob Dylan
Ohms - Deftones
The Ascension - Sufjan Stevens
Copyright 2020 by The VVN Network
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Here’s What Sergeant’s Lawsuit Against Onondaga Sheriff’s Office Must Prove
A sergeant with the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office is suing the department, with a 70-page lawsuit outlining allegations of improper arrests, illegal seizures, false record-keeping, sexual misconduct and racially-motivated behavior.
Kevin Murphy claims that the department is violating the state’s whistleblower act and also violating his right to freedom of speech.
The lawsuit states that after reporting alleged wrongdoings, other deputies retaliated against Murphy. Court documents claim he was denied promotions, duties were taken away and he was forced to work at a location further from his home.
We spoke with Gerald Raymond, a lawyer at Tully Rinckey, who says this is a wide-ranging lawsuit not only alleging negligence within the department, but also that people there acted intentionally.
“You have to go a step further. Negligence means you weren’t careful enough, but if you are alleged to commit what we could call an intentional tort, you have to show that somebody deliberately tried to, that there were also allegations of conspiracy to inflict stress on him,” Raymond said.
Lawyers at Tully Rinckey say proving there was intention would require concrete evidence.
We reached out to Murphy’s lawyer who would not share details about the lawsuit. We also contacted County representatives and the County’s Law Office, but they would not comment on pending litigation.
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Ernest Race
Ernest Race (1913 - 1964) was a key figure in early twentieth-century British design. He was born in Newcastle and studied interior design at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. He first worked as a designer for London lighting manufacturer Troughton & Young before establishing his own company, Race Fabrics, to produce and sell his textile designs.
After the war, Race founded Ernest Race Ltd (subsequently renamed Race Furniture) to manufacture his own furniture designs. The company was to produce some of the most iconic designs of the post-war era, including the BA3 and the Antelope chairs.
The BA3 chair was the first design issued by Race Furniture. In keeping with the government's Utility Furniture scheme, the chair was made of re-cast aluminium from now redunant British fighter planes, while parachute silk was often used as upholstery fabric.
The Antelope chair was designed for the 1951 Festival of Britain for use on the terrace of the Royal Festival Hall. In 1955 the BA3 and Antelope chairs won both Gold and Silver medals at the Salone di Milano, a first for British furniture design.
Race's designs are notable for their light and often playfully curvaceous, their innovative use of new materials and manufacturing technologies and their distinctive names: the Flamingo, Heron and Antelope and Roebuck chairs number among his designs. His works are now held in the permanent collections of the V&A Museum in London and MOMA, New York.
Filter Armchairs Rocking Chairs Shelving Side Chairs Side Tables Stackable Chairs Storage With Backrests
Manufacturer Isokon Plus Race Furniture
With backrests
Isokon plus
Race furniture
Penguin Donkey Mark 2, 1963
Bottleship Mark 2, 1963
Roebuck chair, 1951
Race Rocker, 1948
From £994 £1,170
Antelope Bench, 1951
From £1,060 £1,248
Gazelle Standard, 1951
BA2 armchair, 1945
BA2 side chair, 1945
Antelope Standard chair , 1951
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By the early 2000s, which country was Taiwan's third-largest trading partner? A. United States B. Japan C. South Korea D. China
By the early 2000s, the United States was Taiwan's third-largest trading partner.
Question|Asked by bellemortexx
Confirmed by jeifunk [11/14/2015 8:57:00 AM]
Questions asked by bellemortexx
The position of a place north or south of the equator is measured in A. terms of relative location. B. degrees of latitude. C. meridians of latitude. D. terms proportional distance.
Weegy: The position of a place north or south of the equator is measured in degrees of latitude. (More)
As of the year 2009, how many people around the globe lived outside their country of birth? A. 700 million B. 100 million C. 50 million D. 200 million
Weegy: As of the year 2009, 200 million people around the globe lived outside their country of birth. (More)
After Stalin died in 1953, the number of people sent to the gulag A. decreased dramatically. B. remained about the same. C. decreased slightly. D. actually increased.
Weegy: After Stalin died in 1953, the number of people sent to the gulag DECREASED DRAMATICALLY. (More)
Economic growth that assures basic resources for future generations is associated with _______ human development. A. ecological B. sustainable C. modern D. "growth pole"
Weegy: Economic growth that assures basic resources for future generations is associated with sustainable human development. (More)
Which of the following ethnic groups have suffered a long history of discrimination in Japan? A. Xinjiang B. Uygurs C. Falun Gong D. Ainu
Weegy: The Ainu have suffered a long history of discrimination in Japan. (More)
See all questions asked by bellemortexx
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1960sThe Man From UNCLE
did u know that James Bond creator, Ian Fleming contributed to this show's creation? . .the two-man spy team of Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) and Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn), always kept in tow by Alexander Waverly, the British head of the organization.
Tags: tv man from uncle robert vaughn david mccallum leo carroll espionage
Added: 6th July 2007
Posted By: Marie
1960sTroll
. . .and, i was just saying that i 'didn't get' the fascination with Cabbage Patch Dolls!! but i loved these! "Troll dolls, originally known as Leprocauns and also known as Dam dolls, Wishniks, Treasure Trolls, and Norfins, became one of America's biggest toy fads beginning in the autumn of 1963, and lasting throughout 1965. With their brightly colored hair and cute faces, they were featured in both Life Magazine and Time Magazine in articles which commented on the "good luck" they would bring to their owners."
Tags: toys troll doll
1970sBilly Preston
Craig Powerplay car stereo ad featuring Billy Preston. . . and i HATE to admit that i didn't know who he was!! i just liked the car and the 'do'!! but here's a little info on him: William Everett Preston (September 2, 1946 – June 6, 2006) was an American soul musician from Houston, Texas, raised mostly in Los Angeles, California. In addition to his successful, Grammy-winning career as a solo artist, Preston collaborated with some of the greatest names in the music industry, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Little Richard, Ray Charles, George Harrison, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, Sammy Davis Jr., Sly Stone, Aretha Franklin, the Jackson 5, Quincy Jones, Richie Sambora, and Red Hot Chili Peppers... MAN!! what a gig!
Tags: ad craig powerplay stereo billy preston
1970sTootsie Roll Mr. Owl
Tags: Tootsie Roll Mr. Owl "How many licks..."
Posted By: Chris
1970sCharlie Rich - Rollin With The Flow
Charlie Rich had so much more talent than he was given credit for, he was a genius when it came to the piano, wrote and played not only country music, but blues and jazz as well. Here's one of his hits from the 70's that we hardly ever get to hear anymore.
Tags: charlie rich country blues arkansas
Added: 1st August 2007
1970s All In The Family 1971 To 1979
The dysfunctional family that America couldn't help but love. For Archie and Edith it was business as usual.
Tags: all in the family carroll oconner
1960sClancy The Great Roller Skating Monkey By Ideal Toys 1962
Ideal Toys introduced Clancy in 1962 and sales took off! Even grouchy old coots would crack a smile watching Clancy in action!!! Toss a coin in Clancy's hat and he'll skate towards you, or you could hold his hand and he'd skate as you walked along. Another GREAT Ideal toy. Like the jingle says, "It's a Wonderful Toy, It's IDEAL!"
Tags: Monkey Skating Ideal Toys Classic
1970sELVIS Suspicious Minds Live From Hawaii
At this time in his life, I think Elvis was at his best. This song was widely regarded as the single that jump-started his career after his successful '68 Comeback Special. It was his eighteenth number-one single in the United States. Rolling Stone later ranked it #91 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Not bad for a country boy from Mississippi.
Tags: elvis presley music entertainers Suspicious Minds Live From Hawaii
1960sJIMMY JET
Probably the earliest flight simulator ever made for kids and one of the greatest toys ever made! Made by the "Deluxe Reading" toy company in the early 1960's, and sold mainly in supermarkets. (You could also get them by mail-order from the old Spiegel catalog and other mail-order firms as well.) You controlled the steering with a yoke as your jet flew over moving terrain, (a rotating scenery cylinder,) controlling your airspeed as you lined up a "target," then fired (actual) rubber-tipped missiles by pulling the two missile-launching levers. Enough dials, levers, chrome and noise to delight any young fighter pilot! It was a blast knocking down my little green army men with the missiles! It used 4 'D' batteries.
Tags: Jimmy Deluxe
1960s Sonny And Cher In Their Glory
Salvatore Sonny Bono started out in Los Angeles at Specialty Records as a songwriter in the late 1950s. In 1963, while working on sessions with Phil Spector, he met a 16 year old, would be singer named Cherilyn Sarkasian Lapierre at a coffee shop next to a Los Angeles radio station. She had previously recorded Ringo, I Love You, produced by Phil Spector, under the name Bonnie Jo Mason. Although Sonny was married to Donna Rankin, with whom he had a daughter, his interest in Cher grew until he eventually ended his marriage. Sonny and Cher were later married and although she was reluctant, the pair formed a professional duo, initially known as Caesar and Cleo. For a time, from 1965 until 1967, they were rock and roll's hottest couple, so much so that in some conservative communities they were considered almost morally subversive. Parents locked up their kids when Sonny and Cher were passing through for a concert appearance. Then, as quickly as they started, the hits stopped coming. Later, they ended up with a summer replacement try-out show that did so well that Sonny and Cher were given a regular spot in the CBS lineup in January 1972, with a comedy-variety series. Their recording career was revived initially by a live album, cut in one night in Las Vegas, featuring new versions of their early hits as well as parts of their current repertory. The album went gold. The next couple of singles by Cher, and Sonny and Cher failed, but producer Snuff Garrett, who had been at Liberty when Cher was there, but had never worked with her, was brought in, and the result was Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, a number one hit that revived their career. After that, The Way of Love, All I Ever Need Is You, A Cowboy's Work Is Never Done, Half Breed, and Dark Lady kept either Cher or the couple in the Top Ten at various times through 1974. By then, however, their marriage had fallen apart, and with it, the success of their TV show.
Tags: sonny and cher music
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YouthCake
Musical Scenes in Non-Musicals
Minor spoilers for The Lego Movie series, Shrek 2, Back to the Future, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and The Mask
By film editor, Ajay Ascano
A few weekends back, I saw the sequel to 2014’s The Lego Movie: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the jokes in the film (most of which probably flew over many of the kids’ heads.) However, there was one major gripe of the film that made me cringe:
Its singing.
Now, I’m not dissing the singing talents of Will Arnett or Tiffany Haddish, but these scenes were definitely the epitome of pandering to a child audience. For context: a lot of people definitely saw the first film as a movie intended for a broader audience age range.
Another factor of my distaste of certain musical segments in films is the lack of realism. If it plays well into the plot and is not forced, it can generally be a good addition.
So, here I am to compare and contrast musical scenes in non-musical movies. Of course, these are my opinions, so what I may feel was awkward might be different than others.
“Johnny B. Goode” - Back to the Future
While not necessarily contributing to the plot, this scene in Back to the Future (1985), is a good example of just a random music sample. Going on for about 3 minutes, it’s placed amongst the other scenes haphazardly.
For me, the only memorable part of this scene is the revelation that Marty McFly was Chuck Berry’s inspiration to make the song. Otherwise, it does feel a bit forced to have this clip of Michael J. Fox rocking out on stage for so long.
While not as forced as The Lego Movie 2’s multiple singing parts, it still could have been time well-used.
“I Need A Hero” - Shrek 2
Shrek 2, regarded as one of the few sequels to break the “sequels can’t be just as good as the first” curse. I don’t think it’s the nostalgia that fuels my enjoyment of this scene, but rather how memorable the scenery in the climax was. For context, Shrek’s wife, Princess Fiona, was captured and being forced to remarry another Prince. The film then follows Shrek as he races to stop this event from happening.
The title of the song spells it out. “I Need A Hero” symbolizes exactly what the situation calls for. Unlike “Johnny B. Goode” in Back to the Future, the song was actually covered specifically for its film.
Overall, the upbeat remix of the song works well in tandem with the visuals, making this a noteworthy musical scene.
“Cuban Pete” - The Mask
Now, we arrive at Jim Carrey’s performance in The Mask (1994). Under the namesake guise of “The Mask,” Carrey’s character is being pressured by cops for some mischievous activities. So, to counteract the entire police-force, he begins to play and sing a samba mix of “Cuban Pete,” originally recorded by Louis Armstrong in the ‘30s.
The interactions in this scene are well choreographed as the protagonist uses the Mask to bend reality through the use of song and dance.
“Mr. Blue Sky” - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Finally, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite opening scenes in recent movies. GotG Vol. 2 opens up with the Guardians battling a giant alien monster, save for Groot. Groot, now basically a child, plugs in the aux cord from a Walkman to some speakers. Muting most of the fights sound, we focus on the fight from tiny Groot’s perspective.
Each one of the Guardians has an interaction with him as he dances around the battle platform. He even takes on his own monster. This scene is just overall a great counterpart to the first film, which does approximately the same, but only with Star-Lord, played by Chris Pratt.
So, to those who wish to use a musical scene in a non-musical:
If it’s not used in an interesting or original way,
you probably shouldn’t use it.
Ajay Ascano, film editor
Tags: film
wow😳😍
A virtual anthology based in the South Bay. We display a variety of ideas from local youth, with emphasis on the arts, social justice, and minority voices.
Stop Fetishizing Gay People
Fetishization is not allyship. By politics editor, Cameron Price
The Art of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Credit to Sony Pictures for these images. (Visual and minor spoilers from the film) By film editor, Ajay Ascano
By April Owens This poem was published in the 2018 edition of Myriad, El Camino College’s literary magazine.
The Soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
Campus Insider: Williams College
By Diana Meza, academics editor Hi everyone! As all you seniors know, college application season is well underway, so here’s the fir...
Get to Know Me: Politics Co-Editor
Cameron Price (Left) /Getty Images - David McNew/ I am Cameron and I am your politics co-editor!
Don't Call Us Queer
A hot take on a controversial issue. By politics editor, Cameron Price
Arts in Action: Summer DanceLab
via dancemetrodc.org What role do the arts play in the lives of young people today? Here’s a short take on what’s happening in the ar...
Minor spoilers for The Lego Movie series, Shrek 2, Back to the Future, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and The Mask By film editor, Aja...
Under the Microscope: Flipside With Lana Del Rey
See more of my work here Queen of the Tumblr generation or of the romanticized, "Sad Girl" façade? "Under the Microscope&...
INTRODUCING: EXTRA PRESSURE.
Into the New World
Peering Out Through a Window
Essential Political Songs
The 2000's Superhero Phenomenon
Created By BeautyTemplates.
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My Sister Susan
- Written by John Clothier, 'Dad'
On the day I was born my elder sister Susan Mary was already 15 years old and about to leave Bruton School for girls to start two years practical work in our cheese dairy before taking on a Cheesemaking course at Cannington College near Bridgewater.
Susan was very lucky at the time to get on the Cheesemaking Course at Cannington as they were run by Miss K. D. Maddever who was one of the greatest teachers of practical cheesemaking ever to grace the West Country Cheddar arena. K.D. as she was known to some of her closest associates, had the great gift of being an incredibly clever person, and had the ability to impart some of that greatness into the students that were lucky enough to gain entry to her courses.
Being born 15 years later than Susan, I cannot really remember properly meeting her until she was 18 or 19 years old and almost at the end of her Cannington training. I must have been almost as much of a pain to Susan as I was to Jim in a way, as she was kind enough to let me into her very “grown up” world sometimes. This would involve taking me to the Cinema to see Laurel and Hardy, George Formby who was a great favourite, as he played Banjo with great skill, and numerous Cowboy stars such as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Tex Ritter and others, all of whom sang by the way, these Guys were known as the Singing Cowboys, and I absolutely loved their work which was great entertainment for a lad like me. Their world of fancy cowboy outfits, horses and very decorative Sixguns gave me an introduction to my love of Country Music which some of you will know that I still like to sing and play a little.
Music and the ability to remember songs and sing along to the memories, have been an amazing help to me during the more difficult times of life, and the somewhat lonely task of milking cows on one’s own, tractor driving before cabs and radios, and generally doing farm chores in the darker days of winter’s early or late hours.
Anyway Susan, like Jim was very patient with me and my interminable questions about everything she was doing and where she was going, and the world of two much older siblings was absolutely fascinating, for an inquisitive little so and so like me, and I couldn’t wait to be able to do all of the things that they could do.
After her K. D. Maddever training Susan became a very proficient cheese maker and quickly gained the skills of making consistently good cheddar, which was incredibly difficult in those days, without the technical sophistication which we are now able to call on. She also managed to win the greatest prize that our little business had won to that date, which was the Reserve Champion Cheddar at the Frome Cheese Show. As the Frome Cheese Show was the greatest showcase of its time for the hundreds of Farmhouse Cheesemakers of their era this was a great honour, and one which everyone at Wyke Champflower rejoiced in and remembered for many, many years.
Later on after she married Mr. Norton Look she went on to become an expert Double Gloucester Cheese maker for their little business.
As you can feel I am very proud of my family’s hard won expertise as Cheesemakers and even more proud that this business skill, has been carried forward to the current generation of Clothiers and that we are among the few survivors of three thousand Farm based Cheesemakers who were around when my mother started taking lessons from her mother.
Next time …..my early lessons in business and economics at the Wyke Champflower School of the same!
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Romania’s Transgaz has purchased Moldova’s Vestmoldtransgaz
World Pipelines, Friday, 30 March 2018 11:00
This week, in the presence of the Minister of Economy of the Republic of Moldova, Mr. Chiril Gaburici and the Minister of Economy of Romania, Mr. Danut Andrusca, Transgaz’ Director General, Mr. Ion Sterian, the representatives of Eurotransgaz Ltd, and of the Chisinau authorities signed the contract for the sale-purchase of the State Enterprise Vestmoldtransgaz.
The event marks the end of a stage in the privatisation process of SE Vestmoldtransgaz through an investment contest and outlines one of the most significant transactions recently made by the Government of the Republic of Moldova, for a purchase price of 180.2 million Moldovan lei (US$10.9 million/€8.8 million) and an investment plan of up to €93 million over the next two years.
The Minister of Economy and Infrastructure of the Republic of Moldova, Mr. Chiril Gaburici, underlined that “by signing this contract, we may surely state that we have taken another major step towards the construction of a very important infrastructure project for Moldova. Through this privatisation announced by the Moldovan authorities at the end of October 2017, Transgaz, and I dare say, the Romanian state confirmed its good and serious intentions to contribute to increasing the security of our country's natural gas supply. This project will implicitly contribute to the increase in the energy security of the Republic of Moldova during an extremely difficult period in which the diversification of the energy supplies, especially natural gas, is currently a very topical issue. Moreover, the Ungheni-Chisinau pipeline will allow the national authorities to meet one of their priority goals in sectoral strategies – to lay the foundations for a real gas market.”
In the context of the contract signing ceremony, Transgaz’ Director General, Mr. Ion Sterian stated that the event: “is a step forward to create the proper conditions underlying the construction of the gas pipeline Ungheni-Chisinau, with all relevant milestones defined and approved under the FEED, which will offer higher flexibility to the Republic of Moldova in the selection of optimum gas sources and routes to supply the domestic consumers.”
Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/30032018/romanias-transgaz-has-purchased-moldovas-vestmoldtransgaz/
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Absence From Berkshire Filing Sends Wells Fargo Stock Lower
Shares of Wells Fargo & Co. fell about 5% Thursday after word filtered through the market that Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Warren Buffett's investment company, no longer held the stock as of June 30.
A Thursday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission indicates that investor Warren Buffett may have liquidated his investment stakes in Wells Fargo, General Dynamics Corp. and Torchmark Corp., according to Federal Filings Business News, a unit of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and its interactive edition.
The filing, which lists the holdings of Berkshire Hathaway, does not include the three companies. They all appeared in a similar Berkshire filing for the previous quarter.
In trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Wells Fargo shares fell $13 to $254.50.
However, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman, said Berkshire Hathaway remains a "substantial stockholder" in the company and had only sought "confidential treatment" for its Wells Fargo holdings. It's unclear whether Berkshire sought the same treatment for its General Dynamics and Torchmark holdings.
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NOWCAST Pittsburgh's Action News 4 at Noon
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COVID-19 in Pennsylvania: Tracking cases, deaths and latest restrictions Breaking News: Sign up for our Coronavirus & Rossen Reports Newsletters <% if ( weatherAlerts > 0 ) { %> Severe Weather <% var weatherAlertsMessage = "There " + ( weatherAlerts > 1 ? "are" : "is" ) + " currently " + weatherAlerts + " active weather " + ( weatherAlerts > 1 ? "alerts" : "alert" ); %>
81-year-old tropical reef fish is the oldest discovered by scientists
Updated: 12:53 PM EST Dec 3, 2020
By Sara Spary, CNN
For years, experts have warned about the destruction of coral reefs due to global warming and the acidification of our oceans. But in a time when bleached and sometimes dying reefs are becoming all the more common, researchers recently discovered a massive, detached portion of the Great Barrier Reef growing. And not only is it size a staggering 1640 ft tall, taller than the Empire State Building, but it's also surprisingly healthy, even after a bleaching event in the area in 2016, we didn't see any evidence or bleaching or even damage from that bleaching event. That's not to say it hasn't occurred, but to our eyes, here we are. Four years later, what we saw instead was quite a thriving coral reef and sponge community, probably more fish than we've seen on any of the other RV dives, a real blizzard or fish over the summit. And while there are seven other detached portions of the Great Barrier Reef, all of those have been mapped since the late 18 hundreds, making this one a particular surprise. 120 years later, this one resides just over 3.5 miles from the bulk of the Great Barrier Reef and Ecosystem, which spans an area half the size of Texas, with the highest portion of the newly discovered annex still 131 ft underwater. UNESCO has deemed the Great Barrier Reef a World Heritage site, listing it as the largest and most spectacular coral reef on earth.
Video above: Coral reef taller than the Empire State Building discovered in Australian watersScientists have discovered what they say is the oldest tropical reef fish recorded anywhere in the world — an 81-year-old midnight snapper caught off the coast of Western Australia.The octogenarian fish, which is old enough to have lived through World War II, was found by the Australian Institute of Marine Science at the Rowley Shoals, about 186 miles west of Broome, as part of a study into the longevity of tropical fish.Researchers looked at three species they said were not commonly targeted by commercial or recreational fishing in Western Australia and the Chagos Archipelago in the central Indian Ocean. The species included red bass, midnight snapper and black and white snapper.The 81-year-old midnight snapper was identified alongside 10 other fish over the age of 60, including a 79-year-old red bass that was also caught in the Rowley Shoals — an area spanning three coral reefs at the edge of Australia's continental shelf.Marine scientists determined the age of the fish by dissecting them and studying their ear bones, or otoliths, which contain annual growth bands that can be counted in a similar way as tree rings.Brett Taylor, a fish biologist who led the study, said the midnight snapper beat the previous record holder by two decades."Until now, the oldest fish that we've found in shallow, tropical waters have been around 60 years old," he said."We've identified two different species here that are becoming octogenarians and probably older."Taylor said the research would help scientists understand how fish length and age will be affected by climate change."We're observing fish at different latitudes with varying water temperatures to better understand how they might react when temperatures warm everywhere," he said.The octogenarian fish is not the oldest sea-dwelling creature to exist.Greenland sharks, which are native to Arctic seas, are the longest-living vertebrate on Earth. University of Copenhagen researchers estimated that these sharks live to at least 400 years, nearly two centuries longer than the whales.
Video above: Coral reef taller than the Empire State Building discovered in Australian waters
Scientists have discovered what they say is the oldest tropical reef fish recorded anywhere in the world — an 81-year-old midnight snapper caught off the coast of Western Australia.
The octogenarian fish, which is old enough to have lived through World War II, was found by the Australian Institute of Marine Science at the Rowley Shoals, about 186 miles west of Broome, as part of a study into the longevity of tropical fish.
Researchers looked at three species they said were not commonly targeted by commercial or recreational fishing in Western Australia and the Chagos Archipelago in the central Indian Ocean. The species included red bass, midnight snapper and black and white snapper.
The 81-year-old midnight snapper was identified alongside 10 other fish over the age of 60, including a 79-year-old red bass that was also caught in the Rowley Shoals — an area spanning three coral reefs at the edge of Australia's continental shelf.
Marine scientists determined the age of the fish by dissecting them and studying their ear bones, or otoliths, which contain annual growth bands that can be counted in a similar way as tree rings.
'It's working!': Officials thrilled to see animals using highway wildlife overpass in Utah
Brett Taylor, a fish biologist who led the study, said the midnight snapper beat the previous record holder by two decades.
"Until now, the oldest fish that we've found in shallow, tropical waters have been around 60 years old," he said.
"We've identified two different species here that are becoming octogenarians and probably older."
Taylor said the research would help scientists understand how fish length and age will be affected by climate change.
WATCH: Zoo shares ultrasound video of baby elephant due in February 2022
"We're observing fish at different latitudes with varying water temperatures to better understand how they might react when temperatures warm everywhere," he said.
The octogenarian fish is not the oldest sea-dwelling creature to exist.
Greenland sharks, which are native to Arctic seas, are the longest-living vertebrate on Earth. University of Copenhagen researchers estimated that these sharks live to at least 400 years, nearly two centuries longer than the whales.
WTAE Pittsburgh
©2021, Hearst Television Inc. on behalf of WTAE-TV.
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A Neighbor Describes What Happened When Law Enforcement Stopped Responding to an Armed Encampment in North Portland
He lives less than a block from the occupation, inside the blockades used to seal off neighborhood streets from police.
(Mick Hangland-Skill)
By Tess Riski |
Few recent events in Portland have drawn as much national attention as the Red House Eviction Defense. The armed occupation of three blocks of North Mississippi Avenue interrupted the foreclosure seizure of the "Red House," the home of the Kinneys, a Black and Indigenous family facing eviction during winter amid the pandemic.
The standoff has become a flashpoint of gentrification, racial inequity and radical activism in Portland. The occupiers initially arrived in the neighborhood in early September. But the occupation grew significantly in size and energy after Multnomah County sheriff's deputies and Portland police officers, following a court order, arrived in the early morning hours of Dec. 8 to evict the Kinneys.
Few people had as closer a view of the occupation as a man living near the Red House. That neighbor reached out to WW to respond to our account of the eviction defense ("Beyond the Barricades," Dec. 16, 2020). He asked not to be identified out of fear of political reprisal, but WW independently confirmed he lives less than a block from the encampment, inside the blockades used to seal off neighborhood streets from police. This is his story, as told to WW reporter Tess Riski.
Between 7 and 9 am on Dec. 8, a large crowd of individuals started to build after they got the news about the eviction. And it grew and it grew. The police were slowly drawing down. That crowd came through the backyard of an adjacent house, and they were throwing bottles and rocks and bricks and paint balloons at the police and screaming at them and threatening them about the eviction.
Police backed down the hill because they were outnumbered by the number of protesters. They pushed the police down into the street, down by the Mississippi Triangle, and they surrounded them.
I thought they were going to beat the cops in the street, and it was one of the scariest things I've seen in real life. I had never seen anything like that in America. At that moment, I was like: This is completely spun out of control, and this is really dangerous.
Then the large group went back to the Red House, and more people came in and they began to rip down the fence on the property. They went inside the house themselves and started pulling stuff out to build the barricades. They started carrying out refrigerators and washers and dryers.
They blocked the alleys and they blocked the side street of my house. They wouldn't allow us to move our cars because they had fully barricaded us in. They said they had basically claimed the area and we weren't able to leave.
On Saturday last week, an individual went around and broke the Ring cameras off of people's front doors, on their doorbells, with a crowbar.
It was just a huge, huge, raging party occupation: giant bonfires on the hill, bonfires everywhere in the street. They built the barricades. They had weapons behind it. They had bottles and rocks and Molotov cocktails and all that stuff.
They had sentries, essentially, that are posted up there. They had an individual with an assault rifle positioned right next to our driveway. They have people regularly back at their station, but they also patrol around the block with weapons and tactical gear and bulletproof vests. They watch us, you know, and they're regularly standing around as we move in and out of our backyard.
I could go out front on foot, but there were several people outside, and they were armed and they would watch us. They'd follow us around the block. And they were very suspicious that we were coordinating with the police. Like I said, they had guns up front, too, in addition to everyone inside of the zone.
Generally, they didn't say much to us. They knew we weren't happy that they were there, but basically we had kind of cut a deal with them that they needed to keep some distance from our property and not trespass or create fire risks and hazards next to it. And, in exchange, we were leaving them alone. That was kind of the truce that we had.
Everyone thought the cops were going to come down, so they were prepping for that. The side streets were lined with tires and wood that they were soaking in gasoline and lighter fluid in anticipation that, when the police would come, they were going to light it on fire and create a big flaming barricade to prevent them from coming in.
They had bonfires on and adjacent to our property next to the gasoline-soaked tires. We were asking them to put it out—and they refused to do so and would yell at us.
They got really hostile and told me to fuck off and that we were part of the problem, or that we were just another gentrifier. We were scared they were going to attack us in our house.
If you had a problem, or you were scared for your safety or that you were going to be attacked, you had to negotiate with the individuals or the leaders themselves, because the police would not come out proactively because of concerns about security and the situation escalating. If you wanted them to stop, you had to go down and negotiate with them yourselves.
There's this notion that the neighbors generally were happy about this, or thought it was cool or were OK with it. Everyone who was directly surrounded by this was really, really scared and nervous. And people kept their mouths shut because they were worried about their safety and protecting their homes.
I was pretty impressed with actually how quick it came down. But everything is still here. Everything's still trashed. Everything's still covered in graffiti. Everything's a mess. My house, my sidewalk, everything's covered in garbage now.
If I'd known about this, I would've done what works in the city. I would have gone and found Mayor Ted Wheeler in person and screamed at him until he did something about it, because that's the message that's being sent to people as a result of this.
If you want the city to do things, you either have to get a bunch of guns and take over a neighborhood and threaten violence, or you go find Wheeler in real life or Commissioner Dan Ryan or whoever else and you surround their home and you scream at them and harass them until they give you what you want. Otherwise, they hide from you. It's incredibly disappointing and unfortunate that that's what the city's decision-making has come to.
About Tess Riski
Tess Riski covers prisons, the alt-right movement and more. She has previously written for the Miami Herald, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Tess recently graduated from the Columbia Journalism School, where she was a Stabile fellow in investigative journalism. She is originally from Seattle.
Amid Threats of Inaugural Violence, Oregon Legislature Delays Start of Session
Kinney family
Multnomah County Sheriff's Office
Portland Police Bureau
Red House Eviction Defense
Ted Wheeler
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Ohio governor supports nuclear bailout law despite scandal
U.S. Headlines
by: ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS, Associated Press
Posted: Jul 22, 2020 / 11:43 AM EDT / Updated: Jul 22, 2020 / 05:11 PM EDT
Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder leaves the federal courthouse after an initial hearing following charges against him and four others alleging a $60 million bribery scheme Tuesday, July 21, 2020, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A nuclear plant bailout law should remain in place, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said Wednesday, even as a bribery scandal involving one of the state’s most powerful lawmakers unfolded over the law’s passage and both Democratic and GOP lawmakers called for its repeal.
DeWine’s comments came a day after Larry Householder, the Republican speaker of the Ohio House, and four associates were arrested in a $60 million federal bribery case connected to the taxpayer-funded bailout.
U.S. Attorney David DeVillers described the ploy as likely the largest bribery and money-laundering scheme that has “ever been perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.”
DeWine said he’s long advocated for a balanced energy policy for Ohio, which includes the carbon-free energy provided by the state’s two nuclear power plants. He said he was also concerned about the jobs that would be lost if the plants were closed.
“The policy is good policy,” the governor said of the energy bill. “Because people did bad things does not mean the policy is not a good policy.”
DeWine, who signed the original bill, said it had been obvious that a lot of money was being spent on supporting the bailout and then stopping an attempt to repeal it at the ballot.
“There was no indication that anything illegal was going on,” the governor said.
DeWine said he first learned of the scandal Tuesday and no one in his administration has been contacted by investigators. His office has no involvement in the scandal, the governor said.
Householder was one of the driving forces behind the nuclear plants’ financial rescue. Previous attempts to bail out the nuclear plants had stalled in the Legislature before Householder became speaker. Months after taking over, he rolled out a new plan to subsidize the plants and eliminate renewable energy incentives.
“When corruption is revealed, it is important we act quickly to fix what has been broken,” Rep. Michael Skindell, a suburban Cleveland Democrat, said Wednesday. Senate Democrat Cecil Thomas of Cincinnati also called for its repeal.
The 2019 law added a new fee to every electricity bill in the state and directed over $150 million a year through 2026 to the plants near Cleveland and Toledo. The bill faced fierce opposition from both clean energy groups and manufacturers.
FirstEnergy Solutions, the subsidiary that operated the Ohio nuclear plants before it emerged from bankruptcy earlier this year under a new name, sought help for its struggling operations from the Trump administration too.
The company unsuccessfully lobbiedadministration officials for a bailout worth billions of dollars to prop up its coal and nuclear plants.
FirstEnergy shares fell $7.16 to $27.09 on Wednesday, a day after the bribery charges were announced.
Repealing the law quickly won’t be easy, and is complicated by support the law received in the House, both from Householder-backed Republicans and Democrats persuaded to support the measure.
Meanwhile, even before the scandal erupted, the Householder-led House was on summer recess, and the speaker had declined to bring lawmakers back before fall. The Senate has been conducting sessions.
Republican officials from DeWine on down have called on Householder to resign, including at least seven GOP House lawmakers as of Wednesday afternoon. The speaker, who could continue to hold office unless he were convicted, has remained silent regarding those demands.
A vote by two-thirds of the House could result in the expulsion of a member for disorderly conduct under the Ohio Constitution, Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who also called on Householder to resign, tweeted Wednesday morning. In addition, the Constitution allows the governor to call the General Assembly together “on extraordinary occasions,” Yost said, noting: “This is that.”
DeWine said he would consider calling the Legislature back in session if necessary.
The investigation is the second major case brought against a utility within the past few days.
Last week, federal prosecutors in Illinois said electric utility ComEd had agreed to pay $200 millionto resolve a criminal investigation into a long-running bribery scheme that also implicated longtime state House Speaker Michael Madigan.
While Madigan denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged, prosecutors said the company admitted that from 2011 to 2019 it arranged for jobs and vendor subcontracts “for various associates of a high-level elected official for the state of Illinois.”
Associated Press writers John Seewer in Toledo and Dan Sewell in Cincinnati contributed to this report.
More U.S. Headlines Stories
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US defense chief slams China as rising threat to world order
by: ROBERT BURNS and MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press
Posted: Feb 15, 2020 / 05:01 AM EST / Updated: Feb 15, 2020 / 10:32 AM EST
U.S. Secretary for Defense Mark Esper speaks on the second day of the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)
MUNICH (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Saturday cast China as a rising threat to world order — saying the world’s most populous nation steals Western know-how, intimidates smaller neighbors and seeks an “advantage by any means and at any cost.”
A frequent critic of China, Esper used an address to an international security conference in Munich, Germany, to give his most comprehensive condemnation yet of a communist country that he said tops the Pentagon’s list of potential adversaries, followed by Russia, “rogue states” like North Korea and Iran, and continuing threats from extremist groups.
“The Chinese Communist Party is heading even faster and further in the wrong direction – more internal repression, more predatory economic practices, more heavy-handedness, and most concerning for me, a more aggressive military posture,” he said.
Esper stressed that the United States does not want conflicts with China, and noted that the U.S. government has provided medical supplies to help China combat a coronavirus outbreak that has infected over 67,000 people. Still, he said Beijing has made clear its long-term intentions and said Europe and the rest of the world must “wake up” to the threats that China poses.
“The Communist Party and its associated organs, including the People’s Liberation Army, are increasingly operating in theaters outside its borders, including Europe, and seeking advantage by any means, and at any cost,” he said.
“While we often doubt the transparency and forthrightness of Beijing, when it comes to their security aims, we should take the Chinese government at its word,” he said. “They have said that by 2035, the PRC intends to complete its military modernization, and, by 2049, it seeks to dominate Asia as the preeminent global military power.”
With words that echoed the Trump administration’s criticisms of Iran, Esper said China represses its people and threatens its neighbors.
“We want China to behave like a normal country,” Esper said, adding “and that means the Chinese government needs to change its policies and behaviors.”
Esper and his immediate predecessor, Jim Mattis, have sought to shift the main focus of U.S. military and security policy toward China and away from small wars against insurgents and extremists. U.S. allies in Europe, while concerned about China’s rise, are more immediately worried about Russia.
C hinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi later responded, telling the forum that Esper and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “say the same thing wherever they go about China” and dismissed their remarks as “lies.”
“The root cause of all these problems and issues is that the U.S. does not want to see the rapid development and rejuvenation of China, and still less would they want to accept the success of a socialist country,” Wang said through a translator.
He said China had a “right to develop” and said if Beijing and Washington worked together, it would benefit the whole world.
“The most important task for China and the U.S. is to sit down together to have a serious dialogue and find a way for two major countries with different social systems to live in harmony and interact in peace,” he said. “China’s ready and we hope the U.S. will work with us.”
In remarks to the conference earlier Saturday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said China presents challenges as well as opportunities for Western nations. He said Europe and the United States need to work out a united approach to China’s rise.
“There are opportunities, but also many challenges,” Stoltenberg said, adding that it’s important for Western countries to keep open lines of communication with Beijing.
Also at the Munich conference, Pompeo refuted assertions that the United States under President Donald Trump was rejecting its traditional international leadership role.
“I’m happy to report that the death of the transatlantic alliance is grossly over-exaggerated,” Pompeo said. “The West is winning.”
David Rising contributed to this report.
by Jerry Sullivan / Jan 15, 2021
Jim Huetter worked his first Buffalo Bills game in the 1962 season, in the team’s third year of existence in the AFL. He was 13 years old at the time.
Huetter’s father, the late Al “Whitey” Huetter, was a legendary sports official in Western New York, a man who worked all sports. Whitey was an AFL referee in the early days of the Bills, when they played their home games at War Memorial Stadium.
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (WIVB)-- Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center announced Friday afternoon they are canceling next week's COVID-19 vaccine clinics due to a supply shortage.
Memorial says they have "not received enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to meet public demand."
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Wivenhoe's History
Discover Wivenhoe’s rich past from the Domesday Book to yesterday
You are here: Home>Topics>Maps, Books, Deeds, Wills & more>Sea-Change: Wivenhoe Remembered>Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Social Hierarchy, Work and Poverty
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Social Hierarchy, Work and Poverty
Contributions by Walter Wix, Ralph Moss, Annie Skilton, Dave Weatherall, Halcyon Palmer, Joyce Blackwood, Bill Ellis, Marjorie Goldstraw, Ivy Knappett, Tony Forsgate and John Barton
Page created by Peter Hill, copied from the earlier Wivenhoe Encyclopedia website
The book Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered, published in 2006
In the 1930s Wivenhoe’s industries were in trouble. Wivenhoe’s upstream shipyard was not working for most of the 1920s and 1930s, and population fell from 2400 in 1901 to 2100 in 1931. So the old sense of social hierarchy and distance was reinforced by poverty, unemployment and poor housing, which was then concentrated in lower Wivenhoe.
Workers and bosses: W. G. Loveless and the gravel pit – Walter Wix
That was a feature of the employment treatment by Mr Loveless, of his workforce. Even before the War they used to go on an outing of some sort, every year. I didn’t join in until 1937 and I went into the Navy in 1940, but in the meantime I think the outings that I went on concerned football matches, because Mr Loveless’s nephews were Leslie and Dennis Compton, and they both played for Arsenal. So we visited Highbury to watch a particular football match as an outing, and probably went to the theatre or something afterwards. It was all very well done, and these outings, we went all over the place. We went to Hampton Court, Southend was a venue that we went to a couple of times. But it wasn’t as though we went empty-handed, we were all given pocket money to go to spend. So we were treated very well.
Again another feature of Mr Loveless’s generosity was at Christmas. Now, he used to set a lot of store by Christmas..The land that was fallow, or the land that was not being used for gravel extraction, we used to farm. And while WG was still active he farmed it. Later years, like with the 54 acres and the 19 acres on the Lennox side, we had an arrangement with the local farmers that they farmed the land, they paid us a rent for farming it. But at that time, Mr Loveless was responsible for farming and we used to keep bullocks and pigs and chickens and things, and one of the things at Christmas, he always made sure that everybody had a Christmas dinner.
And again, initially, before the War brought rations and things like that, he allocated one of the bullocks, one of the butchers who bought the beef would provide beautiful joints, so that every man had a beef joint for Christmas. And then when it got so that, of course, there were restrictions and that, all right, poultry, but everybody had a turkey or a chicken. And apart from that he also used to provide a draw of toys and chocolates and things for the family. And always a great do just before we broke up for Christmas, with all these chickens or the joints and that sort of thing, all laid out with their names on, and then we’d have the draw for the presents, chocolates, or the toys. He made a great thing of children and buying little things of interest, and out of the ordinary sort of things so that everybody with a family, whether it was just a wife or whatever, had an additional prize to take home at Christmas. W G Loveless was a good employer. He looked after his personnel but what he expected from you was loyalty, and a good day’s work for a good day’s pay.
From village paternalism deeper in rural Essex – Ralph Moss
Away from the coast, Ralph was born in 1913 in Colne Engaine, coming to Wivenhoe in 1936 as base for his grocery round in the villages. He had a tough start. His father, a farm worker on Courtauld family estate, had died, leaving 11 children. But Miss Katherine Courtauld made sure all the children were sent off to the kind of jobs she thought appropriate: the girls to service, and Ralph to sea.
Miss Courtauld was very good to us. She came down to see my mother and said that she would make sure, they would get a job somewhere. The girls were working at the silk factory in Halstead, and gradually they all went off to service in Golders Green. My brothers went into the forces, and one became a teacher. And I got a job on the Cutty Sark. I went off to the Cutty Sark when I was 14.
I was more or less pushed into it. Because when it was my turn to leave school, Miss Courtauld sent the bailiff down, and I had to report to her at 10 o’clock on Friday morning, into her study. I was mandated to go and see her. And I went in for audience, afraid to speak hardly, as usual in those days! I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted to do. And she said, ‘Would you like to go to sea? A training ship?’ And as a last resort, I said, ‘Yes, Miss, I’ll do that.’ So I saw her on the Friday and on the Monday, I was pushed off to Falmouth Harbour. I had nothing with me. We had nothing, only what we stood up in, really, in those days.
Laughing at the mistress – Annie Skilton
Eveline Cox came and asked Bob for a job and he said, ‘Yes, you can start on Monday.’ Well, she started. And what she told us made us roar with laughing! She was a lady’s companion in London! And of course she used to look after a lady and they had a butler and everything. Well, anyhow, one day the family she worked for were going away for the weekend. They went away and the next day all the maids and that said, ‘We’re going to have a splash up meal now they’re away.’ Well, they had a splash up meal – and the family walked in! They walked in! The butler and they all had the sack! Eveline said, ‘We had all the silver out,’ she said. ‘Had a lovely meal ready,’ she said, ‘and they walked in!’ Oh, we didn’t half laugh about that! There was things like that we used to talk about.
Attitude to upper classes – Dave Weatherall (c. 1940s-50s)
My father-in-law Mr Gibson was in Colchester walking up towards the Regal cinema, and from behind him, ‘Hey, you!’ – as loud as that. ‘Hey, you!’ He said to me, ‘I took no notice, I carried on,’ he was telling us. ‘Hey, you! I’m talking to you.’ He said, ‘Me? You’re talking to me?’ The other man said, ‘That’s right. Where is Magdalen Street. Do you know where it is?’ Gibson said, ‘Yes, I know where it is. But I’m certainly not telling you.’ So the other man said, ‘Do you know who I am? I’m the Chief Inspector of Suffolk Police.’ Gibson said, ‘Yes, and I’m Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘find your own way to the place.’ But he said, if he’d have said to me, like anybody else would, ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I’d have turned round and said, ‘Certainly,’ and told him.’ He didn’t like it. He said, ‘He didn’t like it.’ But if Mr Gibson was talking to you or anything you’d think, ‘What a gentleman!’
The local elite – Halcyon Palmer
I think my mother [Margery Dean, wife of the village doctor] was quite nervous of [the local gentry] and I don’t think they socialised very much. I don’t mean not at all but I think they had their own circle of friends, and I think didn’t really socialise, I wouldn’t say, with the gentry an awful lot. But, on the other hand, when the War came, it was all hands to the pump, and then they did mix with, for example, the Gooches and people, because everybody was pulling together, yes. Indeed. I think they were really regarded, both of them, as slightly eccentric. I’m not sure, but I think! She certainly was eccentric! Yes, I think she was a bit of a shock to [Wivenhoe people] to be honest. I think it was quite a conventional little place, and I think they were really the beginnings of it being a little bit less conventional.
What the Rector or the doctor said – Halcyon Palmer
Churches now are much more relaxed. We always used to wear hats and the whole thing has changed completely. I mean, much for the better too. We’ve got a very nice Rector now, I think he’s a great asset. But I think rectors always have played a large part, really, in a small community. Don’t forget, going back to when I was little, there wouldn’t have been very many educated people in a place of this size. There were a few, of course, but there weren’t very many places where you could turn to for help. And I think very much what the Rector said, or what the doctor said, was black and white! If he said it, it was so. And I think that’s what’s changed a lot. I think, now, we question everything, don’t we. And I think both doctors and ministers of any kind must have an awful struggle because it’s no longer like that.
You made yourself smart – Joyce Blackwood
The Post Office was on the corner of Queen’s Road, right on the corner. And Mr Goodwin, who kept it when I was little, was also the agent for our three terraced houses. He used to collect the rent and it was a big event. My father, when he was at home, used to dress up to go and pay the rent. You know, you made yourself smart.
1960s: the Nottage and yacht owners – Bill Ellis
Really, the whole thing was run, very largely – I can only describe Wivenhoe, at that time, in the late 1960s, as a squirearchy. You were either part of the very small upper Wivenhoe squirearchy or Mafiosi or you weren’t! And there was a great social divide between the two, which was rather sad. But anyway the Mafiosi did, very much, keep everything to themselves, and they wanted things run just their own way. For instance, the mud berths in front of the Nottage appeared to me to be let out to someone, ‘You can put your boat in there, and don’t forget, you can come and do a little job for me,’ something of that sort. This style of thing, you see.
`My family’s in trade’ – Bill Ellis
At that time, living in the house next door here, West House, just behind where you’re sitting, we had Lady Sophie Kier lived there, and she is the daughter of the Marquis of Anglesey of course! And she’s really Lady Elizabeth Sophia Learmont-Paget, daughter of the Marquis of Anglesey, and we got on quite well with her and so forth. She’d rented the place, because Robin, her husband, had got some shipping interest or something down at Harwich at the time. Anyway, we were walking along West Street with Lord Palmer, and I said, ‘By the way,’ I said, ‘Do you happen to know the Earl of Uxbridge?’ I said, ‘Lady Sophie Kier lived in here.’ And he said, ‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘Well, I know him vaguely,’ he said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘don’t have a lot to do with him,’ he said. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘my family’s trade, you know. They go back to the 1500s!’
Poverty: a strong Socialist – Halcyon Palmer
She [Margery Dean] was a Scholarship pupil at a school where most of the children came from quite affluent homes, and her mother had had to make her uniform, as distinct from the tailor-made ones from the outfitters that the richer children wore, and I think this gave her an inferiority complex really, in a way, that lasted her for the rest of her life, and was really the seed on which her strong Socialist beliefs was planted, really. Certainly when she went to university, she became quite involved with a lot of Debating Societies and so forth, and I think she very much enjoyed pitting her wits and her ideas against other people of intellectual thoughts. And I think, after her family were born, and a little bit off her hands, that is really why she became interested in Left-wing politics.
The other thing you have to remember is that there was quite a lot of poverty here in this little village, there were a lot of people who really didn’t earn a lot of money, and didn’t have very nice houses in which to live, they were cottages without bathrooms and so on and so forth, and I think she felt that they deserved a better lot, really. [Dr Dean’s] practice was in the lower part of the village, and so we were very used to the way that most of the people who lived down there had to live. I think this might be what partly fed it, as you might say.
Childhood diet – Marjorie Goldstraw
We ate all the wrong things. They hadn’t much money, sixpenny worth of meat – an old sixpence – made the meat for a meat pudding. And, oh, dumplings, and she’d go to the butchers and get a foot and hock, which is a pig’s foot and hock, and make lovely pea soup. Well, I can taste it now. Because meat was meat then, and the flavour was different. How she did it I don’t know. And at Christmas time, one of the uncles who was running the dairy which was in the shop next door then, in our time, they used to bring a chicken up and things like that. And my uncle who ran the coal business would shoot a bag of coal in the cellar. Things like that. My mother had nothing to return because we were living hand to mouth.
Very economical – Halcyon Palmer
They moved here in 1935, when I was a few months old, and she made her own bread and all that sort of thing. She was quite interested in cookery, but she was always very economical about recipes and this sort of thing, and, in fact, I’ve recently found a little pamphlet – she wrote a book on how to live on almost no money, and apparently, for the first two years of their married life, they actually tried to live on the sort of lowest wage that the men then could earn, which would explain some of the ghastly things we sometimes had to eat! Although, to be fair, she was quite a good cook! But it was always very economical fare.
Hand-me-downs – Ivy Knappett
Some people was ever so poor. If, for instance I’d grown out of a dress or a coat and that, my mother would tell somebody and say, ‘Well, you can have it for five shillings.’ Five shillings was like – being in this house for five shillings a week. And they’d have a coat off of my mother or my mother would have a coat off of them. Really we didn’t have much new things, we had somebody’s clothes. If our mothers got them cheap from somewhere we used to think they were lovely, except you met somebody and they’d say, ‘Oh, the girl whatshername had that coat on last week.’
Family home – Ivy Knappett
When you get up to as far as Anglesea Road you go a little way, and there’s a hill down and a hill up and we were born up there, on top of the hill. And that was only two bedrooms, and two downstairs, that’s all it was. The kitchen was in the living room. We had a coal-fire stove and everything on the top there – you boiled your potatoes and your greens. On the top there was a black top and you kept that black top on all the while because the heat went under the oven. And the front room…oh, we mustn’t go in the front room unless we had a party or anything like that!
Heating – Joyce Blackwood
We had one fire in the middle room and on high occasions another one in the front room if you were lucky! But nothing else. We didn’t have any paraffin heaters or anything like that, which a lot of people did. But there was a kitchen range, so it served a purpose of heating and cooking. She used to cook by that.
Poor families – Tony Forsgate
We did country dancing at school. We had to dance with the girls, obviously, but there were certain girls that everyone tried to steer clear of! And the majority of those lived down the street, close to the river. There was, in a way, a social distinction. I mean, there was poverty, on a small scale in some parts of Wivenhoe. They were mainly along what we call the Folly, the houses that have now been converted. That’s possibly where the poorer families lived. But I think when you’re a child you’re not aware of the hardships that your parents have either gone through or actually are going through. I know my father never received a large wage but my mother was very good at handling money, because in those days the wives or the mothers did not go out to work. Today it’s totally different. We’re in a situation where women like to be independent and in some cases the economics of this world force people both to go out in order to pay the mortgage.
Children’s play – Ivy Knappett
My dad earned good money there [as a riveter], and my mother used to say, ‘Now, don’t you play with so and so down there,’ no, they weren’t good enough for me, you know! I’m only talking when we got a bit better in money, but when we were poorer she let me play with anybody! She would rather we played with somebody who was a bit well off, but not because they were dirty, just because, you know, poor people played with poor people. Oh, the difference in today, isn’t there!
School – Ivy Knappett
At school, we were stuck at the back if we had old clothes on. And then the people who’d got money, their daughters was dressed nice, they were put in the front. But if we had an old dress or anything, all of us was put at the back. Fancy doing that! So if they had visitors in, they thought that the whole school was nice, didn’t they? The rich was in the front, and the poor stuck up at the back!
Gossip – John Barton
[In Britannia Crescent] we were all in each other’s houses all the time really, and the women used to congregate in a house for tea or coffee or whatever, in the mornings, and my mother wouldn’t get involved with it, because they were just tittle-tattling most of the time, I think, and gossiping about other people, so she wouldn’t get involved. But we used to go along just for a bit of fun really, and take the mick out of them!
Helping each other – Freda Annis
Granny used to do a lot of needlework, and she was always making things. I can see her now, at her machine. And I know one time – of course, I was only quite a kid – the little kiddie that lived near us came round and she said could she go and see his mother? So Granny went. She came back. She went to a cupboard up on the stairs and she took out a skirt and she all unpicked it, washed all the pieces, put on the line, and she was stitching away there in the evening. And my mother said, ‘What are you doing?’ She said, ‘Well, that little kid, one of those little kiddies next door has got to go to school,’ she said, ‘on Monday. She hasn’t got any trousers for him,’ so she made a pair of trousers for him. And she was like that. She was always making things. But I’ve thought about it a lot and I thought, ‘Well, how many people would do that today?’
This woman’s parents lived just a little way down the road and her father was always repairing things and they had big old iron saucepans in those days and Granny said ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to ask Mr Enfield to do it for me,’ and when he brought it back he’d soldered it and that, so she said, ‘How much do I owe you?’ He said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you made a pair of trousers for my little boy,’ he said, ‘I can’t charge you anything for that.’ And I thought, ‘That’s how they helped each other,’ you know.
Bender fish – Freda Annis
There was another old lady, her eyesight was very bad. Her husband used to go fishing and he came up one day and he said, ‘Hannah, could you go and see Celia? She wants a little bit of needlework done.’ So she said, ‘Yes, course I will.’ So she wanted the sheets turned side to middle, that’s what they used to do. And she was stitching away there. During the next week he came with a little ‘bender fish,’ they used to have them on a little string, like lovely little dabs, like little plaice. And he said, ‘You were good enough to do a bit of needlework for Celia,’ he said, ‘So I know you enjoy these.’ Well, I mean, that went a long way with people. That was a very tasty meal. And that’s how people helped each other.
To return to the Main Page for the Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered Project – Click here
This page was added on 09/01/2021.
Sea-Change: Wivenhoe Remembered
History of the 2006 Oral History Project & the book Sea-Change: Wivenhoe Remembered
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - About Farms and the Village
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - About Shops
Sea-Change: Wivenhoe Remembered - About the Book and the Project which began in 2004
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Barges and the Port
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Boats with Stories
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Ernie Vince and the River
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Factory Work in Wivenhoe
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Ferries at Wivenhoe
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Fishing
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Flooding of the River Colne
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Rabbiting: Children’s fun and food
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Sailing and Ecology
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Sailing on the River Colne
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Shipyards
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Social Attitudes
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - The Barrier on the River Colne
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - The Nottage Maritime Institute
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - The Wivenhoe One Design [WOD]
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - The Wivenhoe Sand and Gravel Pit
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Tradesmen and Shops
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Unemployment
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Up-streeters and Down-streeters
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Wivenhoe Hall
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Wivenhoe Park and the Gooch family
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Wivenhoe Pubs
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Wivenhoe Regattas
Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Wivenhoe Sailing Club
'Sea-change: Wivenhoe Remembered - Social Hierarchy, Work and Poverty' also appears in
Wivenhoe Quarry
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Global Blackness: Black Writers in Translation
Our annual January archive issue this year comes at a moment of urgency: in two weeks, the US’s first Black vice president, Kamala Harris, will be sworn in, after four years of divisive politics in which racism figured heavily. Less than a year after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor led to renewed Black Lives Matter protests and a reckoning across American society, literary publishers—including this magazine—are seeking to address the deficit of Black writers published each year.
The magnitude of the hole is clear, but data that might inform solutions is scattered and, sometimes, nonexistent—another indication, perhaps, of just how steep the climb out will be. A few quick examples, though, can be quite illustrative: in the New York Times “Globetrotting” list for 2020, only twelve of 224 titles listed there are from Africa; nine are in translation, but almost all of those are from French, and of the four writers from sub-Saharan Africa, only one identifies as Black. While the Times list may not make any pretense of comprehensiveness, this one is nonetheless revealing of US publishing’s priorities. Last month, Richard Jean So and Gus Wezerek wrote of their efforts to quantify the number of Black writers published in the US between 1950 and 2018, finding that ninety-five percent of English-language books published in the period were authored by white writers. It’s tempting to guess at what data would have looked like if they had drilled down to translated work. Literary agent Marie Dutton Brown, interviewed for the Times piece, remarks that “Black life and Black culture are rediscovered every ten to fifteen years.” Imagine the impact on Black writing in translation.
Part of the problem stems from larger issues within our industry: corporate (or corporate-minded) publishers looking for the next Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, wittingly or unwittingly narrowing from the get-go what Black writing ought to read like. In an article published last year in the Times Literary Supplement, Colin Grant details some of the problems that have plagued Anglophone literary publishing when it comes to publishing Black writers: differing literary standards for works by white writers and Black writers, and a rush to publish more Black writers that betrays greater concern with avoiding mention alongside the #publishingsowhite hashtag than with developing the careers of Black writers (or as one of our columnists later this month will argue, Black translators). Complicating the scenario further, the barriers faced by Black writers hoping to have their work internationalized can begin before translation is even a consideration, as scholar and activist Franciane Conceição Silva writes in her essay (translated by Bruna Dantas Lobato) for this magazine in 2018.
This is not, of course, to overlook the good work being done—and being done well before we finally began the current reckoning with our shortcomings—by some independent publishers.
There is, as the title of this essay suggests, a secondary problem when it comes to Black literature in translation, which pertains to expectations placed on writers of color, as translator and scholar Corine Tachtiris notes in her recent interview with Project Plume. “Anti-racist translation should actively disrupt racism, whether that’s discursive racism, structural, economic, linguistic racism, and so on. That might be by translating into a racialized English that challenges the White mainstream norm, or by selecting texts that undermine racist stereotypes of other cultures, especially racist formulations that are meant to come off as positive.”
As the writers in our opinion series publishing later this month note, there are solutions where there’s will. PEN Translation Prize finalist Aaron Robertson proposes new ways in which publishers might work to support Black writers and translators, and also charts a path for translators of color to organize. Sandra Tamele, a WWB contributor and founder of Maputo-based Editora Trinta Zero Nove, discusses why she founded a press in Mozambique with the aim of publishing writers there in English translation. Writing of the translation history of Octavia Butler and of her own work, Évelyne Trouillot advocates not only for the more frequent publication of Black writers in translation but also a change in the way this is done.
At Words Without Borders, we have begun to evaluate our own myopia when it’s come to better publishing and promoting Black writers. The danger of the single narrative, a double risk when publishing writers who are Black and write in a language other than English, is pervasive, and we’ll be working with outside advisors to assess and help guide our efforts. As we work to address our own shortcomings through sustainable, structural initiatives aimed at lasting change, we are taking inspiration in the work of Black writers in our archive whose work is testament to the multiplicity of Black life as it confronts structural racism (and its effects) throughout the globe.
In making our selection for this issue, we wished to highlight writing that confronted the various guises and modi operandi of racism. What those active in the struggle for change understand is that it's not just the institutions that buttress racism that must be dismantled but the ideas underpinning them. The essays, stories, and poems this month shed light on the corners where these ideas lurk, which, as we discover in the work of Igiaba Scego and Ricardo Aleixo, pervade the quotidian if only we bother to look. But the Black experience, as activists have urged this year, should not be reduced only to misfortune and struggle. Failure to acknowledge Black joy (also an act of resistance) is but another form of undercutting anti-racist work. Naomi Jackson reminds us of some of the forms this can take in her paean to pan-Africanism via Salvador, Brazil. While selections of any sort fail to adequately capture the whole picture, the writers here harness the strength of literature as, by its very attention to nuance, a form of resistance.
The first of those is Ricardo Aleixo, who combines text and performance in work that explores poetry as both visual and social expression. In this issue, we’re revisiting Dan Hanrahan’s translations of three poems by Aleixo, adding a video performance by Aleixo of his poem “My Man”—a repudiation of the impositions made upon Black identity—especially for this issue.
Like Aleixo’s, the work of Lima Barreto confronts racism head-on. As critic Felipe Botelho Corrêa notes in this 2018 essay, Barreto, a late contemporary of Machado de Assis, expertly diagnosed the disconnect between the realities faced by most of Brazilian society and the European-inspired forms of Brazilian literature at the turn of the century. Taking the opposite tack in “Black Teeth and Blue Hair,” his 1922 short story published in English translation for the first time in our December 2018 issue, Barreto warns that “ignorance is a kind of blindness.” Barreto embraced literature as a means to social change and a clamor for racial justice. When the story’s narrator is mugged, he loses more than his pocket money. Barreto’s is a tale that provokes readers to distrust initial impressions.
Igiaba Scego, meanwhile, in an essay for our April 2016 issue, looks at the persistence of Mussolini-era racism in the form of a popular song. Scego’s essay foreshadowed the proliferation of texts in the US throughout 2020 that reckoned with the surreptitious pervasiveness of racist attitudes in popular childhood songs. “But do people who sing it really know what it means?” Scego asks in her examination of Renato Micheli’s "Faccetta nera."
If the work of other writers in this issue center race and racial consciousness, Germano Almeida’s “A Form of African Identity” traces the deleterious effects of colonialism in impeding solidarities between Cabo Verdeans and other African nations while also writing against the monolithic Africa of the Western imagination. “We led our lives in the serene assurance of being Cabo Verdeans, with the harmless contributing circumstance of also being Portuguese, when this tranquility was abruptly overturned in the 1960s and 70s by the shattering revelation that Cabo Verde was also Africa, in the deepest sense,” Almeida writes. Almeida uses his pen to draw the contours of an identity that allows Cabo Verdeans both their idiosyncrasies and their kinship to other African nations.
Johannes Anyuru, meanwhile, meditates on race, history, and Islam, in Sweden and across Europe, on a journey to the Alhambra. This route begins, perhaps unexpectedly, on the Stockholm metro, where, Anyuru writes, “when my eyes landed on the guy talking about vacuuming a mosque I couldn’t stop staring. It was like he came from a planet that still had meaning.” Tracing his own conversion to Islam, Anyuru later reflects, “If I speak of peace now [ . . . ] I speak of preserving difference. I am not talking about peace because I want to bring harmony to the conflict that has made me who I am, but because I want to preserve the person I am.” Anyuru’s assertion reminds us: despite calls to the contrary, calls to achieve anti-racist through the elision of difference in fact achieve the opposite.
Magali Nirina Marson’s “Abandoning Myself,” in which a young victim relates the neglect, poverty, and abuse of a life for which she was never destined, reveals the nefarious dalliance between racism, colonialism, and misogyny. The choices left the Malagasy narrator, and her mother, after her French father returns to France, are an indictment of a society.
In “Coloureds,” graphic artists the Trantraal Brothers set their sights on the pipeline fueling persistent social ills. Caught in a milieu of addiction and domestic abuse, children in one township in South Africa find themselves facing poverty, hunger, evangelism, and life-or-death decisions. Availing themselves of the unflinching honesty that is inherent to children, the Trantraal Brothers look at the ways in which the family and social spheres conspire to perpetuate inequality.
Colonialism and Christianity in Nigeria are at the heart of Akinwumi Isola’s story about religious and linguistic identity, targeting the social structures of racism from another vantage point. Selected by 1986 Nobel winner Wole Soyinka for WWB’s The World through the Eyes of Writers anthology, Isola’s “The Grammar of Easter (You Don’t Say That in English),” takes raucous aim at the hapless evangelizing of a white man whose mission is upended as he spends the bulk of his time attempting to remedy the grammatical confusion he’s wrought in course of his proselytizing.
Impatiently recounting his own “bullshit story,” the Ivorian narrator of an excerpt from Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah Is Not Obliged, armed with the Petit Robert and a slew of other French-language dictionaries, sketches the contours of his “fucked-up life” with cheeky defiance. In this romp through French and pidgin idioms, the narrator zeroes in on the cultural assumptions—often nonsensical to other cultures and, occasionally, even in their original contexts—that underlie our everyday speech and, thus, our attitudes. The pathway leading to “the easy money working as a civil servant in some fucked-up, crooked republic” is closed off to our narrator, whose only form of redress is a foul-mouthed elucidation of the structures keeping him in his place.
In a 2016 essay, New York-based writer Naomi Jackson, author of The Star Side of Bird Hill, takes us along her own intellectual and cultural journey from the Caribbean to West Africa to South Africa, and eventually to Brazil—itself the country, as Jackson notes, with the second-largest Black population in the world after Nigeria. “Given my love for Black people and fascination with our stories, Brazil’s paramount importance in the historical trans-Atlantic slave trade and its contemporary role as a cultural and economic leader on the world stage, it was inevitable that my travels would lead me there,” Jackson writes. From her time in the city of Salvador, she returns more certain than ever of the need for an “evolving dialogue that broadens definitions of global Blackness.”
We hope this issue might serve as both a reminder and a beginning: a reminder of this evolving dialogue's plurality, and one we must acknowledge; the work has only begun.
© 2020 by Eric M. B. Becker. All rights reserved.
Read more from the January 2021 issue.
Juan José Saer’s “La Grande”
The Watchlist: December 2020
Our Favorite International Reads of 2020 (and What We’ll Be Reading in 2021)
Remembering John O’Brien
The City and the Writer: In Oxford with Maya C. Popa
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Behind the Art: “The Butterfly Effect”
The Best Translated Books You Missed in 2020
Namibian Writing Front and Center: Rémy Ngamije on Doek! Literary Magazine
Yasmeen Abdullah
Tara Parsons Joins WWB Board of Directors
from the December 2020 issue
New Voices: Afghan Women Writers
There is a legend about a Persian traveler who comes to an Afghan village in search of a good poet. First, he visits the shopkeeper who tells him he is a poet but that the farmer is a better one; then the farmer sends the visitor to the tailor, assuring him that he is really the best poet in the village. And on it goes. Poetry, memoir, fables, proverbs, and stories sit at the heart of Afghanistan, a nation founded by a poet, Ahmad Shah Abdali (also known as Ahmad Shah Durrani), and the birthplace of Rumi.
In modern Afghanistan, years of chronic instability and internal displacement have created a challenging environment for writers of all kinds. Twenty different flags have flown over the country since the beginning of the twentieth century. Changes in rulers, monarchs, emirs, and presidents, as well as revolution, Soviet invasion, and Taliban rule, have led to clashing political ideologies and the imposition of widespread restrictions not only on everyday life but on freedom of speech and expression, particularly for women.
Although there are twenty-two publishers in Kabul alone, Afghanistan has minimal infrastructure for local literary translators and editors, and there is little translation of literary work between language communities and ethnic groups. The majority of Afghan writers who have appeared in English translation are men; most live outside the country, as do the few Afghan women who have carved out lives as writers elsewhere.
What about those writers who cannot leave home, whose imaginative worlds draw on the immediate experience of their day-to-day life? In post-Taliban Afghanistan, the literacy rate of women is still disproportionately low and those who want to write struggle to find support. Yet many of these women sense that it is here, in Afghanistan, with all its insecurity and political volatility, that ideas and themes can flourish. A nation’s upheaval cannot be understood without women's perspectives.
Over the past few years, various one-off projects have encouraged these writers, and some women have featured in anthologies of contemporary writing from Afghanistan. However, it is hard to establish initiatives in what is still a challenging working environment. As a result, the voices of emerging women writers stay unheard.
The four writers featured here come via Untold, a UK-based development program offering writers in areas of conflict and postconflict a space in which to speak for themselves. Untold’s current project, Write Afghanistan, was prompted by a conversation with scriptwriters on Afghanistan’s long-running radio soap opera New Home, New Life. One or two had self-published stories on social media, under pseudonyms for safety’s sake, and only in Dari.
So last year, with support from the British Council, Untold put out a countrywide open call asking for short pieces of fiction from women. We were told to expect about thirty submissions. In fact, more than one hundred and twenty women writers from across Afghanistan sent in stories written in both Dari and Pashto. The stories were sent from internet cafes or home computers; some were written by hand. They explored subjects from the domestic sphere to women’s social and political rights, employing narrative techniques including reportage, folk tales, fables, and allegory. And most were clearly inspired by personal experience.
The bulk of the writers lived in metropolitan areas, including three of those featured here, but a significant number came from more remote, volatile provinces. Some women had never shared their work beyond their households. Maryam Mahjube was inspired by the open call to write two new stories, but it was her sister who actually sent them in, because the author felt she was too inexperienced for her work to be taken seriously. She had had no experience of editing or sharing her work, had never before even rewritten anything, and had not been able to attend any of the rare writers' meetings in the capital.
A team of readers from the Afghan literary community in the UK and Untold’s project manager, Will Forrester, drew up a longlist of twenty writers selected for their strong, original voices and stories with the potential to be developed for a local and a global readership. Budget restrictions meant selecting just ten from this list, in order to work with the writers one on one. Of those ten, four have been selected to appear here. An experienced editor in Sri Lanka, Sunila Galappatti, and Dari and Pashto translators in the UK worked with each writer on her story via WhatsApp; sensitivity to the writer’s safety was of paramount concern.
All four writers mentioned the difficulty of finding the peace and space required to concentrate on writing. Finding the space to write is but one challenge; the war-scarred country feels permanently on edge, locked down long before the pandemic. This atmosphere is conveyed in Sharifa Pasun’s "The Decision," and Maryam Mahjube’s "Turn This Air Conditioner On, Sir," where just leaving the house can be a matter of life or death.
Freshta Ghani had to flee across the border to Tajikistan recently after the radio station where she worked was threatened by the Taliban. She’s been using a pen name since she first began writing secretly at school. Her story, “Daughter Number Eight,” translated from Pashto, reflects her family’s traditional values and the devastating costs of expectations not met. Batool Heydari addresses another tradition in her tale of a man presumed martyred who returns to a painful domestic surprise.
Even in Kabul, opportunities for women to connect with other writers, and to discuss and, eventually, publish work, remain limited. One of Untold’s aims is to help establish a local support framework for women writers and build the capacity of local fiction editors and translators. Write Afghanistan’s remote editorial process continues with the support of the Bagri Foundation. Meanwhile, Batool Heydari now leads a weekly WhatsApp session for the ten writers to share ideas and challenge each other to develop their work.
Maryam Mahjube says she has found a sense of belonging from writing that has eased her isolation. “Among all this, we still carry on with our lives, we pass our days, we read, we dance, we buy books, we write poetry, we write stories, we see friends and family. Stories are like a mirror we hold up to ourselves.”
© 2020 by Lucy Hannah. All rights reserved.
Read more from the December 2020 issue
As American as Immigration: Małgorzata Szejnert Brings to Life the Many Stories of Ellis Island
The Decision
Tragedy strikes a newsroom in Kabul as a journalist scrambles for safety in Sharifa Pasun’s short story set during the Soviet-Afghan War.
She opened the wardrobe, took out her skirt and suit jacket, and shut the doors. After getting dressed, she looked at herself in the three-piece mirror, brushed her hair, and looked again. She admired herself, she thought she looked really good. Her long hair touched her shoulders, shining as the afternoon sun caught it through the window.
There was a pen on the dressing table, which she put in her handbag. She looked at her watch, it was five in the afternoon. Hearing the car horn, she opened the window and looked down from her second floor apartment. The gray car was waiting near the stairs of the building. The driver looked up and, on seeing her, stopped pressing the horn. Sanga slung her handbag over her shoulder quickly and left the room. She called to her mother from the corridor: “Mom, I am going now, bye! The car is waiting for me outside.”
Her mother rushed into the corridor. Her sleeves were rolled up, with a knife in her hand and tears in her eyes from the onion she had been cutting.
Sanga turned back and begged her mother: “Mom, please look after Ghamai, I don’t want him to hear us, he is busy riding his bike on the balcony.”
She left and quickly went down the stairs. Her mother watched, praying for her safety until the minute Sanga got in the car and shut the door.
Sanga reached the National Radio and TV headquarters, where she worked in the evenings. During the day, she was a student at Kabul University.
She went straight to the makeup room on the left side of the building, at the end of the corridor on the first floor. The makeup lady, Maryam, was in the room. She was tall, with curly hair she had dyed brown. Her glasses were pushed to the top of her head and their string hung down behind her neck. She was standing at the middle mirror, busy removing curlers from another newsreader’s hair.
Sanga stood in front of the sink and washed her face with warm water, then, looking in the mirror, dried it with a paper napkin. Maryam asked the seven o’clock newsreader, whose hair she was doing: “Should I do your makeup or do you want to put it on yourself?”
She answered: “You will be busy with Sanga’s hair now, there isn’t much time left, I will do my own makeup.”
Sanga sat down beside the seven o’clock newsreader and Maryam stood over her. She touched Sanga’s soft hair, looked at her clothes, and said: “It is good you are wearing modest clothes.”
Sanga didn’t like this comment. She wanted to say that she always wore suitable and modest clothes. At this moment, they heard a loud explosion from a nearby rocket. They all got very scared and their eyes opened wide in shock. The seven o’clock newsreader could barely speak. She whispered: “Sounds like it landed very close.”
Maryam, the makeup lady, said: “God save us, I hope it is not a continuous attack.”
Sanga looked at Maryam and said: “If you finish my makeup and hair quickly you will be able to go home soon. I will be here until eight thirty or nine o’clock.”
It was 1985. The opposition was busy fighting the Afghan army, firing rockets and targeting government buildings and institutions. People used to call them blind rockets because only one in a hundred would hit the target.
Sanga’s heart was beating hard and fast. She hadn’t kissed her two-year-old son goodbye, because when she did, Ghamai would cry and insist on going with her. She couldn’t take him to work, so she usually left the house without letting him know.
Maryam said angrily: “What kind of country is this? They can’t let us live peacefully––how can we work and live in this kind of situation?”
It was twenty past six in the evening now. The telephone rang; it was a telephone on a wire, as they all were in offices at that time. Maryam picked up and, after listening, told the seven o’clock news reader to go to the newsroom. She said: “They say the news is very important and there is a lot of it. You need to go now.”
Then, too, radio and TV were important institutions. This newsroom produced news about the leader, his cabinet ministers, and their work, as well as the victories of the army, which was fighting the opposition. At the end of the broadcast, there was some international news too. At that time, there was only one TV channel across the county that broadcast live news in Kabul city.
The newsreader quickly took her pen out of her handbag, looked at herself in the mirror again, put on another layer of red lip liner, and left in a hurry. As she closed the door, another rocket struck. The makeup lady was panicking: “This is definitely a continuous attack; more rockets will land.”
Sanga was worried that Maryam might leave without finishing her makeup. The female newsreaders would always have their hair and makeup done before appearing on TV. Maryam took the metal comb, separated Sanga’s hair in small parts, and curled them all up. She plugged in the hair-drying hood while Sanga sat calmly underneath it, the warm breeze blowing through her hair.
The seven o’clock newsreader opened the door of the makeup room and came in to take her handbag. She had finished her work and a car was waiting to take her home. Maryam quickly said: “I want to go with you. We live in the same direction.
Sanga was left alone. She looked out of the makeup room window and it was dark now. She didn’t like being alone. She left the makeup room and went to the newsroom. At the top, there was the editor’s desk. He usually stayed beyond his eight-hour shift. This was an important office and everyone––from the editor to reporters, producers, and even the helping staff––had overtime pay.
As Sanga entered the newsroom, she greeted her colleagues and went straight to sit behind the long desk right in the middle of the room. One of her colleagues told her that not all her notes were ready but some copies were, so she could read through those. Sanga got busy, marking the script as she practiced reading. At that moment, there was another whistling sound followed by a huge explosion. This time the rocket had hit the technology building, newly built, just behind the National Radio & TV building. The explosion was so powerful that it broke the windows of the newsroom.
It was the end of autumn but the weather was cold; a sharp breeze blew into the newsroom. Someone opened the door and said in a worried voice: “All of you go to the lower floor. It is possible that more rockets will strike! Hurry, we all need to go downstairs now.”
Everyone started panicking and left their chairs, most of the staff took their pens and papers with them and started leaving the newsroom. Sanga left her notes on the table, she was very scared. One person came close to her and whispered in her ear: “Don’t get scared, everything will be fine.”
Sanga responded: “I have seen many rockets, they land every day. I am not scared of rockets, I am scared of God.”
Sanga had no sooner finished her sentence than another rocket landed, striking the front of the nearby admin building. If you looked down from the newsroom window you could see the building’s rooftop. A piece of shrapnel hit the chair where Sanga was sitting a few seconds ago. She had only just reached the door of the newsroom.
Everyone had left by now. Sanga went quickly to the corridor, took a deep breath, and ran down the stairs, nearly falling. It was now five minutes to eight o’clock. Sanga had to go to the live studio.
Before entering the studio, she took her shoes off and wore the special sandals which were kept in a metal cupboard. The people in charge of the studios didn’t want anyone bringing in dust that could harm the machines. Sanga had left her notes behind in the newsroom and was empty-handed. She went inside the studio, feeling the warmth of the studio lights as she sat down. The editor brought news copies and gave them to Sanga. It was time for the eight o’clock news. As Sanga was taking up the copies, she saw her face on the monitor in front of her and heard the signature tune of the news show going live. After that, she started reading the news bulletin, finishing it all on time. The studios were soundproof; no sound from explosions could enter from outside.
Sanga waited in front of the Radio & TV building in her makeup and styled hair. Other staff were also leaving the building in groups, there were big and small cars waiting to take them home. Everyone looked worried, many workers were lowering their heads as they walked toward the cars, as if walking that way would save them from the rockets.
One of the drivers told Sanga to get in the car quickly. Sanga got in and the driver sped toward the 3rd Macrorayan, those residential blocks built by the Russians in the 1950s and 60s. Before the car had reached the first roundabout, a rocket landed in front of those blocks. Sanga could hear the screams of men, women, and children. There was panic and chaos around her; her heart started beating fast. She decided that if this time she reached home safely, she would quit the presenting job.
She had decided to quit a few times before but whenever she thought it through, she would decide that a life without working would be hard. That thought seemed as bad as death to her.
Before they reached the second roundabout, another rocket landed near them. It went past the car and landed on the edge of the roundabout. The driver and Sanga both ducked. Scared and panicking, the driver nearly lost control of the car. After a stopping briefly, he started driving again.
Now the car had entered her part of the Macrorayan area. Along the way, they could hear the wounded people screaming and calling for help, but there was no one who could run out to help them.
Sanga finally reached her home. It was nine o’clock at night now, she went quickly up to her apartment and knocked forcefully on the door, but it wasn’t locked. Her mother had been standing behind the door for some time, waiting for her return. As she opened the door for Sanga, her eyes welled with tears, which she tried not to let flow.
Sanga went into her room, followed by her mother. She went close to Ghamai’s bed; he was fast asleep. She kissed him gently, touched his hair, and then sat on her bed, taking a deep breath. Her mother now had a smile on her face. Sanga asked her: “Mother, was Ghamai scared by the rockets?”
“No, he was sleeping, he didn’t even move in his bed,” she said.
“I was worried that a rocket might have landed near our block.”
As her mother listened carefully, Sanga told her that wherever she went today the rockets followed her: “I saw it with my own eyes. I had just got up off that chair and hadn’t even reached the newsroom door when the rocket landed and its shrapnel hit that same chair. It was just a matter of a few seconds. I got up and, when I looked back, the chair was all broken and destroyed.”
Her mother screamed with fear.
Sanga’s mother couldn’t stop crying anymore. Her voice echoing all over the room, she went up to her daughter, hugged her and then kissed her. Sanga felt calm in her arms. Her mother wiped her tears with the edge of her scarf. She went out of the room and, after a few seconds, brought back a glass of lemon juice. As Sanga drank the juice, she felt as if she was regaining her energy. Her mother left the room, telling her to rest.
It was eleven o’clock, the dogs could be heard barking far away, the roads were busy with ambulances. The rockets couldn’t be heard anymore. Sanga knew that the opposition had run out of rockets. She felt that they must be tired like her. She was thinking that they would be sleeping now and getting ready to launch fresh attacks tomorrow, but no one knew where the next attack would be and when it would happen.
Sanga held her head tightly between her hands. Her mind was full of news, loud explosions, and ambulance sirens. She pulled the duvet over Ghamai so he wouldn’t get cold.
She opened the wardrobe next to her bed and looked at her clothes––it seemed as though she was choosing her outfit. She took some clothes out and hung them on the door. She closed the curtains so the room couldn’t be seen from outside. She turned on the TV and a song by Mahwash was on. Before it ended the power went out.
Sanga got up and drew back the curtains. Moonlight brightened the room. She switched off the TV and lay down on her bed, but she couldn’t sleep. Ghamai’s beautiful face was shining in the moonlight, he looked like an angel child when it is asleep.
I saw Sanga the next day. She got out of the gray car in front of the National Radio & TV headquarters. She was wearing a khaki jacket with a black skirt, carrying a few books and her handbag. She adjusted her handbag on her shoulder, took her sunglasses off, and placed them on her head. Before entering the building, she looked around at the damage from the day before. She observed the scene carefully and calmly, and then went inside.
“The Decision” © 2020 by Sharifa Pasun. Translation © 2020 by Zarghuna Kargar. Developed with Untold, a development program for writers in conflict and postconflict areas, supported by the British Council and the Bagri Foundation. All rights reserved.
Khurshid Khanum, Rise and Shine
Presumed dead, a man returns from war to find that his wife and daughter have moved on with their lives in this short story by Batool Heydari.
He called, but nobody answered. He tried the number again and again. He then kept calling the whole day, but all he could hear was the sound of the phone ringing. He could not remember the last time she stayed out of the house for this long. He speculated. Maybe Khurshid is ill. Maybe something has caused her to stop her answering the phone.
Someone finally answered at around nine in the evening. He could not breathe when he heard her say “hello.”
When he was a student in Kabul, and engaged to Alia, he would call her and wait silently for her to initiate the conversation. He had wanted to hear her heartbeat. He would repeat this routine, call but never speak first. Alia had learnt this, and so instead of saying “hello,” she would giggle and ask, “Suleiman, is that you?”
The woman on the phone did not giggle. She asked tauntingly if he had stomach cramps that were stopping him from talking. Tears dried in his eyes. He could not remember Alia answering so harshly.
He remembered that they had a regular ghost caller for some time. They would call, but then keep silent. Suleiman swore at them on a few occasions, but it had proven futile and he failed to break the silence. Alia was of the opinion that no profanity must ever be spoken, even if the caller called a hundred times and uttered nothing.
This time, she had not cursed. She had said “Do you have stomach cramps?” When the call disconnected, he redialled the number. His hands were not shaking this time. He was pressing the numbers hard.
The woman on the phone said “hello” loudly. After taking a deep breath, he asked,
“Is Alia there?”
He realised that the woman could not have been Alia. She stretched the word hello, said it loudly, and Alia never did either.
He sighed in relief when the woman said,
“No, you have dialled the wrong number.”
But as soon as he put the phone down, he asked himself if this could be true. No––there was no way he had dialled the wrong number. He felt confident in this. He rang again and, this time, spoke with the woman articulately. He introduced himself as a distant relation of Alia’s who had come from one of the provinces to speak with her about something important.
When the woman felt comfortable, and decided it was not a nuisance call, she explained that they had bought the house from a family three years earlier. He asked the name of the family and the woman replied:
“Akbari. Zargham Akbari.”
Leaving no doubt, she confirmed further,
“Engineer Akbari.”
She could not have known that the caller at the other end of the phone was about to faint. She continued talking to “Alia’s distant relative,” explaining that she did not know exactly where the family lived, but that she knew that they lived in Chawk-e Gul-ha, a posh neighborhood.
Suleiman swallowed his saliva and asked the woman if she was certain that Engineer Akbari’s wife’s name was Alia. The woman confirmed, laughing, and mentioned Alia’s older daughter, Khurshid.
“A wonderful girl,” she said. “I wanted her to be my daughter-in-law, but fate disagreed. She was going to university, and my son did not want a wife who went to university.”
Suleiman started to sweat profusely when he heard the woman sigh and say, “What has the world come to? The daughters of the martyred are going to university...”
He could not understand. He asked, with difficulty, “The martyr’s daughter? What martyr?”
The woman, who was enjoying having found someone to speak to, continued, “What kind of family member are you if you are unaware of this, dear brother?” she said.
He tried to find an explanation, but the woman interrupted before he needed to: “I don’t know much. Her neighbors said that she is a martyr’s daughter. That her mother lost her husband and, two years later, married one of her husband’s comrades, an architect. God has now graced her with another child. When we bought the house, she had just given birth. A beautiful boy called Suleiman.”
He could not breathe. He murmured, “Suleiman.” Then he disconnected the call.
Flabbergasted, he stared at the photo in his hand. He could not believe that his wife had remarried. That little Khurshid was a university student. That he was thought to have been martyred. That his friend, Zargham, was now Alia’s husband. That they named their son after him. He felt a pain in his throat and pressed his lips together.
The next day, he got out of bed and opened the window. It had been six years since he was captured. He picked up the water jug and drank from it directly. Water spilling on his chest as he gulped. He poured the remainder on his head before going back to bed. He wished he had held his tongue back then—that he had never spoken to Zargham about his wife, never described her to him. He ran his fingers through his greying hair. He was pleased he hadn’t visited the house yet––all the neighbours would have recognized him. He closed his eyes, a lump in his throat. He then stood and stared at the phone. He dialled the number again and the same screeching woman answered.
“Why did you hang up, brother?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she continued, “I called Ms Sabri, one of the Akbaris’ old neighbors, to tell her that their relative had called. She didn’t know where exactly they were living. Just that they live in Chawk Gulha, as I told you. But she did say that Alia goes to the martyrs’ graveyard, the unnamed martyrs’ graveyard on the hill, on Fridays.”
“An old lady used to live with them. Do you know what happened—” The woman interrupted: “Are you talking about Bi Bi Jaan? She was ill when I was their neighbour. She could not speak. The neighbours used to say she had suffered a stroke when she learnt of her son’s martyrdom. The poor lady passed away a year later.”
The woman hung up once she was done talking. Suleiman leaned on an object near him and started crying loudly.
It was morning when he opened his eyes.
On Thursday he went to the city for a walk. He went to all the places he had visited with Alia and Khurshid. To relive the good old memories, he sat where they had sat as a family.
In the evening, he went to have his beard shaved. He felt ticklish when the barber ran clippers over the twisted hair on his neck. He remembered Alia telling him after their engagement that she did not want him to shave his beard, because a woman’s beauty lies in her long hair and a man’s beauty and masculinity lies in his beard and mustache. He saw a sparkle in Alia’s eyes when he grew a beard for the first time. She would compliment him, telling him that the beard suited him and that he looked like an angel.
He remembered Alia painting. She was working on a painting of angels in those days; they were all men with long hair. His reminders to Alia that there are also female angels fell on deaf ears. When the painting was complete, she wrapped it and gave it to him as a gift.
Suleiman’s beard was now shaven. All that was left was his mustache. He touched it. When the barber asked repeatedly if he should shave the mustache too, Suleiman looked up and asked, “Do you think a mustache suits me?” The barber removed the cape, tapped him on his back and said, “A man without a mustache is not a real man.” Suleiman laughed, and got up from the chair to look at the mirror. He could not recognize himself.
He left early the next morning for the cemetery. The security office was closed. A few hours had passed. He was now lying under a willow tree with his small bag under his head, gazing at the branches hanging down. He had searched widely to find this tree.
And now he had no choice but to look for the unnamed martyrs’ graveyard himself. Despite searching extensively, he could not find his name, and so he waited for the office to open.
When the attendant arrived, Suleiman gave him the name and surname. The attendant said that they had wanted to allocate this Suleiman a plot for burial in the martyrs’ area, but that his daughter had refused, insisting that he be listed as missing. So he had no headstone. “She comes here every Friday––alone or with her mother. They come here first and then they visit the graves of other martyrs. She comes to my office, too. She asks if anyone has inquired about her father. She always asks this question. There is no shortage of families who are anxious about the news of their missing loved ones, so, for their comfort, we give them the bones of something, dressed as the remains of a soldier who has been missing for years.”
Suleiman’s hands were cold, and he was breathless. He closed his eyes and thanked the man, before leaving to find his own grave, or perhaps himself. A cold breeze swept between the thick willow leaves. He found his way back to its hanging branches.
He sat there, hugging his legs close to his chest, with his chin resting on his kneecaps. The sun had risen to remove the morning shadows over the graves. The smell of rain, the smoke from the burning wild rue seed, and the occasional sound of prayer engulfed the air. People were slowly gathering around him. He remembered the day they had brought Khurshid home from the hospital. Bi Bi Jaan had looked dejected when she learned it was a baby girl. Suleiman, however, was overjoyed. He pressed her to his chest and asked Alia what she had named her. Alia just shook her head. He then kissed the baby girl on the face and said, “I will give her a name myself. She will be her father’s Khurshid, her father’s sun.”
When Khurshid grew up, they would read poems so loudly that Alia would be forced to tell them off. They would hold hands and walk around the pool surrounded by vases in the garden. “Khurshid Khanum, rise and shine. Say hello to your dad, Khurshid Khanum,” Suleiman would sing.
He stood still where he was standing. He felt his heartbeat slow down. He could not believe his eyes. It was her––Alia, Suleiman’s own Alia. He could not swallow. He kept blinking in disbelief. Then, he collected himself. “You finally came,” he thought. It was Alia, accompanied by a girl her size, wearing a headscarf and smiling. She was walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Alia. “It is them. It must be them, Alia and her father’s Khurshid Khanum,” he said to himself.
He hid behind the tree trunk, holding the bag to his face to avoid being recognized. “She has grown into a lady,” he told himself.
Khurshid took something out of her bag––a packet of dates. Her hair was visible under her green headscarf. She was offering the votive dates to the passersby. She bore an uncanny resemblance to Alia. She reminded him of her mother when they had first met.
Khurshid stopped suddenly as if someone had called her name. A man and a small boy were approaching her. Alia took the little boy from the man’s arms. Zargham had grown older, into a man, as he would say. His hair had turned gray.
Suleiman was heartbroken and panting. Alia followed the man. Khurshid left, too. Suleiman felt as if he was disintegrating. He fell to the ground. He buried his face in the soft soil under the willow tree and cried loudly. He filled his fists with soil and screamed. He wanted to stop breathing there and then. He wanted his heart to stop pumping blood through his veins. A flood of tears was washing his eyes, rolling down his clean-shaven, wrinkled face. He knelt, lifted his head, and hit it against the ground, over and over. He could not lose them.
His knees were wet from his tears. Alia had left. Zargham and the little boy were gone. Someone who looked like Alia seemed to be walking toward the attendant’s office. The wind was blowing her skirt. How fast she was walking. It must be Khurshid. She must have a question for the attendant––the same old question.
Suleiman stood right there. He picked up his bag, clenched his fists, and headed toward the attendant’s room. His steps were slow and his legs shaky. He felt as if he was dragging them behind him. Khurshid was standing. The man in the office was on the phone. Khurshid had not yet asked the question. Suleiman was still standing there, wondering whether he could lose her or not. Tears had washed his entire face. He could not lose Khurshid, and did not want to. He walked fast and steadily now, edging closer to the girl. He was right behind her, breathing slowly. The attendant ended his call and looked up. The girl asked the attendant, “Excuse me, uncle, has anyone come to ask about my father’s grave?” As he began to answer the girl, his gaze remained fixed on Suleiman.
“Khurshid Khanum, Rise and Shine” © 2020 by Batool Heydari. Translation © 2020 by Parwana Fayyaz. Developed with Untold, a development program for writers in conflict and postconflict areas, supported by the British Council and the Bagri Foundation. All rights reserved.
Atiq Rahimi’s “A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear”
Turn this Air Conditioner On, Sir
A young man makes his way to work in Kabul, preoccupied with the thought of his own death, in this story by Maryam Mahjube.
Sir, please turn the air conditioner on.
If he says this out loud, everyone around him will scold him. Or they will ridicule him about how cold the weather is at this time of year, happy that space is tight in the car and they have to sit close to one another. As the number of vehicles grows and traffic gets worse, his sweat increases and a warmth spreads from behind his neck and over his whole body. When a bigger truck, full of bricks, stops beside their car, his body clenches. If that truck is full of gas and petrol, he grips the handle on the roof tighter and turns his face to the person sitting next to him, but without any smile that might at least offset his fear, his anger, and his distress. So no one will fight or make a scene, so they will not ask what they have done wrong to deserve such a look. He pretends that he wants to look at the shops or vehicles on their side. As he warms up, his cologne permeates the packed space inside the car and mixes with the smells of smoke and petrol and dust.
There is no escaping from this crowdedness. When he looks beyond the window to his left, there is a loaded trailer. To his right, there is a person sitting, and another person after that. When he looks past them, through the window, the vehicles are also full of people and are moving slowly, slowly, one after another. Beyond them, there are grocery stores whose insides are full of rice and oil and whose outsides are surrounded by crates of yellow and red apples, pomegranates, and oranges. Their color spreading warmth. The smoke of kebabs slowly wafts upwards from a restaurant and disperses. On the floor above it is a café. Its sign darkened by the smoke.
Slowly the Silo comes into view. The Silo building is so tall that it covers the silhouette of the mountains.
There are two things no one has seen—the Silo painted any other color than yellow and white and the daily arrival or departure of its bread-makers. Although Hamed has been taking this route for the past eighteen years, he has never met or seen a single person who works there. Upset by this, he breathes deeply. The pavement is full of people. People with flesh and skin and veins and blood. People full of joy and sadness and wishes and God.
Oof, people—bags full of blood with green veins and black hair. And the eyes that are black and white, green and white, a few blue and white. People full of sorrow and depression. And with the hearts that are blackened by the world. And hearts full of hope and joy from a few pieces of paper and thanking God that life is still good.
Outside the vehicle, steam comes out of the mouths of men and young children selling souvenirs in the streets. Thanks to the cold weather, it is as if everyone in the city is smoking a cigarette. This is the crowd who might at this moment or a few moments later explode with Hamed. With their veins full of blood and their skulls full of brains and nerves, they might disappear. Then he remembers the piece of cheese he left in the fridge for tomorrow morning.
Will it stay there until tomorrow morning and forevermore? Tomorrow morning will not come. Tomorrow morning—when I would have eaten that piece of cheese with sweet tea—will never come.
For these twenty-eight days he has gone to the office and come back. In two days, he will get his pay. Two days from today. Hamed speculates. For no reason at all, in utter stupidity and ignorance, on this road, inside this vehicle, his veins full of blood, would have been torn apart. In two days’ time, his pay will be transferred to the bank.
He checks one pocket, then the other, but there is no handkerchief. He puts his hand inside the pocket of his jacket and then pulls out a light turquoise colored handkerchief––on one corner of which a pear is embroidered in pink––and cleans the sweat from his forehead and neck. The handkerchief smells of cologne, the one he bought for three thousand Afghanis from Gulbahar Centre. Its bottle is really small but still full of cologne, like the people who are full of blood and wishes. It is too much—it isn’t only the thought of death and being unexpectedly broken into pieces. What if, after this, his son becomes a gum seller or an addict, or if his daughter has to beg in this country, where …
Oh God, I seek refuge in you, but all these orphans and beggars haven’t fallen from the sky. They have been left behind. Left behind by people—half of whose blood seeped into the ground in the street while water washed the other half away—buried, unwashed, as martyrs in the most crowded graveyard.
The sky is blue and clear and there is a gentle breeze. It is one of those days when the winter sun is gorgeous, and you don’t want to even think of death. The alley near the school is crowded for a winter’s day. Little and big girls, with their white chadors and colored jackets that cover half the blackness of their shirts, crowd around the man selling candy floss. Those who had eaten it first had pink colored lips and tongues. The memory of childhood turns to water in people’s hearts, just like that sweet pink cotton wool in their mouths. Mothers take the hands of their small boys and pull them into the school. The car now stops at the school lane. As the north wind blows onto Hamed’s body and dries his sweat, his phone rings:
“Hello Hamed, are you OK?”
“Hello yes, I got here fine!”
“There’s been an explosion on Pul-e Charkhi Road. I called to check on you. Thankfully, you have got there.”
“Pul-e Charkhi was not on my way, but thanks.”
He says goodbye and goes into the school, his secretary Kaka Kheir Mamad runs toward him:
“Good morning, Mr. Headmaster. Come, someone has been bothering me. He has been waiting for you since early morning. Mr. Headmaster, these girls want to transfer to another school. Their father has brought papers.”
Hamed doesn’t consider it necessary to ask: “Are they not content with their studies or teacher?”
Hamed knows that in government schools, one doesn’t ask these kinds of questions. It is completely against pride and honour in these hallowed places. It is only the private schools which put themselves at the feet of their students. He himself understands that no one makes their journey to school longer because of the quality of their studies. It’s possible that their father, like others from this area, has migrated to another place.
He looks at the document. Yes! Rabia Balkhi––so they have moved to Karteh-e Seh or Karteh-e Char. He is now curious whether they got the house with a mortgage or if they rented. He can’t imagine that these girls’ father, with his shabby appearance, bought a house.
Kaka Kheir Mamad brings tea and chocolate from the day before, which one of the students had brought as his graduation sweet. Hamed recalls that its wrapper was red and inside was chocolate mixed with nuts. It is now lunch time. The smell of fried onions rushes in with every opening and closing of the door of his office. A sense of hunger makes Hamed’s mouth watery and at last he asks his secretary, “Kaka Kheir Mamad, what are we having for lunch?” And Kaka Kheir Mamad answers: “What do the poor have for lunch, Mr. Headmaster, potato curry.” Headmaster Hamed approves the transfer documents and hands it back to Kaka Kheir Mamad. When Kaka Kheir Mamad goes away, he is alone. It was during his tea break that suddenly he felt crowded and restless again. Today his heart and mind won’t rest on anything. The tea doesn’t taste the same as normal. Why? It is as if demons are chasing him and even though now they are hidden from him, Hamed can sense them. As he remembers his sister’s call, fear runs through his heart and body––why did his sister call him so randomly and ask how he was when she knew that the explosion wasn’t on his route? Her asking how he was gives him a bad feeling. What if today, on the way back, he gets caught up in a suicide attack and that is the last time that his sister heard his voice? Don’t let it be that his sister has sensed that his death will come soon. He feels intensely low and his whole being is tangled up like a knot. He swallows, takes a deep breath. If he was a smoker, he would definitely smoke a cigarette.
He prays to God for strength, as he gets up from behind the table, and walks himself to the yard. The sun is high in the sky, warm and gentle. Hamed sits on a bench. The air is fresh and worth breathing. He moves bits of gravel around with his feet and doesn’t notice at all that he is playing with the little stones. Yes, his heart and his whole attention are on the other side of the city, with the people who died today. Who are they to him and had they known that they would die today?
Had someone informed them:
Hello, this morning at eight twenty-three you will die and afterwards explained that next to you is a vehicle full of explosives, we still don’t know what kind of explosives but we know it will explode––it will suddenly burst into flames and you will be consumed by the flames. The people would have said if it will catch fire, let it catch fire, we will die anyway, your information is not that useful. It would have been better if you had said today the weather will be cloudy or whether it would rain or not at eight twenty-three. Death is certain and we are not afraid of it, but we do fear that our children will be orphans.
Hamed raises his head and looks around him at the dry, leafless trees and the empty courtyard of the school. It is a space he has seen over and over again for many years, but it has never seen him so remorseful. He gets up and looks at his watch, it shows it is ten past two in the afternoon. Every day, he goes home from school at two thirty, so why does he want to go now? What game is he caught in? Who wants to ensnare him? Or is it a mysterious good force prompting him to leave at this hour? Should he go or not? Afterwards, they will say:
Hamed left school at two thirty every day, on the day he died he left at ten past two, damn it!
“Turn This Air Conditioner On, Sir” © 2020 by Maryam Mahjube. Translation © 2020 by Parwana Fayyaz. Developed with Untold, a development program for writers in conflict and postconflict areas, supported by the British Council and the Bagri Foundation. All rights reserved.
Daughter Number Eight
Societal expectations weigh down on a mother returning from the hospital after having her eighth daughter in this story by Freshta Ghani.
It is past early afternoon. The evening call to prayer is still to come. I am hungry, but I am fasting. My legs are weak, my hands are shaking. There is a kind of silence in the kitchen, but the sound of the pressure cooker, which has just started, is breaking it, getting louder and more powerful. The pressure cooker has increased my fear too. I look at the clock: seventeen minutes past five in the evening. I turn the heat down under the meat. There is a big bunch of spinach waiting to be cleaned, cut, and cooked for the guests. The kitchen is very messy, and it is making me feel suffocated. I open the bunch of spinach, clean it leaf by leaf, and use the big knife to start cutting it up. Sometimes, it is easy to take all my anger out on the vegetables, cutting them up vigorously. This is what I do. I haven’t even finished cutting up the spinach before I start worrying about the rice; I have to soak some now so that it cooks better later.
Goodness me. I can’t work properly today. I don’t know the best way to do all this. I’m panicking a lot. My heart is pounding uncontrollably. I can’t even leave the pot full of rice. I have to get dinner ready quickly. I can smell the meat—it smells cooked enough. Oh, I so feel like eating it. When the fast breaks I will definitely be eating some meat. May God accept my fast and bless me with a son this time. What else would I ask for? Oh, and it’s so good that I cooked the okra and eggplant last night. This makes my life easier now. Two dishes are ready. They will just need warming up later.
I can hear loud voices from the next room. My mother-in-law and sisters-in-law are laughing and talking loudly. What are they talking about? I wonder. God knows where Sharifa and Nazanin are. God, I am now eight months pregnant and I haven’t gone for a single check-up. I feel that this one might be a son, but I am scared that something might happen to me. I hear a very sweet voice. Who might this person be? Oh, it is my third daughter, Basmeena. She has got the salad plates ready for me. Oh, I love her tiny hands. She melts my heart with these little things she does to help me.
Cooking the spinach and meat is easy and quick. I finish making both. But how will I manage lifting the pot of rice on my own? I am feeling a bit helpless, tired. Last time, when auntie Makai was here, she saw me lifting a bucket full of water and told me off. This pot is even bigger.
The mullah has now called for the evening prayer. Maybe someone will come out of that room and help me with this pot of rice. Until then, I will break my fast. I haven’t finished my first bite when my eldest sister-in-law comes in and says: “Well done, you! The guests haven’t even arrived yet and you have started licking the pot like a hungry cat!”
My first bite is now stuck in my throat. It won’t go down, due to my fear. I move the plate away—I don’t feel like eating after this. I am standing quietly, saying nothing, though I have a lot to say. My mother always says not to be rude to my in-laws. She says you have to just endure everything. OK. My sister-in-law leaves the kitchen and my tears start flowing again like a river.
I wash a big pot and put it on the stove. I increase the heat. My life is like the boiling water in this pot, the happiness evaporating from it like the steam. My rice is soft now. I look out the window, but there is no one who can help me to lift it down. OK then. I will just lift it. Nothing is going to happen to me.
As I lift it, I feel a sharp pain in my back. The water has started flowing between my legs. With difficulty I sieve the rice, add oil and spices, put the pot back on low heat on the stove. My legs have slowly started losing their strength and the pain in my back and stomach is increasing. I feel like screaming. I slide to the floor, in too much pain to carry on with my chores. Now the kitchen door opens, and my youngest brother-in-law, Hashmat, asks: “Is the food ready? The guests have arrived.”
As he enters the kitchen he sees me. I can hear him saying, “Sister-in-law, what has happened?” He splashes water over my face, looks at me carefully, and then runs out of the kitchen. A few seconds later, my mother-in-law and eldest sister-in-law are standing over my head.
My mother in-law says: “You are a drama queen. A fake. If you couldn’t cook then you should have asked us to. If you die, what will I tell our relatives and the village?” My vision blurs. Hashmat gets angry with his mother and sisters, but I can’t hear what they are saying. I feel like I might die. The last thing I remember is the black of the car seats.
Today is my third day in the hospital. I am breathing in the smells around me. One of my hands is connected to the drip. A white sheet is coving my body. A nurse comes in and tells off the women—those women in labor whose babies haven’t yet arrived. If the women scream in pain, the nurses tell them off. There is pain in each woman’s eyes. One is beside me, breastfeeding her newborn baby. I look at the baby and remember my own. I call the nurse and ask, “Where is my baby?”
The nurse, who is wearing pink lipstick, stands over my head. She takes out my file, looks at me very carefully, and leaves without saying anything. After half an hour she is back, and I ask her the same question again.
“Your baby is weak and is in an incubator,” she says. “The doctors will tell you.”
I quickly ask her: “Is it a boy or a girl?”
The nurse thinks for a second, then says: “I don’t know. When the doctor comes, ask her.”
My heart is beating fast. I really hope that this time I have given birth to a boy. God must have listened to my prayers this time, but, if it is a girl, what will I do? My life will be hell. My heart beats faster and harder. I wish that my wish comes true. I really want a boy this time. God help me, if this baby is a boy I will distribute something good among the poor in your name. I will fast and visit shrines in your name.
I ask the lady beside me what the time is. It is eleven, and I still haven’t seen my baby. There is no sign of the doctor. I look at my hand. It is all bruised. How could this have happened? Maybe, in the last three days when I have been unwell, I have had many injections.
An older man and an older woman have entered the room. Maybe they are hospital workers. Oh, no. They are not hospital staff. They have brought food to the woman next to me. There is noise from all the women, but she is screaming the loudest. She is eating at my brain.
The doctor has entered the room. She is very angry about the man—is saying, in a loud voice, “Haven’t I told you not to let male visitors in here? Don’t you understand?” The doctor is fuming. Her face is turning red with anger, and I am not sure how to ask her about my baby. I haven’t even started talking when she leaves the room. Now she starts shouting at the woman who let the visitors in.
Oh, what should I do? There is a smell of kebab in the room, and I am so hungry. Two more hospital workers have entered and they are distributing plates of rice, beans, and a banana to all the patients. The woman beside me leans in and gives me a bite. I tell her that I don’t want it, but she insists. I am hungry, but nothing is going to go down my throat. If this time I haven’t given birth to a son, my life will be turned to poison. I am thinking deeply. I put the dishes to one side and fall asleep.
I wake to the cry of a baby. In the room, there is one baby that is particularly unsettled. The lady has two kids—a one-year-old, maybe one and a half, and a newborn. It is the older baby that is crying. I tell her that she should have left the older one at home, and she says that they brought him yesterday because he was even more unsettled when apart from her. I smile at her, and tell her, “God bless him.”
The day has passed into night. I know nothing about my baby. I am not allowed to go anywhere apart from the bathroom. The doctors are telling me I should be resting, but how can a mother rest when she’s separated from her baby? What kind of justice is this?
In the morning, a young doctor enters the room. She looks very fresh. She is wearing a light blue scarf—she looks good. “Is the baby better today?” I ask her. “How is it? Is it a son or a daughter? The nurse says my baby is weak and is being kept in an incubator?”
The doctor looks at me very carefully and says, “Thank your God that your baby is alive. The baby was so weak that we thought it wouldn’t keep breathing. What did you do that it came to this?”
I answered: “Doctor, my auntie said I should fast while pregnant. That maybe then I would give birth to a boy.”
She is angry. “You fast and then the blame goes to the doctors? We are blamed for mothers who die giving birth. How can these kinds of women stay alive? Who fasts during pregnancy?” She leaves the room. My heart is exploding: they need to tell me if I have a son or a daughter.
A few seconds pass before a nurse comes in and announces that those mothers whose babies are in incubators will have them by the evening. My hands and legs start shaking. I ask the woman beside me for the time every few minutes. I am eager to see my baby. I am so, so anxious to see my baby.
It is mealtime again. I don’t feel like eating. The lady next to me says, “Eat something. You will be breastfeeding your baby, you need your energy.” I force myself to eat a few bites before the older lady comes in to collect the plates.
The day passes with us women chatting to each other. I didn’t sleep at all last night. It is my fifth day here. Finally, the doctors bring the baby to me and say I can leave. My eldest brother-in-law and his wife have come. They ask me to go with them, and I ask them quickly, “Is my baby a boy or not?”
They are all looking down. No one says anything. I lose hope.
I take my baby and look under the blanket. My baby is a girl.
I start slowly walking out of the hospital with my in-laws. My heart is beating faster. My body is shaking. I don’t know if it is the fear, or if it is cold outside. I look at my daughter and say to myself: “What would have happened if you were a boy? I hope I die before we get home.”
As we arrive, I hear singing and music. At first, I think the neighbors are getting their son married. No—the sound is coming from our house. Oh, good, I think. My brother-in-law is getting married. This will be a good distraction, and perhaps they won’t tell me off for giving birth to another girl.
As I enter the yard, my youngest daughter runs toward me. Her face is unwashed, I hug her close to my chest, then clean her nose with the edge of my scarf. I asked her, “Marwa, what is happening at home?”
She is talking in her sweet young voice: “I don’t know, Mama. But everyone is wearing beautiful clothes. Look at my new yellow dress.” I am anxious to learn what is happening.
When I enter the room, the women greet me by tossing the traditional chocolates and other sweets over my head. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe they will welcome me like this knowing that I have given birth to a girl. Everyone is congratulating me. I have started to smile, for the first time in a while. I am saying thank you. I haven’t finished greeting everyone when one woman, standing on my left, says: “This is the first time I have seen a woman who is happy that her husband is taking a second wife.”
It feels like someone has poured boiling water over me. My legs feel weak, my throat is full of pain, and my eyes have dried out. I sit down in the middle of the room and let my baby girl slip from my hands. A woman who is sitting near me catches her quickly. The baby’s cry is eating my brain. I hate to hear it. I don’t even want to see my baby. I am silent, but my mood is changing.
There is a lot of noise from the women. A few of them have gathered around me. I am still in my own world. Maiwand enters the room, and I run toward him and spit in his face. He slaps me hard across mine. I fall down on the floor, and he leaves the room.
Nargis’s auntie tells her daughter, Palwasha, to give me a glass of warm milk, since I have just given birth. She helps me get up with great difficulty. The kitchen is a mess, and there are dishes everywhere. Palwasha puts a pot of milk on the stove, but then leaves in a hurry, the sound of music and singing coming from the next room. It is making its way right into my brain. I get angrier and angrier.
The milk is getting hot and foaming up.
I pour the full pot of boiling milk over my head. I fall to the floor. I am burning from head to toe.
A few women come into the kitchen. One of them runs toward me, lifts me up, and says with a sigh: “Poor woman. Her husband has married another woman.”
Another woman, who has a big voice, says: “Poor woman. Her luck is bad. This is her eighth baby, and it’s another girl.”
“Daughter Number Eight” © 2020 by Freshta Ghani. Translation © 2020 by Zarghuna Kargar. Developed with Untold, a development program for writers in conflict and postconflict areas, supported by the British Council and the Bagri Foundation. All rights reserved.
The Translator Relay: Jack Jung
Aperture: Sudanese Female Novelists Coming into Focus
Why is it so hard to find the work of Sudanese women in English translation? Yes, there is Leila Aboulela, who writes in English, but if asked about other female Sudanese writers, one would probably struggle to name them. Some might reason that there just aren’t many Sudanese women writing. This assumption has led to anthologies and online publications focused on Sudanese literature in which female-authored works make up less than thirty percent of their contents; more general anthologies include even fewer writers. This issue seeks to counter such assumptions.
The short story form has long been celebrated in Sudan, and yes, single stories by female authors, as well as a few entire collections, have made it into English. But where are the novels written by Sudanese women? Tayyeb Salih, Amir Tag Elsir, and Hammour Ziada are all feted authors of novels in their original Arabic and translated English versions. But when I spoke with journalists, academics, and friends, they were all hard pressed to find a novel by a Sudanese woman translated into English.
Zeinab Belail, one of Sudan’s preeminent writers, has been publishing literary works for over thirty years. Why have we never come across her work in English till today? Of the five writers featured in this issue, Rania Mamoun is the only one to have appeared in translation before. Is there some sort of double marginalization at play? Perhaps, for not only are they women, but also Sudanese, caught in a limbo at times of not being Arab nor African enough.
Rather than focusing primarily on who has made it into English, I felt it more pressing to investigate what is happening in the Sudanese publishing arena within the context of the greater Arab literary sphere. The conclusion? If one reads Arabic, yet can’t “see” the works of female Sudanese authors, can’t celebrate their works and engage with their powerful writing, it’s not because they aren’t there.
So what do we know about the world of Sudanese novels in Arabic? Nabil Ghali’s study ”A Bibliography of the Sudanese Novel” investigates the state of novels published in Arabic in Sudan from 1948 to 2015. This study finds that in this period, 476 novels were published, 314 of them between 2000 and 2015. Of those 476 novels, only forty-nine, by thirty-five writers, were authored by women. Compare this to, say, Amir Tag Elsir, who has published nineteen novels and is still writing. Furthermore, the years of 2014 and 2015 saw eleven novels authored by women published, nearly equaling the output of female authors in the fifty years between 1948 and 2000, which saw no more than fifteen women’s novels making it to market in Sudan. Enough number crunching; here is the takeaway: from 1948 to 2015, only ten percent of the novels published in Sudan were written by women. Ten percent.
Not all hope is lost, though. A more recent study analyzing the Arabophone Sudanese novels published in Sudan and outside of it, carried out by Dr. Atef Al Haj Saeed, states despite the December uprising being at the forefront of the population’s concerns, 2019 was a record year for the novel in Sudan, with twenty-eight published. An additional twenty novels were published outside Sudan (the lion’s share in Egypt), bringing the total to forty-eight. Of these, nine, or twenty percent, were written by women. And of these nine novels, over fifty percent were published outside of Sudan in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Authors in this issue, some of whom still reside in Sudan, are among those who sought to publish their works outside of the country.
Amna al-Fadl, Ann El Safi, Rania Mamoun, Sara Al-Jack, and Zeinab Belail are all established writers with short story collections, poetry collections, and novels to their name. I interviewed them to hear the challenges they have faced getting published in Arabic, and the trickle-down effect this has on their work making it into translation. When Belail, lauded for her extensive body of work, showed an editor her first novel, Al-Aktiyar (The Choice, 1984), he responded, “This is too much . . . coming from a woman.” More than three decades into her career, Zeinab recounted, “writing about sex or religion is still forbidden for women. There are red lines that as a female writer you’re not even meant to approach. To do so brands you a heretic, a rogue, someone who has no appreciation for literature.” Compare this to Amir Tag Elsir’s novel Ebola ’76, which opens with a sexual encounter.
"There is a patriarchal mentality that prevails throughout Sudanese society, and an extremely high sensitivity toward what female authors are writing about, especially when it seemingly contradicts societal values,” shares Ann El Safi. Living outside of Sudan, El Safi recollects that, upon returning to Sudan to discuss her novel Falak al-Ghawaya (Orbit of Temptation, 2014), she was met with heavy criticism and even threatened. Her novel portrays an empowered female character who takes her life into her own hands, having her own affair after suspecting her husband’s infidelity. One critic even went so far as to demand she rewrite the book. You may argue that women’s writing is censored to some degree in all Arab countries, but when comparing these cases to those of female writers publishing in Lebanon or even the UAE, for instance—where Libyan Najwa Bin Shatwan’s latest novel, The Horse’s Hair, retells the sacrosanct story of creation and pummels the patriarchal customs of her country—the brick wall that Sudanese women writers are facing is that much higher, thicker, seemingly impenetrable. Bin Shatwan shared that getting her novel published in the UAE did raise some eyebrows in the industry there but wasn’t impossible thanks to the stalwart support of her male editor.
For those ten percent of Sudanese women who manage to break through and get their novels published, what happens next? “Literary critics tend to be males who prefer to celebrate male authors,” Belail declares. “No matter how distinguished a woman’s writing may be, works by women are rarely reviewed. Male critics simply do not appreciate the courage it takes for women to write in our society.” Courage, and determination. It goes without saying that if women’s works are repeatedly neglected, pushed aside whether in print or on radio or television, then Sudanese readers—let alone other Arab ones—are less likely to know about these books and pick them up.
The ripple effect is that editors in the English-speaking world (and undoubtedly in other language ecosystems as well) want to see translated reviews, numbers of books sold, and other evidence to show how the book did in its home country. If a Sudanese female author is unsupported by her own literary ecosystem, it is unlikely that her work will make it into any other language. A case in point is that between 2015 and 2017 alone, there were at least five novels by male Sudanese authors translated into English whereas to date there appears to not have been a single female-authored Sudanese novel translated into English and published. By contrast, in 2020, to cite one Arabophone example, there have already been three novels by Palestinian women translated into English published by both American and British houses.
Aside from issues that affect both male and female Sudanese authors—lack of marketing support, poor distribution of books, weak editing standards in houses, nonexistent financial support from governmental bodies, a dearth of training for publishers—what many of these writers are hoping for, at the very least, is summarized by Sara Al-Jack: “Sudanese women writers need to be seen as separate entities from their female characters so that we aren’t prosecuted for our characters’ actions and decisions.”
What may not be seen by Western audiences as provocative or controversial can be deemed as such by Sudanese society. In Amna al-Fadl’s novel Some of What Happened Between Us (translated by Katherine Van de Vate) the protagonist, Basma, is a journalist and activist based in Sudan. Starved for love, the protagonist embarks upon a passionate extramarital affair with a psychologist she meets at a workshop in a prison. Far from a mere romance, though, al-Fadl’s work is an indictment of the treatment of women in Sudan in which early marriage, genital mutilation, and domestic abuse feature. (As you may have suspected, it was published outside of Sudan.) The novel juxtaposes the modern and the traditional, moving through different times and places to tell Basma’s story in a deeply evocative yet economical style. Al-Fadl is a poet, and writes in lyrical language of great beauty, particularly when she is portraying her characters’ thoughts and emotions, as seen in the excerpt here, “Basma’s Dream.”
In “The Birth of the Spirit,” from The Mites by Sara Al-Jack, the Nile is more than an element in the setting; it is a central character, perhaps the central character. The river plays a pivotal role in the story, as it does in the history of Sudan, which Al-Jack is intent on retelling through a different lens in her work. It is Al-Jack’s inspired and imaginative reconstruction of such stories, and how she positions the Nile in the heart of the narrative of creation, that drew the translator Yasmine Zohdi to the particular scene presented in this issue, which effectively conveys the essence of this ambitious work.
Ann El Safi’s novel Like Spirit resists easy categorization. Its twenty-two vignettes weave in and out of a number of narrative threads, which meet and part in ways evocative of the shape of the long braid that forms one of its recurring physical motifs. The novel plays with ideas of reincarnation and doppelgängers, and explores themes of war, injustice, wasted potential, unrequited love, and the complex, interchangeably nourishing and destructive, relationship between humans and nature. ”Freedom of Flight,” the excerpt featured here, translated by Nariman Youssef, introduces the perspective of an unexpected character.
“Al-Nar Street,” from Zeinab Belail’s The Cactus (translated by Nesrin Amin), opens in a slum on the outskirts of the “Illuminated City.” The residents of the slum are migrants who settled there when the city shut them out by means of physical boundaries. A failed uprising leads to their expulsion from their already squalid homes, and they embark on a fantastic journey with the determination to rebuild their lives, aided by nothing less than demons and genies. The fantastic and supernatural thus blend and contrast with the stark realism of the life of the marginalized people. Belail explained that the novel is an ode to the Sudanese people, whose harsh conditions, much like those of cactus plants, only increase their resilience and fortitude.
Also exploring a marginalized section of Sudanese society is Rania Mamoun’s Son of the Sun (translated by Nesrin Amin), which takes place in Mamoun’s hometown of Wad Madani. Set up as two parallel narrative lines that converge toward the end, it follows two protagonists: the melancholy morgue-worker Karam, who lives withdrawn from society, and the uninhibited, sanguine Jamal, one of the so-called “shammasa,” the homeless “sons of the sun.” The novel traces the repeated and futile attempts of the shammasa to emerge from their hopeless situation, only to be brutally pushed back by society. Their world is contrasted to that of Karam, himself living on the margins of society, who feels more at ease dealing with the corpses in the morgue. In the excerpt here, “At the Coffee Shop,” Jamal observes a mundane morning turn suddenly violent.
As you dive into these poignant excerpts, savor the literature for its creativity, experimentation, and musicality … but just as important, remember what it took for these voices to reach you.
All interviews were conducted by email in Arabic and have been translated into English. Special thanks to Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin for providing contact details for some of the authors and to Hamid Al Nazir for guiding me to available data on publishing in Sudan.
© 2020 by Sawad Hussain. All rights reserved.
View this article in Arabic | English - Arabic
A routine day turns suddenly violent in this excerpt from Rania Mamoun’s novel Son of the Sun.
Words Without Borders · Rania Mamoun Reads "في المقهى" ("At the Coffee Shop")
Listen to Rania Mamoun read "At the Coffee Shop" in the original Arabic.
The frenzied football fan banged on the table with a force that knocked the tea over. One glass shattered as it hit the ground. He shot up, angrily screaming at the man addressing him. He kicked the plastic chair; it fell over with its legs pointing to the sky. I looked at the shattered glass and, for a moment, couldn’t hear his angry voice anymore. Is our boss going to make me pay up for this glass? He told us a hundred times not to break any glasses. You break it, you buy it. Of course, he’ll say it’s my fault, that I should have cleared the table sooner . . .
I looked over and saw the enraged fan had slashed the other’s throat with a piece of broken glass. While I was brooding, he had bent over, picked up a shard of glass, and slit the throat of the man he was speaking to, sliced the artery right open! In that moment, one man lost his life. Oh God! Like that—just like that! In a blink of an eye, a man’s dead!
I was horrified. Looking over at Ibrahuma, I saw that he was too. I’d never seen anyone die in front of me before. Blood gushed from the man’s neck, it splattered on the customers’ clothes and on the killer, who had a frozen look in his eyes. People gathered around shouting: “Take him to the hospital!” “Save him!” “Help me pick him up!” “Call an ambulance!” “What have you done, man?” “Where’s the ambulance?” “Somebody call an ambulance!” “It’s all right, man, compose yourself, compose yourself.” “Shut up, he can’t hear you.” “Is he dead?” “No, no, he’s not dead.” “He’s dead you idiot, look, look, his eyes have lost their shine.” “Oh my God.”
The crowd grew. In minutes, a crowd of people gathered, each one of them eager to see the victim, to see how well they knew him. Everyone claimed they knew that the murderer would kill somebody someday. He was hot-tempered, red-hot, like burning coal, a fanatical supporter of his team, which happened to be losing that day.
Salem, our boss, roused us from our state of shock and confusion at what had happened. He yelled at us to bring in the cups, tables, and chairs.
“They’re going to attack the coffee shop next. Hurry up!”
We quickly started collecting cups and trays. This guy only cares about his money, even when someone had just been murdered right before his eyes. We passed through the crowd, trembling, moving cautiously and nervously, grabbing cups and bumping into each other. We picked up the fallen chairs and brought them into the restaurant, at times grabbing the same one and carrying it in together. We took all we could carry back into the coffee shop, then ran back out to bring in the tables. It wasn’t easy. Shorter people were standing on top of them so they wouldn’t miss out. We struggled, as there wasn’t much space for us to move the tables or lift them over our shoulders. The whole place was jam-packed, making what we had to do almost impossible.
Even after the ambulance had left with the body inside, and after the police had arrested the murderer and prepared a field sketch, the place was still teeming with people. Salem was agitated, screaming at Ibrahuma and me, barking out one order after another, leaving us tense and confused about what to do next. After some rushed hauling we were able to save many of the tables, if not all.
Some people sat at the remaining tables and started retelling the events over and over to those who kept coming in, and whoever heard the story passed it on. Everyone was talking, you couldn’t tell who was listening to whom! This one was telling the story, that one was analyzing it, someone else was sharing his observations, while another guy was reminded of a similar story he had heard or witnessed. The conversations drifted—soon enough they forgot all about the murderer and his victim. They started talking about violence, about how people have forgotten how to talk to one another, how they have become irritable and short-tempered and unable to handle criticism.
One of them, a slender man with a good head of hair and four different color pens sticking out of the pocket of his shabby white shirt, jumped on top of a rusty metal table and began talking to the crowd from his improvised pulpit:
“People, everything that’s happened here is the government’s fault! Yes, this government hasn’t left us a mattress to sleep on, it has made our lives intolerable, our work intolerable, we’re constantly tired and irritated, worn out as an old shoe! Brothers, if this government was just, our lives wouldn’t have been so miserable, we wouldn’t be killing one another, robbing one another and . . .”
This man must be high on something, I thought.
One of the people standing around shouted at him: “How is the government responsible?” Others answered back, their blood boiling: “What do you mean, how is the government’s responsible? If this killer had been content and carefree, if he wasn’t hungry, he wouldn’t have done what he did.” Another responded: “He committed this crime because he’s an angry and hot-tempered man. He’s nothing but a sore loser!” Another one butted in to say that it’s not the government’s fault but that the football players are to blame, playing like they’re drunk, unable to run or control the ball or score a goal.
Bragging, the man on the table said: “You see, it’s like I said, it’s all the government’s fault. If the government had taken an interest in sports these players would have been like the Brazilians. Even when they beat you, you come out happy because you’ve enjoyed the match. The score doesn’t matter.”
Another man hopped on the same table and said to him: “Hey man, what’s your beef with the government? It’s the coaches’ fault, they’re not doing their job properly and only care about their paycheck at the end of the month!”
“No, it’s not the coaches’ fault, it’s the government, the government, guys! You want to kill the elephant, you don’t stab its shadow! You’re cowards, scurrying off like mice to hide in your holes and leaving those running the government to walk all over this country like it’s their private property.”
“Who you calling coward? Who you calling mouse? Watch your tongue, man.”
“Cowards and mice, you’re all cowards, you’re all wimps! A cowardly people, cowards, cow—”
The words caught in his throat as he took a punch to the temple. A vicious brawl broke out between the two of them, right there, on the table. It collapsed under their weight and both men tumbled to the ground.
Hands shot out from all sides trying to separate them, and voices intermingled:
“Guys, calm down.”
“A difference of opinion shouldn’t come to this—cool it, guys!”
“I’m calm!”
We looked on with great interest and excitement, eager to pick up anything that fell on the ground: a wallet, a pack of cigarettes, a pouch of snuff, or anything else that might be in their pockets and which we could use. Ibrahuma and I stood side by side, now at some distance from the coffee shop, watching, on the lookout for whatever this chaos would gift us. It might just be our lucky day.
From Ibn al-Shams. © Rania Mamoun. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2020 by Nesrin Amin. All rights reserved.
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Hassan Blasim’s “The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq”
Freedom of Flight
Ann El Safi presents a bird’s-eye view of violence and unrequited love.
Words Without Borders · Ann El Safi reads "حرية الطيران" ("Freedom of Flight")
Listen to Ann El Safi read "Freedom of Flight" in the original Arabic.
Your days are swallowed by the road, your feet yearn for freedom.
The smell of absence seeps into the carnage around me. She has left her bedroom window open. The wall it is set in stands in ruins. The clock across is still ticking, its glass cracked in three places. The ceiling is gone. Every corner of the room is ravaged. Her beautiful paintings are debris, a scatter of colors covering the orphan chair in the corner. The small clay figurines, which she used to make when she visited her grandmother, have been blown into dust that settles over everything that surrounded them.
The wooden door, carrying the marks of a great fire, lies flat in the middle of the room. Not much else remains of the home that was.
Not much of the garden either, where once the air was filled with the sounds of oud and reed pipe and drum and conversation.
Her photograph lies in a corner on the floor. I must wipe it to see her face, her adorable long braid, the smile that turns my little heart into an oasis humming for her love, the honey-colored eyes that have filled me with joy and with sorrow time and time again.
Her home is in the village at the top of the valley by the low hill where my family and I reside. This is my first visit since the last brutal attack, three months ago. Nobody knows who the raiders were or what they wanted. Nobody knows why those unarmed people were massacred––women, children, old men, and young people in the prime of life. Could anyone take pleasure in such lawlessness and brutality? How could such atrocious crimes go unpunished?
But what do I care about the crazy world of humans? It has always confounded me. The stories I used to hear from my parents and grandparents! War and destruction, then a truce, a peaceful spell, then war again, and on and on and on.
We have always fed on the best of what the road brings us. Young antelopes and deer. Nothing less excites our hunting instinct. My kind do not eat scraps. Wherever we go, we only catch the finest there is.
She is a woman I have watched for many years, and for as many years she has been unaware of me. She used to leave her window open from morning till night. I watched her grow up, become a mother, a widow, an orphan, a grandmother.
My favorite pastime after a long day of hunting was to stand atop a tree or the wall around her house and watch her. My heart tells me she lives still, even if she’s been gone for a long time.
I hear a herd of camels approaching on the road. Up in the sky there’s a decent number of falcons on one side and vultures on the other, all following the peaceful herd. Right now, I’m not in the mood for hunting.
I step carefully in the grass that covers the garden of her house and lift my head toward the rain clouds gathering in the west. The memory of her brings me comfort. Her life started one year after mine. She was widowed at twenty and cared for her daughter until the daughter married. She lost her parents at thirty, then her daughter moved to the city. She stayed in the house with a woman who helped her with the housework and kept her company. Though age only increased her beauty and poise—her charms seem to flow from an endless mysterious well—she refused to remarry.
There came a point in my life, a threshold between being and non-being. I was getting older, facing a choice only I could make: surrender to death, or cling to life and face the hardships of regenerating my body’s force. For her, I chose life.
My travels carry me twenty to thirty kilometers every day, within the village and around it, in search of her face. Going to the city is a reckless and dangerous thing to do, yet that too I have done. I only have my heart to guide me to her.
I don’t know how much longer I will be alive, but I have befriended the roads and hope that they take me to her. She doesn’t know that I’m looking for her, nor that I have watched her through the years of her life. Yet she is the reason I’m still holding on to mine.
I breathe absolute freedom on land and in the air. The freedom in my body, in my movements, in my thoughts; I express it however I wish and I fly with it however I wish. Still, inside that which beats in my chest lies a secret that shackles my life to a human woman. I, the fearless one, who is feared by all beasts and beings, am helpless before the very thought of her.
A female of the human race has made me feel like I was made for her alone. I know full well that she would not look twice at someone like me. My slender smooth feet, my red-and-orange rimmed eyes, and my soft coat of grey and white feathers, would fill her with nothing but amusement. In her beautiful eyes, I’m like any other falcon.
I don’t tire of waiting. Every day I comb the roads to her house, and the roads that lead into and out of the city. I decipher the clouds and the passing gusts of air. I ask when she will come and receive no answer.
Now I have decided. I will travel to search for her in every place. I will put my life in danger. Why should it matter? What good is there in my life if she might be in danger while I’m not there to help in any way I can?
My role among the nobles of my tribe requires no more than some brief hours at the end of the day. We meet to discuss issues of import to our council and—primarily—to the congregation who has entrusted us with its affairs. My point of view, as an elder, is accepted by opponents and claimants when they come to us to settle their disputes.
Every now and then I inspect my claws. They are as new, growing like they did in my youth.
I rise to the top of a cliff. The sun is scorching. I smell a carcass being devoured by the vultures behind the rock. I watch one of the entrances to the village. A grey dust cloud raised by a herd of sheep envelops the place, while a man, surrounded by five dogs, yells from behind them.
They all stop in the shade of the tree with the massive hollow trunk in which water is stored from the last rainy season. The villagers pour bucketfuls of water into it whenever they can, so there’s always enough to drink for them and their cattle.
Two hours pass. I feel faint and drowsy from the heat. I should return to my nest. A sudden noise snaps me awake. I hear the screams of children: “They have come! They have come to kill us!”
The killing and plundering and pillaging lasts for an hour of human time. Many lives are lost. Weapons pierce the bodies of unarmed victims with noise and fire and leave them lying in their own blood.
I look at my claws. They are merciful in comparison and have never pierced flesh except to fill my hunger. As the brutes start to leave, I know I will follow them out of this wretched village.
Moments ago, they were committing monstrosities and taking lives. Now they’re heading east. I follow them and within two and a half hours, their convoy arrives at its final destination: A green city. I expect them to be received in some way, celebrated or censured for the carnage they have inflicted on unguarded land.
To my disappointment, they just disperse in the roads of the city. I don’t understand if it’s evil or apathy that makes them seem like lambs in the city, more peaceable than the souls they have extinguished that afternoon!
By sunset I arrive at the city’s central square. It holds enough light to dispel the dark heart of the night sky.
I look around me. To my right there’s an orderly park, in the middle of which stands an impressive towering building. I circle it. Its windows are shut. There’s a pond surrounded by tall trees and a lawn so neatly clipped it looks like the green surface of the water.
I know I can’t be safe in the cities of humans. I have to be mindful of where I walk or fly, and when. I spot a rabbit by one of the trees along the pond and quickly snatch it for nourishment before returning to the treetop, hoping that no human glimpsed me.
A few years ago, my mate ascended to heaven. My offspring inhabit worlds different to my own. I consider my beak and my claws and the air around me. Everything feels hollow. It is she who fills the universe with the spirit of beauty. Some may call me idealistic or delusional. But I find joy in the symbolism of her being, it fills me entirely, intoxicates my very existence.
A familiar perfume pulls me toward a group of people gathered in the park, with food and drink and talk of someone’s birthday. My poor aging heart—you have never quit dancing with the phantom of her. She is here. She is the one being celebrated. It’s close to midnight when the celebration ends and she enters the building accompanied by five people, one of whom I take to be her daughter. An hour passes. A window opens. It is her. My enchantress lies in her bed, talking to a boy of about ten who sits across from her. He kisses her forehead and goes out. She shuts the window.
I settle in a tall tree. I close my eyes and only open them in the morning, to find the humans going about their affairs, moving individually and in groups in every direction, some sitting around in laughter and conversation.
The one I take to be her daughter strolls out of the building in a rose-coloured dress, holding hands with the ten-year-old boy and a man of about her age. She resembles her mother, though her mother’s beauty is unmatched.
My enchantress opens the window. She looks out as she untangles her hair with her fingers. Then she sits in front of the mirror to comb, then braid it. With the magnificent braid draping over her left shoulder, she gets up and looks out of the window again. There is a man with her in the room. I hear his laughter and see her smile, then he comes to her. They kiss. He holds her like a precious doll. She is relaxed in his arms. Their bodies move closer to the window and, together, they close it.
The whistle of a distant train reaches me with the question: What am I doing here?
© Ann El Safi. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2020 by Nariman Youssef. All rights reserved.
Alaa Al Aswany’s “Chicago”
THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING
Al-Nar Street
The residents of Al-Nar Street coexist with demons and djinns from a nearby swamp in this excerpt from Zeinab Belail’s novel The Cactus Plant.
Words Without Borders · Zeinab Belail reads "شارع النار" ("Al-Nar Street")
Listen to Zeinab Belail read "Al-Nar Street" in the original Arabic.
Al-Nar Street is one of the longest streets that any of the city’s residents has ever set foot in. Long and winding, it starts in the east and ends in the west, as if rising and setting with the sun. On its banks are clay houses with small doors, small windows, and tight spaces. Their inhabitants therefore spend most of their time in the street, despite the sewage pumped into it. The houses extend along the street for around half a kilometer on each side. To the north, they are contained by the moringa trees, which keep the dust out of the Illuminated City with its high-rise buildings, paved roads, and lush gardens. And then there’s the large open space, wider than the row of houses, a space flooded by searchlights. Not even a mouse could cross it undetected.
To the south, the houses are contained by a deep canal leading away from the big river and to a place unknown to the residents. Perhaps it was originally dug to irrigate this land, but then someone changed their mind and it was abandoned, left dry, for the residents of the street to do their business and dispose of their waste. In the rainy season, it fills with water and debris. Goats drink from it and young boys learn to swim in it. Beyond this stream is a vast pit from which truck drivers obtain sand to sell for house construction. In autumn, these pits turn into swamps—a haven for mosquitoes. Scattered around this area are dense mesquite trees where stray dogs and cats seek refuge, as do young delinquents. At night these trees serve as a veil behind which some drink alcohol, thieves split their loot, and criminals fight, kill, and bury their victims in shallow graves. Often, police officers come here to dig up bodies, and the stench rises to the residents’ noses.
Women are forbidden from setting foot in the swamp, by day or by night. If a woman crosses the canal, if only to dispose of some garbage, everyone’s tongues would wag and stories would be spun about her. A powerful reason prevents the women from crossing the canal, where garbage, bricks, mud and animal carcasses have created a multitude of bridges. That reason is the demons who come in the shape of handsome men in clean clothes; they tempt women and then have their way with them. Everyone remembers the strange thing that Fathia bint Al-Khayyat gave birth to, and which Al-Hussain delivered them of in the non-place. And although men have forbidden their wives from crossing the canal, the demons have continued to come to the swamp, now bringing along their own women, to procreate in this filthy piece of land. The residents believe that the demons prefer filthy, squalid places. Every day, when the men cross the canal to the swamp for whatever reason, they find objects belonging to women—the djinns’ women of course—an earring, a bracelet, an item of clothing, or a shoe. They remain on guard, and tread carefully for fear that they may step on one of the demons’ offspring and be paralyzed.
The houses in Al-Nar street are attached. Neighbors can hear each other whisper. They exchange greetings, swear words, food, and buckets of water over the walls. Bathrooms are common property. A homeowner may walk into the bathroom only to find a neighbor using it, and there would be no embarrassment or anger. Water pipes are common property as well, and one child’s medicine is shared by all children. In fact, any person’s medicine may be used by anyone with similar symptoms.
Leafy neem trees line the street providing shade; children use them as playgrounds, men as their social clubs, and barbers as their salons. Some sections of the shaded cover have been taken over by the makers of woven anaqrib beds and banaber stools. Arguments are always breaking out between the carpenters and women who accuse them of reserving the good quality wood for the pretty women, or for women with whom they have other special arrangements.
Some tailors have also made use of the neem trees, but ladies’ tailors have separate shops to protect their customers from the prying eyes of the men passing by with sacks of coal. The spaces beneath some branches have turned into a market for cigarettes and snuff, while elsewhere they are used as workshops for mending tattered shoes. Wise men, sand readers, and palm readers have occupied spots in the shade, as have the sellers of roots—aphrodisiac roots, roots for incurable diseases, and roots that increase wealth. Some areas are reserved for the display of multicolored, decorated pottery. People come to Al-Nar Street from far and wide to buy things they cannot find anywhere else.
In the evening, women sell food along the length of the street, and men stand in circles around them to eat in the light of the kerosene lamp. The street heaves with the masses of people escaping from their stuffy, overcrowded houses. To an onlooker from above this extraordinary river looks like a mythical ship carrying people with unlit torches.
In the last third of the night, the whole street awakes. The head of the household starts by removing the branch supporting the external door, causing it to collapse. All men and boys over seven, and a few under seven, leave the house and greet one another as they meet on the street. With one hand holding up their jilbab to keep it from dragging in the mud, and the other clutching the misbaha beads, they head toward the mosque built by a benefactor they’ve never met. They feel their way in the dark, following the light of handheld flashlights and recognizing each other from their voices or the houses they were coming from. Everyone is muttering prayers, rushing along before it’s too late.
At the end of the second third of the night God descends from the seventh heaven, roaming the Earth and calling on his worshippers: “Is there anyone who is seeking my help so that I may help him? Is there anyone who was wronged so that I may restore his rights? Is there anyone who is invoking me so that I may respond to his invocation?” Then God returns to the seventh heaven and its boundless spaces. The worshippers’ voices cannot reach such lofty heights, and that is why they rush, in the hope that God will hear their prayers and answer them. In the meantime, while God is roaming the Earth, the women heat skillets, cook food, or milk sheep. They do not have the time to stop and listen to the call of God. They hurry toward the markets. The tea-selling women move swift as the wind. In only a few moments the men will come out of the mosque to buy tea from them. Some of these men have no milk at home, others have wives who are too busy preparing the goods to sell in the market, while yet others do not like to start the day with the sight of their wives: what with their messy hair and dirty, ragged gowns, or the sound of their angry, nagging voices, so unlike the well-groomed tea sellers who greet each customer with a special, bright morning smile. Men drink their tea with milk, with cinnamon, with clove, with mint, with sweet dumplings; tea that is unlike any other tea. It quenches their thirst and cures ailments only they know of. Accompanied by kind and gentle words, this tea is so very different from their wives’ tea, which always lacks flavor, no matter how perfect it is.
From Nabat Al-Sabbar. © Zeinab Belail. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2020 by Nesrin Amin. All rights reserved.
Season of Migration to the North
Adania Shibli’s “Minor Detail” Caps Its Author’s Long Quest for a Language of Life Under Occupation
Mahmoud Darwish’s “Journal of an Ordinary Grief”
Basma’s Dream
Spending the night at a women’s prison where she is covering a conference, a journalist wakes from an inexplicable dream in this excerpt from Amna al-Fadl’s novel Some of What Happened Between Us.
Basma switched off the tape recorder and fell into a deep sleep. But she soon awoke, terrified, and drew the curtains back from the window overlooking the prison courtyard. She could discern nothing in the pitch dark but the whistling of the winter winds and the trembling of her hands from the bitter cold. Without hesitation, she telephoned Mahasin, who had once told Basma that she was an expert in interpreting dreams, a talent she had inherited from her father.
Although Mahasin was now seventy, she was still strong and robust, and her familiar face inspired affection at first glance. She carried you off to other worlds with her endless tales of history, folk medicine, djinn, and men of religion such as Sufis and dervishes. Everyone adored Mahasin’s stories, parts of which were true and parts spun, perhaps, by her fertile imagination. Women often visited her to unburden their hearts of rancor, sadness, or even joy. They would depart happy, after sipping the coffee she presented with delightful ceremony in a rounded clay pot with a squat neck, encircled by tiny crimson cups on a circular metal tray. Overhead hung a smoky haze of the traditional incense that Mahasin specialized in making and selling in the neighborhood.
Mahasin had shadowed her father during his apprenticeship with a Sufi sage, during which, as she told the story, he developed a mastery of all the religious arts and sciences. She accompanied him to Sufi ceremonies for meditating upon God’s name and debating the finer points of doctrine until she became quite convinced of her gift for interpreting dreams and treating intractable diseases without resorting to modern medicines. Basma, however, continued to see Mahasin as the mother she’d lost at a young age, before her heart had had its fill of her boundless maternal love, her warm embrace, and the sage advice she imparted with a wisdom acquired early in her life. But Death, that killjoy, was waiting for her mother, with his scythe that never misses.
Basma told Mahasin about her recurring dream, the dream about a forest that she had been unable to shake off since she was ten. Although she had changed her sleeping position, her pillow, and even some of her bedtime rituals, the dream remained, filling her imagination whenever she fell into exhausted sleep.
She hovers overhead, aimless, surrendering herself to fate. She runs through the depths of a dense forest, her magenta dress sweeping like a peacock’s tail over the edges of the grass, the sound of pounding drums eclipsing her heartbeats, fearful of the savage wild beasts and the whining insects thirsting to bite anything succulent. She makes her way toward the source of the drumbeats; the mist parts to reveal the faces of men gathered around a pile of burning wood, practicing their strange rites, repeating their supplications with one voice in a steady rhythm. An old man with a long white beard leads her by the hand and seats her beside the fire, placing on her head a wreath of greenery decorated with rare flowers, before leaving. Everyone follows him, but she remains seated by the fire until the last piece of wood, and with it her dream, vanish, as morning breaks, increasing her confusion and astonishment at her strange visions.
As Mahasin fought off her drowsiness, Basma finished describing the dream. It came to her often, she said, and she had begun to fear its opaque meanings.
After a brief silence, Mahasin said: “Your dream portends good things, God willing, good things. The old man is your mother’s prayers for you; the wreath on your head represents a king, in name or in meaning; and the fire is something you’ve been hoping for, which will set you ablaze with happiness and joy; you will lie awake at night to guard it lest it disappear.”
As she listened to the interpretation of her persistent dream, Basma laughed sardonically. Although Mahasin was still earnestly deciphering the dream’s symbols, Basma interrupted her, saying: “I can believe the part about my mother’s prayers, since she spent most of her time praying for my happiness. How I’ve missed the sound of her entreaties to God in the dark of night, how I’ve missed hearing her speak my name, her voice full of love and life! If only I could fling myself into her arms as I used to; if only I could breathe in her scent––her special smell mingled with her perfume––and forget my father’s cruelty! He left me no choice but to wander through the path of despair and defeat; he deprived me of my appetite for life; he destroyed any sense of security I’d dreamed of, which might have let me build a relationship with a man.”
Just as her conversation with Mahasin ended, and before the screen of her phone faded, Basma cried out: “It’s Amir! Oh my God—Aunt Mahasin told me the wreath means a king, in name or in meaning, and his name is Amir—the prince!” She repeated the words over and over as she paced the room, so exhilarated that she nearly woke up Mariam.
Despite Mariam’s urging, Basma was the only workshop participant who had declined to stay in a hotel on the grounds that she did not wish to feel lonely. Her mother had given birth to her alone; she had grown up in the shadow of orphanhood after her death and during the subsequent years she’d spent abroad, immured in her home. She was weary of quiet and solitude and attracted by the hustle and bustle of the prison. That night, she felt her dream had become a reality, unobscured by mist, that not even violent winds could sweep away.
Basma threw herself on the bed and disappeared beneath the covers, murmuring over and over to herself—It’s Amir, Amir is the prince!—the smile on her lips anticipating the start of trysts by the sea.
From Ba’d alladhi dara baynana. © Amna Al Fadl. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2020 by Katherine Van de Vate. All rights reserved.
Adania Shibli’s “We Are All Equally Far from Love”
The Birth of the Spirit
A young woman is captivated by a mysterious book about the history of the Nile as she searches for a disappeared friend in this excerpt from Sarah Al-Jack’s novel The Mites.
I flipped through a small booklet with a worn-out cover. The title was covered in the white marks of a corrector pen. Beneath it was a drawing of the Nile, from its source to where it drains into the Mediterranean. The first page was torn out; there was no author name, no mention of a publishing house or copyrights. The paper was dry and yellow, with just a little carelessness it could disintegrate into powder; a handful of dust. There was no dedication, no preface. The language was delicate and rich. I read it on the bus that I took to the dorms in Bahari, where I looked forward to resting after a long, exhausting workday filled with endless details.
Qayshun was flowing right beneath me when I opened the book, as the bus crossed the Blue Nile bridge.
The first page read:
He was flowing in peace, through God’s highest heaven, next to two other rivers in Paradise—Al-Kawthar and the Euphrates—when God first shaped Man. He watched as Iblis slithered through the dough, in through one opening and out through another, wondering what that creature was. Until God breathed His soul into it, and it became Adam. Then God asked Iblis to kneel before Adam: Iblis refused Him, and he refused Adam, so he was expelled from God’s mercy and was deemed cursed, which further deepened his resentment toward God’s new creation. And so Iblis stalked Adam, and he deceived him, and they were both forever banished from Paradise.
But before they were driven out, he was. And his was a violent descent; he slammed against the face of the Earth, horizontal and rigid, and he slept for a lifetime. When he woke from his slumber he tried to rise; he dragged his right leg, digging Qayshun––the Blue Nile, while the heel of his right foot created Lake Tana. He dragged his left leg and that was Gayjun––the White Nile, and where the heel of his left foot had been Lake Victoria came to be. His head: the Mediterranean; his arms the branches of Damietta and Rashid, his neck a third stream that slipped through the pages of history books, forgotten. He stood like a giant in splendor; he screamed for the first time, and down poured the rain.
He left fragments of his soul behind and he roamed the Earth, tilting his face toward the sun. To prepare their earthly exile for receiving Adam and Iblis, God put him there first, ruining his game with the Euphrates and Al-Kawthar. They stumbled and they fell, and he bore witness to it all.
I stepped off the bus, enthralled by the author’s language and his strange theory about the origins of the Nile. I didn’t go to the dorms as I had planned; my feet led me to the river.
As soon as Sareya arrived—with the cloud that surrounded her, whose colors changed with the time of day and the shade of the sun and its reflection on her legendary neck, guarded by the pendant with the blue bead—the Nile’s name changed, and it became the Spirit. The sounds of the river creatures began to fade as a strange language formed between her and the waves. She turned the book to face the water; the water held it in its memory. She placed her bookmark where she had stopped, closed the book, and placed it in her large handbag—“Aleppo’s Basket,” her mother had called it. Sareya remembered her coarse features, her delicate heart, and the corals of Port Sudan. She returned to the banks of the Spirit, she asked him about the author’s claim.
“Do you spring from the heavens?”
The sunset call to prayer rose from one of the mosques nearby, and she noticed for the first time that the sun was no longer there. And as soon as she posed her question to the Spirit, the moon shone, smiling down on the water’s surface, and the waves reveled in its light, as though answering her question: “Yes, he is one of the rivers of heaven.”
I entered the dorms, still captivated by the poetic language of the book. The supervisor wasn’t at the front desk; I was grateful I didn’t have to talk and interrupt my train of thought. From my pocket, I took out the keys to my room, swiftly unlocked the door, and walked in. I threw Aleppo’s Basket on the floor and plopped down right next to it. I looked up at the clock on the wall before me: the time for the sunset prayers had passed (they always say maghrib is like a swift visitor). Rushing to the bathroom, I washed and prepared for prayer. I read the chapter of Al-Fatiha, followed by Al-Kawthar––a river of Paradise, just like the Nile and the Euphrates. I finished praying, lay down on my prayer rug, opened Aleppo’s Basket, took out the book, and immersed myself.
Adam descended in the city of Sari. Iblis accompanied him, invisible to Adam but following him incessantly. Adam found himself in the midst of a barren desert, a scorching sun beating down on him. Eve wasn’t there, he’d forgotten her upon his fall from sky to Earth. Barefoot and naked but for a mulberry leaf, he wandered, until he encountered life.
And He Taught Him All the Names
Life results at the intersection of two coordinates—a horizontal one: place; and a vertical one: time. It progresses with the movement that takes place within those coordinates, X and Y; happening across various internal points within this space. Several activities occur there, creating a rhythm that enables Adam and his children to perform a specific act for which they were made, a long time ago.
The summoning, the calling, the inspiration
aids them in finding a rhythm
an attempt to reach
the perfect tune
because complete harmony
is impossible…
—Where is this voice coming from?
—It is coming from the depths at the heart of this darkness.
—Where? I can’t see the place you’re pointing toward.
—It is there, to the South. Look at the source of the sound.
The voice comes from above, from where you came. She screamed; she was looking for you. The seven skies echoed her scream, as did the earth.
The pigeons wondered, the hoopoe asked: What is the purpose of this stranger’s visit to the earth? Qayshun and Gayjun filled with water after the giant stood up and screamed and the rain poured down. The sun hid behind the clouds, in fear of that which was to happen and which they did not know. The moon was eclipsed and did not reappear, the earth shook and sent lava shooting out of its volcanoes, and there was nothing the creatures could do but wait.
Weightless neutrons floated, praising God in an unprecedented first. Adam felt his soul swimming through him, moving to the age of impurity. It was done to him, when God decided that he should fall. And fall he did, vertically, but then he landed horizontally, positioned like a cross; naked but for the mulberry leaf that covered his being.
—It is there, to the South. Look at the source of the sound. Follow the voice; do what it commands. Plunge into the heart of the Spirit; you know him, he knows you well. Then leave him at the navel. You will forget him, he will forget you. Sail across Gayjun to the South. We bear no relation to you; follow your intuition; the calling, the summoning, the inspiration. Go deeper into the South, through the waves of Gayjun. You will find weeds tangled with serpents and snakes, swamps where lethal golden frogs croak. The crocodiles of the river will meet you with open jaws—do not fear; they are cleaning their teeth with the rays of the sun. They are ugly and forbidding; their backs scaly, their tails carrying the promise of death. Their teeth glint in the light of the sun that cleans them; arrows that pierce the heart of anyone who’s a stranger to the swamps. And you, you are definitely a stranger.
He wades through the swamp, the bones of the dead fish lying in the mud tear through the skin of his feet, stabbing at his flesh. The stabbed foot sticks to the mud, the earth clings to it, and finally, painfully sucks the thin, lodged bones out of him. He is waist-deep now; the insects of the swamp are feasting on his blood and there’s no way out. He is hindered by algae and rootless plants he can’t see, on this journey for which he knows no purpose. He keeps moving through Gayjun, southwards, against the current. In the forest, he is assaulted by the trees, their branches whipping him across the back. The monkeys toy with him; throwing ripe mangoes at his face. He walks and walks and trips on banana leaves and walks again. He walks for years; his nails are long, his hair unruly; his soul wilts, his body weakens. From pleasure to pain, from wealth to weariness. He continues on his way south, one wave handing him to the next.
Who will he be?
Where did he come from?
And how did he end up here?
© Sarah Al-Jack. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2020 by Yasmine Zohdi. All rights reserved.
Alexandra Chreiteh’s “Always Coca-Cola”
Peach Blossom Paradise
Reviewed by Mauricio Ruiz
Translated from the Polish by Sean Gasper Bye
Scribe US, 2020
Drawing on unpublished letters and journals, the Polish journalist always keeps an eye on revealing details in her new book "Ellis Island: A People's History," the result of extensive research into the manifold trajectories of those who set foot on a new continent and helped forge the modern US.
Here’s the key, take it. Read these words and travel back in time. This is what Polish writer and editor Małgorzata Szejnert has decided to offer her readers in Ellis Island: A People’s History: a miniature travel machine. Szjenert is a magician of the eye and of memory. From the opening page she leads the reader to the bank of an infinite river and points upstream, to the sources of the past: this patch of land, now called Ellis Island, is where the Lenni Lenape Indians once lived. In one phrase, she conveys how nature shaped their world: “The oysters here are large, and fat enough to choke on . . . when burying their dead—both humans and dogs—the Lenape seal the bodies up tight with these shells; they are indestructible.” Lenni Lenape means the True People. By 1630, Szjenert informs us, the True People no longer feel safe and sell the island to the Dutch West India Company.
In 1774, the island is acquired by Samuel Ellis, a wealthy fish merchant whose name remains linked to the island’s history. Years go by and the landscape is no longer the same; little by little everything is changing. By the mid-1880s, on neighboring Bedloe Island, works of a magnitude never before seen are being carried out. In Szjenert’s hands, even a construction site becomes a playground for original imagery. “You might be forgiven for thinking it conceals an elephant, raised on its hind legs and stretching its trunk into the air,” she writes. A magnificent copper statue will soon light the waters for ships entering New York’s Harbor. “Once freed from its cocoon, the elephant trunk turns out to be an arm raising a torch.”
Born in 1936, Szejnert is one of the leading chroniclers and editors in Poland, and was a mentor to the first generation of journalists working in the country after the fall of the Iron Curtain. She wrote about the rising tide of tensions in Poland in the 1970s and later became an active member of the opposition movement during the Solidarity period. To write this book, she drew on unpublished letters, journals, and manuscript—shared with her by Diana Pardue, director of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, and writer Barry Moreno—to create a vast canvas of the lives of those arriving in a new world. She also relied on the work of historian Witold Kula, who at the time of the German occupation was a volunteer teaching assistant at the Underground Free Polish University. He was able to ensure the safekeeping of an enormous collection of letters sent by Polish emigrants back to their families. Szejnert's broad experience as a journalist is palpable in the specificity of details, notes, and images she includes. Though the book describes the journeys (often hindered) taken by many different peoples across the Old World—Slovaks, Ukrainians, Italians, Lithuanians, Irish, Norwegians, and many more—the author keeps a keen eye on the connections to her native Poland, which at the turn of the nineteenth century was under Russian rule. The reader learns of the many letters confiscated by czarist censors, letters that could never reach the brother, the aunt, or the spouse who were meant to join their loved ones in the new country. Authorities wanted to stop the exodus by any means possible, and several ship tickets were never received. How many families were split apart? This implicit question recurs throughout the book.
Ellis Island opened for operation in 1892. From the late 1800s until the 1950s, it was the entry point for nearly twelve million people into the US. While describing the immigration station itself, Szejnert’s writing becomes a cane for the visually impaired. She sees the unseen, the neglected ordinary details that reveal the character of an individual. Through her portrayals of doctors, nurses, photographers, commissioners, interpreters, social workers, and others, the reader discovers how a luggage handler can determine a migrant’s country of origin just by looking at their bags. “Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians have the most tightly packed luggage . . . The suitcases of the English and French are in better condition than others’ and are the most modern. Greeks and Arabs have bundles large as mountains.”
For her exhaustive research, the author spent time in New York visiting archives at the library of the Immigration Museum—to this day, the librarians still remember her. Her book interweaves images of the past and present, how the urban landscape looks to her now, and how it must have looked to those who arrived to a new life after many days at sea, cramped on the third class deck, spent yet hopeful.
Szejnert is sensitive to nuance. She knows of the success stories of migrants such as Albert Einstein, Bob Hope, Annie Moore, or Joseph Pulitzer, but also wants to shed light on the many untold stories of people who tried to come to the US. Upon arrival, migrants were subjected to methodical physical and psychological examinations; signs of mental instability or of a contagious disease could mean deportation. There was the Kissing Gate, an area where those admitted met relatives; after a battery of procedures and check-ups, it was a moment of joyous relief. Then there were the Stairs of Separation, silent witness to dashed hopes and tearful faces. Built in gray marble, the stairs stood solid and ice cold. They were divided into three lines by barriers: the right led to the railroad ticket office; the left to the ferry to New York. Then there was the one in the middle: “Those who are sent on the middle route, between the barriers, are in deepest despair. Bereft and terrified. The middle line of stairs cuts them off from their families, their traveling companions, their hope for a new life.”
The author’s tone is that of someone who empathizes with the plight of migrants, someone who understands the implications of uprooting oneself. In 1981, martial law was introduced in Poland and Szejnert lost her job. The situation became untenable and she left for the US with her son. Though in the end she didn’t stay—she returned to Poland when the Iron Curtain fell—she knew firsthand how such an experience could mark an individual.
And perhaps that’s also why she empathizes with the discrimination that the Chinese faced, and with the dreadful conditions many Jews in the Russian Empire had to endure. She describes how John B. Weber, Ellis Island’s first commissioner, traveled to Russia to understand why so many people were emigrating to America. What he encounters leaves him devastated: “…a hospital where he investigates and confirms what he can hardly believe: that Pasteur’s life-saving rabies vaccine is forbidden to Jews, because they are Jews.” Weber is indefatigable. He travels, he interviews people. He wants to understand and record what he sees. “It is inhumane of us to push these people back into the pit from which they have crawled. When we do this we should extinguish the torch of the Goddess of Liberty.” It makes the reader wonder to what extent today’s US immigration authorities care to understand why people ever want to leave their lands.
In Sean Gasper Bye's translation, Szejnert's prose enters the ear like a wave of silken murmurs. Syntax, idiomatic expressions, word choice––nothing is left uncared for in the hands of Bye, tailor of sentences. He was the literature and humanities curator of the Polish Cultural Institute New York, and his own mother's family sailed over from Poland and Slovakia at the beginning of the twentieth century. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship for the translation of this book.
In the pages of Ellis Island, we learn not only of the evolution and tightening of the US immigration laws, but also gain glimpses into millions of lives passing through its gate. Szejnert has created a portal through which the reader can hear the voices of those who set foot on the new continent and helped forge the modern US, as well as those who could not make it but deserve to be remembered nonetheless.
From Excess to Ascesis: Ryszard Krynicki’s Verses Confront the Perils and Ruins of History
Andrzej Stasiuk’s “Nine”
Jerzy Pilch’s “A Thousand Peaceful Cities”
Mauricio Ruiz is a Mexican writer who's lived in Belgium, Norway, and the US. His work has appeared in Catapult, The Common, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, JMWW, River Teeth, Literal Magazine, among others. He's been shortlisted for the Bridport and Fish prizes, and received fellowships from OMI writers (NY), Société des auteurs (Belgium), Jakob Sande (Norway), Can Serrat (Spain), and the Three Seas' Council (Rhodes). His second collection of stories was published in 2017, and his work has partially been translated into French and Dutch.
More about Mauricio Ruiz
Canaan Morse
Ge Fei
The Watchlist: November 2020
The City and the Writer: In Naples with Angelo Cannavacciuolo
Introducing WWB’s Assistant Editor and Development Associate, Nina Perrotta
Sara Al-Jack
Zeinab Belail
Lucy Hannah
Children’s Literature in Translation: Levine Querido
Zarghuna Kargar
Parwana Fayyaz
Yasmine Zohdi
from the November 2020 issue
A Bereaved Soldier Looks for Revenge in David Diop’s Disturbing ‘At Night All Blood is Black’
Reviewed by Martha Anne Toll
Translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis
Macmillan, 2020
Via a forceful monologue, Diop's novel creates a tale of revenge with biblical overtones as it looks at the relatively little-known story of Senegalese riflemen fighting in the French army in the First World War.
David Diop’s new novel, At Night All Blood is Black (tr. Anna Moschovakis), combines a war story with allegory and myth. In under 150 pages, the book engages biblical tropes as it takes readers to the bloody trenches of World War I through the troubled account of a Senegalese soldier fighting in the French army. The result is a warning against war and its savage consequences. The book delves into the brutal details of WWI and colonial domination, invoking canonical texts against a world that is anarchic, violent, and surreal.
Diop was born in Paris and raised in Senegal. He lives in France and serves as head of the arts, languages, and literature department at the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour, where his specialties include eighteenth-century French literature and the study of European representations of Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
At Night All Blood is Black is narrated by Alfa Ndiaye, who has enlisted in the French army in WWI to fight as a Chocolat, as recruits from the African colonies were called, alongside white French soldiers. His “more-than-brother,” Mademba Diop, joins him, and is mortally wounded during battle.
As Mademba lies with his guts spilling out “like a sheep that has been ritually dismembered after the sacrifice,” he implores Alfa to slit his throat and end the pain. Three times Mademba asks, and three times Alfa refuses. This reference to Jesus’ imprecation during the Last Supper that Peter would thrice deny him, makes what follows only more ironic.
Alfa carries Mademba’s dead body back over the battlefield, horrified with himself for having chosen to honor the laws of his ancestors, which prohibit mercy killing. He judges his failure to act as an abandonment for which he must redeem himself.
Using language that conflates spirituality and sexuality with grisly battle imagery, Alfa’s story descends into a hellscape. As Alfa returns to his comrades, the trench looks to him as “the slightly parted lips of an immense woman’s sex. A woman, open, offering herself to war, to the bombshells, and to us, the soldiers.”
Mademba Diop shares the author’s family name. By making this choice, author David Diop hovers over the text, binding the two “more-than-brothers,” adding freight to Mademba’s death and its repercussions for Alfa. Mademba’s name is a nod to parenté à plaisanterie (kinship jokes), a custom in parts of Central and West Africa in which certain ethnicities or regional groups engage in playful teasing and taunting between families to tighten kinship bonds.
To atone for failing Mademba, Alfa begins hurling himself at the enemy, slicing the back of his opponent’s knees with a machete, dragging him into no-man’s-land, and waiting for him to awaken. Alfa looks into his blue eyes, where he sees not just panic but the view the enemy has been taught to have of Africans—an image of death, savagery, rape, and cannibalism. Alfa then disembowels him, watching his blue eyes dim. In his words, he “cleanly” and “humanely” slits the enemies’ throat. This language connotes the opposite of what he is doing; he cloaks his ongoing murders as a mission of morality and justice. “At night all blood is black,” he remarks.
For each of his victims, Alfa brings back a hand as booty. Initially, his trenchmates proclaim him a hero, but after he delivers his fourth hand, they begin to fear him. The Chocolat soldiers whisper that Alfa is a dëmm, “a devourer of souls,” and the white soldiers agree. Alfa sees rumor chasing him “like a little slut.” He calls rumor “a shameless woman with her legs spread, her ass in the air.” As Alfa becomes increasingly violent, his metaphors of sexual violence become more frequent. The stereotypes he sees in the enemy’s eyes transform to action, which he narrates with the imprimatur of righteous indignation. Readers are forced to grapple with Alfa’s motives for revenge, to ask why Alfa acts as he does. In his furious reversal of right and wrong, Alfa demands an accounting of colonial oppression and its fallout.
Alfa is a madman, but so too the world is mad. He takes readers on a vertiginous tour of war and home, swinging between reporting that feels at once accurate and delusional. His verbal tic, “God’s truth,” asserts credibility for an unreliable narrator who is far from credible.
The incredible lies not in the actions Alfa describes, gruesome though they are, but in Alfa’s chilling interpretations. We meet his psychiatrist, presumably supplied by French judicial authorities to test his sanity. He provides a dizzying and uncomfortable account of his first sexual experience and describes his own crimes—including rape—with dispassion.
According to Alfa, “each thing is a double,” a theme that is a through line of the book, beyond his relationship with his “more-than-brother” Mademba. Alfa’s mother, the only daughter of an itinerant herder and Alfa’s father’s fourth and final wife, is “a source of joy and then of pain.” She comes to love his father as her opposite: “He was as old as an immutable landscape, she was young like the changing sky.” When Alfa is nine, his father urges her to go in search of her lost family. “We never abandon those who gave us life,” she tells Alfa, then abandons him.
As the book comes to a close, an omniscient figure makes a set of grave pronouncements:
I empty skulls and bodies… I am assassin and judge… I am innocent and guilty. I am the beginning and the end. I am the creator and the destroyer. I am double.
This language, invoking Alpha and Omega, resonates with the protagonist’s name and recalls the Book of Revelation.
At Night All Blood is Black is translated with economy and sensitivity by poet and translator Anna Moschovakis, who is particularly successful at rendering Alfa’s feelings of foreign-ness into English. She declines to translate words such as “Toubab,” a Wolof word used in Senegal and elsewhere to designate a white person of European descent.
In the end, translation itself becomes a subject:
To translate is never simple. To translate is to betray the borders, it’s to cheat, it’s to trade one sentence for another.
What and who is being translated, and by whom? Is it the man society deems mad, who may in fact speak the truth? Is it the way in which the African views the white man? Or, most important, how the white man translates the African into a monolithic image of brutality, an image that begets violence and lasting damage? Diop’s novel poses these questions, with the stark implication that the white man’s destruction runs so deep that it destroys not only whole societies but also humanity itself.
Tahar Ben Jelloun’s “The Happy Marriage”
Andreï Makine’s “A Woman Loved”
In ‘The Death of Comrade President,’ A Sophisticated Portrait of a Country in Crisis
Martha Anne Toll
Martha Anne Toll is the 2020 recipient of the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. Her debut novel, Three Muses, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in 2022. She is a regular contributor to NPR Books and other outlets; and was the founding executive director of the Butler Family Fund, a social justice philanthropy.
More about Martha Anne Toll
Disoriented: Creating a Platform for Lives in Transit
An Archipelago in a Landlocked Country
Toward Our Common Destruction: Humans and the Environment
Our November 2020 issue, the second part of our double issue of writing on the climate crisis that began last month, coincides with an inauspicious date: as of November 4, 2020, Donald Trump has made official the United States’ breach of its commitment to the landmark 2015 Paris accord on climate change, the second time in two decades that the US agreed to and then failed to honor its commitments to an international climate pact.
The protagonist of this month’s work is, by and large, the natural world in its multitudes: the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, still the deadliest in history; a mother whale and the dead calf born to her on Puget Sound, which she carried for seventeen days; torrential rains flooding Luanda; an imposing elephant stirring the sands along the Ganges; and the mangrove forests of Bahia, Brazil. Yet something else binds this month’s work together: the symbiosis, sometimes tacit, sometimes not, of mankind and the planet.
Photographer Eliseu Cavalcante’s photo essay, from his ongoing series Ser Manguezal/Man-Grove, takes us to the mangrove forests of Belmonte, in Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia. Inspired by Brazilian writer and geographer Josué de Castro’s 1967 work Of Crabs and Men, which envisions men as crabs learning to navigate the mangrove, Cavalcante’s striking images evoke this vital habitat and throw into relief the interdependence of man and mangrove. Through Cavalcante’s work, we are reminded in no uncertain terms that climate destruction spells our own doom.
Fiction by Ondjaki, translated here by Stephen Henighan, gives us a farcical view of urban catastrophe provoked by human folly. In “The Sky’s Seams Burst,” excerpted from Ondjaki’s 2004 novel Quantas madrugadas tem a noite (How many dawns has the night), we recognize the frequently absurd search for alternate explanations that might exculpate us from any responsibility in climate disaster. In the drenched Angolan capital, Luanda, Ondjaki portrays a society hell-bent on capitalizing even on its own demise, its craven businessmen looking to turn suffering to profit as neighborhood after neighborhood succumbs to the floodwaters. The only thing to save us from this tragic picture is the writer’s wry account of human irrationality.
Transporting us from urban rivers to the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington state, Isabel Zapata, translated by Robin Myers, depicts the intertwined destinies of a mother orca, her dead calf, and the pilot of an empty plane that is rapidly losing fuel and altitude, reminding us of the ways in which “we all move, unknowingly, at every moment, toward our destruction.” Zapata’s verses memorialize two 2018 events that drew international attention—a mother orca’s seventeen-day, thousand-mile odyssey carrying her dead calf through off the Pacific Northwest coast and Horizon Air employee Richard Russell’s theft of a passenger jet used to ride to his death—events which, as a result of air traffic control recordings, became forever linked. Before bringing the plane down on Ketron Island, the pilot expresses his dying wish: to catch a glimpse of the whale faithfully carrying her dead child.
The same majesty that awes Zapata’s doomed pilot likewise strikes Yu Jian in his poem “Elephant,” translated by Xin Xu. Jian composes an elegy to “a defeated god, approaching the dusk of time” as it marches across Asia to its death. Chased toward an untimely end, this “robed king” glimpses a pack of lions for whom the elephant’s final journey seems a dire portent, the twin fates of these mighty beasts a reminder that even the most powerful cannot elude their demise.
If Zapata and Jian offer us the certainty of the end, Markéta Pilátová evokes the agony of a conclusion whose hour is unknown. In an excerpt from her novel Tsunami Blues—rendered into English by Sára Foitová—Pilátová reminds us of the fragility of life in a world ravaged by ever more frequent climate disasters. When news of the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia arrives in Prague, a young musician’s instructor and her grandmother wait tensely by the phone for the call confirming that she has survived the deadly waves.
The writing here serves as a stark and unequivocal warning of the human cost of environmental destruction. As it emphasizes human dependence on the Earth’s various biomes, it makes explicit the inadequacy of terms like climate change and environmental crisis: this fight is not just for our forests and oceans, comes the increasingly urgent warning—it is for our common survival.
© Eric M. B. Becker. All rights reserved.
Read more from the November 2020 issue
A New Short Story Anthology Sheds Light on the Aftermath of War in Vietnam
In Puget Sound
Human and natural tragedy intersect in Isabel Zapata's poem about the Richard Russell Horizon Air incident and mother orca Tahlequah's thousand-mile journey with her dead calf.
© Isabel Zapata. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2020 by Robin Myers. All rights reserved.
Sergio Pitol’s “The Journey”
Homero Aridjis’s “A Time of Angels”
Guillermo Rosales’s “Leapfrog & Other Stories”
Being Mangrove: Eliseu Cavalcante in Belmonte, Bahia, Brazil
Eliseu Cavalcante's Being Mangrove/Ser Manguezal series was inspired by Josué de Castro's book Of Men and Crabs from 1967. De Castro was a Brazilian geographer, physician, writer, and activist against world hunger. In his book, men are envisioned as crabs, learning to walk in the mangroves. A common theme across the work of Cavalcante, who has also photographed the indigenous and river communities of the Amazon, is the symbiotic relationship between natural habitats and the communities that inhabit them. "Humans seemed to blend in with the mangrove, and it was easy to imagine them transforming into the mangrove roots, the crabs, and the mud," Cavalcante said of Being Mangrove.
In September 2020, Brazil's environmental minister rescinded protections for mangrove habitats, ending conservation efforts that stretch back to 1577, when Brazil was still a Portuguese colony. Brazil's more than 8,000 square miles of mangrove correspond to nearly ten percent of mangrove habitats worldwide. This ongoing series of photographs takes a look at those who depend on the mangrove ecosystem to survive, and the delicate relationship between humans and this particular ecosystem. Cavalcante has expressed his desire that his photographs at once draw attention to the arduous work of crab hunters and emphasize the crucial need to preserve mangrove forests. The photos below were taken in the mangrove forests of Belmonte, Bahia, a state in the Brazilian Northeast.
© Eliseu Cavalcante. By arrangement with the photographer. All rights reserved.
The Sky’s Seams Burst
In this excerpt from his novel Quantas madrugadas tem a noite (How many dawns has the night), Ondjaki gives us a farcical view of urban catastrophe provoked by human folly.
Then lemme take a step back to fill you in on the whole business: we started with the tick because now I know it came from the tick, but nobody knew at the time, you get my drift? Take it easy, there’s no confusion, there’s a whole bunch of different confusions: first, the dead man had two ladies; second, there was that kerfuffle over the widows of the state, the revenues for veterans, doesn’t that ring a bell? That was in the weeks when the downpours came, don’t you see? Then take it easy, I’m going to duly situate you.
It was during that rainstorm that nobody understood, they were even sayin it was ’cause of the death of that dude Savimbi, who was a witch doctor, and that now all that rain was ’cause of him dying like that without saying farewell, killed dead all of a sudden, you see them sorcerers need a whole bunch of farewell ceremonies, it’s not just point an AK-47, pull the trigger, and bingo! And the rains were there to confirm it––Angola soaked, I remember it well, they were days from another world…In Luanda, bro? Even the goddess Kianda, no stranger to the waters, was stuck!
Buddy: the world’s sewer? End of the river’s course where the rain takes its vengeance? Rain was no longer rain! We even earned the respect of our Mozambican brothers, the real experts in flooding. The sky’s seams had burst and the seamstress-angel had checked out—and here we were, sitting out the aquatic consequences: more catastrophe, less catastrophe, who even wants to hear about it? Internationally we stand out for war and famine, the only rain that interests anyone in coming here to suffer is the petroleum-diamantine rain, you get it, right? other kinds of rains––of mud of fat mosquitoes that kill kids of fever in the pre-dawn hours, or else a rain of sudden smiles or the cracking of asphalt never to be repaired, or rain dampening the tents and roof tiles of people from the provinces displaced by our big fat and fattening war—those are rains better suited to poor people and nobody came here so his eyes would be pained by having to look at that: to go out on a whim was already to go for a swim, to take a drive was to sail the seas, to live was just to suffer. It’s our people themselves who give me a pain in the heart: to laugh is to laugh, an eternal act of the lips, and not just laughing to oneself but to others as well, to take aim at life and leave a stain. Now it looks like I’m going to have to tell you this: here it’s life that's adopted, as though it were a little girl with rheumy eyes that you search and find gentleness—you like her, and slowly you get used to her. Here life resembles a little stepdaughter we take into our home, a girl fleeing the war… So I’m losing my way, buddy? I’m adrift on my sodden memories of those days? It’s because you weren't there: here we treat suffering well! It stops mistreating us and an Angolan gets nervous: the rain, a near catastrophe? We took it in stride, smiles, new business dealings came in with the tide, now you can learn to swim in an asphalt pool, your ex-street, the ex-trajectory of dusty feet. Without the slightest doubt, it was a lot of rain, only that: there are lots of us here, too. Is there new strength in unity? Dear fellow: it’s in suffering that a people’s smile becomes one––a single faceless mouth laughing in misfortune’s face, mollifying it. Are you joking? Why misfortune, social flooding?––it’s almost always a question of looking, how you look at it. Don’t look so shocked, hey, get this: for you the baobab can be an ugly-withered little tree. But! And if I can lend you broader vistas: an old-robust tree, often pretty when it shows off the setting sun.
Even when he’s behind schedule—you thought it'd be any different?—Burkina doesn’t give breakfast a miss even where peaceful waters flow, I mean the waters aren’t as peaceful as they usually are, but even so he goes to the porch, calls the kid WWK (Walk With Kare) to eat breakfast together and sit watching the rain falling from the skies.
the whole tap! am i right, Uncle Burkina?
the kid asked, Burkina just nodded his head, the milk slowly streaming from his mouth, that stomach thing he’s got, a special milk the guy drank till he felt not more pain from the nervousness brought on by life’s daily routine.
Dear fellow, it was no longer funny to talk about catastrophe and excess water, I’ll put you in the picture: two districts of Lobito, one in Huambo and one in Moxico, had already disappeared; in Boavista, folks everywhere were bathing daily, not of their own accord or some sudden desire for corporeal cleanliness, but because that was the only way to round off their day, their assigned duty of standing out in the rain, eyeing the sky with open, damp eyes, inquiring of God, for those who had a God, when it all was going to end, then nothing at all, no sign of letting up, not the slightest crack to let rays of sunlight in, not a fig-leaf of hope for a dry spell—just water.
There was no longer any charm in interviewing nor in photographing nor in filming, as here charm, too, had died of drowning, kids in the street and street kids still guffawed now and then, their means of getting around their neighborhood was a wooden boat, an inflatable tire from an Ural or Ifa truck, oh man, Soviet technology!, many died of drowning from never having learned to swim over the asphalt, which was no longer visible. International television coverage, are you kidding?, they were reporting the facts, comparing us with Chinese rainstorms with the difference that here we had neither rice nor helicopters to offer a lifeline, and one guy they picked up walking through the rain during the hours prior to the worst thundershower they wanted to interview, he just stood there, like he was defying the heavens, right in front of a church that was even open and receiving people but he didn’t want to go in
but why aren’t you going into the church, sir?
the reporter of foreign misery asked him
I’m not a believer!
the dude, taking it easy
but at least don’t stay out in the rain, get inside the church
the reporter almost forced him, while he stood there damply, raindrops on his lips and drooling spittle, plain-as-plain by the look in his eyes that he had no patience left, when he responded
oh comrade . . . just leave me in peace, for fuck’s sake . . . I’m going straight into the church, to kneel down in there and all, being a believer why wouldn’t I?
From Maianga on down, down to downtown, the traffic still flowed like always, though only jeeps could get through fine, but watch out, it was getting dangerous there, invisible potholes, even Rua António Barroso had swallowed two cars, vanished just like that, according to the testimony of those in the know among the audience lining building windows, who saw one car go, and another bigger one that tried to get through right after, disappear as well, not just disappear from sight, into the lower waters, but disappear like a crane came the next day and found the pothole empty, some people said.
Kianda’s tentacles reach all the way up here
others put forward the theory that the two cars had been ripped off overnight, I dunno.
Burkina’s minivan, its reinforced shock absorbers and suspension sparing him from the jolt at each curve or pothole, was still in working order, and with the delay of having overslept due to recollections of the night before, he sent Sete to hook up the police siren and had nothing to write in the blank on the form that the policemen would see, because he didn’t have either the Honourable Lady Judge or a dead man on board, so he just wrote the famous initials PUN (Prostitutes’ Union—National), but, with the luck of those who rush when they’re late, a cop perched right there on Mutamba, skinny with hunger, like a bald, rain-soaked version of the dwarf Pintainho in the cartoons, orders the guys to stop and stands there, saying hum . . . hum, chewing his lips, eyeing the makeshift siren and trying to read in the box on the slate. And then
good morning, comrades… Pleeze present your personal identification and registration documents for the car
Sete started to pull out the documents while he dismantled the siren, and everybody gave up their documents; then the dwarf asked permission to enter the van, because if he didn’t, everybody’s documents were gonna get soaked.
Excerpt from Quantas madrugadas tem a noite © Ondjaki. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2020 by Stephen Henighan. All rights reserved.
Edgard Telles Ribeiro’s “His Own Man”
Antonio Lobo Antunes’s “The Land at the End of the World
Mia Couto’s “The Blind Fisherman” and “The Tuner of Silences”
Tsunami Blues
In this excerpt from her novel Tsunami Blues, Markéta Pilátová traces the reverberations of the December 2004 tsunami in Indonesia back to the Czech Republic.
Music for the old lady
Small Town Moravia, December 26, 2004
His memories, his “pictures from the tropics,” included these kinds of images, too. This was how they ran from hurricanes, back in Cuba such a long time ago, or from surreal, torrential rains that would flush away most of the reason for accumulating any possessions whatsoever. Lázaro turned on the news. A man in a suit jacket and a light green tie was mournfully informing the nation that a huge tsunami had ravaged Thailand, and that the list of missing persons included Czech tourists. Lázaro gulped. He called Jitka and they both watched the wave incredulously as it swept across the screen, stared at the ruins of luxury hotels, gray beaches strewn with broken palm trees. “But that’s where Karla went, how is she doing?” Jitka asked nonsensically, as if Lázaro had just received a cable or text message straight from the Czech embassy.
“How the hell should I know?” he snapped. Then he got up from the armchair and moved to the phone.
“Good evening, am I speaking to Mrs. Klimentová? This is Lázaro Milo. I’m Karla’s teacher at the conservatory,” he opened primly.
“Hello, Mr. Milo,” Karla’s grandmother said just as stiffly. “You’re probably calling about the tsunami?” the retired pharmacist continued.
“Yes, have you heard from them?” asked Lázaro in a hushed voice.
“No, not yet, but I hope they’re . . . they’re alright. Karla especially, she always gets so sunburnt,” Mrs. Klimentová jabbered incoherently into the phone.
“Sunburnt?” Lázaro repeated, astonished.
“Her skin is so sensitive, you know, with all those freckles.”
“Right, those freckles.” Lázaro realized the old lady was in shock.
“Should I . . . should I come over?” he asked after a moment of uneasy silence, during which neither of them let go of the receiver. Karla had told Lázaro that Mrs. Klimentová was a widow and lived alone. An old-school church choir singer. Pedantic, anxious, and immensely proud of Karla’s musical gift. The only one in the whole family. He pictured the quiet old third-floor apartment on Kovářská Street, not far from the square. In it, a petite lady with a purple hairdo reminiscent of cotton candy sat in a chair, waiting for any kind of news.
“I’ll be there in a bit, wait for me, please, don’t go anywhere, Mrs. Klimentová, OK? Just stay in, it’s freezing cold out, and the embassy might call any minute,” Lázaro urged her, feeling like a reasonable son.
“Jitka, listen, I’ll run over to old Mrs. Klimentová, she hasn’t heard anything yet and I’m worried about her, about them, I’m just worried,” he explained to his wife.
“Should I come with you?” Jitka offered.
“No, I’d rather you didn’t,” Lázaro answered quickly. He wasn’t even sure why exactly he didn’t want Jitka to come.
He was in the hallway, putting on his shoes, when she asked, “What are you taking the trumpet for?” and stared in amazement at the black case covered with years’ worth of stickers.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted; he’d grabbed the instrument without thinking about it but now realized that the gesture calmed him down, so he kept the case in his hand. He pressed an affectionate kiss onto the back of Jitka’s hand, his lips so similar to Karla Klimentová’s. She ran her fingers through his thinning, grizzled curls and inhaled his scent—something between dandelion honey, which Lázaro put in his tea by the pound, and Halls menthol cough drops, to which he’d developed a strong addiction. He claimed they kept his throat from drying out when he played.
He walked, his pace quick, from Slovan, a prefab housing development he and Jitka had been living in for nearly fifteen years, up a slight hill, crossing deserted, frosty intersections, and small lumps of squashed snow creaked under his shoes. He headed for the city center and through the arcades on Kovářská, past a bulletin board that was always full of city hall announcements and death notices.
He rang an old doorbell and discovered, to his chagrin, that this grandchild of the olden days was actually attached to a speaker. “Who is it?” asked Mrs. Klimentová’s voice, twisted and crackling like a tomcat’s fur.
“Lázaro Milo,” he crackled back into the machine.
“I’ll be right down,” said Mrs. Klimentová. She put on a vest lined with rabbit fur and held on to the frosty railing as she slowly descended the stone staircase from the third floor.
Together, they walked through the long corridor and panted their way up the stairs. She with her aching knees and asthma, and he, forty pounds overweight. Then the old lady invited Lázaro into the hallway, with its red poppy wallpaper. “Come, come on in, don’t just stand in the hall,” she nudged him, and now it was her turn to stare in surprise at the case in his hand.
“Are you going to play somewhere?” she asked.
“No, I’m not even sure why I brought the trumpet with me,” Lázaro shrugged and put the case down on the shoe cabinet.
“Would you like something to drink? Do you drink tea or coffee?” she led him into the living room, where she sat him down on an abraded old green leather sofa.
“It’s Swedish, my husband and I bought it on an installment plan, it was the first thing we got for this apartment, I’ve had it for thirty years and I’m never throwing it away!” she told Lázaro decisively, as if he were a cruel social worker who didn’t want to allow her to take the old sofa set to the retirement home.
“I’ll take tea, if you don’t mind, and if you have a bit of honey, that would be extremely excellent,” Lázaro answered; even after so many years, he still hadn’t quite absorbed the fact that Czech scoffs at those excessive Hispanic superlatives.
“Of course, of course, you like dandelion honey, don’t you,” the old lady recalled.
“I do, but how did you know that?” Lázaro was surprised.
“Karla told me,” said Mrs. Klimentová, then stopped suddenly and after a moment made a few nervous steps back toward the sofa. They didn’t speak. Then she asked, “Should I turn on the TV?”
“There won’t be anything new anyway, I think they’ll just repeat the evening news, but turn it on if you want,” Lázaro shuffled in his seat and hoped Mrs. Klimentová would say no.
“No, I’d rather not,” she said.
“I’ll go get the tea, make yourself comfortable, you must be frozen after the walk,” she said in a concerned voice and finally went off to the kitchen.
Lázaro sat on the sofa, its old Swedish springs were pressing into his Cuban behind. A painting hung on the wall above the sofa; Karla had told him she liked to look at it while playing. “I like to watch that wacko greyhound of Grandma’s,” she used to say. Only now did Lázaro understand what exactly she meant. A rectangular tempera painting showed an exaggeratedly long greyhound standing on spidery legs, leaning against some sort of brown footstool and looking into an unknowable distance. Lázaro, too, glimpsed the indifferent beauty in the animal’s calm stance and empty expression, the beauty that allows one to pitch in and do his bit, add a log to the stack, a feather to the down pile for the great comforter of art—a place you can lounge about in when the world is all askew. Which, right now, it was. Lázaro stared pleadingly at the elegant, impassive greyhound, longing to find in his eyes at least a shadow of the skinny girl with a trumpet. But the greyhound’s eyes showed him nothing.
“Here’s your tea,” said the old lady and poured some delicious-smelling tea in a Tesco mug.
“I have at least twenty of these. It’s like a hobby, you know. I fill out those promotional flyers and send in the correct answers and from time to time they draw my name and send me a mug. Everyone laughs at me for this, but I love getting packages in the mail . . . I guess that’s why I do it. Pretty tacky, aren’t they?” Mrs. Klimentová gave a half-smile and her tinted hair shone in the light cast by a small pink crystal-laden lamp.
“No, why?” Lázaro protested earnestly.
“They are, but they’re my honest, hard-won mugs,” she laughed.
“This is where Karla plays?” said Lázaro.
“Yes, she doesn’t disturb anyone here. The walls are thick and I’m the only one on this floor, there’s just some empty office space next door,” explained Mrs. Klimentová eagerly, all the while studying Lázaro. His brown forehead, slim-fingered hands, two deep furrows over the bridge of his nose.
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Lázaro?” she called him by his name this time.
“No, unfortunately not,” he answered after hesitating for a moment. “And you?” he looked at a small silver locket with a Madonna on her neck.
“I do, fortunately,” she smiled comfortingly, as if to say, You will get there . . . just be patient . . . faith will land on your shoulder like a dove.
They kept looking at each other, and if someone were to say the night was still young, they would have been right. The night awaiting them was shamelessly full of strength, just as the tsunami had been a few hours ago. Lázaro didn’t know if he did or didn’t want to talk to this curiously uptight yet kind woman. He probably came to distract her a bit, but now he’s not sure why he’s really sitting here. Maybe he wasn’t worried about Karla’s grandmother, maybe he was worried about his own nightmares. Because tonight, they threatened to unfold their wings, beating strongly until they took flight over the ocean. And like everyone, he nourished them and from time to time brushed against their wings like against a sore tooth.
“May I ask—what are you thinking about now?” the old lady asked.
“I was thinking about Cuba,” Lázaro answered obediently.
“Do you miss home?” she continued her inquiry, and he finally understood why he’d come here. Why he’d entered this old living room, why he was staring at the wacko greyhound on a blue background and a silver Madonna on an unknown woman’s neck.
“I don’t miss it, because I fled. I fled and I ended up in this town where nothing reminds me of Cuba. Nothing at all. Do you understand?” The words started flowing out of him and Jiřina Klimentová listened. She knew Lázaro from Karla’s stories, and at the same time knew practically nothing about him. It was the same for him. She felt close, because Karla talked about her occasionally, but he’d never seen her in person. This wasn’t a confession of any kind. He wasn’t talking to Mrs. Klimentová, only to himself. He rehearsed his own personal myth out loud, the way he’d pieced it together into a linear, sometimes cyclical, but always unbearable memory.
Jiřina Klimentová watched him just like the greyhound in the painting—perhaps they’d painted it after her. She was listening to her granddaughter’s teacher Lázaro Milo in her room next door to an empty office. She was waiting for news, any kind of news, and listening to him. On this young, monstrously powerful night filled with a wave that had been woken by ancient suboceanic tremors that Jiřina Klimentová knew nothing about. Still, she was sure that the red-hot magma spilling in the ocean was flooding and sealing her own quiet existence on Kovářská Street, too. On this night, the Cuban trumpeter and Moravian pharmacist could tell each other anything.
“It all happened a very long time ago,” Lázaro started.
“Go on, we have time, lots of it . . . we have until the morning, you’ll stay the night, won’t you?” she asked, and he was glad she did. The idea of spending many hours on the green sofa was soothing.
“I’ll just have to call my wife so she doesn’t worry, but yes, I’ll stay . . . gladly,” he added.
“It might have to do with the wave, it’s as if something very old shifted inside me, something I’d wanted to push out completely. Please don’t take it badly, it might sound wrong for me to say this, but I feel like I’ve experienced something similar to what you’re going through now,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she furrowed her brows.
“I mean the situation where you’re waiting for news, where you don’t know whether someone you care about terribly is alive or not,” he explained softly.
“Oh, and you, so you also waited for this kind of news, after some disaster back in Cuba, a long time ago?” It seemed that he had her full attention now. They were in the same boat, a steamboat in the middle of a large river that flows into a warm, tropical sea.
“I’m still waiting,” Lázaro said, and it sounded like an echo in a small tree hollow out of which a brown owl had flown, years ago, and sat down on the hot white sand.
Jiřina Klimentová didn’t ask anything else that evening. They were silent. All of a sudden, Lázaro didn’t feel like talking anymore. She realized it and didn’t press him with more questions. She just said: “How about you play something?” And while she rummaged around in the adjacent room, where Karla had her sheet music stored in a small wooden cabinet, Lázaro called Jitka to tell her he would be staying with the old lady overnight.
“Sure, but don’t try anything funny, alright?” she ventured to joke, but Lázaro just mumbled tiredly and said he’d be home in the morning. He took the trumpet from the hallway and sat back down on the living room sofa. Jiřina brought some sheet music and Lázaro started reading it. “I hate silence,” the old lady sighed. “I need to have the radio on, I listen to concerts on the classical music station, or I turn on the TV so I hear someone talking, even if not to me, so that I’m not so alone here. I guess it’s primitive, but that’s one of the reasons I always liked it when Karla was playing.”
“What are these? What is this music?” he started suddenly.
“It’s Karla’s, I think she wrote these, but I’m not sure, you know how secretive she is, never tells me what she’s doing, whether she’s practicing or playing her own pieces. But she was composing, I know that for sure,” Mrs. Klimentová explained. Lázaro looked back at the music. It was all blues pieces. Full of repetitive harmonic loops, both major and minor keys, they were blues for the trumpet, for Karla’s trumpet and her style of playing—brusque, furious, full of hoarse stops, the best blues Lázaro had heard in years. No perfect structure or elaborate form. Like when Muddy Waters first stuck a cable to his battered guitar and shoved it in an amplifier. There was this primal feel of something old and newly discovered, something that surfaced once every thousand years before slowly sinking back into the depths of the collective unconscious. We all know something like this music has been here a million times already, but no one remembers exactly where they’d heard it. But they are sure that they had once, that it’d come to them half-asleep for a midnight quickie. Naked, pleasurable music, growling with delight, wandering in dreams, with her hair down and knees uncovered, arching her hips, forever sad, asking for all our sins, sins she wanted to redeem.
This music did not push any boundaries. But it was clear it did not intend to, either. It was essentially old-fashioned music. Clinging to tradition, hanging onto its skirts, but still, and this really surprised Lázaro, it made him want to sit down in a corner somewhere, hum along with the notes and sway in their rhythm.
“These are blues pieces,” he explained.
“Yes, she did tell me she wanted to compose sad things,” Mrs. Jiřina shook her head in disapproval. “I never really understood why, she’s such a young girl!” she shook her head vigorously again, as if arguing with Karla.
“Maybe young girls do like to think about death most of all . . . and love, of course,” Lázaro said philosophically. Then he reached for the cough drops in his pocket and offered Jiřina one, too. “No, thanks, but please, play now, I can’t wait . . .”
So Lázaro put the music up on the stand that Jiřina had prepared for him and he played. Right in front of Jiřina Klimentová’s eyes, he became a statue, like those lining the streets of a small town under a blanket of snow. His silhouette was mirrored in the window, lit by a streetlamp. The image contained all of the keepsake junk from Jiřina’s entire life, reflecting in the muted gleam of Lázaro’s trumpet. Karla’s sheet music fell, one page after another, onto the green carpet; its color matched the scratched leather of the sofa. Jiřina saw the veins on her husband’s forearms again, saw him and the neighbor carrying the heavy piece of furniture into the room. She heard their muffled curses mixing with the wailing trumpet. Lázaro was standing and his arms were caressing Karla’s music. Finally, Jiřina felt like crying. The shock that was yet to come had long ago passed her by.
© Markéta Pilátová. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2020 by Sára Foitová. All rights reserved.
Ludvik Vaculik’s “The Guinea Pigs”
Yu Jian composes an elegy to a majestic elephant as it marches across Asia.
Rising above the land, it precedes the grayness of Asia.
A robed king, boundless and lost, stands at the edge of Xishuangbanna and Laos.
It’s the jungle’s shield. The Creator bestows its symbolism,
endowing it with a face of grief, hiding diamonds behind its blue eyelids;
imitating crescent moons to shape its tusks, keeping palm-leaf manuscripts secret in its wrinkles.
Huge webbed-toes, heavy as lead stamp blocks, inspect the territory of its ancestors.
Its long trunk like irrefutable evidence is dawdling left and right.
Traversing the jungle, it rouses a pride of lions lurking deep by the river.
O, it is a defeated god, approaching the dusk of time.
The eternal fog cracks, its tonnage disintegrates, and recedes.
It lowers its big ears, eroding step by step in darkness,
as it turns into countless grains of sand along the Ganges.
"Daxiang (大象)” © Yu Jian. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2020 by Xin Xu. All rights reserved.
Ji Xianlin’s “The Cowshed - Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution”
“The Invisibility Cloak” by Ge Fei
Wang Anyi’s “Fu Ping”: An Ode to Ordinary People
The City and the Writer: In Mexico City with Carmen Boullosa
Captain of the Sleepers by Mayra Montero
Lizard Tails by Juan Marsé
Mario Benedetti’s “The Truce: The Diary of Martín Santomé”
The Discreet Strength of Mercedes Barcha
Paige Aniyah Morris
“Glaciers and Oceans and the Next Hundred Years”: A Conversation with Andri Snær Magnason
“We Are Always Present in What We Write”: An Exchange between Emmanuel Carrère and Daniel Mendelsohn
Reviewed by Sarah Moore
Translated from the Vietnamese by Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock
Columbia University Press, 2020
Translated and edited by Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock, "Other Moons" brings together twenty stories from different authors dealing with the lingering effects of what the Vietnamese call "the American War." It is a rare opportunity to discover a variety of esteemed writers coming from all three main geographic regions of the country.
This new anthology of Vietnamese short stories, published by Columbia University Press, unites twenty diverse voices from contemporary Vietnamese literature on the topic of the American military action in the country. While the war officially ended in 1975, Other Moons' narratives demonstrate its enduring consequences in Vietnamese life and thinking. Published in English translation for the first time, these works offer a fresh perspective on the conflict that took place between 1945-75. Throughout, the war is referred to as ‘the American War,’ the terminology most commonly used in Vietnam. Only the perspective of the war’s victors, the Vietnamese communists, is represented. The volume’s editors and translators, Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock, make their reasoning clear: that alternative narratives from those who supported the former South Vietnamese government and American intervention are already available in English translations of diasporic literature. Additionally, Vietnam’s tightly regulated censorship and publication practice greatly affects the literature that is available for translation. This is therefore a rare opportunity to discover such a variety of esteemed Vietnamese writers, chosen for their quality as well as their diversity, coming from all three main geographic regions of the country.
Ha and Babcock provide an enriching context for the stories in their introduction. They selected authors to represent a variety of personal and professional backgrounds—some are well-known, full-time writers, while others make time to write outside of their day jobs. But central to all the works in the collection is the contributors’ rejection of a “socialist realism” approach to literature, which dominated artistic expression between 1945–90 and produced heavily politicized writing that contained Stalinist and Maoist propaganda. In contrast, the new generation of writers in this anthology address the theme of war through a very different approach; they condemn it, rather than glorifying it. Moreover, the subjects of their stories are common people and the war is recounted through everyone’s lives—those who leave and those who are left behind.
The mention of the war’s aftermath in the book’s title points to a crucial feature of the collection: the rupture of communities, the difficulties of reintegrating, and the continual search for closure are stronger themes throughout the stories than the actual lived realities of fighting. In Truong Van Ngoe’s “Brother, When Will You Come Home?” Quan travels for the third time, along with his relatives and a colleague, to search for the remains of his brother Binh, a soldier in company C3 who had died in the conflict. The chances of success in finding his body become increasingly small and Quan turns to a psychic for help. These searches continue to take place in Vietnam until today, almost half a century after the war officially ended, with over 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers still missing. Quan’s relentless pursuit, as well as his eventual willingness to turn towards the spiritual, reveals how the impact of the war goes far beyond a physical recovery for the country.
The emotional suffering and the atrocities of war are often conveyed through its collision with the domestic. An important theme of these stories, for example, is the mourning for love that was made impossible, as even the most personal projects are suddenly disturbed and upended by violence. Nguyen Minh Chau’s “Crescent Moon in the Woods,” a canonical story that is taught in Vietnamese high schools, tells of the doomed love between Nguyet and Lam. They have never met but Lam’s sister, who knows them both and believes that they would be a wonderful match, has promised to introduce them. They suffer and patiently await their meeting, which finally comes fleetingly . . . before it is gone again.
The perspectives of the female authors (five out of the twenty), as well as the female characters that leave to fight, are an especially interesting part of the anthology. Such women return to their communities and must face the trauma of the aftermath of war, in addition to the conflict it creates with their domestic duty. In Nguyen Trong Luan’s “The Corporal,” Xuan returns to her village after many years spent fighting for the North Vietnamese Army in the highlands and must immediately turn her thoughts to marriage. As the daughter of a poor peasant, Xuan has little autonomy. She enters an unhappy arranged marriage and lives the rest of her life in poverty. Military victory has no bearing on her future, which is instead still determined by a patriarchal postwar society. Suong Nguyet Minh’s “The Chau River Pier” recounts the female soldier May’s return to her village, having lost her leg in battle. Her injury isolates her from her previously imagined life of marriage and motherhood, while her return coincides with her former fiancé’s wedding to another woman. But it is not only the women who leave that face such disruption; the women who remain must contend with suspicions of marital infidelity. In “War” by Thai Ba Tan and “Ms. Thoai” by Hanh Le, wives’ loyalty is thrown into question by their husbands. In each case, the women are presented as innocent, with their infidelity caused by events beyond their control—in “Ms. Thoai,” a rape, and in “War,” an unexplained pregnancy that is described as immaculate. Yet their husbands’ suspicion of infidelity causes immense, irreversible suffering for both of them and the absence of trust or forgiveness defines the rest of their lives.
Forgiveness and reconciliation—within families, among Vietnamese, and with foreign enemies—lie at the heart of many of these stories. “An American Service Hamlet” by Nguyen Thi Thu Tran was inspired by her own experiences growing up among American soldiers stationed in the South. The story portrays the women who were hired to do laundry or to work as maids in the American offices. When the young girl Bach oversees an American soldier, Smith, crying on the breast of his girlfriend, Miss Trung, she is fascinated by this display of sorrow and tenderness. She later saves him from cruel torture by a group of drunken Vietnamese men. Her kindness, empathy, and admiration for Smith and Miss Trung’s love show her belief that “in difficult situations people were still capable of showing some kind of natural kindness toward one another” and offers a tone of mutual understanding. In other instances in the anthology, forgiveness comes only with hindsight. In both “Louse Crab Season” by Mai Tien Nghi and “Ms. Thoai,” forgiveness is expressed too late to save the characters from misunderstanding and its painful consequences. The control of irony in revealing such regret only to the reader seems to drive home the advantage of hindsight and advocates reconciliation. As the narrator of “War” says,
There were new challenges in peace time that didn’t necessarily require extraordinary endurance or sacrifice, but required something bigger, something more complicated and subtle: compassion and forgiveness.
Of all the writers included in this anthology, the most well-known in the English-speaking world is certainly Bao Ninh, whose novel The Sorrow of War has been widely translated and won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 1994. His short story “White Clouds Flying” succinctly shows the disorientation of experiencing the persistent sorrow of war in the present day. The brevity of the story’s one scene, which takes place in an airplane as it crosses the seventeenth parallel air zone, makes it unique among the others in the collection, which tend towards longer narratives that recount stories of the past. Ninh’s story describes the short exchanges between an elderly female passenger and an airline stewardess, narrated through the voice of an observing male passenger. Inside the enclosed, compressed cabin, the elderly woman constructs a traditional shrine in order to cope with the pain resurfacing as she travels to see (for the first time) the place where her son died. Her pain and her traditions persist and highlight the disparity between her life in the country and modern society. In just a few pages, Ninh conveys the significant trauma that these generations are made to confront while the world seemingly moves on and modernizes, and with such sparse, exact prose, he reveals himself to be a master of the unsaid.
Other Moons is a necessary work that succeeds in enlarging the perspective of English-speaking audiences through diverse, well-chosen Vietnamese voices. The stories read fluently, and Ha and Babcock clearly explain any difficulties encountered in translating from the Vietnamese. For example, this is evident in the more complex Vietnamese system of relationship-dependent pronouns, which indicate age and the nature of the relationship between speakers. The decision to not translate these too literally avoids an unnatural formality in the English. A particularly beautiful translation difficulty that they describe is the expression "ve que," meaning literally "to return to one's hometown." They explain the cultural weight of "que," not quite achieved with the English "hometown" as it is also synonymous with the countryside, conveying a return to a way of living, not merely a geographical place. The introductions they provide for each story elucidate such subtleties and offer a rich cultural and linguistic context for English readers. Not only are the translations in Other Moons skilled and considered, they demonstrate the tremendous importance of translation in portraying the complexities of a conflict, its traumas, and its people.
Sarah Moore is a British editor and translator based in Paris. She is blog editor at Asymptote journal and runs the monthly poetry events, “Poetry in the Library” at Shakespeare & Company. She is currently studying for a master’s in comparative literature at the Sorbonne University.
More about Sarah Moore
The Watchlist: October 2020
Émanuel Grenier-Benoit
Raphaëlle Leyris
A Pre-Columbian Bestiary: Tepeyólotl
2020 Words Without Borders Virtual Gala
Amna al-Fadl
Katherine Van de Vate
Rania Mamoun
Nesrin Amin
Ann El Safi
Conjuring Up a Nocturnal Montreal: Stéphane Larue and Pablo Strauss on Translating “The Dishwasher”
New Ways of Saying “We”
Sexism and Science Fiction: An Interview with Tang Fei
Maryam Mahjube
Batool Heydari
What Happens When We Sleep?
Introducing WWB’s Editorial Fellow, Varun Nayar
from the October 2020 issue
What Turned Mexico Into a ‘Visceraless’ State? Cristina Rivera Garza Has a Few Ideas
Reviewed by Jeremy Klemin
Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker
The Feminist Press, 2020
In "Grieving," a collection of essays spanning over a decade, the talented author attempts to explain how her nation succumbed to a project that uses its citizens as "cannon fodder in exchange for maximum profit."
In the early 1980s, Mexico was bailed out of a foreign debt crisis by the IMF and the World Bank so that it could continue paying back interest on loans from US banks. The condition for this financial relief was a set of sweeping structural adjustments which, under the banner of neoliberalism, created the perfect storm of conditions that, in the decades to come, would facilitate the rise of the modern Mexican cartels, and consequently, the border crisis with the US.
In Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country (tr. Sarah Booker), author and 2020 MacArthur Fellowship winner Cristina Rivera Garza, known primarily for works of fiction like No One Will See Me Cry (tr. Andrew Hurley) and The Taiga Syndrome (tr. Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana), traces the connections between these defining events in a series of essays written over the last sixteen years. Ranging from investigative journalism to art criticism, this collection takes steady aim at both the Mexican state and the narco cartels, but its ultimate target is neoliberalism, which Rivera Garza sees as the philosophy uniting the two entities. In the essay “I Won’t Let Anyone Say Those Are the Best Years of Your Life,” the author describes both the Mexican cartels and the new, structurally reconfigured Mexico as a “neoliberal regime that used [Mexico’s youth] as cannon fodder in exchange for maximum profit.” She settles upon the phrase, “estado sin entrañas,” which Sarah Booker renders into English as the “visceraless state,” to describe the predicament. While the eponymous essay appears early on in the collection, her most lucid description of this expression comes in her essay about the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the last (and best) in the collection: “[The visceraless state is] a state for which bodies are not a matter of care but merely extraction.”
As macabre as this assessment might sound, these essays are not devoid of hope—they are replete with the stories of individuals, often women, who have tried to either fill or make sense of the state’s absence. “Elvira Arellano and That Which Blood, Tradition, and Community Unite” traces the efforts of Arellano who, after being deported from the US, founds an organization in Tijuana that provides shelter and assistance to recently deported women while they establish a life in Mexico. “On 2501 Migrants by Alejandro Santiago” is an essay about an art project which could be described as a kind of border-inspired reinterpretation of Qin Shi Huang’s Terracotta Army. Originally featured in the streets of Oaxaca City, Santiago’s hometown, 2501 Migrants features as many human-sized sculptures, meant to represent the migrants who have left the city. I am often wary of creative reviews of single books or art installations in thematic essay collections—so often they read as thinly disguised filler content—but Rivera Garza manages to leap the nebulous chasm between review and essay, and it ends up being one of the strongest pieces in the collection. In the failed war on drugs, the border crisis, and all the violence that has accompanied them, there is still beauty somehow. There is no lack of data in these essays for inquiring minds, but these moments of beauty and determination inevitably outlast the figures and make for some of the collection’s most poignant moments.
A significant portion of the collection is about how immigration and the failed war on drugs have impacted women—about femicide and the mothers it leaves daughterless—but some of the collection’s smaller, anecdotal essays about women have the most staying power. “The Neo-Camelias” is a fascinating look at the complicated role of women in cartels and how that position has evolved over time. In “Nonfiction,” Rivera Garza retells the story of a taxi driver she knows who, after taking a sex worker to a hotel, learns that she has been killed that very evening. Incredibly, not long after learning of the murder, he realizes that his current passenger, also a sex worker, is the woman’s younger sister.
Given the period of time in which these essays were written, readers might note how Rivera Garza’s style changes throughout the collection. Her 2004 essay “Mourning,” for example, which explores mourning and the Other through the work of Judith Butler, adopts a more academic style. It’s a logical thematic fit, but I enjoyed the essay more for what it revealed about the evolution of Rivera Garza’s voice throughout the collection than the content proper. In some of the collection’s other more recent essays, Garza seems to move away from an academic register, opting instead for the taut, economical prose characteristic of her novella The Taiga Syndrome. Among the essays added to the original 2011 collection (and subsequent second edition, published in 2015), I would have loved to read Rivera Garza’s take on how Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist, fits into this larger pattern of visceralessness. AMLO initially refused to take COVID-19 seriously, and though his politics differ, he is often at odds with democratic institutions in a way that is similar to Trump and Bolsonaro.
It’s also worth noting that two of the added essays, “I Won’t Let Anyone Say Those Are the Best Years of Your Life” and “On Our Toes” were originally written by Rivera Garza in English. The rest of the collection was originally written in Spanish and translated by Sarah Booker, who also worked on the author’s novel The Iliac Crest. She does a marvelous job capturing the subtleties of Rivera Garza’s voice: In “On 2501 Migrants by Alejandro Santiago,” for example, Booker capably translates one of Rivera Garza’s thornier sentences—“Fantasmagóricos y aterradores a la vez, frágiles como el material que los compone, pero ciertos en el aire que los envuelve y sólidos en el espacio que ocupan, los migrantes de Santiago cruzan sobre todo una frontera: la muy delgada y quebradiza línea de lo que con frecuencia se denomina como realidad”—as “Simultaneously fantastic and terrifying, as fragile as the material they’re made of, yet solid in the space they occupy and the air that surrounds them, Santiago’s migrants cross one border above all: the thin, brittle line we often call reality.” Seamlessly done.
Precious few are essay collections in translation, and of those precious few, many consist of fiction writers compiling their stray odds and ends for a dependable base of readers. Thoughtfully curated and aptly translated, Grieving is not just for completists of Rivera Garza’s obra; in less than 200 pages, it is both evocative and informative. With this collection, Rivera Garza obliges readers to take her work as an essayist just as seriously as the short novels and novellas that have made her name.
César Aira’s “Varamo”
Sergio Chejfec’s “The Dark”
Tomás Eloy Martínez’s “Purgatory”
Jeremy Klemin
Jeremy Klemin is an essayist from Long Beach, California. He was a 2018 Fulbright Fellow in Curitiba, Brazil, and has also lived in Portugal and Scotland. You can find his work published or forthcoming in publications like the New York Times Book Review, Literary Hub, and the Common. He is the editor of Joyland Magazine's "Consulate" section.
More about Jeremy Klemin
Sharifa Pasun
Freshta Ghani
Marjam Idriss
The City and the Writer: In Athens with Amanda Michalopoulou
World in Verse: A Multilingual Poetry Reading
Haytham El Wardany
Climates: On Environment
As I write, the West Coast of the US is ravaged by wildfires; the Gulf Coast, still recovering from Hurricane Laura, braces for Hurricane Sally’s potential destruction; an enormous chunk of Greenland’s icecap has broken free; the Northern Hemisphere has sweated through the hottest summer on record—and that’s just today. Temperatures swing between extremes, violent weather becomes the norm. In this daunting context, we present a double issue of writing on environmental issues.
Global warming manifests in obvious ways—milder winters, shrinking glaciers, extreme weather; but, like the wildfire smoke that has drifted as far east as New York, the evidence travels and transforms as it reaches new territories and settings. And because humankind’s stewardship of the earth involves so many elements, the pieces gathered here and in next month’s issue address varied facets within the greater category of environmental crisis.
Icelandic writer and environmental activist Andri Snær Magnason began writing his nonfiction narrative On Time and Water after a climate change specialist told him, “people relate to stories, not data.” In “Farewell to the White Giants,” translated by Lytton Smith, Magnason blends family history, scientific fact, and traditional tales in a eulogy to his country’s vanishing glaciers. He imagines future generations looking at photographs of glaciers with wonder, trying “to understand what we were thinking.”
From the thawing north we turn to the parched Spain of Ariadna Castellarnau’s “Water Man,” translated by Adrian Nathan West. The title character travels with his sullen teenage daughter to rescue a dusty village from drought. Her father, who has “the gift of making water well from the earth,” insists the resistant young woman has inherited his talent; when the villagers demand impossible results, he commands her to step in, to devastating effect.
Thailand’s Duanwad Pimwana presents the all-too-possible consequences of the world’s cavalier attitude toward accumulation and disposability. In her “All Trash on the Eastern Side,” translated by Mui Poopoksakul, the world itself has become one big trash heap, with the population gradually subsumed by garbage. In this horrifying terrain, the narrator searches for both food and the fabled Land Without Trash, a magical place of animals, trees, and, most remarkably, no garbage. When he meets a determined woman with her own goals, his search takes a fateful turn.
Readers will recall graphic artist Francisco de la Mora’s “Joe,” from our February 2017 issue, in which the title character, a polar bear, travels from the Arctic to the United Nations to plead for more attention to his shrinking land. In “Liberty and Hope,” translated by Nina Perrotta, de la Mora finds two icons—the Statue of Liberty and Rio’s Christ the Redeemer—making their ways through desolation and destruction to a mournful rendezvous. They ask the question on all our minds: is this the end, or just the beginning?
And climate writer Amy Brady considers the power of fiction in communicating environmental decay. While journalists may be constrained by the need for objectivity, Brady notes, “fiction writers have the freedom to explore the pathos of climate change.” Here she echoes the scientist who prompted Magnason: people may not respond to data, but information presented in narratives can move readers to act. The writers in this issue are staking our collective hopes on it.
© 2020 by Susan Harris. All rights reserved.
Read more from the October 2020 issue
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You have to wonder just how aware Pence is of his situation.
I mean, he's had to know for years that an utterly corrupt and amoral sociopath like Trump would not only demand a January 19th pardon from President Pence, but that he'd also stab Pence in the back before throwing his corpse under a speeding bus at any time and on the slightest whim...
...right? Pence is smart enough and aware enough to have figured these things out long ago, isn't he?
Insert iffyhandwavering.gif here
Pence's one thing in his favor is a Constitutional Officer he can not be fired by Trump....otherwise he'd be gone.
I think we're getting really close to the "Russians are within 500 meters of the Führerbunker" stage.
It's a mere 15 days until der treue Heinrich, er, Mike Pence commits the ultimate betrayal...and then almost certainly bolts out of the country after the last syllable is out of his mouth and stays there until after noon on January 20th.
I have a funny feeling he won't play Gerald Ford for Trump...but who knows lol
So now we are in for "The Longest Month".
Honestly a coronary event would be useful in this one case of someone so absolutely devoid of any character.
It would certainly be better than our current state: Any meaningful government work won't happen. Instead we'll get more batshit attempts to undermine the election and of course an executive order to make sure only "beautiful" buildings are built in D.C.
Because millions of Americans aren't in danger of being thrown out of their homes, or scrambling to put food on the table (hey, here's $600, go nuts!), and there isn't a pandemic ravaging this country like a 9/11 every single goddamn day.
But you know, "TDS" or whatever.
The wheels are flying off...
https://www.axios.com/trump-white-ho...3b18529c9.html
Trump turns on everyone
Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
President Trump, in his final days, is turning bitterly on virtually every person around him, griping about anyone who refuses to indulge conspiracy theories or hopeless bids to overturn the election, several top officials tell Axios.
The latest: Targets of his outrage include Vice President Pence, chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Secretary of State Pompeo and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Why it matters: Trump thinks everyone around him is weak, stupid or disloyal — and increasingly seeks comfort only in people who egg him on to overturn the election results. We cannot stress enough how unnerved Trump officials are by the conversations unfolding inside the White House.
Top officials are trying to stay away from the West Wing right now.
Trump is lashing out, and everyone is in the blast zone: At this point, if you're not in the “use the Department of Homeland Security or the military to impound voting machines” camp, the president considers you weak and beneath contempt.
Trump is fed up with Cipollone, his counsel. Some supporters of Cipollone are worried that Trump is on the brink of removing him and replacing him with a fringe loyalist.
A source who spoke to Trump said the president was complaining about Pence and brought up a Lincoln Project ad that claims that Pence is "backing away" from Trump. This ad has clearly got inside Trump’s head, the source said.
Trump views Pence as not fighting hard enough for him — the same complaint he uses against virtually everybody who works for him and has been loyal to him.
Pence’s role on Jan. 6 has begun to loom large in Trump’s mind, according to people who’ve discussed the matter with him.
Trump would view Pence performing his constitutional duty — and validating the election result — as the ultimate betrayal.
A new fixation: Trump has even been asking advisers whether they can get state legislatures to rescind their electoral votes. When he’s told no, he lashes out even more, said a source who discussed the matter with the president.
And in an Oval meeting Monday night, Trump spoke with House Republicans about voting to overturn the result on Jan. 6 — a desperate vote that even Trump has privately acknowledged he's bound to lose.
The person who has the worst job in Washington, according to multiple administration officials: the incoming head of the Justice Department, Jeffrey Rosen.
The consensus is he has no earthly idea the insanity he is in for.
The next month will be the longest of his life.
Obtained by Axios
Another reflection of Trump’s state of mind:
As Axios reported Monday night, the president got his personal assistant to email Republican lawmakers a PowerPoint slide (above) attacking McConnell for being "the first one off the ship," and absurdly claiming credit for the Senate majority leader’s victory in his Kentucky re-election.
That's quite a message to send two weeks out from crucial runoff races in Georgia, where Republicans need to stay unified.
Where's Jared? A source told Axios that Kushner, who yesterday participated in a tree-planting ceremony in Jerusalem Forest's Grove of Nations, "is focused on the Middle East."
It's a perfect visual encapsulation of Kushner's absence — on the other side of the world, planting a tree with Bibi and accepting plaudits, while Trump discusses mayhem with Sidney Powell.
Excellent rundown of the Four Seasons fiasco, too much post here entirely, but the best part was this:
It’s hard to know what counts as a fuckup when you work for Donald Trump. Looked at by the standards of a traditional campaign with a traditional candidate who possesses a minor-to-moderate capacity for traditional human feelings, like shame, what happened at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, or the fact that it happened at all, was a disaster.
Newsmax Fact-Checks Its Own Smartmatic Lies Following Legal Threats
Fledgling pro-Trump cable-news network Newsmax ran a point-by-point debunking of numerous election-fraud conspiracies about voting software company Smartmatic on Monday, days after the firm issued a threat of legal action and demand for retraction over the network peddling falsehoods about the company.
In two separate segments during Monday’s broadcast of John Bachman Now, hosts John Bachman and John Tabacco both issued lengthy statements offering fact-checks about claims made that Smartmatic was involved in an international conspiracy to flip millions of votes from President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.
“Since Election Day various guests, attorneys, and elected officials have appeared on Newsmax and offered opinions and claims about Smartmatic and Dominion systems. Both companies that offer voting software in the U.S.,” the statement began. “And Newsmax would like to clarify its news coverage and note that it has not reported as true certain claims made about these companies.”
From there, both hosts noted that their viewers “should be aware of Newsmax has found no evidence that either dominion or Smartmatic owns the other or has any business association with each other,” assertions that have been repeated consistently by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
“We have no evidence that Dominion uses Smartmatic software or vice versa,” the fact-check continued. “No evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election. Smartmatic has stated that its software was only used in the 2020 election in Los Angeles, was not used in any battleground state contested by the Trump campaign. Newsmax has no evidence to the contrary.”
The statement concluded by pointing out that Newsmax also has no proof that Dominion or Smartmatic have any relationship with liberal philanthropist George Soros and that Smartmatic is not owned by long-deceased Venezuelan dictator Huge Chavez.
“Smartmatic states it has no operations in Venezuela,” the hosts declared. “While the company did election projects in Venezuela from 2004 to 2017, it states it never was founded by Hugo Chavez, nor did it have a corrupt relationship with him or the Venezuelan government.”
Powell and other Trump allies have insisted, without any evidence whatsoever, that Chavez, Soros and Smartmatic were involved in a shadowy plot to “steal” the election from Trump by using algorithms to change Trump votes to Biden. Powell’s various “Kraken” lawsuits have been tossed out of state and federal courts around the country.
Newsmax also quietly published the statement on its website over the weekend. Newsmax’s on-air fact-checks of the wild claims made on its own network follow Fox News airing a similar debunking of the Smartmatic election fraud conspiracies on three of its programs over the weekend.
While Smartmatic’s lawyers have sent forceful letters to Fox News, Newsmax and One America News demanding that they clear the company’s name and prepare for legal action, Dominion Voting Systems has issued a similar threat to the Trump campaign and Powell. First Amendment lawyers, meanwhile, believe that both companies have “extremely powerful” cases.
“The repeated accusations against both companies are plainly defamatory and surely have done enormous reputational and financial harm to both,” famed attorney Floyd Abrams told the New York Times on Sunday.
Wh..what in the actual f--k is happening?? First Lou Dobbs, now Newsmax. What Is Going On??
I must be having a stroke, because after the last 4+ years of a consequence-free right-wing tsunami of ridiculous lies...suddenly they've found the truth?
Oh right, lawsuits. And lawsuits = financial pain.
Is Trump Cracking Under the Weight of Losing?
Donald Trump has never had a week like the week he just had. On the heels of the Supreme Court’s knock-back and the Electoral College’s knockout, some of his most reliable supporters—Mitch McConnell, Vladimir Putin, Newsmax—acknowledged and affirmed the actual fact of the matter. Trump is a loser.
Consequently, he is plainly out of sorts, say former close associates, longtime Trump watchers and mental health experts.
It’s not just his odd behavior—the testy, tiny desk session with the press, the stilted Medal of Freedom ceremony that ended with his awkward exit, the cut-short trip to the Army-Navy football game. It’s even more pointedly his conspicuous and ongoing absences. The narcissistic Trump has spent the last half a century—but especially the last half a decade—making himself and keeping himself the most paid-attention-to person on the planet. But in the month and a half since Election Day, Trump has been seen and heard relatively sparingly and sporadically. No-showing unexpectedly at a Christmas party, sticking to consistently sparse public schedules and speaking mainly through his increasingly manic Twitter feed, he’s been fixated more than anything else on his baseless insistence that he won the election when he did not.
Over the course of a lifetime of professional and personal transgressions and failures, channeling lasting, curdled lessons of Norman Vincent Peale and Roy Cohn, Trump has assembled a record of rather remarkable resilience. His typical level of activity and almost animal energy has at times lent him an air of insusceptibility, every one of his brushes with financial or reputational ruin ending with Trump emerging all but untouched. His current crisis, though, his eviction from the White House now just a month out, is something altogether different and new.
“He’s never been in a situation in which he has lost in a way he can’t escape from,” Mary Trump, his niece and the author of the fiercely critical and bestselling book about him and their family, told me. “We continue to wait for him to accept reality, for him to concede, and that is something he is not capable of doing,” added Bandy Lee, the forensic psychiatrist from Yale who’s spent the last four years trying to warn the world about Trump and the ways in which he’s disordered and dangerous. “Being a loser,” she said, for Trump is tantamount to “psychic death.”
The combination of an unprecedented rebuke meeting an uncommonly vulnerable ego has some people wondering if there is a chance that Trump’s unusual actions suggest something potentially more dire. Could he be on his way to a mental breakdown?
Sam Nunberg dismissed the notion. “No,” the former Trump political aide said in a text.
Same with Anthony Scaramucci, who very briefly and semi-famously was his top White House spokesperson. “No chance,” he said.
But that’s not consensus. Louise Sunshine, for instance, has known Trump longer than just about anybody. She started working with him in the early 1970s—so I sent her a text asking her the question. “Maybe,” she responded.
Everybody, after all, has a breaking point. “And he’s not indestructible,” said Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive vice president who was the construction manager for Trump Tower and just wrote a book called Tower of Lies. “I do think Trump is struggling,” Tony Schwartz, the actual author of The Art of the Deal, told me, “and that this is far and away the toughest time he’s ever had.”
“His fragile ego has never been tested to this extent,” Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney and enforcer before he turned on him, told me. “While he’s creating a false pretense of strength and fortitude, internally he is angry, depressed and manic. As each day ends, Trump knows he’s one day closer to legal and financial troubles. Accordingly, we will all see his behavior deteriorate until it progresses into a full mental breakdown.”
“Psychological disorders are like anything else,” said Mary Trump, who’s also a psychologist. “If they’re unacknowledged and untreated over time, they get worse.”
In Lee’s estimation, it’s not something that could happen. It’s something that is happening, that’s been happening for the past four years—and will keep happening.
“His pathology has continued to grow, continued to cause him to decompensate, and so we’re at a stage now where his detachment from reality is pretty much complete and his symptoms are as severe as can be.” She likened Trump to “a car without functioning brakes.” Such a car, she explained, can look for a long time like it’s fine, and keep going, faster and faster, even outracing other cars. “But at the bottom of the hill,” Lee said, “it always crashes.”
Trump is who and how he is first and foremost because of his parents. His unwell mother couldn’t and didn’t give him the attention he wanted and needed, while his domineering father gave him attention but a wrong and warping kind—instilling in him a grim, zero-sum worldview with the dictate that the only option was to be “a winner.” Ever since, he responded so relentlessly to these harsh particulars of his loveless upbringing—the insatiable appetite for publicity, the crass, constant self-aggrandizement—that he became the president of the United States and arguably the most famous person alive. But from the time he was a boy, the way Trump has coped with the void he’s felt ultimately has been less a solution than a spotlight—it’s what’s made his most fundamental problem most manifest.
“His problem is that he has grown up with vulnerability in terms of his self-worth, self-esteem and a clear sense of himself,” Mark Smaller, a past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, told me. “Somebody with these kinds of vulnerabilities, affirmation, being the center of things, is never enough. Because you can’t solve these old wounds, these old, narcissistic wounds—you cannot solve them with affirmation, with being at the center of things. You can’t because they persist, so that you need more attention, you need more affirmation, you need to be more at the center of things, all the time, more often. And when realities start to interfere with getting that kind of affirmation, you just want more.”
The only moment in Trump’s life that remotely compares to what’s happening right now is in early 1990.
He was mired in a tabloid-catnip marital breakup on account of an affair with the B-movie actress who eventually would become the second of his three wives and the mother of the fourth of his five children. He also was a staggering $3.4 billion in debt—personally liable for nearly a billion of that—his business affairs in New York and with his casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in absolute shambles. “I would have been looking for the nearest building to jump off of,” Steve Bollenbach, the financial fixer banks made Trump hire, once told biographer Tim O’Brien. That spring, according to Vanity Fair, Trump ordered in burgers and fries and stayed up late in bed, staring at the ceiling. At risk of becoming a has-been and a punchline, Trump nonetheless boasted about future prospects—of national magazine covers and a comeback to come. “All Donald knew,” Wayne Barrett wrote around the time, “was that he was still a story.”
He sat at his desk paging through periodicals looking for his name. “Even if it was the same AP article in every single newspaper, he wanted to see it,” former Trump casino executive Jack O’Donnell told me. “That’s how he survives.”
“Did he collapse? No. He did not collapse,” veteran New York Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said. “He just continued.”
Trump was able to do that, of course, principally due to the sprawling, near-foolproof safety net his father’s wealth allowed. Lenders in New York and regulators in Atlantic City, too, let him skate, both groups as beholden to him as he was to them.
Still, en route to averting comeuppance, he proceeded to weave this self-inflicted calamity into a preferred tale of a certain toughness he possessed. “Most people would have been in the corner sucking their thumb,” he said to a reporter from the Sunday Times of London. “You learn that you’re either the toughest, meanest piece of shit in the world, or you just crawl into a corner, put your finger in your mouth, and say, ‘I want to go home,’” he told a writer from New York. “You never know until you’re under pressure how you’re gonna react.”
But the biggest difference between then and now: Even when Trump was all but broke, even as bankers clawed back some of his “toys,” the “props for the show,” as he once put it in Playboy, they gave him an obscene $450,000-a-month allowance. And the most important thing? He got to keep Trump Tower. He got to remain living in the penthouse of the building that he had built, that had made him famous, and that served above all as the preeminent stage for how he wanted to be seen.
“He was always there in his office,” Alan Marcus, Trump’s publicist later on in the ‘90s, told me. “He was always there in his castle.”
This time, on the other hand, he’s getting kicked out. No more Oval Office photo ops. No more two-scoop nights watching Fox News in his room in the residence. In a month’s time, for most likely the last time, the door of the White House will close behind him.
This looming reality colors his interactions in these waning days.
Earlier this month, the Medal of Freedom ceremony to honor Dan Gable, the fabled Iowa wrestler and coach, seemed precisely the sort of pomp Trump liked the most throughout his single term. “He couldn’t stand the feeling of losing,” he said of Gable, reading from prepared remarks, standing behind the lectern festooned with the presidential seal, surrounded by Gable, Gable’s family and members of Congress from Iowa, reporters and photographers.
“Before matches,” Trump continued, “Dan would repeat the words ‘cakes, carries, ducks, picks, shucks, sweeps’ over and over again. I’ll have to ask Dan why. Why, Dan?”
“Because they’re all moves that end the match,” Gable said.
“Oh,” Trump said.
Toward the end of the event, though, when one of the reporters asked if he was still “looking to change the outcome of the election,” Trump called the election “rigged” and the United States “third-world” before turning to thank Gable again—and then abruptly walked out.
Gable, seeming surprised and still standing in the Oval, looked at the gathered press and held his hands up. He said all that was left to say.
“He’s gone.”
“So,” Brian Kilmeade of Fox asked Trump last weekend in one of the vanishingly few interviews the president has consented to since he lost, “would you show up at the inauguration. Will you?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said. “I want to talk about this: We’ve done a great job. I got more votes than any president in the history of our country—in the history of our country, right? Not even close: 75 million”—actually a little more than 74—“far more than Obama, far more than anybody. And they say we lost an election. We didn’t lose.”
This is true, obviously, only if one ignores the more than 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden and the 306 Electoral College votes he was awarded as a result.
The people who’ve known Trump well, the people who’ve watched him for a long, long time, the mental health professionals—they’re worried, they told me, about what’s to come, in the next month, and in the months and years after that.
“There’s no reckoning with reality,” biographer Gwenda Blair said. “He’s going to continue to frame it that he won, he was cheated, he’s the victim, and he’s going to continue to bend reality as best he can.”
“He’ll continue to rage against the results, and he’ll continue to solidify in the minds of millions more Americans that the democratic process was corrupted, and that’s going to have a long-lasting tail that we’ll have to deal with in American politics for many, many years,” said Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security who was “Anonymous” before he revealed his identity in October. “I don’t expect that the president is going to chain himself to the Resolute Desk and refuse to leave, but also, given what we’ve seen the past few weeks, I wouldn’t totally put it past him.”
“The probability of something very bad happening is very high, unacceptably high, and the fact that we don’t have guardrails in place, the fact that we are allowing a mentally incapacitated president to continue in the job, in such an important job, for a single day longer, is a truly unacceptable reality,” said Lee, the Yale psychiatrist. “We’re talking about his access to the most powerful military on the planet and his access to technology that’s capable of destroying human civilization many times over.”
“You have to remember,” said Cohen, his former attorney. “Trump doesn’t see things the way that you do. He sees things in his distorted reality that benefits him. He’s able to right now embrace that distorted reality because he still wakes up in the White House. But what happens each and every day as he gets closer to not only leaving, but also it comes with a sense of, in his mind, humiliation, right? And he knows that he is destined for legal troubles.”
“He’s looking down the barrel” of legal and financial difficulties, Mary Trump said. “But perhaps more troubling for him or more terrifying for him is the fact that he is in danger of losing his relevance.”
And that is not something Trump will ever be able to abide.
“He’s going to go back to Mar-a-Lago, to MAGAstan, as I call it, and he’s going to return to standing ovations and applause beyond what you can comprehend,” Cohen said, “because these sycophants that are there will continue to bolster his ego and he can go from table to table, listening to people placate him about how the election was stolen from him. And that’s just going to further create that mishigas in his head.”
“Do I think that Trump is going to fall apart in a way where he would become completely dysfunctional and not leave his room? I don’t think so,” said Smaller, the past president of the psychoanalytic association. “But if you’re in this kind of unregulated state, and I think that’s what we’re observing, he’ll do kind of desperate things to maintain that being the center of attention.”
“He will not go away, because this is his psychological lifeline,” Lee said.
“For him,” she stressed, “it’s a matter of psychic survival.”
Could go either way in my humble opinion. He's certainly never been in this perfect shit storm of setbacks and problems.
But as I've often said, time is not on this man's side.
Barr says no basis for special counsel to investigate election, no federal authority to seize voting machines
Attorney General William Barr said Monday he has seen no reason for a special counsel to investigate possible fraud in the November election, contradicting an idea proposed by President Donald Trump.
Barr, who is set to step down on Wednesday, said, "if I thought a special counsel was appropriate I would name one, and I haven't."
"I said there was not enough fraud to affect the election and I stand by that," he said, noting what he said in an AP interview shortly before informing Trump during a White House meeting that he would resign.
Barr also said there is no federal authority to seize voting machines used in key states, as Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has suggested he order.
“I see no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government, you know, a wholesale seizure of machines by the federal government," he said.
During a Friday meeting with Trump at the White House, a source said, Guiliani, lawyer Sydney Powell and retired Gen. Michael Flynn discussed an executive order to seize and examine voting machines across the country.
Trump invited Powell to consider the possibility that she be appointed a special counsel and be given high-level security clearances to investigate the 2020 election. The meeting was highly contentious, sources told ABC News, filled with screaming and demands from Powell, who called other Trump aides "quitters" for giving up the fight.
The meeting ended with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and other Trump attorneys talking the president out of making the offer, the sources said. Giuliani, who joined the meeting by phone, also opposed the idea, according to sources.
Powell did not respond to ABC News' request for comment. She was at the White House Sunday as well, but the reason was unclear.
Barr's candid comments came when he answered reporters' questions at an unrelated news conference.
Considering how Trump and his Cult feel about traitors to the Dear Leader, Barr better grow eyes in the back of his head
As Eric said, he's doing the Trumpian thing: State "some people are saying" -- insert something outrageous -- "but I'm not calling for that" to ensure CYA.
And of course retweet something without any commentary whatsoever "I was just retweeting...I didn't even look at the entire tweet...I had no idea blah blah blah"
It's like dealing with small children except these clowns are twice as transparent.
I get it Joe
But someone needs to remind him of both points....cause he doesn't seem to get it.
If the next Administration gets a wild hair...or he oversteps further...these could be articles within overall legal proceedings.
Does Flynn not realize:
2. that as a retired lieutenant general he is still subject to the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and can be recalled to active duty for a court martial and be charged for Article 94? Once you become a general officer in the US Army a whole set of privileges come with that...but so do some special provisions which make you more responsible for your actions after your retirement from active duty.
I just have to ask: How did you pull this from what Flynn actually said and has been saying all along? The man has been hinting at, support and calling for martial law and using the military to overturn a free and fair election.
Where exactly (or even vaguely) is there a "blatant mischaracterization of Flynn's view"? I am seriously baffled at how you're able to come to that conclusion.
1. his pardon only covers previous malfeasance and nothing new?
Originally posted by GVChamp View Post
Is there anything that should have changed my mind? I gather there was a NY Times article about it, but I imagine it's behind a paywall. Nothing in DOR's CNN snippet convinces me to change my mind and I boycott CNN so I won't click on the link to see more.
I could actively research, but the last time I did that I had to dig through a massive pile of muck generated by the outrage machine to find the actual video. What's the point? And the actual news stories today are the COVID strain out of the UK and the CDC vaccine recommendations. The latter is pretty gosh-darn important considering a bunch of official CDC documentation and guidance looked like they were about to recommend letting grandma die.
Don't see anything to update my opinion and don't see any reason I should be looking to change my mind. I SHOULD look more into this new covid strain, but between the PVC Cement and the bleach, I don't think I'm going to form great opinions on that right now, and I'd rather form great opinions than bad opinions I have to later unmake.
Why not just look at that Newsmax interview where he said two different things in the Trumpian fashion, as Astralis so adroitly defined it? No additional research needed.
I mean, you were pretty adamant that there was a blatant mischaracterization of Flynn's view and typical journalistic malpractice. Do you still feel that way?
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Animal Film Festival Finalist “Best Fest” in FestForums
by Center for Animal Protection & Education (CAPE) November 2, 2017 November 2, 2017
Grass Valley, Calif., November 2, 2017 – On its five-year anniversary the Animal Film Festival (AFF) has received a substantial accolade – it is a finalist for Best Fest at the national FestForums Conference taking place November 16 – 18 at the Fess Parker Resort in Santa Barbara, California. The conference brings together leaders of music, film and food festivals and events for collaboration and professional development.
The Animal Film Festival produced by the non-profit Center for Animal Protection & Education (CAPE) lit up the screen for the first time in February 2014. Since then the AFF has screened 93 films and hosted 26 filmmakers. The AFF has also established a streaming channel on ROKU and tours many cities across the west coast. The AFF is partnered with the Tarshis Foundation that gave $14,000 in awards to five filmmakers during the 2017 AFF. The AFF has also been featured in Variety Magazine.
The 5th annual Animal Film Festival comes to Grass Valley, February 17, 2018 at the Center for the Arts in downtown Grass Valley, CA. Submissions are still open for shorts, documentary and animated films about all aspects of animals and their lives around the globe.
The Tarshis Awards presented by Amber and Adam Tarshis of the Tarshis Foundation, are currently accepting submissions for 30 – 90 second films that creatively and convincingly highlight the issues of animal suffering in modern farming. Last year, five films were presented with a total of $14,000 in awards.
The 5th annual AFF will kick off on Tuesday, February 13th with a special presentation of the film Eating You Alive sponsored by the VegFund . This entertaining and important film will screen at the Guild Theater, 2828 35th Street, Sacramento. Early-bird tickets are now on sale at www.animalfilmfestival.org.
To view the short video about the AFF that will be screened during the FestForums Best Fest Awards ceremony visit this link: https://youtu.be/_gUMZ-nTu-U
About CAPE
The Center for Animal Protection and Education (CAPE) (www.capeanimals.org) works to save the lives of individual animals and to educate people about ways in which they can alleviate animal suffering. Founded in 1992, CAPE has helped thousands of animals. Those who are older, injured or recovering from an illness are placed into new, loving homes through CAPE’s foster and adoption programs. In 2012 CAPE established the CAPE Animal Sanctuary in Grass Valley, California, a permanent home for dozens of animals with special needs and burros removed from their native habitats on public lands by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. CAPE programs teach that all animals have the right to a long, full life, free from pain and suffering. To learn more or donate please visit www.capeanimals.org.
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Luke Perry Suffers ‘Massive’ Stroke, Is Currently Hospitalized
UPDATE: A new report states Perry is in a “medically induced coma,” after his condition “deteriorated” on the way to the hospital.
Very scary news for Riverdale and 90210 fans, as TMZ reports that Luke Perry has suffered a “massive” stroke and is “currently hospitalized” in Los Angeles:
Paramedics responded to Luke's home in Sherman Oaks around 9:40 AM. We know the call came into the fire department for someone suffering a stroke, and Luke was transported to a nearby hospital. It's unclear what his condition is right now. The 52-year-old who stars as Archie's dad, Fred Andrews, on "Riverdale" ... had been shooting episodes recently in L.A. on the Warner Bros. lot.
Perry, who grew to fame as Dylan on the original Beverly Hills, 90210 has been an American television staple for almost 30 years. (30 years!) After he left (and then returned to) 90210, he starred on HBO’s Oz and John From Cincinnati, as well as the Showtime sci-fi series Jeremiah. He joined the cast of Riverdale in 2017. Although there is a 90210 revival series currently in development with most of the original cast involved, Perry is not confirmed to appear at this time.
Perry is a young man; just 52 years old. Hopefully the stroke isn’t as serious as it sounds in TMZ’s initial report and he’s able to make a full and speedy recovery.
Gallery — The Best TV Shows of the Year:
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Source: Luke Perry Suffers ‘Massive’ Stroke, Is Currently Hospitalized
Filed Under: Luke Perry, Riverdale
Categories: Newsletter
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The Original ‘Jurassic Park’ Cast Reunited For National Voter Registration Day
Sam Neill. Jeff Goldblum. Laura Dern. They are the original stars of Jurassic Park.
It’s always exciting to see them together, which doesn’t happen all that often. Neill, Goldblum, and Dern never appeared as a trio in a Jurassic Park sequel, although they all did make return appearances. Goldblum headlined The Lost World, and Neill was the star of Jurassic Park III, which also featured a supporting turn from Dern. And Goldblum returned for a brief appearance in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. That will lead into the upcoming Jurassic World: Dominion, which will be the first Jurassic since the first to feature all three stars.
Dominion is currently in production, but we’ve only gotten fleeting glimpses of the film and its cast so far. Today, we got a nice reunion picture of Neill, Dern, and Goldblum all together from the official Jurassic World Twitter account, encouraging everyone to go vote this year in the 2020 election:
They’ve all got masks on, so hypothetically Sam Neill could have a huge bushy mustache, and Jeff Goldblum could be rocking a soul patch in Jurassic World: Dominion and we won’t know until there’s a trailer for the film.
Jurassic World: Dominion is scheduled to open in theaters on June 11, 2021. To see if you’re registered to vote — and to register if you’re not — go here. Happy National Voter Registration Day!
Gallery — Franchises That Recast Major Roles:
Source: The Original ‘Jurassic Park’ Cast Reunited For National Voter Registration Day
Filed Under: Jurassic Park, Jurassic World: Dominion
Categories: Articles, Celebrity, Movies
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Home/Culture/Charles Mungoshi Zimbabwe writer
Charles Mungoshi Zimbabwe writer
April 18, 2017 Culture, Whos Who
Charles Lovemore Mungoshi (born 2 December 1947) is a writer from Zimbabwe.
Mungoshi’s works include short stories and novels in both Shona and English. He also writes poetry, but views it as a “mere finger exercise.” He has a wide range, including anti-colonial writings and children’s books. While the colonial regime initially banned his work, he now writes about post-colonial oppression as well.
The awards he has won include the Noma Award in 1992 and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region) twice in the years 1988 and 1998. Two of his novels, one in Shona and the other in English, both published in 1975, won the International PEN Awards. His first Shona novel was Makunungunu Maodzamoyo followed by the English short collection Some Kinds of Wounds, which was banned by the colonial regime. His other Shona novel, Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura, won several awards and his play Ingongova Njakenjake showed his versatility as a writer.
He is married to an actress, Jesesi Mungoshi, who played in the Zimbabwean film Neria as Neria. He holds an Honorary degree from the University of Zimbabwe. Mungoshi also took part in some of the local Zimbabwean drama series in the late ’80s to early ’90s, and played a role in a local drama Ndabvezera which was produced by Aaron Chiundura Moyo.
“It is the old story, isn’t it?”
Charles Mungoshi is a writer in both Shona and English. He was born in 1947 in a village near Chivhu in Manyene Tribal Trust Land. His novel ‘Waiting for the Rain’ has been prescribed reading for years in Zimbabwean schools. This novel was published in1975, the same year as his Shona novel ‘Ndiko kupindana kwa mazuva’ (How time passes). He received an International PEN award for both these books. Mungoshi’s other publications include two collections of short stories, ‘The Setting Sun’ and ‘The Rolling World’ (1987), two collections of children’s stories, ‘Stories from a Shona Childhood’ (1989) and ‘One Day Long Ago’ (1991) and a collection of poems, ‘The Milkman Doesn’t Only Deliver Milk’ (1998). His latest book is ‘Walking Still’, a collection of short stories, which was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He also has a short story in the anthology ‘Writing Still’ (ed. Irene Staunton, Weaver Press 2004).
The following text is from a conversation between Charles Mungoshi and Mai Palmberg, an event arranged within the framework of the series “The Writers’ Africa” on 30 September 2003 at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala. The evening ended with questions from the floor, indicated below with Q. Mai Palmberg’s two closing questions are indicated with MP.
Let me start by asking you why you became a writer?
I don’t know what else I should have become. I don’t know how these things come about, but I think my parents wanted me to be something else, and even as late as, well, just before Walking Still was published, which is about five years ago, my mother said, “I’d wish you’d burn your library”. Anyway, she didn’t mean it and some good things have happened also. It probably has got to do with having your nose in the book and hardly saying anything at all to anyone; I am talking about when I was growing up.
But I always want to think that it was the loneliness, the way I grew up that led to my choice of career. It was not a career that I chose, I think it chose me. Traditionally in Shona culture you live in a round village and with the head of the kraal, somewhere there. But some time in the 1950s my father had to move from our village to start a farm of his own, a farm in the modern sense, with machines and all the modern technology, although not that productive.
This farm was about 17-something acres and you could get out with 20, 25 to 30 head of cattle for the whole day, feeding on wild fruits and you did not come back home until probably five o’clock in the evening. So most of the time I was alone and when I could read, which was five years after I started school, four or five years, I could read very well in both English and Shona. I always had books with me.
I am the first son and first child and after me there were three girls, then four boys, and as a boy you are expected to work with men. I didn’t have any friends on this farm; the nearest friend was about a mile or so away. We were not allowed to visit anyone at all, not because they were cruel, but there was so much work to do on the farm and I was supposed to be always there, minding the cattle or running errands, and so on.
Even when I started going to school, my father would go to the school and tell the headmaster that his son would not be attending the Sunday school because he was the only one he had to help him on the farm.
And in school, when on Monday, Wednesday and Friday pupils stayed over after school – which closed at about 1 o’clock – to do sports or outdoor games, my father made sure that I didn’t join the other pupils in those games.
My sisters being girls, I couldn’t heard cattle with them. I couldn’t work with them because they were women and they would be with our mother doing other things, so I was always almost on my own. When I was with my father, you can imagine the kind of conversation we had, “Pick that”, “Did I say to?”, “Did I tell you to?”, “Run!” and so on, so you would wish to be as far away from him as possible.
So most of my life was really lived in my head and talking to trees and birds and animals. So I want to think the loneliness, being on my own, turned me sort of inside and the reading helped along. It wasn’t long before I thought, “Well, I think I can also write a story”. I think that’s what happened.
What kind of reading, do you remember?
The very first book I read and I could only identify words like ‘this’ and ‘was’ and ‘it’ and ‘the’, something like that, but I couldn’t tell how the story went. But I remember very well the title, it was “Flamingo Island” and I loved the sound of the word ‘flamingo’. I would say that word ‘flamingo’ and I thought it was wonderful. I didn’t know what it meant.
Later on there was a proliferation of Second World War comics and cowboy comics, American literature, I think, from a publisher called Dell. These are the kind of comics I read. I didn’t realise that then, but I think from very early I was a victim of the power of the word, so from reading those comics I easily identified with the heroes there and I found I cultivated a hatred for the Germans, or the Jerries as they were called in these comics, and the Nips or the Japs, as the Americans put it, and I was several cowboys. I never thought about the Red Indians. They were my enemies and I looked down upon them.
At that time there was not much literature from here. We are looking at 1959 and the oldest published Shona novel had been published in 1956. Then there was of course the Christian Bible the Bible, and it was in a very weird, very old print with letters and it was hard to read. It had been translated I think by some very enthusiastic white missionary. Some of what was supposed to be poetry, sounded very strange to the ear. Well, nobody read much, they read the Bible but otherwise what we called stories we heard from our grandmothers.
I think I became a writer was simply something out of this loneliness, I had to make something out of my life. I was amassing a lot of words and you either sing them or you shout them, you have to do something with those words, and I started putting together stories.
So did you do that already in school?
I did. I remember; the first poem I wrote was when I was the first year in school. I had to ask somebody how to spell the name of a certain girl who sat next to me. I wrote the word down and sent the letter to her. I think that’s the first poem I wrote. Siphiwe.
So it’s a one-word poem?
Yes, a one word poem with a whole lot of feelings behind it. Later on I wrote about valleys and mountains and trees and then the inevitable longer poem, longer version of Siphiwe, “The Love Story”, which was published in a school magazine. And 4-years later in secondary school, 2-years away from my leaving school for good, I had a story published in a commercial magazine in Harare , Zimbabwe , and the following year another story. These stories were of course love stories and adventure stories. At that time I used to believe that a good story should have about two deaths on every page and a lot of blood right from page one to the end and so on and a bit of the bedroom scene, that was a good story as far as I was concerned.
Later on it came as a surprise when I was reading some English short stories in the school library. I read some stories, for instance, Ernest Hemingway’s stories, and there didn’t seem to be anything happening in those stories. I mean you can have a love story without people sleeping together; you can have a murder story without anyone being killed on the page and so on. It was something about the shot, the sound of the gunshot when the curtain is closed, that was something from Chekov I suppose, and the whole thing about writing a story in a manner that leaves a lot unsaid. I got interested in that and I found myself writing stories.
But what had happened again was this loneliness, which did not end by going to school. In fact I think it worsened because I couldn’t sort of get myself together to become part of the other pupils at school. I think the final rift between myself and being part of whatever crowd I was supposed to have been part of came when I was, I think, thirteen and we were playing football. I always tried to avoid games where competition was required because I’d never lived or stayed with anyone or competed with anyone in anything, everything I did it by myself and I was the best by myself. So whenever I found myself competing I always came out the worst. So I was goalkeeper in this and somebody kicked the ball right on me and I fell back and I think I must have been out for two hours, and from there I hated football or any games that could kill, could hurt somebody.
From there I think I became friends with just my books and walking through the forest and I would maybe avoid going to, play truant from church and go out into the bush. I was very good at hunting for fruit and people like me for the strange fruits that I brought from the bush.
So when your stories got published and won these competitions, your parents were not very proud?
No, they were not. In fact what happened with this loneliness the other thing I did was I started keeping a diary. It was very strange, after writing about a painful experience, I felt very relaxed, very refreshed and very cheerful and in fact I became a kind of clown, I think. There was a kind of euphoria after writing a story or something that really pained me I became very funny. I don’t know how to say it but one of the things that I became good at is acting on stage and so on.
And I think that also served me, that held me from writing gory stories, melodramatic stories into writing actually the kind of writing that I’m writing now, when.
Do you think that literature in Zimbabwe has gone through a stage of literature for education and social/political values?
Yes, when I went to school the teachers wrote on the black board “Think in English, Talk in English, Act in English”. So they were very serious about education and that is what they taught. In secondary school we had plays, simplified stories; we had Shakespeare, we had Oliver Twist – all those stories. Some I don’t know where they came from but I had those in primary school and in secondary school.
Well, I meant after independence. Some say that the early literature of independent Zimbabwe was not sort of following the nationalist call?
OK, looking at literature in Zimbabwe, and books like my ‘Waiting for the Rain’, Stanley Nyamfukudza’s ‘Non-Believer’s Journey’, Dambudzo Marechera’s ‘House of Hunger’ and the other books – yes, they were seen as books without political ideologies, without any historical content, and as books that are individual or egoistic, and all that kind of things; there was nothing at all that would help there.
And our only response was that it was at least an analysis of and we were looking into the individual to see how and why the individual suffers and could you please offer an answer, if there is any answer? It’s simply a laying open of what is bothering, a diagnosis of what’s wrong with us, and they said, “No, ideologically this is empty”.
But then, only recently I hear, and it’s the same university and probably these might have been students in secondary school but now they are the lecturers, they are talking of this same book of mine again. I haven’t changed a single word, but now they say it means something, this is one of the greatest things that have happened too. So it is interesting in the light of talk on self-censorship that a criticism of the present seems to have been written already in a book many years ago, which was then stamped as being ideologically empty.
Q. You have written your short stories, novels, and columns, but you have also translated, for example, Ngugi wa Thiongo’s The Grain of Wheat. Could you tell us why you did that, and what that novel meant to you?
I was editor of a publishing house and we were all eyes open, looking around for the great novel of out of the struggle. I felt very bad, I couldn’t write the Shona war novel. I really liked ‘The Grain of Wheat’, it was skilfully plotted and it did not tell that this is how it was, and this is right and this is wrong, and he has complex characters, and gave alternative interpretations.
And I felt reading The Grain of Wheat it that it was almost the same as in Zimbabwe, the British of the Highlands, the farms and the people living in the compounds and the people of the land dissatisfied, the educational system, the same sort of characters, headmasters and so on and the priests, all of it. I felt that Mau Mau was just like our Chimurenga.
So I felt that this would be of some help to the Shona writers who were trying to write about the war. I am not sure whether any of our authors did get inspired by it or learnt how to chisel the characters. But some have later written very well about the struggle, not as speeches but as subjective experiences, such as Alexander Kanengoni. ‘Effortless Tears’, I think that is one wonderful story. It is someone being honest about his or her experience, not trying to cover it up with pseudo-heroics and that kind of thing.
Q: You were talking about the characters in the Chimurenga, and you have described the second Chimurenga. If you wrote about it, how would you describe the characters in the third Chimurenga?
The characters? Which one is this third? Is it to be fought or has it been fought already?
Q: Are you very straight?
Where is it, the third Chimurenga? When was it?
Q: Why do you ask me?
Because you used the expression.
Q: But you know perfectly well what it is.
No, I don’t. Oh, the one they call the third Chimurenga?
Q: The one going on right now.
I’m still confused about it, I don’t know who is right or who is wrong. I don’t even know whether we talk of right or wrong.
I think they are all what they’ve always been, trying to cheat each other. It’s intrigue, and I’m better then you are and it is survival of the fittest. It is the old story, isn’t it? It is lies you can do this thing it as long as you don’t get caught. I think it’s the same old – I need to sit down and write a story to illustrate. As the father who gives his children a snake when they ask for bread.
MP: Can I ask one thing that I forgot to ask before, this book ‘Walking Still‘ was produced in 1997, right? Looking to the future, are you working on anything now?
I think I’ll deal with the third Chimurenga.
MP: Now that you hear about it?
Now that I hear about it, it’s interesting how we say third and second Chimurenga when the people are really the same people who are afraid, who fight, who are greedy, who hate their own or who twist, the same old – who love. I mean, they loved in the second, now they still love, they hate, and it’s always about people who don’t deliver, isn’t it? It is the old hat and the same old characters, I suppose. With cell phones.
[Conversation with Charles Mungoshi on 30 September 2003 at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala]
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9/11 As A Benefit
Jon Gold Sat, 08/11/2007 - 7:40pm
Stu Bykofsky
You may have heard that Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky recently wrote that a new 9/11 is what we need in order to re-unify this country.
I think what's interesting about his assertion is that he is willing to have 1000's of people murdered because it would be beneficial in his eyes.
How much different is that than what we are saying with regard to the Bush Administration and the first 9/11 (and hopefully the last)? Is it such a stretch to say that the Bush Administration was willing to have 1000's of people murdered because it was beneficial to them in that it allowed them to invade two countries illegally, it gave them unprecedented powers that go against the Constitution of the United States, it has given billions of dollars to their corporate friends, and it has given them "carte blanche" for policies that do not benefit the people, but instead the Military Industrial Complex? No, it isn't.
What Stu has shown us is that people ARE capable of looking at an event like 9/11, and seeing it as "beneficial." What Stu has shown us is that people ARE capable of WANTING something like 9/11 to happen in order to further an agenda.
The Bush Administration are suspects for the crimes of 9/11. Please do not tell me that this isn't true based on the idea that they would never be able to do such a thing, or even think of such a thing.
I can guarantee you that seeing something like 9/11 as beneficial is not unique to Stu Bykofsky. Not by a longshot.
Incidentally...
"Unity" was also a benefit for the Bush Administration. "Unity" among the American people that allowed the invasion of Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent, the invasion of Iraq.
Donate To 9/11 First Responders
Jon Gold on Sun, 08/12/2007 - 9:28am.
Truly disturbing
The Bushites are so desperate to see their delusional worldview affirmed, they are giving public expression to their treasonous bloodlust. Bykofsky's column is unnerving, because it gives popular expression to the fascist drift. People like this can't come out and say they want fascism, so they mask their authoritarian desire in thinly veiled treason ("We don't want fascism, but wouldn't it be great if a foreign Other gave us a reason for fascism...").
This is true to the neocon mindset, however, in the way it wants lies to become reality. The War on Terror is self-fulfilling, for the same reason. Right now, the Clash of Civilizations thesis is a bogus pretext for expansion of Empire. But if the neocon establishment manages to extend the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and then bomb Iran, they will continue to provide genuine reasons for millions of Arabs and Muslims to strike at America. And when they inevitably strike (as they should), or when the neocons manufacture a false flag attack, the neocons will say, "See, told you so."
The other disturbing piece of media in the past few weeks was the Weekly Standard's propaganda about the "9/11 Generation." They're taking Zelikow's public myth to the next level, creating a generational identity for a generational conflict (both, of course, neocon inventions).
simuvac on Sun, 08/12/2007 - 11:57am.
Got post! Shame such posts
Got post! Shame such posts are necessary!
Hollywood makes war and killing people acceptable.
Killing from a distance is shown as acceptable. Bankers do it the best. Their interest forces unbearable living conditions for the many, it is the original source of injustice and murder.
TV rarely shows real blood and real wounds.
The Media in general focus on BUSINESS... and killing is often business that is intentionally given a business-like showing.
It would be a different world if The Media were to focus on people, workers, trade unions and victims, if it would show mayhem and strife for what is is:
more important than business.
The next 911 may come in form of a natural distaster.... Hurricaines for example.
http://u2r2h-documents.blogspot.com/2007/03/some-political-cartoons.html
u2r2h on Sun, 08/12/2007 - 3:37pm.
Apparently, Bykofsky on CNN tomorrow night at 8pm
http://kevinmccullough.townhall.com/g/77ced230-fafa-4878-933c-b68a455e99b5
simuvac on Sun, 08/12/2007 - 5:36pm.
I see he's all over the "circuit" now. He was on John Gibson's show as well. The funny thing is, THIS guy that called for the murder of 1000's of more people is treated with respect, and dignity by the pundits, whereas WE are the ones that are treated as "crazy."
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The second is Trump calling into a TV news morning show with a more detailed personal account. Here he muses that something other than the plane would have to have been involved in bringing down the building with out further or clearer hypothesis.
Could it be that a breakthrough is ahead in the next 4-8 years for 9/11 Truth, Justice and Reconciliation? I'm not suggesting he would crusade for the cause from the White House , but how possible and likely that he nor his Justice Department nor appointed judges would obstruct cases that could be heard in civil and criminal court?
"Who blew up the World Trade Center?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq7NjcaKeeM
He just annihilated two political dynasties and the MSM.
I'm optimistic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig82nOhg-E8
jkeogh on Fri, 01/20/2017 - 1:56pm.
If President Trump . . .
. . . knows the truth, which is not out of the question--no matter what one thinks about him, he's not stupid--then whether he does anything about it would all come down to strategy.
He has already demonstrated remarkable canny in the way he's played an overtly hostile MSM like a violin. Most people don't realize how shrewd he really is, (in spite of his winning!) which itself is to his benefit.
Consider how the reigning elites and oligarchs have viciously opposed him. Consider what the neocon crackpots think about him. Consider how prominent elements of the CIA tried to thwart him and discredit his presidency--and have tried to sabotage in advance his intention to normalize relations with Russia so we don't get vaporized.
If he knows the truth about 9/11, which I strongly suspect, he has an ace up his sleeve that is the ultimate game-changer. Something that could flatten his enemies, bolster his standing here and abroad, and save his country from the humiliation of not having resolved the problem on our own.
Is he really above doing this? I don't think so. Remember, this man has a massive ego--ironically one of the things that makes me hopeful about his presidency. When you've had all the money, all the women, all the fame and success a man could handle, what's left? Only one thing: He wants to go down in history as the man who brought America back. Were he to conclude that exposing 9/11 was necessary to that end, then he'll do it.
As to Shoestring's point about his friendship with Silverstein, nothing surprising here considering that he's primarily a New York real estate magnate. I wouldn't draw too much from it. He was friends with the Clintons; they attended his wedding and all that. He's been friendly with people in both major parties and all across the political spectrum. I doubt he would let this friendship stand in his way if he saw a clear advantage to his legacy.
All pure speculation of course.
JTL on Sun, 01/29/2017 - 1:54pm.
9/11 Mastermind’s Letter To Obama:Here’s Why We Attacked America
Amusing drivel:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-09/911-mastermind’s-letter-obama-here’s-why-we-attacked-america
"When Barack Obama was still in office, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks, penned a letter to him. Though a judge recently ruled that letter could be sent to the White House before the outgoing president left office, the contents were to be withheld from the public until a month later - until after President Trump had assumed power.
This week, the Miami Herald obtained and published the contents of the 18-page letter, originally written in 2015 and titled “LETTER FROM THE CAPTIVE MUJAHID KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMAD TO THE HEAD OF THE SNAKE, BARACK OBAMA, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE COUNTRY OF OPPRESSION AND TYRANNY.” It contains the Kuwait-born Pakistani terrorist’s insights into why 9/11 occurred, as well as surprisingly accurate assessments of American politics.
One of the main reasons for 9/11, according to Mohammed, is one terrorists have referenced before: American foreign policy. His explanation is rooted both in history and in current affairs."
7man on Thu, 02/09/2017 - 12:05pm.
Thanks Satyavira! Very "clean" sourced videos.
I appreciate the clean videos which make it easy to identify their origin.
TomT on Sat, 01/21/2017 - 5:47am.
I'm surprised that Donald Trump, with all of his building experience, did not understand that the '93 bombing was not under the tower.
It is impossible to get a vehicle within the footprint of either tower.
The truck bomb of 1993 was under the Vista Hotel. Only minor damage was done to the south wall structure of the North tower. There was never any danger of a tower collapse.
I am hoping that Mr. Trump will invite the structural engineers associated with AE911T into a strategy session, so we can move forward with an truly independent investigation.
kawika on Sat, 01/21/2017 - 9:38am.
1993 - Bomb under the Vista Hotel - (not World Trade Center)
Thanks kawika!
QUOTEThe truck bomb of 1993 was under the Vista Hotel. Only minor damage was done to the south wall structure of the North tower. There was never any danger of a tower collapse.
Either I forgot (it has been 10 years since I last reviewed the 93 bombing) or I did not know.
Best - http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/fv57d6594b.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/WTC1993_BlastDamage.png
TomT on Sun, 01/22/2017 - 4:13pm.
Who Remembers...
The relief the "conservatives" felt after Bill Clinton when "Bush the Lesser" was selected and installed?
Who remembers the the relief and euphoria after "Bush the Lesser" when Obama was selected and installed effectively
putting the left to sleep? Promise anything to get elected!!! deliver nothing.
I think we have been manipulated and played again. Left foot, right foot, left foot...yet the trajectory does not change.
Trump did say during his campaign that if elected he would tell us who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks...
Then reminds us of the "Dancing MUSLIMS".
No truth is coming. I'd love to be wrong.
Joe on Sun, 01/22/2017 - 7:20am.
I hear ya. Me too. No truth coming... I would love to be wrong.
I have tinges of hope on occasion, but no solid expectations. I expect that many aspects of the system will stay the same.
Examples of "hope": Calling out the media and addressing the vaccine issue.
I cherished Trump calling out the media "You are fake news!"
Trump on Buzzfeed News Service, and says to CNN at the end “You are Fake News!”
(90 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xuvA1Uc4TY
Hacking, Intelligence Agencies
(90 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrsP6RF0sX0
-- One minute -- (Prior Trump discusses Hacking and Russia, but at this point Trump nails Hillary and Podesta on what was released in the emails.)
https://youtu.be/Gq5A0fQ_vP8?t=11m28s
The White House might now expand the Press Briefings to include bloggers and talk show radio hosts.
VACCINES - http://www.dogsagainstfluoridation.com/vaxxed-movie
Robert Kennedy Jr. says tapped by Trump to head vaccine safety review.
Kennedy revealed that 70% of ad revenue for major news networks comes from Big Pharma.
The Big Pharma Washington Lobby is more powerful than any other Lobby Group, including oil and defense contractors.
(15 minute video with Robert Kennedy testifying)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2UJ2oBeya0
The corrupt CDC is now scampering in fear with some of Trump’s appointments…
…Georgia Congressman and surgeon, Dr. Tom Price, as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Read this hit-piece: Tom Price Belongs to a Really Scary Medical Organization That Promotes Anti-Vaccine Hysteria http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/12/tom-price-belongs-to-a-really-scary-medical-organization.html
One final note:
I am aghast at the number of Left protesters at the inauguration of Trump, because it paints a picture of a huge number of folks who are unaware and "don't look" at the evil during the Obama / Hillary reign.
The Left has lost their soul by denying the wars, corruption, loss of freedoms, and lies during the past 8 years.
Incredible willful ignorance.
Donald Trump was friends with WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein
It is worth noting that Donald Trump has said he was good friends with Larry Silverstein, the real estate developer who took over the lease of the World Trade Center just six weeks before 9/11.
On September 11, he said on UPN 9, "You look at Larry Silverstein, who's a terrific owner in New York and a very good friend of mine who I just called. I was very worried about him, because I assumed maybe he was in the building." (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcKlPhFIE7w 1 minute 9 seconds into the video.)
Trump later said on MSNBC's Hardball, "Larry Silverstein is a great guy, he's a good guy, he's a friend of mine." (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBcU4GPNn_o)
Trump described phoning Silverstein on September 11 during an address in November 2001. Interestingly, he mentioned that Silverstein "was remarkably optimistic about the future, despite the catastrophe that had just occurred." (Source: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Trump+weighs+in+on+WTC+tragedy.-a080776306)
In December 2001, Silverstein actually received the 2001 Fred C. Trump Award for lifetime achievement. The award was presented to him by Trump. (Source: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/ABO+Remembers+September+11+at+Tile+Dinner+Dance.-a081139629)
Silverstein was reportedly "selected to receive the award prior to Sept. 11, largely because of the World Trade Center acquisition." (Source: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Silverstein+shows+his+resolve%3A+Vows+to+rebuild+World+Trade+Center...-a080235061)
Shoestring on Sun, 01/22/2017 - 11:23am.
Do some far-sighted people understand what's coming?
I don't want to risk reading too much into this, but it does seem like there's a latent awareness about 9/11 Truth among a few who may be positioning themselves for the coming blow-up.
Tucker Carlson is one example. Consider his recent interview with Alex Jones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOXzH2eWj2Q&t=268s
Smart move. Remember how he treated Prof. Griffin? "It is wicked, blasphemous and sinful for you to . . ." (Or something stupid like that.)
When it all blows sky high, that kid would have some 'splainin' to do. Does he recognize something? Is he trying to pull a CYA in advance of the excrement hitting the whirling blades?
What else would explain this? What did he have to gain? Particularly in view of his new (or was it then forthcoming?) prime slot on Faux News?
JTL on Sun, 01/29/2017 - 12:34pm.
The new boss is starting to look a bit like the old bosses...
Trump's New World Order
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLS5h1ZDKvE&t=923s
Joe on Sun, 02/05/2017 - 5:22pm.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article195196.html
Thierry Meyssan : "Donald Trump was the first personality in the world to contest the official version of the attacks of 9/11, on television that very day. After having noted that the engineers who built the Twin Towers were now working for him, he declared on New York’s Channel 9 that it was impossible that Boeings could have burst through the steel structures of the towers. He continued by stating that it was also impossible that Boeings could have caused the towers to collapse. He concluded by affirming that there had to be other factors of which we were as yet unaware. From that day on, Donald Trump has never ceased to resist the people who had committed those crimes. During his inaugural speech, he emphasized that this was not a passage of power between two administrations, but a restitution of power to United States citizens, who had been deprives of it [for sixteen years] [2]."
remo on Wed, 02/08/2017 - 10:43pm.
Webster Tarpley sued by Melania Trump
https://www.sott.net/article/342038-Melania-Trump-sues-Daily-Mail-for-150mn-after-falsely-reporting-she-once-worked-for-es...
A separate defamation suit was launched by Trump against a Maryland blogger who had written about rumors she had worked as an escort and falsely stated that she suffered a breakdown.
However, the lawsuit was settled with Webster Tarpley, the blogger, to pay a "substantial sum", according to Trump's attorney.
"I acknowledge that these false statements were very harmful and hurtful to Mrs. Trump and her family, and therefore I sincerely apologize to Mrs. Trump, her son, her husband and her parents for making these false statements," Tarpley wrote in a statement released by the lawyer.
TomT on Thu, 02/09/2017 - 8:29am.
@2:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNN7vULiFSs
It would be charitable to assume he has TDS.
jkeogh on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 5:16am.
New National Economic Council director tried to profit from 9/11
Former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, who Donald Trump has appointed as head of the National Economic Council, instructed his employees at the Goldman Sachs building in lower Manhattan to try and make a profit from the crisis when the World Trade Center was attacked on 9/11.
Former Goldman Sachs manager Nomi Prins recalled in a 2012 documentary that on September 11, 2001: "All we knew was that an airplane had hit the building. Gary Cohn, the head of the commodities area, who is now the president of Goldman, was telling his traders to keep trading because his gut instinct was that he could make money from whatever was going on because it had to do with planes, it had to do with oil, so they could make money."
(Source: https://mic.com/articles/166537/donald-trump-adviser-gary-cohn-goldman-sachs-september-11-profit#.3lafydFhX.)
Shoestring on Thu, 02/09/2017 - 10:37am.
Saudi Crown Prince Awarded the CIA ‘George Tenet’ Medal of Honor
The US Central Intelligence Agency has awarded its “George Tenet Medal” to the Saudi Crown Prince for his "intelligence work in the fight against terrorism". The medal was given to Mohammed bin Nayef by CIA Director Micheal Pompeo during a reception ceremony in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
“Our relationship with the United States is historic and strategic. Any attempts to undermine that will falter.”
Satyavira on Sat, 02/11/2017 - 10:53pm.
Birds of a feather conspire together.
Large Graphics of Saudi Family
- http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/8/d/2/a/highres_450576138.jpeg
- http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/8/d/5/4/highres_450576180.jpeg
- http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/d/7/c/8/highres_450595240.jpeg
Taken from 911blogger article - http://911blogger.com/news/2016-05-31/game-thrones-recent-saudi-coup
TomT on Sun, 02/12/2017 - 9:50am.
Some past Trump wrestling moments
Trump in “The Art of the Deal” (with eye candy). Watch for the boogieman!
(one minute) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2vJN3st5T4
Trump gets thrown to the mat.
(45 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUnVDs7PmLk
Trump throws punches and disrespects hair.
(3 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMKFIHRpe7I
And in the Left corner...
Russia is continuing to invade Korea!!!
..and Nancy Pelosi finds out she can’t work with President BUSH.
(30 seconds ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiwlHayx_48
Watch out Japan!! Islands can capsize.
(10 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q&feature=youtu.be&t=1m15s
Photo of Politics as I see it.
https://a248.e.akamai.net/secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/member/e/2/1/5/highres_6237877
TomT on Sun, 02/12/2017 - 10:25am.
http://truepundit.com/video-discussion-of-deep-state-erupts-on-fox-business/
jkeogh on Wed, 02/15/2017 - 5:34pm.
Excellent find!
“I mean the Deep State, it’s not just intelligence, it’s banking, it’s law enforcement, it’s the administrative agencies…It’s the below the radar service of the government that never changes no matter which party runs the White House,”
“…The laws have been written to keep them in power.”
And on 2/14/2017
Dennis Kucinich Discusses The Deep State's War On Trump
Full interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2yTkqwg-cE
(30 second summary - Worth watching!) - https://youtu.be/N2yTkqwg-cE?t=7m33s
More DEEP STATE with Democracy Now & Glenn Greenwald
QUOTE from neocon Project for the New American Century (PNAC) co-founder Bill Kristol:
"...But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state."
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept: Empowering the "Deep State" to Undermine Trump is Prescription for Destroying Democracy
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/16/greenwald_empowering_the_deep_state_to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY1MiNfwcRg
TomT on Fri, 02/17/2017 - 6:40pm.
Deep State vs Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
Repeatedly in this video, Rex Tillerson stresses the importance of INTEGRITY.
He also talks about the destructive aspects of "people with fiefdoms trying to protect their own turf" within a bureaucracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEPVy4OGO6M&feature=youtu.be&t=21m51s
Rex Tillerson gets extra points because he directly opposed the Rockefeller family wishes in 2008 after becoming CEO of Exxon in 2006.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Tillerson
NEWS - Feb 17, 2017 - CBS
...Much of seventh-floor staff, who work for the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources and the Counselor offices, were told today that their services were no longer needed....
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/state-dept-layoffs-under-rex-tillerson-being-carried-out/#
"...Four top officials were cleared out of the building at the end of January..."
http://nypost.com/2017/01/26/senior-staff-resigns-en-masse-from-state-department/
Feb 16, 2017 Trump goes after media in Press Conference
The "Russian Ruse" is also discussed.
Full Press Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct0H_ndjavM
White House Statement to the Press on the "Travel 'Ban'". (prior to the court decision which struck down the travel 'ban')
According to the White House, it actually was not a 'ban' but rather a more cautious vetting process on countries suggested by the Obama administration. People still can come like always, except it might be a little longer process to ensure everything is copacetic. 16:22 and later 24:30 - Queued to 16:22
https://youtu.be/CMbNqxRfDXM?t=16m22s
The "Russian Ruse" and Fake News about Russia
Recently, we saw Bill Kristol's Twitter QUOTE: "...But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state."
Who are the powerful Washington DC players who for many years have been screaming “Russia is the bad guy”?
Who are they? …
…The Neocons (and younger recruits) with their rebranded entities like “The Foreign Policy Initiative”.
The neocons for many years have been wishing for a new cold war with Russia in order to further their agenda of maintaining American dominance by having a continuing "Mexican Standoff".
Mexican Standoff definition - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_standoff
Robbie Martin probably has done the best research on the new neocons.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was founded by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
The neocons were very busy as foreign advisors to Obama and Hillary. Warmongering Robert Kagan, family and friends were especially industrious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan
The neocons repositioned themselves using a rebranded name The Foreign Policy Initiative
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foreign_policy_initiative/
Robbie Martin discusses how the neocons have carved a new enemy -- Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybmh7rbC--Q&feature=youtu.be&t=1m37s
Great 12 minute summary of the Neocon agenda during Obama and Hillary along with showing the end of the Cold War.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXpIfZqg8zA&list=PL8BrC7tLTUR-JxDs3H2rwQx-a277-pnDl
The “Project for a New American Century” continued extremely strong with Obama and Hillary, and now it seems like elements are on Trump’s team.
(5 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-vEGNEtKSU
James Corbett also reports on Russia and the Neocons.
Corbett Report video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lqP96obq90
Show notes – https://www.corbettreport.com/neo-neocons-want-cold-war-2-0-james-corbett-on-the-vin-armani-show/
Kristol Quote
Satyavira on Mon, 02/20/2017 - 12:14am.
thanks for supplying links to my films & interviews
however I must stress how deeply concerned I am that much of the 9/11 truth movement has come to the conclusion that Donald Trump is not part of a deep state apparatus or that he is somehow a secret 9/11 truther. Just because *most* neocons wanted to stop Donald Trump doesn't mean that all neocons did. PNAC signatories Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, William Bennet, John Bolton & James Woolsey are all very pro-Trump, some of them might end up working directly in his administration (Bolton was promised a side job after not getting sec state). Shoestring was pointing out some very important connections above that I think deserve a lot more focus from truthers, specifically Trump's close relationship to Larry Silverstein (that continues to this day, Silverstein was just given a contract to build a new FBI building under the Trump administration for example) & Rudy Giuliani (a man so deeply connected to not just 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks and subsequent coverups but also other nefarious deep-state activities like the BCCI and representing Manuel Noriega, that he qualifies as a 9/11 prime suspect).
I'm working on a podcast about Trump's own relationship with the deep-state and what neocons have chosen to remain close to him, and also the very very suspicious nature of conspiracy culture in general being narrowly focused into a curiously 'pro-Trump' narrative by way of people like Alex Jones, Roger Stone and Steve Pieczenik. Additionally I have to give respect points here for hold-outs like Kevin Ryan, Wayne Madsen and James Corbett for not going along with this trend.
hope i didn't offend anyone with this post as I could understand why some think Trump is 'on our side', i think that's a potentially very dangerous mindset to put oneself in especially during a very precarious political landscape like this.
Robbie Martin on Fri, 02/24/2017 - 2:43am.
Beautifully stated, very important information
I would very much love to see you "get a lot of milage", a lot of exposure.
You bring a tremendous amount of background research to the table which is extremely pertinent in this Trump era.
I think you could enlighten us all about phenomena like "Russian hackers and the evil Russia mantra", along with this phenomena of "Fake News" in the press and the Left's loud angst. And Trump's ties to all these inside players.
You are spot on about Alex Jones, Mike Adams, Roger Stone (who wants to sell books), and others.
Corbett and/or Newsbud really need to have you on. Repeatedly.
TomT on Fri, 02/24/2017 - 9:07am.
"Deep State" going mainstream
The phrase "Deep State" is gaining more mainstream usage. That is very good thing, even if poorly defined by media outlets and reporters. I just watched Rush Limbaugh tell Chris Wallace Glenn Greenwald coined the term.
However smarter reporters and spokespeople are beginning to connect the dots and open the public to "spy level" reality. The more the term becomes normalized, the less a pejorative like "conspiracy theory" has any weight. This is exactly the kind of soil where 9/11 Truth grows verdant.
April 22 is 'Earth Day' and 'March for Science' Day
https://www.marchforscience.com
There will be events in D.C. and other cities across the country.
Our NorCal 9/11Truth group will be in San Francisco tabling etc. We are looking for 9/11 science one-liners: '9/11 Truth' is not 2+2=5, if you catch the drift...
So, please post science-related truth slogans that cause you to smile, think, and say "Wake the F@#k Up People ! "
This probably should be a new thread...my apologies!
7man on Sat, 03/11/2017 - 3:08pm.
The only thing that will bring change is us. The only way we can bring change is coming together. I suggested a while back to create a day when we all come forward together. 9/12 for truth and everyone stand together and demand truth for the infamous day of 9/11. I see no other alternative; they pick people off individually, but our power is only there if we use it together.
Jayeats on Wed, 02/22/2017 - 8:05am.
"accused (GW Bush) of knowing about the 9/11 attacks..."
Former President Bush breaks his silence on Trump | Feb 27, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG0TgKKCfwY
Trump is not your friend
The american president is several rungs down the ladder of power in this country. He's no different from Obama in bowing down before the controlling elite. Within weeks of Obama being elected, he invoked 9/11 to justify sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. This was to demonstrate unequivocally his respect for the true powers-that-be. Trump did the same thing with his first travel ban. Read the text of Section 1 below. September 11 is front and center. Make no mistake; the road will be long and no mainstream leader will save you. Grassroots is the only way, people!
Section 1. Purpose. The visa-issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States. Perhaps in no instance was that more apparent than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when State Department policy prevented consular officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19 foreign nationals who went on to murder nearly 3,000 Americans. And while the visa-issuance process was reviewed and amended after the September 11 attacks to better detect would-be terrorists from receiving visas, these measures did not stop attacks by foreign nationals who were admitted to the United States.
JohnnyMo on Wed, 03/08/2017 - 6:18am.
If anything,
we are more likely to see a U.S. false terror event, as we witness Trump ramping up to be YOUR Homeland Security president. He's already invoked 9/11 to enact a Muslim ban, beef up DHS domestic forces, begin removing social securities, civil rights and federal legal safeguards, not to mention spending your tax money building a frikkin' wall. But you think he's going to, some bright and useless day, expose 9/11 inside jobbery? Wtf has happened to 9/11 truth?
jnelson on Thu, 03/09/2017 - 8:12pm.
thanks for saying it! Trump is not on our side!
wildbill on Fri, 03/10/2017 - 9:22pm.
Here is evidence of Trump going after the boogeyman
Trump, along with his heavy-chested advisor, confronts the boogeyman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2vJN3st5T4
More info here...
http://911blogger.com/news/2017-01-18/donald-trump-and-next-wave-911-truth-telling#comment-264629
and here...
Seriously Tom?
Enough with the WWE please.
jkeogh on Sat, 03/11/2017 - 3:50pm.
I enjoyed that.
I needed a laugh.
Still, I say this. The US president is a puppet of a massive command and control structure hidden from the public and capable of enormous feats of power. It executed a massive false flag operation on 9/11, incorporating amazing control over the military, FEMA, mainstream media, and Washington. To suggest that a president could affect that power is absurd. He could possibly take a stab at it from a microphone, make a pinprick -- and be neutralized in short order.
JohnnyMo on Sun, 03/12/2017 - 1:00pm.
Still think that?
There are extraordinary people. I remember close friends telling me there is no way he can win, because they are too powerful. It's perception, not reality.
jkeogh on Wed, 05/23/2018 - 3:38am.
TRUMP'S 9/11 FLIP FLOP ?
TRUMP'S GREATEST FLIP FLOP OF ALL TIME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7vIpG-7Cac
smacko on Tue, 03/14/2017 - 2:47pm.
Trump is not interested in truth.
I voted for Obama in 2008, hoping that he would investigate 9/11. It became clear rather early that he wouldn't, and that I was deluded in my hopes. I think it is clear by now that Trump likewise has no interest in getting to the truth of 9/11. It's time for all those who thought he was to admit that they too have been fooled.
Bilbo on Mon, 03/20/2017 - 3:58pm.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts : Trump Is Over Apr 23, 2017
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts : Trump Is Over
The Mind Renewed
MP3 & SHOW NOTES: http://themindrenewed.com/interviews/... "I think that the Trump presidency is already over. I'm not even sure he qualifies as a figurehead."—PCR
We are joined once again by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former US Assistant Secretary to the Treasury for Economic Policy, for a discussion on the Trump presidency so far.
Dr. Roberts assesses the performance of the new president and his administration with reference to pre-election promises; shares with us his view that the deep state has effectively neutralised Donald Trump as US president; gives his reaction to the so-called "Syrian gas attack" in Idlib, and the subsequent military action by the US against Syria; and considers the very real prospects for war as Washington steps up its warmongering around the globe.
Source: http://themindrenewed.com/interviews/...
Interview Notes: http://themindrenewed.com/interviews/...
Disclaimer: The views expressed by Dr. Roberts in this interview are his responsibility alone; they do not necessarily reflect those of The Mind Renewed.
Yep. Trump ain't playing 4-D chess.
4-D Chess - http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/trump-is-playing-4d-chess
For PCR's prediction to age worse.
Dr. Julian Charles is a fantastic interviewer.
https://archive.fo/Ecj68 (yes)
https://archive.fo/jVXdz
https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/921716470140325889
And he's going to Dallas next week. Cant imagine why the perma-state dislikes him so much...
This is the work of Bob Fischer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-EBGYF8XLQ
When I saw it years ago, I had to verify it myself:
Note the odds calculation is wrong due to a rounding error. The correct odds are:
1/22 x 1/22 x 1/22 x 1/22 x 1/22 = 1 / 5,153,632
August 12, 1944 at eight zero five hours - Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., the eldest son of the Kennedy patriarch Joseph Kennedy, is killed over the English Channel while flying a mission during World War II. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Curse
Approximate location 8mi southeast of Halesworth, Suffolk, England http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy,_Jr.
Exact Location: 52 degrees 14 minutes 46.22 seconds N Latitude, 1 degree 50 minutes 24.58 seconds E Longitude http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/geo/geohack.php?pagename=Halesworth_Suffolk_England¶ms=52_14_46.22_N_1_50_24.58_E
Astronomical sidereal time above location at time of incident: 15:50':18.3"
November 22, 1963 at 12:30 p.m. CST (18:30 UTC) - President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Curse
Patsy: Lee Harvey Oswald
Approximate location: Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, USA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination
Exact Location: 32 degrees 46 minutes 43 seconds N Latitude, 96 degrees 48 minutes 30 seconds W Longitude http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/geo/geohack.php?pagename=Dealey_Plaza¶ms=32_46_43_N_96_48_30_W_
JFK had three attempted assassinations, including a suicide bomber, prior to the actual murder in Dallas. One of the attempts in Chicago on November 2, 1963 coincided with the actual CIA sponsored assassination of the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu on the same day. All three attempts fit the same predetermined pattern.
These events were on:
December 11 1960 at 9:55 EST in Palm Beach FL as he left a church service; (Source Book: "Ultimate Sacrifice", Pages 621-625)
Patsy: Richard Paul Pavlick
Astronomical sidereal time above location at time of incident: 15:56':15"
November 2 1963 at 13:00 EST in Chicago at Soldiers Field (Army vs Air Force football game); (Source Book: "Ultimate Sacrifice", Pages 621-625)
Patsy: Thomas Vallee
November 18 1963 at 13:45 EST arrival at MacDill AFB in Tampa FL
June 19, 1964 - Sen. Ted Kennedy (Edward Moore Kennedy) is in a plane crash in which one of his aides and the pilot were killed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Curse
(NTSB Report):http://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/images/Ted_Kennedy_1964_NTSB_Report_Brief.doc
(NTSB Report @ ntsb.gov): http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=81646&key=0
Approximate location: Southampton, Massachusetts http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=81646&key=0
Exact Location: 42 degrees 09 minutes 31.64 seconds N Latitude, 72 degrees 42 minutes 55.30 seconds W Longitude http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/geo/geohack.php?pagename=Southampton_Massachusetts¶ms=42_09_31.64_N_72_42_55.30_W
June 5, 1968 at 12:15am - Robert F. Kennedy, brother to both John and Ted, is shot multiple times in Los Angeles, immediately following his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. He died the next day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Curse
Approximate location: Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~dlewis/crime.htm
Exact Location: 34 degrees 03 minutes 34.97 seconds N Latitude, 118 degrees 17 minutes 49.53 seconds W Longitude http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/geo/geohack.php?pagename=Ambassador_Hotel¶ms=34_03_34.97_N_118_17_49.53_W
July 16, 1999 - John F. Kennedy, Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy; and Carolyn's sister Lauren Bessette die when the private plane Kennedy is piloting crashes into the Atlantic Ocean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Curse
(NTSB Report): http://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/images/JFK-Jr's_NTSB_Report.doc
(NTSB Report @ ntsb.gov):http://ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20001212X19354&key=1
Approximate location: Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, seven miles from the southwestern tip of the Massachusetts island. http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/21/kennedy.plane.06/
Exact Location: 41 degrees 17 minutes 37.2 seconds N Latitude, 70 degrees 58 minutes 39.2 seconds W Longitude http://ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20001212X19354&ntsbno=NYC99MA178&akey=1
Interesting notes on Skippy's friends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiPctjK9-E8
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/jfkbulkdownload
jkeogh on Tue, 10/17/2017 - 9:24pm.
State Secrets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege#Sibel_Edmonds (FBI_203A-WF-210023)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Intelligence_Corps_(United_States_Army)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Intelligence_Agency
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program
Who was recently busted with (aka selling) SAP material?
jkeogh on Sun, 10/29/2017 - 11:04pm.
Saudi housekeeping
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-04/shocking-purge-saudi-king-arrests-billionaire-prince-bin-talal-others-anti-money-lau
jkeogh on Sun, 11/05/2017 - 11:40am.
Trump: "I Think I Know" Who Was Behind 9/11 Attacks
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-17/trump-i-think-i-know-who-was-behind-911-attacks
"Iraq did not knock down the World Trade Center," adding "It were other people. And I think I know who the other people were. And you might also."
He's been destroying their PR arms for ~3 years. Extraordinary times.
jkeogh on Mon, 06/17/2019 - 4:13pm.
Cryptic but curious comments
These are certainly curious comments. I hope Trump was referring to the real perpetrators and not just another group of scapegoats from the Middle East.
Shoestring on Tue, 06/18/2019 - 12:46am.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer on Information Operations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1U9BAHWlo4
Has really shown his true colors.
Jon Gold on Tue, 12/03/2019 - 3:28pm.
"about a year before the World Trade Center was.. blown up" -DJT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzn7lVBSq0g
@1:27:54
jkeogh on Sun, 10/27/2019 - 9:30pm.
Forcing the Deep State into the open
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/exposing-john-brennans-cia-trump-task-force
jkeogh on Wed, 11/13/2019 - 10:20pm.
I hope no one...
Puts stock into the idea that Trump is going to help us. He's a conman, plain and simple.
It's possible...
He could release 9/11 documentation (though Barr has fought against it). But, it's not looking like he's going to do a damn thing.
Archive offline
Sort as preferred. Scroll down slow enough to load the images without error. Save As.
jkeogh on Sat, 10/17/2020 - 3:58am.
Yea. YouTube and other places are again purging harder.
Some recent YouTube purges...
Destroying the Illusion
Redpill78
PrayingMedic
Joe M
IPOT
Edge of Wonder
Spaceshot76
WokeSocieties
Truth & Art TV
PatriotsSoapbox
Dustin Nemos
InTheMatrixxx
AndWeKnow
Stroppy Me
JustInformed Talk
Sarah Westall
and more not listed.
Joe had his "The Plane Truth Project" video removed yesterday.
https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1586-new-world-next-week-with-james-evan-pilato/#comment-95601
Irregular Warfare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s29jKFQD6rw
jkeogh on Tue, 11/10/2020 - 1:09am.
Who would have thought in January 2020 we would be watching Rudy Giuliani and Bernard Kerick make a public case for a large scale criminal conspiracy involving strategic election and voter fraud? An inside and outside job. .
Thousands of sworn affidavits.
Four minutes or so into this he says the video evidence of ballots being pulled out from of tables is akin to the Zapruder film.
Who knows where this goes, though I think it opens Rudy to a line of 9/11 Questioning he might find uncomfortable.
https://youtu.be/7vRckA6PqGA
Satyavira on Sat, 01/02/2021 - 9:54pm.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1479
|
__label__cc
| 0.567398
| 0.432602
|
SciencePG Frontiers
Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics
Volume 3, Issue 4, July 2015, Pages: 77-82
Amniotic Fluid Embolism During Emergent Cesarean Section at 25 Weeks of Gestation: A Case Report
Khalid Guelzim1, Youssef Benabdejlil1, Adil Chennana1, Mohammed Moutaouakil2, Adil Boudhas3, Jaouad Kouach1, Mohammed Oukabli3, Chafiq Haimeur2, Driss Moussaoui1, Mohammed Dehayni1
1Department of Gynecology-Obstetric - Military Training Hospital Med V, Rabat, Morocco
2Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Military Training Hospital Med V, Rabat, Morocco
3Department of Pathological Anatomy, Military Training Hospital Med V, Rabat, Morocco
(K. Guelzim)
(Y. Benabdejlil)
(A. Chennana)
(M. Moutaouakil)
(A. Boudhas)
(J. Kouach)
(M. Oukabli)
(C. Haimeur)
(D. Moussaoui)
(M. Deyahni)
Khalid Guelzim, Youssef Benabdejlil, Adil Chennana, Mohammed Moutaouakil, Adil Boudhas, Jaouad Kouach, Mohammed Oukabli, Chafiq Haimeur, Driss Moussaoui, Mohammed Dehayni. Amniotic Fluid Embolism During Emergent Cesarean Section at 25 Weeks of Gestation: A Case Report. Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Vol. 3, No. 4, 2015, pp. 77-82. doi: 10.11648/j.jgo.20150304.12
Abstract: Amniotic fluid embolism (AFE) is a rare but fatal obstetric emergency, characterized by sudden cardiovascular collapse, dyspnea or respiratory arrest and altered mentality, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). It can lead to severe maternal morbidity and mortality, but the prediction of its occurrence and treatment are very difficult. We report a case of AFE during emergent Cesarean section at 25 weeks of gestation for high vaginal bleeding, caused by placenta praevia totally recovered, in a 36 years old woman having a history of two c-section and carring bichorial biamniotic twin pregnancy. Sudden dyspnea, hypotension, signs of pulmonary edema and DIC were developed during Cesarean section, and cardiac arrest followed after these events. The course of these events was so rapid and catastrophic, which was consistent with AFE and disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC).Thus, we report this case precisely and review pathophysiology, diagnosis, treatment of AFE by referring to up-to-date literatures.
Keywords: Complications, Amniotic Fluid Embolism, Cardiac Arrest, Surgery, Cesarean Section
Abstract Keywords 1. Introduction 2. Case History 3. Discussion 4. Conclusion References
Amniotic fluid embolism (AFE) is a rare but fatal obstetric emergency. Though rare, it has high maternal morbidity and mortality and is the first cause of maternal death with the varying incidence of 1/8,000-1/15,200 [1]. Once it occurs, hypotension and fetal distress take place in all the parturient women, and followed by pulmonary edema, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and bleeding due to hemostatic disorder, eventually leading to cardiac arrest [2]. The major factors of the clinical results of amniotic fluid embolism are anaphylaxis, vascular occlusion by particulate matters, vasoconstriction by prostaglandin or others, and disseminated intravascular coagulation [3,4]. Amniotic fluid embolism usually occurs during parturition at the terminal stage of pregnancy or Cesarean section, but it was reported that amniotic fluid embolism also took place during the dilatation and curettage of missed abortion patients at the second stage of pregnancy [5] and during the cervical suture removal to prevent abortion by incompetent cervix [6]. The diagnosis of amniotic fluid embolism is done clinically and other diseases that should be differentially diagnosed need to be basically excluded. The differential diagnosis includes pre-eclamptic toxaemia/pregnancy-induced hypertension, anaphylaxis and pulmonary embolism. There is no diagnostic test for AFE; the finding of foetal elements in the maternal circulation is non-specific. Historically, AFE was thought to induce cardiovascular collapse by mechanical obstruction of the pulmonary circulation. It is now thought that a combination of left ventricular dysfunction and acute lung injury occur, with activation of several of the clotting factors. An immunological basis for these effects is postulated. There is no specific therapy and treatment is supportive. The mortality of the condition remains high .We have experienced amniotic fluid embolism and cardiac arrest that took place during an emergent Cesarean section due to high metrroraghia on placenta praevia totally recovered in the second trimester of pregnancy in a 36 years old patient with a history of two Cesarean section and carring twin pregnancy. The patient died after 12 hours of intensive health care. Thus, we report the case herein in reference with the related literature.
2. Case History
Figure 1. Standard staining HE GX20: Vascular wall light filled by trophoblast cells.
Figure 2. Immunochemistry: Posivity for anti body CD34+ of endothelial cells with emboli made of trophoblast cells.
Our case is about a 36-year-old woman, Gravida 3 Para 2, with a history of two Cesarean section. Her actual pregnancy was a bichorial biamniotic twin pregnancy. The woman was admitted to our service at 24 weeks of gestation for vaginal bleeding.The diagnosis was a posterior placenta praevia totally recovered. She received tocolysis with calcic inhibitor. The vital signs were normal at the time of hospitalization. The results of the blood test and urinalysis were all normal.Fetal movement were well perceived by the patient. After one week, she presented a high vaginal bleeding. Blood test revealed an anemia with 5,6g/dl of hemoglobin. Tocolysis was stopped and an emergent Cesarean section was decided for maternal safety with transfusion of 4 packed red blood cells. The vital signs that were measured by the electrocardiography, pulse oximetry, and the automated blood pressure device at the operation room were 120 mmHg of systolic blood pressure, 80 mmHg of diastolic blood pressure, 90 of heart rate, and 94% of oxygen saturation. Spinal anesthesia was decided . Five minutes after the fetus was delivered, the blood pressure was decreased to 60/40 mmHg, the oxygen saturation to 65%, and the heart rate to 60/min. Although dobutamine and norepinephrine were injected since heart failure was suspected, pulseless electrical activity (PEA) was found and the operation was suspended temporarily to carry out cardiopulmonary resuscitation. After the injection of epinephrine 1 mg and atropine 0.5 mg with continued thoracic compression, the sinus rhythm was recovered and the vital signs were increased to the blood pressure of 160/80 mmHg, oxygen saturation of 95%, and heart rate of 120/min. With the continuous intravenous injection of norepinephrine, as well as dopamine and dobutamine, a central vein catheter was inserted through the right internal jugular vein and an arterial catheter through the left femoral artery. Although the operation was then resumed, a severe hemorrhage was found and the blood pressure was reduced to 60/40 mmHg and the oxygen saturation to 80% at the end of the operation. The results of the arterial blood gas study at that moment were pH 7.154, PaO2 63.5 mmHg, PaCO2 57.5 mmHg, bicarbonate 19.8 mmol/L, and oxygen saturation 85.1%, which indicated a serious respiratory and metabolic acidosis and hypoxia. An electrolyte disorder was also observed as the ionized calcium concentration was 0.6 mmol/L and that of the potassium was 5.78 mmol/L. Bicarbonate was injected to correct the acidosis and the 50% dextrose in water (D/W) solution to which CaCl2 600 mg and insulin were added was also injected. In addition, pentaspan and normal saline were continuously injected through the central vein. Since the possibility of hemorrhage by coagulation disorder, not the surgical hemorrhage, could not be excluded, the packed red blood cells and the fresh frozen plasma were transfused, too. Although the blood test related with disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) was carried out during the operation (bleeding time, prothrombin time, activated prothromin time, antithrombin III, fibrinogen, D-dimer, and fibrinogen degradation product), the results could not be obtained because of coagulation of the blood sample. Then a subtotal interadnexiel hysterectomy was performed. Even after the finish of the operation, the low blood pressure was maintained and the patient returned to the PEA state. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was performed and epinephrine 1 mg and atropine 0.5 mg were injected 2 times for each. After the patient was recovered to the sinus rhythm, she was moved to the intensive care unit. The total operation duration was 1 hour; the urination was 100 ml; the blood loss was 1,000 ml; the injected fluid was 1,850 ml; and the transfused blood was 1,500 ml. More than 2,500 ml of secretion was discharged through the endotracheal tube and it spouted out continuously even in the intensive care unit. Heart failure took place once again and cardiopulmonary resuscitation was performed continuously. However, the blood pressure was dropped to 53/30-40/20 mmHg, the heart rate to 20-30/min, and the oxygen saturation to 50-60%. The complete heart failure was continued as the patient's status did not become any better, and the patient showed no response to the medications. Though the cardiac compression was continually carried out, the patient died after 3 hours. Microscopic examination of the hysterectomy piece showed a vascular wall of a fill light trophoblast cells (Figure 1). Additional immunohistochemical studies showed positivity for anti-CD34 of endothelial cells with emboli made of trophoblast cells (Figure 2).
Amniotic fluid embolism is a fatal syndrome that takes place during pregnancy or during or after delivery. Amniotic fluid embolism was firstly described in 1926 [1], and it was recognized as a syndrome by Steiner and Lushburgh [2] as fetal debris were found within the pulmonary blood vessels of the parturient women who died during labor by similar clinical characteristics. Although it was reported that the incident rate was 1 out of 8,000-15,200 live births [3] and the mortality was in the range of 61-86% [3,4], the mortality was decreased to 13.3-44.0% according to a recent study. It is thought that this trend may be because the diagnosis and treatment have been advanced and only fatal cases were reported selectively. Amniotic fluid embolism holds 5-15% of the overall causes of maternity deaths, and it leaves permanent neurological damage to 61% of the parturient women and 50% of the newborn children [4]. Many have been known as the risk factors of amniotic fluid embolism, but parturient women over the age of 35, Cesarean section, forceps and fetal suction, placenta previa, abruptio placentae, eclampsia, and fetal distress syndrome were verified as the risk factors by a large scale research that was carried out recently although the correlation among them has not been understood clearly [7]. The major clinical characteristics include cardiovascular collapse accompanied by severe hypotension and arrhythmia, cyanosis, respiratory distress, pulmonary edema or acute respiratory failure syndrome, respiratory arrest, consciousness fluctuation, and massive hemorrhage by DIC. Among these, the incidents of hypotension, respiratory failure, and cyanosis is almost 100%. The major causes of maternal death are cardiac arrest, massive hemorrhage by DIC, acute respiratory failure syndrome, and multiple organs dysfunction. According to the report by Lewis [8], 11 of the 17 parturient women who had experienced amniotic fluid embolism complained of prodromal symptoms such as dyspnea, chest pain, chilliness, restlessness, the feeling of being pierced by a pin, nausea and vomiting. The time interval between the observations of these symptoms to the women's collapse varied, ranging from several minutes to 4 hours. In this case report, even though the parturient woman showed the symptom of dry coughing from the morning of the operation day onwards, it was not very severe and no other specific symptom was observed. The causes of the prophase hypoxia, which is the most representative clinical characteristic of amniotic fluid embolism, are severe ventilation-perfusion mismatch by pulmonary vasoconstriction and bronchospasm, and those of the anaphase hypoxia include pulmonary edema by left ventricular failure and nonpsychogenic pulmonary edema that is related to the increase of the capillary permeability. Suchlike hypoxia may be the cause of heart failure and neurologic damage. The parturient woman in this case report showed an oxygen saturation of 94% at the time of entering the operation room, which might have been the indication of hypoxia that occurred already, rather than the error by hypothermia. In addition, from the chest radiograph taken in the operation room after the fetus was delivered, severe pulmonary edema at both lungs and normal central venous pressure were found, though the pulmonary arterial pressure was not measured. Thus, it is assumed that the hypoxia might have been caused by pulmonary edema due to the left ventricular failure or the increase of the pulmonary capillary permeability, rather than by the pulmonary vasoconstriction at the initial stage. The acute cardiovascular collapse can be explained by the biphasic model suggested by Clark [9]. Right ventricular failure can take place at the initial stage by the pulmonary vasoconstriction and pulmonary hypertension due to the secretion of endogenous mediators, which was proved in a number of reports. Shechtman et al. [10] reported that acute right ventricular failure accompanied by severe pulmonary hypertension, left deviation of the atrial, and ventricular septum was found from the transesophageal echocardiography performed within 30 minutes after the occurrence of amniotic fluid embolism. A large amount of ascites was also found after the laparotomy in our case, which is thought to be the secondary result of the right ventricular failure. As the operation moved on to the anaphase, the pulmonary hypertension did not continue, but it was shifted to left ventricular failure, which might have been caused mainly by the decreased filling of the left ventricle following the enlargement of the right ventricular enlargement. Other causes of myocardial failure that are known include myocardial ischemia due to hypoxia, decreased blood flow in coronary artery due to decreased cardiac output, and direct myocardial depression by the substances in amniotic fluid such as endothelin. The blood pressure of the parturient woman in our report was decreased after the spinal anesthesia, which could have resulted from the high level of sensory block to the T4 spine, but it could be probably because of the decrease of the general vascular resistance following the left ventricular failure. DIC is also one of the factors that can cause hypovolemic shock, and it is found in 50% of the parturient women with amniotic fluid embolism. The mechanism of DIC is not clear, but it is known by a previous animal experiment that amniotic fluid is related to the thromboplastin-like effect, platelet aggregation, and the activation of complement reaction. In addition, Lockwood et al. [11] discovered a large amount of tissue factors in amniotic fluid and explained the triggering of blood coagulation and consumptive coagulopathy caused by the activation of extrinsic pathway and factor X. DIC, which is clinically characterized by continuous blood loss, can take place in any stage of amniotic fluid embolism, from the initial stage to the terminal stage. In this case report, the heart was temporarily recovered by the cardiopulmonary resuscitation after the cardiac arrest, but the prognosis could become worse as hypovolemic shock took place due to the DIC afterward. In conclusion, the main causes of the maternal death of the parturient woman are thought to be the hypotension by the combined effect of the left ventricular failure, the decrease of the general vascular resistance due to the spinal anesthesia and continued blood loss by DIC, and pulmonary failure by the severe pulmonary edema. The etiology of amniotic fluid embolism is not clear yet. The pathway of amniotic fluid influx to the maternal circulatory system includes the uterine cervical vein, damaged uterine site, and placental site. In early studies, pulmonary vascular occlusion was considered as the main etiology of amniotic fluid embolism, but various clinical characteristics of amniotic fluid embolism were hardly explained by the mechanism and it was not verified by animal experiment [12], implying that there might be another mechanism rather than the mechanical occlusion. Hammerschmidt et al. [13] mentioned that activation of complements and granulocytes caused the pulmonary vascular occlusion. Now, the secretion of primary or secondary endogenous mediators following the amniotic fluid inflow to the maternal circulatory system is considered as the major etiology of amniotic fluid embolism based on several reports. The known mediators include histamine, bradykinin, endothelin, leukotriene, and arachidonic acid metabolites. These immunological factors can be supported by the fact that amniotic fluid embolism is found more frequently among the parturient women who have conceived a male fetus and with the history of drug allergy. Amniotic fluid embolism is diagnosed clinically after excluding other diagnoses. In other words, amniotic fluid embolism can be strongly suspected in a pregnant woman or a puerperal woman, immediately after the delivery, with cardiovascular collapse as well as respiratory failure, DIC, and convulsion, excluding anaphylaxis, septisemia, pulmonary embolism, myocardial infarction, perinatal cardiomyopathy, and hemorrhagic shock (atony, uterine rupture, and abruptio placentae). Blood test, chest radiography and echocardiography can help, but they are nonspecific. Although in many studies amniotic fluid tissue was found in the blood aspirated at the terminal of the pulmonary artery catheter installed in parturient women who were diagnosed as having amniotic fluid embolism [14], the amniotic fluid tissue was found in only about 50% of the parturient women in the study of Clark et al. [4], as well as in other studies. Moreover, the component of amniotic fluid is also found among the women who do not have amniotic fluid embolism or the women who are not pregnant. Hence, that a component of amniotic fluid is found in a maternal circulatory system does not necessarily mean that amniotic fluid embolism has occurred. However, the probability of amniotic fluid embolism is increased in the case where there are the clinical characteristics that suggest amniotic fluid embolism. Also, in the parturient woman in this case, the diagnosability was increased since a great amount of amniotic fluid component was found in the pulmonary blood vessels, as well as the clinical characteristics of amniotic fluid embolism. Beside this, another known method of amniotic fluid embolism diagnosis is to measure zinc coproporphrin, sialyl Tn antigen, tryptase, and complement factors in the peripheral blood of a parturient woman, but more research is required for it. The treatment is performed symptomatically depending on the symptoms of the patient and the basic direction of the treatment is maintenance of the appropriate oxygenation level and blood pressure, and correction of the coagulopathy. Firstly, for the hypoxia, tracheal intubation should be immediately carried out and positive-pressure ventilation with oxygen of high concentration should be performed so as to maintain the oxygen saturation higher than 90%. For the hypotension and the shock, the preload should be increased by means of rapid injection of a crystalloid solution. Since an overdose of fluid can worsen the heart failure at this time, it is helpful to monitor by means of pulmonary catheter or electrocardiography. In the case of a serious hypotension which does not respond to a fluid treatment, vasopressors such as norepinephrine or cardiac inotropic agents such as dopamine, dobutamine, and milrinone can be used. When a large amount of hemorrhage occurs due to DIC, packed red blood cells should be primarily transfused to supply oxygen to the tissue appropriately. Platelets, fresh frozen plasma, and cryoprecipitate also need to be transfused. Among them, cryoprecipitate has been known to help the patient to recover the cardiopulmonary and hematological state rapidly by enhancing the removal of antigenic and toxic substances such as amniotic fluid since it contains fibronectin. When cardiopulmonary arrest takes places during the clinical course, cardiopulmonary resuscitation should be immediately carried out and cesarean section should be performed as early as possible in order to improve the prognosis of the parturient woman and the fetus. Since the gravid uterus represses the venous return by the aortocaval compression, quick delivery of the fetus makes the cardiopulmonary resuscitation more effective. In addition to these, other treatments are available including aprotinin, serine proteinase inhibitor, cardiopulmonary bypass, pulmonary embolectomy, hemofiltration, and inhalation of nitric oxide gas, etc. Recently, a case where extracorporeal membrane oxygenation showed a good result in a parturient woman with amniotic fluid embolism who had a cardiac arrest was reported, and it was newly suggested as a treatment [15].
As experienced in this case, amniotic fluid embolism is rare, but it is a rapidly developing, fatal disease. However, this disease is hard to diagnose in its onset, and the treatment is still difficult. Thus, a prompt and positive treatment should be carried out if there is a parturient woman in whom a sudden cardiopulmonary collapse, respiratory failure, and hemorrhage are found. Particularly when cardiac arrest takes place, cardiopulmonary resuscitation should be carried out immediately and the fetus should be delivered at the same time in order to improve the prognosis of the parturient woman and the fetus. It must be noted that even after the parturient woman has recovered from the cardiac arrest, neurologic damage caused by hypoxia can still take place.
Meyer J. Embolia pulmonar amnio caseosa. Bras Med. 1996;2:301.
Steiner P, Luschbaugh C. Maternal pulmonary emboli by amniotic fluid. JAMA. 1991;117:1245–1254.
Morgan M. Amniotic fluid embolism. Anaesthesia. 1989;34:20–32.
Clark SL, Hankins GD, Dudley DA, Dildy GA, Porter TF. Amniotic fluid embolism: analysis of the national registry. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 1995;172:1158–1169.
Kim BI, Paek SH, Rho WS, Lee SP, Cho SK, Lee SH. Amniotic fluid embolism during dilatation and curettage in a second trimesteric missed aborted pregnant patient. Korean J Anesthesiol. 1997;33:778–783.
Haines J, Wilkes RG. Non-fatal amniotic fluid embolism after cervical suture removal. Br J Anaesth.2003;90:244–247.
Abenhaim HA, Azoulay L, Kramer MS, Leduc L. Incidence and risk factors of amniotic fluid embolisms: a population-based study on 3 million births in the United States. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2008;199:49.e1–49.e8.
Lewis G. The confidential enquiry into maternal and child health (CEMACH) The seventh report on confidential enquiries into maternal deaths in the United Kingdom. London: CEMACH; 2007. Saving mothers' lives: reviewing maternal deaths to make motherhood safer--2002-2005.
Clark SL. New concepts of amniotic fluid embolism: a review. Obstet Gynecol Surv. 1990;45:360–368.
Shechtman M, Ziser A, Markovits R, Rozenberg B. Amniotic fluid embolism: early findings of transesophageal echocardiography. Anesth Analg. 1999;89:1456–1458.
Lockwood CJ, Bach R, Guha A, Zhou XD, Miller WA, Nemerson Y. Amniotic fluid contains tissue factor, a potent initiator of coagulation. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 1991;165:1335–1341.
Stolte L, van Kessel H, Seelen J, Eskes T, Wagatsuma T. Failure to produce the syndrome of amniotic fluid embolism by infusion of amniotic fluid and meconium into monkeys. Am J Obstet Gynecol.1967;98:694–697.
Hammerschmidt DE, Ogburn PL, Williams JE. Amniotic fluid activates complement. A role in amniotic fluid embolism syndrome? J Lab Clin Med. 1984;104:901–907.
Resnik R, Swartz WH, Plumer MH, Benirschke K, Stratthaus ME. Amniotic fluid embolism with survival. ObstetGynecol. 1976;47:295–298.
15. Ho CH, Chen KB, Liu SK, Liu YF, Cheng HC, Wu RC. Early application of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in a patient with amniotic fluid embolism. Acta Anaesthesiol Taiwan. 2009;47:99–102.
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Welcome to the Ashdale Hall
Westhill's Community Hall
A HISTORY OF THE HALL
The Ashdale Hall in Westhill was officially opened for business on Saturday 29 January 1994. Many residents from in the community will remember the previous Ashdale Hall, a portacabin-style building which stood on the site of the present Hall. It had been given to the community by the Westhill’s principal developer, Ashdale Land & Property Company Ltd, and served the local needs for many years. In 1992 a committee of local people was formed with the aim of securing a brand new Hall for the town. The committee began a campaign to raise awareness of the relatively modest facilities of the old building, and to raise funds towards providing a new Hall.
Approximately £30,000 was raised from a variety of ventures and donations, and provided a lot of good fun for those involved. This money was used to fund most of the furniture and equipment in the Hall. The old hall continues to serve a purpose as the clubhouse for Millbank/Tillyfourie Bowling Club.
Construction of the new Hall began in the spring of 1993. The Hall was honoured to have two ‘opening ceremonies’. Firstly Princess Anne visited the building on 18th August 1993 (while building work was still in progress) and officiated whilst a time capsule was placed into the wall in the foyer. Then in January 1994 we invited Mrs Isabel (Bunty) Milne to cut the ribbon and declare the Hall open for business. Bunty agreed to join us again to celebrate the Hall’s 10th anniversary and she graciously cut our birthday cake. Bunty was born in 1919 and was chosen for these honours because she has lived in Westhill for longer than anyone else.
© Westhill & District Public Hall Association
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A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
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Reviews One in a thousand. An ordinary extraordinary woman
Published in the printed edition of Baltic Worlds BW 1-2 2016, 107-108
Published on balticworlds.com on June 23, 2016
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In a Swedish film from 1948, Främmande Hamn [Foreign Harbor], shot partly in Gdynia, the role of an old Polish woman is played by Elsa Meyring, who was living in Stockholm at the time. The scene in which she appears was probably shot in a studio in Stockholm, but the plot, supposedly taking place in 1938 in a Baltic harbor, might not have been totally unknown to the actress.
Meyring was born Elsa Bauschwitz in Stettin, Germany, in 1883. She married Theodor Meyring in 1904, and during World War I she took an active part in the social welfare of invalids and widows. From 1919 to 1929 she was a member of the Stettin City Council, with responsibility for the welfare of the youth of the city, and was the first woman member of the council.
This seems like the beginning of a successful political and social career in Stettin and Germany. But things would turn out otherwise. Helmut Müssener and Wolfgang Wilhelmus, two scholars long dedicated to the study of exile in the unique triangle of German, Swedish, and Jewish relations, have compiled and written a book on the extraordinary life of this talented and humble woman. The book contains both her own life story as a “German non-Aryan woman in the 20th century” as well as many documents pertaining to her life and the political circumstances that shaped her life’s trajectory, plus a prologue explaining things taken for granted in her own account of her life.
In December 1939, a young woman of Baltic German descent arrives in Swinemünde, the outport of Stettin, on a boat from Helsinki together with a large group of Baltic Germans. After some weeks, she and her mother are given an apartment in central Stettin, fully furnished, but deprived of all personal details.
Simultaneously, the Jewish population of Stettin is forced to leave their apartments on the night of February 12, 1940. One of the many interesting and terrifying documents in the book is a Merkblatt issued to select members of the Nazi Party with extremely detailed instructions on how, “with hardness, accuracy, and caution” [Härte, Sorgfalt und Umsicht], without any consideration of the Jews’ complaints, to evacuate all Stettin Jews. The population was moved to the freight station to wait in the stark cold. They were given old cement sacks filled with some food and then packed into fourth-class wagons without toilets, lighting, or heating. They were forbidden to open the windows but managed to get some snow to melt for drinking water. Elsa’s cup and saucer became a common treasure. After a journey of three days and nights, the train arrived in Lublin, chosen by the Nazi German administration to be a center of reception for expelled German Jews. They had to leave their few remaining belongings and walk in deep snow, the elderly frost-bitten people left to be taken care of by local Jews.
The brutal expulsion of the Stettin Jews was reported in the foreign press and induced the (in)famous pro-Hitler Swedish explorer Sven Hedin to protest to Heinrich Himmler against the treatment, but he was bluntly rebuffed, as reported in his memoirs of visits to Berlin. (His protest is not mentioned in the present book.)
The group was divided and directed to three villages populated by Orthodox Jews, who were to take care of the Stettin Jews at their own expense. Elsa’s elderly husband had a physical and mental breakdown, and was sent to an overcrowded Jewish hospital in Lublin, where he died. Elsa, with her background in the social services, volunteered as a cultural interpreter between the ordinary Germans and the impoverished, Orthodox Yiddishspeakers.
The deportation is described in great detail in Elsa Meyring’s memoirs in the book. But Müssener and Wilhelmus also follow another trajectory: how the Swedish bureaucracy dealt with the attempts by people in Sweden to save the Meyring couple by allowing them entry into Sweden, a country that tried to stay isolated from the influx of refugees and job-seekers by means of a formal attitude by which political activity against authoritarian régimes was (reluctantly) seen a reason for asylum, while the evident oppression of Jews (and Roma) in Nazi Germany was not.1 On October 3, 1939, three Swedish citizens of good repute applied to the Swedish Foreign Ministry for entry permits on behalf of the Meyring couple. Some months before, the former town councilor and former Swedish vice-consul of Stettin, Georg Manasse, now exiled in Sweden, had written a letter of recommendation concerning his former colleague that was attached to the several documents in the application. However, on October 26, 1939, the National Social Welfare Board denied the application “for the time being”, but this decision was not transmitted to the Stockholm Mosaic Community (the Jewish community of Stockholm) until February 2, 1940. This refusal a few days later provoked the pro-Nazi professor at Stockholm University College, the ex-German Nobel Prize laureate Hans von Euler, whose Jewish docent Erich Adler had earlier tried to save the Meyring couple, to renew a request for their admission to Sweden. A week later, the request was dismissed. However, on March 1st, 1940, after meetings with representatives of the Mosaic Community and other parties, the Swedish Foreign Ministry informed its legation in Berlin that the Meyring couple would be allowed entry into Sweden for a stay of three months. In the meantime, Elsa’s husband had died, and the visa allowance expired, but it was renewed and she was allowed to buy a passport issued by the governor general on June 14 and an entry visa for Sweden, allowing her to fly from Berlin to Stockholm.
This strange document is shown in the book: a passport of Rzeczpospolita Polska in Polish and French, but filled out in German and stamped by the Office of the General Government of All Occupied Polish Territories. The passport contains a visa stamp from the Swedish Legation in Berlin allowing entrance for a period of three months “under the condition that the passport holder does not engage in political propaganda”, and the exit stamp from Tempelhof Airport. The passport makes it possible (not without problems, sacrifices, and some good luck) for her to take a train to Berlin and fly to Stockholm on June 28, 1940. “Das Wunder war geschehen” [the miraculous had happened], she writes at the end of her report.
The surviving members of the deportation are forcibly moved again in the spring of 1942, and put to death in the camps the same year.
While in Sweden, Meyring works as a volunteer with the Emigrantenselbsthilfe, the Rescue Service for German-Jewish migrants. As her passport from a non-existent state is invalid, she applies for an alien’s passport, which is accepted, but it has to be renewed every six months. Until the end of the war, she reports intending to leave the country, but with the fate of the German Jews, Stettin turning into Szczecin, her homeland and home town cease to exist. She now applies for a residence permit (p. 199: we read 1940, but the correct year is 1946!), intending to stay in Sweden, and in 1949 she applies for Swedish citizenship, enclosing her life story and recommendations from a number of prominent people. A very detailed report from the Stockholm police, based on the application and a personal inquiry, and containing only positive information, is sent to the Stockholm Governor’s Office for a decision which, in an “obedient pronouncement”, rejects the application, because she “enjoys financial support for her livelihood”. After a long bureaucratic delay, a new application is made, showing that the financial support is minimal and that she is living within very modest means.
She was finally granted Swedish citizenship by the Swedish Minister of Justice on March 9, 1951. She died on December 17, 1967, in Nytorp in the Jewish Home for the Aged in Southern Stockholm, and is buried in the Jewish section of the Southern Cemetery.
Elsa Meyring’s own story, the comments by Müssener and Wilhelmus about political conditions in Germany and Sweden, and the many bureaucratic documents give a moving and exciting account of the life of a minor figure yet an extraordinary person, and also of the circumstances surrounding her life in two countries during World War II. ≈
1 The official Swedish handling of Jewish immigration is treated in detail in a recent doctoral dissertation by Pontus Rudberg: The Swedish Jews and the Victims of Nazi terror, 1933—1945 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 2015), 253.
Thomas Lundén
by Thomas Lundén
Professor of human geography, CBEES. Editor of the year-book Ymer.
Helmut Müssener, Wolfgang Wilhelmus: Stettin Lublin Stockholm. Elsa Meyring: Aus dem Leben einer deutschen Nichtarierin im zwanzig-sten Jahr-hundert., 2nd edition. Rostock: Ingo Koch Verlag, 2014.
Baltic Worlds, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University, Alfred Nobels allé 7, SE- 141 89 Huddinge, Sweden.
Contact mail: bw.editor@sh.se
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(716) 651-9187 jbidwellbfa@roadrunner.com
Family History Books
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History of the BFA
One typical and ordinary road trip in 1971 led Joan and Virgil Bidwell to an extraordinary lifetime quest of searching for other Bidwells. The couple had a yearning to locate long-lost relatives, so they logically began where anyone would in those days – the phone book! Initially, Joan and Virgil estimated finding 100 or so other Bidwells in the United States. However, after discovering a whopping 33 listed in Columbus, Ohio, alone, they realized their family was larger than initially estimated. With each subsequent road trip and with each town that they would pass, the two would search for Bidwells in local phone books, record contact information, and collect information on family lineage and dates for each contact made.
In 1973, the “inaugural” Bidwell Family Reunion was held in Fairmont, Minnesota. Roughly 90 Bidwell descendants from around the country attended, many of whom were notified via contact information previously obtained from the local phone books. This was an incredible feat in less than two years, considering this was prior to the age of internet!
With each passing year, Joan and Virgil’s determination and devotion to catalog and build family connections grew exponentially – as did the Bidwell database. Other Bidwells shared in the interest as they volunteered to host annual reunions in various locations as well as assist with genealogical research efforts.
Joan’s interest eventually turned into an obsession, leading her to spend countless hours visiting genealogical libraries throughout the country including Salt Lake City, contacting numerous Bidwells, reviewing newspaper records, and walking through cemeteries all to gather the information necessary to understand the family connections. At each reunion, Joan would bring her family tree scrolls and educate the attendees by showing their relationship to one another as well as their relationship to one of our original immigrants, John Bidwell of Hartford, CT, from the mid-1600s.
Research efforts culminated with the publication of Bidwell Family History – Volume I in the mid-1980s. Everyone was excited to finally have a personal guide to trace their ancestry!
Joan’s passion for genealogical research and the annual family reunions continued until her passing in 2005. With the publication of The Bidwell Family – Volume I and II in 2011, the Bidwell Family Association was able to help Joan achieve her goal of publishing a second volume containing all the updates and additional research gathered since the initial publication.
We thank Joan and Virgil for sharing their enthusiasm with other Bidwells and especially for their dedication and commitment to the revival of the Bidwell Family Association. We learn though Joan’s research that there had been an active Bidwell Family Association up until the 1940’s which was suspended due to WWII travel safety precautions and which never resumed activity. At a family reunion, one will often say “if Joan were here, she could tell us how we are related.” While we cannot get the answer from Joan, we are deeply grateful for her efforts in creating an enduring genealogical catalog to help us find the family ties that not only connect us to each other but connect us to our forefathers and foremothers of days gone by.
If you are interested in The Bidwell Family – Volume I and II, a limited number of copies are still available. Please visit this page or Amazon to find more information or download an order form here.
About the BFA
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This year was the best one I have attended.
By Lorna Miller on March 28, 2015 9:00 PM |
The 2015 Turner Classic Film Festival was the best one I have attended. The previous four festivals were fantastic but the mix of movies this year combined with the people in attendance made it truly special. I am never ready for it to be over when it ends and am already looking forward with hopeful anticipation that I'll be able to cover the seventh festival already promised for 2016. This year I was determined to make the most of the festival and arrived on Wednesday to attend a meet and greet with other fellow movie lovers poolside at the Roosevelt
My 2015 TCM Classic Film Festival Schedule (subject to change)
Each year it is harder to decide on what to see.
With the 2015 TCM Classic Film Festival a week away, I have started planning my schedule. Each year it is harder to decide on what to watch. I go in thinking I will stick with films I have not yet seen, but all-time favorites have a tendency to sneak onto my schedule. Below is my list of the top films I am most excited about and likely to attend (as of right now). Thursday: Too Late for Tears (1949): My festival will start off with my most sought after genre, film noir. I have never heard of the film but
Longmire: The Complete Third Season DVD Review: A Much Darker Season Unfolds
It offers something different than the many formulaic crime dramas these days.
By Lorna Miller on March 2, 2015 8:13 AM |
The third season of Longmire continued what had been previously established in the first two seasons as a strong crime drama rooted in deep and interesting characters. What was unique about this season is that it followed three fully developed storylines involving the main characters rather than just standalone murder mysteries, unfolding a complex interconnectedness between them. It is a much darker season as well with a strong undercurrent of evil that wove throughout. This drew me in further and resulted in a huge cliffhanger that left me anxious for the next season. A&E didn’t have as much faith and
101 Dalmatians (1961) Diamond Edition Blu-ray Review: An Amusing and Entertaining Film
Disney at its best.
By Lorna Miller on February 8, 2015 5:00 PM |
Disney's 101 Dalmatians is narrated by Pongo (Rod Taylor), an adult male Dalmatian, and starts cleverly with him introducing us to his human pet, Roger. Both are bachelors and Pongo is trying to find them suitable mates. He spots a lovely female Dalmatian, Perdita (Cate Bauer), and her pet, Anita, walking in the park. He manages to orchestrate a meeting and both couples are married soon after. Fast-forward several months and Perdita is now about to give birth to puppies. This brings Cruella De Vil (voiced fabulously by Betty Lou Gerson), a long-time friend of Anita’s, into the picture. One
Alabama & Friends at the Ryman Review: Celebrating 40 Years
Highly entertaining from beginning to end.
By Lorna Miller on October 19, 2014 12:08 AM |
Alabama was formed in 1969 by cousins Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry, and Jeff Cook. Over the course of their career, they became the greatest-selling country band of all time by selling over 75 million singles and albums. They peaked during the 1980s when they created 27 number-one hits. The band thought they were quitting for good and put on a farewell tour in 2003. They reunited in 2011 and have been going strong ever since. In celebration of their 40th anniversary, they recorded the tribute album Alabama & Friends and a concert at the historic Ryman Auditorium featuring Luke Bryan,
Divergent Blu-ray Combo Review: Shailene Woodley Has a Dauntless Task
The film stays faithful to the lessons and themes of the book, which are not just for young adults.
Being a big fan of Veronica Roth's book series, I was thrilled to hear that Divergent was being made into a film. It suffers from being compared to the Hunger Games trilogy and admittedly, the first film isn't nearly as good. However, the overall themes and messages behind Divergent make it worth watching. In the future, society has been divided into five factions based on a persons aptitudes and values. The Dauntless are the brave, Amity focuses on being peaceful, Erudite is for the intelligent, Abnegation is the selfless, and, if honesty is your strong suit, then you are Candor.
Longmire: The Complete Second Season DVD Review: A Standout Show Worth Watching
Tensions slowly rise through the 13-episode season, leaving lives in balance and ensuing chaos.
The second season of the popular A&E western crime drama Longmire continued the successful formula of interesting standalone cases along with the evolving development of the main characters. Based on Craig Johnson's best-selling western mystery series, the TV series plays like the unfolding of a novel. With each episode, layers are peeled away revealing complex characters forced to deal with the consequences of their actions. Sheriff Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) struggles to come to terms with the murder of his wife but has re-committed to his job and is moving forward with the help of his new girlfriend Lizzie (Katherine
Each year I seem to enjoy the this festival more and more.
[Editor's Note: Lorna's coverage of Day One and Two can be found here.] Day Three Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) had me up and raring to go for Day Three. Anything starring Gary Cooper will always be at the top of my list. Factoring in Frank Capra as director, there was nothing else in this time slot that even challenged it. Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) is a simple man who enjoys writing greeting-card poetry and playing the tuba in his small town of Mandrake Falls, Vermont until he inherits $20 million from a long lost uncle. Upon the news,
I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and was wanting more once it was over.
The 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival was my fourth and favorite. It may have been the festival programming or the movies I chose to watch, but I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and was wanting more once it was over. Day One After picking up my pass and surviving the chaos at the Welcome Party at Club TCM, I headed over to Hooters where I luckily secured a prime window seat to see the red-carpet action for the Oklahoma! opening gala. Several celebrities were in attendance such as Shirley Jones and Maureen O'Brien. My festival officially started with Cheaper by the
My Top Picks for the 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival
If I am lucky, I'll get into all seven.
By Lorna Miller on April 9, 2014 2:21 AM |
Each year when the schedule for the TCM Classic Film Festival is posted, I feel equal levels of excitement and stress. How will I ever decide? And why do they always put movies in the same slot that I really want to see? This year is no different. The schedule can be found at the Festival website and the following films are at the top of my list to see. Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) My festival viewing will start off with this sentimental selection since I have seen it several times but never on the big screen. Clifton Webb
Saving Mr. Banks Blu-ray Review: A Heartwarming Story
I have read several articles addressing all of the incorrect information in the movie, and I have no issues in enjoying the illusion.
It is rare that I am interested in watching a movie a second time after a recent viewing. It is usually a few years before I am ready. Saving Mr. Banks is a rare exception to this rule because I was actually excited to see it again, and it proved to be even more delightful. Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) is determined to fulfill a 20-year promise to his daughters by bringing their beloved character, Mary Poppins, to life. Author P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson) has fought him all along but due to financial difficulties she is convinced to travel from
The Following: The Complete First Season Combo Pack Review: Dark and Truly Horrifying
For those that enjoy intense thrillers and being scared, the first season of The Following is not to be missed.
By Lorna Miller on January 5, 2014 8:03 PM |
For 15 weeks on Monday nights at 9 PM I was glued to the television to watch The Following. Since it was created by Kevin Williamson, who in my mind created one of the scariest and original modern horror movies with Scream, I was excited to check it out. Kevin Bacon on a weekly basis was the other main reason I tuned in. Neither of them disappointed with this terrifying psychological thriller. Former FBI agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) is brought back from disability to help re-capture Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), a serial killer Hardy was responsible for sending to
Big 25th Anniversary Combo Pack Review: A Splendidly Touching Film
It delivers lighthearted humor and noteworthy life lessons.
By Lorna Miller on December 16, 2013 12:18 AM |
Big is one of those movies that I thoroughly enjoyed when it was released but haven't seen or thought about it since. In celebration of its 25th anniversary, there is a new Blu-ray/DVD combo edition. Being 40 years old now as compared to 15 when it came out, I appreciate a lot more of the story's depth and thoughtfulness rather than just finding it funny and cute. Twelve-year-old Josh Baskin (David Moscow) is a normal kid who enjoys spending time with his best friend Billy (Jared Rushton) and playing on his computer. While at a carnival with his parents, Josh
Saturday at Stan Lee's Comikaze 2013
What I did this weekend.
By Lorna Miller on November 3, 2013 11:08 PM |
Held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Stan Lee's Comikaze offers pop culture delights on a much smaller scale. I had hoped to have more success in attending some of the panels on Saturday since it has become such a difficult feat at San Diego Comic Con. Alas, no such luck. I attempted to start off with "Super-Heroines of Pop Culture," focusing on the challenges of creating female heroes in a male-dominated field but it had already started and the line was as far as I could see. "Voice-Nado" featuring voice talents in a Whose Line is it Anyways?-type improvisation
Monsters, Inc. Blu-ray Review: Monsters Get Scared Too
Meet the Monsters.
Released in November 2001, Monsters, Inc. was the fourth feature-length feature film by Pixar Animation Studios. While it was a commercial and critical success, I didn't think it was as entertaining for adults when compared to the previous films. The inhabitants of the city Monstropolis rely on the screams of children as its source of power. Monsters, Inc. provides the city’s energy through its scream-processing factory. James P. “Sully” Sullivan (John Goodman) and Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) are the top scare team at the factory. Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi) is Sully’s rival determined to take over the top position. In
The Devil's Backbone Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: One of Guillermo del Toro's Most Personal Films
A somewhat traditional ghost story that offers surprises.
Guillermo del Toro is one of the most interesting directors currently making films because of his unique vision and style. His 2001 feature The Devil's Backbone is a somewhat traditional ghost story that offers surprises. Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi) and principal Carmen (Marisa Paredes) run an orphanage for the children of the republican militia during the Spanish Civil War. Carlos (Fernando Tielve) is their latest ward. He thinks he is visiting with his tutor and is shocked to be left behind as he is unaware that his father has been killed in battle. After Carlos is assigned to the bed
Trance (2013) Blu-ray Review: Suspenseful and Surprising
It was a treat to see Danny Boyle return to this style of film and he didn't disappoint.
By Lorna Miller on August 5, 2013 6:46 PM |
Danny Boyle is one of the few directors who garners instance attention for any new film. His history of interesting and unique films is continued with Trance, a psychological thriller with twists and turns you won't see coming. Simon (James McAvoy) is involved in security for fine-art auctions. We quickly learn that due to his insider connections, he is behind a complicated heist of a $27 million painting with local gangster Franck (Vincent Cassel) and his gang of thugs. In order to escape, Franck is forced to hit Simon in the head with a shotgun. Once Franck gets away, he
Stoker Blu-ray Review: A Film to be Savored
“Stoker” is visually stunning and satisfied my desire for a suspenseful and thoughtful film.
By Lorna Miller on July 1, 2013 4:18 PM |
India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is a shy, isolated young girl devistated by the loss of her father Richard (Dermot Mulroney) to a strange and horrible accident. Her mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman), is distant and selfish and does not provide any comfort. Richard's brother, Charlie (Matthew Goode), shows up at the Stoker home after the funeral and offers to stay indefinitely. India never knew of his existence as he has spent his life traveling the world. Charlie evokes immediate fear in the head caretaker of the house, Mrs. McGarrick (Phyllis Somerville), who suddenly and mysterously disappears. India grows suspicious as she
Dark Skies (2013) Blu-ray Combo Pack Review: A Compelling Family Drama Undercut by Aliens
The film isn't super scary, but it does have a slow built of creepiness and intensity.
By Lorna Miller on June 16, 2013 10:11 PM |
I have never been a big fan of alien movies because they have never been particularily scary to me. More real life and tangible things are scarier; give me a psycho killer or a big shark and I am not sleeping. Little green men, on the other hand, are too far beyond reality. What is interesting about Dark Skies is that while the cause of the scares is aliens, the story is more about real-life happenings and what draws families together and pulls them apart. The Barrett family seem to be a normal suburban family dealing with everyday issues. Daniel
Longmire: The Complete First Season DVD Review: Complex Characters, Simple Police Work
A smart western series with dynamic characters in a unique setting.
Based on best-selling author Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire western mystery novel series, Longmire is a fresh take on the crime drama. Since it was A&E's most-watched original series in the network's history, I was pleased to have the opportunity to get caught up on Season One right before the start of Season Two. Longmire (Robert Taylor) is struggling to get his life back together after the death of his wife a year earlier. As the sheriff of Absaroka County in Wyoming, he attempts to do this by throwing himself back into work. While solving a range of crimes, he must
My 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival Journal, Part Two
A weekend of bunnies, birds, and classic films.
My Saturday started off with a bit of nostalgia at “Bugs Bunny's 75th Birthday Bash”. Film critic Leonard Maltin and animation historian Jerry Beck put together a collection of cartoons featuring his key rivals, such as Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam, along with showcasing the different directorial styles of Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Chuck Jones. Even though I have never been a big fan of Bugs Bunny, it was really fun to see some cartoons I had forgotten about as well as watching the crowd dance in their chairs to the iconic Looney Tunes opening song. My favorites were
My 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival Journal, Part One
What I saw the first two days at 2013's TCM Film Festival.
As the fourth annual TCM Classic Film Festival was approaching, I was filled with anticiption as I made my top selections of films that I wanted to see. y next moment of anticpation was the schedule since lots of times movies I want to see conflict with each other. This year, I was able to see just about everything that I wanted to and the programmers did a wonderful job of picking a range of movies I have never seen or even heard of along with those that I was thrilled to finally have the opportunity to see on the
What I Must See at the 2013 TCM Film Festival
A preview of my schedule for the upcoming TCM film festival.
As spring approaches, one of the things I look forward to with high anticipation is the TCM Classic Film Festival. This year it returns to Hollywood Blvd. the weekend of April 25-28. Of the 40-plus films that have been announced, the following seven are, in no particular order, at the top of my list of must-sees. Airplane! (1980) This disaster-movie spoof written and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker about the food poisoning of a flight crew and the subsequent chaos that ensued, blazed a path for film parodies. It has been several years since I have
Les Miserables (2012) Blu-ray Review: Bring This Home
Les Miz fans won't want to go one day more without it.
Les Miserables was one of my most anticipated films of 2012. I have seen the stage musical numerous times and find deeper meaning and greater appreciation for the themes each time. The 1998 film version with Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush was a tremendous disappointment; therefore, while my expectations were high for the new film, I was cautiously optimistic that they would be able to translate this tale on screen in a deserving fashion. Tom Hooper managed to bring it to the screen it a way that not only pays homage to what I have always loved about the musical
Lady Antebellum: Own the Night World Tour Blu-ray Review: Fans Need This Now
Behind-the-scenes footage combines with concert performance captures this popular band.
By Lorna Miller on December 17, 2012 2:01 AM |
Before watching this concert, I wouldn’t have called myself a great fan of Lady Antebellum, which is comprised of Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley, and Dave Haywood. I had “Need You Now,” considered the greatest-selling country single of all time, on my iPod but never considered buying an album or seeing them in concert. With prices what they are these days for tickets and with my seats getting further and further away from the artist, watching a concert on home video seems like a solid solution. Taken from their Own the Night world tour, their second as a headliner, the concert
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Blu-ray Review: A Nostalgic Look Back at the '80s
Thirteen years later, it has endured as a fun, entertaining film.
It's been many years since I'd seen Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and will admit that I haven’t missed it or had any interest in watching it again. I remember enjoying it when it first came out in 1989 and watched it several times over the next couple of years but didn’t like it enough to seek it out since. When the opportunity to review it came my way, I figured why not take this opportunity to revisit it and see if still holds up. I was pleasantly surprised that it does. In 2688, human society has reached utopian levels,
The Raven (2012) Blu-ray Review: Quoth the Reviewer, "Worth Watching"
For fans of murder mysteries and John Cusack.
By Lorna Miller on October 21, 2012 9:23 PM |
I love murder mysteries; given my choice of any genre, this is what I will pick every time. To get ready for Halloween, I was hoping The Raven would not only satisfy my desire for a good whodunit but provide some chills as well. Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) is a peculiar fellow who writes of the macabre in 19th century Baltimore, Maryland. Poe is struggling financially due to a period of writer’s block, has alienated himself socially due to his drinking, and is attempting to win the heart of Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve), but is being thwarted by her
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel DVD Review: Well Worth a Visit
There are many wonderful aspects that make the film so successful.
I admit that I loved The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel before I watched it. The preview brought me to tears and the cast had me in awe. I am happy to state that it lived up to my expectations; it made me laugh, cry, and at the end left me feeling joyful and hopeful. It is the type of film that makes you feel good and better off having watched it if you pay attention to the underlying lessons. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel follows a group of retirees who, for varying reasons, decide to pack up their lives and
The Game (1997) Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: A Fast-paced Thrill Ride
Emotionally and intellectually engaging while also being visually interesting.
David Fincher is one of my all-time favorite directors. He instantly captured my attention with Se7en; I had never seen anything like it and was mesmerized by its darkness. The Game solidified what would be a continued devotion to this day to see anything he is involved with. This film is emotionally and intellectually engaging while also being visually interesting. There is an inherent darkness but yet it provides moments of real filmmaking beauty. I am thrilled that it is getting the appreciation it deserves by being given high-definition treatment by the Criterion Collection. Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is
You Only Live Twice Movie Review: All of the Charm, Action, and Womanizing You Expect
Though flawed on a number of fronts, the film still entertains.
By Lorna Miller on August 14, 2012 10:18 PM |
You Only Live Twice is the fifth film in the James Bond series. Released in 1967, it was intended to be Sean Connery's last time playing the character; George Lazenby was the next actor selected but after On Her Majesty's Secret Service he backed out of the contract. This provided the opportunity for Connery to return to the role in 1971 for Diamonds Are Forever. He also appeared in the Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again, which is not considered an unofficial James Bond film since it was made without the involvement of Eon Productions. Sean Connery set a
Shallow Grave (1994) Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: An Exceptional Film
Everything comes together perfectly to make this film such a success.
Danny Boyle's first film Shallow Grave is a disturbing and extreme examination of the consequences of one's actions. I love films and at times will see almost anything just for fun but when I see something exceptional I realize how much horrible stuff I waste my time on. Shallow Grave is one such exceptional film and it leaves me wanting to be more discerning. Tabloid journalist Alex (Ewan McGregor), accountant David (Christopher Eccleston), and doctor Juliet (Kerry Fox) are roommates that have somehow come together as close friends despite their vast differences. The trio are looking for a new boarder
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Blu-ray Review: Impressive Disc But Lacks the Charm of the Previous Film
May satisfy if your expectations are kept to a minimum.
The first Sherlock Holmes was fun, exciting, and unique. It far exceeded my expectations. A Game of Shadows doesn't have the charm of the original film and left me disappointed. A Game of Shadows starts off with a bombing in Germany that we come to realize is much more sinister than it appears. In connection with this bombing, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) follows his feisty love interest Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), which leads to the first big fight scene showcasing the unique direction of Guy Ritchie. Holmes prevails and is able to catch up with Irene just as a
Reporting on The 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival: Day 3 and 4
The festival concludes as does my coverage.
My longest day of the festival appropriately started with The Longest Day (1962), a star-studded World War II action film featuring John Wayne, Richard Burton, Red Buttons, Henry Fonda, and Robert Mitchum to name only a few. This is a film made for the big screen; it covers the D-Day Invasion from the U.S., British, French, and German perspectives. One of the more unique aspects is that the French and German characters speak in their native languages. It is slow at times, but powerful as well. Robert Osborne spoke with Robert Wagner after the screening and with the next film
Taking in the classics.
The 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival returned to Hollywood from April 12th through April 15th for their third edition. I attended last year and after my wonderful limited two-day experience, I was determined to attend everyday this year and get to as many films as possible. I managed to see 15 films in slightly over 72 hours and had a blast in the process. My festival got off to a great start at a pre-party tweet-up at The Roosevelt Hotel. Strong drinks were flowing and great appetizers were offered. Aside from being able to indulge in these treats, it was
War Horse Combo Pack Review: Worth Watching Though Poorly Paced
At times, I was more interested in watching Spielberg talk about "War Horse" rather than watching it.
While the title indicates that this is a war movie, it is much deeper than that. It is a film about courage, friendship, and loyalty among other concepts. Albert (Jeremy Irvine) is a young British man helping his parents with their farm. One day while in the fields he witnesses the birth of a thoroughbred horse and becomes enamored as he watches it grow. Later on Albert's father, Ted (Peter Mullan), gets caught up in a competition with his landlord at an auction and winds up buying the horse. Rose (Emily Watson), Albert's mother, is extremely upset since Ted was
Texas Killing Fields Blu-ray Review: Unimaginative and Disjointed
Just another procedural crime drama.
By Lorna Miller on February 8, 2012 1:54 AM |
I am always a little concerned when reviewing a film that I have never heard of that has already been released in theaters. Texas Killing Fields is one such film, originally released in theaters in October 2011, it is now available on Blu-ray. I took an interest in watching the film despite my concerns since I enjoy crime films and because of the cast. Unfortunately, I should have gone with my instincts. It is unimaginative, disjointed, and a sad waste of the actors' talents. Homicide detective Mike Souder (Sam Worthington) and his recently transferred partner from New York, Brian Heigh
In Time DVD Review: An Enthralling Science-Fiction Thriller
I really enjoyed this film.
By Lorna Miller on January 23, 2012 3:44 AM |
I am not sure what it is but I am willing to see anything these days featuring Justin Timberlake. He is charming, talented, attractive, and personable. I am also a fan of Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy, therefore, how could I resist In Time starring all three. Not only did the performances live up to my expectations, the film is exciting, thought-provoking, and entertaining. Set in the year 2161, genetic engineering has established set lifespans. Everyone stops aging at 25 and is given one year to live unless you are able to earn more time. Time has become the only
Real Steel Blu-ray Review: A Good Movie, A Great High-Definition Experience
A familiar story told well.
When I saw the first preview for Real Steel, my reaction was the same as many: Rock'em Sock'em Robots brought to the big screen. I had no interest whatsoever. What eventually won me over is Hugh Jackman's likability and my desire to see Evangeline Lilly in anything since Lost. The movie is very predictable and sappy but it does have some tender moments and impressive action. In the year 2020, robots have replaced humans in the boxing ring. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is an ex-fighter who struggles to earn a living as he travels the country to enter his fighting
'Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974) Blu-ray Review: An Average Rankin Bass TV Special
I would rather watch Rudolph or my all-time favorite The Year Without a Santa Claus.
By Lorna Miller on December 23, 2011 1:36 PM |
Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass created many successful animated holiday specials, the best known being Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. A lesser-known special from 1974 is 'Twas the Night Before Christmas based on Clement Moore's famous 1823 poem. I recalled looking forward to this one every year along with all of the others but hadn't watched it in a really long time. Junctionville is a town in panic when their letters to Santa start coming back. The residents quickly learn that it is due to an anonymous letter printed in the town's newspaper claiming that he
The Help Blu-ray Review: Maids Air Dirty Laundry Anonymously
I can't recommend this film strongly enough.
By Lorna Miller on December 4, 2011 1:34 AM |
Written by Kathryn Stockett, The Help is a fiction novel released in 2009. It is currently ranked number seven on The New York Times best seller list at the time of this writing and has been on the list for 41 weeks. I read and loved the book after hearing rave reviews from many friends. The book was rich with interesting characters, many of whom were developed with a rare depth that I came to care about. Some characters I loved while others I hated. When I heard they were adapting the novel into a film, I was concerned about
Winnie the Pooh Combo Pack: A Wonderful Return to the Classic Characters
Geared more towards younger viewers but there are some clever moments for adults.
Winnie the Pooh is the fifth animated theatrical release featuring Christopher Robin and the adorable creatures from the Hundred Acre Wood. The creators of the film used five stories from the original A.A. Milne works as their inspiration for this new tale. Winnie the Pooh is one of my all-time favorite Disney characters and I was hesitantly excited to see the new film. My hopes were that they would be able to recapture the charm and personalities from the early cartoons rather than the disappointment I had experienced from some of the most recent feature films with characters that didn't
Cedar Rapids The Super Awesome Edition Blu-ray Review: Neither Super nor Awesome
Great potential, but fails to deliver.
Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is a sheltered and naive small-town insurance agent who is given the chance to attend a convention in the big city of Cedar Rapids when his co-worker dies suddenly. Bill (Stephen Root), the insurance company owner, is hoping that Tim will be able to secure the agency the coveted two-diamond award for the fourth year in a row. Tim leaves his older girlfriend/ex-teacher (Sigourney Weaver) behind and embarks on an adventure that starts with him flying on airplane for the first time and results with him drinking, doing drugs, and many other things he would have
Four Weddings and a Funeral Blu-ray Review: Not a Run-of-the-Mill Romantic Comedy
While it remains a delightful film 17 years later, it doesn't reap much benefit from high definition.
By Lorna Miller on July 31, 2011 10:55 PM |
Four Weddings and a Funeral is a 1994 British romantic comedy that follows a group of friends as they attend the five events listed in the title. The film received critical acclaim along with winning several BAFTA awards and earning Hugh Grant the Golden Globe for Best Actor - Musical or Comedy. This film also started a successful relationship between writer Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant which lead to Notting Hill and Love Actually. Charles (Hugh Grant) is a perennial bachelor who believes in the lightning bolt of love and is searching for his soul mate. He meets Carrie (Andie
Honeymoon in Vegas Blu-ray Review: Enjoyable Movie but the Blu-ray Should Be Annulled
MGM craps out with this title due to poor video and no extras.
Oh, I how I remember the days when Nicholas Cage made good movies. Honeymoon in Vegas was one of them. Originally released in 1992, it was nominated for two Golden Globes including Best Motion Picture - Musical/Comedy. Jack Singer (Nicholas Cage) makes a promise to his dying mother that he will never get married. Several years later, his girlfriend Betsy (Sarah Jessica Parker) is ready to call it quits unless he commits. Worried that he will lose her, he abruptly decides that they should fly to Las Vegas and tie the knot. Upon arrival at their hotel, Betsy is spotted
Limitless Blu-ray Review: The Film Reaches Its Potential
For fans of intelligent thrillers and those who think Bradley Cooper is hot.
By Lorna Miller on July 20, 2011 11:50 AM |
What would it be like to utilize 100% of your brain? This is the question posed in the film Limitless based on the novel The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn. I was expecting a fun thrill ride but was pleasantly surprised by the performances and depth of story. Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is a struggling writer. He is broke, about to get kicked out of his apartment, and has lost his girlfriend when he runs into Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), an ex brother-in-law. Vernon recognized instantly that Eddie is down on his luck and offers him a solution, a new drug
Kung Fu Panda Blu-ray Review: Captivating for Both Kids and Adults
Jack Black is the star of the show and doesn't disappoint.
Po (Jack Black) dreams of being a kung fu master but being an overweight, uncoordinated panda makes working in his father's noodle restaurant seems more appropriate. One day the tortoise Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) has a vision that Tai Lung (Ian McShane), a kung fu master who went bad, will escape from prison so Oogway calls for a ceremony to select the Dragon Warrior, who legend says is to be a supreme kung fu master. The red panda Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) believes that one of the Furious Five [Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Viper (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis
Tangled (2010) Blu-ray Review: Disney's Last Princess Movie Ends on a High Note
I can't recommend Tangled strongly enough.
Comedy, romance and adventure, Disney delivers all three mightily in their 50th animated feature Tangled. In November 2010, Disney announced that they would no longer be making princess-based fairy tale animated features. I wasn't overly shocked by the news since there hasn't been a great princess movie in quite sometime, but was sad at the same time since The Little Mermaid and Beauty and The Beast are on the list of my favorites movies of all times. The Princess and the Frog was enjoyable while I was watching it, but I doubt it would ever warrant a second viewing. Tangled
Bambi Diamond Edition Blu-ray Review: The Prince of the Forest is Born
My thoughts wandered to all of the better films in the vast Disney archives, which are more interesting and entertaining.
By Lorna Miller on March 6, 2011 10:28 PM |
Based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten, Walt Disney's Bambi was released in 1942 and is the company's fifth animated film. Although it is hard to for me criticize anything Disney-related, as I revisited Bambi, my thoughts wandered to all of the more entertaining films in their vast archives. The film starts with all of the forest animals gathering together for the birth of the new prince, a deer named Bambi. Thumper, an outspoken bunny rabbit, becomes Bambi's closest friend and introduces him to various elements of the forest while teaching him how to
You Again Blu-ray Review: Actions Have Consequences
A good message, but not well executed.
By Lorna Miller on February 13, 2011 7:39 PM |
I have often wondered why women are not as supportive of each other as they could be. We should be each other's strongest allies and always have our best interests at heart. More often than not, that is not the case. Women can be mean and competitive and usually it is directed at other women. You Again attempts to address these issues in a light-hearted and comical manner. While I appreciate examine this important subject matter, the movie fails due to a lack of focus, weak storylines, and a waste of the talented actresses doing the best they can with
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The League was formed to do exactly what its name implies. But Beatrix Harper’s sister, Lydia, is organizing a new generation of activists to give the ineffective group a different mission: Fight for “typic” rights—and, Lydia hopes, get more rights for women into the bargain. The 21st century America of the Clandestine Magic series is 100 years behind on that score.
I imagined Lydia’s effort to overhaul the League would be like a temperance organization overtaken by women’s suffrage advocates. Here’s how that might look. (All these photographs are from the Library of Congress; click the link in the captions for non-alternate-reality information about them.)
The Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic, 2020 conference.
League activists.
Lydia Harper, president of the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic, Maryland chapter.
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Company history: Philip Webley, was born in 1813, he was the younger brother of James Webley who was born in 1807. Both were born in Birmingham but only their mother, Hannah Webley (b.1776) has been traced. Towards the end of the 1800s the firm claimed establishment in 1790, this must have been the date James and Philip's father or grandfather originally established a bullet or gun implement making business. It was not, as is often stated, the date William Davis established his business (see below). Philip Webley (b.1813) was apprenticed in 1827 to Benjamin Watson. James Webley (b.1807) also seems to have been apprenticed, but to whom is not known. In 1834 James and Philip established their partnership as percussioners, lock filers and gun makers at 7 Weaman Street, which were William Davis' old premises (see William Davis). William Davis, a gun implement maker, mould and tool maker, died in 1831 and his wife Sarah inherited the business which was then located at 84 Weaman Street which she ran with her daughter, Caroline. On 5 January 1838 Philip Webley married Caroline. Philip Webley and his family (all born in Birmingham) were recorded in the 1841 census living in Weaman Street (number unknown). Philip, who described himself as a bullet mould maker, was recorded in this census as having been born in 1816 and his wife, Caroline was recorded as having been born in 1821, both dates are obviously incorrect. They were living with their children, Thomas William (b.1838), Emma (b.1839) and Philip Jnr (b.1841), and James' and Philip's mother, Hannah (b.1776 in Birmingham). Sarah Davis (b.1825) was also living with them, she was probably William and Sarah Davis' daughter and was probably employed as a servant/nurse). James was recorded in the 1841 census in St Mary's Row (no number stated) but strangely, the record states born in 1811 rather than 1807, and it states that he was not born in Birmingham, Warwickshire whereas in later censuses he states he was born in Birmingham, as was Philip, Harriet and Mary Ann. His sisters were also recorded as born in 1811, which is obviously incorrect, and not in Warwickshire. A child, Emma (b.1839) was recorded but to whom she belonged is not known. In this census James somewhat surprisingly described himself as a clerk. Philip was recorded at 84 Weaman Street from 1838 as a gun percussioner, lock filer and gun maker and this is when the partnership was last recorded, but the brothers apparently continued to co-operate until 1845 when Philip reportedly sold his interest to James and used the money to purchase Sarah Davis' business. Even then, they worked together particularly with regard to the design and manufacture of percussion revolvers. As stated above, the census records James in St Mary's Row (no number stated) in 1841 but other reports only record him from 1845 as a gun and pistol maker at 14 St Mary's Row. Philip was recorded in the 1851 census as a 38 year old gun and pistol implement manufacturer living at 84 Weaman Street with Caroline (b.1818), Thomas William, Emma and Philip Jnr, and two other sons, James (b.1843) and Henry (b.1847), and Philip's cousin, Sarah Haywood (b.1826). James was recorded in the 1851 census as a 43 year old gun maker employing 24 hands, a very substantial business. He was living at 14 St Mary's Row with his wife, Louisa (b.1815 in Birmingham) and sister, Mary Ann. On 4 February 1853 Philip Webley registered patent No. 335 for a hinged revolver, and on 14 September 1853 he registered patent No. 2127 for an improvement. This was the firm's first muzzle-loading percussion cap and ball revolver which became known as the "Longspur". It was well received and faster to load than the Colt but, being hand-made, it was more expensive. Production exceeded that of the Galand & Sommerville 44 calibre revolver (manufactured by Braendlin & Sommerville) but not the Adams (Deane, Adams & Deane) or Tranter revolvers which were very popular. James Webley died in 1856 and Louisa took over the business continuing at 14 St Mary's Row under the Louisa Webley name. In 1859 Thomas William, aged 21, was made a partner in the firm, which changed its name to P Webley & Son and described itself as "Gun and Pistol Makers and Patent Revolving Pistol Makers", probably exploiting Philip Webley's patent No. 305 and its improvement under patent No. 2127. Thomas later managed the shotgun side of the business. Louisa was recorded in the 1861 census living at 14 St Mary's Row with her daughters Louisa (b.1852) and Hannah (b.1856) and her sister Ann (Mary Ann). Louisa described herself as a gun maker employing 9 men and 7 boys. In 1865 Louisa was recorded at 13 St Mary's Row as Mrs James Webley but not after that date. In 1900 P Webley & Son reportedly occupied 13 St Mary's Row, so it seems that when Louisa Webley retired Philip Webley bought the business. The 1861 census records Philip and Caroline living at 386 Bristol Road with Thomas W, Philip Jnr and James, and another daughter, Caroline (b.1855). Philip's niece, Mary Draper (b.1858) was recorded and the family employed a domestic servant. Philip described himself, Thomas W and Philip Jnr as gun and pistol implement manufacturers. James was described as a merchant's clerk. On 15 August 1861 P and T W Webley registered patent No. 2033 for a pinion adjusted leaf sight. From about 1863 up to the First World War, the firm made rook rifles for Holland & Holland. From the 1890s they supplied magazine rifles. In 1863 and 1864 the firm's address was given as 83-84 Weaman Street, but from late 1864 to 1875 their address was 84 Weaman Street. On 7 May 1864 a design was registered for a lever rod for extracting cartridge cases from repeating arms (No. 4364). On 4 August 1865 T W Webley took out provisional patent No.2030 for a centre-fire cartridge with a dummy pin which acted as a loaded indicator, and for conversions of pin-fire guns and revolvers to centre-fire, and on 17 November 1866 he patented a spring assisted rotary under-lever (Henry Jones type) for a pin-fire gun (No. 3022). In 1867 the firm made a double action .442 revolver which was adopted by the Royal Irish Constabulary and proved very popular (see Further Info below). In 1869 T W Webley became a guardian of the Birmingham Proof House. On 21 May 1870 P and T W Webley patented a laterally sliding barrel action (No. 1474). The 1871 census records Philip as a 48 year old gun maker again living at 386 Bristol Road but only with Caroline, a cook and a housemaid. Thomas William was recorded living at The Uplands, Northfield, Edgbaston with his wife, Emma (b.1840 in Thrapston, Northamptonshire) and his brother Henry and two servants. Thomas described himself as a 30 year old master gun maker, Henry was described as a 24 year old gun maker's clerk. By 1874 the firm had a showroom in London at an unknown address. In 1875 the firm expanded into 82-84 and 88-89 Weaman Street. In 1877 the firm bought the business of Tipping & Lawden at Constitution Hill, Birmingham. Plain quality guns were sold under the Tipping & Lawden name for several years. The Webley's London showroom was recorded at 17 Woodstock Street, just off New Bond Street and Oxford Street. On 9 January 1879 a patent was registered for a cartridge loading machine (No. 6123). On 8 May 1880 T W Webley patented a top strap intercepting sear safety for a trigger plate action (No. 1860). The thumb slide had a vertical rod engaging with a lever pivoted behind the tumbler which blocked the tumbler. In the 1881 census, Philip Webley (aged 68) was recorded as still living at 386 Bristol Road with Caroline. James, aged 38 and described as a commercial traveller, was living with them. Philip described himself as a gun, rifle and revolver manufacturer employing 150 men and 10 boys. The 1881 census records Henry Webley as a 34 year old widower and firearms manufacturer living on his own apart from two servants at 6 Vicarage Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham. Henry's first wife was Julia Harriss whose brother was J Harriss of Trulock & Harriss of Dublin). At some time he moved to London to take care of the London end of the business leaving Thomas William to manage the factory. The 1881 census records T W Webley as a 43 year old gun and rifle maker living at Selly Park, Northfield, Edgbaston, with his wife Emma (aged 41), a cook, housemaid and under-housemaid. On 24 November 1881 T W and Henry Webley patented a revolver extractor with a spring loaded retractor and an extractor for a drop-down action (No. 5143). On 29 March 1882 patent No. 1511 by T W Webley covered a top rib extension and sliding bolt fitting into a notch in the rear of the tumbler. More important was the Webley Screw Grip patent (No. 3053) of 26 June 1882 by T W Webley and T Brain an opening cocking breech loading action. The top lever spindle was threaded and mated with a matching thread in the action so that turning the top lever caused the top lever to act on a stepped extension and the turning spindle moved the under-bolt. This patent also covered another triple grip mechanism in which the under-bolt was raised at the rear and this raised a lever which withdrew a bolt which engaged with an extended top rib. The cocking mechanism covered by the patent used sliding V springs as push rods to cock the tumblers. One projection for each barrel projected from the barrel flats and on opening the gun these pushed back the springs. The lower limbs of the springs acted via an anti-friction roller on the curved front face of the tumblers and in doing so the springs were put under tension but in this position the gun could not fire. In order to fire, an external lever on a transverse rod was turned and this rod acted on the upturned top limbs of the springs to move the springs forward so that the lower limbs put the necessary firing pressure on the front curves of the tumblers. Obviously, this mechanism was an effective safety device. On 1 February 1883 Henry Webley registered patent No 542 for an improvement to W E Gadge's patent No. 3313 of 29 July 1881. On 20 March 1883 T W Webley, George Bouckley and Edwin Charles Hodges registered patent No. 1463 for cocking and safety mechanisms for drop-down barrel guns. The safety comprised a coil spring loaded rod the front end fitting into a slot in the tumbler axis thus preventing it from rotating. The rear end fitted into an inclined slot in the trigger blade. On 31 March 1885 Henry Webley and J Carter patented a side-lever operated stirrup barrel latch for a revolver (No. 4070). In 1886 the firm opened additional premises in Slaney Street. On 15 February 1888 T W Webley patented an ejector mechanism operated by the cocking lever (No. 2294). In this patent the cocking lever had a spring loaded cam on the tumbler and the lever had a slotted pivot behind the hinge pin so that when a lock had been fired and the gun was opened the lever was in the forward position and tripped the coil sprung rocking sear. On 3 November 1888 T W Webley patented muzzle rifling (No. 15894) to compete with the Fosbery/Holland & Holland Paradox rifling. This Webley rifling differed from the Fosbery patent by having straight grooves along the barrels and twisted rifling only in the last 5 inches. Not many of these guns were made. In 1888 the London showroom moved 60 Queen Victoria Street. On 24 March 1888 Philip Webley died. At the time he was living at 64 Bristol Road. Caroline and Thomas William were his executors, his will was proved at £13,609.7s.10 1/2d. The new London showroom was managed by W J Jeffery. It seems he may have taken advantage of Philip Webley's poor health and leased the property in his own name. Whatever the terms of the employment agreement between Jeffery and the firm, Thomas and Henry immediately terminated it and left W J Jeffery to occupy the premises. It seems the firm had no London Offices or showroom after 1888 but in 1893 a new showroom was opened at 78 Shaftesbury Avenue and Henry probably moved to London to run it. The shop manager was H J Harriss (Julia Harriss' brother and Henry's brother-in-law?). The 1891 census recorded Caroline Webley aged 73 living on the south coast at a boarding house at 67 Warrior Square. She obviously moved there for the sake of her health, but died in April of that year. Henry does not seem to have been recorded in the census but Thomas William and Emma were recorded again at 2 The Uplands. In 1893 Thomas and Henry Webley bought the business of Joseph Lang & Son. Lang had been buying P Webley & Son guns for some time but they were broke and unable to pay their debts. On 22 February 1896 Henry Webley, aged 46, married 25 year old Flora Macdonald. At the time he was living at 59 St James' Street. She was born in Cardigan in 1871 and was the daughter of a colonel in the Royal Marines. On 1 March 1897 T W and H Webley patented a falling block action (No. 5388), but the most significant date in 1897 was 21 October when the firm bought W & C Scott & Son. Prior to this take-over, P Webley & Sons had bought the firm of Richard Ellis & Son. The businesses combined under the name on of Webley & Scott Revolver & Arms Co Ltd. Webley had been Birmingham's largest manufacturers of revolvers for some time and Scott had been the biggest manufacturers of sporting guns. After the take-over, guns were produced under both the Webley and the Scott names. The P Webley & Sons name was used up to 1920 (cheaper guns being sold under the names "Charles Webley" and "Thomas Parker"). One gun (serial No. 68041) has been seen engraved Webley & Scott Arms Co Ltd but this was probably an engraver's mistake as no other record of this firm is known. T W Webley was appointed managing director of the new company, Lord Ebury was chairman. Henry Webley formally retired at this time due to ill health. Frank T Murray was company secretary. It seems the company expanded to occupy 81-91 Weaman Street, there are conflicting reports about when the Slaney Street premises were given up, in 1897 or 1900, and one report states that up to 1900 the company still occupied 13 St Mary's Row. In 1898 T W Webley put Lang & Hussey Ltd (who had taken over from Joseph Lang & Son Ltd) into liquidation and registered another company with the same name. The shareholders were Henry and T W Webley. In 1899 the former Scott showroom at 10 Great Castle Street, Regent Circus (Oxford Circus) London was closed and Webley's premises at 78 Shaftesbury Avenue were used. On 13 October 1900, Webley & Scott Revolver & Arms Co and W J Whiting registered patent No 18225 for a locking spring modification to the Fosbery automatic revolver. The 1901 census records Thomas William and Emma on holiday at the Imperial Hotel, Torquay, with a lady's maid. Henry and Flora were recorded living in a flat at 97 Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea with a butler, a lady's maid, a cook and a housemaid. On 15 March 1902 Webley & Scott Revolver & Arms Co and T W Webley registered patent No. 6365 for a falling block rifle mechanism. On 19 September 1902 Webley & Scott Revolver & Arms Co and W J Whiting registered patent No. 20430 for a same position trigger mechanism for single or double action revolvers. On 4 September 1903 Webley & Scott Revolver & Arms Co and W J Whiting registered patent No. 19032 for a semi-automatic pistol with a recoiling barrel and breech block. On 13 February 1904 Thomas William Webley died at The Uplands. He left a personal estate valued at £35,325.4s.1d. Frank T Murray became managing director of the company. On 16 February 1904 Webley & Scott Revolver & Arms Co and W J Whiting registered patent No. 3820 for another semi-automatic pistol with a recoiling barrel and breech block. On 17 August 1904 Webley & Scott Revolver & Arms Co and W J Whiting registered patent No. 17856 for a lock on the slide of a semi-automatic pistol to hold it open when the magazine was empty. On 17 November 1904 W J Whiting registered patent No. 25028 for improvements to patent No. 3820 of 1904. On 13 May 1905 W J Whiting registered patent No. 10072 for a combination coil spring for a revolver. On 4 August 1905 W J Whiting registered patent No. 15982 for an improved semi-automatic pistol mechanism and safety which locked the hammer at half cock. In 1906 the company was renamed Webley & Scott Ltd. On 11 June 1906 W J Whiting registered patent No. 13570 for an automatic pistol mechanism. On 4 May 1907 W J Whiting registered patent No. 10377 for coil spring cocking of hammers. On or about 4 November 1908 Webley & Scott and W J Whiting registered patent No. 23200 for a safety block for a semi-automatic pistol. On 4 September 1908 Webley & Scott Ltd and W J Whiting registered patent No. 18567 for a semi-automatic pistol with a fixed barrel which referred to patent No. 23200/1908. On 12 September 1908 W J Whiting reportedly registered patent No. 19177 for a semi-automatic pistol action which locked the slide when the magazine was empty. This patent number has not been confirmed and a patent No. 2570 reportedly 12 September 1908 which referred to a modification of patent No. 15982 (not found) of 1905 has not been confirmed. In 1909 Webley revolvers and automatic pistols became standard issue for the armed forces and the manufacture of all shotguns and rifles was moved to the former Scott factory at The Premier Gun Works, 123 Lancaster Street; the enlarged former Webley factory only produced pistols and revolvers and other small items. Production of sporting guns at the Premier Works amounted to about 2,500 per annum in the period 1897-1909, and 2,000 in the period 1910-1913. Prior to the merger with W & C Scott & Son, P Webley & Son had produced rifles using Martini, Mauser, Mannlicher and Springfield actions, they also produced a "W & RC" rifle in various calibres. They produced sidelock shotguns in 5 grades that they called the "W & R" models. These used the Webley & Brain patent and the Rogers patent. John Thomas Rogers and John Rogers were action filers at 78 Lower Tower Street, they registered patent No. 397 covering a cocking mechanism widely used by Webley. They also produced "Rogers" and "London Pattern" models, and boxlocks that they called the "A & W" (51, 52, 54, 2nd Special and 1st Special grades), these used the Anson & Deeley action and Webley & Brain top fastener; these were produced up to 1940. They also produced a "K" model boxlock shotgun in three grades up to 1921. In 1904 a Webley employee, J Carter had registered a patent for a single trigger. This became known as the Webley Duplex Single Trigger as one could use the front trigger to fire the right and then the left barrel, or the rear trigger to fire the left and then the right barrel. The complication was that a slide had to be operated to switch the trigger from either "Ordinary" double trigger operation to "Combination". On 23 January 1909 W J Whiting registered patent No. 1664 for a magazine catch for semi-automatic pistols. On 15 October 1909 W J Whiting registered patent No. 23564 for a semi-automatic grip safety which referred to 1664/1909. On 21 February 1910 W J Whiting registered patent No. 4213 for a combined cocking lever and compression chamber for an air weapon. In 1910 the firm made it's "Proprietary Hammerless Boxlock", this used the Webley top extension Screw Grip patented in 1882. It was later named the Model 400 and became available for a time in three grades, production continued until 1946. This model with its top extension was the first to take advantage of improvements in accurate machining of metal parts so that guns could be made on what was called the "interchangeable principle". On 1 September 1910 W J Whiting registered patent No. 20367 for ejectors which used twin spring guide rods in automatic guns. At the same time he registered patent No. 15783 for a side lever on a semi-automatic pistol to release the magazine hold-back. On 1 January 1912 W J Whiting registered patent No. 201 for a rear sight for use on a long range automatic pistol. On 14 May 1912 W J Whiting registered patent No. 11418 for a hammer block for a semi-automatic pistol to prevent damage when dry-firing. In about 1912/1914 the company made a trap-shooting shotgun with a raised ventilated rib, a mid-sight, Monte Carlo stock with pistol grip, and a beavertail fore-end. On 30 January 1913 W J Whiting registered patent No. 2468 for a safety mechanism for semi-automatic pistols to prevent discharge if no magazine was inserted. On 19 March 1914 W J Whiting registered three patents, No. 6491 for a trigger guard lock for a semi-automatic pistol which referred to his patent No. 15982/1905, No. 6955 for a firing pin and spring modification to his patent No 6956/1914, and No. 6956 for a safety grip and safety to prevent firing of a semi-automatic pistol if no magazine was inserted. On 30 June 1914 W J Whiting registered patent No. 15636 for a magazine removed safety for a semi-automatic pistol. In 1914 the company introduced their Model 100 single barrel semi-hammerless shotgun production of which continued until about 1975. This was based on William Baker's patent No. 6223 of 1910 but in 1922 and 1924 improvements were patented by D V Johnstone and John William Fearn. On 24 October 1914 the company registered patent No. 21473 for a safety which locked the trigger on removal of the magazine of a semi-automatic pistol. From 1914 to 1929 the company made a single-barrel trap gun. The start of the First World War in 1914 heralded big changes for the company which was heavily involved in the war effort in particular, in making the Mark IV .455 calibre revolvers and Verey Pistols. Henry Webley rejoined the board in 1915 for the duration of the war; at this time he was also Chairman of Joseph Lang & Sons. William J Whiting was appointed joint managing director in 1915, he resigned in 1920 (his son worked for Webley & Scott Ltd and at some time was also appointed works manager). W J Whiting's last patent was No. 151196 of 21 January 1920 which was for another magazine removed safety. Production of sporting guns fell dramatically in the early years of the war and ceased from August 1917 to March 1919. On 30 October 1920 Henry Webley died. At the time he was living at 31 Albert Hall Mansions, Kensington. Probate was granted to Charles Wyld, managing director of Fortnum & Mason, and Percy Gerald Dudley Bell, Chartered Accountant. Henry left a personal estate valued at £30,269.19s.2d. In 1920 the making of guns under the name of P Webley & Sons ceased, and the Premier Gun Works at 123 Lancaster Street closed (the Weaman Street premises acquiring the name Premier Gun Works). The lack of demand in the gun trade meant that the company sought other engineering work, in particular from the fast developing automotive industry. In 1921 the London showroom was moved from Shaftesbury Avenue to smaller premises at 55 Victoria Street. On 3 February 1922 Webley & Scott Ltd and J W Fearn registered patents No. 192914 for a spiral spring top lever. In 1922 Douglas Vaughan Johnstone became managing director. On 12 September 1922 D V Johnstone and J W Fearn registered patent No. 199992 for a coil mainspring and cocking lever on a top lever operated single barrel gun. On the same day they registered patent No. 200429 for an ejector. It was in 1922 that the Model 300 was introduced. It was discontinued in 1939 when the model 300A commenced its 7 year life. This, like the model 400 had a top extension but it used a Greener type cross-bolt. At this time the production of guns was running at about 1,000 per annum (2,000 in 1920 and 1924). Production of Scott's designs dropped substantially and over the next 5 years only about 150 were made. In the following 10 years only about 50 Scott guns were produced and manufacture of them stopped in 1935. On 6 July 1923 D V Johnstone and J W Fearn registered patent No. 217441 for a V spring operated version of their single barrel gun covered by patent No. 199992 of 1922. On 1 December 1923 F Clarke, D V Johnstone and J W Fearn registered patent No. 231557 for an air pistol or air cane piston compressed by a screw mechanism. On 21 December 1923 D V Johnstone and J W Fearn registered patent No. 219872 for an air pistol with a forward hinged barrel cocking mechanism. On 26 January 1924 D V Johnstone and J W Fearn registered patent No. 231270 for a metal and leather barrel seal for an air weapon. On 19 February 1924 they registered patent No. 229851 for a trigger locking safety for an air pistol. On 3 May 1924 they registered patent No. 237657 for an over / under action with side lugs interlocking with recesses in the barrels. On 30 September 1924 they registered patent No. 246540 for an air weapon rear sight with two adjustable plates. On 3 May 1926 they registered patent No. 252651 for an air cylinder sealed by multiple split rings. On 3 May 1929 Webley & Scott Ltd and D V Johnstone registered patent No. 326703 for an air pistol with variable cocking pressure. This was the final step in the creation of the famous Webley air pistol. How many were made in one form or another is not known. Between 1925 and 1946 the lightweight game model 500 (grade 2) shotgun (also called "Proprietary" probably because it had the Webley top extension and Screw Grip fitted to the model 400) was produced. The model 600, a basic non-ejector, was introduced in 1927 and produced until 1946. Various versions, 601 (1937), 602 (1937), 603 (1938) and 604 (1939) were made some of which had top extensions. In 1925 a few experimental over / under shotguns were produced but they never went into full production. The experiment was repeated in 1930 but again, probably due partly to the depression, they never saw the light of day. In 1928 T W Horton was appointed chairman. In that year the 55 Victoria Street premises were closed and the company operated only from Birmingham. In 1929 production dropped to 400 guns; in 1932 it was 100 guns but then it rose gradually to about 400 guns in 1938. In 1932 A C Griffiths was appointed chairman. In 1934 H W Smallwood was appointed general manager. The production of W & C Scott sporting guns ceased in 1939 (apart from one gun made in 1949 and a consignment of 48 boxlock shotguns made for Abercrombie & Fitch in New York in 1964). The production of Webley & Scott sporting guns continued until June 1940 when the company increased the manufacture of Mark IV .38 calibre revolvers and flare pistols. Precisely what other war work the company engaged in is not known. It seems the company acquired two additional factories during the Second World War but their precise addresses are not known; it is likely that they were not in Birmingham as the company was classified as a strategic industry and the danger from bombing was too great. In December 1945 the production of boxlock shotguns started again, but rifles were no longer made by the company and sidelock shotgun production temporarily ceased. "Standard" and "Special" models of shotgun were made, but these were replaced in 1947 by the model 700 in 12 and 16 bore. By 1949 production had reached 1,000 guns per annum. During the 1950s and 1960s the company made their bolt action shotgun in .410, .22 and .360 (9mm) calibres. In the 1950s they also made boxlock and falling-block guns for Holland & Holland. W C Scott & Son had been a major supplier of guns to Holland & Holland from the mid-1800s; from about 1919 these boxlocks were usually sold with "Shot and Regulated by Holland & Holland" engraved on the barrel or rib. In 1952 Eric G Bewley became general manager, he had been company secretary since 1930 and was appointed a director of the firm in 1957. He was a guardian of the Birmingham Proof House from about 1930 until about 1967, and chairman from 1949 to 1957. He was chairman of the Gunmakers Association in 1950 and Chairman of the Long Sufferers Association in 1965. In 1957 two extra models were introduced, these were the 701 and 702 which had more engraving and better wood. The 702 was the top of the range, not the 701 as some reports state; this oft-repeated mistake arose due to a researcher obtaining prices for the 701 and 702 at different times and between the frequent rises in prices. Variations including 20 bore and 28 bore models, were made for export to the USA. The number of guns produced by the firm at this time and during the 1960's and early 1970's was about 1000 per annum of which more than half were exported to the USA. In 1958 Webley & Scott Ltd were taken over by R H Windsor Ltd and, when the Weaman Street factory was demolished to make way for the Birmingham Inner City Ring Road, they moved to Park Lane, Handsworth, Birmingham. In 1960 Arusha Industries Ltd took over R H Windsor Ltd and the enlarged company was named General & Engineering Industries Ltd. In 1965 Webley & Scott Ltd bought W W Greener Ltd. From 1965 to 1967 the company made 275 guns under the Greener name, mostly "Empire de Luxe" and "Empire" models with aluminium alloy actions. Most of the remainder were "DH40" and "Blue Rock" boxlocks. The Greener GP single barrel shotgun was produced from 1965 to 1979. In 1966 a small number (27) of "Conquest" or "Model 1100" guns were made, these were based on the Rogers bar-action sidelock. From 1970 to 1978 the company imported Over/Under shotguns from Beretta in Italy. These guns were finished by Webley & Scott and named either "Model 900" (1346 in number)or "Model 901" (11 in number), the latter having better wood and engraving. In 1973 the Harris & Sheldon Group bought Webley & Scott Ltd but within a short time sales and production started to fall, declining to about 350 guns per annum by 1979. In 1978 and 1979 the company imported a few Kromson and Arkrom Over/Under shotguns. In 1979 Webley & Scott Ltd ceased shotgun production but continued to make air rifles and air pistols at Park Lane. Harris & Sheldon invested £250,000 in a new company, W & C Scott (Gunmakers) Ltd which was established at the Premier Works, Tame Road, Witton, Birmingham. The cessation of shotgun production was mainly due to the high costs of gunmaking in the UK compared with Spain, Italy and Japan; the intention of the new company was to produce medium and top quality double barrelled shotguns, supply the trade with barrels and actions, and repair all makes of shotgun. Patrick G Whatley was the managing director of the new company, his staff numbered 32 people a majority of whom were former Webley & Scott Ltd employees. Out of about 500 shotguns per annum produced by all UK makers in the following 12 months, about 100 guns were produced by the new company. The basic models were the "Bowood", the "Chatsworth" (sideplates) and the "Kinmount". Derivations of these were made for the US market these being the "Texan" (Bowood) and the "Crown" (Kinmount). In 1983 a sidelock was produced in standard (discontinued in 1984) and de luxe qualities, this was named the "Blenheim". The company also produced guns for the Orvis company (the Orvis KHP). The main problem experienced by W & C Scott (Gunmakers) Ltd during the ensuing years was the relatively high price of their products compared with imported guns, and lack of a significant export market. In 1985 W & C Scott (Gunmakers) Ltd and Webley & Scott Ltd were sold to Holland & Holland who had a long held reputation for very high quality guns, an established export market, and a desire to manufacture boxlock guns for which they required additional manufacturing capacity. Webley & Scott appears to have ceased operations but W & C Scott (Gunmakers) Ltd appears to have continued operating under that name making the "Cavalier" model shotgun. In 1991 Holland & Holland decided to centralise all their manufacturing at their Harrow Road factory in London and the Birmingham factory was closed. In 1993 the company was bought by Scalemead Arms, a distribution company owned by David Pickering. Airgun manufacture was resumed and the company moved to Frankley Industrial Park, Tay Road, Rednal, Birmingham, West Midlands B45 0PA. In November 2005 Webley & Scott Ltd appointed administrators to manage the company and find a buyer for the business. In 2006 a buyer was found, Airgunsport Ltd bought the business but details are not known. A company named Webley International Ltd continues to operate as a supplier of airgun accessories, imported airguns, blank firing guns and other gun accessories. The shotgun archives of Webley and Scott were sold to Gallyon & Sons at auction in London on 5 December 2002. The price paid was £8,000. Internet Gun Club has some details of serial numbers which we have not published. Please put details of your gun and its serial number in the appropriate forum and we will reply with what information we have. Further information is available from Gallyon & Sons. Other: After producing the Royal Irish Constabulary revolver in 1867, almost all of Webley's subsequent revolvers were of a top-break design such as the British Bull Dog (1872) which was available in .44 short rimfire, .442 and .450 calibers, and later in .320 and .380. Webley made some of the double action revolvers now called Webley .577 Boxer revolvers. These were made by Webley and others under licence from William Tranter. In the 1880s Webley developed the Mark 1 "WG" Army Model in 455/476 (.476 Enfield). It was manufactured in .450, .455 Webley, and .476 calibre and founded a family of revolvers adopted by the British Army, Royal Navy, and police constabularies from 1887 to 1918. The Mark VI (No. 1 Mark VI after 1927) was the most widely-produced of their revolvers, 300,000 were made during the first World War. In 1885 Lieutenant Colonel George Vincent Fosbery VC (Retd) sold his patent No. 7568 for his Paradox gun to Holland & Holland. In turn they had the guns made by Philip Webley & Son, and possibly others. In 1898 Lieutenant Colonel George Vincent Fosbery approached Thomas Webley to develop and build his self-cocking or automatic revolver. Heavy recoil is a problem with pistols, and Fosbery sought to use the recoil to cock the hammer and rotate the cylinder and to reduce recoil in the process. The barrel and cylinder slid backwards on the frame. He had made several prototypes based on the Colt 1873 single action model. William John Whiting was manager of Webley's revolver department (later appointed works manager then joint managing director) and he was given responsibility for putting the Fosbery revolver into production although he was primarily known for his work with automatic pistols which were then becoming popular. The Webley-Fosbery was shown at the July 1900 Bisley Meeting and was highly praised for its lack of recoil and steadiness of aim. Two of the testers had highest possible scores and Petty Officer Larcombe of HMS Wildfire won the self-loader match with a Webley-Fosbery. The pistols were tested by the military in England and the USA but were rejected as the sliding mechanism was deemed too likely to succumb to dust and grit in the field. The revolver was not a commercial success partly because of the new popularity of the "automatic pistol" and the restrictions introduced in the 1903 Pistols Act, but it was popular with target shooters. About 4237 were made, production ceased in 1924. In 1909 the company started to make semi-automatic pistols, their .32 calibre was adopted by London's Metropolitan Police in 1911. A .38 calibre version was used by the Royal Navy during World War II. As P Webley & Son, the firm is known to have sold cartridges for a short period. Amongst the awards won by the company were: Medal at the Dublin Exhibition 1872 Medal at the Vienna Exhibition 1873 Medal at the Philadelphia Exhibition 1876 Medal at the Sydney Exhibition 1880 Medal at the Calcutta Exhibition 1883 Medal at the Zurich Exhibition 1892. Semi-automatic pistols were just beginning to appear when Colonel Fosbery (1832 - 1907) devised a revolver that cocked the hammer and rotated the cylinder by sliding the action, cylinder, and barrel assembly back on the frame. The prototype was a modified Colt Single Action Army revolver. Fosbery patented his invention August 16, 1895 and further improvements were patented in June and October 1896. Fosbery took his design to P. Webley & Son of Birmingham. P. Webley & Son, which merged with W.C. Scott & Sons and Richard Ellis & Son in 1897 to form the Webley & Scott Revolver and Arms Co., was the primary manufacturer of service pistols for the British Army as well as producing firearms for civilian use. Webley further developed the design and the Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver was introduced at the matches at Bisley of July 1900.The revolver was initially made in .455 calibre for the British service cartridge, and later in .38 ACP. While the .455 version had a standard 6-round cylinder, the .38 high velocity (.38 Colt ACP) version had eight chambers and could be loaded by a circular full-moon clip. The .38 version had a shorter cylinder, and thus shorter recoil stroke. Some were made with the short frame in .455 caliber. A variety of modifications led to the production of 6 different models, Marks I through VI.The Webley-Fosbery quickly proved popular among target-shooters. Because the trigger mechanism did not rotate the cylinder, shots were smooth and consistent, permitting rapid and accurate shooting. Walter Winans, a famous contemporary target shooter, preferred the Webley-Fosbery and in 1902 he used it to place six shots in a two inch bull's-eye at 12 paces in seven seconds. Using a Prideaux speedloader he was able to fire twelve shots into a three inch bull's-eye in approximately 15 seconds. Recent research using a .455 short frame Model in Switzerland has achieved a five-shot 8" group at 10 meters in 1.27 seconds. Though Webley viewed this weapon as an ideal sidearm for cavalry troops, the Webley-Fosbery was never adopted as an official government sidearm. Though, many were privately purchased by British officers prior to and during World War I, it being chambered for the .455 service cartridge. Reports suggested that it was more susceptible to jamming in wartime conditions than the Service Webleys. Furthermore it was commonly believed that the Webley-Fosbery required an absolutely rigid arm in order to function since when fired while held loosely the cylinder may not cycle properly, although in fact it cycles properly even when held very loosely and with a bent and relaxed arm. The revolver may be recocked manually but this requires pulling the entire action-cylinder-barrel assembly back across the frame, a two-handed operation that makes the Webley-Fosbery an awkward single-action revolver. For the first shot, it is necessary to use the free hand to cock the Fosbery. This can be done by either cocking the hammer, or to pull the whole assembly rearwards to cock the hammer and rotate the first round in front of the hammer. Production of the Webley-Fosbery ceased between 1915 and 1918, with a total production of less than 5000. However the pistol could be found in Webley's catalogues until 1939. (Ref. ‘Webley revolvers’ by Bruce + Reinhart, ‘Pistols of the world’ by Hogg and Weeks p275, Internet Gun Club)
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Boston City Council Election 2015:Murphy Touts Experience, Record on the Campaign Trail
by Times Staff • October 29, 2015 • 1 Comment
Councilor Stephen Murphy is one of the more visible councilors when it comes to attending community events, fundraisers or civic meetings, whether it be in Eastie or his home of Hyde Park, but the work of the life-long councilor is often best seen in between the lines – that being line items in the City Budget.
Murphy, who was first elected in 1997, is currently running for re-election to gain one of the four at-Large seats up for grabs in a five-person field. In a recent interview, he said he has always been a councilor who looked for creative ways to save money – being a finance person during his early working years – and give everyone a hand up.
As such, Murphy is focusing on his experience as he campaigns, pointing to the little and big things he has done to help the common good over the years.
“Growing up in Dorchester, it was part of my upbringing; my parents stressed to always work to be part of the collective good,” he said. “They always said to make sure to give people a hand up when you can and not to be about the ‘you,’ but about the ‘we.’”
Murphy attended Boston Public Schools – the son of a BPS Teacher’s Aide and a Boston Police Officer – and graduated from Boston Latin School. He attended Stone Hill College and worked at a private company in transporting deaf students to a Rhode Island school. After graduation, once receiving a job offer for business administration in Connecticut, the owner of the company matched the Connecticut offer, and Murphy said he went to work in the private sector doing everything from balancing the books to being a marketer.
The sale of that company, however, to an out-of-state firm led him to the State House, where he was a budget analyst for the State Senate.
“I changed direction with my life and went to work in the State Senate as a budget analyst and I began to realize the difference between private finance and public finance,” he said. “I’ve put that knowledge to good use at the Boston City Council on many occasions.”
One example of digging deep for savings, he said, was in 2003 when the state slashed Local Aid payments to Boston – sending the City reeling. Murphy discovered an obscure state law from the late 1950s that required Boston to put millions of dollars into an Overlay Account. Boston was required to put 5 or 6 percent of its budget into such an account, while every other municipality put in 2.5 percent.
Through a petition to the State Legislature, Murphy was able to repeal the requirement and release millions to the City.
“I was able to get us out of that and release $26 million out of the Abatement Trust Fund to the budget for operational needs,” he said. “It helped keep us going without raising revenue – just through legislative and financial tools.”
From the line items, he points to the blinking lights – that is the countdown lights on all Boston crosswalks.
“I was in Washington, D.C., and on Massachusetts Avenue and saw that all the crosswalks had a countdown feature,” he said. “I thought it would be a good idea to bring to Boston and we were able to do that. It’s a great help to everyone, especially the elderly.”
Murphy also pointed to his revised plan and study in 2009 of the various Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreements. He said the late Mayor Tom Menino appointed him to the Committee to study the issue and reform the PILOTs, and they found many that needed updating.
“For example, all of Northeastern University, with all of its buildings, was paying just $18,000 per year to the City,” he said. “My mother’s single-family home had a tax bill of $4,300 per year. They were basically paying the equivalent of four single-family homes for all their land and buildings…We agreed to let them ramp up to the new payments over five years. Overall, it released an additional $30 million for the City. We’re now in year four of the program and about to be all the way ramped up.”
Looking forward, Murphy said the City needs to really consider if it’s reached a level of overdevelopment that is affecting quality of life.
“Moving forward, we have to worry about overdevelopment,” he said. “If you get in a automobile at any time in any place in the city, you are stuck in the city. We are paralyzed with traffic and parking problems. We really have to look at that. You have people circling and driving around and around for an hour to look for a parking spot near their homes.”
Along those same lines, Murphy said he wants to investigate a North Station-South Station Connector using an above ground, solar-powered monorail on the Greenway.
“I’m interested in looking at building a solar-powered monorail to bridge the gap between North and South Station on the Greenway,” he said. “You can privately fund it and get it done with no cost to the taxpayers.”
He also said, moving forward, that he wants to be more efficient in the busing of students within the district and for outside special education placements.
“It’s our duty to do this,” he said. “I don’t shrink from duty. I just think we can be doing it in a much more efficient way.”
Finally, as the chair of the Public Safety Committee, he said he is happy about the way the Boston Police have been conducting community policing.
“The kids see them as more than the police,” he said. “They see them as human beings. The officers play basketball with the kids and go on day trips. There’s an interaction and not on an enforcement level…I believe we’re actually a model for doing it right.”
Murphy is currently a resident of Hyde Park with his wife, Bridget Simmons Murphy.
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what is constant in math
A constant function of a single variable, such as For example x-x is a constant because regardless of the value of x the result will always be 0. Also, take free tests to practice for exams. This is because the derivative measures the rate of change of a function with respect to a variable, and since constants, by definition, do not change, their derivative is hence zero. For example, in the figure given above 36 and 82 are constant because its face value is 36 and 82 respectively. If you were to plot the function on standard graph paper, it would be a straight line, as the change in y (or rate) would be constant. Since c occurs in a term that does not involve x, it is called the constant term of the polynomial and can be thought of as the coefficient of x0. PI is a built-in mathematical function that is part of Math class. For example, –42 is a constant. Math.PI and others are modified with classifiers public. As an adjective, constant means the same as fixed. Fact Check: What Power Does the President Really Have Over State Governors? Pi is an irrational number. = As an adjective, it refers to non-variance (i.e. If f is the constant function such that Having 1 apple will never mean that you have 2 apples or 3 apples. The simple fact it allows negative values tends to prevent bias also, so it’s often preferred to the sigmoid. Also, a term or expression for which any variables cancel out. × This arises due to the fact that the integral operator is the inverse of the differential operator, meaning that the aim of integration is to recover the original function before differentiation. Festival of Sacrifice: The Past and Present of the Islamic Holiday of Eid al-Adha. If you have 1 apple, you always have 1 apple. To acknowledge this, a constant of integration is added to an indefinite integral; this ensures that all possible solutions are included. As an adjective, it refers to non-variance (i.e. A constant rate in math is the absence of acceleration. A constant rate in math is the absence of acceleration. For example, in the equation "6x - 4 = 8," both 4 and 8 are constants because their values are fixed. Example: in "x + 5 = 9", 5 and 9 are constants. Need help with a homework or test question? for every x then, Function or value which does not change during a process, For a narrower treatment related to this subject, see, Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Constant_(mathematics)&oldid=991381256, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles needing additional references from August 2012, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 29 November 2020, at 19:26. It is also known as Archimedes' constant. A constant in math is a fixed value. In this article, we will discuss what variables are, what are constants in Maths, expressions in detail. Subscription is FREE! Access FREE Constant Functions Interactive Worksheets! That is, not changing or moving. ( During the evaluation of a limit, the constant remains the same as it was before and after evaluation. 5 Examples include: In calculus, constants are treated in several different ways depending on the operation. x A constant in a narrower context could be regarded as a variable in a broader context.[1]. {\displaystyle f(x)=5} = In general, a function with a constant rate is one with a second derivative of 0. What Is "term" in Math? What Is a Constant in Math – the Story 5 marzo 2019 Lascia un commento Senza categoria By It’s essential for you to be aware of the basicsof a function. So is 3x + 5 – 3x, which simplifies to just 5. Cc; constant • a quantity having a fixed value that does not change or vary, such as a number. One, and every other number, is always a constant. f Unit Rate Task (CCSS Math 7.RP.2b) This video covers a task in which students are asked to find a constant of proportionality and use it as a unit rate to find the solution. The sum of the values in the right column is 2.7182818284590452353602875 which is "e." For more information on e, visit the the math forum at mathforum.org. The operator (such as "+" or "-") illustrates the function performed to satisfy or solve the equation. As we already know how Java provides us with different functions and allow us to perform various operations. For example, in the figure given above 36 and 82 are constant because its face value is 36 and 82 respectively. Constant. It may be a number on its own or a letter that stands for a fixed number in an equation. Go To Top - Constant Difference Concept If you want us to send you our future Modelmatics eZine that would inform you on the latest article in Teach Kids Math By Model Method, do an easy sign-up below. In mathematics, the word constant can have multiple meanings. For example, the derivative of a constant function is zero. Constants arise in many areas of mathematics, with constants such as e and π occurring in such diverse contexts as geometry, number theory, and calculus. ), The Secret Science of Solving Crossword Puzzles, Racist Phrases to Remove From Your Mental Lexicon. Furthermore, it is a transcendental number. See: Variable In the equation "7x2 - 3x + 6," the number 6 is a constant, whereas 7 is the multiplying coefficient and. The constant of integration is generally written as 'c', and represents a constant with a fixed but undefined value. f What is Constant in Maths? Furthermore, you should not try to use a decimal for π, because the double closest to π may not be directly representable as a fixed decimal expression, or the obvious decimal expression might not be useful. ) Some values occur frequently in mathematics and are conventionally denoted by a specific symbol. A constant in math is a value that doesn't change. Integration of a function of one variable often involves a constant of integration. This math class is included in java.lang package. In Math, something that does not change is called a Constant What is the unit for the dielectric constant? A constant is a value which does not change but stays the same such as in the equation y=2x, 2 is a constant as it stays the same. unchanging with respect to some other value); as a noun, it has two different meanings: For example, a general quadratic function is commonly written as: where a, b and c are constants (or parameters), and x a variable—a placeholder for the argument of the function being studied. For example, let’s say you have the following equation for a power series: f(x) = 3 + 5(0) + 7(0)2 + 9(0)3 + 11(0)4 + …. Such a function always takes the same value (in this case, 5), because its argument does not appear in the expression defining the function. Here’s what I did. 72 The differential of a constant function is zero, as noted above, and the differential operator is a linear operator, so functions that only differ by a constant term have the same derivative. Value of Gravitational constant is 6.674x10-11 m 3 kg-1 s-2 ( Gravitational Constant : Gravitational constant is a empirical physical constant, represented by the symbol G. It is used in the calculation of gravitational force between two bodies. These standard symbols and their values are called mathematical constants. If you were to plot the function on standard graph paper, it would be a straight line, as the change in y (or rate) would be constant. A more explicit way to denote this function is, which makes the function-argument status of x (and by extension the constancy of a, b and c) clear. The Dielectric Constant of a medium does not have a unit because it is a ratio. A constant may be used to define a constant function that ignores its arguments and always gives the same value. "x" is referred to as the variable, not known until the equation is solved. A constant may be used to define a constant function that ignores its arguments and always gives the same value. After teaching the Constant Difference strategy for subtraction to at least six different groups of teachers and students in third and fourth grade over the past month, I think I finally hit on a winning tool: the Number Line app. The constant of integration is usually represented with , or, in the case of a differential equation where there are multiple constants, Since the derivative of any constant is 0, any constants will be "lost" when differentiating. Reference: The mathforum.org As a noun, a term or expression with no variables. What is Constant in Maths? In Algebra, a constant is a number on its own, or sometimes a letter such as a, b or c to stand for a fixed number.
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THE FIELD GUIDE TO A REGENERATIVE ECONOMY
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NEW RESOURCE BANK
REGENERATIVE QUALITIES OF NEW RESOURCE BANK
Views Wealth Holistically / In Right Relationship / Robust Circulatory Flow
The story of a formerly financially troubled California bank that saved itself and thrived by returning to its original values-based mission.
Vince Siciliano became CEO of New Resource Bank in 2009, charged by the bank’s Board not only with turning around what was then a financially troubled bank under intense regulatory scrutiny, but also with recommitting it to the “green” mission upon which it was originally founded. In 2006, the bank had received a community bank charter from the state of California. During its first two years of de novo operation it had experienced serious “mission drift.”
"There was this notion that we were a green bank but there was no concrete strategy to make this real in our lending and operational culture," Vince relates. “Instead during those early years it was all about growth metrics in comparison to a bank called Bridge Bank, which had set the metric for growth in California."
"Mission was important but not necessarily the primary driver for the loans we made," Vince reports, "growing the bank to scale was driving strategy more than mission.”
By 2008, 88 percent of New Resource’s loans were in real estate with few classifiable as “green.” A good portion of them was in danger of slipping into nonperformance in the wake of the financial crisis. As Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mark Finser, a Founder and Board Chairman of RSF Social Finance, recognized the bank was at a critical juncture. It was at that time, Mark notes, "with the backing of the major investors and the Board, I had to step in as Chairman, let the executive team go, hire an executive team that was mission-aligned and committed to the values, and rebuild the board to ensure mission alignment."
When Vince joined the bank, investors fell into two distinct categories. The original founders—among them Triodos Bank and RSF Social Finance—were advocates of “banking with the long view in mind,” and were now eager to double down on the bank’s green mission. However there were still a minority of investors who were looking for fast growth with the goal to sell and cash out in five to seven years at multiples of their original investment. Having worked for over 35 years in community banking, Vince had witnessed first hand the damage that this “grow to sell” strategy had wrought on local economies. He and the Board also knew that the hypergrowth trajectory that these small group of investors were expecting was incompatible with a truly sustainable, holistic-value banking model.
“One of the first things Vince did when he came on board was to get really clear about our mission, vision and values,” Stephanie Meade, director of marketing and culture, relates.
Vince and the Board also made a formal commitment to the mission when New Resource became a founding member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV) in 2009, a membership organization of 28 banks globally who share the mission of values-aligned banking. The GABV network leverages $100 billion in combined assets and 20 million clients globally.
GABV banks follow the principles of sustainable banking, which include a commitment to the triple-bottom-line, banking in the real economy (versus financial economy), a client-centered approach, and a focus on transparency and long-term resiliency. “The GABV is a key network and partner for us,” explains Vince Siciliano. “It is powerful to be part of a global movement for sustainable banking and together be setting a standard for how banking should be done.”
Under the reconstituted Board's urging and Vince's operational leadership, the bank moved to adopt a 100 percent mission lending approach. Loans were no longer made to businesses that did not fall into its mission-aligned target markets. At the same time, Mark as Chairman and Vince as CEO started reaching out to shareholders, spelling out clearly the renewed and long-term commitment to the mission. Those that were already mission aligned were very supportive; those that were not have generally sold their shares over time.
The recession, as it turned out, offered up a silver lining to New Resource, as many “quick flip” bank investors divested across the board from the now-hobbled banking sector. Even sustainably focused Generation Investment Management, which had purchased a ten percent ownership in New Resource in 2008, sold its stock as it became apparent that the bank was not going to produce an IRR sufficient to meet the fund’s investment targets.
“A number of shareholders self-selected out when it became clear that we were not going to be a quick growth and potential merger bank,” Stephanie reports. “We were consciously selective about reaching out to new potential shareholders who shared our values.” The bank’s share price dropped during the recession and then gradually recovered, but, in line with many community banks, it has never made a full recovery to pre-recession levels. It is currently trading at about book value. Vince explains:
“We are an example of ‘true impact investing’; we want to be very clear with shareholders that we are a triple-bottom-line bank and help them understand and expect triple bottom line returns; namely, what is the impact we are having on building the new economy?
How are we advancing environmental protection and restoration? What is the impact on our communities and the issues they struggle with relative to access to healthcare, education, good jobs, etc.?”
The living wall behind one of the New Resource Bank's seating areas. The wall is constructed of recycled wood and all furniture is Greenguard certified and contains no flame retardants. The offices are LEED Gold certified.
A New Strategy for Investing in Mission
Under Vince’s leadership the bank and the board set about creating a formal strategy to align its lending strategy with its green banking mission. Five general categories were targeted: Clean energy, including renewables and energy efficiency; green real estate; nonprofits with social and environmental impact charters; natural and organic products, as well as a more general catch-all category for sustainable companies.
But often, beyond the above broadly targeted groups, more art than science was (and continues to be) applied to the client vetting process. “Most of the time ‘you know it when you see it’” says Vince, “But it is not only when the client is making something green or more efficient. It can be a drycleaner or a restaurant or a consulting firm that is operating from a heartfelt sustainable orientation. So we look at how they treat their employees, what do they do for the community, how do they source, what is their carbon footprint? If all those things are important to them and it is evident in the culture they build, that will be a mission fit for us.”
On the other hand, Vince notes, a company that produces a “green” product is not automatically a 100-percent mission-aligned one. “For example a company that runs around doing energy retrofits for large buildings or making organic cheese doesn’t necessarily have green in its DNA; it could just be a business for them.” Still New Resource might consider doing business with them. “We would bank them with the encouragement that they move on to internalizing sustainability into their DNA,” Stephanie says.
“We don’t just want to preach to the choir and bank everyone like us, but also move our customers along that spectrum of sustainability.”
Principles of Exclusion
The bank has recently adopted the following broad principles that guide its lending decisions:
1) We will not lend to businesses or organizations that incite hatred or promote exclusion.
2) We will not lend to businesses or organizations that support or promote harm to others.
3) We will not lend to businesses or organizations that are not considerate and respectful of their impact on their environment, the community they serve, and their stakeholders.
The bank probably would not lend to an oil or gas company if the purpose of the loan were to facilitate or expand ongoing operations. However, Bill Peterson, New Resource’s chief credit officer reports the bank might consider financing the development of alternative fuels for that company. “We run into these kinds of dilemmas from time to time,” he elaborates. “Do we support incremental change from within an industry/company that has previously been harmful or indifferent to the planet and/or communities? How do we advocate/impact change if we can’t help them?
As a bank, we have decided that it is important to help drive sustainability to both early ‘learners’ as well as to sustainability ‘champions.’ We want to continue to help many different kinds of companies become thoughtful about their economic, social, and environmental impacts.”
Team building around holistic values is a New Resource Bank priority. Above, employees celebrating bike-to-work day in May.
The B Lab Quick Impact Assessment
Vince says that while bank lending officers have become highly skilled at the initial customer vetting process and provide uniquely helpful business advice to young companies, they are often less comfortable playing the role of sustainability advisors to their customers. They are, however, able to help determine where opportunities to improve corporate sustainability exist and direct their customers to resources. A new client survey is giving those lenders better tools to engage in conversations around sustainability practices with their clients.
Beginning in 2016, the bank began transitioning from an in-house-designed “sustainability assessment” customer survey to B Lab’s “Quick Impact Assessment.” “We did this for a couple of reasons,” Stephanie explains. “First, we feel it is beneficial for us to move toward more standardization in the field of impact measurement versus everyone using separate measurement systems.” The B Lab survey allows clients who are already Certified B Corps or already using the B Lab as a self-assessment tool to transfer that assessment data to the bank rather than fill out a new survey. The tool also offers alternative questions tailored to a company’s size and sector and allows the company surveyed to see how it has scored on each question—whether above, average, or below average. Most importantly, it provides a dropdown menu with suggested best practices and exemplary case studies when a customer is scoring at a low level in a particular area, or wants to improve its score. The company then has an opportunity to set goals for the year ahead.
About 30 New Resource customers have completed the survey thus far, and it is being rolled out to all new and existing borrowers over the coming year. “We hope to have a conversation with our clients once they take the survey to review the areas in which they are doing well and where they need improvement,” Stephanie reports. “We can then talk about how we can support them in setting targets or introduce them to resources to help in reaching them.”
The Impact Assessment will not only help New Resource measure the sustainability of its clients, but also the bank’s overall impact.
Employees representing the bank at a Climate Leadership march in Oakland take a stand against fracking.
“We want to be able to know that we are fulfilling our mission and to measure our impact.” New Resource Bank defined four areas over the past year that it believes are its primary impacts: environmental protection, health and wellness, education and community empowerment and sustainable commerce. Stephanie notes, “Through our new assessment, we would like to quantify our impact; for example, what percent of our customers work in underserved areas, or how much greenhouse gas are we avoiding by financing the clean energy clients that we do.”
The Road to Mission-Aligned Banking
Vince names three fundamental prerequisites for banking success, based on his experience helping to steer New Resource onto a truly mission-aligned course. First, the mission must be embraced in an authentic way by leadership and ownership. Second, the bank’s mission must be embedded into its corporate culture at every level. Third, a clear strategy must be articulated to deploy the mission, with all the banks resources pressed into that service. Finally, he maintains,
"New Resource must avoid a narrow focus on financial performance with the goal of selling out at a high multiple to book. Rather, we should continue our goal of cultivating a deeply holistic-value banking practice while articulating to the rest of the world what the new economy of banking can look like.”
New Resource has enjoyed 15 consecutive quarters of profitability since it recommitted to its mission. While currently 14 percent of the bank’s legacy loan portfolio is not mission-aligned, every new loan that has been extended since early 2009 has been. Clearly the decision to invest in values-aligned businesses has been a profitable one for New Resource Bank and the communities and clients it serves.
Disclosure: Capital Institute Founder & President John Fullerton is an investor in New Resource Bank.
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Supernatural season 1 links
Sep 19, · Find links to watch Supernatural Season 1 Episode 2: Wendigo. Sign up free for show tracking and more! The first season was released on DVD as a six-disc box set on September 5, , by Warner Home Video in Region 1. Although the season was split into two separate releases in Region 2, the complete set was released on October 2, , and in Region 4 on October 2, Original network: The WB. Sep 13, · Find links to watch Supernatural Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot. Sign up free for show tracking and more!
[Now you know exactly where to download all episodes of Supernatural Season 1. We carefully monitor the series air dates and add every new episode on the day it’s released so you can watch your favorite TV show right away. The fourteenth season of Supernatural, an American dark fantasy television series created by Eric Kripke, premiered on October 11, , on The CW. The season will consist of 20 episodes and airs on Thursdays at pm (ET). This is the third season with Andrew Dabb Original network: The CW. Sep 19, · Find links to watch Supernatural Season 1 Episode 2: Wendigo. Sign up free for show tracking and more! Sep 13, · Find links to watch Supernatural Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot. Sign up free for show tracking and more! The first season was released on DVD as a six-disc box set on September 5, , by Warner Home Video in Region 1. Although the season was split into two separate releases in Region 2, the complete set was released on October 2, , and in Region 4 on October 2, Original network: The WB. Provenance. Season 1, Episode April 13, A gruesome double murder sends the boys after a mysterious painting with unusual powers and a blood-soaked past, and it may pose a threat to a 60%(23). | ] Supernatural season 1 links Now you know exactly where to download all episodes of Supernatural Season 1. We carefully monitor the series air dates and add every new episode on the day it’s released so you can watch your favorite TV show right away. Watch Supernatural Season 1 on filmfrancais2019.com!. The fourteenth season of Supernatural, an American dark fantasy television series created by Eric Kripke, premiered on October 11, , on The CW, and concluded on April 25, The season consists of 20 episodes and aired on Thursdays at pm (ET). This is the third season with Andrew Dabb and Robert Singer as showrunners. Find links to watch Supernatural Season 1 Episode 2: Wendigo. Sign up free for show tracking and more!. Find links to watch Supernatural Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot. Sign up free for show tracking and more!. The first season was released on DVD as a six-disc box set on September 5, , by Warner Home Video in Region 1. Although the season was split into two separate releases in Region 2, the complete set was released on October 2, , and in Region 4 on October 2, Provenance. Season 1, Episode April 13, A gruesome double murder sends the boys after a mysterious painting with unusual powers and a blood-soaked past, and it may pose a threat to a. Supernatural Season 1 Episode 11 Free Streaming Online, Sam and Dean finally make contact with their father, but he tells them to stop looking for him and sends them on another ghost-hunting job. Full episodes of Supernatural season 1 by The WB,The CW download and copy in mp4 mkv avi Here you can download full episodes of Drama,Mystery TV Show Supernatural Season 1 by The WB,The CW, in high quality and low size. We will update this page with direct download links and all episodes. Supernatural Season 1- 5 [DVD]. All of our paper waste is recycled within the UK and turned into corrugated cardboard. All DVDs from World of Books are from Region 2 and not designed for US DVD player. Related: supernatural season 2 supernatural complete series supernatural season 1 dvd supernatural season 5 supernatural season 1 blu ray supernatural season supernatural dvd supernatural season supernatural season 2 dvd supernatural season 3 supernatural season Watch Supernatural (s13e1) Season 13 Episode 1 Full Online on GoMovies. Sam and Dean are left to pick up the pieces after the loss of their mother, the demise of Crowley and the heartbreaking death of Castiel. A man dies of a stroke in front of a mirror but Sam and Dean believe something, or someone else (Bloody Mary), may be behind his death. Dean tries to help Sam open up about his girlfriend's death, particularly after Sam lets it slip that there's some information that he hasn't told Dean. Supernatural Season 14 Episode 1 Free Streaming Online, Sam enlists everyone’s help in trying to track down Dean, who can literally be anywhere. Meanwhile, Castiel may be in over his head after meeting up with. Supernatural, Season 14 Episode 1, is currently available to watch and stream on The filmfrancais2019.com can also buy, rent Supernatural on demand at Amazon, Vudu, FandangoNow, Google Play, DIRECTV NOW, iTunes online. The first season of Supernatural focuses on two brothers: Sam and Dean as they track down their father, John, who is on the trail of the demon who killed their mother. They witness their mother's paranormal death as children and grow up trained to fight by a distraught father who wants nothing more than to hunt down the thing that killed his wife.
Supernatural Season 10 Supercut - Deanmon
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A Look at Classic and Current Media Impact
“Smoke” A Film Adapted From The Bestseller VOLT by Alan Heathcock
April 27, 2017 by Flash Vaults In General
“Smoke” is a short film, which was adapted from Alan Heathcock’s bestseller VOLT, which is a collection of short stories. It was hailed as the best book released in 2011. Alan Heathcock is also a full time professor at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho. You can watch the film in Vimeo here.
When reflecting on the short story, “Smoke,” Heathcock shared, “It started when I was 9 years old and my grandfather told me a story.” Heathcock’s grandfather told him a haunting story that stuck with him for many years after. His grandfather worked as a foreman driving the Oklahoma oil fields. One day, his truck came nose to nose with another on a narrow, impassable stretch of road. He told the other guy he had to put his car in reverse and back out. The guy refused, so he grabbed a tire iron and hit that man “until he went back from where he came,” Heathcock says.
“I thought about that story for a long, long time. If you hit someone with a tire iron, you’re that close to altering your life, the lives of your children and grandchildren, how you understand yourself,” Heathcock says.
That became the inspiration for “Smoke,” which tells a twisted imagining of the rest of the story that goes on an epic mythological bent.
Heathcock can add executive producer to his already decorated resume, which includes bestselling author and Boise State University professor. He provided oversight to Boise directors/producers Cody Gittings and Stephen Heleker, who approached Heathcock about bringing his short story to the big screen. The result of those efforts was Wednesday night’s SVFF premiere of Smoke, featuring two must-see performances from Joel Nagle and Amadeus Serafini and some beautiful Idaho backdrops.
In “Smoke,” Serafini plays Vernon, a teenager on the verge of manhood whose father (played by Joel Nagle) forces him to help him dispose of the body of a man the dad murdered in a fit of rage. Vernon struggles to keep his emotional footing by talking with an imaginary “Roy Rogers” (Boise actor Nick Garcia). The film also features Idaho Shakespeare Festival company actress Jodi Dominick.
When Boise filmmakers Stephen Heleker and Cody Gittings read Alan Heathcock’s “Volt,” a story collection about the denizens of a fictional town, they were struck by the story “Smoke.” It’s a tale about a young man whose father forces him to help him dispose of the body of a man he murdered in a fit of rage.
“It was so beautifully contained, with just a few characters and locations, but the scope of it encompassed these huge moral questions and ideas,” Heleker says. “It was perfect for a short film.”
They approached Heathcock, who was immediately signed on. They collaborated on the screenplay with Heathcock, co-directed the film and — in 2014 — shot for a week and a day at various locations in Idaho with a cast of actors from Los Angeles and Boise.
The moody literary film made its world premiere at the Sun Valley Film Festival and screened at Filmfort at Boise’s Treefort Music Fest a few weeks later.
Now the public can see “Smoke” for free online here via Vimeo.com.
“We just wanted to get it out there for people to see,” Heathcock says — especially because Amadeus Serafini, one of the stars of “Smoke,” is now starring as Kieran Wilcox in MTV’s “Scream the TV Series.”
“He’s got a lot of fans now who will want to see it,” Heathcock says.
Putting it out there for free — rather than look for a distributor or go the on-demand route — felt like the right thing to do for the community that sprang up around the project, Heleker says.
“We had so many friends and family who backed the film, it didn’t feel right to turn around and say, ‘OK, now, pay to watch it,” he says.
Gittings and Heleker, both 28, met in the honors college at Boise State, where Heathcock taught at the time. Gittings lived across the hall from Heleker’s twin brother, Marcus, who also is a filmmaker. Gittings and Stephen Heleker worked on several shorts together before “Smoke.” It was the biggest thing any of them had done.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst Review
August 20, 2016 by Flash Vaults In General Tagged 2016 video game, Mirror's Edge Catalyst
The 2008 Mirror’s Edge was widely embraced by gamers pulled in by the first person view point of Faith, a medium build “hot” Asian woman voiced by Jules de Jongh. The fast pace and stunning graphics helped users overlook the somewhat limited freedom of movement. This year’s sequel, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, seems to be creating a polarizing reaction. Players who were pulled in by the character and the storyline were disappointed that the new storyline is thin and that there was a missed opportunity to flesh out the characters bringing in some depth. They found the game less than engaging.
Players who craved more of the action with its jumps, twists and turns were more than satisfied. The battles are still a little clunky and more frequent, but increased freedom of movement more than compensated. The main character had a bit of a transformation looking more edgy and streetwise with a smaller physique and shorter hair style. The voice actress for Faith Connors was also replace with Faye Kingslee taking on the task. Although her voice was a bit thin in the trailer, in the actual game, Kingslee was able to nail it
Running is supposed to release endorphins that make people happy, but Faith Connors and her friends don’t seem to take any joy in being off-the-grid mailmen in the city of Glass’ Big Brother-ruled future. Literally everyone in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is sullen at best or angry at worst, and without a shred of humor or levity it becomes a huge downer. Fun fact: you won’t see a single smile in this entire eight to 10-hour story campaign (more if you fill it out with sidequests) until Faith finally cracks a grin in the post-credits scene. Some people feel the character development is nonexistent, and worse, everyone – including Faith herself – is completely unlikable.
Her physical transformation indicates that this will be a more dramatic version. I was quickly immersed in her world. I appreciated not being distracted by side plots that would have perhaps developed more sides of Faith’s character.
Faith’s own backstory is revealed when you experience the moment where Faith begins her rise from a carefree runner to the hero the city needs. Playing in first person allows players to feel her fluid movement, combat and power. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is a classic example of form over substance. Pleasant, acrobatic sprint over futuristic roofs is often slowed down and distracted by focus on combat or hidden items. Basic gameplay and running in the City of Glass is still more than worthwhile though – there’s no better courier than Faith. EA needs to take the plunge and allow the game to veer from traditional game play that requires battles to keep our attention.
Movement in Catalyst still feels as fresh and empowering as it did in 2008, with our viewpoint firmly fixed through Faith’s eyes for every jump, slide, wall run, and skill roll (save for the occasional finishing move that pulls the camera out to third-person). That perspective makes the simple act of running a thrill, just like in the original. The crunch of gravel or the squeak of a glass floor under Faith’s feet, the heavy breaths she draws as she runs faster and longer – it’s quickens my pulse to practically to string moves together successfully as I move from one area of Glass to another across its rooftops. The grappling hook I picked up partway through the campaign helped sell the idea that Faith could traverse a city like you can tie your shoes. Perhaps no other game utilizes the LB/L1 button more than Catalyst – it’s your jump button that leads into momentum jumps, mid-air attacks, and zip lines – but it felt perfectly natural as I ran and jumped around Glass.
Unlike the original Mirror’s Edge, Catalyst’s version of the gleaming white city of Glass is an open world, and it offers a couple of advantages. First, it lets you challenge yourself to put together epic-length, perfect runs that span the entire city.
Fans of the original Mirror’s Edge favorite element was the built-in tool that let you easily create your own time trials. In Mirror’s Edge Catalyst you can really enjoy putting it to the test in this freeform city. Your time trials automatically show up as optional events in your friends’ games. Through side quests you can guild up your XP so you can unlock more traversal moves, combat abilities, or Faith’s gear. Other missions like Secret Messenger Bag retrievals are small parkour challenges that are intriguing by themselves. Checkpoints are liberal and reload times are relatively quick, so you can take risks and experiment without losing much ground.
A Review of the New Release Paragon by Epic Games
August 18, 2016 by Flash Vaults In General Tagged MOBA game, Paragon Video Game
Paragon, a third-person multiplayer online battle arena from Epic Games, places you in the battle with constant threat of danger at every turn. Paragon combines third-individual control with profound key decision-making. Paragon is organized so that each player can contend and win while never spending cash.
“We want to allow people to have meaningful involvement with their characters,” according to executive producer John Wasilczyk. “That means rewarding the experience and time you spend with Paragon. The unifying factor is that we want to make sure we make time feel valuable.” New legends are added to the continually growing list at regular intervals, giving the player more decisions and new powers. Aptitude matters – where you point, when you assault, and how you move. Bases are located at opposite ends of the symmetrical map. Players have to defeat the enemy team and destroy the core in their base.
Paragon places you in direct control of the activity in a completely 3D world. Cards give legends special forces and abilities on the front line. Construct your gathering by playing, and make decks that lead your group to triumph. Since cards influence power in in the game, they must be earned by playing the diversion. Intense new characters join the conflict, changing the fight with unique capacities and ultimates. Be the first to ace them in battle, make pulverizing decks, and lead your group to domination. Each card contains one of two capacities.
First is a detached capacity, for example, a harm multiplier.
Second is a dynamic capacity, for example, a mending elixir, all of which can be prepared amid matches. Each card additionally has a specific expense all by itself – from 1 to 10 – which take away from your general asset pool to prepare cards, maximizing at a general aggregate of 60. This allows each player to continue to individualize their player’s abilities.
While the game is intense, it would be nice to have some sort of rankings, so that each player can be teamed with others of the same ability. Owning the super pack for advanced difficulty would be great, but the skins are not intriguing, so most players may want to level up the legends to get the card packs.
Although the graphics are amazing, the sound is less than epic. The soundtrack should create tension and heart racing anticipation. A more ambitious and creative vibe would really support the visual impact of Paragon.
In Paragon, Epic Games (Gears of War, Unreal Tournament) made an combination of styles and conceptions that is a balance of strikingly delightful and energetic visuals. Keeping in mind it continues to have a hefty portion of the natural components of League of Legends, Dota, and Heroes of the Storm, Paragon is very similar to more up-to-date games like SMITE and Gigantic, with quick paced gameplay that puts you nearer to the activity. Be that as it may, it stays consistent with its roots as a MOBA with everything from 5v5 matches, flunkies, paths, towers, centers, and the reiteration of particular saints to look over. It’s all here.
In any case, during the time spent making this unusual, well-crafted venture, Epic plans to guarantee that every aspect of what makes Paragon unique stays in place. This isn’t a MOBA with third-individual shooter gameplay, or a third-individual shooter with MOBA targets – neither one of the genres is weakened here. Paragon is a half breed approach that not just holds the personality of every style of diversion, however frees them in their solitary magnificence.
America, America by Elia Kazan
August 23, 2015 by Flash Vaults In General
The movie America, America was adapted by Elia Kazan from his novel of the same name. A 163 minute ode to his Greek uncle who immigrated to the United States from the Anatolian Mountains the movie begins with a dark screen and a voice over explaining that the Greeks had moved to the Anatolian mountains and lived with the Armenians.
When it opens to the main character Stavros Topouzoglou and his Armenian friend/mentor Vartan getting ice from the mountain to take to the village in 1898, the viewer is immediately drawn into the story. Vartan is telling Stavros it is time to immigrate to America before it is too late foreshadowing the imminent change in their fortunes.
Segue to a meeting of the Turkish council that rules over the Greeks and Armenians. The council is portrayed as very normal men, which makes their decisions more startling. The governor reads a note from the Ottoman ruler that some Armenians had bombed a bank in a Turkish city. The governors are to punish the Armenians in a way of their choosing.
When Stavros and Vartan return to the village, the Greeks are hurrying to their homes and the Armenians are being moved to the church. Refusing to show fear, Stavros goes to the bar, therefore, he is not rounded up and sent to the church. Detained by his Greek mother who forces him to return home, Stavros crawls out a window to rejoin Vartan. They make the decision to leave the bar to head to America, but as they leave, they hear the Armenian people in the church and watch as the Turkish soldiers set the church on fire. Vartan attacks a soldier and some young people who were also missed in the roundup, tear open one of the doors and many of the Armenians escape. Vartan has been killed. This portrayal of the persecution of the Armenian people by the Turkish government on film was unprecedented and could be the first example of the human rights movies of the seventies. The film was shot on location in Turkey until officials decided that the film could reflect badly on Turkey. When Kazan moved the production to Greece, cans of film were confiscated. Fortunately, the labels on the cans had been switched so those portions of the film were saved.
Stavros runs to his grandmother who still lives in the caves in the Anatolian Mountains to ask for money to go to America. She curses him for being a sheep like his father and sends him on a way, but she does give him a knife. As he leaves her cave, he commits an act of generosity that will later have great ramifications He sees a man who has been walking long enough to have worn out his shoes. Stavros gives him his shoes and walks home shoeless.
Stathis Glallelis was cast for the part of Stavros. Kazan went to Greece to run auditions. Glallelis auditioned but as he was a newcomer he was turned down. Kazan returned to the United States. When Glallelis spent all his money to follow Kazan to the U.S., Kazan decided he embodied the spirit of Stavros. He later regretted this choice. Glallelis did not have the emotional range necessary to play Stavros. He was unable to create the empathy necessary to pull the audience into his struggle making some of his actions seem more self-serving than determined.
The protagonist Stevros’s long journey to America, begins when his father decides to entrust him with all their belongings and send him to his uncle in Constantinople in Instanbul. His father appears to be trying to shock him into responsibility.
His mother cries for the goods she knows he will lose, not returning his hug before he leaves, foreshadowing his poor decisions that will result in the loss of all their goods before the week is out.
Once away from home he is quickly befriended, conned, and then manipulated out of all his possessions by a gregarious Turk, whom he finally ends up killing in self-defense. The rest of the movie focuses on Stavros making his big plans come true, so his father will be proud of him. He works at hard labor for 9 months to earn 7 of the 110 pounds he needs to take the boat to America by carrying extremely heavy items on his back, only to have it stolen by his first prostitute arranged by his longshoremen friend–thus continuing his poor choice of friends.
To make it up to Stavros, the longshoreman takes him to an anarchist meeting which is disrupted with gunfire and everyone, except Stravos is killed. Taken for dead, Stavros is carted out of town. Fortunately, he falls out of the cart before being thrown over the cliff with the corpses.
Realizing he can’t work hard enough to make his passage, he turns to his uncle to arrange for a marriage to a “plain” girl with a wealthy father planning to leave her with her dowry as soon as they are married.
Finally, shamed by his developing feelings for her, he leaves before the wedding He has found a wealthy benefactor who will take him to America, if he spends time with her on the voyage when her husband sleeps.
When they reach America, the deception is discovered, and he is to be sent back. The young man who wore his shoes was also on the ship as an indentured shoe shine boy. Although guaranteed a job in America, the young man has become very ill, perhaps with tuberculosis. When he sees Stavros’s despair at being so close to America just to be sent back, the young man sets his shoes on the deck and jumps off the side of the ship. Stravos is able to use his identity to make it to New York City.
The movie closes with his father opening an envelope containing $50.00 given to him by his mistress, then cutting away to a final picture of the victorious Stavros as a elated shoe shine boy.
The story was moving and solid, but Glallegis was not able to portray the conflicting emotions of the main character. Through close up after close up, he looks exactly the same. The portions of the script where he is allowed to smile happily, he is transformed. Angst, torment, pensiveness, regret were beyond him.
The film won critical acclaim winning an Academy Award for Best Picture, but it must have been for intent, not delivery. The movie itself was heavily criticized on all fronts, except for its intent. Filming this story was difficult for the director for many reasons. He had obtained permission to film in Turkey, but when the government realized that it documented the massacre, they made the film crew and actors leave the country. Kazan hid the shot film in new film canisters when the crossed the border, which was fortuitous because the film in the labeled cans were confiscated.
Citizen Kane by Orsen Welles
Twenty-five year old Orsen Wells co-wrote, produced, directed and performed in what has been called the greatest movie ever, Citizen Kane. From the opening moments when a broken gate, perching monkeys and an abandoned golf course frame a desolate mausoleum on the hill, to the dying man’s whispered words “rosebud” there is a feeling of slow decay, which is immediately contrasted with the staccato cadence of the newsreel which draws the audience through the life of Charles Foster Kane. The newsreel calls Kane the Kubla Kahn of Florida living in Xanadu the modern version of Kubla Kahn’s palace.
The show was controversial as was most of Orsen Welles budding career. In 1936,at the age of 20, Welles and his friend and co-writer John Houseman set Shakespeare’s Macbeth in Haiti featuring all African American actors. In 1937 clashing with their current performing group, they formed the Mercury Theater, named for the American Mercury, a magazine featuring many of the important writers of the time. They were immediately successful in Broadway and then radio, performing the famous “War of the Worlds” in 1938. Citizen Kane was his first movie, but it was almost banned before it was shown.
The story centers around Charles Foster Kane, a wealthy eccentric newspaper mogul who abandons his principals and is left friendless. William Randolf Hurst a newspaper magnate took over the San Francisco Examiner from his father. He is credited with beginning yellow journalism which is using sensational news which may or may not be true to sell newspapers. He eventually owned over 30 newspapers and later added magazines. He engaged lawyers to try and stop the film and refused to let any of his newspapers comment on it. There are striking similarities between Hurst and Kane. Hurst used his influence to draw the United States into a war with Spain in 1898, as it was intimated did Kane. Kane ran for Governor and lost. Hurst ran for mayor and governor of New York.
After the newsreel at the beginning of the story, the audience knows the details about Kane’s life, but before the reel is released the editor wants more. He wants to know the real Kane. He sends a reporter out to find out the meaning of the last words, “Rosebud.” Through interviews and flashbacks, the viewer is taken back through Kane’s life beginning with a snowy day when his mother who was given a gold mine that was considered abandoned but was a producer, sends him, a eightish-year old boy to live in the city to be raised by the bank. There is a hint at the father’s brutishness, but no explanation or warning was given to Kane. The movie skips to Kane as a young man ready to enter the business world. He has millions of dollars and many companies due to the apparent brilliance and honesty of his legal guardian, but refuses to man them. Instead he takes over a small failing business and takes aim at the large corrupt corporations and government entities around him by building it into a powerful entity. He signs a pact of social conscience which his friend tucks away for a time when Kane may need a reminder.
In his determination to beat the circulation of the Chronicle, he hires the entire state of the Chronicle and then leaves town abandoning the paper, signaling the end of his idealism. When he returns from Europe, the newspaper staff was greats them with an enthusiasm he would have heartily embraced before he left two years before. They had purchased a very large sterling silver cup with sentimental inscriptions. However, he brushed through the office, handed a wedding announcement to one of the staff, grabbed the cup and went back to his wife waiting in a chauffeured carriage. Becoming heady with his own power he runs for governor. When he is exposed for spending time with a young woman, he loses the election and his first wife and son. By the end of the movie he has burned through two wives and is alone in Xanadu the marble mausoleum he created for his second wife. From an open sharing personality to the overbearing puppet master that forced his second wife to perform a series of operas opening her to criticism and derision, the movie is a descent from socialistic ideas to capitalistic despotism.
In the original review in the New York Times it is stated that only Charlie Chaplin equals Welles when he wrote, directed and produced “The Great Dictator.”
2001: Space Odyssey Revisited
August 4, 2015 by Flash Vaults In General
I first watched 2001: Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick in the theaters when I was twelve. I don’t think anyone could really visualize what landing on the moon would look like, although Kennedy promised we would have a moon landing before 1970. We called it the “race to the moon.” We were determined to beat the Russians. The nations focus was on the construction of a space program that could produce a rocket capable of getting us to the moon first.
Most of us were infatuated with the idea of other civilizations. We read Robert Heinlein and fantasized about outposts in space. After reading Ray Bradbury, we would imagine what it would be like to colonize new worlds. To us kids, it seemed like the transition into a time with space travel would be like a portal in which everything we knew would suddenly become futuristic.
For the adults, the scientific discoveries that would lead to space travel generated feelings of apprehension as shown in The Brave New World and 1984. Advancements in artificial intelligence were met with guarded optimism as in the Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov published in 1953.
Space Odyssey was the first movie to put a realistic face on not only space travel, but an adaptive computer system that mimicked the mind. Of course, George Jetson had been talking to his computer since 1962 in the popular futuristic cartoon, The Jetsons. While the computer in Space Odyssey may have been a man and he was concerned with the welfare of the crew as is in the Jetsons, Kubrick must have watched the episode where the computers revolt after the mainframe computer takes offense at comments from the humans.
Scorsese noted the audacity and vision that Kubrick demonstrated when he segues from the time of early man to space travel when he throws the bone club into the air. He also observes that Kubrick’s linking of the computer and camera was the dawn of modern film making.
This film is a first in so many area. The first major film to have a computer that becomes a sentient life form. The first to create a metaphoric presence as the alien life force. The first to show realistic space travel through the merging of front screen technology.
Kubrick was so successful that many feel he also faked the first moon landing. The similarities between the 2001: Space Odyssey and the still and video shots of the actual moon landing as thought provoking at their least. Of course, many in the government of the time felt that H.G. Wells was privy to top secret reports because of the similarities between the weapons in War of the Worlds and the atomic bomb. For Kubrick being accused of recreating a moon landing because his show was so realistic is high praise.
No Man’s Sky Review
August 21, 2016 by Flash Vaults In Uncategorized
No Man’s Sky ventures in to a new frontier with a universe full of unique planets. It allows the player to “go where no man has gone before.” Unlike Captain Kirk, you will not be able to surround yourself with a crew of friends physically or virtually. This is a game meant to be played alone. Although the video game community is split on whether or not this game is an epic success or an epic failure, no one can contest a few key points.
First, the game does not contain all the elements promised in the pre-launch campaign—of course few games do.
Second, if you try to play the game is traditional manner trying to reach an objective, solve the puzzle, climb the levels, conquer the game and its opponents, you are setting yourself up for a frustrating few hours.
Third, using an algorithm to create limitless flora, fauna and biomes has broken a barrier that could be an evolutionary step in video game development.
No Man’s Sky allows users time for solitude and reflection while being engaged and entertained. Strategies are not for survival, but creation and exploration. Players build their own space ships for esthetics, rather than better weapons or more speed.
The game taps into the part of us that needs to carve a quiet place out of our day where we can retreat and no one else can follow. Playing No Man’s Sky reminds me of a friend of mine who rakes their Zen garden every day for 30 minutes. Or my grandfather who used to walk the perimeter of his farm every night after dinner. If you like to run or ride your bike for miles just because, you will love this game.
This is not a video game where there is a clear objective, like collecting items to save the princess, kill everyone on a level to reach the next one, navigate a battlefield to save your squad. If you move quickly through the game trying to reach new planets and doing a cursory check to see what lives there and what they look like, you will be very disappointed with this game.
If you enter the new universe as if it was your new home, and slowly absorb and name each element of the planet, you can embrace the wonder of the journey. Stand still and feel the pulse of your new world.
It is an unusual and contradictory game, one that asks very little of its players while simultaneously demanding a great deal. It’s a frustrating failure in many ways, technically unpolished and seemingly unfinished. It’s full of perplexing design decisions and half-realized ideas. It gets a few big things right and a hundred little things wrong. It draws you in with a promise of endless splendor, then swiftly reveals itself to be something much more ordinary.
No Man’s Sky is a fascinating game, in part because of its novel concept—to fly through near-infinite space, exploring a vast, uncharted universe on your way to its center—and in part because of its tangle of expectations, hype, and controversy. Relaxing and flowing with the game, allowing the quiet creation and exploration can restore your peace of mind at the end of the day.
You won’t fit every resource into your inventory at first, so here are the most important things to collect in the first couple hours:
It is the most essential element in No Man’s Sky, able to recharge your mining tool and your life support — both of which can take any red-clad isotope, but seriously, only use carbon. Carbon’s also used when interacting with random alien encounters. So far, every planet we’ve gone to has had an abundance of carbon. When in doubt, shoot all the plants and trees. Keep some on you at all times.
The other isotopes (red elements): Plutonium and Thamium9
Both are essential for specific tasks — Plutonium recharges your ship’s launch thrusters, while Thamium9 recharges your pulse engine. Both are considered “rare” although it’s easy to spot plutonium (red crystals, same on every planet) and Thamium9 is ridiculously common once you’re in outer space (shoot any asteroid). Whenever you find these, it’s best to transfer most / all back to your ship immediately (hold down triangle when in your menu) to keep your exosuit’s inventory clean.
The oxides (yellow): Iron, Zinc, and Titanium
Iron is in every rock, and though it’s essential for early-game repair and crafting, its usefulness lessens after you leave the first planet. Zinc and Titanium, the rarer oxides, can also be used to recharge your hazard protection (although a cheaper solution is to run indoors or hop in your ship, if those are options). It’s always good to have a bit of zinc on you, if nothing else, and trust that there’ll be a nearby rock if you really need Iron.
Heridium and other silicates (blue)
Heridium is crucial when you’re preparing your hyper drive. It’s also perhaps the most annoying part of the tutorial, which asks you to walk far away from your ship in search of the element. Feel free to transfer additional Heridium to your ship as soon as you get it — you won’t often need it on hand.
Green elements
Okay so… this is a very long game, and maybe later on this will mean something else, but at this point all green-tinted elements and items only seem to exist for selling in the galactic market. And while sometimes the market favors one element over the other, given the sparseness of inventory slots, it may not be a bad idea to sell these often. Same as with the silicates, feel free to transfer to your ship as soon as you get it, to keep your exosuit inventory clean.
There’s good money to be made on the galactic market. Every system’s space station (and a few random terrestrial spots) provides a place to buy and sell items and upgrades. Prices vary based on each store (a helpful prompt tells you whether or not it’s in your favor). That’s one of the best ways to make money. But here’s an even better way: hold L2 to look at and analyze every creature you see. The galactic library is trying to chronicle everything in the universe, and it seems to have unlimited funds. Press option to open up your library, which lets you rename and upload everything you’ve found. Systems and planets give you the most credit, but you also get paid for discovering creatures and plants.
Ultimately, if you are a person who loves to build and create. If you loves to unwind by relaxing, then you will enjoy and appreciate this game.
Spirited Away is a breathtaking animated film by Hayao Miyazaki. Although it was produced by Walt Disney Productions, it has the beauty of a Japanese anime. The movie is an allegory demonstrating how the need to accumulate possessions and greed can transform a kind, well-meaning person into a monster or pig. In the movie, the main character, a young daughter named Chihiro helps the characters remove their excess, so they can return to their former selves.
Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki is a beautiful story of a family that stumbles upon an abandoned theme park that houses a bathhouse where spirits go to regenerate. Chihiro and her parents are traveling to a new home. Chihiro is filled with apprehension and anger over the move. When her father takes an uncharted shortcut, they find themselves in front of a tunnel that leads into the empty park.
Lured in by a delicious smell, her parents enter a food booth and unable to resist, they begin to eat. Chihiro is fearful of the booth and worried about its absent owner. She wanders to a bridge and stops in front of a very large bath house. A young man, Haku, stops her before she crosses the bridge and tells her to run away, but when she returns to the booth to warn her parents, they have been turned into pigs.
She runs away, but finds water now fills the area she and her parents had crossed. She watches as a ferry brings spirits to shore. As they touch the ground their bodies materialize.
Haku returns and directs her to the boiler room. He tells her that she must get a job before morning or she cannot stay to rescue her parents. By confronting the witch that rules the island and runs the bath house, Chihiro secures a job, but must give up her name and become Sen.
She is befriended by a house maid also. At the heart of the tale seems to be the idea that greed creates a corruption of the spirit. This is illustrated first by the parents who become pigs when they can not control their greed and eat the food without permission. Because it is food prepared for the spirits, her parents are punished by being turned into pigs. The second manifestation of greed is the slime monster.
Chihiro is forced to help the smelly filthy monster because she is the lowest servant. When she is bathing him, she discovers a “thorn.” When the thorn is extracted with the help of everyone in the bath house, it turns out to be piles of items, including a bicycle, that had been eaten by the spirit. When the junk was extracted, the slime monster turned into a powerful, but gentle river spirit.
The third example of how greed can transform good to evil was No-face, the gentle spirit befriended by Chihiro. When No-face discovers that money makes him important, he eats the greedy frog, and begins to embody his attitude. He demands attention by giving out gold for services. He becomes a monster and starts to eat people. When he asks for Chihiro she leads him out of the bath house. As he leaves, he spits out everyone he swallows and returns to the kind spirit he was originally.
Even the baby changes when he helps weave the thread for Chihiro while he was a rodent. When he returned to his original shape, he is kind and thoughtful opposed to the selfish tyrant he was before the adventure. Chihiro’s metamorphis began when she gave up her fear, first to help her parents and then to help Haku.
Haku, a river spirit that manifests as a dragon and a boy, is saved when she reminds him of his real name. This seems to imply that all the characters that embodied the idea of greed or excess forgot themselves, but when they turned away from excess and purged themselves, they found their true spirits again.
The main character Chihiro draws us into her story and each of the diverse monsters and spirits are so well portrayed, we feel for them during their transformations. When sweet No Face turns into an evil monster, we miss his kind spirit and are glad to see it return.
This movie works on so many levels. The imagery is mystical and yet very simple. Each spirit and character is well-rounded. The story is interesting on its own, but the allegorical element makes it very moving.
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