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10 Infants Who Disappeared
Robin Warder August 31, 2013 0
No unsolved mystery is more heartbreaking than the disappearance of an infant. It is an incredibly painful experience for a parent to bring a child into the world and only enjoy a limited amount of time with them before they go missing and are never heard from again. But in this type of case, at least there’s always a decent possibility that the victim is still alive. Whenever an infant is abducted, it’s often done by someone who wants to raise the child as their own, or sell the baby for the purposes of illegal adoption. The child can grow up and live a seemingly normal life without knowing that they were stolen from their real family.
A recent example of this was when a 23-year-old woman named Carlina White discovered that the woman she thought was her mother had actually abducted her from a hospital when she was only 19 days old. In the end, she finally got to reunite with her biological parents. In some of the following cases, the parents themselves have been suspected of causing their child’s disappearance, but there’s always a chance these missing infants might still be alive somewhere.
10 Marlene Santana
On October 18, 1985, Francesca Santana gave birth to a little girl named Marlene at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn. Three days later, Francesca was viewing her newborn baby in the nursery when an unidentified Hispanic-looking woman in her late twenties started a conversation with her and commented that Marlene was the prettiest baby there. Later that night, Francesca and two of her relatives were leaving the hospital with Marlene when she was confronted outside by this same woman, who pulled a gun on them and forced them to walk six blocks to a deserted junkyard.
The woman ordered Francesca to hand over the baby. After the assailant pointed her gun directly at Marlene and threatened to shoot her, Francesca complied with her demand. Francesca and her relatives barely had time to react before the woman took Marlene, jumped into a nearby car driven by an accomplice, and sped away. Authorities speculated that Marlene was either sold for adoption or that the woman responsible was unable to have children and decided to steal a baby whom she could raise as her own. Sadly, over 27 years have passed and Marlene Santana remains missing.
9 Raymond Lamar Green
Donna Green gave birth to a son named Raymond on November 1, 1978 at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. While viewing her newborn in the nursery, Donna met an African-American woman who called herself “Lisa Morris.” She claimed she was there visiting her sister, who had just given birth. Donna conversed with this woman on numerous occasions before being discharged from the hospital and taking Raymond home.
On November 6, Morris made a surprise visit to Donna’s apartment, claiming she wanted to see how Raymond was doing. Donna let her in to see the baby, and since her brother Tony was also there at the time, Donna felt comfortable leaving the room to take a shower for three minutes while Morris was visiting. However, when Donna emerged from the shower, Tony claimed that Morris had taken Raymond outside after he started crying. Donna went to look for them, but was told by a neighbor that Morris had climbed into a vehicle and driven away with Raymond. After contacting the police, Donna found out the name “Lisa Morris” was false and that no one fitting her description had a sister who had given birth at that hospital. The woman’s identity remains a mystery, and unfortunately, Raymond Lamar Green’s whereabouts are still unknown.
8 Bryan Dos Santos-Gomes
In Fort Myers, Florida, on December 1, 2006, Maria de Fatima Ramos Dos Santos was waiting at the bus stop with her three-week-old son Bryan and a female friend when a Hispanic woman pulled up in an SUV asking for directions. When Maria and her friend eventually got on the bus, the woman followed them and asked for directions again after they got off at their stop. They decided to climb into the vehicle to help the woman when they were suddenly abducted. Maria took note of the fact that the SUV already had a car seat and diaper bag inside. The woman drove them to Estero and demanded $500 before dropping Maria and her friend off and driving away with Bryan.
Maria and her husband, Jurandir Gomes Costa, are originally from a village in Brazil, and they paid human traffickers to smuggle them into the United States. It was initially suspected that Bryan was abducted because Jurandir had fallen behind in his payments to them. However, police soon leaned toward Bryan’s abduction being a random crime after another Fort Myers woman came forward and described a similar incident. On the day of Bryan’s abduction, she had been out walking with her infant grandchild when this same Hispanic woman pulled up in an SUV asking for directions. It’s believed that the woman might have been looking to steal a child she could raise as her own, but neither Bryan nor his abductor have ever been found.
7 Melissa McGuinn
Rebecca and Robert McGuinn lived in Trenton, New Jersey, with their seven-month-old daughter Melissa and two roommates, one of whom was 30-year-old Wanda Faye Reed. On March 6, 1988, Wanda asked Rebecca if she could take Melissa for a walk and was given permission to do so. Wanda left and returned eight minutes later with a neighbor, but Melissa was not with her. Wanda was mentally disabled and functioned at the level of a four-year-old child, so she wound up giving conflicting stories about what happened to Melissa.
At first, she claimed that an unidentified African-American man knocked her down and stole the baby. Wanda then said she dropped Melissa in the Delaware River before changing her story again and claiming that the neighbor she was with had exchanged the baby for drugs. The neighbor was investigated and nothing was found to support Wanda’s accusations, and her story about the Delaware River was discounted since Wanda could not have walked there and back during the eight-minute period she was away. It was speculated that Wanda might have deliberately harmed Melissa because she was jealous of the attention she had been receiving. Wanda was charged with kidnapping, but was found mentally incompetent to stand trial. The charges were dropped and she was sent to live in an institution for mentally disabled individuals. Sadly, after 25 years, there are still no answers about what she did with Melissa McGuinn.
6 Sabrina Aisenberg
In Valrico, Florida, on the morning of November 24, 1997, Marlene Aisenberg awoke to discover that her four-month-old daughter Sabrina was missing from her crib. A blue and yellow blanket belonging to Sabrina also disappeared along with her. The garage door had been left open during the night, one of the doors to the Aisenberg residence was unlocked, and a blonde hair and unidentified shoe print were found near the crib. At approximately 1:00 AM, a neighbor was awoken by his barking dog and believed he also heard the sound of a baby crying.
While there was some evidence to suggest Sabrina had been abducted, authorities found it suspicious that neither Marlene nor her husband, Steve, heard an intruder entering the house during the night, and the family dog also never reacted. Controversy ensued after authorities decided to bug the Aisenberg home with listening devices and supposedly recorded Marlene and Steve stating that their daughter was dead. The Aisenbergs were both indicted on conspiracy charges in 1999, but the recordings were not audible enough to make out their supposedly incriminating conversation. It was also discovered that investigators had lied to a judge in order to gain permission to bug the Aisenberg residence, so the couple was eventually cleared of all charges. While the Aisenbergs have never officially been ruled out as suspects in their daughter’s disappearance, there is no evidence to suggest they were responsible. Sadly, after more than 15 years, there are still no answers about what happened to Sabrina.
5 Christopher Abeyta
In the early morning hours of July 15, 1986, Colorado Springs residents Gil and Bernice Abeyta discovered that their seven-month-old son Christopher was missing from his crib. The couple last saw Christopher after putting him to bed at midnight, and the front door had been left unlocked. Some suspicion initially fell upon the parents. Gil and Bernice were in the midst of reconciling after a separation, and this particular night just happened to be the first time in a while that Gil was staying over at their home. However, the Abeytas have never officially been named as suspects in their son’s disappearance, and the investigative efforts of the Colorado Springs police faced heavy criticism since they eventually destroyed most of the evidence in the case.
Christopher’s parents believe he was abducted and claimed to have received numerous hang-up phone calls for six months prior to his disappearance, which immediately came to a halt before resuming months later. These calls were eventually traced to a woman named Emma Bradshaw, whom Gil had been having an affair with. Because she had a prior history of break-ins, Bradshaw is considered the prime suspect, though she has always maintained her innocence. Nearly 27 years later, the Abeyta family maintains a website about Christopher’s disappearance and are currently offering a $100,000 reward for information that will finally provide them with closure.
4 David Blockett
David Blockett was only two weeks old on December 11, 1980 when an African-American woman calling herself “Marie Kelly” visited his family’s home in Newport News, Virginia. Kelly told David’s mother, Vanessa, that she was from the Department of Social Services and that they were sponsoring a function for children at a nearby medical center. She managed to convince Vanessa to let her take David and his two-year-old brother Frederick to the function. Later that afternoon, Frederick was found wandering around alone at a shopping center. He had a note in his pocket with his name and address on it.
Frederick was returned to his mother, but there was no sign of David. A check with the Department of Social Services revealed that no one named Marie Kelly worked for them, nor did they have any employees matching her description. Once he got older, Frederick had vague recollections of the abduction and seems to remember the woman meeting up with a male accomplice. In a bizarre postscript to this story, two of David’s nephews also wound up being abducted over 30 years later, though they were soon found unharmed. Sadly, the same thing has yet to be said for David himself, and he remains missing.
3 Kamiyah Mobley
On the morning of July 10, 1998, Shanara Mobley gave birth to a little girl named Kamiyah at University Medical Center in Jacksonville, Florida. Throughout the day, she had frequent encounters with an unidentified African-American nurse. About eight hours after Kamiyah was born, this nurse said there was a problem with the baby’s temperature and took her out of the room. They apparently left the hospital together because this is the last anyone ever saw of Kamiyah or the nurse.
Even though the woman had worn a nurse’s uniform and an identification badge, the hospital had no record of her working there. It’s speculated that she may have had previous hospital experience since she seemed to have knowledge of medical terminology and the building’s layout. When she was not posing as a nurse, the woman was passing herself off as a member of the Mobley family to the hospital staff, and she frequently asked them when the baby would be leaving the nursery. Shanara eventually sued the hospital over her daughter’s abduction and received a $1.5 million settlement. It’s believed that the unidentified woman was scouting for a child she could abduct and raise as her own. If Kamiyah Mobley is still alive today, she is 15 years old and probably completely unaware of her true identity.
2 Lisa Irwin
Jeremy Irwin returned to his Kansas City, Missouri home at 4:00 AM on the morning of October 4, 2011, and noticed that his 10-month-old daughter, Lisa, was missing from her crib. Lisa’s mother, Deborah Bradley, claimed she had last seen her after putting her to bed the night before. Jeremy was also surprised to discover that several of his house’s lights were on, the front door was unlocked, Lisa’s bedroom window was open, and three cell phones were missing. Deborah had also gotten drunk that night and soon faced suspicion that she was responsible for Lisa’s disappearance.
Police accused Deborah of failing a lie detector test and had a cadaver dog search the Irwin home. They claimed that the dog turned up the scent of a dead body near Deborah’s bed, but they never took any material from the home for further testing or presented any evidence to support their claim. Lisa’s family believes she was abducted, and this theory has been supported by three witnesses who claimed they saw an unidentified man walking down a road five kilometers (three miles) away from the Irwin home that night, carrying a baby wearing nothing but a diaper. One month after Lisa’s disappearance, Jeremy claimed his debit card was stolen, and in May 2012, it was reportedly used on a website that provides false birth certificates. Authorities have investigated these leads, but have yet to find out what happened to Lisa Irwin.
1 Mary Agnes Moroney
In 1930, Michael and Catherine Moroney lived in Chicago with their daughters, Anastasia and Mary Agnes, who had just turned two years old. Michael posted an ad for a social services person to help take care of his family, and on May 14, a woman calling herself Julia Otis showed up at their home, claiming she’d been sent by a social worker named Mrs. Henderson. The next day, she offered to take Mary Agnes shopping for clothes, and her parents consented. One day later, the Moroneys would receive a letter from Otis, claiming she had taken Mary Agnes to California and would return the child in two months.
Two weeks later, the Moroneys received another letter, this time from a woman named Alice Henderson. She claimed that Julia Otis was her cousin and had kidnapped Mary Agnes because her own husband and baby had died the year before. The Moroneys never heard from Otis or Henderson again, but authorities believed both notes had the same handwriting. In 1952, a California woman named Mary McClelland came forward and claimed she was Mary Agnes Moroney. She reunited with her family, but there were suspicions that McClelland was not actually Mary Agnes since she did not have the child’s hernia scar, and a doctor claimed to have delivered McClelland the year before Mary Agnes was born. Decades later, after McClelland died, DNA testing confirmed that she was not actually Mary Agnes Moroney.
Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopaedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. He is also the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row and recently worked on a sci-fi short film called “Jet Ranger of Another Tomorrow.” Feel free to contact him here.
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Looks Like Wally Fay ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp
“Did you get a good look at the man?” Officer Miggles asked.
“Oh, yes,” Miss Dragonette said.
“Can you describe him for me?”
“Well, he was kind of heavy-set without being what I would call fat, if you know what I mean.”
“So he was moderately overweight?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Did you notice anything else about him? The color of his hair?”
“He was wearing a hat so I couldn’t see his hair. I would imagine it would be dark, though. Underneath the hat.”
“How tall was he?”
“Rather on the tall side. About six feet and one inch, I’d say.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A long brown topcoat that came down to his ankles. Cashmere, I think.”
“Cashmere?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Can you tell me anything else about him?”
“He was wearing a brown tie with little yellow birds on it, like parrots.”
“All right. How old would you say he was?”
“If I had to guess, I’d guess late thirties. Thirty-eight or thirty-nine.”
“How would you describe his face?”
“Well, let me think, now. He needed a shave. I did notice that right off.”
“So he had stubble on his face.”
“Yes, dark stubble. The color of the stubble on his face was what made me think he would have dark hair, even though I couldn’t see his hair because of the hat he was wearing.”
“Can you tell me anything else about his face?”
“He looked like that actor in that movie about the woman with a spoiled daughter who shoots the woman’s husband.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am.”
“I know! It was Joan Crawford!”
“So, the man looked like Joan Crawford?”
“No! It was a Joan Crawford movie. The man looked like one of the actors in the movie.”
“Do you know the actor’s name?”
“No, I can’t think of it offhand. It wasn’t the playboy who was Joan Crawford’s second husband and it wasn’t the first husband, either. It was the other man. The one in business with Joan Crawford’s first husband.”
“Okay, ma’am. I don’t think we’re making much progress here.”
“I remember now! His name was Wally Fay.”
“Whose name?”
“The man in the movie with Joan Crawford. The name of the character he played was Wally Fay. I can’t think of his real name, though. It’ll come to me later, I’m sure.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t much help.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Can you tell me anything else about him at all?”
“He was in another movie where he played Paul Newman’s brother.”
“No! Can you tell me anything else about the man who fired the gun?”
“Paul Newman was married to Elizabeth Taylor and he had this brother they called Gooper. I suppose that was a nickname, though.”
“I don’t need to hear about a movie.”
“Gooper was married to a coarse fat woman named May. She and Gooper had a lot of little kids, and Paul Newman’s wife, the character played by Elizabeth Taylor, didn’t much care for them because they made so much noise.”
“That won’t help us to catch the man we’re looking for, ma’am.”
“Well, I’m trying to remember! I’m cooperating with you. It seems the least you can do is be patient and polite.”
“I’m sorry if I seem impatient but I don’t need to hear about any movie.”
“Where was I? Oh, yes. Paul Newman and his brother Gooper had a rich old father who didn’t like anybody in his family. Well, the entire family was gathered because the father had just found out he had a fatal disease and the two sons—especially Gooper—were worried about who was going to inherit the estate. It was in the South, somewhere. Mississippi, I think.”
“Okay, that’s enough about movies. Can you describe for me what you saw the man do?”
“Well, I was just walking along the sidewalk, minding my own business, on my way to buy a new pair of shoes. I heard a commotion in the street and I stopped to see what it was. I saw a bunch of police cars with flashing lights. It seemed to be something terribly important, but I didn’t know what it was.”
“A bunch of people had gathered along the sidewalk to watch, but I stayed back. That’s when I noticed the man in the cashmere coat come out of an alleyway.”
“What made you notice him?”
“He just stood there, looking very dignified. He wasn’t trying to elbow in to get a closer look, the way the other people were. He just looked straight ahead as though in a trance or something.”
“Well, after all the police cars had passed with their lights going, I saw the big black car of the governor. I could see him in the car smiling and waving—I recognized him from his pictures—and I knew then what all the commotion was about. All the people were trying to get in to get a closer look at him.”
“So you didn’t know until that moment that the governor was going to be visiting here that day?”
“No. Why should I?”
“Don’t you read the newspapers? Don’t you watch the news on television?”
“Go on.”
“When the car carrying the governor came about even with where I was standing on the sidewalk, the man in the cashmere coat took a few steps forward.”
“Toward the car?”
“Then what did he do?”
“I looked away for a moment and that’s when I heard the gunshots.”
“How many gunshots?”
“Three, I think. Some of the people screamed or ducked down as if they thought they were going to be shot, but I wasn’t afraid because I saw where the bullets came from and I knew they weren’t directed at me.”
“All right. Then what?”
“After the man fired the shots, he just simply disappeared.”
“People don’t disappear.”
“I know they don’t, but that’s the way it seemed to me. He was there and then he wasn’t.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“The governor’s car stopped and all the police cars stopped and everybody was running around trying to find out where the bullets came from. There were more people than ever now crowding around to get a better view. You know what people are like.”
“I suppose I do.”
“Well, the police spotted me standing on the sidewalk and, well, I guess it seemed to them that the bullets had come from about where I was standing, so they asked me if I had seen anything and I said I had and that’s when all these questions started. Can I go now? I’m feeling a little shaky after all the excitement.”
“It seems you were the only one who saw the man in the cashmere coat.”
“Yes, that’s because I was the only one standing back where he was standing. Everybody else was crowding toward the front.”
“As the only witness, you’ll need to make yourself available for further questioning.”
“Please, I’d rather you kept me out of this, if you don’t mind.”
After Office Miggles took her name and address, Miss Dragonette continued two blocks up the street and stepped off the curb between two parked cars. Looking around to make sure she wasn’t being observed, she took the gun out of her purse and threw it down a storm drain from which could be heard the sound of rushing water.
Satisfied that she wasn’t seen, she snapped her purse shut smartly and crossed the sidewalk to a store window where two high-fashion female mannequins in fur coats stood side by side. She looked into the face of the mannequin on the right and returned the artificial smile. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to make your acquaintance,” she said before continuing on her way.
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Hippo Press Articles
This Week’s Hippo
May 17, 2017 Michael Witthaus
Over a 50-year career, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band made its mark with hits from “Mr. Bojangles” to “Voila (An American Dream).” Beyond that, the Southern California band helped others find audiences – first, by recording early songs by important songwriters. Later, they introduced a generation of rock fans to the music that inspired them via the seminal 1971 album, Will The Circle Be Unbroken. The three record set featured a who’s who of Americana music – before it was given the name. Two more volumes followed in the ensuing decades. In 2015, the group celebrated its 50th anniversary with a star-studded PBS special.
Founding member Jimmie Fadden shared some of his memories with the Hippo in a recent phone interview.
The mid-1960s were a momentous time in Southern California music
It felt like things were very creative, that there was a lot of music being played by a lot of people that was very interesting and it had a life that was different from other things go on … we had the Seeds and Steppenwolf and the Byrds, there were a lot of cool rock bands in LA, but there was a lot of variety and I think everybody was having a lot of fun with it. There was a lot of hanging out and camaraderie; not exactly what you would call a cafe scene, but it was like that.
The wealth of creativity upped everyone’s game
Absolutely! It’s like when you were skiing, you were following somebody down the hill – you had to do better or you’re out running and trying to tag along with somebody to keep up.
Band member John McEuen and his brother Bill’s love of bluegrass led to a landmark album
Bill was a huge fan of the Grand Ole Opry and John being a banjo player becomes that, and is ultimately fascinated with the life of Earl Scruggs and every great banjo player that ever was. He translates that enthusiasm into our group. Bill comes up with the idea that maybe we could make a record. There are steps along the way that need explaining. It’s kind of complex and everybody has their own remembrances of it, but as it was, we opened a show for Merle Travis at the Ash Grove … then Earl Scruggs was playing at Tulagi’s in Boulder, Colorado. John went to see him and asked him about the idea of maybe playing on one of our records, and then this thing grew and grew.
Earl Scruggs and his wife/manager Louise Scruggs helped recruit other legends to the project
Earl and Louise managed to generate enthusiasm [and] everybody was excited about the idea of us and them. Randy and Gary and Stevie Scruggs had a lot to do with the interface to us. Earl listened to his sons and embraced the interest in newer music that they had. He saw there may be some reason to do this … there are some obvious rootsy little bookmarks in our music that the Scruggs boys really got a hold of and showed Earl. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand it, but they more or less said “Dad, this is cool, we really like this,” and Earl said, “Yeah – okay!”
Steve Martin was briefly a member of the group.
Steve and John worked together early on; Steve is the really funny banjo player and John’s the great banjo player that is pretty funny … We used to goof on him. He had this Chinese Bogota Mystery Box of the Dead, this cheap magic trick thing, and he would keep stuff in there to juggle like oranges. Some nights we would put honey on the oranges just to mess with him. We put pizza dough in there one night. He pulled it out and said, “ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to do an impression of myself,” and smashed it on his face. He had a quick wit.
The NGDB 50th anniversary show had many ‘best moments’
It’s great to have the people that are a part of this family … we’re like a school of fish, sometimes swimming together, but sometimes apart; never together but close sometimes. So it’s really nice to have those musical moments; there’s something warm and fuzzy about them. It’s like “Wow, if this gets any better, I’m going to fall off the stage.”
When: Thursday, May 18, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St., Manchester
Tickets: $35.50-$107.50 at palacetheatre.org
This story originally appeared in the 11 May 2017 issue of Hippo Press
Posted in Dirt Band, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Uncategorized
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Michael is the primary music and comedy writer for the Hippo, New Hampshire's largest alt-weekly; Michael contributes reviews of current CDs and DVDs, covers concerts large and small, and writes stories about the area music scene. He's a prescient observer of the trends making every word, note and image "local" entertainment. Michael wrote the weekly "Local Rhythms" column for three New Hampshire/Vermont papers: the Eagle Times (Claremont), Connecticut Valley Spectator (Lebanon) and the online Message for the Week (Chester, Vermont) before their abrupt closing on 9 July 2009. He later wrote Local Rhythms for the Compass in Claremont. Email:mwitthaus@gmail.com
Crazed by the Music
Jaded Insider
RAIN: Radio & Internet
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« Trevor reviews The Meagre Tarmac, by Clark Blaise
Trevor reviews The Beggar’s Garden; Kimbofo on The Sisters Brothers »
A Good Man, by Guy Vanderhaeghe
Review copy courtest McClelland & Stewart
The time is July, 1876 — three weeks after Sitting Bull and the Sioux have defeated Custer at Little Big Horn. The opening setting is Fort Walsh in Canada’s Cypress Hills, in the deep southwest corner of what is now Saskatchewan. Wesley Case is the failed son of a wealthy Ottawa-based lumber baron (the law, journalism and a possible military scandal are all part of that list) whose father has just “bought” his son’s way out of the Northwest Mounted Police. Senior Case wants Wesley to take up a political career with a safe seat in Parliament; Wesley has plans to establish a cattle and horse ranch near Fort Benton, 150 miles south of Fort Walsh in Montana.
Forts Walsh and Benton may be on the opposite sides of an international border but they are inextricably linked at the time. No one knows where Sitting Bull and the Sioux are — the Americans are determined to annihilate him and his tribe. The Canadians have a different concern. The native people recognize no national border — will the Sioux chief head north and build a coalition of tribes that will continue (or respond to) the violence?
And, just to make things more complex, there is serious ongoing tension between the new Dominion of Canada (created in 1867) and an America that is still emerging from the Civil War. Throw in the Fenian raids on Canada and the War of 1812, still a living memory, and you have a triangle of forces — two European-founded countries that don’t really trust each other but both intent on moving into the western frontier and native peoples who are resisting.
Fans of Guy Vanderheaghe (and yes I am one) will recognize this as familiar territory, literally and figuratively, for the author. The Englishman’s Boy and The Last Crossing — both highly regarded novels — were set in this same region at virtually the same time. A Good Man completes Vanderhaeghe’s Western trilogy. If you haven’t read either of the first two, don’t worry; these three novels complement each other and can be read in any order since they explore different aspects of what was happening at the time. And each has components which take the book off into a unique direction.
If you have read the first two, you will know that both climax with fictional versions of deplorable real-life massacres of native people. A Good Man is different — the battle (and the killing went the other way this time) has already taken place when the book opens. This novel explores what is happening in the European policing, trade and settler community in the wake of that battle. Uncertainty is at play everywhere and rugged people don’t respond well to that.
One of the things that I admire most about Vanderhaeghe’s trilogy is his ability to explore the complexity of the forces at play. On the grand scale, the tensions between the invading forces and the native bands. At a community level, the concerns in both Fort Walsh and Fort Benton about what the near-term future holds. And at the personal level, for Wesley Case and his friends, life continues to go on, ranches needed to be looked after and people fall in love. Author Vanderhaeghe delivers on all those fronts (and many more minor ones, I must say).
Here’s how Wesley’s decision about his ranching future is introduced, in an entry in his personal journal, responding to the letter from his father saying he has bought out his son’s commission and “smoothed your way back into civilian life”, saying that his intervention with Sir John A. Macdonald “left the impression your candidacy [for Parliament] is not out of the question”. It is a long quote, but I would like to give visitors here a flavor of the author’s narrative style:
Since I could not take him by the shoulders, shake him, shout, “Let me be!” I blew out the candle, consigning Father and his blather to the shadows. It is the place for him; he is a shady man. So why do I take the trouble to copy choice selections of his tirade into this journal? Because at some future date I shall surely wish to relive my triumph over the Baron. He may puff himself up for unlocking my cell door, assume that I will meekly do his bidding, fulfill his defeated ambitions by becoming his parliamentary proxy, but if he thinks that will happen, he has another think coming. In the two months since this letter arrived I have had plenty of time to make my own plans, to prepare to roll the dice and become a rancher. A chancy business, but I have enlisted Joe McMullen to help me bring it to fruition. So to hell with Father. The struggle between his higher organ which prompted him towards the world of politics, and his lower organ, which urged him towards Solange [the maid for whom Case’s father deserted his mother], was settled long ago. His lower organ won. Let him live with the consequences of it.
That sets the ranching story line (and offers proof of Wesley’s damaging stubborness, although some of that is a necessary characteristic for survival in frontier country). To create the vehicle for the “community tension, where is Sitting Bull?” thread, Vanderhaeghe has Wesley sign up as a go-between to deliver information back and forth between Major Walsh at Fort Walsh in Canada and his counterpart in Fort Benton. The two not only have distrust sown by different national agendas, they have very different attitudes toward how to deal with native people — and personally they hate each other’s guts, which makes co-operation an even more difficult prospect. The narrative does get stretched at points, but readers do get a very good picture of military “commanders” in total confusion around whatever threats they face.
What perhaps impressed me most about the book, however, was the device that Vanderhaeghe uses to frame his “global” story (the Canada-U.S. conflict): a love story. The Fort Benton town lawyer has been threatened and he has hired one Michael Dunne to “protect” his wife, Ada Tarr. The laywer will die but before he does Dunne has become obsessed with her — and Wesley is destined to fall in love with the well-read Ada.
We discover in Dunne’s background story one of the most disagreeable characters in recent fiction. An informer in Toronto when Confederates were seeking both money and men from there to fight the Union, he moved on to become an enforcer for Fenian elements, on both their real and perceived enemies. He has brought this violent streak to the Cypress Hills-Fort Benton country, where the continual suspicion on all sides offers many chances to profitably exploit his talents. It is no stretch of imagination to see that he will eventually adapt them to serve his obsession for Ada Tarr.
There is a very real sense in this book that the conflict between the armed forces, traders and settlers and the native bands is now playing out its final acts — the massacres of the previous two books illustrated a continuing conflict, but that has now been decided. What is at play here is what the “winners” do with their victory (again at the national, community and personal levels) and they can’t unlearn the despicable behavior that got them here when it comes to dealing with this new world.
In the broad context, A Good Man is an epic (and I don’t use that word often) account of what was happening in Western North America in the late 1870s — a story that does deserve to be revisited. In its details, however, the book chooses to do that through a very different set of devices, delving into what individuals were feeling and doing as all this went on. As the novel moved from thread to thread, I never lost interest for a moment. For this reader (a champion of the first two novels, I admit) Vanderhaeghe has produced a true tour-de-force to complete his trilogy.
This entry was posted on September 23, 2011 at 2:15 pm and is filed under 2011 Giller Prize, Author, Vanderhaeghe, Guy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
11 Responses to “A Good Man, by Guy Vanderhaeghe”
anokatony Says:
Having read everything else by Vanderhaeghe, I am, more than ever, eagerly waiting for “A Good Man”.
shawna Says:
This sounds great, Kevin. I really enjoyed “The Englishman’s Boy” and had “The Last Crossing” on my TBR list. Now I’ll have to add this one as well!
Tony, Shawna: I know that this kind of historical novel is not to everyone’s taste (and often not to mine, I must admit). What I have always liked about Vanderhaeghe is the way that he makes characters the central part of his novel — while the history is important (and useful), his interest is in portraying how people both coped with it and effected it. This novel delivers on that front as well as the previous two in the triology did.
Max Cairnduff Says:
The Englishman’s Boy has stayed in my memory. Over time its weaknesses (and I did think, do think, it had some) have faded a bit and some of its sweep and vision remains.
I should perhaps read The Last Crossing before this, but you do remind me to try another Vanderhaeghe.
It’s interesting how he’s explored such a specific time and place over three novels. In a sense he’s rooting the Western in fact – generally of course it’s a genre with often very questionable historicity.
A failed lawyer opening a ranch. I’m sure nothing could go wrong with that plan.
Max: You raise a very good point in observing that Vanderhaeghe sets all three books in the same area at the same time. For me, each heads off in a different direction — while they are fiction, in a sense the trilogy represents three very different views of the same historical situation. In that sense on my “triangulation” of Western writers (Zane Grey, Cormac McCarthy, Wallace Stegner), he is much closer to the Stegner approach, although there are some McCarthy elements in his work.
I agree that he is not perfect — his attention to detail sometimes leads to some frustratingly slow parts that don’t have much reward. Like you, I’ve found that they tend to fade in time while the stronger parts grow in signifigance. I will also admit that it helps a lot to “know” the territory — I’ve only been to the Cypress Hills a couple of times (they are on no beaten path) but it is a very different part of the world that the author captures particularly well. I am hoping that fellow judge Trevor gets to this one eventually — he grew up in Idaho, not far from where all this action takes place.
The only Zane Grey I’ve read was Riders of the Purple Sage, which I rather liked but I wouldn’t recommend it to most serious readers.
But then like most serious readers I’m not always a serious reader. Grey’s a lot of fun.
Stegner I haven’t read yet and should. I own one certainly, recommended by either you or Trevor (or both, but I think just one of you). A tremendous looking writer.
Curious how alluring the Western can be. A testament perhaps to the landscapes that ultimately produce the genre.
The Giller Jury is going to face an interesting discussion when it comes to the shortlist — both this book and The Sisters Brothers are “Westerns” set in roughly the same time. At that point, all similarity ends — and I can only see one of the two advancing to the shortlist. I’d plump for this one, but that is more a reflection of my reading tastes than anything else.
Buried In Print Says:
Although I’ve had the other two volumes in this trilogy on my shelf for years, I’ve never read them; and although I fully intended to read them before I turned to A Good Man, I only finished the last book on the longlist yesterday and the prize is announced tomorrow. (Close one.) All that to say that unlike you, I was not a champion of his other novels.
But I can readily understand how you could be, even after just one volume. It’s an old-fashioned style, and not a time period in which I’m terrifically interested, but I was surprisingly engaged throughout (a good bit of that going to Ada’s character — and her love of George Eliot — but not that alone).
I can understand why some readers (and the jury, I presume) don’t share my enthusiasm for Vanderhaeghe’s trilogy — as you point out, the style is somewhat old-fashioned and the narrative quite conventional. I don’t find fault with that at all and would second your assessment that with this novel it is the characters who make the book special — even though I think the author’s three story lines are also very well-developed.
Marilyn Potts Says:
I love Guy Vanderhaeghe’s book and it is indeed the characters that always bring me back. I’m just starting to read “A Good Man.” Did you know he wrote two very interesting plays?
Marilyn: I did know that he had written plays, although I have neither seen nor read them. I think for me, in his historical novels, it is the way that he is able to establish characters inside the historical context that is so impressive — there is a balance between people and context. As I said in an earlier comment, I’ll be interested in seeing where he heads now since he says his historical novel period is finished.
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Paula Goering. Photo courtesy of U of T Psychiatry
Paula Goering Boldly Helped Those in Need
Alum and prof helped people grappling with mental illness and homelessness
September 6, 2016 | By Nadia Siu Van
A little kindness goes a long way, but Paula Goering – who dedicated her life to improving the lives of others, before passing away of cancer in May – went beyond the call of duty.
After obtaining her PhD from U of T’s Institute of Medical Science in 1985, Goering became a psychiatry professor at the university, where she was known to lead daunting large-scale projects. Her life’s work culminated in a five-city study that showed the “Housing First” model – where people grappling with homelessness and mental illness are provided with a place to live, along with preventive care – to be an effective long-term approach. “Paula was always bold and fearless in her commitment to helping those in need,” says Donald Wasylenki, former chair of psychiatry at U of T.
Throughout her career in mental-health-services research, Goering extended kindness to everyone, from befriending the people she worked with (many of whom struggled with mental illness) to organizing celebrations. “She’d bake a chocolate angel food cake – my favourite kind – for my birthday every year,” says Wasylenki. “She believed in making a difference in the world, no matter how small.”
Farah Mawani, a PhD candidate in public health sciences, had assumed that Goering would step down as her co-adviser. “She said, ‘No, I want to see you through to the end,’” Mawani recalls. “I was not able to complete my PhD in time, but I will carry her kindness, generosity and belief in me forever.”
Tags: 1980s alumni, Department of Psychiatry, Homelessness, In Memoriam, Mental health, School of Graduate Studies
By Cynthia Macdonald
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Little Rock Look Back: Franklin D. Roosevelt
Posted on January 30, 2017 by Scott
Gov. & Mrs. Roosevelt with Sen. Robinson en route to FDR taking oath as president.
On January 30, 1882, future U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born. In 1936, he visited Little Rock as part of a statewide tour in conjunction with Arkansas’ Centennial celebration. While in the state he spent time outside of Hot Springs at Couchwood, the vacation home of Arkansas Power & Light founder Harvey Couch, who was the chair of the Centennial activities.
In honor of President Roosevelt’s visit, a portion of Highway 365 in Little Rock was designated Roosevelt Road. He followed part of that road while in the Capital City before making a public appearance.
President Roosevelt’s address on June 10, recounted Arkansas’ territorial and statehood history. At the end he paid tribute to his Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson. The Senator was a friend and confidant who often led the charge for FDR programs in congress. Indeed, it would be New Deal programs which would allow for the construction of a municipal auditorium in Little Rock, which would be named in memory of Sen. Robinson after his death in the summer of 1937. (As the Democratic leader of the Senate, it had been Robinson who accompanied FDR and Eleanor in the motorcade to the 1933 Presidential inauguration ceremony.) A quote by President Roosevelt upon learning of Senator Robinson’s death adorns a wall of Robinson Center.
FDR’s visit to Arkansas had political implications as well. The late Senator Huey Long of neighboring Louisiana had been arguably FDR’s biggest adversary in Washington. Long was very popular in rural areas of Arkansas and had campaigned for Hattie Caraway when she ran for re-election to the Senate, to the dismay of many of Arkansas’ Democratic establishment. Harvey Couch had worked to bring about a detente between FDR and Long prior to the latter’s assassination in 1935. But between a lingering mistrust of FDR by Long supporters and discontent from some sectors based on New Deal programs, it was important for FDR to shore up Democratic support in Arkansas. At the time the state had nine electoral votes.
FDR would return to Central Arkansas in 1943 to review troops at the military facility named for Sen. Robinson. That would be his final visit to Arkansas before his death in April 1945.
As a character in the musical Annie, FDR has been on the stage of Robinson on numerous occasions.
Posted in Government, History, LR Look Back | Tagged Annie, Arkansas Power & Light, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harvey Couch, Hattie Caraway, Huey Long, Joseph Taylor Robinson, Robinson Center Performance Hall
Happy Birthday to PHANTOM – 6 weeks until it arrives in Little Rock
29 years ago today, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA opened on Broadway. It is still going strong at the Majestic Theatre.
Of course, Little Rock theatregoers will not have to wait much longer to see PHANTOM at the new Robinson Center Performance Hall. It will be here from March 8-19. Producer Cameron Mackintosh’s spectacular new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s phenomenal musical success, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, will come to Little Rock as part of a brand new North American Tour.
The production will be the largest musical to play in the building ever. It will eclipse Beauty and the Beast and Wicked, which both have played at Robinson twice.
The musical, based on a novel by Gaston Leroux, features music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and book & lyrics by Charles Hart, Richard Stilgoe and Mr. Lloyd Webber. The production was produced by Cameron Mackintosh and directed by Harold Prince.
After opening in London in 1986, The Phantom of the Opera opened on Broadway in January 1988. It is still running over 27 years later. Phantom is the longest running show in Broadway history. Nominated for 10 Tony Awards in 1988, it won seven: Best Musical, Actor in a Musical (Michael Crawford), Featured Actress in a Musical (Judy Kaye), Director of a Musical (Harold Prince), Scenic Design (Maria Bjornson), Costume Design (Bjornson) and Lighting Design (Andrew Bridge).
Hailed by critics as “bigger and better than ever before,” this production boasts many exciting special effects including the show’s legendary chandelier, new scenic and lighting designs, new staging and choreography. The beloved story and thrilling score will be performed by a cast and orchestra of 52, making this PHANTOM one of the largest productions now on tour.
Celebrity Attractions is bringing PHANTOM to Little Rock. Ticket information can be found here.
Posted in History, Music, Theatre | Tagged Andrew Lloyd Webber, Beauty and the Beast, Cameron Mackintosh, Celebrity Attractions, Charles Hart, David Bridge, Gaston Leroux, Harold Prince, Judy Kaye, Maria Bjornson, Michael Crawford, RIchard Stilgoe, Robinson Center Performance Hall, The Phantom of the Opera, Tony Awards, Wicked
Little Rock Look Back: Voters approve Municipal Auditorium
On January 26, 1937, Little Rock voters went to the polls to vote on three different municipal bond issues. One of them was the construction of a municipal auditorium.
The bonds for the auditorium would be $468,000 in general obligation bonds which would be paid off between 1940 and 1971. This was toward a total cost of $760,000 for the entire project.
The official campaign for the auditorium was sponsored by the Little Rock Forward Committee which was led by W. H. Williams. In campaign advertisements it showed the value of conventions in New York City which was estimated at $100 per convention attendee. Little Rock organizers were estimating a $10 a day expenditure by visitors, which the committee stressed was very conservative. The campaign committee emphasized the importance of acting at that time due to the federal government money involved.
Various committees and organizations endorsed the auditorium project including the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, Little Rock Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the Young Business Men’s Association.
The thrust of the campaign focused on the economic benefit to Little Rock as well as the fact that the auditorium would be for all citizens. This message was picked up in editorials by both the Democrat and Gazette. In editorials on January 23 and 25, the Democrat opined that the benefits of the auditorium would be distributed among all classes of the citizenry. The next day, both papers ran editorials which touted the economic boon an auditorium would bring through conventions and meetings.
The Democrat’s approach broke down the current value of conventions to Little Rock with, what it termed, the city’s “existing inadequate” facilities. The paper emphasized a conservative estimate of what the added value to Little Rock’s economy would be with the new auditorium.
In expressing support for the auditorium the Gazette stressed the values for local, statewide and national groups. “An auditorium would provide a more convenient and better adapted community center for all kinds of local gathering,” and continued that it would make Little Rock “the logical meeting place for state conventions of every sort.” In discussing the value of state, regional and national meetings the paper stressed that the outside money spent by convention attendees has an impact beyond stores, hotels and restaurants.
Both papers also echoed the importance of the federal government financing to make this possible. The Democrat noted that the Public Works Administration grant and federal low cost loan made this an ideal time.
On January 26, 1937, Little Rock voters approved the auditorium bond by a vote of 1,518 to 519. It passed in each of the city’s 23 precincts. Little Rock Mayor R. E. Overman expressed his pleasure at the outcome of the vote and extended his thanks to the voters.
After the election, a Gazette editorial commented on the low turnout for the special election by commenting that the weather had been nice and there were no other barriers to voting. The editorial writer opined that those not voting in the election must not have been opposed to the endeavor.
Posted in Architecture, Government, History, LR Look Back | Tagged Arkansas Democrat, Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock Federation of Women's Clubs, Little Rock Forward, Little Rock Regional Chamber, R. E. Overman, Robinson Center Performance Hall, W. H. Williams, Young Business Men's Association
Little Rock Look Back: Douglas MacArthur
On January 26, 1880, Douglas MacArthur was born in the Arsenal Building while his father was stationed at the Little Rock Barracks. Though he left Arkansas a few weeks later when his father was transferred, he returned to his birthplace on March 23, 1952. On that day he was greeted by crowds welcoming one of the USA’s most famous military figures.
Though Gen. MacArthur spent only a few weeks in Little Rock, he was baptized at Christ Episcopal Church. The location of the baptism remains a mystery today because the church was meeting in temporary locations due to the first structure having been lost to a fire.
When the General returned to Little Rock in 1952, he did pay a brief visit to Christ Church. He also spoke at the Foster Bandshell in the park which bore his name. He was one of three presidential candidates to speak at the Foster Bandshell in 1952, the others were the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower.
When General MacArthur died, he was granted a state funeral. He was one of the few non-Presidents to have been given this honor.
Today, the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History is located in the Arsenal building. It was created to interpret our state’s military heritage from its territorial period to the present. Located in the historic Tower Building of the Little Rock Arsenal–the birthplace of General Douglas MacArthur–the museum preserves the contributions of Arkansas men and women who served in the armed forces. Exhibits feature artifacts, photographs, weapons, documents, uniforms and other military items that vividly portray Arkansas’s military history at home and abroad.
Posted in Government, History, LR Look Back, Museum | Tagged Adlai Stevenson, Christ Episcopal Church, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Foster Bandshell, MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, MacArthur Park
Little Rock Look Back: Little Rock takes possession of Robinson Auditorium
On January 25, 1940, the City of Little Rock officially took complete possession of the Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium. By assuming custody of the structure from the contractor and the PWA, the City accepted responsibility for any of the remaining work to be completed. This event happened one day shy of the third anniversary of the election which approved plans to issue bonds for an auditorium.
E. E. Beaumont, the Auditorium Commission chairman, stated that an opening date could not be set until more work was completed. A major unfinished task was the laying of the front sidewalk which had been delayed due to cold weather.
The night before Little Rock took possession, Robinson Auditorium had been a topic of discussion at the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce annual meeting. The new Chamber president Reeves E. Ritchie (who as an Arkansas Power & Light executive had been engaged in the lengthy discussions about the installation of the steam line and transformers of the building) pledged that the Chamber would work to bring more and larger conventions to Little Rock at the Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium.
Posted in Architecture, Government, History, LR Look Back | Tagged Arkansas Power & Light, City of Little Rock, E. E. Beaumont, Little Rock Regional Chamber, Public Works Administration, PWA, Reeves E. Ritchie, Robinson Center Performance Hall
2017 National Magazine Award nominations include Oxford American
The Oxford American has been nominated for a 2017 National Magazine Award: Zandria F. Robinson’s “Listening for the Country” is a finalist in the Essays and Criticism category.
In her feature essay from the 2016 Southern Music Issue, Robinson writes of her experience planning her father’s funeral in Memphis and wrestling with her complicated memories of their relationship—all while listening to the music her father loved. Written with precise compassion and vivid insight, “Listening for the Country” is an unsparing portrait of a family caught between city and country, love and loss.
This is the Oxford American’s fourteenth National Magazine Award nomination since the magazine’s founding in 1992. The Oxford American has been awarded four National Magazine Awards in its 25 years, most notably for General Excellence in 2016.
Zandria F. Robinson and the Oxford American are nominated alongside four other esteemed writers and publications in the Essays and Criticism category: Michael Chabon for GQ, Andrew Sullivan for New York, Sam Anderson for The New York Times Magazine, and Becca Rothfeld for The Hedgehog Review.
The winners of the 2017 National Magazine Awards will be announced on Tuesday, February 7, in New York City.
Posted in Literature | Tagged Andrew Sullivan, Becca Rothfeld, GQ, Michael Chabon, National Magazine Award, New York (magazine), Oxford American, Sam Anderson, The New York Times, Zandria F. Robinson
Little Rock Look Back: The Sun shines in as HAIR plays Robinson Center
Ad for the original production of HAIR in Little Rock. Note the ticket prices. And that they could be purchased at Moses Music Shops.
Forty-five years ago today, on January 18, 1972, the musical Hair settled in for a week-long run at Robinson Auditorium. The saga to bring the national tour to Little Rock had actually begun eleven months earlier.
In February 1971, a young Little Rock attorney named Phil Kaplan petitioned the Little Rock Board of Censors to see if it would allow a production of Hair to play in the city. He was asking on behalf of a client who was interested in bringing a national tour to Arkansas’ capital city. The show, which had opened on Broadway to great acclaim in April 1968 after an Off Broadway run in 1967, was known for containing a nude scene as well for a script which was fairly liberally sprinkled with four-letter words. The Censors stated they could not offer an opinion without having seen a production.
By July 1971, Kaplan and his client (who by then had been identified as Southwest Productions) were seeking permission for a January 1972 booking of Hair from the City’s Auditorium Commission which was charged with overseeing operations at Robinson Auditorium. At its July meeting, the Commissioners voted against allowing Hair because of its “brief nude scene” and “bawdy language.”
Kaplan decried the decision. He stated that the body couldn’t “sit in censorship of legitimate theatrical productions.” He noted courts had held that Hair could be produced and that the Auditorium Commission, as an agent for the State, “clearly can’t exercise prior censorship.” He proffered that if the production was obscene it would be a matter for law enforcement not the Auditorium Commission.
The Commission countered that they had an opinion from City Attorney Joseph Kemp stating they had the authority. One of the Commissioners, Mrs. Grady Miller (sister-in-law of the building’s namesake the late Senator Robinson, she had served on the Commission since 1940), expressed her concern that allowing Hair would open the door to other productions such as Oh! Calcutta!
On July 26, 1971, Southwest Productions filed suit against the Auditorium Commission. Four days later there was a hearing before federal Judge G. Thomas Eisele. At that hearing, Auditorium Commission member Lee Rogers read aloud excerpts from the script he found objectionable. Under questioning from Kaplan, a recent touring production of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite was discussed. That play has adultery as a central theme of one of its acts. Rogers admitted he found the play funny, and that since the adultery did not take place on stage, he did not object to it. Among those testifying in favor of it was Robert Reddington, who was director of performing arts at the Arkansas Arts Center.
Judge Eisele offered a ruling on August 11 which compelled the Auditorium Commission to allow Hair to be performed. Prior to the ruling, some of the Auditorium Commissioners had publicly stated that if they had to allow Hair, they would close it after the first performance on the grounds of obscenity. To combat this, Judge Eisele stated that the Commission had to allow Hair to perform the entire six day engagement it sought.
Upon hearing of the Judge’s ruling, Commissioner Miller offered a succinct, two word response. “Oh, Dear!”
In the end, the production of Hair at Robinson would not be the first performance in the state. The tour came through Fayetteville for two performances in October 1971 at Barnhill Arena.
On January 18, 1972, Hair played the first of its 8 performances over 6 days at Robinson Auditorium. In his review the next day, the Arkansas Gazette’s Bill Lewis noted that Hair “threw out all it had to offer” and that Little Rock had survived.
The ads promoting the production carried the tagline “Arkansas will never be the same.” Tickets (from $2 all the way up to $8.50) could be purchased at Moses Melody Shops both downtown and in “The Mall” (meaning Park Plaza). That business is gone from downtown, but the scion of that family, Jimmy Moses, is actively involved in building downtown through countless projects. His sons are carrying on the family tradition too.
Little Rock was by no means unique in trying to stop productions of Hair. St. Louis, Birmingham, Los Angeles, Tallahassee, Boston, Atlanta, Charlotte NC, West Palm Beach, Oklahoma City, Mobile and Chattanooga all tried unsuccessfully to stop performances in their public auditoriums. Despite Judge Eisele’s ruling against the City of Little Rock, members of the Fort Smith City Council also tried to stop a production later in 1972 in that city. This was despite warnings from City staff that there was not legal standing.
Within a few years, the Board of Censors of the City of Little Rock would be dissolved (as similar bodies also were disappearing across the US). Likewise, the Auditorium Commission was discontinued before Hair even opened with its duties being taken over by the Advertising and Promotion Commission and the Convention & Visitors Bureau staff. This was not connected to the Hair decision; it was, instead, related to expanding convention facilities in Robinson and the new adjacent hotel. Regardless of the reasons for their demise, both bygone bodies were vestiges of earlier, simpler and differently focused days in Little Rock.
Posted in History, LR Look Back, Theatre | Tagged Arkansas Arts Center, Arkansas Gazette, Auditorium Commission, Bill Lewis, Board of Censors, City of Little Rock, Emily Miller, Fort Smith, G. Thomas Eisele, Hair, Jim Porter, Jimmy Moses, Joseph Kemp, Lee Rogers, Moses Melody Shops, Neil Simon, Oh! Calcutta!, Phil Kaplan, Plaza Suite, Robert Reddington, Robinson Center Performance Hall, St. Louis, The Weekend Theater, UA Little Rock, UA Little Rock Theatre and Dance, University of Arkansas
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In a such a small country you will see Mediterranean climate of Spain, the mountain peaks of Switzerland, the lakes of Italy, coves for swimming like those of the Turkish Sea, and the exotic sandy beaches like in Tunisia.
Montenegro is beautiful and it will maintain its investment and tourism growth pace.
Purchasing property in Montenegro should be considered a sound investment. The potential for growth in tourism makes Montenegro a natural choice for the investor. Let us focus on some facts about this idyllic country.
In the very south of the big blueness of the Adriatic Sea, in the heart of the Balkan Mountains, there exists Montenegro.
Montenegro is small but an extraordinary country. Even if it is a small country, spread on around 14000km2 and with less than 690 000 inhabitants; it is very hard briefly to describe and introduce Montenegro. One of the reasons is stormy and honorable history of this country, which had attracted many conquerors because of its specific geographical position, so they had left traces which made it such as a country with tempestuous history, rich with cultural, inherits, as multi ethnic and multi confessional country.
Beautiful nature makes Montenegro very particular and different; it is unique, untouched, pure, diverse and special. Those wild beauties represent a main Montenegrin treasure. On its small surface a magnificent coast is spread and it leaves you out of breath, and mountains with their beauty and size are conquering all your attention.
Today, Montenegro is more and more recognized as a tourist destination, with various and attractive offers which can satisfy even tourists with the most expectations. Small Montenegrin surface offers many possibilities to the tourists; they can stay on the coast and visit many beaches which are spread from Ulcinj (Ada and mouth of the river Bojana), to Herceg Novi (to the border with Croatia), and for a very short time they can visit the north of Montenegro and enjoy in mountains and numerous lakes.
Wild beauty is taking you in its arms and discovers all charms in the heart of the Europe, located in Montenegro. Visit Montenegro, visit country which will amaze you for sure.
Montenegro experiences a Mediterranean climate with hot dry summers and autumns. Winters are comparatively cold with the country’s inlands experiencing heavy snowfall.
The town in Montenegro - Kotor is in the list of UNESCO World Heritage wherethere is the narrowest street in the World. This street is called: «Let the people go”.
At 1300 meters deep, the Grand Canyon of Tara River is actually the deepest canyon in Europe and second largest in the world after the Colorado canyon in the USA.
Skadar Lake is one of the biggest bird reserves in Europe. Permanently or seasonally, 267 birds live there. It is also the habitat for 40 types of fish. Centre for Protection and Research of Montenegro (CZIP) has made big moves to protect the birds and there are more flamingos visiting the country than ever before.
In particular, Montenegro offers fantastic ski and mountain resorts which are becoming increasingly popular with tourists and locals alike.
Montenegro uses EURO as official currency since 2003, making banking and financial systems much, much easier and more adapted to European business than the majority of its neighboring nations.
According to the Montenegro Police Chief - crime rate in Montenegro among lowest in Europe.
In Montenegro, in November 2015 tourists realized 24 282 arrivals which is 6.5% more than in November 2014. The number of realized overnight stays is 104 138, which is 26.0% more than in November 2014. Overnight stays of foreign tourists represent 82.8% while the domestic tourists represent 17.2% of all overnight stays in November 2015.
Montenegro has the potential to become a magnet for investment because of its business-focused economic system. It enjoys great economic freedom and monetary stability.
Real estate ownership in Montenegro is guaranteed and without specific limitations. For investors advantages are: free transfer of profits abroad, free access to European market and Russian market, only 1 per cent of customs value, economic reforms and newly created institutions, the shortest period in the region for company registration, avoidance of double taxation, free trade zones where firms are exempted from paying VAT and profit taxes.
According the information of the Global Investment Trade Monitor published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development the sectors attracting most of the FDI (Foreign direct investment) are finance, tourism, energy, health care and real estate. The main investing countries are Switzerland, Norway, Austria and Russia.
Over 5 000 foreign-owned companies are registered and operate in Montenegro; the number of registered foreign companies has doubled in past two years.
Montenegro government has committed to invest in the region €200 million into roads and tourism expansion of the coastal region alone.
Montenegro tries to keep the foreign direct investment environment as simple as possible.
Furthermore, Montenegro is the only country in South Eastern Europe besides Serbia that has signed a Free Trade Agreement with Russia. This agreement gives goods produced in Montenegro with prevailing value added in Montenegro a free of customs access to Russia, a market of some 150 million consumers. Montenegro has also signed a Free Trade Agreement with Turkey.
Buying a property in Montenegro is a good choice.
We have a very big choice of apartments, villas, holiday houses or urban planning lands at very reasonable prices.
The interests of our company are to understand your needs and to safe your investment.
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315 U.S. 543 - Pearce v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
315 US 543 Pearce v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
62 S.Ct. 754
86 L.Ed. 1016
COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE.
Argued Feb. 5, 1942.
Decided March 9, 1942.
[Syllabus from pages 543-545 intentionally omitted]
Mr. Gordon S. P. Kleeberg, of New York City, for petitioner.
Mr. Gordon B. Tweedy, of Washington, D.C., for respondent.
Mr. Justice DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner and her husband separated in 1913. There was an agreement providing for monthly payments by the husband for her support. That agreement was amended in 1916 so as to provide monthly payments to her of $500 for life. Her husband, however, was given an option to terminate the arrangement by purchasing an annuity contract from a life insurance company which would pay petitioner $500 a month for the rest of her life. In 1917 petitioner obtained an absolute divorce in Texas, her husband entering a personal appearance. Neither alimony nor a property settlement was mentioned in the divorce decree. There were no children. Several months after the divorce Mr. Pearce purchased an annuity from an insurance company for petitioner's benefit. The annuity provided for a payment of $500 per month during her life.
Neither petitioner nor Mr. Pearce included the $6000 received by her under the annuity contract in their federal income tax returns for 1935 and 1936. The Commissioner sent deficiency notices to both of them. Each appealed to the Board of Tax Appeals. At the hearing the Commissioner contended that the payments were income of petitioner. The Board upheld that contention. 42 B.T.A. 91. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of the Board, one judge dissenting. 2 Cir., 120 F.2d 228. We granted the petition for certiorari, 314 U.S. 593, 62 S.Ct. 98, 86 L.Ed. —-, because of the manner in which that court applied the rule of Helvering v. Fitch, 309 U.S. 149, 60 S.Ct. 427, 84 L.Ed. 665, and Helvering v. Leonard, 310 U.S. 80, 60 S.Ct. 780, 84 L.Ed. 1087, in case the ex-wife rather than the husband was sought to be taxed on alleged alimony payments.
The Circuit Court of Appeals reached the conclusion that petitioner was liable by the following line of reasoning. The determination of the Commissioner that the monthly payments were income of petitioner was presumptively correct; the burden to show error rested on petitioner. Welch v. Helvering, 290 U.S. 111, 115, 54 S.Ct. 8, 9, 78 L.Ed. 212. Error might be shown by submitting 'clear and convincing proof' (Helvering v. Fitch, supra, 309 U.S. page 156, 60 S.Ct. page 430, 84 L.Ed. 665) that the payments were made pursuant to a continuing obligation of her former husband to provide for her support, so as to make the rule of Douglas v. Willcuts, 296 U.S. 1, 56 S.Ct. 59, 80 L.Ed. 3, 101 A.L.R. 391, applicable. The burden of establishing error is not sustained by a divorced wife merely by showing that an obligation of her former husband might have continued despite the divorce. Since it is doubtful and uncertain under Texas law whether petitioner's former husband was discharged of his marital obligation by the settlement in question, petitioner failed to show that the presumptively correct determination that she was liable was erroneous.
We do no think that that was a correct application of the rule of the Fitch and Leonard cases. Those cases hold that the income is taxable to the former husband not only where it is clear that payments to his ex-wife were made pursuant to a continuing liability created by his contract or by local law but also where his undertaking or local law makes that question doubtful or uncertain. Those cases, like Douglas v. Willcuts, supra, involved situations where the divorced husband was sought to be taxed on payments to his ex-wife. But the rule which they express supplies the criteria for determining, in absence of a different statutory formula, whether payments received by the ex-wife are properly taxable to her or to her divorced husband. If the Commissioner proceeds against the ex-wife, she sustains her burden of rebutting his presumptively correct determination merely by showing doubts and uncertainties as to whether the payments were made pursuant to her former husband's continuing obligation to support her. If the Commissioner proceeds against her former husband he sustains his burden by submitting clear and convincing proof that the payments were not made pursuant to any such continuing obligation. Helvering v. Fuller, 310 U.S. 69, 60 S.Ct. 784, 84 L.Ed. 1082. The other course would make the liability of the divorced wife or the divorced husband wholly dependent on the election of the Commissioner to proceed against one rather than the other where, for example, local law was uncertain. But the rule of Douglas v. Willcuts, supra, rests on a more substantial basis. Its roots are in local law and the undertakings of the husband. It calls for the use of the same criteria whether the husband or the wife is sought to be taxed.
We think, however, that petitioner has not maintained her burden in this case. Her former husband was not under a continuing contractual obligation to contribute to her support. For the agreement made in 1916 provided for the termination of his personal obligation to make payments to her in the event that he purchased the designated annuity. And so far as Texas law is concerned, she has not maintained her burden. Her showing as to Texas law is illustrated by the following.
By statute in Texas alimony may be awarded during the pendency of a suit for a divorce 'until a final decree shall be made in the case'. Vernon's Ann.Civ.St. Art. 4637. 'This statute is exclusive in its very nature, and no alimony can be decreed by any court in this state except under its express terms.' Martin v. Martin, Tex.Com.App., 17 S.W.2d 789, 791, 792. It has been broadly stated in Phillips v. Phillips, Tex.Civ.App., 203 S.W. 77, 79 that, 'In this state the legal duty of the husband to support his wife ceases upon the severance of the marital bonds, nor has a court the power to decree that a husband or his property may be subjected to such support after divorce. Permanent alimony is not provided for by Texas statutes.' And see Pape v. Pape, 13 Tex.Civ.App. 99, 35 S.W. 479; Boyd v. Boyd, 22 Tex.Civ.App. 200, 54 S.W. 380. It is, however, provided by statute that the divorce court shall order 'a division of the estate of the parties in such a way as the court shall deem just and right, having due regard to the rights of each party and their children, if any.' Vernon's Ann.Civ.St. Art. 4638. That power extends not only to community property but to the separate property of the husband. Ex parte Scott, 133 Tex. 1, 123 S.W.2d 306; Clark v. Clark, Tex.Civ.App., 35 S.W.2d 189; Berg v. Berg, Tex.Civ.App., 115 S.W.2d 1171; Keton v. Clark, Tex.Civ.App., 67 S.W.2d 437. At times the divorce court has made such a division of the estate as apparently to impose on the husband a personal obligation to make stated payments to his wife. Wiley v. Wiley, 33 Tex. 358. Furthermore, a divorce decree which does not settle the rights of the parties to community property may not preclude a subsequent suit by the wife to establish her rights in it. See Gray v. Thomas, 83 Tex. 246, 18 S.W. 721. And the decree may be corrected to conform to the intention of the parties. Keller v. Keller, 135 Tex. 260, 141 S.W.2d 308. The power of the court to modify a property settlement previously approved, so as to give the wife an interest in property not covered by the earlier decree, has been denied in absence of fraud or mistake. Cannon v. Cannon, Tex.Civ.App., 43 S.W.2d 134. Petitioner challenges the reliability of the latter case because on appeal the case was dismissed for want of jurisdiction (121 Tex. 634), which meant either disagreement with the reasoning but approval of the result, or lack of jurisdiction. Vernon's Ann.Civ.St. Art. 1728. And see Republic Ins. Co. v. Highland Park Independent School Dist., 133 Tex. 545, 125 S.W.2d 270.
We need not, however, endeavor to resolve that doubt. Nor need we speculate as to the power of the court at some future time to order a division of property in this case and as an incident thereto to impose on petitioner's husband a personal obligation as was apparently done by the divorce decree in Wiley v. Wiley, supra. See 6 Tex.L.Rev. 344 discussing Helm v. Helm, Tex.Civ.App., 291 S.W. 648. For even though petitioner established that the divorce court retained that broad power, not specifically reserved, and even though we assume that the power to make a division of property is the equivalent of a power to provide permanent alimony, she has not maintained her burden of rebutting the presumptively correct determination of the Commissioner that the income from this annuity contract was taxable to her. In order to maintain that burden she would have to show that it was at least doubtful and uncertain whether the Texas court, as an incident of its power to require the husband to support his wife, retained control over this annuity contract or the income from it. That at least is the result unless we are to broaden the base on which the Fitch, Fuller, and Leonard cases rest.
Those cases involved so-called alimony trusts. In each the trust was irrevocable. In each the husband had an obligation to support his wife.
In the Fitch case the trust provided that the wife was to receive during her life $600 a month from the income of the trust property; the husband, the balance. We held that the husband had not shown by 'clear and convincing proof' that 'in Iowa divorce law the court has lost all jurisdiction to alter or revise the amount of income payable to the wife from an enterprise which has been placed in trust. For all that we know it might retain the power to reallocate the income from that property even though it lacked the power to add to or subtract from the corpus or to tap other sources of income. If it did have such power, then it could be said that a decree approving an alimony trust of the kind here involved merely placed upon the pre-existing duty of the husband a particular and specified sanction.' 309 U.S. at page 156, 60 S.Ct. at page 430, 84 L.Ed. 665. And in speaking of the alimony trust involved in Douglas v. Willcuts, supra, we stated (309 U.S. pages 151, 152, 60 S.Ct. page 428, 84 L.Ed. 665): 'It is plain that there the alimony trust, which was approved by the divorce decree, was merely security for a continuing obligation of the taxpayer to support his divorced wife. That was made evident not only by his agreement to make up any deficiencies in the $15,000 annual sum to be paid her under the trust. It was also confirmed by the power of the Minnesota divorce court subsequently to alter and revise its decree and the provisions made therein for the wife's benefit. Likewise consistent with the use of the alimony trust as a security device was the provision that on death of the divorced wife the corpus of the trust was to be transferred back to the taxpayer.'
In the Leonard case income from the trust was to be paid to the wife for her life which together with income from other property was estimated at $30,000 a year. A separation agreement provided that the husband would pay his wife an additional $35,000 each year during her life so that her aggregate net income for the maintenance of herself and her children would be $65,000 a year. The separation agreement also provided that in the event the husband's ability to make the annual payment of $35,000 became impaired he might apply to a court for a reduction of his obligation of not less than $10,000 a year. We held that the husband had not sustained his burden of showing that 'local law and the alimony trust' gave him 'a full discharge' from his obligation to support his wife. 310 U.S. page 86, 60 S.Ct. page 784, 84 L.Ed. 1087. The trust and the undertaking in the separation agreement were integral parts of an arrangement by which the 'maintenance and support' of the wife 'were secured'. 310 U.S. page 85, 60 S.Ct. page 783, 84 L.Ed. 1087. We noted that it was not clear under New York law whether or not such a settlement could be remade by the court, though there was some authority which indicated that the divorce court's reserved power might be exercised 'where the provision in the separate agreement, approved by the decree, is for support and maintenance'. 310 U.S. pages 86, 87, 60 S.Ct. page 784, 84 L.Ed. 1087. In view of that fact and the nature of the settlement, we concluded that the husband had not shown that the trust was not mere security for his continuing obligation to support his wife.
In the Fuller case it was clear under Nevada law that the court retained no control over the divorce decree which approved the trust settlement. Since there was no such reserved power and since the trust contained no contractual undertaking by the husband for support of the wife, we concluded that his obligation to support had been pro tanto discharged. We held, however, that the husband was taxable on a $40 weekly payment which he had agreed to make to his wife. But that fact did not make him taxable on income from the trust also, since the provision for weekly payments and the trust 'were not so interrelated or interdependent as to make the trust a security for the weekly payments.' 310 U.S. page 73, 60 S.Ct. page 786, 84 L.Ed. 1082. We also noted (310 U.S. page 76, 60 S.Ct. page 787, 84 L.Ed. 1082) that though 'the divorce decree extinguishes the husband's pre-existing duty to support the wife, and though no provision of the trust agreement places such obligation on him, that agreement may nevertheless leave him with sufficient interest in or control over the trust as to make him the owner of the corpus for purposes of the federal income tax' under the rule of Helvering v. Clifford, 309 U.S. 331, 60 S.Ct. 554, 84 L.Ed. 788.
Thus a property settlement made for the purpose of maintaining or supporting the wife may be treated for income tax purposes as mere security for the husband's continuing obligation dependent on such considerations as whether it contains, or is interrelated with, contractual obligations of the husband for her support; whether the court has a reserved power to alter or modify it; or whether the husband retains any substantial interest in the property conveyed. Where the settlement carries some of the earmarks of a security device, then the power of the court to add to the husband's personal obligations may be especially significant. See Helvering v. Leonard, supra. But where, as here, the settlement appears to be absolute and outright and on its face vests in the wife the indicia of complete ownership, it will be treated as that which it purports to be in absence of evidence that it was only a security device for the husband's continuing obligation to support. There may be difficulty in placing a particular case on one side of the line rather than the other. But as stated by Mr. Justice Holmes in Irwin v. Gavit, 268 U.S. 161, 168, 45 S.Ct. 475, 476, 69 L.Ed. 897, 'That is the question in pretty much everything worth arguing in the law.' And see Harrison v. Schaffner, 312 U.S. 579, 583, 61 S.Ct. 759, 762, 85 L.Ed. 1055.
As we have said, petitioner has made no showing whatsoever that the Texas court retained the power to reallocate the income from this annuity contract or to control it in any way as an incident of its power to require the husband to support the wife. She has not shown that the divorce court imposed any personal obligation on the husband in respect to the settlement in question. And she is not aided by those cases which enforce agreements of the husband to make periodic payments to the wife. See Johnson v. Johnson, Tex.Com.App., 14 S.W.2d 805. There is no such agreement here. Proof that the Texas court might add to the husband's personal obligations as an incident to a future property settlement is no substitute for proof that the court had the power to remake this property settlement after it was consummated. Hence there is no ground for concluding that this settlement which is absolute on its face is mere security for an obligation of a husband to support his wife.
'The correct ground for refusing to tax such income to the husband is merely that it is the lump sum which discharges him and not the future income received by the wife.' Paul, Five Years with Douglas v. Willcuts, 53 Harv.L.Rev. 1, 17, note 44. We noted in Helvering v. Fuller, supra, 310 U.S. page 74, 60 S.Ct. page 787, 84 L.Ed. 1082, that outright transfers of property to the wife, though providing for her maintenance and support, were no different from cases 'where any debtor, voluntarily or under the compulsion of a court decree, transfers securities, a farm, an office building, or the like, to his creditor in whole or partial payment of his debt.' We do not think that it would be proper to extend the rule of Douglas v. Willcuts, supra, to such a situation. The possibility that the divorce court might add to the husband's personal obligation does not alter the result. As in the Fuller case, the transfer of property to the wife might result only in a partial discharge of the husband's obligation. If the husband undertook, or was directed, to make other payments, he might be taxable on them. But the fact that he is taxable on a part of the payments received by the wife does not necessarily make him taxable on all. Helvering v. Fuller, supra, 310 U.S. page 73, 60 S.Ct. page 786, 84 L.Ed. 1082. Hence the statement in Helvering v. Fitch, supra, 309 U.S. page 156, 60 S.Ct. page 430, 84 L.Ed. 665, that it must be clear 'that local law and the alimony trust have given the divorced husband a full discharge and leave no continuing obligation however contingent' is to be read in light of the fact that the alimony trust in that case was deemed to be a mere security device for the husband's continuing obligation to support. For the husband was relieved from payment of the tax on income from the property settlement in the Fuller case though he had a continuing obligation to pay the wife $40 a week.
If the rule of Douglas v. Willcuts, supra, is not to be extended to this type of case, then on the showing which has been made the husband would have sustained his burden in case the Commissioner had proceeded against him. Cf. Mitchell v. Commissioner, 38 B.T.A. 1336. Clearly then, the wife may not escape.
Such cases as Helvering v. Horst, 311 U.S. 112, 61 S.Ct. 144, 85 L.Ed. 75, 131 A.L.R. 655, Helvering v. Eubank, 311 U.S. 122, 61 S.Ct. 149, 85 L.Ed. 81, and Harrison v. Schaffner, supra, are not opposed to this result. Those cases dealt with situations where the taxpayer had made assignments of income from property. He was held taxable on the income assigned by reason of the principle 'that the power to dispose of income is the equivalent of ownership of it and that the exercise of the power to procure its payment to another, whether to pay a debt or to make a gift, is within the reach' of the federal income tax law. Harrison v. Schaffner, supra, 312 U.S. page 580, 61 S.Ct. page 760, 85 L.Ed. 1055. But in those cases the donor or grantor had 'parted with no substantial interest in property other than the specified payments of income'. Id., 312 U.S. page 583, 61 S.Ct. page 762, 85 L.Ed. 1055. Here he has parted with the corpus. And 'the tax is upon income as to which, in the general application of the revenue acts, the tax liability attaches to ownership.' Blair v. Commissioner, 300 U.S. 5, 12, 57 S.Ct. 330, 333, 81 L.Ed. 465. Finally, there is no barrier under the income tax laws to taxing the holder of an annuity on the income received, however his interest in the fund which produces the income may be described. Cf. Irwin v. Gavit, supra.
Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, dissenting.
The social fact that a husband is normally under a responsibility to provide for his wife even after they are divorced is the basis for the rule that monies received by a wife under a divorce settlement are presumed to be in discharge of a continuing obligation of the husband. I therefore agree with the decision of the Court to the extent that it reinforces this rule as a rule of policy, and not one of caprice varying with the sex of the taxpayer against whom the Commissioner chooses to proceed. I agree that if the Commissioner proceeds against the wife, 'she sustains her burden of rebutting his presumptively correct determination merely by showing doubts and uncertainties as to whether the payments were made pursuant to her former husband's continuing obligation to support her', and that if, on the other hand, the Commissioner determines that the payments are taxable to the husband, the latter sustains his burden only 'by submitting clear and convincing proof that the payments were not made pursuant to any such continuing obligation.' But I do not agree that the petitioner has failed to make the showing which is required under the rule professed by the Court.
Local law may provide that the transfer of property under a divorce settlement finally and definitively terminates a husband's obligation to support his wife, and that, once such a settlement is made, the wife loses her right to apply to a court for an order requiring the husband to support her. If the local law gives the settlement such effect, it is immaterial what the nature of the transferred property is. For in such a case the income derived from the property cannot be regarded as conferring any benefit upon the husband, and it is therefore taxable to the wife. On the other hand, local law may provide that even though a husband has made a complete, irrevocable transfer of property, he has nevertheless not obtained a full discharge of his marital obligations to his wife, and that, where circumstances in the future may warrant, a court can order the husband to make further contributions to her support. In such a case the husband is still under a 'continuing obligation however contingent', Helvering v. Fitch, 309 U.S. 149, 156, 60 S.Ct. 427, 430, 84 L.Ed. 665; Helvering v. Leonard, 310 U.S. 80, 84, 60 S.Ct. 780, 783, 84 L.Ed. 1087, and since the income received by the wife from the property contributes to her support and thus serves to discharge the obligation which under local law the husband still owes her, the income should be taxable to him. 'The dominant purpose of the revenue laws is the taxation of income to those who earn or otherwise create the right to receive it and enjoy the benefit of it when paid.' Helvering v. Horst, 311 U.S. 112, 119, 61 S.Ct. 144, 148, 85 L.Ed. 75, 131 A.L.R. 655; and see Harrison v. Schaffner, 312 U.S. 579, 61 S.Ct. 759, 85 L.Ed. 1055.
The fact that the wife may, years after the settlement, have to go to court for an order requiring the husband to make additional payments for her support is of no legal consequence if the husband may be required to make such payments. A legal obligation may continue even though its burden is contingent upon future judicial action. A wife's receipt of income from property settled upon her may make it unnecessary to her ever to apply for a court order. But it does not follow that unless and until she goes to court for such an order, her husband is under no legal obligation to support her. If the income from the property should dwindle to the point where the wife can no longer maintain herself, and the law has continued its hold upon the husband so that he may be required to make further contributions to her support, then plainly the husband is still under a 'continuing obligation however contingent'. The determinative fact is that the law has continued its hold upon the husband, not that it has reserved the power to modify the particular settlement.
It is utterly immaterial whether the property transferred was an irrevocable trust, as in the Fitch and Leonard cases, or an annuity contract, as we have here. For the annuity is taxable income, Irwin v. Gavit, 268 U.S. 161, 45 S.Ct. 475, 69 L.Ed. 897, and the procurement, by the husband's purchase, of its payment to his wife renders the annuity taxable income to him if it is in discharge of his obligation, quite as much as if he had procured the payment by creating a trust of his property. Harrison v. Schaffner, supra.
In every case the decisive inquiry is whether the husband's obligation subsists after the divorce settlement, or whether, as a result of the settlement, he is quits of his wife, once and for all, for better or for worse. If he is under a continuing obligation, the property transferred, whether it be an irrevocable trust or an annuity contract, is a security device only in the sense that it operates to secure the fulfillment of the obligation. If the fact that the husband has divested himself of control over the transferred property were determinative, certainly the Fitch and Leonard cases, at least, would have been decided the other way. For in each of these cases the husband conveyed an absolutely irrevocable trust, over which he had no greater control than the husband has over the annuity in the case before us. These cases show that if a husband is under a continuing obligation to support his wife, income from the property is taxable to him not because he has retained any interest in or control over the property, but because the income discharges pro tanto a legal obligation which he owes and thus confers a taxable benefit upon him. The ultimate criterion of taxability, therefore, is not whether a state court has reserved power to control the property transferred by a husband under a divorce settlement, but whether 'the court lacks the power to add to his personal obligations'. Helvering v. Leonard, 310 U.S. 80, 87, 60 S.Ct. 780, 784, 84 L.Ed. 1087.
In law as in life lines have to be drawn. But the fact that a line has to be drawn somewhere does not justify its being drawn anywhere. The line must follow some direction of policy, whether rooted in logic or experience. Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines.
The decisions of this Court dealing with the question before us have turned upon whether local law was uncertain as to the existence of a continuing obligation on the part of the husband to support the wife. The opinion of the Court now introduces another element, namely, whether the local law is uncertain as to the power of the state courts to remake the particular settlement. This, it seems to me, has no valid relation to the basic principle of tax liability that 'he who receives benefits should be taxed'. Whether a husband is benefited from the payment of monies to his divorced wife depends upon his obligation to her which the payment of the monies served to discharge, not upon the nature of the wife's interest in the property he has transferred to her. To introduce such an unwarranted refinement is to clog the administration of the revenue laws.
But, in any event, all of the judges of the Circuit Court of Appeals were agreed that 'the law of Texas is uncertain as to whether the taxpayer's husband discharged himself of his marital liability by the settlement at bar.' 2 Cir., 120 F.2d 228, 230. This general uncertainty as to Texas law is controverted now not by controlling Texas authority but by extended argumentation and speculation. The Court suggests that had the Commissioner gone against the husband, he would have sustained the burden as heretofore defined, namely of showing, 'by submitting clear and convincing proof', that under local law he was under no continuing obligation. Support for the proposition is drawn not from any Texas authority, whether statute or decision, but from a decision of the Board of Tax Appeals, Mitchell v. Commissioner, 38 B.T.A. 1336. But in that case there was a division of property between husband and wife, which included property belonging to the wife under an earlier arrangement entirely unrelated to the husband's marital obligations. The Board held that the income from such property could not, therefore, be taxed to the husband. As its opinion shows, the decision did not turn on the Texas law of divorce: 'We think that the trust income which was paid to her (the wife) * * * was her separate income. It was not paid in satisfaction of any legal obligation of J. A. Mitchell (the husband) and it is not taxable to him.' 38 B.T.A. at page 1342.
The Court's exegesis of Texas law shows it to be no less uncertain than was the Iowa law in the Fitch case or the New York law in the Leonard case. The effect of the Court's ruling that the wife, in order to escape tax liability, must clearly establish that the state court has reserved the power to modify the terms of the particular property settlement is to reject the rule of policy enunciated earlier in its opinion. For there is no clear Texas authority, and under the rule of the Fitch and Leonard cases, which the Court does not purport to modify, the husband would be unable to show, 'not by mere inference and conjecture but by 'clear and convincing proof" (Helvering v. Leonard, supra, 310 U.S. at page 86, 60 S.Ct. at page 784, 84 L.Ed. 1087; see Helvering v. Fitch, supra, 309 U.S. at page 156, 60 S.Ct. at page 430, 84 L.Ed. 665), that the payments made to his wife did not discharge a continuing obligation which he owed her. Therefore, liability under the tax law is made actually to depend upon whether the Commissioner elects to go against the husband or the wife. Having closed the front door to determination of tax liability by caprice, the Court allows caprice to enter through the back door of 'presumption'.
We brought this case here in order to clarify an important question arising under the federal revenue laws, not to re-examine the correctness of the lower court's finding regarding the uncertainty of Texas law as applied to this case. The general uncertainty of Texas law with respect to control over divorce settlements is conceded—and that is the decisive factor for our purpose. The absence of specific Texas authority dealing with such an annuity settlement as we have here does not lessen or remove that uncertainty, or justify us in making assumptions regarding the Texas law affecting such a settlement. Where prophecy as to a state court's ruling on its local law is not imperatively required of us, experience counsels abstention from prophecy. No ruling of ours can make Texas law.
I believe therefore that the judgment below should be reversed because of the ruling on federal law as to which we all agree, and that Texas law should be left where the Circuit Court of Appeals found it.
The CHIEF JUSTICE joins in this dissent.
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Health & Social Policy
A Decent Living for Home Caregivers—And Their Clients
caring for caregivers
At-home caregivers are among the least protected and most undervalued workers in the U.S. Low federal reimbursement rates lay at the heart of the problem.
Heather Rogers
Laddie Read, a 69-year-old with cerebral palsy, can’t get up without help. When he awoke one morning last April expecting to find his home-care aide and instead saw a complete stranger at the foot of his bed, Read was terrified. “I had no idea who was there,” he recalls. “If you were bedridden and somebody just walked into your house,” he says, “how would you feel?”
Read requires help to move from room to room, get into his wheelchair, use the bathroom, dress, and bathe. He can’t cook, shop, or clean the house. To assist with all these tasks, the Portland, Oregon, resident relies on home-care aides seven days a week. It turned out that the stranger was a replacement. His usual aide couldn’t come in—but no one bothered to tell Read. While abruptly losing caregivers isn’t uncommon in Read’s decades of using the service, it was no less upsetting. The new aide couldn’t understand what Read was saying—his caregivers must be trained to understand his severely impaired speech—and had no clear idea of how to perform the job. “It felt like hell,” Read said, speaking through an interpreter. “When this happens, my whole world stops.”
Thousands of people dependent on home-care workers face similar disruptions every day. Turnover in the industry is extreme. In 2014, the median rate topped 60 percent, as documented in an industry study—that’s six out of ten caregivers leaving the job every year. It’s not surprising that so many workers flee the profession, which has intense physical and emotional demands—and poverty wages. The median earnings are less than $21,000 a year. That’s well below the annual median across all occupations, which is almost $35,000, and just above the federal poverty line for a family of three. Earnings are so low that about half of all at-home caregivers are on some form of means-tested public assistance, including Medicaid and food stamps, according to the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, a research organization.
Why is pay so bad for these workers? One explanation is that home-care aides comprise several traditionally marginalized groups. About 90 percent of home-care workers are women; almost half are of color. And since the job doesn’t require a high school diploma, most have low education levels. America’s chronic devaluing of care work, be it for children, the ill, disabled, or aging, reinforces a vicious cycle of low status and low pay.
So entrenched is the discriminatory view of caregiving that the country’s most important labor law deliberately shuts these workers out. When the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was passed in 1938, it transformed the lives of American workers by setting the eight-hour day and establishing other basic protections, including extra pay for overtime. However, the law excluded domestic caregivers. Astonishingly, it still does. As a result, home-care aides do not even have the right to receive minimum wage and overtime pay.
At-home caregivers have a range of titles, including personal care assistants, home-care aides, home health aides, homemakers, and companions. As defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are two basic types of home-care workers, “personal care aides” and “home health aides.” Both help with daily tasks like dressing, bathing, and cooking, but home health aides also perform basic medical duties, such as giving medication and taking vital signs. The country’s 875,000 home health aides most often work with clients short-term, in the days after they’ve returned from the hospital after treatment for an acute condition. Personal care aides, of which there are 1.2 million, are the helpers who stay with clients for the long haul, sometimes for decades.
Under federal law, personal care assistants do not need any licensing or training but home health aides must have 75 hours of instruction to carry out their medically oriented duties. While home health aides must have this extra training, their median earnings are not even a dollar an hour more than those of personal care assistants.
(Photo: AP/Tony Dejak)
The median earnings for home-care workers are less than $21,000 a year—well below the annual median across all occupations. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which set basic protections for American workers such as the eight-hour work day, has excluded domestic caregivers since its passage in 1938, which means those workers do not have the right to minimum wage and overtime pay.
Instead of deficient wages and high turnover, these workers could enjoy proper compensation and be rewarded with raises and promotions for receiving ongoing training and honing their skills, which rarely, if ever, happens today. There are pathways to achieve these ends, which include granting home-care workers overtime and the minimum wage, allowing them to unionize, shifting the industry to a direct public employee model to remove the profit motive and, most vitally, increasing government reimbursement rates.
The government doesn’t keep good statistics on how home care is financed. Funds come from multiple sources, the biggest being Medicaid and Medicare, according to estimates by Candace Howes, an economist at Connecticut College who chairs both the economics and the gender and women’s studies departments. In determining these numbers for the Department of Labor, Howes’s modeling shows that public money pays for 83 percent of wages for both home health and personal care aides. Medicare is a federal program; Medicaid dollars come from both federal and state coffers and it is administered differently by each state. The remaining funding that pays for at-home care comes through other federal programs, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as private health insurance and out-of-pocket payments by the consumer.
Low reimbursement rates are at the heart of the problem. Based on a sampling of 15 states conducted by Health Management Associates, a consulting firm, the average Medicaid allocation in 2012 was $17.70 an hour. Even when workers win wage increases thanks to unionization drives, they will soon max out their earning potential. And if reimbursement rates don’t grow, then workers can only advance so far. The increased commercialization of the sector also plays a role, by diverting funds that might otherwise flow directly to caregivers.
Commercial Caregiving Meets a Devalued Profession
There are two broad categories of employers of home-care workers—private agencies and public registries. Both entities match people seeking help with qualified caregivers and oversee management and payroll. In contrast to the state-affiliated registries, most private agencies operate as for-profit businesses.
Among the private agencies there is a range of models, including for-profit companies, franchises, nonprofits, and a handful of worker-owned cooperatives. Due to the absence of monitoring and data collection, there’s no comprehensive picture of how much of the market each type of agency commands. However, piecing together what data there are can shed some light on the money flows.
The burgeoning franchise home-care companies are the fastest-growing piece of the industry. They include such national chains as Comfort Keepers and Homewatch CareGivers. An exact breakdown of how many workers are employed by chains compared to other types of agencies isn’t clear. It is obvious, though, that much of the revenue at the chains goes straight to the top. Their gross profits range between 30 and 40 percent, as reported by Franchise Business Review. Gross profit represents the portion of money left over after subtracting from revenues the direct costs of providing the service. In this case, these expenses primarily include employee pay. CEO compensation at the four publicly traded national home health care chains, adjusted for inflation, has increased more than 150 percent since 2004, a report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) finds. In sharp contrast, when adjusted for inflation, the report says average hourly wages for home-care workers over that same time have declined by nearly 6 percent.
Even good providers run up against insufficient reimbursement resources. For example, Cooperative Care is a worker-owned company based in central Wisconsin that was established in 2001. Its 60 home-care aides provide services for about 150 clients. The agency is for-profit, but because its mission includes maintaining good working conditions, its profit margins are considerably slimmer than the chains’.
According to the company’s board president, Tracy Dudzinski, the current Medicaid reimbursement rates Cooperative Care receives via a regional managed care organization (in other locations, the state dispenses funding) range from $20 to $15 an hour. The typical reimbursement is $17 an hour, she says.
From this sum, the co-op pays its overhead, including rent and insurance, as well as employees’ hourly wages. And, anomalous in the industry, the co-op also uses its reimbursements to cover overtime, travel time (some aides visit multiple clients a day), holiday pay, and paid time off, including sick days and vacation time. In addition to this, the company foots the bill for ongoing training to build its aides’ skills.
An aide with no experience would start at $9 an hour and could work up to earning $11.10, according to Dudzinski. While that’s only slightly above the national median, Dudzinski says, these workers take home far more than that hourly rate. To illustrate the point, she gave an example of the income of a representative full-time employee. This caregiver earned about $30,500 in 2014, including more than $3,000 in overtime, another $3,000 in mileage, and a profit-sharing payout of $600. This annual income is almost 50 percent higher than the industry median.
After previously working at a private agency and having put in 11 years at the co-op, Dudzinski, who is also a caregiver and the agency’s administrative coordinator, says she now sees how much money owners can skim off the top. “They don’t pay their workers well because they want to line their own pocket,” she says.
Indeed, overtime alone adds up to a tidy sum, according to the industry’s own numbers. A report commissioned by the International Franchise Association found that among agencies in states without overtime protections (in the absence of federal requirements, some states have adopted their own), 89 percent of caregivers routinely worked overtime. Among the agencies surveyed for the report, workers averaged about eight overtime hours per week. At the median hourly rate of $9.83 for personal care aides, a company with 300 workers that refused to pay extra compensation would retain more than $520,000 a year. Conversely, a worker making $10 an hour and compensated for eight overtime hours weekly would keep an additional $2,000 a year.
In response to worker advocates’ demands for labor-law protections, in 2013 the Department of Labor (DOL) at last promulgated a rule allowing caregivers minimum wage and overtime under the FLSA. The rule was set to take effect at the start of 2015, but private agency owners have been fiercely defending their turf. Trade groups, including the Home Care Association of America, opposed the rule, claiming agencies can’t afford to pay $7.25 an hour, let alone overtime. These groups say that if private care agencies must follow standard labor protections, they’ll be forced to raise prices beyond what the ill and disabled could manage. And they have succeeded in holding up the new regulation’s implementation with a legal challenge. Last January, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon in Washington, D.C., vacated the DOL’s rule, saying it contravened the language of the FLSA. The DOL is currently appealing this decision.
Although industry groups claim that paying home-care workers according to normal wage and hour rules would break the bank, Cooperative Care demonstrates this is a fallacy. Another way to ratchet up compensation is with a direct-employee model operated through the state. These caregivers are matched with clients through registries operated by states and counties. The state government determines wages, issues paychecks, and handles administrative work. Similar to the cooperative model, this does away with the middleman and thus far has more readily lent itself to unionization, which in turn has raised wages in some states, most notably Oregon.
The Oregon Example
In the summer of 2013 in a hotel in Portland, about two dozen home-care workers and a few staff from their union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503, huddled in a conference room. They had been negotiating their most recent contract with the state for the previous seven months. About 20,000 caregivers who work through the state registry are represented by SEIU.
(Photo: AP/Nick Ut)
Home-care workers in Los Angeles rally in Los Angeles in April for higher wages. Many low-wage labor advocates argue the unionizing is key to raising wages and improving work conditions.
Everyone in the conference room was tired, including Andrew Boeger, a researcher with the union. He’d been hunched over a laptop running numbers on spreadsheets for hours. Then two workers and the union’s chief negotiator stepped into the room. They’d struck a deal to raise their hourly base wage from $10.40 to $13.75. “There were women who were crying,” Boeger says. “One woman said, ‘Now I can afford to fix my car,’” he recalls. “People were literally weeping.”
The keys to getting higher pay in Oregon were the ability to bargain collectively and to maximize Medicaid funds through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion. To this end, first the union worked with state lawmakers to ensure more federal money would be in Oregon’s purse. Since Medicaid is administered by the states, each sets its own reimbursement rates for at-home caregivers. The Medicaid budget comes from each state’s contribution, coupled with federal matching funds for which states must apply. SEIU lobbyists toiled with sympathetic state lawmakers to take full advantage of the Medicaid higher spending under the ACA. They crafted Oregon’s Medicaid policies so that the state secured almost two-thirds of its Medicaid money from federal coffers, according to Heather Conroy, executive director of Local 503. This put Oregon among the top half of federal Medicaid recipients in the country. Crucially, the union negotiated a bigger slice of that additional revenue for home-care aide pay.
This win was significant. Non-union at-home caregivers in Oregon perform the same tasks as those employed by private agencies, yet are paid considerably less. Joy’e Willman, who works for a private agency and has been one of Laddie Read’s caregivers for more than 20 years, was earning just $9.90 an hour with no overtime and no benefits. She just got her first raise in six years—a mere 35 cents an hour more.
Many low-wage labor advocates argue that unionization is key to improving conditions. To that end, SEIU is currently leading a high-profile national campaign called the Fight for $15—an effort to raise the floor on earnings. Low-wage workers, mostly in the fast-food industry, have been grabbing headlines—and raises—through picketing and walkouts. And as of last fall, increasing numbers of home-care aides have signed on.
A Federal Fix?
The raise Oregon’s caregivers secured may seem momentous, but it falls short of a living wage. At-home aides in other states have made some strides in establishing unions and shifting to direct public employment with similar outcomes. Among these states are California, Washington, New York, and Massachusetts, which have median hourly rates ranging from $10.34 to $12.86. Even when workers hold the purse strings, as they do in co-ops, they face a fundamental barrier to higher pay—the reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid are insufficient. After all, $17 an hour can only go so far. Squeezing out waste and firing the middleman aren’t enough to get home-care pay up to a level commensurate with the demands of the work and the needs of workers.
Another problem is that not only are the wins limited, they are also fleeting. Within the current system, the sums available to fund at-home caregiving can fluctuate with every state budget cycle and political changeover. Governors and legislators friendly to publicly funded programs might work hard to get Medicaid dollars and may set acceptable reimbursement rates for workers. But new leaders with a divergent agenda could easily roll back those victories in the next budget. Consequently, some caregiver advocates contend that, ultimately, the answer lies in hiking federal Medicare and Medicaid funding rather than just pushing state lawmakers to give more.
According to Irene Tung, senior policy researcher at NELP, increasing federal reimbursement rates for caregivers would go a long way toward fixing the wage problem and the threat of inadequate home care. “The federal government needs to kick in greater resources and those need to be tied to specific wage standards,” she says. Those standards would require that a certain percentage of public dollars go directly to worker pay and benefits. “I think, collectively as a nation, if we’re going to meet the challenges of this growing workforce, federally we have to pay more for Medicaid—it can’t just happen piecemeal, state by state.”
Research by Howes, the economist, has shown that what most effectively reduces turnover among the larger caregiving workforce is higher wages. That means these workers will remain on the job longer, gaining more expertise to deliver higher-quality care. “That’s how we meet the need for more people who want to age at home”—as do the majority of boomers—says Howes.
Dudzinski agrees. “The federal government needs to increase the Medicaid reimbursement rate so you can pay your workers what they’re worth,” she says. “If this is what they choose for a career, let them make a living at it instead of leaving them to live in poverty.”
Legal, Safe, Rare—and Bad Advice
Beware of zealots pushing their own views posing as friendly strategic advisers.
Connecticut and Oregon Make Paid Family Leave a Reality
Bryce Covert
Some states are not only passing paid family leave but making it more generous for the lowest-paid workers.
Private Equity’s Latest Scheme: Closing Urban Hospitals and Selling Off the Real Estate
Mike Elk
Thousands are expected to rally Thursday against the closing of Hahnemann University Hospital, a 171-year-old facility in Center City Philadelphia.
Heather Rogers is the author of Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution and a senior fellow at Demos.
Articles By Heather Rogers
RSS feed of articles by Heather Rogers
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The Rising Latino Tide
I. I Can Help McBride!
"When I go door-to-door, and they open it up, they don't really listen to me," says Patrick Vilar, a fresh-faced young Democrat who is seeking election to the Florida House of Representatives this November in a district that, the conventional wisdom says, is Cuban, Republican and, for a Democrat, a fool's errand. "They read down the piece until they come to the line, 'Colombian Bar Association,'" he says. "That stops them. They look up and say, 'You're Colombian?' Then we start speaking in Spanish. It's a match."
Vilar is encountering many such matches as election day draws near because his district, like the rest of Florida, is changing into something no one anticipated just a few years ago. "This is a misleadingly Republican district," says Vilar. "I know, it's 45 percent Republican, 30 percent Democratic and 25 percent independent -- that's more independents than any district in the state. What people don't know" -- and he winks at me as if he's sharing some bit of political arcana that the powers-that-be aren't onto yet -- "is that 62 percent of the independents are non-Cuban Hispanics." Many are Colombian newcomers, half of whom have arrived in the past four years after fleeing the violence in their homeland.
Vilar's district, a fast-growing area on Miami's western edge, has the highest concentration of non-Cuban Hispanics in southern Florida, and it's not the only part of the state that's changing. Up Disney way, Orlando is home to a vast assortment of hotel workers from Puerto Rico and Latin America. But it's only now that anyone's noticing this transformation and the political opportunity it creates.
"It took the 2000 Census to wake people up," says Alvaro Fernandez, the Florida director of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, the nation's foremost Latino voter-registration organization. "It turns out that 70 percent of Hispanics in Florida aren't Cuban. Suddenly, the Democrats are chasing Hispanics."
Such was hardly the case two years ago. "There were no Spanish-language signs in Miami-Dade for Gore, not a one," says Doralba Muñoz, who chairs the Hispanic Caucus of the state Democratic Party. Indeed, everything about the Democrats' Hispanic operation in Florida seems to have been born yesterday. "There is no infrastructure, no clubs," says Jim Carlson, the statewide Hispanic outreach coordinator for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride's campaign. Carlson is based in the Orlando area, where the Puerto Rican migrants from New York are heavily Democratic. "There is no old guard to pass along the keys to the kingdom," he says. "But the stakes here are so high."
Are they ever. In 2002, as in 2000, Florida is up for grabs, with McBride, a moderate Democrat with a folksy manner and no experience in public life, running roughly even with the first brother, incumbent Gov. Jeb Bush. And with election day just around the corner, McBride's prospects hinge on get-out-the-vote campaigns, not only in Florida's black and Jewish precincts but in those areas around the state now settled by Hispanics from anywhere but Cuba.
He has help from unexpected quarters. One group that has been registering Puerto Ricans, surprisingly, is the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Administration, which, in a new program undertaken at the behest of Commonwealth Gov. Sila Calderon, has signed up 70,000 Puerto Ricans this fall, chiefly in Florida and New York.
Vilar's own connections go beyond mere governors. When he won the Democratic primary in early September, he was invited to the Colombian Embassy in Washington for an audience with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Any doubt that Vilar has been anointed the great Colombian hope is dispelled by the reception he receives at the Festival of Flowers, which brings thousands of Colombians to a Miami fairground on a Sunday in mid-October. A hastily assembled Vilar-for-state-rep brigade, which has sandwiched itself in the festival parade between a Colombian marching band and some vintage tail-fin Cadillacs, draws lusty cheers from the crowd.
Vilar's campaign is hardly confined to the Colombian community; his marching society comprises a smorgasbord of Latinos (even Cubans), whites and Haitians. But there is no question that he has mobilized a specific community. When I ask him if it helps to have McBride on the top of the ticket, he does a mock double take. "Neither Bush nor McBride pull votes in this district," he says. "McBride can't help me. I can help McBride!"
II. What the Numbers Say
At a time when the country is as evenly divided politically as it's ever been, it is the Patrick Vilars and the new Latino immigrant communities that are poised to realign the nation in a decisively Democratic direction. This is as American a tradition as can be found: The two great realignments of the past century both involved the mobilization of entire new groups into the electorate, centered around a distinct set of issues and organized by institutions with particular credibility among them.
Much of the base of the New Deal was the great second wave of immigrants who came to America between 1880 and 1924 from southern and Eastern Europe, most of whom had either never voted or never voted Democratic until Roosevelt took office. Prodded by the Congress of Industrial Organizations' activists in the steel and auto towns of Pennsylvania and the industrial Midwest, by the garment unions of New York and other such groups, millions of working-class Americans registered and voted Democratic for the first time in the early 1930s; the electorate expanded by nearly 25 percent between 1932 and 1936 in a massive ratification of the New Deal. Similarly, 30 years later, the great civil-rights campaigns compelled the Democrats to grant the franchise to southern blacks, whom the campaigns then mobilized and, under federal protection, brought to the polls for the first time. The difference, of course, was that the civil-rights revolution helped engender a counter-realignment that led to the Republican ascendancy of the 1970s and 1980s.
Now a new realignment is on the horizon; you can see it circling when you read the numbers on Latino population growth, Latino political attitudes and Latino partisan identification. In and of themselves, of course, numbers don't guarantee a realignment, which also requires some break with the old order and the right mix of leaders and institutions to organize the upsurge. In some states, most notably California, those leaders and institutions are already present; in other states, most unfortunately Texas, they are not. But the preconditions for change in a number of states are plain to see.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 35 million Latinos in the United States in 2000, a figure that grew by nearly 13 million during the 1990s -- a stunning 58 percent increase due chiefly to immigration. The states that immigration is changing most are the anchor states of the Republican ascendancy of the 1980s -- the Reagan Sunbelt, if you will. While the United States as a whole was 12.5 percent Latino in the 2000 Census, California was 32.4 percent Latino, Texas was 32 percent and Florida was 16.8 percent. For the Republicans, California, of course, is long gone: The home of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan is now the most Democratic state in the union. What gives Bush consigliere Karl Rove nightmares is that Latino immigration may mean that Texas and Florida could be lost as well -- Texas within a decade or so, Florida within the next week. And if Florida becomes a state on which the national Democrats can rely, getting a GOP president elected looks increasingly like squaring a circle.
Migration, of course, is not the same as naturalization, much less mobilization, but in some states -- California most of all -- those processes have been under way for years. Sergio Bendixen, the Miami-based pollster who specializes in Latino public opinion, notes, "In 1988, immigrants made up less than 20 percent of the Latino electorate. Today, they're almost half." As immigration and naturalization soared in California, the Latino share of the electorate rose from 9 percent in 1992 to 15 percent in 2000. Latino immigration to Nevada, Colorado and Arizona is also pushing those states in a more Democratic direction.
If these numbers should concern Rove, the emerging Latino ideology should alarm him, as the Pew Hispanic Center's massive new nationwide poll of more than 2,929 registered Latinos makes dramatically clear. Respondents were asked to choose a preference: paying higher taxes to support a larger government that provides more services or paying lower taxes for a smaller government providing fewer services. While whites and blacks opted for lower taxes and less government (whites by a 61 percent to 32 percent margin, blacks by a 52 percent to 39 percent one), Latinos went the other way, supporting higher taxes and big government by a 55 percent to 38 percent margin. Stunningly, the support for big government was highest among Texas Latinos, who favored it by a 63 percent to 32 percent margin. Among Latino Republicans, high taxes and big government still commanded 52 percent support. (Among white Republicans it got 17 percent backing.)
However, on cultural issues such as abortion and divorce, Latinos, particularly Latino immigrants, remain quite conservative. Thirty-four percent of Latino Democrats, for instance, find divorce unacceptable, compared with just 13 percent of white Democrats. But these are not issues that loom large in the electoral calculus of Latino voters. Asked to identify the two issues most important to them, 58 percent said education and 39 percent said the economy. Only 4 percent mentioned abortion.
In accord, then, with the Democrats' position on the economy, and convinced that Democrats are the more immigrant-friendly party, it's not surprising that Latinos identified Democrats (45 percent) more than Republicans (10 percent) as the party that shows greater concern for Latinos. The one great exception to Latinos' Democratic proclivities comes on the question of the president himself. In polling that Bendixen conducted in May, Latino voters favored a Democratic Congress by a 53 percent to 23 percent margin. But when asked whether they'd back Bush or Al Gore in a presidential rematch, they split: Gore received 46 percent, Bush 44 percent.
III. The Palm-Pilot Revolution
It's in Texas that the revolution was supposed to unfold this year. As the first Latino candidate for governor in the state's modern history, and as an oilman and banker worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Democrat Tony Sanchez planned to plunge unprecedented resources into a campaign to register and mobilize hundreds of thousands of Latino voters. And plunge he did: Though the final registration figures aren't all that impressive, people can't stop talking about the Palm Pilots.
"This is the most ambitious program I've even seen," says Priest Cantu, who runs the San Antonio field operation for Sanchez. "All our canvassers had these Palm Pilots to immediately register the voters' preferences. It must have cost a fortune."
But Sanchez's success at mobilizing people with his state-of-the-art technology has been mixed. Part of the problem is Sanchez himself, a candidate whose stump speeches suggest nothing so much as a banker reading aloud from a quarterly report. (He does read his speeches from a blue binder.) Part of his problem is his message, which ignores a range of populist themes -- raising the minimum wage, providing drivers' licenses for undocumented immigrants -- that could awaken his Latino working-class base. Part of his problem is the flood of negative commercials, a number of them his own, which is turning potential voters away from politics. And part of his problem is that his campaign seems not to have connected with the Latino communities of Houston and Dallas, though it has definitely made an impact in the more historically Latino Rio Grande Valley.
"Down in south Texas, by the border, you see a lot of activity," says Southwest Voter Registration President Antonio Gonzalez. "The campaign has hundreds of people on the payroll, and there's a lot of energy. Sanchez [who comes from the south Texas town of Laredo] is their candidate."
But south Texas -- running from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico and as far north as San Antonio -- is a unique political turf and one of the most profoundly poor places in the nation. Its residents on the whole aren't immigrants (the immigrants pass through to areas with more jobs); many come from families that have lived there for generations. November elections are of no great moment because all local contests are decided in the Democratic primaries. "There are groups of old women who walk the precincts," says Victoria Tinajero, who coordinates the Sanchez field campaign along the border. "They've guaranteed to pull out 30,000 sometime voters, but it's not enough. Tony enabled us to do so much more; he brought in Palm Pilots ... ."
In this somewhat insular world, Sanchez is certainly a big deal, as is clear when he addresses a "Women for Sanchez" luncheon in El Paso. To this gathering of professional women, almost entirely Latina, he delivers his stock speech, attacking his opponent, Republican Gov. Rick Perry, for the sorry state of the schools, for the state's insurance crisis and for being indentured to the state's insurance industry.
What's missing from his text is any reference to the struggles that have erupted over the conditions of life for south Texas Latinos. In San Antonio and along the border, the church-based, working-class organizations affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) have built a powerful organization for economic justice. This year they persuaded the state legislature to pass a far-reaching living-wage statute for public employees throughout south Texas, only to see Perry veto the measure. They then convened a meeting of 10,000 activists this September to ask major candidates to back an agenda including this living-wage proposal and another measure enabling undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers' licenses.
According to several sources, Sanchez was reluctant to commit to these causes. Under the pressure of the IAF parishes, he eventually did. But having done so, he's said nothing about them since. For their part, the IAF churches committed to turn out 500,000 votes this November for their agenda. At affiliated churches (there are 50 in San Antonio alone), priests are now delivering homilies on the need to boost the vote in working-class Latino precincts, and parishioners are going door-to-door (no Palm Pilots for them), asking sometime voters to join them in voting at the early-voting polling places now open for business.
Yet despite the scope of its own activities and that of the Sanchez campaign, IAF organizers fear that Latino voter participation may not take off this year. "We're not finding a lot of activity in the neighborhoods," says Christine Stephens, the IAF's lead organizer in Texas. "The negative ads have really taken a toll on people's wanting to vote." Indeed, with millions of dollars sunk into a capital-intensive field campaign to increase voter turnout and millions more sunk into a negative media campaign that can only depress turnout, the Sanchez campaign is a marvel of self-negation.
Southwest Voter Registration leaders are projecting a doubling of the Latino turnout in 1998's gubernatorial election, predicting that the number of Latino votes cast will rise from 473,000 to 880,000. (Sanchez's own people say he needs -- and will get -- 1 million Hispanic votes.) But on Oct. 18, Texas Secretary of State Gwyn Shea reported that total registration increased by a net of just 200,000 voters this year and that a smaller percentage of voting-age Texans were actually registered than in 2000 and 1998.
One particularly ominous sign is that college-student volunteers on the campaign are almost impossible to find. The fact that Sanchez had been a major supporter of George W. Bush and has never espoused notably progressive policies has not endeared him to liberal activists, Latino or otherwise. "We've been in the trenches for 40 years for this?" asks one. "For a guy who's no better than a Republican?"
Whatever the limitations of Sanchez's campaign in south Texas, they pale in comparison with its problems in metropolitan north Texas (Houston and Dallas), the center of the state's immigrant influx. "We've got more Hispanics here in Houston than in all the Rio Grande Valley put together, more than in Bexar County [San Antonio]," says Marc Campos, a Houston-based political consultant long active in Latino campaigns. "Half of them are immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and they've all come in the past decade."
Yet the new immigrants here are largely an orphan population. "There hasn't been the kind of intense effort to naturalize and mobilize these people like there's been in California," says Campos. Accordingly, Houston has "the largest Hispanic population of any city that doesn't have a Hispanic member of Congress." And in greater Houston, nobody has particularly high expectations for Latino turnout in the November election.
IV. Rainbow Rifts
Latino Texas, in sum, is still light years from Latino California. The political culture of the state as a whole, of course, is vastly more conservative. The difficulty that unions have establishing a base in a right-to-work state means that a credible and militant force within the immigrant community is missing, though the IAF, with increasing success, seems to be playing much of the role in South Texas that the unions have played in California. But there's certainly been no break with the old order, no such surge of immigrant activism as came after the passage of Proposition 187 in California, and no major institutions that have arisen to mobilize the large immigrant communities of Houston and Dallas. Indeed, during a week's trip through Texas, I heard several Latino pols say that if Sanchez doesn't make it in November, it will take "20 years" or "a generation" before a Latino can make a credible run at the top of the ticket. This is too pessimistic: For all its shortcomings, Sanchez's campaign has hastened the mobilization of Latino Texas. Higher Hispanic turnout in south Texas could enable Democrat Henry Cuellar to unseat a Republican incumbent congressman in this month's election. But a quantum leap in political organizing in urban Texas is required to politicize the migration that, compared with California's, has not yet transformed the state.
Knocking Texas into the Democratic column, however,
doesn't require the Los-Angelesization of Texas Latinos. It merely means that enough nonwhite Texans have to go to the polls and vote Democratic -- because no Democratic candidate for president, governor or senator has gotten more than one-third of Texas' white vote during the past decade. The Democratic ticket in Texas this year was supposed to leap that hurdle by presenting voters with a Latino candidate for governor and a black candidate for senator -- former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk. In particular, both members of this "Dream Team" were to benefit from the Sanchez surge among Latino voters.
But it's not clear how much of that surge will benefit Kirk. "There's resentment at Kirk in South Texas for beating [his Democratic primary opponent] Victor Morales," says Sanchez coordinator Tinajero. The Southwest Voter Registration's Ricardo Castañon notes that the Rio Grande Valley gave Morales particularly strong support in his one-on-one runoff with Kirk.
Polling shows Kirk has a better (though not very good) chance to win his Senate race than Sanchez has to win the statehouse. It would be particularly galling for Democrats if Kirk goes down due to nonwhite racial resentments, but it would hardly be the first time in recent years that black-brown tensions subverted a Democratic candidate, as defeated Los Angeles mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa can attest. Whatever the internal divisions within the Democratic coalition, however, the ongoing growth and mobilization of the Latino population means that the coalition is growing steadily larger.
But a cautionary note is still in order: While Latino voters are already contributing to the broad-based realignment of the nation and of several states, the realignment of a city or a district often requires the ability to build cross-racial coalitions. This is a lesson not lost on Patrick Vilar, who, upon returning to his headquarters from the Festival of Flowers, answers questions on a Haitian-American radio show. He then passes the phone to his Haitian friend Paul, who pitches for Vilar in mellifluous French while volunteers in the outer office phone voters in both Spanish and English. It's a cacophony that presages a change in our politics, a cacophony that's distinctly American.
Handicapping the Democratic Field After the First Debates
Never Mind the Russians. It’s the Court That Rigs Our Elections.
The five Republican justices’ gerrymandering decision ensures GOP rule even when the party’s in the minority.
The Unbearable Costs of Empire
The Taxonomist: The Tax Cheaters Lobby
The Fly-by-Night 107th
Revolt on the Ranch
Herrera's Winning Hand
Devil in the Details
Devil in the Details:
Books in Review
Bloody Good Fun
The Repudiation Syndrome
Comment: Outward Bound
Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy
Lula's Rules
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Maps of country: Djibouti
The cities by alphabet
Maps: Ali Sabieh
Maps: Ali Addé أدى على
Maps: village Am'isso
Pier (Djibouti)
Viewpoint (Djibouti)
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Motel (Djibouti)
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Apartments (Djibouti)
Toy Store (Djibouti)
Ticket Shop (Djibouti)
Supermarket (Djibouti)
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Optician’s (Djibouti)
Mall (Djibouti)
Kiosk (Djibouti)
Jewelry (Djibouti)
Hardware Store (Djibouti)
Hairdresser (Djibouti)
Furniture Store (Djibouti)
Florist’s (Djibouti)
Dry Cleaning (Djibouti)
Department Store (Djibouti)
Computer Store (Djibouti)
Clothes Shop (Djibouti)
Car Parts (Djibouti)
Car Shop (Djibouti)
Butcher’s (Djibouti)
Bookstore (Djibouti)
Bakery (Djibouti)
Liquor Store (Djibouti)
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Home Features Property Values
Nothing Goes Unsolved
From Doughnuts to Deco
by Preston Lauterbach
Don't believe everything you hear about the real estate freeze. As the subjects of this feature demonstrate, there are many reasons to buy and sell property, and they're not all about the money. The historic homes and neighborhoods of Memphis help to make our city an aesthetically distinctive place while providing crucial components of local identity. Working with those structures means more than making a living for some Memphians — it offers outlets for artistic expression, community rehabilitation, and personal redemption.
Just don't call it "flipping." >>>
OPERATION RESTORATION
"I don't like the term 'flipping,'" says Suzanne Henley, a Midtowner who has beautified, then sold homes around her neighborhood on and off for nine years. "It's a legal, real estate problem that has a pejorative connotation to a lot of people who work on houses. The term smacks of trying to put one over on people quickly," she adds.
Henley explains that "flippers," real estate agents, and appraisers have colluded to fix prices on homes. Those who've been caught end up in prison. Funny, you don't see that side of it on A&E's popular cable series Flip This House .
The proliferation of house-flipping TV shows hasn't helped the public perception of her profession either, Henley says. "I've never really been concerned about how much a house has made," she explains. "Each house has been this incredible challenge and adventure. The idea of fitting in salvaged architectural pieces and yet creating open, free-flowing space — the combination of those two elements — is why I do this. The idea of creating something new out of something that wasn't there is strong. All of the homes that I've worked in are hundred-year-old homes."
On top of the challenges inherent in reshaping old homes, Henley derives satisfaction from the long-term effects her projects have on their surroundings. "Most of the houses I've done are the first on their block to be fixed up — which is wonderful afterwards for the neighborhood, and not so good for sales," she explains. "I'm the worst poster child for this as a business venture."
Henley came to the profession late in life when she felt the need for a little fixing up of her own. From the front step of her eighth project, a Queen Anne on York Avenue, she looks back at that beginning. "I was director of development at the Memphis College of Art, working hard full-time. My brother died, my mother died, and my last child left home. A giant light bulb went off — I was 57 then, I'm 65 today — and I thought, 'If I'm ever going to be my own person, this is the time.' Plus I think there was some creative urge after all of the deaths and empty-nest feelings — to create something in that place," Henley recalls.
She undertook her first home renovation project in 1999 at an address on Lee Place, just north of Overton Square. Over time and through trial and error, she assembled a reliable and skilled crew led by veteran carpenter Clyde Macklin. "My family was gone, and these guys have become family, though I've fired my share of cokeheads and crackheads and thieves," Henley laments.
She's also learned a thing or two about public relations. "We get comments from neighbors that we take into consideration. Here they get to vote on things," Henley explains, gesturing toward her current renovation house. "At one point I had 20 color samples taped to the exterior, and people would come and initial the one they liked. The guys always vote on what color to use as well."
The interior, however, is all Henley's vision. "She tells us what she wants to do to a house," Macklin says, standing in a sunny bedroom, once a cramped kitchen in Henley's current project. "We go through and estimate the cost and value of it, and tell her what can and can't be done."
"And then I say to do it all anyway," quips Henley, adding to the conversation from the next room.
Henley's vision of a project and the work of her crew completely converts home space, turning a utility room into a kitchen, a bathroom into a bedroom, closets where there were none. They knock down walls, expand doorways, or move windows, even if just a few feet, to make the vision real. Destruction is only the first part. They might tear a chimney down and build a fireplace from the bricks. "You have to pray to the spirit of the hundred-year-old house — the laws of physics can be charmed to a certain extent. You hope that the bones can support the changes," Henley muses.
The changes might include a recessed frame in a wall to hang a plasma-screen TV — something the original builders didn't account for in 1911.
"Most projects take around four months but it varies according to the size of the house," Macklin says, adding that construction materials also figure in to the timeline. "A 2x4 now isn't really a 2x4, so if you're working on an old house [from back when a 2x4 was two inches by four inches] you have to buy a larger piece of lumber and reduce it. They skimp on everything today, so it makes it challenging."
Another challenge? Today's precarious market, which makes Henley question the future of her business. "I've never lost money, but on several houses I've not made as much as I've wanted to," she explains.
But while economic challenges are ever-present, it's the creative challenges that keep Henley motivated. Thankfully, for Henley, her crew, and the areas in which she works, those creative challenges are recession proof.
Avery bridges doesn't fit the "flipper" image any better than Henley does. The soft-spoken young man explains his own home renovation philosophy as he stands in the middle of Oxford Avenue in Binghamton the morning after Christmas: "I do construction as ministry."
Raised a Southern Baptist in south Louisiana, Bridges explains that the South-ern Baptist churches thriving today are located outside the city, and away from neighborhoods like Binghamton. "I say that with shame — this is where the church needs to be," Bridges says.
To fill what he sees as the absence of the church, Bridges fixes up homes in Binghamton for people called to do ministry in the neighborhood. "I wouldn't speculate on these houses without someone that I could covenant with," Bridges says. To Bridges, the slumlord is the enemy. He believes in what he describes as a careful gentrification of Binghamton, a neighborhood he's worked in for several years.
"I first heard about Binghamton in 2004," he explains, while volunteering with Service Over Self (SOS), a Christian community- development organization that repairs and renovates homes in the neighborhood. "We were doing a cleanup that day, and the SOS director at that time, Robert Montague, asked me to become a construction manager that summer. I started here as a volunteer, and I've worked here the past three summers, which got me initiated in the neighborhood. It became clear to me about a year ago that the Lord really wanted us to stay here and make a difference."
Bridges has three projects on Oxford Avenue between Bingham and Collins Streets at various stages from concept to complete. "I learned about the property at 2596 Oxford Avenue which became my first project," he says. "This corridor from Collins to Hollywood and Sam Cooper to Poplar is where the greatest improvement in housing conditions has happened in this neighborhood. There's 20 years' worth of work that I'm standing on the shoulders of," he adds, crediting SOS and the Binghamton Development Corporation.
Bridges operates his business on the equity of his home. His clients have included a teacher at the new Brewster Elementary School, SOS personnel, and other outsiders committed to Binghamton. "I work for people who want to come in to this neighborhood from the outside to do ministry work," he says. "They care about the neighborhood first, and want a nice house second. I know people for years before I do any work for them."
His calling, as Bridges sees it, involves transforming communities from the inside of homes out to the streets. "If all anyone in a neighborhood ever sees is people being misogynistic toward women, or not dealing with conflict rightly, then they're bound to repeat that behavior. This neighborhood needs whole families to come and demonstrate righteousness," he says.
Bridges hopes that the transformation process will increase equity throughout the neighborhood. "When I turn a $20,000 house into an $80,000 house, that $40,000 next door can become an $80,000 house as well, and I won't have touched it," he says.
Raising home values makes it difficult on what he calls neighborhood detriments — pimps, pushers, and slumlords. "If those are the people that I've run off, then that's good work," he says. "That's necessary to make a neighborhood sustainable. I want to build a haven for people who are great neighbors."
Bridges feels that he's in it alone now that the Binghamton Development Corporation has shifted its efforts on improving the eastern section of the neighborhood. "They feel there's a greater need right now over there. I think they're content to let the market forces take hold here [in west Binghamton] and that's where I come in."
The danger with those market forces is that the citizens whom Bridges is called to help could be priced out of their community. Thus, the concept of careful gentrification. While the idea of a flood of young middle-class professionals buying into Binghamton sounds unlikely now, the same may have been said of Cooper-Young 30 years ago.
Bridges plans to involve current community members in the process. "Over time as I build relationships with the neighbors," he explains, "I try to convince them that the neighborhood is changing and that it would be in their best interest to own their own home in order to benefit from the change. Gentrification is somewhat inevitable, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I care about this neighborhood."
Careful gentrification includes plans for renters as well as owners. "My biggest fear is for a good neighbor to be priced out and have to leave because their rent is doubling from the increasing property values," Bridges says. "I want to provide rental properties here and not just single-family homes. There should be a healthy balance of renters and owners in a community, but Binghamton doesn't need it to the degree it has it now. That mix is so overwhelmed by rentals right now that it's a detriment to the community."
Bridges says it's critical that others understand his motives for fixing up Binghamton. In short — he's more than a flipper. "If people don't know the investments I make in the community they might think I was profiteering off of well-intentioned people," he says. "I want to remove that perception, and the way to do it is to be involved in the community." M
February-2008 Features Memphis Magazine February 2008
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Press-serviceNews and events2014 year - The year of Healthy child
Securing Uzbekistan’s Prosperity through Intensification of Democratic Reforms and Formation of Civil Society
The text of President Islam Karimov’s keynote address delivered at the official meeting occasioned to the 21st anniversary of the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan
I am enormously delighted to greet you in this magnificent and peerless hall, express my sincere respect to you all and congratulate on the 21st anniversary of the country’s Constitution that has laid a robust foundation for building a new state and society.
We have every reason today to assert that the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan that was adopted on the 8th of December 1992 has come to be a principal normative and legislative backbone for constructing an independent democratic nation with a socially oriented market economy and building a civil society in the country where values are centered on human interests, rights and freedoms and with a reigning rule of law.
We have every ground to claim that the principles and provisions as well as enduring goals and objectives fixed in the Constitution, along with the properly chosen and profoundly thought-out strategy of furthering the ends, have proved reliable and decisive in driving fundamental transformation and critical socio-political, socio-economic and humanitarian reforms. They have proved instrumental also in achieving the heights that we can take pride of with every reason.
The life itself makes us stress the aptness of the model we opted for to marshal reforms and modernization of the country, a paradigm that has acquired extensive renown and acknowledgement around the globe as the Uzbek Model, which derives in full fr om the provisions inbuilt in our Constitution.
The essence of this model is known to have focused on five principles, namely, freeing the economy of ideology, securing the rule of law, acknowledging the regulating role of the state as the key reformer, spearheading a robust social policy with an eye to specific peculiarities of the country, and adhering to the gradualness of political and economic reforms being undertaken.
I believe there is hardly a special need in trying to prove to someone that the wide-ranging democratic, socio-economic, political and judicial-normative reforms can succeed only when pursued gradually and on the basis of consistency, continuity and evolutionary development.
The life itself has been confirming – time and again – the unacceptability of forcing and speeding up the democratic processes. The path of revolutionary u-turns and coercive methods as seizure of power, as we observe, normally brings about counterproductive effects.
The remarkable heights we have achieved in the liberalization and democratization of society, in ensuring a sustainable and steadfast economic development, the growth in the people’s wellbeing and quality of life, the nation’s dignified standing in the international arena – all of this is first and foremost an outcome of well thought-out reforms that cater to contemporary democratic requirements in forming a national statehood and polity built on the principles of checks and balances, of separation of functions and powers of the legislature, executive and the judiciary, of the priority of human interests, rights and freedoms, as well as universally recognized norms of international law.
Fundamentally important have been the cardinal democratic and market reforms in the economy, the institution of unprecedentedly favorable conditions and the provision of privileges and preferences for the development of small business and entrepreneurship, as well as farming as a decisive form of economic management in rural areas, the adoption of a considerable package of legislative acts to safeguard private property and rights of property owners, the formation of exclusively reliable terms and favored regime for foreign investors, the persistent perfection of normative and legislative base and conditions essential for doing business.
I would like to underscore in particular that in fostering an exceptionally encouraging and priority environment in the country for small business and private entrepreneurship and an advanced promotion of the institution of private property, we see a critically important source not only for growth in economic development, in the incomes and employment of population, but also for the formation of a middle class that is becoming a keystone bedrock and a driving force of democratic reforms.
That said, I would like to reiterate the pretty essential truth, that is, the process of reforms, democratization and renewal of society is not a one-shot and momentary process, but a persistently continuous one that ultimately aims the kind of ends graspable and supported by the population.
I am convinced that this is the very stance where we should see the crucial conditions and guarantees for ensuring the success of intensive reforms, democratic revitalization and modernization of the country.
It is by no means a secret that, proceeding fr om this understanding of goals and objectives in transforming our society, such renowned slogans as “Reforms are not for the sake of reforms, but for the people” and “Do not demolish your old house unless you have erected a new one” have been growing popular and garnering support.
At the same time, we are well aware of the fact that Uzbekistan’s steadfast movement toward the implementation of principles envisioned in the Constitution, the extensive transformation and democratic reforms in government, socio-political and socio-economic building, in the humanitarian area, and primarily the cardinal revision and renewal of the education sector, the dynamic growth in the level and quality of life of the population – all this has fundamentally changed the frame of mind of the people and the appearance of our country as well as its standing in the world community.
The most telling and tangible idea of the unprecedented changes our nation has been experiencing is given by some indicators of economic advancement for the past 22 years of our independent development.
Uzbekistan’s economy has grown 4.1 times within this period, and in per capita terms it multiplied at least threefold, taking into account at the same time that the population of the country increased for this period by nearly 9.7 million people to reach the current 30.5 million approximately.
Notwithstanding the grave repercussions of the still ongoing global financial and economic downturn, the annual growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) has exceeded 8 percent in 2008-2013, while this indicator is projected at 8.1 percent in the year 2014. Very few countries around the world have been able to boast similar economic growth rates.
The real aggregate per capita incomes have enlarged 8.2 times for the independent development years.
Macroeconomic indicators have been maintained in balanced terms, so has the annual surplus of the State Budget.
The public external debt of the country does not top 16 percent of the GDP, while the internal debt has a zero valuation, amid the mounting volumes of exports and gold and currency reserves.
During the independent development period, capital investments equaling more than 162 billion US dollars in dollar estimates, including in excess of 56 billion dollars of foreign investments, have been drawn in Uzbekistan’s economy.
The volume of capital investments in 2013 is to make up 14 billion dollars in dollar estimates, which is 23 percent of the GDP.
What do these facts and figures suggest?
They constitute, first and foremost, hundreds and thousands of newly commissioned modern enterprises producing competitive goods in demand in the global market; hundreds and thousands of kilometers of rail and motor roads as well as infrastructure facilities; hundreds of thousands of square meters of housing; and, finally, the cardinally transforming appearance of our urban and rural areas, the growth in the wellbeing and quality of life of the population.
All these facts are indicative of the growing confidence of the international community in the processes of reforms and modernization of the country and in the future of Uzbekistan.
Today, we can state with absolute conviction that within a historically brief span of time, Uzbekistan has turned from a land with a one-sided raw-material based economy with a destructive monopoly of cotton production into a dynamically growing country with a modern industry advancing with speedy rates.
This is backed expressively by the fact that the share of manufacturing industry in Uzbekistan’s GDP amounts currently to 24.3 percent in contrast to the 14.2 percent back in 1990. In the meanwhile, the proportion of agriculture in the GDP has reduced from 34 percent to 17 percent in 2013.
During independence years, such novel sectors have been established in Uzbekistan as automotive industry, home appliances manufacturing, hydrocarbon-chemical production, pharmaceuticals industry, while the food and light industries, chemical industry, manufacturing construction materials and other sectors have undergone complete modernization and reorientation to the production of competitive goods with higher added value.
When we speak of such grand structural moves forward in the economy and changes in our lives, we cannot ignore the extremely critical and decisive turnabouts occurring in the frame of mind and thinking modes of people, in their attitude to life and outcomes of their labor.
The human being himself has been changing, his civic and political consciousness has been growing; so has his legal culture. We have been getting rid of the communist ideology and parasitism, the belief in Soviet-style leaders who think for us.
The new generation of cadres has been confidently entering our lives to occupy leading positions, a generation of independent thought, commanding modern knowledge and contemporary vision, free of prejudices and stereotypes of the bygone times, a generation capable of assuming responsibility for the future of the nation.
In this I see, without any exaggeration, colossal opportunities and reserves, which any country can take pride in.
What can we discern from these facts?
First. These facts are suggestive by and large of the confident strides toward and establishment of a modern democratic society in the country, reforms and sustainable development of the economy that ensures high rates of growth in the level and quality of life of the population, the mounting authority of Uzbekistan in the international arena.
The efficacy and practicality of the reforms being undertaken afford us every reason to state that Uzbekistan has every chance in a historically short period of time to join the ranks of the advanced democratic nations.
Second. The past period of our independent development fully confirms the correctness of the evolutionary, gradual and successive progress towards strategic goals and objectives stipulated in the Constitution of the country with an eye to historical and national peculiarities and mentality of the people.
Third. We are well aware also of the fact that one can have a modern constitution, a perfect strategy for furthering the ends envisaged in that basic law. However, tell me, my dear friends,would we be able, wielding all this, to achieve the results that we have, had our people not backed us?
Only its courage and patience, perseverance and persistence, only the heroic labor of our people have allowed us to make the accomplishments we can all be proud of with every reason.
Allow me to bow to the end from this high rostrum to you all for that, and to our entire people in your person.
Esteemed friends!
Summing up the efforts undertaken for the past period, it is critically important to refrain from euphoria and complacency, to avoid detachment from the reality, to assess soberly and with self-criticism one’s own place in the contemporary world and go hand in hand with the persistently growing requirements of the times and be vigilant of one’s own path forward.
Adopted by the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan in November 2010, the Concept for the Intensification of Democratic Reforms and Formation of Civil Society in the Country has become an appropriate and logical extension of the democratic transformation and modernization marshaled by us.
In essence, it is a longer-term program of mutually connected political and economic reforms, of democratization and liberalization of the system of government and management, of securing the independence and autonomy of the judiciary, the freedom of speech and information, the freedom of choice and the development of electoral system, formation of civil society in the conditions of globalization and the rapidly changing contemporary world.
Sufficiently remarkable efforts have been undertaken for the past period of time in each of these priority aspects of the enhancement of reforms. This can be judged on issues under discussion on the pages of the press and broadcast on television as well as the laws being passed by our parliament.
Critically instrumental role in this is being attached to the growingly potent job of the legislative branch of power in the system of government and polity, the enlargement of its controlling functions and consolidation of the judicial and normative system.
A range of amendments has been introduced to the Basic Law to further improve the activities of the parliament. Reinforced has been the role of parliamentarian groups and factions of political parties at each stage in the deliberation and adoption of laws and normative acts.
No legislative act is being passed without taking into account the views and proposals of deputy factions (parliamentarian groups).
In accordance with the Concept, consistent endeavors have been spearheaded to further reform the judicial-normative system; reinforce the independence and autonomy of courts as the critical integral part in the formation and democratization of society, in securing the rule of law and the reliable protection of human rights and freedoms.
First and foremost, controlling powers of the prosecutor’s office over the judiciary have been abolished to a full extent, and the right to suspend the execution of court verdicts has been removed from the list of prosecutors’ powers.
Legislative acts have been underway to expand the use of the habeas corpus institution in the consolidation of judicial oversight in the criminal proceedings and in the perfection of the system and mechanisms for securing the principle of competition between defense and prosecution.
The powers of the court to open a criminal case and proclaim sentence on it have been eliminated from the criminal procedural legislation. The judicial oversight of investigation during pre-trial process has been reinforced. The application of such measures of procedural coercion as dismissal from office and placement in a medical institution has been passed on to courts.
The adopted legislative acts stipulate clear-cut grounds for operative investigation, real legal guarantees have been created for adherence to the law, provision for citizen rights and freedoms and ruling out the administrative arbitrary rule.
The elevation in the effectiveness of the system of training and retraining juridical specialists has been addressed by the adoption of a resolution by President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on measures to further perfect the system of training jurisprudence cadres signed in June 2013, in accordance with which the Tashkent State Institute of Law has been reinstituted as Tashkent State University of Law, along with the establishment of foundations for the cardinal transformation and improvement of the fundamental base of the system of jurisprudence education.
It is especially imperative to expound on the execution of extensive programs designed to promote the institutions of civil society, that is, nongovernmental nonprofit organizations, free and independent mass media.
The nongovernmental nonprofit organizations (NNOs) are turning into an important factor in the protection of democratic values, rights, liberties and legitimate interests of people, in the realization of potential by citizens, in raising their public, socio-economic activity and law culture. The NNOs have been facilitating the maintenance of balance of interests in the society.
Currently, the number of NNOs operating in the country has exceeded 6 thousand, the volumes of funds provided by the Public Fund for the Support of NNOs and Other Civil Society Institutions under the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan in the form of fellowships have increased twofold in the last three years.
Today, NNOs are widely active in the implementation of programs to address pressing issues in healthcare, environmental protection, in securing employment and social support of vulnerable strata of the population. They have been also engaged into the process of lawmaking. Public discussions are held of bills being elaborated as part of the Concept, and other acts of legislation with vast social significance.
Owing to measures taken within the framework of the Concept, the domestic mass media are growingly becoming active participants of the reforms being undertaken in the country.
Bright evidence to this is manifest by the extensive involvement of civil society institutions and mass media in the law experiment designed for the trial of the draft law of the Republic of Uzbekistan “On the Openness of the Activities of Government and Management Bodies”, which has been in progress in Bukhara and Samarkand regions for nearly a year.
Summing up the aforesaid, I would like to stress particularly that currently, the establishment of an integrated system has been acquiring an important significance in securing the parliamentary and public oversight of the executive branch of power, in consolidating its normative and legal base, as well as the speedup of the legislative acts necessary for it.
In this regard, it is essential to ensure the soonest adoption of draft laws currently under discussion – “On Social Partnership” and “On Public Scrutiny in the Republic of Uzbekistan.”
To this end, it is increasingly vital also to accelerate the adoption of such bills as those “On Economic Foundations of Mass Media” and “On Guarantees of State Support for Mass Media” and other draft laws under deliberation today.
Let me take this opportunity to speak also on one more issue.
The further intensification of reforms with cashing in the expertise of advanced democracies, the logic of political and constitutional development of Uzbekistan dictates the necessity in uplifting the role and significance of representative deputy bodies. In a word, it requires the consolidation of their real capacities in the life of our society.
In this respect, it is pressing to further expand the role of the Legislative Chamber and Senate of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan in the system of government, to reinforce their functions of scrutiny over the activities of the Cabinet of Ministers and executive bodies, along with their entitlements and powers in addressing strategic objectives of internal and foreign policies, with the introduction of due amendments and addenda to the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
Along with this, our realities urge us to include in the agenda also the issue in raising the responsibility of the Cabinet of Ministers, of local hokimiyats (administrations) first and foremost, in arranging systematic hearings of their reports before local Kengashes (Councils).
All these amendments and addenda pursue in the end a critical goal of ours, namely, the further democratization of the system of government and management in the country, provision for a gradual realization of the principle “From a Strong State to a Robust Civil Society”.
Dear compatriots!
The cardinal consolidation of the role of political parties in the definition of concrete priorities in the socio-political and economic development, and their involvement in addressing strategic challenges in the transformation and modernization of the country should become the most crucial factor in the steadfast democratic reforms.
The experience of advanced democracies in the contemporary world suggests that primarily the consolidation of a multiparty system and inter-party competition constitutes one of the most critical conditions wh ere the parliamentarianism is built on, when principal political forces and social strata of the population of the country are represented inside the walls of the parliament as a result of free and equal elections.
I do not believe there is a necessity to tell what we mean by political parties, who have their own charter and action plan built on their own vision of addressing the issues standing before the society.
In other words, it is primarily about a political party having an electorate of its own, a party which has won its reputation among voters with its clear and firm position on key issues of state and social building as well as domestic and foreign policies of the country, with its ability to resolutely defend the interests of those who vote in elections for this party.
All of these issues are particularly relevant in the light of the December 2014 national elections to the Oliy Majlis and local representative bodies.
Summarizing, I think it is appropriate today to revisit the preamble of our Constitution, which states: “The people of Uzbekistan, solemnly declaring their commitment to human rights and the principles of state sovereignty, recognizing the ultimate responsibility to the present and future generations, affirming their commitment to the ideals of democracy and social justice, seeking to ensure a decent life for the citizens of the Republic, assuming the task of creating a humane and democratic state with a rule of law, represented by their authorized representatives, present this Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan.”
Addressing those present in this hall today, and to all our people in your person, I would stress that everything done over the years, everything projected to be carried out in the future, gives us every reason to say that we will not retreat from the path chosen by us, and that everything envisaged by our Constitution will be executed for certain.
Dear fellow country men and women!
Declaring the year 2013 in our country as the one of wellbeing and prosperity, we decided to raise the large-scale works on the comprehensive development and betterment of our native Uzbekistan to a new, higher level, which was enthusiastically received by our entire people.
During the year, in order to implement a set of targeted mobilization of resources and opportunities, greater involvement of government, nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations in the implementation of tasks to improve the level and quality of life of people, we have furthered tremendous efforts and been able to implement many important undertakings.
We continued to work to ensure a consistent, steady growth in welfare and real incomes, higher employment rates, further development of small business and private entrepreneurship, farming, in tackling social problems.
It is known that the adoption of the State Budget in our country every year is accompanied by the focus on the promotion of the social sector. In 2013, the funds allocated for this sphere amounted to 60 percent of total budget expenditures, or by 1 trillion soums as much as those in 2012.
Talking about the growth in living standards of our people, I would like to cite some specific indicators.
Today, every third family in Uzbekistan has its own car. Every 100 families on average possess 80 refrigerators and 146 television sets, suggesting that there are some families who have two or three TVs. The possession of washing machines, vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, personal computers and other necessary home appliances has been increasing, too.
Currently, 19 million people in the country enjoy mobile communications, and each family has an average of 3 cell phones. The number of internet users compared to last year increased by 18.3 percent and now amounts to 7.1 million people.
Indisputably, these figures show a steady increase not only in the level, but also in the quality of life of our citizens.
In 2013 alone, for the purchase of household appliances, rural residents have been allocated with consumer loans totaling nearly 68 billion soums, and young families have been provided with mortgage loans for more than 346 billion soums, or 10 percent as much as those provided last year as a financial support for the construction and purchase of housing.
To secure employment, what is important for us, over 970,000 jobs have been created this year, of which 60 percent in the countryside, and crucially, employed have been more than 500,000 boys and girls – graduates of professional colleges, and these can be referred to as our greatest achievements.
Especially I would like to expound on the implementation of another priority challenge, that is, public healthcare, improving the healthcare system, raising its effectiveness, and boosting preventive works.
7 million women of reproductive age and 7.3 million children have undergone medical examination, while qualified medical care has been provided to 195 thousands of lonely elderly people, the disabled and retired people.
During the year, 146 modern medical facilities have been commissioned in the country for budget funds equaling 311 billion soums. In particular, a new treatment building and a diagnostic department as well as a children’s sanatorium have been erected in the Andijan regional diversified medical center. The medical association in Chirakchi district of Kashkadarya region has undergone complete reconstruction, so have diversified medical centers for children and adults in Surkhandarya region, medical associations in the Uzbekistan and Kushtepa districts of Fergana region, and dozens of other hospitals.
New surgery buildings have been commissioned at the clinic of Tashkent Pediatric Medical Institute and the Republican Specialized Scientific and Practical Medical Center of Pediatrics.
I would take this opportunity to express my special thanks to all the medical professionals who work selflessly in this area, successfully developing new, advanced diagnostic and treatment methods.
This year we have undertaken a lot of efforts to raise the level of development of a new system of education and upbringing.
756 educational institutions, children’s music and art schools, children’s sports facilities have been constructed, reconstructed and repaired. Organized were modern computer classes, educational laboratories and workshops outfitted with the necessary equipment.
It is known that as part of a program aimed at further improving the system of teaching foreign languages in secondary schools, their in-depth study has been established this year starting from the 1st grade. It certainly is important, as it creates new opportunities for familiarizing our children with the achievements of world science and culture, the formation of their personalities as mature and highly qualified specialists.
This year, recreation in summer camps was organized for about 300,000 children, including on privileged terms for 4,500 students from the Aral Sea region and 75,000 boys and girls from low-income families.
We all understand that a detailed analysis of the enormous works undertaken in the course of implementation of the State Program “The Year of Wellbeing and Prosperity”, would take a rather long time. I just want to draw your attention to one indicator.
6 trillion and 930 billion soums and more than 471 million dollars have been spent to the execution of the program from all sources of funding. This fact confirms without any doubt the extensive scale and significance of the endeavors we have carried out.
I will use this opportunity to express my personal sincere gratitude and that from all our people to government bodies and public organizations, farmers and entrepreneurs, foreign and international institutions, ambassadors of foreign countries present in this hall, all the people who have contributed to this noble work, who have labored hard for a good cause.
Dear participants of the festive assembly!
Now, we need to consult, as the tradition goes, to name the coming year 2014.
From time immemorial, every parent wants to ensure that their children grow healthy and well-rounded. Indeed, the aspirations of each of us and all our people are centered on the dream that underlines the meaning of life, that is, to raise our children inferior to nothing and no one, to see their happiness and prosperous future.
Talking about the health of children, what we mean is not only their physical health, but also their spiritual and moral formation and development.
From the first years of independence, our country has come to define as a priority of state policy the implementation of the concept “Healthy Mother – Healthy Child”, and as part of relevant national programs we have undertaken remarkable efforts, the fine results of which are recognized worldwide.
At the same time, the current rapidly changing time and the life challenge us with new, very important and urgent tasks in this direction.
Taking all this into account, in order to progressively continue our work to foster a healthy generation and raise our endeavors to a higher level, I propose to announce the upcoming 2014 year in our country as the one of the health of the child.
We all know that the birth of a healthy child, his and her formation as a healthy and powerful individual defines a set of factors and conditions. Yet there are most important, indeed crucial, factors among them which I consider it necessary to expound on in particular.
First, a healthy baby is born as a rule in a healthy and happy family. We regard the family as the core of upbringing, as that ensuring an uninterrupted continuation of life, having a strong impact on the fate of children, their future. It is exactly the family atmosphere that such noble qualities as respect for elders, caring for the younger ones, kindness and humaneness, compassion and generosity, devotion to the Motherland and one’s own people are shaped.
Naturally, the birth of a healthy child is primarily dependent on the health of the mother. For nine months, the expectant mother nurtures her baby – a gift from the Almighty – carefully and lovingly under her heart, and gives him/her life. All emotions and the state of mind and soul the woman experiences during this time get inevitably transmitted to the fetus.
To value women, to take care of them, to make their daily household cares much easier, to seek to protect them from various diseases is the duty of every man and our entire society. In order for this truth not to be left as just words, all of us must, feeling our own responsibility, to put it into practical action.
Consequently, the elaboration of a state program “The Year of Health of the Child” should focus on issues such as maternal and child health, boosting the healthy atmosphere in the family, its economic and spiritual and moral foundations.
Second, in the formation of a healthy child a critical role belongs to the healthcare system, which has been assigned with gigantic responsibility.
To this end, the program should reflect the tasks in cementing the economic and technical capacities of the healthcare system, outfitting it with modern equipment, supplying qualified personnel to medical institutions involved in bolstering the health of mothers and children – screening and perinatal centers, women’s health consultation facilities, maternity hospitals, gynecological and visitation services, rural medical centers.
Taking into account the recommendations of the World Health Organization, we need to continue improving the effectiveness of measures to ensure timely and quality nutrition for pregnant women and infants, to produce goods fortified with special vitamins and minerals, regular medical examination of children, prevention of various diseases among them.
Naturally, what is rather important in nurturing a healthy child is the medical culture of the population, especially that of parents. In this regard, elaboration of the program it would be appropriate to organize a large-scale outreach aimed at improving the medical culture.
As you know, mandatory premarital medical examination of the prospective spouses has been introduced in our country in order to build healthy families and foster healthy children.
But, unfortunately, sometimes there are cases of irresponsible attitude to this important issue that is directly linked with human life, the fate of the potential child; there are also cases of acquisition of false medical certificates. All this cannot fail to bother and disturb us all. I think it is time to eradicate utterly these negative phenomena, further enhance the responsibility of medical workers for carrying out their professional duties, and in general for the birth of healthy children, without any pathologies.
Third, it is essential to bolster the role of education and sports in the formation of a healthy child.
The program should identify specific measures to expand the network of preschool educational institutions and their equipment in accordance with the requirements of the time, recruit their staff among highly qualified teachers and specialists, and improve the quality of children’s preparation for school.
One of the most important periods in the physical and psychological development of the child is the study in primary schools. It is no secret that during the former regime this issue, unfortunately, was by and large neglected. Teaching in these classes was mainly entrusted to teachers with specialized secondary education.
Given the role and importance of primary education in nurturing the younger generation, we have put an end to such an unacceptable state of affairs. Today, this task is performed with higher education teachers wielding high professional skills.
In working out a due program we ought to reflect the need to uplift the quality of primary education, improve educational standards, curricula, textbooks and teaching guides, the widespread introduction of advanced pedagogical and information-communication technologies.
Building on the goals and objectives of the Year of the Health of the Child, we need to identify and implement specific actions to promote healthy and active lifestyle, instill the love for physical culture and sports in our children, especially girls.
Fourth, to achieve such a lofty goal as to foster a healthy and comprehensively advanced generation, this issue should continue to be the focus of the state and society and remain a priority of our policy.
We understand well that all spheres and institutions responsible and involved in shaping a generation of new formation cannot develop and rise to a new, modern level without the help and support of the state.
In the program of the Year of the Health of the Child, we should first clearly define our priorities, namely, improvement in the effectiveness of funds earmarked for the promotion of various fields, especially social services, creation of necessary conditions in line with the requirements of contemporary times.
However, the study and implementation in our country of the best international practices related to nurturing healthy children, including the expertise of advanced nations, has been growing in importance.
Fifth, I think there is no need to dwell on the enormous role of the mahalla and other social institutions in bringing up a healthy child, and their influence on the process.
From this perspective, the responsibility of aksakals (elders) and activists of mahallas grow immeasurably, as that of consultants for religious enlightenment and moral education in augmenting peace and unity, an atmosphere of mutual respect and harmony in families and the society in general, in protecting our children from various harmful phenomena that pose a threat to their healthy development.
In dealing with such vital issues as upbringing our children, especially girls, helping them to master modern knowledge and professions, engaging schoolchildren in various hobby clubs, providing material and moral assistance to needy families, promoting entrepreneurship, preventing early marriage and family conflicts, holding family rituals and activities without pomposity and in accordance with the requirements of the present day, we rely primarily on mahalla activists having a great life experience.
We need to further expand the scope of the institution of mahalla and hence grant it with even greater powers and opportunities.
Obviously, for the implementation of all the abovementioned priorities it is necessary to further improve the relevant normative framework.
Paying a due tribute to what we have achieved over the past 22 years of our independent development in building a democratic state and civil society, securing a sustainably developing economy, a decent place that our country has been earning in the international arena, it is impossible not to ask a simple question as to what these accomplishments are primarily built on.
In addressing this inquiry, without diminishing the role and importance of other factors, I would emphasize the following: the foundation on which all these successes stand is the physically healthy and spiritually mature modern generation with an independent thinking and advanced intelligence, with an ability to take responsibility for the fate of the Motherland and build a nation with a great future.
Of increasingly paramount importance is that the youth policy spearheaded in our country has been receiving a potent support in our society.
The attention and comprehensive care for our children and the younger generation is exactly the core wh ere we see the manifestation of our belief in the future, a sign of tremendous and indisputable respect for our people.
I am convinced that the announcement of the year 2014 as the one of the Health of the Child and the implementation of an appropriate state program on this front constitutes another confirmation of these gracious ends and challenges we set out before ourselves.
Congratulating you, my dear ones, time and again on the marvelous holiday – the Day of our Constitution – I wish you all a sound health, happiness and the best of luck, and prosperity and affluence to your families.
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Author: Press service of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan
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On the Security and Privacy of Modern Single Sign-On in the Web
Guido Schmitz (gtrs) and dfett
Many web sites allow users to log in with their Facebook or Google account. This so-called Web single sign-on (SSO) often uses the standard protocols OAuth and OpenID Connect. How secure are these protocols? What can go wrong?
OAuth and OpenID Connect do not protect your privacy at all, i.e., your identity provider (e.g., Facebook or Google) can always track, where you log in. Mozilla tried to create an authentication protocol that aimed to prevent tracking: BrowserID (a.k.a. Persona). Did their proposition really solve the privacy issue? What are the lessons learned and can we do better?
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Archive for the ‘Felicia Webster’ Category
Omaha’s black sirens of song and spoken word
February 15, 2016 leoadambiga 3 comments
Here is a collection of stories I have done on some amazingly gifted black singers and spoken word artists whose work enriches all our lives. Just focusing on women artists in this post.
Kathy Tyree
Sisters of song: Kathy Tyree connects with Ella Fitzgerald
Omaha singer feels kinship to her stage alter ego
©by Leo Adam Biga
Now appearing in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Ella, the dramatic musical revue of the life of American songbook diva Ella Fitzgerald at the Omaha Community Playhouse, reveals the anguish behind the legendary performer’s sweet voice and carefree persona.
Call it kismet or karma, but the woman portraying her is veteran Omaha chanteuse Kathy Tyree, whose ebullient, easy-going public face has similarly disguised her own torment.
The high points surely outweigh the low points in their respective lives but Tyree’s experienced, much as Ella did, her share of failed relationships, including two divorces, and myriad financial struggles.
“I’m in a much better place now,” Tyree says.
Known for her bright spirit and giving heart, Tyree’s usually worked a regular job to support her and her son. Currently, she’s program manager at Omaha Healthy Start. A few years ago she used all her savings and 401K to launch her own production company and after a rousing start one bad show broke the business.
The enigmatic Fitzgerald died in 1996 at age 79 with few outside her inner circle knowing her private travails because her handlers sanitized her regal image as the First Lady of Song.
As Tyree researched Fitzgerald’s life for the role, which director Susie Baer Collins offered without an audition, she identified with what Ella did to separate, if not always reconcile, her private and public sides.
“She was very weak and very strong at the same time,” Tyree says of Ella. “She had all these secrets and these hurts, all this internal pain, but she always held it together. She was at the top, she was international, she was the goddess of scat.”
Fitzgerald was respected for her dignified demeanor, the purity of her well-modulated voice and her perfect elocution, though some criticized her for being too precise, too pristine, too white. All of it helped to popularize jazz.
Tyree says the adoration that flowed Ella’s way was due to her talent but also to “how she carried herself as a black woman,” adding, “She wasn’t Lady Day (Billie Holiday), she wasn’t drinking and popping pills and going through all these changes publicly. That takes a lot.”
Before getting the role Tyree was lukewarm about the singer. Her favorite female artists were Diana Ross, Patti Labelle and Cher. After months listening to the Ella canon, Tyree says ,”I have a completely different appreciation for her. Now I am a fan. This woman was a walking instrument. She could do just amazing things with her voice.”
Kathy Tyree as Ella
Because the script peels back the layers of myth around Fitzgerald’s antiseptic image, Tyree now feels connected to the real woman behind the silky voice and prim and proper mask
“There’s so much more to her than was allowed to be shared with the world. She definitely has a story, she definitely was singing from a place of pain. In rehearsals I began seeing a lot of the parallels between us.”
Both grew up fatherless and both lost a sister. By their mid-teens both were mixed up in the wrong crowd. Just as performing saved Fitzgerald, it gave the “rebellious” Tyree a purpose and discipline she’d lacked. She began singing in church, at Morningstar Baptist, where she still attends today, and at Omaha Technical High School. Outside of her faith, performing is Tyree’s spiritual sanctuary.
“For me theater and music are my therapy but from everything I’ve learned about Ella it was more like her drug. For me it takes me to another place and it gives me a peace and a calm. I leave everything outside. It’s like this is a whole other world.”
Just as performing helped Tyree cope with insecurities, she guesses it did so for Ella, whose character in the show says, “I’m always OK when I’m on the stage. When I’m not working, I turn off, I get lost.”
Tyree’s usual reticence about her own turmoil isn’t to protect a well-manufactured facade, but a personal credo she inherited.
“I shared with Susie (Baer Collins) in a read-through that in my family we have a rule – you never look like what you’re going through. Though I’ve been through a lot, I’ve had a lot of heartbreak and heartache, I never look like what I’m going through, and that was Ella.
“It’s a pride thing. I was raised by strong black women. These women had to work hard. Nobody had time for that crying and whining stuff.
It was, ‘Straighten your face up, get yourself together, keep it moving.’”
She says what she doesn’t like about Ella is “the very same thing I don’t like in myself,” adding, “Ella didn’t have enough respect for herself to know what she deserved. She didn’t have those examples, she didn’t have a father. People always say little boys need their fathers, well little girls need their fathers. too. They need somebody to tell them they’re beautiful. They deserve somebody in their life that isn’t going to abuse them. When you don’t have that you find yourself hittin’ and missin’, trying to figure it out, searching for that acceptance and that love. That’s very much our shared story.”
That potent back story infuses Tyree’s deeply felt interpretations of Fitzgerald standards. Tyree’s singing doesn’t really sound anything like her stage alter ego but she does capture her heart and soul.
Tyree, a natural wailer, has found crooning ballad and scat-styles to conjure the spirit of Ella. Tyree makes up for no formal training and the inability to read music with perfect pitch and a highly adaptable voice.
“My voice is very versatile and my range is off the charts,” Tyree says matter-of-factly. “I can sing pretty much anything you put in front of me because it’s all in my ear. I’ve been blessed because they (music directors) can play it one time and I get it.”
She considers herself a singer first and an actress second, but in Ella she does both. She overcame initial doubts about the thick book she had to learn for the part.
“It’s a lot of lines and a lot of acting and a lot of transitions because I’m narrating her life from 15 years-old to 50.
But after months of rehearsal Tyree’s doing what she feels anointed to do in a space where she’s most at home.
“This is where I get to be lost and do what I do best, this is where I don’t miss. I think it’s because it’s coming from a sincere place. My number one goal is that everybody in the audience leaves blessed. I want to pour something out of me into them. I want ’em to leave on a high. It’s not about me when I’m on stage. This is God-given and there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with it to deliver.”
This popular performer with a deep list of musical theater credits (Ain’t Misbehavin’, Beehive) feels she’s inhabiting the role of a lifetime and one that may finally motivate her to stretch herself outside Omaha.
“I’m still like blown away they asked me to come do this show. I still have goals and dreams and things I want to do. As you go through your journey in life there’s things that hinder those goals and dreams and they cause you to second guess and doubt yourself – that maybe I don’t have what it takes. I’m hoping this will instill in me the courage to just go for it and start knocking on some of those doors.”
Ella continues through March 30. For times and tickets, visit http://www.omahacommunityplayhouse.com.
Camille Metoyer Moten
I have had the distinct pleasure now of profiling a handful of Omaha’s chanteuses – those vexing songbirds of the nightclub or cabaret set who enchant as much with their attitude as with their voice. The magic they imbue a song with has everything to do with how they interpret the words and music, bending notes with tone, texture, posture, expression. One such songstress is Camille Metoyer Moten, who fairly oozes sophisticated style. This piece I did on her for The Reader (www.thereader.com) appeared a few years ago. More recently, I’ve written about two more sisters of the Great American Songbook in Karrin Allyson and Anne Marie Kenny. You can find my stories about these other artists on this same blog. I still hope to write about the most legendary of the cabaret singers from Omaha, namely Julie Wilson.
Camille Metoyer Moten, A singer for all seasons
Originally published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Excuse the shameless alliteration, but singer Camille Metoyer Moten often gets props for her versatile chops, a quality she amply displayed in concert at the Multi-Faith Music Festival last month. In short order the Omaha native effortlessly went from a jazzy cabaret interpretation of the Harold Arlen standard “Over the Rainbow” to a soaring duet with Seth Fox of “Make Our Garden Grow” from the Leonard Bernstein classic Candide to wailing solo and harmony turns on the Rent anthem “Seasons of Love.”
Her classically trained mezzo soprano hit all the requisite notes, leaving no doubt she could call on more if required. She confirmed this in a recent interview at the north Omaha home she and her husband Michael Moten, pastor of One Way Ministry church, share. If necessary she said she can still find the first soprano notes she once reached automatically as a Xavier University voice major in New Orleans in the early 1970s, where she sang with the school’s noted jazz band and in clubs around town. Ellis Marsalis often sat in with her and the Xavier crew.
As impressive as she was that night at All Saints Episcopal Church, where she shone the brightest on a talent-rich festival bill, it was just another example of how easily she swings from one thing to another. Last spring she sang opposite Broadway veteran Kevyn Morrow in the Omaha Community Playhouse’s mega production of Ragtime. She’s a musical theater legend there, with two Fonda/McGuire Awards to her credit. But she’s best known for her cabaret shows. Lately, she’s been laying down tracks for her first CD, Go Forward, a mix of contemporary religious music. Then there’s her work at One Way Ministry, where she leads the choir and sings solos. She’s also a regular in Opera Omaha and Soli Deo Gloria Cantorum concerts.
She can sing anything,” said Playhouse music director Jim Boggess. Pianist- producer-conductor Chuck Penington, a frequent accompanist of hers, said, “She has a very broad repertoire. She can go clear across the 20th century in music. She knows lots and lots of material and she sings it all really authentically.”
Metoyer Moten, who began singing at home imitating “the silky, velvety sound” of song stylists Nancy Wilson, Carmen McRae and Ella Fitzgerald she listened to on her mother’s records, finds satisfaction in having “a lot of versatility. That’s one of the reasons I stay so busy,” she said. “That was my goal when I first started out. I wanted to be able to do it all. I love it all so. I love the fact I can do that. I love when people say, ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’” Long fascinated by how those legends got just the right inflection or phrasing, she’s now the model of cool, the caress of her voice enveloping a lyric, pulling you into the embrace of its meaning.
As those who work with her are quick to point out, her artistry extends beyond technique. “She has an innate sense of musical style and makes the message in a lyric very personal,” said Opera Omaha artistic director Hal France. “You can talk about voice and her voice is warm and compelling, but you can’t separate voice from life experience, intelligence and soul. I suppose if one can bring all of that together in performance then you really have something, and Camille does.”
The 52-year-old mother of two draws on many things. Her grandpa Vic and dad Ray ran the family business, Metoyer’s Barbecue, on North 24th Street. She said in one of the late ‘60s riots her fair-skinned father went there to “protect” the place. “As he stood outside a group of teens advanced and he overheard one say, ‘Let’s get him,’ thinking he was white, before another one said, ‘No, man, that’s Metoyer” and moved on.” Her dad was president of the Nebraska Urban League. Her folks were “involved” in the 4CL civil rights group. As a child she marched on city hall with them demanding fair housing and she met Malcolm X and Jesse Jackson.
While a Burke High School senior her mother died from a brain tumor. She said her mom was “a great singer.” Family legend has it she even landed an audition with Duke Ellington, “but never did anything with it,” except harmonize with her children, choosing life as a homemaker over touring torch singer. The loss of her mom occurred the same year Burke’s then music director denied Metoyer Moten a part in a production of Guys and Dolls due to her race. Years later she helped overturn bias in local theater by winning nontraditional roles — Mary Magdalene, Fanny Brice and Eva Peron — which helped make it happen for other minorities. “I do feel like I kind of opened the door to that color blind casting,” she said.
At lily white Burke things weren’t so enlightened. “I had some issues there,” she said. A sympathetic drama teacher did come to her “with tears in her eyes and said, ‘I just want you to know it had nothing to do with your talent. That man said he’s not having no black girl kiss a white boy on his stage.’ It was messed up. I was crushed but I appreciated her honesty.” After graduating she fled Omaha, at 17, for a new start down south, in Louisiana, where her dad’s Creole family hailed from.
“It was a bad year,” she said. “So I went to New Orleans. It was kind of just an opportunity to get away from the whole thing.” To her “roots.”
The Crescent City proved a tonic. There, blond afro and all, she trained her voice, met her husband, underwent a born again conversion and discovered jazz. With “so much” to engage her, what most enamored her was “the heart and soul of the people. They live their culture. The music and the food, it’s so them, and I admire that,” she said, “because it’s just a passion you don’t see other places. It’s a very spiritual place.” It’s where jazz first truly spoke to her. “Growing up and listening to the jazz artists my mother had was one thing. Then to see and feel the passion of the jazz artists there was a totally different thing.” She came to see it as an inheritance. “I had all these peers that had come from generations of jazz players. So I was surrounded with all these incredibly gifted musicians from that city.”
Partying her way through college, she found an eager playmate in a local boy named Michael Moten. Raised a Catholic, she’d fallen away from organized religion. He was no churchgoer himself. But then he made a resolution to “get closer to God” and made good on it. She did, too. “It completely changed our life,” she said.
The couple married and in 1979 acted on the advice of her dad, a counselor at Boys Town, to apply as family teachers there. They flew in on a Friday and nailed the interview. They went back to New Orleans on a high after landing the jobs. The following Monday her father was shot and killed at the family’s eatery by a deranged woman he’d fired a year before. He was 52. The “drugged-out” woman had harassed him and the family by phone, spewing “profanities.” “Just a senseless death,” Metoyer Moten said. “My father was such a giving man. His funeral was massive. So many people turned out because he was a great guy.”
Upon her return to town in ‘79 she began gigging in theater and concert settings.
Having endured the pain of losing both parents prematurely, she has a well of emotions to summon in coloring her soulful cabaret work. For someone as shy as she, the intimacy of that performing “took some getting used to,” she said. As a girl she used to sneak downstairs to dress up in her mother’s red cape with leopard trim and mimic what she imagined an elegant jazz singer in a club must look and sound like. Her mother would creep down the stairs to listen, the creak of the steps giving her away, enough to make the self-conscious Camille clam up.
Metoyer Moten prefers the “nice distance” a theater’s stage and lights provide as a buffer from audiences, but she’s come to embrace the “freer style” of cabaret, even if it exposes her. “When you’re doing that cabaret thing they’re right there, you know. You might spit on them. which has happened,” she said, cracking her big easy laugh. “I just talk…about my panty hose… whatever, and people like that. People get involved and talk back. It’s fun. It’s helped me get over that shyness.”
Her laidback vibe wins over everyone. “She’s truly one of the funniest people I have ever met in my life,” Boggess said. “A wonderful sense of humor. She doesn’t take herself very seriously. She is so easy to work with because she’s always open to suggestions. But she’s usually right about what’s right for her. I just love working with that girl. I love her to death. And she breaks my heart when she sings.”
One of Camille Metoyer Moten’s many upcoming engagements is singing for the Omaha Holiday Lights Festival concert Thanksgiving night at the Gene Leahy Mall.
Here’s my Omaha Magazine (http://omahamagazine.com/) piece about how beloved Omaha performing artist Camille Metoyer Moten used social media as a communnication and connection point to share her odyssey with cancer and her reliance on faith for getting through the illness. On my blog you can find other stories I’ve done on Camille, who is an inspiration through her work and her life.
Faith, Friends and Facebook
The Journey of Camille Metoyer Moten
When cancer struck beloved Omaha performer Camille Metoyer Moten, she shared her odyssey and faith on Facebook
©Photography by Bill Sitzmann Now appearing in Omaha Magazine (http://omahamagazine.com/)
Popular singer-actress Camille Metoyer Moten is a fun-loving, free-spirited soldier of faith.
Camille with fellow Omaha singer-actress Jill Anderson, who’s dealing with her own health issues (you can find my story about Jill and her journey on this blog)
More images of Camille
Carol Rogers
Life comes full circle for singer Carol Rogers
August 28, 2015leoadambigaEditLeave a comment
A good portion of my life is spent interviewing and profiling artists and creatives of one type or another. It’s a good challenge for me to try and give readers an authentic representation of the subject and his/her persona, spirit, character, and voice without reducing them to stereotype or generic personality. I really strive to have you feel and hear the individual as I come to know them. My encounters with these talented folks are often rich experiences for the lively give and take that happens as I more or less give them free rein to be themselves. I want them to express themselves without holding back or self-censoring One of my more recent experiences along these lines was with singer Carol Rogers and I thoroughly enjoyed our time together. She is all positve love, light, and energy and she has a distinctive way of expressing herself that is poetic and soulful, earthy and esoteric, all at once. I believe I’ve captured her many colors in this new cover piece for the September 2015 New Horizons. Look for it at newstands or call 402-444-6654 for a free subscription to the monthy paper. Make the call and you’ll have the issue with her story and every forthcoming issue sent to your home or business.
NOTE: For the same newspaper, New Horizons, I profiled Carol’s mother, singer-pianist Jeanne Rogers, and some other Omaha black women in music. Jeanne was the music director and pianist at one of my regular places of worship in Omaha, Church of the Resurrection.
Here is a link to that earlier story on my blog-
https://leoadambiga.com/?s=black+women+in+music
Appeared in the September 2015 New Horizons
Since putting down Omaha roots again after years away pursuing her music career, free-spirited singer Carol Rogers is sure she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be.
This hipster hails from a revered musical heritage family that’s done great things with their craft. Like her brothers Donnie, Ronnie and Keith, she made a name for herself here but enjoyed her biggest success elsewhere. Her big break came earning a spot singing and recording with Brazilian star Sergio Mendes. It meant performing in English and Portuguese across myriad musical styles. Her virtuosity has inspired some in the biz to call her “a vocal god.”
Her stage persona and song interpretation can be sweet, salty or sultry. She can scat, sing jazz, R&B, soul, blues, country, pop, rock, even heavy metal. She once covered “Rage Against the Machine.”
Her association with Mendes put her in the company of celebrities and dignitaries. That heady period fulfilled a lifelong desire to feed the beat-of-a-distant-drummer leanings she’s always felt.
Despite growing up surrounded by the sounds of Motown’s black divas, Rogers said, “I used to think I was Doris Day. I would come down the stairs, ‘Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be,’ and my brothers would wait for me at the bottom of the stairs to pummel me with, ‘Who do you think you are? Wake up, you skinny chicken head, wake up.’ So I kind of lived in a fantasy land. I never really saw myself like everyone else looks at themselves. I like to do things differently. I kind of was a hippy without the drugs because I liked the way they dressed.”
“Even as a young woman I couldn’t look like everybody else. To this day I feel most comfortable when I have on lots of colors.”
Her funky sensibility extends to a window treatment in her home that has a gingham curtain with a paisley print against a red wall, though she said she’s self-conscious enough to wonder if visitors think “I’m decorating like a crack-head in a brothel.” At the end of the day, she said, “I just want to celebrate and excite as I go and come.”
It’s why after dying her hair she’s let it go gray, proudly wearing the beauty of her age in dreadlocks that frame her queenly features.
“I began to embrace my gray. It’s a crown of righteousness if it’s accompanied by good works.”
Her righteous energy found expression in a Ladies Sing the Blues concert at Loves Jazz & Arts Center when she arrived in character as an elder negotiating a walker to the stage. Once there, she shed costume, wig and prosthetics to reveal her youthful, high-octane self and sleek legs. She then proceeded to tear up the joint with a full-throated, hip-swaying, table-topping blues performance in the spirit of Big Mama Thornton and Shemekia Copeland.
“Coming in with the girls, I knew I was going to break it down into something completely different,” Rogers said. “Yeah, I’m an entertainer. I think that’s what makes me different from other folks. I’m not afraid to put on fake boobs and a fake butt and act a little silly. I want to explore my uniqueness as an entertainer and to never compromise my professionalism.
“I don’t fit into anybody’s mold and I will not acquiesce.”
During the kinetic A Happening concert she did at Carver Bank with new age musician Dereck Higgins she adorned herself in head band and glitter to help affect just the right groovy mood for this retro rave.
She feels certain her bohemian spirit is divinely directed, saying. “God was deciding my mind frame to think outside the box.”
The family matriarch who made music a family inheritance for Carol and her brothers is their mother Jeanne Rogers. She was a woman who did her own thing as well. Jeanne sang with area big bands and gigged as a jazz pianist-vocalist. A talent for music didn’t fall far from the tree, as Carol and her brothers have all made a living in music and joined their mother as Omaha Black Music Hall of Fame inductees.
Carol’s four children “all have voices,” too. Bethany, a recording sound engineer by trade, is especially gifted. Mom proudly watched her daughter “tear it up” one Sunday at One Way Ministry Apostles Doctrine Church, where the family worships.
Even when Jeanne became an Omaha Public Schools educator and administrator, she never left music behind. Indeed, she used it as a tool to reach kids. Carol, who as a girl used to accompany her mom to school to help her and other teachers set up their classrooms, followed in her footsteps to become a teacher herself, including running her own “kindergarten school of cool” that all her kids went through.
Carol, 61, also grew up under the influence of her grandmother Lilian Matilda Battle Hutch, She remembers her as an enterprising, tea-totaler who on a domestic worker’s wages managed buying multiple homes, subletting rooms for extra income. She sold Avon on the side.
“She could see opportunity and she was on the grind all the time. They called her ‘The General’ because she’d rifle out her demands – You comn’ in? I need you to go in the backyard and weed some stuff.’”
When Jeanne developed dementia, Carol’s trips back home increased to check on her mother and eventually take charge of her care. When Jeanne could no longer remain in her own home, Carol placed her in nursing facilities. She rests comfortably today at Douglas County Health Center. Carol’s since come back to stay. She and two of her kids reside in her mother’s former northeast Omaha home.
Jeanne Rogers, right, with her daughter Carol Rogers ©photo by RYAN SODERLIN
As a homage to her educator mother, Carol has a kitchen wall double as a chalk board with scribbled reminders and appointments.
“Chalk is how she relayed things,” Carol said of her mom.
Both sides of a living room door are also chalk boards, only Rogers calls them “blessing boards. She has guests leave inscriptions and affirmations on one side and she writes scriptural passages on the other side. She calls it “seasoning” the door.
There in her home, one August morning, Rogers recounted her personal journey as an artist and a woman of faith who’s been born again. She recalled growing up in a bustling household on Bristol Street where she couldn’t help but be immersed in music between her siblings rehearsing and her mother and her musician friends jamming. That 24-7 creative hub imbued her with a love for performing.
“In the summertime it was just crawling with people because my brothers had instruments. In the basement they were always practicing. It got so I couldn’t study without a lot of noise. I still sleep with noise. If you didn’t get home in time and there was food you didn’t eat because the people who were in the house ate. It was first come-first served. That used to make me mad.
“But there was music. Folks would come. A typical weekend, Billy Rogers, not any relation, would come and jam. Everybody who was anybody came in and jammed. I didn’t know who they all were, all I knew there was always noise.”
The Rogers’ home was the place neighborhood kids congregated.
“My mother would boast that kids’ parents would say, ‘Why is my child always at your house?’ Because they’re welcome and there’s music. And so that’s just the way it was. That’s the way I remember the house. I didn’t have to go looking for people or excitement – it came to the house. There was always something going on.”
Her mother grew up near enough the old Dreamland Ballroom to hear the intoxicating rhythms of the black music greats who played there.
“That’s when she got bitten by the jazz bug,” Carol said. “She would go to sleep hearing the music playing at Dreamland.”
Carol enjoyed an even more intimate relationship with music because of the nightclub atmosphere Jeanne orchestrated at home.
“Oh, these jam sessions that mama would have. All I know is we would have to be whisked to bed. Of course, we could hear them at night. They would never go past 10 or so. Occasionally she would let us come down and just watch, which was a privilege. There’d be Basie Givens, who she played with forever, Clean Head Base, Cliff Dudley, the names go on of all the people who would come in. And they’d just jam, and she’d sing and play piano.
“It was a big party and to-do thing at the house. I would go to sleep hearing her and her friends play the jam sessions. Coming downstairs in the morning there was always somebody crashed out on the floor.
As a girl, Rogers was aware of the racism and discrimination that confined African-Americans to Omaha’s Near North Side.
“I didn’t venture past 72nd (Street) much.”
But she also saw how music broke down such barriers.
“Music was colorless and it brought everybody together. White folks would come into the neighborhood to play at my mother’s house. Italians, Jews were coming in. It was like a United Nations. Anybody could play, you came in.”
The diversity she was exposed to at home and at Omaha Central High School helped prepare her for the cultural smorgasbord she found with Mendes on international tours and in cosmopolitan Los Angeles.
It took a lot to finally get this restless singer to come back home to stay. She went through a stage when life was a series of gigs and parties. Then she settled down to raise her four kids as a single mom, eventually making her living as a much-in-demand vocal instructor.
She still works with artists today.
The truth is that even though Rogers is settled here now, there’s still a part of her yearning to go off somewhere. It’s why she’s in Rio de Janeiro this month working with an aspiring performing artist.
Now that she’s back home, she’s gigging at different venues around town. This is where it all started for her. Some of her earliest musical expressions came performing in youth Show Wagon concerts in Omaha city parks and in talent shows at the Omaha Civic Auditorium. She starred in Central High Road Shows. She appeared at Allen’s Showcase in North Omaha. She made her first television appearance on KETV’s Black on Black community affairs program.
The Omaha native first flew the coop as a teen with the Omaha Can Do Ambassadors on a tour to Greenland, Iceland and Canada.
Rogers, whose musical influences never seemed in synch with the times or her culture, as witnessed by her idolizing Judy Garland and Doris Day, eventually fixed on a suitable model.
“I wanted to be Diana Ross,” she said. “I wanted to stand up and sing, ‘Baby, baby…’ Yeah, that was my dream.”
She never found the solo career she craved but she did tour the U.S. with C.W, McCall in the wake of the “Convoy” hit record. Chip Davis later of Mannheim Steamroller fame, was the producer-composer-arranger. Playing red-neck honky-tonks with McCall she couldn’t be out front with her big personality because African-Americans weren’t always welcomed. Receding further into the background and having her spirit dampened was killing her.
She quit C.W. McCall and returned to Omaha, where she was the area’s most requested studio background singer for records and commercials, but she once again found the city too stultifying for her free spirit. This caged bird not only needed to fly but to soar far away.
She went out to Calif. to audition for Stevie Wonder but never really got a fair shake, not even meeting the famed artist. Dejected by that experience, she despaired what to do next.
“I was very depressed here because I knew I had to do something else. I said, I need something more. A true story: I was lying in bed knowing I should go to church – I hadn’t been born again at the time – when God’s voice told me to go back to California. There was no doubt in my mind who had spoken to me. I immediately put everything I wanted in my Volkswagen and left and and I haven’t had to look back. That mission was successful.”
She managed a face to face audition with Sergio Mendes, who needed singers for an upcoming tour. It came down to her and another girl and Carol won the spot. Rogers said it worked to her advantage she didn’t realize just how big a star Mendes was before trying out.
“Naivete was the angel’s wings I floated on with him. I had no idea how huge he was, otherwise I’d have panicked. I auditioned in the latter part of June 1976 and on July 4 he called to say, ‘If you want the job, it’s yours.’ I put the phone down and screamed.”
She said she reminded him that she’d earlier sent in an audio tape of her voice that he never acknowledged, to which he responded, “I never even listened to it and per that tape I would have never hired you.”
As the whirlwind touring commenced, she said she soon discovered like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.’ Whew! But I was ready.” During nearly 25 years working together, she and Mendes became muses to each other.
“We fit because I was ready to totally immerse myself into something. I was fascinated with black people speaking another language. The ability to immerse myself in something and travel the world and get paid for it, well, it was a great education, it was a Ph.D.”
She got the adventure she sought but like many who get what they ask for, she found that career success alone didn’t complete her.
“I went through some things in L.A. Severely depressed for some years. Working top dollar but depressed because something was missing – I was separated from the Lord. I was still traveling with Sergio when I was reborn in 1980 coming off a long tour in Japan.
“I baby sat a friend’s house and I needed something to read, so I went to a bookstore and got Billy Graham’s book, How to be Born Again. I read it and knew that when Jesus went to that cross he died for me, too, It absolutely blew me away. I spontaneously started writing Christian songs.”
The words and music came flowing out of her as if supplied by a higher source.
“You see, when you’re first born again the Lord sojourns with you and he talks to you. Today, my faith is now seasoned with trials and rejoicing in trials.”
She found great satisfaction teaching at a prestigious L.A. performing arts school. At a certain point she developed a sort of alter ego for her teaching role – Mama O.
“Mama O came about when I needed an identity to separate me from the students. Everybody respects mama, so I decided I’m going to be Mama. And Mama what?. So, Mama O, in deference to my time in Brazilian culture.
“That got to my psyche so powerfully that I felt more powerful as a teacher. I’m not just Carol Rogers, no, I’m Mama. When Mama tells you to do something, you better do it. Mama won’t loan you no money, because I’m not that kind of mama. Mama might give you a little lecture because that’s what mamas do. But Mama’s going to show you how it’s done and Mama’s going to ask you to do it exactly.”
She said that bigger-than-life persona is “the rock side of me, the metal side of me.” Since relocating back to Omaha in 2013, Rogers said, “Mama’s a bit quieter here because nobody believes her. After I start teaching again (which she plans to do at the collegiate level) I would like to be called Mama O again.”
Even with work and faith, the L.A. scene became trying.
“California became my Canaan experience. Friendship is hard to find. Backsliding is very easy. But if you’re called and you know you’re born again, nobody can pluck you from God’s hand. Now, the deeper story. Everything closed for me in my life. You know when God closes a door but opens another? That’s exactly what was happening to me.”
She said though she was “a favorite, award-winning” teacher at the school where she taught, she endured a backlash from administrators because her forceful personality made her stand out. Students asked for her specifically.
“Kids would come thousands of miles from Europe, India, Japan and say, ‘We want Mama.’ They called me Mama. They were told, ‘Well, she’s taken, you can’t have her.’ I said, ‘Fix it, give me some more hours.’”
The young singers she worked with on all aspects of performance represented many vocal-music styles and Rogers determined she wouldn’t teach something unless she could do it herself.
“I had to do it all, even heavy metal. How can I tell to do something if I don’t show you I can do it? I was adamant about that and it set me apart from my contemporaries at school and for that reason the director of the school said, ‘You’re an easy target, we want everybody to be alike. But you stand out like a sore thumb.’”
As her situation there became tenuous, she was touched by students siding with her. But each time she spoke out, tensions only increased. She felt like the administration wanted to dampen her originality in order to make her conform.
“When my job began to become corporate, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t exercise my God-given uniqueness.”
So, she left, and in 2013 she finalized her move to Omaha.
“I didn’t want to come back to Omaha but I knew i had to come back for my mom because I became her guardian. I needed to be here in all of the Midwest’s mystery and awe and hummingbird moths and thunderstorms. I was telling my daughter during a beautiful thunderstorm that the lightning was God’s paparazzi.’”
She said she never imagined her two children living with her would ever take to Neb., but they have.
“They both marvel at the thunderstorms and the cicadas in the trees and the squirrels and wild turkeys running around. My oceans are the cicadas at night, the diminuendo and the crescendo.”
It’s not just her family who’s fond of Midwest living.
“If I describe this place to my Calif. friends – ‘Everything I need for a taco is running around free ‘ they think it’s paradise.”
She’s disheartened though Omaha now suffers from inner city woes like persistent gun violence that didn’t really exist back in her day. Like many from her generation, she longs for a return to the It-takes-a-village-to-raise-child culture she grew up in.
With some perspective now, she feels things worked out the way they were supposed to in bringing her back home to be with her mom. She never forgets the inspiration for her life’s journey in music.
“Mom gave us music and she gave us a house full of it all the time.”
Seeing her mom’s mental capacities diminish has been difficult. Seeing her no longer recall the words to songs she sang thousands of times, like “My Funny Valentine,” cuts deeply. No one is prepared for losing a loved one, piece by piece, to the fog of Alzheimer’s. All Rogers or anyone can do is be there for the afflicted.
“I’m glad I’m close by for her sake to remind her she’s loved and hopefully, even though she doesn’t recognize me, give her a familiarity.”
As if dealing with her mother’s odyssey were not enough, Rogers no sooner got situated here than the home she inherited from her suffered a disaster while she was away.
“I came back to find the pipes burst over the winter. The water in the basement was up to my knees. Then the tears began to roll because I’m thinking, You don’t know how much insurance will pay off. That winter was so terrible that they couldn’t get to me for five days. By the time they got to me this place stank of mildew and mold.”
There was insurance but it didn’t come near to covering the damage.
“I didn’t know what i was going to do but I knew God didn’t bring me this far for nothing.”
She attributes providence with bringing the home from disaster to rebirth and the blessings that came with it.
“A Christian couple to whom the Lord has given many gifts love my vocal ministry and they gave me $50,000 to put this house back together. The demolition guys came in like piranhas and took everything down to beams and joists. I could see the attic from downstairs.”
She was put up at a Residence Inn for five months while the heavy work was done. The result is essentially a brand new home.
“Everything is new,” she said. “As the guys were installing the appliances I was crying. Why? Because God has granted me favor beyond favor. The Lord impressed upon my heart the scripture that says, ‘In Christ, all things become new.’ It just doesn’t mean your spirit – you can get some new stuff, too. That’s OK.”
She’s given the home a Biblical name.
“I call my home Lazarus Resurrected because by the time they got to it, it stank, but Jesus resurrected it. My mission statement of this home is to serve. Just like my mother’s house did but with a little bit more decorum. Can’t just anybody get in and out of here.
“And once music begins I’m sure I’ll have more people coming through. Inevitably the basement will become my kick-it space like it was once before. I’ll be able to put instruments down and not fear water finding it’s mark again.”
Playing hostess will be new for her, she said, “because in L.A. I was too busy to have company. I’d come home after driving to and from and would want to collapse. So I’m learning hospitality and welcoming it. I look forward to it because this house is blessed, it’s anointed. It’s blessed me. It was an inherited blessing from my mother, it has to continue and it will. My kids are here.”
She feels blessed, too, whenever she takes the stage.
“In this day in age when you’re inundated with the electronic ability to insulate yourself, I never ever count it anything less than a privilege to be heard by a live audience. That being the case, I have to prepare. I’m not so fast at learning things anymore, so it takes a long time to prepare these days,
“Yeah, it’s a privilege to be able to share my feelings and my life experience through my singing. Sometimes my nerves derail me but usually that means I needed to pay a little bit more attention to details.”
Just as she’s most alive when she freely expresses her uniqueness, she helps voice students find and nurture their own uniqueness.
The student she’s working with in Brazil has all the necessary vocal chops, Rogers said, but needs confidence in herself and in her ability to perform in front of live audiences. Rogers draws her own vast experience to try and get students to look at performing as a collaboration or communion. She likens it to a figure eight.
“The band is behind me and at the apex is me and then the audience is in front of me. Everything they do when I’m on stage comes through me and it’s just a circular exchange of credibility – we believe you, we give you our energy. And the band’s supporting me. What a privilege to have people backing me. They’ve got my back.
“To be in front at that apex, sharing it and feeling it come back to me through them is such a high. That is what I really concentrate on. It’s cathartic, especially as I’ve learned to sing the blues.”
Hanging on a wall of her home is a metal artwork depicting an after the club scene with unmanned band instruments and overturned chairs. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture her at the apex with a hot three-piece band behind her and a live wire crowd in front of her.
Rogers still records from time to time. On a 2011 visit to Omaha she met local jazz pianist, composer, arranger Chuck Marohnic at Countryside Community Church when she insinuated herself into a piece he was playing. He immediately asked her to be one of the singers from around the nation lending their voices to his Jazz Psalms Project that features original music for all 150 psalms in the Bible’s Book of Psalms.
“I’d never been asked to do something like this before,” she said, referring to jazz arrangements of scriptures. Ironically, her mother introduced jazz tinges to traditional hymns at Church of the Resurrection in Omaha when she was music director there.
For the Jazz Psalms Project Rogers said, “We did everything live. Oh, what a high. And the guys were great, including Chuck at the piano. It was absolutely amazing all of us playing together.”
Upon return from her coaching stint in Brazil she’ll no doubt grace various nightspots with her unique talents starting in the fall.
It’s a good time for Carol Rogers. She’s more comfortable in her own skin than she has been in a long while.
“Being home has helped. Having two of my kids here has helped. Also seeing God work miracles, ah, that’ll make you get your head right.”
This ever curious searcher just wants to keep creating and stretching herself. Her exploration, she said, “never done.”
Just don’t ask her to stay in the shadows.
“I want my light to shine.”
Follow the artist at http://www.carolrogersmusic.com.
Jeanne Rogers
“Music is my life. I can’t live without music.” Omaha jazz singer/pianist Jeanne Rogers recites the words as a solemn oath. As early as age 4, she said, her fascination with music began. This only child lived in her birthplace of Houston, Texas then. She’d go with her mother Matilda to Baptist church services, where young Jean was enthralled by the organist working the pedals and stops. Once, after a service, Jean recalls “noodling around” on the church piano when her mom asked, “‘What are you doing, baby?’ ‘I’m playing what the choir was singing.’ So, she tells my daddy, ‘Robert, the baby needs a piano.’ They let me pick out my piano. I still have it. All my kids learned to play on it. I just can’t get rid of it,” said Rogers, who proudly proclaims “four of my five kids are in music.”
Blessed with the ability to play by ear, she took to music easily. “I’d hear things and I’d want to play ‘em and I’d play ‘em,” she said. She took to singing too, as her alto voice “matured itself.” After moving with her family to Omaha during World War II, she indulged her passion at school (Lake Elementary) and church (Zion Baptist) and via lessons from Florentine Pinkston and Cecil Berryman. At Central High she found an ally in music teacher Elsie Howe Swanson, who “validated that talent I had. Mrs Swanson let me do my thing and I was like on Cloud Nine,” she said. Growing up, Rogers was expected by the family matriarchs to devote herself to sacred or classical music, but she far preferred the forbidden sounds of jazz or blues wafting through the neighborhood on summer nights. “Secular was my thing,” she said. When her mother or aunt weren’t around, she’d secretly jam.
The family lived near the Dreamland Ballroom, a North 24th Street landmark whose doors and windows were opened on hot nights to cool off the joint in an era before AC. She said the music from inside “permeated the whole area. I would listen to the music coming out and, oh, I thought that was the nicest music. Mama couldn’t stop me from listening to what the bands were playing. That’s the kind of music I wanted to play. I wanted to play with a band. I was told, ‘Oh, no, you can’t do that. Nothing but trash is up in that ballroom. There’s no need your going to college if that’s all you want to play.’ But, hey, I finally ended up doing what I wanted to do. And playing music in the nightclubs paid my way through college.”
Do-gooders’ “hoity-toity,” attitude rubbed her the wrong way, especially when she “found out folks in church were doing the same thing folks in the street were.”
Rogers, who became a mother quite young, bit at the first chance to live out her music dream. When someone told her local bandleader Cliff Dudley was looking for a singer she auditioned and won the job. “That’s how I got into the singing,” she said. “I was scared to death.” She sang standard ballads of the day and would “do a little blues.” Later, when the band’s pianist dropped out, she took over for him. “And that’s how I got started playing with the band.” Her fellow musicians included a young Luigi Waites on drums. The group played all over town. She later formed her own jazz trio. She’d started college at then-Omaha University, but when the chance to tour came up, she left school and put her kids in her mother’s care.
The reality of life on the road didn’t live up to the glamour she’d imagined. “That’s a drag,” she said of living out of suitcases. Besides, she added, “I missed my kids.” Letters from home let her know how much she was missed and that her mother couldn’t handle the kids anymore. “She needed me,” Rogers said. “I mean, there were five kids, three of them hard-headed boys. So I came back home.”
The Jewell Building once housed the Dreamland Ballroom
She resumed college, resigned to getting an education degree. “All I wanted to do was play the piano in the band. But I ended up doing what I had to do,” she said.
To support her studies she still played gigs at local clubs. And she nurtured her kids’ and their friends’ love of music by opening up the family home to anyone who wanted to play, turning it into a kind of informal music studio/academy.
“My house on Bristol Street was the house where everybody’s kids came to play music,” she said. Her twin boys Ronnie and Donnie Beck practiced with their bands upstairs while younger brotherKeith Rogers’ band jammed downstairs. Their sister, singer Carol Rogers, imitated soul songstresses. Some youths who made music there went on to fine careers, including the late guitarist Billy Rogers (no relation). Ronnie played with Tower of Power and still works as a drummer-singer with top artists. Donnie left Omaha with drummer Buddy Miles and now works as a studio musician and sideman. Keith is a veteran music producer. His twin sister Carol performed with Preston Love and Sergio Mendes, among other greats.
Jeanne plays with her children when they come to town. In 2000 she went to Calif. to cut her one and only CD, “The Late Show,” which her son Ronnie produced. He pushed her hard on the project, but she likes the results. “My son’s a nitpicker and a stickler, but that’s what gets the job done.” One of the kids who was always at her place, Vaughn Chatman, is an attorney and the founder of the Omaha Black Music Hall of Fame, which Rogers and her three sons are inductees in.
She still plays a concert now and then but mostly for Sunday services at Church of the Resurrection, adding a piano jazz beat to traditional hymns. “I like it because it’s a come-as-you-are church. It’s a nice place to be.” She also volunteers at Solomon Girls Center and sometimes gives piano lessons.
She may not have wanted it, but she ended up a teacher and principal (Druid Hill) in the Omaha Public Schools. “It turned out to be one of the most rewarding things I’ve done,” she said. She used music to reach students. “The kids loved it because I would play the blues for them when they were doing their math lessons and stuff. Other kids would come by the door and my kids would say, ‘Bet you wish you were in here.’” Whether at home, in the classroom, at the altar or on a nightclub bandstand, she makes music part of her life.
Tiffany White-Welchen delivers memorable performance in “Lady Day”
Tiffany White Welchen as Lady Day
“WHITE-WELCHEN PERFORMANCE MAKES THIS A MUST SEE.” Betsie Freeman, Omaha World Herald.
“TIFFANY’S PERFORMANCE IS TRULY REMARKABLE.” Loyal Fairman, The Nonpareil
“LADY DAY DELIVERS RAW EMOTION…INCREDIBLE PERFORMANCE” Betsie Freeman, Omaha World Herald.
“A HEART-WRENCHING PLAY WITH INCREDIBLE MUSIC…” Loyal Fairman, The Nonpareil
Let me add to the rave reviews Tiffany White Welchen has received for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in the Performing Artists Repertory Theatre production of “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.” Choose whatever words of praise you wish to describe her performance – bravura, tour de force, scintillating, lights out, brilliant, mesmerizing, moving, multi-layered, multi-textured – and they all apply to what she does in this show. While the play is an often dark, despairing look at the low down ebb of Holiday’s final days, it is also funny, profane, provocative and ironic, just like the great jazz singer herself. Holiday went through some hard, harsh things but she probably didn’t think of her own life as tragic the way we do from the outside looking in. White-Welchen intimated as much in an interview she gave me. Holiday lived a raucous life and she did it on her own terms. While she made some bad choices and had some real dirt done to her, she wasn’t about regret.
White-Welchen sees similarities between her life and Holiday’s – from their shared experience growing up around lots of men to navigating life as an African-American woman to encountering discrimination.
“Most people see this beautiful, elegant woman on stage with a sleek ponytail and gardenias in her hair when actually she could curse like a sailor and hang with the guys like nobody’s business. That’s a parallel with my own life. I have three brothers and I’m very much a Tom boy. However, I’m pretty girly at the same time. It’s pretty awesome to be able to take those sides of me and kind of magnify them with a Billie Holiday twist, of course.
“I appreciate how she had to overcome so many difficult things that were happening to African-Americans at that time. There were times she couldn’t appear on-stage with Artie Shaw’s band until it was time for her to do her numbers. She’d get off the bus, perform, and then go right back on the bus when everybody else got to stay on the bandstand. And there were times she was supposed to sing with the band and venues said, ‘No, we’re not going to allow an African-American in our establishment,’ and the band would have another singer fill in for her.
“I really admire the fact she was able to get over such adversity.”
In the play White-Welchen courageously goes to some raw, naked places emotionally. She deserves credit for being willing to expose herself that way.
Performing the song “Strange Fruit” that deals directly with the lynching horrors blacks faced in the South is a harrowing thing for White-Welchen.
“I was really surprised one night when I started crying really hard during that particular song. Singing it gave me a chance to relate to what my grandmother and my great great granmother must have gone through and it makes me think about some deep-seated issues that have happened to me as African-American woman and about the lessons my mother taught me and about some of ugly parts of life I have to accept. I try to capture all that in that one song.
“I asked Mr. C (director Gordon Cantiello) to allow me to sing the very beginning of it acapella because I wanted people to get a sense of what was really going on at the time, to feel what it was like to go through those times, and to feel my pain as Billie Holiday.”
White-Welchen said she has come to realize that the deep cross-currents of Holiday’s life with social events of that time make the play a valuable and moving instructional tool.
“I didn’t realize I was teaching a history lesson on stage until I saw and felt the interaction from the audience.”
Having the responsibility to express all the potent themes and colors of the play while remaining true to Holiday and all her brilliance and dysfunction is a tall task for a performer who never leaves the stage except for intermission.
“I had never done a one-woman show before. It is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. The greatest challenge for me is to clear my mind of any issue or anything going on in my life and to forget all the hats I wear and to get up on stage and just perform. So I have to forget that I’m a mom, that I’m the director of a department. I have to forget about my mother in the audience, I have to forget about anything that bothered me during the day, because if I take that on stage with me it will distract me.
“I’m able to bring all those things with me on stage in other shows where I’m not on all the time, but not with this one because I’m up there by myself the whole time. I have to concentrate my energy so that I hold the character and the audience and never release them.”
Credit also goes to director Gordon Cantiello for pulling those depths out of her. These two artists have a long working history and the trust they’ve built allows White-Welchen to invest all of herself in this demanding role. She knows Cantiello will support her when she goes out on a limb. White-Welchen told me there are moments, lines and lyrics that are particularly difficult for her to deliver because they trigger her own personal losses and heartaches but she muddles through anyway to serve the play.
“There is a moment in the show where Billie talks about losing her father and I’m very much a daddy’s girl, so when I get to that part of the show there’s times I can emotionally go there and other times that I can’t. I think it’s because I don’t want to think about that my own father isn’t here anymore. He was my greatest fan, he came to every show. My mom is at every show and I know how much she misses him.
“In that scene Billie talks about singing at a bar in Harlem and getting a call telling her her father’s dead and she went back on stage and sang. When she tells that part it’s very emotional for me.”
Informing her portrayal of the troubled Holiday is White-Welchen’s expertise and experience as a mental health therapist.
“When people talk to me about their issues you can barely hear them, their voice changes, the pain is so hard it’s hard to come up with the words as they tell me their most horrifying stories.
What I try to do in the show is to express how much my pain is, not by crying or shouting but by being silent or speaking in a faint voice.”
She said the experience of portraying such pain has affected the way she deals with clients.
“I guess it’s given me a level of sensitivity that I may not have had before. When you are in this field for so long you kind of become callous to it and I think by playing her I’m a lot more sensitive now and I’ve talked to staff about making sure that when people tell their story we’re not re-traumatizing them. So my level of sensitivity and empathy have definitely been enhanced by playing Billie Holiday.”
Cantiello is glad to have someone as perceptive and seasoned as White-Welchen in the role.
“I couldn’t ask for a better performer, actress, singer than Tiffany,” Cantiello said. “As a behavioral therapist, she brings a lot of understanding and compassion to the role. For me, understanding the amount of suffering Billie Holiday had to endure in her lifetime brought me to tears. I just knew Tiffany would be perfect for the part and she’s certainlly proved to be.”
Omaha has many outstanding vocal and theatrical talents and White-Welchen is among the very best because she’s the total package. This is a showcase part and she’s completely up to its challenges and opportunities. She does justice to all the Holiday signature tunes but her renditions of “God Bless the Child” and “Strange Fruit” are worth the price of admission alone.
Kudos as well to music director Ric Swanson for the tight numbers and his piano accompaniment.
Helping draw us in is the intimate, immersive performing space that’s just right for the one set production.
“The venue is perfect for immersive cabaret style theatre,” Cantiello said. “It gives the audience a chance to be a part of the story. Our new theater at the Crossroads is that type of space. A perfect space for ‘Lady Day.'”
The limited run of “Lady Day” is soon coming to an end and so act now and reserve your seats for one or more of these remaining performances:
Friday, October 23 at 7pm
Saturday, October 24 at 7pm
Tickets can be purchased by calling 402-706-0778. All tickets are $35 for all shows.
The theater is located in the Target wing at Crossroads Mall. Park in the Northeast parking garage on the lower level and enter the Northeast entrance. Enter the lobby and make a right. Look for the PART signs.
Robinlyn Sayers transforms herself into Hattie McDaniel in “Hi Hat Hattie”
Vivacious Robinlyn Sayers seemingly came out of nowhere to mesmerize Omaha theatergoers with her captivating portray of Hattie McDaniel in a one-woman show at the Blue Barn Theatre. The niece of football legend Gale Sayers and the daughter of the less well known but equally gifted Roger Sayers, Robinlyn was in the process of trying to reinvent herself when I met her. She was already a distinguished medical professional but she also possessed serious chops as a singer and actress and was intrigued with the idea of doing something professionally with those skills, too, perhaps even transforming herself into a full-time performer. The show at the Blue Barn was her Omaha stage debut and after its success she moved to Texas for another medical position. I lost contact with her along the way and now I see she’s working as the chief financial officer for Family Service Center of Galveston County. I trust she still performs now and then, because she’s been blessed with a great gift and it was her desire to heal people not just through health and medical services but through song and theater. My story about her originally appeared in the Omaha City Weekly.
A woman under the influence
Originally published by the Omaha City Weekly
After a diverse medical career that ranged from molecular research to community health, Omahan Robinlyn Sayers, M.D., now applies a form of healing arts, with a capital A, in service of the theater, where she’s found a home for her many dreams and talents. Fresh off a one-woman tour de force portraying the late Academy Award-winning actress Hattie McDaniel in the Blue Barn Theater production of Larry Parr‘s Hi Hat Hattie, for which her singing and acting drew raves, Sayers sees a parallel between what she did in medicine and what she does in drama. That congruence is like the kinship she feels with McDaniel, a kind of alter ego for her.
“I feel like I’m still healing on the stage,” said Sayers, a living-out-loud figure whose juke joint voice drips with honey, gin, sex and smoke and whose round, expressive eyes fill easily with tears. “I always wanted to cure. I never wanted to be somebody to just push a thermometer or check a yeast infection. I never wanted to be that simplistic. Now, it’s so gratifying to go up there for two hours on the stage and make people cry or smile or forget what happened at home. I just want to make people feel inspired, motivated, hopeful. Afterwards, they come to you and they’re so fulfilled. Like this is the best thing in their life. It’s like I’m their wonder drug.”
Sayers herself finds acting such an elixir that she’s put her work in medicine on hiatus to forge a new life in the theater, an arena she plans using to reach people. “I’m going to be very selective in the types of pieces I become involved in,” she said. “I really want to only be involved in things that are both educational and entertaining. They need to have some element of truth to them. They need to convey some sort of a message or theme or issue or be somewhat political.”
That she made her Omaha dramatic debut as Hattie McDaniel, a woman whose story intersects with her own, makes it all seem fated. “It was just God for me to be able to do this show,” Sayers said. “My goodness…there’s so many things that are similar in our lives.” Both are the youngest of Midwest families. Each dreamed of going on stage from an early age. Each married more than once without bearing a child. Like Hattie, Sayers possesses what Blue Barn artistic director Susan Clement-Toberer, who directed her in the play, called “a zest for life and a passion for the work. She’s so intelligent and she has such a desire to tell the story.”
Like Hattie, she’s soldiered on. “I like the struggles and challenges of life,” said Sayers, whose Birth of the Blues rendition is a soul-stirring summation of the black experience. And, like high-living Hattie, she said, “I give the best parties in town.”
Throwing herself into the demanding one-woman show that encompasses 80 pages of dialog and song, Sayers did extensive research on McDaniel and the Jazz Era and spent extra hours working with Toberer on character nuances. “I had to be so focused for that show,” Sayers said. “I had to isolate everybody from my life. I put in six hours a day with Susan (Toberer), not to mention what I did at home. I put a lot into it.” During the February 6 through 29 run Sayers also cultivated some rituals to help her get in character and commune with Hattie’s spirit. For example, before the curtain went up she got in the habit of quickly running through the show backstage and she enlisted the crew, including Toberer and the play’s musical director, Keith Hart, who also played the mute pianist on stage, to pray with her.
“It was all about ushering in Hattie,” Sayers explained. “There were times when we had ushered in so many feelings, it would be scary. I wouldn’t even feel like me. I mean, there were times I felt like I was Hattie McDaniel. There was one night, and it was the last night, when I really, truly felt it. She’d won her Oscar 65 years ago that same day (as brassy Mammy in Gone with the Wind).”
“Even now,” months removed from the show, “I’m not quite separated from her,” said Sayers, adding the experience of getting so close to a figure she admires “was magical for me.” The connection she feels is so acute, she said she likes to think that “if Hattie could have chosen someone to do this role — someone with balls enough to really get her record straight for the fabulous actress and entertainer she was — that I would be the one to do it.”
She’s likely to get a chance at playing Hattie again if the Blue Barn can secure the rights to the show for an as yet undetermined revival that may go on tour.
Performing has been a dream of Sayers, a native of north Omaha’s Florence area, forever. But until a couple years ago, she’d done little to heed her hunger aside from playing the lead in two Little Theater dramas at Tuskegee University, where she earned a biology degree. Despite scoring successes on stage in college, her drama aspirations were deferred in favor of her burgeoning genetic research career.
She first made a splash in academia when her research won her awards and opportunities to present papers at national conferences. Then, using her bravura persona to get noticed, she landed a job, at age 24, with the National Cancer Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. Her NIH stint found her working in the lab of Robert Gallo, the renowned medical scientist who first isolated the AIDS virus. It was the late 1980s, a momentous period in the scientific-medical community’s investigation of AIDS and a heady time for Sayers.
“I was able to get into it (AIDS research) when it was just blowing up,” she said. “All the talents I have and all the things I learned over the years — to be able to isolate and sequence and clone — I got from working with the AIDS virus. I was blessed to be right there when they were just starting to do some really fundamental things in molecular biology. It just opened up a whole bunch of other things for me.”
Sayers has been something of a curiosity in the various labs she’s worked in over the years because she’s an M.D. without a Ph.D. “My expertise as a molecular biologist is just from OST — On the Job Training,” she said, adding there’s a weird gulf between holders of the alphabet soup titles, so much so that Ph.Ds responded to her with incredulity. “They were like, ‘Who do you think you are? We’ve gone to graduate school and defended our dissertations. Why didn’t you go to graduate school?’ And I’d tell ’em, ‘Because I have a million other things I want to do.’ And I didn’t ever want to be just clinical. Never did.”
Doing cutting edge research appealed to Sayers’ sense of discovery, but since she didn’t want always to be confined to a lab, she went after and got her M.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Any acting thoughts were put on hold during medical school, especially when she got married. The marriage didn’t last.
After college, she worked with Boys Town National Research Hospital’s renowned Dominic Cosgrove in exploring Alports Syndrome, an inherited kidney disease that can result in deafness. Then, she and her second husband moved to Texas, where she was a microbiology and immunology research associate at the Baylor College of Medicine. Her days revolved around research, leaving little time for anything else.
“It’s a very consuming life. You’re talking 80 hours a week, seven days a week,” she said. “There’s a tremendous amount of pressure I had to put on my technicians and on myself to pay very close attention to details. In science, you can’t have flaws. Your data has to be statistically significant and reproducible. You spend many hours not sleeping because you’re worried whether your incubation period is going to work out and if the temperature is going to be all right.”
Deferring one dream to pursue another has been the pattern of her life. Acting just had to wait until her passion for research ran its course. “I’m a dreamer. And the thing with me is…I have all these dreams and I know it’s just a matter of time before I knock them all out. I just go for one, and go for the other, and go for the other…and just live.” For a long time, she kept her performing ambition to herself. “A lot of times I’m afraid to share my dreams because people, you know, poison them and get you distracted and make you doubt yourself,” she said.
The youngest child of straight-laced parents, Roger Sayers and Madeline Adams Sayers, she never acted before college, but instead threw herself into her passion for animals — she was forever bringing home stray dogs — and science — she and her brother dissected salamanders and frogs. She worked for local veterinarian Bill Lofton. Her love for animals was so great, she began her Tuskegee studies in animal science, but she changed her mind after a mentor convinced her that as a bright, bold African-American female she could go far in human medicine.
As a kid, she did sing briefly with the Salem Baptist Church youth choir. Otherwise, the Northwest High grad strutted her stuff in cheerleading, gymnastics, swimming and track activities. The fact she found an outlet for self-expression in sports is no accident, as she hails from one of Nebraska’s most prominent athletic families. Her father Roger was a top American sprinter and NAIA football player at then-Omaha University in the early 1960s. Her legendary uncle, Gale, is a member of both the college and pro football halls of fame following All-America and All-Pro careers with Kansas University and the Chicago Bears, respectively.
All her other performing was done privately, before friends and family, or secretly, as when she learned all the lines of a play her siblings appeared in at north Omaha’s old Afro-Academy. She was, she said, “a closet performer.” As she got older, she rarely performed publicly. There were the two plays she starred in in college. Then, while an NU Medical School student, she let her hair down singing a cover of Roberta Flack’s The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face at an on-campus multicultural affairs concert. When an unexpectedly large crowd showed up, she got stage fright. As if the packed house wasn’t bad enough, she was unfamiliar with the lyrics. Then, the canned music went out mid-song, forcing her to finish acapella.
“I went all the way back in the closet,” she said of that performance nightmare.
It wasn’t until moving to Texas she ventured on stage again when, at the prodding of her second husband, who “loved to hear me sing,” she sang at a string of honky tonk karaoke bars. With a penchant for singing country music and overturning people’s stereotypes, she’d go into a black bar and defiantly belt out a Shania Twain hit. “When the twang would start up,” she said, “people would be like,’Wrong song, wrong song,’ and by the end they would be like, ‘Yee-haw.’ We’d have ’em going, and it’d be so great that I’d think, Hey, I might be kinda good.”
Still, she didn’t try out for her first play in Omaha for two years after moving back here in 2001. Her second marriage had ended. She wasn’t ready. “I was down that I couldn’t stick it out like other women and stay married,” she said. As usual, she immersed herself in work, this time at the Charles Drew Health Center, advocating for the homeless and running the center’s chronic disease management program.
Finally, in 2003, she reached a now-or-never point in her drama dreams. “I was like, ‘I have left both of my husbands. I have no children. I’m about to turn 39, so go for it, girl, go for it.'” Without telling a soul, she auditioned for a staging of the Fats Waller revue Ain’t Misbehavin’ at the John Beasley Theater and won a part. Theater founder and guru, John Beasley, the film and TV actor, took her under his wing, telling her, “You∂ve got it” — meaning the acting gift. “She’s definitely got it,” he said. “She has the talent, the presence and the personality.”
She followed up Ain’t Misbehavin‘ with a part in Little Shop of Horrors at the Millenium. It was there she met Keith Hart, who told her she’d be perfect for Hi Hat Hattie, a production of which he’d worked in in Kansas City. He sold the Blue Barn on the play and about “how completely” Sayers “threw herself into a character and a song” and how “tough and gutsy” she was. “I knew Hattie needed to be kind of a tough broad,” Hart said. One thing led to another and the Blue Barn added the play to its season and Sayers won the part in an open audition.
As much as her talent impressed Toberer and Hart, her work ethic may have won them over even more. For the audition and rehearsal process, Sayers steeped herself in all things Hattie. Untrained as an actress, she gave herself over to Toberer’s direction, learning to “link” and “pull” emotions from her own life to serve her character; for certain scenes, she drew on troubled relationsips and disturbing memories of racism. “There was unlimited discovery for me,” she said.
Among the discoveries was a tolerance for things not going according to plan, something “the control freak” struggled with in the tyranny of the lab. “It’s made me, at 39, give myself a break in life,” she said. “The last week of the show, I felt like I was running track again. When you start rockin’ and you own the show, you feel like you’re in the starting blocks again. It’s fun…crazy…exciting. I love it.”
She hopes to “ride” the momentum from Hi Hat as long as it lasts. On John Beasley’s advice, she’s taken the plunge and is seeking regional theater and film gigs in larger markets, the very path he took in launching his career. Now residing in Galveston, Texas, she recently turned heads at a Houston audition where 25 theater directors saw her. “I’m auditioning like crazy. I get great comments every time. I have been using a monologue from Hi Hat Hattie. So Hattie is still helping me.” She’s intent on going after any role that interests her and on avoiding being typecast. If acting doesn’t work out, well, she’s already been back to school preparing for a health administration career and is in the running for a research associate spot. Either way, she said, “This is what I’m supposed to do…inspire people to dream.”
Felicia Webster and Michelle Troxclair
Spoken word. The word-based performance art ranges the gamut in terms of style and form. But it’s best practitioners usually deliver emotive, intelligent work touching on personal, social, cultural, political themes and featuring a lyrical rhythm and rhyme cadence not unlike that of song. Spoken word events can highlight a range of approaches and subjects that stretch your mind. My soon to appear story for The Reader (www.thereader.com) profiles one of the Omaha metro area’s most diverse spoken word events, Verbal Gumbo, and the two women who stir its pot, Felicia Webster and Michelle Troxclair.
Images of WithLove Felicia
Spoken word soul sisters stir the verbal gumbo pot to keep it real and flavorful
Appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Soul sister poetesses Michelle Troxclair and Felicia “WithLove” Webster stir the pot to make the spicy mix of Verbal Gumbo, the spoken word series throwing down the third Thursday of every month at House of Loom.
The artists launched the series last fall at the invitation of Loom’s Brent Crampton.
“Felicia and Michelle have brought a consistently diverse, experimental and truthfully honest night of poetry and performance. They’re two very strong women in our community that have been really active in the social progressive and arts scene here,” says Crampton. “They help us to live out our mission here with social issues and culture and bringing people together.”
Gumbo’s beats and hipsters fit right in at Loom, 1012 South 10th Street, with its music-dance cultural blends and crafted cocktails.
The spoken word sets are as diverse as the poets themselves. Some pieces are intensely personal. Others, political. Some call for action, others ask you to think.
The mic’s evenly shared across genders and races, with people standing to deliver everything from private testimonies to slam spits to hip hop rhymes to indignant rants to preacher-like sermons to social justice screeds to inspired songs.
“This is a very open, diverse atmosphere and we’re not in judgment of how people choose to be in the world,” says Webster, an arts educator. “Diversity is how we present ourselves here. We’re ‘edutainers.’ If somebody comes up and shares a poem about abuse, well that gives us an opportunity to have a conversation about it.”
“Disseminating information that is going to charge people to heal, to change, to move, to educate, to motivate is also a part of what we do at Verbal Gumbo,” says Webster. “The issues in the community we come from are very deep. There are a lot of wounds, some of them still open. Having a platform where you are not being judged for what you do or what you say or how you say it allows people to get up there.”
“It’s a healing. Like I have anger management issues and I have to write it and say it, it has to come out. It’s a cleansing experience. And that’s what a lot of people are using this for. People share things on this microphone they wouldn’t share anywhere else. We’re here to provide the platform for people to share and to be transparent and vulnerable,” says Troxclair, a former arts and social services administrator.
Michelle Troxclair
Poet Ruth Marimo’s raw story of surviving an abusive relationship, being arrested as an illegal alien and coming out as a lesbian has been embraced there. The Zimbabwe native and mother of two reels about the seemingly contradictory facets of her life in her intense yet whimsical piece, “Who Am I?”
I’m a stranger to my own mother,
A child with no parent,
A sister with no siblings,
An immigrant to this land,
An alien to my own nation.
I’m everything I’m not supposed to be,
A Lesbian who owns no cats,
A literate African,
An educated fool,
A voice that can’t be silenced,
A turbulence that can’t be calmed,
An answer that can’t be found…
Marimo describes how for her Gumbo debut “both Michelle and Felicia really took me in with open arms and under their wing,” adding, “Everyone has just been very supportive.”
Ruth Marimo
Troxclair says Marimo’s “very tragic story that’s had this phenomenal outcome” is among many stories of personal transformation told there.
“Sometimes someone will say something that someone needed to hear. That’s how it works here. We’re all about that,” says Webster.
Judging, formally or informally, has no place at Verbal Gumbo.
Troxclair says, “Part of my housecleaning when I get up there is to say, ‘It’s difficult to come up here and put your soul and your life experience up on this microphone and so if you don’t like what you’re hearing be quiet.’ We do not allow anybody to be criticized belittled or demeaned in any way. That’s not what we’re here for.”
“When somebody’s on the mic, we respect the mic,” Webster likes to say.
“People are comfortable here,” says Troxclair. “They feel loved, respected and honored and part of something bigger than just themselves. People who wouldn’t set foot in a regular church, mosque, temple, whatever, say it’s almost like church because it’s an uplifting and spiritual experience.”
“Verbal Gumbo is my nondenominational church,” says Webster. “We’re speaking life into words, we’re breathing life into the experience. And we make everybody feel like family when they come in. There have been plenty of nights when I have needed to be lifted up. This is like my poetic-spiritual reciprocity. It feeds my soul, it mixes that gumbo pot up, adding spices when I’m needing a little cayenne pepper to get through.”
Cultivating new artists like Marimo is part of the deal.
“We adopt people on a regular basis,” says Troxclair. “I’m very much a mama and so I take in all strays. When people come in here and they share their stories we’re like, ‘You’re family.’ We embrace everybody we come into contact with and we want to make sure everybody feels like this is a home.”
Before her Jan. 17 Gumbo set Marimo said it herself. The author of the self-published memoir Freedom of an Illegal Immigrant says, “It’s something I look forward to every month because it’s such a welcoming space and it’s diverse.”
“The people who come through those doors come from such different backgrounds and are able to share their experiences and it feeds us for a number of reasons,” says Troxclair, “The level of talent is one. It’s always good to see talented people come and do what they do. Some of the things they talk about is another reason. They talk about everything from relationship stuff to political stuff to tragic life experiences. It’s just edifying.”
The styles and themes range from Marimo’s lyrical reflections to Webster’s old-school beatboxing to Developing Crisp’s rap-style hooks to Nathan Scott’s political history lesson to Paula Bell’s black woman identity manifesto that ends with, “So you can take it or you can leave it, I really don’t give a damn.”
The audience of creatives sits at cocktail tables and cabanas or stands at the bar. Onlookers really feeling it lean into a performance. It’s the epitome of Omaha Cool, complete with snapping fingers, knowing, nodding heads, raised drinks and adult conversation .
The women behind Gumbo have a long history celebrating The Word. Webster lays claim to organizing the metro’s first spoken word series at the defunct Dazy Maze in the late 1990s. She then left for Philadelphia, where she and Davina Natanya Stewart formed the spoken word duo Daughters of the Diaspora. Troxclair hails from a family of storytellers and has written and orated since youth. When Webster returned to Omaha a few years ago Troxclair recruited her for the Poetry in Motion series she hosted at Loves Jazz & Arts Center.
The diversity and the vibe of Loom, the pair say, help set Gumbo apart from other spoken word venues and events here.
“It brings people from all walks of life and every community in one spot and everybody enjoys each other and respects each other’s culture,” says Troxclair. “We’re open to all different kinds of audiences and artists.”
Gumbo’s wide-open aesthetic complements Loom’s ultra laid-back scene.
“It’s very chilled, very relaxed,” says Webster. “The antique furniture, the vintage feel, the exposed brick, the music, the artwork, it’s very eclectic. All of that creates the ambience that is totally different from any other place in Omaha. You feel like you’re not in Omaha for one night. It’s a whole other vibration. It’s for grown-ups. There’s this opportunity to be a part of a rich culture of artistic expression.”
That expression may include music, dance, body painting and moving to whatever groove grabs you. Small community vendors are invited to promote their side hustle goods and services. Webster and Troxclair say Gumbo’s also a networking-information forum, ala the black barbershop-salon, where community issues and events get discussed and personal problems get aired and vetted.
“It’s a lifeline,” says Webster.
The next Verbal Gumbo is Feb. 21. The event starts at 7 p.m. Admission is $5.
For series updates visit http://www.facebook.com/verbalgumbo.
Zedeka Poindexter
This is a breakout season in the life and career of Omaha slam poetry champion Zedeka Poindexter. Her work is getting in front of more and more people thanks to her live and YouTube performances, her readings, and her published pieces. My Reader (www.thereader.com) story about her and her passion for all things poetry related, including the Nebraska Writers Collective and its Louder Than a Bomb Omaha festival, reveals a woman extremely passionate about what she does and supremely confident in her own skin. Zedeka’s coached several teams in Louder Than a Bomb Omaha, which runs March 17 through most of April, but work commitments are preventing her from coaching this year. Her heart though will be with the youth competing in the event.
Zedeka Poindexter, ©Photo by Justin Limoges
Bomb girl Zedeka Poindexter draws on family, food and angst for her poetry
For The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Three-time Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards poet nominee Zedeka Poindexter envies the performing outlets high school-age poets have today. The March 17-April 20 Louder Than a Bomb is a case in point. There wasn’t anything like it when she was in school.
“I was working in a notebook, I always did, but there was no place to go with these things,” says Poindexter, 39, who’s blowing up with her personal anthems about race, family, relationships, loss and blessings.
But as a teen her thoughts didn’t find a voice outside her private journals. That’s a far cry from today’s young poets, who have platforms galore for their innermost musings. Poindexter should know since she’s coached LTAB teams from Blackburn, Westside, Millard West and her alma mater, Omaha North.
“These kids are doing things that blow my mind and all I have to do is facilitate a space for them to do what they were already going to do anyway and help them figure out the best way to present it, These kids are fearless, they will tell you any personal story they have, They are incredibly courageous and just all by themselves so cool. It kind of fuels you as an artist, You’re like, If you’re doing this and you’re 16, what the hell’s my excuse.”
Just as LTAB gives youth an expressive arena, Poindexter uses slam and other opportunities to evolve her own work. For example, her Union for Contemporary Art fellowship will culminate in a new collection of poems that revolve around family recipes and food as focal point and bridge for familial divisions. She plans a May 2 reading and tasting.
“It’s a very different thing trying to write a series of poems that interconnect and relate to one another,” says Poindexter, who’s used to crafting slam’s more instinctive, one-off performance pieces.
In 2012 she became Omaha’s only female city slam champion.
“It has almost always been a white man. I might also be the only person of color who’s won, but I know I’m the only woman, so that’s a huge honor for me. I was a cranky woman that year because there was only one other woman and there wasn’t anybody else brown. I was like, ‘C’mon, y’all, can do better than this.’ I was pissed.”
She represented Omaha at the 2013 Women of the World Poetry Slam in Minneapolis, where she was voted an audience favorite.
“It’s all women, it’s all storytelling, it’s very affirming.”
Her work appears in the WOWPS anthology, Alight.
She’s not inclined to leave her slam roots. She has a long history with the Nebraska Writers Collective, whose head, Matt Mason, is the godfather of Omaha slam. He considers her “a cultural treasure for our community.”
“Zedeka is a nationally-known performance poet. You wouldn’t know by meeting her as she doesn’t name-drop or talk about all she’s accomplished, but her work is among the best in the country,” he says. “It’s been great to see her expand her role by publishing more lately as well as taking on the role of running Omaha’s poetry slam. She really does it all. She’s also a great presence in classrooms.”
In turn, Poindexter’s proud of her Collective family. “We’ve been a force for a good long time. We really had a pretty good run as far as accolades in the slam community. A lot of writers have grown beyond that and published work I really love.”
Beyond her Collective circle she’s studied with former Kennedy Center Imagination Celebration poet laureate Stacy Dyson and with storyteller A-Nanci Larenia Stallworth.
Recently, she joined novelist Joy Castro and poet Roger Gerberling for a Backwaters Press reading and paired with Nebraska state poet Twyla Hansen at the Kaneko Feedback Reading Series. Being matched with Hansen gave her pause.
“Being a slam artist is very different than being somebody who’s devoted their life basically to craft and teaching, which I have not done,” says Poindexter, who’s a thesis away from completing her master’s in communication at UNO. “But it turned out to be amazing. I think there are some people who exist strictly in the performative world and some who exist strictly in academia, but there is a lot of crossover.
“I think the bigger separation or chasm I noticed for awhile was a white scene and a black scene. Myself, i just went wherever the baddest ass readings were. They were different things but vitally important to how I grew as a writer and performer. The perception that anybody is not welcome at either place worries me.”
©photo by Eric David Herrera
She appreciates the diversity of the OEAAs and enjoyed doing her thing at last year’s awards show.
“The fact I got to perform poems really important to me before a roomful of artists and everybody got quiet was absolutely one of the most magical things.”
She often writes about the dynamics of her large African-American family. The Great Migration brought her people from the South to Chicago and Omaha. She mines their rich vein of idioms and imbroglios, delighting in food as a bond that nourishes and heals.
Her poem “Poor Relations” discusses her Omaha family line being branded inferior by their affluent Chicago relatives.
“There were struggles, we had our own personal dysfunctions but we were strong and we were happy. It’s been really cathartic to try to tell these stories and be honest about them.”
Born into a family of matriarchs who were “voracious readers,” Poindexter immersed herself in books and writing from an early age.
“Poetry’s been this thing that’s sustained me spiritually but it kind of existed outside regular life.”
She dabbled in theater and journalism but discovered her artistic home in the emergent slam and spoken word movement.
“I always wrote poems but I kind of started finding a community when Matt Mason ran readings at Borders years ago. There were Pop Tarts for prizes.”
She followed the local slam scene to the Om Center, where it’s still based.
Slam slayed her the first time she saw Def Jam. “I didn’t know what that thing was but I was going to figure out how to do that thing.”
She immersed herself in slam in Colorado, where she moved after losing her grandmother and anchor. She returned to Omaha a few years ago to be close to her spoken word soul sister, Felicia Webster, and to her slam girls, Katie F-S and Sarah McKinstry-Brown.
“Slam has saved me in more ways that I can think of. It feels right. If I migrate away from performance and writing I feel the atrophy of it. I like the fact I have a passion, that there’s this thing that drives me. I don’t know what I would do without that as a rudder.”
She wouldn’t know what to do without her creative community.
“I don’t know if I could function without having that sense of support. It’s afforded me most of the close friendships and safety nets I’ve experienced the last 15 years.”
She’s encouraged by the camaraderie LTAB students display. She’s still struck by what happened a few years ago when a Lincoln High team member lost her mother.
“As a team they decided they wanted to come to finals with all new work, including a piece that the girl who’d just lost her mother had written. And so they scrapped everything. There was no strategy, they were not worried about winning, they were like, This is the work we want to feature. They believed in it and they won, and it was so good. The thing that was so cool was they were willing to sacrifice to do this thing intrinsically personal to them. I’ll take that any time over people who live for the scores and stuff.”
She calls LTAB coaching “the best job ever.”
She feels confident about one day supporting herself as an artist and teacher. She may next pursue a master of fine arts degree,
“I don’t know many artists who value themselves for the work they do because it’s always something that’s never fully supported them,” says Poindexter, who works a corporate day job.
“Being valued for my artistry is something I’ve learned to do a lot better.”
Zedeka hosts the Om Center poetry slam the second Saturday of every month. Visit OmahaSlam.com.
View her performing at buttonpoetry.com.
For Louder Than a Bomb details, visit ltabomaha.org.
The Jeanpierres and Family
I have the distinct pleasure of being friends with a remarkable group of women musical artists in Omaha who are all related to each other. Once in a while they gift the community with their individual and collective talents in concert. Their DIVA 3 concert on Sunday, February 8 at New Life Presbyterian Church will commemorate Black History Month with performances of arias and spirituals from the classical canon that celebrate the legacy of African-American women in classical music. Nola Jeanpierre, her daughter Carole Jeanpierre and Carole’s daughter Elyssia Reschelle Finch possess powerful, dramatic soprano voices that will raise the rafters and give you goosebumps. They are all classically-trained. Nola’s sister Johnice Orduna will add her fine vocals as well. As if that’s not enough this musical line, those three generations of performers will be joined by a fourth generation, in the person of Nola’s aunt, Claudette Valentine, who will accompany this family of vocalists on piano. It will be a program you won’t soon forget. Your heart and soul will never be the same. I’ve always thought that if someone with a video camera would record oen of this family’s concerts and post it to YouTube that the video would stand a good chance of going viral because people all over world will be struck by the magic of their music. Nola, Carole and Elyssia deserve the recognition.
BLACK HISTORY MONTH CONCERT DIVA 3 A TRIBUTE TO HISTORY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN IN CLASSICAL MUSIC
Three generations of classically-trained Omaha singers bound by blood, faith and black musical heritage will perform a DIVA 3 concert on Sunday, February 8 at New Life Presbyterian Church, 4060 Pratt Street.
The 6 p.m. Black History Month show will feature Nola Jeanpierre, her daughter Carole N. Jeanpierre and Carole’s daughter Elyssia Reschelle Finch performing songs celebrating African-American women in classical music. In the tradition of Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle, the three local women will use their dramatic soprano voices to interpret arias and spirituals from the classical canon.
Nola is a veteran musical theater performer on Omaha stages. She portrayed Bloody Mary in South Pacific at the Omaha Community Playhouse. She sang the role of the High Priestess in the memorable Opera Omaha mounting of Aida at the Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum. She’s the featured soloist at the St. Cecilia Cathedral Flower Show each year. She’s done summer stock back East. She traces her vocal abilities to her mother, Bernice Bragg.
Nola Jeanpierre
Carole Jeanpierre
Carole has performed with national artists on stage and in the recording studio. She is often a guest soloist with the University of California Davis Gospel Choir. She also composes music, including an original, faith-based opera she wrote, Noalia: An Opera of Love that she is workshopping She recently adapted the opera into a children’s book.
Ejyssia, a student at Concordia University in Seward, Neb., has a goal of auditioning for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, which her grandmother Nola did as a young woman.
Nola’s sister, Johnice Orduna, will lend her own fine voice to the concert. Nola and Johnice’s aunt Claudette Valentine, a piano instructor and choir director, will accompany the vocalists, which means a fourth generation of musicianship will be represented.
This long line of musical talent is viewed by family members as a gift from On High they feel called to share.
“As a family music represents the fruits of the spirit,” says Carole. “It is our hope to enlighten hearts, to share the gift with love and with unity so that audiences are uplifted. That’s the bottom-line.”
“I’ve always been so appreciative that we were blessed with a gift that we could give back,” says Nola.
“Music is love,” Valentine says simply.
Carole created DIVA 3 as a vehicle for the family to sing together, just like they did at family reunions back in the day.
“We’d have family gatherings and someone would bring the macaroni and cheese and someone would bring the guitar, and we would all sit up under each other and sing. That was our best times,” recalls Carole.
“The piano was the center of everything we did,” Valentine says of growing up.
As each next generation came into the family’s musical fold, a new talent was nurtured and another voice added to the mix. When Nola and her two sisters showed a musical knack as toddlers, their mother had them start piano lessons. Voice lessons followed. Claudette formed the girls into a sweet harmonizing trio that performed widely. As Nola’s music career blossomed her first-born, Carole, soaked it all in.
Nola recalls their earliest musical bonding, “She would be under the piano and sometimes I would sit her on the stool next to me and we would sing. She’d touch the keys and play the piano. When I heard the talent then it was time to use it because she has the most phenomenal gift of pitch and mimicking a sound of a one I’ve ever known. She can sound like anybody.”
“I picked up everybody’s gift,” says Carole, who made her public performing debut at age 3 in church.
“I just gave her what was given to me and passed it on down,” says Nola.
Truthfully, it probably started in the womb,” Carole says of this music osmosis. She went on to train with some 17 vocal coaches but says her mom’s “the best.” Nola and Carole both teach vocal students.
The family’s closeness carries over to performing, where their intuitive understanding allows them to cover for one another.
“We feel each other,” says Nola. “We just know when one is going to drop out and the other needs to pick it up.”
Elyssia, who has a mixture of her grandmother’s and mother’s voices. appreciates the musical legacy she is part of and the warm comfort of performing with loved ones.
“I definitely recognize how special that is. Not everybody has that and it does bring your family into a closer connection because we all do share something and we all display our gifts in the same kind of way.”
For the February 8 concert the doors open at 5:30 p.m. for a private auction from the Creations 2 Bragg About Collection.
DIVA tickets are $15. Purchase advance tickets by calling 402-.281-5396. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Raw DAWGS after-school program.
For more information, call 402-281-5396.
Richetta Wilson
When Omaha jazz vocalist Richetta (Lewis) Wilson sings, she can’t help but sound a little like icons Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Dianah Washington and Nancy Wilson, as she worked and forged friendships with these legends when they performed here. Once a featured artist in Omaha’s finest clubs, Richetta naturally drew on the impeccable phrasing and posh stage craft of divas she admired. “I had a little bit of all of ‘em in me because I dealt with all of ‘em,” she said from her showplace of a home. With sophisticated ladies as models, it’s no wonder the petite Wilson has been the epitome of art and class among Omaha song stylists for half-a-century.
“Those were all my favorite people. I loved ‘em,” she said. She “especially” cherishes how she was able “to get to know” them as human beings. She got particularly “close” to Dianah and Ella. “Practically all of ‘em stayed at my house. We’d cook. We had a lot of fun together. Dianah Washington was my idol. From 10 years old I always wanted to sing like her. I did every tune she did. She put so much feeling in her tunes. She was a great person. Ella was a dream. I did her hair. We’d go to work together. She was a honey. I really enjoyed her.”
Getting schooled by old souls was nothing new for Wilson, whose father, Richard Lewis, mother Camille, and uncles and grandpa, all played professionally. Early on her dad saw his little girl’s talent and hunger to perform. She was so enamored with his life in music she’d “wait up on him” to come home from the Trocadero Club, where he played with Cliff Dudley’s band, pumping him for all the details.
“I had to know everything that went on,” she said. “He always sang ‘Laura’ to me because I loved to hear him sing that. When I got to be about 12 he let me go to rehearsals with him down to the Trocadero. I’d be wide-eyed.”
He bought her a baby grand piano for her 7th birthday and saw to it she and her four siblings learned their chops. “He dearly loved music. He instilled it in all of us,” she said, adding that a brother, Victor Lewis, has enjoyed a long career as a jazz drummer-composer. “Everybody had to play.” She balked, declaring, “‘All I want to do is sing.’ She later appreciated the training ”because that’s how you learn to phrase and get your chords down and everything.”
At home she imitated Dianah, crooning into a lamp while her brothers made believe brooms were horns or saxes. Her dad eased her into show biz by having her sing at American Legion halls. “That’s when I took off,” she said. “I told him, ‘This is what I want to do, Daddy. I want to sing.’ I threw my lamp away and picked up the real mike.” When he felt she was ready, he had her audition for bandleader Dudley. Shy Richetta was coaxed to sing “Tenderly.” She recalls finishing the tune and Dudley turning to her dad to declare, “’She’s hired.’ That got me on the circuit,” she said.
Dudley became her mentor. “He made me sing some of everything. I couldn’t just do jazz. I did country western, all the show tunes…so I have a rep where I can do a little bit of everything,” she said. “He was a heck of an arranger. He was my foundation, I’ll put it that way. He was stern…I cried a lot, but he taught me everything I know. It was worth it. It got me good jobs and sent me on my way.” She was 17 when she joined Dudley and 19 when she hooked up with Preston Love’s territory band, touring the South on a big yellow bus with a pot belly stove in it. She was the group’s only female. Before her dad let her go he made pianist Roy Givens “promise he’d take care of me.” Givens kept his word.
Life on the road with a 17-piece orchestra was “an experience” she said. They played Jim Crow venues where the band had to enter through the back door and the crowd on the dance floor was separated by a rope — whites on one side, blacks on the other. The band slept on the bus. She got teased by the guys. Nine months away from home with all those crazy cats was enough for her.
She performed many more times with Love and Givens. She regarded them and players like Sonny Firmature and Buddy Graves “my musical family.” With her real family she sang in a trio that had her dad on sax and her mom on piano.
In her heyday she performed at swank local night spots — The Colony Club, Angelo’s, the Carnation Ballroom, Mickey’s, the M & M, the Blue Room — and the best hotels. She headlined a Joslyn jazz festival. Her “great following” went wherever she did. She took gigs in Denver, San Francisco and once had an extended, nine-month engagement at a hip Kansas City club. By then she was married with kids. It meant a weekly routine of getting her house in order before hopping a Wednesday charter for K.C, performing through the weekend there, then flying back to Omaha Sunday night to begin the cycle all over again. Her late husband, Richard Wilson, generally didn’t like her going on the road.
“I was amazed he let me do it that long,” she said. “I had many opportunities to go and do a whole lot more than I did. He said, ‘We’ve got four daughters here and I don’t think you’re going to be going away leaving girls.’ So, I made myself happy with working around here. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done and all the people I’ve had the opportunity to meet and the good times we’ve had.”
She only plays the rare gig anymore. There’s still nothing better than blending her sweet voice with the sound of a full, swinging orchestra. She last did that in 2005 at Harrah’s Casino, singing a duet with Omaha native Eugene Booker McDaniels on his classic “Feel Like Making Love” at the Omaha Black Music Hall of Fame awards dinner. She was inducted for her lifetime as a consummate jazz interpreter.
Much of the old gang’s gone now, but she still performs from time to time with Buddy Graves at Touch of Class Lounge. She sings at her annual birthday bash, too. She and her brother Victor Lewis jammed at a recent Jazz on the Green.
“I’ve had an adventurous life with all the things I’ve done,” she said. “It’s hard to kind of believe. But I wouldn’t trade it for nothing in the world.”
Hip-hop artist Shannon Marie, whose real name is Shannon Ennis, was in the first group of resident fellows at the Carver Bank in North Omaha’s historic Lake Street district. She grew up a few blocks from the Carver and she’s adamant about developing a national name for her writing and singing.
“I’m definitely confident about it,” says Marie, who’s produced several mix tapes. “It doesn’t matter where you are, it’s where you want to go. I can make it happen.”
If it doesn’t happen here she may leave to try her hand elsewhere, though she admits she needs more polish.
“I feel like I need to be more prepared before I step out with the big dogs.”
She got serious about rapping as a junior at Benson High School. Her early professional forays taught her lessons about not selling out.
“I would contact promoters and they’d just kind of brush me off like, ‘Who is this chick?’ Now when they have something going on I’m one of the first people they contact. I’ve gained their respect. They’ve seen the growth and they know I have people backing me.”
Her YouTube videos attract hundreds of thousands of views. Her Omaha fan following is such she gets recognized most everywhere she goes.
Gone are the days when promoters tried extracting sexual favors from an aspiring newbie. “It’s a male-dominated industry and sometimes guys look at females like a piece of meat. You have to be confident to let people know, Hey, you cant treat me like this. Now they’re like, ‘She’s just about her business. She’s not about sleeping her way to the top.’
“I kind of had to learn the hard way in some cases. I still have to learn a few things.
But it’s a lot better now than me being naive and saying, ‘OK, let’s just do music.’ All that glitters isn’t gold.”
A dispute with a local record label resulted in some of her original music being withheld from her. She’s moved on.
She plans a Carver event featuring herself and other empowered women who’ve overcome obstacles. She’s also planning a listening party for her new work.
“Now I’m here, I’ve got my opportunity, everything is still possible.”
Working alongside fellow residents who are “so different,” she says, “is going to be interesting.” She adds, “We really do vibe together. There’s going to be positive stuff going on. I want to support everybody and I want them to support me, too.”
She feels the love from friends, family and fans. “Everyone is excited for me.” She terms the multicultural turnout for Carver’s grand opening “a beautiful thing” and encourages all of Omaha to support its programs. “It’s for everybody.”
She’s eager to add to the area’s rich music legacy, saying, “Now it’s our time.”
Portia Love
Portia Love understands why she’s identified with her father, whose band she sang with for several years, but music was his thing, not hers.
“The writing thing is mine,” says Love, who retreated into words and stories as an “introverted” adolescent and began winning recognition for her work at Marian High School.
She went on to work in and teach human services but always wrote on the side. As a veteran artist with Why Arts she conducts writing workshops for people with disabilities. She also holds workshops through the Bemis.
She’s self-published two books of poems, Eclipses of the Sun and Redefinition. She creates poems by commission for clients, placing her original works in designer boxes, frames and photo albums.
WriteLife is publishing her debut novel, The Men’s Club, as well as a book of short stories, High Heel Shoes, Bright Red Lipstick and Strange Love.
Carver appeals to her for practical reasons.
“I went after it for the working space and the recognition. I’m real if nothing else. I tear my house up doing this stuff. Now I have a studio to work out of. This is my time for me and my writing. This is an opportunity that I hope is going to put me to another level. i hate anybody trying to put limitations on me and what I do.”
Moving artists along is part of the idea.
“We hope this opportunity provides a crucial jump for the residents and that they are able to move their artistic practices to new levels,” says McGraw.
Love says Carver’s location is “significant,” adding, “The whole thing is significant. I love that Hesse (McGraw) said the Bemis cannot be this white organization that ignores the fact there are people of color in this city with talent. And yes this is the perfect place for it, 24th and Lake. I think about my dad and how much he would have loved coming through here wearing the hell out of everybody. I think he would be so overjoyed to see me excelling at something that was not his.”
Love’s hosting a poetry reading from 3 to 6 p.m. on May 25. She’s invited her fellow resident artists to add their distinct flavors.
Categories: African-American, African-American Culture, Camille Metoyer Moten, Carole Jeanpierre, Felicia Webster, Jazz, Kathy Tyree, Michelle Troxclair, Music, Nola Jeanpierre, Omaha, Singer, Spoken Word, Uncategorized, Zedeka Poindexter Tags: Camille Metoyer Moten, Carole Jeanpierre, Felcia Webster, Jazz, Kathy Tyree, Michelle Troxclair., Music, Nola Jeanpierre, Omaha Singers, Spoken Word, Tiffany White-Welchen, Zedeka Poindexter
February 9, 2013 leoadambiga 2 comments
WithLove Felicia, ©photo by Herb Thompson
Soon to appear in The Reader
The styles and themes range from Marimo’s lyrical reflections to Webster’s old-school beatboxing to Developing Crisp‘s rap-style hooks to Nathan Scott’s political history lesson to Paula Bell’s black woman identity manifesto that ends with, “So you can take it or you can leave it, I really don’t give a damn.”
Harsh Life Revealed in Memoir Gives Way to Growth: Ruth Marimo Comes Out of Silence to Assert Her Voice (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
Categories: Entertainment, Felicia Webster, House of Loom, Michelle Troxclair, Omaha, Poetry/Spoken Word, Verbal Gumbo, Writing Tags: Felicia Webster, House of Loom, Michelle Troxclair., Spoken Word, Verbal Gumbo
Noah Diaz making run for his dream at Yale School of Drama and theater companies nationwide
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South By Southwest 2006: A View From The Ground
Kyle Ryan, Marc Hawthorne, and Josh Modell
And so it begins… South By Southwest 2006, the 20th year of musical madness in Austin, Texas, the self-proclaimed "music capital of the USA!" Eight billion bands play in any available nook and cranny, some already massively popular, some hoping to catch the ears of radio programmers, media, and honest-to-goodness music fans. (And sometimes all three.) The A.V. Club ventured down south to join in the delicious melee. We humbly offer this minute-by-minute report.
DAY ONE, MARCH 15: OFF TO THE ROCK RACES
4:56 p.m.: You know you're at SXSW when the taxi receipt features advertising for a new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album.
5:48 p.m.: Imagine that all the rockers from your town founded their own city, and you'll have a rough approximation of Austin in March. Unlike its New York counterpart, CMJ, SXSW is concentrated into one relatively small area. Black T-shirts, bed head, dudes wearing eyeliner, and tattoos abound. The days begin early with parties and barbecues, and they end late with shows everywhere. Unlike CMJ, a lot of bands end up playing multiple times, so it's not a big deal if you can't get into a show—you'll probably have another chance.
6:01 p.m.: An air of desperation lingers as bands try to stand out, industry types talk business, and people size up others to see how they can benefit. It concentrates pretentiousness into spiritually lethal doses. At this very moment, the founder of eMusic—he sold the company years ago to Universal—is sitting nearby in a café, pitching some kind of new business to various label people. There's talk of revenue streams, royalty payments, and—probably—synergy. (That last one is a guess.) But SXSW has a festive air that acts as the spoonful of sugar to make the soul-sucking elements go down. It's hard to complain when there are so many good bands, warm (though cloudy) weather, and Shiner Bock.
6:08 p.m.: The first day of SXSW Music (it's immediately preceded by SXSW Film and SXSW Interactive) is a zoo, and everybody who purchased or somehow earned a badge must wait in line to get it. A SXSW worker—they're everywhere, and the fest is amazingly well organized—tells someone behind us in line, "Everybody has to wait. Everybody who gets a badge is the same. The Beastie Boys had to wait in this line. Elijah Wood had to wait in this line." We think he said, "Charlize Theron didn't have to wait, though."
7:08 p.m.: To the average Joe, he probably just looks like a weird, possibly homeless guy, but he's a demigod here: While waiting for a table at a Thai restaurant, in ambles Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis, with grey mane attached. We end up seeing him everywhere over the weekend.
8:14 p.m.: At the opposite end of the indie-rock celebrity spectrum… It's former O-Town member (they're the boy band from Making The Band, remember?) Jacob Underwood, who now sports big ol' dreadlocks. Does anyone else here recognize him? Doubtful.
8:19 p.m.: Thieves could have a field day breaking into vans and trailers here. (Not that The A.V. Club would condone that behavior.) Say, is that Orange Rockerverb 100 yours? Nice. Oh, and that vintage Moog too, huh? Are you gonna be around all night? Speaking of vans and buses, they're all here, from 20-year-old shitheaps to gussied-up Nightliners to one van that had a PA mounted inside of its rear doors. (A band performed inside.) "We had hoped to have the only white van, but it looks like we're out of luck," Eric Elbogen of NYC indie-poppers Say Hi To Your Mom said. Maybe next year.
9:21 p.m.: Russian Circles play "Death Rides A Horse" at the Flameshovel showcase, stealing the show. Bound Stems are here, too, but there's something in the air that's not quite right. A mysterious pool of water at the front of the stage turns out to be raw sewage. Bound Stems play a solid set of fractured, arty rock, and don't appear to be too concerned by the stench. After the set, the band admits that the smell was twice as bad onstage.
10:30 p.m.: An invite-only party for Blender magazine's 20th anniversary (are they that old?), is getting underway at a produce warehouse outside the main drag. The event offers the irresistible lure of a "red carpet." The promised celebs (Elijah Wood, Tommy Chong (!)) never materialize. There's a scramble to take photos of a guy we don't recognize. It turns out to be jazzy Brit singer Jamie Cullum, a fact that excites mostly no one. Also appearing on the red carpet: Singer-songwriter Rhett Miller, who looks way too dressed up.
11:55 p.m.: The music finally starts, with buzzing Twin Cities band Tapes N' Tapes, who are at least partly worthy of the hype around them here. Like many bands, they're scheduled to play SXSW an ungodly number of times. The fashion-forward crowd seems unenthused—they're not here to be enthused—but the band is pretty great. We don't stick around for Echo & The Bunnymen or Spoon (or all the free liquor).
11:59 p.m.: '90s indie stalwarts Versus are still amazing, and it's even worth jumping at any chance to see their offshoots. +/- is fronted by James Baluyut and Pat Ramos —Versus' guitarist and drummer, respectively—and its records feature wondrously claustrophobic pop that has a few things in common with Pinback. The band's fleshed-out live sound can be explosive.
12:32 a.m.: Unintentionally hilarious British band The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster plays sorta proto-modern-metal-punk that nods to Danzig and hardcore. We just assumed they were weird no-names on a British showcase, but apparently they're hep enough to rate an upcoming collaboration with UNKLE…
1:06 a.m.: The Rakes may be this year's future of Brit-rock—funny, cutting, catchy, and great. Singer Alan Donohoe looks and dances like Ian Curtis, but the band sounds like a fashion-unconscious Bloc Party with a love of The Jam—and with tight songs more important than their presentation. That makes for a riveting performance, which includes the monster single "Retreat," as well as a Serge Gainsbourg cover. Amazing.
1:13 a.m.: Even though it takes The Go! Team an eternity to set their gear up for the night's last slot, they easily win over the audience with ebullience. The English band couldn't have looked happier to be onstage, and it was contagious for the capacity crowd at Exodus. The club's stage is at street level with windows along the back, so passersby could watch the show from behind if they couldn't get in. That's the other thing: You can't walk down the street without hearing a cacophony of music from various clubs, all of it blending together. Last night on Red River Street, you could tell that Neko Case was performing with The New Pornographers because her voice came through clear across the street.
2:02 a.m.: The Flaming Lips finish up a "secret" show. It's exactly the kind of thing that makes Austin in March so exciting and fun. Thursday's "secret" show? Beastie Boys.
[pagebreak]
DAY TWO, MARCH 16: FOR THOSE CONTINUING TO ROCK, WE SALUTE YOU
10:30 a.m.: SXSW managing director Roland Swenson gives a heartfelt introduction to an appearance by Neil Young and film director Jonathan Demme, noting that the festival had tried in the past to get Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan as keynote speakers, but never Young—he seemed out of reach. As on his recent Daily Show appearance, Young was totally normal and chill, which actually seemed a little strange. He spoke about songwriting, the concert film he made with Demme, etc. It wasn't terribly enlightening, but interesting just the same.
12:06 p.m.: Owen, also known as Mike Kinsella (Cap'n Jazz, American Football, Joan Of Arc) is playing at the Convention Center. It's a little early to completely absorb his beautifully confessional songs, but he sounds great and, appropriately enough, plays the song that includes the line, "I listen to my same old CDs / New Order and Morrissey."
4:16 p.m.: Islands, featuring former members of The Unicorns, make a pretty little mess onstage at the Longbranch Inn, both with the cheese popcorn they're tossing around and with worldbeat-tinged indie pop. When rappers Subtitle and Busdriver join the fun, for a few seconds it feels like the place is going to explode.
4:30 p.m.: Neko Case soundchecks with "Star Witness" in a tiny field house in a park overlooking the city at a party thrown by Anti- Records and Chicago club the Hideout (where Case used to tend bar). SXSW simply doesn't get better than a small show with great music, free alcohol, nice weather, and an awesome view of the city.
5:10 p.m.: Elefant, the New York band that sounds British, closes out a Filter-sponsored party. They're giving away Puma track jackets with "Elefant" emblazoned on the back. The sound is boomy and weird, since it's in a big stone courtyard covered by a tent. But Elefant are still good, even though the singer doesn't wear his scarf. It's probably too humid for that.
8:47 p.m.: Guy walking on Sixth Street talks on his phone: "Every time someone thinks I'm a loser, I can feel it." Blabbing on your cell phone at top volume isn't helping.
9:15 p.m.: People go nuts for Morrissey, of course. And he's very good, of course, because he's the sort of born entertainer/artiste that most bands here wish they could be, or at least be near. No, his later solo stuff isn't as good as The Smiths, but it's still pretty damn good. And for the old school, he even busts out "Girlfriend In A Coma," "How Soon Is Now," and, best of all, "Still Ill." Up next, according to the guide, is a "Special Guest." This is usually a good sign, so we stick around until the next scheduled act, Goldfrapp, takes the stage. Ray Davies was reportedly supposed to show up and play, but didn't.
9:17 p.m.: Red Hot Chili Peppers logos (with the release date of their new album) are spray-painted on top of other people's posters and flyers all over the city. Because if anyone needs the help of viral marketing, it's a multi-platinum artist with a large, devoted fanbase—never mind the unknowns or relative unknowns whose posters are getting covered up.
10:02 p.m.: A man who turns out to be Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips walks down Sixth Street in a giant plastic ball, followed by people in giant alien and insect costumes. SXSW has a little bit of a Mardi Gras to it, which may explain the Bible-beaters roaming the streets and urging people to repent. As the evangelicals shout over a megaphone, a woman yells, "Elvis is my personal lord and savior!"
10:10 p.m.: Deadstring Brothers take the stage at the Bloodshot Records showcase. The vibe of the club is sports-bar jockiness (female boxing and the NCAA tournament are on the five giant HDTVs). Waitresses walk the crowd with test-tube shots, and an MC talks constantly between bands, "Hey folks, don't forget to try a shot, only $2! All right, stick around for more great music from Bloodshot Records artists!" What, no jalapeno shooters? Singer Masha Marjieh asks, "Am I forced to watch TV while I play?" Answer: Yes. Singer-guitarist Kurt Marschke adds sarcastically, "Gimme some of that female kickboxing!" The Deadstring Brothers play an excellent set of country-fied Southern rock anyhoo.
11:24 p.m.: Scott H. Biram—"the dirty one-man band"—plays a song about getting hit by an 18-wheeler, which actually happened to him. Biram's pleasantly abrasive hard blues is excellent, and he's an electrifying performer—no small feat for a man whose setup consists of his voice, his guitar, and some kind of kick-drum contraption. He swears a lot, too. Biram debuts a new song: "Well if it tastes like chicken, and it smells like pee, you know that fish didn't come from the sea!" A few seconds later he adds, "That's all I got for that one." Who needs more?
12:13 a.m.: Bobby Bare Jr.: "Could you turn off the yellow lights? I feel like I'm a cheeseburger in the yellow lights of life." Bare, son of country-music legend Bobby Bare, plays an excellent set of rocking Americana, a nice mix of country twang and rock bombast.
1:59 a.m.: In an effort to end night two with a bang, it's straight to Eternal to experience the fuss that is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. It turns out that the Brooklyn band—which plays earnestly quirky indie pop that brings to mind Talking Heads, The Velvet Underground, and Violent Femmes but is too inspired to sound derivative—is worth every drop of the ink that's been spilled in its name.
DAY THREE, MARCH 17: NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER!
12 p.m.: Just because you can drink for free at noon doesn't mean you should.
12:29 p.m.: Two band guys sit in a sandwich shop discussing their singer: "I think the qualities that make him an asshole also make him a good lead singer," one says. The other counters that it's part of the "good guys, bad band" phenomenon: Nice people make shitty music, or so the theory goes.
12:35 p.m.: Scarecrow! This metal band caught a friend's eye because they wear skeleton face paint. Apparently they caught no one else's eye, because they play to about five people. But they give it their skeleton-faced all just the same. The singer even introduces himself as "Yours deadly."
1:56 p.m.: Reverend Dave Ciancio of The Syndicate (the company that manages screamo band Thursday, among others) snags what he says is his 42nd pair of sneakers at the Riot Act Media/Flameshovel Records showcase. He apparently has 41 pairs of Vans and, now, one pair of retro-looking Sauconys.
2:48 p.m.: Comedian Eugene Mirman hosts the Merge/Sub Pop party in the sand-filled backyard of a BBQ joint about a mile outside downtown. He does a bit about a band that sent him a MySpace message (they were opening for Badfish, apparently "the best" Sublime tribute band), and they wanted him to come. He answers with a disturbing message that includes, "The worst thing I've ever done is shit on a cat in its sleep." Recent Sub Pop signees Band Of Horses begin a set that's marred by constant mic problems. Frontman Ben Bridwell changes lyrics to say it's their worst show ever. Everyone laughs.
3:01 p.m.: The Go! Team is supposed be going on right now at the Spin party at Stubb's, but apparently they're already done. The Stills follow with a fairly boring performance, but We Are Scientists are convincing. Apparently Charlatans UK are still together, too.
3:40 p.m.: Back at the Flameshovel party, Headphones—the newish project of Pedro The Lion's David Bazan—battles a mic stand that won't stay up. He prefaces a song with a bit of history about how the Romans privatized their army just before the empire fell. "I pray America crumbles soon," he says. Umm…
4:20 p.m.: Legendary '90s punk band Lifetime, who broke up in '97 but reunited last year, begin their set at Emo's. (My Chemical Romance is the not-so-secret headliner.) The crowd erupts. Frontman Ari Katz says, "This is the most girls there's been at a Lifetime show ever." A guy with a visible bald spot stage dives. People run and jump off the stage continuously during the set, and the crowd itself jumps up and down, moshes, and generally freaks out. The group's members clearly didn't expect such an ecstatic reception, but they love it. Afterward, a kid exclaims, "That didn't just happen, did it? I can't believe that just happened!" Just how big of a deal was it that Lifetime played? After My Chemical Romance takes the stage (to much squealing from young girls), frontman Gerard Way says, "The greatest fucking honor of our lives is to play with Lifetime."
5 p.m.: RJD2 is playing DJ at the Pitchfork day party, which takes place in a tent. No one seems to notice that RJD2 is playing DJ, though, as it just sorta sounds like someone is playing records between bands. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what's happening. Art Brut closes out the tent party, and the British band is funny, sloppy, and weird. Singer Eddie Argos has a killer moustache. They blaze through 25 minutes, including a new version of the song "Emily Kane," in which Argos updates the story of his long-lost girlfriend. It's fucking charming.
6:40 p.m.: We Are Scientists, last year's super buzzing band at SXSW (and owners of an excellent, Killers-like album this year), perform three songs for a live broadcast on a Minnesota radio station. Have you ever seen a band play in a little conference room on the top floor of a hotel? It's actually pretty cool. The DJ interviews bassist Chris Cain—he of the semi-ironic moustache—between songs, and he's hilarious. The band is great, too: How is their record not totally massive yet?
7 p.m.: The big story of day two is a surprise appearance by the Beastie Boys, who open a show at Stubb's that also features Deadboy And The Elephantmen, Noisettes, The Fiery Furnaces, The Dresden Dolls, Gomez, and Nickel Creek. Word travels quickly late in the afternoon, and the teeming masses converge. A TV news van parks outside, a news helicopter circles overhead, and the staff tries to cope with a crowd intent on getting in. The Beasties take the stage to "Brass Monkey" of all things, and the crowd goes crazy. Enthusiasm makes it easy to forgive the B-Boys' obvious rustiness, and the trio keeps the goodwill going with a set full of hits, from "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" to "Body Movin." A guy exclaims, "Damn, they look motherfuckin' old!"
7:25 p.m.: A giant MySpace bus gets mobbed by kids on Fifth Street. They disappear inside of it as it pulls away, perhaps never to be seen or heard from again.
8:49 p.m.: Members of female trio The Like sign the autograph wall at Arirang sushi on Sixth Street. One member draws a big heart, then writes "The Like are cunts 4 eva" inside of it.
10 p.m.: Same hotel as We Are Scientists, same floor, different side, it's Eric Bachmann playing the No Depression night. He's not necessarily a fit for that crowd, but he is amazing, especially with the addition of some new songs and a violin player. The instrumental "Islero" is fiery. A solo album—how is that different than a Crooked Fingers album, you ask?—is due later this year, and the bits we hear are great.
10:15 p.m.: With all the available choices, Sukpatch at Latitude 30 turns out to be a bad call. The Minneapolis band apparently forgot that it used to make great, beats-y pop that was like a more drugged-out, less eager version of Beck. Now Sukpatch is just a run-of-the-mill indie-rock band. Sadly, Toto, we aren't in the mid-'90s anymore.
11:05 p.m.: It's time to leave civilization and make the trek east for the Fiery Furnaces show at Red's Scoot Inn. Though there's a line to get into this unsanctioned event, a hill behind the venue is just high enough to allow for a perfect view of the stage. There's no denying that the Friedbergers are rocking the place with all their might, but once it becomes clear that they're not going to start throwing punches at each other, it's easy to stop paying attention.
11:15 p.m.: Clem Snide's Eef Barzelay plays solo, battling against bad sound, another band playing outside, and even—oh the inhumanity—a sound system right behind him that won't stop playing hip-hop. He plays an angry set, which is still pretty damn impressive. But ideal conditions these are not.
12:07 a.m.: Binky Griptite, guitarist and emcee for The Dap-Kings (blues maven Sharon Jones'), warms up the crowd before Jones makes an appearance. He tells the bartenders to turn off the TV over the bar: "There's only one show going on here tonight."
12:20 a.m.: You haven't been to Austin in March until you've been nearly bowled over on the sidewalk by Juliette Lewis. Slow down, rocker!
12:40 a.m.: Text message from Kyle: "Make the blues music stop." Note that he still wants music, just not blues. Good for you, Kyle!
1:27 a.m.: Neko Case laments her choice of pants. "I have a bit of a camel toe going on," she says, laughing, and requests that people don't take photos of it. Everyone cheers, particularly the dudes. Her backup singers, Kelly Hogan and Rachel Flotard, laugh before Flotard says, "Really? We have a moose's paw over here. It's clams' night out, if you know what I mean." The crowd roars. After Case plays "Dirty Knife," a track from her excellent new Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, a woman in the crowd says, "She's blowing my mind! I'm going to buy all her albums tomorrow!"
2:05 a.m.: St. Patrick's Day ends with Snow Patrol at Stubb's, and the dramatic pop is a bit underwhelming. Maybe it's all that Shiner talking, but suddenly everything starts to sound like The Goo Goo Dolls. It's time to get some sleep.
DAY FOUR, MARCH 18: RUNNING ON FUMES, BUT RUNNING JUST THE SAME
11:10 a.m.: The circus prepares to leave town, but not without an intense day and night first. People are exhausted, hung over, and getting burned out, but they soldier on.
1:54 p.m.: During an acoustic set at the Austin Convention Center, Rogue Wave plays "Salesman At The Day Of The Parade," a quiet song from their recent Descended Like Vultures.
2:13 p.m.: Flatstock 8, a gathering of rock-show poster designers, is doing brisk business. It'd be easy to drop a month's pay at this joint, with amazing limited-edition work by The Bird Machine, Burlesque, Aesthetic Apparatus, and tons of others. If you want some funny Dr. Dre stickers or a kick-ass Arcade Fire poster, this is the place to be.
2:16 p.m.: There aren't a ton of people on hand to see Amusement Parks On Fire, but the English band plays a great set of anthemic rock that bursts, buzzes, and pays tribute to some of the best alt-rock from the '90s (Smashing Pumpkins, Hum, Dinosaur Jr., etc.).
3:01 p.m.: Near the Emo's Annex stage across the street, a young girl asks a security guard what time Lifetime will play. When she hears that the band played yesterday, it's like she just watched a puppy get run over. Twice.
3:50 p.m.: Far from the din of downtown, there's more din: The neighborhood surrounding the University Of Texas (a couple of miles north) keeps busy, with shows in vintage shops, pizza places, and even Urban Outfitters, which scores great bands every year. The Rakes play again, after some serious technical difficulties. They are even awesomer than on Wednesday.
4:01 p.m.: The microphone keeps cutting out on Beth Ditto of The Gossip. Instead of getting pissy about it, Ditto says, "Fuck it, I don't care. You can hear me." Considering the intensity of her gospel-like punk wail, she's probably right.
5:32 p.m.: Goblin Cock is a sludgy metal band fronted by Pinback's Rob Crow, and just in case anyone thought that any of the black-cloaked dudes onstage were taking themselves seriously, they toss in a cover of Tears For Fears' "Head Over Heels." Hopefully Roland Orzabal will get a chance to hear it someday.
5:36 p.m.: Screamo band Thursday takes the stage with "Understanding In A Car Crash" and the crowd erupts. There's a lot of singing along and pointing fingers at singer Geoff Rickley, who flails like an epileptic.
8:34 p.m.: The singer of New Mexican Disaster Squad prefaces a song during the group's set at the Jade Tree showcase at Emo's by referring to it as "the fuck song." A fiftysomething woman sitting in the corner keeps her fingers in her ears. The group's hardcore was apparently too loud, and there's no doubt she's too old.
9:02 p.m.: Hardcore band Paint It Black takes a minute between songs to make sarcastic comments about SXSW. "That's what SXSW is all about—moving units, making connections… and eyeliner." The bassist adds, "If I see anyone on a Blackberry during our set, I'm going to throw down my bass and shove it up your ass."
9:15 p.m.: Eternal, which looks like a dance club, is the wrong place for tender acoustic troubadour Jose Gonzalez. He's still impressive, even more so live than he is on record. He plays his cover of The Knife's "Heartbeats" (the one from the Sony Bravia commercial with all the balls bouncing down Russian Hill in San Francisco) and pretty much transfixes the entire audience (except for one asshole who thinks he's being hilarious by secretly attaching stuff to his friend's back).
10:11 p.m.: Over at the Merge showcase, there may not be a less surprising band in the world than The Essex Green, whose throwback pop seems generated via some sort of throwback-pop computing machine. Is this the same label that spawned The Arcade Fire, Polvo, and…
10:57 p.m.: …Superchunk, who hadn't played together in months before this show and who seem perpetually on the edge of packing it in? You couldn't tell here, as they stormed and joked through a set of classics and even a newbie or two. Singer/label co-owner Mac McCaughn started the set with this gem: "I didn't tell the rest of the band, but I think we're gonna get signed tonight!" then blazed through everything from "Cool" to a fiery "Precision Auto." After the set, who appears on stage to half-drunkenly sing Superchunk's praises? David Cross, that's who. Nice.
2:16 a.m.: And then it was done, and a whirlwind of rock had blown through town for the 20th time. There are shows we're sorry we missed (Editors, Gang Of Four, Levy, Julie Doiron, Billy Bragg, The Flaming Lips, Metallagher, the Barsuk/Saddle Creek showcase, and lots more), but there's always next year. We'll be back.
Recent from these authors
Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La is a magical-yet-hokey monument to music—and to Rick Rubin
Deadwood lives again: A catch-up guide to its cast and characters
Relationship status with Morrissey’s new covers album: It’s complicated
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Waco Brothers & Paul Burch: Great Chicago Fire
Noel Murray
Great Chicago Fire
Paul Burch, The Waco Brothers
Both Paul Burch and The Waco Brothers’ Jon Langford are roots-music devotees who’ve spent their careers writing and recording songs that decode and recode the classics of folk, country, and mid-20th-century pop. But working in collaboration on the album Great Chicago Fire, Burch and Langford have given themselves license to hang loose. They open the album with the title track, which begins by paraphrasing Johnny Rotten—“Did you ever get the feeling that you’ve been cheated?”—over a loose copy of the riff from T. Rex’s “20th Century Boy.” Clearly, somebody rang the bell for recess.
Elsewhere on Great Chicago Fire, Burch and The Waco Brothers channel the Exile On Main St.-era Rolling Stones on the intro to “Monterey,” ape Highway 61-era Bob Dylan on “Cannonball,” and bring a heavy dose of David Bowie’s “The Jean Genie” to their cover of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” None of this is all that unusual for Langford, who with his influential punk band The Mekons as well as with the Wacos has openly courted disreputability plenty of times. But Burch is known for his tastefully twangy, cleverly conceptual singer-songwriter albums, which makes it a rare treat to hear his affected drawl over music this raucous and seemingly off-the-cuff.
Burch and the Wacos don’t set their country sides aside. Most of the songs on The Great Chicago Fire are fundamentally C&W—just with more of a Lower-Broadway-after-midnight vibe than early-evening-at-the-Ryman. And Burch doesn’t take lead on every song, either. There’s a mix of voices here to match the mix of styles. The overall feel is of skilled vets taking a break to play around, tossing out ideas for barroom jams and wild mash-ups and then daring themselves to bring them to life. They don’t get too crazy, because they’re always aware that a single moment of carelessness can burn everything down. But they also seem to realize that sometimes a roaring blaze can be pretty, and can clear a space for something new.
Recent from Noel Murray
David Crosby somehow lived long enough to get the overdue documentary treatment
A new documentary about Toni Morrison puts a great American writer into context
Hulu’s Das Boot miniseries is well-acted and well-crafted… but needs more boot
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17 Mar '14
Preparing for a Consultation with an Employment Lawyer
So you think you have an employment discrimination or wrongful termination case and are looking to hire a lawyer. Just as you must evaluate the lawyer to decide if they are right for you, the lawyer must assess your legal claims to determine whether they should represent you. Once you have gone through the preliminary consultation and conflict check, the lawyer will likely schedule an in-person meeting to delve into your claims in greater detail. The more information you have readily available, the more easily an employment lawyer can assess your claims. Of course, that does not mean you should bring with you every scrap of paper conceivable! Below, I describe some of the documents you should bring with you to help the consulting lawyer evaluate your case.
EEOC Publication on Religious Garb and Grooming Provides Clarity
Yesterday, the EEOC issued a new publication that discusses employees’ rights with respect to religious grooming and dress in the workplace. The publication, Religious Garb and Grooming in the Workplace: Rights and Responsibilities, is written in question-and-answer form and addresses some of the most common issues that come up when workers require religious accommodations with respect to their clothing and grooming. It is meant to guide employees and employers; you do not need to be a lawyer to understand it.
Here are some of the key points from the EEOC’s publication:…
What’s in your personnel file? Here’s how to find out!
Did you ever wonder what’s in your personnel file? Do you know that you have a right to find out? What other documents are you entitled to see or copy? Below, I discuss the employment records you are entitled to get and share sample language for making such a request.
Labor Code § 1198.5 provides that (with limited exception): “Every current and former employee, or his or her representative, has the right to inspect and receive a copy of the personnel records. . . .
Ms. Mizrahi was elected as an officer of the State Bar of California Labor & Employment Law Section.
Ramit Mizrahi has been selected as one of the Top 100 Super Lawyers® Rising Stars and Top 50 Women Rising Stars in Southern California.
Ms. Mizrahi has been selected as a Pasadena Magazine Top Attorney.
Ms. Mizrahi has been selected as a Los Angeles Magazine Top Women Attorneys In Southern California for the fourth year in a row.
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Shoppers not feeling Black Friday this year
by Jillian Eugenios @jillianeugenios November 19, 2014: 12:42 AM ET
Stores one-up each other on Thanksgiving
Stores may be opening early for Black Friday, but that doesn't mean shoppers will show up.
Most Americans, in fact, are not going to be shopping on either Black Friday or Cyber Monday this year, according to a new report released Wednesday by Bankrate.com.
The report found that only 40% of Americans plan to shop on Black Friday, and only 28% plan to do that shopping in a store, while others will go shop online.
"Traditional Black Friday has a bit of a bad rap to the casual shopper," said Bankrate analyst Jeanine Skowronski. She mentioned the long lines and horror stories that have popped up in news reports over the last several years. "That's making them inclined to stay away on that particular day."
Related: Walmart workers plan Black Friday protests
It's not just fear of being pepper-sprayed in Walmart, though. The length in the holiday shopping season is a major factor: Some retailers began offering Black Friday deals as early as Nov. 1, taking away the urgency for customers to make it into stores the day after Thanksgiving.
"People have become conditioned to looking for deals and discounts before Black Friday and right after Christmas," Skowronski said. "It's more like the deal will come to them, than they need to be aggressive and get the deal."
Who will be checking out the in-store deals? Mostly millennials, ages 18 to 29. Though they are more likely to shop in stores than go online, it doesn't necessarily mean that they'll be buying right away. Skowronski said it's more about the experience, and that they go to the store to comparison shop.
"This is a game they're very comfortable playing," she said. "Millennials are more frugal then they get credit for."
Related: Walmart defends Thanksgiving Day deals
The data backs that up. While that group plans on spending around $100 to $250 on Black Friday, other shoppers anticipate spending about $400. A quick look shows that spending that kind of money could net a shopper an Xbox One console at Best Buy ($429.99) or two iPad Minis from Walmart ($199 each).
And there's always Cyber Monday, though only one in four Americans anticipate they'll be making a purchase that day, according to the report.
What of those in line on Thanksgiving Day?
"That day is for the big time bargain hunters, those who are thinking, 'I need to be first to get the best deal.'"
CNNMoney (New York) First published November 19, 2014: 12:42 AM ET
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Thor Vs. Superman Fight: Chris Hemsworth Is Ready for It
Kevin Burwick
Chris Hemsworth shared some Thor vs. Superman artwork from a fan on social media. The actor is out promoting the upcoming Men in Black: International and has stated he's taking a break from the entertainment business after the promotional campaign to spend some time at home with his family. However, after sharing the God of Thunder vs. the Man of Steel artwork, he might start to get a lot more questions about returning to work on a possible crossover movie.
Marvel Studios and DC aren't about to get together for a crossover event, but it's still fun to think about. Chris Hemsworth shared some fan art on social media teasing a battle between his Thor and presumably Henry Cavill's Superman with the hashtag: "send me the location." Hemsworth is obviously kidding around, but this is something that some hardcore comics fans might want to see on the big screen. Plus, it isn't without precedent. Just by looking at the comments, there's a lot of people who would like to see it and quite a few who believe the God of Thunder would come out on top.
In 2003, Marvel Comics and DC Comics teamed up for the JLA/Avengers crossover event. It was a huge four-issue mini-series, which has been torn apart by comic fans for nearly 20 years now. In one of the issues, Thor and Superman battle and eventually become allies. They each win a battle against each other, taking them both by surprise. Superman even wields Mjolnir in the epic battle, but only because the God of Thunder grants him permission. Superman later compares fighting Thor to a black hole.
Related: Will Drunk Thor Return in Guardians 3? Karen Gillan Sure Hopes So
Since the comic crossover event wasn't very well-received, it's safe to assume that a big screen adaptation of the fight won't be happening any time soon. That still has not kept fans from wondering who would win if the two superheroes battled each other on the big screen. It's the same for Iron Man and Batman, or just about any rival superheroes between DC and Marvel. There are valid arguments for both sets of heroes, but it would ultimately come down to who was adapting the material for the big screen to decide. A draw seems like the most logical conclusion.
Chris Hemsworth is just having some fun with the idea of a Thor vs. Superman fight. However, he has just sparked the debate all over again and fans want to argue about who would win in said fight. Hemsworth obviously has his money on Thor, though others may have some other ideas about how it would all go down. Regardless, it's just something fun to think about and it might inspire some comic book fans to go back and re-read the JFA/Avengers crossover event comic series. You can check out the image from Chris Hemsworth's Instagram story below.
God of Thunder vs. Man of Steel — Who do you got? 👊 pic.twitter.com/0lmYTC63Bx
— Fandom (@getFANDOM) June 4, 2019
Topics: Thor, Superman
Writer for Movieweb since 2017. Enjoys playing Catan when not writing about superheroes and Star Wars.
What Is Quentin Tarantino's Favorite Marvel Movie in the MCU?
Chris Hemsworth Talks Fat Thor and His Fight to Keep Him in Avengers: Endgame
Chris Hemsworth Came Very Close to Playing Gambit Instead of Thor
Another MCU Star Really Wants to See Thor in Guardians of the Galaxy 3
Chris Hemsworth Is Definitely Down for More Thor After Avengers: Endgame
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Markham Square
Neighbourhood: Main St Unionville & Enterprise Blvd
Neighbourhood: Unionville
Suite Layouts: 1BR, 1BR + Den, 2BR, 2BR + Den, 3BR + Den
Parking: Space included with suites 579 sq. ft and larger
Locker: Included with suites 571 sq. ft and smaller
Expected Occupancy: April 2021
Prices: 1BR from the $300,000s, 2BR from the $400,00s, 3BR from the high $600,000s
Maintenance Fees: $0.52 per sq. ft. (approx) + Internet. Excludes water, hydro, and heating/cooling
Developer: Ideal Developments
Architects: Kirkor Architects
View West Tower Floorplans
View East Tower Floorplans
Welcome to Markham Square – a visionary new mixed-use development in the heart of Markham offering two condo towers and a new type of living close to good transport links and the newly announced York University Markham campus.
There are a variety of suite layouts available in the two buildings, including 1-bedroom (483 sq. ft. to 549 sq. ft.), 1-bedroom plus den (531 sq.ft. to 654 sq. ft.), 2-bedroom (641 sq. ft. to 836 sq. ft.), 2-bedroom plus den (791 sq. ft. to 1,020 sq. ft.), and 3-bedroom plus den (987 sq. ft. to 1,062 sq. ft.). All units include outdoor space in the form of a balcony or terrace, depending on the location within the building. For full details of the suite layouts, click on the “View Floorplans” button above.
All units will be finished to a high standard and will include a number of top quality features:
Floor-to-ceiling double-glazed windows
9’ smooth ceilings in principal rooms
Custom-designed kitchen cabinetry
Kitchen island with electrical outlet
In-suite alarm system with keypad
Markham Square will consist of two towers: the 33-storey west tower and the 29-storey east tower. Highlights and amenities in the building include: a two-storey lobby with the style and elegance of a hotel, 24-hour concierge service, free wi-fi in all amenity areas, fitness club, yoga/meditation studio, 9th level rooftop lounge, outdoor terrace with barbeques, indoor and outdoor bar, party room, games room, multimedia lounge, guest suites, ample guest parking, and meetings rooms.
Located on the corner of Main St Unionville and Enterprise Boulevard, this neighbourhood offers the best of both worlds. Across the street from Markham Square is the Markham Pan Am Centre – purpose-built for the 2015 Pan Am and now the centre of community sporting activities, with an Olympic-size swimming pool and a huge variety of other sporting facilities.
Nearby, you’ll also find a wide range of shops, restaurants, and even a cinema, all within walking distance. In the near future, there will also be the new Markham campus of York University just a few minutes away. The campus is scheduled to open in 2021 – the same year that tenancy is expected to commence at Markham Square– and that adds to the investment potential in the area because there will be a huge increase in demand for rental units.
For some old-world charm, it’s also just a short walk up Main St Unionville to the heart of historic Unionville and it’s charming shops and parks.
Transit Details
This is a great location for commuters, with a number of transit options nearby. The Unionville GO train station is just a seven-minute walk away from Markham Square. From there you can catch a train to Union Station in downtown Toronto, with the journey taking 40-45 minutes. For buses, you can head up to highway 7 and take advantage of the ‘Rapidway’ service that runs on a dedicated lane on large parts of the highway, allowing buses to quickly navigate through rush-hour traffic. There are also great options for car drivers because the 407 ETR is less than 1km away, while highway 404 is just a short drive away.
Swan Park Towns
Margo Condos
Upper Unionville
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Pool/Getty Images
Obama Redefined Patriotism. Trump Is Trying to Erase That, Too.
By Graham Vyse
Barack Obama delivered the finest speech of his presidency on March 7, 2015. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, and the nation’s first black president stood before the Edmund Pettus Bridge to offer a masterful affirmation—of the heroes who marched for freedom, of their righteous cause, and of the underlying “American instinct that led these young men and women to pick up the torch and cross this bridge.” “It’s the idea held by generations of citizens who believed that America is a constant work in progress,” Obama said, “who believed that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what is right, to shake up the status quo. That’s America.”
The speech was, among other things, a remarkable gift to American liberalism, casting the tradition of progressive protest as core to the nation’s character. It also made clear the president’s conception of American exceptionalism and love of country. As his former chief speechwriter Cody Keenan tweeted on Sunday, referencing the above passage from Obama’s speech:
Protest *is* patriotism. https://t.co/0IqY1fHEFF pic.twitter.com/LcqaILuu92
— Cody Keenan (@codykeenan) September 24, 2017
Today, America is governed by a man who, as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote recently in The Atlantic, “made the negation of Obama’s legacy the foundation of his own.” Donald Trump launched his unlikely political insurgency with the racist lie that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, and as president, Trump is working to dismantle Obama’s signature policy accomplishments: the Affordable Care Act, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Paris climate agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, and detente with Cuba. Trump is finding negation more difficult than anticipated, and yet the project remains his raison d’être.
But Trump is also trying to undo Obama’s legacy in more subtle, yet equally pernicious ways. The president’s days-long, still-ongoing rant against black athletes who protest systemic racism by kneeling during the national anthem is not merely his picking a fight for fight’s sake, or launching a culture war to appeal to his white nationalist base. Trump’s tirade is a direct assault on the idea, frequently promulgated by Obama, that protest is patriotic. That is, it’s an attack on Obama by proxy—a rejection of the values the 44th president spent eight years espousing from the White House.
Barack Obama handed his right-wing critics a gift early in his first presidential campaign: He refused to wear a flag pin on his jacket lapel. “My attitude is that I’m less concerned about what you’re wearing on your lapel than what’s in your heart,” he said in October of 2007. “You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve. You show your patriotism by being true to our values and ideals. That’s what we have to lead with is our values and our ideals.” Conservatives pounced, and by May of 2008, Obama was wearing a flag pin. “Obama may make it sound like just a random fashion choice, but there is a large swath of Americans who take symbols like the pledge of allegiance, the national anthem, and, yes, the flag in its many iterations very seriously,” Jay Newton-Small wrote for Time.
Obama may have relented in this instance, but he nonetheless redefined patriotism as president. CNN writer John Blake surveyed that legacy last October, writing, “No other president has talked about patriotism the way Obama has. It’s a type of patriotism many nonwhite Americans can finally see themselves in.” Blake cited the Selma speech, as well as Obama’s remarks at the dedication of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, when the president said, “This is the place to understand how protest and love of country don’t merely coexist but inform each other—how men can proudly win the gold for their country but still insist on raising a black-gloved fist, how we can wear an ‘I can’t breathe’ T-shirt and still grieve for fallen police officers.”
When Obama was asked last year about Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who began the kneeling protest, he treaded carefully. At a news conference in early September, he said Kaepernick was “exercising his constitutional right to make a statement. I think there’s a long history of sports figures doing so.” He was asked again at a CNN town hall later that month. “I believe that us honoring our flag and our anthem is part of what binds us together as a nation,” he said. “But I also always try to remind folks that part of what makes this country special is that we respect people’s rights to have a different opinion.” The president said protesters should “listen to the pain that that may cause somebody who, for example, had a spouse or a child who was killed in combat and why it hurts them to see somebody not standing. But I also want people to think about the pain he may be expressing about somebody who’s lost a loved one that they think was unfairly shot.”
This was a trademark answer from Obama: He showed profound empathy for both sides in a vitriolic debate, and employed stark language to help them see from the other’s perspective, and to bring them together over their shared pain. Without having to say it, Obama’s message—to the military family and police protester alike—was apparent: You’re all patriotic Americans. Trump’s message is precisely the opposite, imposing a litmus test on all Americans: You’re only patriotic if you stand for the national anthem and honor the flag.
But there’s also a racist dimension, as there always is with Trump, to his definition of patriotism. “It’s impossible not to be struck by Trump’s selective patriotism,” The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb wrote on Sunday. “It drives him to curse at black football players but leaves him struggling to create false equivalence between Nazis and anti-Fascists in Charlottesville.” It is striking indeed, but all too characteristic. Coates described birtherism as “that modern recasting of the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the country they built.” It’s little wonder, then, that birtherism’s chief proponent reflexively attacks black athletes as unpatriotic, and wants to erase his black predecessor’s inclusive, constitutionally faithful understanding of patriotism. For Trump, patriotism comes in only one color.
Graham Vyse is a former staff writer at The New Republic.
@grahamvyse
Politics, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Selma, Colin Kaepernick, Race, Media, Twitter, patriotism
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Illinois Resident Among 5 Dead in Warplanes Crash Off Japan
Associated Press | December 12, 2018 9:14 am
In this Dec. 6, 2018, file photo, Japan's Coast Guard ship, top, and U.S. military plane are seen at sea off Kochi, southwestern Japan, during a search and rescue operation for missing crew members of a U.S. Marine refueling plane and fighter jet. (Kyodo News via AP, File)
TOKYO (AP) — The U.S. military has identified five Marines who were declared dead after their refueling plane collided with a fighter jet last week off Japan's southern coast.
Search and recovery operations have ended after finding only one survivor, who was aboard the fighter jet.
The five crew members identified Wednesday were on a KC-130 Hercules refueling aircraft that collided with an F/A-18 Hornet during regular training. The warplanes crashed into the sea south of Japan's Shikoku island.
The Marine Corps identified the crew members as Lt. Col. Kevin R. Herrmann, 38, of New Bern, North Carolina; Maj. James M. Brophy, 36, of Staatsburg, New York; Staff Sgt. Maximo A. Flores, 27, of Surprise, Arizona; Cpl. Daniel E. Baker, 21, of Tremont, Illinois; and Cpl. William C. Ross, 21, of Hendersonville, Tennessee.
They were based at Iwakuni air station near Hiroshima as part of the Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 152.
“It is with heavy hearts that we announce the names of our fallen Marines,” Marine Corps Lt. Col. Mitchell T. Maury, the squadron's commanding officer, said in a statement. “They were exceptional aviators, Marines, and friends whom will be eternally missed. Our thoughts and prayers remain with their families and loved ones at this extremely difficult time.”
The two crew members in the fighter jet were recovered after the accident, but one died. He was earlier identified as Capt. Jahmar Resilard, 28, of Miramar, Florida. The Marines said the survivor was in stable condition when rescued.
The search for the five missing crew, joined by Japanese and Australian forces, was halted Tuesday and they were declared dead.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation, the Marines said.
It said Herrmann served in the Marine Corps for 16 years and is survived by his wife and three daughters. He was promoted posthumously to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Brophy, who served 12 years in the Marine Corps, is survived by his wife, son and daughter.
Flores served nine years in the Marine Corps and is survived by his wife.
Baker joined the Marines two years ago and is survived by his mother and father.
Ross also served two years and is survived by his mother and father, the Marines said.
The crash is the latest in a series of recent accidents involving U.S. military forces deployed in and near Japan.
Last month, a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan crashed into the sea southwest of Japan's southern island of Okinawa, though its two pilots were rescued. In mid-October, a MH-60 Seahawk also belonging to the Ronald Reagan crashed off the Philippine Sea shortly after takeoff, causing non-fatal injuries to a dozen sailors.
Two years ago, a MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft Osprey crashed during a nighttime refueling exercise off the southern island of Okinawa, injuring two crew members.
More than 50,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan under a security pact.
George W. Bush to Receive Award from Lincoln Foundation
Trump Declares Support for Saudis Despite Khashoggi Murder
Former NATO Ambassador Says Trump Abdicating Global Leadership
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Home https://server7.kproxy.com/servlet/redirect.srv/sruj/smyrwpoii/p2/ Sport https://server7.kproxy.com/servlet/redirect.srv/sruj/smyrwpoii/p2/ Matt Kuchar responds to the controversy
Matt Kuchar responds to the controversy
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – Matt Kuchar, in an interview with GOLF.com on Wednesday night, said he was "disappointed" and "sad" with his $ 5,000 fee on his Mexican card, David "El Tucan" Ortiz, $ 1.3 million in November at Mayakoba Golf Classic, led to hurt feelings about what became joy, learning wins.
"I think someone has reached his ear," Kuchar said. "I was very clear and very upfront on Tuesday [of the tournament week]. And he said, 'It's okay, he has bonuses, which make up $ 4,000."
Kuchar said he told Ortiz he would pay $ 1,000 if he missed the cut, $ 2,000 if he did the cut, $ 3,000 if he had a top-20 and $ 4,000 if he had a top-1
0. "The extra $ 1,000 is, & # 39; Thank you – a good week. & # 39; These are the rules, she agrees with those rules, that's my struggle. I do not know what happened. One person said, & # 39; You need more. & # 39; "
Ortiz described his salary of $ 3,000 for a week, with $ 2,000 as a down payment of whatever his bonus.
Kuchar was wet and tired after Wednesday's pro-am round which took nearly five hours to complete. He sits in a bank at the Riviera clubhouse and quietly explains his part of the El Tucan Affair within 20 minutes without his trademark sign.
A winning Tour caddy can expect to receive 10 percent of his players' winnings. In this case, it costs $ 130,000. For a club caddy at a resort that is usually made $ 100 to $ 200 a day, this would be a huge amount.
Ortiz said in a recent telephone interview that he was given a envelope on Sunday evening after a cash tournament here. He counts it after Kuchar left, he said. In an interview shortly after the November tournament, Ortiz said he still hopes to receive a bonus check for the win. He did not think he paid him in full. The point of Kuchar on Wednesday evening at the Riviera was that in his mind that he had paid Ortiz more than the agreed amount.
Kuchar described a local caddy he had in Mexico City a couple of years ago named Santiago and how he had dinner with him whenever he returned to Mexico City. "I hope that there will be such a relationship with David," Kuchar said, "but this does not happen."
Ortiz said he was not interested in working for Kuchar again, though he was described as a "good man and a good player." About 10 weeks after the November 11 event, Ortiz was offered an additional $ 15,000 bonus, which he denied. In an interview he said, "Not thanks, they can keep their money." He said he felt a $ 50,000 fee was appropriate.
Kuchar said he always had his intention to bring his regular man, veteran Tour caddy John Wood, to Mayakoba. The belief that Ortiz will play the tournament when Kuchar released this year "will never be something," Kuchar said.
Kuchar seems somewhat embarrassed that the extra amount is offered, because he felt his financial obligation to Ortiz was complete. Asked how it was shown that the additional amount was offered, Kuchar said, "It's the agency." He is referring to Excel Sports Management, which represents him. Agent of Kuchar has Mark Steinberg, who also represents Tiger Woods and Justin Rose.
Kuchar was asked who would actually pay the money.
Kuchar smiled and said, "It does not appear in Steinberg's pocket." , Kuchar will pay. He said that further proffered payment was Steinberg's effort to control the damage.
I think if you ask for the attendant room locker, they will tell you that they are happy to see me. I'm not Phil Mickelson, but these guys are like, & # 39; Matt is coming our way. & # 39;
"I think people know me well enough to know I'm not trying to get away with anything, that's not how I work," Kuchar says. He said that some players give him a hard time about caddy-payment debacle, "just as I would do with them." Kuchar has a reputation for having needle out and talking smack during training rounds.
Kuchar said he did not really understand why the pay dispute became an emotional issue. It said that a $ 5,000 caddy payment to a $ 1.3 million payday seemed sparingly, he nodded, but indicated he had a different look.
"For a man who makes $ 200 a day, a $ 5,000 week is a really big week," he said. .
"I try to look at the bright side of everything," Kuchar said. "I hope he's happy, I hope things are really good in his life. I must think, if he is given the same opportunity to do it again, he'll say, & # 39; Yes. & # 39; He's a good person, he's a good partner. The picture of two of us with a trophy, always on the wall in my office. "
There are players, somewhat or not, with a reputation for frugal tippers. And there are players at the other end of the spectrum. Asked where he came down to that spectrum, Kuchar said, "I think if you ask for the attendant room locker, they will tell you that they are happy to see me. I'm not Phil Mickelson, but these guys are like of, & # 39; Matt is coming our way. & # 39;
"Maybe I missed the boat here. I think, I went there [to Mexico City] next week, and win, I'm expected to pay him $ 130,000? "
Kuchar, the player ranked 10th in the all-time money list on the Tour with $ 46 million, has his own answer, he paid $ 5,000. If he paid $ 50,000, you would read etc. And he paid $ 130,000, he wanted to become a legend in Mayakoba, and in far-infested caves, forever.
Michael Bamberger could have reached [email protected]
Latest CC Sabathia-Rays tiff is required Yankees spark
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Washburn University celebrates Founders Day Feb 6
01/30/14 07:01 am CST
Media Opportunity
When: Thursday, Feb. 6, 2014
Where: Main level, Memorial Union
Washburn University will celebrate 149 years on Founders Day on Feb. 6. Washburn President Jerry Farley will serve free cupcakes at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 6 on the main level, Memorial Union, Washburn campus.
Washburn history:
Washburn University was established February 6, 1865 as Lincoln College by a charter issued by the State of Kansas and the General Association of Congregational Ministers and Churches of Kansas. A two-story brick building on the northeast corner of 10th and Jackson Streets was soon erected and the first classes began in January 1866. In 1868, the school was renamed Washburn College, in recognition of a $25,000 donation by Ichabod Washburn, a church deacon and resident of Worcester, Mass.
Washburn was granted a permanent location in 1865 when Topekan Col. John Ritchie donated a 160-acre site, which at the time was a considerable distance southwest of the city. Construction on the first building began in 1872, with occupancy taking place in 1874. For the next two decades, college President Peter McVicar conducted an aggressive development campaign. His efforts resulted in the establishment of numerous Victorian limestone structures that characterized the campus for the next 90 years.
Expansion of the school was constant. The School of Law was organized in 1903, as was a School of Fine Arts and a medical school, which educated physicians until 1913. During the next three decades structures such as the Mulvane Art Museum, Benton Hall and Whiting Field House were added to the campus. In 1966, a tornado struck Topeka and several original and historic buildings on campus were demolished, as were more than 600 massive trees that had shaded the campus. The Washburn community rallied and financial support from friends and alumni made possible the rebuilding of many school facilities during the coming years. Today, university facilities offer more than one million square feet of modern academic and support space.
In 1941, the citizens of Topeka endorsed Washburn by voting to establish a municipal university, supported in part by the city and governed by a local board of regents. In 1952, the Washburn Board of Regents officially changed the name of the school to Washburn University of Topeka. In 1999, the university’s primary funding was moved from city property tax to county sales tax sources, with the school retaining status as a municipal subdivision of the state. In addition to local financial support, Washburn has received state funds since 1961, which have been coordinated by the Kansas Board of Regents since 1991. The university is governed by its own nine-member Board of Regents.
At Washburn University, more than 6,973 students and 1,000 faculty and staff are involved in more than 200 academic programs. Leading to certification, associate, bachelor, master's, doctor of nursing practice and juris doctor degrees through the College of Arts and Sciences and the schools of Applied Studies, Business, Law and Nursing. Washburn is located on a 160-acre campus in the heart of Topeka. The broadly-based liberal arts and professional programs are enriched by a long-standing interactive relationship between the campus and Kansas’s capital city community.
Amanda Hughes, university relations, 785-670-2153
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Washburn University’s Mulvane Art Museum Sin Nombre film and guest speaker
11/10/17 5:59 pm CST
Washburn University’s Mulvane Art Museum will host a film screening and discussion of the film Sin Nombre on Tuesday, November 14 at 6:00 pm in the upstairs gallery. The film, shown in conjunction with two of our exhibitions that focus on the Mexican American community and U.S. immigration detention facilities, is about Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a Honduran teen who hungers for a better life. Her chance for one comes when she is reunited with her long-estranged father, whomore...
Washburn University is named the first Purple Heart University in Kansas
11/8/17 12:50 pm CST
Washburn University is being recognized on Thursday, November 9, for its commitment to veterans and members of the military with designation as the first Purple Heart University in Kansas. The award is being presented by the Military Order of the Purple Heart, an organization chartered by Congress in 1958 to recognize men and women who received the Purple Heart Medal for wounds suffered in combat. The organization advocates on behalf of veterans and runs amore...
Washburn University Welcomes Alpha Sigma Lambda Honor Society
11/1/17 1:37 pm CDT
Topeka, Kan. – Washburn University has become the newest chapter of the Alpha Sigma Lambda (ASL) Honor Society. Washburn’s Upsilon Nu chapter joins with more than 300 other chapters across the country. Founded in 1946, ASL partners with colleges and universities to celebrate the scholarship and leadership of adult students in higher education. ASL’s mission ismore...
Washburn University hosts Military Appreciation Day Nov. 4
10/31/17 1:45 pm CDT
Topeka, Kan. – The Washburn University office of student life will host Military Appreciation Day Saturday, Nov. 4 for current and former members of America’s armed forces. Beginning at 10 a.m., members of the military and Washburn communities will be available to explain military education benefits and answer any questions from military-connected people or their family members. Other events include a visit from the Rolling Thunder and inflatables for kids. This eventmore...
Media Advisory: Educators from across Kansas gather for STEM Educators’ Conference today
10/30/17 5:39 am CDT
Former NASA Astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison to give speech tonight keynote
WHAT: More than 200 educators from across Kansas will be on hand Monday to learn the latest techniques in teaching science, technology, engineering and math at this full-day conference on the Washburn University campus in Topeka.The conference features multiple professional tracks and breakout sessions for teachers from elementary schools through middle and high school and is designed to help teachers understand how to incorporate STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) topics intomore...
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Gay Wrestler Supports Suicide Prevention by...Making Porn
Wednesday Dec 5, 2018
Openly gay wrestler and personal trainer Dave Marshall has found a unique way to support suicide prevention: By making porn.
In an interview with Gay Star News, the Australian athlete opened up about using his OnlyFans account for a good cause. OnlyFans is a private subscription service that allows users to require a fee to see their content. A number of porn stars use the platform to build their brand and make extra money.
Marshall, 29, explained his father took his own life last year and that he donates a portion of his proceeds from OnlyFans to the suicide prevention group Beyond blue. So far, he said he's raised about $3,600.
"The reason the money I raise from my OnlyFans goes towards Beyond Blue is seeing every day how big depression and anxiety has become in society and almost overlooked," he wrote on Instagram. "Stats on LGBT in this area are quite scary too so I hope I can in some way, give back to my community. Positivity is everything."
Speaking with GSN, Marshall said he came out as gay three years ago — around the same time he quit his sales job to start wrestling professionally.
"I had hooked up with guys in my early years of high school, although it was always in secret," he said. "I ended up in and out of relationships with girls. The last one when I was 18 — that lasted for seven years. I told her when we were 23 I was bi but [she said] as long as I loved her, she didn't care."
Nevertheless, they broke up and that's when he started dating a man. Even though that relationship did not last, his ex is the one who told him about OnlyFans. At first, Marshall wasn't too sure about it.
"After some thought, I did start it up with part [of the] proceeds going to Beyond Blue," This text will be the linkthe athlete told GSN.
On Instagram, he added:
"I know my way of donating to my charity may be a bit different but the waves of positive messages from you guys has been a blessing! To those that don't agree, look around, there is so much negativity in the world today already, don't add to that! Spread some positivity and love life!"
Check out some highlights from Marshall's Instagram below. Check out his OnlyFans account by clicking here. And Click here to read his full interview with GSN.
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Dr. Ayesha Khanna
CEO, ADDO AI, Founder, 21C Girls
Dr. Ayesha Khanna is Co-Founder and CEO of ADDO AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) advisory firm and incubator. She has been a strategic advisor on artificial intelligence, smart cities and fintech to clients such as SMRT, Singapore's largest public transport company, SOMPO, Japan's largest insurance firm, and Smart Dubai, the government agency tasked to transform Dubai into a leading smart city.
In 2017, ADDO AI was featured in Forbes magazine as one of four leading artificial intelligence companies in Asia and Ayesha was named one of South East Asia's groundbreaking female entrepreneurs by Forbes magazine in 2018. Ayesha is also the Founder of 21C GIRLS, a charity that delivers free coding and artificial intelligence classes to girls in Singapore.
She has been published and quoted on technology, innovation and smart cities in The New York Times, BusinessWeek, TIME, Newsweek, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review. Ayesha has a BA in Economics from Harvard University, an MS in Operations Research from Columbia University and a PhD in Information Systems and Innovation from the London School of Economics.
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Patrick Bordeleau
Avs’ Bordeleau out 8-10 weeks with fractured kneecap
By Jason BroughDec 23, 2014, 1:44 PM EDT
As if missing Colorado’s first 32 games after undergoing offseason back surgery wasn’t trying enough for fourth-liner Patrick Bordeleau, now he’s got a fractured knee cap and will be out another 8-10 weeks.
Bordeleau has played just one game in 2014-15; he returned to the Avalanche lineup Saturday in Buffalo, logging 6:46 of ice time and registering two hits.
It’s not clear how Bordeleau suffered the injury. He was listed as a scratch Sunday versus Detroit.
The Avs host the Blues tonight.
Tags: Colorado Avalanche, Patrick Bordeleau
Varlamov’s return pushed back, McGinn’s season might be done
By Ryan DadounNov 30, 2014, 6:36 PM EDT
Avalanche coach Patrick Roy will get to see goaltender Calvin Pickard at least one more time before netminder Semyon Varlamov’s (groin) return pushes the team to make a change.
Although Roy initially expected Varlamov to be available on Monday, per the Denver Post’s Adrian Dater, the bench boss has decided to err on the side of caution by delaying their starting goaltender’s return until Thursday. Pickard will start again on Monday, according to Mike Chambers.
Roy has previously stated that he intends to keep Pickard on the roster once Varlamov is healthy enough to play and he doesn’t want to carry three goaltenders. Unless something changes soon, the stage seems to be set for Reto Berra to be put on waivers.
Although the Avalanche are likely to get Varlamov back soon, the news is far grimmer for Jamie McGinn. The 26-year-old forward hasn’t played in roughly two weeks and might undergo season-ending back surgery. Patrick Bordeleau had back surgery over the offseason and won’t be able to make his season debut for weeks.
In light of Colorado’s injury problems, they’ve summoned 21-year-old forward Colin Smith and 22-year-old forward Mike Sgarbossa. Smith is looking to make his NHL debut while Sgarbossa has six NHL contests under his belt.
Colorado will face Montreal next.
Follow @RyanDadoun
Tags: Colorado Avalanche, Jamie McGinn, Patrick Bordeleau, Reto Berra, Semyon Varlamov
An Avalanche of injury woes in Colorado
By Cam TuckerNov 21, 2014, 6:37 PM EDT
It’s not getting any easier for the Colorado Avalanche.
The Avalanche continue to occupy last place in the Central Division, a sign of the regression many who believe in advanced statistics thought was going to happen. Now, Colorado is dealing with a rash of injuries, forcing them to recall three players – Andrew Agozzino, Ben Street and Tomas Vincour – from Lake Erie in the American Hockey League.
According to the Avalanche, there are eight players now out of the lineup due to injuries. You might say this dilemma is starting to snowball.
Alex Tanguay was the latest casualty. He took an Alex Ovechkin shot to the face and suffered a facial fracture as a result.
“He texted me last night after the game and said that he will try and come back as soon as possible,” head coach Patrick Roy said Friday, as per the club’s website. “Knowing Tang, I know he has the success of the team at heart. He knows that he is an important player, and he will do whatever he can to come back as soon as possible.”
That’s a tough loss for the Avalanche right there. The 35-year-old Tanguay – and this might be a sign of the times and struggles in Colorado right now – leads the Avalanche in goals with seven.
Perhaps the good news is goalie Semyon Varlamov is only listed as day-to-day with a groin injury, suffered earlier this week. Although, because it’s a groin injury, the good news still comes with caution.
It’s not so promising beyond that.
Rookie forward Dennis Everberg (shoulder) is also out. Roy didn’t have any specific timeline for him, other than he’s out for “awhile,” according to the club.
Defenseman Ryan Wilson (shoulder surgery) is out for the season. The club has listed Patrick Bordeleau (back), Brad Stuart (hamstring) and Jesse Winchester (head) as out indefinitely, and forward Jamie McGinn (back) was still being evaluated.
Tags: Alex Ovechkin, Alex Tanguay, Brad Stuart, Colorado Avalanche, Dennis Everberg, Jamie McGinn, Jesse Winchester, Patrick Bordeleau, Ryan Wilson, Semyon Varlamov, Washington Capitals
Bordeleau (back) out about three months, others Avs limp into camp
By James O'BrienSep 18, 2014, 11:00 PM EDT
NHL training camps are rapidly approaching, yet the Colorado Avalanche already come in a little banged up.
The Denver Post reports that head coach Patrick Roy was nearly having a difficult time keeping track of their injuries. Let’s take a look at the slew of injury notes from that article:
Patrick Bordeleau underwent offseason back surgery and is expected to miss the first three months (give or take) of the 2014-15 season.
Jamie McGinn is also dealing with a bad back that might sideline him for part of training camp.
John Mitchell is struggling with migraines.
The following players are dealing with what the Denver Post describes as “minor and undisclosed injuries”: Gabriel Landeskog, Ryan O’Reilly, Jan Hejda and Max Talbot. On the bright side, many of those players were involved in scrimmages this week, so it doesn’t sound like these are serious issues.
Avs exec Joe Sakic expressed his belief that the team added valuable depth during this offseason, so perhaps they’ll be able to weather this early storm quite well?
More than a few people look at how savagely Colorado was often out-chanced last season and believe that the team will take a big tumble down the standings even at full strength, so it’s not ideal to see such health issues cropping up. Sakic and Roy seem pretty confident in their ability to keep things going, though.
Follow James O’Brien @cyclelikesedins
Tags: Colorado Avalanche, Gabriel Landeskog, Jamie McGinn, Jan Hejda, John Mitchell, Max Talbot, Patrick Bordeleau, Ryan O'Reilly
Get your game notes: Avalanche at Wild
By Jason BroughApr 24, 2014, 1:07 PM EDT
Tonight on CNBC, it’s the Minnesota Wild hosting the Colorado Avalanche starting at 9 :30 p.m. ET. Following are some game notes, as compiled by the NHL on NBC research team:
• Wild center Mikael Granlund scored 5:08 into overtime to give Minnesota its first win of the series in Game 3. Granlund became only the fifth NHL player in the last 75 years to score his first career playoff goal in a 1-0 overtime game. The others were San Jose’s Andrei Zyuzin (1998), Philadelphia’s Ruslan Fedotenko (2002), San Jose’s Niko Dimitrakos (2004) and Colorado’s Ryan O’Reilly (2010). O’Reilly had come off the ice two shifts before Granlund potted the winner. Elias Sports Bureau
• The Wild registered a franchise postseason record 46 shots on goal in Game 3, led by Granlund and Zach Parise (seven apiece). Only once has Minnesota registered more shots in a game, regular season or playoffs. That came on Dec. 21, 2002, when they peppered goaltender and current coach Patrick Roy with 47 shots in a 4-2 loss at Pepsi Center.
• Avalanche forward, Nathan MacKinnon (1-6–7) needs two points to become the highest-scoring teenager playing in his first playoff series in the Expansion Era (1968-present). Elias Sports Bureau
• The Avalanche’s top line of Gabriel Landeskog – Paul Stastny – MacKinnon combined for 17 points (seven goals, 10 assists) and 20 shots on goal in Games 1 and 2, both wins. In the Game 3 loss, the trio was held without a point on seven shots, primarily by the Wild’s checking line of Matt Cooke – Erik Haula – Justin Fontaine. With the seven-game suspension handed down to Cooke, the task of slowing down the Avs’ top line will be given to rookies Haula and Fontaine and second-year Nino Niederreiter.
• Avs center Joey Hishon is expected to make his NHL debut on the fourth line with wingers Paul Carey and Patrick Bordeleau. The last player to make his debut in the playoffs for the Quebec Nordiques/ Colorado Avalanche franchise was winger Mike Hough in 1985. Hough did not register any points.
If Hishon plays, he will be the 12th Colorado skater to make his NHL playoff debut this season, tying the Avs with Tampa Bay and Columbus for the most playoff debutants this postseason.
• Wild goaltender Darcy Kuemper came into Game 3 with three career postseason appearances, all in relief. In 2013, he allowed four goals in 73:27 in Games 4 and 5 vs. Chicago (both losses). After stopping all 14 shots in 26:02 in Game 2 vs. Colorado, Kuemper posted a 22-save shutout in 64:44 in his first postseason start. Kuemper, who set a franchise rookie record with 16 consecutive starts in goal during the regular season, will make his second straight postseason start tonight
Tags: Colorado Avalanche, Darcy Kuemper, Erik Haula, Gabriel Landeskog, Justin Fontaine, Matt Cooke, Mikael Granlund, Minnesota Wild, Nathan MacKinnon, Nino Niederreiter, Patrick Bordeleau, Paul Carey, Paul Stastny, Zach Parise
Avs’ Bordeleau out 8-10 weeks with fractured kneecap December 23, 2014 1:44 pm EDT Varlamov’s return pushed back, McGinn’s season might be done November 30, 2014 6:36 pm EDT An Avalanche of injury woes in Colorado November 21, 2014 6:37 pm EDT Bordeleau (back) out about three months, others Avs limp into camp September 18, 2014 11:00 pm EDT Get your game notes: Avalanche at Wild April 24, 2014 1:07 pm EDT Avalanche’s Varlamov stops 45 shots, but Wild win in OT April 21, 2014 10:25 pm EDT Video: Matt Cooke injures Barrie with knee-on-knee hit April 21, 2014 8:46 pm EDT Sharks’ Hannan injured against Avalanche (Updated) April 12, 2014 12:18 am EDT Fleury leads battered Penguins to victory over Avalanche April 6, 2014 11:02 pm EDT Roy calls Backes ‘gutless’ for altercation with MacKinnon April 5, 2014 5:48 pm EDT Video: Bordeleau tossed for checking Schenn from behind February 6, 2014 8:07 pm EDT Hall questions if refs changed call over jumbotron replay December 21, 2013 9:00 am EDT Roy rips McGinn, says he needs to be better… everywhere, really November 28, 2013 7:56 pm EDT Duchene to miss Avs’ two-game road trip November 20, 2013 3:34 pm EDT MacKinnon to replace Duchene at center November 18, 2013 5:45 pm EDT Avs rip Stewart after Sarich scrap, celebration November 15, 2013 12:42 am EDT Video: Contestants for Hockey Fights’ best bout of 2013 July 10, 2013 9:45 pm EDT Avs re-sign tough guy Bordeleau to three-year, $3 million deal June 5, 2013 1:05 pm EDT Flames’ Stajan leaves game with upper-body injury, won’t return April 8, 2013 11:04 pm EDT Landeskog treating rematch vs. Sharks, Stuart ‘like any other game’ February 26, 2013 10:59 am EDT
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·17th May 2018
·Chris Lawton
Pro Football is nearly back once more. For all those fans who are complaining there’s no pro ball until the NFL pre-season, the CFL has its first pre-season game – Saskatchewan at Edmonton on Sunday May 27th.
Imagine that. Not the long drought between the draft and the NFL pre-season that so many bemoan, but actual pro football happening throughout summer. A lot of UK fans are locked on the NFL and don’t really consider the CFL. Those fans are missing out on a lot of fun.
Of course if you want to start following a game or a new league it is usually more interesting and certainly more fun if you pick a team to follow.
Perhaps the best way to do that is to find something about a team that attracts you. So to help you out below are a few pointers on each of the 9 CFL teams. The CFL has a great online community too, so with that in mind there are links to websites and suggestions for twitter fans to follow. Each team has lots of great fans online and the suggested ones here will hopefully act as a doorway to you finding more and discovering a whole new community.
BC Lions: Based in Vancouver, British Columbia the Leos play in the CFL West Division. Founded in 1954, they are currently coached by CFL living legend Wally Buono who is by all accounts entering his last season in the coaching ranks. According to fan forums the most popular NFL team in Vancouver is the Seahawks by some margin, but that doesn’t mean they don’t support BC too. Jeff Reinebold, well known in UK football circles, has returned to coaching in BC and has already been appealing to the UK fan base to get behind the Leos! They last appeared in, and won The Grey Cup in 2011.
Team Website: https://www.bclions.com/
Team Twitter: @BCLions https://twitter.com/BCLions
Twitter hashtag: #BCLions
Suggested fan Twitter account: @BCLionsDen https://twitter.com/BCLionsDen
FUN FACT: In 1991, Doug Flutie’s second year in the CFL, he set the all time single season passing yards record of not just the CFL but all of professional football with 6,619 yards.
Calgary Stampeders: Based in Calgary, Alberta the Stamps play in the CFL West Division. Founded in 1945 they are part of a football tradition in the city that dates back to 1909. Over the last 2 years Calgary are a regular season CFL best 28-6-2, only to be upset in The Grey Cup final by Ottawa & Toronto respectively. Formerly community owned, following financial difficulties they were put into private hands in 1991 and have been privately owned since. Former NFL stars who have played for the Stamps include QB’s Doug Flutie and Jeff Garcia. They were last year’s Grey Cup runners-up and last won The Grey Cup in 2014.
Team Website: https://www.stampeders.com/
Team Twitter: @calstampeders https://twitter.com/calstampeders
Twitter hashtag: #GoStampsGo
Suggested fan Twitter account: @StampsFans https://twitter.com/stampsfans?lang=en
FUN FACT: In 1992, the Stamps made Doug Flutie the highest paid CFL player when they signed him to a $1,000,000 contract. They won their 3rd Grey Cup championship that same year.
Edmonton Eskimos: Based in Edmonton, Alberta the Eskimos play in the CFL West Division. Founded in 1949, the Eskimos colour and uniform choice was decided for them as they started out with hand me down uniforms from the University of Alberta Golden Bears. They are one of the three community owned teams in the CFL. The Esks hold the distinction for the longest run of making the playoffs for any North American sports team – an incredible 34 years between 1972 and 2005. NFL fans will probably recognise the name Warren Moon, who helped lead them to 5 straight championships between 1978-82 They last appeared in, and won The Grey Cup in 2015.
Team Website: https://www.esks.com/
Team Twitter: @EdmontonEsks https://twitter.com/EdmontonEsks
Twitter hashtag: #OnEEmpire
Suggested fan Twitter account: @EskEmpirePod https://twitter.com/eskempirepod
FUN FACT: The Edmonton Eskimos CFL team was founded in 1949; however other teams existed with this same name in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Hamilton Tiger-Cats: Based in Hamilton, Ontario the Ti-Cats play in the CFL East Division. Founded in 1950 they were created by a merger of the Hamilton Tigers and Hamilton Cats – hence the name. In 2003 they had the dubious distinction of the CFL’s most ever losses in a season with 17. Hamilton and Toronto have been playing each other in one form or another since 1873, although those early games bore little to no relation to what we see now! They last appeared in The Grey Cup in 2014, but last won The Grey Cup in 1999.
Team Website: http://ticats.ca/
Team Twitter: @Ticats https://twitter.com/Ticats
Twitter hashtag: #Hamiltonproud
Suggested fan Twitter account: @BoxJBoys https://twitter.com/boxjboys?lang=en
FUN FACT: In an eleven season span from 1957 to 1967, the Tiger-Cats played in the Grey Cup nine times, winning it all on four occasions.
Montreal Alouettes: Based in Montreal, Quebec the Alouettes were founded in 1946 and they play in the CFL East Division. They have actually folded twice only to be re-formed. The league considers all the iterations of the Alouettes as one club dating back to their founding. The first known written account of a football game in North America comes from Montreal when a team of English troops played civilians from Mcgill University in 1868. The Alouettes had been pretty successful through the 2000’s and have had on their roster, Mike Pringle the CFL career rushing yardage leader and Antony Calvillo pro footballs all time passing yardage leader. They were a league worst 3-15 in 2017 and have brought in former NFL coach Mike Sherman. Bringing in a former NFL coach worked for the Argonauts, but Marc Trestman already had a deep understanding & experience of the Canadian game. It will be interesting to see how Sherman fares. For anyone wondering just what an Alouette is – it is french for Lark! They last appeared in, and won The Grey Cup in 2010.
Team Website: https://www.montrealalouettes.com/
Team Twitter: @MTLAlouettes https://twitter.com/MTLAlouettes
Twitter hashtag: #AlsMTL
Suggested fan Twitter account: @AlouettesFLDeck https://twitter.com/AlouettesFLDeck
FUN FACT: Professional wrestler ‘total Package’ Lex Luger played parts of the 1979, 1980, and 1981 CFL seasons for the Montreal Alouettes under his given name Larry Pfohl.
Ottawa Redblacks: Based in Ottawa, Ontario, the RedBlacks play in the CFL East Division. Founded as recently as 2014 the RedBlacks are a little misleading for new fans as there has been a team in Ottawa, on and off since 1876. The Ottawa Rough Riders were a founder member of the CFL and played up until 1996. An Ottawa Renegades team lasted only from 2002-2005. Many Ottawans see this team as the continuation of their former representatives but the CFL does not list them as continuous or connected in that way. Ottawa may well have liked to reinstate the Rough Riders name but Saskatchewan lobbied against this. The RedBlacks name came from a fan competition and is copyrighted in both English and French (Rouge et Noir). They last appeared in, and won, The Grey Cup in 2016
Team Website: https://www.ottawaredblacks.com/
Team Twitter: @REDBLACKS https://twitter.com/REDBLACKS
Twitter hashtag: #RNation
Suggested fan Twitter account: @LumberJoes https://twitter.com/LumberJoes
FUN FACT: The REDBLACKS made their CFL debut on July 3, 2014 in Winnipeg. Running back Chevon Walker scored the franchise’s first touchdown early in the first quarter.
Saskatchewan Roughriders : Based in Regina, Saskatchewan and playing in the CFL West Division. The most obvious comparison here is that they are sometimes referred to as the Packers of the North. Founded in 1910, the green and white are the 3rd oldest pro football team in existence behind the Arizona Cardinals and the CFL’s own Argonauts. They are a community owned team with a pretty rabid fan base. They sell close on as much merchandise as the rest of the CFL combined. In fact they sell more merchandise than any other sports team in Canada with the exceptions of the Toronto Maple Leafs & Montreal Canadiens, and not unlike the Packers fans and their cheeseheads, Riders fans have a tradition all of their own – the carved out watermelon worn on their heads! They last appeared in, and won The Grey Cup in 2013.
Team Website: https://www.riderville.com/
Team Twitter: @sskroughriders https://twitter.com/sskroughriders
Twitter hashtag: #RiderPride
Suggested fan Twitter account: @PifflesPod https://twitter.com/pifflespod?lang=en
FUN FACT: Saskatchewan’s team name, ‘Roughriders’ comes from an alternate name for the North-West Mounted Police.
Toronto Argonauts: Based in Toronto, Ontario, the double blues are North America’s oldest professional football team and play in the CFL East Division. The Argos were founded in 1873, initially as a rugby club and for the first 83 years of their existence were owned by the Argonaut Rowing Club. They have won a record 16 Grey Cups. Toronto perennially struggle with growing their fan base, which is a shame for such a big city. Some point to a TV blackout in the 70’s and 80’s that meant many potential fans became more engaged with the NFL. Also arguable is that Toronto is ‘not a football town’. A lot of potential support goes to the NBA’s Raptors and MLB’s Blue Jays as well as a growing number of MLS Toronto FC fans. In 2017 they hired ex Bears coach Marc Trestman & experienced CFL GM Jim Popp who are looking to bring success and with it more attention for the team. They are the defending Grey Cup champions.
Team Website: https://www.argonauts.ca/
Team Twitter: @TorontoArgos https://twitter.com/TorontoArgos
Twitter hashtag: #Argosfootball
Suggested fan Twitter account: @TheArgosOars https://twitter.com/TheArgosOARS
FUN FACT: The 1997 Toronto Argonauts were the first professional football team to have two different Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks on their roster; Doug Flutie (Boston College – 1984) and Andre Ware (University of Houston – 1989).
Winnipeg Blue Bombers: Based in Winnipeg, Manitoba the Blue Bombers play in the CFL West Division. Founded in 1930, Winnipeg have appeared in The Grey Cup 25 times, which is more than any other CFL team. They are a community owned team and ‘Big Blue’ have a very loyal fan base. Perhaps the most recognisable name from their coaching history for NFL fans would be that of Bud Grant who won 4 Grey Cups before famously going on to lose 4 Superbowl’s coaching the Vikings. Very few CFL all time records are dominated by Blue Bombers players, but Milt Stegall, who played briefly for the Bengals from 92-94 does hold a host of receiving records. They last appeared in The Grey Cup in 2011, but last won The Grey Cup in 1990.
Team Website: https://www.bluebombers.com/
Team Twitter: @WPG_BlueBombers https://twitter.com/Wpg_BlueBombers
Twitter hashtag: #ForTheW
Suggested fan Twitter account: @BomberFanTed https://twitter.com/BomberFanTed?lang=en
FUN FACT: Former Head Coach Bud Grant is one of only two people (along with Warren Moon) and the only coach to be in both the NFL Pro football and Canadian Football Hall-of-Fame.
Hopefully BT Sport and ESPN will again be covering the CFL in the UK (at the time of writing confirmation has not yet been seen), but just to get a flavour of the game and the teams it is well worth checking in on the CFL’s game recaps page. You can even start with last year’s Grey Cup highlights! https://www.cfl.ca/videos/2017-game-recaps/
So there you have it, a by no means definitive guide to each CFL team – the big question now is – which is the one for you?
Article written by: Chris Lawton
Chris Lawton joined the NFLGirlUK.com team in 2017 and has been writing about the CFL ever since. He originally started following the NFL with the 'first wave' of fans when it was shown on Channel 4 in the 1980's. He has been a keen supporter of the Miami Dolphins since 1983. Chris first encountered the CFL in 2016 and instantly fell in love with the Canadian game. He has been writing about the CFL from the inception of Ninety-Nine Yards. You can find him on twitter as @CFLfanUK
Titans QB Controversy? by Stuart Taylor
Dan 17th May 2018
Really missing out on a whole lot of rich history and passion for the Hamilton Ticats. With a passionate fanbase that will drop everything they’re doing to support the team. Just take a look at the yellow and black kilt wearing box J boys for instance. Let’s not forget about the amazing players we have had, with some more recent legends like Danny McManus, Darren Flutie and Joe Montford. The most famous of all being big Angelo Mosca, who was a superstar in the 60s for all of football and even took his talents to wrestling with the great Andre the giant.
Chris Lawton 18th May 2018
Hi Dan, thanks for taking the time to read the article. I was trying to keep each team down to a brief intro for new fans to the league here in the UK. I love your obvious passion & I have pointed people to the box J boys on twitter so hopefully they can get a flavour of the passionate fan base there. Now I’m going to read up all about Angelo Mosca and his influence because he sounds fascinating!
Scott 21st February 2019
You certainly were keeping it brief with your Hamilton description, as it’s by far the brief-est. Looks like someone is an Argo fan lol. I enjoy the coverage in the UK with Jeff Reinbold on the panel.
Chris Lawton 22nd February 2019
Hi Scott, Thanks for reading the article – I appreciate it! Dan (see above) has already picked me up on Hamilton. Good to know that Hamilton have fans who look out for their team! I usually do something like this before each season to give UK based fans an idea of the teams and their history if they are just coming to the CFL. Looks like I’ll have to give the Ti-Cats a bigger bio next time.
Pingback: The Choice is yours: Selecting your CFL team - Ninety-Nine Yards: American Football for UK fans
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Woman faces first-degree murder charge in death of boyfriend’s uncle
Posted at 2:12 pm February 10, 2014
By John Huotari Leave a Comment
Tammy Sue Chapman
A former Claxton woman is facing a first-degree murder charge for her alleged role in the death of a 79-year-old man whose body was found hidden underneath an apartment staircase on Patt Lane two years ago.
Tammy Sue Chapman, 45, was indicted on the murder charge by an Anderson County grand jury on Feb. 4. She was arrested Friday.
She and her boyfriend Norman Lee Follis Jr., 50, both now face the first-degree murder charge.
The victim, Sammie J. Adams, 79, of Patt Lane in Claxton, was Follis’ uncle.
Norman Lee Follis Jr.
The Anderson County Sheriff’s Department announced it was charging Follis with first-degree murder on Jan. 25, 2012, after an investigation found Adams’ body hidden underneath a staircase inside his apartment. Adams had ben reported missing a few days earlier, on Jan. 22, 2012, authorities said.
One count of the Feb. 4, 2014, grand jury indictments alleged that Follis and Chapman “unlawfully, intentionally, and with premeditation” killed Adams between Dec. 5, 2011, and Jan. 24, 2012.
Chapman was initially charged with being an accessory after the fact and theft of more than $500 in the case related to Adams’ death, but authorities said then that more charges could be filed as the investigation continued.
A second count from the Feb. 4 grand jury indictments charged Follis and Chapman with theft of more than $1,000. It alleged that the couple obtained a 1997 Mercury Marquis owned by Adams, as well as the keys to his home, without his permission.
Chapman still has an accessory after the fact charge. The Feb. 4 indictments said she harbored Follis and helped him avoid arrest between Dec. 5, 2011, and Jan. 24, 2012.
Chapman remained jailed in the Anderson County Detention Facility in Clinton on Monday afternoon. Her total bond has been set at $1 million.
Follis has remained jailed since his arrest on Jan. 25, 2012. His total bond has also been set at $1 million.
Patt Lane is off Raccoon Valley Road across Clinton Highway from Edgemoor Road.
Filed Under: Anderson County, Police and Fire, Top Stories Tagged With: accessory after the fact, Anderson County Detention Facility, Anderson County grand jury, Anderson County Sheriff's Department, Claxton, first-degree murer, indictment, Norman Lee Follis Jr., Patt Lane, Sammie J. Adams, Tammy Sue Chapman, theft
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1. Mat Todd on Open Research, Collaboration and Leveling the Playing Field in Research
Why are you interested in supporting OCSDNet?
I think that open research is important for a number of reasons: You can have more people actively involved in the research process. You can get the public involved. You democratize research and level the playing field. If you open the process up you can do better science, faster. Open research has no geographical boundaries and allows you to work with everybody, which is incredibly liberating. Currently, the playing field is not level and there are big issues of resources, lack of awareness, differences in traditions and working practices, all of which may inhibit people from working together. If we really want to try and make the science meritocratic, then we have to make an effort to make sure everyone can be involved. Hopefully, the projects that are put forward by the OCSDNet will be proactive in making sure that people who are in less resourced environments are able to take part or lead. I think that if we can run effective projects and if we can combine the projects with some reflection so as to learn from them then there is a real chance to create lessons for how more people can get involved in future projects.
Allow me to relate to this on a personal level. About 10 years ago I gave a talk at the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon. I thought that it would be great to establish a project where students in my lab and in Cameroon could work together using the internet as a collaborative medium. It was a perfectly fine idea, but the problem is a lack of basic resources: an un-level playing field. There were just so many things that were preventing people from getting involved and that was immensely restraining. I think to examine those things- why people can’t participate or ways in which people can – is really important for the next generation of students who are learning in these countries. If we can understand the problems then maybe we can fix them. If we can do that then people have the ability to collaborate on research projects in detail and in real time.
What skills, insights and experiences do you bring to this initiative?
My background is in organic chemistry, which is an important part of the drug discovery and development process. A while back we did a project on improving a drug called praziquantel (PZQ), which is used to treat bilharzia [schistosomiasis] around the world. We were working on this with the World Health Organization to make this drug more active and less bitter, which is important for mass distribution programs. We did the project open source, which was a first. We put the problem out on the web and then worked on it in full public view so that our lab notebooks and all our ideas were shared and we allowed anyone to participate in the project. We got a lot of help from outside the core team, particularly from companies who helped to solve the problem much faster than had we done it on our own. That led to another project, which I am now working on with the Medicines for Malaria Venture, called Open Source Malaria (OSM). It’s a consortium of people who are working together completely openly with no secrecy to find new medicine for malaria that could be effective in treating this terrible disease. I should say that is now leading to a more general idea called Open Source Pharma: the idea that you could apply radical openness to the whole drug discovery process and take something from discovery all the way to the clinic without any secrecy at all.
I bring this experience of working in an open way on actual science projects. Most of the time is spent actually doing the science but we do have to spend time figuring out how to work in this way. There are different challenges when you have no walls around your project.
How do you think that your own work will benefit from being involved with OCSDNet?
Being open allows you to involve both patients and researchers from endemic countries. One of the reasons to get involved in OCSDNet is to try and work out why it is that we are not very good at involving labs and students from endemic areas. I’d like to know that. I’d like to know more about the barriers and how we can involve people more effectively from countries that, so far, have not been involved in OSM. If students from any country could start contributing to the detail of the science because it’s all completely openly available online, it would be amazingly productive for everybody. Amazing in terms of the science, amazing in terms of the students from better-resourced environments and amazing for the students in less resourced environments because they might gain access to resources with minimal expense. It’s a win for everybody, but we have got to make sure that we are doing it right.
To learn more about Open Source Malaria and how Open Research works:
see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCOokjOiVTc
Open Access, The Global South And ...
Research, Knowledge And Development: Changing Systems ...
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4S access Africa Apiwat Ratanawaraha Argentina Bangkok Brazil Buen Vivir Cameron Neylon Citizen Science climate change collaboration Colombia Costa Rica e-infrastructure education hardware ICT ICTD iHub Innovation Kenya Kyrgyzstan lebanon Leslie Chan Lidia Brito manifesto Mat Todd Mozambique OCSDNet OCSDNet Launch open access Open and Collaborative Science open data Open Knowledge open science participation research South Africa STS Sustainable Development Traditional Knowledge Ubatuba UNESCO workshop
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Ohio’s “Minute Men”: Squirrel Hunters and the Defense of Cincinnati
Ohio Memory September 21, 2018 Digital Collections, Ohio History Connection Selections, Ohio State Journal, Piatt Castles
Illustration of the Squirrel Hunters in Cincinnati, which appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on September 27, 1862. Via Ohio Memory.
Ohioans are familiar with many of the most notable battles of the Civil War–we have learned about Gettysburg, Antietam, Chickamauga and more since we first studied the conflict in school. But have you ever heard of the Squirrel Hunters?
Drawing of a Squirrel Hunter with typical dress and weapons, via Ohio Memory.
In early September of 1862, the Civil War was in its second year, and Confederate forces were on the move northward. Southern troops under General Kirby Smith were able to capture Lexington, Kentucky; Smith then dispatched General Henry Heth to capture nearby Covington, Kentucky, as well as the city of Cincinnati, just across the Ohio River– an effort which, if successful, would be the first invasion of Confederates into Ohio. In response to the fall of the last line of Union defense in the area, Major General Horatio Wright, commander of Union forces in Kentucky, ordered General Lewis Wallace to prepare Covington’s and Cincinnati’s defenses.
Once in Cincinnati, Wallace moved quickly to declare martial law, and at the same time issued a call in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan for a volunteer militia. Local business owners were ordered to close their shops, and civilians to report for military duty in defense of the Ohio border, preparing defensive features like trenches in order to ready the two towns for attack. Ohio Governor David Tod left Columbus and came to Cincinnati to assist Wallace, ordering Ohio’s adjutant-general to send any available troops not currently guarding Ohio’s southern border, and for the state quartermaster to send 5,000 guns to equip Cincinnati’s militia. A number of Ohio counties offered their men for the defense of Cincinnati as well, an offer which Tod immediately accepted on Wallace’s behalf. He stated that only armed men should report, and that transport should be provided by railroads at no cost. The state of Ohio would later cover the bill. Civilians from 65 counties–a total of over 15,000 men–converged on Cincinnati as part of a volunteer militia that would soon become known as the “Squirrel Hunters.”
Many of these men had no previous military experience, and the weapons they brought were outdated–more suited to small game hunting than combat, and thus the source of their enduring nickname. A 1915 article from the Amherst Weekly News characterizes the men’s weapons as “pitchforks, clubs and pistols and blunderbusses of the vintage of 1812 or thereabouts.” Churches, meeting halls, warehouses, and even Cincinnati’s Fifth Street Markethouse were commandeered to operate as makeshift barracks and dining halls as men crowded in to come to the city’s defense.
Article reporting on the success of the Squirrel Hunters, from the Daily Ohio State Journal, September 15, 1862. Via Ohio Memory.
Between volunteer defenders and the regular army, Heth’s men reported a force of 70,000 along the border, and the Southern advance was quickly and effectively repelled without direct conflict or bloodshed. A Confederate scout is reported to have said of the volunteers, “They call them Squirrel Hunters; farm boys that never had to shoot at the same squirrel twice.” Wallace quickly lifted martial law, and allowed all businesses to reopen (with the exception of those that sold alcoholic beverages). By September 13th, Cincinnati got word that enemy forces were withdrawing and the town was no longer in danger. Thanks to the bravery and willingness to serve of thousands of everyday Ohioans under the leadership of Tod and Wallace (henceforth nicknamed the “Savior of Cincinnati”), Cincinnati and Covington were saved from Confederate control.
Discharge received by Squirrel Hunter William McCoy Piatt, who volunteered at just 16 years old. Courtesy of Piatt Castles via Ohio Memory.
Without much fuss, the Squirrel Hunters returned to their homes and livelihoods, although newspapers of the time like the Mt. Vernon Democrat suspected that they may be called up to assist again before long. The following year, as a show of thanks, the Ohio legislature authorized funds for Governor Tod to print discharges for these men from military duty. To this end, Tod issued a call for each county to furnish the names of the men who volunteered as Squirrel Hunters, stating in part, “The people of the State owe a debt of deep gratitude to the ‘Squirrel Hunters,’ who, by their prompt response to the call made upon them, saved the cities and towns upon the southern border from the fire and sword of the enemies of our glorious government.” Examples of these discharges can be found on Ohio Memory, with numerous other examples in the archival holdings of the Ohio History Connection.
Further recognition would come in 1908, when the Ohio General Assembly passed a resolution to pay each surviving Squirrel Hunter (a surprising number, according to the Wooster Daily News) a stipend of $13, equal to one month’s pay for an Ohio militiaman in 1862. Want to know more? You can learn about the interesting story of Ohio’s Squirrel Hunters on Ohio Memory as we remember their contribution to our state’s history and their impact on the Civil War.
Anniversaries Cincinnati Civil War Military Ohio Squirrel Hunters
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leonaluis
The Real Katherine Heigl Problem: A Sexist Studio System
Her career plummeted because she's "ungrateful." But is that a trait we only expect from female stars? "I've never really been America's sweetheart, but for a minute I think that's what they wanted me to be. And I had 'em for a second thinking maybe I was. And then I opened my mouth and it was clear I wasn't." Katherine Heigl told Elle in 2011. In the last five years, she's gone from big-budget romantic comedies to Nyquil commercials. Why? Heigl has what the industry calls a “likeability problem” — and that problem is being "ungrateful" in a studio system where only male actors are allowed to.
Heigl’s reputation for being “ungrateful” began when she said that Knocked Up, the 2007 comedy from much-beloved Judd Apatow, was "a little sexist. It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys… I had a hard time with it, on some days. I'm playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy?” The backlash was immediate, message boards and blogs calling her uptight, bitchy, a traitor, and — overwhelmingly — "ungrateful." However, Heigl’s hardly the only actor who’s pointed out flaws in her own movie. Earlier this summer, Jim Carrey slammed the violence in Kick-Ass 2, and there are copious other male examples: Shia LaBeouf, George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, David Cross. Their careers continue to flourish.
In 2008 Heigl turned down an Emmy nomination for Grey’s Anatomy because she felt that the quality of the writing hadn’t earned her one. Again, she was called ungrateful. And again, there's an extensive list of male actors who have crapped on the same shows that propelled them to stardom: Kevin Bacon, Jaleel White, Jason Segel, Tate Donovan — even T.R. Knight, also about Grey’s. The word "ungrateful" is never applied to them — male actors aren't expected to kotow to the showrunners who gave them their start. Or, for that matter, to anybody.
Case in point: Studio execs take issue with Heigl for her temper and requests for creative control. It goes without saying that there’s no shortage of big-budget male actors whose tantrums and pretensions are well-known to the industry and blogs alike. Russell Crowe, duh. Edward Norton, who demanded so much creative control on 2008’s Incredible Hulk that he was finally fired from the sequel. Christian Bale, whose infamous tirade at a crewmember on the set of The Dark Knight went viral. But these instances are attributed to their brilliance and talent. While their tantrums appear on gossip blogs for a few days, these fits have done nothing but further mythologize their star power.
And the final point: Yes, Heigl requests a big fat paycheck (example: $13 million for The Ugly Truth). But let’s put this into perspective: Adam Sandler got $25 million for Anger Management. Robert Downey Jr. got $75 million for Iron Man 3 — and, again, his bad reputation has only added to his net worth. Hugh Jackman tops out at $100 million for Wolverine. Heigl's hard-nosed requests are for a fraction of their paychecks.
Tagged: katherine heigl
A better comparison would be drew Barrymore as she and Robert Downey juniors careers started bc of nepotism unlike lindsey
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Wladimir Klitschko recalls seeing Muhammad Ali at Atlanta Olympics
By Nick ZaccardiAug 3, 2017, 9:05 AM EDT
Wladimir Klitschko, the former world heavyweight boxing champion who retired Thursday, smiled when asked to recall his 1996 Atlanta Games experience, saying “the Olympics have changed my life.”
Before going 64-5 as a pro, Klitschko won super heavyweight gold at age 20 at Ukraine’s first Summer Olympics as an independent country. Friday is the 21st anniversary of the gold-medal bout.
“I have great memories,” Klitschko said in an interview two years ago at Madison Square Garden. “Meeting Muhammad Ali. … He was visiting the [athletes’] village, gathering a lot of people. I was one of them. It was exciting to see him in person. I didn’t get a chance to shake his hand.”
Klitschko said that was the first time he was close to Ali. The two Olympic champions met several more times before Ali died June 3, 2016.
Klitschko’s second memory of the Atlanta Games was of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing on July 27.
“One of the memories is the bombing of the disco, where my friends went to, and I was there before,” Klitschko said. “But I left, because I have to be in the schedule and sleep. When I heard the next morning, which was right on the other side of the campus where we were staying, it was really sad. Thankfully, nobody from my team got injured, but they were there.”
Klitschko auctioned his gold medal in 2012 for $1 million, all of which went to his and older brother Vitali Klitschko‘s charity. In a gracious gesture, the buyer reportedly immediately returned the medal back to the Klitschko family after the sale.
VIDEO: Ali lights 1996 Olympic cauldron
Tags: Atlanta 1996, boxing, Muhammad Ali, olympics, ukraine, Wladimir Klitschko, Muhammad Ali, Wladimir Klitschko
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Novak Djokovic wins after strange sweat scene; U.S. Open semis set
By OlympicTalkSep 5, 2018, 11:59 PM EDT
NEW YORK — Novak Djokovic, in his previous 10 straight runs to U.S. Open semifinals, had never heard an opponent utter what John Millman said midway through their quarterfinal Wednesday night.
“I don’t know what to do now, I can’t stop sweating,” Millman told Djokovic at the net between games, the Serbian leading 6-3, 2-2 on another muggy night at Arthur Ashe Stadium. “I don’t want to change now, but … ”
Djokovic interrupted the plea.
“I get you, and I’m soaked, too, go ahead,” he said. “I’m fine to have a little rest.”
And so Millman left the court in the middle of his first Grand Slam quarterfinal — at the advanced age of 29 — to put on new clothes and shoes. The request was even more unusual because Millman didn’t wait until after the set, or even after one more game to do it during a changeover.
So strange that the U.S. Tennis Association deemed necessary to explain the allowance in a press release before Djokovic finished the 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 win just before midnight.
“The chair determined that the surface was dangerous enough to invoke the ‘Equipment Out of Adjustment’ provision in the ITF Duties and Procedures for Officials and allowed Millman to go off court to change clothes/shoes,” the release stated. “Both players agreed that he should do so. Because the chair umpire deemed the situation within the ‘Equipment Out of Adjustment’ provision, Millman was not charged with an official change of attire or bathroom break.”
Djokovic sat as Millman changed, shirt off, arms bent behind his head, towel wrapping his waist, grinning as if enjoying Coney Island beach.
“You don’t stop sweating, though,” the Australian said of the six-minute break. “You go to this little holding room just off the court, and there’s a tiny, probably, like, three-by-three room, even less, and you’re just dripping. The sweating doesn’t stop.”
U.S. Open Semifinals
(17) Serena Williams vs. (19) Anastasija Sevastova: Thursday, 7 p.m. ET
(14) Madison Keys vs. (20) Naomi Osaka: Thursday, after Williams-Sevastova
(1) Rafael Nadal vs. (3) Juan Martin del Potro: Friday
(6) Novak Djokovic vs. (21) Kei Nishikori: Friday
Unprecedented SCENES! "I'm fine to have a little rest" – @DjokerNole. WATCH @johnhmillman LIVE on @SBS / STREAM: https://t.co/g69nEF0am2 #SBSTennis pic.twitter.com/jDlRIYkalP
— SBS Sport (@SBSSport) September 6, 2018
Temperatures were mild compared to earlier in the tournament — 70s — but the humidity was as punishing as the two veterans’ groundstrokes.
The USTA has made near daily announcements of extreme-heat provisions the last 10 days, including allowing players to leave the court after three sets for 10-minute breaks (after two sets for women’s matches).
“I’m not normally like the biggest sweater. But I don’t know. I was really sweating,” Millman said. “I’d play in a swimming pool if I got to play a quarterfinal, you know, every week at a Grand Slam.”
Djokovic, known for being perhaps the fittest player on tour, said he’s bringing at least 10 shirts for every match here. The conditions are so brutal, he noted, that he saw unflappable Roger Federer sweat like never before in his fourth-round loss to Millman in the same night-time setting at Ashe.
“I personally have never sweat as much as I have here,” Djokovic said after advancing to play Japan’s Kei Nishikori in his 11th straight U.S. Open semifinal. “It feels like sauna.
“I asked the chair umpire whether they are using some form of ventilation or air conditioning down at the court-level side, and then he says that he’s not aware of it, that, you know, only what comes through the hallway type of thing. I think that this tournament needs to address this. I mean, because whether it’s night or day, we just don’t have air down there.”
Djokovic, has made the U.S. Open semis every year since 2007 (with two titles among his 13 total Grand Slam trophies), excluding last year when he missed the event with an elbow injury.
Earlier Wednesday, Nishikori ousted No. 7 Marin Cilic 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-4 in a rematch of the 2014 U.S. Open final won by Cilic. That marked Nishikori’s deepest Grand Slam run.
Djokovic is enjoying a resurgent summer, taking his fourth Wimbledon title to end a two-year Grand Slam title drought.
He then won the Cincinnati Masters leading into the U.S. Open, entering as a co-favorite with top-ranked Rafael Nadal despite being ranked sixth. Nadal gets No. 3 Juan Martin del Potro in the other semifinal.
Also Wednesday, Japan’s Naomi Osaka and American Madison Keys each won in straight sets to set up the second women’s semifinal.
The Osaka-Keys winner gets either Serena Williams, eyeing her record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title, or Latvian Anastasija Sevastova (a first-time Grand Slam semifinalist) in Saturday’s final.
Osaka is the only woman left in the draw who has beaten Williams.
Wednesday was historic for Japan, which put a man and woman into the semifinals of the same Grand Slam for the first time.
Nishikori and Osaka are among the 2020 Olympic host nation’s most popular active athletes, a list topped by Shohei Ohtani followed by more baseball players.
U.S. OPEN: Scores | Men’s Draw | Women’s Draw
Tags: John Millman, novak djokovic, tennis, U.S. Open, John Millman, Novak Djokovic
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Tag Archives: program
What a Load of Garbage
April 20, 2017 by Ryan Borchers
When you hear the words “garbage collection,” you might think of a truck rolling into the neighborhood and a couple of guys hopping off to pick up your waiting bin(s).
It turns out that the Omaha metro area is one of the last places in this country where trash is collected that way.
Omaha mayor Jean Stothert wrote in a March 2016 press release, “I feel like our current service is way outdated.”
Efforts to modernize have been underway for some time now, according to an email from Justin Vetsch, 30, the Omaha senior district manager for Waste Management. Waste Management is the company that handles the City of Omaha’s garbage collection services.
“Back in November of 2016, upon the city’s request, Waste Management implemented a pilot program which showcases what a modernized collection system would look like, with automated trucks and standardized 96-gallon carts for trash and recycle,” Vetsch says. “This pilot program will conclude in April. The feedback and comments that Waste Management has received from residents indicates the pilot area is going well.”
Mike Shrader, 57, is the owner/manager of Premier Waste Solutions, a private company servicing Sarpy County, northern Cass County, and western Douglas County. He has been in the waste-collection industry since 1975 and hopes the city’s new system works as well as it has for his company.
“The vast majority of municipalities across the country use some form of a carted system,” Shrader says. The old model of collection, in which employees rode on the back of the truck and picked up the trash, has not been viable since the 1990s. “It’s hard to find individuals who are willing to do that kind of work, week in, week out.”
The Shrader family, looking for a different model, was introduced to an automated pickup system in Arizona, in which the garbage trucks use mechanical arms to pick up 96-gallon carts. What used to be a two- or three-person job now only needs a driver, and the carts hold about three times as much waste as a residential garbage can and can be wheeled around instead of lifted.
With the exceptions of the city of Omaha, Bellevue, Carter Lake, and Ralston, every other community in the area is what Shrader called a “carted community,” though there’s a pilot program underway now in Bellevue that is similar to the one in Omaha.
Overhauling the system is expensive, Shrader says, which is why it has not happened yet, but changing to this automated system brings with it a number of advantages.
“Not only is it more efficient for the hauler, in a sense of one-man crews, it’s also safer,” Shrader says. “When we look at the injuries across the nation … it’s usually the second or third person that’s on the truck.”
When everyone in the neighborhood has the same carts, Shrader and Vetsch say, it gives the neighborhoods a sense of uniformity.
“A modernized system would also include easy wheeling, and standardized covered carts with lids, which are more aesthetically pleasing to have lined down neighborhoods versus loose bags and individually selected cans,” Vetsch says.
If you have ever had your trash can tip over in a stiff wind, then you know it is a hassle to retrieve trash strewn about your curb and lawn.
“The lids are attached, and they’re on wheels,” Shrader says. “They do a better job of withstanding some of the wind.”
The carts will still fall if the wind is strong enough, but they have an easier time remaining upright, and the lids help make them more “critter-proof,” Shrader says.
Vetsch pointed out that having fewer trucks on the road is good for the environment as well.
“As part of the current pilot, Waste Management is collecting the recycling in 96-gallon carts every other week,” he says. “With recycling collection every other week, it reduces truck traffic in the city’s residential neighborhoods, along with reduced emissions from fewer vehicles.”
“Going with a cart system for the recycling is probably the bigger plus,” Shrader says. “Not only do you have a lid on your recycling cart, but you have the capacity of 95 gallons versus 18.”
“In most cases, the ability to have a cart with a lid for recycling dramatically improves recycling participation, as a household may be currently limited due to the recycling bin’s size,” Vetsch says.
The future of Omaha’s garbage collection has yet to be determined, of course. Like any new system, Vetsch says, there will probably be a sense of hesitation.
“I really hope this pilot program works for them,” Shrader says. “It’s like coming out of the Dark Ages.
“If the city would accept that program, I think they’re going to be very, very happy with that for a long, long time.”
Visit wasteline.org for more information.
Posted in: B2B Magazine, Neighborhoods, Omaha Magazine
Topics: advantages, automated, B2B, bags, CAN, cans, carts, Cass County, community, company, Douglas County, driver, emissions, employees, environment, expensive, garbage, lids, Mike Shrader, model, modernized, municipalities, neighborhoods, Overhauling, participation, pickup, Pilot, Premier Waste Solutions, program, recycling, reduced, residential, Sarpy County, system, traffic, trash, truck, uniformity, vehicles, waste, Waste Management, waste-collection, wheeled, wheeling
Big Museum, Pint-Sized Fun
March 16, 2015 by Claire Martin
The expected audience for morning attendance at the Joslyn Art Museum is not, perhaps, thought to be a handful of pint-sized art scholars. But that’s precisely the group of observers that hovered around a Renaissance fresco on a recent Friday morning, chattering about concepts like color, shapes, and how it was that a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Michelangelo) could be an artist.
“A museum shouldn’t be a stuffy place, I don’t think,” artist and teacher Therese Straseski says. “It should be a fun place.”
Straseski has led and instructed the Art Adventures program at the Joslyn for 15 years now, in which kids from the ages of 3-5 participate in interactive art activities with their parents every Friday morning. Creative tasks can range anywhere from pouring plaster to mixing color palettes.
“I think art is amazingly important in children,” Straseski says. “Teaching art is about learning to enjoy yourself and love what you do. Maybe I can’t be Rembrandt, but I can teach these kids to enjoy themselves in creating art.”
Another of Straseski’s passions in her job is the substantial development in her young students’ skill and interest over time. More exposure to art, she believes, helps integrate both sides of the brain immediately in children.
“We absolutely see improvement in our kids,” she says. “When they come as 3-year-olds, concepts are lost on them and they’re just having fun. But as they get older, they start to understand concepts like color and line.”
Parents, according to Straseski, are some of the program’s strongest advocates, especially as art programs are dropped from elementary curriculums due to budget cuts.
Mom and Art Adventures regular Alison Novak, for example, prioritizes the preservation of art’s significance in her kids.
“I think children are naturally drawn to art because it’s messy and creative,” Novak says. “But I do think they’re very aware of the importance of art and artists, especially as they get older.”
She adds that the interactive aspect of Joslyn’s art program is especially engaging for her 3-year-old daughter, Dagny.
“The experience of art in this program is important because it’s so tactile and allows [my daughter] to use different materials,” Novak says. “It’s not just coming and looking at the art. It’s something to get her involved.”
It’s quite possible, then, that with the efforts of art advocates like Straseski and Novak, a mini-Renaissance is in the making in these small art students—perhaps not in technique, but in the messy and loving creative process.
“Art is about being able to pass on that passion to someone else,” Straseski says with a smile. “That’s the passion in art.”
Posted in: Downtown, Entertainment, Galleries & Museums, HerFamily, Publications
Topics: Art Adventures, featured, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, program, Therese Stratseski
Restoring Hearts Celebration
October 4, 2013 by Mitchell Warren
Photography by Mitchell Warren
In the spring of 2013, young men and women from Omaha Home for Boys programs spent 18 weeks learning, laughing, and collaborating on the restoration of MishMash, the Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail motorcycle rebuilt as part of the nationally recognized Helping with Horsepower™ Bike Rebuild program. With the steadfast support of Jeremy and Mike Colchin, the father-son duo from Black Rose Machine Shop, MishMash was transformed into a stunningly patriotic motorcycle.
By late spring/early summer, MishMash was ready to travel around the state of Nebraska (and western Iowa) to spread the word about the Home and share a message of hope. MishMash heralded the Omaha Home for Boys mission and message at parades, fairs, football games, various community events, conferences, and concerts. One would be hard-pressed to find someone who hadn’t seen the motorcycle or heard about the youth at the Omaha Home for Boys and this life-changing project.
Several months later, the raffle winner of MishMash—Jeff Waddington of Bennington—was selected to the roaring applause of more than 450 Restoring Hearts with Bike Parts™ Celebration attendees. Academy Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin delivered a breathtaking, inspirational speech to supporters, community members, and friends—some old, many new—of the Omaha Home for Boys.
Matlin touched on the difficulties of growing up as a young child “who just happened to be deaf” with big dreams of being a star—fueled and supported by long-time friend Henry Winkler. It was a message that resounded well with youth, staff, and supporters alike—you can be anything you want to be, and anyone can make their goals and dreams into realities with hard work and dedication.
Youth also took to the stage, joining Mike DiGiacomo and Mary Nelson, hosts of KMTV-Channel 3’s The Morning Blend, to share their thoughts of the Helping with Horsepower™ project, along with their own dreams and goals.
It was a celebration as much about MishMash as it was about the youth at the Home—and a celebration everyone involved will remember!
With the help of supporters, the Home raised more than $30,000 from the bike’s raffle, selling more than 1,700 tickets. Funds will be used to facilitate the programs at the Omaha Home for Boys—directly and positively impacting the hundreds of youth touched by our programs.
Become a Home Partner and Supporter
With the success of this year’s Restoring Hearts with Bike Parts Celebration, staff at the Omaha Home for Boys are in full gear to prepare for next year’s Helping with Horsepower Bike Rebuild program. Stay tuned for more information to become a sponsor, donate to the bike rebuild project, and buy tickets to attend next year’s Restoring Hearts with Bike Parts!
To become a sponsor for next year’s bike rebuild, please contact Trish at 402-457-7165 or PHaniszewski@omahahomeforboys.org. For more information about Omaha Home for Boys, visit omahahomeforboys.org.
Posted in: Giving, Nonprofit, Online Exclusive
Topics: bike, Black Rose Machine Shop, boys, event, fundraiser, fundraising, gala, girls, Harley-Davidson, Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail, Helping with Horsepower Bike Rebuild, Henry Winkler, Iowa, Jeff Waddington, Jeremy Colchin, KMTV, Marlee Matlin, Mary Nelson, men, Mike Colchin, Mike DiGiacomo, MishMash, motorcycle, Nebraska, Omaha, Omaha Home for Boys, program, raffle, rebuild, Restoring Hearts with Bike Parts, The Morning Blend, women
Gridiron Hero Becomes Mentor and Coach
August 27, 2013 by Wendy Townley
Photography by Eric Francis Photography and Ted Kirk
What former Nebraska Cornhusker Steven Warren remembers most from his days playing football is not a particular game or plays, but rather the camaraderie among his teammates—along with key tenants such as persistence, integrity, and trustworthiness. These were experiences and traits that would serve Warren well later in life.
Recruited out of Springfield, Mo., he recalls Nebraska Head Coach Tom Osborne paying Warren and his family a visit in their living room the same week Big Red won the 1995 national championship. Warren accepted a UNL football scholarship and packed his bags for Lincoln.
Warren (96) delivers a bone-crushing hit back in his playing days for Big Red.
“Nebraska football was No. 1; it was everywhere,” Warren recalls. “And being a part of it was like being a part of The Beatles.”
Freshman year was both a culture shock and an athletic shock for Warren: rigorous practices alongside the fame of being a Cornhusker. “There was so much temptation because of what you were part of. But you also had to learn time management,” he adds.
While playing for Nebraska, Warren found himself developing close friendships with other players and families in and around Lincoln. Oftentimes, parents would seek Warren out to speak with their children about setting goals, planning for the future, and living one’s dream.
Warren left Nebraska as a 3rd round pick of the Green Bay Packers in the 2000 NFL Draft. Thirteen weeks into his rookie year, Warren was sidelined with an injury and told he would miss the remainder of the season. He stayed in Green Bay, undergoing rigorous rehabilitation and training. He returned to the Packers for one more season before moving to the AFL, first playing for the San Jose Sabercats and, later, the Arizona Rattlers. At each of his AFL stints, Warren suffered separate injuries. “That’s when I realized my body was trying to tell me something,” he recalls.
Warren returned to University of Nebraska-Lincoln and finished his sociology degree in 2004. After graduation, he had a decision to make. His wife, Heidi, is from Columbus, so staying in Nebraska certainly seemed like an option. And being a Nebraska alumni opened many doors for Warren. Former Huskers often pursued successful careers after leaving the field.
But a sales job or related opportunities just didn’t feel right.
“I always liked helping others, and I worked with mentors while at Nebraska,” Warren shares. At his Lincoln home near 30th and Y streets, some of Warren’s fondest memories were sitting on his porch and talking with children and teens who lived in the neighborhood.
That feeling never left him, which is why today he is president and founder of D.R.E.A.M. (Developing Relationships through Education, Athletics, Mentoring). It’s an Omaha-based nonprofit mentoring organization that reaches out to young men enrolled in middle school.
“Seven years ago, everything for D.R.E.A.M. just fell into place: the pieces, the people. It was meant to be,” Warren says.
D.R.E.A.M. began in 2006 as an after-school program at Walnut Hill Elementary School at 43rd and Charles streets. Five volunteers met regularly with 20 at-risk students. Today, the program has expanded to several Omaha schools and added a chapter in Springfield, Mo., Warren’s hometown. In all, the program serves about 300 boys.
D.R.E.A.M. finds its success from 40 volunteers who spend three to five hours each week at an assigned school throughout the academic year. The theme is simple: becoming a man.
“Our volunteers work with seventh- and eighth-grade students each school year teaching them the positive attributes of being a man: respect, responsibility, relationship building, establishing rapport,” Warren says. “All of these lessons I learned from football at Nebraska and our peer counseling.”
D.R.E.A.M. teaches young men that it’s okay (even encouraged) to be successful in school. College-age mentors serve as living, breathing examples of the success that comes with hard work, dedication, and diligence.
Teena Foster, an Omaha Public Schools site director at McMillan Magnet Center Middle School, has worked alongside Warren and his college-age volunteers since last fall. Foster says she continues to see growth in the seventh- and eighth-grade students who participate in D.R.E.A.M. each week. And she knows Warren is the driving force.
“Steve is dedicated to mentoring these young students,” Foster explains. “He’s always smiling, is always pleasant. So are his volunteers. They build great relationships with our students. Mentors are extremely important in these young lives.”
Warren’s belief in mentorship yielded a second program that also occupies much of his time. From his experiences as a student athlete, Warren launched Warren Academy in 2010. It’s designed to provide students (from elementary and middle school to high school and college) with leadership skills and character-building through athletics.
Warren Academy, however, isn’t just for students. Coaches and other leaders also participate to improve and refine a variety of leadership skills, both on and off of the field. Warren Academy programs include training sessions, camps, coaching clinics, nutritional counseling, education assistance, and mentoring. The athletic training component features speed, strength, and agility training programs. Warren says that once the organization has its own facility, Warren Academy’s offerings will expand to include fitness for adults and children of all ages.
“Our goal is to become the primary training resource for field sports,” Warren adds. “That includes baseball, football, track, soccer, and lacrosse.”
Seems Warren’s best playing position is that of teacher. And he’s loving every minute of it.
Posted in: Lifestyle, Nonprofit, Omaha Magazine, People, Sports
Topics: AFL, Arizona Rattlers, athlete, athletic, baseball, Big Red, coach, Cornhusker, D.R.E.A.M, Developing Relationships through Education Athletics Mentoring, draft, faces, field, football, Green Bay Packers, gridiron, hero, Huskers, injury, lacrosse, Lincoln, mentor, mentorship, Missouri, Nebraska, NFL, nonprofit, Omaha, Omaha Magazine, Omaha Public Schools, people, program, recreation, San Jose Sabercats, scholarship, soccer, sociology, sports, Springfield, Steven Warren, students, Teena Foster, Tom Osborne, track, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, UNL, volunteer, Walnut Hill Elementary School, Warren Academy
Completely KIDS
by Bailey Hemphill
Imagine you’re a child. You spend eight hours at school every weekday, and you return home to an empty house every night. Sometimes, your only meal is the lunch provided at school. Your parents work day and night to provide for your family, but it’s never enough. Meanwhile, you have homework that you desperately need help with, but there’s no one around to help you. You want to talk about school, the friends you’ve made, or your latest art project, but you’re alone.
This is the life of many children in the low-income neighborhoods of the Omaha community. But it doesn’t have to be.
Completely KIDS is determined to make sure it isn’t. Enriching activities, help with homework, nutritious snacks, and people to talk to for guidance—these are all things the nonprofit organization offers to youth and families through after-school and family strengthening programs.
The organization was formerly Camp Fire USA Midlands Council, a nonprofit founded in 1920 as a club for girls and young women. In the 1970s and ’80s, the program admitted boys and young men, reaching out to the needs of the underserved through after-school activities in North and South Omaha. Now, Completely KIDS—which disaffiliated from the national Camp Fire organization in 2011 to keep its funds within the Omaha community—serves more than 2,000 youth from pre-kindergarten through high school, as well as their families.
Penny Parker, executive director of Completely KIDS, has devoted her professional career to serving children and families. Previously, she worked with American Red Cross, the Nebraska Department of Social Services, Child Saving Institute, and Douglas County Social Services.
“I think that’s why I feel responsible and passionate about working here, because I know the direct effects of doing this job.” – Lisset Hernandez, program coordinator
“My prior employment focused on working with children who were already involved in the child welfare system, and I wanted to work at an agency where I could work with children to keep them out of the system,” she explains. That’s why she applied for the position with Completely KIDS, which she’s occupied for 22 years now.
Parker believes Omaha needs Completely KIDS because it offers out-of-school programming and family outreach services in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the community. “We provide opportunities for children and families that they would not otherwise experience, [as well as] programming to children who reside in homeless shelters. We [also] provide 385 weekend backpacks of food for children in our programs who may have little or no food to eat on the weekend.”
Making a difference in the lives of youth and families is what Parker thinks is the most important aspect of the organization’s work. If you ask her what her favorite memory of working with Completely KIDS is, she can list several: “The children who tell me that participating in one of our activities is the best day of their life; the youth who have graduated from our program and come to work for us; the children who had to beg for food before they got involved in our weekend food program; the teen who said that we saved her life…”
Lisset Hernandez, program coordinator at Field Club Elementary School for Completely KIDS, can certainly attest to the organization’s impact on the lives of youth, as she herself was helped by the program.
“It was long, long ago,” she says. “I was invited by one of my close friends in fifth grade. She told me about this program, and, of course, it was about a place to hang out other than home.”
Hernandez says Completely KIDS aided her more on a personal level than on a resource level. “Hispanic parents tend to be more at work to make ends meet than with their kids. I know Hispanic parents view this as giving children the necessities—food, clothing, and shelter. But it’s not enough. Youth need guidance,” she explains. “I think this is what [this program] was to me and many of the other youth.”
Today, Hernandez is a senior at the University of Phoenix, where she’s working toward a bachelor’s degree in health administration. She’s also a mother to a 2-year-old son, Nazim. She believes her life has gone in a good direction because of the support she received from Completely Kids during her youth.
“Never in a million years did I think I would have ended up working with my community in this manner…I am very happy to be doing what changed my life growing up,” she says. “I think that’s why I feel responsible and passionate about working here, because I know the direct effects of doing this job.”
Even if she doesn’t work directly for Completely KIDS in the future, Hernandez plans to remain involved with the organization. “I would love to keep volunteering and donating because I know what their intentions are…I really would love to help them become nationally known and be able to serve more youth citywide.”
“I thought I could stop in and see if I could volunteer…I’m starting my 13th year volunteering, and boy, I tell you there’s something about seeing kids working together and seeing those lightbulbs go on when they’re playing chess.” – Lynn Gray, volunteer
Lynn Gray, a special needs paraprofessional at Millard West High School in the Millard Public Schools district, began volunteering with Completely KIDS more than a decade ago after learning about their mission.
Back in 2001, Gray read an article in the Omaha World-Herald about Completely KIDS. “I thought I could stop in and see if I could volunteer,” he says. Shortly after, he began working with the nonprofit, helping kids with their homework and doing activities with them.
Although he and his wife, Cindy, don’t have children of their own, Gray loves working with kids and always has. As a student at University of Nebraska-Lincoln years ago, he helped with a special needs swimming program through Lincoln Parks & Recreation.
These days, Gray volunteers playing chess with Completely KIDS youth. Gray learned how to play chess when he was 11, and it’s a passion he loves to share. “I read that they were playing chess in schools and how important it was for growing children, so I thought it would be neat to implement into the program.”
It’s not a formal chess club, of course. Gray says it’s just for fun. “Working together is a major benefit of chess. For some kids, they learn decision-making and problem-solving; others learn patience.” One of the things he enjoys the most is watching the older, more experienced chess players help the younger, newer kids just learning the game.
“I’m starting my 13th year volunteering, and boy, I tell you there’s something about seeing kids working together and seeing those lightbulbs go on when they’re playing chess…I’ve got so many memories,” Gray adds. “I’m just very thankful for this opportunity with Completely KIDS.”
Volunteers, as well as donations, are always needed to continue providing quality programs for youth and families in the community. Events, like the upcoming Big Red Tailgate, which will be held Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. at Embassy Suites La Vista (12520 Westport Pkwy.), are major fundraisers for the organization. For more information about Completely KIDS, visit completelykids.org or call 402-397-5809.
Posted in: Family, Giving, Nonprofit, Omaha Magazine, People
Topics: after-school, Big Red Tailgate, Camp Fire USA Midlands Council, children, community, Completely KIDS, Executive Director, family, gala, guidance, kids, Lisset Hernandez, Lynn Gray, nonprofit, North Omaha, Omaha, Omaha Magazine, organization, Penny Parker, program, program coordinator, school, South Omaha, volunteer
Crafty Cocktails
June 20, 2013 by Kyle Eustice
House of Loom owners Brent Crampton and Ethan Bondelid finally took the plunge and dove headfirst into a new entrepreneurial endeavor, The Berry & Rye. Tucked away in the former Myth Cocktail Lounge at 1109 Howard Street, The Berry & Rye is a craft cocktail lounge with a unique objective in mind.
“I love the culture of the drink experience behind the craft. It’s a very soulful approach to imbibing,” Crampton explains. “Something I get to experience often is friends getting together to order these labor-intensive drinks that have lots of creativity and skill put into them, and enjoy good conversation in this sit-back-and-take-your-time kind of atmosphere. Then, when the drinks arrive at your table, people are so intrigued by their drinks, they become a conversation piece.”
Brent Crampton and Ethan Bondelid.
The craft cocktail is rooted in the classic recipes of the early 1900s. The practices were lost once the Prohibition Era hit in 1920, and people stopped caring about sculpting a superior drink with fresh juice, fresh ingredients, and high-quality spirits.
The Berry & Rye strives to provide not only a relaxed environment, but also a carefully concocted and tantalizing drink.
“In a sense, it’s like visiting a restaurant,” Bondelid says. “You wouldn’t expect to grab a menu and eat standing up. We ask that people take and enjoy a seat while being served at their table. It’s not the type of place to yell or act overly loud. It’s a comfortable, conversational bar, and this heightens everyone’s experience.”
Considering that loud behavior and drinking often go hand-in-hand, creating a more cultured craft cocktail atmosphere may seem like a lofty goal. But for Bondelid and Crampton, it’s something they’ve experienced throughout their many travels. They are bold enough to envision the potential in Omaha.
“There is a wealth of great culinary and cocktail experiences out there,” Bondelid assures. “Omaha’s culinary culture has seen some great strides recently, and its cocktail culture is starting to grow as well. In traveling, I’ve been able to visit some of the country’s greatest cocktail venues. I’ve wanted to bring that flavor to Omaha, from the non-overcrowded, loud rooms to the incredible range that can come from balanced and creative cocktails.”
Both Bonelid and Crampton are confident in The Berry & Rye’s intriguing concept. To date, they have invested nearly $15,000 into their “ice program.” They have a massive reverse osmosis system, which provides the purest water possible for all syrups and ice machines. From commercial freezers to Japanese ice presses that create perfect spheres to order, they have taken ice very seriously.
“The thing that separates The Berry & Rye from the rest is that when you collectively consider all the aspects of our concept, such as the ice program, specialized tools, methodology, expertise, and dedicated atmosphere, we’re taking craft cocktails further than many people in Omaha have up to this point,” Bondelid explains. “Namely, we’re taking our ice program further than any other venue, and we’re the only non-restaurant craft bar that offers hosted seating, ensuring that the consistency in experience remains the same.”
Crampton is careful to point out that the seating-room-only policy isn’t a “VIP or exclusive” thing. It’s in place “solely for consistency,” he says. It takes time to craft each drink. The duo has also developed an in-house soda program; they make their own cola, tonic, and citrus syrups, but, of course, their focus is on original cocktails. Classics like gin and tonics are always an option, but they urge you to try one of 20 original recipes on their menu to truly grasp what The Berry & Rye is all about. Perhaps Lily’s Dinner Party, with Broker’s gin, wasabi, and egg whites; or Smoke Over Trinidad, with Zaya rum, sherry, and tobacco syrup made with pipe tobacco from SG Roi. (The latter is served in a corked carafe so guests can pour for themselves at their own speed.)
“When tending a bar and making drinks becomes an art form and an experience visually and flavorfully for the guests, then you know what makes it special,” Bondelid says. “When you have people that follow their passion to the farthest extent of their skills, it’s a beautiful thing.”
Berry & Rye
1105 Howard St.
theberryandrye.com
Posted in: Beer, Cocktails & Wine, Downtown, Encounter, Nightlife
Topics: Berry & Rye, Brent Crampton, cocktail, craft, downtown, drink, Ethan Bondelid, House of Loom, ice, Japanese, lounge, Myth, Old Market, Omaha, program, Prohibition Era, reverse osmosis system, The Encounter
Hangar One’s Fly Boy
May 25, 2013 by Chris Wolfgang
At the ripe old age of 23, Tyler Klingemann, flight instructor at Hangar One, has been flying for seven years. “I began at 16,” he says, “which is the FAA’s minimum age that a pilot is allowed to fly solo.”
The dream took hold much earlier than that though. The night before a family vacation to Disney World, 8-year-old Klingemann couldn’t stop thinking about a Travel Channel episode he’d seen. “The host jokingly stated that all passengers in the back were fed dirt and worms while first-class passengers were wined and dined,” he says. He stayed awake, dreading his first flight ever. The story does end happily; after the trip, it wasn’t Disney World he told his friends all about, but rather the airplane.
“Ever since that moment, I saved every dime I earned,” Klingemann says, “whether it was babysitting, mowing lawns, or working at the local bagel shop to earn enough money to pay for flight lessons.”
His diligence paid off as a junior in high school with his private pilot’s license and again in May 2012 with a degree in professional flight from University of Nebraska–Omaha. Klingemann has his ratings in instrument, commercial, and multi-engine, as well as his flight instructor’s certificate.
He began working at Hangar One five years ago as a line-service technician, towing, fueling, and cleaning aircraft. He’s since moved on to certified flight instructor, educating students in UNO’s aviation program, instructing business owners in expanding their companies’ outreach, and just sharing his love of flying with anyone who wants to learn. “If you love what you do, you never have to work a day in your life!” Klingemann says. The best feeling, he adds, is seeing a student land an airplane solo for the first time.
He has no problem with the 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week availability to his students, and he doesn’t mind the very late hours of nighttime training. But there is one aspect of flight instruction that Klingemann doesn’t embrace with enthusiasm. “I don’t like others getting sick,” he says. When the occasional passenger gets struck with motion sickness, Klingemann lets them control the plane, opens the air vents, and lands as soon as possible. “Knock on wood, I haven’t had someone throw up yet!”
Though flying is the job that is also a hobby for Klingemann, the bachelor manages to get away from the Millard Airport to hang out with friends or volunteer at Big Brothers Big Sisters. But he’s never away from flying for long; his two other jobs consist of instructing jumpers at Skydive Crete and training students in UNO’s aircraft simulator. “Any time I fly, I’m happy,” he says. “Seeing the city lights and circling downtown at night is one of my favorite things to do.”
Posted in: Auto, B2B Magazine, Business, Lifestyle, People
Topics: aircraft simulator, airplane, aviation, B2B Omaha Magazine, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Business, FAA, flight, Hangar One, How I Roll, instructor, line-service technician, Millard Airport, Omaha, plane, program, Skydive Crete, student, Tyler Klingemann, University of Nebraska-Omaha, UNO
Stimulate Your Kids’ Brains This Summer
by Deborah Gleich-Bope
Summer Time = Fun Time! This is true for all of us, especially kids who are looking for a break from school. But according to Harris Cooper, author of Summer Learning Loss: The Problem and Some Solutions, a concern of educators and parents is that the long summer vacation breaks the rhythm of instruction, since children learn best when instruction is continuous. Long breaks from school can often require educators to do a significant amount of review of material when students return to school in the fall. Below are some suggestions on ways to keep your child’s brain engaged throughout the summer while still having opportunities to practice skills they acquired in the classroom.
Lakeshore Learning Center, located at 12005 W. Center Rd., offers free crafts for kids every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. You can even check the website to preview the craft. While you are there, pick up some educational games and activities your child can do during the week. The store offers educational games for all ages and in every subject area in which your child may have an interest.
If your budget is a little tight, your children can participate in the Omaha Public Library’s free summer reading program. Each library will post a schedule online describing the special activities your children can participate in, along with the days and the times they will be taking place. They also can earn points for reading each day and exchange their points for prizes. Another good source for free activities is familyfuninomaha.com. This website features a page entitled “Summer Fun Series,” in which parents can find free summer activities throughout Omaha. Some of these may include special kid-friendly activities at the local malls, free local fine arts performances, and community events.
We all know how much our children love to spend time on the computer, so make it worth their while by directing them to websites that encourage them to practice reading and math skills while still having a good time. Try out some of the following sites:
learninggamesforkids.com
pbskids.org
playkidsgames.com
knowledgeadventure.com
cookie.com
turtlediary.com
Remember—making sure your kids’ brains stay active throughout the summer will help them transition into the next grade smoothly and lessen their stress level at the start of the year.
Posted in: Education, Family, HerFamily, Parenting
Topics: activities, computer, education, family, free, games, Harris Cooper, HerFamily, internet, kids, Lakeshore Learning Center, Omaha, Omaha Public Library, parents, program, reading, school, summer, Summer Fun Series
Project Everlast
April 25, 2013 by Bailey Hemphill
The first time Akeeme Halliburton was placed in foster care, he was in middle school. His infant brother had been born with drugs in his system, so he and his siblings were removed from their mother’s care and taken into protective custody until alternate care was found. He and his younger brother jumped between foster homes for a few years before they were allowed to return home. But when Halliburton was attending Central High School, his mom became physically abusive, so he called Child Protective Services, who placed him and his siblings back into the system.
“There were good memories and also some bad,” Halliburton, now 20, says of his years in foster care. “When I was younger, I was more of a rebel. I didn’t know why I was in foster care, and I just wanted to go home. When I was older, I just wanted to make a good impression so I could find a better home.”
Halliburton was placed with a foster mom the first time, though their relationship was often strained. “I volunteered at Creighton [Hospital] a lot and always got home pretty late, so she called the cops on me.”
The second time was with a foster dad, who let him volunteer and have more freedom, but Halliburton only received one meal a day, never had proper clothing for winter, and spent a lot of his time alone.
Fortunately, the last foster home he was in was with a woman who provided quality care. “She understood and listened,” he says. “I was a lot more obedient, too, because of the good environment. She didn’t just want me there for money; she cared about me.” But, eventually, Halliburton grew old enough that he was no longer able to remain in foster care.
“When I was younger, I was more of a rebel. I didn’t know why I was in foster care, and I just wanted to go home. When I was older, I just wanted to make a good impression so I could find a better home.” – Akeeme Halliburton, former foster child
While there is always concern for children within the foster care system, there has been a surprising lack of concern in what happens to the youth who age out of foster care when they turn 19. It’s a frightening thought for many former foster care youth, who no longer have a home, steady income, emotional support, medical care, transportation, or education. Worse, the statistics are against them. One in five young people who age out of foster care will be homeless before age 21.
Fortunately, Halliburton heard about Project Everlast, a grassroots effort that promotes community resources to improve a youth’s opportunities and networks for housing, transportation, and health care during the transition to adulthood.
Project Everlast formed in 2007, when the Nebraska Children & Families Foundation met with a steering committee of Omaha youth, the Nebraska Department of Health & Human Services, the Sherwood Foundation, and the William and Ruth Scott Family Foundation. Together, the youth and the representatives of the organizations developed an innovative plan to help aged-out foster care youth with resources for housing, transportation, health care, education, employment, personal and community engagement, and daily living.
Now, with youth-driven councils all across Nebraska—in Omaha, Lincoln, Norfolk, Grand Island, North Platte, Scottsbluff, Geneva, and Kearney—Project Everlast is able to provide a source of peer-to-peer support and mentoring to members, as well as allow foster care youth to have a voice in advocating for changes in agencies and systems, locally and statewide. The councils are open to any youth or young adult with foster care experience between the ages of 14-24 and are supported by a Youth Advisor, who provides training and support.
Project Everlast also has several community partners in Omaha that work with them to create a network of support for youth in transition, including Family Housing Advisory Services, Child Saving Institute, Central Plains Center for Services, Omaha Home for Boys, Lutheran Family Services, Heartland Family Service, and Youth Emergency Services.
“Foster care can be a very isolating experience, and decreasing that isolation is a vitally important part of our work.” – Rosey Higgs, associate vice president of Project Everlast
“My foster mom told me about [Project Everlast],” Halliburton says. “I didn’t know what it was, but I had seen some fliers outside of my school. We went to a group one day, and after that, I just started going more often and getting more involved. They gave me all kinds of numbers to call for help and resources on how to age out of foster care. If I hadn’t found them, I wouldn’t have aged out with as many benefits.”
“Our work is guided by young people in foster care and alumni of foster care,” says Rosey Higgs, associate vice president of Project Everlast.
Higgs, who has undergraduate and graduate degrees in social work from the University of Nebraska-Omaha, had some past experience in launching new initiatives for domestic violence, homelessness, and HIV prevention. When she heard about Project Everlast, she jumped at the chance to be a part of it and add child welfare into her career expertise. “I was instantly drawn to its philosophy and was really energized by the amazing group of young people who were involved,” she adds.
Although she provides oversight and direction to the Project Everlast initiative of the Nebraska Children & Families Foundation, Higgs’ primary responsibility is to convene with community members, nonprofit agencies, the government, and young people to address barriers faced by youth in transition from foster care to adulthood.
“While there is still work to be done, we are well on our way to creating a culture that seeks out and honors the inputs of [those with foster care familiarity] in administering services for youth in foster care and alumni…People who have experienced foster care have important insight to share as we write child welfare policy and create new programs.”
Other organizations focused on foster care often talk about transitioning foster care youth to adulthood through achievements of independence, but Higgs thinks that’s inaccurate. “Hardly anyone lives independently,” she states. “Most people have a network of trusted friends and family that they depend on for advice from time to time or even just for a social outlet. Foster care can be a very isolating experience, and decreasing that isolation is a vitally important part of our work.”
“Young people aging out of foster care require ongoing support so they can reach their full potential and take advantage of the opportunities Nebraska offers to other children their age,” says Mary Jo Pankoke, president of the Nebraska Children & Families Foundation.
Pankoke, who holds an undergraduate degree in education and a graduate degree in psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been with the foundation from the beginning of its creation in the 1990s. “We bring public and private sectors together throughout the state to prevent problems that threaten the well-being of our children. It’s a wonderful mission that motivates me every day.”
“Young people aging out of foster care require ongoing support so they can reach their full potential and take advantage of the opportunities Nebraska offers to other children their age.” – Mary Jo Pankoke, president of Nebraska Children & Families Foundation.
Having seen the results of Project Everlast’s work, Pankoke knows the initiative is going in the right direction. “In just two years, measuring success in Omaha, more youth received a high school diploma or GED and went on for more training…the number of youth with a paying job [went] from 55 percent before Project Everlast to 68 percent…[and] an increase in youth having full-time, stable employment [went] from 26 percent to 53 percent.”
Higgs and Pankoke both believe that it’s in everyone’s best interest to ensure that all youth have a fair shot at becoming successful adults.
“I always encourage people to think about how they support their own children as they prepare for adulthood—youth in transition from foster care need exactly the same things,” says Higgs.
“We all win if youth can receive a high school diploma, prepare for meaningful work, find emotional support and connection when they need it, and have a safety net when money or housing becomes an issue,” says Pankoke.
As for Halliburton, his time in foster care and with Project Everlast has left quite the impression. He’s currently looking at colleges where he could study sociology and social work. “[Project Everlast] has been phenomenal,” he says. “Everything they’re doing is for the good of foster care…Any kids aging out of foster care should really think about coming in and getting involved because it’s a great asset.”
For more information, visit projecteverlastomaha.org.
Posted in: Family, Lifestyle, Nonprofit, Omaha Magazine
Topics: adult, age out, Akeeme Halliburton, Central Plains Center for Services, charity, Child Protective Services, Child Saving Institute, children, community, council, education, emotional support, family, Family Housing Advisory Services, foster care, foster home, gala, Heartland Family Service, home, homeless, kids, Lutheran Family Services, Mary Jo Pankoke, medical care, Nebraska Children & Families Foundation, Nebraska Department of Health & Human Services, nonprofit, Omaha, Omaha Home for Boys, Omaha Magazine, organization, parent, program, Project Everlast, Rosey Higgs, Sherwood Foundation, statistics, steady income, system, transportation, William and Ruth Scott Family Foundation, youth, Youth Emergency Services
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Tiger Woods Odds: Is this the end for the injured legend?
February 10, 2017 Gracie Kuhn
Unless you have the freak-like qualities seen in 44 year-olds Jaromir Jagr (NHL) and Bartolo Colon (MLB), or 39 year-old Tom Brady (NFL), most professional athletes don’t see their careers continue into their 40s. Most sports exert a tremendous toll on your body, and they wind up being dominated by youth. Then there’s golf, where many of the better-known names are still going into their later years: see Phil Mickelson (46), Vijay Singh (53), and Fred Couples (57), just to name a few.
Where does 41-year-old Tiger Woods sit?
Even after his raunchy personal life was uncovered for everyone to see, and then surgery sidelined him for a while, he’s a player fans would love to see regain his legendary dominance. After all, he is arguably the greatest golfer of all-time.
To the excitement of both fans and the media, Tiger announced in December he’d return to competition. But just over a month in, it hasn’t really gone as planned. He missed the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open, and dropped out of the Omega Dubai Desert Classic last week due to nerve issues. Now, two more events have been cut from his schedule: the Genesis Open and Honda Classic, which take place this weekend and next.
The reason for pulling out? Back spasms.
Is this the beginning (or middle) of the end for Tiger Woods? He has two more events, the Valspar Championship and Arnold Palmer Invitational, on his calendar for March. Will he be healthy by then?
Here are a few odds for the remainder of Tiger’s season.
Tiger Woods 2017 Season Odds
Odds Tiger will play in at least five more tournaments this season: 4/1
While Tiger played in a few non-PGA tournaments before making his return to the big leagues, he’s only played one PGA event. Even though he missed the cut at the Farmers, he didn’t look half-bad for a guy who’s had multiple back surgeries. But just a week later he pulled out of a tournament in Dubai, and now both the Genesis Open and Honda Classic. While five seems like an attainable number, unless Tiger finds a way to stop the spasms, it looks like that could be the most we’ll see from him this year.
Odds Tiger will play The Masters: 1/1
Any golfer you ask would say playing at Augusta would be a dream come true. Well Tiger has done it, and won an impressive four times. The great thing about The Masters is it’s the ultimate Boys Club: it allows former winners to return, no matter how long ago they won. It’s a tournament full of tradition and legacies, and Tiger is included in that. Unless he’s unable to walk, expect him to play. And if his spasms are still bothering him and he pulls out, you better believe he’ll still be there, although it may be only for the opening ceremony.
Odds Tiger will win a PGA tournament this year: 12/1
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems rather unlikely. While we saw flashes of his former self at the Farmers Insurance Open, he still missed the cut by four strokes. And it’s going to take a lot more than just playing on the weekend to nab a win.
Odds Tiger on when Tiger will officially retire
Never: 1/6
By January 1, 2018: 5/1
By the end of the 2017 golf season: 25/1
One thing we do know about Tiger is he’s stubborn. When he commits to something, he does everything in his power to get it done. That includes a “successful” return to the game. While “successful” to him would probably include winning a few tournaments, to others, it’s more along the lines of playing in and making the cut in every event he signed up for. So, given that his goal is basically unattainable, an official retirement from Tiger will probably never come.
Photo credit: Keith Allison (Tiger Woods) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
Letter from the “Odd”itor: Madness, McGregor, Mayweather and more!
March 18, 2017 Gracie Kuhn
NCAAF Odds: can Clemson repeat in 2018?
January 15, 2017 Gracie Kuhn
Spooky Odds for Friday the 13th!
October 13, 2017 Alice Marshall
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694 F. 2d 1050 - General Motors Corporation v. National Auto Radiator Manufacturing Co Limited
Federal Reporter, Second Series
694 F.2d.
694 F2d 1050 General Motors Corporation v. National Auto Radiator Manufacturing Co Limited
694 F.2d 1050
GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, a Delaware Corporation,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
NATIONAL AUTO RADIATOR MANUFACTURING CO., LIMITED, a Foreign
Corporation, and Central Stamping, Limited, a
Foreign Corporation, jointly and
severally, Defendants-Appellees.
United States Court of Appeals,
Sixth Circuit.
Argued Oct. 11, 1982.
Decided Dec. 7, 1982.
Christine Oldani, Plunkett, Cooney, Rutt, Watters, Stanczyk & Pedersen, P.C., Detroit Mich., for plaintiff-appellant.
Daniel G. Beyer, Kerr, Wattles & Russell, M. Sean Fosmire, Ronald E. Wagner, Kitch, Suhrheinrich, Smith, Saurbier & Drutchas, Detroit, Mich., for defendants-appellees.
Before EDWARDS, Chief Judge, ENGEL, Circuit Judge, and PHILLIPS, Senior Circuit Judge.
This is a conflict of laws case in which this court is asked to decide whether the law of Michigan or the law of Ontario, Canada, should be applied to resolve the issues presented on appeal. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor held that under Michigan conflict of laws rules, the law of Ontario is controlling. She granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants-appellees, National Auto Radiator Manufacturing Co. (National Radiator) and Central Stamping, Ltd. (Central Stamping), both of which are Canadian corporations. GM sought contribution or indemnity under Michigan law from the Canadian Corporations to recover all or part of the amount GM had paid in settlement of an underlying personal injury claim. The underlying claim was brought by an employee of Central Stamping who lost his hand in an accident caused by the malfunctioning of a press which had been sold by GM to National Radiator and ultimately bought by Central Stamping.
Jurisdiction is based upon diversity of citizenship. Michigan rules of conflict of laws control. In an opinion rendered from the bench, the district judge held that the law of Ontario applies in the case, and that under the Ontario Workers' Compensation Act, GM's claims of contribution or indemnity are barred. We affirm.
* The primary issue on appeal is whether the district court was correct in holding that choice-of-law rules in Michigan require the application of Ontario law, which bars the claims of GM. The following facts are pertinent to this inquiry. GM, a Delaware corporation with its home office in Michigan, purchased a steel gap punch press from Wean United, Inc., the manufacturer, and used the press from 1955 until December 1972. GM then sold the press "as is" to National Radiator, a Canadian Corporation. This sale and transfer took place in Michigan. National Radiator later sold the press to Central Stamping, also a Canadian Corporation.
In 1973, an employee of Central Stamping, Subhash Patel, was injured severely in Windsor, Ontario, when the press malfunctioned. Patel received workers' compensation in accordance with Ontario law. He also filed a civil action in the Circuit Court for Wayne County, Michigan, against GM and Wean United, Inc. Under the Ontario Workers' Compensation Act there is an exclusive remedy provision which bars other actions against "schedule one" employers1 on behalf of an employee who elects to receive the statutory compensation payments. Rev.Stat.Ont.1970, c. 505 Sec. 8(14). The statute further provides that a third party has no right of contribution or indemnity against any "schedule one" employer. Rev.Stat.Ont.1970, c. 505 Sec. 8(11).2
Unquestionably both defendant corporations are "schedule one" employers. In his action against GM and the manufacturer Patel argued that the law of Michigan should be applied in that litigation. GM defended by asserting that Ontario law controlled. GM and Wean United, Inc., ultimately settled with Patel out of court for $225,000, of which $125,000 was paid by GM and $100,000 by Wean. GM filed the present action against National Radiator and Central Stamping for contribution or indemnity. Wean also sued for contribution or indemnity in the district court, but has not appealed from the judgment against it.
GM contends that the law of Michigan should be applied in analyzing its claims for contribution or indemnity. Three major theories are offered for reaching this conclusion. First, GM contends that Michigan law applies because the asserted injury in the case arose from GM's contract with National Radiator, and this contract was made and carried out in Michigan. This argument is based on the theory of lex loci contractus, that under choice-of-law principles the validity and construction of a contract is determined by the law of the place where the contract was made. As part of this contention, GM states that the actual wrong suffered for purposes of this case, involving claims of contribution and indemnity, was the payment by GM of $125,000 in settlement of the Patel action. Since the wrong arose from the contract for the sale of the press, and the contract was made in Michigan, it follows, according to GM, that Michigan is the "place of the wrong" for choice-of-law purposes.
Second, GM urges this court to follow Michigan law as the jurisdiction having the more dominant contacts with the facts in the case. Finally, the argument is made that an application of the law of Ontario would violate Michigan public policy. GM emphasizes that its right to contractual contribution or indemnity is based on the use of the language "as is" in the contract for the sale of the press.
Since jurisdiction in the present action is based on diversity of citizenship, the district court properly looked to the conflict of laws rules of Michigan, the place where it sits. Day & Zimmermann, Inc. v. Challoner, 423 U.S. 3, 96 S.Ct. 167, 46 L.Ed.2d 3 (1975); Klaxon Co. v. Sentor Electric Manufacturing Co., 313 U.S. 487, 61 S.Ct. 1020, 85 L.Ed. 1477 (1941). In personal injury cases, absent any violation of public policy, Michigan usually has applied the substantive law of the place of the wrong, the lexi loci delicti. Bennett v. Enstrom Helicopter Corp., 679 F.2d 630, 631 (6th Cir.), aff'd on rehearing, 686 F.2d 406 (1982), citing Sweeney v. Sweeney, 402 Mich. 234, 236, 262 N.W.2d 625, 626 (1978).
Despite contention by GM that the place of the wrong for its contribution or indemnity claims is Michigan, it is clear that the place where the underlying personal injury occurred, which is Ontario in the present case, has been deemed the place of the wrong for choice-of-law purposes. See generally Hill v. Clark Equipment Co., 85 Mich.App. 1, 270 N.W.2d 722 (1978). The rationale offered by the courts for this conclusion is that since an action for indemnity or contribution is entirely derivative from the principal claim, it also should be governed by the law of the place where the principal claim arose. Alabama Great Southern R.R. v. Chicago & N.W. Ry. Co., 493 F.2d 979 (8th Cir.1974); Annotation, "What law governs right to contribution or indemnity between tortfeasors," 95 A.L.R.2d 1096, 1102-08 (1964). The question, however, is whether Michigan choice-of-law principals would consider the place of the wrong as determinative in this case.
The most recent decision of the Michigan Supreme Court, Sexton v. Ryder Truck Rental, Inc., 413 Mich. 406, 320 N.W.2d 843 (1982), announced that it is no longer the law in Michigan that courts should apply the law of the place of the wrong in every personal injury case. This decision was handed down subsequent to the district court decision in the present case. In Bennett v. Enstrom Helicopter Corp., 686 F.2d 406 (6th Cir.1982) (on rehearing), this court summarized the Sexton decision as follows:
Sexton produced two "majority" decisions, with one justice joining in two opinions. Justice Williams' opinion established two rules:
(1) "[W]here Michigan residents or corporations doing business in Michigan are involved in accidents in another state and appear as plaintiffs and defendants in Michigan courts, the courts will apply the lex fori, not the lex loci delicti ..., without reference to any particular state policy." Sexton, 320 N.W.2d at 854, Williams, J. (Emphasis added).
(2) Michigan's owners' liability statutes, including the aircraft owner's statute, MCLA Sec. 259.180a, will be given "uniform application to residents traveling outside of Michigan as well as [to] persons within our state." Id. at 856. The rationale for this rule is that these statutory causes of action are founded not on any conduct of the parties outside of Michigan "but on the relationship between Michigan owners and Michigan operators." Id. (Emphasis added).
Justice Kavanagh's second "majority" opinion held that the place of the wrong is no longer a "fact controlling or even of great significance" to choice-of-law questions, since the state clearly has the "power" to regulate the extraterritorial consequences of the intrastate status of ownership. Id. at 407.
Justice Levin, who joined in both opinions in Sexton, also provided some helpful comments with respect to the holdings of the case:
Justice WILLIAMS' opinion would hold that, in an action commenced in Michigan growing out of an accident in another state, Michigan common and statutory law shall be applied whenever the plaintiff and defendant are both either residents of or corporations doing business in Michigan. Justice KAVANAGH'S opinion would hold that in a tort action commenced in Michigan, the domestic law of this state shall govern absent a reason for applying the law of another state and that the place of the wrong is not a reason for not applying Michigan domestic law.
413 Mich. at 441, 320 N.W.2d at 857.
It is important to note that the Sexton court reached its conclusions "on the facts and reasoning herein developed," and expressly declined to adopt the "law of dominant contacts or any other particular methodology, although any such reasoning may, of course, be argued where persuasive and appropriate." Id. at 433, 320 N.W.2d at 854.
We conclude that the present case is distinguishable from Sexton on its facts and that the trial court was correct in applying the substantive law of Ontario. Not all of the corporate parties in this case are Michigan corporations. None of them was incorporated in Michigan, and although GM maintains its principal place of business there, no evidence was offered that either of the defendant Canadian corporations do any business in Michigan. Furthermore, the individual plaintiff-employee in the original action against GM was a Canadian resident when the injury occurred and at the time the lawsuit was filed. In that case, in an opinion rendered on the motion of GM for summary judgment, the Circuit Court for Wayne County, Michigan, accepted the argument of GM that Ontario law should be applied in analyzing Patel's claims. It would be an anomalous result to hold that the law of Ontario should apply in the underlying personal injury action, but that the law of Michigan applies to the derivative claims of contribution or indemnity brought in a subsequent suit. See Bennett v. Enstrom Helicopter Corp., supra, 686 F.2d at 407-08 (where upon similar reasoning this court distinguished Sexton and held that New Zealand law, the lex loci delicti, applied to bar the plaintiff's tort claims).
Another distinguishing factor between the present case and Sexton is that the rationale in Sexton for applying Michigan law was found partially upon the substantial interest Michigan had in the motor vehicle owner-operator relationship under the facts in that case. See Sexton, supra, 413 Mich. at 434-39, 320 N.W.2d at 854-56. This interest is evidenced by reference to the owner liability statutes of Michigan, and by the fact that the motor vehicle owner in Sexton was a Michigan resident. In the present case, however, the employer-employee relationship is of paramount importance, and Ontario has the overriding interest in this relationship since the underlying suit involved an application of the Ontario Workers' Compensation Act to a claim by an Ontario employee against his employer. As the district court noted, this is of particular relevance in that it "is carefully designed to avoid litigation of exactly the kind plaintiffs are pursuing here."
We find substantial support for the conclusion of the district court that Ontario law should apply. The ultimate conclusion of the district court was that "the significant interest of Ontario in enforcing its carefully balanced statutory compensation scheme for the benefit of its workers and those who do business in that jurisdiction outweighs the interest of the State of Michigan and does not substantially conflict with the public policy of the State of Michigan." As correctly held by the district court, the fact that the sale of the press from GM to National Radiator took place in Michigan was not sufficient to overcome Ontario's interest.
We agree with the district court that there is no violation of Michigan public policy in applying Ontario substantive law, which bars the claims of GM.
The district judge noted that the major cases relied upon by GM for the proposition that Michigan public policy required an application of Michigan law involved situations where the contact with the other jurisdiction was isolated and fortuitous. See Sweeney v. Sweeney, 402 Mich. 234, 262 N.W.2d 625 (1978); Kircher v. Kircher, 288 Mich. 669, 286 N.W. 120 (1939); Shaheen v. Schoenberger, 92 Mich.App. 491, 285 N.W.2d 343 (1979); Storie v. Southfield Leasing, Inc., 90 Mich.App. 612, 282 N.W.2d 417 (1979), aff'd 413 Mich. 406, 320 N.W.2d 843 (1982); Branyan v. Alpena Flying Service, Inc., 65 Mich.App. 1, 236 N.W.2d 739 (1975). Both parties in each of these cases were Michigan residents, and the only contact with the other jurisdiction was that the injury occurred there. This is not the situation in the present case. We agree with the district court that there is no violation of Michigan public policy in applying Ontario substantive law in this case.
Regulation 834 of the Workers' Compensation Act sets forth 27 classes of businesses defined as scheduled one employers. Both National Radiator and Central Stamping fall under class 10, Sec. 1(ii)(c), which refers to employers engaged in the operation of metal stamping work
Sections 8(11) and 8(14) of the Ontario Workers' Compensation Act, Rev.Stat.Ont.1970, c. 505, provide as follows:
8(11). "In any action brought by a workman of an employer in Schedule 1 or dependant of such workman in any case within subsection 1 or maintained by the Board under subsection 4 and one or more of the persons found to be at fault or negligent is the employer of the workman in Schedule 1, or any other employer in Schedule 1, or any workman of any employer in Schedule 1, no damages, contribution or indemnity are recoverable for the portion of the loss or damage caused by the fault or negligence of such employer of the workman in Schedule 1, or of any other employer in Schedule 1, or of any workman of any employer in Schedule 1, and the portion of the loss or damage so caused by the fault or negligence of such employer of the employee in Schedule 1, or of any other employer in Schedule 1, or the workman or any employer in Schedule 1, shall be determined although such employer or workman is not a party to the action." (emphasis added)
"The provisions of this Part are in lieu of all rights of action, statutory or otherwise, to which a workman or the members of his family are or may be entitled against the employer of such workman for or by reason of any accident happening to him or any industrial disease contracted by him on or after the 1st day of January, 1915, while in the employment of such employer and no action lies in respect thereof." (Emphasis added.)
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The Open Letter accusing Francis of Heresy: A Sedevacantist Analysis
More than a week has now passed since the publication of the "Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church" released on Apr. 30 by nineteen Novus Ordo clergymen and academics accusing "Pope" Francis of being a pertinacious heretic and asking the addressees to declare him such and thereby remove him from office. Since then, many more academics and clerics have added their names to the Open Letter, and at the time of this writing, the total is up to 81 (see updates here). While countless Novus Ordo web sites have covered the fallout from this so far and will continue to do so in the days to come, it is time for some sedevacantist analysis and commentary -- the kind of assessment that you won't get from most other sources, since Sedevacantism is the ugly duckling, the enfant terrible for those in the Vatican II Sect who consider themselves traditional Catholics. So far, only Fr. Anthony Cekada has weighed in briefly on the matter. Before we begin, a clarifying reminder may be in order: We sedevacantists do not believe that Francis has lost the Papacy, either due to heresy or for any other reason. Rather, we believe that he never attained the Papacy in the first place, for the simple reason that, as a public heretic even before the 2013 conclave, he was simply not eligible for the Papacy or for any other office in the Catholic Church. That's it in a nutshell. There is another important point of which our readers should be aware: There are (at least) two ways to demonstrate that Francis is not a valid Pope: (a) by demonstrating he is not a Catholic and therefore cannot be the head of the Catholic Church -- this is the argument from the cause (personal heresy); (b) by demonstrating that in his capacity as "Pope", he has done things which, by divine law, are impossible for a Pope to do (for example, canonize notorious sinners as saints, establish disciplinary laws for the whole Church that are in themselves evil, heretical, impious, immoral, or otherwise harmful) -- this is the argument from the effect (impossible actions). Between these two different lines of argumentation, the argument from the effect is by far the more compelling, as it totally avoids the thorny issue of having to "judge" that someone claiming to be Pope is guilty of the personal sin of pertinacious (=willful) heresy, which a lot of people are uncomfortable doing because they mistakenly fear that this would necessarily mean they are engaging in "private judgment" or that they would be usurping authority they do not have (this too is inaccurate because no one is asking them to make a legal judgment, which would bind other consciences, but only a cognitive judgment concerning a manifest state of affairs; cf. 1 Cor 2:15).
Introductory Comments
But now on to the Open Letter. Perhaps one can characterize it, first and foremost, as a sincere but desperate attempt by a number of conservative Novus Ordos who are at their wits' end with Francis to do something -- anything -- about the pink elephant in St. Peter's Basilica. However flawed or insufficient the document and the approach may be, there is at least this one thing one can definitely give them credit for: At least they're trying to do something! They can see that the situation is intolerable and is threatening to gradually destroy even every bit of what they believe Catholicism to be (namely, the Vatican II religion with a conservative spin); and so, as a drowning man tries to hold on to anything within reach, they are trying in their anguish to do whatever appears to be within their means to get the ball rolling in order to put an end to this disaster. As regards the evidence for heresy and pertinacity on Francis' part that is presented in the Open Letter, it will not be evaluated or discussed in this post. In the last 6+ years, Jorge Bergoglio has proved himself a public pertinacious heretic in so many ways and on so many occasions, that one might as well ask for proof that McDonald's sells French fries. Francis is not a Catholic and is guilty as sin of public heresy and apostasy, and this is objectively manifest. Readers who are not familiar with the evidence may wish to take a look at this page:
The Facts about "Pope" Francis
We will now proceed to analyze and comment on the salient points of the Apr. 30 letter accusing Bergoglio of being a pertinacious heretic.
Addressed to the Wrong People
The Open Letter is addressed to the "bishops of the Catholic Church", in other words, to the world's Novus Ordo bishops. This is puzzling already because it's not like that college of Modernist pretend-bishops has recently distinguished itself as being particularly concerned about orthodoxy. In fact, only a handful of names come to mind when one thinks of who among "Catholic bishops" in the Vatican II religion shows any genuine concern for the importance of Catholic Faith and the purity of doctrine -- even the Novus Ordo version thereof. On the other hand, it does not take long to think of a whole list of pseudo-episcopal scoundrels who are infamous for working to undermine Catholic Faith or morals, or what's left of either in the Vatican II Church. Names like Mahony, Tobin, Cupich, Maradiaga, Baldisseri, Woelki, Stowe, Paglia, Muller, Farrell, Schonborn, Tagle, Wuerl, Kasper, Gumbleton, Lynch, Nichols, Ravasi, Kohlgraf, Marx, and Favalora may be known for a lot of things, but concern for orthodoxy is not one of them. In fact, with very rare exceptions these people cannot even so much as refuse "Holy Communion" to scandalous politicians, which they are required to do by their own canon law; much less do they penalize them with an excommunication. Are these people now going to excommunicate, as it were, the man they believe to be the Pope? Fat chance! Already at the outset, then, the authors' endeavor is doomed to failure: They're simply addressing the wrong people. Heretics don't generally care much for orthodoxy. Then again, to whom were they going to appeal instead? Who else is there? And that is the crux of the matter: What recourse can be had concerning the problem of a "heretical Pope", if such a thing can exist? Who can be appealed to? Thankfully, the question simply does not present itself, for a heretical Pope -- that is, someone who is at the same time a public non-Catholic and also the head of the Catholic Church -- is an impossibility. One might as well ask what to do about a four-sided triangle or how to cope with a married bachelor. But more on that later.
Heresy as Canonical Delict
In their first paragraph, the signatories of the Open Letter say they are writing "to accuse Pope Francis of the canonical delict of heresy". Notice they are not accusing him simply of heresy but of "the canonical delict." Heresy can be looked at from the moral point of view (as a sin against God, dealt with by moral theology), and it can be looked at from the canonical point of view (as a crime or delict against Church law, dealt with by canon law). Clearly, the authors are accusing Francis of the canonical crime, which, however, presumes the personal sin as well, according to the defintion given in canon law: "By the term delict in ecclesiastical law is understood an external and morally imputable violation of a law to which a canonical sanction, at least an indeterminate one, is attached" (1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 2195 §1; underlining added). By accusing Francis of the canonical delict rather than simply of the public sin, the authors have shot themselves in the foot. Canon law is absolutely clear -- and this is really just a restatement of Catholic dogma -- that the Pope cannot be judged by any mortal: "The First See is judged by no one" (Canon 1556). Nor, in fact, can he incur any canonical penalty, for Canon 2227 states:
§1. A penalty cannot be imposed or declared against those mentioned in Canon 1557 §1, except by the Roman Pontiff. §2. Unless expressly named, Cardinals of the H. R. C. [Holy Roman Church] are not included under penal law, nor are Bishops [liable] to the penalty of automatic suspension and interdict.
The people "mentioned in Canon 1557 §1" include all heads of state (n. 1), all cardinals (n. 2), all legates of the Holy See, and, "in criminal cases, Bishops, even titular ones" (n. 3). Since, then, even cardinals are exempt from the penalties of canon law and are judged by the Roman Pontiff directly, what were the authors of the Open Letter thinking in asking the "Pope's" inferiors to apply canonical penalties against him who "is judged by no one"? (All this, by the way, is also contained in the Novus Ordo 1983 Code of Canon Law; see Canons 1321; 1404-1405.)
A Heresy Trial for the Pope?
After listing copious documentation to support their accusation that Francis denies Catholic dogma and does so pertinaciously, the accusers state: "Despite the evidence that we have put forward in this letter, we recognise that it does not belong to us to declare the pope guilty of the delict of heresy in a way that would have canonical consequences for Catholics" (p. 15). This is an interesting admission. If Francis is Pope, then indeed they do not have the power to "declare the pope guilty of heresy" -- because they are his inferiors, and an accused person can only be declared guilty in a legally valid and binding way by a superior whose subject he is:
The Supreme Pontiff has the highest legislative, administrative and judicial power in the Church. The Code [of Canon Law] states that the Roman Pontiff cannot be brought to trial by anyone. The very idea of the trial of a person supposes that the court conducting the trial has jurisdiction over the person, but the Pope has no superior, wherefore no court has power to subject him to judicial trial. (Rev. Stanislaus Woywod, A Practical Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, rev. by Rev. Callistus Smith [New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1952], n. 1549, p. 225; underlining added.) The Roman Pontiff has received from Christ supreme authority over the whole Church, and it follows from this very fact that he, in the direction of the faithful to eternal salvation, possesses full jurisdiction and all its attributes. He alone, or together with a Council called by him, can make laws for the universal Church, abrogate them or derogate from them, grant privileges, appoint, depose, judge or punish Bishops. He is the supreme judge by whom all causes are to be tried; he is the supreme judge whom no one may try. ...It is not becoming that the supreme legislator should be subject to other laws, except to those which emanate from the Sovereign Pontificate; it is not becoming that he who constitutes the tribunal of appeal for all men, rulers as well as subjects, should be judged by his inferiors. ...The reason why the Pope can be judged by no one is evident. No one can be judged by another unless he is subject to that person, at least with respect to the subject matter of the trial. Now, the Roman Pontiff is the Vicar of Jesus Christ, who is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and to him has been entrusted the commission to feed His lambs and His sheep. In no way, therefore, can he be subjected to any man or to any forum, but is entirely immune from any human judgment. This principle, whether taken juridically or dogmatically suffers no exception. (Rev. Thomas Joseph Burke, Competence in Ecclesiastical Tribunals [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1922], pp. 85-87; underlining added.)
Strangely enough, however, although they recognize their own powerlessness to legally judge, convict, punish, or depose the "Pope" for heresy, the signatories have nevertheless decided that somehow the "bishops" they are addressing are competent to do these things, when they too, of course, are but Francis' inferiors:
We therefore appeal to you as our spiritual fathers, vicars of Christ within your own jurisdictions and not vicars of the Roman pontiff, publicly to admonish Pope Francis to abjure the heresies that he has professed. Even prescinding from the question of his personal adherence to these heretical beliefs, the Pope's behaviour in regard to the seven propositions contradicting divinely revealed truth, mentioned at the beginning of this Letter, justifies the accusation of the delict of heresy. It is beyond a doubt that he promotes and spreads heretical views on these points. Promoting and spreading heresy provides sufficient grounds in itself for an accusation of the delict of heresy. There is, therefore, superabundant reason for the bishops to take the accusation of heresy seriously and to try to remedy the situation. ("Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church", Easter Week, 2019, p. 15)
Here the authors state that they want the Novus Ordo bishops they are addressing to "admonish Pope Francis to abjure the heresies that he has professed." In the very next paragraph, they elaborate:
Since Pope Francis has manifested heresy by his actions as well as by his words, any abjuration must involve repudiating and reversing these actions, including his nomination of bishops and cardinals who have supported these heresies by their words or actions. Such an admonition is a duty of fraternal charity to the Pope, as well as a duty to the Church. If - which God forbid! - Pope Francis does not bear the fruit of true repentance in response to these admonitions, we request that you carry out your duty of office to declare that he has committed the canonical delict of heresy and that he must suffer the canonical consequences of this crime. ("Open Letter", p. 15)
This passage is fraught with problems. First, by what authority do the signatories think they can specify what the "bishops" must do, and even more so, how Francis must react, in order for him not to lose the pontificate they believe him to be holding? Second, what kind of theology underlies this demand? If the Pope has no superior and therefore cannot be tried or judged by anyone, then no one can threaten him with canonical consequences if he should fail to act in a certain way. The only way bishops could declare that a Pope has lost his office is if he is already not Pope and this is manifest. What is impossible is that he should remain Pope until such time as a declaration should come. For if he is Pope before the declaration, then the declaration cannot be made, for it would amount to judging the Pope, which is impossible. But if a declaration can be issued, then it must be manifest that he is already not Pope even before the declaration, for which reasons the bishops can issue it. Given these considerations, it simply makes no sense for the authors of the Letter to give Francis a chance to recant (abjure) in order for him not to cease to be Pope. The accusers have been very clear that Francis is already a manifest pertinacious heretic, on account of which they have taken the liberty of asking the Novus Ordo bishops to declare him to have forfeited his office. Their accusation is precisely that he professes heresy and is pertinacious in it, and that this is manifest. What, then, would repentance accomplish as far as the papal office he supposedly holds is concerned? All it could do is make a heretical pseudo-Pope into a repentant and formerly heretical pseudo-Pope, nothing more. It could not prevent him from having committed pertinacious heresy already, nor could it keep him from losing the pontificate they believe him to hold, since that is lost by public pertinacious heresy alone, as we will see, and not by public-pertinacious-heresy-if-he-doesn't-do-what-his-inferiors-tell-him-to.
A 'Faithful Minority' can depose a Pope?
The Open Letter gets more problematic still:
These actions do not need to be taken by all the bishops of the Catholic Church, or even by a majority of them. A substantial and representative part of the faithful bishops of the Church would have the power to take these actions. Given the open, comprehensive and devastating nature of the heresy of Pope Francis, willingness publicly to admonish Pope Francis for heresy appears now to be a necessary condition for being a faithful bishop of the Catholic Church. ("Open Letter", pp. 15-16)
This is just indefensible. If the actions the authors believe their addressees must take need not be taken "by a majority of them", much less all of them, then how is this supposed to work? What criterion will suffice then as having established that the "Pope" is a heretic and no longer holds his office? A minority of bishops? Then what about the majority that disagrees? The authors offer a handy standard, though without any justification: The deed is to be done by a "substantial and representative part of the faithful bishops of the Church." Note well -- it's not just a substantial and representative part of the bishops but of the faithful bishops! And you can probably guess who has already determined who counts as a faithful bishop -- precisely, the authors of the Open Letter! And so in the same breath they offer yet another gratuitous criterion for identifying just who is faithful: why, those who are willing to do what they're being told in the Letter, of course! By that definition, it looks like the verdict will be unanimous after all....
An Attempt at Theological Justification
On p. 16 of the document, the accusers maintain that their "course of action is supported and required by canon law and the tradition of the Church", and they append an attempt at theological justification for it, entitled "Canon law and Catholic theology concerning the situation of a heretical pope". Of course the appendix begins by mentioning the seventh-century Pope Honorius I, a case concerning which enough has been written in the past so that there is no need to repeat it here. We simply ask our readers to review the following links:
The Case of Pope Honorius I
The Primacy and Infallibility of the Sovereign Pontiffs: Honorius I
Does the Pope Honorius Affair Refute Sedevacantism?
Regarding the possibility of a "heretical Pope" (Papa haereticus), that is, the possibility of a true Pope becoming a heretic in his private capacity (as a private person and not as part the exercise of his magisterium, as will be explained later; cf. Denz. 1837) and what would have to be done in such a case, theologians are divided and the Church has never made a definitive pronouncement either way. Theologians have therefore addressed the question at least hypothetically. After the First Vatican Council (1870), whose dogmatic constitution Pastor Aeternus contains copious teaching about the Papacy, we find theologians treating of the Papa haereticus scenario only minimally. The canonist Fr. Charles Augustine Bachofen, for example, considered it a "purely academical question", that is, the question "whether a Pope coud be deposed if he became a heretic or a schismatic." His response: "Nego suppositum", meaning, "I deny the supposition" (Rev. Chas. Augustine, A Commentary on the New Code of Canon Law, vol. II [London: B. Herder Book Co., 1918], p. 211). The renowned canonist Fr. Matthaeus Conte a Coronata summarizes the state of the question thus:
...it cannot be proved that the Roman Pontiff, as a private teacher [!], cannot become a heretic, for example, if he contumaciously denies a dogma previously defined; this impeccability was nowhere promised to him by God. On the contrary, [Pope] Innocent III expressly admits that the case can be conceded. But if the case should take place, he falls from office by divine law, without any sentence, not even a declaratory one. For he who openly professes heresy places his very self outside the Church, and it is not probable that Christ preserves the Primacy of His Church with such an unworthy individual. Consequently, if the Roman Pontiff professes heresy, he is deprived of his authority before any whatsoever sentence, which [sentence] is impossible. (Rev. Matthaeus Conte a Coronata, Institutiones Iuris Canonici, vol. I, 4th ed. [Rome: Marietti, 1950], n. 316c; our translation; underlining added.)
Fr. Joachim Salaverri, in his comprehensive treatise on the Church of Christ, devotes only one short paragraph to the question of the heretical Pope:
Whether or not the Pope as a private person [!] can fall into heresy? Theologians dispute about this question. It seems to us "more pious and probable" to hold that God in his providence will see to it "that the Pope will never be a heretic." For, this opinion, which was held by Bellarmine and Suarez, also was praised at Vatican Council I by Bishop Zinelli, Secretary for the Faith, when he said: "Because we rely on supernatural Providence, we think it is sufficiently probably that this will never happen. For God is not lacking in essentials, and therefore, if He were to permit such an evil, there would not be lacking the means to provide for it." (Rev. Joachim Salaverri, Sacrae Theologiae Summa IB: On the Church of Christ, trans. by Rev. Kenneth Baker [original Latin published by BAC, 1955; English published by Keep the Faith, 2015], n. 657; italics in original.)
The celebrated Cardinal Louis Billot treats of the question of the Papa haereticus more elaborately in Question XIV, Thesis XXIX of his Tractatus De Ecclesia Christi ("Treatise on the Church of Christ"), which is well worth a read. He concludes, similary to Fr. Augustine, that "although there is justification for the hypothesis of a Pontiff who might become notoriously heretical, God would never allow it even to be a-priori believable for the Church to land in so many troubles of such kind". The canonist Fr. Matthew Ramstein, too, does not have too much to say on the topic of a heretical Pope. His only paragraph dealing with the topic ends with the words: "How the fact of heresy and of consequent vacancy of the papal chair would be determined is difficult to understand" (A Manual of Canon Law [Hoboken, NJ: Terminal Printing & Publishing Co., 1948], p. 193). Far from there being some "course of action [that] is supported and required by canon law and the tradition of the Church", as the authors of the Open Letter would have it, the fact is that the consensus of theologians after Vatican I is that, since the Pope cannot be brought to trial by anyone, nor judged or deposed by anyone, if he ever should become a public heretic in his private capacity, he would immediately and by that fact alone cease to be Pope, having, as it were, removed himself from the Papacy. A declaratory sentence is neither required nor possible for such self-deposition to occur. This is echoed by the Novus Ordo theologian "Abp." John Michael Miller, who, after giving the historical background to the debate over the Papa haereticus, writes:
At present, the Church has no canonical norms for dealing with a heretical pope. On the one hand, the pope is obviously in the Church, belonging to the community of faith. Like any Catholic who publicly professes heresy, a pope would place himself outside her communion and by that very fact loses his ministry.... It is difficult to imagine what specific juridical procedures could be drawn up to deal with the situation should it arise.... Because it concerns a question of fact rather than law, there can be no set legal procedure for this process. (J. Michael Miller, The Shepherd and the Rock [Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1995], p. 293)
Thus everyone can see that the position of the automatic and immediate self-deposition of a Pope who becomes a heretic is not some idea crazy sedevacantists have cooked up but is thoroughly grounded in Catholic theology as informed by the teachings of the First Vatican Council, and it is retained even in Novus Ordo theology. Speaking of Vatican I, the question of what ought to be done with a Pope who defects into heresy actually came up during the proceedings of that council. Abp. John Purcell of Cincinnati, United States, relates how it was answered by the doctrinal commission:
The question was also raised by a Cardinal, “What is to be done with the Pope if he becomes a heretic?” It was answered that there has never been such a case; the Council of Bishops could depose him for heresy, for from the moment he becomes a heretic he is not the head or even a member of the Church. The Church would not be, for a moment, obliged to listen to him when he begins to teach a doctrine the Church knows to be a false doctrine, and he would cease to be Pope, being deposed by God Himself. If the Pope, for instance, were to say that the belief in God is false, you would not be obliged to believe him, or if he were to deny the rest of the creed, “I believe in Christ,” etc. The supposition is injurious to the Holy Father in the very idea, but serves to show you the fullness with which the subject has been considered and the ample thought given to every possibility. If he denies any dogma of the Church held by every true believer, he is no more Pope than either you or I; and so in this respect the dogma of infallibility amounts to nothing as an article of temporal government or cover for heresy. (Abp. John B. Purcell, quoted in Rev. James J. McGovern, Life and Life Work of Pope Leo XIII [Chicago, IL: Allied Printing, 1903], p. 241; imprimatur by Abp. James Quigley of Chicago; underlining added.)
More information on this historical tidbit can be found here.
The Pope is judged by No One -- except in case of Heresy?
The authors of the Open Letter are quite aware, of course, that a true Pope cannot be judged or removed from office by anyone, even for heresy, and they state as much: "It is agreed that the Church does not have jurisdiction over the pope, and hence that the Church cannot remove a pope from office by an exercise of superior authority, even for the crime of heresy" (p. 17). And yet, they attempt to relativize this principle on the next page with specious argumentation:
The first canon to give explicit consideration to the possibility of papal heresy is found in the Decretum of Gratian. Distinctio XL, canon 6 of the Decretum states that the pope can be judged by no-one, unless he is found to have deviated from the faith... The canonical assertion that the pope can be judged for heresy came into being as an explication of the canonical principle that the pope is judged by no-one. The statement in this canon is an enunciation of a privilege; its object is to assert that the pope has the widest possible exemption from judgement by others. This canon was included, along with the rest of the Decretum of Gratian, in the Corpus iuris canonici, which formed the basis of canon law in the Latin Church until 1917. Its authority is supported by papal authority itself, since the canon law of the Church is upheld by papal authority. It was taught by Pope Innocent III, who asserted in his sermon on the consecration of the Supreme Pontiff that "God was his sole judge for other sins, and that he could be judged by the Church only for sins committed against the faith".... Rejection of the canon in the Decretum would undermine the canonical foundation for papal primacy itself, since this canon forms part of the legal basis for the principle that the Pope is judged by no-one. ("Open Letter", pp. 18-19)
The signatories of the Open Letter seem to think that the expression that a Pope can be judged when it comes to heresy expresses a qualification, restriction, relativization, or exception to the general rule that the Pope cannot be judged by anyone, but this is not so. Rather, the simple truth is that the only reason why a Pope -- so to speak -- can be judged for heresy is that he is no longer Pope if he is a heretic. This fact alone explains why judgment is licit in that case. This position was first enunciated, it seems, by Cardinal Juan de Torquemada and later adopted by St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church:
In the Summa de Ecclesia, one of the earliest and most influential ecclesiological treatises of the late Middle Ages, John of Torquemada (+1468), for example, admitted that a heretical pope could, in a certain sense, be "judged" by a council. Even so, the council would not be judging a true pope. Precisely because he was heretical, he would already have ceased, by that very fact, to hold the papal office. Jesus' words, "He who does not believe is condemned already" (Jn 3:18), provided a bilical proof text which justified the automatic loss of office if a pope fell into heresy. After the Council of Trent, Robert Bellarmine (+1621) and others took up the theory of John of Torquemada: a pope who falls into heresy forfeits his office. No formal deposition is required since divine law already put the pope outside the Church. A kind of direct divine deposition took place, stripping the pope of his primacy. Whatever juridical body "judged" the pope would simply declare the fact of the pope's heresy, making public that he was no longer in communion with the Church. Theologians frequently compared such a declaration to a death certificate, which publicly makes the death known but does not cause it. With regard to heresy, this judgment would, however, have legal consequences. The Church would be free to elect a new pope. Because these theologians did not give an ecumenical council the right to depose a pope, their theory avoids the pitfalls of [the heresy of] conciliarism. (Miller, The Shepherd and the Rock, p. 292; underlining added.)
Thus, to say that the Pope cannot be judged "except in the case of heresy" is not to say that there is an exception to the impossibility of judging a Pope -- rather, it is to say that a public heretic is already not Pope and therefore can be judged. This is the only way to understand this qualification in accordance with Church teaching. In his treatise on the Church, Cardinal Billot addressed these very objections made by the signers of the Open Letter, as follows:
The authorities who object on the opposite side of the question do not prove anything. First they cite the statement of Innocent III, in his Sermon 2 on the consecration of the Supreme Pontiff, where, speaking about himself, he says: “Faith is necessary to me to such a degree that, although I have God alone as judge of [my] other sins, I could be judged by the Church only by reason of a sin that is committed in the faith.” But surely Innocent does not affirm the case as simply possible, but, praising the necessity of faith, he says that it is so great that if, whether or not it is in the realm of possibility, a Pontiff should be found deviant from the faith, he would already be subject to the judgment of the Church by the reason that was stated above. And indeed it is a manner of speaking similar to that which the Apostle uses when wishing to show the unalterable truth of the Gospel: But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. For Innocent had said earlier: “If I were not made firm in the faith, how could I strengthen others in the faith? That is what is recognized as pertaining especially to my office, as the Lord witnesses: I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith not fail; and thou being once converted, confirm thy brethren. He prayed and He brought it to pass, since He was heard in all things out of reverence for Him. And therefore the faith of the apostolic see has never failed in any disturbance, but has always remained whole and unimpaired in order that the privilege of Peter should persist unshaken.” Consequently, that statement is rather in opposition to adversaries, unless they should say that by it Innocent actually means he can sometimes lack that which the Lord procured for Peter as necessary for the office to which he appointed him. They also cite the statement of Hadrian II in the third address read in Ecumenical Council VIII, Action 7: “We read that the Roman Pontiff has judged the bishops of all the churches; but we do not read of anyone who has judged him. For although after his death the Eastern churches anathematized Honorius, nevertheless it must be recognized that he had been accused of heresy, by reason of which alone inferiors may resist the initiatives of their superiors or freely reject the wicked senses. Although even in that case it would not have been ever so much lawful for any of the patriarchs or other bishops to carry out the sentence against him unless the approval of the concurrence of the Pontiff of the same first see had preceded.” But what does this matter, since it is well known that Honorius by no means fell into heresy, but only negatively favored the same by not using the supreme authority to root out the incipient error, and in this sense he is said to have been accused in the matter of heresy? Accordingly, in the same Ecumenical Council VIII, Action 1, a formula sent by the same Hadrian had been appended, in which, with no restriction attached, one reads the following: “In view of the fact that the Catholic religion has always been preserved in the apostolic see, and holy doctrine has been proclaimed.” If on the other hand the sense of Hadrian is not that Honorius fell into heresy, those who use that statement to argue that the Roman Pontiff can become a heretic have no ground to stand upon. Lastly they advance a point of canon law, Distinction 40, canon 6 Si papa: “No mortal on earth presumes to prove the (pope) guilty of faults, since he who is to judge all men must not be judged by any man, unless he be discovered to be deviant from the faith.” But, above all else, one must bear in mind that this citation is taken from the Decretum of Gratian, in which there is no authority except the intrinsic authority of the documents that are found collected in it. Moreover, there is no one at all who would deny that those documents, some indeed authentic and others apocryphal, are of unequal value. Finally, it is more than highly likely that the previously cited canon under the name of the martyr Boniface must be considered to be included among the apocryphal documents. However, Bellarmine in this case also replies: "Those canons do not mean to say that the Pontiff as a private person can err (heretically), but only that the Pontiff cannot be judged. Nevertheless since it is not wholly certain whether a Pontiff can or cannot be a heretic, for this reason they add out of an abundance of caution [the following] condition: unless he become a heretic" [Bellarmine, Book 4, De Romano Pontifice, chapter 7]. (Cardinal Louis Billot, Tractatus De Ecclesia Christi, 5th ed., q. XIV, th. XXIX [Rome: Gregorian Pontifical University, 1927], pp. 633-635; italics given; underlining added; our translation.)
It is unfortunate that the signatories of the Open Letter spent so much time worrying about theological opinions on these questions expressed before the First Vatican Council but not afterwards.
Canonical Warnings needed to prevent Chaos?
All the examples the signatories of the Open Letter give with regard to warnings having to be issued to the "heretical Pope" are irrelevant because, unlike what theological positions may have been permitted in "the early canonical tradition", the Church has long clarified that the Pope cannot be brought to trial or judged by anyone, and warnings -- if they are to be canonically significant -- can only be issued by a human superior, of which the Pope has none. The idea that inferiors could issue warnings that bind a Pope's conscience is downright silly. How do the authors envision this in the case of Francis? Shall "Cardinals" Burke and Sarah together with "Bishops" Schneider and Gracida send a letter to Francis warning him that they will "remove the papacy" from him? Do they not think that Francis would respond by removing something from them? In any case, what will they do if "Cardinals" Maradiaga, Cupich, and Marx then join "Archbishops" Paglia and Wester in support of Bergoglio, denouncing his opponents? Which of these putative bishops would a Catholic then be obliged -- or even permitted -- to follow? Alas, the Open Letter gets stranger still as it goes on. After pointing out that they disagree with "Sedevacantist authors" concerning this matter, the signatories declare that if it were true that "a pope automatically loses the papal office as the result of public heresy, with no intervention by the Church being required or permissible", then this "would throw the Church into chaos in the event of a pope embracing heresy...." Now this is just rich. Ladies and gentlemen, which creates the greater chaos? The idea that Francis is Pope or that he isn't Pope? To ask the question is to answer it. It cannot and need not be denied that of course a Pope becoming a heretic and immediately/automatically ceasing to be Pope would create a chaotic scene and be a grave hardship for the Church -- Cardinal Billot referred to "so many troubles of such kind" this would bring about -- but by no means would it lead to more or even as much chaos as what the Novus Ordo Sect currently has on display. After all, Francis is able to do so much damage to souls precisely because he is accepted as Pope by practically the whole world. Let's have a look at how the canonist Fr. Gerald McDevitt assesses the issue of spiritual harm with regard to loss of office:
Since it is not only incongruous that one who has publicly defected from the faith should remain in an ecclesiastical office, but since such a condition might also be the source of serious spiritual harm when the care of souls in concerned, the Code [of Canon Law] prescribes [in Canon 188 n. 4] that a cleric tacitly renounces his office by public defection from the faith. (Rev. Gerald V. McDevitt, The Renunciation of an Ecclesiastical Office [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1946], p. 136; underlining added.)
In other words, the immediate and automatic loss of office for heresy is precisely what prevents or at least lessens serious spiritual harm. The idea that any bishop -- not just the Pope -- forfeits his office as soon as it becomes public that he is a pertinacious heretic, is easily confirmed just by consulting the pertinent literature on the question. Instead of digging up theories held by some in the early Church or in the eleventh century, the authors of the Open Letter should have simply looked more closely at the past century:
This crime [public heresy or apostasy] presupposes not an internal, or even external but occult act, but a public defection from the faith through formal heresy, or apostasy, with or without affiliation with another religious society.... The public character of this crime must be understood in the light of canon 2197 n. 1. Hence, if a bishop were guilty of this violation and the fact were divulged to the greater part of the town or community, the crime would be public and the see ipso facto [by that very fact] becomes vacant. (Rev. Leo Arnold Jaeger, The Administration of Vacant and Quasi-Vacant Dioceses in the United States [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1932], p. 82; underlining added.)
Note well: Even in the case of a simple bishop, who has a clear superior in the Pope and can easily be judged by him, the bishop loses his office for heresy as soon as that heresy and its pertinacity are public (defined in canon 2197 n. 1 as "already known or [committed] in such circumstances that it can be and must be prudently judged that it will easily become known") -- even before the judgment by the Holy See. This is confirmed even more explicitly by the same author a few pages later:
...when a bishop tacitly resigns, as in the case of apostacy [sic], heresy, etc., the see becomes fully vacant the moment the crime becomes public. According to a strict interpretation of the law, the jurisdiction of the bishop passes at that moment to the Board [of Diocesan Consultors], who may validly and licitly begin to exercise its power, as long as there is certainty that the crime has become public. In practice, however, it would probably be more prudent on the part of the Board, instead of assuming the governance of the see immediately, to notify the Holy See without delay, and await for such provisions which the Supreme Authority might choose to make. (Jaeger, Administration, p. 98; underlining added.)
It is simply a matter of practical prudence that, ordinarily, it will probably be better to wait for the Apostolic See to issue a judgment against a manifestly heretical bishop -- but this is not necessary, strictly speaking. And if this be so with the case of a mere bishop, who can easily be brought to trial and to whom warnings can be issued, etc. -- how much more does this have to be true for the Pope himself, who has no superior and cannot be judged by any man? Although the authors of the Open Letter go out of their way to assert that "the pope cannot fall from office without action by the bishops of the Church" (p. 19) -- while at the same time maintaining, of course, that "the Church does not have jurisdiction over the pope, and hence ... the Church cannot remove a pope from office by an exercise of superior authority, even for the crime of heresy" (p. 17) -- they also add a little footnote to hedge their bet: "We do not reject the possibility that a pope who publicly rejected the Catholic faith and publicly converted to a non-Catholic religion could thereby lose the papal office." But this disclaimer overturns their entire thesis because it admits in principle that the Pope does lose his pontificate automatically as soon as his rejection of the Catholic Faith is sufficiently manifest. The only question that remains, then, is one of degree -- how manifest is manifest enough? -- and not of kind.
When a Pope can -- and cannot -- become a Heretic
Another critical point to note -- one that the Open Letter does not address at all -- is that it is utterly impossible for a Pope to defect into heresy in his capacity as Pope, that is, in the exercise of his magisterium. All the controversy concerning the Papa haereticus that theologians even consider as a possiblity is that of a Pope becoming a public heretic in his private capacity, not as the head of the Church, as we have already seen in some of the quotes above. On this point, Fr. Ramstein is emphatic:
If the Pope should happen to fall into heresy, he is no longer a member of the Church, much less its head. It is understood that the Pope cannot be guilty of heresy when he speaks infallibly ex cathedra. The supposition is only possible should the Pope teach heretical doctrine in a private capacity. (Ramstein, A Manual of Canon Law, p. 193; underlining added.)
But this distinction is not only not drawn by the signatories of the Open Letter; on the contrary, they maintain precisely that Francis has taught heresy in his magisterium, especially as found in the exhortation Amoris Laetitia but also in other Novus Ordo magisterial sources from which they draw data as evidence for his heretical depravity. Thus they have themselves violated Catholic dogma:
...in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been preserved untainted, and holy doctrine celebrated.... For, the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might disclose new doctrine, but that by His help they might guard sacredly the revelation transmitted through the apostles and the deposit of faith, and might faithfully set it forth. Indeed, all the venerable fathers have embraced their apostolic doctrine, and the holy orthodox Doctors have venerated and followed it, knowing full well that the See of St. Peter always remains unimpaired by any error, according to the divine promise of our Lord the Savior made to the chief of His disciples: "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren" [Luke 22:32]. (Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, Ch. 4; Denz. 1833, 1836; underlining added.) ...it can never be that the church committed to the care of Peter shall succumb or in any wise fail. "For the Church, as the edifice of Christ who has wisely built ‘His house upon a rock,’ cannot be conquered by the gates of Hell, which may prevail over any man who shall be off the rock and outside the Church, but shall be powerless against it". Therefore God confided His Church to Peter so that he might safely guard it with his unconquerable power. (Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, n. 12)
Many more quotes on God's guarantees for the Papacy can be found here. The authors might respond to this argument by quoting from p. 1 of their Open Letter: "We do not claim that [Francis] has denied truths of the faith in pronouncements that satisfy the conditions for an infallible papal teaching. We assert that this would be impossible, since it would be incompatible with the guidance given to the Church by the Holy Spirit." But here the authors have misunderstood something: The Pope cannot be a heretic at all, not only not in his ex cathedra statements. Heresy is more than simple error -- it is the denial of dogma, and willful public adherence to it makes one a non-Catholic, not just a bad Catholic. If the Pope could teach heresy in his non-infallible teachings, then he simply would and could not be the rock against which the gates of hell cannot prevail (cf. Mt 16:18).
Not always Infallible, but always Safe
A Pope's non-infallible teaching, by definition, does not come with the guarantee of infallible truth, but it does come with the guarantee of infallible safety:
The Holy Apostolic See, to which the safeguarding of the deposit of faith and the attendant duty and office of feeding the universal Church for the salvation of souls have been divinely entrusted, can prescribe theological pronouncements — or even pronouncements to the extent they are connected with ones that are theological — as teachings to be followed, or it can censure them as teachings not to be followed, not solely with the intention of infallibly determining truth by a definitive pronouncement, but also necessarily and designedly apart from that aim, either without qualification or by way of limited supplements, to provide for the safety of Catholic doctrine (cf. Zaccaria, Antifebronius vindicatus, vol. II, diss. V, chap. 2, no. 1). Although infallible truth of doctrine may not be present in declarations of this kind (because, presumably, the intention of determining infallible truth is not present), nevertheless, infallible safety is present. I speak of both the objective safety of declared doctrine (either without qualification or by way of limited supplements, as mentioned) and the subjective safety of declared doctrine, insofar as it is safe for everyone to adopt it, and it is unsafe and impossible for anyone to refuse to adopt it without a violation of due submission towards the divinely established magisterium. (Cardinal John Baptist Franzelin, Tractatus de Divina Traditione et Scriptura, 2nd ed. [Rome: Ex Typ. S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1875], Thesis XII, Principle VII; our translation; italics removed; underlining added. The entire work is available in English, translated by Ryan Grant, as On Divine Tradition [Sensus Traditionis Press, 2016].)
This explains why the Church requires us to submit to all papal teaching, not just to that which is infallible. If it were not guaranteed to be safe, then submission would be downright dangerous -- even if it were merely optional! Yes, Catholicism demands Faith (cf. 2 Cor 5:7), and here we can see who really believes in the Papacy -- it is us sedevacantists! That papal teaching is always perfectly safe also agrees with common sense: It is one thing for a non-infallible teaching to contain an innocuous error but quite another still for it to contain heresy, which is a very denial of the Faith, poison for souls! A simple analogy from daily life helps to illustrate that: It is one thing for the doctor not to be able to guarantee that the patient is in perfect health; but this does not imply that therefore the patient might be suffering from stage IV brain cancer. For further details on this issue, please see the following links:
Would God permit a Non-Catholic Pope? Response to Peter Kwasniewski
Do Catholics have to Assent to Non-Infallible Church Teaching?
Ferrara’s Fatal Flaw on Sedevacantism
Quite simply, a Pope (or Church) who can teach heresy at any point except in rare ex cathedra pronouncements is not credible as a divinely instituted authority, one God Himself calls "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15) and against which He guarantees that "the gates of hell shall not prevail" (Mt 16:18).
Concluding Observations
Reading the Open Letter and the different reactions to it from the authors' co-religionists -- those that are sympathetic, those that are hostile, and those who fall in between -- one will discover that each side makes some good points, and yet each side also says things that are unacceptable. There is one simple reason for that: It's because each side is partially correct -- and partically in error. Those who denounce Francis as a manifest heretic are right in doing so; those who point out that a Pope cannot be judged or deposed, are correct as well; and so are those who say each believer has an obligation to assent even to a Pope's non-infallible teaching. All this is true -- but if you put it all together, you get the sedevacantist conclusion: There is no way Bergoglio could possibly be Pope. But because all sides are hell-bent on avoiding that very inference, they necessarily all err in some respect or another. One thing is always important to keep in mind: The only -- or at least the ultimate -- reason why the signatories of the Open Letter take the luxury of still considering Francis to be a true Pope until the "bishops" -- at least the faithful ones; wink, wink -- declare otherwise, is that they reserve the right to simply refuse him submission in the meantime. It's a kind of best-of-both-worlds scenario for them: It has all the advantages of Sedevacantism -- the refusal of Bergoglian garbage -- and none of the disadvantages. The only problem is: It runs afoul of Catholic teaching on the Papacy. Interestingly enough, however, this aspect of their position is never much dwelt upon or justified -- it is always tacitly assumed that of course a heretical Pope need not or cannot be submitted to. After all, we are not permitted to submit to heresy. But then, by the same token, we are required to submit to any valid Pope -- not just the "non-heretical" ones. How is this possible? It is possible because, at worst, the Pope can become a heretic in his capacity as a private individual -- it is totally impossible that any such privately held heresy could infect his Magisterium (regardless of whether we're talking about the infallible or fallible kind). We challenge the Novus Ordo scholars and clergy in question to produce even one approved Catholic theologian after the First Vatican Council who taught that a Pope can teach heresy in any of his magisterial acts. Good luck. While we wait, all readers of this blog who have not done so already, are invited to take the Francis Papacy Test to verify for themselves the intrinsic impossibility of Francis being a true Pope, regardless of whether he is personally guilty of the sin or delict of heresy. To sum up our assessment of the Open Letter in a single sentence: The signatories are using heretical theology to ask heretics to accuse their "Pope" of heresy. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict: This isn't going to work, fellows. Image source: Wikimedia Commons License: Public domainBergoglio accused of heresy and pertinacity...
Francis Accused: Open Letter to World's Novus Ordo Bishops seeks Remedy to 'Heretical Pope'
The internet is abuzz again after the latest attempt by conservative Novus Ordos to do something about the pink elephant in St. Peter's Basilica: Their "Pope" is a blatant pertinacious heretic. Yesterday, April 30, the feast of St. Catherine of Siena (in the traditional Roman calendar), a document entitled "Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church" was released simultaneously in six different languages:
The English version was introduced by Maike Hickson at LifeSite, and its release is accompanied by a one-and-a-half-page summary and a select bibliography for further reading. In addition, an online petition has been started that seeks public support for the letter. The contents of the letter can be outlined as follows:
Listing of seven heretical propositions Francis is accused of holding, and their condemnation by the Magisterium
Evidence that Francis holds these heresies
Listing of public heretical statements
Listing of public heretical actions
Evidence that Francis is pertinacious (=aware of and obstinate) in these heresies
Specific request made of "bishops"
Appendix: theological justification for request
In her piece for Life Site, Hickson refers to the 19 signatories as "prominent clergymen and scholars", though just how prominent each one of them is, may be disputed. Most of the names will not be familiar to even the average conservative Novus Ordo who is interested in theology. Here is a list of the names together with each person's academic credentials, in alphabetical order:
Georges Buscemi, President of Campagne Québec-Vie, member of the John-Paul II Academy for Human Life and Family
Robert Cassidy, STL
Fr Thomas Crean, OP
Matteo d’Amico, Professor of History and Philosophy, Senior High School of Ancona
Deacon Nick Donnelly, MA
Maria Guarini STB, Pontificia Università Seraphicum, Rome; editor of the website Chiesa e postconcilio
Prof. Robert Hickson, PhD, Retired Professor of Literature and of Strategic-Cultural Studies
Fr John Hunwicke, former Senior Research Fellow, Pusey House, Oxford
Peter Kwasniewski, PhD
John Lamont, DPhil (Oxon.)
Brian M. McCall, Orpha and Maurice Merrill Professor in Law; Editor-in-Chief of Catholic Family News
Fr Cor Mennen, JCL, diocese of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Netherlands), canon of the cathedral Chapter. lecturer at de diocesan Seminary of ‘s-Hertogenbosch
Stéphane Mercier, STB, PhD, Former Lecturer at the Catholic University of Louvain
Fr Aidan Nichols, OP
Paolo Pasqualucci, Professor of Philosophy (retired), University of Perugia
Dr. Claudio Pierantoni, Professor of Medieval Philosophy, University of Chile; former Professor of Church History and Patrology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
Professor John Rist
Dr. Anna Silvas, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education, University of New England
Prof. dr. W.J. Witteman, physicist, emeritus professor, University of Twente
The only names that will jump out at most people are probably those of Nick Donnelly, John Hunwicke, Peter Kwasniewski, John Lamont, Brian McCall, and perhaps Aidan Nichols. We note the complete absence of any Novus Ordo clergy of higher rank than priest, and even the ubiquitous Prof. Roberto de Mattei did not sign this letter. How "Fr." John Hunwicke's academic claim to fame -- having once been, in his Anglican days, a researcher at a heretical house of studies -- is helpful in lending credible support to accusing the "Pope" of heresy, is not immediately clear. In any case, the seven specific heresies the authors are accusing Francis of are very well researched, well argued, and well presented, and there is no question that he is guilty as sin of pertinaciously holding and spreading these denials of dogma. That part of the Open Letter is commendable. As far as the theological justification for "bishops" declaring the "Pope" a heretic so he will lose his office, and related issues -- that is an absolute disaster. However, our commentary on that will have to wait for a separate post [UPDATE: This post is now available here]. Meanwhile, you can get our initial reaction to the letter in a brief podcast we put together last night:
What will this latest effort, this "measure [taken] as a last resort to respond to the accumulating harm caused by Pope Francis's words and actions over several years" accomplish? We predict that it will accomplish absolutley nothing in terms of real, long-term effect. It will simply generate headlines for the next few days, keep journalists and bloggers busy, (re-)trigger theological discussions, and ultimately have no effect whatsoever on Francis or his pseudo-Catholic hierarchy. We've seen this all before, and more than once. Remember? Image source: shutterstock.com License: paidClarification appears in 'Acta Apostolicae Sedis'...
Novus Ordos in Shock as Francis declares Permissibility of Communion for Public Adulterers "Authentic Magisterium"
Analysis & Commentary
After more than 19 months of reports, analyses, arguments, interviews, rumors, conjectures, accusations, excuses, warnings, "corrections", promises, allusions, and plenty of spin, the "doubts" about the correct interpretation of Francis' "Apostolic" Exhortation Amoris Laetitia have now been officially put to rest: In a tacit move behind the scenes, Francis ordered that his Sep. 2016 endorsement of the interpretation offered by the Argentine "bishops" of the Buenos Aires region for their flock become a part of his (putative) "authentic Magisterium" and be included in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which is the official Vatican organ publishing papal texts and decisions. Semi-Traditionalists and conservative Novus Ordos are in shock, scrambling to figure out what this means and what to do next. Before we proceed to analyze and evaluate this latest move on the part of the "Pope", which puts an end to the debate over Amoris Laetitia at least de jure, let's first recall the background and look at the raw facts:
The Buenos Aires Guidelines on the Interpretation of Amoris Laetitia and Francis' approval of them in letter to Buenos Aires "Bishops" on Sep. 5, 2016
Full Text in Spanish and English of Buenos Aires Guidelines (PDF)
Full Text in Spanish and English of Francis' Approval of Buenos Aires Guidelines (PDF)
Although these guidelines and Francis' endorsement were originally leaked to the public, some time ago they were published on the Vatican web site
The most offensive portion of the Buenos Aires Guidelines is this one: "If one arrives at the recognition that, in a particular case, there are limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability..., particularly when a person judges that he would fall into a subsequent fault by damaging the children of the new union, Amoris Laetitia opens up the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.... These in turn dispose the person to continue maturing and growing with the aid of grace. However, it is necessary to avoid understanding this possibility as an unrestricted access to the sacraments, or as though any situation might justify it. What is proposed is a discernment that adequately distinguishes each case" (nn. 6-7).
Francis' endorsement of the Buenos Aires Guidelines is clear and definitive: "The document is very good and completely explains the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations."
The Buenos Aires Guidelines as well as Francis' endorsement have been published in the Oct. 2016 edition of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (vol. CVIII [108], n. 10; pp. 1071-1074). Francis' endorsement is called an "Apostolic Letter" (p. 1071).
Appended to the two documents is a "Rescript 'from an Audience with His Holiness'" by "Cardinal" Pietro Parolin, dated June 5, 2017, which reads: "The Supreme Pontiff decreed that the two preceding documents be promulgated through publication on the Vatican website and in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, as authentic Magisterium."
The Acta Apostolicae Sedis ("Acts of the Apostolic See") is the "only official publication of the Holy See ... in which all official acts and laws in whatever form are promulgated" (Michael Williams, The Catholic Church in Action [New York, NY: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1958], p. 155). It was instituted by Pope St. Pius X in 1908 with the Apostolic Constitution Promulgandi. Although not all decisions of the Roman Congregations are published in the Acta, nevertheless, "if they contribute to the interpretation of some point of canon law or are of interest in jurisprudence, they are published" there (The Catholic Church in Action, p. 90).
These are the facts. After catching up on covering all the news items from Francis' recent trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh, Novus Ordo news sites began to report on this Amoris Laetitia development. Here are links to just a few:
"Pope's Letter to Argentine bishops on ‘Amoris Laetitia’ part of official record" (Crux)
"Pope's Letter to Argentine bishops is Magisterial Teaching, Cardinal Parolin says" (Catholic Culture)
"Pope Declares Troubling Interpretation of AL 'Authentic Magisterium'" (Church Militant)
Considering that the Novus Ordo Sect itself requires its adherents to hold that the "authentic Magisterium" of the man they recognize as Pope requires their "religious submission of the intellect and will" (see Canon 752 of Novus Ordo Canon Law), conservative Novus Ordos and Semi-Traditionalists now have an obvious problem on their hands, one they must either admit and seek to resolve or else deny and explain away. Which is exactly what they're doing. We look at a few of their efforts and evaluate them:
"Deacon" Nick Donnelly
In a tweet of Dec. 2, 2017, English "Deacon" Nick Donnelly asked: "Has Francis deposed himself as the successor of St Peter by attempting to make the heretical interpretation of AL Authentic Magisterium?" For a Novus Ordo cleric, this is quite a courageous question to raise, and it is refreshing to see. A great many of his colleagues do not have the guts to do so. Pray for all of them, that they may begin (or continue) to wake up.
"Bishop" René Henry Gracida
Likewise on Dec. 2, René Henry Gracida, a retired Novus Ordo bishop from Texas, wrote on his blog: "Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letters to the Argentine bishops in the ACTA APOSTOLICA SEDES [sic] making those letters magisterial documents." The "bishop" has been republishing posts from other blogs that denounce or are severely critical of Francis. Earlier this year, Gracida became the first (and, so far, only) Modernist "bishop" to publicly voice doubt regarding Francis' legitimacy.
David Domet at Vox Cantoris is willing to call Francis a "pernicious and filthy heretic" but still believes that "cardinals must now begin the formal process" of accusing/warning and judging him -- an idea that is totally at odds with the Catholic dogma that the Pope -- and this the blogger believes him to be -- cannot be judged by any man, for all men are his inferiors. But while no one can subject a true Pope to an ecclesiastical trial, what can be done is recognize that a particular papal claimant is indeed a "pernicious and filthy heretic", as obviously even Mr. Domet agrees with regard to Francis. But from this it follows with necessity that he is not the Pope of the Catholic Church, and for this cognitive (not legal) judgment, no authority is needed. It is the only possible and therefore necessary conclusion to draw from all the evidence.
Michael Voris
Michael Voris of Church Militant fired up his spin machine and, unable to ignore this big of a story, he at least sought to focus his viewers' attention away from Francis and instead directed it to those evil "bishops" who are basically doing what Francis has been doing. Not once but twice did Voris try this tactic:
Vortex, "Critical Moment", Dec. 4, 2017: "While this may appear to be a crisis regarding the papacy, we'd like to point to something even more critical...."
Vortex, "The Real Deal", Dec. 5, 2017: "...another much more important question needs to be asked. How is it — regardless of what the pope meant — that so many various bishops and bishops' conferences seem to agree that those in an objective state of mortal sin can in some circumstances receive Holy Communion?"
We call his enterprise Church Disneyland for a reason. His Vortex is in reality a Distortex.
Steve Skojec
Over at One Peter Five, rhetorician Steve Skojec presented an "expert" assessment from Dr. John Joy on Francis' move to have the Buenos Aires Guidelines and his endorsement added to the Acts of the Apostolic See. Joy advanced a rather curious thesis: Although the inclusion in the Acta "means that it is an official act of the pope rather than an act of the pope as a private person", and although it is clearly "an official endorsement" of the Buenos Aires interpretation of Amoris Laetitia, nevertheless Joy claims that "this doesn’t necessarily mean that the letter to the Argentine bishops is itself magisterial" -- and so religious submission of intellect and will wouldn't necessarily be required. Apparently Joy missed the fact that Francis had explicitly decreed that the two documents be given the status of "authentic Magisterium."
Louie Verrecchio
Resignationist Louie Verrecchio was also not impressed by Joy's expert analysis. In fact, Verrecchio succinctly summarized the whole spectacle about the latest Amoris Laetitia development thus: "Jorge Bergoglio is a heretic; notorious, formal, pertinacious, and that, my friends, is hardly breaking news." Being a Resignationist, Verrecchio already believes Francis isn't a valid Pope (he thinks Benedict XVI is), so he finds his rejection of the Argentinian impostor corroborated.
Dan Hitchens
In a convoluted post at Catholic Herald, columnist Dan Hitchens offers what sounds like a rather desperate attempt to persuade himself and others that it is best to move along because there is really nothing to see here. He maintains that Francis' decision to include the Buenos Aires Guidelines and his endorsement in the Acta "may somewhat clarify what the Pope is saying" while noting "the ambiguity of the document" and concluding that "this episode leaves us pretty much where we were." In other words: whatever.
The Semi-Traditionalist comedy site The Remnant failed to surprise in its commentary, which was provided by David Martin:
Hence Amoris Laetitia [Chapter] VIII, which proposes that people living in adultery can be guiltless and thus be admitted to the sacraments of Confession and Communion when "concrete circumstances" make it difficult to renounce their adulterous state, is now declared "magisterial" by the Holy See.
The problem with this is that heresy or sacrilege can never be declared magisterial, so that if it is, it not only has no binding force, but the faithful are obliged to resist and refute such a declaration. St. Thomas Aquinas says in his Summa Theologiae: "If the faith were endangered, a subject ought to rebuke his prelate [pope] even publicly."
(David Martin, "Communion to Adulterers Promulgated as 'Authentic Magisterium'", The Remnant, Dec. 4, 2017)
And there you have The Remnant's entire theological "competence" on display. We may rephrase Martin's argument thus: "What cannot be magisterial cannot be magisterial; so if it is, then it doesn't count. And look over here, we found a nice quote from St. Thomas Aquinas. It has nothing to do with the subject matter, but don't let the facts get in the way of our propaganda." Only if Francis were to issue his endorsement of the Buenos Aires Guidelines ex cathedra (i.e., meeting Vatican I's conditions for infallibility) would Francis cease to be Pope, Martin assures his hapless readers -- incorrectly, of course. Although even this much would be contrary to The Remnant's usual position, we must remind Martin that Francis has already done things a true Pope is divinely protected from doing -- such as declaring John Paul II a saint of the Catholic Church, for the canonization of saints is an act protected by infallibility, as even Remnant columnist Christopher Ferrara once knew.
Christopher Ferrara
Speaking of Chris Ferrara, we would be totally remiss, of course, if we did not pay particular attention to what this professional spindoctor has to say about Francis' declaration that the Buenos Aires Guidelines are now "authentic Magisterium." As of the time of this writing, Ferrara has published three posts on the matter at the Fatima Network web site:
The Amoris Laetitia Game: Keep Them Guessing While We Do What We Planned to Do (Dec. 4, 2017)
The Authentic Magisterium Is Truth, Not a Trademark (Dec. 5, 2017)
The Plague of Ecclesial Positivism: No Truth, Only Law (Dec. 6, 2017)
In the first post, Ferrara correctly shows that there is no reasonable way to absolve Francis of error here; but then he asserts that whether or not Francis has fallen into heresy is "ultimately ... not for any of us, but only for the Church (an ecumenical council or subsequent Pope as in the case of Honorius I), to judge definitively." This is nonsense, of course. Whether or not Francis has embraced heresy is not dependent on some authoritative judgment, definitive or otherwise, but on Catholic teaching applied to the empirically verifiable facts. Interestingly enough, Ferrara knows this and acts accordingly when it comes to individuals other than the ones who claim to be Pope, especially when it is helpful to the case he's arguing at a given moment. For example, consider what Ferrara said about "Cardinal" Walter Kasper a few years back, also in connection with Amoris Laetitia:
Kasper is one of the Church’s most notorious post-conciliar Modernists, who, among other heresies, has denied the historicity of the Apostolic Succession. Not surprisingly, then, his address to the cardinals calls for a “pastoral solution” that would allow certain divorced and “remarried” Catholics, living in a state of public adultery, to receive Holy Communion. (Christopher A. Ferrara, "The Francis Effect: A Gathering Storm", The Remnant, Mar. 11, 2014; underlining added.)
Here we see the lawyer Ferrara identifying Kasper as not only a heretic but in fact a "most notorious" one, correctly labeling the heresy he adheres to as Modernism. More specifically, The Remnant's chief polemicist accuses Kasper of denying the historicity of the Apostolic Succession and notes that this is but one "among other heresies" the "cardinal" holds. A little later in the same article, Ferrara even accuses Kasper not only of being a heretic but of deliberately "undermin[ing] [an] aspect of the Faith". So, when it comes to "Cardinal" Kasper, Ferrara has no problem detecting heresy and identifying and condemning him as a heretic. Yet when Bergoglio does the same thing Kasper does, suddenly we "don't know" if it's heresy. This isn't principled Catholic commentary on Ferrara's part -- it is simply propaganda meant to persuade the reader in favor of The Remnant's editorial position. As far as the case of Pope Honorius I goes, by the way, that argument has been refuted here. Francis' decision to declare the explanation of Amoris Laetitia given by the Buenos Aires "bishops" to become part of his "authentic Magisterium" is a devastating blow to Ferrara, who has maintained for years that none of the errors since Vatican II have ever been "official" or "binding" and therefore not truly "magisterial"; rather, the lawyer from Virginia maintains, there has been a "great facade" erected that makes it appear as though the regime of novelty since the council were official, binding, and magisterial, when in reality it is not so. Ferrara argues this at length in a book he co-authored with Thomas E. Woods, Jr., entitled, The Great Facade: The Regime of Novelty in the Catholic Church from Vatican II to the Francis Revolution (2nd ed., 2015). This book had appeared in its first edition in 2002. We will quote two sentences from this work, found in both editions, that have now come back to bite the authors: "Satan understands better than any other creature that the Magisterium can never officially teach error.... [W]e have the divine assurance that the Church can never officially teach error" (The Great Facade, 1st ed: p. 66; 2nd ed: p. 60; italics given). But this is exactly what Francis has now done, and it is absolutely undeniable, since he explicitly used the phrase "authentic Magisterium" with regard to his approval of the Buenos Aires Guidelines and ordered them to be published in the official compilation of papal pronouncements, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. In other words: It doesn't get any more official or magisterial than this (in degree, yes, but not in kind). Faced with this unhappy refutation of his own position, Ferrara's task was now to find a way around it all. This he did in his second post on the subject:
As the explosive new book on Pope Francis, The Dictator Pope, makes its appearance as a best seller in both English and Italian editions, the Church is confronted with an astonishing dictatorial abuse of the Magisterium itself by Francis and what some have called his “magic circle” of handpicked ultra-progressivists. (Christopher A. Ferrara, "The Authentic Magisterium is Truth, not a Trademark", Fatima Network, Dec. 5, 2017)
Notice that in the opening sentence already our lawyer calls Francis' move a "dictatorial abuse of the Magisterium". But if, as Ferrara believes, Francis is Pope, what should be "abusive" about ordering one of his own Apostolic Letters to be included in the Acta? Did not Pope Pius IX do the same thing when he commended the German bishops for their explanation of the dogma of papal infallibility in his Apostolic Letter Mirabilis Illa Constantia (see Denz.-H. 3112-3117)? Of course, what constitutes the "dictatorial abuse of the Magisterium" for Ferrara is not the form of promulgation but the falsity of Francis' teaching. However, the truth of a doctrine can never itself be part of the criteria for what constitutes an authentic exercise of the Magisterium, for that would result in absurdity: It would require the faithful to know ahead of time and independently of the Magisterium what is true and what is false in religious matters, when the whole point of the Magisterium is to teach people what is true and what is false concerning faith and morals. Thus the role of teacher and taught would be entirely reversed. Ferrara proceeds to criticize Francis' inclusion of the two documents in the Acta as follows:
This move is a blatant attempt to halt all criticism of AL (including the seemingly imminent “formal correction” by Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller) by cloaking the letter and the guidelines in the language of Canon 752 of the 1984 Code of Canon Law, which (citing Vatican II) provides “[a]lthough not an assent of faith, a religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals when they exercise the authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim it by definitive act; therefore, the Christian faithful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it.”
The ploy cannot succeed. Francis’ novelty cannot be part of the “authentic Magisterium” because it transgresses the fundamental divine limitation on papal doctrinal authority as enunciated by the First Vatican Council:
“For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.” Francis is here claiming to announce new doctrine, overturning the teaching of his own predecessor in keeping with all of Tradition. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II declared in 1998, the absolution and admission to Holy Communion of public adulterers in “second marriages,” without a commitment to cease adulterous sexual relations, “is intrinsically impossible” and “The conscience of the individual is bound to this norm without exception.” That is because this is a norm “over which the Church has no discretionary authority. The indissoluble nature of marriage… goes back to Christ Himself and is thus identified as a norm of divine law,” and the admission of public adulterers to Holy Communion would violate that divine moral norm.
This is the usual line of argumentation used by the recognize-and-resist crowd: What constitutes the genuine Roman Catholic Magisterium is determined not by the (putative) Vicar of Christ, the Pope, but by some American lawyer with access to the traditional Denzinger, who routinely reviews the Pope's pronouncements to judge their orthodoxy and then informs the populace as to what is and isn't to be accepted from the man who is "judged by no one" (1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 1556). No doubt, St. Pius X would have been impressed! What is worse is that Ferrara thinks that Vatican I is helping his case, but this is not so. If we look at the words he quoted in their proper context, this becomes evident. Their source is Chapter 4 of the Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus. This document contains the council's solemn teaching about the Papacy. Chapter 1 shows how our Blessed Lord instituted the Papacy and made St. Peter the first Pope; Chapter 2 explains how this primacy exists in all true successors of St. Peter, even until the end of time; Chapter 3 explains in what the papal primacy consists; and Chapter 4 defines the infallible teaching authority of the Pope. We will now look at Chapter 4 in its entirety to see the full context. The words quoted by Ferrara we will mark red:
That apostolic primacy which the Roman pontiff possesses as successor of Peter, the prince of the apostles, includes also the supreme power of teaching. This holy see has always maintained this, the constant custom of the church demonstrates it, and the ecumenical councils, particularly those in which East and West met in the union of faith and charity, have declared it. So the fathers of the fourth council of Constantinople, following the footsteps of their predecessors, published this solemn profession of faith: The first condition of salvation is to maintain the rule of the true faith. And since that saying of our lord Jesus Christ, You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, cannot fail of its effect, the words spoken are confirmed by their consequences. For in the apostolic see the catholic religion has always been preserved unblemished, and sacred doctrine been held in honour. Since it is our earnest desire to be in no way separated from this faith and doctrine, we hope that we may deserve to remain in that one communion which the apostolic see preaches, for in it is the whole and true strength of the christian religion. What is more, with the approval of the second council of Lyons, the Greeks made the following profession: "The holy Roman church possesses the supreme and full primacy and principality over the whole catholic church. She truly and humbly acknowledges that she received this from the Lord himself in blessed Peter, the prince and chief of the apostles, whose successor the Roman pontiff is, together with the fullness of power. And since before all others she has the duty of defending the truth of the faith, so if any questions arise concerning the faith, it is by her judgment that they must be settled." Then there is the definition of the council of Florence: "The Roman pontiff is the true vicar of Christ, the head of the whole church and the father and teacher of all Christians; and to him was committed in blessed Peter, by our lord Jesus Christ, the full power of tending, ruling and governing the whole church." To satisfy this pastoral office, our predecessors strove unwearyingly that the saving teaching of Christ should be spread among all the peoples of the world; and with equal care they made sure that it should be kept pure and uncontaminated wherever it was received. It was for this reason that the bishops of the whole world, sometimes individually, sometimes gathered in synods, according to the long established custom of the churches and the pattern of ancient usage referred to this apostolic see those dangers especially which arose in matters concerning the faith. This was to ensure that any damage suffered by the faith should be repaired in that place above all where the faith can know no failing. The Roman pontiffs, too, as the circumstances of the time or the state of affairs suggested, sometimes by summoning ecumenical councils or consulting the opinion of the churches scattered throughout the world, sometimes by special synods, sometimes by taking advantage of other useful means afforded by divine providence, defined as doctrines to be held those things which, by God's help, they knew to be in keeping with sacred scripture and the apostolic traditions. For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles. Indeed, their apostolic teaching was embraced by all the venerable fathers and reverenced and followed by all the holy orthodox doctors, for they knew very well that this see of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour to the prince of his disciples: I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren. This gift of truth and never-failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this see so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all, and so that the whole flock of Christ might be kept away by them from the poisonous food of error and be nourished with the sustenance of heavenly doctrine. Thus the tendency to schism is removed and the whole church is preserved in unity, and, resting on its foundation, can stand firm against the gates of hell. But since in this very age when the salutary effectiveness of the apostolic office is most especially needed, not a few are to be found who disparage its authority, we judge it absolutely necessary to affirm solemnly the prerogative which the only-begotten Son of God was pleased to attach to the supreme pastoral office. Therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the christian faith, to the glory of God our saviour, for the exaltation of the catholic religion and for the salvation of the christian people, with the approval of the sacred council, we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable. So then, should anyone, which God forbid, have the temerity to reject this definition of ours: let him be anathema. (Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, Chapter 4; underlining added.)
Clearly, what Vatican I is teaching is that because he is assisted by the Holy Ghost, the Pope will "religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles" and will not "make known some new doctrine" by the revelation of the same Holy Ghost. Mr. Ferrara, on the other hand, reduces this teaching to little more than a superficial banality: He claims it simply means that the Pope isn't supposed to make new doctrines, for that is not why the Holy Ghost was given him. Such an interpretation of the text is not tenable because this much is true of anyone, not just of the Pope alone. In fact, even a Protestant would agree that his own self-styled pastor isn't supposed to teach his own strange doctrines. That's hardly a profound insight to be taught by a Catholic ecumenical council! Secondly, notice that the conciliar constitution says that "the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine..." (italics added). If Ferrara's understanding of this passage were correct, it would mean that the Pope is not supposed to proclaim new doctrines that are nevertheless revealed to him by the Holy Ghost -- a grotesque thing for a Catholic council to teach. Thirdly, Ferrara's interpretation does not jibe with the surrounding context, which establishes the prerogatives and uniqueness of the Papacy, protected by the Holy Ghost. What sort of divine protection would the Holy Ghost provide if the Pope were merely “not supposed to” invent new doctrines but nevertheless be quite capable of doing so? Wouldn't that be true also of your local grocery store clerk and the grumpy bus driver on your morning commute? Aren't they, too, “not supposed to” come up with a new gospel? It is evident, therefore, that Vatican I teaches, not that the Pope ought not to teach new (or false) doctrine, but that he actually does not. That is the meaning of the special assistance of the Holy Ghost for the Pope. Ferrara turns the doctrine of Vatican I from describing a truth about the Papacy into a merely normative rule for papal conduct -- but the idea that dogmas are merely normative and not descriptive was actually condemned by Pope St. Pius X in his Syllabus of Modernist Errors: "The dogmas of the Faith are to be held only according to their practical sense; that is to say, as preceptive norms of conduct and not as norms of believing" (Pius X, Decree Lamentabili Sane Exitu, error n. 26). This statement is to "be held by all as condemned and proscribed", according to the Pope. Ferrara concludes his Dec. 5 post as follows:
In sum, “authentic Magisterium” stands for the truth of Christ and what the Church has always taught in His name and by His authority. It is not a trademark that Pope Francis can blithely affix to his absurd novelties in order to declare them beyond criticism or discussion.
Never in the entire history of the Church has any Pope dared to abuse the Magisterium in this manner. There have been other papal tyrants in Church history, but never has there been a Pope who tried to tyrannize Catholic doctrine itself by demanding universal submission to his own errant ideas.
Several observations must be made here. First, a man who believes the Vatican II Sect is the Roman Catholic Church can hardly speak about "what the Church has always taught", for the Vatican II Church does not teach, for example, the social kingship of Christ, the absolute identity of the Church our Lord founded with the Catholic Church, or the necessity of the Church for salvation. Thus it is false to say that the church he believes in "has always taught" this. His church hasn't taught it for the last 50 years -- so "always" is simply not true. We notice that our lawyer from Virginia has now carefully added the caveat "in His name and by His authority" -- this will allow him to argue later that whatever heresies or other errors may proceed from the Novus Ordo magisterium henceforth, cannot be considered as being taught "in [Christ's] name and by His authority." This may be clever on his part, but it is totally unworthy of Sacred Theology. People need to remember that when they read Ferrara, they are simply watching a skilled lawyer at work. Secondly, notice that Ferrara shies away from quoting any Catholic dogmatic theology manual for a definition of what constitutes the "authentic Magisterium" -- which would have been the natural thing to do. But where Ferrara fails, Novus Ordo Watch is happy to help out:
Authentic magisterium (from [Greek] authentia = authority) is the office of handing on doctrine instituted by a legitimate authority. Therefore, it implies in the teacher the power and office of handing on doctrine; but in the disciples [i.e. in the taught] the obligation and right to receive instruction. Magisterium can be authentic in two ways: in the broad sense and in the strict sense. Authentic magisterium in the broad sense is that which by itself does not have the power to demand from the disciple the assent of the intellect. Such is, for example, the magisterium of a professor in a university. Authentic magisterium in the strict sense is that which has such power in itself to impose doctrine, that the disciples by that very fact are bound to give the assent of the intellect, because of the authority of the legate of God which the teacher makes use of. (Fr. Joachim Salaverri, Sacrae Theologiae Summa IB: On the Church of Christ, trans. by Fr. Kenneth Baker [original Latin published by BAC, 1955; English published by Keep the Faith, 2015], n. 504; italics given.)
Why did Mr. Ferrara not see fit to quote a definition such as this for his "explanation" of what constitutes the authentic papal Magisterium? Quite simply, because it sinks his boat. Ferrara does not proceed from Catholic teaching in his argumentation and then reason to a necessary conclusion. Instead, he begins with his desired conclusion and then tries to find (highly selective) evidence to back it up -- at the expense of traditional Catholic teaching if need be. This is why we call him a propagandist and rhetorician. Ferrara's position on the authentic Magisterium, which is held by virtually all recognize-and-resist adherents, is also blown to pieces by St. Robert Bellarmine, the Doctor of the Papacy, who emphasized that the nature of the papal teaching authority is such that if God did not prevent it from teaching error, all the faithful would be led into such error precisely because of their divinely-mandated duty of submission:
The Pope is the Teacher and Shepherd of the whole Church, thus, the whole Church is so bound to hear and follow him that if he would err, the whole Church would err. Now our adversaries respond that the Church ought to hear him so long as he teaches correctly, for God must be heard more than men. On the other hand, who will judge whether the Pope has taught rightly or not? For it is not for the sheep to judge whether the shepherd wanders off, not even and especially in those matters which are truly doubtful. Nor do Christian sheep have any greater judge or teacher to whom they might have recourse. As we showed above, from the whole Church one can appeal to the Pope yet, from him no one is able to appeal; therefore necessarily the whole Church will err if the Pontiff would err. (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, Book IV, Chapter 3; translated by Ryan Grant as On the Roman Pontiff [Mediatrix Press, 2016], vol. 2, p. 160; underlining added.)
It's just too bad that this Doctor of the Church did not take into consideration that there is quite an easy solution to this conundrum: an American layman could just declare on various online and print publications that the "Pope" has it all wrong -- problem solved and gates of hell kept from prevailing! Ferrara himself loves to quote Bellarmine whenever he can find a quote that supports (or so he thinks) the position he is arguing (see, for example, here and here -- with a sedevacantist response here). But when Bellarmine clearly refutes him, Ferrara sides with.... Ferrara! The same goes for the American lawyer's quoting of Pope Pius IX, for example. He will be happy to quote certain parts of the encyclical Quanta Cura, but you will scarcely find him quote the following text from the same document:
Nor can we pass over in silence the audacity of those who, not enduring sound doctrine, contend that “without sin and without any sacrifice of the Catholic profession assent and obedience may be refused to those judgments and decrees of the Apostolic See, whose object is declared to concern the Church’s general good and her rights and discipline, so only it does not touch the dogmata of faith and morals.” But no one can be found not clearly and distinctly to see and understand how grievously this is opposed to the Catholic dogma of the full power given from God by Christ our Lord Himself to the Roman Pontiff of feeding, ruling and guiding the Universal Church. (Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Quanta Cura, n. 5)
Little did the good Pius IX suspect that eventually there would be found the likes of Chris Ferrara, who refuse assent and obedience even to those judgments of the (putative) Holy See that do touch upon faith and morals -- in the name of "Tradition", of course! Ferrara's position is also dangerously close to that which was explicitly condemned by St. Pius X, namely, the following assertion: "In proscribing errors, the Church cannot demand any internal assent from the faithful by which the judgments she issues are to be embraced" (Decree Lamentabili Sane Exitu, error n. 7). But then again, if a layman from the United States gets to reject the "authentic Magisterium" of one man he accepts as Pope, why not also that of others?
Other high-profile individuals who have commented on Francis' latest addition to the "authentic Magisterium" include Dr. Joseph Shaw, the official spokesman for the famous Filial Correction effort. He appears to be grasping at straws as he tries to persuade his readers that, in essence, nothing has really changed -- totally ignoring Francis' now "magisterial" statement that "[t]here are no other interpretations" of Amoris Laetitia's Chapter VIII than the one given by the Buenos Aires "bishops."
Edward Peters and "Fr." John Zuhlsdorf
Canon lawyer Ed Peters seeks refuge in an argument that can only be considered legalistic: Canon 915 in Novus Ordo Canon Law states that people "obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion"; and since Francis has not explicitly decreed that this canon be revoked or considered superseded, Peters reasons, nothing has really changed. (Mr. John Zuhlsdorf, otherwise known as "Fr. Z", agrees with him in essence.) While this argument may work for a canon lawyer, who only considers what pertains specifically to the theological discipline of canon law, it is simply a red herring. The issue is not that Canon Law has or has not been changed -- the elephant in the living room is that Francis has used his putative authentic Magisterium to impose the idea that reception of the sacraments is not per se impermissible for people who are in public mortal sin of which they have not repented.
In summary, we can say that the reactions among the conservative Novus Ordos and Semi-Traditionalists are quite varied. While some select few are willing to concede that Francis has squared the circle and therefore some serious questions now need to be asked regarding his legitimacy, others maintain silly positions that run the gamut from "he didn't actually say it" to "he may have said it but he didn't mean it" to "he said it and meant it but it doesn't count." But only Michael Voris managed to insult his audience so badly that he basically said, "Who cares? You should be worried about the evil bishops!" Interestingly enough, Francis' move doesn't just leave prominent Novus Ordo and Semi-Trad commentators with the proverbial egg on their faces. "Cardinal" Gerhard Ludwig Muller, too, doesn't look too good now. Recall that Muller was interviewed about Amoris Laetitia in May 2017 by EWTN's Raymond Arroyo:
ARROYO: Why do you think Amoris Laetitia has been so…It was a document intended, I think, to bring everyone together around the centrality of marriage and family, and yet it has caused such global division. I mean even the Pope himself, when he approves of the Argentine bishops interpretation, that seems to give credence and weight to the absolute opposite of what you’re…the interpretation that you’re advancing; that you can’t change this and that nothing has changed and that there is no possibility of this. The Pope seems to be giving a preference to the Argentines who say there is a path here… MÜLLER: I’m not that clear with all that actions, bishops interpret the pope, the pope interpret the bishops. And, we have some rules in how to act in the Church. We have synods, coming together and then the pope make a summary and with his papal authority he gives his explanation or writes the documents and then must be…all be finished not with interpretation of the interpretation; that is not good for (the) Church. And I am saying (this) as a Catholic theologian. (Interview with "Cardinal" Gerhard Muller, The World Over, May 25, 2017; transcript here; video here)
We'll just leave it at that. By the way, now that the Buenos Aires Guidelines and Francis' endorsement of them are included in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, we can expect that they will also show up in the next Novus Ordo edition of Denzinger. Think about that for a minute. The upshot of all this is a very simple Catholic truth we have repeated here time and again: The Papacy has consequences. Recognizing a man as the Pope of the Catholic Church who is in fact a manifest anti-Catholic heretic or even apostate, has dire consequences because the office of Vicar of Christ is more than just a title. The Pope is a teacher, legislator, and administrator with genuine authority given him directly by God. We would like to remind all our readers of some articles we have published here before regarding the Papacy, demonstrating that the true Catholic teaching about the Pope has been eclipsed by today's self-proclaimed "traditionalists" who recognize Francis as Pope but then refuse him submission:
The Stumbling Block of the Papacy: Why Bergoglio doesn't fit
Anything but Sedevacantism! Analysis of a curious Phenomenon
A Dangerous Experiment: Taking Francis' Claim to the Papacy seriously
Have the Gates of Hell prevailed? The Papacy and Sedevacantism
The Impossibility of Judging or Deposing a True Pope
Those interested in more sedevacantist commentary on Francis' move to include the Buenos Aires Guidelines in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis may wish to read what Tom Droleskey has written:
"Go Ahead, Argue with Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton" (Christ or Chaos)
If there is indeed going to be a schism between the conservative and the liberal Modernist camps in the Novus Ordo Sect over Francis, this move should be the trigger point. If this doesn't do it, there will be no schism at all. The Papacy has consequences, and one of these consequences is that a true Pope cannot do what Francis has done. GAME OVER.
Image sources: vatican.va (screenshot) / churchmilitant.com (spoofed) / istockphoto.com Licenses: fair use / fair use / paidSemi-Trads trip over the Papacy...
At the dictation of the Holy Ghost, the first Pope, St. Peter, wrote concerning his Lord and Master Jesus Christ:
...it is said in the scripture [Is 28:16]: Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious. And he that shall believe in him, shall not be confounded. To you therefore that believe, he is honour: but to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set. (1 Peter 2:6-8)
It is fitting that the Pope, being the Vicar of Christ, should have a share in His Lord's attribute of being a stumbling block to those who do not believe. In our day, this truth is being accentuated with particular force, although in a way that most would, presumably, never have expected. In a recent post entitled "A Dangerous Experiment: Taking Francis' Claim to the Papacy Seriously", we took the First Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Pastor Aeternus, and replaced each occurrence of the phrase "Roman Pontiff" in it with "Pope Francis", to demonstrate what one would have to believe about Francis if he truly were the Pope of the Catholic Church. After all, to accept a man as Pope means to affirm of him whatever the Church affirms of the Papacy. The results of this experiment were grotesque and showed that most people who call themselves "traditional Catholics" and accept Jorge Bergoglio as Pope, do not in fact believe about him what the Church teaches about the Pope. The excuses people come up with to justify their stance are endless, but they all seem to be consistently driven by one single overall motive: to avoid Sedevacantism at all costs. That price, however, is too high; because by taking an anything-but-Sedevacantism approach, they distort and thereby deny the Catholic Faith of which they imagine themselves to be loyal adherents and staunch defenders. Put in figurative but more practical terms, the recognize-and-resist traditionalists are faced with the problem of the square peg (Bergoglio) not fitting into the round hole (Papacy). Since the two won't fit, there are only two ways to make them fit if one insists on recognizing Francis as the Pope of the Catholic Church: either modify the peg (by spinning Bergoglio into a Catholic) or modify the hole (by changing and thus denying Catholic doctrine on the Papacy). In the face of the undeniability of Francis' open apostasy, more and more people who refuse to let go of the idea that the man really is the Pope, are going with the second option. That is, they would rather deny the office of the Papacy than deny that one particular man actually possesses it. Here is a brief excerpt from one of our podcasts making this very point:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPsXPqqCPT8[/embedyt]
This tragic phenomenon we will evaluate in this post. In particular, we will examine three recent cases of individuals who mean to be traditional Roman Catholics but have, explicitly or implicitly, denied ("stumbled over") the Papacy as a result of their refusal to abandon the idea that Francis is a true Vicar of Christ. In other words, because they have insisted on continued use of the square peg and were determined to make it fit into the round hole, they left themselves no choice but to clumsily and forcefully adjust the shape of the hole. The three individuals who have recently engaged in this impossible task are: Nick Donnelly, Hilary White, and George Neumayr.
Nick Donnelly
We'll begin with Nick Donnelly, a Novus Ordo permanent deacon in Lancaster, England, who owns the web site ProtectThePope.com and is active on Twitter. For years Donnelly ran his Twitter account under the handle @ProtectThePope, yet a few days ago, on July 17, he notified his followers that he was changing his Twitter name from @ProtectThePope to @ProtectTheFaith. Take a look at his tweet announcing the change (click image to enlarge):
(direct link to tweet)
This change from "Pope" to "Faith" is very revealing: Donnelly had to change his handle because it became manifestly undeniable that protecting the Faith could not be accomplished by protecting (defending) Francis. As the last 4+ years have proved, "Pope" Francis is clearly not the bulwark of the Faith, is not the rock against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. But that is precisely what the Pope -- a real Pope -- is, according to Catholic teaching:
By the See of the chief of the Apostles, namely by the Roman Church, through the same Peter, as well as through his successors, have not the comments of all the heretics been disapproved, rejected, and overcome, and the hearts of the brethren in the faith of Peter which so far neither has failed, nor up to the end will fail, been strengthened? (Pope St. Leo IX, Apostolic Letter In Terra Pax; Denz. 351) This chair [of Peter] is the center of Catholic truth and unity, that is, the head, mother, and teacher of all the Churches to which all honor and obedience must be offered. Every church must agree with it because of its greater preeminence — that is, those people who are in all respects faithful…. Now you know well that the most deadly foes of the Catholic religion have always waged a fierce war, but without success, against this Chair; they are by no means ignorant of the fact that religion itself can never totter and fall while this Chair remains intact, the Chair which rests on the rock which the proud gates of hell cannot overthrow and in which there is the whole and perfect solidity of the Christian religion. Therefore, because of your special faith in the Church and special piety toward the same Chair of Peter, We exhort you to direct your constant efforts so that the faithful people of France may avoid the crafty deceptions and errors of these plotters and develop a more filial affection and obedience to this Apostolic See. Be vigilant in act and word, so that the faithful may grow in love for this Holy See, venerate it, and accept it with complete obedience; they should execute whatever the See itself teaches, determines, and decrees. (Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Inter Multiplices, nn. 1,7) Indeed one simple way to keep men professing Catholic truth is to maintain their communion with and obedience to the Roman Pontiff. For it is impossible for a man ever to reject any portion of the Catholic faith without abandoning the authority of the Roman Church. In this authority, the unalterable teaching office of this faith lives on. It was set up by the divine Redeemer and, consequently, the tradition from the Apostles has always been preserved. So it has been a common characteristic both of the ancient heretics and of the more recent Protestants — whose disunity in all their other tenets is so great — to attack the authority of the Apostolic See. But never at any time were they able by any artifice or exertion to make this See tolerate even a single one of their errors. (Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum, n. 17) Union with the Roman See of Peter is … always the public criterion of a Catholic…. “You are not to be looked upon as holding the true Catholic faith if you do not teach that the faith of Rome is to be held”. (Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, n. 13) In the Catholic Church Christianity is incarnate. It identifies itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the mystical body of Jesus Christ and which has for its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Saviour, the daughter and the heiress of His redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance, and of that immortality which have been promised it, it makes no terms with error, but remains faithful to the commands which it has received to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolic Letter Annum Ingressi) So the fathers of the fourth council of Constantinople, following the footsteps of their predecessors, published this solemn profession of faith: ‘The first condition of salvation is to maintain the rule of the true faith. And since that saying of our lord Jesus Christ, You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church [Mt 16:18], cannot fail of its effect, the words spoken are confirmed by their consequences. For in the apostolic see the catholic religion has always been preserved unblemished, and sacred doctrine been held in honour. Since it is our earnest desire to be in no way separated from this faith and doctrine, we hope that we may deserve to remain in that one communion which the apostolic see preaches, for in it is the whole and true strength of the christian religion.’… To satisfy this pastoral office, our predecessors strove unwearyingly that the saving teaching of Christ should be spread among all the peoples of the world; and with equal care they made sure that it should be kept pure and uncontaminated wherever it was received. It was for this reason that the bishops of the whole world … referred to this apostolic see those dangers especially which arose in matters concerning the faith. This was to ensure that any damage suffered by the faith should be repaired in that place above all where the faith can know no failing…. For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles. Indeed, their apostolic teaching was embraced by all the venerable fathers and reverenced and followed by all the holy orthodox doctors, for they knew very well that this see of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour to the prince of his disciples: I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren [Lk 22:32]. This gift of truth and never-failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this see so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all, and so that the whole flock of Christ might be kept away by them from the poisonous food of error and be nourished with the sustenance of heavenly doctrine. Thus the tendency to schism is removed and the whole church is preserved in unity, and, resting on its foundation, can stand firm against the gates of hell. (First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, Ch. 4)
As we can see here, in the Catholic Church, protecting the Pope is protecting the Faith because the Pope himself is the divinely guaranteed guardian of the Faith. Presumably, this was also Donnelly's own understanding at some point and the reason why he originally set up his handle as @ProtectThePope to begin with. But then Francis came and made a mess, and now Donnelly has stumbled: Instead of leaving his Twitter handle intact and rejecting Francis as Pope -- which would have been compatible with Catholic principles --, he decided to retain Francis and instead change his idea about the Papacy. In other words, instead of tossing out the square peg, he decided the hole needed adjustment. Perhaps it's a good thing that Twitter does not allow account names longer than 15 characters, else Mr. Donnelly might have chosen @ProtectTheFaithFromThePope as his new handle, which would have illustrated the monstrous absurdity of the notion that Francis is a true Pope, even more clearly. We must never forget that Catholic teaching on the Papacy applies to each and every Pope equally. Once he is validly elected and accepts the office, even an unfit man, an oddball, or a great sinner is no less of a Pope and is owed no less submission and obedience by Catholics than a St. Pius X or a St. Gregory the Great:
The Church, as St. Leo the Great teaches, in well-ordered love accepts Peter in the See of Peter, and sees and honors Peter in the person of his successor the Roman pontiff. Peter still maintains the concern of all pastors in guarding their flocks, and his high rank does not fail even in an unworthy heir. In Peter then, as is aptly remarked by the same holy Doctor, the courage of all is strengthened and the help of divine grace is so ordered that the constancy conferred on Peter through Christ is conferred on the apostles through Peter. (Pope Leo XII, Encyclical Ubi Primum, n. 22) All who defend the faith should aim to implant deeply in your faithful people the virtues of piety, veneration, and respect for this supreme See of Peter. Let the faithful recall the fact that Peter, Prince of Apostles is alive here and rules in his successors, and that his office does not fail even in an unworthy heir. Let them recall that Christ the Lord placed the impregnable foundation of his Church on this See of Peter [Mt 16:18] and gave to Peter himself the keys of the kingdom of Heaven [Mt 16:19]. Christ then prayed that his faith would not fail, and commanded Peter to strengthen his brothers in the faith [Lk 22:32]. Consequently the successor of Peter, the Roman Pontiff, holds a primacy over the whole world and is the true Vicar of Christ, head of the whole Church and father and teacher of all Christians. (Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum, n. 16) …the Church has received from on high a promise which guarantees her against every human weakness. What does it matter that the helm of the symbolic barque has been entrusted to feeble hands, when the Divine Pilot stands on the bridge, where, though invisible, He is watching and ruling? Blessed be the strength of his arm and the multitude of his mercies! (Pope Leo XIII, Allocution to Cardinals, March 20, 1900; excerpted in Papal Teachings: The Church, p. 349; underlining added.)
Not only is this the dogmatic teaching of the Church, it is also verified in ecclesiastical history, as we can see, for example, in the case of the notoriously sinful and unfit Pope John XII:
Nothing in his life marked him for this office, and everything should have kept him from it. He was rarely seen in church. His days and nights were spent in the company of young men and of disreputable women, in the pleasures of the table and of amusements and of the hunt, or in even more sinful sensual enjoyments. It is related that sometimes, in the midst of dissolute revelry, the prince had been seen to drink to the health of the devil. Raised to the papal office, Octavian changed his name and took the name of John XII. He was the first pope thus to assume a new name. But his new dignity brought about no change in his morals, and merely added the guilt of sacrilege. Divine providence, watching over the Church, miraculously preserved the deposit of faith, of which this young voluptuary was the guardian. This Pope’s life was a monstrous scandal, but his bullarium is faultless. We cannot sufficiently admire this prodigy. There is not a heretic or a schismatic who has not endeavored to legitimate his own conduct dogmatically: Photius tried to justify his pride, Luther his sensual passions, Calvin his cold cruelty. Neither Sergius III nor John XII nor Benedict IX nor Alexander VI, supreme pontiffs, definers of the faith, certain of being heard and obeyed by the whole Church, uttered, from the height of their apostolic pulpit, a single word that could be an approval of their disorders. At times John XII even became the defender of the threatened social order, of offended canon law, and of the religious life exposed to danger. (Rev. Fernand Mourret, A History of the Catholic Church, Vol. 3 [St. Louis, MO: Herder Book Co., 1946], pp. 510-511)
Let no one, therefore, say that Francis is a "bad Pope". He is not. He is a non-Pope. A bad man who is a Catholic can be Pope, but a non-Catholic man cannot. (This is explained further here.)
Next, we turn to another recent Papacy stumbler, the semi-traditionalist blogger and Remnant contributor Hilary White. On July 16, she sent this tweet:
Notice that Miss White is questioning Vatican I, not Vatican II. Talk about stumbling over the Papacy! But then, what should keep her from it, given the "recognize-and-resist" position she espouses? After all, if we can resist one legitimate church council, why not the others as well? This is simply the logical conclusion of the resistance position, where each individual Catholic is ultimately the judge over which magisterial pronouncements to accept and reject, and where each believer determines for himself when the Pope is to be submitted to and when he must be resisted. The end result? Absolute chaos, with no possibility of resolution even in principle, since the Pope has been rejected as the ultimate Catholic authority that can bind consciences and move wills. The Pope is reduced to a figurehead who is "followed" only whenever what he decrees is already in agreement with the personal conviction of each believer. (We elaborate a bit more on this in our response to SSPX-resistance priest Fr. Francois Chazal.) So now White has simply extended her resistance to Vatican I as well. And for what reason? Because it seemed better to her to throw out Vatican I than to give up the idea that Francis is Pope. (Once again, modifying the round hole was preferred to junking the square peg.) We had warned about this back in April in our response to Steve Skojec's preposterous recommendation of a "practical Sedevacantism", the idea that we must say Francis is Pope but act like he's not:
Thus, while “practical sedevacantists” may very well think of themselves as retaining the traditional Catholic faith, the truth is that they have long rejected it — keeping in mind that rejecting even one dogma rejects the Faith entirely, since the Faith exists only as a whole and not in parts or degrees.... Certainly, the “practical sedevacantist” may perhaps pay lipservice to the traditional Catholic teaching while contradicting it in practice, but such a course of action would not only be dishonest and hypocritical, it would also amount to cognitive dissonance, a state in which one’s actions deny — or at least do not match — one’s thoughts or stated beliefs. Such a state cannot last long for a sane human being. The discrepancy between one’s thoughts and one’s actions will quickly resolve itself into either changing one’s actions to align with the thoughts, or changing one’s thoughts to correspond with the actions. Since he refuses to abandon the belief that Francis is a true Pope, no matter the consequences, the “practical sedevacantist” thus forces himself to either submit to Francis and become Novus Ordo, or else deny the traditional Catholic teaching on the Papacy. We are reminded of these words of St. Jerome: “…every schism fabricates a heresy for itself to justify its withdrawal from the Church” (qtd. by Pope Pius IX, Encylical Quartus Supra, n. 13). ("Anything but Sedevacantism! Analysis of a curious Phenomenon", Novus Ordo Wire, Apr. 25, 2017)
Tragically, White has proven our analysis correct: No longer able to bear the obvious conflict between the teaching of the First Vatican Council on the Papacy and the known facts about Jorge Bergoglio, White is now toying with the idea of abandoning belief in the Papacy altogether. This corroborates the warnings we've issued on this blog and in some of our podcasts, namely, that acceptance of Francis as Pope is dangerous and destructive of the very Faith one means to uphold.
George Neumayr
Lastly, we will examine some ideas recently put forth by George Neumayr, who writes for The American Spectator and just published the highly informative work The Political Pope: How Pope Francis Is Delighting the Liberal Left and Abandoning Conservatives (New York, NY: Center Street, 2017). On July 14, Mr. Neumayr appeared as a guest on the Tom Woods Show (episode no. 952) to discuss his new book, meaning he spoke in detail about the apostasy of "Pope" Francis. Toward the end of the program, Woods asked Neumayr what he would, ideally, like to see happen in the church now with regard to the "Pope". Neumayr's response was explosive and telling: "This might sound glib but the best-case scenario that I could envision would be if the Pope converted to Catholicism" (31:25 min mark)! Yes, wouldn't it be helpful if the Pope were also a Catholic? If the head of the Catholic Church were also a member of the Catholic Church? Wouldn't that make the Catholic teaching on the Papacy -- especially Vatican I -- so much easier and more meaningful? As we saw above, the simple fact of the matter is that Catholic doctrine does not allow for the idea of a non-Catholic Pope. It's impossible, nay absurd. For Neumayr to state something so outrageous shows that he does not know -- or, at any rate, does not adhere to -- Catholic teaching on the Papacy. How could the Pope be the rock on which rests the foundation of the Church and which the gates of hell cannot overthrow, if he himself denies the very Faith his office is divinely guaranteed to protect? Neumayr elaborates on his answer and goes on to describe various other possible scenarios he envisions. Although we cannot transcribe everything here, you can listen to the entire podcast at this link. There is, however, one more comment he makes that we cannot pass over in silence (beginning at the audio's 32:28 min mark):
Catholics are going to have to decide whether they [audio unclear] the Faith over papolatry; whether preserving the integrity of the faith is more important to them than maintaining a sort of phony appearance of unity. The cardinals are going to have to decide whether they're really defenders of the faith or not. And if they do make that decision, then they have only one choice, and that is to declare to the faithful that the current Pope is a bad Pope, and he must be resisted, for the good of the faith.
Now that's a new one: The Novus Ordo cardinals are to get together and declare, not that Francis isn't a Pope, or that they will remove him from office (which they couldn't do if he were a true Pope, but this had been suggested by semi-trads before), but that he is a bad Pope and ought to be resisted!? Precisely where in Catholic doctrine does Mr. Neumayr find such an idea? Is he making it up as he goes along? This shows that people have lost all sense of what the Papacy is, even those people who think themselves defenders of the Faith. And no wonder, for if you continually make yourself believe that a square peg can go through a round hole, it is not surprising if after a while you start thinking of the hole as having corners itself. The Pope is sovereign and supreme. No one can judge him; no one can punish him; no one can even subject him to a trial, and all must submit to him under pain of eternal damnation. We have laid out all this in some detail at the following links:
Response to Mundabor on the Papacy
Pope Leo XIII condemns the "Recognize-and-Resist" Position
There is a lot more in the Neumayr podcast audio that we could take issue with here -- such as his claim that if Francis doesn't answer the dubia, there is no way to know whether he is a formal heretic or not -- but this will suffice to make our point: Once again an attempt is being made to "defend the Faith" by people denying that Faith. We have no reason to doubt Mr. Neumayr's sincerity and good will, but that is irrelevant to the cold hard fact that he cannot defend a Faith that he himself does not hold. It is absolutely astonishing to see to what lengths people will go in order to avoid the conclusion that Francis is not a valid Pope. There really does seem to be a veritable "Sedevacantophobia".
Answering a Common Objection
At this point, someone may argue that there is no danger in accepting Francis as Pope, as long as we reject whatever he teaches that is false. We can simply "take what is good" from him and "reject what is bad", can't we? The short answer is no, we can't. The longer answer is given by St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church. In his magnificent treatise On the Roman Pontiff, he refutes precisely this very argument:
Again we see that the true Catholic teaching on the Papacy is all but forgotten in our day. If submission to the Pope consisted in nothing more than a "take what is good, reject what is bad" approach -- in which each individual believer has to decide for himself what is good and what is bad, of course --, what would be the difference between a Pope and a Protestant minister? Could we not say the same about "Pastor Fred" at Rainbow Bible Fellowship down the street -- take from him what is good and reject what is bad? Is the Papacy essentially the same, then, as the pseudo-offices of heretics? Is the Vicar of Christ and Sovereign Pontiff of the Bride of Christ really just another "Pastor Fred"? Obviously not. But it is precisely to this that the recognize-and-resisters, especially the Society of St. Pius X, have reduced the Papacy in their stubborn refusal to abandon the idea that an apostate like Jorge Bergoglio could be the head of the Catholic Church. Apparently it is just so much easier to rework that round hole than to throw away the square peg and insist on one that will fit.
But can't we just "leave all this to God"?
All these considerations likewise refute the so-called "Opinionists", that is, those who maintain that it is entirely legitimate to accept Francis as Pope, as long as we don't submit to him. But this would only be a tenable position if submission to the Pope were not required by Catholic doctrine -- yet it is, under pain of heresy and under pain of schism. And this makes perfect sense, for it would be absurd to say that the Church could have a faith different from that of her head. Still, some people sincerely wonder: "Can't we just keep the Faith and simply not worry about the Pope issue? Whether Francis is Pope or not, we know what we have to believe and how to practice our religion. So can't we just do that and leave the rest to God?" At first sight, this might seem like a reasonable position to take, and one can sympathize with those of good will who hold it. There is so much turmoil, so much struggle in souls over everything that has happened, and one cannot help but feel a certain compassion for people who seek refuge in such a "let's just be Catholic and leave this to God" approach. However, while those who struggle deserve our sympathy and compassion indeed, this does not make the truth about the matter somehow relative or optional. In a nutshell: The reason why we cannot just "keep the Faith" and ignore the Pope question is that Catholic teaching on papal authority and submission to the Pope is part of the very Faith we need to keep and defend. You cannot simply cut out a portion of the Faith and decide to only "keep the rest". If you toss out the Papacy, you are not keeping the Faith, no matter how many other dogmas you embrace. Of course we understand that it takes people some time to "sort things out", so to speak, and that is entirely legitimate. We do not condemn people who are searching for doing what they need to do: search, investigate, assess. But this does not take away from the fact that there is only one conclusion at which ultimately to arrive. Consider this analogy: A Protestant man is having some doubts about his religion and is starting to research to see if Catholicism is true. This is difficult for him because he does not have a lot of Catholic apologetics material at his disposal, he has to work a lot of hours to support his wife and eight children, and he is a slow reader. Besides, because of how he was raised, he has a difficult time accepting the Catholic veneration of saints and in particular Catholic teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary. Do we sympathize with this man's struggle? Of course we do. Do we recognize his good will, pray for him, try to help him, and wish him well? Naturally. But none of this means that the truth of the Catholic religion is therefore a matter of opinion, that it is not that important, that he can just "accept Christ, try to live a holy life, and leave the rest to God." The mere fact that people struggle to come to understand certain things does not do away with the fact that there is something to be understood. And that something is certain and not optional.
"But you have no Authority!"
The same goes for the objection that sedevacantists have "no authority" to require anyone else to be a sedevacantist. Of course we don't. But then, we do not invoke any pretended authority to begin with. To return to the analogy we just used, Catholics also don't have any authority to require a Protestant to be a Catholic. But it's not a matter of authority: Catholicism is true because it is the religion founded by Jesus Christ, not because Catholics "authoritatively" declare it to be true. And just as this lack of authority on the part of individual Catholics with regard to converting Protestants does not render Catholicism optional, doubtful, or reduce it to an opinion, neither does a sedevacantist's lack of authority make Sedevacantism optional or doubtful, nor does it make Francis' status into an opinion. The lack of authority is not a genuine difficulty because it simply does not require authority to point out that the peg is square, the hole is round, and the two don't fit -- and you're not allowed to change the shape of either. For those who would like to investigate this whole issue about opinion and authority further, we recommend the following:
Is Francis a valid Pope? Why it does matter
Comedy Hour at The Remnant: Response to Hilary White
Opinionism: Is the Pope Question just an Opinion? by Bp. Donald Sanborn
These articles will help you rediscover the true Catholic teaching on the Papacy.
Believe in the Papacy, not in Francis
The Papacy is not the problem -- anti-Catholic usurpers of the papal throne are. And unless we firmly reject their false claims to the Papacy, we will be led into serious error by them, either directly (by embracing their false teaching) or indirectly (by rejecting their false teaching but then, by necessary implication, denying the Catholic doctrine on the Papacy, which requires that we submit to papal teaching). The Catholic teaching on the Pope is true, and it is immensely beautiful and consoling: "To you therefore that believe, he is honour" (1 Pet 2:7). At the same time, it is also quite terrible, becase the rock of St. Peter, which perdures in all of his legitimate successors (see Denz. 1824 and our post on Perpetual Successors), "to them that believe not" becomes, like Christ, "the stone which the builders rejected, ... the head of the corner: a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set" (1 Pet 2:7-8). We must take great care, therefore, that we do not stumble: "And whosoever shall fall on this stone, shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder" (Mt 21:44). The people we have criticized in this post, we have criticized in charity. We do not want to see them ground to powder, so to speak. They have stumbled and fallen, and we want to help them get up. We exhort them, therefore: "Do not believe in Francis at the expense of the Papacy! Rather, believe in the Papacy at the expense of Francis!" Doubting or denying Catholic doctrine on the Papacy is a very serious sin, even heresy with regard to those teachings that are dogmatic. To all those who are more willing to doubt the Papacy than the legitimacy of the world's greatest apostate, we say: Why? Why do you let Bergoglio do this to your soul? Why do you let him steal your faith? If Bergoglio causes you thus to sin against the Faith, cut him off! For it is better for you to enter Eternal Life without a Pope than to go to eternal damnation with (a putative) one (cf. Mt 5:29-30). If this makes you uneasy and the prospect of having no Pope frightens you, this is understandable. However, do not let this be an excuse not to heed the admonitions of our Lord: "Fear not, only believe" (Mk 5:36); and, "...be not faithless, but believing" (Jn 20:27). It is okay to be frightened, but it is not okay not to believe: "...he that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mk 16:16); "Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God" (2 Jn 9). And thus we believe. We believe in the Papacy and therefore not in "Pope" Francis. Image sources: composite with elements from shutterstock.com and istockphoto.com Licenses: paid
Posts Tagged: Nick Donnelly
What to do with a “heretical Pope”?
The Open Letter accusing Francis of Heresy:
A Sedevacantist Analysis
More than a week has now passed since the publication of the “Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church” released on Apr. 30 by nineteen Novus Ordo clergymen and academics accusing “Pope” Francis of being a pertinacious heretic and asking the addressees to declare him such and thereby remove him from office. Since then, many more academics and clerics have added their names to the Open Letter, and at the time of this writing, the total is up to 81 (see updates here).
in Novus Ordo Wire Amoris Laetitia, Brian McCall, Claudio Pierantoni, Correctio Filialis, Francis, Heresy, John Hunwicke, John Lamont, Juan de Torquemada, Magisterium, Nick Donnelly, Peter Kwasniewski, Pope Honorius I, Schism, Sedevacantism, St. Robert Bellarmine 0
Francis Accused: Open Letter to World’s Novus Ordo Bishops seeks Remedy to ‘Heretical Pope’
Bergoglio accused of heresy and pertinacity…
The internet is abuzz again after the latest attempt by conservative Novus Ordos to do something about the pink elephant in St. Peter’s Basilica: Their “Pope” is a blatant pertinacious heretic.
Yesterday, April 30, the feast of St. Catherine of Siena (in the traditional Roman calendar), a document entitled “Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church” was released simultaneously in six different languages:
The English version was introduced by Maike Hickson at LifeSite, and its release is accompanied by a one-and-a-half-page summary and a select bibliography for further reading.
in Novus Ordo Wire Amoris Laetitia, Brian McCall, Claudio Pierantoni, Correctio Filialis, Francis, Heresy, John Hunwicke, John Lamont, Magisterium, Nick Donnelly, Peter Kwasniewski 0
Novus Ordos in Shock as Francis declares Permissibility of Communion for Public Adulterers “Authentic Magisterium”
Clarification appears in ‘Acta Apostolicae Sedis’…
After more than 19 months of reports, analyses, arguments, interviews, rumors, conjectures, accusations, excuses, warnings, “corrections”, promises, allusions, and plenty of spin, the “doubts” about the correct interpretation of Francis’ “Apostolic” Exhortation Amoris Laetitia have now been officially put to rest: In a tacit move behind the scenes, Francis ordered that his Sep. 2016 endorsement of the interpretation offered by the Argentine “bishops” of the Buenos Aires region for their flock become a part of his (putative) “authentic Magisterium” and be included in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which is the official Vatican organ publishing papal texts and decisions.
in Novus Ordo Wire Adultery, Amoris Laetitia, Christopher Ferrara, Divorce, Edward Peters, Francis, Heresy, John Joy, John Zuhlsdorf, Joseph Shaw, Magisterium, Michael Voris, Nick Donnelly, Rene Gracida, Steve Skojec 53
The Stumbling Block of the Papacy: Why Bergoglio doesn’t fit
Semi-Trads trip over the Papacy…
The Stumbling Block of the Papacy:
Why Bergoglio doesn’t fit
…it is said in the scripture [Is 28:16]: Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious. And he that shall believe in him, shall not be confounded. To you therefore that believe, he is honour: but to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set.
in Novus Ordo Wire Francis, George Neumayr, Hilary White, Nick Donnelly, Papacy, Pope John XII, Schism, Sedevacantism, St. Robert Bellarmine, Steve Skojec, Vatican I 39
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Besiktas and IMG Dogus Sign Historic, Wide-Ranging Strategic Partnership Agreement
Posted on October 9, 2012 11:03 am by Web Desk
ISTANBUL, TURKEY–(Marketwire – Oct 5, 2012) – Beşiktaş Football Investments Co. Inc., the first football company which is publicly offered and owned by Beşiktaş JK, one of the most storied athletic clubs in Turkey, and IMG Doğuş, the Turkish joint venture between IMG Worldwide, the global sports, fashion and media company, and Doğuş, one of Turkey’s largest sector conglomerates, today signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) to develop a broad range of world class sports, fashion and art projects in Istanbul. This represents the first major initiative undertaken by the IMG Doğuş Joint Venture.
IMG Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Dolan, representing the IMG Doğuş Joint Venture, and Mr. Fikret Orman, Chairman of Beşiktaş JK, signed the LoI in Istanbul today.
Under the terms of the LoI, IMG Doğuş will work with Beşiktaş on a variety of important strategic initiatives around sports, fashion and the arts. IMG will provide design and development work of the new stadium and also will create additional revenue generating concepts.
In one of the first projects being planned, IMG Doğuş will assist Beşiktaş in revamping and modernizing to global standards its Youth Sports Academy and Close Season Training Camp in Turkey. IMG has extensive expertise in this area as the owner of one of the world’s leading academies in Florida, USA. Set on over 400 acres, IMG Academy features programs for American Football, European Football, tennis, golf, basketball and baseball among other sports.
In addition, the LoI calls for IMG Doğuş, utilizing IMG’s position as the world’s leading marketing organization, to manage the sale of all the commercial rights of the Club and the Club’s Stadium in Istanbul. This will include the development of a family of sponsors including naming rights, shirt sponsorship, technical sponsors and official suppliers.
IMG Doğuş will also assist Beşiktaş in developing a business plan for all aspects of the proposed Stadium redevelopment project. IMG is the market leader in the commercialization of new stadia and is currently working on a number of new stadia in Brazil and Russia for FIFA World Cup 2014 and 2018 respectively. The agreement includes the development of a business plan for the planned new Beşiktaş stadium.
IMG and Beşiktaş also plan to cooperate on the creation of an exciting new concept — a Centre of Excellence in the Stadium Management.
“We are extremely pleased and excited about the new IMG Doğuş relationship with Beşiktaş JK,” said Michael Dolan on behalf of the IMG Doğuş Joint Venture. ”The Club has enormous history in Turkey and has enjoyed tremendous success in its more than 100 years of existence. We believe that with the IMG Doğuş experience and knowledge of the Turkish market, that we can have a very significant positive impact on The Club. We are looking forward to a long and prosperous association,” Mr. Dolan concluded.
Speaking at the press meeting, Mr. Fikret Orman, Chairman of Beşiktaş JK, said, “As the oldest sports club in Turkey, we are glad to pioneer the industry again to initiate a strong long-term cooperation with IMG Doğuş. We believe that IMG’s worldwide experience and know-how will lead us to develop new projects and bring a new vision to our understanding of sports and club management. We hope that this Lol will constitute a benchmark both for Turkey and the sector.”
About IMG
IMG Worldwide is a global sports, fashion and media business, with nearly 3,000 employees operating in 30 countries around the globe. IMG’s areas of expertise are diverse and wide ranging: IMG College; IMG’s Joint Ventures in China, Brazil, India and Turkey; IMG Media; IMG Events and Federations; IMG Fashion; IMG Models; IMG Art+Commerce; IMG Clients; IMG Academy; IMG Consulting and IMG Licensing. More information is available at www.imgworld.com. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
About Doğuş Group
Founded in 1951, Doğuş Group has become one of largest conglomerates in Turkey and has the vision of being a regional leader in the services sector. Doğuş Group is active in seven core businesses: financial services, automotive, construction, media, tourism and services, real estate and energy. Doğuş Group has 126 companies and a workforce of over 30 thousand which enables it to offer high level technology, quality brands and dynamic human resources to its customers. The Group seeks to maximize the value of its brands, not only in Turkey but also in the regional and global context. The Group carries the vision of becoming a regional leader especially in the services sector.
Tags: IMG
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« YouTube video recognition | Main | Comcast tries p2p throttling »
Morpheus loses, but not badly
The twisting path of MGM vs. Grokster (the entertainment industry's lawsuit against the companies behind the Grokster, Kazaa and Morpheus file-sharing programs) took another fascinating turn today. As only fanatical followers of this case may know, two of the three sets of defendants -- the companies connected to Grokster and Kazaa -- settled with the movie studios, record companies and music publishers not long after the Supreme Court ruled that p2p software companies could be held liable for inducing infringement. But StreamCast Networks, which distributes Morpheus, couldn't strike a deal with the labels and studios, so it fell to U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson to apply the justices' opinion to that portion of the case. He did so a year ago, finding that StreamCast was, in fact, liable. But he did not immediately grant the plaintiffs' request for a permanent injunction, wondering aloud at a hearing how to craft an injunction that did not block non-infringing uses of Morpheus. Today, Wilson finally granted the injunction (Download the pdf here), but with caveats that will keep StreamCast in the game at least temporarily.
Predictably, Wilson required StreamCast to add filters that block Morpheus users from downloading copyrighted works, and to encourage users of older versions to switch to the filtered edition. But he stopped short of granting the plaintiffs' request that StreamCast use "all technologically feasible means" to prevent infringement, and that it be barred from distributing any Morpheus software until it demonstrated its ability "exhaustively" to protect copyrights. Such a move, Wilson said, would give the entertainment industry the power to determine whether a file-sharing product with non-infringing uses got distributed at all, which he said runs against the Supreme Court's Grokster decision. Instead, he said he would appoint a special master to help him pick a filtering approach that was most effective in reducing piracy while preserving non-infringing uses.
In addition, Wilson ruled that the Morpheus filters would have to block only the works specifically claimed by the plaintiffs, who must also submit proof to StreamCast that they own the titles in question. This approach is consistent with the 9th Circuit's initial opinion in the Napster case, when it required the song-swapping service to block infringements only of the songs identified by the record labels and music publishers. But it's a blow to the music and movie industries, whose lawyers have long argued that p2p networks should bear the burden of policing themselves.
StreamCast added filters of its own design to Morpheus months ago, although it hasn't been able to persuade most users to switch to this version of the program. With today's ruling, StreamCast can stay in business for at least a bit longer. It has deals with some indie labels to sell or give away selected tracks, and it may pursue a hybrid business model built around music sales and advertiser-supported content. Of course, no one has shown yet that there's much money to be made in filtered p2p, so even Wilson's forbearance may not be enough for StreamCast in the long run.
Posted by Jon Healey on October 16, 2007 | Permalink
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Times of Masses and Devotions
Catechesis and Sacraments
St. Philip’s Seminary
Map Year
Teachers’ Programme
Sponsorship & How to Apply
Well, my brothers, when shall we begin to do good?
St Philip Neri
Diversity within unity is the basic formula of the Oratory. There is scope for individual prayer, study, and works of mercy within the bonds of the common life. Individual ministries are never divorced from the common mission of prayer, preaching, and the sacraments:
There are many subjects in the Congregation of St Philip of great genius and talent who may be tempted to go forth out of their proper sphere. The ministry of hearing confessions and preaching may seem to them contemptible and of very limited profit; but if they do not humble themselves they run great danger of leaving the Congregation and of working immense injury both to themselves and others by their pride and ambition (The Excellences of the Oratory).
The mission attaching to a classical Oratorian vocation remains a timely one, as the activities under the following headings suggest:
I. Instituting a school of prayer.
The attraction of a “spiritual, but not religious” posture points to the widespread existence of a spiritual hunger. Nonetheless, spiritual knowledge depends upon the embodiment of spirituality in a concrete way of living and practices that can be handed on. The riches of the Catholic contemplative tradition and its ascetical preliminaries must be presented today in a fresh and effective way to awaken men to the loving presence of God.
II. Promoting spiritual direction and confession.
St Philip was an apostle of frequent confession. He saw this sacrament as possessed of its own significance, even apart from its role as preparation for holy communion. This sacrament will demonstrate its full power as we become increasingly aware of the interplay of virtue and vice in a concrete ways of living. The ministry of spiritual direction can serve such an awareness.
III. Extending the liturgical movement.
The Oratory has maintained a tradition of splendor in the liturgy, not only at Mass, but also at Solemn Vespers on Sundays and feast days. According to the French Oratorian, Fr Louis Bouyer (1913-2004) the spirit of the original Oratory was best conveyed by the music of Animuccia, who frequented St Philip’s Exercises. Fine liturgical music continues to be cultivated in Oratorian churches. As Oratorians, we can continue to contribute to the contemporary liturgical movement (which resumes and extends the older liturgical movements of the twentieth century) by our cultivation of the fullness of liturgical life. The Toronto Oratory and the English Oratories, for example, regularly celebrate both the rites of the Ordinary Form and the Usus Antiquior.
IV. Cultivating sacramental devotion.
St Philip and his companions were unusual for their day in the practice of frequent communion and Eucharistic adoration. They were instrumental in introducing Rome to the Forty Hours Devotion—an extended period of continuous Eucharistic adoration, which many Oratories still pointedly celebrate with much splendor. The Oratorian tradition has also been known to mark the entire octave of Corpus Christi with special solemnity. A recent author has spoken of the “sacramental” or “embodied” mysticism of St Philip.
V. Fostering saving knowledge of the Holy Scriptures.
Distributing the daily Word of God is one of the essential works of the Oratory. The biblical scholarship of the twentieth century has enriched our Scriptural knowledge but this acquisition is still seeking its place in the tradition and life of the Church. St Philip’s “daily familiar discourse on the Word of God” can promote the integration of contemporary scripture scholarship, patristic exegesis, doctrinal development, and the renewed practice of lectio divina.
VI. Rediscovering the Marian Dimension of the Church.
Contemporary theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has argued that it is by participating in the ‘all- embracing form’ of Mary’s faith, even more than in obedient acceptance of Peter’s authority, that we encounter the profoundest dimension of Christian identity. Our Lady’s active fiat offered to the Incarnation emerges from the deeper level of her unrestricted receptivity to grace, and for Balthasar this is the form not only of the individual disciple but of ecclesial being itself.
St Philip was in the habit of referring to Mary as the foundress of the Oratory. His insight was verified by several visionary experiences of the Madonna and a strong emphasis on cultivating an affinity with her as the encompassing form of Christian discipleship. With this in mind, the life of charity without vows that characterizes Oratorian existence can be interpreted as a retrieval of a more primordial Marian spirit in the Church, importantly different from the centralized and hierarchical forms of the counter-Reformation.
Attunement to the Marian dimension of the Catholic tradition offers a guiding thread to contemporary and cultural renewal, to which Oratorian life can make an unemphatic but distinctive contribution. A beginning in this direction has already been made in the French Oratorian Louis Bouyer’s contributions to sophiology in The Seat of Wisdom: An Essay on the Place of the Virgin Mary in Christian Theology. (For more on this line of thought see Jennifer Newsome Martin, Hans Urs Von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought and Michael Martin, The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics.)
VII. Keeping alive the lore of the saints.
Popular interest in the saints has not waned, as an increasing number of compilations of saints’ lives and sophisticated scholarly studies bear witness, not to mention the great number of newly-canonized saints added to the official list of the Martyrologium in recent years. The Exercises of the Oratory provide an appropriate place for making known the witness of holy men and women, not only in their virtues, but in the drama of their lives.
VIII. Inculcating moral literacy.
Both philosophers and popular writers have evinced renewed concern with “virtue ethics,” which is part of the patrimony of the Church. The ambience of the Oratory can stimulate the dimension of moral evaluation and reasoning in practical life. The Spiritual Exercises of St Philip were vitally concerned with the acquisition and development of the virtues. Spiritual direction and the counsel of the confessional can weave a discourse of the virtues into reflections on daily life. This is all the more essential when competing discourses such as psychologism and emotivism still largely hold sway in the public sphere.
IX. Elaborating an “historical orthodoxy.”
The “historical consciousness” of contemporary man is a challenge to the proclamation of “eternal truths.” To overcome both a simplistic and unconvincing essentialism, as well as a facile and destructive historical relativism, a deeper knowledge of Church history and the development of doctrine is required. The final (and synthesizing) discourse of the Exercises of the Oratory was drawn from Church history. The Oratory has given the Church many historians, and the father of modern Church history, Cardinal Cesare Baronio, began his great scholarly work with the discourses St Philip set for him in the Oratory.
X. Supporting cultural and intellectual endeavours.
The Oratory has demonstrated a taste for intellectual and artistic culture, especially in the domain of history and music, “the word as sound, which through the ear reaches the heart.” The contribution of the musicians Palestrina and Animuccia to the Exercises has been mentioned above. Giovan Francesco Anerio’s (ca. 1567-1630) Teatro armonico e spirituale, was dedicated to the Oratory. Emilio de’ Cavalieri’s (ca. 1550-1602) opera Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo had its premiere in the Oratorian Church of the Chiesa Nuova. About literature, Cardinal Capecelatro notes:
… proof of Philip’s wish to cherish a spirit of literary research in his congregation is seen in his resolve that it should have a printing press of its own. It was set up in the Piazza of the Valicella, almost adjoining the house, and was placed under the direction of Andrea Brugiotti, a brother of the Oratory, and an amanuensis of Baronio’s; and hence issued the volumes of the Annals until the Vatican press charged itself with their publication.
We might also note the painters and architects patronized by St Philip and the Oratorians: the baroque architect Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), who created the Roman Oratory; the painter Federico Barocci (1535-1612), who contributed two prominent altarpieces for the Oratory’s Chiesa Nuova and whom St Philip called “my Barocci.” Others painters who carried out artistic programs in harmony with the Oratorian spirit include Cristoforo Roncalli (ca. 1552-1626), Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). The seventeenth–century Oratorian Father Giovanni Severano wrote: “Limiting ourselves, then, to just the usefulness that we gain from images, we could form the opinion that these are of benefit and aid to illuminating the intellect and inflaming the emotions and will help no less than books and the Scriptures themselves.”
Here Fr Faber drew attention to the “amplitude” of St Philip’s understanding of the Word of God:
St Philip’s Word of God includes many things, it is not mere missionary preaching; it included Baronius’ Annals with all its secular learning. Perchance men may some day hear St Philip lecture on Physical Geography, on the dangers of Biela’s comet, or the Physiognomy of Plants in a Mechanics Institute, or on English Literature or the Principles of Poetry in a People’s Hall. … His views are anything but narrow.
The Oratory also has a special intellectual resource in the voluminous writings of Blessed John Henry Newman. The purity of Newman’s quest for religious truth is exemplary in modern times. His analysis of the fruitful tension among tradition, magisterium, and theological research marks out a path for acquiring the true and living mind of the Church. His sermons and essays give many helpful indications for the development of theology. His university writings have not ceased to inspire revivals of liberal education. His Oratory papers document the mediation of the Oratorian tradition to the contemporary world.
XI. Encouraging fellowship between clerics and the laity.
The Second Vatican Council ushered in “the age of the laity,” encouraging laymen to pursue holiness in the course of daily life, promoting new lay movements, and enlarging lay participation in the activities of the Church. The Oratory was, at the first, also a lay movement, and this original lay movement has persisted in the association of the Little Oratory, always under the necessity of being re-thought and re-adapted to the needs and occasions of the times. Moreover, the stability of Oratorian life promotes familiar trust and support between clergy and laity. It is not uncommon for parishioners to be married by the same priest who baptized them.
XII. Assisting the revival of community and family life.
The crisis of the modern family has inspired the conception of the family as “domestic church.” Oratorian spirituality, too, is domestic. The “holy community” is a special kind of family, and the superior is called simply “the Father.” Among St Philip’s exercises were those including children: picnic pilgrimages to the Seven Churches of Rome, dramatics, singing, recitations, and concerts. The Oratory has a part to play in preserving a “sense of place” in the midst of a mobile, post-industrial society. The Oratory, by its life of voluntary stable community, is a resource for the revival of the communal sense in large cities.
XIII. Carrying out the New Evangelization.
St Philip and his companions were so taken by their reading of the letters of St Francis Xavier (1506-1552) from India that they considered mounting a missionary venture themselves. But upon seeking the counsel of the prior of the Cistercian monastery at the Tre Fontane, Philip was told, “Your Indies are here in Rome.” The mission of an Oratorian is to work at “home”; the Oratory is thus an apt instrument of the New Evangelization, re-proposing the gospel in formerly Christian societies. Just so, St Philip was the Apostle of Rome, who by means of the “counter-fascination of purity and truth” reconverted both clerics and laymen in the city at the centre of the Church. This subtle influence is the only mode to which St Philip’s sons would lay claim:
Influence is exercised in the world in different ways. Sometimes men gather their intentions and their power together, and incorporate them in a visible system; and then, by the grace of God, and the persistency of their own clear and definite wills, they animate the system, and make it tell, as a momentum from without, upon the world, with its will or against its will. This is mostly, though not always, the case with the founders of religious orders; as with St Ignatius, and his wonderful Society, and so also with the great Benedictine scheme of monastic legislation. Then again there are men who do not gather their specialty up in any such cognizable way, men whose work is more general, whose spirit is more universal, and by its very penetrativeness blends with other influences, and is lost to sight, readily foregoing its claims to the praise or gratitude of men. Their work is more hidden, because their spirit is in all their works. … St Dominic’s was a definite influence in the Middle Ages. It acted upon the world, and most blessedly, from without, from a visible focus of power and heat. It had its own ascertainable shape and features, and men knew it when they saw it. … St Francis exercised a more extensive as well as a different kind of influence. St Dominic, when the two Saints met at Rome, would fain have had the two orders amalgamated; but St Francis had the clearer vision then, and steadfastly declined. In like manner St Ignatius asked St Philip to coalesce with him; but the holy Father would not. His influence was to be of a different kind. He sent Ignatius his first Italian novices; he was a portion, and no mean portion, of the life of all the religious orders in Rome. His specialty was not tied up in a system. What he bequeathed to his own Congregation, which was itself but one of many things which emanated from him, was not so much a Rule, as a Spirit; so that when an Oratory loses its freshness, it must die out, as if by the common law of evaporation. Neither can it be a stereotyped impression of any past state of things; for, as a spirit, though distinctive, it takes its modification from the circumstances in which it finds itself. It is a soul without a body; circumstances are its body. This is its characteristic. Its power of work is in this (Faber).
Continue to “Life”
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You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Dick Cheney’ tag.
VP Cheney & VP-Elect Biden Meeting at Naval Observatory VP Residence (Video)
November 14, 2008 in Biden, democrats, Joe Biden | Tags: Biden, C-SPAN, Cheney, CSPAN, Dick Cheney, Jill, Jill Biden, Joseph Biden, Lynne Cheney, Naval Observatory, news, politics, president-elect, Residence, transition, Vice President, VP Residence, Washington, wife | Leave a comment
Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne Cheney welcomed Vice President-Elect Joseph Biden and his wife Jill Biden to the Naval Observatory for a private meeting and tour of the Vice President’s Residence in Washington.
Biden’s new role: Good cop
November 10, 2008 in Barack Obama, Biden, Bush, Clinton, democrats, Joe Biden, John McCain, McCain, Obama, Pelosi, Republican, white house | Tags: Alberto Gonzales, Bill Clinton, Bob Kerrey, Bush Attorney General, Chuck Hagel, Congress, Democrat, Democratic, Democratic caucus, Democratic strategist, Dick Cheney, Dick Durbin, Dick Lugar, Emanuel, Foreign Relations Committee, GOP, GOP staffers, Harry Reid, Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Jennifer Duffy, Joe Biden, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Majority Leader, Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Nancy Pelosi, New Yorker, Patrick Leahy, Pelosi, policy, Rahm Emanuel, Republican aides, Secretary of State, Sen. Dick Lugar, Senate, Senate Majority Leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Tom Coburn, Tom Daschle, Vice President, Vice-President Joe Biden, white house | Leave a comment
A few days before the election, a Democratic strategist privately worried that a Vice-President Joe Biden was destined for a White House career of dissatisfaction and idle-hands mischief.
“You can’t just have a guy like him at loose ends, he’d go crazy,” said a Democratic consultant who knows the affable, bright and mercilessly quotable soon-to-be ex-chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “They need to keep him busy. Nobody over there wants him getting into the Secretary of State’s [business].”
Harnessing Biden’s considerable talents and containing his flaws will be an ongoing challenge for Obama. But Democratic insiders say the appointment of tough-guy Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff—and the administration’s need to forge a governing coalition that includes some Republicans—has brought Biden’s upcoming role more clearly into focus: He’ll play the good cop.
The Democrats’ apparent failure to win the 60 Senate seats necessary to halt a GOP filibuster has created the need for inter-party ambassadors like Biden who are practiced at the art of aisle crossing. In his 36-year Senate career, Biden was never considered a bomb-throwing ideologue, and he still has plenty of chits to cash in with Republicans on the Hill.
“He’s probably got more friends among Senate Republicans than John McCain does, and that’s a huge plus for Barack Obama, who is committed to breaking the partisan roadblock of recent years,” said Biden spokesman David Wade shortly before Election Day.
And while Emanuel’s bad-cop reputation may be overstated, all those F-bombs and threats to pulverize GOP incumbents during his tenure of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee boss create an opening for Biden, who maxes out on the Mr. Nice Guy scale.
“I really have genuine relationships with Republican leaders in the House and the Senate. I mean, I—I hope this is not self serving, but I’ve gained the respect,” Biden told an Ohio campaign rally in late October. “I’ve been able to literally work with the Republican leaders, of the committees as well as, as well as the Senate,” he added. “And Barack knows that, Barack has served there and sees that… I’m confident that I’ll be spending a fair amount of time [in Congress].”
In an interview with the New Yorker last month, Biden selected a lofty, if somewhat dubious role model: Lyndon Johnson, who plunged into a deep depression when John F. Kennedy assigned him the role as emissary to a Senate he had bullied, cajoled and utterly dominated as majority leader in the 1950s.
Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who’s fond of Biden, painted a different picture: “I can see Joe in his room [just off the Senate chamber], smiling, slapping people on the back, making his points, working the members.”
Indeed, Biden told the New Yorker that his style would be more honey than sting: “I have never ever, ever screwed another senator,” he said.
On top of that, Biden could not be more different than the outgoing vice president, who never visited the weekly Democratic caucus lunches in the Senate and had virtually no relationships with the other side of the aisle. It’s unlikely that Biden will ever be caught telling another senator to “Go [expletive] yourself” as Dick Cheney famously said to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy. Unless he’s kidding.
Biden’s best Republican friends in the Senate are centrists, including retiring Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel and the top Republican on the Foreign Relations committee, Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, with whom he’s forged a close working partnership.
Biden is equally popular with some GOP staffers, drawing top-level Republican aides into free-ranging discussion on nettlesome policy problems, even setting up secure computer forums where aides can swap ideas without partisan recrimination, according to a person who participated in one of the chat groups.
The veep in waiting is not a favorite with Republicans hard-liners, though, who still hold grudges over his tough questioning of former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The conservative bloc in the Senate remains unified, and could still engineer a filibuster of Obama priorities.
“Joe’s really well liked—and he can be a real stand-up guy—but it’s going to be tough for him,” said an aide to a top Senate Republican, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“We’re not in the mood to make deals. People like him, sure, but people are going to change their votes on defense or health care or taxes just because Joe Biden’s a great guy?”
Biden may find it even tougher with Democratic senators—thrilled to have one of their own in the White House again—who may want to simply bypass the vice president and forge a relationship directly with Obama.
“He will carve out a role for himself, the problem is that he’s going to have a lot of competition—and it’s competition that won’t be willing to step aside for him,” says Jennifer Duffy, who covers the Senate for the non-partisan Cook Political Report.
Obama hasn’t served a full term in the Senate but he’s got plenty of friends in the Democratic caucus: Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, up-and-coming Missouri freshman Claire McCaskill and an ailing but still powerful Ted Kennedy. Obama also has a unique relationship with one of the most conservative senators, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, with whom he shares a passion for government reform.
Then there’s former Majority Leader Tom Daschle—a well-connected kitchen-cabinet Obama adviser who is likely to play some kind of role in the administration.
But Biden’s biggest competition may come from the president-elect himself.
“Obama already has his own relationships in the Senate so, in a sense, he doesn’t need an emissary,” Duffy adds. “He’s his own go-to guy.”
Obama has gone to great lengths to establish personal relationships with legislators, creating direct lines of communication that will be handy even if he runs into problems with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
“Barack’s been seriously keeping touch with the [fiscally conservative Democratic] Blue Dogs and all the other foot soldiers—he’s intent on not making the same mistakes we did,” said a former aide to Bill Clinton, who worked his congressional transition team in the early 1990s. “We thought all we had to do was to keep in touch with the leaders and we left the members and committee chairs alone. That was a huge mistake and it killed us on the health care… Barack’s not making that mistake.”
So Little Time, So Much Damage
November 4, 2008 in Bush, climate change, Clinton, democrats, Economy, Environment, Health, Iraqi war, Republican, Scientific R & D, Women's Rights | Tags: abortion rights, Americans’ privacy, Attorney General, CIVIL LIBERTIES, Clean Air Act, Condoleezza Rice, Congress, Dick Cheney, Dirk Kempthorne, E.P.A., George Orwell, Guantánamo Bay, homeland security, Michael Mukasey, Office of Legal Counsel, white house | Leave a comment
While Americans eagerly vote for the next president, here’s a sobering reminder: As of Tuesday, George W. Bush still has 77 days left in the White House — and he’s not wasting a minute.
President Bush’s aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others — few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush’s case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage.
Here is a look — by no means comprehensive — at some of Mr. Bush’s recent parting gifts and those we fear are yet to come.
CIVIL LIBERTIES We don’t know all of the ways that the administration has violated Americans’ rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey rushed out new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use chillingly intrusive techniques to collect information on Americans even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing.
Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject’s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. The changes also give the F.B.I. — which has a long history of spying on civil rights groups and others — expanded latitude to use these techniques on people identified by racial, ethnic and religious background.
The administration showed further disdain for Americans’ privacy rights and for Congress’s power by making clear that it will ignore a provision in the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security. The law requires the department’s privacy officer to account annually for any activity that could affect Americans’ privacy — and clearly stipulates that the report cannot be edited by any other officials at the department or the White House.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has now released a memo asserting that the law “does not prohibit” officials from homeland security or the White House from reviewing the report. The memo then argues that since the law allows the officials to review the report, it would be unconstitutional to stop them from changing it. George Orwell couldn’t have done better.
THE ENVIRONMENT The administration has been especially busy weakening regulations that promote clean air and clean water and protect endangered species.
Mr. Bush, or more to the point, Vice President Dick Cheney, came to office determined to dismantle Bill Clinton’s environmental legacy, undo decades of environmental law and keep their friends in industry happy. They have had less success than we feared, but only because of the determined opposition of environmental groups, courageous members of Congress and protests from citizens. But the White House keeps trying.
Mr. Bush’s secretary of the interior, Dirk Kempthorne, has recently carved out significant exceptions to regulations requiring expert scientific review of any federal project that might harm endangered or threatened species (one consequence will be to relieve the agency of the need to assess the impact of global warming on at-risk species). The department also is rushing to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list — again. The wolves were re-listed after a federal judge ruled the government had not lived up to its own recovery plan.
In coming weeks, we expect the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a final rule that would weaken a program created by the Clean Air Act, which requires utilities to install modern pollution controls when they upgrade their plants to produce more power. The agency is also expected to issue a final rule that would make it easier for coal-fired power plants to locate near national parks in defiance of longstanding Congressional mandates to protect air quality in areas of special natural or recreational value.
Interior also is awaiting E.P.A.’s concurrence on a proposal that would make it easier for mining companies to dump toxic mine wastes in valleys and streams.
And while no rules changes are at issue, the interior department also has been rushing to open up millions of acres of pristine federal land to oil and gas exploration. We fear that, in coming weeks, Mr. Kempthorne will open up even more acreage to the commercial development of oil shale, a hugely expensive and environmentally risky process that even the oil companies seem in no hurry to begin. He should not.
Soon after the election, Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, is expected to issue new regulations aimed at further limiting women’s access to abortion, contraceptives and information about their reproductive health care options.
Existing law allows doctors and nurses to refuse to participate in an abortion. These changes would extend the so-called right to refuse to a wide range of health care workers and activities including abortion referrals, unbiased counseling and provision of birth control pills or emergency contraception, even for rape victims.
The administration has taken other disturbing steps in recent weeks. In late September, the I.R.S. restored tax breaks for banks that take big losses on bad loans inherited through acquisitions. Now we learn that JPMorgan Chase and others are planning to use their bailout funds for mergers and acquisitions, transactions that will be greatly enhanced by the new tax subsidy.
One last-minute change Mr. Bush won’t be making: He apparently has decided not to shut down the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the most shameful symbol of his administration’s disdain for the rule of law.
Mr. Bush has said it should be closed, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and his secretary of defense, Robert Gates, pushed for it. Proposals were prepared, including a plan for sending the real bad guys to other countries for trial. But Mr. Cheney objected, and the president has refused even to review the memos. He will hand this mess off to his successor.
We suppose there is some good news in all of this. While Mr. Bush leaves office on Jan. 20, 2009, he has only until Nov. 20 to issue “economically significant” rule changes and until Dec. 20 to issue other changes. Anything after that is merely a draft and can be easily withdrawn by the next president.
Unfortunately, the White House is well aware of those deadlines.
Darth Cheney, Sith Lord McCain Chronicles
November 3, 2008 in Bush, John McCain, McCain, Palin, Republican, Sarah Palin | Tags: air america, ann coulter, Arianna Huffington, Barack Obama, bill o'reilly, Conservative, daily show, dailykos, Democrat, Dick Cheney, Drudge Report, elisabeth hasselbeck, Fox News, hillary clinton, huffingtonpost, John McCain, jon stewart, Keith Olbermann, laura ingraham, Liberal, Malkin, matt drudge, Media, michael savage, michelle, Rachel Maddow, Republican, rush limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Saturday Night Live, sean hannity, SNL, stephanie miller, stephen colbert, view | Leave a comment
Darth Cheney appeared our of the darkness of his undisclosed location – to endorse the new Sith Lord McCain who he hoped would be his loyal successor and work to expand the Dark Empire he worked hard to create.
Looking out onto the Kingdom Sith McCain and Darth Cheney – the two agreed that his Empire should continue – under the directive of the war without end doctrine – in order to bring all the known world and its important resources under their control ~ nothing they thought could stop them now.
There were no limitations on their desire for power and control by – war baby war – success was at hand. But their plan was missing one thing they had to unite the world, around their dark vision and they needed one person – an Obama Skywalker.
Meantime dark ideas had already infiltrated the Senate – and the plan to take it over and to undermine democracy – in the name of restoring order and maintaining security was complete.
The very powers of the Senate – through deception – were used to steal democracy. And no one could stop it.
And a new power – the power of the dark side – was soon unleashed.
The world looked very different as there would be no peace for 100 years.
All was well in the outer-lands – but little known to Obama Skywalker – he was about to enter the battle and restore order to the force. His first encounter with the Dark Lord McCain was at hand – after his home was destroyed – he began his Jedi training.
Trust your feelings Barack, said his sage trainer – in the ways of the force.
As the Emperor’s forces drew closer and destruction seemed complete Obama Skywalker went into training with one of the greatest sages of all.
“Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”
Obama learned that the restoration of the good side of the force lay with him.
Later in the cave – Obama Skywalker was tested.
“Will he finish what he begins?”
“I won’t fail you. I’m not afraid.”
“Oh, you will be. You will be.“
Sith McCain was so confident in his vision – he tried to get in Barack the Jedi to join with him on the dark side.
Lord McCain said something like ‘ I am your father ‘
Naturally Obama Skywalker said that this was impossible and that he would never join him – that he would never move to the dark side. And the fight for Skywalker’s surrender began.
Realizing that the force was strong with Obama Skywalker and he would be a threat to the Empire – if he would not come over to the dark side – Darth Cheney – sought to teach – this insignificant one – a lesson.
In the end with his last shred of humanity, seeing that his own son would be destroyed, he took on Darth Cheney and saved Obama Skywalker, saying something like ‘ tell the voters you were right ‘ ‘ you were right.’
Once order was restored – there was music and celebrations throughout all the lands – as the battle for the good and the betterment of mankind and over the dark side’s war without end for control of power and resourses – had been won.
Obama takes campaign battle to GOP territory
November 2, 2008 in Barack Obama, Bush, Clinton, democrats, Joe Biden, John McCain, McCain, Obama, Palin, Republican, Sarah Palin | Tags: anl, Biden, Bill, campaign donations, Cindy, Clinton, CNN, Colorado, Democratic presidential, Dick Cheney, Election 2008, Election Day, Electoral Map, endorsement Mccain, Hillary, Joe, John King, McCain, michelle, Missouri, Nevada, Obama, Plumber, political news, politics, Polls, president, President Bush, rally, rights, Saturday Night Live, suppression, Virginia, voters | Leave a comment
WASHINGTON – In the final weekend of a long race for the White House, Barack Obama promised to heal America’s political divisions while rival John McCain fought to hold on to Republican-leaning states and pledged to score an upset.
For Obama, buoyed by record campaign donations and encouraging poll numbers, it was a time for soaring rhetoric and forays into Republican territory. “We have a righteous wind at our back,” the Democrat said Saturday.
McCain saw the weekend as a final opportunity to persuade voters to prove the polls and pundits wrong and sweep him into office.
“We’re a few points down but we’re coming back,” he told supporters in Virginia.
Obama campaigned Saturday in Nevada, Colorado and Missouri, all states that voted for President Bush four years ago, while McCain struggled to keep Virginia from voting for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1964.
McCain also made a quick sidetrip to New York City and an appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” where he joked about his campaign and his latest plan to win over voters.
“I thought I might try a strategy called the reverse maverick. That’s where I’d do whatever anybody tells me,” McCain said. If that failed, he quipped, “I’d go to the double maverick. I’d just go totally berserk and freak everybody out.”
Both men appealed to supporters to turn out on Election Day, saying the stakes could scarcely be higher.
“If you give me your vote on Tuesday, we won’t just win this election — together, we will change this country and change the world,” Obama said in a nationwide Democratic radio address.
Vice President Dick Cheney endorsed McCain, saying Americans “cannot afford the high tax liberalism of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”
Obama, campaigning in Colorado, pounced on the remark, saying McCain had earned the endorsement through supporting the Bush administration’s failed social and economic policies.
“Bush and Cheney have dug a deep hole,” Obama said. “Now they’re trying to hand the shovel to McCain.”
An Associated Press-Yahoo News national poll of likely voters showed Obama ahead, 51 to 43, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. McCain’s campaign says its internal polling shows the gap closing.
Cheney’s Deputy Chief Of Staff Must Testify, Court Says
November 1, 2008 in Bush | Tags: Claire O'Donnell, corruption, corruption Washington, Deputy Chief Of Staff, Dick Cheney, Politics News, Vice President's Office | Leave a comment
No, this is not some Halloween stunt. That guy you see over there being held accountable is actually the vice president of the United States.
The U.S. District Court in D.C. ruled today that Vice President Dick Cheney will have to let his deputy chief of staff, Claire O’Donnell, give testimony in a lawsuit over his records.
Cheney, with his well-known passion for secrecy, had argued that a vice president need only preserve records central to his job as the official who presides over the U.S. Senate or records relating to specific tasks assigned by the president. That would narrow the pile considerably.
A group of historians and others at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a lawsuit, concerned about their eventual access to the vice president’s records. In a second round victory, the court today denied Cheney’s move to block discovery in the case.
Anne Weismann, CREW’s chief counsel, hailed the decision.
Today’s decision, allowing CREW discovery in our case against the office of the vice president, moves us one step closer to ensuring that important historical documents will not be lost to future generations. CREW looks forward to deposing Cheney’s Deputy Chief of Staff Claire O’Donnell to get to the bottom of what exactly the administration has been doing with documents that belong not to the vice president, but to the American people.
The vice president’s office declined to comment, noting that the case was still in court. Where Cheney may well file an appeal
Source: LATimes, HP
Dick Cheney, Palin’s Role Model
October 4, 2008 in Bush, Palin, Sarah Palin | Tags: Cheney Palin, Cheney Palin Role Model, Dick Cheney, Expand Vp Powers, Palin Expand The Vp Powers, Palin Expand Vice Presidency, Politics News, Sarah Palin | Leave a comment
From not knowing what a VP does – to wanting to be like Cheney – one of the most powerful (and dangerous) VP’s in history – with Palin I get the sense of the rat that borrows in and quickly finds its way around its new tunnels.
That it is likely Cheney made a lot of money of the country’s energy policy – where he and likely Bush made undisclosed (trusts) amounts off oil – shows that America is as close as it can be to being run like an African dictatorship – where the whole country and its people are used for the leader’s benefit – in this case – the country is being pulled through the narrow opening of oil and wars to get more oil. To prove it everything else has failed or come under stress – besides these two industries.
In all the talk about the vice-presidential debate, there was an issue that did not get much attention but kept nagging at us: Sarah Palin’s description of the role and the responsibilities of the office for which she is running, vice president of the United States.
In Thursday night’s debate, Ms. Palin was asked about the vice president’s role in government. She said she agreed with Dick Cheney that “we have a lot of flexibility in there” under the Constitution. And she declared that she was “thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president also, if that vice president so chose to exert it.”
It is hard to tell from Ms. Palin’s remarks whether she understands how profoundly Dick Cheney has reshaped the vice presidency — as part of a larger drive to free the executive branch from all checks and balances. Nor did she seem to understand how much damage that has done to American democracy.
Mr. Cheney has shown what can happen when a vice president — a position that is easy to lampoon and overlook — is given free rein by the president and does not care about trampling on the Constitution.
Mr. Cheney has long taken the bizarre view that the lesson of Watergate was that Congress was too powerful and the president not powerful enough. He dedicated himself to expanding President Bush’s authority and arrogating to himself executive, legislative and legal powers that are nowhere in the Constitution.
This isn’t the first time that Ms. Palin was confronted with the issue. In an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, the Alaska governor was asked what she thought was the best and worst about the Cheney vice presidency. Ms. Palin tried to dodge: laughing and joking about the hunting accident in which Mr. Cheney accidentally shot a friend. The only thing she had to add was that Mr. Cheney showed support for the troops in Iraq.
There was not a word about Mr. Cheney’s role in starting the war with Iraq, in misleading Americans about weapons of mass destruction, in leading the charge to create illegal prison camps where detainees are tortured, in illegally wiretapping Americans, in creating an energy policy that favored the oil industry that made him very rich before the administration began.
Ms. Couric asked Joseph Biden, Ms. Palin’s rival, the same question in a separate interview. He had it exactly right when he told her that Mr. Cheney’s theory of the “unitary executive” held that “Congress and the people have no power in a time of war.” And he had it right in the debate when he called Mr. Cheney “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had in American history.”
The Constitution does not state or imply any flexibility in the office of vice president. It gives the vice president no legislative responsibilities other than casting a tie-breaking vote in the Senate when needed and no executive powers at all. The vice president’s constitutional role is to be ready to serve if the president dies or becomes incapacitated.
Any president deserves a vice president who will be a sound adviser and trustworthy supporter. But the American people also deserve and need a vice president who understands and respects the balance of power — and the limits of his or her own power. That is fundamental to our democracy.
So far, Ms. Palin has it exactly, frighteningly wrong.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Flat-Earther Palin’s Big Oil infatuation
September 26, 2008 in Oil, Palin | Tags: Alaska, big oil, Bush, carbon, climate change, Dick Cheney, eskimos, exxon mobil, global warming, kennedy, polar bears, Politics News, robert, Sarah Palin | Leave a comment
Drill Baby Drill – though there is a big question that keeps coming up – Drill What?
According to experts even in Palin’s ANWR oasis – over one hundred test wells have been sunk around the area and have yet to produce the dream find that Palin believes the US could be dependent on. Oil leaving the Alaska pipeline is now half the volume of its peak. But while Palin fools herself – she strikes out to convince others of the same.
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I was water-skiing with my children in a light drizzle off Hyannis, Mass., last month when a sudden, fierce storm plunged us into a melee of towering waves, raking rain, painful hail and midday darkness broken by blinding flashes of lightning. As I hurried to get my children out of the water and back to the dock, I shouted over the roaring wind, “This is some kind of tornado.”
The fog consolidated and a waterspout hundreds of feet high rose from the white ocean and darted across its surface, landing for a moment on a moored outboard to spin it like a top, moving toward a distant shore where it briefly became a sand funnel, and then diffusing into the atmosphere as it rained down bits of beach on the harbor. For 24 hours, a light show of violent storms illuminated the coastline, accompanied by booming thunder. My dog was so undone by the display that she kept us all awake with her terrified whining. That same day, two waterspouts appeared on Long Island Sound.
Those odd climatological phenomena led me to reflect on the rapidly changing weather patterns that are altering the way we live. Lightning storms and strikes have tripled just since the beginning of the decade on Cape Cod. In the 1960s, we rarely saw lightning or heard thunder on the Massachusetts coast. I associate electrical storms with McLean, Va., where I spent the school year when I was growing up.
In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.
In those days, I recall my uncle, President Kennedy, standing erect as he rode a toboggan in his top coat, never faltering until he slid into the boxwood at the bottom of the hill. Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home from the Justice Department for lunch at our house. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow in our backyard. My brothers and sisters played in the structure for several weeks before it began to melt. On weekend afternoons, we commonly joined hundreds of Georgetown residents for ice skating on Washington’s C&O Canal, which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate.
Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy. In 1998, these companies plotted to deceive American citizens about climate science. Their goal, according to a meeting memo, was to orchestrate information so that “recognition of uncertainties become part of the conventional wisdom” and that “those promoting the Kyoto treaty … appear to be out of touch with reality.”
Since that meeting, Exxon has funneled $23 million into the climate-denial industry, according to Greenpeace, which combs the company’s annual report each year. Since 2006, Exxon has cut off some of the worst offenders, but 28 climate-denial groups will still get funding this year.
Corporate America’s media toadies continue to amplify Exxon’s deceptive message. The company can count on its hand puppets — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, John Stossel and Glenn Beck — to shamelessly mouth skepticism about man-made climate change and give political cover to the oil industry’s indentured servants on Capitol Hill. Oklahoma’s Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe calls global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American public.”
Now John McCain has chosen as his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a diligent student of Big Oil’s crib sheets. She’s something of a flat-earther who shares the current administration’s contempt for science. Palin has expressed skepticism about evolution (which is like not believing in gravity), putting it on par with “creationism,” which posits that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.
She used to insist that human activities have nothing to do with climate change. “I’m not one … who would attribute it to being man-made,” she said in August. After she joined the GOP ticket, she magically reversed herself, to a point. “Man’s activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming,” she told Charles Gibson two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, Alaska is melting before our eyes; entire villages erode as sea ice vanishes, glaciers are disappearing at a frightening clip, and “dancing forests” caused by disappearing permafrost astonish residents and tourists. Palin had to keep her head buried particularly deep in an oil well to ever have denied that humans are causing climate change. But, as Upton Sinclair pointed out, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Palin’s enthusiastic embrace of Big Oil’s agenda (if not always Big Oil itself) has been the platform of her hasty rise in Alaskan politics. In that sense she is as much a product of the oil industry as the current president and his vice president. Palin, whose husband is a production operator for BP on Alaska’s North Slope, has sued the federal government over its listing of the polar bear as an endangered species threatened by global warming, and she has fought to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Alaska’s coast to oil drilling.
When oil profits are at stake, her fantasy world appears to have no boundaries. About American’s deadly oil dependence, she mused recently, “I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem.”
I guess the only difference between Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney is … lipstick.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an environmental lawyer and a professor at Pace University Law School.
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Bankrupting car makers may mean killing the electric car, again (Video)
December 4, 2008 in Barack Obama, climate change, Economy, Environment, Obama, Oil, Scientific R & D | Tags: Auto Industry, auto makers, Bankrupting, battery, car, clean, competitors, Dr. Burton Richter, electric, electric car, ethanol, family car, Ford, fuel efficient, G.M., gas prices, green economy, Green energy, hybrid, innovation, jeep, killing, Li, Li ion, lithium, Oil, revenge electric car, saloon, sedan, suv, technology, who killed the electric car | 17 comments
GM Volt technology allows a car to drive for 40 miles before switching over to gas/petrol – but we already have electric cars like the Tesla that can go 240 miles without recharging – plenty enough for everyday driving – at about 2 cents/mile to run.
It seems that the auto makers are stalling ~
US Auto makers roll out fuel efficient cars
Palin pardons a turkey, then gives interview in front of slaughter (Video)
November 21, 2008 in Palin, Republican, Sarah Palin | Tags: Alaska, foul, gobbles, house, Oil, Palin, pardon, shed, slaughter, thanksgiving, turkey, wasilla | 21 comments
There is definitely something raw about that lady!!
WSJ, Obama’s Challenge: Energy – Part 1 (Video)
November 14, 2008 in Barack Obama, Bush, democrats, Economy, Environment, Obama, Oil, white house | Tags: Energy, gas, green, Obama, Oil, president, Wall Street Journal, WSJ | Leave a comment
With just weeks to go before taking office, the economy is hurting and oil and gasoline prices are dropping, all presenting challenges for President-elect Obama’s green energy proposals. Stacey Delo reports. (Part 1 in a series.) (Nov. 12)
For more political videos, check out www.wsj.com/video.
Back Home, Palin Finds Landscape Has Changed
November 10, 2008 in Bush, democrats, John McCain, McCain, Oil, Palin, Republican, Sarah Palin | Tags: abortions, Alaska, Anchorage, campaign, coal, Coghill, Democratic, democrats, Election Day, Gara, Gov, John Harris, John McCain, McCain-Palin, Obama, Oil, oil companies, Oil prices, President-elect Barack Obama, President-elect Obama, raise taxes, Republican, resign, Sarah Palin, Senator Ted Stevens, socialist, State Representative Les Gara, Taxes, Ted Stevens, Troopergate | Leave a comment
ANCHORAGE — Gov. Sarah Palin has returned to Alaska fully recast and amplified.
Adored by many national conservatives, Ms. Palin is a prospect for a presidential run in 2012, supporters say. Caricatured by opponents, she is a candidate for political oblivion, say others.
Regardless, Ms. Palin told reporters the day after Election Day, “This has been all positive for me.”
Alaska, too, has been recast and amplified in the 10 weeks since Ms. Palin soared to national prominence as the Republican nominee for vice president, and the process has not necessarily been all positive.
Oil prices, which provide the bulk of state revenue, were well over $100 a barrel in late August when Ms. Palin left to campaign with Senator John McCain. Now they are slumming south of $60 a barrel, below the level required to balance the state budget. Increased scrutiny of Ms. Palin’s time as governor often painted an unflattering portrait of her administration. Investigative news reports have portrayed Ms. Palin as being consumed with personal matters and vindictiveness, particularly in the controversy over the firing of her public safety commissioner in what has become known as Troopergate.
Many Democrats, her allies in passing key legislation to raise taxes on oil companies and spur development of a natural gas pipeline, are outraged by her partisan attacks on now President-elect Barack Obama and on the tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign here at home.
Within the state’s Republican establishment — never Ms. Palin’s comfort zone — there is tension over the fate of Senator Ted Stevens, who was convicted last month of failing to disclose gifts and free home renovations he received. Ms. Palin called on Mr. Stevens to resign even as state Republicans urged his re-election. A preliminary vote count suggests he could win a seventh full term.
Even if Mr. Stevens wins, he could still be forced to resign, and Ms. Palin is widely viewed as a strong candidate to win his seat in the special election that would have to be held to replace him.
Ms. Palin has largely dodged questions about her long-term political future, and as she gets back to governing full time, few people know what to expect from her in the immediate future.
“She’s coming back to a whole different world from when she left,” said State Representative John Coghill, a Republican from North Pole who is chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee. “If she comes back with a puffed up ego there’s going to be problems. But if she comes back ready to work, that will be better.”
Ms. Palin, in an interview in her office on Friday, said she was ready to work.
“Now we kick in that fiscal conservativeness that needs to be engaged, and we progress this state with $57-a-barrel oil,” Ms. Palin said. She said the state would have to “be prudent with public dollars and provide services more efficiently than have ever been provided in the state of Alaska before.”
The price and production of oil determines state finances: taxes on oil bring in about 85 percent of state revenue. To balance the budget for the 2008-9 fiscal year, the price of oil needs to average $74 over the 12 months, said Karen J. Rehfeld, director of the state office of management and budget. If it falls below that average, the state could have to make emergency cuts or dip into a reserve account that contains several billion dollars. High prices early in the fiscal year may help keep the average up this year, but next year is another matter.
Ms. Palin, first elected governor in 2006, has governed only in times of budget surpluses, and lawmakers said they had many questions about how she would lead now.
“I just don’t know what kind of philosophy she’s going to have when she comes back,” said State Representative John Harris, a Republican and the departing House speaker.
Noting that his chief of staff, John Bitney, was once the governor’s legislative director, Mr. Harris added, “We were just trying to figure out what kind of policy things the governor may want to address and we were kind of scratching our heads, because we don’t know.”
Mr. Harris was among several lawmakers who questioned whether Ms. Palin would spend the rest of her term, which ends in 2010, positioning herself to run for national office. Would she pursue a socially conservative agenda, promoting bills to restrict abortion or gay rights, issues she largely passed on in her first two years in office because she was trying to win support from Democrats on other issues? Would she move to the center? Would she continue to rail against “the old boy network,” stoking her reformist image at the expense of her fellow Republicans, whose party has been tarnished by corruption scandals, including that of Mr. Stevens?
Ms. Palin rejected the idea that she would be playing to a larger audience.
“My actions will continue to be first and foremost in good service to the state of Alaska,” she said in the interview.
But other than suggesting that cost cuts were to come, Ms. Palin did not hint at a broader agenda.
The governor is due to submit her 2009-10 budget next month, and neither she nor her aides offered specifics about what it might contain. The McCain-Palin campaign portrayed Ms. Palin as an energy expert, and one top priority Ms. Palin expressed well before she was selected to run for the vice presidency was to improve energy sources for different parts of the state. That includes finding cheaper sources of energy for rural villages, which often rely on inefficient diesel power, as well as for cities like Fairbanks, the state’s second largest, where utilities rely on oil and coal.
The state also faces questions over issues like financing Medicaid, increasing mining in environmentally sensitive areas and spending on transportation projects, as well as the complex negotiations involved in trying to develop the gas pipeline with the cooperation of the same oil companies whose taxes Ms. Palin has raised.
Ms. Palin’s partisanship on the campaign trail may be what most surprised people at home.
“She’s coming back to a divided state, where Democrats had supported her but they watched her for two months call the president-elect of the United States a terrorist sympathizer,” said State Representative Les Gara, Democratic of Anchorage. “She called him a socialist.”
Her partisanship also surprised some conservative Republicans, who were accustomed to feeling ignored while Ms. Palin nurtured alliances with Democrats and moderate Republicans. Now, some Republicans who have been at odds with Ms. Palin in the past are wondering if her partisan tone on the campaign trail might mean they will have her ear more than before.
“It appears that way,” said Mr. Coghill, the Republican from North Pole. Mr. Coghill said Ms. Palin’s emphasis on socially conservative issues on the campaign trail has helped persuade him that now is the time to ask Ms. Palin to actively support a bill that would require minors seeking abortions to notify their parents in advance.
“There are some people in our caucus who are skeptical” that Ms. Palin might ally herself more with Republicans now, Mr. Coghill said. “But they’re willing to take the chance, to step up and play.”
Ms. Palin suggested in the interview that how she ran for vice president would not shape how she governs Alaska.
“If anybody wants to try to criticize and say, ‘Oh, all of a sudden she’s an obsessive partisan,’ they’re wrong,” she said.
But she did allow that she thinks beyond her current role.
“Around every corner is something new,” Ms. Palin said, “so I look forward to seeing what happens next. But for now, it’s great to be back in the governor’s office.”
Palin’s Energy Speech: But Can We Say Thanks But ~ No Thanks !!
October 31, 2008 in Barack Obama, Biden, Bush, climate change, democrats, Environment, Joe Biden, John McCain, McCain, Obama, Oil, Palin, Republican, Sarah Palin, Scientific R & D | Tags: Alaska, clean-coal, coal, energy alternatives, energy technology, ET, gas, gas pipeline, Green energy, Mccain Nuclear Power, Nuclear, Oil, oil companies | Leave a comment
Here a pro-future energy plan – quickly constructed.
In the future we are going to drive vehicles with mechanics which don’t use oil and gas.
Our factories will be powered by an energy source which cost little or nothing – lowering the cost of production.
The amount spent on energy could be shifted to research and development – we could create more if we don’t have to factor in the energy cost.
Once the cost of energy is out of the equation — as with most things there is an energy cost to manufacture it, and another energy cost to deliver it – to the wholesaler – then another energy cost to either deliver it to the consumer or the retail outlet, each time a product has to be moved or made or cooked, then the energy cost is added on to it like a tax.
Once you take that expense out of the system – then you are instantly looking a system where there is more money.
In your own home – if we don’t have to pay for electricity or heating, or gas to power our cars – or if we can significantly reduce these costs in the short term – and say wages stay the same – then you could instantly see how you could have more money in your own household. But if we could take the cost of energy out of the whole system, or significantly reduce it, then we could see how there would be more money for everyone – as sales or demand may go up and prices go down. We become the limiting factor and not energy availability or its cost. How we want to use and recycle materials for use again, becomes the limiting factors, on what we produce.
TOLEDO, Ohio – No blaring country songs. No pink handmade signs. No rousing chants of “Drill, baby, drill.”
Gov. Sarah Palin abandoned the usual flash of her campaign rallies on Wednesday to deliver her second policy speech as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, an address focused on energy security.
Standing on a riser above a concrete floor, under the glare of fluorescent lighting, Ms. Palin addressed fewer than 200 people, mostly employees of Xunlight Corporation, a spin-off from the University of Toledo that manufactures solar energy implements.
She called for greater energy independence, blaming decades of presidents and legislators for failing to achieve it.
“It’s been 30 years’ worth of failed energy policies in Washington, 30 years where we’ve had opportunities to become less reliant on foreign sources, and 30 years of failure in that area,” Ms. Palin said. “We must steer far clear of the errors and false assumptions that have marked the energy policies of nearly 20 Congresses and seven presidents.”
Ms. Palin also laid the blame at the feet of her Democratic counterpart, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has opposed offshore drilling. Mr. Biden was overheard telling a supporter on the campaign trail that he did not support clean-coal technology in the United States.
“He says that clean coal is O.K. for China, but sorry, Ohio, Joe Biden says it’s not for you,” she said. “And that is just nonsense.”
If Senator John McCain is elected, she added, $2 billion a year would be devoted to clean-coal research and development.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland released a response on behalf of the Obama campaign:
“In a bit of rare straight talk, Sarah Palin attacked her own running mate’s record today by blaming our oil addiction on ‘thirty years of failure’ in Washington,” said Governor Ted Strickland. “John McCain was there for twenty-six of those years, during which he voted against alternative sources of energy and stood with oil industry lobbyists instead. Now he wants to give those oil companies an additional $4 billion in tax breaks, even as he proposes pennies for the kind of renewable energy that can end our dependence on Mideast oil and create new jobs. After decades of John McCain’s failed leadership on energy, we can’t afford four more.”
As a vice-presidential candidate, Ms. Palin has leaned heavily on her record in Alaska challenging the power of oil companies, and as governor, she negotiated a $40 billion pipeline that would deliver natural gas from the North Slope of Alaska to the lower 48 states. But that project, which she described in her speech on Wednesday, is years away from federal approval and will not be built for at least a decade.
Source: NYT
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Outgress
Home Help >
Slack Integration
Let's talk about what is allowed and what isn't allowed by Niantic. First let's look at the definitions as laid out by Ingress Terms of Service...
Niantic Terms of Service
Last updated October 1, 2018.
We publish real-world augmented reality mobile experiences, including mobile game applications ("Apps"), and operate a real-world augmented reality platform ("Platform"). Please read these Niantic Terms of Service and any applicable App guidelines (the "Guidelines" and, collectively, "the Terms"), because the Terms govern your use of the Apps and Platform. The Terms also govern your interaction with any websites we own or operate ("Sites"), purchase of any Niantic merchandise, participation in Niantic live events or promotions ("Events"), and more generally your use of any Niantic products or services (together with Apps and Platform, the "Services").
For Ingress specific terms, that means the phone app, connections to Ingress servers intended for the phone app and the ingress.com website.
"Content" means the text, software, scripts, graphics, photos, sounds, music, videos, audiovisual combinations, communications, interactive features, works of authorship of any kind, and information or other materials that are generated, provided, or otherwise made available through the Services, including User Content.
This means content within the phone app, content received through connections to Ingress servers or website (see above for definition of "Services").
"User Content" means any Content a user of a Service provides to be made available through Services.
This means content that users generate or submit (things like portal photos and portal names).
Portals Images and Titles
Portals images and titles are submitted by users and fall under Ingress' "User Content". Niantic does not claim ownership rights in User Content and nothing in these Terms restricts any rights...
This means portals images and titles aren't claimed under copyright by Niantic since it was end users who created them.
Things You Can't Do
attempt to access or search the Services or Content or download Content from the Services through the use of any technology or means other than those provided by Niantic or other generally available third party web browsers
Outgress is based on emails, which is a "technology or means" provided by Niantic. But it's a bit of a moot point because emails don't fall under the Terms of Service definition of "Content" or "Services".
extract, scrape, or index the Services or Content
Outgress does not do anything with the phone app, website or Ingress servers (see definition of "Services" and "Content"). Outgress is not a scraper and never makes any connection to Ingress servers in any way.
Your Emails
Niantic does not attempt to put terms on what you are allowed to do with your emails. You are free to search, compile, share, etc.
For Sake Of Argument...
Let's say emails were part of Ingress "Services" as defined by the Terms of Service (which they aren't), and also not a technology or means provided by Niantic (which they are). In that case, indexing emails would be a violation of the Terms of Service. This also means that any emails that you have in searchable form (for example in Gmail or any other email client) is also a violation of Ingress terms because they were indexed for search.
Has A User's Privacy Has Been Violated Because Other Users Can See Where They Played Ingress?
No, under the Niantic Privacy Policy, every Ingress user has agreed to allow Niantic to collect, store and transmit their location to other users. Users who are notified of other player locations are not required to keep that information private (they are free to let others know those locations). When you use the Services, and in particular when you play our games, use social features within those games, or take part in live events, we will share certain Personal Data with other players. This Personal Data includes your in-game profile (such as your username, your avatar, and your team), your in-game actions and achievements, the real-world location of gameplay resources you interacted with when playing the games (for example PokéStops within Pokémon GO or Portals within Ingress)...
If you honestly don't want your location to be known, you absolutely should not be playing a location based game that sends push notifications, in-game alerts and emails to other players letting them know your location at a specific time.
Things Niantic Can Do
We may suspend or terminate your access to and use of the Services, at our sole discretion, at any time and without notice to you...
While we believe Outgress to be completely within the bounds of Ingress Terms of Service, Niantic is free to terminate your account at any time for any reason they want. So like most things in life, use Outgress at your own risk.
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Planet Vinyl
Exploring the Universe of Found Sound
Welcome to Planet Vinyl
Records for sale
Copyright, and all that
Little Boy Lost, Johnny Ashcroft
The Fifth Beatle
April 24, 2019 by Richard Evans
If, like me, you grew up listening to the Beatles you may have wondered about the strange-sounding “piano-or-is-it-a-harpsichord” solo on the song “In My Life,” on the Rubber Soul album. It goes like this:
https://planetvinylblog.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/20238-b4-inst-as-heard.mp3
This was the work of the “Fifth Beatle,” George Martin, so called because of his work playing, producing and arranging many of the Beatles’ finest recordings. Both classically-trained and open-minded, Martin engineered subtle soundscapes which complemented and enhanced the band’s work, especially Paul McCartney’s melodies – including “In My Life”. Hunter Davies reveals the secret to that puzzling keyboard sound in his book The Beatles Lyrics (which I recommend as a fascinating insight into both song-writing generally and the Beatles canon in particular):
The music is greatly helped by what sounds like a harpsichord, tinkling away like a Bach minuet, giving it a classical timeless quality. This was George Martin, on a piano with the sound speeded up.
Here is the solo, slowed down by 25% (very nearly the same as playing a 45rpm record at 33⅓), the speed at which it was originally played.
https://planetvinylblog.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/20238-b4-dig-ver-33-to-45.mp3
(Full disclosure: this processed segment was taken from a different, stereo release. This meant I could separate the piano from the other sounds, such as the drum track.)
Nice enough. Dignified. But it has nothing of the magic which the speeded-up version drops into the finished song. And here is the whole song – as released. The record has been bashed about a bit, but that is okay. It shows that someone once loved this LP, and played it over and over. Just listen.
https://planetvinylblog.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/20238-b4.mp3
Artist: The Beatles
Album: Rubber Soul
Track: B4 In My Life
Format: 12”, 33⅓ rpm, vinyl, mono
Label: Capitol-EMI
Catalogue: T 2442
This entry was posted in 12", 1960s, 33 rpm, LP, Pop and tagged Columbia (label), EMI (label), George Martin (EMI producer), In My Life (song), Piano, Rubber Soul (LP), The Beatles. Bookmark the permalink.
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One thought on “The Fifth Beatle”
The Soulful Heart says: April 27, 2019 at 2:42 am
How clever!! I never realized.
Follow Planet Vinyl on WordPress.com
Straight into overdrive
Girl from Tiger Bay
We need to tell the story again
Rascals in knickerbockers
HAL on Earth
7" 10" 12" 33 rpm 45 rpm 78 rpm 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s Children's Classical Compilations Country Dance EP Folk Gospel Jazz LP Nineteenth Century Pop Rock Single Soul Soundtracks Spoken Word World music
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Tag: P-750 light utility aircraft
Chinese organisations turn Aerospace aircraft into unmanned aerial vehicle
Hamilton’s Aerospace Ltd’s turboprop P-750 light utility aircraft has been developed into an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in conjunction with a group of Chinese organisations for commercial and military applications.
The AT200 has been developed by Chinese company Star UAV with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Engineering Thermophysics and other Chinese state organisations.
Launch customer SF Express, a Chinese delivery services company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, and the second largest courier in China will acquire three AT200 for testing and evaluation. Test flights have already begun.
SF Express provides domestic and international express delivery.
The plan is to use the aircraft for unmanned cargo flights. The AT200 will carry 1500 kg over ranges of up to 2000 km.
Attracting interest from agencies outside China is how SF Express would integrate the AT200 into its intensive network of logistical support for the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army, notably its new network of militarised islands in the disputed South China Sea.
Aerospace developed the P-750 from the legendary Fletcher Fu24 aerial topdressing machine. It is in widespread use around the world for tasks ranging from light freight to sky-diving.
The company says its extremely short capabilities put it in a class of its own.
It is certified in the US as well as NZ and is supported by major US firms including Pratt & Whitney, engine-makers.
In China where skydiving has taken off as a recreational activity, Aerospace’s P-750 is used extensively because of its ability to carry up to 17 skydivers to jump height fast and effortlessly and to return quickly to pick up more thrill-seekers.
Last year the company was taken to court and fined $74,000 for breaking UN sanctions by shipping parts to North Korea.
tutere44 Business Leave a comment March 19, 2019 1 Minute
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Tag Archives: Saturday Night Live
CNN Films, Magnolia Pictures Start 2019 On A Strong Note With New Gilda Radner Doc
Posted on January 1, 2019 by philspicks
Courtesy: CNN Films/Magnolia Pictures
Once you reach the top, there’s nowhere to go but down. Who hasn’t heard or repeated this old adage at one point or another in life? Well, CNN Films and Magnolia Pictures have started 2019 at the top with their brand new documentary Love, Gilda. Keeping that in mind, here’s to hoping that the nearly 90-minute documentary, which focuses on the life and career of the late, great Gilda Radner will not be the only great new offering from the two studios this year. That aside, this presentation is such a strong start for each side partly because of its main feature. This will be discussed shortly. The bonus content that comes with the DVD strengthens its presentation even more, and will be discussed a little bit later. The DVD’s average price point rounds out its most important elements, and will also be discussed later. Each item is important in its own right to the whole of Love, Gilda. All things considered, they make Love, Gilda the first great documentary of the new year.
CNN Films and Magnolia Pictures’ new documentary Love, Gilda is the first great new documentary of the new year. That is proven in part through the documentary’s main feature. The primary content is a standard presentation, following the life and career of the late great entertainer, providing a look not just at the woman on camera, but the woman behind the lens, too. Needless to say, that in-depth examination of Radner’s life and career is a fitting tribute to Radner. It is such, that it will leave even the most emotionally steeled person tearing up to a point. Audiences learn over the course of the doc’s 86-minute run time, that her comedic roots were in here childhood. Even more surprising is the apparent long-term impact of her being bullied for her weight during her childhood. It would appear in watching this program, that Radner suffered from anorexia throughout the majority of her life as a result of that bullying. Of course, that is entirely assumption, but it would seem that there is a link there. Even more interesting (and sad) is her battle with ovarian cancer, which eventually is what took her life. She did not die as a result of drugs or alcohol, but from something far more unexpected. Her brave battle with the disease will keep those unfamiliar with her story completely engaged, and agreeing that the way in which she passed was so tragic. On a happier, note, audiences get a first hand telling of Radner and second husband Gene Wilder’s true love story along with clarification that she was never married to John Belushi. Wilder and Radner’s love story will move any viewer in the best way possible. On a related note, the revelation that Radner was married to former Saturday Night Live band leader G.E. Smith prior to her marriage to Wilder adds its own share of interest to the overall story, too. The readings from Radner’s own autobiography It’s Always Something and the highlights of her own personal notes adds yet more interest to the story. That is because they show even more clearly, the woman behind the lens. They reveal her to be such a fragile person, emotionally, but not just some diva type figure. Rather, they make her a figure to whom so many people can relate. She was just an average person going through emotional turmoil that every person goes through even today. These revelations add even more appreciation for Radner not just as an entertainer, but as a person. When one considers everything noted here, along with the vintage footage of Radner performing on SNL, The National Lampoon Show and even her earliest days working with a stage troupe, what audiences get through this doc’s main feature is a story that rivals any overly embellished story that Hollywood’s “Big Six” could ever develop. Hopefully none of those studios will ever try to tell their own unnecessary story of Radner’s life and career, but even if one were to make such a thoughtless move, this doc’s main feature would still outperform said presentation, proving again why docs are far better than said biopics. Now, keeping all of this in mind, it should be clear why the main feature of Love, Gilda is so important to the doc’s overall presentation. That presentation follows a standard formula, yes, but at the same time, it tells a powerful and moving story that will keep any viewer engaged and entertained. Of course, that primary content is only a portion of what makes the doc such a strong new offering from CNN Films and Magnolia Pictures. The bonus content strengthens even more, the foundation formed through the doc’s main feature.
The bonus content that is included with Love, Gilda strengthens the doc’s presentation even more primarily through its extensive bonus interview segments. The interview segments in question are more in-depth presentations that were segmented throughout the course of the main feature. They are with the likes of Martin Short (with whom Radner worked early in her career), SNL producer Lorne Michaels, SNL alums Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Bill Hader and Radner’s family and friends. Poehler spoke warmly of Radner, saying that next to Carol Burnett, Radner was one of the most influential female entertainers in her own life and career. Additionally, Poehler states in her extended interview, that she regretted never having gotten to meet Radner because of Radner’s impact on her life and career.
Short talks during his extended interview that Radner’s “command of a room” and her “originality” were among the most important aspects of Radner’s personality. Additionally, he smiles as he recalls that Radner never tried to compete with other entertainers, but rather enjoyed just being with other entertainers. Short said of that nature that “it was an amazing aura. It wasn’t even stardom. It was something beyond that.”
As if all of these fond recollections are not enough, audiences also learn through another of the extended interviews where Radner actually got her name. It is revealed by one of those closest to Radner that she allegedly was named after the title character from actress Rita Hayworth’s 1946 starring vehicle Gilda. That story alone is certain to bring plenty of smiles and even some fond laughs. Between this revelation, the others noted here and so many others presented in the extended interviews, the story and picture that audiences get of Radner here is just as engaging and entertaining as that presented in the doc’s main feature.
The “home movies” and “gallery’ bonuses are not exactly the most standout additions in terms of bonuses. Even with that in mind, they help audiences to see even more, the importance of those extended interview segments. To that end, audiences will agree that the extended interviews are just as critical to this doc as the doc’s main feature. When those interviews and the main feature are paired together, their whole creates a presentation that proves even more why it is such a strong first effort from CNN Films and Magnolia Pictures. Keeping that strength in mind, it makes the doc’s price point money well-spent.
Love, Gilda’s average price point is $22.89. That number is obtained by averaging prices from Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Barnes & Noble Booksellers. It should be noted that the “buy” link at the doc’s official website takes audiences back to Amazon, and that while information on the film is listed at CNN Films and Magnolia Pictures’ websites, no “buy” link is available. Additionally, the doc is not listed at Books-A-Million’s website. Keeping this in mind, Love, Gilda can be ordered via the country’s biggest retailers, and at a price that will not break the bank. What’s more, the mode price of $22.39 means that the average price point is only barely above that most commonly listed price. That is even more of a positive for audiences. When one takes into consideration the depth and breadth of the information shared throughout the course of Love, Gilda, both prices prove to be equally affordable and worth spending. When one keeps all of this in mind, Love, Gilda proves in whole to be a strong start to 2019 for CNN Films and Magnolia Pictures, and easily the year’s first great new documentary.
CNN and Magnolia Pictures’ first new documentary of 2019 is also the year’s first great new documentary. Go figure, it has been released today, on the very first day of the new year. The doc’s main feature easily supports these statements, as it presents the story of someone who might have been a celebrity, but who never made herself like so many celebrities past or present. It presents Radner as someone to whom any everyday person can relate even today. It is a touching story that easily rivals any biopic that Hollywood’s “Big Six” might ever try to create. Again, hopefully none of those studios will ever try to ruin her life and legacy, but if they should ever go that low, this doc will still outdo anything they churn out. The bonus extended interviews included with the doc deepen Radner’s story even more, adding even more appreciation for her as a person and entertainer. The DVD’s average price point proves to be money well-spent, considering the appreciation that the main and secondary content creates. Each item is important in its own way to the whole of Love, Gilda. All things considered, they make Love, Gilda a great start to 2019 for documentary fans, and the year’s first great new documentary. More information on Love, Gilda is available online now at:
Website: http://www.lovegilda.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LoveGildaTheFilm
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LoveGildaFilm
More information on this and other titles from Magnolia Pictures is available online now at:
Website: http://www.magnoliapictures.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MagnoliaPictures
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MagnoliaPics
More information on this and other titles from CNN Films is available online now at:
Website: http://www.cnn.com/shows/cnn-films
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cnn
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cnnfilms
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Movies | Tagged celebrities, CNN, CNN Films, entertainment, facebook, Gilda Radner, internet, Love Gilda, Magnolia Pictures, movies, Phil's Picks, Saturday Night Live, Television, The National Lampoon Show, Twitter, Wordpress | Leave a reply
Make A Bet, Enter For A Chance To Win “A Bet’s A Bet” From Phil’s Picks
Courtesy: Cinedigm
Independent movie and television studio Cinedigm will release its new rom-com A Bet’s A Bet next Tuesday, January 20th. And one lucky person will win a copy of the movie on DVD for free courtesy of Phil’s Picks this Friday, January 16th. Anyone that wants to enter for a chance at a free copy of the movie just needs to go to the Phil’s Picks Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/philspicks, “Like” it, and then write on the page that they want to be entered for a chance to win the movie. It’s that easy. A review of the movie is available online now via the Phil’s Picks blog at https://philspicks.wordpress.com/2014/12/23/the-opposite-sex-is-an-edgy-entertaining-rom-com/.
A Bet’s A Bet, which also goes by the title The Opposite Sex, is an independent release. But it boasts a superstar cast. Daytime Emmy© Award winner Jennifer Finnigan (The Bold and the Beautiful, Tyrant) co-directed and co-starred with Jonathan Silverman (Weekend at Bernie’s, Weekend at Bernie’s II, Close to Home). Kristin Chenoweth (Rio 2, Stranger Than Fiction, Glee) makes an appearance early on in the movie. Also on board are Josh Hopkins (G.I. Jane, Cougar Town, The Perfect Storm) opposite lead star Geoff Stults (She’s Out Of My League, Wedding Crashers, The Break-Up). Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live, Kenan & Kel, All That) appears in a supporting role along with Dana Ashbrook (Twin Peaks, Dawson’s Creek, Crash) and Josh Cooke (I Love You, Man, Hart of Dixie, Manhattan). Debra Jo Rupp (That 70s Show, She’s Out of My League, Big) makes an appearance as Vince’s (Geoff Stults) secretary. And Eric Roberts (The Expendables, The Dark Knight, The Cable Guy), brother of actress Julia Roberts, stars as Vince’s boss Mr. Campbell. Even former N’Sync member Joey Fatone makes a cameo as a delivery man. Actress Mena Suvari (Chicago Fire, American Beauty, Six Feet Under) rounds out the cast as Vince’s love interest. It is her relationship with Vince that serves as the basis for the movie’s script.
The script behind A Bet’s A Bet centers on high-powered divorce attorney Vince (Stults) and his budding relationship with equally strong-willed divorcee Jane (Suvari). Vince is a self-proclaimed bachelor for life who is more focused on sleeping with every woman that he can get. On the other side of things, Jane is going through a nasty divorce. When the pair is introduced through a couple of mutual friends who just happened to be married, a series of hilarious bets plays out. The end result is a budding relationship that neither expected as both Vince and Jane are such headstrong characters. Jane’s own divorce case plays a role in the pair’s growing relationship, too. It offers its own share of laughs as audiences will see in watching the movie.
A Bet’s A Bet (The Opposite Sex) will be available on DVD next Tuesday, January 20th. It will retail for $14.93. It runs ninety-seven minutes counting end credits. To keep up with the latest sports and entertainment news and reviews, and giveaways from Phil’s Picks, go online to http://www.facebook.com/philspicks and “Like” it. Fans can always keep up with the latest sports and entertainment news and reviews, and giveaways in the Phil’s Picks blog at https://philspicks.wordpress.com.
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Movies, Television | Tagged A Bet's A Bet, All That, American Beauty, Big, celebrities, Chicago Fire, Christian Bale, Cinedigm, Close To Home, Cougar Town, Crash, Dana Ashbrook, Dawson's Creek, Debr Jo Rupp, entertainment, Eric Robers, facebook, FOX, G.I. Jane, Geoff Stults, Glee, Hart of Dixie, Heath Ledger, I Love You Man, internet, Jennifer Finnigan, Jim Carrey, Jonathan Silverman, Josh Cooke, Josh Hopkins, Kenan & Kel, Kenan Thompson, Kristin Chenoweth, Lionsgate, Manhattan, Matthew Broderick, Mena Suvari, movies, NBC, Nickelodeon, Phils Picks, Rio2, Saturday Night Live, She's Out Of My League, Six Feet Under, SNL, Stranger Than Fiction, Television, That 70s Show, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Break-Up, The Cable Guy, The CW, The Dark Knight, The Expendables, The Opposite Sex, The Perfect Storm, Tom Hanks, Twin Peaks, Tyrant, Wedding Crashers, Weekend at Bernie's, Weekend at Bernie's II, WGN, Wordpress | Leave a reply
PBS Announces Release Date For “Finding Your Roots Season 2”
Posted on November 6, 2014 by philspicks
Courtesy: PBS
PBS will release the second season of its hit celebrity-based historical series Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr. this fall.
Officials with PBS announced this week that Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Season 2 will be released on Tuesday, December 16th. Gates meets some of the country’s biggest names in the series and examines their ancestry in each hour-long episode. In the series’ second season, Gates studies the ancestry of big names such as: Derek Jeter, Ben Affleck, Jessica Alba, Sting, Tina Fey, Sally Field, Stephen King, Nas, and many others. In all, twenty-nine celebrities are featured throughout the course of Season Two.
Gates goes into even more depth with his guests in Season Two than was possible in the show’s premiere season. He studies his guests’ specific ethnic roots, cultural traditions, and the inner works of his guests’ families. New advancements in DNA testing even allows for study of genetic genealogy. The advancements allowed for revelations linked to questions of paternity, geographic origins of his guests’ ancestors, and even tribal Native America ancestry in other cases. It is all revealed over ten episodes spread across three discs.
Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Season Two will be available only on DVD Tuesday, December 16th. It will retail for MSRP of $39.99 and can be ordered online direct from PBS’ online store at http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=46207086&cp=&sr=1&kw=finding+your+roots&origkw=Finding+your+roots&parentPage=search#Details. Audiences can access more information on the series, and watch videos from the show online now at:
Website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FindingYourRootsPBS
Twitter: http://twitter.com/henrylouisgates
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Television | Tagged Anderson Cooper, Batman vs. Superman, Ben Affleck, book, celebrities, CNN, Date Night, Derek Jeter, educational programming, educational television, entertainment, facebook, Fantastic Four, Finding Your Roots with henry Louis Gates Jr., Henry Cavill, Henry Louis Gates Jr., internet, Jessica Alba, Major League Baseball, MLB, movies, Mrs. Doubtfire, Nas, NBC, New York Yankees, Phils Picks, Public Broadcasting, public television, Sally Field, Saturday Night Live, SNL, sports, Stephen King, Steve Carrell, Stin, Television, The Flying Nun, Tina Fey, TLC, Twitter, Who Do You Think You Are, WNET, Wordpress | Leave a reply
Lionsgate’s Latest Family Friendly CG Centerpiece Will Entertain The Whole Family
Lionsgate’s latest CG animated feature Jungle Master is one of the year’s more welcome family features to come along so far in 2014. Unlike so many of the movies released in recent years by Dreamworks and Disney/Pixar, Jungle Master actually takes the road less travelled. The movie’s animation is the most obvious way in which it takes that road less travelled. Despite being a CG presentation, it doesn’t bare that cookie cutter appearance of the movies released by Dreamworks and Disney/Pixar. Another reason that it stands out is its run time. The movie’s run time comes in at just under the ninety-minute mark. That’s a very good thing and will be discussed later. Last but not least of all that makes this movie stand out is its script. The story lifts lightly from The Wizard of Oz believe it or not and adds in a touch of Avatar for good measure as well as other sci-fi flicks. The end result is a story that the while it may never be as big as anything from Dreamworks or Disney/Pixar, is still enjoyable in its own right. It proves to be a movie that the whole family should watch together and will enjoy together when they do watch it together.
Jungle Master is not one of the most well-known family flicks to be released by any of Hollywood’s major studios this year. That aside, it still proves in the long run to be one of the year’s more welcome family friendly flicks. One reason for that is the movie’s “animation.” Lionsgate’s CG features are completely unlike those of Dreamworks and Disney/Pixar in the realm of animation. It’s almost impossible to tell Dreamworks’ CG movies from Disney/Pixar’s because they all look alike. The only way to really differentiate the two studios’ works is by the studio names. That speaks volumes. Lionsgate on the other hand has strived to keep itself separate from the mold used by those studios in terms of its animation. The look of Lionsgate’s CG movies is rawer for lack of better wording. But it isn’t raw to the point of looking like some pieces from perhaps independent studio Engine 15 Media Group and others. There is actually some attention paid to detail with Lionsgate’s CG movies, including this one. That attention to detail helps Jungle Master maintain its own identity separate from its bigger name counterparts from Dreamworks and Disney/Pixar. It even helps the movie to maintain its own identity from Lionsgate’s previously released CG features. That mostly original look is just one of a number of positives that surround Jungle Master and make it stand out among this year’s crop of CG movies.
The largely original look of Jungle Master plays a key role in the movie’s ability to keep audiences engaged through its entire eighty-two minute run time. That run time is another reason that families will enjoy this movie. It doesn’t even reach the ninety-minute mark. That relatively short run time drastically increases the chances of keeping audiences engaged from start to finish. This is especially the case with the movie’s target younger audiences. Most of the CG movies released since 1995—which is when Pixar broke the mold and released Toy Story—have averaged about ninety minutes. There have been a small number of movies that have come in just under that time. But most either reach the ninety-minute mark or go well over it as was the case with Toy Story 3. That movie came in at almost forty-five minutes. Luckily its story worked well enough that it still succeeded and quite well at that. Speaking of story Jungle Master’s story works wonderfully with its run time. Its story combines elements of a number of other movies to make a story that somehow actually works. It’s one more way in which Jungle Master works and makes itself one of this year’s more welcome family films.
Both the look of Jungle Master and its run time are important to the movie’s overall success. They each play their own important role to the overall presentation as they both have an impact on whether or not audiences are kept engaged. Luckily, both factors succeed by themselves and together. As much as they succeeded, the look of Jungle Master and its run time are not all that made this direct-to-DVD feature work. One would be remiss to ignore the movie’s script as an equally important part of the whole. The movie’s script centers on a twelve year-old girl named Rainie (pronounced rainy) who runs away from home ater her mother forgot about her birthday. It is assumed by the fact that Rainie was upset enough to run away that her mother (who remains nameless throughout the movie) has probably left Rainie alone more than once. Her decision to run away ends up taking her to al alien planet and a much biger adventure that is directly linked to the company for which her mother works. It’s thanks to her adventure that Rainie realizes her mom hasn’t intentionally ignored her, obviously leading to an eventual reconciliation between mother and daughter. The central story of the parent/child relationship is obviously anything but new. It’s been done more times than a person can count on his or her own two hands. However, the story’s execution is what makes this plot work. Screen writer Steve Kramer lifted liberally from the likes of The Wizard of Oz and Avatar to make this story. While he obviously lifted from the noted movies, Kramer didn’t try to just remake them and mix them together. He used them more as influences for his story about family. What’s more he balanced said elements quite well; well enough in fact that audiences will be moved to overlook the references to said movies and enjoy the presented story.
Kramer’s re-telling of original writer/director Xu Kerr’s story is one of the most important of this movie’s aspects in considering its level of success. He obviously used at least a couple of rather well-known movies that have come before as both influences and elements of this movie. But he also didn’t try to just rip off either work. He balanced them together to make a largely original story that centers on family. That creativity and homage still is not all that makes this movie work. One should also take into account the movie’s cast and even its bonus shorts. Victoria Justice (Victorious, Victoria Justice, iCarly), Jane Lynch (Glee, Hollywood Game Night, Wreck–It–Ralph), David Spade (Just Shoot Me, The Benchwarmers, Tommy Boy), Josh Peck (Drake & Josh, Ultimate Spiderman, Ice Age: Continental Drift), Christopher Lloyd (Cyberchase, Back to the Future 1 – 3), and John Lovitz (Saturday Night Live, The Critic, Gorwn-Ups 1 & 2) make up the movie’s cast. Lovitz proves to be the real star of the story with his comical antics voicing Mulla. The fact that so many well-known names overall would feel confident enough about such a movie makes it even more worth the watch. And the bonus shorts included with the movie will entertain children for a little while after the movie ends. These extra positives combined with the positivews already noted make Jungle Master a movie well worth at least one watch together by any family. It is available now in stores and online. More information on this and other releases from Lionsgate is available online at:
Website: http://www.lionsgate.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lionsgate
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lionsgatemovies
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Movies, Television | Tagged ABC, celebrities, Chris Farley, David Spade, Disney, Drake & Josh, Dreamworks, Engine 15 Media Group, entertainment, facebook, FOX, Glee, Grown-Ups, Grown-Ups 2, Hollywood Game Night, Hot in Cleveland, iCarly, Ice Age Continental Drift, internet, Jane Lynch, John Lovitz, Josh Peck, Just Shoot Me, Lionsgate, movies, NBC, Nickelodeon, Phils Picks, Pixar, Saturday Night Live, The Benchwarmers, The Critic, Tommy Boy, TV Land, Twitter, Ultimate Spiderman, Victoria Justice, Victorious, Wordpress, Wreck-It Ralph | Leave a reply
IFC’s Portlandia is As Solid As Ever Now In Its Fourth Season
Courtesy: IFC
When it first debuted on IFC almost four years ago in 2011, Portlandia was little more than an unknown sketch comedy show. Now three years later, it has gone on to quite the unexpected success. It has garnered itself a nomination for an Emmy award and even a Peabody award win; this despite the show still being largely a cult favorite. Now with the recent release of the show’s fourth season on DVD, audiences that might still be unfamiliar with Portlandia will be able to see for themselves just what has made this little show that could a fan favorite for four seasons now. The first and most obvious reason that Portlandia has garnered such a fan following over the course of its run is its writing. The writing behind this show is the sort of writing that will impress any fan of The Kids in the Hall and The Upright Citizens Brigade. Also worth noting of this season is the acting on the part of lead stars Fred Armisen (Saturday Night Live) and Carrie Brownstein along with their co-stars and guest stars. Speaking of the guest stars, the guest stars lined up for Season Four add their own comedic element that audiences will appreciate, rounding out the whole presentation. All three factors together make the fourth season of IFC’s Portlandia a presentation that audiences new and not so new to the show will enjoy from start to finish.
The central point in the enjoyment of Portlandia Season Four is the show’s writing. This season’s writing is a laugh riot. Armisen and Brownstein take no prisoners with co-writer Jonathan Krisel throughout this season. From social media to organized religion to horror movies, pet adoption agencies and so much more, nothing is off limits this season. There’s even a spoof of the classic 1993 Robert Redford/Demi Moore drama Indecent Proposal in one episode. The episode in question features none other than the star of HBO’s hit drama Boardwalk Empire, Steve Buscemi. The pokes at all things pop culture alone make Season Four well worth the watch. They’re just the tip of the proverbial iceberg in what makes this season’s writing work. As with the series’ previous three seasons, each episode is split into multiple segments with one skit serving as the hub of each episode. That hub is sandwiched by a group of other stand-alone sketches. This aspect of the writing is likely thanks in large part to SNL head Lorne Michaels also playing a role in this series, too. And it proves to work quite well surprisingly enough even here.
Directly related to the writing behind Portlandia’s fourth season is the acting on the part of the both Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. The characters that have become so familiar and beloved by fans throughout the show’s first three seasons are back once again. And the way that Armisen and Brownstein handle their portrayals makes for more than its share of laughs. Those that might not be so familiar with the duo’s brand of comedy might see the duo’s acting as being aimed at a very specific audience. The reality is that their acting is meant entirely to poke fun at certain groups of people. They do so by going completely over the top in their stereotypical presentation of said characters. It works perfectly with the scripts in general to make each of the sketches even more of a laugh riot. Armisen and Brownstein’s acting combines with the season’s writing to make each of this season even more entertaining, regardless of audiences’ familiarity with the series.
Both the writing and acting that went into the fourth season of Portlandia play their own part in the overall enjoyment of this cult hit series. Adding even more enjoyment to the overall presentation that is the series’ fourth season is the inclusion of a who’s who of guest stars. It has already been noted that Boardwalk Empire star Steve Buscemi is on board this season. Joining him are the likes of Kirsten Dunst (Spiderman 1,2, 3), Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Holy Man), and singer k.d. Lang among others. Goldblum actually makes multiple appearances throughout this season’s sketches. And Dunst opens the season in a hilarious episode that pokes fun at all of the really bad horror movies polluting theaters, store shelves and online retailers. It is certain to leave any viewer laughing so hard that they cry. k.d. Lang’s appearance later in the season is just as funny. She appears in a skit about a group of lesbians on a nature retreat. The retreat just happens to be led by an older man. Needless to say that things turn rather interesting for him and Lang’s character. These are just some of the laughs offered by the guest stars throughout Portlandia’s fourth season. Audiences will find their own favorite moments when they pick up this season’s box set.
The guest stars tapped to appear in Portlandia’s fourth season make for plenty of laughs. The same can be said of the acting both on their part and that of Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein (as well as their cat mates). And the writing in general makes a solid cornerstone on which rests the equally solid acting and A-list guest list. All things considered, Porlandia Season 4 proves in the end to be a collection of episodes that anyone looking for a good laugh will enjoy. It is available now in stores and online. More information on Portlandia is available online at http://www.facebook.com/portlandia and http://www.ifc.com/portlandia. More information on this and other releases from IFC is available online at http://www.facebook.com/IFC and http://ifc.com. To keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news, go online to http://www.facebook.com/philspicks and “Like” it. Fans can always keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news in the Phil’s Picks blog at https://philspicks.wordpress.com.
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Television | Tagged Big Fish, Boardwalk Empire, Carrie Brownstein, Eddie Murphy, Fred Armisen, HBO, Holy Man, IFC, Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park, k.d. lang, Kirsten Dunst, Lorne Micheals, Monsters Inc., NBC, Portlandia, Powder, Saturday Night Live, SNL, Spiderman, Spiderman 2, Spiderman 3, Steve Buscemi, The Kids in the Hal, The Upright Citizens Brigade, Will Smith | Leave a reply
StarVista’s New Carol Burnett Show Box Set Will Have Viewers Cracking Up
Posted on April 7, 2014 by philspicks
Courtesy: StarVista Entertainment/Time Life
StarVista Entertainment has done it yet again. On Tuesday, April 15th, StarVista Entertainment will release the latest collection of episodes from The Carol Burnett Show in the form of The Carol Burnett Show: Carol’s Crack Ups. This six-disc box set is one of the few box sets this year that has earned itself a spot on this critic’s list of the year’s best overall new box sets. From the episodes collected for this set, to the equally hilarious bonus material, to the video’s once again high quality footage and the packaging, so much was done right concerning this set. So much was done right in fact that there is simply not enough time or space to discuss every single positive aspect of the set. All of these factors and more make The Carol Burnett Show: Carol’s Crack Ups a box set well worth purchasing for any fan of The Carol Burnett Show and more than worthy of a place on this critic’s list of the year’s best overall new box sets.
The primary reason for any fan of The Carol Burnett Show to pick up this latest compilation of episodes from Burnett’s landmark show is the episodes themselves. Each of the set’s seventeen total episodes is jam packed with hilarious jokes and gags, and enjoyable musical numbers. Make the deal even sweeter, StarVista Entertainment has once again given audiences the ability to choose not only given shows, but the separate segments within each show. While the jokes and gags have a certain edge about them, they are quite tame in comparison to the majority of what’s out there today. Their edge proves that comedy can still be funny even in the 21st century without being overtly blue. One of the prime examples of this comes in the bonus skit, “The Oldest Man: Firefighter.” This skit sees Tim Conway playing his familiar “Old Man” character once again. This time the old man is a firefighter dispatched to stop a fire at the home of Korman’s unnamed character. The physical comedy and the jokes shared throughout the skit will leave any viewer laughing so hard that they cry. It certainly did that with this critic. Bonus skit or not, it shows just why The Carol Burnett Show is still such a beloved show even decades after it ended its original eleven-season run on CBS.
The largely family friendly humor shared throughout each episode in this latest box set is just part of what makes the episodes the cornerstone of the set’s success. Audiences will enjoy just as much, the musical numbers included in each episode. The Carol Burnett Show was not the first, nor the last to incorporate musical numbers into its overall structure. The Smothers Brothers—Tom and Dick—incorporated musical numbers into their show in the late 1960s as did Sonny and Cher in their variety programs—The Sonny & Cher Show and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. This then raises the question what would make the musical numbers in The Carol Burnett Show so enjoyable. The answer to that is the same answer to what made the musical numbers in the other variety shows so enjoyable. Unlike a show such as Saturday Night Live, The Carol Burnett Show and its fellow variety shows didn’t stick just to pushing the most current radio hits of the day. The radio hits were there. But they weren’t all that got the focus. So simply put, the musical numbers were so fun because they weren’t part of the massive marketing machine that today’s talk shows are. The musical numbers included in The Carol Burnett Show: Carol’s Crack Ups sees the likes of And y Griffith (The Andy Griffith Show, No Time For Sergeants, Matlock) Gloria Swanson, Ruth Buzzi and more singing songs that are just as enjoyable today as they were decades ago. Those songs include: ‘Just Squeeze Me/Oh, You Beautiful Doll’, ‘Turn Your Radio On’ and ‘I’ve Been Around/A New-Fangled Tango.’ Those songs and all of the others included in each show serve to add even more enjoyment for viewers of all ages as they make their way through all six of the set’s discs.
The comedy and the musical numbers included in each of the seventeen total episodes on this set make for so much enjoyment. Making things even better for viewers is the fact that StarVista Entertainment has once again given viewers the option to choose not just from the episodes on each disc, but also to choose from specific skits and musical numbers within each episode. This option means that viewers will once again not have to sit through the entire episodes in order to their favorite segment in each episode. That in itself could be argued a bonus feature separate from the bonus features which will be discussed later. It is the finishing touch that makes the episodes included in this set such a joy to watch.
The episodes included in The Carol Burnett Show: Carol’s Crackups are the foundation of the success of the set in question. The bonus features included in the set make that foundation even more solid for audiences. This time out, StarVista has included as bonus material, special separate looks at the impact of both Tim Conway and Harvey Korman on The Carol Burnett Shows. Those examinations include footage of other classic Carol Burnett Show skits that really exhibit their talents both by themselves and together. Among the most memorable of those skits are “The Dentist” and Conway’s now famed “Elephant Skit” from The Family. It’s too bad that neither of those skits was included in this set in their entirety. That’s because of their level of hilarity. It was so funny to learn that in “The Dentist”, Tim Conway made Harvey Korman laugh so hard that he wet himself. And the bonus discussion on “The Peeping Tom” is definitely not for children, ironically enough. Carol and company discuss the comedy in guest star Dick Van Dyke and Tim Conway switching places in the skit and how Carol used a body suit with fake breasts to flash the peeper. Yes, that is what she did. And she shows the body suit, too. Again, it is not for children. It’s one of the rare moments that is not kid friendly. The other bonus material included in this box set is relatively safe for all viewers. And it is sure to have anyone watching laughing just as hard as ever.
Having discussed the role of the episodes themselves and the bonus features in The Carol Burnett Show: Carol’s Crack Ups, there is one last part of the set to examine in the set’s success. That last factor is its packaging. StarVista Entertainment has once again wisely packaged its set, placing each of the six discs on either side of three separate “plates” inside the box. Bizarrely enough, there is actually a fourth plate, which has been left empty. Perhaps this is only the case with review copies. But it was very much the case with previous Carol Burnett Show box sets, too. So it is definitely a head scratcher of sorts. That aside, the fact that StarVista has maintained that high standard of packaging, protecting the discs is one more reason the company is quite deserving of its share of applause. It is the last touch on a set that is more than worth the purchase for any viewer whether new to The Carol Burnett Show or not.
The Carol Burnett Show: Carol’s Crack Ups will be available Tuesday, April 15th. It can be pre-ordered now via Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Carol-Burnett-Show-Carols-Crack-Up/dp/B00HXWV2JQ/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1396874564&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=The+Carol+Burnett+Show+Carol%27s+Crack+Ups. More information on this and other Carol Burnett Show DVD sets is available online at http://timelife.com and http://www.facebook.com/TimeLifeUS. To keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news, go online to http://www.facebook.com/philspicks and “Like” it. Fans can always keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news in the Phil’s Picks blog at https://philspicks.wordpress.com.
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Television | Tagged Andy Griffith, Carol Burnett, celebrities, entertainment, facebook, Gloria Swanson, Harvey Korman, internet, movies, music, No Time For Sergeants, Phils Picks, Ruth Buzzi, Saturday Night Live, StarVista Entertainment, Television, The Andy Griffith Show, The Carol Burnett Show, The Smothers Brothers, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The Sonny & Cher Show, Tim Conway, Time Life Entertainment, Wordpress | Leave a reply
The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty A Surprisingly Enjoyable Story For A Reboot
Courtesy: 20th Century Fox/Samuel Goldwyn Pictures
More often than not, Hollywood’s seemingly undying hunger for prequels, sequels, and remakes has led to some of the movie industry’s worst movies in memory in recent years. However, the 2013 remake of the 1947 Danny Kaye classic The Secret Life of Walter Mitty has proven to be the rare exception to that rule. One part Death of a Salesman and one part Forrest Gump, this last movie of 2013 is also the year’s best. This is despite the fact that it is just one more on the industry’s ever-growing list of prequels, sequels, and remakes. The very first factor in the success of this updated story is its writing. Writer Steve Conrad has taken author James Thurber’s original story and updated it in a way that works even despite being changed around so much. Also to be taken into consideration is the acting of the cast. Veteran actress Shirley MacClaine (Downton Abbey), comedienne Kristen Wiig (SNL), and Adam Scott (Parks & Rec) each expertly carry out their roles and make the story all the richer. The same can also be said of surprise guest stars Patton Oswalt and Sean Penn. The last aspect of the movie to consider in its success is its cinematography. The scenes shot in Greenland and Iceland were beautiful to say the very least. The same can be said of so many other scenes that make up Walter’s fantasies and his real life adventures. That aspect comes together with the cast, its acting, and the general writing to make this movie one of the biggest surprises of 2013.
Writer Steve Conrad’s adaptation of author James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is not the first time that the story has been adapted to the big screen. Its first big screen adaptation was in 1947. Little changed from that story–penned by writers Ken Englund, Everett Freeman, and Philip Rapp–and this latest take on Thurber’s story. The one big difference between the two stories is that the original adaptation was a rom-com. Conrad’s update is more of a human drama that centers on overcoming the fear of life’s uncertainties and taking risks. Typically, making such a drastic change is a formula for disaster. But this case is a very rare exception to the rule. Somehow, Conrad has managed to make his story work. And he has managed to do so in so many ways. What he offers audiences in this adaptation is the story of a man that sets out to find a photograph, but ends up finding himself in the long run. It’s all brought on as Life magazine, the magazine he works for is preparing to release its very last print issue before it becomes an entirely online entity. This is another aspect of Conrad’s script that makes it work so well. That’s because it is such a real story element.
The use of Life magazine transitioning from a print outlet to an entirely online entity is a hugely useful tool to advance this story. That’s because of its realism. So many branches of the print media have transitioned mainly to an online presence in order to survive in the digital age. That transition makes for a lot of uncertainty in any number of individuals’ lives including the story’s lead character. It’s that uncertainty of the future that forces Walter to make his daydreams become reality. And Stiller’s take on Walter as he grows through his adventures serves to make the story all the richer.
Steve Conrad’s updated take on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is surprisingly enjoyable despite being an update on one of Hollywood’s classic movies. The human drama that makes up the story’s main plot does so much to make the story work. The same can be said of the acting of lead Ben Stiller and his cast mates. He makes his take on his character one that is entirely believable as Walter grows from a socially awkward wallflower type of figure to a more self-confident man. His isn’t the only portrayal that makes the story work, either. Surprise guest star Patton Oswalt is spot on as a tech rep with e-harmony. He interacts with Walter solely via phone throughout most of the story. Even over the phone, those moments make for so many laughs. Just as funnier is the reveal of Oswalt’s character late in the movie. His joke of what he thought Walter would look like compared to his own looks makes for one of so many classic moments throughout the story. Adam Scott plays the story’s antagonist, Ted Hendricks, that comes in to Life as a “cleaner” of sorts responsible for downsizing the magazine’s staff. He was just as much on spot in his role as the rest of the cast in its roles. He is a completely cold, despicable figure that cares only about his own advancement. He makes audiences cheer happily for Walter both when he confronts him in his daydream and for real later in the story. That’s the sign of an actor fully grasping his character and getting the job done. The same can be said of supporting actress Shirley MacClaine as Walter’s mom. She is Walter’s only real source of support among everyone around him. And one can feel the love that Walter’s mom has for him, too. Anyone that doesn’t laugh and smile at the pair’s personal moments have no heart. That ability of the cast to reach audiences on so many emotional levels is just as important as the script itself in this story’s success. The story’s success doesn’t end here, either. There is one more aspect of this movie that makes it successful. That aspect is the movie’s cinematography.
The cinematography of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is beyond belief. From Walter’s imaginary fight scenes with Ted to his real life adventure across Greenland, Iceland, and Afghanistan, the camera crews and editors went beyond the call of duty. The contrast of Walter set against the giant magazine covers that lined the halls of Life make for their own statement. That’s because as Walter runs past the covers, audiences see the figures on each cover turn to Walter’s face. It makes for a statement of his dreams potentially becoming reality. And in its own right, it is also a foreshadowing of sorts, not to reveal too much for those that haven’t yet seen. These are just some of the examples of the expert cinematography that is exhibited throughout the course of the story. There is much more for audiences to see for themselves. And they will indeed find so much when they watch this story for themselves. And together with its casting and writing, audiences will find so much to applaud in this movie; so much in fact that they will agree that despite being a reboot, it still proves to be 2013’s best new movie.
Posted in Celebrities, Internet, Movies | Tagged 20th Century Fox, Adam Scott, Ben Stiller, celebrities, Danny Kaye, Death of a Salesman, entertainment, Evertt Freeman, facebook, Forrest Gump, Holiday Inn, internet, James Thurber, Ken Englund, Kristen Wiig, Life Magazine, movies, Parks and Rec, Patton Oswalt, Philip Rapp, Phils Picks, Samuel Goldwyn Pictures, Saturday Night Live, Sean Penn, Shirley MacClaine, SNL, Steve Conrad, The Secret Lifeof Walter Mitty, White Christmas, Wordpress | Leave a reply
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Tag Archives: The Wild Thornberrys
Nicktoons Nostalgics Will Go Wild For The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series
Courtesy: Nickelodeon/Shout! Factory
It’s hard to believe but it has been a little more than seventeen years since Nickelodeon’s classic animated series The Wild Thornberrys made its television debut. And almost a dozen years have passed since it ended its five-season run. In the years since this classic animated series ended its run it has remained a fan favorite among those that grew up watching it and Nickelodeon’s other beloved Nicktoons. Four years ago, fans of The Wild Thornberrys were finally rewarded for their loyalty to the show when Nickelodeon teamed up with Shout! Factory to start releasing the series in its own standalone season sets. Over the course of the next two years that loyalty would be rewarded even more as the companies partnered to release the series’ remaining four seasons in their own sets. And now next week the companies’ partnership culminates with the release of the show’s complete series run on DVD. The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series will be released next Tuesday, December 8th. Regardless of whether or not audiences already own any or all of the show’s previously released standalone season sets, this new collection is a welcome addition to any fan’s home DVD library. The main reason that it is such a welcome new addition is its packaging. This set is packaged in exactly the same format as Nickelodeon and Shout! Factory’s previous Nicktoons series sets. In other words, it is far more ergonomic than having multiple standalone sets. It’s just one part of what makes this collection welcome. While it might not seem overly important on the surface, the set’s pricing is just as important as its packaging. That will be discussed later. Last but hardly least worth mentioning of the set is the episodes. None of the series’ episodes have been omitted here. So regardless of whether or not audiences already own any of the series’ previous standalone DVD sets, they still get every single episode here. It completes the presentation that is The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series. Together with its packaging and pricing, all three elements prove The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series to be not just a welcome addition to any of the show’s fans but one of the year’s best new box sets for families.
The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series is a welcome addition to any fan of the classic animated Nickelodeon series. It is also one of the best of this year’s new box sets for families. The main reason for that is the set’s packaging. Audiences will note with this new box set that Nickelodeon and Shout! Factory have packaged the series in exactly the same fashion as their previous Nicktoons series sets. It has packaged all of the series’ DVDs into two separate boxes within a larger box for a total fifteen-disc set. On the surface one might think that this would be less ergonomic than simply having the show’s standalone season sets. But the opposite is the case. In the show’s original DVD releases, Nickelodeon and Shout! Factory separated Season Two into three separate box sets and combined Seasons four and five into one single box. The end result is a total collection of six standalone DVD sets. This collection takes those six boxes and reduces them to just two boxes. Set side-by-side the full series set actually proves to take up less room on DVD racks than the show’s six separate standalone sets. That is because Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon have once again used the standard packaging method used in its previous Nicktoons series sets. The discs are placed one to a side on either side of the boxes’ inserts. In the case of these two boxes, this allows eight discs to be packaged in the first box and seven in the second. This is a big reason that this collection is more ergonomic than the separate standalone DVD sets. It also protects the discs from one another, which is, again, nothing new for Shout! Factory’s box set releases. What’s more both boxes come complete with their own episode guide. The episode guides are printed on the back of each of the box sets. They list clearly which episodes are included on which disc, leaving no confusion for fans in that arena and round out the ways in which the set’s packaging proves so important to its overall presentation. It is just one part of the whole of the set that makes it such a welcome addition to any Nicktoons Nostalgic’s home DVD library. The set’s pricing is just as important as its packaging.
The packaging method used in The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series is an undeniably important aspect of the set’s overall presentation. It is the same packaging method used in Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon’s full series sets of their previously released Nicktoons. And just as with those sets, this set’s packaging is more ergonomic than the combination of the series’ standalone season sets. While the set’s packaging is undeniably important to its overall presentation, it is just one part of what makes this new box set such a welcome addition to any Nicktoons Nostalgic’s home DVD library. The set’s pricing is just as important to the set as its packaging. Shout! Factory has the fifteen-disc set listed as retailing at MSRP of $39.93. That is roughly average for such a set. However, thanks to a deal with retailer Wal-Mart, the set is actually available now in store ahead of its nationwide release date for $19.99. That is even cheaper than the set’s discounted online price at Shout! Factory’s online store. That price is $34.93. Twenty dollars for a fifteen-disc DVD set is a relatively affordable price and a smart price at that. Currently it isn’t even listed online via Best Buy’s website or that of Target. It is very possible that this set will be released exclusively via Wal-Mart. And if that is the case, then that $20 price tag (that’s in store. it is listed at $29.98 on the retailer’s website) is definitely another positive to the set. Add in the set’s smart packaging, and it becomes that much more of a welcome addition to any Nicktoon Nostalgic’s home DVD library. Even together they are not the only important factors to consider in the overall presentation of The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series. The episodes contained within the box set round out the set’s most important elements.
The packaging of The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series and its price are both important elements in their own right to the DVD box set. The pricing is just as important as the packaging because of its prince in-store at Wal-Mart stores across the country versus its various online prices. As important as both noted elements are to this box set they are only a portion of what makes the set’s presentation a win. The set’s featured episodes are just as important as its packaging and pricing. Audiences will be happy to know that they get the series’ full run in this box set. Every single episode that was presented in the series’ standalone box sets is also present in this collection. Some might take this for granted. But there are some rare box sets from other companies that try to pass themselves off as being complete sets yet obviously lack certain episodes. Luckily that isn’t the case here. Because it isn’t the case, it makes the price (both in store and online) all the more important. And together with the set’s smart packaging, all three elements come together to make The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series a clearly wildly fun collection for any of the show’s fans and for any Nicktoons Nostalgics out there.
Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon’s upcoming release of The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series is a great collection both for fans of this classic animated series and for any Nicktoons Nostalgic overall. This applies both to those fans that already own the series’ previous standalone season sets and those that might not have been so lucky to get their hands on said box sets. That is thanks in large part to its ergonomic packaging. Thanks to its smart packaging, it actually saves more space than the series’ collected standalone season sets. Wal-Mart’s current $20 in-store price (hopefully it will remain at that price for the foreseeable future) is affordable to say the least. That is especially in comparison to its varied online pricing. The presentation of all five seasons’ episodes rounds out the set’s positives. All three elements are equally important in their own right to the overall presentation of The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series. All combined they make this box set a great addition to any Wild Thornberrys fan’s home DVD library and those of any Nicktoons Nostalgic, too. The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series will be available nationwide on Tuesday, December 8th. However it is currently available in Wal-Mart stores across America right now thanks to a special distribution deal between Shout! Factory and Wal-Mart. More information on this and other titles from Shout! Factory is available online now at:
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Posted in DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Television | Tagged entertainment, facebook, internet, Nickelodeon, Nicktoons, Phils Picks, Shout! Factory, Television, The Wild Thornberrys, Twitter, Wordpress | Leave a reply
CatDog: The Complete Series Is Another Welcome Addition To Any Classic Cartoon Lover’s Library
Courtesy: Shout! Factory/Nickelodeon
Next Tuesday, October 14th, Shout! Factory will release its latest complete Nicktoons box set thanks to its partnership with Nickelodeon and Viacom. CatDog: The Complete Series follows Shout! Factory’s most recent complete Nicktoons box set Hey Arnold!: The Complete Series. That box set was released August 19th. And as with that series, CatDog: The Complete Series will be available exclusively via Wal-Mart stores nationwide. This latest box set is another wonderful addition to the home library of Nicktoons Nostalgic that grew up in Nickeldeon’s golden era. The most obvious reason that any grown up fan of this series will appreciate this new complete series set is the same as Shout! Factory’s previous full series Nicktoon sets. It contains every episode from the series’ original run on Nickelodeon. In connection to the episodes, they are contained on the same total number of discs from the previously released stand-alone sets. The difference is that the twelve discs that make up the series are contained within only two boxes. This saves space on any DVD rack. It’s one more reason that audiences will appreciate this set regardless of whether they have already purchased any of said the said stand-alone boxes. And last of note that makes CatDog: The Complete Series another welcome release from Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon is the writing that went into the episodes. Together with the set’s packaging and the inclusion of every one of the series’ episodes, it completes the box set and makes it all the more welcome an addition to the home collection of any Nicktoons Nostalgic.
CatDog is one of the last of Nickelodeon’s great series that earned the title Nicktoon. Next to the likes of Hey Arnold!, Rugrats, and Doug, it was one of the last of a special breed of cartoons for kids. After it ended its initial run on Nickelodeon, it ran in re-runs for a while until the network’s heads decided to move the kid favorite series over to Nickelodeon’s digital “sister station” Nicktoons. Most cable and satellite carriers general keep Nicktoons on their upper digital tiers, thus making it a premium channel that costs extra for subscribers. Suddenlink made things even more difficult for audiences recently when its dispute with Viacom led the carrier to drop not just Nicktoons but all of the Viacom networks that it once carried for customers across the country. This means that for possibly thousands of audiences, there is now no way to see CatDog on television. This makes CatDog: The Complete Series even more of a positive for anyone that grew up with this series and other Nicktoons. So now regardless of whether or not audiences can get Nicktoons for one reason or another, Shout! Factory have made it possible for every Nicktoons Nostalgic to own one more piece of television greatness in its entirety. Things only get better from here, too. The set’s overall packaging should be taken into consideration, too in its overall success and enjoyment.
The inclusion of CatDog’s complete series in Shout! Factory’s new full series set is something that most definitely should not be taken for granted. There are those that get Nickelodeon’s Nicktoons network and actually get to see this modern classic cartoon, given. But there are also those that don’t get the network for one reason or another. Whether it be because of the cost of subscribing to extra digital tiers on their carriers or their carrier not even carrying the network (as with Suddenlink’s dispute with Viacom), there are in fact those that don’t get to see these episodes. That makes the release of this set quite the welcome addition to those individuals’ home libraries. The set’s overall packaging makes it all the more welcome an addition to audiences regardless of whether or not they already own any of the series’ previously released stand-alone box sets. All sixty-eight episodes that made up the series are spread across twelve discs inside two boxes. Compared to those aforementioned stand-alone box sets, the packaging of the discs in this format takes up much less space on DVD racks than those sets by themselves. So not only do audiences get the complete series in this set, but they also get the complete series in yet another ergonomic package. Once again, the employees of Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon are deserving of their own share of applause for these efforts. It still is not the last of the factors worth noting that makes this latest full series set from Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon a win for fans. The final factor that makes this set a welcome addition to any classic Nicktoons fan’s home library is the series’ animation. It separates the series not only from other Nicktoons of its time but from every other children’s program on television today.
The last piece of the puzzle that makes CatDog: The Complete Series such a welcome addition to the library of any classic Nicktoons fan is the series’ animation. There are still a few children’s shows out there today on cable the feature at least some amount of hand drawn animation. But by and large, most of today’s children’s programs are more based in computer generated “animation” than actual hand-drawn art. Unlike those shows CatDog was created largely by hand. If there was any computer usage in this series, it was minimal at best. Other than that, it gives the show its own identity much like its fellow Nicktoons and those series that came before it in the golden era of the “Big 4.” Taking this into account and the fact that true cartoons have officially gone by the wayside—weekday and weekend—such actual art work becomes increasingly valuable. It serves as one more example of what once made children’s programming so great and still could again one day given the opportunity. And together with both the overall packaging of this set and the inclusion of its full sixty-eight episode run, it makes this set a must have for any Nicktoons Nostalgic and for any fan of real cartoons.
The partnership between Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon has produced a number of wonderful releases up to this point. CatDog: The Complete Series is just one more addition to that long line of proper classic Nicktoons released thanks to that partnership. The set’s packaging and the inclusion of the series’ full sixty-eight episode run works alongside its original animation to make it a joy for any lover of classic cartoons. It may or may not be the last of the complete series releases from Nickelodeon and Shout! Factory. At this time, there is no deal in place for releases of Rugrats, Doug, or even Rocket Power. And there’s no word on when or if Hey Dude! and The Wild Thornberrys will see full series releases. Whether or not any of these series ever get proper releases from Shout! Factory, at least audiences will have CatDog: The Complete Series. It will be available next Tuesday, October 14th. It can be ordered online direct from Shout! Factory’s online store at http://www.shoutfactory.com. More information on this and other releases from Shout! Factory is available online at:
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Television | Tagged Doug, entertainment, facebook, Hey Arnold!, HeyDude!, internet, Nickelodeon, Nicktoon, Phils Picks, Rocket Power, Rugrats, s CatDog, Shout! Factory, Suddenlink, Television, The Wild Thornberrys, Viacom, Wordpress | Leave a reply
Nickelodeon, Shout! Factory Finishing Off Another Classic Nicktoon Next Month
Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon established a partnership only a few years ago that has seen some of the network’s greatest classic series, called Nicktoons, get full, proper releases. Almost all of those classic Nicktoons has seen releases in separate seasons and complete series box sets. Now what is one of the last of those series sets will be released next month in the form of CatDog: The Complete Series.
CatDog: The Complete Series will be released on DVD Tuesday, October 14th. The series’ complete four-season, sixty-eight episode run will be released in one complete multi-disc set. It will retail for MSRP of $29.93. After this release, the only full series sets that are left to be released under the companies’ current partnership are The Wild Thornberrys: The Complete Series and Hey Dude: The Complete Series. Audiences can keep up with the latest on all of these releases online at:
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Movies, Television | Tagged Adventure Time, Billy Bob Thornton, Billy West, Cartoon Network, CatDog, celebrities, Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers, Curious George, Disney, Disney Junior, entertainment, facebook, Frank Welker, Futurama, Galvatron, Garfield & Friends, Garfield A Tale of Two Kitties, Gravity Falls, Hey Dude, Home Alone 2, Jake and the NEverland Pirates, Jim Cummings, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, movies, Nickelodeon, PBS, PBS Kids, Phils Picks, Phineas and Ferb, Rdger Bumpass, Roger Bumpass, Scooby Doo Where Are You?, Shout! Factory, Sophia the First, Spongebob Squarepants, Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, Teen Titans Go!, Television, The Boxtrolls, The Fairly Oddparents, The Real Ghostbusters, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The SMurfs, The Wild Thornberrys, Tim Curry, Tom Kenny, Transformers Age of Extinction, Uncle Grandpa, Wordgirl, Wordpress | Leave a reply
The Rescue Bots Are Back On The Job With Another Fun DVD For The Whole Family
Courtesy: Shout! Factory/Shout! Kids
The latest compilation of episodes from Hasbro Studios’ Transformers Rescue Bots is another great collection for any fan of this kid friendly series. The compilation, which was released last Tuesday, September 2nd, is especially well-timed considering the proximity of its release to Halloween. That is primarily because of the five episodes featured in the disc. The episodes presented on this disc offer their own not so scary stories that are still a good fit for any child’s Halloween party. For those that might be new to this series (like this critic), said audiences will also appreciate the series’ animation. Being another product of Hasbro studios, it should come as no surprise that the series’ animation plays a role in its enjoyment, too. And last but not least of all worth noting in the overall presentation is the series’ list of voice talents. The actors charged with putting a voice to the series’ characters are largely well-known figures. They are figures that have quite the resume when it comes to animated programs, children’s programs, and sci-fi shows, too. Some have experience in all three realms, making their acting all the more believable and in turn enjoyable. The combination of those experienced voice talents and the series’ animation and writing makes Transformers Rescue Bots: Mystery Rescue just as enjoyable for those that are new to this series as those that are more familiar with the show.
Transformers Rescue Bots: Mystery Rescue is the fifth compilation of episodes from the Hub network’s hit children’s series. The compilation was released just last week in stores. Its timing could not have been better taking into account its episodes and the fact that Halloween is a little more than a month away. The episodes collected for this compilation each present their own not so scary but still entertaining story for kids at their Halloween parties this year. The DVD opens with a mystery that sees everyone in Griffin Rock suddenly disappearing after a horde of robotic bugs infests the town. It’s up to Cody, his friends, and the Rescue Bots to solve the mystery. The second episode sees some “ghosts” suddenly appearing. It turns out though, that things aren’t always what they appear to be when Cody and the Rescue Bots investigate the “hauntings.” There’s even a little twist that parents and kids alike will like, regardless of whether or not they are believers. “Spellbound” is the third episode chosen for the DVD. One could argue that this episode lifts lightly from Stephen King’s novel Cell as cell phones are being used to take over the minds of the Griffin Rock’s citizens. This is an especially enjoyable episode not only for this reason, but for its emphasis on caring for the environment. “Blame The Gremlins” is another great addition that parents and children will appreciate as it offers its own frightful fun. When Cody’s big brother Kade (voiced by Jason Marsden) starts having nightmares about gremlins, those nightmares become reality and invade Griffin Rock. Parents that are familiar with Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone series will appreciate the subtle homage to the episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” in this episode. One could even argue that there’s a subtle reference to a certain gremlin from Warner Brothers’ beloved Looney Tunes franchise. “Feed The Beast” closes out the DVD with a little tale of Griffin Rock’s own version of the legendary Sasquatch. As with the discs other episodes, it offers its own frightful fun for younger viewers. All of the episodes together will keep young viewers fully engaged from start to finish.
Of the stories included on this disc are not enough enjoyment by themselves, audiences that might be new to Transformers Rescue Bots will appreciate the fact that the episodes are kid friendly. They don’t have the level of violence and deep, thought provoking material that makes up the original Transformers franchise or any of its offshoots over the years. It makes for a fun and safe way to ease younger viewers into the Transformers universe. It could be argued that to that extent, it actually takes a page from the likes of Tiny Toon Adventures, The Flintstone Kids, Taz-Mania and others that came from that era. That’s because while many critics came down hard on the series, the reality was that they were in fact a way to slowly and gently bring younger viewers into the likes of Looney Tunes, The Flintstones, Scooby–Doo and other classic franchises. To that extent, the very concept of this franchise makes the writing all the more valuable and enjoyable to the overall presentation that is this latest compilation.
The writing that went into the episodes on this DVD makes them (and the franchise in whole) a joy for both children and adults. Its mix of family friendly stories and its more grown-up pop culture references will make watching them as a family a fun time. And especially today, families need as much time as possible together. It’s not all that makes this collection enjoyable, either. The series’ animation also makes the episodes presented here fun, too. Audiences that are familiar with Hasbro Studios’ properties will find it no surprise that this series’ animation bears a somewhat similar animation style to that of both Pound Puppies and Littlest Pet Shop. It is safe to suffice that the same individuals charged with crafting the artwork for those series were also behind Transformers Rescue Bots, too simply by watching these episodes. Even with its similarities to those series, it does bear its own identity apart from them. The differences lie mainly in little things like the contours of the characters and the backgrounds and even the coloring. Other than that, this series’ animation lies in the same category as those others from Hasbro Studios already noted. Even as similar as its animation is to those series, it still is nice to see animation today that can look so much like it was hand drawn instead of all of the cookie cutter CGI shows out there for younger audiences today. It’s just one more part of what makes this new DVD so welcome in any family’s DVD library.
The animation in Transformers Rescue Bots: Mystery Rescue and the writing in its episodes together make this latest collection of episodes welcome in any family’s DVD library. The last factor to note that makes it such a welcome addition to any family’s library is the series’ list of voice actors. Those behind the characters in this series are no strangers to voicing animated characters. The cast includes Jason Marsden, Kath Soucie, Levar Burton, Mauriche LaMarche, Tim Curry, Diamond White and so many others. While their episodes are not included in this DVD, Mark Hamill (Star Wars, Batman The Animated Series) and Danica McKellar (The Wonder Years) even offer their talents in a couple of episodes, too. Having such a who’s who of actors lending their talents to this series is a tribute to its popularity and the popularity of the Transformers franchise in whole. Jason Marsden is known for his work on Nickelodeon’s The Fairly Odd Parents and as the voice of Nermal in Cartoon Network’s The Garfield Show. He has worked on a number of other series and movies, too. These are just a couple examples of his body of work. Kath Soucie and Levar Burton both worked together on Captain Planet and the Planeteers early in the 1990s. Soucie is also known as the voice of Phil and Lil DeVille in Nickelodeon’s beloved Nicktoon Rugrats. Not to omit Mauriche LeMarche or Tim Curry, the resume of these two actors could fill pages and pages. Needless to say they are quite the well trained and well-respected actors. And having them on this series’ cast is quite the statement. Newcomer Diamond White has already started building up her own resume with voice acting credits including work on Disney’s Phineas and Ferb, and Sophia the First. She also plays the role of Sophie in Nickelodeon’s teen-centric series The Haunted Hathaways. Needless to say, the cast that was tapped for the roles in Transformers Rescue Bots more than did its job with this latest collection of episodes. Their years of training and experience helped them to interpret each episode’s script and in turn make it each story all the more enjoyable. The end result is a collection of episodes that the whole family will enjoy again and again while they wait for the next collection of episodes from this surprisingly entertaining show.
The A-list voice cast tapped to voice the characters in this latest collection of episodes from Hub’s Transformers Rescue Bots goes a long way toward validating it and the series in whole. Parents will note the celebrities’ names and want to check out the actors’ work for themselves. They will also appreciate some of the subtle pop culture references thrown in for good measure in some of the episodes included on the DVD. Kids will enjoy the animation and stories in general. All things considered, there is a lot that makes Transformers Rescue Bots: Mystery Rescue a hit for the whole family. So much in fact that it could potentially end up on this critic’s list of the year’s best new DVDs for children and families. It is available now in stores and online. It can be ordered direct from Shout! Factory’s website at https://www.shoutfactory.com/kids/kids-animation/transformers-rescue-bots-mystery-rescue. More information on this and other releases from Shout! Factory is available online now at http://www.shoutfactory.com and http://www.facebook.com/shoutfactoryofficial. To keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news, go online to http://www.facebook.com/philspicks and “Like” it. Fans can always keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news in the Phil’s Picks blog at https://philspicks.wordpress.com.
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Television | Tagged A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Animaniacs, Batman The Animated Series, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, celebrities, Danica McKellar, Diamond White, Disney, entertainment, facebook, Futurama, Garfield A Tale of Two Kitties, Hasbro Studios, Hub, internet, Jason Marsden, Kath Soucie, Levar Burton, Littles Pet Shop, Mark Hamill, Mauriche LeMarche, Nickelodeon, Phils Picks, Phineas and Ferb, Pinky and the Brain, Pound Puppies, Reading Rainbow, Rugrats, Shout! Factory, Shout! Kids, Sophia the First, Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Wars, Taz-Mania, Television, Th Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Fairly Oddparents, The Garfield Show, The Haunted Hathaways, The Simpsons, The Wild Thornberrys, The Wonder Years, Tim Curry, Tiny Toon Aventures, Wordpress | Leave a reply
Hey Arnold! Goes Out On Top In Its Fifth Season
The end is finally here for another of Nickelodeon’s beloved classic Nicktoon, Hey Arnold! The final season of Hey Arnold! is finally available to the masses. And it goes without saying that Hey Arnold! has gone out on top in its final season. In fact, it was at the same level as the series’ third season. That is primarily because of the solid writing throughout all twenty-three of Season Five’s episodes. Also to note in this season are more guest spots. Both Andy Dick and Tim Curry offer their voice talents this season. And of course, one can’t ignore that as with the series’ previous season releases, Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon have continued to lead the pack in multi-disc sets. This season’s packaging was done just as the series’ previous seasons, making it that much more worthy of applause. And together with the solid writing and guest appearances, it all comes together to make Season Five a fitting send off for Hey Arnold!
The writing behind the final season of Hey Arnold! is some of the best writing in the show’s five total seasons. Being that this season was the show’s final run, the show’s writers sent the show off on top of its game. This season, the show’s writers spoof all the big name crime fighters with one of their own. They also take on the political machine when a local businessman in Arnold’s neighborhood takes on one of the city’s politicians. And in what are some of the series’ absolute best episodes, the show’s writers finally offer hints at who were Arnold’s parents in a pair of episodes. One of those episodes was a two-part episode that is certain to make even the strongest viewer tear up. This is just a small sampling of what makes Season Five so enjoyable. Audiences will also enjoy seeing Arnold and Eugene take on a bitter playwright in their annual school play. If that’s not enough, there’s even a bonus Halloween episode that sees Arnold and his friends take on the legend of a female spirit that murdered her fiancé. It sounds violent. But it’s entirely family friendly. There is still much more to enjoy this season, including an episode using the classic plot element of a young person learning the reality of germs. It makes for plenty of laughs every time. These episodes and the others from the show’s original run are all here. And whether one grew up with this classic series or one is a new fan, audiences will find what makes these episodes some of the series’ best.
Hey Arnold! goes out on top in Season Five. That’s primarily because of its writing. Season Five boasts not just solid writing but two great guest spots. Celebrities Andy Dick and Tim Curry make appearances this season. Andy Dick voices of a vigilante named Monkeyman in the season premiere. Monkeyman learns some very valuable lessons about both himself and those that he protects after meeting Arnold. And in “Eugene, Eugene”, Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Wild Thornberrys, Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties) stars as a bitter playwright that make his own version of a well-known play for the annual P.S. 118 fourth grade class play. When Arnold and Eugene discover the revisions made by Curry’s character, they confront him and then set the play on the right course despite the changes. The guest spots by both Curry and Dick aren’t the only ones made over the show’s five seasons. Jim Belushi (Life According to Jim, K9) and Jennifer Tilly (Family Guy, Monsters Inc.) also appear in the show. Tilly appears in Season Five’s episode, “Ernie in Love.” Having such big names appear in Hey Arnold!just goes to show that even into its fifth season, it had quite the high level of credibility. It adds even more to appreciate about both the series’ fifth season and the series as a whole.
The guest spots and the writing that went into Hey Arnold! Season Five both do so much to make this season one of the series’ best. The set’s packaging should also be taken into account in examining it as a whole. Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon have packaged Season Five exactly as the previous seasons of Hey Arnold! The set’s first pair of discs each get their own spots on “plates” inside the standard size DVD case. The third disc is placed on the inside back of the case on its own spindle. This protects the discs from scratching one another and in turn allows them to be enjoyed with every watch. It’s the crowning touch on a near perfect set for any true Nicktoons Nostalgic. It is available now in stores and online and can be ordered direct from the Shout! Factory store at http://www.shoutfactory.com/node/217616. More information on this and other Shout! Factory releases is available online at http://www.shoutfactory.com and http://www.facebook.com/shoutfactoryofficial. To keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news, go online to http://www.facebook.com/philspicks and “Like” it. Fans can always keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news in the Phil’s Picks blog at https://philspicks.wordpress.com.
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Television | Tagged 20th Century Fox, Andy Dick, celebrities, entertainment, facebook, Family Guy, Garfield A Tale of Two Kitties, internet, Jennifer Tilly, Jim Belushi, K9, Life According to Jim, Monsters Inc., Nickelodeon, Nicktoons, Phils Picks, Shout! Factory, SUperhuman Samurai Cyber Squad, Television, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Wild Thornberrys, Tim Curry, Wordpress | Leave a reply
Nicktoons Nostalgics Will “Scream” With Joy for Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: The Complete Series
Halloween is right around the corner once again. That means that lots of people are looking for entertainment for their annual parties. This includes parents looking for entertainment for their children’s parties. Next Tuesday, Nickelodeon and Shout! Factory will release one more new fun release for the whole family that is a perfect fit for those parties in the form of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: The Complete Series.
Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: The Complete Series is great fun for both new young audiences and for those that grew up with the series. It is one of Nickelodeon’s famed Nicktoons that brought Arlene Klasky and Klasky Csupo to fame during the 1990s and early 2000s. And just as the pair set itself apart from the crowd with its groundbreaking series, Rugrats and the equally innovative Wild Thornberrys, it did so just as much with this series, too. Klasky Csupo showed just how far ahead of its time it was with this series. To an extent, one could argue that it might well have been the influence behind Disney/Pixar’s 2001 movie, Monsters, Inc. That’s because the movie in question didn’t come into being until at least three years after Aaahh!!! Real Monsters had ended in 1998. This is just one part of what makes the series so important for any fan of Nickelodeon’s golden era. In direct connection, audiences will appreciate the show’s writing. Again, a comparison to both Klasky Csupo’s other cartoons and to Monsters, Inc. is necessary to show how far ahead of the times and quick the writing was in this series. A third factor to consider in deciding whether or not to buy or order this new set is its packaging. Yet again, Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon have set the bar with another box set’s packaging in this collection. What can be said that hasn’t already been said about that? But that’s a good thing. And it seals the deal on what is another great trip back in time for any purist Nicktoons Nostalgic.
Klasky Csupo was the Pixar of the television world from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. That is thanks to its long strain of original hit cartoons that would be the backbone of Nickelodeon’s Nicktoons programming. Those hits included the likes of Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys, and what would end up being the studio’s last Nicktoon, All Grown Up. Throughout all of the cartoons created by the studio, each one was entirely different from the last. And Aahhh!!! Real Monsters was one that definitely stood out. It stood out among both other Nicktoons and other cartoons in general. The only other studio doing anything remotely similar at the time was DiC Enterprises with its claymation based Bump in the Night. Between the two, Klasky Csupo’s cartoon still stood out and in a good way, as it lasted well past the latter of the two toons. No one at the time had thought of the concept of a trio of young monsters living in a dump, learning how to scare humans. Even the characters themselves were original. One look at David Eccles’ Krumm makes one wonder if he in fact wasn’t an influence behind Mike Wazowski. Both of these factors (and others) show just how far ahead of its time this series was.
Aahhh!!! Real Monsters was well ahead of its time in so many ways. From the general story and characters to other smaller aspects, its cast and writers proved that in so many ways. In direct connection, it is just as impressive thanks to its writing. From learning how to scare and avoiding the wrath of their teacher, The Gromble (Gregg Berger—Garfield & Friends, The Angry Beavers, The Garfield Show) to trying to escape capture by Simon the Monster Hunter (Jim Belushi—Life According to Jim, Hey Arnold!, the Adventures of Jimmy Neutron), the writers found so many ways to keep the show fresh through all four of its seasons. There was even a hunt for a pail that sends Ickis on a wild chase that will leave audiences laughing. It’s one more of so many wonderfully entertaining moments that make this new set so fun for anyone that grew up with the series and for their kids, too.
The writing and general ingenuity of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters went a long way toward making it one more of Klasky Csupo’s most beloved cartoons. The same can be said of what made it one of the best Nicktoons of Nickelodeon’s golden era. There is one last factor in this new set that fans of the show will appreciate in its upcoming release. That factor is the set’s packaging. Nickelodeon and Shout! Factory have already released both Rocko’s Modern Life and The Angry Beavers in complete series sets. Those sets both managed somehow to contain eight discs in a box that only takes up the space of two standard DVD cases on any DVD rack. The same can be said of this set’s box, too. Each of the set’s discs are placed on either side of their own “plate” within the case. As large as it may make the box seem, it actually manages to conserve space in the long run. For that, both companies are more than deserving of even more credit. What’s more, this form of packaging also protects the discs from being scratched up. So it serves as a double whammy in the best possible manner. Keeping this in mind along with the original writing and the generally original concept behind the show, audiences are presented with another welcome shining release from Nickelodeon and Shout! Factory. One can only hope that from here, the two companies will eventually strike a deal to release Klasky Csupo’s other classic Nicktoons next. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: The Complete Series will be available online and in stores Tuesday, October 8th. It can be ordered direct online from Shout! Factory’s store at http://www.shoutfactory.com/node/218263. More information on this and other releases from Shout! Factory and Nickelodeon is available on the official Shout! Factory website, http://www.shoutfactory.com and Shout! Factory Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/shoutfactoryofficial. To keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news, go online to http://www.facebook.com/philspicks and “Like” it. Fans can always keep up with the latest sports and entertainment reviews and news in the Phil’s Picks blog at https://philspicks.wordpress.com.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, ABC, All Grown Up, Bump in the Night, Cookie Jar TV, DiC Entertainment, Disney, Disney/Pixar, Duckman, entertainment, facebook, Garfield & Friends, Gregg Berger, Hey Arnold!, internet, Jim Belushi, Klasky Csupo, Life According to Jim, Monsters Inc., Nickelodeon, Nicktoons, Phils Picks, Pixar, Rocket Power, Rugrats, Shout! Factory, Television, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius, The Angry beavers, The Garfield Show, The Wild Thornberrys, Wordpress | Leave a reply
Taz-Mania Season One Volume One Another Welcome Unearthing From Warner Home Video
Courtesy: Warner Home Video
Warner Brothers has largely started off 2013 in successful fashion. Its only major missteps so far this year have been its DVD and Blu-ray release of Hats Off to Dr. Seuss and Tiny Toon Adventures Volume 4. Save for those two problematic releases, Warner Home Video has largely seen more success through the first two quarters of the year. Now Warner Home Video has started off its new quarter by catching its footing in the first half of Taz-Mania Season One. Taz-Mania Season One Volume One is one of many candidates for the best children’s DVDs and Blu-rays of 2013. That’s because unlike the company’s previous missteps, this release gets almost everything right. The only downside to this set is something that has plagued many of its releases so far this year. And that will be discussed later.
Taz-Mania Season One Volume One is a welcome release from Warner Home Video. This relic of a bygone era is one more example of everything that made not only children’s programming great, but also television in general. As audiences will see in Season 1.0, Taz-Mania made both children’s programming and television in general so great because unlike the cartoons that pollute television’s channel lineups today, it’s a cartoon that even today families can watch together. That’s thanks first and foremost to the show’s writing. The show’s writing is witty and clever. It’s taut enough that adults won’t feel like they’re being dumbed down. At the same time, it offers just enough comedy for even today’s younger viewers to find themselves laughing. The constant fights between Taz and Molly are something to which both adults and kids alike can relate, and thus at which adults and kids alike can laugh. And Taz’s constant adventures with his fellow characters are just as enjoyable. Viewers of every age will love watching Taz go diving for undersea treasure with Digeri Dingo, facing off against Francis X. Bushlad, and even taking on a part-time job in hopes of getting his own motorcycle. There’s even a heartfelt story telling how Taz first got his pet, Dog the turtle. If it doesn’t pull at a viewer’s heartstrings, nothing will. There is so much more that audiences will enjoy from this first half of Season One. This is just a taste of what kids and kids at heart can expect from this set.
The witty, clever writing of Taz-Mania makes it a great addition to any Looney Tunes fan’s library regardless of whether one is seeing it for the first time or for the first time again. It’s just one part of the show’s success. The animation style is another plus to this modern classic cartoon. So many of today’s “cartoons” are cartoons in the loosest sense possible; those that are at all. For the most part, most of today’s kids programming is dominated by CGI created shows and live action fodder for tweens and teens. Those rare hand-drawn cartoons that are left have been spit-shined. Taz-Mania is the exact opposite. Its more “rough” animation style is a throwback to the classic days of animation. It doesn’t have the finely defined borders and background designs of so many of today’s cartoons. It really serves to help Taz-Mania develop its own identity, even among other cartoons from its era. In its own right, one could even argue that Taz-Mania’s animation style is a direct throwback to the golden era of Looney Tunes. That makes this double-disc set even more worth watching regardless of one’s age.
The writing and animation in the first half of Taz-Mania’s debut season are both big factors in the show’s success. There is at least one more factor to consider in determining whether Warner Home Video’s people have succeeded with this latest release. That factor is the double-disc set’s packaging. The packaging is by and large, a success. It follows the same formula that has become the norm for multi-disc box sets. Both of the set’s discs are placed on their own spot inside the standard size DVD case. As with any other set packaged in this fashion, it protects the discs from scratching and in turn, increases their longevity. The discs themselves are the only real downside to the entire set. Anyone that has picked up any previously released sets from WHV this year will notice that the people at WHV have not put a whole lot of thought into appeal on the discs. Sure, there are designs on both discs. But both discs are splashed in a single, flat tone. It would have been nice to see a full color design rather than something that looks like someone took a paint brush and ran it right over a bunch of clear designs. This is a minor issue. But it still plays a part in the overall picture. This might be as simple as a cost-cutting measure. If so, it’s understandable. Otherwise, this is something that the people at WHV will hopefully fix with any of its upcoming release. The double-disc set is available now in stores and online. It can be ordered direct online from the WB shop at http://www.wbshop.com/product/tazmania+taz+on+the+loose+season+1+part+1+1000303587.do?sortby=bestSellers&from=Search.
Posted in Celebrities, DvD's and blu-rays, Internet, Television | Tagged Animaniacs, Batman The Animated Series, BeetleBorgs, Doug, Eek! The Car, entertainment, facebook, FOX, Fox Kids, Futurama, Goosebumps, Hey Arnold!, internet, LIfe With Louie, Looney Tunes, Mauriche LaMarche, Mel Blanc, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Nicktoons, Phils Picks, Rugrats, Spiderman, Tasmanian Devil, Taz-Mania, Television, The Simpsons, The Wild Thornberrys, Tiny Toon Adventures, Warner Home Video, Wordpress | Leave a reply
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Press Release: Harry Bertschmann – Press Release
Harry Bertschmann: Over 50 Years of Painting
June 21 – July 19, 2018
Artist Reception: Sunday, July 1 from 5 to 7 PM
Quogue, NY, June 18 , 2018: The year 2018 began with the surprising rediscovery of a painter who is being added to the pantheon of significant abstract expressionist masters. The Harry Bertschmann story first broke on Sunday, January 7th, 2018 in The New York Times by writer Susan Chumsky, and has quickly achieved high acclaim from art historians while delighting collectors. Quogue Gallery will continue its rediscovery of the Harry Bertschmann Collection at its gallery in Quogue from June 21 to July 19, 2018. An artist Reception will take place on Sunday, July1 from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibition at the gallery follows the successful launch of the abstract master’s works at the Art Palm Beach fair in January and the Art on Paper fair in Manhattan in March. The exhibition will feature over 25 paintings from the 1950s up until the 1990s. Paintings from Bertschmann’s many different series will be on display, including work from the Stuttgart Series, the Ab-Ex Shapes Series, the Bank Street Series, and the Subway Series.
Harry Bertschmann, “Bank Street Series No. 36,” 1978 – 1985, Acrylic on canvas, 47.25″ x 79″
The 87-year-old Bertschmann enjoyed many solo exhibitions at museums and galleries during the 1950s. In 1958 the jury of the prestigious Carnegie International selected him as its youngest exhibitor — and one of his large abstract expressionist paintings hung beside those by Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Barnet Newman, Philip Guston, and Robert Motherwell. He was represented by the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City for eight years, and in 1961 Bertschmann’s solo exhibition followed one for Elaine de Kooning. But after settling in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s Bertschmann drifted from the gallery scene because he was leading a double life. His training at the famous Basel School of Design led him to become an innovator in graphic design, and many of his commercial logos and packaging have become pervasive in American culture. The logos and packaging for Kent and Newport cigarettes, Nestlé’s, and Bufferin are but a few of his creations. In 1997 the artist was honored with a retrospective in Basel. Despite earning a living from his commercial projects, he was resolute in painting every day.
Harry Bertschmann, “Bank Street Series No. 33,” 1978 – 1985, Acrylic on canvas, 48″ x 64″
Art critic and historian Prof. Robert C. Morgan described Bertschmann’s vision as “abstract gestural signs that suggest a language.” He added, “Bertschmann is essentially an art world outsider looking inward. He is a seasoned artist, a highly creative artist, an articulate individual, and a nearly obsessive worker, always willing to stand back and examine what he does before moving ahead. He is also an exemplary draughtsman…His atelier is a phenomenon to behold.”
Harry Bertschmann, “Bank Street Series, No. 30,” 1978 – 1985, Acrylic on canvas, 48″ x 70.5″
ABOUT QUOGUE GALLERY
As Quogue’s first and only private art gallery, the Quogue Gallery is a dynamic space in the Hamptons where artists, collectors, and art enthusiasts can meet and share their common passion for serious artistic investigation and appreciation. The gallery’s mission is to present a program of artistic excellence not limited to any genre or medium. Its focus is on modern and contemporary art created by emerging, established, and historically important artists. An essential aspect of the mission is to establish the gallery as an active, vibrant, and inventive participant in the Hamptons art panorama, with artist talks and events that significantly contribute to modern and contemporary art discourse.
44 Quogue St
Quogue NY 11959
Chester & Christy Murray
info@quoguegallery.com
← Tommy May – Press Release
Art Review: Sparks of Abstract Expressionism Illuminate Bertschmann Paintings →
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Status Report on the Deployment of SESAR
Published by kingaostanska on May 13, 2016
Original publication: May 2016
Authors: Imperial College London: Professor Washington Yotto Ochieng, FREng Dr Milena Studic
Short link to this post: http://bit.ly/2CtEjjb
Download the Study
The Air Traffic Management (ATM) system ensures safe, orderly and expeditious flow of air traffic on the ground and in the air. Over the years many initiatives have aimed to improve the ATM’s physical infrastructure, increasing the levels of automation and making operational changes to improve air traffic flow.
Despite these efforts, it was found that these changes are not sufficient to cope with the predicted growth in air traffic in both the short- and long-term. To cope with the increasing demand for air travel, a new global Concept of Operations (ConOps) was developed by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to improve user flexibility and maximise operational efficiency in order to increase capacity, improve safety and reduce the impact of aviation on the environment.
The European Union’s (EU) application of this ConOps started in 2004 through the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) programme. Since its establishment, SESAR has gone through the Definition phase (2005-08) and the Development phase (2008-13), and is currently in the final Deployment phase (2014-20), which is the focus of this report.
In summary, the main findings are that:
Significant effort has been made to create an integrated management structure for SESAR Deployment (Figure 1) with a clear assignment of responsibilities and interfaces/interactions (details in Section 2). This structure should facilitate the removal of potentially unnecessary duplication of effort and wastage of resources. Within the context of this structure, the following issues should be addressed to
achieve maximum cohesion and integration:
− Coordination between the ATM Master Plan (in particular the Implementation View of the Master Plan which includes the European Single Sky ImPlementation (ESSIP) Plan) and the Deployment Programme (DP) (for Pilot Common Project (PCP) related elements);
− Ensuring complementarity between the ATM Master Plan planning and implementation reporting mechanism (ESSIP/Local Single Sky ImPlementation (LSSIP)), and the SESAR Deployment Manager (SDM) reporting mechanism.
As the implementation of the PCP started in 2014, it is too early to quantify the benefits of the SESAR Deployment to date in terms of the SESAR Key Performance Areas (KPAs). The initial cost benefit analysis determined the overall benefit to be accrued from the PCP as EUR 2.4 billion for the period 2014-2030.
There is in place a monitoring and reporting structure, with the task of quantifying the actual operational benefits embedded in it. However, potential conflict of interest in this function should be avoided through a wholly independent process.
From the information provided by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA), the expenditure on PCP via the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding mechanism was EUR 325.4 million in 2014 (Table 2), with a further indicative EUR 446.9 million for the Call for Proposals issued in 2015. This is out of a total of EUR 3 billion investment expected for the period 2014-2020 for the PCP. The expenditure to date in terms of the proposals funded in the CEF Call 2014, identifying the coordinating applicants and the participating EU Member States, is presented in Table 2. However, the breakdown at stakeholder and State levels were not provided
by INEA for reasons of confidentiality.
To date, the implementation of the PCP is on time, although there are delays anticipated in the ESSIP Report for a number of the PCP pre-requisites. For these delays, the SDM is looking at ways of accelerating the implementations to deviate as little as possible from the original target end dates. Information on the consequences of the delays in terms of cost is still to be determined.
The Stakeholder’s Consultation Platform (SCP) appears effective: results based on the data from 2014 and 2015 show a significant increase not only in the project allocation but also in the stakeholder participation. In order to increase further the level of engagement of the operational stakeholders, during the DP2016 updating process, the Stakeholders’ Consultation process will be expanded from three to over six months allowing for two rounds of consultation prior to submission of the DP2016 draft to the EC (SESAR Deployment Manager, 2015a).
To achieve the full potential of the PCP, countries that do not belong to the EU but are a part of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) or neighbouring States (third countries) are expected to implement parts of the PCP. Their involvement is either as formal partners or as third parties whose air transport activities have close links with those of the EU.
Risk management is a critical element of the SDM’s responsibility. The 2015 Deployment Programme (DP2015) contains a detailed analysis of risks together with the ways to mitigate them. These are reviewed on a continuous basis and updates are made. In addition to these risks, further limitations in the SESAR Deployment have been identified in this report (Section 2.9) and should be incorporated into DP2016 together with their mitigations.
The SESAR Deployment Governance has three levels: Implementation, Management and Policy levels. However, the highest level (the Policy level) is not yet in place. This is required urgently in order to ensure a better involvement of State Authorities in the process, because ultimately States are responsible for the implementation of the PCP, as declared in the National Safety Authority (NSA) guidance for SESAR Deployment.
• The implementation of the Pilot Common Project (PCP) is on time and underpinned by a credible management structure with a clear assignment of responsibilities and interactions/interfaces.
• Although there are delays anticipated for a number of the PCP pre-requisites, the SESAR Deployment Manager (SDM) is looking at ways of accelerating the implementations to deviate as little as possible from the original target end dates. Information on the consequences of the delays in terms of cost is still to be determined.
• The expenditure to date through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) mechanism is EUR 325.4 million, out of EUR 3 billion planned for 2014-2020 for the PCP.
• The implementation of the PCP is at an early stage. Hence, the benefits in terms of the Key Performance Areas (KPAs) are still to be quantified.
Link to the full study: http://bit.ly/573-436
Please give us your feedback on this publication
One of the challenges associated with the deployment of SESAR is its management structure or architecture that identifies the relevant entities and processes. The structure should identify very clearly the responsibilities and interactions (interfaces) between the various partners and stakeholders.
The Master Plan is organised in three Views summarised in Figure 2.
The ESSIP Plan and ESSIP Report are governed by the EUROCONTROL Provisional Council and the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU), and as such offer a valuable tool, together with the LSSIP documents, for planning and monitoring short to medium-term deployment of the Master Plan. In addition, the ESSIP/LSSIP mechanism is used for reporting on the status of the Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP).
Monitoring View introduces the methodology for SDM synchronisation captured in Figure 4.
The SESAR Deployment Governance is responsible for the “timely, coordinated and synchronised implementation of Common Projects” (European Commission, 2013b) through the policy, management and implementation levels. Their main roles and responsibilities for each of the levels are summarised in Figure 5.
To support SESAR Deployment, so far there have been two CEF Calls for Proposals in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
The analysis of the mapping results between the PCP Air Traffic Management (ATM) Functionalities (AFs) and the European Single Sky ImPlementation (ESSIP) Objectives, as illustrated in Figure 7, shows that while some of the ESSIP Objectives exceed the expected ESSIP completion timelines (red triangles in Figure 7), it should be noted that none exceeds the overall Full Operational Capability (FOC) defined in the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 716/2014 on the establishment of the PCP (European Commission, 2014c). Therefore, it can be concluded that some of the elements of SESAR implementation are experiencing delays, but not (yet) exceeding the overall PCP timelines.
The methodology employed in the report is captured in Figure 8. It consists of five stages together with the necessary iterative loops to ensure exhaustive coverage of each stage.
The ATM functional architecture by Studic (2015) is employed in this report due to its completeness (and thus invariable nature), and ability to represent the ATM system in any phase of the SESAR Deployment. The functional model is captured in Figure 9 where the ATM functions are represented in light blue and the relationships between the functions in dark blue.
AF1: Extended Arrival Management and Performance Based Navigation in the High Density Terminal Manoeuvring Areas refers to precision approaches and early air traffic sequencing to reduce fuel consumption and environmental impact of flights on arrival.
AF2: Airport Integration and Throughput refers to time-based separation in the approach and planning, sequencing, routing, constraint management and safety assurance on the airport surface to improve airport safety, capacity, punctuality and fuel consumption.
AF3: Flexible Airspace Management and Free Route enables Airspace Users (AUs) to fly their preferred trajectory irrespective of the airspace structures or route network thereby improving flexibility, airspace utilisation, fuel consumption and punctuality.
AF4: Network Collaborative Management refers to improvements in flow management strategies, collaborative planning across the network and improvements in complexity assessment that should improve network capacity and flight efficiency.
AF5: Initial System Wide Information Management (iSWIM) refers to the development of interoperable information exchange services between operational stakeholders to improve efficiency of the overall ATM system.
AF6: Initial Trajectory Information Sharing is expected to enhance flight data processing performances to improve predictability of aircraft trajectory and therefore implicitly improve safety, capacity, fuel consumption and punctuality. Please note that the results for AF6 are included for completeness only as they are based on only one objective covering one Project Family and are unreliable because of lack of data.
Categories: TRANTRAN PublicationsPublications
Tags: TRANEuropean transportPublicationsSingle European SkyAir Traffic Management [ATM]International Civil Aviation Organisation [ICAO]
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The Agenda for Cohesion Policy in 2019-2024: Key issues for the REGI Committee
Original publication: July 2019 Authors: Carlos MENDEZ, John BACHTLER and Irene McMASTER Short link to this post: http://bit.ly/2Lfv1jG Available languages: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This study reviews the current and emerging issues for Cohesion Policy to support Read more…
How to tackle early school leaving in the EU
Original publication: March 2019 Authors: Panteia: Amber VAN DER GRAAF, Paul VROONHOF, Georgios ROULLIS, Federica VELLI Short link to this post: http://bit.ly/2HiXFhS Available languages: Background Decreasing early school leaving (ESL) is one of the current Read more…
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Commentary, Movie Reviews, Raffles Reviews 8 May 2014 11 May 2019
Raffles Reviews – Captain America: The Winter Soldier
By Angelica Chong (14A01B)
Cover picture reproduced with permission
Halfway through writing the first draft of this review, I realized something: I didn’t really want to go over the same old narrative loopholes, or the sad state of action sequences in summer blockbusters that have reduced battles to demolition derbies. So instead of writing 1000 words on camera angles and the improbability that anyone believed Nick Fury was actually dead, I’m going to talk about Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and the unavoidably political dimensions of one of America’s most famous superheroes.
The important thing to remember is that Steve Rogers is not Captain America because Captain America is not a man; he is not even a just a hero. He is the embodiment of everything that the American psychology stands for*. In The Amazing Spiderman #537, Cap explains this in one of his most famous speeches:
“Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world — ‘No, you move.’”
*Or, more accurately, what it purports to stand for.
For the visually inclined
This premise is explored in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (CA: TWS). Cap, the beacon of American pride during WWII and a much-needed leader in the modern context of 2014, becomes a fugitive from the very nation he has sworn to defend – because he’s decided that SHIELD, who is supposed to protect the American people, is what they need protecting from. As he puts it in the movie, SHIELD’s Project Insight, which shows their inclination for liberation through pre-emptive annihilation, is “not freedom; it’s fear.”
CA: TWS attempts to critique the American system itself as inherently wrong, through both the toxic growth of HYDRA the organization in SHIELD, and Cap’s condemnations of SHIELD’s founding policies all the way back to Operation Paperclip. It is clear that SHIELD has been complicit from the start: HYDRA managed to commit international atrocities because they recognized that SHIELD was a fellow monster, and that the value systems and structures of SHIELD not just allowed for infiltration, but cultivation. HYDRA is not embodied by Red Skull and Nazi Germany; it is not an organization restricted by time, place, or the weight of history; it is an ideology, and it found its home in SHIELD for a reason. HYDRA didn’t turn the system rotten; it always was. It is important to note that Fury, categorically a Good Guy, was perfectly okay with the idea of the helicarriers in the air, before he ever found out about HYDRA’s plans for it. Both Pierce and Fury express variations to the same theme: that the price of freedom is high, and they are both one of few who are willing to pay it. The irony of these parallel proclamations is, of course, that while one genuinely believes in the use of America’s intrusive and all-encompassing warfare to ‘protect’ the world, so does the other. It’s just that one is willing to kill about 7 million more people to do it. Who is who? It’s more than a perfunctory observation about the realities of America’s preventative warfare and questionable military engagements. CA:TWS rends the dichotomy between the bright manifest righteousness of America’s foreign policy and its innumerable shadowy antagonists because there is none. It’s a damning proclamation to make of a country that has been able to justify their actions because, hey, they’re always the good guys, right?
Except no, they’re not. This is where the Winter Soldier comes in. Captain America as Steve Rogers’ persona is the moral psyche of America; as SHIELD’s patriot, he is the controlled face of propaganda. The Winter Soldier is one thing: the long dark shadow of Cap’s palatably sunshine love of his nation and its people. He is not a person; look at the mechanization of his body, and the complete erasure of personhood and agency, and we can see that he is a weapon, literally. Both Cap and the Winter Soldier are parallel facets of America’s freedom and national security, except the latter is Cap’s ugly, hidden brother: the one who is used to dealing death unflinchingly, until there is nothing left but collateral damage and a body-count. He is used in the name of the greater good, to “shape the century”, but there is nothing good about what he does.
Symbolically, the Winter Soldier is a construct just like Captain America. They are inextricable aspects of warfare: the smiling hero and his metal red right hand. Captain America cannot exist without the Winter Soldier, because someone needs to get their heads dirty, and it can’t be the nation’s blond poster-boy. When Cap looks into a mirror, he sees not himself, the shining beacon of everything that is good and noble in the world, but the quiet dirty blood-stained machinations of the Winter Soldier behind the scenes, doing what Cap will not – and cannot – do. In CA: TWS, Steve finally understands that there is no such thing as evil neo-Nazis secretly taking over SHIELD; the bad guys have always been at home.
But behind the domino mask and the metal arm, and the decades of memory-wiping and ice, there is a man. And herein lies the greatest tragedy of the movie: the dissolution of Bucky Barnes. Narratively, his tragedy is a personal one, for both himself and Steve, his best friend; politically, it speaks of the twisted compromises that we have made in the name of protecting ourselves, and the corruption of people into living weapons at the cost of their – and our – humanity. The Winter Soldier’s only legitimate character arc occurs in the final act of the movie, when he says of Steve, wonderingly, “I knew him.” Probably the first original thoughts he’s had since he’d been cryogenically frozen again and again, they represent a tension, between the man who used to be Bucky Barnes and the killing machine in front of us, that is palpable. The ghost of the man in the machine breaks through the Pavlovian conditioning of his masters – because make no mistake of it, the Winter Soldier is not an employee but a dog – when Steve drops his shield and refuses to fight his friend. Because no matter how much you try to systemize and weaponize a human being, at the end of the day, he is still a human being. And the Winter Soldier’s black-and-white reality of kill orders and terminated targets warps and buckles under the weight of choice that Captain America, the man and the mission, gives him. The last we see of the Winter Soldier (before the post-credits scene anyway) is of him dumping Steve unceremoniously onto the Potomac river bank. He rejects his mission outright because he felt something other than numbness – but this is hardly cathartic for the characters or the audience; Bucky Barnes isn’t back, and is likely never to be – but the important thing here is that the Winter Soldier, for the first time in his existence, has exercised free will. He chose to let Steve fall; he also chose to save him.
CA: TWS is clearly a political movie that tries to go beyond your typical Good vs. Evil plot to explore the surface benevolence/back-alley-terror duality of war. But maybe it’s just because I’m always more invested in the characters than anything else, because the relationship between Steve and Bucky is, to me, the true heart of the movie. While it is awful to think about brainwashed assassins and the complete breakdown of a nation’s security from within, on the helicarrier at the end, during the film’s narrative and emotional climax, it’s not about SHIELD vs. HYDRA or Captain America facing the Winter Soldier. It’s about Steve and Bucky, two boys from Brooklyn, who, despite lost decades and the red in their ledgers, still have each other, till the end of the line.
This is a bit of a side-track, but interestingly enough, Ed Brubaker, the author who wrote the original Winter Soldier comic arc, chose that name because of the Winter Soldier Investigation of 1971, where the Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW) organized a media event to get discharged servicemen to discuss the acts of savagery they had seen and committed during their time in the war. The hope was to bring these tragedies, which were often swept under the rug, before the public eye. Specifically, it was to prove that incidents like the My Lai massacre of 1968 were not isolated and rare occurrences, but were instead the frequent and predictable result of official American war policy. When future Secretary of State John Kerry spoke before a Senate Committee, he explained:
“We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.”
However, the term ‘winter soldier’ itself is derived from Thomas Paine’s revolutionary pamphlet, The Crisis, which was written during the American Civil War:
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The implication being that the winter soldier is one who does right by his country even in the face of personal cost, or divergence from those who are supposed to be guardians of the state. Ironically, according to Paine, the real winter soldier is Captain America.
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2 thoughts on “Raffles Reviews – Captain America: The Winter Soldier”
hellokitty says:
*spoiler alert
great review, just a little thing i wanted to point out – bucky barnes will probably come back in the sequels as he replaces steve rogers as captain america in the comics after his apparent death.
one really good point about the movie is how the winter soldier actually matches captain america blow by blow in the fighting scenes. the choreography is very impressive and i think it adds to the symbolism of how they are merely reflections of each other.
as for the action scenes, i have to say they were pretty damn good for typical demolition derbies albeit a little unrealistic but hey, it’s hollywood and a marvel movie.
Piglet says:
16 Jun 2016 at 4:36 AM
Post-‘Civil War’ I’m revisiting all the great content that was created in the wake of ‘Winter Soldier’. This is one of the most elegantly-written reviews I’ve read, and I especially appreciate the focus on the indictment of American policy and rhetoric. Thanks!
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Imelda Staunton 1.9.13 Thought of the Day
“…It was the best job of my life. It’s rather like falling out of an aeroplane with no parachute.”
Imelda (Photo credit: Lizzie Wells)
Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton was born on this day in London, England, in 1956. She is 57 years old.
Staunton, an only child, lived with her mum and dad over her mother’s hair dressing salon. Her mother was also a gifted natural musician who could pick up songs by ear (but couldn’t read music.) She passed on her love of music to Staunton who attended La Sainte Union Convent Catholic school. After graduation she attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Staunton wasted no time launching her career following graduation, becoming associated with such prestigious venues as The Old Vic and the National Theatre. [Moviefone: Imelda Staunton Biography.]
Musical theatre and Shakespeare fill her Stage CV. She won the prestigious Olivier Award twice.
On film she landed a role in the ensemble movie Peter’s Friends with Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie. She worked with Branagh and Thompson again in Much Ado About Nothing. Then paired up with Laurie as Mr. and Mrs. Jennings in Thompson’s wonderful adaption of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility in 1995. (Thompson both wrote the screen play and starred in the film). She was Maria in Twelfth Night and the nurse in Shakespeare in Love.
As Staunton’s numerous stage roles continued to earn her critical success, frequent television and film roles made her a familiar and endearing face to the general public. [Ibid]
She stepped away from the crowd with a starring dramatic role in Vera Drake.
Her undeniably affecting portrayal of the title role — a selfless housewife and cleaning woman who makes a name for herself performing illegal abortions — earned her near-universal praise. After earning accolades from both The Venice Film Festival and The New York Film Festival as well as the Los Angeles and Chicago film critic associations, Staunton had undeniably arrived when the role earned her a Best Actress nomination for the 77th Annual Academy Awards. [Ibid]
She took home a BAFTA for Vera.
Français : Avant-Première Mondiale d’Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort, à Londres, le 7 Juillet 2011 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In 2007 she, like many other classically trained British actors, found a new audience when she took a role in a Harry Potter film. Staunton played the nasty Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor in a fluffy pink cardigan, Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Some Ministry officials in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, from left to right: John Dawlish, auror; Dolores Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister; Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic; and Kingsley Shacklebolt, auror. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
She laced up a corset again for her supporting role as Miss Octavia Pole in the BBC’s delightful adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (and again for Return to Cranford).
Julia Mackenzie and Imelda Staunton (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Staunton has lent her voice to a number of acting projects including and animated version of the Wind in the Willows, The Adventures of Mole, The Adventures of Toad, The Ugly Duckling, and Chicken Run. She’s even did a turn as the voice of Interface on Dr. Who.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2013 at 11:10 pm and tagged with Imelda Staunton and posted in England, Entertainment, Film, Musical Theatre, postaday, Theatre, Thought of the Day, Today's Birthday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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New Orleans Mural Ordinance, Which Regulates "Works of Art," Is Unconstitutionally Vague
So a district court held today.
Eugene Volokh |The Volokh Conspiracy | 7.9.2019 8:33 PM
In today's Morris v. City of New Orleans (E.D. La.), U.S. District Judge Martin L.C. Feldman invalidated a New Orleans ordinance that regulated murals. The facts:
Neal Morris lives in Orleans Parish. He owns residential and commercial properties. He is perhaps not a fan of President Donald Trump. On November 4, 2017, Morris commissioned a local artist to paint a mural on a commercial property he owns at 3521 South Liberty Street. The mural quotes a controversial comment made by President Trump that had been recorded in a 2005 "Access Hollywood" segment; the mural replaces with pictograms two vulgar words used by Trump.
Just a few days after the mural was painted, a local news outlet publicized a story about the mural and noted that murals "are typically regulated by the Historic District Landmarks Commission and the City Council." The same day the news story was published, on November 8, 2017, the City of New Orleans Department of Safety and Permits sent Morris a letter advising him that the mural violated a zoning ordinance. Jennifer Cecil, the purported director of the City's "One Stop for Permits and Licenses," wrote that an inspection of the property on November 8 revealed a violation of Section 12.2.4(8) of the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance, which, according to her letter, concerns "Prohibited Signs—Historic District." …
Morris was instructed to remove the mural, and warned that his failure to do so by November 22, 2017 would cause the Department of Safety and Permits to initiate appropriate legal action to secure compliance. The penalty for failure to comply is a maximum fine or jail for each and every day the violation continues plus court cost as prescribed by law….
Morris uncovered several stark inaccuracies in the November 8 letter: Section 12.2.4(8) does not in fact exist; there is no section titled "Prohibited Signs—Historic District" in the CZO; nor does the CZO contain a blanket prohibition on murals in residentially zoned historic districts. On November 17, 2017, Morris politely wrote to the City requesting clarification in light of the inaccuracies in Ms. Cecil's letter. Impolitely, apparently the City did not respond.
Morris sued, and the city then replaced the ordinance, with one that imposes lighter regulations, but that still specially regulates any noncommercial "work of art painted or otherwise applied to or affixed to an exterior surface," but doesn't regulate other noncommercial signs. But the lawsuit continued, with Morris requesting an injunction blocking the new ordinance as well, and the court agreed, holding that the rule was unconstitutionally vague:
Jennifer Cecil, Director of the New Orleans One Stop for Permits and Licenses, … could not even define the term ["work of art"]:
A: . . . the presentation of a permit request for a mural is an assertion that this is a work of art . . . .
Q: So you are saying that the applicant, by the mere fact of asking for a mural permit, is presuming that the subject is a work of art?
A: That's my understanding of how it's approached, yes. . . .
Q: So that's what I am sort of getting at. I am trying to understand where the line is drawn.
A: If you tell me that it's not a work of art when you come in, that you are just painting solid—that you are painting a house, there will be no permit required if you are not in a historic district.
Q: So if I don't think it's a work of art, I don't need a permit?
A: If you don't think it is a work of art and you are describing solid color painting to us, we would not tell you that, no. If you begin describing figurative painting or painting of words, we would suggest that you have it reviewed and you present an example of what that would look like.
Tellingly, the City fails to respond to the plaintiff's arguments in this regard. In so doing, the City apparently concedes that the CZO's failure to define "work of art" renders the definition of "mural" impermissibly vague. {Of course, if the City were to attempt to define "work of art," this would unquestionably give rise to additional content-based distinctions. It appears the City has no choice but to step back and craft a broad, content neutral definition of sign that does not refer to "art," "commercial speech," or "non-commercial speech." And if the City wishes to treat murals differently than signs, it could perhaps create subcategories based on physical characteristics alone, such as "wall sign" or "painted wall sign." Compare Central Radio Co. Inc. v. City of Norfolk, Va., 811 F.3d 625, 628-29 (4th Cir. 2016) (holding that sign ordinance exempting from regulation "works of art which in no way identify or specifically relate to a product or service" was a "content-based regulation that d[id] not survive strict scrutiny") with Peterson v. Vill. of Downers Grove, 150 F. Supp. 3d 910, 919-23 (N.D. Ill. 2015) (holding that sign ordinance's ban on all painted wall signs was content neutral and "narrowly tailored to serve the Village's interest in aesthetics.").}
Because the CZO's use of the indistinct, shapeless, and obscure phrases "work of art" … fails to provide "sufficient guidance such that a [person] of ordinary intelligence would understand" when a mural permit is required, Morris is entitled to summary judgment that the definition of "mural" is unconstitutionally vague under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court also seemed to hold that any ordinance that requires prescreening of signs to determine whether they contain commercial advertising must pass strict scrutiny as a content-based restriction (even if it ultimately doesn't further distinguish within the category of speech that isn't commercial advertising), even though a restriction on commercial advertising doesn't need to pass strict scrutiny:
Because the City of necessity must determine whether a mural contains commercial speech, and, therefore, should be regulated as a sign, the ordinance is a prohibited free speech enemy and does not pass strict scrutiny, or even a more relaxed scrutiny test. The murals-permit scheme is unconstitutional insofar as it distinguishes between commercial and non-commercial artwork. Regulations of commercial speech (such as signs) are not subject to strict scrutiny. But the City has gone beyond signage regulation.
I'm not sure whether that's quite right, but I do think the holding that "work of art" is unconstitutionally vague is correct.
NEXT: @RealDonaldTrump and Twitter: Public Forums and Private Architecture
Eugene Volokh is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA.
Free Speech Art
The Supreme Court sometimes makes vague definition and distinctinctions. It could be argued that its concept of commercial speech is vague and incapable of clear definition, just as it was argued that the Court’s definition of obscenity was unconstitutionally vague.
But however much a lower court judge may disagree with the Supreme Court, lower courts are not free to say that speech categories created by the Supreme Court itself violate the constitution.
Just as a lower court judge is not free to hold an obscenity law that track’s the Supreme zcourt’s definition of obscenity unconstitutionally vague, it is not free to hold a distinction between commercial and non-commercialspesch that tracks the Supreme Court’s own language in describing this distinction.
Of course the Supreme Court is capable of being vague. But a lower court judge nonetheless isn’t free to claim a Suoreme Court decision violates the constitution on vagueness grounds, just as it isn’t free to rule a Supreme Court decision was wrong on other grounds.
David Nieporent
It could be argued that its concept of commercial speech is vague and incapable of clear definition,
In the sense that anything “could be argued,” I suppose. But commercial speech is one of the most clearly defined terms.
As to the rest, you have misread the opinion. It held that “work of art” was vague, not “commercial speech.”
[Eugene Volokh] New Orleans Mural Ordinance, Which Regulates “Works of Art,” Is Unconstitutionally Vague – Jehtro Lewis – Blog
[…] from Law https://reason.com/2019/07/09/new-orleans-mural-ordinance-which-regulates-works-of-art-is-unconstitu… […]
jubulent
Interesting case, particularly as the Supreme Court has had no difficulty defining a “work of art” and distinguishing it from a mere “industrial design” in the copyright context. See, e.g., *Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands*, 580 US ___ (2017).
vrkboston
“…the holding that “work of art” is unconstitutionally vague is correct.”
Really? So is the Copyright Act unconstitutionally vague? It manages to define “work of visual art” and “pictorial, graphic, [etc.] work” in fairly vague terms using “art” and has managed to withstand attack. In fact, I suspect an attack based on vagueness wouldn’t survive the laugh test.
In this case, chances are for copyright purposes the “mural” in question would be considered a literary work, since it’s pretty much all words. But even literary work is commonly understood to be art.
And what’s with this “purported” director of the City’s “One Stop for Permits and Licenses” scarifying? Either she is or she isn’t, and later in the opinion the judge seemed content to accept her credentials.
This whole case stinks. It’s a bit of judicial political theater or a disingenuous end-run around having to analyze the 1st Amendment issues.
Robert Beckman
That’s because the copyright act doesn’t restrict any speech based on any of those factors.
Anything that’s copyrighted has speech restrictions (other people can’t use it, with exceptions), but the restriction doesn’t depend in any way on whether it’s art or not, so a challenge for vagueness would have to assert that whether something was registered or not was a vague definition, and it’s not.
This case instead restricts speech based on the content of the speech, not on whether there’s a copy of it in a registry, and the definitions the state provided are vague. If, on the other hand, the city had a law that said “no wall coverings of any kind except for those on this list” that wouldn’t be vague, and that’s how copyright restrictions work.
Remember that copy right is asking the government to exclude others from use, not to allow you to use it yourself. In a world without copyright, anyone could use anything, so copyright adds a set of things that can be restricted notwithstanding the first amendments commandments.
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Schistosomiasis, also known as bilharziasis or snail fever, is primarily a tropical parasitic disease caused by the larvae of one or more of five types of flatworms or blood flukes known as schistosomes. The name bilharziasis comes from Theodor Bilharz, a German pathologist, who identified the worms in 1851.
Infections associated with worms present some of the most universal health problems in the world. In fact, only malaria accounts for more diseases than schistosomiasis. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 200 million people are infected and 120 million display symptoms. Another 600 million people are at risk of infection. Schistosomes are prevalent in rural and outlying city areas of 74 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In Central China and Egypt, the disease poses a major health risk.
There are five species of schistosomes that are prevalent in different areas of the world and produce somewhat different symptoms:
Schistosoma mansoni is widespread in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and South America and can only infect humans and rodents.
S. mekongi is prevalent only in the Mekong river basin in Asia.
S. japonicum is limited to China and the Philippines and can infect other mammals, in addition to humans, such as pigs, dogs, and water buffalos. As a result, it can be harder to control the disease caused by this species.
S. intercalatum is found in central Africa.
S. haematobium occurs predominantly in Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Intestinal schistosomiasis, caused by Schistosoma japonicum, S. mekongi, S. mansoni, and S. intercalatum, can lead to serious complications of the liver and spleen. Urinary schistosomiasis is caused by S. haematobium.
It is difficult to determine how many individuals die of schistomiasis each year because death certificates and patient records seldom identify schistosomiasis as the primary cause of death. Mortality estimates vary related to the type of schistosome infection but are generally low. For example, the estimated annual death rate from infection with S. mansoni is 2.4 per 100,000.
All five species are contracted in the same way, through direct contact with fresh water infested with the free-living form of the parasite known as cercariae. The building of dams, irrigation systems, and reservoirs, and the movements of refugee groups introduce and spread schistosomiasis.
Early symptoms of infection
Many individuals do not experience symptoms. If infection is present, it usually takes four to six weeks for symptoms to appear. The first symptom of the disease may be a general ill feeling. Within twelve hours of infection, an individual may complain of a tingling sensation or light rash, commonly referred to as “swimmer's itch,” due to irritation at the point of entrance. The rash that may develop can mimic scabies and other types of rashes. Other symptoms can occur two to ten weeks later and can include fever, aching, cough, diarrhea, or gland enlargement. These symptoms can also be related to avian schistosomiasis, which does not cause any further symptoms in humans.
Katayama fever
Another primary condition, called Katayama fever, may also develop from infection with these worms, and it can be very difficult to recognize. Symptoms include fever, lethargy, the eruption of pale temporary bumps associated with severe itching (urticarial) rash, liver and spleen enlargement, and bronchospasm.
Intestinal schistosomiasis
In intestinal schistosomiasis, eggs become lodged in the intestinal wall and cause an immune system reaction called a granulomatous reaction. This immune response can lead to obstruction of the colon and blood loss. The infected individual may have what appears to be a potbelly. Eggs can also become lodged in the liver, leading to high blood pressure through the liver, enlarged spleen, the buildup of fluid in the abdomen (ascites), and potentially life-threatening dilations or swollen areas in the esophagus or gastrointestinal tract that can tear and bleed profusely (esophageal varices). Rarely, the central nervous system may be affected. Individuals with chronic active schistosomiasis may not complain of typical symptoms.
The condition that occurs when the liver and kidneys are not functioning properly and a clear, straw-colored fluid is excreted by the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity (peritoneum).
Cercariae—
The free-living form of the schistosome worm that has a tail, swims, and has suckers on its head for penetration into a host.
Miracidium—
The form of the schistosome worm that infects freshwater snails.
Urinary tract schistosomiasis
Urinary tract schistosomiasis is characterized by blood in the urine, pain or difficulty urinating, and frequent urination and are associated with S. haematobium. The loss of blood can lead to iron deficiency anemia. A large percentage of persons, especially children, who are moderately to heavily infected experience urinary tract damage that can lead to blocking of the urinary tract and bladder cancer.
Proper diagnosis and treatment may require a tropical disease specialist because the disease can be confused with malaria or typhoid in the early stages. The healthcare provider should do a thorough history of travel in endemic areas. The rash, if present, can mimic scabies or other rashes, and the gastrointestinal symptoms may be confused with those caused by bacterial illnesses or other intestinal parasites. These other conditions will need to be excluded before an accurate diagnosis can be made. As a result, clinical evidence of exposure to infected water along with physical findings, a negative test for malaria, and an increased number of one type of immune cell, called an eosinophil, are necessary to diagnose acute schistosomiasis.
Eggs may be detected in the feces or urine. Repeated stool tests may be required to concentrate and identify the eggs. Blood tests may be used to detect a particular antigen or particle associated with the schistosome that induces an immune response. Persons infected with schistosomiasis may not test positive for six months, and as a result, tests may need to be repeated to obtain an accurate diagnosis. Blood can be detected visually in the urine or with chemical strips that react to small amounts of blood.
The use of medications against schistosomiasis, such as praziquantel (Biltricide), oxamniquine, and metrifonate, has been shown to be safe and effective. Praziquantel is effective against all forms of schistososmiasis and has few side effects. This drug is given in either two or three doses over the course of a single day. Oxamniquine is typically used in Africa and South America to treat intestinal schistosomiasis. Metrifonate has been found to be safe and effective in the treatment of urinary schistosomiasis. Patients are typically checked for the presence of living eggs at three and six months after treatment. If the number of eggs excreted has not significantly decreased, the patient may require another course of medication.
If treated early, prognosis is very good and complete recovery is expected. The illness is treatable, but people can die from the effects of untreated schistomiasis. The severity of the disease depends on the number of worms, or worm load, in addition to how long the person has been infected. With treatment, the number of worms can be substantially reduced, and the secondary conditions can be treated. The goal of the World Health Organization is to reduce the severity of the disease rather than to completely stop transmission of the disease. There is, however, little natural immunity to reinfection. Treated individuals do not usually require retreatment for two to five years in areas of low transmission. The World Health Organization has made research to develop a vaccine against the disease one of its priorities.
Prevention of the disease involves several targets and requires long-term community commitment. Infected patients require diagnosis, treatment, and education about how to avoid reinfecting themselves and others. Adequate healthcare facilities need to be available, water systems must be treated to kill the worms and control snail populations, and sanitation must be improved to prevent the spread of the disease.
In what regions of the world that we might visit for a vacation is schistosomiasis likely to be a health problem?
Does the federal government issue health alerts for regions such as these?
Are there preparations we should make before leaving for a vacation in such areas?
What is the long-term risk if we should contract schistosomiasis on a foreign trip?
To avoid schistosomiasis iwhen visiting endemic areas, individuals ought to take the following precautions:
Contact the CDC for current health information on travel destinations.
Upon arrival, ask an informed local authority about the infestation of schistosomiasis before being exposed to freshwater in countries that are likely to have the disease.
Do not swim, stand, wade, or take baths in untreated water.
Treat all water used for drinking or bathing. Water can be treated by letting it stand for three days, heating it for five minutes to around 122°F (around 50°C), or filtering or treating water chemically, with chlorine or iodine, as with drinking water.
Should accidental exposure occur, infection can be prevented by hastily drying off or applying rubbing alcohol to the exposed area.
See also Dams ; Endemic ; Malaria ; Parasites ; Sanitation ; Tropical disease .
Bogitsh, Burton J., Clint E. Carter, and Thomas N. Oeltmann. Human Parasitology, 4th ed. New York: Academic Press, 2012.
Secor, W. Evan, and Daniel G. Colley, eds. Schistosomiasis. New York: Springer, 2010.
Gryseels, B. “Schistosomiasis” Infectious Disease Clinics of North America 26, no. 2 (2012): 383–97.
Nour, Nawal M. “Schistosomiasis: Health Effects on Women.” Obstetrics and Gynecology 3, no. 1 (2010): 28–32.
Siddiqui, A. A., B. A. Siddiqui, and L. Ganley-Leal. “Schistosomiasis Vaccines.” Human Vaccines 7, no. 11 (2011): 1192–97.
Gonya, Lenna. “Symptoms and Treatment of Schistosomiasis.” Helium. http://www.helium.com/items/2101285-symptoms-and-treatment-of-schistosomiasis (accessed September 21, 2012).
Gray, Darren J., et al. “Diagnosis and Management of Schistosomiasis.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3230106/pdf/bmj.d2651.pdf (accessed on September 21, 2012).
“Schistosomiasis.” PubMed Health. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002298/ (accessed September 21, 2012).
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd., Atlanta, GA, 30333, (800) CDC-INFO (232-4636), cdcinfor@cdc.gov, http://www.cdc.gov .
World Health Organization, Avenue Appia 20, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland, +22 41 791 21 11, Fax: +22 41 791 31 11, info@who.int, http://www.who.int .
Ruth E. Mawyer, RN
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The San Gabriel Valley: The Ultimate Place To Live
Home to a wide variety of cultures, shopping centers, spectacular restaurants and in ownership of a fantastic public educational system, the San Gabriel valley is the perfect place to raise a family. Encompassing wonderful cities such as South Pasadena, San Marino and Pasadena, also known as the one and only “city of roses,” your family will never grow bored of the extreme livability of the San Gabriel Valley. If you’ve been thinking about moving to the San Gabriel Valley area here are few convincing features the charming location has to provide.
With seventeen kindergarten through fifth grade elementary schools, five middle schools, and four high schools, the Pasadena Unified School District has no shortage of high ranking institutions that will ensure the proper and thorough education of your children. In addition to these spectacular public institutions, there are numerous parochial and private schools in which your child will also receive a great education. The education in Pasadena does not stop with great fundamental schooling, but is home to multiple institutions of higher education. These highly revered and diverse institutions include the California Institute of technology (Caltech), the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, the Art Center College of Design, and the highly rated Pasadena City College, currently ranked eighth nationwide on the military’s list of veterans-friendly two-year colleges. However, the Pasadena Unified School District is not the only credible school district in the San Gabriel Valley.
The San Marino Unified School District is comprised of approximately 2,700 students enrolled in kindergarten through twelfth grade through the city’s two elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. If you are looking for a quality education with a smaller and more intimate class size, the small San Marino Unified School district might be the place for you to educate your children. San Marino schools also have the benefit of being supported by the San Marino Schools Foundation, an organization that was formed in 1979 in response to substantial reductions in state and school funding. The foundation’s exclusive purpose is to raise money for the San Marino Unified School district, thus ensuring a well maintained education standard.
South Pasadena is also known for its exceptional public schools and family oriented community. South Pasadena has three elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. South Pasadena is know for their continued effort to reduce California’s “achievement gap,” and their strict following of the No Child Left Behind, Adequate Yearly Progress, and the Academic Performance Index requirements. Due to South Pasadena’s highly coveted schooling system, you must be a resident of South Pasadena to enroll your children in one of the highly revered South Pasadena public schools.
One of the many advantages to living in the San Gabriel Valley are the various appeals it has to offer in terms of housing. Pasadena is known for its unparalleled charm and exquisite historical architecture. Notable architects include Greene and Greene, the famous designers of the Gamble House, Reginald Johnson, Myron Hunt and Sylvanus Marston, all who were believed to be somewhat responsible for establishing Pasadena as the vibrant community it is today. Home values in Pasadena are consistently valued at approximately 46.5% greater than California’s average home and 228% higher that the nation’s average home.
When it comes to beauty, San Marino does not let its Italian counterpart down. Named after the Republic of San Marino, Italy, the southern Californian version of the picturesque Italian town does not disappoint. Only spanning a little less than four square miles, the community of San Marino is uniquely residential and characterized by extravagant properties. Having climbed 11.2% in the past year, and predicted to rise 4.5% within the next year, San Marino homes are ranked as some of the highest valued properties in the nation.
Livability and Things To Do
The San Gabriel Valley is an extremely livable area with incredible weather, eclectic amenities and low crime rates. To say the least, there is never a shortage of things to do in the San Gabriel Valley Area.
With its mixture of historic conservation, modern sustainability and diverse cultures, Pasadena is a city in which its residents greatly value living. Pasadena has a vast collection of character homes, such as craftsman, bungalow, Spanish, and English Tudor, thus emphasizing Pasadena’s passion for accentuating historical beauty, and setting it aside from its Westside neighbors. If you are a lover of the environment, Pasadena is the place for you! Because of its easily accessible public transportation, and impressive walk-ability, the city of Pasadena does a adequate job of reducing its carbon footprint. Pasadena is best known for its Tournament of Roses Parade, a New Years celebration that has been held annually since 1890. During the rest of the year Pasadena remains relevant with it’s the uniqueness of Old Town Pasadena. Once nothing more than a few desolate blocks in Pasadena, Old Town has evolved into a historically charming, yet conveniently modern, collection of over 200 specialty boutiques, and over 100 immaculate restaurants, bistros, and cafes, all situated on a convenient 22 consecutive blocks.
Although much smaller than Pasadena, occupying only a little less than three and a half miles, South Pasadena packs big town amenities into a small town feeling. Some of the best know attractions in South Pasadena are the Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain, the Rialto Theatre and the South Pasadena Farmer’s Market. The Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain vintage theme, yet thoroughly modern, hot spot for people to grab a bite to eat or relax with friends and family. The Rialto Theatre was built in 1925, and is one of the few remaining single-screen movie-viewing locations in the entirety of the Los Angeles Area. The South Pasadena Farmer’s Market is, for many, the highlight of the South Pasadena resident’s week and deeply cherished throughout the San Gabriel Valley. Held every Thursday from 4:00pm to 8:00pm in historic South Pasadena near the Metro Gold Line at South Pasadena station, the Farmer’s Market is home to an eclectic mix of vendors, and a wonderful way to engage in community.
Whether you choose to reside in places South Pasadena, San Marino, or Pasadena, the San Gabriel Valley is a wonderful place to settle down and raise a family. With eclectic amenities ranging from nationally famous New Years day parades, or locally famous weekly farmer’s markets, the San Gabriel Valley will ever feel like a boring place to live. Fortunate to have great education systems and beautiful homes, anywhere in the San Gabriel Valley is an ideal place to live.
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Edinburg: A City with a Great History to Call Your Home
Posted in Buying Property, News on Thursday November 17th, 2016 by Krys Weyand Leave a Comment
Located in one of the northernmost areas of Hidalgo County, the City of Edinburg is one of the Rio Grande Valley’s most diverse cities with a strong sense of community pride. It is the perfect home for someone who wants to live just outside of a big city or for the person who wants to have their own ranch to raise livestock. A family living in a city like Edinburg really gets the best of both worlds.
Take a look at the beginnings of Edinburg and learn how Santa Cruz Properties can help you and your family purchase a rural residential lot of land in this great city.
Is Edinburg the city for you and your family? Ask about our lots for sale in Edinburg today.
Around 1908, travelers settled in a city they named Chapin, which was named after County Judge Dennis B. Chapin. In 1911, this city was renamed Edinburg. The city rapidly prospered thanks to John Closner and W.F. Sprague (streets are named after them in the city) and there was a lot of ranching activity up until 1915.
In 1927, more streets continued to be named after prominent executives and railroad officials. The “Golden Spike” train first entered the city this year. The train was initially operated by San Antonio-Rio Grande Valley Railroad, but the Edinburg Southern Pacific Depot opened later that year. Fun fact: the restored Southern Pacific Depot currently houses the Edinburg Chamber of Commerce. By walking in Edinburg’s downtown area, one can appreciate the architecture of historical buildings like this one.
By 1928, a country club, a hospital and schools were built during the expansion of the city. Edinburg’s citizens also constructed its first college, Edinburg College, which later became Edinburg Junior College and Edinburg Regional College, then Pan American University and most recently transitioned from The University of Texas – Pan American (UTPA) to The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) in 2013. As you can see, positive changes and expansions are still taking place to this day.
Present Day Attractions
Presently, a family can enjoy various activities in places like the Museum of South Texas History, Carmike Cinemas, El Sal del Rey (Salt of the King), Edinburg Municipal Park, Edinburg Municipal Golf Course, the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands and World Birding Center and the Edinburg Professional Baseball Stadium. These are only a few locations that you and your family can visit in your free time. Edinburg continues to expand and will, without a doubt, have more to offer in the near future.
Why You Should Buy Property Here
Living in Edinburg will allow you and your family to live within close range to not only all of the attractions and educational institutions that the city has to offer, but you will also be a short drive away from other cities in Hidalgo County. For example, you and your family can drive to McAllen to explore a multitude of restaurants, shopping centers and nightlife activities or escape to a recreational site like the Mission Hike and Bike Trails or Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park.
From La Joya to Mercedes, there is something for every member of the family to enjoy in Hidalgo County. Buying a plot of land in Edinburg can fulfill your dream of becoming a landowner and bring you and your family one step closer to appreciating the culture and commerce found in the RGV. The best perk about buying land with Santa Cruz Properties, however, is that our land prices are low compared to other sellers.
We Can Help You Get Started
Santa Cruz Properties strongly believes in giving everyone the opportunity to follow his or her dream of becoming a landowner. We would love to help you and your family get started with this process. In order to purchase land with us, all you need are two forms of identification (Texas driver’s license/identification, passport, social security number, birth certificate from country of origin) and a down payment plus applicable fees. You can view our lots for sale here. If you have any questions, call us at 956.383.0868.
Tags: Nearby Events
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You are here: Home / Film / Slamdance Film Festival – Day 1
Slamdance Film Festival – Day 1
January 26, 2019 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment
Welcome to Slamdance. While most of the world is familiar with the Sundance Film Festival, they may not have heard of Slamdance, a renegade festival also held in Park City, Utah, the same week. Slamdance’s mantra is “By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers”. It is celebrating its 25th year in 2019, and seeks to serve new and emerging filmmakers. Over 2000 films have screened at Slamdance over the last 24 years, giving important career starts to many filmmakers.
Gun violence continues to be a hot topic in America. In Heidi Yewman’s documentary Behind the Bullet, the focus is on four people who have pulled the trigger. We often see the effects guns have had on victims and families, but what of those who have killed? Yewman’s interest in the subject dates back to the Columbine shooting. She graduated from Columbine prior to the shooting, but one of the victims was her basketball coach. The four people we meet are a woman who has gone through 46 surgeries in five years since a failed suicide attempt; a man who grew up in the streets of South Philadelphia among drugs and crime, who spent ten years in prison for murder after killing someone in a shootout; a man who killed an intruder in his home; and a now 18 year-old boy and his family ten years after he found his mother’s gun and accidentally killed his five year-old brother. As the film rotates between their stories, we learn the ways their pulling a trigger has changed their lives. We hear them express guilt, forgiveness, reconciliation, and suffering. We also see ways in which lives can change for the better by how one moves through the aftermath and the love one receives in that process.
Satire fills Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity from American Popular Culture from writer/director Nicole Brending. It is the fictional story of “the most successful child star in the history of the world”, Junie Spoons, told in puppet animation. Like a “where are they now” tv show, it tells of her rise and fall. In the process it looks at the American celebrity culture. Along the way it features various touchstones of pop culture—sexually-charged childhoods, the manufactured images, exploitation by those who should nurture, the media’s and the audience’s role. There are scenes reminiscent of the O. J. car chase, the flap over the exploitation of actresses in Blue Is the Warmest Color, and Caitlyn Jenner’s transformation. Much of the film works well as satire, but it eventually becomes a bit too bizarre to sustain its own story. The film asks us to consider the way much of this exploitation reflects society’s inherent misogyny, or as a note at the end of the credits calls it, “the actually crazy shit that people do to women.”
A Great Lamp by Saad Qureshi is a look into the bleakness of life. Max, a skirt-wearing homeless man, goes around town pasting posters of his dead grandmother in hope that someone will remember her. Howie, haunted by his past, connects with Max and they plan to see a rocket launch. Gene spends his day killing time, dressing to go to work at the job he quit months ago. There is emptiness in their lives, but somehow they find something each day to keep them going. The film itself tries to be a bit too artsy. Some of the visual effects are distracting and annoying. And although the plots don’t really connect, they carry ideas that were interesting, but never quite fully developed. An example is to listen to the wishes made on pennies in a fountain and then connecting with those people to fulfill their wish. A title card at the end of the film suggests that this is an example of filmmaking as therapy and that those involved in the film are each seeking their own ways of dealing with life, just as in the film.
Filed Under: Film, Film Festivals, Reviews
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Fighting Back: Narrow Issues vs Core Values
Posted on March 12, 2005 by Dave Johnson
In ‘I Have a Nightmare’, Nicholas Kristoff writes about the essay “The Death of Environmentalism,” seemingly without having read it to the end. Kristoff writes that the environmental movement lost credibility by making alarming claims that haven’t come true. He writes,
“The Death of Environmentalism” notes that a poll in 2000 found that 41 percent of Americans considered environmental activists to be “extremists.” There are many sensible environmentalists, of course, but overzealous ones have tarred the entire field.”
Is Kristoff unaware that there is a well-funded right-wing movement in this country that uses lies, smears and humiliation as a primary tactic to sway public opinion? “Extremist” is the wording the Right uses to discredit environmentalists, and Rush Limbaugh uses to describe environmentalists on his 20-some-million-listener radio show. No wonder 41 percent of Americans use the word! But Kristoff unintentionally echoes the “conventional wisdom” of the Right’s smear campaign — it’s environmentalists’ fault people think they’re “extremists” because they scream “the sky is falling” like Chicken Littles. It’s like saying “if only Jews [blacks, gays, women, etc.] didn’t act that way people wouldn’t hate them.”
What I took from the “The Death of Environmentalism” was that the authors think money spent promoting environmental issues might be better spent, in the current climate of public attitudes, on fighting the Right at a deeper level, promoting core Progressive values to the general public, to foster development of a sustainable political coalition to elect candidates who support environmentalism.
Read the essay, judge for yourself. From its conclusions:
While it’s obvious that conservatives control all three branches of government and the terms of most political debates, it’s not obvious why. This is because environmentalists and other liberals have convinced themselves that, in politics, “the issues” matter and that the public is with us on categories such as “the environment” and “jobs” and “heath care.” What explains how we can simultaneously be “winning on the issues” and losing so badly politically?
[. . .] Conservative foundations and think tanks have spent 40 years getting clear about what they want (their vision) and what they stand for (their values).
[. . .] Environmental groups have spent the last 40 years defining themselves against conservative values like cost-benefit accounting, smaller government, fewer regulations, and free trade, without ever articulating a coherent morality we can call our own. Most of the intellectuals who staff environmental groups are so repelled by the right’s values that we have assiduously avoided examining our own in a serious way. Environmentalists and other liberals tend to see values as a distraction from “the real issues” — environmental problems like global warming.
[. . .] If environmentalists hope to become more than a special interest we must start framing our proposals around core American values and start seeing our own values as central to what motivates and guides our politics. Doing so is crucial if we are to build the political momentum — a sustaining movement — to pass and implement the legislation that will achieve action on global warming and other issues.
Read the entire essay. It represents an important turning point in Progressive thinking about promoting narrow-interest issues v.s. core values.
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Texas Tech Head Basketball Coach Visits San Angelo
(Live Photo/Sonia Ramirez)
By Sonia Ramirez-Muñoz | May. 25, 2017 10:10 pm
SAN ANGELO, TX – This past Monday, members of the Texas Tech Alumni Association-Concho Valley hosted a very special guest during a luncheon at Zentner’s Daughter. Tech’s Men's Basketball Head Coach Chris Beard spoke about his team, his team's goals, and the vision he has for the Red Raiders in the upcoming season.
Coach Beard was introduced by Coach Boone, Angelo State University’s Men’s Head Basketball Coach. Boone and Beard know each other well. They worked together at ASU and McMurry University before Boone became head basketball coach at ASU and Beard at Texas Tech. For Boone Beard is not only a colleague, but also a close friend, one with whom he has shared many experiences.
Commenting on Beard's first year at Texas Tech, Boone said, “he had a good year this first year. I think we all know big things are coming. He wins no matter where he goes, he’s a great person, and one of the fiercest competitors I have ever been around, but he does it the right way. He loves his players, takes good care of them and graduates them.”
During his speech Beard talked about his experience with the Red Raiders, detailing his future plans, but he also touched upon the importance of being humble. The opportunity to coach a team in the Big 12 is a tremendous one for any coach, but he recalled several instances that helped keep him humble. In particular, he remembered a conversation he had with one of his daughters after his Little Rock team had won against San Diego State, an undefeated team for many years. He remembered expecting her to congratulate him on the big win, but instead, he was presented with the news that the "new American Girl doll was offering free shipping." This was very exciting news for his daughter who was convinced that this was an opportunity her dad could not pass up. Beard went on to share other anecdotal stories that illustrated that for him it is important to keep his head grounded and to work hard every day to build a better team.
Coach Beard was a part of the Texas Tech family for ten years. From 2001-2011, he served under legendary coach Bob Knight both as assistant coach and assistant head coach. After ten years, he moved on to be the head coach for the South Carolina Warriors (ABA). A year later, he went to McMurray University to serve for a year as the head coach. Thereafter, he spent two years alongside Coach Boone as Angelo State University's Head Basketball Coach where he helped lead the Rams to a very successful season. The last stop before returning to the Red Raiders was a year as head coach at Little Rock University.
He is credited with turning around Little Rock’s basketball team during the 2015-2016 season, leading them through 30 victories, a season record. His record at Little Rock was 30-5; a vast improvement from the team’s previous stats.
He considers his time at ASU as one of his “most rewarding years of his career,” and his second favorite place to be at after Texas Tech. Beard mentioned that he became a little emotional after he walked through the Junell Center. Beard is proud of Coach Boone’s team and knows that they are "on to great things.”
“I believe he is going to win a national championship at Angelo State,” Beard said, “It’s really really good basketball here and 'Cinco' [Boone] does a great job with the program.”
During his speech Beard also talked about the new recruits who have signed on with the Red Raiders Men's Basketball team. For Beard, the incoming freshmen and the transfer students have very strong potential, and he believes they will be tremendous assets to the team. The incoming freshmen have, according to Beard, the potential of becoming “the best class Texas Tech has ever had.” Several of the new recruits had offers from prestigious universities, and Beard feels very fortunate to have recruited them for Tech.
Coach Beard thanked everyone for attending the luncheon organized by Texas Tech Alumni Assocation-Concho Valley. The first game of the Red Raiders Men's Basketball Team will be on November 10, 2017.
Our Sports Guy, The Fat Punter, Bids San Angelo Farewell
Trio of Concho Valley Youth Golfers Preparing for World Championships
SAISD Football Season Ticket Holders Can Renew Their Tickets Starting Monday
Top 5 Concho Valley Defensive Backs to Watch in 2019
Top 5 Concho Valley Linebackers to Watch in 2019
Sonia Ramirez-Muñoz - Former Correspondent
Sonia was born in Los Angeles but has been living in San Angelo for 11 years. She is a graduate of Angelo State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. Sonia has also worked for ASU’s TV channel, Ram TV and has interned as a blogger for Angelo State.She's excited about working with San Angelo LIVE! and learning more about this area of communication. She enjoys spending time with her family, traveling to Mexico when she gets the chance, listening to music and hanging out with her friends.
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Professor Sarah Peverley
Medievalist, Book Historian, Broadcaster. Lost in the Fifteenth Century.
Blog: The Parchment Mirror
The Liverpool Players
Past Productions and Events
Tag Archives: Undine
Mermaids: The Lure of Sirens’ Song
If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing. [J.M.Barrie, Peter Pan]
For as long as I can remember I’ve been enchanted by mermaids. One of my earliest memories is watching the Japanese anime version of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. Released over a decade before Walt Disney’s movie, the anime film broke my heart by remaining true to the original ending of Andersen’s tale (published in 1837), in which the mermaid dies after sacrificing everything to gain the love of a prince she saved from drowning.
Statue of The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen.
As a little girl who demanded a happy ending for the brave, faithful and selfless mermaid, I recall fleeing to the bathroom in tears as she perished and turned to sea foam. From that moment I fell in love with mermaids and wanted to be part of their world as much as Andersen’s Little Mermaid wanted to be part of ours.
Hylas and the Nymphs, John William Waterhouse.
My older self still has that childlike fascination and feeling of injustice at the Little Mermaid’s story, but mermaids also appeal to me more broadly because they embody mystery and duality: as hybrid creatures, they help to define what makes us human.
As part of my ongoing research into mermaids, I’ve been looking into the multi-faceted character of the sea-maid and the element in which she dwells. Last year, part of my research fed into a special edition of BBC Radio 3’s Words and Music, which is being repeated on Sunday 27 July 2014, 6.15pm (GMT). Produced by the brilliant Philippa Richie, my programme is inspired by the different ways in which mermaids have been a well-spring of creativity for composers and writers from diverse cultures across time. All kinds of sea maidens are included, from Dvořák’s tragic water sprite Rusalka, who asks the moon to tell her beloved how she feels in the famous ‘Song to the Moon’, to Gershwin’s ‘trollop’ Lorelei, whose liberty and sexual allure prompts the human singer of her tale to aspire to be a femme fatale of similar calibre. With dramatic readings by Toby Stephens and Amanda Root, I couldn’t have been happier with the result.
Detail of Mermaid from La Bibliothèque nationale de France.
The programme begins with the lively and colourful mermaid lagoon in Barrie’s Peter Pan, and an evocative piece of music inspired by one of the most famous and influential water sprites, Undine, or Ondine, whose name is first recorded in the alchemical writings of Paracelsus (1493-1541). Originally the name Undine defined the species of elementals inhabiting waterfalls and forest pools, but by the nineteenth century it had become the forename of a water nymph that fell in love with a human and married him to gain an immortal soul. Undine’s story became incredibly popular in the nineteenth century when the German Romantic writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué wrote a novella, Undine (1811), about her ill-fated marriage to a knight called Huldebrand. Her story is similar to The Little Mermaid, and it inspired the work of several composers, including Tchaikovsky, Debussy, and Henze.
Mermaid from Besançon, BM MS 69. Breviary, use of Besançon. Rouen.
Alluring and often deadly, we see a darker, predatory and sexual side of mermaids at the forefront of the extract taken from a thirteenth-century encyclopaedia, De Proprietatibus Rerum, written by the Franciscan scholar Bartholomeus Anglicanus, or Bartholomew of England.
Later, we hear how explorers like Christopher Columbus attempted to make sense of the new creatures and worlds that they encountered in the Age of Exploration. Columbus’s observation that mermaids ‘are not so beautiful as they are painted, though to some extent they have the form of a human face’ seems to imply that he saw manatees rather than the arousing, yet sexually unavailable fish-maidens conjured by imaginative sailors.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 1537. Jean Parmentier, La mappemonde aux humains salutaire.
By contrast, Haydn’s canzonetta, ‘The Mermaid’s Song’ (1794), offers a more playful rendition of the mermaid’s seductive call to ‘follow, follow, follow’ her beneath the waves. One of a small number of technically simple songs composed for performance in a drawing-room setting by a solo voice and keyboard, the expressive flourishes and unrelenting liveliness of the piano’s watery soundscape complements the simplicity of Anne Hunter’s charming lyric.
A Mermaid, John William Waterhouse.
In Walter de la Mare’s ‘Sam’, a mermaid is used to contrast the self-doubt and inexperience of youth with the playful confidence and self-awareness that comes with old age, while T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, uses the mysterious and uninhabitable underwater world to reflect the narrator’s feelings of sexual inadequacy and, more generally, the individual’s isolation in the modern world:
I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown. [T.S. Elliot, Extract from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’]
Several of the pieces that made the final edit draw upon the mermaid’s lack of an immortal soul to explore love and difference. While Anderson’s The Little Mermaid is the most famous example, Oscar Wilde’s The Fisherman and his Soul (1891) turns the motif on its head to highlight the conflict between physical love and spiritual salvation, and individual happiness versus social expectation. The very form of mermaids – part animal, part female – is ideally suited to negotiating such tensions, a concept that is also brilliantly tackled in Daniel’s ‘Ulysses and the Siren’ (1605), as we find Ulysses (the Latin counterpart of Odysseus) impervious to the siren’s lure. Writing during a new wave of exploration, Daniel’s poem addresses the pursuit of honour and renown achieved through an active life, not averse to war, versus passivity and the pursuit of individual pleasures closer at hand. For Ulysses, the promise of fame is more attractive than the siren’s song.
Sirens in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 764.
As time permits, and my research develops, I’ll dive deeper into the legends associated with mermaids and the infinitely complex ways that mankind has used them over time. But for the moment, dear reader, I’ll leave you with an invitation to hear the mermaids singing on Radio 3 this Sunday…
You can follow the progress of my work on mermaids on this blog and here.
This entry was posted in The Parchment Mirror and tagged amanda root, andersen, atargatis, Bartholomeus Anglicanus, bartholomew of england, BBC, BBC radio 3 words and music, Chaucer, Christopher Columbus, derketo, fisherman and his soul, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, hans christian andersen, henry hudson, john william waterhouse, Little Mermaid, Mermaid, mermaid expert, mermaid programme, mermaids, Middle Ages, odysseus, ondine, oscar wilde, peter pan, prufrock, romance of the rose, samuel daniels, sea maid, siren, sirens, toby stephens, ulysses, Undine, walter de la mare, water sprite on July 25, 2014 by Sarah Peverley.
Mermaids: The Lure of Sirens' Song
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Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, Emeritus
Daniel Kahneman is Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University, and a fellow of the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Kahneman has held the position of professor of psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1970-1978), the University of British Columbia (1978-1986), and the University of California, Berkeley (1986-1994). Dr. Kahneman is a member of the National Academy of Science, the Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and the Econometric Society. He has been the recipient of many awards, among them the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association (1982) and the Grawemeyer Prize (2002), both jointly with Amos Tversky, the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists (1995), the Hilgard Award for Career Contributions to General Psychology (1995), the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (2002), the Lifetime Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association (2007), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2013). Dr. Kahneman holds honorary degrees from numerous Universities.
kahneman@princeton.edu
Helene E. Wood
Faculty Assistant
hwood@princeton.edu
Mailing Address Only
Woodrow Wilson School
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Princeton, NJ 08544 USA
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Odelia Oshri
Department of Political Science and The European Forum
European Forum courses
54614 MA/PhD seminar: The politics of populism
Since the 1990s, left-wing and right-wing populist parties have established themselves in the European political map. At the same time, the 2008 financial crisis and the more recent migration crisis have strengthened populist feelings, Euroscepticism, and nationalism. This shift has, in turn, accentuated the cleavage between the “open,” pro-European, transnational and democratic outlook, on the one hand, and the “closed”, Eurosceptic, nationalistic and authoritarian position, on the other. A major objective of this course is to describe, discuss, and analyze the phenomenon of right/left-wing radicalization in Europe. Among the questions addressed are the following: Are there common patterns underlying the success of populist parties in Europe? Who votes for these parties? What is the reason for their success in Europe and why are some countries “immune” to populist ideologies? What is the impact of populist parties on public policies and democratic institutions? What are the relationships between globalization, the crisis of democracy, the economic crisis, and the success of populism?
The course is designed to expose students to recent developments and state-of-the-art literature in the booming field of comparative populism. It seeks to familiarize students with the intricacies of empirically complex – and, for this reason, theoretically challenging – phenomena, and assess the impact of the latter on European democracies. The course provides students with analytical tools for understanding the complex politics of populism; the rationales of the populist voter; the attributes of populism when in power; and its normative implications for contemporary liberal democracy.
54602 MA/PhD seminar: Politics and identity in contemporary Europe
Is there such a thing as a European identity? If so, how has it developed and what is the role of supranational institutions in this regard? Also, what are the causal mechanisms of Europeanization processes that are currently underway in Europe? And why are their outcomes not the same for different member states? The European Union is a fascinating laboratory for the study of political identities. On the one hand, it embraces 28 member states that, not only share an internal market, but cooperate in other areas such as justice and home affairs. On the other hand, and despite an ostensibly increasing convergence among its member states on cardinal collective issues, a diametrically opposite tendency is emerging: More and more calls are voiced to stem the deepening and broadening of cooperation among the EU members. This puzzling development is evident in the surveys conducted among European citizens, in difficulties posed by some member states to ratifying EU treaties, as well as in the gradual rise of populist right and Euroskeptic parties across Europe. Recently, all these processes culminated in the ‘leave’ vote in the Brexit referendum. The course examines this complicated political landscape, with its interplay of variegated identities, which are being molded and reconstructed due to accelerating interactions.
The objective of this course is to expose students to contemporary academic research on European identity, the factors that promote or hinder its creation, and the relationship between national and European identities. The course will introduce students to the challenges inherent in the empirical research on this subject as well as to the effect of the European identity on integration processes in Europe.
Courses offered in the Political Science Department
56067 BA course: Between threat and opportunity: Immigration, identity and national pride in contemporary Europe
In recent years, migration has become one of the most preponderant concerns faced by the European Union, and one that puts the very essence of the EU as a political entity to the test. This course engages with this complex and multilayered phenomenon and aims at addressing the following questions: Why is there a European–wide backlash against migration and multiculturalism in general and against Muslim migrants in particular? How is migration related to the transformations undertaken by the European party system and the rise of the radical right in Western Europe? How does immigration impact public opinion and on the articulation and configuration of national and supranational identities?
To answer these questions, this course is thematically divided, according to four main pillars. In its first part, the course will be devoted to discussing the meanings and definitions of European identity. We will discuss the evolution of the concept, the role attributed to it, and its (political) manifestations. This part will also engage with the role and place of supranational institutions in identity formation and sustenance, focusing primarily on the question of Is European identity a necessary condition to sustain legitimate supranational institutions? In the three subsequent parts of the course, students will delve into the three most pressing and intertwined challenges to European identity–immigration, nationalism and the surge in populist right parties in Europe. We will grapple with the question of what accounts for the rising opposition to immigrants and immigration and contemplate upon the different economic and cultural approaches that address this issue.
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PerspectiveSignal Transduction
The Path to Specificity
Charles S. Zuker,
Rama Ranganathan*
C. S. Zuker is at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Departments of Biology and Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093-0649, USA. E-mail: charles{at}flyeye.ucsd.edu
R. Ranganathan is in the Department of Pharmacology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75235-9050, USA. E-mail: rama{at}chop.swmed.edu.
Science 29 Jan 1999:
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5402.650
Charles S. Zuker
C. S. Zuker is at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Departments of Biology and Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093-0649, USA. E-mail: charles@flyeye.ucsd.edu
For correspondence: charles@flyeye.ucsd.edu
Rama Ranganathan
R. Ranganathan is in the Department of Pharmacology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75235-9050, USA. E-mail: rama@chop.swmed.edu.
For correspondence: rama@chop.swmed.edu.
Signal transduction systems in a typical eukaryotic cell consist of a network of proteins that transform multiple external stimuli into appropriate cellular responses. Molecules that form this network can be placed into ordered biochemical pathways in which signal propagation occurs through the sequential establishment of protein-protein and small molecule-protein interactions. A major challenge in the study of intracellular signaling has been the elucidation of the physical and biological principles by which the network of signaling molecules is assembled to execute temporally and spatially ordered signaling programs.
How does specificity arise in connecting a given input signal with the appropriate cellular response? How is “crosstalk” between pathways avoided when detrimental but promoted when necessary? In addressing these questions, recent work has begun to focus on the organization signaling components into macromolecular assemblies. These assemblies are mediated by multi-functional adapter proteins that are critical for both efficiency and specificity of signaling. By recruiting the appropriate assortment of signaling proteins together, adapters organize signaling pathways into distinct functional entities (1, 2). Adapter molecules range from very simple to complex multi-domain proteins that contain different numbers, varieties, and combinations of modular protein-protein interaction motifs.
Some of the best studied intracellular cascades are the tyrosine kinase and G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) pathways. In the case of receptor tyrosine kinases, recruitment of specific adapter proteins (Grb2 and Shc, for example) creates a tyrosine phosphoprotein scaffold that is anchored at the plasma membrane and serves as an organizing center for components of the mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase pathway (1). Proteins assembling into this complex vary in different receptor systems, thus allowing functional diversity through modular reorganization of the signaling complex. Recently, multi-PDZ domain proteins have been shown to act as scaffolds for organizing neuronal G protein-coupled signaling proteins. In Drosophila photoreceptors, a five-PDZ domain protein known as InaD assembles components of the visual signaling pathway into a macromolecular complex (3, 4). Flies homozygous for a null allele of InaD show mislocalization of all target proteins in photoreceptor cells and dramatic loss of signaling (4). Thus, in the world of intracellular real estate, location, location, and location are key determinants of in vivo function.
On page 655 of this issue of Science, Luttrell et al. describe the identification of a new signaling complex in which activated β-adrenergic receptors (β2AR) couple to c-Src (5). These results are of significant interest because they represent a well-defined molecular example of a junction between two major intracellular signaling pathways (GPCR and tyrosine kinase). More important, they substantiate the notion that intracellular crosstalk is neither an accident nor a random consequence of “intracellular mixing.” Instead, crosstalk is an active, ordered process.
The adapter protein that links β2AR to c-Src is arrestin, the molecule long established as a deactivator of G protein-mediated signaling. In the classical role for arrestin, activation of a GPCR leads to its carboxyl-terminal phosphorylation by GPCR kinases (GRKs), which then create a high-affinity substrate for interaction with arrestin (see the figure) (6). Arrestin binding to GPCRs is thought to sterically prevent G protein interaction, thereby quenching (or arresting) the catalytic activity of the receptor. In this research article, Luttrell et al. show that agonist-mediated activation of the β2AR leads to the formation of a protein complex consisting of receptor, arrestin, and the tyrosine kinase c-Src (see the figure). These data fit well with previous observations that β2AR agonists stimulate activation of the MAP kinases Erk1 and Erk2 and suggest that assembly of the β2AR-arrestin-c-Src complex is one mechanism by which this cross-pathway interaction occurs. Because arrestin shows nearly exclusive binding specificity for the active state of GPCRs, these data also indicate that c-Src activation occurs from the desensitized form of the receptor. This result nicely explains the observation that GPCR-dependent stimulation of the MAP kinase pathway does not depend on activation of GPCR-effectors (for example, phospholipase C and adenylate cyclase) (7). Thus, this process represents the execution of a sequential second program of signaling after GPCR activation.
Arrestin's multiple roles.
In its classical role, arrestin (Arr) binds to the phosphorylated, activated receptor and prevents G protein binding, thus uncoupling the receptor from G protein activation. But it also recruits clathrin to the receptor complex and triggers receptor internalization through coated pits. In its new role described in this issue, arrestin recruits c-Src to the arrestin-receptor complex and stimulates crosstalk with the MAP kinase pathway; AC, adenylate cyclase.
Work in several laboratories had previously shown that arrestin directly binds to clathrin heavy chain and that this interaction targets arrestin-bound β2AR for internalization through coated pits (see the figure) (8). Luttrell et al. now show that arrestin mutants that fail to interact with clathrin (that is, that prevent receptor internalization), but can still interact with receptor and c-Src, act as dominant inhibitors of β2AR-dependent MAP kinase activation. Similarly, arrestin mutants that poorly interact with c-Src, but support receptor sequestration, inhibit β2AR-dependent activation of MAP kinases. Thus, both c-Src recruitment and internalization of the receptor complex appear to be necessary signals for effecting MAP kinase activation.
Three mechanistic aspects of this new function for arrestin are of particular interest and require further follow-up. First, is the adapter function of arrestin a regulated process? Arrestin is a phosphoprotein. Interestingly, the free cytosolic form of arrestin is largely maintained in a phosphorylated state, but becomes dephosphorylated upon receptor interaction (9). Using immunoprecipitation experiments, Luttrell et al. showed that phosphorylated arrestin is unable to interact with c-Src. Therefore, the receptor-dependent dephosphorylation of arrestin may partially account for the recruitment and activation of c-Src. It would be valuable to determine what proteins mediate arrestin phosphorylation and dephosphorylation, and how this process is regulated. Second, what is the mechanism by which arrestin activates c-Src? Luttrell et al. showed that arrestin interacts with the SH3 domain of c-Src, and that binding to arrestin significantly increased c-Src's specific activity. This finding suggests that c-Src activation may result from removal of the SH3 domain-mediated inhibition of the kinase activity (10). Structural studies of the arrestin-c-Src complex may provide important insights into the activation mechanism. Finally, in what way is internalization of the receptor complex necessary to promote MAP kinase activation? This is particularly intriguing because c-Src binding to the arrestin-receptor complex occurs at the plasma membrane.
The emergence of adapter and scaffolding proteins as critical functional elements of cellular signaling suggests that important principles of signal transduction lie in macromolecular organization. A particularly attractive feature of signaling complex assembly through adapter proteins is simplicity through modular design. In this scenario, specificity and complexity of signaling may arise through the reorganization of signaling complexes rather than from altered activity of individual components. This work now illustrates that the same principles that govern specificity and selectivity within signaling pathways may be extended to crosstalk between signaling pathways.
T. Pawson,
, Science 278, 2075 (1997).
S. Tsunoda,
J. Sierralta,
C. S. Zuker
, Curr. Opin. Genet. Dev. 8, 419 (1998).
A. Huber
, EMBO J. 15, 7036 (1996);
B. H. Shieh,
M. Y. Zhu
, Neuron 16, 991 (1996).
S. Tsunoda
L. M. Luttrell
, Science 283, 655 (1999).
J. Zhang
, Recept. Chan. 5, 193 (1997).
J. Alblas
, J. Biol. Chem. 268, 22235 (1993).
, ibid. 272, 27005 (1997);
O. B. Goodman
. Nature 383, 447 (1996);
O. B. Goodman,
J. G. Krupnick,
V. V. Gurevich,
J. L. Benovic,
J. H. Keen
, J. Biol. Chem. 272, 15017 (1997);
F. Santini,
A. W. Gagnon,
J. H. Keen,
J. L. Benovic
, ibid., p. 32507;
J. G. Krupnick
. ibid., p. 15011.
F. T. Lin
, ibid. 31051.
S. C. Harrison,
M. J. Eck
, Nature 385, 595 (1997)F. Sicheri, I. Moarefi, J. Kuriyan, ibid., p. 602; I. Moarefi et al. ibid., p. 650.
You are going to email the following The Path to Specificity
By Charles S. Zuker, Rama Ranganathan
Science 29 Jan 1999 : 650-651
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Catching Up On The Week (Oct. 30 Edition)
October 30, 2015 NewsA Perfect Circle, Different Class, Let It Be, Maynard James Keenan, Nowhere, Pulp, Puscifer, Ride, shoegaze, The Replacements, Tim, Toolsymeo Leave a comment
A few non-spooky #longreads for your (one-hour longer) weekend…
Thankfully, we have not seen any Halloween-related “thinkpieces”, so we can go straight to some links worthy of your time. First, Maynard James Keenan sat down for an extensive interview with the Phoenix New Times, and the article features Maynard talking at length about several topics with his typical humor. Maynard is preparing for the release of Puscifer’s new album, Money Shot, though of course it was his talk about one of his other bands that drew most of the attention, as anything that mentions “Tool” is sure to garner clicks.
Pitchfork has a piece on the 25th anniversary of Ride’s Nowhere, one of the biggest and most important albums of the shoegaze era, and discusses how the genre has played a part in shaping the sound of a numbers. This week also marks the twentieth anniversary of Pulp’s brilliant album Common People, and Stereogum pays tribute to the landmark record.
Finally, Consequence of Sound attempts to settle the age-old debate of “Which is the best Replacements album: Let It Be or Tim?” They take their time in analyzing the merits of the two legendary albums, but in the end come up with the correct result.
The Replacements, Live at the Crystal Ballroom
April 14, 2015 Live Shit, RecsDave Minehan, Josh Freese, Let It Be, Paul Westerberg, Pleased to Meet Me, T. Rex, The Replacements, Tim, Tommy Stinson, Young Fresh Fellowssymeo Leave a comment
Last Friday night, I was able to cross one of the biggest names off my Concert Bucket List when The Replacements finally returned to Portland after a lengthy absence. It was not a given that I would be able to attend, until I was able to receive a ticket just a few short hours before the show, but the show was worth the entire hassle. It was gloriously imperfect, just like the band themselves.
It definitely went better than their last Portland gig…
I was barely alive the last time The Replacements played Portland, when they played a gig at the Pine Street Theater. For a band known for its penchant for self-sabotage that led to wildly chaotic performances, somehow this particular Portland show stuck in the band’s memory so much that the band felt obligated to apologize on numerous occasions, as eloquently told in articles from the Willamette Week and the Daily Emerald. On Friday night, nobody threw a couch out the third story window of the Crystal Ballroom like they did back in ’87, but even with a “more professional” version of The ‘Mats playing, there was always a lingering feeling that the show could devolve into a similar mess.
I am sure that there are many that are hesitant to even call this an “official” reunion, but hearing Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson playing classic songs from legendary records like Let It Be, Tim, and Pleased to Meet Me was more than enough for me and the hundreds of grizzled fans in attendance. One could even argue that it is even more fitting now that The Replacements have replacements stepping in to fill the shoes of departed players Chris Mars and Bob Stinson/Slim Dunlap. Dave Minehan deserves praise for his ability to keep a steady hand on the second guitar, and.Josh Freese was almost a comically overqualified stand-in–though he had only a few moments to show off his impressive skills, he did a great job in driving the beat and following the whims of Paul.
Standing amid the oldest all-ages section ever.
A raucous opening set from old touring mates Young Fresh Fellows helped contribute to the “anything goes” aura of the night, with their costume changes and a free-wheeling style that included a crash cymbal atop a giant spring. As for the headliners, the band blistered through a wild and unpredictable set, hitting tracks across the entirety of their career and tossing in some improvised jams as well as a few impressive covers. Early in the show, the band locked into a bluesy groove and Paul sang about the local Whole Foods; later, the band responded to a flurry of requests with the theme to Green Acres. Not all of their covers were irreverent piss-takes like that–one of the highlights of the night was a T. Rex medley that went from “20th Century Boy” to “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” to the band’s own “All Shook Down.” The band also delivered their apology for their previous failures in person, sneaking in “Portland” into another medley of originals.
Nobody should expect technical perfection from a Replacements show, and there were a few flubs here and there–Paul forgot part of the lyrics to “Little Mascara” and gave up on the ending solo to “Sixteen Blue”, but we were thrilled to simply hear those gems in person. The audience eagerly lapped up some of the band’s greatest “misses”, as Tommy so eloquently put it, though there were the occasional lulls in enthusiasm from the generally older crowd. Yet those moments were soon forgotten when the room came alive to sing, “WE ARE THE SONS OF NOOOOOO ONE: BASTARDS OF YOUNG!” with their idols. The fact that the band could also toss in “Can’t Hardly Wait”, “Left of the Dial”, and “Alex Chilton” was icing on the cake. The Replacements also managed to pull off something that I had never before seen at the Crystal Ballroom, when they played a second encore of “I.O.U.” as the house lights came on.
The Replacements managed to break the Portland “curse” this time; hopefully this will encourage to visit us once again sooner rather than later (and if they could play “Unsatisfied” next time, that would be perfect).
Additional Background: I get around 800 emails a week about concerts in six different states, and for some reason I never received an email alerting me when tickets were on sale for the one show I was desperate to see this year. When I finally found out they had been on sale for a couple of weeks, it was too late. I checked ticket resellers, and for weeks the prices were outrageous. However, the Saturday before the show I heard “I Will Dare” play on the speakers at Fred Meyer while I was doing some grocery shopping, and I took it as a sign to bite the bullet and look for a ticket in earnest. I kept checking prices, and finally gave in late Friday afternoon and attempted to purchase tickets from StubHub. This was nearly a disaster, as the site kept fucking up again and again and again. For a while, I was stuck in a netherworld of “not having an account” and “already having an account” at the same time, and then faced an additional hurdle of simply trying to add in a credit card for payment, all for the privilege of paying 3x face value for a ticket. I firmly believe that services like StubHub are a leech on society, and the fact that they could not create a website that worked as smoothly as goddamn TicketMaster is a true indictment of their shittiness, since TicketMaster is the worst thing that humanity has ever created. If The Replacements themselves got most of the profit from the reselling, I would have less of an issue with this, but this is pure exploitation, no matter what way a free-market acolyte would try to spin it. It is one thing for these services to provide an outlet for someone to unload tickets because they are unable to attend, but the fact that it is easily exploited by assholes damns the entire enterprise. Good work guy in swooping in and picking up a ticket and contributing absolutely nothing to society! I can only say that I hope to never have to relive that experience ever again, though I suspect that it will be the only way to actually see Refused when they play Portland next month.
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Methodology of the study and data collection
Reetta Niemi
Viikki Teacher Training School, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Centre for Education Practice Research, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
Niemi, R., 2019, ‘From active joining to child-led participation: A new approach to examine participation in teaching practice’, South African Journal of Childhood Education 9(1), a663. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v9i1.663
From active joining to child-led participation: A new approach to examine participation in teaching practice
Received: 20 May 2018; Accepted: 11 Oct. 2018; Published: 23 Apr. 2019
Copyright: © 2019. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Background: The new core curriculum for basic education in Finland emphasises the interrelation between learners’ participation and multidisciplinary learning. Each learner must be provided with an opportunity to join at least one multidisciplinary learning module each year. Hence, student teachers also implement a multidisciplinary learning module as part of their teaching practice at the University of Helsinki.
Aim: In this article, I describe how two multidisciplinary learning modules were implemented by four third-year student teachers in a teacher training school and how they were educated to analyse the different forms of participation in their teaching.
Setting: The research question of this article is as follows: How do different teaching practices used in multidisciplinary learning modules support learners’ participation?
Methods: The data of this study consist of two documentation forms: two semi-structured group interviews and a field note diary.
Results: The results showed that most of the practices used in multidisciplinary learning modules supported an active joining form of participation and a collaborative form of participation. In the multidisciplinary learning modules, a child-oriented form of participation was supported through practices that related to creating artistic learning outcomes; however, no practices supported a child-led form of participation.
Conclusion: In this study, the student teachers learned to analyse the different forms of participation in their teaching. Nevertheless, more data about the workability of the mentoring method in other contexts are needed.
Keywords: learners’ participation; multidisciplinary learning modules; teaching practice; teacher training; practitioner research; teacher professional development.
In the 21st century, Finland has become famous for its educational system. Because of its reputation, there has been considerable international interest in Finland’s implementation of the new national curriculum that took place in 2016. Some of the main changes in the Finnish national core curriculum for basic education (Finnish National Board of Education [FNBE] 2014) are connected to two interrelated elements: pupils’ participation and multidisciplinary learning modules.
Firstly, pupils’ participation is one mission in basic education in Finland. The Finnish national core curriculum states that basic education should reinforce the pupils’ positive identities as human beings, learners and community members and promote participation, a sustainable way of living and growth into active citizens who use their democratic rights and freedoms responsibly. It also states that participating in civic activity is a basic precondition for an effective democracy. Skills in participation and involvement as well as a responsible attitude towards the future may only be learned by practising (FNBE 2014:19–25). In Finland, schoolwork should be based on learners’ participation by ensuring that they are heard. The learners’ involvement in planning their own schoolwork and group activities is also seen as a natural way of reinforcing participation (FNBE 2014:37).
All of these aspects of participation given in the core curriculum apply to the political and social dimensions of participation defined in educational literature. Political participation means making an impact, influencing the community, taking part in decision-making and taking responsibility. In schools, the political dimension usually means working with the school councils and mimicking the political structures of adult society. Social participation is concerned with the sense of community, belonging, membership and positive social interdependence. A learner has to be a member of the group or the community; one has to be able to act in a group and feel accepted as part of the group (Kiilakoski, Gretschel & Nivala 2012; Niia et al. 2015; Thomas 2007). I agree with Bae (2009), who points out that the phenomenon of learners’ participation is too often reduced to mean learners’ role in decision-making and that the social dimension of participation receives less emphasis.
In order to support pupils’ participation, the current national curriculum emphasises the role of multidisciplinary learning modules. It states that to safeguard learners’ opportunities to examine wholes and engage in exploratory work that is of interest to learners, they must be provided with opportunities to join a multidisciplinary learning module at least once during a school year. The curriculum also clarifies that the duration of the learning modules must be long enough to give pupils time to focus on the contents of the module and work in a goal-oriented and versatile manner over the long term. It also states the importance of strengthening the learners’ participation through learning modules by offering learners opportunities for involvement in the planning of the objectives, contents and methods of the studies and ways to raise issues that they find meaningful (FNBE 2014:23–33). Despite being from the compulsory role of multidisciplinary learning modules, the national core curriculum has always supported and still supports subject-based teaching through subject-based goals. That has confused many teachers as they wonder how to come up with a holistic multidisciplinary module while at the same time ensuring that the requirements of the subject-based curriculum are met.
In this article, I focus on two problems. I describe how two multidisciplinary learning modules were implemented by four student teachers in the Viikki Teacher Training School from September to December 2017 by connecting subject-based goals and pupils’ participatory role in planning, implementing and evaluating the module. I also describe how the model of the four forms of participation was used in teaching practice in promoting student teachers’ skills to reflect different forms and dimensions of participation. My research question is: How do different teaching practices used in multidisciplinary learning modules support learners’ participation?
In the next section, I draw a picture from previous models of participation and present a new approach to analysing participation in teaching. After that, I describe my method, data collection, analysis and results. I also discuss some ethical problems related to this study. In the conclusion, I look ahead and suggest how the results of this study could be applied in teacher education.
Models of participation
As participation practice has grown, so has the number of guides and models to support the practice (e.g. Hart 1992; Landsdown 2001, 2010; Lundy 2007; Reddy & Ratna 2002; Shier 2001; Treseder 1997). One of the most influential models has been Hart’s (1992) ladder of participation, in which he presents an eight-step model that begins with non-participation: (1) manipulation, (2) decoration and (3) tokenism. The model ends with degrees of participation: (4) assigned but informed; (5) consulted and informed; (6) adult-initiated, shared decisions with children; (7) child-initiated and directed and (8) child-initiated, shared decisions with adults.
Hart’s model has also been substantially critiqued. It has been said that it implies a necessary sequence to children’s developing competence in participation (Kirby & Woodhead 2003:243; Reddy & Ratna 2002:28). It has also been questioned whether one should even mention different levels of participation. Jensen (2000) has suggested that the rungs of the ladder can be described as different forms rather than different levels of participation.
In his later work, Hart (2008) pointed out that the ladder of participation addresses only a rather narrow range of ways in which most children in the world participate in their communities. It focuses on programmes or projects rather than on children’s everyday informal participation in their communities. The ladders focus instead on describing the varying roles adults play in relation to children’s participation. In fact, the ladder is primarily about the degree to which adults and institutions afford or enable children’s participation.
Landsdown (2010) suggested that the importance of finding key indicators to evaluate evidence of cultural climate in which the right of children to be heard and taken seriously is established. She also emphasised that it is necessary to be able to measure the extent, quality and impact of actual participation in which children are engaged. From her point of view, children should even be able to participate in evaluating what participation is taking place.
Landsdown (2010) classified children’s participation on three levels: consultative, collaborative and child-led. Firstly, consultative participation is a level on which adults seek children’s views to build knowledge together. The actions are adult-led and managed and children do not join the decision-making. Secondly, collaborative participation provides a greater degree of partnership between adults and children. On this level, children can be involved in designing and undertaking research, showing representations on boards and committees. Collaborative participation provides an opportunity for shared decision-making with adults. Thirdly, child-led participation occurs when children are afforded the space and opportunity to identify issues of concern, initiate activities and advocate for themselves. The role of adults is to act as facilitators to enable children to pursue their own objectives through provision of information, advice and support.
According to Sinclair (2004), children’s participation in decision-making is complex: it is undertaken for different purposes and is reflected in different levels of involvement, contexts and activities. Different contexts constitute a different form of participation. Participation as a group phenomenon is different from personally experienced participation. What is crucial is that those involved understand these complexities so that they can match appropriately the nature of their activity to its purpose and to the decision-making context and the appropriate level of power-sharing. Sinclair (2004) points out that only when the adults have thought this through will they be able to engage effectively with children.
Similarly, in schools one can find different contexts in which participation has different purposes. Learners’ participation in breaks, lessons, school councils and special school events can look different. In the literature, it is common that examples related to learners’ participation in schools are organised around specific projects, which often are activities that are ‘added on’ to normal classroom practices (Malone & Hartung 2010:32), instead of a focus on lessons and teaching practices. In this study, my concern relates to learners’ participation in actual lessons in different school practices.
My ideas of participation follow the four aspects defined by Kiilakoski et al. (2012). Firstly, participation is a relational phenomenon that, secondly, involves a formal and informal recognised position as an agent. Thirdly, participation should manifest in physical, oral and verbal events and actions and, fourthly, it should produce a feeling of participation. In the next section, I draw a four-form approach to be used as a tool to see how teachers as representatives of a school institution can support different forms of participation through their teaching practices.
Four forms of participation in classroom practices
After the new core curriculum (FNBE 2014) was launched in Finland, the concept of participation has spread everywhere, but it has also caused problems. The concept has been repeated as a canonical script without being analysed and explained. It has also been considered as a phenomenon that either exists or does not (Tammi & Hohti 2017). Because previous models of participation relate rather to contexts in which learners work with adults in programmes and committees than on lessons, my colleagues and I developed the model of the four forms of participation suitable for use in classroom practice (Niemi, Kumpulainen & Lipponen 2018). We use the concept of form instead of level, because we think that each form is important and we do not want to promote one form as better than another. In the original model, we focused on learners’ role in decision-making on lessons. In this article, I continue to develop these forms by placing a stronger emphasis on the social dimension of participation.
The first form of participation is called active joining. This form relates to Hart’s Levels 3–4 and to Landsdown’s ideas of consultative participation but it also relates to the social dimension of participation. In this form, a teacher creates learning activities in which a learner can work actively, bring out knowledge and thoughts from the content and work as a teacher’s assistant. However, all activities are led by a teacher and learners do not share power, but these activities often support learners’ everyday communication and relatedness to others.
The second form of participation is called collaborative participation. This form has adopted features from Hart’s Levels 5–6 and from Landsdown’s ideas of collaborative participation. In this form, a teacher is the one who makes the first input by choosing topics for the lessons defined in the curriculum. After that, in a shared discussion between learners and teacher, the lesson finds its format. Learners’ previous knowledge, thoughts and ideas together form the direction of the lesson in collaboration with a teacher. In this form, learners have an impact on decision-making, but this form strongly emphasises the social dimension of participation.
Child-oriented participation is connected to Hart’s Levels 7–8 and to Landsdown’s level of child-led participation. In this form, learning situations are based on learners’ own ideas and wishes and a teacher’s role is to work as assistant and facilitator, who helps learners to accomplish their ideas. In this form, a teacher’s role is continually present by setting timetables, helping group work and giving suggestions to improve learning outcomes. In this form, learners have a recognised role as agents who are able to influence decision-making in terms of their own learning and take responsibility for their own learning.
In both Hart’s (1992) and Landsdown’s (2010) models all the levels are connected to adults’ existence and adults’ role in children’s actions. That aspect has been critiqued by asking whether it is possible that children can act without adults (Kirby & Woodhead 2003). In our approach, the form of child-led participation refer to those situations that happen without adult interference. Those situations may occur in play that begins, continues and ends according to children’s own will. By child-led participation we also mean situations in which a learner takes a lead from a classroom activity and shares his or her expertise on behalf of the classroom community. This form of participation highlights learners’ independent role in decision-making.
This study is practitioner research that has elements from action research and design-based research. Practitioner research can be seen as an umbrella of different approaches that focus on an intentional and systematic study of one’s own practice (Dinkelman 2003:8; see also Heikkinen, De Jong & Vanderlinde 2016). In education, practitioner research can be seen as any research carried out by teachers and other education professionals into aspects of their work (McLaughlin 2011).
In this study, I conducted a small-scale intervention in the functioning of the school setting and examined the effects of this intervention. There are features that are context-specific, participatory and collaborative. These elements are characteristic of action research (Carr & Kemmis 1986; Cohen & Manion 1994:186). However, I have also attempted to create a model for teacher education to educate student teachers to understand the different forms of participation. My attempt to design a method to mentor student teachers that is not dependent on context gives this study features from design-based research (Cohen & Manion 1994:186; Van den Akker et al. 2006).
The study took place in a teacher training school in the city of Helsinki, Finland. The participants in the study were third-year student teachers (three women and one man) who conducted their second teaching practice during the study. By the time of the research, the pupils (13 girls and 12 boys) of the classroom were in the third grade (approximately 9 years old). The classroom had several multicultural pupils, five of whom did not speak Finnish as a first language. In this study, I have a triple role: I am a teacher to the learners, a mentor to the student teachers and a researcher.
Data collection took place from September to December 2017. All data were collected during a 50-lesson teaching practice. Each teaching practice took 1 week for planning and 5 weeks for teaching. During the teaching practice, student teachers taught five different subjects and conducted a multidisciplinary learning module from the contents. Table 1 describes the multidisciplinary learning modules that were produced in teaching practices. The data consisted of two forms that document the student teachers’ reflections from teaching methods, two group interviews and my field note diary. Student teachers’ plans for multidisciplinary module sessions (n = 20) have also been included in the writing process to verify the order of sequence during multidisciplinary learning modules.
TABLE 1: The multidisciplinary learning modules of the study.
The student teachers completed a documentation form after each week, after approximately 10–12 lessons. The documenting began with reflecting on all the different teaching practices the student teachers had used and then they filled out the form in (Figure 1) according to their experiences. After the teaching practice, I interviewed the student teachers.
FIGURE 1: A documentation form that was used as a mentoring tool (Author’s own work).
In practitioner research, a researcher always has an impact on the results (Heikkinen et al. 2016). In this study, I am one of the authors behind the four forms of participation (Niemi, Kumpulainen & Lipponen 2018) that were used as a theoretical starting point. Because I am the one who taught the meaning of each form to student teachers, my interpretations have had an impact on student teachers’ thinking, which should be considered when interpreting the results of this study. In practitioner research, ethical issues are always to be considered carefully. Ethically it was important that I did not have an official power relationship to the student teachers through grading (in Finland there is no grading in teaching practice), but they were free to express their opinions without fearing an effect on their studies; however, my role as their mentor may still have had an impact on the results. There is always a possibility that they may have had some criticism that they did not want to share because they knew me. That is something to admit, not deny (see also Heikkinen et al. 2016). To increase the validity of this article, the student teachers were invited to read this article and correct my interpretations before sending the article to a journal for publication. I have also obtained permission to do this study from the leading principle of the school.
How do different teaching practices used in multidisciplinary learning modules support learners’ participation?
In the interviews, the student teachers viewed highly structured practices like answering teachers’ questions, doing study book tasks, filling in forms and notebook work as practices that require pupils’ active joining but do not give learners any opportunities to join power-sharing or support communication. In these multidisciplinary learning modules, there were not many of these practices and their purpose was to strengthen pupils’ skills through repetition. The student teachers also noticed that these practices were easy to spot on this form, because there was no variation between learners’ actions in these practices.
In those two multidisciplinary learning modules, the learners were able to join many kinds of learning games and play. They were also shown different videos during the modules. The student teachers also classified these practices to the form of active joining. In the learning modules, there were also many practices in which the learners completed scientific-based research and made observations from tests created by the student teachers. In those practices, pupils worked actively and communicated with their peers but they did not join in the decision-making. In the literature, there are many studies that have shown how much learners appreciate doing scientific research and joining games or play (e.g. Hopkins 2008; Niemi, Kumpulainen & Lipponen 2015a, 2015b; Niemi et al. 2015). Even though these activities do not give learners a chance to join power-sharing, they still give learners a chance to experience a social dimension of participation through everyday communication (see also, Bae 2009). When solving problems and playing games, learners can be heard and communicate freely with classmates and feel a sense of relatedness to others.
The student teachers viewed investigative learning practices as a collaborative form of participation. In these two learning modules pupils developed their own research questions from a topic set in the curriculum. In these investigative practices, the learners also worked in expert groups and were co-teachers to each other. The practices, which student teachers considered as a collaborative form of participation, related to activities in which they built knowledge together in dialogic form. For example, doing a Venn diagram together with learners and building up lessons according to learners’ preknowledge were considered as practices in which learners were involved in designing and undertaking different kind of actions together with teachers (see also Landsdown 2010). In the second learning module, pupils also conducted a self-evaluation of their own work. The learners joined an assessment discussion with student teachers according to their self-evaluations. The student teachers saw this practice as a collaborative form of participation, because input was provided by the student teachers but the learners had a significant role in setting goals for themselves for future projects. Even the student teachers had input into these practices; the learners had a recognised and active role in each practice. They were not only teacher’s assistants (see Landsdown 2010) but they also had a role as active members of the classroom community who had an impact on the lesson’s direction.
In the interviews, the student teachers mentioned that at the beginning of the multidisciplinary learning module, when they built conceptual knowledge and reached the subject-based goals set in the curriculum, the practices often supported an active joining form of participation or collaborative form of participation. After the teachers created the conceptual ground for the learners, the learners had a chance to plan how to express their learning and they were able to implement their learning in various ways, often artistically.
In these two multidisciplinary learning modules, the practices that supported a child-oriented form of participation related to processes of creating learning outcomes; writing a video script; filming a video; writing a letter to a representative of a city council; creating a scene of a play and composing a song. In these practices, learners were able to make decisions and the teacher’s role was only to help learners if they were confronted with problems. These practices also forced learners to take responsibility for their own learning.
However, the student teachers pointed out that in this part of the learning module there were also learners who did not reach a child-oriented form of participation and who needed continual structure to guide their work. This result is similar to that of previous research; the form of participation is in relation to learners’ capacities to participate (Hart 1992; Landsdown 2010; Sinclair 2004). In interviews the student teachers also revealed that in many cases it was easy to place a certain practice in a certain box on a documentation form. However, there were practices that began with one form and during the lesson evolved into another form of participation. Furthermore, learners’ different capacities to join practices sometimes made it impossible to place a certain practice into a certain box. This critique clearly reveals the difficult aspects of participation. Researchers and teachers can try to understand different forms of participation but it is challenging to capture the phenomenon as whole. As Sinclair (2004) has said, participation as a group phenomenon is different from personally experienced participation. I still claim that if teachers understand these complexities, they can also appropriately match different practices to its purpose and to the decision-making context and the appropriate level of power-sharing (see also Sinclair 2004).
In this study, there was no single practice that was considered to support a child-led form of participation. However, when learners worked in groups, there were single moments that could be seen as a child-led form of participation. For example, in one group learners decided themselves to solve a problem through voting. The voting was implemented without the interference of the student teachers. Similarly, Hart (2008) has reported that children can reach the child-led form of participation only in play. In an interview, the student teachers mentioned that in this classroom there was one practice that supported a child-led form of participation; the learners can use one break per day for practising their own plays. On Fridays there is a lesson in which the learners present these performances. The programme of the lesson is made by learners and the lesson is guided by them. This lesson was not part of student teachers’ multidisciplinary learning module, but because it was a major part of the class culture, it was revealed in the interviews. Table 2 presents the previous results by using the model of documentation form used in this study.
TABLE 2: Results presented in the model of documentation form.
In Finland, achieving learners’ participation is one mission of basic education. To promote learners’ participation, each learner must be provided with an opportunity to join at least one multidisciplinary learning module per year. This practice has also caused questions: What do we mean by ‘participation in learning’? How is it possible to create holistic multidisciplinary modules while at the same time ensuring that the requirements of the subject-based curriculum are met? Because of the compulsory nature of multidisciplinary learning modules, student teachers must also implement a multidisciplinary learning module as part of their teaching practice.
In this article, I have described the model of four forms of participation. In the study, I used that model as a tool in mentoring the student teachers to analyse their own work and to understand how different teaching practices promoted different forms of participation. At the beginning of each multidisciplinary learning module, when the conceptual base of the topic was built and when the work was based on reaching subject-based goals set in the curriculum, the practices mainly promoted an active joining form of participation and a collaborative form of participation. When the multidisciplinary learning module went further and when the learners began to plan and implement their learning outcomes, the practices used supported a child-oriented form of participation. In the multidisciplinary learning modules, there were not any practices that supported a child-led form of participation. In this study, the student teachers also revealed the difficult essence of participation. We can try to understand different forms of participation, but it is challenging to capture the phenomenon, because participation as a group phenomenon is different from personally experienced participation (see also Sinclair 2004). It is crucial that the teachers involved understand these complexities so that they can match appropriately different practices to its purpose and to the decision-making context and the appropriate level of power-sharing (see also Sinclair 2004).
In this study, the student teachers experienced the model used in mentoring as beneficial in terms of their professional development. It also worked well in connecting the theory of participation to practice. When I look at the method through the lense of design-based research (e.g. Cohen & Manion 1994:186; Van den Akker et al. 2006), I think that this method can be transferred to other contexts. It did not require any financial resources and all events occurred during an ordinary school day as part of everyday mentoring. I also think that in teacher education this method could be used in connecting other theories besides participation to practice. Even though the results were promising, this research has to be considered a minor-scale study. There is a need to do more research about the workability of this method in other contexts. However, I hope that this minor research provides the educational community with some new aspects of learners’ participation in learning and inspires other practitioner researchers to try this method.
As Landsdown (2010) put it, it is necessary to be able to measure the extent, quality and impact of actual participation in which children are engaged. In this study, I was able to capture student teachers’ reflection of different forms of participation that were promoted by the teaching practices used. According to Landsdown (2010), learners should join in the process of evaluating the processes in which they have participated. In this research, the method used focused only on student teachers’ reflection and it did not include learners’ voices. I give that critique to my own work but I also see that as a future challenge and a goal on which to focus in future studies.
My results are contextual but the issue of promoting learners’ participation is global. I claim that Finland’s educational system (see, e.g., Lanas & Kiilakoski 2013), where primary school is decentralised, no teacher evaluation exists and the national curriculum offers teachers substantial pedagogical freedom, gives teachers the possibility of supporting learners’ participation. In Finland, teachers’ autonomy and trust in teachers’ strong model of professionalism allow teachers to choose teaching practices that are appropriate for the particular learners and determine creative ways to implement learning. I believe that by supporting the autonomy of teachers, teachers can enhance the autonomy of learners also in other educational contexts. I hope that my article also raises discussion on that important issue.
The author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article.
Bae, B., 2009, ‘Children’s right to participate – Challenges in everyday interactions’, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 17(3), 391–406. https://doi.org/10.1080/13502930903101594
Carr, W. & Kemmis, S., 1986, Becoming critical: Education, knowledge and action research, Falmer, London.
Cohen, L. & Manion, L., 1994, Research methods in education, 4th edn., Routledge, London.
Dinkelman, T., 2003, ‘Self-study in teacher education: A means and tool for promoting reflective practice’, Journal of Teacher Education 54(1), 6–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487102238654
Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE), 2014, Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet 2014 [Basics of Basic Education Curriculum 2014], viewed 06 January 2018, from http://www.oph.fi/download/163777_perusopetuksen_opetussuunnitelman_perusteet_2014.pdf
Hart, R., 1992, Children’s participation, from tokenism to citizenship, UNICEF, Florence, viewed 25 August 2018, from http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/childrens_participation.pdf
Hart, R., 2008, ‘Stepping back from “the ladder”: Reflections on a model of participatory work with children’, in A. Reid, B.B. Jensen, J. Nikel & V. Simovska (eds.), Participation and learning. Perspectives on education and the environment, health and sustainability, pp. 19–31, Springer.
Heikkinen, H.L.T., De Jong, F.P.C.M. & Vanderlinde, R., 2016, ‘What is (good) practitioner research?’, Vocations and Learning 9, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-016-9153-8
Hopkins, E.A., 2008, ‘Classroom conditions to secure enjoyment and achievement: The pupils’ voice. Listening to the voice of Every child matters’, Education 36(4), 393–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004270801969386
Jensen, B.B., 2000, ‘Participation, commitment and knowledge as components of pupil’s action competence’, in B.B. Jensen, K. Schnack & V. Simovska (eds.), Critical environmental and health education – Research issues and challenges, pp. 219–238, Danish University of Education, Copenhagen.
Kiilakoski, T., Gretschel, A. & Nivala, E., 2012, ‘Osallisuus, kansalaisuus ja hyvinvointi’ [Participation, citizenship and well-being], in A. Gretschel & T. Kiilakoski (eds.), Demokratiaoppitunti. Lasten ja nuorten kunta 2000-luvun alussa, pp. 11–19, Nuorisotutkimusverkosto/Nuorisotutkimusseuran julkaisuja 118, Helsinki.
Kirby, P. & Woodhead, M., 2003, ‘Children’s participation in society’, in H. Montgomery, R. Burr & M. Woodhead (eds.), Changing childhoods. Local and global, pp. 233–272, Open University Press, Chichester, IL.
Lanas, M. & Kiilakoski, T., 2013, ‘Growing pains: Teacher becoming a transformative agent’, Pedagogy, Culture and Society 21(3), 343–360. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2012.759134
Landsdown, G., 2001, Promoting children’s participation in democratic decision-making, UNICEF, Florence, viewed 04 January 2018, from https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/insight6.pdf
Landsdown, G., 2010, ‘The realisation of children’s participation rights: Critical reflections’, in B. Percey-Smith & N. Thomas (eds.), A handbook of children and young people’s participation. Perspectives from theory and practice, pp. 11–23, Routledge, Abingdon.
Lundy, L., 2007, ‘“Voice” is not enough: Conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’, British Educational Research Journal 33(6), 927–942. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920701657033
Malone, K. & Hartung, C., 2010, ‘Challenges of participatory practices with children’, in B. Percey-Smith & N. Thomas (eds.), A handbook of children and young people’s participation: Perspectives from theory and practice, pp. 24–38, Routledge, London.
McLaughlin, C., 2011, ‘Creating a place for research in schools. Flowing with a tide or swimming upstream?’, in I.M. Saleh & M.S. Khine (eds.), Practitioner research in education. Theory and best practices, Peter Lang Berlin, viewed 02 January 2018, from ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.helsinki.fi/lib/helsinki-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1054425
Niia, A., Almqvist, L., Brunnberg, E. & Granlund, M., 2015, ‘Student participation and parental involvement in relation to academic achievement’, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 59(3), 297–315. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2014.904421
Niemi, R., Kumpulainen, K. & Lipponen, L., 2015a, ‘Pupils as active participants: Diamond ranking as a tool to investigate pupils’ experiences of classroom practices’, European Educational Research Journal 14(2), 138–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904115571797
Niemi, R., Kumpulainen, K. & Lipponen, L., 2015b, ‘Pupils’ documentation enlightening teachers’ practical theory and pedagogical actions’, Educational Action Research 23(4), 599–614.
Niemi, R., Kumpulainen, K., Lipponen, L. & Hilppö, J., 2015, ‘Pupils’ perspectives on the lived pedagogy of the classroom’, Education 3–13 43(6), 681–697.
Niemi, R., Kumpulainen, K. & Lipponen, L., 2018, ‘Osallistumista vai osallistamista? Osallisuuden tarkastelua monialaisen oppimiskokonaisuuden toteuttamisessa’, Nuorisotutkimus 36(1), 22–35.
Reddy, N. & Ratna, K., 2002, A journey in children’s participation, The Concerned for Working Children, Vimanapura, viewed 06 January 2018, from https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/sites/default/files/documents/2625.pdf
Shier, H., 2001, ‘Pathways to participation: Openings, opportunities and obligations. A new model for enhancing children’s participation in decision-making, in line with Article 12.1 of the United Nations Convention of the Right of the Child’, Children and Society 15, 107–117. https://doi.org/10.1002/chi.617
Sinclair, R., 2004, ‘Participation in practice: Making it meaningful, effective and sustainable’, Children and Society 18, 106–118. https://doi.org/10.1002/chi.817
Tammi, T. & Hohti, R., 2017, ‘Lasten osallistuminen ja posthumanistinen ontologia: Urittuvaa ja emergenttiä kartoittamassa’, Kasvatus & Aika 11(1), 69–83.
Thomas, N., 2007, ‘Towards a theory of children’s participation’, International Journal of Children’s Rights 15, 199–218. https://doi.org/10.1163/092755607X206489
Treseder, P., 1997, Empowering children and young people: Training manual, Save the Children and Children’s Rights Office, London.
Van den Akker, J., Gravemeijer, K., McKenney, S. & Nieveen, N., 2006, Educational design research, Routledge, Abingdon.
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Senator Danielson’s Bill to Increase Voting Rights for Coloradans with Disabilities Unanimously Passes Senate Committee
Denver, CO – The Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee today voted unanimously to pass SB19-202, Voting Rights for Voters With Disabilities, a bill sponsored by Senator Jessie Danielson (D-Jefferson County) to increase ballot access for voters with disabilities. The bill now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee for consideration.
“The right to vote is essential to our democracy – and no disability should prevent any Coloradan from exercising this right,” said Senator Danielson. “Although Colorado has the most inclusive and reliable voting system in the country, there are still improvements to make. This is an important step forward in extending voting rights to all Colorado citizens.”
The bill requires the Secretary of State to establish procedures to enable voters with disabilities to independently mark a paper ballot using non-visual or low-vision access technology. This would include voting at polling locations and for mail-in ballots.
“This measure is particularly important to blind and low-vision voters so that they have equal access to the polls and can vote a private ballot,” said Scott LaBarre with the National Federation of the Blind.
“Our democracy works best when everyone participates, and we need to do more to make voting more accessible to every Coloradan,” added Senator Danielson.
For more information on SB19-202, please visit http://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb19-202.
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Tiger sees contending as next step to regaining top form
Bernie McGuire
US golfer Tiger Woods, pictured July 2018, will tee off in the opening round of the US PGA Dell Technologies Championship, seeking his first victory in more than five years
Tiger Woods says the secret to recapturing the dominating form that made him a 14-time major champion in an era of younger rivals is to keep putting himself in contention.
The 42-year-old American tees off in Friday's opening round of the US PGA Dell Technologies Championship, the second event of the tour's season-ending playoffs, seeking his first victory in more than five years.
Woods, whose 79 career PGA titles are three shy of Sam Snead's all-time record, has not competed at TPC Boston since 2013, where his best finish was a runner-up effort behind Phil Mickelson in 2007.
Asked what he needed to do to reclaim the intimidating aura he once owned against a new generation of rivals, Woods said he has to put himself in the title hunt as he did in finishing second to Brooks Koepka at the PGA Championship earlier this month.
"The thing is for me is to just keep getting there in the mix and keep getting there on that back nine late on a Sunday with a chance to win," Woods said.
"It's just a matter of giving myself a lot of opportunities and in order to win you have to be there. I've been there enough this year and clearly learned a lot from it."
In 15 events this season, Woods has also shared second at the Valspar Championship and fifth at Bay Hill in March and briefly led on Sunday at the British Open before sharing sixth.
It's not a bad comeback season for a star who underwent spinal fusion surgery last year and wondered if he might ever play again.
"This has been one of my best years, considering that I didn't know what I was going to do," Woods. said. "I just didn't have a clue.
"And the fact that I've been able to make it this far is very exciting to me. I have a bright future ahead of me because at this point last year that wasn't the case, didn't know. But now I know that I sort of have a bright future."
- Rory watches his teen swing -
Four-time major winner Rory McIlroy tries to regain winning form after 2012 and 2016 titles in Boston but comes off a share of 50th at the PGA Championship. Last week, he watched videos of his age-16 swing with coach Michael Bannon to try and make a breakthrough at age 29.
"In looking at videos of myself I was very impressed," McIlroy said. "There have been times where I swung it well and the results have followed on from that.
"It made me realize, OK I can do this again. It was good to see all that video. And even just watching it you start to feel the feelings that you might need to get back into those positions. So it was a beneficial week."
- Defending champ Thomas rested -
Third-ranked defending champion Justin Thomas comes to Boston assured of his first Ryder Cup berth but hoping to defend his crown and boost his chances to win the $10 million playoff top prize at the Tour Championship in Atlanta in three weeks.
"These playoffs are also extremely important and have a lot on the line, so, we're trying to keep our bodies rested for each and every week we play," Thomas said.
"Also, it's great anytime you can come to a place that you've not only won, but to defend your title."
McIlroy looks to end drought on Open's return to Northern Ireland
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Tag: Nash & Young
Friday Night Dialogues: A song before they go
by Terry Lucas
REPORTER FILE PHOTO
Join the Library for Friday Night Dialogues on Friday, July 12 to hear author David Browne discuss his latest book, ‘Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The Wild Definitive Saga of Rock’s Greatest Supergroup.’
Join us for our Friday Night Dialogues program at the Shelter Island Public Library on Friday, July 12 to hear author David Browne discuss his latest book, “Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The Wild Definitive Saga of Rock’s Greatest Supergroup.” Mr. Browne, a senior writer at Rolling Stone, has, over the course of his 20 plus years in music journalism, explored the lives of such performers as Jeff and Tim Buckley (2001’s “Dream Brother”), Sonic Youth (2008’s “Goodbye 20th Century”), and The Grateful Dead (2015’s “So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead”).
Crosby, David Browne, David Crosby, Friday Night Dialogues, Graham Nash, Nash & Young, Nash & Young: The Wild Definitive Saga of Rock’s Greatest Supergroup, premium, Rolling Stone, Shelter Island Public Library, So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead, Sonic Youth, Stills, The Grateful Dead, Tim Buckley
Island profile: David Browne, choosing a profession between jockey and judge
by Charity Robey
CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
David Browne of New York and Shelter Island.
When David Browne panned Rod Stewart’s 1975 album, “Footloose and Fancy Free,” saving special derision for the first song, “Hot Legs,” he was a student at a New Jersey high school. It was his first record review.
“People noticed,” David said. “They were either angry at me or agreed with me. That was one of my first indications of the power of the written word.” (more…)
Crosby, Entertainment Weekly, James Taylor, Loudon Wainright III, Maggie Murphy, Music & Sound Output, Nash & Young, Rod Stewart, So Many Roads”, Sonic Youth, Stills, Testa Communications, Vincent Testa
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P.E.I. falls short
P.E.I. stands alone in Atlantic Canada in having no sexual assault nurse examiner program.
By Payge Woodard
July 17, 2017, 3:41 pm ADTLast Updated: March 16, 2018, 3:16 pm
Prince Edward Island is the only province in Atlantic Canada without a sexual assault nurse examiner program. The programs ensure expert care when collecting forensic evidence after an assault.
When questioned, Amanda Hamel, Health PEI’s media relations officer, said only the largest hospitals have trained staff.
Michael MacDonald, the manager of emergency at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown, said a four-hour online training program has been taken by 13 staff members. It teaches nurses about sexual assaults and rape kit testing. MacDonald also said one full-time and one casual nurse at the facility have taken a two day course and another is currently taking it. The clinical training for the course is done by performing procedures such as pap tests.
These courses aren’t long enough to be a fully trained sexual assault nurse examiner according to the coordinator of Halifax’s sexual assault nurse examiner program, Susan Wilson.
Other stories in this project
Out of reach (July 17, 2017)
A drive too far (July 13, 2017)
“There are some people who take sexual assault nurse examiner training but they aren’t sexual assault nurse examiners,” she said.
To satisfy the training guidelines set out by International Association of Forensic Nurses, nurses need to complete 40 hours of coursework, online or in a classroom, and another 40 hours of clinical training.
Nurses working in the Halifax program must complete 49 hours of classroom training, nine hours more than the recommended length. Wilson said the clinical training often exceeds the 40-hour minimum as well.
A statement from Health PEI says the health authority believes it is moving in the right direction in providing care for victims of sexual assault.
Payge Woodard
Payge is a master of journalism student at the University of King's College. She's interned for Bangor Daily News in Maine and freelanced for Halifax's weekly, The Coast.
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The double taxation treaty between Malta & USA
Malta first agreed on a double taxation agreement with the USA in 1980 but due to changes in their tax model, the deal could not last through 1997 after their collaborator pulled out. Almost a decade later, the two signed yet another pact in 2006 which this time was framed based on the US tax model. This deal went into effect the following year although it was subject to further improvements which came in 2010. Of more significance was the facilitation for fighting tax evasion that made the greater worth for this change.
Motivation for the Double taxation deal
The push factors that motivated the two collaborators into signing a double tax treaty was to boost commerce between Malta and the US. In order to make that happen the deal had to protect revenues from being taxed twice between the two nations. The Malta-US double tax treaty offers an eye-catching cut on taxes for business transactions made between the two nations. It has allowed a significant reduction in tax charges on payment of royalties, interests, and dividends across the two nations.
The double tax treaty comes with a plethora of benefits for both Maltese and US investors. Maltese investors won’t be charged with tax when they pay revenues to a US tenant (unless they surpass the agreed threshold). However, a tenant of the USA can be charged with a tax of 15% if paying revenues to a resident of Malta. There is however a slight tax bargain, a reduction by 10% if the receiver has a minimum of 10% the voting power of the client. Malta’s impressive network of double taxation agreements together with its investment incentives have left Malta a marvel to the world of business—especially including the tax breaks that are made to returns payments from pension funds
As with regard to transacting interests and royalties, both nations are charged with the same rate of 10% and the payer takes the charge. Tax on earned income by a tenant of one state in the other state is charged by the country of residence of the employee unless if the employee has worked in the other nation for a period surpassing 183 days of that year—in this case, the other nation becomes obliged to take over the taxation responsibility. To benefits from the Malta-US double tax treaty, the residents of the two countries have to be eligible personnel— that is, they have to be residents of either state. They also could be pension funds or listed organizations or companies on the Stock Exchange.
For a deeper and more detailed explanation of the double taxation treaty between Malta and the United States, feel free to get in touch with SIGTAX Agents. Our expert team of lawyers, accountants and consultants is ready to assist you in each step. Our lawyers can provide you with finer details on the legal aspects pertaining to the double taxation system in Malta so that you don’t skip any necessary steps.
company subsidiaries in malta
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Inner Spirit Holdings is Honored to Support the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund
– Inner Spirit will commemorate the legacy of The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie with a charitable commitment to the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, and a Legacy Room in support of reconciliation –
CALGARY, Alberta (June 4, 2018) – Inner Spirit Holdings Ltd. (“Inner Spirit” or “the Company”) is proud to announce their support of the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund (DWF) via a five-year charitable commitment and the establishment of a DWF Legacy Room. This support is part of an ongoing agreement to collaborate with Newstrike Resources Ltd. (“Newstrike”) & Up Cannabis.
Inner Spirit is a specialty retailer and franchisor establishing recreational cannabis dispensaries in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan under the Spiritleaf brand. Its head office in Calgary will establish the DWF Legacy Room – a space created to help educate Canadians about the history of Residential Schools and the story of Chanie Wenjack.
“Inner Spirit is proud to be a part of continuing Gord Downie’s work by supporting meaningful conversations about social progress,” said Darren Bondar, President and CEO of Inner Spirit, and a lifelong fan of The Tragically Hip’s music. “We value being a part of the communities in which we operate, and that includes ensuring people are aware of, and participating in, reconciliation efforts.”
Up Cannabis Experiential Hubs – a meeting place at every Spiritleaf location
Inner Spirit is committed to providing customers with a welcoming space to gather, learn and share experiences. That’s why Inner Spirit is collaborating with Newstrike & Up Cannabis to establish Up Cannabis “Experiential Hubs” at every Spiritleaf location. Newstrike is the owner of licensed producer Up Cannabis Ltd. and is partnered with The Tragically Hip to combine top-quality products and the power of music to create Canada’s next great cannabis brands.
“We’re delighted to be working with Newstrike to create Experiential Hubs in each Spiritleaf dispensary, where customers can come together to learn, appreciate music and celebrate Canada’s iconic musicians, The Tragically Hip and their community initiatives,” said Bondar.
Jay Wilgar, CEO of Up Cannabis said that “We look forward to working with Spiritleaf to enhance Up’s distribution reach and successfully build our businesses in a complementary and strategically aligned manner. To be able to do that in collaboration with one of Gord Downie’s key charitable initiatives is very meaningful and something that we are proud to be a part of.”
About Newstrike and Up Cannabis
Newstrike is the parent company of Up Cannabis Inc., a licensed producer of cannabis that is licensed to both cultivate and sell cannabis in all acceptable forms. Newstrike, through Up Cannabis and together with select strategic partners, including Canada’s iconic musicians The Tragically Hip, is developing a diverse network of high quality cannabis brands. For more information, visit http://www.up.ca or http://www.newstrike.ca
About the Downie Wenjack Fund
The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund (DWF) is part of Gord Downie’s legacy in Canada, and embodies his, and his family’s commitment to improving the lives of Indigenous Peoples. In collaboration with the Wenjack family, the goal of the fund is to continue conversations beginning with Chanie Wenjack’s residential school story, and to aid our collective reconciliation journey through a combination of awareness, education and action. DWF aims to facilitate safe conversations about our shared history as Canadians, and build positive and understanding relationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Peoples. www.downiewenjack.ca
Dedicated to creating cultural hubs in every community in which it operates, Inner Spirit is establishing a chain of recreational cannabis dispensaries under its Spiritleaf brand. Supporting local entrepreneurs by applying its award-winning franchise and retail models, Inner Spirit has more than 100 partnerships in place for Spiritleaf locations across BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Inner Spirit will also operate multiple corporate dispensaries. With a diverse portfolio of quality and curated lifestyle cannabis products – including Spiritleaf’s own locally and sustainably sourced lines – Inner Spirit’s Spiritleaf is positioned to be an iconic Canadian brand and the most trusted source for recreational cannabis.
More information can be found on Inner Spirit’s website at www.innerspiritholdings.com.
Darren Bondar
PM Rendon
Director, Communications & Public Relations
Up Cannabis Inc.
pm@up.ca
This press release contains statements and information that, to the extent that they are not historical fact, may constitute “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information may include financial and other projections, as well as statements regarding future plans, objectives or economic performance, or the assumption underlying any of the foregoing. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as “may”, “would”, “could”, “will”, “likely”, “except”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “intend”, “plan”, “forecast”, “project”, “estimate”, “outlook”, or the negative thereof or other similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. Examples of such statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the objectives and business plans of the Company; the development of Up Cannabis lounges; the establishment of recreational cannabis dispensaries in BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan; the intention to grow the Company’s business and operations; the legalization of cannabis for recreational use in Canada, including federal and provincial regulations pertaining thereto and the timing related thereof and the Company’s intention to participate in such market, if and when legalized; the competitive conditions of the industries in which the Company operates; and laws and any amendments thereto applicable to the Company.
Terpene Basics
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Rana Daggubati Height, Weight, Age, Biography, Career, Lifestyle & Net Worth
SrsTeam October 28, 2018
Rana Daggubati Height, Weight, Age, Biography, Career, Lifestyle & Net Worth – Ramanaidu Daggubati also known by his stage name Rana Daggubati, is an Indian actor, producer, visual effects coordinator and photographer. He works in Telugu cinema, Tamil cinema and Hindi cinema.
Name Rana Daggubati
Nickname Rana
Birth / Real Name Ramanaidu Daggubati
Profession Actor, Producer, visual effects co-ordinator and photographer
Date of Birth Friday 14th of December 1984
Age (as of 2019) 34 years old
Birth Place Chennai, Tamilnadu, India
Currently Living In Film Nagar, Hyderabad, India
Zodiac / Star Sign Sagittarius
Professional debut Leader in 2010
Net worth $24 million (Rs.152 crore)
Salary Unknown
School Hyderabad Public School, Hyderabad
College Chennai Film School, Chennai
Educational Qualification Graduate (Industrial Photography)
Father Daggubati Suresh Babu
Mother Lakshmi Daggubati
Religion Hindusim
Relationship Trisha Krishna
Wife None
Children None
Daggubati first movie was Leader, in Telugu, which was directed by Shekhar Kammula. It was one of his biggest successes. Rana made his Bollywood debut with the film Dum Maaro Dum, which released on 22 April 2011. The Times of India called it a “dashing debut”. Rana was voted “The Most Promising Newcomer of 2011” in the Times Of India poll. He was listed at number 20 on the Times of India’s Most Desirable Men for the year 2011. In 2012, he was voted as the 10th most desirable man in India, in the poll conducted by The Times of India.
After completing his photography course in Chennai, he returned to Hyderabad and modelled for a few ads and started assisting at the studio. There he learned about the 3D camera, after which he along with his father set up a visual effects DI unit in Hyderabad, where he worked for 5 years.
He played a professional killer in the film Nenu Naa Rakshasi, under Puri Jagannath’s direction, which was a box office bomb. His first release in 2012 was Naa Ishtam, which was followed by his second Hindi film Department. He next starred in Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum, directed by Krish, which became a box office success. He made his debut in Tamil through Thala Ajith Kumar’s Aarambam. Rana did a cameo role in Ayan Mukerji’s Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani.
In 2013, he joined two big budget projects, Gunasekhar’s Rudhramadevi[32] and S. S. Rajamouli’s Baahubali, in which he is the lead antagonist.Rana played Bhallaladeva, the cousin of Baahubali, who had negative shades and received unprecedented appreciation from critics. Baahubali: The Beginning was released worldwide in July 2015 and was the highest-grossing film in India at the time of its release. The concluding film of the series Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, became the first Indian film to cross 1000 crore and is currently the second highest grossing Indian film. In 2017, he did India’s first underwater film, The Ghazi Attack. It opened to very positive reviews.
After Baahubali 2’s epic release, he further did a Telugu political Thriller movie Nene Raju Nene Mantri in which he plays a Politician with grey shades, alongside Kajal Aggarwal. This film too received positive reviews for Rana’s acting and screen presence. The film, also called NRNM, was also released in Tamil as Naan Aanaiyittal and in Malayalam as Raja Kireedam. It was also dubbed into Hindi as Main Hi Raja Main Hi Mantri. Along with the movies, he also starred in a web series called Social. Further, he hosted a Telugu Television programme, No 1. Yaari, which created highest TVP values for a Telugu TV show.He also dubbed for the character Thanos in the Telugu dubbed version of Avengers Infinity War.
Height Meters (approx.) 188 cm, 1.88 m
Height Feet/Inches (approx.) 6 feet 2 inches
Weight in Kg (approx.) 102 kg
Weight in Pounds (approx.) 225 lbs
Chest in Inches 46 Inches
Biceps in Inches 18.5 Inches
Waist in Inches 35 Inches
Facebook facebook.com/RanaDaggubati
Instagram instagram.com/ranadaggubati
Twitter twitter.com/ranadaggubati
Google+ Unknown
Website Unknown
Languages English, Hindi
Hobbies Photography, boxing, diving, cooking
Favourite Food Haleem, biryani, grilled shrimpushi, sashimi, sushi, chicken Afghani, chicken Pakistani, talawa gosht
Favourite Actor Kamal Hassan, Akshay Kumar
Favourite Actress Katrina Kaif
Favourite Director Unknown
Favorite movie Piku, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, 3 Idiots, PK
Favorite Color Unknown
Favorite Singer Unknown
Feet/Shoe Size Unknown
Smoking No
Drinking Unknown
Known for?
Rana is most known for playing the role of Bhallaladeva, the cousin of Baahubali in the Baahubali series – Baahubali: The Beginning and the concluding part Baahubali 2: The Conclusion.
Rana was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, to Telugu film producer Daggubati Suresh Babu. Who is a part of the Daggubati-Akkineni Family. His paternal grandfather was Tollywood film producer D. Ramanaidu. His paternal uncle Venkatesh and his cousin Naga Chaitanya are also actors in the film industry. Rana revealed in 2016 that he is blind in his right eye, and his left eye is a transplanted one.The surgery was done in L. V.Prasad hospital, Hyderabad. Another surgery was done on his right eye when he was 14,but was unsuccessful. He did his schooling in Hyderabad and Chennai from Hyderabad Public School and Chettinad Vidyashram. He lives with his family at his home in Hyderabad. Rana imporved his acting by going to Barry John’s acting school in Mumbai He also learned martial arts after which went to a stunt school in the US.
celebrities lifestyle
height of bollywood
height of indian
Indian Profile
Latest News – Manohar Parrikar Has Pancreatic Cancer, Says Goa Government
Bollywood News – Kiara Advani to join Kabir Singh unit in the last week of November
Pingback: Ram Charan Height, Weight, Age, Biography, Career, Lifestyle, Movies List & Net Worth | SRS Creations
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SPY GAME?
UAE Paid Businessman to Snoop on Trump Administration: Report
Jim Watson/Getty
The United Arab Emirates reportedly recruited and paid an Emirati businessman to provide intelligence on the Trump administration in 2017, The Intercept reported Monday. Rashid al-Malik, who was invited to an inauguration dinner for President Trump and “onetime business associate” of Trump ally Tom Barrack, was reportedly paid “tens of thousands of dollars a month” by UAE’s National Intelligence Service to relay information to “Emirati intelligence handlers” about matters pertaining to the country.
Some of the intel topics reportedly included: U.S. efforts to mediate the conflict between the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar; any meetings U.S. officials had with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; and U.S. sentiment towards the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-Malik also reportedly told his handlers he approached individuals about a potential business venture that would be “indirectly associated with Trump.” The businessman has been tied to a probe of potentially “illegal donations” to Trump’s inauguration fund, and he reportedly cooperated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators. Al-Malik’s attorney told The Intercept that his client was “not an intelligence operative” nor was he “paid to report on the Trump Administration.” The White House, CIA, and Justice Department reportedly declined to comment.
Read it at The Intercept
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Mac Creative Photography
Gareth Wray Photography
Fiachra Mangan Photography
Stair na hÉireann Photography
Joe Canning Poetry
Stair na hÉireann/History of Ireland
Irish History, Culture, Heritage, Language, Mythology
Tag: Irish Republican
#OTD in 1919 – Sinn Féin member, Robert Barton, escapes from Mountjoy Jail, courtesy of some excellent planning by Michael Collins which involved smuggling a file into the prison.
16/03/2018 .Reading time 3 minutes.
Robert Barton was born in Co Wicklow into a wealthy Irish Protestant land-owning family; namely of Glendalough House. He was the double first cousin of and close friend of Robert Erskine Childers and would later be best man at the wedding of Robert Erskine Childers and Molly Osgood. He became an officer in the Royal […]
#OTD in 1882 – Birth of republican activist, Joe Clarke, in Dublin.
Born in Rush, Dublin, Clarke worked for the Sinn Féin Bank, and was active in the Easter Rising. Located in the vicinity of Northumberland Road and Mount Street Bridge, he took part in some of the fiercest fighting of the week, in an area where the Sherwood Foresters famously marched into a waiting party of […]
#OTD in 1883 – Birth of songwriter, revolutionary and house-painter, Peadar Kearney, in Dublin; best known for writing the words of the Irish national anthem.
In 1907, Kearney wrote the lyrics to ‘The Soldier’s Song’. It was used as a marching song by the Irish Volunteers and was sung by rebels in the GPO during the 1916 Easter Rising. Its popularity increased among rebels held in Frongoch internment camp after the Rising, and the IRA in the Irish War of […]
#OTD in 2004 – Death of Joe Cahill, a prominent Irish republican and former chief of staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA).
“I was born in a united Ireland, I want to die in a united Ireland”. –Joe Cahill In May 1920, Cahill was born in Divis Street in west Belfast where his parents had been neighbours with Irish revolutionary James Connolly. Cahill was the first child in a family of thirteen siblings born to Joesph and […]
#OTD in 1919 – Éamon de Valera departed for the United States.
01/06/2017 .Reading time 1 minute.
Éamon de Valera, the American-born president of Ireland’s revolutionary government, was smuggled out of a war-torn country on an ocean liner and into the United States of America where he launched a whirlwind, coast-to-coast tour that brought crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands onto the streets of several major American cities. The Irish political […]
#OTD in 1945 – Birth of singer, songwriter and guitarist, Christy Moore in Newbridge, Co Kildare.
Christy Moore is one of the founding members of Plenty and Moving Hearts. In 2007, he was named as Ireland’s greatest living musician in RTÉ’s People of the Year Awards. The former lead-vocalist and chief songwriter of Planxty and Moving Hearts, Moore helped to bring the musical traditions of Ireland up to modern standards and […]
#OnThisDay in 1964 – Death of Brendan Behan, Irish Republican, Poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both Irish and English.
‘Ah, Bless you Sister, may all your sons be bishops.’ –Brendan Behan Brendan Behan was born in Dublin into a republican family, and became a member of the IRA’s youth organisation Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. However, there was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in the home, which meant […]
#onthisday in 1919 – Sinn Fein member, Robert Barton, escapes from Mountjoy Jail, courtesy of some excellent planning by Michael Collins which involved smuggling a file into the prison.
1883 – Birth of songwriter, revolutionary and house-painter, Peadar Kearney, in Dublin; best known for writing the words of the Irish national anthem.
2004 – Death of Joe Cahill, a prominent Irish republican and former chief of staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA).
Gold Winner – Arts & Culture and Education & Science Blogs 2018
Silver Winner – Education & Science blog 2017
Bronze Winner – Arts & Culture Blog 2016
Category Search Select Category American History An t-Ár Mór Ancient History Ancient Irish History Ash Wednesday Án Ócras Mór Án Gorta Mór Án Ocras Mór Brehon Law British British History England Famine Father’s Day French History Genocide Hibernophobia History History of England Holocausd na nGaedheal Home Rule Ireland Irish Arts Irish Curse Irish folklore Irish History Irish Language/Irish Gaelic Irish Legends and Folklore Irish Medieval History Irish Music Irish Mythology Irish Poetry Irish proverbs Irish recipe Irish Sports Irish Superstitions Irish Theatre Irish Toast Irish-American History Irish-Australian History Irish-British History Irish-Canadian History Irish-Chilean History Irish-English History Irish-Mexican History Irish-Scottish History Maritime History Merry Christmas Newfoundland History Northern Ireland Orange Order History Photography of Ireland Poetry by Joe Canning quotes sayings Science and Education Scottish History Shrove Tuesday Uncategorized World History
Voices From Ireland’s Past – Stair na hÉireann
https://stairnaheireann.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/voices-from-irelands-past1.mp4
Ireland Through A Lens – Stair na hÉireann
https://stairnaheireann.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ireland-through-a-lens-stair-na-hc3a9c289ireann-hd.mp4
My Lagan Love – Stair na hÉireann
https://stairnaheireann.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/my-lagan-love.mp4
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Bail system in Ghana
Cornelius Mensah-Onumah
Bail, as defined by the Greater Accra Regional PRO of the Ghana Police Service, ASP Effia Tengey, is the “release of a person from legal custody on condition that he would be available at a later date and place to stand trial or assist in investigations”.
In Ghana, this conditional release is a guaranteed right of every individual. Both the 1992 Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, and the Criminal Procedure Code, 1960 (Act 30), make provision for this right. Article 14(3) of the 1992 Constitution states that;
A person who is arrested, restricted or detained –
for the purpose of bringing him before a court in execution of an order of a court; or
upon reasonable suspicion of having committed or being about to commit a criminal offence under the laws of Ghana, and who is not released, shall be brought before court within forty-eight (48) hours after the arrest, restriction or detention.
Clause (4) of this same article continues that;
where a person arrested, restricted or detained under paragraph (a) or (b) of clause (3) of this article is not tried within a reasonable time, then, without prejudice to any further proceedings that may be brought against him, he shall be released wither unconditionally or upon reasonable conditions, including in particular, conditions reasonably necessary to ensure that he appears at a later date for trial or proceedings preliminary to trial.
Also, Section 15 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1960 (Act 30) provides for the duration one can be arrested, restricted or detained. It states that “a person taken into custody without a warrant in connection with any offense shall be released not later than forty-eight hours after his arrest unless he is earlier brought before a court of competent jurisdiction. [As amended by the Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Act, 2002 (Act 633), s.(2)(a)].
Prior to a Supreme Court ruling in the Martin Kpebu vs Attorney General case, on Thursday, May 5, 2016, not all offenses were bailable. Felonious crimes like rape, defilement, robbery, murder, kidnapping, treason, among others, as listed in Section 96(7) of the Criminal Procedure Code, were non-bailable. But currently, the ruling has made all offenses bailable after the clause was declared, “null, void and of no effect”, thereby striking it out of the country’s laws.
Since it has already been established that every individual has a right to bail, it is also reasonable to note the processes one may have to go through to secure a bail.
In Ghana, there are two forms of bail; a police bail and a court bail. During the period of the maximum 48 hours of detention after arrest, the suspect may be asked to assist the police in investigations. At the end of the investigation or upon the expiry of 48 hours (whichever comes first), if it is established that the suspect has not committed any offense, s/he must be released unconditionally.
But if it is established that the suspect has or may have committed an offense, the police may either process the suspect to court or release him/her on police bail pending further investigations. In court, the suspect may apply to secure a court bail.
Also, while the suspect reports to the police station as part of his bail conditions with a police bail, the suspect reports in court with a court bail.
Furthermore, under court bail, there are two forms. These are bail pending trial and bail pending appeal. While bail pending trial is granted before a sentence, bail pending appeal is granted after a suspect has been sentenced.
In securing bail for a suspect, someone must be willing and prepared to go to the police station to stand as a surety – guarantor of the bail. Once the suspect is able to get a surety, the bail is granted after undertaking a bond. The bond comes in the form of conditions like, making the suspect appear at the court or police station at a specified date, time and place with an amount also stated in.
This can be seen as a form of contract, as the surety undertakes to make the suspect/accused abide by the conditions stated in the bond. Should the suspect/accused jump bail by failing to comply with the conditions, the surety is called upon to handover the suspect or pay the penalty stated in the bond. This penalty is what is referred to as forfeiture. With the low level of trust among Ghanaians, this makes it difficult for many suspects to find people to act as surety or sureties.
Moreover, unlike the U.S, no bail schedules – list of crimes and amounts to be paid as bail bonds, are in place in Ghana, but Section 96(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code states that, “the amount and conditions of bail shall be fixed with due regard to the circumstances of the case and shall not be excessive or harsh.” For example, in the recent ‘leaked tape’ case involving the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, his bail was set at GHS 100,000 with one surety.
Also, when the accused/defendant feels the bail conditions including amount is too excessive, the defense team can appeal to the court to reduce it, as this is provided by Section 96(3) which states that the bail amount and condition should not be excessive or harsh. A prime example is the accused persons in the Venture Capital Trust Fund (VCTF) case, who are currently standing trial for causing financial loss of GHS 42.9 million to the State and have been granted a bail totaling GHS 170 million. The accused persons include the former CEO, Daniel Duku, who was granted a bail of GHS 50 million, with three sureties. It was reported on Friday, May 3, 2019, that the defense team is currently appealing to the Accra High Court to reduce the bail amount.
It is important to note that when a court is granting a bail, the judge can either direct the surety or sureties to be justified or not. With justification, it means that the surety must prove that s/he has the ability to pay the bail bond should the accused abscond. The justification can be in the form of showing a property like a title deed. An example is when the presiding judge of the Venture Capital Trust Fund case, Mr. Justice Anthony Oppong, in granting the bail application of the accused persons on May, 3, 2019, directed that, their sureties must be justified.
Despite bail being every individual’s right and all offenses bailable, a court can still refuse to grant bail within the laws of Ghana. This is provided in Section 96(5) and (6) of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1960 (Act 30). Situations where a court can deny bail is when it is satisfied that the suspect is not likely to appear in court to stand trial, interfere with any witness or evidence, commit further offenses while on bail and past conduct while on bail.
In considering if it’s likely the accused may jump bail, the court considers the nature of the accusation, nature of evidence in support of the accusation, whether or not the defendant has a fixed place of abode in the country and is gainfully employed, among others. For example, in the 2004 case, The Republic vs Gorman and Others, the Supreme Court denied the accused persons bail because, while most of the accused had no fixed place of abode in the country making the likelihood of they fleeing from the jurisdiction high, the nature of the accusation and severity of the punishment of the first accused/appeallant, made it more likely that he’ll also flee from the jurisdiction when granted bail.
In conclusion, it is worthy to note that, BAIL IS FREE, be it granted by the police or the court, hence any individual should desist from giving out money when demanded by a police officer before a suspect is released.
By: Cornelius Mensah-Onumah|Cornelius is a freelance researcher who holds an MSc in Defense & International Politics and BA in History and Geography
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Stop comparing; ‘Kalyppo soldier’ didn’t offend military rules – Maj. Oduro
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Jazz Al Fresco, 1990
Artist: Pat Cairns
watercolor, 22.5 x 30 inches
Pat Cairns works out of her Atascadero, California studio. For many years, Pat Cairns was known for her impressionistic watercolors of children. Warm, intimate images of boys and girls frolicking at the beach, marching in a parade, or just sitting on the curb watching the world go by were the hallmarks of her work. These familiar, often tender scenes celebrated the emotional power of everyday experiences and were emblematic of Pat Cairns’ interest in connecting the personal with the universal. It is no wonder that the paintings that ignited her career were of children, as Pat Cairns spent twenty-five years teaching art in the San Luis Obispo school system and at Cal Poly. Her children, grandchildren and students were her models.
After retiring, however, her life took an unexpected turn and her art with it. Her husband passed away unexpectedly, she eventually remarried, and she began to travel more. Despite the long-standing success of her figurative paintings, Pat Cairns was drawn to a new world of abstract, nonrepresentational, mixed media art.
Now Pat Cairns jumps in and lets the painting guide her. Instead of controlled brushstrokes, she now scratches, stamps, drips and explores, layering media and collage as she works. Strong design, light, contrasts, and a sense of drama have characterized Pat Cairns’ work throughout her career. Now the marks are bolder, the color palette deeper, and the subject matter more abstract. In her own words, “Where my paintings once whispered, they now shout.”
This painting was donated to the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art’s permanent collection by the artist in 2014.
Icon, 2004
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1983 The Wild Heart TourJoe WalshThe Wild Heart (1983)
REVIEW: Eccentric Nicks gives delicate concert
Stevie Nicks, who performed at the Spectrum last night, is a very unusual pop artist: an intensely mannered and eccentric performer whose mannerisms and eccentricity yield good music.
Nicks usually performs as part of the band Fleetwood Mac, but she has just released her second solo album, The Wild Heart (Modern), and her show last night concentrated on material from that new disc.
For this tour as a headliner, she has assembled a first-rate band consisting of players from other groups, including keyboardist Roy Bittan, from Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band; Benmont Tench, keyboardist from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, and drummer Liberty DeVitto, the best thing that ever happened to Billy Joel. Together with lead guitarist Waddy Wachtel, this band played a lot of harsh, loud rock ‘n’ roll that was a nice contrast to Nicks’ reedy, delicate voice.
Nicks’ entire style of performance can, in fact, be described as delicate. In her wispy gowns and in the fluttery, flyaway dance steps she executes onstage, Nicks plays up the dreamy aspects of her music. The songs she writes are full of wise, young witches, bold princes and glowering monsters – this is fairy-tale rock ‘n’ roll, delivered with roiling melodrama.
What keeps it all from becoming too coy, however, is Nicks’ penchant for creating firm, commanding melodies that bolster her woozy lyrics. At the Spectrum, she gave bright, unsentimental readings of hits such as “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” “Leather and Lace” and the current “Stand Back.” In the end, Nicks skittered along the lip of the stage, accepting bouquets and squeezing the hands of gawking admirers, and as always, her apparent sincerity and guilelessness was impressive.
Preceding Nicks this evening was singer-guitarist Joe Walsh, whose billing on this tour is bigger than an opening act but smaller than co-headliner.
Walsh is a man in the midst of change: His old group, the Eagles, has disbanded, and so he’s testing his solo wings by touring to promote his new album “You Bought It, You Name It” (Full Moon/Warner Bros.). This record is a desultory affair that doesn’t begin to hint at the tough-guy good humor and sharp guitar-playing of which Walsh is capable.
Walsh’s performance last night was charming but slight, with one exception – a terrific, extended version of his finest composition, “Life’s Been Good,” probably the most honest, and certainly the funniest, life-of-a-rock -star saga any musician has recorded.
Ken Tucker / Philadelphia Inquirer / June 28, 1983
Joe Walsh The Wild Heart
Stevie Nicks’ newest album filled with romantic spirit
REVIEW: Stevie Nicks The Wild Heart
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WRC Collection
BIGBEN INTERACTIVE SA
Bundle Released 4 Dec 2017
More for WRC 7 FIA World Rally Championship
Explore more games and downloadable content for WRC 7 FIA World Rally Championship!
Relive the last 3 seasons of World Rally Championship with the WRC Collection, which includes WRC 5, WRC 6, and WRC 7, as well as additional content.
WRC 5 — First edition of the series reboot, produced by Kylotonn Racing Games, which portrays the 2015 season. Progressively learn the basics of rally driving with Rally School.
WRC 6 — A new level of realism for the series is achieved with the integration of the real-scale Super Special Stages. WRC 6 also offers split-screen multiplayer for the first time.
WRC 7 — Even more realistic, WRC 7 offers all the content of the 2017 season, most notably the new versions of the World Rally Cars which are markedly more powerful and agile than the previous generation. And with the addition of the Epic Stages, WRC 7 poses a real challenge, even for the most experienced players.
1 – 8 Players
Network Players 2 – 8 (PlayStation®Plus Subscription Required)
HDD 52 GB Minimum
HD Video Output 720p, 1080i, 1080p
WRC 7 FIA WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP © 2017 published by Bigben Interactive S.A. and developed by Kylotonn Racing Games. All rights reserved. An official product of the FIA World Rally Championship, under licence of the WRC Promoter GmbH and the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile. Manufacturers, cars, names, brands and associated imagery featured in this game are trademarks and/or copyrighted materials of their respective owners. “WRC” and the WRC logo are registered trademarks of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile. All rights reserved.
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Sunnylands in London: Lane meets with U.S. Ambassador and young leaders to discuss international development challenges
U.S. Ambassador Barzun, on far right, is seated next to David Lane as they meet with members of Young Leaders UK.
A small, ornate plaque has been installed just inside the entrance to Winfield House, the Neo-Georgian mansion that serves as the official residence of the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. It reads:
“The Foreign Buildings Office of the Department of State wishes to pay permanent tribute to the extremely generous gift made by Ambassador & Mrs. Walter Annenberg when they undertook a major restoration of Winfield House in 1969. Their generosity continues to benefit American Ambassadors to the Court of St. James’s & indeed all who visit this wonderful house.”
The Annenbergs loved their time in the United Kingdom and were generous supporters to several British museums and cultural institutions.
Their legacy of service and friendship to the people of Great Britain extend to the present day. It was evident in a recent visit to London by Sunnylands President David Lane, who met with Young Leaders UK, a network that connects Britain’s rising leaders, aged 18 to 30, with the United States, the American people and with one another. Lane was joined by Sunnylands Trustee Elizabeth Sorensen, the London-based granddaughter of Leonore Annenberg, along with Retreats Program Director Rebecca Ávila.
A plaque at Winfield House, noting the restoration undertaken by the Annenbergs.
Matthew Barzun, the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, welcomed Lane to Winfield House in January for a wide-ranging conversation that covered global hunger, poverty, development along with some career insights and advice.
Lane, who previously served as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Agencies in Rome (including the World Food Programme and the Food and Agricultural Organization), discussed progress that has been made in reducing the proportion of the world’s population who suffer from food insecurity. However, he also noted the alarming rise in the number of the world’s poorest who live in countries with unstable governments, adding to the severity of crises in global poverty, hunger and health.
The YLUK members peppered Ambassador Lane with questions and observations of their own, including thoughtful analyses of shifting geopolitical forces that complicate action by major world powers.
Barzun, who is completing his service as Ambassador, started the YLUK program, which now numbers more than 2,000 participants. In addition to Ambassador Lane, previous US speakers have included Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama, who met with the group during his visit in April 2016.
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Four abandoned puppies found dumped at side of road
Jenness Mitchell 10 July 2019
The dogs were extremely underweight and one of them was suffering from a broken leg.
Puppied: The dogs were abandoned at the side of the B743. Scottish SPCA
An appeal has been launched after four puppies were found dumped at the side of a road "like rubbish".
All of the dogs were underweight - with one suffering from a broken leg.
The Scottish SPCA is unsure whether the injury was present at the time of the pups being abandoned or if it happened as a result of being left at the roadside and hit by a vehicle.
The dogs - believed to be collie cross types and around two to four-months-old - were found last Thursday by a member of the public on the B743 road between Strathaven in South Lanarkshire and Muirkirk in East Ayrshire.
Inspector Dawn Robertson said: "They are all very underweight and one had an obvious broken leg.
"Thankfully these puppies were found before any serious harm could come to them.
"They are currently being cared for at one of our rescue centres where they will receive all the care and attention they deserve.
"These poor puppies were dumped at the side of a road like rubbish, with no regard for their safety or wellbeing.
"I would urge anyone with information regarding the incident to contact our confidential animal helpline."
If you have any information, call 03000 999 999.
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Nigeria-based Online Entertainment Platform iROKO Will Finance “Nollywood” Films After Raising $19M
Catherine Shu @catherineshu / 3 years
Jason Njoku, the founder and chief executive officer of iROKO
iROKO, an online entertainment platform that targets audiences in Sub-Saharan African countries, plans to strike more deals in Nigeria’s booming movie industry after securing $19 million in funding from French premium cable company Canal+ and Kinnevik, a returning investor.
That amount is divided into $12 million of capital funding, which will be used to develop iROKO’s business and technology; and $7 million that is not from equity or debt financing and earmarked solely for several years of content development deals with studios. iROKO has now raised $34 million since it launched in September 2011.
Founder Jason Njoku tells TechCrunch that this is likely iROKO’s final fundraise. The company doesn’t make its subscriber numbers public, but it expects to generate positive cash flow by the end of this year.
“We want to stay disciplined in this current funding environment to achieve that, but at the same time not limit how we grow our product engineering teams in New York and Lagos,” says Njoku. The platform, which is accessible through a website or Android app, currently has about 2,500 to 3,000 titles and plans to increase its catalog rapidly over the next month.
Njoku was inspired to create the platform after he moved into his mother’s London home and saw that she had switched from watching British soap operas to Nollywood movies. Nollywood is a nickname for the hundreds of small studios in Nigeria that create thousands of movies a year. According to Fortune, Nollywood was a $3 billion industry in 2014, putting it ahead of Hollywood in terms of volume, and just behind India’s Bollywood.
Despite its massive output and popularity, Nollywood movies and shows were hard to find—in London, Njoku had to hunt down VCDs for his mother in small stores.
“I went to Lagos and realized that this was a cottage industry and saw a big opportunity,” he says. “Our first distribution platform was YouTube and once we were funded it made sense for us to build our own platform.”
Warding Off Netflix
Netflix recently launched in South Africa, so the obvious question is how iROKO will compete against the streaming giant if it continues expanding throughout the continent. Its key difference is focusing on Nollywood movies, but iROKO is also focusing on tailoring its tech platform for the needs of mobile users in Africa.
While the most popular online entertainment platforms in the U.S. and Europe stream digital content, iROKO offers downloads. In fact, iROKO’s Android app—its primary product—got rid of streaming last year and replaced it with subscriptions that allow users to download unlimited films and keep them for up to a year. The company’s decision was based on how slow and expensive data is in many African countries.
“It didn’t work. It was a massive challenge. We don’t have the same engineering capability as Netflix, but the cost of streaming data was unimaginable to our customers, so we are in the process of re-encoding all our files to be between 50 to 100 megabytes,” says Njoku.
[gallery ids="1267287,1267288,1267289"]
Though most movie downloads now take between two to three minutes, iROKO wants to compress them even further because many Android smartphones sold in Nigeria only have about three to four gigabytes of storage.
Furthermore, Nigeria suffers from an unreliable power grid, with blackouts a part of daily life (Njoku claims he’s never had 24 hours of uninterrupted electricity). This makes smartphone owners careful about their battery usage, another problem for iROKO to tackle.
“We are thinking about how to encode files in a way that reduces the amount of battery power used,” says Njoku. “It’s still very much a work in progress and we’re still figuring out the best approach. Dealing with significant Android fragmentation—there are phones from all sorts of Chinese and Southeast Asian OEMs, as well as a big secondary market and jailbroken phones—creates its own degree of complexity, which we are also trying to solve.”
Just as crucial as iROKO’s technology platform is the quality of entertainment. Last year, the company financed and produced about 100 hours of content with Nollywood studios and with its new funding for content deals, plans to collaborate with up to 20 studios, using data from its platform to decide what types of movies and shows (romantic comedies, high drama, and shows with Christian themes tend to do well) to produce.
Njoku wants to give Nollywood movies an organized channel for financing and distribution, since it’s often difficult for studios to secure loans from banks and government initiatives to support the industry haven’t taken off yet.
“Nollywood is incredibly fragmented, with hundreds of mini-studios, some of which have just two to three men working for them,” says Njoku. “We have dealt with a huge array of them over the past few years and our view is to bring some sort of structure to that fragmentation.”
Another of iROKO’s goals is to make Nollywood content accessible to viewers throughout Africa, even if they don’t speak English (the official language of Nigeria is used in most Nollywood films). iROKO was named after a type of tree with many branches that grew next to Njoku’s grandparents’ house in Nigeria.
As it turns out, the tree wasn’t actually an iroko, but it’s called by the same word in many Nigerian languages and symbolic of iROKO’s goal to grow throughout Africa by offering the same content in multiple languages. Njoku notes that dubbing helped Nollywood gain an audience in French-speaking African countries, so iROKO will use voiceovers in addition to subtitles to expand in West Africa. It will take the same approach for Swahili and Zulu.
“Language is the largest barrier to bringing content to people, so we are doing everything we can to localize,” says Njoku.
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A Spirit of Service, An Ethic of Tradition: Celebrating 100 Years of Volunteerism
On July 7th, 2019, the Ismaili Volunteer Corps of Tanzania and Zambia celebrated 100 years of volunteerism in the Ismaili Community. The event coincided with the 62nd Imamat Day Celebrations of Mawlana Hazar Imam, at the Diamond Jubilee Complex in Dar es Salaam. The celebratory day commenced with the flag hoisting of the “My Flag” and a March past by the Aga Khan Scouts and Guides, and past and present Ismaili Volunteer Majors that have served in the Ismaili Volunteer Corps.
Video: Book launch - Memoirs of the 46th Ismaili Imam
The First Aga Khan: Memoirs of the 46th Ismaili Imam was recently launched by the Institute of Ismaili Studies. Part of the Ismaili Texts and Translations Series, the book was published in honour of Mawlana Hazar Imam’s Diamond Jubilee. It is the first English translation of the original Persian manuscript, ‘Ibrat-afza, which was composed by Imam Hasan Ali Shah in 1850.
The first Aga Khan: Memoirs of the 46th Ismaili Imam
On a spring evening last month in London, The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) launched their newest publication, entitled The First Aga Khan: Memoirs of the 46th Ismaili Imam. The book covers a significant period of Ismaili history and sheds light on the remarkable life and career of the 46th Ismaili Imam - Mawlana Hasan Ali Shah.
Texas Secretary of State visits the Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre, Toronto
Rolando Pablos, Texas Secretary of State, along with members of his staff, visited the Aga Khan Museum and the Ismaili Centre, Toronto.
Monks Perform Sacred Music Sacred Dance at Plano Jamatkhana
Plano Jamatkhana partnered with the Thanks-Giving Foundation and the Crow Collection of Asian Art to host a performance of The Mystical Arts of Tibet: Sacred Music Sacred Dance.
(-) Remove Plano filter Plano
(-) Remove Aga Khan filter Aga Khan
(-) Remove Damascus filter Damascus
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T h e A r a b W e e k l y The Arab Weekly
Iraq ‘has sufficient forces’ to fight ISIS
Friday 27/11/2015
Iraqis need weapons, training and air support
BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Monday that Iraq has sufficient forces to fight the Islamic State group, after American senators called for more US troops to be deployed to the country.
"The Iraqi government welcomes an increase in support in weapons and training and (air) support from international partners in our war against Daesh," Abadi said in a statement, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS.
But "we confirm that Iraq has enough men and resolve to defeat Daesh and other similar criminal groups," he said.
Abadi's remarks came a day after American senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham advocated an increase in US forces in Iraq to around 10,000 from the current cap of 3,550.
"The prime minister... said he wanted more American presence here," McCain, the chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, told journalists in Baghdad.
And Graham, a member of the same committee, said: "I talked with the prime minister -- would you like more American help? The answer was yes."
He added: "If you went up to 10,000, you're not gonna get any pushback from the Iraqis.
"I mean the difference between 3,500 and 10,000 is meaningless politically inside the country."
The presence of American soldiers in Iraq, where the US fought a nearly nine-year war, remains a very sensitive issue, especially for politicians with close ties to Iran, who have a strong presence in parliament and the government.
ISIS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad last year, aided by the collapse of significant units of the Iraqi army, and also holds territory in Syria.
Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained significant ground from the jihadists north of Baghdad, but large parts of the country's west remain under ISIS control.
© 2015-2019 The Arab Weekly. All rights reserved.
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All About William Shakespeare
“Give thy to every man but few thy voice.”
One of Shakespeare’s famous quotes. People quote him all the time, sometimes not even knowing that Shakespeare himself was the one who wrote it. But is that all we can say about this man? That he wrote famous quotes?
He was a man of many talents and one of the most influential men in all of human civilization. A master writer, actor, poet, and quite a good business man. Everything he has written, has had a profound effect on English literature, inspiring many different kinds of artists out there to create their own masterpieces. Though his work is known worldwide, his life is quite mysterious, as there hasn’t been much discovered on it.
There have been so many conspiracies on William Shakespeare which can be entertaining. Such as whether he actually wrote his plays or not due to the level of passion and intellectuality they contained. Mainly because, he did not have a higher education. We all know it’s ridiculous to speculate such a conclusion because of this fact. However, many other artists during Shakespeare’s time didn’t have much of an education and they became as equally as successful. Example, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, who dropped out of school in the seventh grade yet, he became the king of suspense. So, people, sometimes it isn’t all about our certificates or diplomas. All we need is some passion.
And why did he become so successful or important? Shakespeare had a unique way of writing. In a rare way, he understood human imperfections and weaknesses. He was able to summarize human emotions in an elegant, simple yet profound way. So even back then, people found his work not just entertaining, but relatable. And his work can still be related to despite the fact it was written so long ago. His work has had an enduring success because of this. Most of his work involves tragedy and betrayal.
He is mainly known for Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Macbeth. And his work has been played and published for over 400 years now. Yet, his life is quite mysterious. We know he was married to Anne Hathaway, and there are records of him having children, twins actually, who one of them later died at the age of eleven. And we also know that there are no records of seven years of his life after his children were born. And of course, there are many conspiracies to where he might have gone during this period or what he could have been doing. Some say he was hiding from his landlord, Sir Thomas Lucy. Others say that he was off in Lancashire working as in assistant schoolmaster. No one really knows. And on April 23rd, 1616, he died, leaving very little inheritance to his wife. Naturally, this also leads to some curious speculations, such as whether this couple was actually close or not.
Sad to know that the little evidence there is on Shakespeare’s personal life is in forms of documents and records. But, nonetheless, he will always be appreciated through his many forms of art work. And even though we cannot say much about him, there is no harm in researching him, and making our own conspiracies. Studying his work and trying to get to know the mysterious man we all love.
All our stories!
Let’s Talk About the Importance of Costumes in Plays
All About Contemporary Theater
Student Productions to See This Year
Proper Etiquette When Attending a Play
Schools to Study Theater in Europe
How to Make it As a Stage Actor in Europe
Top 6 Theaters in Europe
Some Of The Best European Play Actors
World Renowned Play Writers From Europe
Best Plays In The West End, London
Arthur Miller: The Greatest Playwright Of The 20th Century
Great Playwrights that Changed the Course of Theatre History
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Kacey Musgraves Reinvents Australian ‘Shoey’ With Glass Slipper
Kacey Musgraves decides to take a walk in her own shoes after she passed on a “Shoey” opportunity in Australia.
The singer made headlines after harshly dismissing the Aussie tradition of driving a beer out of someone else’s shoes while playing in Sydney.
“I’m not drinking out of your F****** shoe…. You could have athlete’s foot or something,” she said from the stage.
Instead of turning a blind eye to the tradition, Kacey appeased the Melbourne crowd by reinventing her own version of the tradition for her final Australian show. “I guess maybe in Sydney I wasn’t really in the mood, but it’s our last show so…” she said before tossing back the tequila, amid cheers of “Kacey! Kacey” from the crowd.
See Kacey take her 'savage tequila shot' below.
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Tag Archives: Corey Hawkins
Movie Review: Straight Outta Compton
August 17, 2015 JannahB Leave a comment
Explicit language and constant snippets of legendary hip hop music filled theaters this weekend as one of the most anticipated films of the year finally hit the big screen this weekend.
Not only does the public get a chance to look back into the life of the notorious hip hop group N.W.A., but the film tells a story, a unique emotional story of a group of friends who had a vision. Mix that vision with talent and ambition, and you’ve got a story that helped put the city of Compton, California on the map.
Disclaimer: I’ll just go ahead and say that the purpose of this review is not to reveal part of the movie and spoil it for those who have not seen it. Instead, I aim to critique the overall experience.
The character choice for the film was spot on! The most impressive character match was O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson, who was played by his son, O’Shea Jackson Jr. The match for this role could not have been any more perfect, for his voice, demeanor and looks proved nearly identical to that of his father’s. According to other sources, ‘Baby Cube’ supposedly had to audition for the role just like anyone else — with all fairness. He also could have gotten tips and advice from his father on how to portray his character, which puts viewers as close as it can get to the real thing. With all said, great job O’Shea Jr.
Approaching the movie premier date, some actors had the chance to interview with other sources and give their take on the characters they played in the film. Recalling a radio broadcast interview with Corey Hawkins, actor for Andre ‘Dr Dre’ Young, Hawkins was questioned about acting out one of the toughest scenes in the film and in Dr. Dre’s life. The interview hyped up this particular scene; the amount of emotion put into it was supposed to be an A+. The scene failed to deliver the emotional pull that its potential.
Based on the knowledge of West coast Hip Hop history, the film was spot on with the timeline of all the events and happenings. This was a characteristic that solidified the film’s credibility and put viewers back in time just like they knew it happened in the ’80s. One thing that could have added another twist into the film was to show a small piece of what the group became after the death of Eric Wright.
Straight Outa Compton Movie advertisement
Source: imdb.com
Other than the timeline, producers did a great job with portraying all scenes from the time period; wardrobe, city life etc.
Overall, the film gave the world a peek at how greatness was created; with determination, ambition, and love. Of course there is more to the story of these characters, but this film will go down in the books as capturing the essence of how these young men became who they are now. This film is a must see and definitely one to own.
ActorsBlack MoviesCaliforniaComptonCorey HawkinsDr. DreEazy EGangster MoviesHip HopHip Hop MovieIce CubeJason MitchellMovieMovie CriticMovie ReviewNWAStraight Outa Compton
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A Ray of Hope for Families Struggling with Autism
By Colo. Dem. Rep. Diana DeGette — 12/07/06 12:01 PM EST
Yesterday, Congress finally passed legislation to combat the growing problem of autism. Like the companion bill I introduced with Representative Mary Bono (R-CA), this bill will provide an increased focus on this devastating disease.
Autism is a complex brain disorder that inhibits a person's ability to communicate and develop social relationships and is often accompanied by extreme behavioral challenges. The Combating Autism Act gives efforts to combat this disease a much needed shot in the arm and places the federal government in a leadership role in diagnostics, causes and cures for autism. The Act authorizes nearly $1 billion dollars, a fifty percent increase, over the next five years to combat autism through research, screening, early detection and early intervention.
The Combating Autism Act is a ray of hope to the thousands of families struggling every day with autism and I am proud of the role I played in ensuring its passage. I look forward to seeing the results of this increase in resources to researchers at the National Institutes of Health.
Tags Person Career Autism Abnormal psychology Health Psychiatry Combating Autism Act Autism Speaks
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Fifty Shades Darker Movie Review
Posted on May 14, 2017 by toddmthatcher
There’s a scene towards the end of Fifty Shades Darker where we find ourselves in Christian Grey’s childhood bedroom. He is engaged in deep conversation with Anastasia Steele. Instead of giving anywhere near a damn about what they were discussing, I found myself distracted by the movie poster in his room: The Chronicles of Riddick starring Vin Diesel.
For the next couple of minutes, my mind wandered to the following questions: What made the set designers pick that 2004 sci-fi flick? What made them deduce that their lead character with a penchant for dominance and sadism would choose that film over any other? I thought about what age Christian would have been when it was released. 17 maybe? Here’s a guy, even as a youngster, that could have bought any movie poster, yet he chose The Chronicles of Riddick. Then I realized the fact that I was preoccupied with this minor piece of set decoration said a lot. I didn’t really care about anything else in that bedroom and or anyone in it.
Fifty Shades Darker is the sequel to 2015’s smash hit Fifty Shades of Grey and continues the saga of that man with the Riddick poster (Jamie Dornan) and book editor Anastasia (Dakota Johnson). Their romance was originated in a series of wildly popular E.L. James novels. As I opined in my one star review of Grey, I tried my best to understand its mass appeal to viewers and readers, but just couldn’t get there. Yet here we are again. When we last left the lovers, they had broken up because Anastasia just couldn’t quite get there with Christian’s kinky preferences. It takes about ten minutes of screen time for her to inexplicably change her mind and they’re back at it.
Part two does bring some new dynamics and characters into the fold. Anastasia’s new boss (Eric Johnson) wants more than her editing services. Christian’s sexual mentor (Kim Basinger) keeps popping up, as does a former lover (Bella Heathcote) who’s still subservient to her former master. These subplots lead to jealousy on both ends. There’s also a bit of exploration of Christian’s troubled childhood. All of these items seem like wind up to whatever the inevitable third picture will bring. There’s no pay off.
Instead we get a whole lot of conversations between our two leads and two underwhelming actors playing them. More than anything, the Fifty Shades series rises and falls with the chemistry of Dornan and Johnson. Once again, its mostly non-existent. The franchise’s selling point is the sex scenes and even they’re nothing more than what you’d see on cable after dark.
That said, I’m awarding Fifty Shades Darker a whole half star more than Grey. Why? Good question. Johnson’s acting is probably a half star better. There is perhaps a half star’s worthy more plot developments than in the first. Or maybe the Riddick poster distraction put me in a better mood. Who knows? The more likely reasoning is I’ve become more numb to the pain this unfortunate series has inflicted on me.
This entry was posted in Todd's Movie Reviews and tagged Bella Heathcote, Dakota Johnson, E.L. James, Eloise Mumford, Eric Johnson, Fifty Shades Darker, Fifty Shades of Grey, James Foley, Jamie Dornan, Kim Basinger, Marcia Gay Harden, movie reviews, movies, Rita Ora, The Chronicles of Riddick by toddmthatcher. Bookmark the permalink.
1 thought on “Fifty Shades Darker Movie Review”
Robin Write on May 15, 2017 at 11:19 am said:
Yeah this was truly awful. The wife and I like to stick on garbage sometimes to mock and have a jolly old time. But this just made me angry. The depth of crud is all engulfing.
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As a crime novel, a thriller first of all belongs to narrative prose like the normal novel. The main difference lies in the topic, because a crime story is about a crime and its enlightenment. Crime is divided into two large groups.
First, there is the classic, analytical thriller
In such thrillers, the crime, which is usually a murder, is placed at the beginning and in the course of history, the crime is reconstructed and the perpetrator determined. The main character in such a thriller usually plays a detective, which is why these thrillers are also referred to as detective novels.
On the other hand, there is the thriller in the broader sense
Into this group belong thrillers in which the reader knows from the beginning who the offender is and how the deed was carried out. In these thrillers are then the crime itself, the education or the background of the act in the center. If an author wants to write his own thriller, he should first deal with the tools for crime literature.
Instructions and tips for writing a crime story
Crime writers usually do not work with a rigid guide, but with some tips and tricks. Ultimately, for the crime writer, that means that he can learn to write the thriller and that the more he deals with it, the easier it will be for him to write.
It is only partially possible to create a general guide for a thriller. But some key points apply to all thrillers and some basic elements are used in many thrillers.
Before the author can start writing his thriller, he first needs a good story. A thriller is characterized by its limited circle of people and the realistic representation of the scene and the course of events. For the author, this results in two consequences. On the one hand, he finds ideas and the stuff for his thriller, however regrettable it may be, often in reality.
Newspapers, magazines, television programs, news and court reports often report in great detail about crimes, their background and perpetrator profiles. In addition, books provide a lot of ideas and suggestions, although not necessarily other thrillers are meant, but especially those books that reveal only at second glance, that they also tell of crime.
As an example, the Bible is mentioned here. The other consequence for the author is that he has to research his thriller. Since a thriller should be as realistic as possible, the author must know what he is actually writing about. This means that he has to find out about the milieu in which his thriller plays, he should know the anatomy of man and acquire knowledge about the methods of investigation and the interrogation tactics of criminology. Of course, the details must also be correct. For example, if the victim is to be poisoned, the author should know what the amount of poison is.
If the idea and all the required information are available, the author should clarify some fundamental questions. First, he should specify what kind of crime thriller he wants to write. In the classic thriller, neither the detective nor the reader knows who the culprit is and do not know the sequence of events yet. This variant makes it a bit easier to maintain the suspense until the end.
The other variant are thrillers, where the offender is known from the beginning. This is not about finding the culprit, but about the background of the crime or the Enlightenment. The tension then arises, for example, by deception maneuvers and the cat and mouse game of the offender with the police. Another important decision is to tell from whose point of view the thriller, whether from the perspective of detective, from the point of view of the perpetrator or from the point of view of an observer.
The elements at the thriller
Once these decisions have been made, the author can resort to some of the essential elements of thriller writing:
Suspense and tension
A mystery thrives on suspense, with the crime thriller distinguishing between two types of tension. Suspense refers to the suspense that is to be maintained from beginning to end, thus causing the thriller to captivate readers and make them read the book full of excitement and curiosity to the end. Tension usually the tension points that are used specifically and temporarily provide for palpitations and goose bumps.
The closed room
A very popular trick in thrillers is the closed room, behind the doors of the crime happens. Since the doors were locked, nobody could actually enter or leave the room, yet the crime has happened. This element is often combined with the fact that it gradually turns out that none the originally suspect comes as a perpetrator in question.
This term describes an action that ends at its peak and leaves the reader with many unanswered questions. Most will know cliffhanger from television series that end in the most exciting moment and thus make the viewer look at the next episode. Cliffhangers are also a popular tool in thrillers to bring suspense to history.
This is a distraction maneuver designed to mislead the reader on the wrong track. The reader receives clues that seem to be important in clearing up the crime or finding the culprit. Later, it turns out that they were logically explainable but just wrong tracks.
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The Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 11, Episode 14: Date, Time & Preview
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Below Deck Season 6, Episode 17: Date, Time & Preview
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Bravo Tonight's TV - December 3, 2018
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The Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 11, Episode 5: Date, Time & Preview
Bravo Tonight's TV - November 29, 2018
Air Date & Time The Real Housewives of Atlanta season 11 continues with episode 5. The episode airs at 8:00 PM EST on Bravo. New episodes of...
The Real Housewives of Dallas Season 3, Episode 16: Date, Time & Preview
Air Date & Time The Real Housewives of Dallas season 3 continues with episode 16. The episode airs at 10:00 PM EST on Bravo. New episodes of...
Below Deck Season 6, Episode 9: Date, Time & Preview
Air Date & Time Below Deck season 6 continues with episode 9. The episode airs at 9:00 PM EST on Bravo. New episodes of Below Deck season...
‘The Real Housewives of Dallas’ Season 3 Episode 11 Stream: How To Watch Live...
Bravo Tonight's TV - October 24, 2018
The Real Housewives of Dallas season 3 episode 11 airs at 9:00 PM EST on Bravo. The episode is called "Episode 11" and it will run...
‘Below Deck’ Season 6 Episode 4 Stream: How To Watch Live Online
Below Deck season 6 episode 4 airs at 9:00 PM EST on Bravo. The episode is called "Bitch in Charge" and it will run around the...
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Married to Medicine is an American reality TV show and is produced by Fremantle Media North America, Galaxy Productions, Purveyors of Pop. The show stars Toya Bush-Harris,...
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Ukraine-Russia Tensions Spark Human Rights Debate
A U.N. report on extensive human rights violations in the Russian-backed separatist regions of eastern Ukraine and in the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula has triggered a fiery debate at the U.N. human rights council.
The conflict between Russian-backed rebels and the Ukrainian government in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk is entering its sixth year. U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore says 5 million people are directly affected by ongoing hostilities along the contact line, the area that separates the two warring forces.
"Shelling, use of small arms and light weapons, mines, explosive remnants of war — these continue to kill and injure civilian women and men, girls and boys," she said.
FILE – Men speak outside a residential building, which locals said was damaged during recent shelling, in the suburb of the rebel-controlled city of Donetsk, Ukraine, June 28, 2019.
Thirteen people have been killed and 78 injured this year, Gilmore said, adding that people in the rebel-controlled areas also suffer from extreme poverty because they do not receive their pensions from the government in Kyiv. She criticized the self-proclaimed authorities in eastern Ukraine for denying human rights monitors access to the detainees, many of whom she said have been subjected to torture.
She also accused the Russian Federation of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in March 2014.
"Those who criticize the occupation or advocate broadly for human rights are intimidated, even imprisoned," she said. "Crimean Tatars have been subjected to arrests [and] convictions for affiliation with Muslim groups declared as 'extremist organizations' under Russian law."
Reaction from Ukraine
Following Gilmore's statement, Ukraine's Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Yuri Klymenko, lashed out at Russia's occupation of Crimea. He accused the Kremlin of violating international humanitarian law in support of the separatists in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
"The temporary occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as in Crimea, Russia stubbornly imposes its citizenships on the local population, thus violating the norms of international humanitarian law and the sovereignty of Ukraine," Klymenko said. "Russia has not come to Donbas to protect anyone. Russia, as an aggressor state, has come to kill."
Ukraine's criticisms did not sit well with the Russian representative at the council. Second secretary at the Russian mission to the U.N. in Geneva, Kristina Sukacheva, sneered at Ukraine's efforts to blame Russia for violations in the Donbas and Crimea. She called the accusations unsubstantiated and farcical.
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Traveler Duo
Stories of a Traveling Couple
6 Top Places to Visit in Beijing 2018
by: Sourish
Asia • China • Featured
In terms of size, Beijing is second only to Shanghai. It is has held the position of the political center of the country for over 800 years. With a dense travel network, encompassing road, airline, and rail, Beijing is at the heart of the travel industry. Still called Peking by some, Beijing is full of attractions and opportunities for sightseeing, including one of the most visited in the world, the Great Wall of China. The city center has been preserved as a place of historic value, where you will find plenty of cultural monuments, like the Imperial Palace and the Heavenly Temple. Beijing is not a place to be rushed; it is a place to wander, to savour the glory of historic China and be taken way back in time. Make sure you take in these 6 places of interest on your trip to Beijing.
No visit to China would be complete without going to the Great Wall. We can date the start of the wall back to the 5-8th Century BCE and much of what still stands today was constructed under the Qing Dynasty as a defense against Mongol insurgents. In total, the wall stretches for 21,196 km with the Qing wall at 8,850 km. OF that 6,259 km are wall while the rest is made up of natural defense and trenches. There are more than 25,000 watch towers spanning the length of the wall which, for the most part, now stands in ruing. Only around 30% of the wall is kept in good enough condition for the tourists. The best part of the wall is called Mutianyu and you can also take in a hiking track called Jinshanling or join one of the many Great Wall tours.
The Forbidden City or the Imperial Palace as it is otherwise known sprawls over 180 acres and was, from 1420 to 1912 the Palace for the Emperor of China. It is home to 980 buildings and is a recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its name comes from the fact that entry to the complex was forbidden unless the Emperor gave permission. Today, it is where you will find the Palace Museum. The complex is split into two – the Outer Court to the South where the Emperor ruled his subjects, and the Inner Court to North where he resided. You will find stunning examples of architecture throughout the complex along with the Palace Museum collections, over one million artifacts – jade, paintings, ceramic, bronze, and more. Your tour of the complex begins at the Meridian Gate and ends at the East Prosperity Gate or the Gate of Divine Prowess.
One of the biggest public squares in Central China, Tiananmen Square is home to some of the most important monuments to be found in the city. Just a short way from the Forbidden City, Tiananmen has been enlarged and renovated over several centuries. Here, you will find the granite-constructed Monument of the People’s Heroes, one the biggest monuments in the country. At the north end of the square stands the Tiananmen Tower, constructed in 1417 and serving as one of the entrances to the Forbidden City. You will also see the National Museum of China, home to relics, objects, and models that trace the history of China and, opposite, is The Great Hall of People, still in use today for diplomatic and government purposes. The Mausoleum of Mao Zedong can also be seen here, the place where, in 1949, China was declared a republic.
The Temple of Heaven
The Temple of Heaven is a stunning collection of religious buildings. The complex is huge, covering even more ground than the Forbidden City and was opened for the public to visit in 1988. Chinese emperors were revered as Heavenly Sons, their duties carried out at the behest of the gods. The temple has some stunning features, including the Circular Mound Alter, a sacrificial altar, which is considered to be the most important part of the temple. Other important buildings worth seeing include The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, the Palace of Abstinence, the Imperial Vault of Heaven and the Heaven Worship Culture. The palace is also surrounded by extensive parks, well worth a wander around.
The Summer Palace
[ Image : Wikipedia ]
The Summer Palace is the biggest royal park in the country and is also one of the best preserved. Built in 1750 as a royal retreat, the Palace suffered extensive damage in the Anglo-French wars, as did much of Beijing and, indeed, China as a whole. The palace has seen many residents over the years, from the Qing Dynasty, right up to 20th-century government officials. The center is the Longevity Hill, littered with buildings. In the Front Hill area, you will find the 730-meter-Long Corridor, complete with spectacular decorations, the Eastern Palace Gate and the Hall of Jade Billows. In the Back-Hill area, there are the garden of Harmonious Pleasures, the ‘Four Great Regions’ and The Glass Tower, among many other sites, many of which have only recently been restored to anywhere near their former glory. Other parts worth visiting are the Eastern and the Western Dams. Opened for public visitors in 1924, the Place has undergone several renovations in recent years and is now one of the top attractions in Beijing.
Bird’s Nest Stadium
Built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the world-famous Bird’s Nest Stadium was constructed in just 4 years. Steel beans are placed randomly to hide the beams needed to open the retractable roof and it is these beans that give the stadium its name. Following the 2008 Olympics, the stadium, which seats 8,000, has mostly been used for football, athletic events, and concerts and there are plans in the pipeline to build a hotel and a shopping mall to bring in even more visitors.
4 Must Visit Places in Shanghai 2018
4 Best Places to Visit in Singapore 2018
About the Author: Sourish
Sourish is an avid Traveler and an amateur photographer who love to explore new places, people, cultures and cuisine.
Sourish and Arpita are avid travellers who like to document their travelling and share it with the world to bring you the best travel destinations and experiences on the planet .
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5 Must Visit Places in Switzerland 2018
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World AIDS Day 2014: Together, We Can End HIV/AIDS
A message and a prayer from the Unfinished Lives Project Team to our worldwide readership. Remember those we have lost. Fight for the cure. Care for the people–ALL the people. Get to Zero. That is what World AIDS Day is all about. As avert.org posted in 2006, “Started in 1988, World AIDS Day is not just about raising money, but also about increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. World AIDS Day is important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done.”
As USA TODAY reports, approximately 34 million people are living with HIV. An estimated 35 million people have already died from complications related to the disease. In the United States, approximately 1.2 million people are living with HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 14% of all people with HIV in the U.S. don’t even know they have the virus, and the only way to find out is to be tested, the CDC warns. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is holding awareness and testing events in California, Florida, Washington, D.C., Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
Together, we can end HIV/AIDS. “Each time [human beings] stand up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope… and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” ~ adapted from the words of Senator Robert F. Kennedy
December 1, 2014 Posted by unfinishedlives | AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HIV/AIDS, Robert F. Kennedy, Unfinished Lives Project Team, World AIDS Day | AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HIV/AIDS, Robert F. Kennedy, Unfinished Lives Project Team, World AIDS Day | Comments Off on World AIDS Day 2014: Together, We Can End HIV/AIDS
A Prayer For the 2012 International AIDS Conference: A Special Comment
Washington, D.C. – As the International AIDS Conference convenes today amidst shocking statistics of the pandemic and hopeful advances toward a cure for this ravaging disease, the Unfinished Lives Project Team offers a Prayer for all who seek to overcome the death, horror and fear associated with HIV/AIDS. May the 20,000 top scientists, activists, policy makers, and everyday people who attend be challenged and inspired by this Franciscan Prayer as we have been [With thanks to Joe Stabile, Nathan Russell of Brite Divinity School, and Jennifer Jacobson who helped transmit the prayer to us].
“St. Francis ‘Neath the Bitter Tree,” by Fr. William McNichols
A Franciscan Blessing
May God bless you with discomfort
at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships
so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger
at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears
to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
and turn their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do
what others claim cannot be done.
July 25, 2012 Posted by unfinishedlives | Brite Divinity School, GLBTQ, Heterosexism and homophobia, HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS prevention, International AIDS Conference, LGBTQ, Social Justice Advocacy, transphobia, Washington, D.C. | Brite Divinity School, GLBTQ, Heterosexism and homophobia, HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS prevention, International AIDS Conference, LGBTQ, Remembrances, Saint Francis of Assisi, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comment, transphobia, Washington D.C. | Comments Off on A Prayer For the 2012 International AIDS Conference: A Special Comment
“Why We Fight”: Fallen Gay Activist’s Fierce AIDS Speech Remembered on His Birthday
Vito Russo delivering his powerful AIDS activist speech, “Why We Fight,” as part of the ACT-UP protest against callous government neglect of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Vito Russo (1946-1990) would have been 66 today, had the AIDS pandemic not robbed us of him. As a gay activist and groundbreaking film historian, Russo is best remembered for authoring the 1981 book, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. But Russo’s impact on LGBTQ equality and American culture and politics reached farther. He was a participant in virtually every landmark gay and lesbian rights effort since the Stonewall Rebellion in the streets of New York City in 1969–where he was actually present, protesting in the crowd who fought back against police oppression in what has come to be known as the birth date of the gay rights movement. He became a leader in the Gay Activists Alliance in the aftermath of Stonewall, and a co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) because of his concern about how gay people were portrayed by the media. In the 1980s, Russo became involved in ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) out of deepening frustration over federal and state governmental refusal to take the HIV/AIDS epidemic seriously. In 1990, he died of complications from the disease, but his legacy became secure after HBO aired a documentary film version of The Celluloid Closet narrated by comedy great, Lilly Tomlin. Russo’s family authorized a biography in 2011 published by the University of Wisconsin Press, Michael Shiavi’s Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo. On July 23, HBO will premier a new documentary film, Vito.
On the anniversary of his birthday, July 11, we at the Unfinished Lives Project join Jeffrey Schwarz, the Producer/Director of Vito, to recall Russo’s powerful AIDS activism, and to remember the multitudes of women, men, and youth cut down so senselessly by a pandemic the U.S. government would not acknowledge until it began to affect the heterosexual population of this country. As Schwarz says in the Huffington Post: “During the AIDS epidemic Vito watched the world he loved crumble beneath his feet. By the time Vito received his AIDS diagnosis in 1985, the epidemic was well into its first decade, and thousands had already died. Vito had long been involved in empowering his community, so he found a way to channel his rage and grief into effective and history-making activism. ‘Why We Fight,’ Schwarz goes on to say, “was a fiery 1988 speech given before a tumultuous crowd of angry ACT UP demonstrators at the New York State Capitol in Albany.” The Queer Rhetoric Project records that the speech was delivered first in Albany as a part of the “9 Days of Protest” demonstration, and then later in Washington, D.C. at the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Why We Fight,” in its entirety, can be found here. Toward the climax of his fierce indictment of a medical and political regime in the U.S. marked by footdragging and homophobia, Russo said, almost prophetically:
“Someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. Remember that. And when that day comes, when that day has come and gone, there’ll be people alive on this Earth, gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives, so that other people might live and be free. So I’m proud to be with my friends today and the people I love, because I think you’re all heroes, and I’m glad to be part of this fight. But, to borrow a phrase from Michael Callen’s song, ‘all we have is love right now. What we don’t have is time.'”
The wrack and ruin of the AIDS pandemic is still with us, and the disease as dangerous as ever. The Unfinished Lives Team asks you to join us in honoring Vito Russo on the anniversary of his birth by advocating for increased research funding, effective education, and regular testing until this horrible disease is finally defeated. For now, like Russo, we must continue the struggle–remember the fallen–and do the work of hope. Happy Birthday, Vito!
July 11, 2012 Posted by unfinishedlives | ACT-UP, gay men, GLAAD, GLBTQ, Heterosexism and homophobia, HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS prevention, LGBTQ, New York, Protests and Demonstrations, Remembrances, Social Justice Advocacy, Vito Russo, Washington, D.C. | ACT-UP, Celluloid Closet, gay men, GLAAD, GLBTQ, Heterosexism and homophobia, HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS prevention, LGBTQ, Media Issues, Protests and Demonstrations, Remembrances, Social Justice Advocacy, Stonewall Riots, Vito Russo | Comments Off on “Why We Fight”: Fallen Gay Activist’s Fierce AIDS Speech Remembered on His Birthday
Susan Sarandon is Trevor Project’s 2012 Hero Award Winner
Susan Sarandon, The Trevor Project’s 2012 Hero Award honoree [New York Daily News photo].
New York, New York – Oscar winning actress, Susan Sarandon will be honored by The Trevor Project as their 2012 Hero Award Winner. Stanley Tucci, President of MTV, will be presenting the award Monday, June 25th, at “Trevor Live,” the LGBTQ teen suicide prevention group’s high profile benefit event.
Sarandon, famed for her artistry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show [“Dammit, Janet!”], The Hunger, and Thelma & Louise, is being honored for her forthright advocacy for marriage equality, publicly opposing homophobia in the media, speaking out to save the lives of LGBTQ teens from bullying and suicide, and her gifts to HIV/AIDS research and treatment. Speaking for the Trevor Project, Abbe Land, Trevor’s Executive Director and CEO, said: “The Trevor Project is proud to honor Susan Sarandon with the Trevor Hero Award. As a straight ally, Ms. Sarandon has a long history of working to raise awareness of the importance of treating everyone fairly and ensuring same basic civil and human rights for all.” Ms. Land continued, “Our honorees know through their work with The Trevor Project that it only takes one resource – one friend, one ally, one parent – to help save a life. We are proud to honor Susan Sarandon with the Trevor Hero Award.”
Responding to the news she was Trevor’s 2012 Hero honoree, Ms. Sarandon said: “It is truly an honor to be recognized by The Trevor Project as a Trevor Hero. All people deserve respect, and young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender deserve to know that there are people who care for them and who are fighting to make this world a better and more accepting place for them.” When she accepts the award, Ms. Sarandon will join the company of other celebrity advocates such as Daniel Radcliffe, Lady Gaga, and Neil Patrick Harris.
Every day, the Trevor Project saves the lives of young LGBTQ people struggling to reconcile their authentic selves with a world that is often hostile and rejecting. The Trevor Helpline is the premier 24/7 online and phone counseling service dedicated to saving the lives of youth from suicide. An innovator in suicide prevention, The Trevor Project has been recognized by President Obama as a Champion of Change. For more information, go to the Trevor Project’s website, accessible here.
June 23, 2012 Posted by unfinishedlives | GLBTQ, Heterosexism and homophobia, HIV/AIDS, LGBT teen suicide prevention, LGBTQ, LGBTQ suicide, Marriage Equality, Media Issues, New York, Social Justice Advocacy, Trevor Project | GLBTQ, Heterosexism and homophobia, HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ, LGBTQ teen suicide, LGBTQ teen suicide prevention, Marriage Equality, Media Issues, New York, Social Justice Advocacy, Trevor Helpline, Trevor Project | Comments Off on Susan Sarandon is Trevor Project’s 2012 Hero Award Winner
Company Rattles Spears, But HIV Discrimination Story Stands, Corroborated by News Reports
Detroit, MI – HIV discrimination charges against Great Expressions Dental Center of Detroit have drawn national attention. They have also drawn the ire of the dental center’s corporate lawyers, who threatened the petitioner on Change.org with legal action to make him take down his original petition. In response, the petitioner has done so, and another is launched in its place, citing corroboration by reporter Todd Heywood of POZ Magazine in a story dated December 8, 2011, of the charges concerning the firing of HIV-positive James White by Great Expressions Dental Centers. The company denies any wrongdoing, and in a missive widely sent to bloggers who carried the discrimination story, claims to be gay friendly and a staunch supporter of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). While the ultimate truth will probably only come out in court, the story of White’s outing as HIV positive, subsequent harassment by employees with Lysol disinfectant, questionable “unexcused absence” charges, and his firing by the company are corroborated by the POZ article.
POZ also cites the Detroit Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s letter to White, advising him and his attorneys of their ruling of reasonable cause to conclude that Great Expressions had indeed discriminated against White in violation of the ADA. An excerpt of the EEOC letter reads: “Based upon the above and the record as a whole, there is reasonable cause to believe that the Charging Party [James White] was disciplined, denied reasonable accommodation, and discharged due to his disability, in violation of Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, as amended.”
As the company’s denial and threats indicate, this case will be battled out for some time to come. White and his attorneys are apparently undaunted, and are proceeding with their suit against Great Expressions for compensatory and punitive damages. In the meantime, if the allegations prove to be true against Great Expressions, a big dental company with deep pockets, then White’s case will serve as a warning to any other company that discriminates against employees because of their disabilities. Workplace discrimination is inexcusable. It is also inexcusable not to know how the HIV virus is spread, or to prey upon ignorance and fear that often accompany news of the disease. This blog will continue to monitor events related to this remarkable story. That is what freedom of information and responsible use of it dictate, and it is also what social justice advocacy is all about. Those wishing to see the new petition on Change.org can access it here. Over 1500 have signed as of early December 22.
December 22, 2011 Posted by unfinishedlives | Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), harassment, HIV/AIDS, Michigan, Social Justice Advocacy | Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Change.org, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Great Expressions Dental Centers, harassment, HIV/AIDS, Michigan, POZ Magazine, Social Justice Advocacy | Comments Off on Company Rattles Spears, But HIV Discrimination Story Stands, Corroborated by News Reports
HIV+ Employee Sprayed with Lysol, Ordered Not to Touch Doorknobs, Then Fired
Photo via Passport Magazine
Detroit, Michigan – In the worst case of job-related discrimination his lawyers have ever seen, James White got fired for revealing he was HIV+. An office assistant for the Great Expressions Dental Center of Detroit, White revealed his positive status to his supervisor after his diagnosis, with the clear understanding she would keep the information confidential, according to Passport Magazine. His superiors then leaked word of his HIV status to coworkers who harassed him for seven months, spraying him with Lysol disinfectant, wiping down any furniture or office equipment he used, and banning him from touching doorknobs. Management subjected White to sudden scheduling changes, and then wrote him up for tardiness and “unexcused absences” until they believed they had enough to fire him. Dogged by harassment and exhausted by the abuse, White was hospitalized for post traumatic stress disorder. While he was in the hospital, Great Expressions called to inform him not to return to work.
White appealed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which tried to mediate between White and Great Expressions. The Detroit chapter of the EEOC ruled in White’s favor earlier this year, finding that there was “reasonable cause” to believe White was discriminated against because of his HIV+ status. The dental firm refused any settlement with White, and the EEOC cleared him to sue his former employer for gross discrimination and violating the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The Body, an HIV-related blog, writes: “In 2011, particularly in an urban environment, absolutely no one has any excuse for being unaware of the ways in which HIV is transmitted. Anyone that has ever had even rudimentary sexual health education knows that HIV is not spread by casual contact, including touch. And an employer has a moral and LEGAL obligation to protect its employees from discrimination, particularly vulnerable populations.”
White’s lawyers have filed a lawsuit demanding compensatory and punitive damages of $140,000 and $45,000, respectively, and requiring the company to post notice of the agreement as well as providing training on HIV/AIDS and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Change.org has posted a petition protesting the action of Great Expressions and demanding their apology to White, which is accessible here. There are over 25,500 signatures as of December 20. Great Expressions operates clinics in Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, Connecticut, Virginia and Massachusetts.
December 20, 2011 Posted by unfinishedlives | Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Employment discrimination, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), harassment, HIV/AIDS, Michigan, Protests and Demonstrations, Social Justice Advocacy | Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Employment discrimination, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Great Expressions Dental Centers, harassment, HIV/AIDS, Michigan, Protests and Demonstrations, Social Justice Advocacy | Comments Off on HIV+ Employee Sprayed with Lysol, Ordered Not to Touch Doorknobs, Then Fired
Dallasite Michael Parish Honored Nationally for Fighting HIV/AIDS
Michael Parish, Outreach Coordinator for the Resource Center of Dallas
Dallas, Texas – Michael Parish, 24, has been recognized by the widely-read LGBTQ blog Queerty for his advocacy in combatting HIV and AIDS. The post, “Born into the Epidemic: Five People Under 30 Who are Fighting HIV/AIDS,” honors Parish for his work in North Texas as Outreach Co-Ordinator for the Resource Center of Dallas, one of the nation’s largest full-service centers for LGBTQ people. A native of Waco, Parish served as a volunteer for four years at the Center until he was hired in 2010 to educate on HIV prevention and safer sex practices, as well as offer STD screenings on the weekends.
Parish says that the greatest obstacle LGBTQ people have to face in the struggle with AIDS is giving up. He said to Queerty, “LGBT people . . . ‘throw in the towel’ when it comes to fighting HIV. They’ve been made to believe that they specifically are ‘destined’ to contract HIV. But if you remove ‘LGBT’ and insert another category of people and say the same thing, you would see the sheer ludicrousness of such a belief. [Fighting that sense of inevitability] is the biggest challenge.”
Commending the choice of Parish for this select honor, Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, Director of the Unfinished Lives Project, said, “Michael is a sign of hope among all LGBTQ people, and for 20-somethings in particular. The struggle against this unrelenting disease needs renewed support at this time, when members of the LGBTQ community seem to believe they are either immune to HIV/AIDS, or falsely assume that if they contract the virus, drugs will simply take care of its effects. Michael and the rest of the staff of the Resource Center of Dallas know there is only one way to effectively fight back, and that is through education, early testing, and safer sex. Well done, Queerty and Michael Parish!”
The other four commendatoris are: Jaszi Johnathan Alejandro, 25, Community Health Specialist from New York, NY; Greg Zhovreboff, 28, Community Organizer from San Francisco, CA; Julian Dormitzer, 23, Clinical Research Nurse hailing from Boston, MA; and Brant Miller, 25, HIV Program Associate in Washington, DC. On this World AIDS Day and every day, the Unfinished Lives Project Team congratulates them all, and the many other unsung heroes in the fight against HIV/AIDS they represent.
November 30, 2011 Posted by unfinishedlives | African Americans, gay men, GLBTQ, HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ, Queerty.com, Resource Center of Dallas, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas, World AIDS Day | African Americans, gay men, GLBTQ, HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ, Queerty.com, Resource Center of Dallas, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas, World AIDS Day | 7 Comments
Gay Cowboy Stoned To Death in Apparent Revenge Killing
Jason "Cowboy" Huggins, from his Facebook page
San Diego, California – On June 22, a wounded 31-year-old gay man struggled out of a gorge near the 1300 block of Washington Street, San Diego, and flagged down a passing motorist. He managed to tell the driver that he had been attacked with blows to his head from a rock before he fell unconscious from his injuries. Police and paramedics responded, and Jason “Cowboy” Huggins was rushed to the Mercy Hospital trauma center where his condition deteriorated rapidly. Huggins, a well-liked member of the San Diego LGBTQ community, fell into a coma, and two weeks later, on July 6, died from massive injuries to his head and brain from blunt force trauma. He had been literally stoned to death. 10News.com reported that police arrested Joshua James Larson, 37, two days after the stoning, and charged him with the Huggins attack and a second assault charge in another case. He is being held on $1 million for the crimes, and could serve from 33 years to life in prison if found guilty of the charges. Investigative reporting uncovered that Huggins had testified against Larson two years prior to the attack, alleging that Larson was guilty of drug possession and grand larceny. Though police have not issued a motive in the killing, and have not labeled the case a hate crime, revenge is suspected to be the motive. Was the murderous attack motivated by anti-LGBTQ phobia? The facts seem unclear about whether and to what extent that may have been a contributing factor. The nature of the attack, however, a prehistoric homicide with biblical overtones, caught the attention of the press. Even though sexual orientation has not been identified by the police as an aggravating factor in the murder of “Cowboy” Huggins, the San Diego LGBTQ community has rallied to his memory, and have raised money to help his relatives come to his funeral all the way from his native home in Clarksville, Tennessee, according to the San Diego Gay & Lesbian News. Huggins, who was easy to spot in the LGBTQ scene, was over 6 feet tall, and wore a cowboy hat, jeans, western shirt, boots, and a large, rodeo-style belt buckle. In his Google Profile, he wrote, “I am a true cowboy from TN now living in sunny San Diego, CA. I am gay and have HIV too. Came out of the closet to all my redneck friends back in TN and was accepted because I am still a great friend that never overstepped my boundries.” The New Civil Rights Movement notes that friends and family in his hometown of Clarksville knew about his sexual orientation and loved him very much. “We remember him being a kid with no aggressiveness in him at all,” Jennifer Sanders, Huggins’ aunt, said. “He was a fun-loving, joking-type of person, a very good kid. I call him a ‘kid’ because he was like my third child. We still can’t believe that it happened. It’s still a shock. He was only 31 years old. He’s going to be well missed by all of his friends out there in San Diego and his family.” Faithful friends stood vigil for Cowboy Huggins from June 22 until his funeral day. So, Jason Baron Huggins was committed to his eternal rest on July 11 at Hillcrest in San Diego, attended by his family, friends, and a loyal LGBTQ community who loved him. As one commenter on the Facebook event page wrote for all the world to see, “Rest in peace, Cowboy.”
July 17, 2011 Posted by unfinishedlives | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Bludgeoning, California, funerals, gay bashing, gay men, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, HIV/AIDS, Law and Order, LGBTQ, Media Issues, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Social Justice Advocacy, Tennessee, Vigils | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Bludgeoning, California, funerals, gay men, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, HIV/AIDS, Law and Order, LGBTQ, Media Issues, perpetrators, Social Justice Advocacy, Tennessee, Vigils | 2 Comments
President Obama Officially Proclaims June 2011 “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month”
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2011
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
The story of America’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community is the story of our fathers and sons, our mothers and daughters, and our friends and neighbors who continue the task of making our country a more perfect Union. It is a story about the struggle to realize the great American promise that all people can live with dignity and fairness under the law. Each June, we commemorate the courageous individuals who have fought to achieve this promise for LGBT Americans, and we rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Since taking office, my Administration has made significant progress towards achieving equality for LGBT Americans. Last December, I was proud to sign the repeal of the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. With this repeal, gay and lesbian Americans will be able to serve openly in our Armed Forces for the first time in our Nation’s history. Our national security will be strengthened and the heroic contributions these Americans make to our military, and have made throughout our history, will be fully recognized.
My Administration has also taken steps to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans in Federal housing programs and to give LGBT Americans the right to visit their loved ones in the hospital. We have made clear through executive branch nondiscrimination policies that discrimination on the basis of gender identity in the Federal workplace will not be tolerated. I have continued to nominate and appoint highly qualified, openly LGBT individuals to executive branch and judicial positions. Because we recognize that LGBT rights are human rights, my Administration stands with advocates of equality around the world in leading the fight against pernicious laws targeting LGBT persons and malicious attempts to exclude LGBT organizations from full participation in the international system. We led a global campaign to ensure “sexual orientation” was included in the United Nations resolution on extrajudicial execution — the only United Nations resolution that specifically mentions LGBT people — to send the unequivocal message that no matter where it occurs, state-sanctioned killing of gays and lesbians is indefensible. No one should be harmed because of who they are or who they love, and my Administration has mobilized unprecedented public commitments from countries around the world to join in the fight against hate and homophobia.
At home, we are working to address and eliminate violence against LGBT individuals through our enforcement and implementation of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. We are also working to reduce the threat of bullying against young people, including LGBT youth. My Administration is actively engaged with educators and community leaders across America to reduce violence and discrimination in schools. To help dispel the myth that bullying is a harmless or inevitable part of growing up, the First Lady and I hosted the first White House Conference on Bullying Prevention in March. Many senior Administration officials have also joined me in reaching out to LGBT youth who have been bullied by recording “It Gets Better” video messages to assure them they are not alone.
This month also marks the 30th anniversary of the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has had a profound impact on the LGBT community. Though we have made strides in combating this devastating disease, more work remains to be done, and I am committed to expanding access to HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Last year, I announced the first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States. This strategy focuses on combinations of evidence-based approaches to decrease new HIV infections in high risk communities, improve care for people living with HIV/AIDS, and reduce health disparities. My Administration also increased domestic HIV/AIDS funding to support the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and HIV prevention, and to invest in HIV/AIDS-related research. However, government cannot take on this disease alone. This landmark anniversary is an opportunity for the LGBT community and allies to recommit to raising awareness about HIV/AIDS and continuing the fight against this deadly pandemic.
Every generation of Americans has brought our Nation closer to fulfilling its promise of equality. While progress has taken time, our achievements in advancing the rights of LGBT Americans remind us that history is on our side, and that the American people will never stop striving toward liberty and justice for all.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2011 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fifth.
June 1, 2011 Posted by unfinishedlives | African Americans, Anglo Americans, Asian Americans, Bisexual persons, Bullying in schools, Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), gay men, Gay Pride Month, gay teens, gender identity/expression, Gender Variant Youth, GLBTQ, hate crimes prevention, HIV/AIDS, Housing Discrimination, It Gets Better Project (IGBP), Latino and Latina Americans, Legislation, Lesbian women, LGBT teen suicide prevention, LGBTQ, LGBTQ suicide, Matthew Shepard Act, Native Americans, President Barack Obama, Presidential Proclamation, Repeal of DADT, transgender persons, Washington, D.C. | African Americans, Anglo Americans, Asian Americans, Bisexual people, Bullying in schools, Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), gay men, Gay Pride Month, gay teens, Gender Variant Youth, GLBTQ, hate crimes prevention, HIV/AIDS, Housing Discrimination, It Gets Better Project (IGBP), Latino / Latina Americans, Lesbians, LGBTQ, LGBTQ teen suicide, Matthew Shepard Act, Native Americans, Politics, President Barack Obama, Presidential Proclamation, Repeal of DADT, transgender people, Washington D.C. | Comments Off on President Obama Officially Proclaims June 2011 “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month”
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Dear Yankees Fans, April Is More Important Than You May Think
By Mark Piersanti April 21, 2018 April 21, 2018
Leave a Comment on Dear Yankees Fans, April Is More Important Than You May Think
The Yankees are off to a slow start to begin the 2018 season after having monumental expectations in the offseason, but is it now time to start worrying?
The coldest month of the baseball regular season.
The month with the lowest attendance across each ballpark.
The month where the NBA and NHL playoffs are taking shape.
Baseball in April isn’t important yet, right? Wrong.
While no team has won the World Series in the month of April, many teams have lost the World Series in the month of April.
What do the last 14 World Series Championship teams all have in common? All of them had an above .500 record when the month of April concluded. You would have to go all the way back to the 2003 Season when the “Florida” Marlins finished under .500 in April and yet won the World Series vs your New York Yankees.
Want more supporting evidence? The last time the Yankees finished April with a losing record was in 2016. That team failed to make the postseason. Before that, you have to go back to the 2008 season, when the Yankees came out of April with a 14-15 record. They also failed to reach the postseason that season.
While I initially felt that Yankees fans needed to take one big deep breath, I now believe there is some reason to be alarmed on April 21.
After all, teams that perform well in the month of April, make it easier on themselves the rest of the way.
The Red Sox, now 17-2, can play .500 baseball the rest of the way and finish with around 95 wins, which could be good enough to win the AL East.
At 9-9, the Yankees have just 10 games remaining in the month of April, eight of which will be played in the Bronx. I’d say let’s win all 10, but let’s at least take six games and move on to May.
Yes, it’s “only April”, but these games count the same as if it were July or September. And with the ultimate goal of being World Series Champions, let’s hope these Yankees come out of April with a winning record.
Tags: Featured Yankees
Published by Mark Piersanti
View all posts by Mark Piersanti
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Next Entry Yankees Break Through, Defeat Blue Jays 9-1 (Highlights)
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Tourist figures rebound in July
Local and foreign travellers play at the Yang Bay Waterfall in the central province of Khanh Hoa. More than 593,000 international visitors arrived in Viet Nam in July, a rise of 5.1 per cent year-on-year. — VNA/VNS Photo Tran Le Lam
HA NOI (VNS) — More than 593,000 international visitors arrived in Viet Nam in July, a rise of 5.1 per cent year-on-year and 12.1 per cent month-on-month, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).
Despite this month's positive figure, the number of foreign holidaymakers still dropped 9.4 per cent to an estimated 4.39 million in the first seven months of the year, GSO said.
During the review period, visitors from Cambodia fell by 43.9 per cent. This was followed by Laos with 36.1 per cent; Thailand (31.2 per cent); mainland China (24.4 per cent) and Hong Kong (14.7 per cent).
A higher number of tourists arrived from South Korea (up 35.5 per cent); Finland (15.8 per cent); Singapore (13.4 per cent); Spain (6.4 per cent) and Italy (5.7 per cent).
The Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism has granted visa exemptions for travellers from Belarus and five western European countries of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain since this month.
According to VNAT Director Nguyen Van Tuan, Belarus citizens are offered visa-free entry for five years and travellers from the other European countries are given exemptions for one year.
Tuan said that annually, some 700,000 western Europe nationals visited Viet Nam.
The figures were short of the potential, Tuan said, adding that the visa exemption was expected to lure more tourists from the countries to Viet Nam.
The administration is hoping these moves will attract an extra 1.1 million arrivals from five western European countries in the next three years, up 50 per cent from 2015. — VNS
Mekong agricultural development project launched (July, 17 2019)
Rubber exports in June increased strongly
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The Uptown Community Mural at the Bakery created by Jonathan Hart features a vibrant display of life, reflecting modern times while still honoring Uptown's historical past
The Uptown Community Mural at the Bake Shop features a vibrant display of life, reflecting modern times while still honoring Uptown's historical past. The artist's home is less than three miles from the site, so Hart was invested in making this project an outstanding example of the community in Uptown.
I was inspired by the balancing act of urban renewal, between the growing momentum of Uptown development and the importance of preserving the neighborhood’s local history and identity.
— Jonathan Hart
Hart was inspired by the balancing act of urban renewal, between the growing momentum of Uptown development and the importance of preserving the neighborhood's local history and identity. He included multiple symbols specific to Uptown and the site. For example, swathes of Herringbone pavement repeat throughout the design, honoring the original 30 block layout of Greenlaw herringbone brick sidewalks. Sycamore leaves represent the original trees that lined the streets of Chelsea (now Uptown) in the 19th century. Some still stand today, as a symbol of perseverance in a neighborhood with a difficult and complex past. Bicycle wheels and other circular shapes symbolize the neighborhood's forward momentum and aspirations as a healthy, eco- friendly place to live. Finally, bialy rolls are included, which are small rolls traditional in Poland. The Rosenbergs (the longtime operators of the bakery) were originally from Poland, so it is likely that bialys would have been made around the time the business was owned by the Rosenberg family. The overall image is a dynamic and inviting balance of color, abstract shape and representation.
Jonathan Hart
Jonathan Hart is an art instructor and professional artist from Memphis, TN. He has been involved in public artwork and community outreach projects since 2004. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Memphis College Art, where he teaches Foundations Drawing and Advanced Placement for high school students.
tags: uptown , city , Mural , painting , johnathan hart
categories: Complete
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In Performance at The White House
A Celebration of American Creativity: Audra McDonald
Preview: Season 2016 Episode 1 | 4m 50s
Season 2016 Episode 1
Corporate funding for the program is provided by American Airlines, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), Norfolk Southern and Comcast NBCUniversal. Foundation support is provided by The Annenberg Foundation. Major funding is also provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and public television viewers.
What Work of Art Has Most Influenced Your Life?
Watch Esperanza Spalding, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Keb' Mo', MC Lyte, and Trombone Short.
Preview: S2016 Ep1 | 3m 15s
Why the Arts Matter
Watch Esperanza Spalding, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Keb' Mo', MC Lyte, and Trombone Shorty.
What Does American Creativity Mean to You?
See Esperanza Spalding, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Keb' Mo', MC Lyte, and Trombone Shorty.
Esperanza Spalding: Behind the Scenes Performance
Official White House video: behind the scenes with Esperanza Spalding.
Trombone Shorty
Trombone Shorty performs at "A Celebration of American Creativity" at the White House.
Brian Stokes Mitchell and Audra McDonald
Brian Stokes Mitchell and Audra McDonald perform for A Celebration of American Creativity.
Esperanza Spalding: Interview and Performance Clip
Watch a performance clip and exclusive interview with Esperanza Spalding.
Smithsonian Salutes Ray Charles
Watch a celebration of the legacy of Ray Charles at the White House.
S2016 Ep2 | 56m 46s
A Celebration of American Creativity
President and Mrs. Obama host an all-star tribute to art and literature in America.
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Keyword analysis. From nomination, further identify a targeted list of keywords and phrases. Review competitive lists and other pertinent industry sources. Use your preliminary list to determine an indicative number of recent search engine queries and how many websites are competing for each keyword. Prioritize keywords and phrases, plurals, singulars and misspellings. (If search users commonly misspell a keyword, you should identify and use it). Please note that Google will try to correct the term when searching, so use this with care.
SEO.com is a certified Google Partner, which means the search engine has certified our knowledge and experience of Google applications and tools. In addition, we have access to specialized Google training and products, and a dedicated Google representative. Whether you are in ecommerce, technology, retail, dentistry, or B2B, you will benefit working with SEO.com.
PageRank is one of many, many factors used to produce search rankings. Highlighting PageRank in search results doesn’t help the searcher. That’s because Google uses another system to show the most important pages for a particular search you do. It lists them in order of importance for what you searched on. Adding PageRank scores to search results would just confuse people. They’d wonder why pages with lower scores were outranking higher scored pages.
Create, develop and enhance your relationships with influencers, bloggers, consultants, and editors. In every industry, you should already know that there are a number of reputable figures that people listen to and trust. Take advantage to develop relationships with them, because they’ll be able to enhance distribution of your content, and include quality backlinks to your blog.
Pagerank has recently been used to quantify the scientific impact of researchers. The underlying citation and collaboration networks are used in conjunction with pagerank algorithm in order to come up with a ranking system for individual publications which propagates to individual authors. The new index known as pagerank-index (Pi) is demonstrated to be fairer compared to h-index in the context of many drawbacks exhibited by h-index.[61]
Selecting the best keywords requires research. You can start by brainstorming any terms or phrases related to your brand, products or services, and what users would likely type into the search bar when searching for what you offer. Beyond that, there are plenty of tools to help you research, one of the best being Google Keyword Planner. Remember to include long tail keywords (longer search phrases) as they can more accurately target your niche.
While working at a Fortune 100 company for nine years before moving to lead my current team, I became fascinated by customer behavior. What kinds of digital offerings most deeply engage customers in their digital lives? I started by looking at some case studies of the products, services, communications and experiences that had been embraced and adopted by customers during the first two decades of the internet. Over a period of seven years working on inbound marketing campaigns, what I found was a recurring pattern of three behaviors that drove the adoption of new digital experiences, which I call the three core behaviors of a network:
Notice that the description of the game is suspiciously similar to copy written by a marketing department. “Mario’s off on his biggest adventure ever, and this time he has brought a friend.” That is not the language that searchers write queries in, and it is not the type of message that is likely to answer a searcher's query. Compare this to the first sentence of the Wikipedia example: “Super Mario World is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo as a pack–in launch title for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.”. In the poorly optimized example, all that is established by the first sentence is that someone or something called Mario is on an adventure that is bigger than his or her previous adventure (how do you quantify that?) and he or she is accompanied by an unnamed friend.
By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. This meant moving away from heavy reliance on term density to a more holistic process for scoring semantic signals.[13] Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, poor quality or irrelevant search results could lead users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web was created to bring together practitioners and researchers concerned with search engine optimization and related topics.[14]
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