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Aachen – Germany
Coyoacan – Mexico
Reims – France
San Miguel – El Salvador
Ivano-Frankivsk – Ukraine
News from ASCA
Interview: Jay Fisette communications 2016-10-19T12:29:53+00:00
Jay Fisette: CYCLING AND RECYCLING: AN ADVOCATE FOR GLOBAL LEARNING
WHEN: 9 July 2014
WHERE: Lac-de-Madine, France
INTERVIEWER: Carl Lankowski
Q: It is still raining here in Lac-de-Madine, some 50 Km northeast of Nancy, capital of theFrench département of Meurthe-et-Moselle and formerly the seat of the Duke of Lorraine. Together with most of the 38 participants of SISTERBIKE XIV, today—thanks to detours—we actually covered some 60+ Km from Place Stanislas in Nancy through persistent rain, a steady headwind, and temperatures in the low 50s Fahrenheit. It is day five of an adventure that started in Aachen, Germany, and followed the Vennbahn cycling path through Belgium and Luxembourg before entering France. We plan to cover around 500 Km by the time we reach the French Champagne capital of Reims on July 13th.
Spirits of the group are higher than one might expect after four days of rain and with today’s ride feeling more like an Outward Bound challenge-program, perhaps because the riders from Arlington and Aachen enjoy and look forward to the camaraderie borne of friendships developed over many years or newly formed on this trip.
Jay Fisette came through today’s ordeal in great form, at the head of the pack. And my first question to you has to be: what made you sign up for this excursion?
JF: Ya know, I have done a lot of cycling in my life—bike tours, bicycle vacations—and I find it a great way to see the countryside and explore. This week’s sister city tour is the fourth one I’ve taken. It’s a wonderful way to combine several of my interests.
Q: How did you become interested in cycling?
JF: In 1981, I left the States and went to Europe with my new bike, new panniers, new tent and new sleeping bag and one friend. We bicycled from London to Greece over three months. If you ask me how I came up with the idea of doing it on a bicycle, I cannot tell you where that came from. There is no bicycling in my family. I didn’t have a good friend who had done it. I can’t tell you how that mode of travel entered my mind. But it did. I had never before bicycled with the full gear on the bike until I landed in London and loaded up. Everything I needed or used for a full year was with me on my bicycle. I do remember bicycling out of the airport at Heathrow, and the closest call I had in the whole three months—to being killed—was because I was riding on the right-hand side of the street into the first round-about. I started to go to my right, straight on into a car, forgetting of course that cars and bikes drove on the left-hand side of the street in that particular country. I didn’t have another close call the rest of the three months.
Q: That sounds like it may have been a decisive break in your life.
JF: You look back on your life—I’m 58 now—and there is no doubt that it was the most interesting, most memorable, the most formative year of my life. The first three months on a bicycle, then living in Paris, then travelling throughout France, throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Communist East Germany and Czechoslovakia. I lived overseas for a year on $7,000. I kept diaries, as I see you do. In that period I wrote a lot, thought a lot, read a lot. I went to the Pompidou Center in Paris and spent a lot of time reading, something I don’t have time to do now. I gave a lot of thought to what was important in life. And it exposed me in a fundamental way to different cultures and the breadth of the world. I was able to experience a broad range of people, politics, and religions…something that, when you are born in the United States and if you don’t leave the United States, it’s very hard to understand.
Q: I have heard you interact with the local population in French. Where did you learn the language?
JF: I am not fluent. I can’t really engage with someone speaking normal French. That said, I certainly can survive in France and get by. My vocabulary is OK. I never had language education—a little Spanish, but never using it practicably. I never really studied French before coming over here. So I studied it at the audio-visual lab on my own at the Pompidou Center. I was self-taught. I picked up what I picked up through people I met here. But you do learn to survive. I have a gorgeous Parisian accent, but the vocabulary, while good for surviving, is not good for having a real conversation.
Q: Sounds great to me! Let’s talk about your origins—where you were born, where your parents came from, how they got to be where they are.
JF: Sure. I was born in Manhattan. Until age 8, I was in New York—Manhattan or Long Island. Then my dad was transferred to Pittsburgh, so I grew up in the Pittsburgh suburbs. It had been farmland not long before, then turned into cul-de-sac neighborhoods with no trees. I planted many of the trees myself.
After growing up in the Pittsburgh suburbs, I attended Bucknell University as an undergraduate and then attended the University of Pittsburgh as a graduate student in public policy and international affairs. So actually, the year overseas was pretty fundamental in opening my eyes and interesting me in broader cultural and political issues.
Q: Was that a break year from Bucknell?
JF: No, when I was at Bucknell I never travelled overseas. I was pinned down, involved in competitive swimming and water polo programs and they were year-round. Certainly, I could have taken a year off, but at that time of my life sports and those teams were sort of my identity and my passion, so I never really gave serious thought to doing a semester abroad. In retrospect, I would recommend it to anybody. What I ended up doing after college was going to graduate school for a year at Pitt, getting a free education, because I was offered the varsity water polo coaching job. I had put in my papers to go into the Peace Corps in West Africa, was waiting to be assigned, when I got a call out of the blue from the aquatics director at Pitt offering me that position at the age of 22. It meant a free graduate degree and so I took it. I never ended up going into the Peace Corps; I ended up at Pitt instead. What then happened is that after the first year at Pitt, Title IX took effect, mandating women’s equality in sports. In order to comply with the new legislation, most of the big universities like Pitt added some women’s sports and also eliminated a number of the minor men’s sports. When water polo was eliminated as a varsity sport, I was on my own.
That is when I took three years off before finishing my graduate degree. The first year and a half, beginning in early 1980, I spent in California on my pilgrimage. I came out as a gay man. I used that time off to go to San Francisco to discover who I was in that regard. I came out, have been openly gay ever since and very comfortable…
Q: Were you in San Francisco when Harvey Milk was killed?
JF: Harvey Milk had been killed the year before I went out – both Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. So it was a very acute political time in terms of civil rights and human rights for the gay and lesbian community. There was a lot of angst. I didn’t feel that personally. I experienced the period as personal liberation and discovery and acceptance of who I was. But my image and my world was certainly colored by the events in San Francisco before I got there. It was then that I took the year in Europe cycling and living in Paris. When I ran out of money and decided to come back from Paris – the big question was whether I would return to the west coast, or to the east coast. I decided to go to the east coast and finished my graduate degree.
Q: That must have been around 1984…
JF: I finished in 1983. I returned from Europe in the summer of ’82 and finished my graduate degree some 10 months later. I then decided to move to the Washington DC metropolitan area. I intended to live in the city.
Q: Your degree was in international affairs and public policy.
JF: That’s right—a mix, really, with economics and arms control. My Bucknell degree was in public policy, but I had a real interest in international affairs.
Q: You applied to the Peace Corps for Africa. Why Africa?
JF: I had a particular course or two at Bucknell, very intense with a very good professor, who became my advisor and with him we studied the emerging world powers, countries like Brazil and Nigeria. Nigeria was large in population and resource rich and therefore seen as a continental power. That was the country I chose to study more in depth. I had a pretty good knowledge of the tribal issues, the colonial issues, so that was the place I identified in Africa that I would like to go and do my Peace Corps work. I went through all the interviews and filled out all the forms and was just at home after graduating from college, killing time, doing some work to earn some money and waiting to be told where I would be assigned in Africa, when I got the phone call from the aquatics director at Pitt.
Q: When you arrived in Washington, where did you live at first?
JF: I looked at the city—I had every expectation I was moving to Washington, D.C. I knew no one in the DC area, except for a casual graduate school friend who offered a little advice and put me up for a while. I focused my search on Adams Morgan: it was a little bohemian, an interesting mix of people. But after looking at a bunch of apartments, I couldn’t find anything I either liked or could afford. And then a woman who was a class mate of mine at Pitt, who happened to be moving to Washington at the same time, told me that she had found an apartment in the River House complex in Arlington County, Virginia. I knew nothing about Arlington. But I went over and looked at the complex and they had an apartment that was spacious, two bedrooms, it was comfortable, the new Metro was opening across the field, so I took it and moved in with a room-mate who had been on the water polo team with me at Bucknell. I was in that apartment for more than four years.
Q: From your background it seems likely that you were looking for perhaps something in international relations, but it is clear that you went in another direction.
JF: Having just finished graduate school and arriving in DC, I got a job in the U.S. General Accounting Office, now called the Government Accountability Office (GAO). I was offered an entry-level job as an investigator/auditor, not in international affairs, but in human services. I did that for a year after which I transferred into the national security and international affairs division. I started doing work on international trade. The three agencies I was most connected to were the State Department, the Commerce Department, and the Defense Department. But the life of an auditor was not for me. It is important work, but working in that bureaucracy was not something for which I could muster any passion. It was stultifying for me. You know, you go into files and spend all day in filing cabinets, then interviewing people, taking notes, and needing three sources for anything I put in a report. In those circumstances there is very little room for creativity and innovation. It was not conducive to my personality. I was not a happy puppy.
Finally, after three or four years, I figured out a way to get a detail over to Capitol Hill. GAO ultimately worked for Congress, so there were times you could arrange to be asked to come over and work in Congress on issues. So that’s what I did for my last year and a half as a GAO employee, detailed to Congress where I was assigned to the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee chaired by Senator Ted Kennedy.
Q: Was there anyone at GAO who was particularly instrumental in facilitating the move?
JF: Alan Mendelowitz, the Director of GAO’s national security and international affairs division, played an important role. I believe he realized that it would be good for me to go to a new place and have that experience, and so he let me leave his supervision. And it did change my life, because I found Capitol Hill much more vibrant, much more engaging, a much more exciting place to work. It starting giving me some sense of possibilities and hope that I could find something that really made me happy. I always believed that you should follow your passion. It’s not always easy to get in touch with it and it’s not always easy to figure out practically how to make that work, but the more often people can identify what they enjoy doing, what gives them energy, your bliss, as has been said, the more likely you are to enjoy your work day.
Q: So, you were working on AIDS on the Hill. That was a critical period in defining public policy on AIDS, was it not?
JF: It was huge. There were many public policy issues related to HIV and AIDS, as well as social, moral, ethical and financial/budget issues. It remains a fascinating area of public policy. For me it was a time in history when so much was going on. This was right in the midst of all the ACT-UP agitation. They were protesting and picketing at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the pharmaceutical companies, arguing against the protocols used in drug testing. Some people got the medication and some got a sugar pill. They really pushed and changed the system in many significant ways to be much more efficient and faster and also challenged the rules and regulations of existing protocols in the whole research area for pharmaceutical Senator Kennedy was a leader and working for him ensured amazing access. Anytime you needed to interview anyone, doors opened.
Q: A question about your developing sense of how the U.S. Government works, how policy worked at that time. The social movement, ACT-UP is a presence. This is a field in which you have an interest. In the end government work sounds like a positive experience for you.
JF: Being on Capitol Hill, doing my small part, I was able to contrast working in an agency, versus working on the Hill. I found the Hill more appealing. On the other hand, the agencies—every one of them – did important work and someone has to do that work. It was an interesting exposure to all different forms and aspects of policy-making and the role of government. After all, that is what I spent a lot of time studying.
Q: How did you get from there to your engagement with local government?
JF: While I was working at the GAO, around 1987, I started doing volunteer work at Whitman-Walker Clinic – one of the largest community-based HIV/AIDS organizations in the country. It started as a gay men’s VD clinic in Georgetown and later expanded to deal with AIDS. I did peer counseling for gay men, a lot around the issue of coming out. It was a local effort. I derived great satisfaction from that work. I got onto the board of the organization. After the Hill assignment came to an end and I declined to go back to the GAO, I was offered the job of running the northern Virginia office of the Whitman-Walker Clinic. The lesson for me was to follow my passion. My volunteer interests evolved into my next job. I often recommend volunteering for something you care about as a serious option for folks trying to find a job. It worked for me. So I ended up running the Whitman-Walker office, growing it from about 6 people to 25 employees. I managed the office and the budget, hired and fired, did the public relations, and the regional coordination. I had never been a manager before, but developed all these skills and enjoyed it tremendously. I enjoyed running an organization.
Now, through the work at Whitman-Walker, I had to advocate for funds from Arlington County, Fairfax County, and the City of Alexandria. I got to know some of the elected officials in Arlington and that got me thinking in other ways as well.
Q: What years were those? When did you make the jump to becoming an elected official?
JF: I was on staff at Whitman-Walker from 1990-1998. I first heard about a possible opening on the County Board in late 1992 when Bill Newman was appointed to a judgeship on the Circuit Court. I had gotten to know several board members—Al Eisenberg, Ellen Bozman, Mary Margaret Whipple and John Milliken. Meanwhile, Bob and I had bought a home in 1987. When you own a home, you get to know your community a little more deeply and often get more invested. While I had long been interested in public policy, I had never given serious thought to running for office – because I was gay. That was the main reason. Having read about HarveyMilk, I had gained a great respect for having a seat at the table, and the value of being open as a gay person in all walks of life. But I never thought elected office was feasible. You just sort of write it off. It isn’t going to happen, so you don’t waste time thinking about it. Yet, after living in a home in Arlington and working at Whitman-Walker, and getting to know the leadership of the community—the idea of running for office did surface. I now knew a large circle of people, growing dramatically from the point at which I moved to the area and knew no one, zero. The County Board was stable; there were not very many openings; so it remained a thought in the back of my mind, though I did reveal my thinking to Bob. I had done some research about how many people voted, so that when Bill Newman announced he was leaving and I knew there would be a vacancy, I talked more openly about it. Bob and I decided we would invite six or eight people over who were active in the Arlington community to test the waters and see if this were viable, whether it was something people could get behind. We were prepared to hear that it was a crazy idea.
Q: What year was this?
JF: It was 1993. People did not think we were crazy. We had a little anxiety about being public, with our phone number listed and all that. As it turned out, having decided to run in that Democratic primary, there were only one or two nasty, hateful phone calls to our home, but it was an incredibly positive experience and a very positive reflection of the Arlington community. Many people saw this in their way as breaking through a barrier, as a step forward. Having some connection to your community when you run for office is highly valued in Arlington. My connections were through Whitman-Walker, people in the human service field, neighbors and the LGBT community. I had no political connection, however, except for knowing a few County Board members as I had asked them for money and had tried to introduce them to the work of Whitman-Walker. I had no endorsements from elected officials when I ran and I was running against the chair of the school board, Darlene Mickey, Charles Monroe, whose mother was the first African-American on the school board and whose father was an African-American judge, and Chris Zimmerman, who had worked for a Virginia Delegate and had all sorts of elected officials endorse him. I had never been to a Democratic Committee meeting until the month before I became the party’s nominee. I won that primary pretty handily, which I really think is a tribute to Arlington, honestly, because I was not known in the political world at all. I had not done any volunteer work for the Arlington Democratic Party – yet the party treated me as an equal; they gave me equal access; they treated everyone fairly and they continue to warmly embrace anyone stepping forward to take the risk of running for office. I don’t think that is common and I don’t think it is to be presumed. Twenty plus years later, if you are serious and thoughtful and you have good intentions, it does not matter where you come from, you will be treated equally by the Democratic party. That’s my experience. Now, you may or may not win, but no one will dismiss you. They will give you an opportunity to prove yourself. So I did win that primary and then I ended up losing in the special election to the Republican/Independent who was running against me. It was about 49.4% to 50.3% of the vote, very close, but I did lose. I chose to run four years later, when Ellen Bozman retired, and did win that race.
Q: Have there been many Republican victors since then?
JF: There have been two: Mike Lane beat Charles Monroe in a special election back around 1999 or 2000, and then just this past April, John Vihstadt won. It has always been in a special election, not a normal November election when the turnout is higher. The three times a Republican/Independent has won has been in a special, off-season election when turnout has been low.
Q: Summarize for us what your agenda and outlook were for your new role in public service as a member of the Arlington County Board.
JF: I was elected in 1997 and started in January 1998. Well, anyone starting on a city council or in our case a county board brings their principles and values, work experience, education and life experience. Your principles and values frame your approach and work ethic. What I have found since starting, and one of the reasons I was attracted to running for office, is that the values of Arlington very much align with my personal values. I don’t know that if I had lived somewhere else that I would have wanted to run for office. But having moved into our home and having become familiar with the community through non-profit work – every time I learned something new about the community it was very consistent with my personal values. Arlington has a reputation for thoughtful/efficient government and an engaged community. There is a high level of customer-service, even if we make mistakes, and we do, even if individuals in the system make mistakes and don’t treat citizens with the care they deserve, corrective action is taken, there is acknowledgement of that. I find the long-term thinking of Arlington very unusual—and I have done a lot of regional work since being elected in the last 16 years. Arlington is regarded very highly by other localities because of the stability and consistency of the vision and because of the creativity and long-term thinking, not just short-term. We don’t have a history of making decisions based on expediency regarding the next election or the budget that month or that year. It’s really with an eye towards sustainability—what’s the best long-term solution or decision that is consistent with the vision of the community. And the vision was articulated and refined back in 2000 or 2001. I am just so proud of Arlington. It certainly works for me—Arlington embodies the values that I hold dear. When I see how much change the community has experienced—the design, the function, the quality of our schools, the infrastructure investment. If people that lived here 30 years ago came back, they wouldn’t recognize Arlington. If they work for the State Department or AID and go overseas for three or four years and then come back, the reaction is “wow!”—just in three or four years. Change is difficult. Part of my job is implementing and overseeing the planning and design for the future. But it’s actually overseeing and managing the implementation of change. Transportation policy has dramatically changed, as we redesigned the community with the onset of Metro. These are transformative things that occurred in Arlington. We have managed our way through enormous amounts of change and have succeeded 90% of the time. People have liked where we have come. We have become better than we were. There is nothing stagnant about Arlington. It’s a very dynamic place. At the same time we have added people, added multi-family homes, office buildings, smart growth and the Metro system, the street-car system down the road, and had never had a local bus system—that’s all new since I have been on the board. We never had a bike-share system. We didn’t have good sidewalks. And all of it works as a package. Nevertheless, despite all this change, we have managed to retain that wonderful connectedness and neighborhood feel that existed when we were a much smaller place—that urban village—the village but also the urban side. I think we still have it to a great degree. So I think Arlington is a fascinating place in which to work. I know that in some places, people in local government are looking for one new building every five years, one project to wrap their arms around, but here we are doing 20, 30 even 50 things at once.
Q: I can validate that from the point of view of a pedestrian walking through Arlington starting on the DC side of the river along the Orange Line corridor. One of the more interesting things I saw was a graffito spray-painted on the side of a bank, since torn down and replaced by a new building. It was in French: les vraisparadissont lesparadis qu’on aperdus, a citation from Marcel Proust. I admit to having been surprised. My first experience in Arlington was in 1969 when I was a student at Georgetown University and visits to Arlington had been to find restaurants to eat cheaply and drink beer. That still happens, though up-market nowadays. I can identify with the “wow” experience you mentioned.
Maybe that provides a segue to the second phase of this conversation—your sister city engagement. How did you discover that Arlington even had sister cities?
JF: So I started on the County Board in 1998. The chairman is determined by the board members themselves. I became chair for the first time in 2001. You still only have one vote as chair. Your unique responsibilities are in setting the agendas for the meetings, facilitating and running the meetings, becoming a spokesperson to the media, and there are certain things that regularly come to the chairman. One of those was sister city affairs. ASCA had existed for some time already and at that time was more directly connected to the county staff. A staff person was assigned to sister city affairs, at least as part of that person’s responsibilities. Trips were organized to visit Aachen with an official delegation. Aachen was the largest and most vibrant of the sister city relationships we had. There was a relationship with Coyoacan, but it was dormant at that time. The folks that support the Aachen-Arlington relationship in Aachen have been strong from the beginning. It is a terrific group of people, many still active from the beginning 20 years ago. I heard about Aachen’s interest that we pursue a relationship with Reims, France. We were beginning to look into it. There had been an initial conversation, but the effort had gone off track. Reims was not particularly interested. That had been attributed to the mayor of Reims. But then there came to be a new mayor. One person who got my attention on this was Hubert Gronen [founding member of Aachen-Arlington and later of the Aachen-Reims sister city relationships—see our interview in the ASCA Online Oral History Archive-CL]. I believe that in hearing about this dynamic—and of course, I am a bit of a Francophile, I really like France—it was appealing to me to think about a sister-city in France. And as we discussed, I like to bicycle. So I threw out the idea of cycling from Aachen to Reims as a demonstration of our interest. I did not put any energy into organizing the ride, but others heard the idea. and it was primarily Hubert who organized the trip. Somehow we pulled together 13 participants from Arlington, and I was one of them, sort of leading this delegation on a kind of pilgrimage from Aachen to Reims in order to express our interest in a relationship, with Aachen represented by Hubert. My clearest memory is Hubert’s persistently articulated advice: we have to create this sister-city triangle. So the thirteen Arlingtonians, joined by Hubert from Aachen, journeyed by bicycle from Aachen to Reims, where we were received in the Hôtel de Ville – the mayor’s office – a grand, beautiful, historic building – showing up in our Spandex, biking right up to the building, walking right in.
Q: That was Mayor Schneiter?
JF: Right! I had to deliver a speech in French, of course. I relied on Hubert’s wonderful assistance. We were welcomed and embraced. We stayed a couple of days in Reims. Fortunately, the Spandex didn’t turn them off. The new mayor, Jean-Louis Schneiter, was very receptive. Within a year or so, they had come to visit us and we signed an agreement with them—on the portico of Arlington House overlooking Arlington National Cemetery. One of the gentlemen on the bike ride, Bernie Chapnick, developed the biking tour idea and took it on as a project and has organized a tour in a different part of Europe every year since. The nice part is that now the participants are a balance of Aachen residents and Arlington residents. It became an opportunity to replenish that intercultural, international connection every year.
Q: The triangle was established in principle. There were certain asymmetries, though. The Reims folks seemed less interested in biking than the Aacheners and Arlingtonians.
JF: Reims has been the destination of a SISTERBIKE at least twice. Most begin and end in other parts of Europe. I was on the first one ending in Reims and I was on the one that started in Reims and ended in Strasbourg. A number of the local (French) cycling folk joined us in Reims, simply to escort us out of town. So it is true that SISTERBIKE has been almost entirely an Aachen-Arlington thing. I think there is a language component to the pattern. The Aacheners generally speak English. Americans and Arlingtonians rarely speak other languages, so our default is English.
Q: We are sitting in Lorraine on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I and we are preparing to cycle to Verdun tomorrow morning, scene of the grimmest carnage in a ten-month battle in 1916 that claimed upwards of 600,000 lives. There is a redemptive connection to the Reims-Aachen-Arlington triangle you just described. The American “doughboy” troops came in 1918 and turned the tide…
JF: ‘Came again in ’44…
Q: Just so. The story of Europe in the second half of the 20th century is completely different than its tragic unfolding in the first half. The transformation is traceable to the relationship between France, Germany, and the United States—France and Germany in reorganizing Europe peacefully beginning in 1950 and the United States in establishing the conditions of existence for Franco-German entente. From the point of view of this student of international relations and European history, I would have expected an even greater sense of organic connectedness in this relationship.
JF: You mean the French in particular.
Q: Right, from the point of view of Arlington, it puzzles me why we have not yet been able to make more of the connection.
JF: You are referring to something broader than the SISTERBIKE experience, I take it.
Q: Yes, I wonder why it has not yet occurred to us to draw more explicitly on this common collective, so to speak trilateral historical experience in animating and shaping ASCA programs.
JF: We could philosophize about it, conjecture about it. There is the historic animosity and competition between Germany and France. We are right here in Lorraine, a region that has gone back and forth between France and Germany for hundreds of years. Britain aside, they are the two leading continental powers. I do think that, for some reason, the French culture…Americans are probably more like the Germans and the language barrier is probably not as significant as it is with the French. You know, I lived there for a while; I consider myself a Francophile; Paris is my favorite city in the world. At the same time, there is a unique character to the French. They are very protective and proud of their culture, of their uniqueness, of their place in the world. This plays out in all sorts of ways. But I think your point about the three being fundamentally important to the stability of the world and the U.S. playing a role as the dominant world power, militarily, economically and otherwise, for a good portion of the last century, is true.
We have had, by and large, terrifically good relationships with France throughout and with Germany after World War II. It is a wonderful connection and it is why our student exchanges are so important. They are very active with Reims—not only Aachen—there is a very strong student exchange. What an incredible opportunity! I wish more of our students took advantage of it. There is more opportunity with Aachen and Reims than is fully realized at the moment. Their students seem to be overflowing in their interest in coming to Arlington. And on our end, it is not quite as robust. There is a healthy contingent, but there are slots for additional students. I think this may be a reflection of America more than Arlington in particular. I have always felt that traveling outside one’s country makes one a better person…and makes the world a better place.
Q: In ASCA board meetings over the past year, discussion has frequently focused on this because it has not been easy to get strong support for the student exchanges from the school board and school administration.
JF: I would offer myself, really. I work with the School Board all the time. They have their role, we have ours, but there is an enormous amount of collaboration and cooperation that has to occur. Half of Arlington’s operating budget goes to the schools. There is such a priority in Arlington on public education. I would be happy to sit down with you to figure out how to better engage the senior people in the administration, the superintendent included, a very good guy, to make sure they understand the opportunity. We have a liaison from the County Board to ASCA, Walter Tejada, and I actually served on the ASCA board myself ten or so years ago for a few years. So I am happy to help out if I can. I would love to have more students take advantage of these programs.
Q: As you mentioned in passing, our European counterparts are always looking for more uptake from us.
JF: It is a great opportunity. I wish I had had such an opportunity in high school and grade school.
Q: Returning to the bigger picture, let me invite you to reflect on your sister-city engagement more broadly.
JF: I would say that the organization is stronger now than I have seen it. It’s always interesting to see how sister-city relationships are managed in other places. As you would expect and as I presume in Europe, there is more of a government role. This is especially true of Reims and to a lesser degree of Aachen. Mayors come to visit bringing big gifts, elaborately packaged, but in Arlington our efforts are non-profit driven, or involve a public-private partnership, relying more on the citizens. Now, I know that in Aachen and Reims they rely on citizens as well. The role of government in Arlington is very lean. We do provide some funding to help you hire someone for coordination tasks, but most of it is going to come from active citizens in the community.
We have five sister cities now. I have not been to Ivano-Frankivsk. I assume that a few people of Ukrainian descent living in Arlington helped make this most recent sister-city success happen. I have heard very nice things about the relationship, the cross-cultural trips. I am not as aware of the student exchanges outside of Reims and Aachen. We have a relationship with San Miguel, El Salvador. The Coyoacan relationship waxes and wanes, turning mostly on the leadership in Mexico. I had met some of the political leaders from Coyoacan as recently as three years ago and liked them enormously. They are a terrific bunch. But then you have the mayor, who left, and sometimes this has to do a lot with the mayor and how much the mayor’s administration supports a sister-city relationship. In Arlington it is less reliant on that, because we don’t have a mayor. Ours is a more confusing system to most everyone else, but we have a system of rotation among five elected county board members, so there is less likelihood that support for sister-city programs will strengthen or weaken depending on the elected political leadership. The corollary is that if anything happens, it must come from the active citizens.
Q: Arlington county probably has a greater percentage of people with graduate degrees and books read per capita than anywhere else on the face of the earth.
JF: And those with international experience—State Department, AID officials are present in great numbers as well as foreign diplomats that have landed or live in our community. The preconditions for successful sister-city relationships are abundantly present.
Q: In that sense, the citizens don’t need to be educated; they already know about the benefits at least in a general sense. It is more a question of time and inclination. In contrast, oddly enough, to Washington DC, which has a dozen sister-city relationships that have almost without exception not been activated and are dormant.
JF: On paper only…
Q: That’s right.
JF: which has not much value. I can understand where they may have ups and downs, based on the strength of citizen involvement, citizens with the time and energy to invest, but simply to have a piece of paper or have a senior elected official show up at a ceremony occasionally is not the value of a sister-city relationship. The real value revolves more than anything around the cultural exchanges, the student exchanges. And it is not only limited to students. Honestly, this is one of the most important aspects. We have had other types of exchanges between us, Aachen and Reims. In particular, we have collaborated in the arts. We have exchanged individuals from our transportation departments. Staff exchanges—I know there is interest on the economic development side. Indeed, you and I met with some of the folks in Aachen last week from their economic development agencies. In the work I do on transportation and energy, I have had the opportunity outside the sister-city framework to visit installations in Germany and Denmark that are models of what we aspire to create in Arlington. The European energy systems are well advanced over our practices here. There is a lot to learn, but it can’t just be honorific and ceremonial appearances.
Q: Enlightened leadership is important at the county level in the county board, so that meritorious ideas are well received and reverberate through the administration. Arlington has been blessed in that way.
JF: We need that openness. And ideas will inspire us from outside the sister-city framework, which will always necessarily have limits in terms of organizational capabilities, energy, and financing. For example, the Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC), which supports regional initiatives in Northern Virginia, has a very active effort, in fact has a German sister region, the region of Stuttgart, featuring exchanges of elected officials and senior staff, where the focus is on energy and sustainability systems. The sister-city program can do some of that, but it is not where the primary responsibility lies. It could be that Reims is the leader in certain things and other parts of Europe lead in others. So we need to be deployed more extensively. Dale Medearis of the NVRC brought a tangible benefit to us through a meeting at the German Embassy discussing community energy plans. That’s where I got the idea to do a community energy plan for Arlington. We actually ended up hiring the consultant who gave the presentation at the German embassy, who worked with us for a year and a half and led to the adoption of our community energy plan. Instead of doing a sustainability plan more broadly, we focused it on energy, which was much more tangible, and it was all through this international connection. This experience clearly demonstrates the value of international connection and learning.
Q: You will be happy to know that Dale has also come to us in the sister-city relationship to talk to the visiting Aachen students about what we do in the United States that is relevant to them.
JF: Dale is all about relevance; he is all about demonstrating the practical value of cooperation.
Q: By way of conclusion, we are now ready to reflect on the continuing relevance of the sister-city concept. As a first step, let us hear what you think our sister-city programs have achieved in Arlington so far.
JF: I think that any community in American that thinks of itself as forward-thinking and sophisticated has to have a sister-city program. I can’t imagine that Arlington, with its educated residents, could be complete without recognizing the importance and finding ways of acknowledging and tapping into internationalism. It’s “think globally, act locally.” I may have chosen, after having studied international affairs, to work at the local level—sort of being a bigger fish in a smaller pond—but any community that is truly going to move itself forward and be complete has to have a global aspect. The world is too small. Many cities have taken the lead in important public policy areas that should, in fact, be framed, guided, and incentivized by forward thinking national policy. Much bigger cities, like New York and Chicago, and many cities around the world – where over half of the world’s population now lives —are in the forefront of policy and program innovation – often learning from one another. Things that happen in one part of the world can have a significant impact in another part of the world. We only help ourselves through international awareness and connections – like those nurtured through a sister-city relationship. That will only become more apparent with the passage of time.
Q: Do you think that ASCA and its official counterpart have together made a perceptible contribution over the past twenty years since the first sister-city experiment, Arlington-Aachen, was launched?
JF: The most tangible impact is going to be through the student exchange, where you have undoubtedly affected many lives by giving kids exposure to another part of the world and another culture, who might not have had that opportunity otherwise. Just like my year abroad was the most formative in my life, I am sure that that the student exchange experiences have made lasting impressions on many young Arlingtonians. That’s a huge contribution. And there are others. Individuals like us now have friends in other parts of the world.
Q: You were at the table yesterday when Hubert Gronen was talking about the relationship between the United States and Germany in light of the Snowden NSA affair. Do you think Hubert would have been able to have that kind of conversation with Americans, absent the intimacy that our sister-city relationship fostered over the years?
JF: I know Hubert and yes he would (laughter). Like me and you, he enjoys provocation and debate. Hubert is an incredibly international person. He speaks six or seven languages and has lived in multiple countries. That’s the beauty of living in Europe. By definition, you are more international. It just happens. Now the Euro is a common currency, but you still have different languages, different cultures. For us, the situation is different. I have heard that only 15% of Americans have a passport. The percentage in Europe must be closer to 95%. We are surrounded by oceans and haven’t had any wars on our soil for a long time. We have had a terrorist attack and a civil war, but we haven’t been attacked in a sustained war in a long time. It’s a different reality. And the danger for us is that too many Americans can be too easily unaware of the rest of the world. You hear some in the political arena refer to “American exceptionalism.” I am not very partial to that term. I am very proud to be American and I left my year here in France feeling even more appreciative and proud of where I happen to have been born and the many good qualities of America. At the same time, I have an enormous respect for the differences in the world, in the cultures and peoples. There are many things that others do better than we do, for instance in the whole area of sustainability, not wasting resources. Europe has had a much longer history and has wasted in its day. Now they have become much more efficient in the way they live, in terms of their space, energy, and resources. There is much to learn about other places and much to appreciate. When you grow up in America, especially without resources and wealth in your family, there is a good likelihood that you will never leave the United States. That will color your view, not only of your own country, but of the world. I think it is much healthier to immerse in some of those differences. It helps form you and makes you a more balanced person.
Q: To close, what do you think about the continuing relevance of the sister-city concept. It was launched in its modern form in the 1950s when travel and communication were limited. Nowadays we have instant connections through the Internet and our cell phones to the rest of the world. Do sister-cities have a future?
JF: I think sister-cities are very relevant, though that doesn’t mean they don’t need to redefine themselves from time to time. The most obvious anchor program is the youth exchange, though it need not stop there. There is the kind of policy learning I mentioned when referencing the German source of our Arlington community energy plan. How the sister-city program re-shapes itself is a very interesting challenge. The starting point is the premise that it does have relevance, and working from there.
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Services/Clients
"Audrey Sheppard is one of the best connected and professional consultants that I have ever worked with. Her rich experience inside of the beltway makes her uniquely qualified to access individuals within Washington that can become strong contacts who can influence decisions throughout the country." -Scott Dodson, President, CEO and board member for AirXpanders
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“As a women’s healthcare company, keeping up to date on the latest policies affecting reproductive access is critical to Agile. Audrey Sheppard has the contacts and ability to build a coalition, and has been instrumental in helping us build relationships with key advocates for reproductive health” --Katie MacFarlane, Senior Vice President for Commercial Development at Napo Pharmaceuticals, formerly Chief Commercial Officer for Agile Therapeutics
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AIKARA
Kyokushin (USA IFKK)
USA IFKK
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Kyokushin Syllabus
Masutatsu Oyama
Mas Oyama was born as Choi Young-Eui in Gimje, Korea under Japanese rule. At a young age he was sent to Manchuria, Northeast China to live on his sister’s farm. Oyama began studying Chinese martial arts at age 9 from a Chinese farmer who was working on the farm. His family name was Lee and Oyama said he was his very first teacher. The story of the young Oyama’s life is written in his earlier books.
In March 1938, Oyama left for Japan following his brother who enrolled in the Yamanashi Aviation School Imperial Japanese Armyaviation school. Sometime during his time in Japan, Choi Young-Eui chose his Japanese name, Oyama Masutatsu, which is a transliteration of Baedal. Baedal was an ancient Korean kingdom known in Japan during Oyama’s time as “Ancient Joseon”.
One story of Oyama’s youth involves Lee giving young Oyama a seed which he was to plant; when it sprouted, he was to jump over it one hundred times every day. As the seed grew and became a plant, Oyama later said, “I was able to jump between walls back and forth easily.” The writer, Ikki Kajiwara, and the publisher of the comics based the story on the life experience Oyama spoke to them about – thus the title became “Karate Baka Ichidai” (Karate Fanatic).
In 1963, Oyama wrote What is Karate which became a best seller in the US and sold million copies all over the world. It is still considered by many to be the “Bible” of Karate to this day. It was translated into Hungarian, French, and English.
In 1945 after the war ended, Oyama left the aviation school. He finally found a place to live in Tokyo. This is where he met his future wife whose mother ran a dormitory for university students.
In 1946, Oyama enrolled in Waseda University School of Education to study sports science.
Wanting the best in instruction, he contacted the Shotokan dojo (Karate school) operated by Gigō Funakoshi, the third son of karate master and Shotokan founder Gichin Funakoshi. He became a student, and began his lifelong career in Karate. Feeling like a foreigner in a strange land, he remained isolated and trained in solitude.
Oyama attended Takushoku University in Tokyo and was accepted as a student at the dojo of Gichin Funakoshi. He trained with Funakoshi for two years, then studied Gōjū-ryū karate for several years with So Nei Chu (1908–1995),a senior student of the system’s founder, Chojun Miyagi. So was a fellow Korean from Oyama’s native province.
Around the time he also went around Tokyo getting in fights with the U.S. Military Police. He later reminisced those times in a television interview, “Itsumitemo Haran Banjyo” (Nihon Television), “I lost many friends during the war- the very morning of their departure as Kamikaze pilots, we had breakfast together and in the evening their seats were empty. After the war ended, I was angry- so I fought as many U.S. military as I could, until my portrait was all over the police station.” Oyama retreated to a lone mountain for solace to train his mind and body. He set out to spend three years on Mt. Minobu in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. Oyama built a shack on the side of the mountain. One of his students named Yashiro accompanied him, but after the rigors of this isolated training, with no modern conveniences, the student snuck away one night, and left Oyama alone. With only monthly visits from a friend in the town of Tateyama in Chiba Prefecture, the loneliness and harsh training became grueling. Oyama remained on the mountain for fourteen months, and returned to Tokyo a much stronger and fiercer Karateka.
Oyama gave great credit to reading The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, a famous Japanese swordsman, to change his life completely. He recounts this book as being his only reading material during his mountain training years.
He was forced to leave his mountain retreat after his sponsor had stopped supporting him. Months later, after he had won the Karate Section of Japanese National Martial Arts Championships, he was distraught that he had not reached his original goal to train in the mountains for three years, so he went into solitude again, this time on Mt. Kiyosumi in Chiba Prefecture, Japan and he trained there for 18 months.
In 1953 Oyama opened his own karate dojo, named Oyama Dojo (form of Gōjū-ryū), in Tokyo but continued to travel around Japan and the world giving martial arts demonstrations, which included knocking live bulls unconscious with his bare hands (sometimes grabbing them by the horn, and snapping the horn off).His dojo was first located outside in an empty lot but eventually moved into a ballet school in 1956. The senior instructors under him were T. Nakamura, K. Mizushima, E. Yasuda, M. Ishibashi, and T. Minamimoto. Oyama’s own curriculum soon developed a reputation as a tough, intense, hard-hitting but practical style which was finally named Kyokushinkai (Japan Karate-Do Kyokushinkai), which means ‘the ultimate truth,’ in a ceremony in 1957. He also developed a reputation for being ‘rough’ with his students, as the training sessions were grueling and students injuring themselves in practice fighting (kumite) was quite common.Along with practice fighting that distinguished Oyama’s teaching style from other karate schools, emphasis on breaking objects such as boards, tiles, or bricks to measure one’s offensive ability became Kyokushin’s trademark. Oyama believed in the practical application of karate and declared that ignoring ‘breaking practice is no more useful than a fruit tree that bears no fruit.As the reputation of the dojo grew students were attracted to come to train there from inside and outside Japan and the number of students grew. Many of the eventual senior leaders of today’s various Kyokushin based organisations began training in the style during this time. In 1964 Oyama moved the dojo into the building that would from then on serve as the Kyokushin home dojo and world headquarters. In connection with this he also formally founded the ‘International Karate Organization Kyokushin kaikan’ (commonly abbreviated to IKO or IKOK) to organise the many schools that were by then teaching the kyokushin style.
In 1961 at the All-Japan Student Open Karate Championship, one of Oyama’s students, Tadashi Nakamura, at 19 years old (1961) made his first tournament appearance, where he was placed first. Nakamura later became Mas Oyama’s Chief Instructor as referenced in Mas Oyama’s book, “This is Karate.” In 1969, Oyama staged the first All-Japan Full Contact Karate Open Championships which took Japan by storm and Terutomo Yamazaki became the first champion, which have been held every year since. In 1975, the first World Full Contact Karate Open Championships were held in Tokyo. World championships have been held at four-yearly intervals since. After formally establishing Kyokushin-kai, Oyama directed the organization through a period of expansion. Oyama and his staff of hand-picked instructors displayed great ability in marketing the style and gaining new members. Oyama would choose an instructor to open a dojo in another town or city in Japan, whereupon the instructor would move to that town, and, typically demonstrate his karate skills in public places, such as at the civic gymnasium, the local police gym (where many judo students would practice), a local park, or conduct martial arts demonstrations at local festivals or school events. In this way, the instructor would soon gain a few students for his new dojo. After that, word of mouth would spread through the local area until the dojo had a dedicated core of students. Oyama also sent instructors to other countries such as the United States, Netherlands, England, Australia and Brazil to spread Kyokushin in the same way. Oyama also promoted Kyokushin by holding The All-Japan Full Contact Karate Open Championships every year and World Full Contact Karate Open Championships once every four years in which anyone could enter from any style.
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Landmark Quiz Mumbai 2009 Questions
LANDMARK QUIZ MUMBAI 2009
Thanks to the Quizmaster (Navin Jayakumar) for Sharing the prelims question.
What internationally accepted emergency radio communication derives from the French meaning 'come help me'?
May Day (from venez m’aider”)
Which part of Delhi is “Delhi 6?
Which Indian reality show on MTV has the tagline “Where love is war”?
MTV Splitsvilla
There are only three rivers in India that run from east to west. One of these is the Mahi. Which are the other two?
Narmada and Tapti
Which popular style of devotional music was originally performed at Sufi shrines and dargahs?
What term used to describe perfect eyesight is also the name of a version of a popular sport?
It is named the Nishan-e-Haider in Pakistan and the Bir Shreshto in Bangladesh. What is the Indian equivalent?
Param Vir Chakra
What canine species once existed all along the Atlantic coast of this European country, where they were taught to herd fish into fishermen's nets, to retrieve lost tackle or broken nets, and to act as couriers from ships?
Portuguese water dog. They are popular nowadays because they are hypoallergenic.
Charles Dickens wrote only two historical novels, one of which was Barnaby Rudge. Which was the other?
Tale of Two Cities
Which warrior in Indian mythology is believed to have originated the Chhath Puja festival (popular in Bihar) in honour of the Sun God?
Referred to in medieval times as Bilad al Barbar ("Land of the Berbers"), what is the commonly used name to refer to the region of Africa containing the countries of Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia?
According to the Jahangir Nama, the emperor was impressed by the performance of certain performers from Bengal. Their leader Krishna Chandra Dev was presented an entire village called Sutigram near Dhaka and the Dev family became the landlords of the village. Being landlords they were called ________ , a term that became their family name. Currently, the eighth generation of this family still continues the tradition of entertainment. Fill in the blank.
Sarkar. (PC Sorcar)
In keeping with the times what word did the American Dialect Society choose as the Word of the Year for 2008?
What 2009 international event was nicknamed “The Big Flick”?
Which IT guru famously does not have a business card. Instead, he hands out what he calls 'pleasure cards'. They list his address - '545, Tech Square, Rm. 425, Cambridge, MA 02139', and his other interests - 'sharing good books, good food and exotic music and dance, tender embraces and unusual sense of humor'. Who are we talking about?
Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement, who still stays in a room on the MIT campus!
What “in-the-news” word was popularized by Veer Savarkar in an ideological pamphlet written while imprisoned in Ratnagiri jail, smuggled out of the prison, and published in 1923 by his supporters under his alias “Mahratta”?
Hindutva. The pamphlet was titled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?
In 2008, who or what replied to a question with this answer, "There's water here; I've tasted it"
Which part of Mumbai featured by NDTV as one of the Seven Wonders of Maharashtra got its name from the nearby St Thomas Cathedral?
Which European football club was founded as a cricket club in 1899 by British expatriates Alfred Edwards and Herbert Kilpin from Nottingham, and in honor of its origins, retained the English spelling of its city's name, instead of changing it to the local spelling?
What term in serial fiction, derived from computer science, means a discarding of much or even all previous continuity and storyline in the series, to start anew, recent examples being Batman Returns, and Casino Royale (2006)?
The Indian Order of Precedence is the protocol list of seating Indian government officials according to their rank. Where in this order does the Prime Minister figure?
Third, after President and Vice-President
In 1982, toothpaste salesman Dietrich Mateschitz was surprised that certain Mr Taisho was in the top 10 list of tax payers in Japan and that he owned Krating daeng (“water buffalo”). This product that listed taurine as one of its ingredients was effective for jet lag. Mr M inspired by this idea created his empire based on Krating daeng. He said, “I was most fascinated by Zeus the king of Gods-the way he came to see Europa and got transformed.” By what name is Krating daeng known to us?
Whose 2009 Lok Sabha election symbol is a harmonium?
Mallika Sarabhai
In 1923 the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded for the practical extraction of ________. The winners felt that the committee had insulted their co-workers – Charles Best and James Collip – by not including them for the prize and so they shared the prize money with them. In a 2007 cross-Canada survey by the CBC, _________ topped the list of the10 Greatest Canadian Inventions. Fill in the blank.
What incident led to the creation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 1974?
Pokharan nuclear test by India.
In which state of India is the Penal Code named the Ranbir Penal Code?
Jammu and Kashmir; named after Ranbir Singh (grandfather of Maharaja Hari Singh).
The original of this was developed after a worker at Rowntree's factory in York put a suggestion in the suggestion box for a snack that a 'man could have in his lunch box for work'. It was launched in September 1935 in the UK as Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp. It was later renamed in 1937 to a brand that we are all familiar with. What?
What name was given to the second son of King Rishabha because of the immense strength of his arms?
Bahubali (bahu = arm ; bali = strong)
What word was coined by Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, a physician at the San Antonio Air Force Hospital in Texas, to denote a system of exercise he developed to help prevent coronary artery disease?
Aerobics. Cooper's book about the exercise system, Aerobics, was published in 1968.
Which is the only field in which women have not yet won a Nobel Prize?
Economics.
The Gahirmatha beach in Orissa is considered the world’s most important site for the nesting of what endangered species?
Olive Ridley turtle
What did Stanley Morison, together with Starling Burgess and Victor Lardent, design for Britain’s The Times newspaper in 1931?
Times New Roman serif typeface.
VISUAL: Identify the person. (Clue today’s quiz)
Where is this picture taken and which book is being autographed?
Leopold Café / Shantaram
VISUAL: Name this animal which is the largest land-dwelling species of the weasel family.
Wolverine/Glutton
VISUAL: What is depicted on this Google doodle that appeared on September 10, 2008? (Answer in 3 words)
TRACK 1 MUSIC VIDEO: Name this group whose song "Human" was voted the Best Song of 2008 by the readers of Rolling Stone magazine.
TRACK 2 VIDEO: (a) Name this award-winning film. (b) What international charitable organization is featured in this film?
Smile Pinki b. Smile Train
TRACK 3 VIDEO: What extreme sport is this?
TRACK 4 MUSIC VIDEO: Where is this song shot?(song Kabhi Kabhi Aditi from the movie Jaane tu ya Jaane Na?)
St Xavier’s College
Labels: Landmark Quiz
QFI Open 2009
Bij Kwij #19
Answers to Random Question 05/Apr/2009
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You are here :: CES In the News » Divide Between Homeowners and Renters is Growing
Divide Between Homeowners and Renters is Growing
By Tim Logan
By some measures, the L.A.-O.C. area is the nation's least-affordable rental market. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
For homeowners in Southern California, the housing recovery has been pretty kind. For renters, not so much..
New figures highlight the growing gap between owners and renters in the Southland: Many homeowners are capitalizing on low interest rates to push down their monthly payment while renters are shelling out larger shares of their income to stay afloat.
And the ranks of renters are growing.
The data, released Thursday by the Census Bureau, show that the median monthly mortgage payment for a homeowner in metro Los Angeles — L.A. and Orange counties — was $2,241 last year. Adjusted for inflation, that figure has fallen 17.7% since 2007. And the share of homeowners spending at least 35% of their income on housing — a common barometer for affordability — has fallen sharply in the last few years to 30%.
Meanwhile, median rent in the area has outpaced inflation by 2.3% since 2007, and the share of renters who spend 35% or more of their income on housing has climbed to just above half. That large burden is partly a function of higher prices for apartments, housing watchers say, and partly of incomes that have been stagnant for years.
"This trend has been going on for some time. Generally it's an issue of income," said Larry Gross, executive director of the tenants group the Coalition for Economic Survival. "Renters are a little younger or very low income. They're earning less, and their rent burden is increasing."
By some measures, metro L.A. is the nation's least-affordable rental market. A study issued last month by UCLA made that claim, noting that although rents and home prices in metro L.A. nearly match costlier markets such as San Francisco and New York, typical incomes in metro L.A. are significantly lower.
That finding was reinforced by Thursday's census numbers, which found median household income in metro Los Angeles last year was $58,869, 10.5% less than metro New York and 26% less than in the Bay Area. And although incomes in metro L.A. grew 1.4% last year, they're still down 10% from 2007 when adjusted for inflation.
"There has been a [long-term] problem of both decreasing real income and increasing real rent," the study's co-author, UCLA urban planning professor Paul Ong, wrote in an e-mail.
Adding to the challenge: more demand for rental units, including from former homeowners who lost their properties to foreclosure. Thanks in part to the mortgage crisis and in part to young adults putting off buying, the region's homeownership rate has fallen from 52% in 2007 to 48% today, and the number of owner-occupied homes has dropped by 115,000.
Some of those houses have been bought by investors and converted to rental units. But construction of apartments, Ong noted, hasn't kept up with the growing demand.
There has been "low and uneven construction of rental units. Too few at affordable levels," he wrote. The "standard economic dynamic of increasing demand and inelastic supply."
Those who managed to own a home through the downturn, though, have fared well because of several years of near-record-low interest rates. Since 2009, about 28 million mortgages have been refinanced into lower rates, said Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist at lending giant Freddie Mac.
A borrower who took out a $400,000 loan in 2007 with 6% interest could save more than $700 a month by refinancing to 4%, according to mortgage website HSH.com.
"We've had a couple of years of almost unprecedented low interest rates now," Kiefer said. "Millions and millions of households have locked in those rates and lowered their monthly payments."
In addition, home values have climbed 40% in the last two years, nearly back to pre-crash levels in parts of the Southland, and many homeowners who weathered the downturn are now in relatively healthy financial shape, he said.
For many renters, the prospect of just holding on to what they've got can be daunting. But that's what Maritza Guzman is hoping to do.
Guzman has watched over the last year as the East Hollywood apartment building where she and her mother have lived for 22 years has emptied out. New owners are planning a major overhaul, she said, and offering longtime tenants — many in rent-stabilized units — cash to leave. All but four apartments are now vacant, and Guzman said she thought hard about taking the $30,000 she and her mom were offered. But she looked around, saw nothing on the market even close to the less than $900 a month they pay now, and realized that the money wouldn't last more than a couple of years.
"It just doesn't make sense," she said.
And, although she would rather own than rent, even if she combined that $30,000 check with her mother's Social Security and income from her job as a preschool teacher and three other part-time gigs, Guzman said, there's no way they could afford to buy a house right now.
"In L.A.?" she said. "That's just not going to happen."
So Guzman is hoping to reach an agreement with her landlord for an apartment in the building after renovations are complete, to hold on as a renter as long as she can.
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CALL US: (805) 276-1942 | GET A QUOTE | LOAN CALCULATOR | BLOG | NMLS#: 245923
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The origins and history of reverse mortgages reveals a loan product that has evolved dramatically over the last 40 years. The first reverse mortgage loan was written in 1961 by Nelson Haynes of Deering Savings & Loan (Portland, Maine) to Nellie Young, the widow of his high school football coach helping her to stay in her home despite the loss of her husband’s income.
Since 1989 reverse mortgages have grown in popularity.
The need for reverse mortgages was further developed in the 1970’s with several private banks offering reverse-mortgage-style loans. These programs gave seniors money from their home but did not afford the protections of today since no FHA insurance had been put in place.
In the early 1980’s the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging issued a report stating the need for a standardized reverse mortgage program. Other committees throughout the mid 80’s cited the need for FHA insurance and uniform lending practices. In late 1987 Congress passed the FHA insurance bill that would insure reverse mortgages. On February 5, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the FHA Reverse Mortgage bill into law. In 1989 the first FHA-insured HECM was made to Marjorie Mason of Fairway, Kansas by the James B Nutter Co.
Since 1989 reverse mortgages have grown in popularity, especially in the mid to late 1990’s. Despite economic upheaval and forward mortgage lending issues, reverse mortgages have continued to grow as a safe, government-insured loan allowing seniors to access a portion of the value of their homes while not having to make a monthly mortgage payment.*
* Borrowers must continue to pay property taxes, homeowner’s insurance and other property obligations complying with HUD’s requirements for the loan. Failure to do so may result in foreclosure.
Learn how a reverse mortgage could provide you more cash.
What Do Family Members Need To Know?
Get informed about how everyone is affected by a reverse mortgage.
How Much Can You Get?
Use our free calculator that will help you see how much you could qualify for.
Get the facts from a qualified reverse mortgage originator.
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Dead Sea Scrolls Community
Dead Sea Scrolls Community by Alex P. Jassen
The Dead Sea Scrolls depict a Jewish community that thought of itself as the righteous remnant of Israel and believed that it held the exclusive understanding of God’s law. For example, the sect adhered to a strict standard of ritual purity and developed a complex process by which previously impure outsiders joined the exclusive, pure community. Numerous texts display contempt for the perceived impurity of the Jerusalem temple and its priests.
This placed the sectarians in a constant state of hostility toward other contemporary streams of Judaism. The community divided humanity into predestined lots of good and evil. It viewed itself as the righteous Sons of Light and other Jews and foreigners as the Sons of Darkness. The community looked forward to an end-time war in which these enemies would be destroyed. This portrait of the sect draws from the community’s writings found among the Dead Sea Scrolls: the Rule of the Community, the Damascus Document, the War Scroll, Miqsat Ma‘ase ha-Torah (Some Works of the Law), the Pesharim (prophetic commentaries), the Thanksgiving Hymns, and the Rule of the Congregation. This community was in existence from the second century B.C.E. through the first century C.E.
Alongside the unifying elements, many of the community’s texts reflect significant differences. For example, the Damascus Document contains substantial rules regarding women and sexual activity. In contrast, the Rule of the Community contains virtually nothing regarding women and, along with some other texts, seems to discourage sexual activity. Scholars now generally agree that the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect the existence of several interrelated groups. For example, the Rule of the Community consistently uses the self-designation yahad (community). In contrast, the Damascus Document refers to rules for those living in the “camps” (mahanot) and employs the self-designation “congregation” (edah). Many scholars propose the existence of a parent group from which a more hard-line sectarian faction developed. Others suggest that the distinct rules and views are representative of different divisions in a broader network of sectarian communities located throughout the land of Israel.
The proximity to Qumran of the eleven caves housing the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that some part of the sectarian community resided there. The physical remains of Qumran from around 100 B.C.E. through 68 C.E. reflect an intense focus on ritual purity (for example, the many ritual baths). This evidence suggests that Qumran housed the hard-line faction who had retreated to the desert for a life of piety. Alternatively, Qumran may have been home to an elite group within the broader network of sectarian settlements.
Scholars have long identified the sectarian community with the ancient Jewish group known as the Essenes. This identification is based on the parallels in thought and practice between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the description of the Essenes found in the works of the first century writers Josephus, Philo, and Pliny the Elder. This straightforward identification is complicated by the recognition of several sectarian groups in the scrolls. Moreover, many aspects of the scrolls do not align with ancient descriptions of the Essenes. Despite these reservations, the parallels clearly point to some aspect of Essene identity for the sectarian community.
Alex P. Jassen, "Dead Sea Scrolls Community", n.p. [cited 21 Jan 2021]. Online: http://bibleodyssey.com/en/places/related-articles/dead-sea-scrolls-community
Alex P. Jassen
Associate Professor, New York University
Alex P. Jassen is associate professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. He is the author of Mediating the Divine: Prophecy and Revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism (Brill, 2007). He is a member of the international editorial team responsible for publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Dead Sea - Qumran
Qumran is a site that was inhabited by members of a Jewish sect—apparently Essenes—who deposited the Dead Sea Scrolls in the nearby caves.
Judaism at Qumran
The Qumran texts testify to the pluralism of Jewish beliefs, practices, and textual forms of the Hebrew Bible in the Second Temple period.
Other Bible from Qumran
Although we now think of the Bible as something fixed and unchanging, before the second century C.E. different Jewish groups had different sets of books in their “Bibles.”
Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible
Philip R. Davies on how the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has affected biblical scholarship.
Robert R. Cargill on who the Essenes may have been.
Related Maps (1)
Khirbet Qumran is the Arabic name for a site situated along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, where arguably the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century was found, the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Temple, The
The Dead Sea Scrolls Today
The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation
Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls
Center for Online Judaic Studies: Dead Sea Scrolls
Digital Dead Sea Scrolls
Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls
A collection of Jewish texts (biblical, apocryphal, and sectarian) from around the time of Christ that were preserved near the Dead Sea and rediscovered in the 20th century.
A group of people attending religious services, worshiping.
A period of time that appears most often in apocalyptic texts and refers to a future time marked by radical change, at the end of human history.
An ascetic sect of early Judaism whose adherents probably included the inhabitants of Qumran (the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls).
Contaminated as a result of certain physical or moral situations, and therefore prohibited from contact with holy things. (See also: "purity" (HCBD).)
A Jewish historian from the first century C.E. His works document the Jewish rebellions against Rome, giving background for early Jewish and Christian practices.
The religion and culture of Jews. It emerged as the descendant of ancient Israelite Religion, and is characterized by monotheism and an adherence to the laws present in the Written Torah (the Bible) and the Oral Torah (Talmudic/Rabbinic tradition).
A Jewish philosopher who lived from roughly 20 B.C.E. to 50 C.E. whose writings bridge Greek culture and Jewish thought.
Devotion to a divinity and the expression of that devotion.
A first-century C.E. Roman soldier, lawyer, and writer who pursued a philosophy of nature and the physical world.
An archaeological site on the western shore of the Dead Sea, in modern Israel, where a small group of Jews lived in the last centuries B.C.E. The site was destroyed by the Romans around 70 C.E. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves near the site and are believed by most scholars to have belonged to the people living at Qumran.
Collective ceremonies having a common focus on a god or gods.
Pools of water used for ritual purification in Jewish practice.
A religious subgroup.
Related to a particular religious subgroup, or sect; often used in reference to the variety of Jewish sects in existence in the Roman period in Judea and Samaria.
The third division of the Jewish canon, also called by the Hebrew name Ketuvim. The other two divisions are the Torah (Pentateuch) and Nevi'im (Prophets); together the three divisions create the acronym Tanakh, the Jewish term for the Hebrew Bible.
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Ethical Musings
Reflections on living the good life by the Rev. Dr. George Clifford
How gratitude changes us for the better
The Butterball Turkey Company had a hotline to answer consumer questions about preparing holiday turkeys. One woman called to inquire about cooking a turkey that had been in her freezer for twenty-three years. The operator told her it might be safe if the freezer had been kept below zero degrees the entire time. But the operator warned the woman that, even if it were safe, the flavor had probably deteriorated, and she wouldn't recommend eating the turkey.
The caller replied, "That's what we thought. We'll just give it to the church."[1]
Congregations routinely conduct annual pledge campaigns in the weeks before Thanksgiving, a season that encourages gratitude. Too often, people give God second best, what remains after satisfying all of their obligations and even many of their desires. “The flavor is gone. Give it to the church.”
Hearing the word leprosy almost invariably evokes thoughts of Hansen’s disease, which causes flesh to rot away. Entire appendages – fingers, hands, even arms – fall off the leper’s body. Hansen’s disease is highly contagious and until recently had no known cure. To prevent the disease from spreading, victims were exiled to leper colonies, like the one on Molokai, torn from family and friends.
Hansen’s disease seems to have been unknown in Judea during Jesus’ time. Not until the Middle Ages did Christians begin to associate the disease mentioned in this morning’s Gospel lesson with Hansen’s disease. Instead, careful analysis of the Greek combined with medical analysis of diseases described by Hippocrates and other ancient doctors suggest the text actually refers to skin conditions such as psoriasis, ringworm and so forth. These conditions are all curable; some are contagious, others are not.
In first century Judea, people with these various diseases were all treated like victims of Hansen’s disease: they became social pariahs. Jewish law required segregating people with skin diseases from the community. Segregation sometimes served the utilitarian function of preventing a communicable disease from spreading. But that was not its purpose. The goal was to exclude a sinner from the community because disease signified sin. In the reading, ten “lepers” had banded together to form their own community after being cut off from family, friends and employment. So, when they saw Jesus, even as they were asking for help, they kept their distance.
Jesus sent the ten to priests because only priests had the authority to pronounce a person clean and to readmit them to the community. As the ten went, they were healed. Some Christians interpret this supernaturally: God perhaps re-arranging skin molecules to achieve healing. Others, including me, understand the healing in terms of psychosomatic illness – many of the skin conditions an accurate diagnosis would have identified can result from emotional trauma, stress, etc. The text supports this interpretation, reporting that “their faith made them well as they went to the priests.”
The miracle – God's action – was God acting through Jesus to restore the ten to mental and/or emotional health. We can see God at work in this same manner today, giving people gifts of peace, courage, strength and wisdom.
Only one of the ten – a Samaritan, regarded by devout Jews as a heretic but nevertheless welcomed into the small community of ten outcasts – returned to Jesus to thank him for being healed and the life that healing restored to him.
Gratitude can change our attitude toward life, self and others. Gratitude can transform depression into hope, animosity into affection, and alienation into friendship.
For many years, the Rev. Eugene McKinley Pierce was an associate pastor at Norman Vincent Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church. When Pierce was hospitalized for surgery, Peale visited him. "Mac," as people called him, sat in bed opening mail. He was having a good day. The day before, however, had been a dark, hard day.
Mrs. Pierce explained Mac’s change in attitude. She pointed to her pearl necklace. "Mac gave them to me for Christmas. They aren't the best pearls in the world. But I love them and wear them frequently. As I sat by his bed and casually touched them, a thought came to mind. 'Mac,' I said, 'let's start thinking of every wonderful experience we've had in our lives, one for each of these pearls.'"
Mrs. Pierce continued: "We started back when we were first in love and that was the first pearl. Then we went along to our wedding day and then to our first baby. And the first church he served, and so on, all the way around the string of pearls. When we finished with the last pearl," she said, "all the dark shadows had gone and happiness reigned in our minds and in our hearts."[2]
Gratitude also changes our attitude toward God. The earth’s beauty, the wonder of life, gifts of peace, courage, wisdom or strength and healing such as the lepers in today’s gospel reading experienced are blessings that invite us to ponder questions of to whom and for what we should give thanks.
A young toddler who had received an Easter basket a week earlier was saying grace before dinner. "Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bunny." Atheists may as well give thanks to the Easter bunny.
Christians, however, give thanks to the Creator, the Son who teaches the way to eternal life, and the Sustainer who graces us with healing and other good gifts. In response to blessings, we thank God by striving to walk the Jesus’ path, with our generosity and in our Eucharistic celebration. The word eucharist, as you may know, comes from the Greek verb that means to give thanks. In sum, gratitude leads us deeper into the mystery that is God. Amen.
Sermon preached on the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 13, 2019
Parish of St. Clement, Honolulu, HI
[1] Paul Harvey, 1/22/95, in Rik Danielson, Show Low, Arizona, "To Quip . . .," Leadership, Summer 1996, p. 71.
[2] Adapted from Norman Vincent Peale, In God We Trust (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994).
Gratitude Stewardship
Why won't Trump release his tax returns?
President Trump’s refusal to make his tax returns public is intriguing and troubling. The IRS routinely audits Presidential and Congressional tax returns. Yet former Presidents and most members of Congress have made their tax returns public. Possible explanations for Trump’s refusal include: His tax returns may reveal that he is not as wealthy as he would like for people to believe. Many real estate investments are heavily leveraged (i.e., mortgaged), so perhaps his substantial real estate holdings represent a relatively small net worth totaling in the hundreds of millions instead of billions. His tax returns may reveal that he derives a disproportionate share of his income from licensing his name instead of the successful real estate deals about which he boasts. His tax returns may reveal aggressive interpretations of the tax code that trigger repeated audits that are not always resolved in his favor. If Trump’s tax returns would enhance his public image by showing th
Mass murder in Orlando
The recent mass murder at a gay nightclub in Orlando has prompted four musings. First, the shooters in both the Orlando and the San Bernardino attacks apparently fully complied with Federal firearms laws when the attackers purchased the weapons used in those attacks. This is not an argument against background checks and other requirements. Instead, this observation points to the inadequacy of present laws to keep people safe. Second, the shooter in Orlando, like the shooters in San Bernardino, appears to have had no links to any terror group, domestic or foreign. As I have previously argued in Ethical Musings, considering all mass murder as terrorism unhelpfully conflates two different types of crime. Tightening immigration policies would not have prevented the Orlando attack. Third, the ultimate path to a safer society consists of promoting respect for the dignity and worth of all persons. Laws that encourage divisiveness (e.g., laws in North Carolina about who can use which pu
Post-election blues
This Veteran’s Day has prompted some musings about the color blue, the election and Veteran’s Day. First, former Vice President Biden is now President-elect Biden. The Democrats, generally depicted by the color blue in color graphics, won the presidential election. The chaos and lack of character widely associated with President Trump will soon vacate the White House. The US has now had both a Black president and a Black woman Vice President-elect. When I was born, both were unimaginable in the segregated Jim Crow south as well as, if we're honest, in the rest of the US. Second, President Trump probably feels depressed, an emotion associated with the color blue. His depression is obvious in his mien. He, from all appearances, is not a person who copes well with losing or rejection. Similarly, other candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, who invested considerable time, emotion and resources in losing campaigns for office also probably feel depressed. Yet, I’m grateful f
© George Clifford 2020
I am an Episcopal priest who retired from the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps as a Captain at the end of 2005. Since retiring, I've written books and articles on ethics and progressive Christianity, served as a parish priest, taught ethics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, as a Visiting Professor of Ethics and Public Policy, and become socially active, e.g., serving as a volunteer mediator helping couples resolve domestic disputes. In my spare time, I enjoy reading and travelling.
Ecological stewardship
Economic ethics
Military ethics
Moral choices
Moral exemplar
Post-theism
Pride that goes before a fall
Some musings about bail: Part 2, Why the system is...
The Bible is a window through which to see God
Some musings about bail: Part 1, The system
Increase our faith
Celebrating St Francis
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Rod Stewart In The City…DONT MISS HIM
With tons of top vocalist and songwriters making to the top of the music industry, the one name that stands out in the crowd is Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart is a British Rock Star that has sold more than 100 million records until now. The journey of the Rod Steward started from his raspy singing voice and has tons of records and awards to his name.
Rod Stewart will make his appearance in Dunedin, NewZealand on 11 Apr, 2015 and I don’t want you to miss the excellent talent on the show. With tons of sales, excellent song and a huge fan base, Rod Stewart has lasted for almost five decades in the music industry. If you want to grab the seats, the book your tickets now without wasting much of your time.
Most of his achievements include retaining the number one spot in the albums in the UK and overall giving 62 hit singles in the UK. Out of those 62 hit singles, more than half of the singles made it to the top 10, out of which six made its way to the top one.
Talking about billboards will also make it at the top of the race with four of its song reaching the top one spot. He also received tons of honor from other prominent music authorities such as CBE.
The whole journey started in the late 1960s coupled with the Jeff Beck Group and later with the Faces.
The early life of the Rod Stewart was good according to the author. He was the youngest of the five siblings and had a great childhood. In the early days, he was interested in football, but after his father’s retirement, he has to start selling newspapers to meet the day’s end. With his family focus mainly in the football arena, Stewart kept his music hunger apart from collecting the great Al Jolson songs and replayed most of his work. Most of the Steward work is influenced by Al Jolson and even the singing style is influenced by the great singer Al Jolson.
With the difficulties in the football career, he chooses the music way and now we are glad that he did choose this path, otherwise we would never have seen such a brilliant talent and might have missed so many great songs.
The most critical period of his career was the period of 1975-88 where he was at the peak of his career. At this time, he becomes the most reach earners in the UK and also set his new record for the Atlantic Crossing album.
With everything going fine, he continued to give the best songs such as Sailing and other “This Old Heart of Mine” making to the top 10 hits in the year 1976. So, what criticism he got? The song “DA Ya Think I’m Sexy” got blamed by the critics. The song was similar to another popular Brazilian song “Taj Mahal”, which in turn lead to a lawsuit against the legend.
During the period of 1995 to 2001, he started new ventures that helped him to expand his loyal fan base and earn more. He also learned songwriting through criticism and worked with Warner Bros. at that time.
The history and achievement of Rod Stewart are too many to fit in this article. We hope you like the information and would urge you to attend his latest performance.
Tags: Rod Stewart
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Five new species of monkeyflowers added to the ranks of the CNPS Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants
Carson Valley monkeyflower (Erythranthe carsonensis)
Last year I had the privilege of naming and describing five new species of monkeyflowers in the Garden’s scientific journal Aliso (30: 49-68, 2012). Four of these monkeyflowers have now been added to the California Native Plant Society’s (CNPS) Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants and one will soon be reviewed for its possible inclusion in the Inventory. Plants in the CNPS Inventory are assigned ranks in an effort to categorize their degree of rarity and concern of threat or endangerment. For example, a CNPS Rare Plant Rank of 2B.3 means that the plant is rare in California, but more common elsewhere (2B), and is not very threatened in California (0.3). The four monkeyflowers that have been added to the CNPS Inventory were assigned a rare plant rank of 1B which means they are not only rare in California but throughout their range. In addition three of the monkeyflowers have a threat rank 0.1 which means they are seriously threatened and one has a threat rank of 0.3 which means it is not very threatened in California. In doing field work for my research I wanted to asses the conservation status of these monkeyflowers because many of them are known to be naturally rare and are therefore of conservation concern. In my field work I surveyed and searched for new populations and provided more detailed information on their geographic range. To learn more about the conservation status of these elusive little plants I recorded information on the quality of their habitat (e.g. abundant non-native plant species would indicate poor habitat quality), signs of disturbance (e.g. trash, road cuts, vehicle trespass, trampling by humans or grazing animals), current use of the area, and current status of the population. This is important because if a species is known to be restricted to a small geographic area then chances are that some degree of disturbance (e.g. development, cattle grazing, and impacts from recreation) could have a significant impact on the long term viability of the species. The information I recorded was published and used in their assessment for ranking in the CNPS Inventory.
Santa Lucia monekflower (Erythranthe hardhamiae)
The CNPS Inventory serves as a State-wide source of information on California’s rare and endangered plants and is an important resource for scientific research, conservation planning, and effective enforcement of environmental laws that deal with plant conservation. It is essential to much of the work I do in evaluating the status of rare plants in California and identifying geographical areas and species to survey. This past year (2012) Garden Scientists described seven new plant species native to California and all seven of these have been added or are being considered for addition to the CNPS Inventory. This brings to light a couple of very important things: one is that we still have much to learn about the flora of California. Since the second edition of The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California was published in 2012 at least 14 new taxa native to California have been newly described! Even though my research has focused on describing and exploring plant diversity in California, the rate at which we continue to learn about and add new species to our native flora still astounds me. Second is that many of these newly described species in California have been found to be rare, and endangered throughout their range.
This shows us that it is critical to gather as much information as possible prior to developing land or changing land use. Balancing our use of the land with protection of natural resources is a difficult task, but in order to do this effectively we need information on what occurs there and its significance. The work we do here at the Garden in conservation and research aims to provide this information in the interest of education on the value and significance of California’s native flora.
Posted by Unknown at 10:57 AM 57 comments:
Labels: CNPS Inventory, monkeyflowers, new species, Rare Plants
Five new species of monkeyflowers added to the ran...
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You are currently browsing the archive for the Strange stuff category.
Desert warfare training in live ghost towns, seen from the sky
June 29, 2016 in Aviation, Geography, Geology, history, Military, Science, Strange stuff, Travel, war | 4 comments
I’ve been fascinated for years by what comes and goes at the Fort Irwin National Training Center—
—in the Mojave Desert, amidst the dark and colorful Calico Mountains of California, situated in the forbidding nowhere that stretches between Barstow and Death Valley.
Here and there, amidst the webwork of trails in the dirt left by tanks, jeeps and other combat vehicles, fake towns and other structures go up and come down. So, for example, here is Etrebat Shar, a fake town in an “artificial Afghanistan” that I shot earlier this month, on June 2:
And here is a broader view across the desert valley east of Fort Irwin itself:
Look to the right of the “town.” See that area where it looks like something got erased? Well, it did. I took the two shots above earlier this month, on June 2. Here’s a shot of the same scene on June 25, 2013:
Not only is the “town” a bit bigger, but there’s this whole other collection of walls and buildings, covering a far larger area, to the right, or east.
I also see in this shot that it was gone on December 8, 2014.
Now I’m fascinated by this town and the erased something-or-other nearby, which I also shot on June 2:
It appears to be “Medina Wasl,” which Wikipedia says is one of twelve towns built for desert warfare training:
One of the features of the base is the presence of 12 mock “villages” which are used to train troops in Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) prior to their deployment. The villages mimic real villages and have variety of buildings such as religious sites, hotels, traffic circles, etc. filled with foreign language speaking actors portraying government officials, local police, local military, villagers, street vendors, and insurgents. The largest two are known as Razish and Ujen, the closest located about 30 minutes from the main part of the post. Most of the buildings are created using intermodal containers, stacked to create larger structures, the largest village consists of 585 buildings that can engage an entire brigade combat team into a fight.
Now I’m slowly going through my other shots over the years to see if I can find Razish and Ujen… if they haven’t been erased.
It would be cool to hear from military folk familiar with Fort Irwin, or veterans who have worked or fought mock battles in those towns.
BYSMD
April 2, 2016 in Culture, Family, Friends, Fun, Geography, North Carolina, Personal, Places, Strange stuff, Travel | Permalink
Once, in the early ’80s, on a trip from Durham to some beach in North Carolina, we stopped to use the toilets at a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. In the stall where I sat was a long conversation, in writing, between two squatters debating some major issue of the time. Think of the best back-and-forth you’ve ever read in a comment thread and you’ll get a rough picture of what this was like.
So I sat there, becoming engrossed and amazed at the high quality of the dialog — and the unlikelihood of it happening where it was.
Until I got to the bottom. There, ending the conversation, were the penultimate and ultimate summaries, posed as a question and answer:
Q: Why do people feel compelled to settle their differences on bathroom walls?
A. Because you suck my dick.
That story became legendary in our family and social network, to such a degree that my then-teenage daughter and her girlfriends developed a convention of saying “Because you suck my dick” whenever an argument went on too long and wasn’t going anywhere. This was roughly the same as dropping a cow: a way to end a conversation with an absurdity.
The whole thing came back to me when I read Pro-Trump Chalk Messages Cause Conflicts on College Campuses in the NYTimes today. The story it suggests is that this kind of thing regresses toward a mean that is simply mean. Or stupid. For example,
Wesleyan University issued a moratorium in 2003, after members of the faculty complained that they were being written about in sexually explicit chalk messages.
So I’m thinking we need a name for this, or at least an initialism. So I suggest BYSMD.
Oil and Water on California’s South Coast
March 15, 2016 in Aviation, education, Geography, Geology, Health, history, Personal, Photography, Strange stuff, Technology, UCSB | Permalink
Oil from the Coal Oil Seep Field drifts across Platform Holly, off the shore of UC Santa Barbara.
Oil in the water is one of the strange graces of life on Califonia’s South Coast.
What we see here is a long slick of oil in the Pacific, drifting across Platform Holly, which taps into the Elwood Oil Field, which is of a piece with the Coal Oil Point Seep Field, all a stone’s throw off Coal Oil Point, better known as UC Santa Barbara.
Wikipedia (at the moment) says this:
The Coal Oil Point seep field offshore from Santa Barbara, California isa petroleum seep area of about three square kilometres, adjacent to the Ellwood Oil Field, and releases about 40 tons of methane per day and about 19 tons of reactive organic gas (ethane, propane, butane and higher hydrocarbons), about twice the hydrocarbon air pollution released by all the cars and trucks in Santa Barbara County in 1990.[1]The liquid petroleum produces a slick that is many kilometres long and when degraded by evaporationand weathering, produces tar balls which wash up on the beaches for miles around.[2]
This seep also releases on the order of 100 to 150 barrels (16 to 24 m3) of liquid petroleum per day.[3] The field produces about 9 cubic meters of natural gas per barrel of petroleum.[2]
Leakage from the natural seeps near Platform Holly, the production platform for the South Ellwood Offshore oilfield, has decreased substantially, probably from the decrease in reservoir pressure due to the oil and gas produced at the platform.[2]
On the day I shot this (February 10), from a plane departing from Santa Barbara for Los Angeles, the quantity of oil in the water looked unusually high to me. But I suppose it varies from day to day.
Interesting fact:
Chumash canoes were made planks carved from redwood or pine logs washed ashore after storms, and sealed with asphalt tar from the seeps. There are no redwoods on the South Coast, by the way. The nearest are far up the coast at Big Sur, a couple hundred miles to the northwest. (It is likely that most of the redwood floating into the South Coast came from much farther north, where the Mendicino and Humboldt coastlines are heavily forested with redwood.)
National Geographic says that using the tar had the effect of shrinking the size of Chumash heads over many generations.
There are also few rocks hard enough to craft into a knife or an ax anywhere near Santa Barbara, or even in the Santa Ynez mountains behind it. All the local rocks are of relatively soft sedimentary kinds. Stones used for tools were mostly obtained by trade with tribes from other regions.
Here’s the whole album of oil seep shots.
A tale of two stars
March 1, 2016 in history, Obituary, Strange stuff | 3 comments
(This post is reblogged from this one, posted on June 11, 2001.)
The best live performance I’ve ever attended was John Lee Hooker playing St. Joseph’s AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church in Durham, North Carolina.
It was around the turn of the 80s, and in those days I went to pretty much every interesting act that came through town. I had no idea this was going to be anything unusual.
When I walked in the door, John Lee was standing near the entrance looking old and beat in his orange jacket. He also smelled pretty bad, frankly, and I felt guilty for noticing it. As usual, I took a seat in the front pew (I hate sitting in the back of anything). In a few minutes John Lee came in and grumbled “Stand up!” in a gruff voice. Everybody obeyed. He then launched into a series of songs that made it impossible for anybody to sit for the next several hours. It was a Rock & Roll Gospel Event of the first order. After that I knew a lot more about John Lee and the hard-driving boogie blues genre he pioneered.
For the last few years John Lee has lived down the hill from my house, which overlooks the Bay Area from Redwood City. He has a small ranch house on a cul-de-sac off Alameda de las Pulgas, the main drag at the base of the hill. There is usually a Caddy parked out front with a vanity plate that makes clear who’s home.
Recently we also came to share the same barber. So now I’ll share the story our barber once told me about his most famous customer.
It seems that John Lee liked to have his hair cut at home, and the barber was glad to oblige. Then one day, when he came over to John Lee’s house, there was a corpse in the front parlor, laying on the couch. When the barber went over to have a closer look, the corpse — which belonged to a gaunt white man — appeared to have been dead for some time. When the barber went into John Lee’s bedroom, where the old man liked to sit to have his hair cut, the barber said, “Did you know there’s a dead guy in your living room?” “Aw,” John Lee replied, “That’s just Keith Richards. He always looks like that.”
Yesterday we drove past John Lee’s house on our way out of town. I wondered, as I always do, about how the old guy was doing. It turned out our barber was losing his customer on the same day.
So: is it true? Whether or not, it’s a great story.
Tags: blues, Caddy, Healer, John Lee Hooker, Keith Richards, Story
What’s up with @TMobile in North Carolina?
September 1, 2015 in Business, Family, Gear, infrastructure, Internet, North Carolina, Places, Strange stuff, Technology, VRM | 9 comments
I took that screen shot at the excellent Oakleaf restaurant in Pittsboro, NC a few days ago. Note the zero bars (or dots) of telephone service, and the very respectable (tested!) data service. To confirm what the hollow dots said, I tried to make a call. Didn’t work.
This seems to be a new thing for T-Mobile in North Carolina, where I spent much of this summer — or at least in the parts of it where I visited.
The company’s mobile phone coverage is pretty lousy to begin with, on the whole: great on highways and in the larger towns; but spotty when you head into the suburbs and countryside. What changed is the sudden near-disappearance of voice phone coverage in some places where it had worked before, and the improvement at the same time of data coverage.
At my sister’s house, near a major interstate highway, I could use my phone on the porch or in the yard, but not indoors, where I’d see the most dreaded two words in mobile telephony: “no service.” Or at least that was the case in July and early August.
Then something strange happened. I started getting data service indoors at her house, and in other places where before there was nothing. But all I got was data, identified by that little “LTE.” Telephony was five empty dots. At my sister’s place I also couldn’t make or get a call out in the yard, on the street, or anywhere in the neighborhood. But the data service was now terrific.
So I’m wondering if this is just me, or if T-Mobile is lately favoring data over telephony in some places. Anybody know? (I note that T-Mobile’s coverage maps only seem to deal with data, not telephony. But maybe I’m missing something.)
By the way, I should add that I wouldn’t trade T-Mobile for any other carrier right now, because I travel a lot outside the country. In addition to fine coverage in New York, Boston, and all the places I tend to go in California, T-Mobile gives me free data roaming and texting everywhere I go, and 20¢/minute on the phone. Yes, the data rates tend to be 2G rather than 3G or 4G/LTE. But it tends to be good enough most of the time. It also makes me tolerant of a less-than-ideal coverage footprint here in the U.S.
Tags: Mobile phone
The untold pirate radio story in New York
June 18, 2015 in Broadcasting, Business, Culture, Geography, Journalism, Law, radio, Strange stuff, Technology | 13 comments
[Update, 4 June 2016—I’m attempting to listen right now to WFAN/101.9 and it’s obliterated by signals flanking it on 101.7 and 102.1. Maybe my tweet about it here will finally get some journalists interested in the topic.]
The radio dial here in “upstate” Manhattan and the Bronx is packed with pirate radio signals. Many are smack next to New York’s licensed landmarks. Here’s what I’m getting right now on our kitchen radio…
88.1 “Romantica New York” Spanish announcers, music in English and Spanish. Right next to WBGO (@wbgo), New York’s jazz station (licensed to Newark).
89.3 Spanish. Right next to WFDU and WNYU (@wnyu), the Fairleigh Dickenson and NYU stations that share time on 89.1.
89.7 Spanish. Talk. Call-ins. Right next to WKCR (@wkcrfm), the Columbia University station on 89.9.
91.3 Spanish, as I recall. It just popped off the air. Right next to WNYE on 91.5.
92.1 Spanish, currently playing traditional Mexican (e.g. Mariachi) music and talking up a Mexican restaurant. Right next to 92.3 WBMP “Amp radio” (@923amp) in New York.
94.3 Spanish talk. Not next to any local station, but two notches removed from 94.7 WNSH “Nash” (@nashfm947ny) in New York (licensed to Newark).
95.3 Spanish music. Right next to 95.5 WPLJ (@955plj) in New York. (Note that in the screen shot above, of my kitchen radio, it lights up the ST (stereo) indicator.)
98.9 Spanish talk and music. Right next to 98.7 WEPN-FM (@espnny98_7), ESPN’s flagship station on 98.7.
99.3 Spanish talk. Right next to 99.5 WBAI in New York.
101.7 Spanish music. Right next to 101.9 WFAN-FM (@wfan660) in New York.
102.5 English talk, with a Caribbean accent. Just heard ads for businesses in The Bronx (nail salon) and New Jersey (dentist), massage therapy (50 fremont ave, East Orange, NJ), a reggae music concert, 708-282-8741. Right next to 102.7 WWFS, “Fresh 102.7” (@fresh1027ny) in New York.
102.9 English talk and music, with a Jamaican accent. I believe this was the same station that earlier today was rebroadcasting a Kingston station, no doubt picked up off the Net. Also right next to WWFS.
105.5 Some kind of Christian pop, I think. It’s not WDHA in Dover, NJ. I just checked that station’s stream online. Totally different.
105.7 Music in English right now. Right next to 105.9 WQXR (@WQXR) in New York.
106.1 English. Reggae dance. Ads: Mizama Apparel Plus, 4735 white plains road. Kings Electronics, 4372 White Plains Road. Jumbo concert in Mt. Vernon… Also right next to WQXR on the dial. All but blows QXR away, in fact. (QXR’s signal radiates from the same master antenna as most other New York stations, on the Empire State Building, but is just 610 watts, while most of the rest are 6000 watts.)
106.9 English music. Caribbean accent. Right next to 106.7 WLTW “Lite FM” (@1067litefm) in New York.
This is a nearly completely different list of pirates than the one I compiled last fall from this same location, in the 10040 area code. (There were pirate signals on 89.3 and 89.7 then, but I’m not sure if these are the same.), None of the pirate signals match anything on this list of all the legitimate licensed signals radiating within 100km (60 miles) of here.
Man, I wish I knew Spanish. If I did, I would dig into as many of these as I could.
All of them, I am sure, are coming from the northern end of Manhattan and the Bronx, though 102.5 has so many ads for New Jersey places that I wonder if it’s actually over there somewhere.
All of them serve some kind of marketplace, I assume. And even though I don’t understand most of what they’re talking about (when they do talk), I’m fascinated by them.
At the same time they are all illegal, and to varying degrees interfere with legitimate licensed stations. If I were any of the legitimate stations listed above, I’d be concerned. Weaker stations (e.g. WKCR, WBGO and WQXR) especially.
There are a few New York pirate radio stories out there (here, here and here, for example); but they’re all thin, stale or old.
This is a real phenomenon with a lot of meat for an enterprising journalist — especially one who speaks Spanish. Any takers?
The Oldest Bridge In New York City Just Reopened After 40 Years
Listening to Serial? Remember the Edgar Smith case.
December 13, 2014 in Broadcasting, Journalism, News, Past, Personal, Strange stuff | 1 comment
I’m now four episodes into Serial, the hugely popular reality podcast from WBEZ and This American Life. In it reporter Sarah Koenig episodically tugs together many loose ends around the murder of Hae Min Lee, a Baltimore teenager, in 1999. The perp, said the cops and the proscecutor at the time, was former boyfriend Adnan Syed, who was convicted by a jury of first degree murder. They deliberated about as long as it takes for an afternoon nap. He’s been in prison ever since.
My provisional conclusion is that the court was right to find Adnan guilty. My case for that conviction (or vice versa) is an ad hominem one: the whole thing is eerily eminiscent (for me) of Edgar Smith , (that’s his mug photo on the right) who served a record length of time on death row before successfully arguing for a retrial, which resulted in a lesser conviction and his release — after which he kidnapped and tried to kill someone else, confessing as well to the original crime. He’s an old man now, serving time for the second crime.
While still in jail for the first crime, Smith earned a high degree of media attention and celebrity with his book Brief Against Death, which was a bestseller at the time. I read it and believed him. So did William F. Buckley Jr., who befriended Smith, and was instrumental in getting Smith’s case reconsidered, by both the courts and the public. Buckley even wrote the introduction to Smith’s book.
Think of the media-intensive Smith case as the Serial of its time.
Back then a good friend of mine was studying at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, and interviewed Smith. “He’s guilty,” my friend said. “The guy is brilliant, but he’s also a liar.” Later Bill Buckley said the same thing.
It haunts me that I was snookered by Smith, and comforts me none to know I wasn’t alone.
This of course makes no case at all against Adnan Syed. He might be innocent as a lamb. And I’d like to say he’s innocent until proven guilty. But his guilt has already been decided by a court of law, so now it’s the other way around: he needs to prove his innocence. Or at least raise the shadow of doubt to a height under which he can be sprung.
I worry about what will happen if all the current interest in this case results in Adnan’s release. What if he really did kill Hae — meaning he’s as remorseless and manipulative as Edgar Smith?
With the case headed to an appeals court, this now appears possible.
I’ll keep my mind open as I listen through the rest of Series. It’s outstanding radio. And I also invite the @Serial team to look at the Smith case as well — if they haven’t already.* It may not be relevant, but it is similar.
Bonus case: Jack Henry Abbott.
* (14 December) Have they? I’ve now listened through Episode 7 and so far they haven’t mentioned it.
Every thing has a face, and vice versa
October 22, 2014 in Awesome, Blogging, Blogroll, Friends, Geology, infrastructure, Internet, Life, Obituary, Photography, Places, Strange stuff | 4 comments
That line came to me a few minutes ago, as I looked and read through the latest photographic blog posts by Stephen Lewis in his blog, Bubkes). This one…
… titled Farmyard, Grandmother, Chicken, and Ovid in Exile, is accompanied by richly detailed text, including this:
The courtyard in the photo no longer exists; it and and the vegetable garden were uprooted several years ago. in their place: a summer-time restaurant surrounded by neatly planted flowerbeds and a tall antenna tower of a mobile telephony company resting on a broad concrete footing. The grandmother still lives on the plot, however, and tends the little that remains of her garden. She is in her late-eighties now and, at day’s end, often sits on the raised curb of the newly paved road next to her former farmyard in expectation of passersby…
Nothing is permanent, but in this case the more durable feature is the grandmother and her friendly face — the face of the place, while she lasts.
Also arresting is Corn Stalks, a Plateau, the Black Sea, and the Horizon:
It’s a place that calls to mind face in its verb form. A synonym might be to meet, or to confront. We face a challenge, an opportunity, a problem, success, failure, or the world. Things face us as well, but not always directly. Three of the four things in the photo are mostly hidden by the first, but far more vast and open. Also flat. Horizons may feature mountains, but they are horizontal: flat and wide.
We are walking and running animals that work best in the horizontal. Our eyes shift more easily to left and right than to up and down. Our stereoscopic vision and hearing also locate best in the horizontal spread from one here to many theres.
Our species dispersed from Africa toward gone horizons, mostly along coasts long since drowned by melting ice caps. The Black Sea has changed greatly in spread and shape throughout human history, and may have reached its present height in a deluge through the Dardanelles and Bosporus seaways.
The view on the path in the photo is framed between the vertical blinders of dry corn stalks at the edges of fields of unseen vastness. (Corn fields have always been both beautiful and a tiny bit creepy to me, ever since I got a bit lost when wandering as a kid into a cornfield somewhere, with no clear direction out other than the sound of distant voices.)
Between the last paragraph and this one, Stephen posted another photo, titled Shabla, Bulgaria: Seawards and Kitchenwards, taken on the shore of the Black Sea:
The subject is mostly boats and ramps. In the foreground are stairs and wood railings, two of the many literal and figurative framings, none quite horizontal, in a vertical photo with dimensions we call “portrait.” On the face of this Bulgarian shore, one ear is the sea itself. All the ramps face land and sea. To them the camera is an unseen visitor from another dimension.
While seeing and hearing are mostly horizontal (our ears as well as our eyes are aligned with the horizon), eating is vertical: food is something we “eat up” and “get down.” So is nutrition: we “raise” crops and cattle.”
In Stephen’s photos, things have faces too. Some are literal, such as in Guns of August, Books of August: The Iconography of a Gravestone in Prague:
The photo puts in contrast the irony of cemetery “monuments” (as gravestones are now called), commemorating stuff nobody alive remembers, for an audience a living performer might round to zero. Under the subhead The Emotions of the Living; the Passivity of the Dead, Stephen writes,
The photo above, taken in the immense cemetery in the late-19th/early-20th century residential quarter of Vinohrady, portrays a gravestone tableau of life’s emotionized figures that reveals the ways that those in the comfort and safety of the home-front consciously or unconsciously sanitized, rationalized, and ennobled the senseless carnage of World War I.
Last month I visited the graves of relatives three generations and more ahead of mine, at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, and reported on that visit in Lives of the Dead. While some graves at Woodlawn yearned toward the kind of extravagance Stephen found in Vinohrady, my late kinfolk leaned in the opposite direction, marking little or nothing of who they planted there. To my knowledge, I was the first to surface (at those last two links) twenty Englerts, Knoebels and others whose faces in death are carpets of mowed grass.
And who knows how long anything will last on the Web? My old blog, on which I wrote from 1999-2007, survives by the grace of a friend, and its blogroll is a near-cemetery of rotting links.
Every thing faces a future for as long as we grace it with expectation of use, appreciation or some other goodness. Why else save anything?
So I’m glad Stephen keeps putting these photos up, and enlarging them so well with prose. Here’s a list of other photos in his series, posted since the last time I last blogged his series:
Stone Cliffs, Stone Beach, Stone Walls, Lord of Stone
Past Glory: Abandoned Mineral Bath Pavilion, Sofia, Bulgaria
Guns of August, Books of August: The Iconography of a Gravestone in Prague
Literary Interlude: Graffito, Sofia, Bulgaria
Monochrome Interlude: Night, Side Street, Şişhane Quarter, Istanbul
Reflective Interlude: A Saturday Afternoon, Beşiktaş, Istanbul
Colorful Interlude: Tarlebaşi Quarter, Istanbul
The Church of St. James the Martyr, Poduyane Quarter, Sofia, Bulgaria: A Careless Assumption, a Careless Bombardment, and the Benefits of a Once-Strong Back
Courtyard, Sofia, Bulgaria: Two Views, New Viewpoint
A Great Day in Meriçleri
A Musical Interlude: Two Musicians, Two Instruments, Two Moods
Istanbul, From Piyale Paşa to Bomonti and Back: A Half-Century of Urban Dynamics in Three Non-Stereotypic Views
It’s a wonderful gallery. Enjoy.
Rediscovering Junkie John, Tim Dawe and Penrod after 40 years
August 27, 2014 in Art, Culture, music, Strange stuff | 2 comments
I used to have an open reel tape of song I recorded off some New York FM station in 1970 or so. It’s long lost now. I didn’t know the artist or the title. It was was half talked, half sung, about a loser in Greenwich Village, “Junkie John,” coming down in a fleabag hotel. Very haunting, which is why I never forgot it.
I didn’t know what it was called or who did it. Every so often I’d ask people who knew music better than than I did, if they knew a song about “Junkie John.” A few said maybe it was a Blues Traveller thing, or John Mayall. But looking down those alleys went nowhere. I figured eventually that it was too obscure, and probably had a title that had nothing to do with what I remembered of it.
But a few weeks ago, at 1:30am here in New York, the song popped into my mind. So I looked up “Junkie John” on Google just for the hell of it, and… Wow:::: found this on YouTube, by Tim Dawe.
It’s the real thing. Amazing. Listen to it. Preferably on good headphones or speakers in a dark room.
Dawe starts the story over a plucked string bass. Very slow, laconic. About a minute in comes a Hammond organ with funeral chords. Then a haunting chorus. Gives ya chills. After about 5 minutes it digresses into a weird psychedelic jazz bridge with more instruments (it seems). Then the instruments drop out and it goes back to just the singer, the organ, the bass, and the end of the story, which seems to have no end, really. (Did Junkie John die, or just come down? Not clear.)
It’s very different listening with headphones today, maybe forty years after the first time I heard it, probably over speakers, probably in the dark, probably in a rural New Jersey house, with the kids asleep in another room.
Here’s the back story, from the CD re-issue liner notes. Funny to learn that the whole story of Dawe, the band, the recording, everybody involved with it, took place in Los Angeles and San Diego, not New York — and that it was a Frank Zappa production, on his Straight label (which had the bizarre stuff, as I recall), rather than his Bizarre label (which, again as I recall, had the straight-ish stuff).
The whole album is called Penrod (which may or may not be Dawe’s real name… also not clear). I bought it on Amazon for $9.49. Now I just need to rip it to the laptop.
Anyway, highly recommended.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/tim-dawe-mn0001559315/biography
http://www.allmusic.com/album/penrod-mw0000745016
http://badcatrecords.com/BadCat/DAWEtim.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Penrod-Tim-Dawe/dp/B00076Q006
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/penrod/id432722101
http://www.ticketmaster.com/Tim-Dawe-tickets/artist/744342
Digging Hart Island, New York’s Million-Corpse Potter’s Field
September 23, 2013 in Culture, Geography, history, infrastructure, Life, Links, Outline, Photography, Places, problems, Research, Strange stuff | 2 comments
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. — Samuel Johnson
Visitors to New York’s Orchard Beach (at the top of the photo above) probably don’t know that the low wooded island offshore will, at the current rate, contain a million buried human bodies, if it doesn’t already.
The site is Hart Island (aka Hart’s Island), and it is New York’s potter’s field: where the city’s “unclaimed and indigent” dead are buried. It is the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world. Burial is done by inmates of the Department of Corrections, which also controls the island. Visitors are not welcome.
I knew nothing about Hart Island until I found myself looking at the picture I shot of the place, above, while seeking information about something else. Though bleak, the stories of the place are fascinating — and, it seemed to me, far too important to leave as far out on the margins of consciousness as they are of the City. So I compiled a list in a Fargo outline, which I’ve arranged below.
One item I’ll pull out of the list to start with is The Hart Island Project*, by Melinda Hunt (@hartisland) and a team of collaborators. Melinda has been leading a steady effort to open up the island to visitors and to humanize and modernize the records kept of persons buried there. Her constituency includes all who reside in what we might call the Mass Grave of the Barely-Known Outcasts — and too few of the living, so far. So dig:
See wooden coffins starting to fill an open trench on Google Maps.
Here is a better “birds eye” view on Bing. Note that these are open graves.
Hart Island. An amazing and much-sourced photo essay by The Kingston Lounge: Guerrilla Preservation and Urban Archaeology. Brooklyn and Beyond.
Melinda Hunt on the Hart Island Project.
Access to New York’s Potter’s Field. To the Editor of the New York Times, by Melinda Hunt.
What Happens When A Homeless New Yorker Dies? By Dan Lewis in Smithsonian.
Hart Island: At New York City’s Potter’s Field, Identifying The Dead And Finding Closure. By Ula Ilnytzky in Huffington Post.
Hart Island Burials In New Online Database; NYC Potter’s Field World’s Largest Municipal-Run Graveyard. By Amy Zimmer in Huffington Post.
New Yorker helps people track down loved ones who died unknown. On CNN.
Artist uncovers tales from New York burial island. Adam Geller, Associated Press. (In SFGate.)
Rapid City woman haunted by Hart Island burial ground. By Mary Garrigan, Rapid City Journal.
Hart Island Tour June 15, 2000. By The New York Correction History Society.
Island of the Dead. In Google Sightseeing.
Abandoned Island That Contains 800,000 Nameless Bodies. Amazing Facts.
Manhattan in Middle Age. By Elizabeth Gumport in This Recording. It’s about the novelist Dawn Powell, who wrote, “New York is my city because I have an investment I can always draw on a bottomless investment of twenty-one years (I count the day I was born) of building up an idea of New York — so no matters what happens here I have the rock of my dreams of it that nothing can destroy.” She is buried in Hart Island.
The Death of Yafna Garcia and Visiting Mille’s Burial Ground. By Chris Arnade Photography (@Chris_Arnade) . Excerpt: “Case #97 of the Bronx Medical Examiner. Cause of Death: Bacterial Endocarditis of tricuspid valve due to intravenous drug abuse. This information had not made it back to either Millie’s family or friends. In early April they still continued to talk of raising money for a funeral. That was not going to happen. Millie was already buried. On March 21, Millie’s body was shipped from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to City Cemetery on Hart Island. Inmates from Rikers Island placed her body in a wooden box made by other inmates. She was placed in a massive trench (70′ x 20′ x 6′) joining roughly one million others that lay beneath an empty field on a small island two miles from the shores of the Bronx. Many of her siblings do not know she is dead. Those who do know don’t realize they cannot bury Millie on their terms. It is unlikely they will ever be able to pay their last respects. Hart Island is run by the Department of Correction and clouded in security and secrecy. It is close to impossible to visit. Family, after showing many documents, can fill out paperwork and hope. If they are accepted they can only get to the island via a ferry that leaves once a month. Her grave is unmarked: They wouldnt be able to find it, anyway.”
Hart’s Island. By God’s Acre. Pull-quote: “When I first heard of Hart Island I was both appalled and excited in equal measure to find a place that I had never heard of and which seemed both illicit and intriguing. However, the more I read about Hart Island the more it became for me symptomatic of the anonymity of the Western world. We live and we die before being swept away in the morning like so much trash. The beautiful baby that is momentarily caressed in the arms of its mother is cast aside in later years and is laid to rest like garbage. Hart island is a loathsome and horrid place and somewhere that I expected to find in the genocidal annals of European history rather than in the land of the free.”
Trailer for “Hart Island: An American Cemetery”, by Melinda Hunt.
The Sad Demise of Bobby Driscoll, child actor and the voice of Peter Pan in the Disney animated classic. Buried at Hart Island.
Lost Boy: The Bobby Driscoll Story. A YouTube video for a Kickstarter that came up short.
Bobby Driscoll on Hart Island. Another YouTube video. Caption: “from his daughter hoping her voice is heard.” Her voice is in text. Gotta watch it.
Finding Names for Hart Island’s Forgotten. By Cara Buckley in The New York Times.
Searching for Names on an Island of Graves. By Sewell Chan in The New York Times.
Sketching Lives Long Buried and Forgotten. By Andy Newman in The New York Times.
Hart Island is NYC’s Public Burial Ground. By The City of New York Department of Correction. Searchable Database. http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/nycdoc/html/hart.html.
The City Life: Piercing the Mystery of Potter’s Field athomesense.com)/li>
New York City Introduces Online Database for Its Potter’s Field< eogn.com)
Green-Wood Cemetery and Hart Island Potter’s Field artassemblyrequired.org)
New York City’s Secret Island Graveyard cssewell71.wordpress.com)
[Nina Bernstein‘s Pulitzer-worthy New York Times series on Hart Island, added on October 12, 2016]:
Officials Object to Plan to Turn Hart Island Burial Site Over to Parks Dept, by Nina Bernstein, January 20, 2016, in The New York Times.
This is Hart Island, by John Woo, Alexandra Garcia, Alon Sicherman and Micah Dickbauer. May 15, 2016 in The New York Times. A short and moving video. Accompanies—
Unearthing Secrets of New York’s Mass Graves, by Nina Bernstein, May 15, 2016 in The New York Times. Subhead: “Over a million people are buried in the city’s potter’s field on Hart Island. A New York Times investigation uncovers some of their stories and the failings of the system that put them there.” Probably the most recent and comprehensive report on the island.
How to Avoid the Fate of a Common Grave, by Nina Bernstein, May 15, 2016, in The New York Times.
New York Stories from Potters Field, an Opinion by Francis X. Clines, May 24, 2016, in The New York Times. Follows up on the pieces above.
Bodies Given to N.Y.U. Ended Up in Mass Graves, Despite Donors’ Wishes, by Nina Bernstein, May 27, 2016, in The New York Times.
On Hart Island, Missed Friends and Common Graves, letter to the editor by Debra Lambert, Barbara Porteus and Perry Dane, on June 6, 2016, in The New York Times.
How a Vague Hunch Led From a Nursing Home to an Island of Mass Graves, by Nina Bernstein, June 8, 2016, in The New York Times.
In fact Hart Island is New York’s ninth Potter’s Field. Writes Melinda Hunt,
A few of these early potters fields remain in the public domain as smaller parcels of land now known as Madison Square Park (1794), Washington Square Park (1797), Bryant Park and the Public Library (1823). Except for the last potter’s field in Manhattan, located at the current Waldorf Astoria Hotel (1836), no records exist of the bodies being moved elsewhere. At all other sites, parks were created after the cemeteries, parade grounds, and the reservoir closed. Once the city expanded beyond 50th Street, the East River became a more convenient route for transporting the bodies. Potter’s fields opened briefly on Randalls Island (1843) and Wards Island (1846) before moving much further out to Hart Island.
It’s a haunting history. Another excerpt:
The burial records show an ever-changing pool of immigrants, diseases and disabilities administered to by a range of institutions. It remains too mixed and varied to become the darling of any special interest group. Genealogists that I have spoken with claim that most families with immigrant roots in New York City probably have lost relatives buried on Hart Island. As one recently told me: “People come to me hoping to discover ‘nobility’ in their ancestry, but the missing people usually turn out to have had alcohol problems or mental illness and were buried in Potter’s Field.”
In New York City, the combined nine potter’s fields have close to one million burials. An immense amount of history is associated with these places. Yet, there is almost no academic or institutional interest in the public cemeteries. Most of the writing about Hart Island takes the form of journalism documenting specific events. Distinctive in these accounts is the unanswered question of why such a place continues to exist. Most other American cities cremate the unclaimed and unwanted. If burials are provided they are in more accessible places. Chicago has a potter’s field with mass graves as part of a private cemetery. New York City offers burial assistance to families who organize an application. Nonetheless, the burials continue to number two to three thousand a year. Even with the twenty-five year time limit, the northern 45 acres of Hart Island named Cemetery Hill is full. Current burials have moved to the shallow grounds south of the workhouses.
New York City has a long-standing policy of respecting diverse religious practices. Many religions do not permit cremation. Until recently Catholics buried on Hart Island were placed in separate “consecrated ground.” In 1913, “baby trenches” were separated from “adult trenches.” Starting in 1935, “catholic babies” had separate trenches from “regular babies.”
Incredible care and expense goes into conducting the burials. In 1990 the cost of flowers, tools, heavy equipment, parts to repair equipment, general maintenance equipment, fuel and inmate labor, at thirty-five cents per hour, drove the cost of each burial to $346. In addition, the city provides for free exhumation if family members claim a body within seven years of burial.
During the first fifty years of Hart Island burials, “unclaimed” people were buried in single graves. Only the “unwanted” whose relatives assigned them to a public burial were in mass graves. Today, all bodies are carefully organized into a grid. The ends of trenches are marked by a number pressed into a concrete block. Re-excavations require locating the designated body within this numbered scheme.
Perhaps it is the abstraction of human lives into trench numbers and statistics that is most disturbing about the potter’s field. I was impressed by the fact that the burial records from the nineteenth century contain full names, causes of death and countries of origin. In this century the names of babies up until 1940 are strictly female; each child’s identity is linked exclusively to the mother. She is the person forever associated with the potter’s field. After 1940, only surnames are listed. By 1955, the causes of death for children are uniformly listed as “confidential.” By 1970, the category “cause of death” is left blank. That the island is prohibitively difficult to visit adds another level of removal.
Then there is this, from Thomas Badhe, in a Common Place essay,” The Common Dust of Potter’s Field: New York City and its bodies politic, 1800-1860″:
The first Potter’s Field burial ground in New York City was located at the site of what would become the militia parade ground and city park at Washington Square. On this nine-and-a-half-acre plot, at the city’s pastoral northern edge, lay the densely packed corpses of about 125,000 “strangers,” many of whom had died during two separate yellow-fever epidemics between 1795 and 1803. Not surprisingly, local residents who had fled crowded lower Manhattan for country estates in the region came to find in Potter’s Field an intense nuisance. Whatever sympathy anyone had for the anonymous dead did not supersede wealthy New Yorkers’ sense of entitlement when it came to their comfortable insulation from the city’s darker side. In a letter to the Common Council, they wrote, “From the rapid Increase of Building that is daily taking place both in the suburbs of the City and the Grounds surrounding the field alluded to, it is certain that in the course of a few years the aforementioned field will be drawn within a precinct of the City.” Within the first two decades of the nineteenth century, their prediction had been realized, and the Potter’s Field began a lengthy series of migrations in a vain effort to stay a step ahead of the city’s relentless growth.
In 1823, the city moved Potter’s Field to an empty lot at the corner of Forty-ninth Street and Fourth Avenue—what would then have been the far northern reaches of the metropolis. This place served as the Potter’s Field until the 1840s when, as the city grew northward, it was relocated once again to Randall’s Island in the East River. Cast off the Island of Manhattan like so many family farms, Potter’s Field would no longer clash with the New Yorkers’ Victorian sensibilities or inhibit the Manhattan real-estate boom.
Just south of Randall’s Island, separated by a treacherous, narrow channel known as Little Hell’s Gate, was Ward’s Island, the site of another Potter’s Field in the mid-1850s. Both Randall’s and Ward’s Islands already housed other city institutions for the indigent, including the Emigrant Refuge and Hospital, the State Inebriate Asylum, the juvenile branch of the Almshouse Department, and the headquarters for the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents. As one guide to New York and its benevolent institutions observed, “multitudes of persons went from the dram-shop to the police-station, and from the police courts to the Workhouse from whence, after a short stay, they returned to the dram shop . . . until they at length died on their hands as paupers or criminals, and were laid in the Potter’s Field.” For most of New York’s institutionalized underclass, there was literally a direct path from the door of the asylum or workhouse to the Potter’s Field.
Relocating the city’s cemetery from Manhattan’s urban grid to an island in the East River did not put an end to the city’s problem with the indigent dead. In 1849, the Daily Tribune reported on the political and legal wrangling between the governors of the Almshouse and the Common Council (the nineteenth-century name for the City Council), the former seeking to wrest authority over Potter’s Field from the latter. The governors cited the poor management of the paupers’ burial ground, which the Tribune referred to as “that den of abominations,” as evidence that the Common Council was unable to manage the Potter’s Field. “We do sincerely trust somebody will shoulder the responsibility of the Potter’s Field,” the Tribune pleaded, “and rid the Island of the abomination before the advent of another warm and perhaps an epidemic season.”
The Common Council and the Governors of the Almshouse traded letters, pleas, and vitriol for the better part of a decade. In May of 1851, the Governors warned the Common Council that, “the land now appropriated [for the Potter’s Field] is now nearly full, and the small space left for further interment (which now average upwards of one hundred per week), renders prompt action necessary.” Four years later, it was still unclear who had control over the Potter’s Field, and conditions were worsening. By this time, there were two burial grounds for paupers: the primary site on Randall’s Island and a smaller one on Ward’s Island to the south. The Board of Governors proposed to expand the Ward’s Island site in 1854, and the Times supported the proposition, suggesting that “it is time that the remains of paupers were interred in some quarter better fitted for their last resting-place than the one now used on Randall’s Island.” In their reports to the Board of Health and the Common Council, the Governors of the Almshouse urged that, “humanity, a due regard for the living, and a sense of proper respect for the dead” be part of any effort “to remedy the existing and impending evils.”
In the meantime, the disinterment of bodies at the old site on Fourth Avenue aroused its own controversy. In 1851, a plan was adopted by the Common Council to expand Forty-ninth Street through the old Potter’s Field, which required the disinterment of thousands of bodies. This project stretched on for nearly the entire decade, accompanied by foot-dragging and corrupt contractors. Commenting on the enormity of the project, the Times reported in the spring of 1853 that “the City Authorities are cutting a street through the old Potter’s Field . . . where so many victims of the Cholera were hurriedly interred in 1832. The coffins were then, in many instances, stacked one upon another; and now, in digging through the hill, the remains of twenty coffins may be seen thus piled together.”
As with the active Potter’s Field, the old paupers’ burial ground aroused no small amount of controversy. In the summer of 1858, the Timesagain reported on the work, claiming that “within three weeks past about 3,000 skeletons have been exhumed from the old Potter’s Field . . . and removed to Ward’s Island.” The winter of 1858-59 passed without any further exhumation, and “meantime the thin layer of earth which covered some hundred half-decayed coffins has fallen away, and . . . crowds of urchins assemble there daily and play with the bones of the dead; troops of hungry dogs prowl about the grounds and carry off skulls and detached parts of human bodies.”
Many of the old potter’s fields became parks. Washington Square is said to have twenty thousand bodies beneath it. Yet today it seems no more haunted than is Paris by its Catacombes, which I visited and wrote about three years ago, and which contains a population of dead that outnumber the city’s live citizens. The real haunting, I believe, is within our culture and its institutions. On that I’ll give Thomas Badhe the last words:
Having strolled through the rural cemeteries, we can better appreciate why the piles of moldering coffins exposed to the public in the 1850s caused New Yorkers to question their city’s claims to “civilization.” But the Potter’s Field was not only the antithesis of the rural-cemetery ideal (as well as a failure of municipal administration); it was also a site of spiritual death, obliterated social identity, and the graveyard of vice. If, as one proponent of rural cemeteries claimed in 1831, “the grave hath a voice of eloquence,” the Potter’s Field spoke in a dark chorus about the failures of democracy and civilization, the stark and messy exigencies of urban inequality, and thousands of individual lives wrecked on the shores of the great metropolis.
* The Hart Island Project is now a beautifully built website featuring the means to look up people buried there, and to tell their stories. Highly recommended.
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The Legacy – The BOLO Books Review
by Kristopher | Mar 16, 2017 | Review
Readers of series crime fiction know that typically the linkage between books resides with the characters, so when an author tries something different, it does tend to get noticed. In her new series debut, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir centers the series around an institution – in this case, the Children’s House of Iceland. The Legacy introduces readers to this real-world facility, which specializes in the care and treatment of abused and traumatized children.
The Legacy begins with a particularly horrific murder in which the only living witness is the victim’s seven-year-old daughter, Margret. Since she refuses to speak, Margret is taken to the Children’s House, where their team – led by Freyja – works with the girl in an effort to understand what she knows about the incident that killed her mother. Overseeing their work with this witness is Detective Huldar – a first time lead investigator who also happens to have a history with Freyja.
Freyja and Huldar had a one-night-stand and neither of them expected to or necessarily wanted to see each other ever again. Yet, now they are forced to work together.
The Legacy by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Sigurdardóttir’s plot is further complicated by a group of young men who spend their free time fiddling with ham radio equipment in the hopes of stumbling upon an interesting frequency. When they overhear the odd transmission of an indecipherable string of random numbers, they find themselves intrigued – and eventually in over their heads.
As these individuals circle around each other, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir leads readers through a compelling investigation with deep roots in yesteryear. Before the sins of the past can be exposed, three lives will be ended and no one involved will ever be the same. The Legacy is a darker and moodier novel than Sigurdardóttir’s previous series – more in line with her recent creepier stand-alone works. The author certainly knows how to weave setting and plot together in interesting ways.
One of Sigurdardóttir’s many strengths is her ability to craft fully realized characters readers want to latch onto. Like Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, her previous series heroine, both Freyja and Huldar are good – but flawed – people who feel as though they could stroll off the page and join readers for a cup of tea and conversation. Watching their interactions will have readers hoping to see more of them and how they might navigate their strange dynamic over time.
Fortunately, these characters will continue through the series, but it is the Children’s House that ultimately garners the most interest. This organization designed to protect and serve those that cannot help themselves is more than worthy of future exploration. Yrsa Sigurdardóttir has come up with a unique idea for a series and The Legacy is only the beginning of the journey. The Legacy will leave an enduring impression upon crime fiction connoisseurs world-wide.
Disclaimer: A print ARC of this title was provided to BOLO Books by the author. No review was promised and the above is an unbiased review of the novel.
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Emerald City Comicon 2015: Highlights
Published on April 1st, 2015
Emerald City Comicon is the Northwest’s premiere pop culture convention. It keeps most of its focus around comics and is said that the founder wanted to model it around the East-coast’s successful Heroes Con. I have been every year since 2012 and I have to say that it does an excellent job melding worlds together and making it a con with something for everyone. I don’t typically go to any conventions for its TV or film presence, so ECCC is my favorite con of the year because of the comic talent it brings in. That being said, this is the first year that I did take advantage of the celebrity photo ops and autograph area to meet Hayley Atwell.
This year the celebrity area was on the 6th floor, which helped keep congestion and traffic around the con manageable. Hayley was only there on Friday, but other guests included Stan Lee, Clark Gregg, Steven Yuen, John Barrowman, Orlando Jones, and other great guests from various fandoms. The show also didn’t skimp when it came to great panels. One highlight was Clark Gregg joking about how his infamous “Destroyer” gun was to be known as “Baby.” Since he’s married to Jennifer Grey, best known for Dirty Dancing, he refused to call it that for fear of the countless memes there would be about him putting “Baby” in a corner.
Food was another improvement over previous years. There was a Food Truck Alley set up on the streets outside of the convention center. They had Thai food, BBQ, comfort food…again, something for everyone and tastier than the jacked up prices of the convention food. Definitely a life-saver around 2:00 pm when you feel like you could pass out from hunger.
The social scene and meeting new people with common interests is another big draw to the convention. They had meeting rooms set up on the 3rd floor with specific themes and times for people to hang out, get to know each other, and take a break. I think it was a great idea and fun for people who may be too shy to go up to strangers to have some way to break the ice. There was Sci-Fi Speed Dating on the same floor. I did not partake in the festivities this year, but am considering doing so next year for sh**s and giggles and to say that I have.
As far as my personal experience at this year’s con, I attended all three days for at least a couple of hours. Friday, I was in costume but only really spent time in the celebrity area to meet Miss Atwell.Saturday, I debuted a brand new costume and did the full day. I walked around and took pictures of the amazing cosplayers and picked up some original artwork I had commissioned prior to the show. I picked up Madder Red/Rasputin from Riley Rossmo, Crow from Nick Dragotta, Oppenheimer from Nick Pitarra, Zsasz from Shawn Crystal, X-23 from Eric Canete, and treated myself to TWO M.O.D.O.K. convention pieces, one with Walter White and one with Grimlock from Gabo and Ken Christiansen, respectively. Sunday, I dressed casually and said my last minute good byes to some friends, networked for future cons and interviews, and scored some free prints. Overall, it was another successful year and a ton of fun.
For 2016, con goers can expect their first big changes since being acquired by major con company ReedPOP in January. ECCC will take place over four days instead of its traditional three. The company hopes that this will make the convention more like its other major comic book events: New York Comic Con and Chicago’s C2E2. The 2016 edition of Emerald City will kick off on April 7of next year. See you at WonderCon this weekend.
Noelle Raemer
Noelle@comicimpact.com
As thousands descend upon, Emerald City Comicon (ECCC), the biggest comic book and pop culture convention in the Pacific Northwest — ReedPOP, the world’s largest producer of pop culture events, announces that for the first time ECCC will expand to four jam-packed days in 2016. The expansion is sparked by growing consumer demand and sell-out crowds that have made the event a must-see calendar event of the year. ECCC 2016 will take place in downtown Seattle, Washington April 7-10.
ECCC 2015 features 200 hours of diverse, inclusive programming, including panels from the hottest writers and artists and some of the comic and entertainment worlds’ brightest voices. This year’s line-up includes the likes of Kevin Eastman (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Kelly Sue DeConnick (Bitch Planet, Captain Marvel), legendary comic creator Stan Lee, Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter, Captain America: The First Avenger), and John Barrowman (Arrow, Torchwood, Doctor Who). It also boasts the largest Artist Alley in the U.S. and an expanded Kids Area with Brick Nation, Clay Animation Network, and the 501st Legion.
ECCC, known for being a fan-oriented and comics-focused show, was founded by local comics retailer Jim Demonakos and opened to 2,500 fans its first year. Since then, attendance has grown steadily reaching a record 70,000 in 2014 and 80,000 in 2015! With new comic and celebrity guests each year, ECCC stands out in the industry as providing a unique experience with heart for fans of all ages. Additionally, ECCC has created a charity art book each year since 2009 –Monsters & Dames – that has raised over $75,000 for Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Demonakos had this to say about the expansion, “This was a tremendous year for us in terms of fan reaction. We sold out far quicker than we ever have in the past and want to expand to meet the demand of all those fans that are looking to experience ECCC. It’s a really unique and special show, and we’re excited to work alongside ReedPOP to help continue its growth.”
“After seeing the amazing response from fans and the opportunity to program even more in 2016 it became abundantly clear that we needed to add another day,” said Lance Fensterman, ReedPOP’s Global Senior Vice President. “We can’t wait to see what next year will bring.”
For more information on this year’s Emerald City Comicon please visit www.emeraldcitycomicon.com.
ABOUT REEDPOP
ReedPOP is a boutique group within Reed Exhibitions exclusively devoted to organizing events, launching and acquiring new shows, and partnering with premium brands in the pop culture world. ReedPOP is dedicated to celebrations of popular culture throughout the globe that transcend ordinary events by providing unique access and dynamic personal experiences. The ReedPOP portfolio includes: New York Comic Con (NYCC), Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2), Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) Prime, East, South and Australia, Emerald City Comicon, BookCon, Oz Comic-Con, Comic Con India, Paris Comic Con, Star Wars Celebration, TwitchCon, Shanghai Comic Convention and UFC Fan Expo. The staff at ReedPOP is a fan-based group of professionals uniquely qualified to serve those with whom they share a common passion. ReedPOP is focused on bringing its expertise and knowledge to world communities in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, India and Australia. (www.reedpop.com)
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Trending Movies/TV Shows
Why our reliance on cars could start booming
MalcolmVines last edited by MalcolmVines
Although many have been off the road during lockdown, research is showing that the desire to drive may surge in a post-pandemic world.
Until earlier this year, Alley Vandenbergwas a regular bus rider. She’d wake up each morning and take line 15 from her apartment in the City Park neighbourhood of Denver, Colorado, to her office at a financial institution in the bustling Civic Center Plaza. Because the commute was just 2.5 miles (4km), the investment supervisor left her car at home so she could avoid the hassle of driving through the heart of downtown at rush hour. It also saved her the $200 cost of monthly parking. Then, the pandemic threw a major wrench into her seamless commute.
“In May, when my office started asking people to return, my bus route had been cut to fewer runs, and capped at 15 riders per bus,” she says. Pre-Covid-19, the bus was always standing room only by the time it got to her, “so I knew I would just end up sitting at the bus stop for an hour or two, watching buses go by because they were already at capacity”.
This, coupled with news of riders not following guidelines for mask-wearing and social distancing, led her to swallow the additional costs and commute to work by car.
She’s hardly alone in making the change. Ridership on public transport has plummeted to historic lows both in the Americas and Europe, including on the London Underground and New York City Subway. Meanwhile, recent reports suggest that, despite our apparent embrace of biking and walking during the pandemic, many people can’t wait to get back into their vehicles. And they might even use them more after Covid-19 passes. Transport planners warn that this rapid shift back to the comfort of cars may be setting the stage for post-pandemic gridlock that could hamper economic recovery in cities across the globe.
A November report by automotive-services company RAC claims that the pandemic may have set the UK back decades in attitudes of driving versus taking public transport. Out of the 3,000 car owners surveyed, 68% considered their vehicles essential for daily errands, up from 54% last year.
The pandemic had the effect of making drivers who already had cars realise that they would depend on them more – Rod Dennis
Reluctance to use public transport was at its highest in 18 years. Some 54% of respondents said safety was a top consideration, but only 43% agreed that they would use their cars less if public transport was improved, which was the lowest figure since 2002. “The pandemic had the effect of making drivers who already had cars realise that they would depend on them more than ever,” says Rod Dennis, a data-insight spokesperson for RAC. “The million-dollar question is whether or not this is a deep-rooted change.”
The generation that has been historically least interested in car ownership, Gen Z, may offer some clues. Auto Trader, a digital marketplace for cars, says 15% of its website audience in the UK between June and September was aged 18 to 24, compared to just 6% during the same period in 2019. Rory Reid, Auto Trader UK’s YouTube director, noted that “the pandemic has shifted young people’s views of car ownership and gotten them to hit the road earlier than usual, as they look to rely less on public transport and try to minimise risk of spreading coronavirus”.
And, perhaps surprisingly, fears over the potential environmental risks of increased car use don’t seem to be a top concern for many around the world. A YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project survey of 26,000 people from 25 countries showed that an overwhelming majority accept human responsibility for climate change. Yet the poll, conducted between July and August, found that the majority of respondents also plan to drive more in the future than they did in the past. For example, take Brazil, where 88% of respondents believed in human-induced climate change. Some 60% of those same people said they would use their car more after the pandemic than before, while just 12% said they would use it less. More than 40% of respondents in the US and Australia also said they would drive more after the pandemic compared to just 10% who said they’d drive less.
Car traffic, in some places, has already exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Greater Paris hit record levels in late October ahead of a new national lockdown, with jams stretching to a cumulative 430 miles. Road congestion levels in outer London have increased nearly a fifth above last year. Traffic in Perth, Australia, is now 18% above pre-pandemic levels.
Many leaders around the world, most notably President-elect Joe Biden in the US, have announced aggressive plans for an economic recovery spurred by investments in green energy. However, these figures suggest targets set by the Paris Agreement may already be in jeopardy.
Concern over the safety of public transport has been one of the major factors luring people into cars in recent months. However, studies in France, Japan and Austria that have looked at the first wave of the virus have shown little evidence tying major coronavirus outbreaks to buses or trains. On the contrary, these studies showed that, with measures like social distancing and mask wearing in place, infections on public transit were actually quite rare.
Nevertheless, transit administrators have worked around the clock to enact new safety measures aimed at luring back riders. These include reducing capacity, enhancing sanitation measures and tapping into technological innovations. The latter has been a major focus of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). It moved more than a billion people in 2019. However, earlier this year, year-on-year ridership dropped by as much as 93%. At the same time, new car registrations in the city climbed 18% above 2019 levels.
Transit Innovation Partnership, a public-private initiative from MTA and the non-profit Partnership for New York City, released a live subway map in October to eliminate paper maps and notices as well as aid with ease of travel. It also launched a Covid-19 Response Challenge in July, which received nearly 200 ideas for innovations that could increase customer confidence by making transit safer, healthier and more responsive. Eight winning companies are currently demoing their technologies, such as air-filtration solutions, antimicrobial LED lights and real-time passenger crowding data.
“It’s absolutely critical to empower the transit agencies to be able to try these new solutions with a strategic approach and move forward,” says executive director Rachel Haot. “There is no going back to how things were before, so we need a completely new framework, and that’s going to require change.”
As a result of this experimentation, as well as strong health-messaging campaigns and steps to encourage mask use, ridership on the subway has steadily increased. But it still remains about 65% lower than last year. Like so many transit systems around the world, the MTA is now facing a financial crisis due to the huge loss of operating revenues.
Kate Laing, programme manager of mobility management at climate leadership group C40 Cities, says transit systems will likely have to slash operations if they can’t come up with the money. She adds, “They will almost certainly find themselves having to cut services in areas where they don’t have guaranteed fares, so we’ll see a welfare and accessibility and equity disbenefit as a result."
A pre-pandemic study from Pew Research Center showed that one in 10 Americans use public transport on a daily or weekly basis, mostly in the metropolitan areas of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington DC. Among those urban dwellers, 34% of black residents and 27% of Latinos reported taking public transit, compared to just 14% of white residents – meaning any cuts could hit people of colour the hardest.
Additional people in cars, and not on public transit, could mean more than just environmental and infrastructure impacts. Gridlock can act like a hand brake on the economy, hampering the flow of workers and goods. Consequentially, cities that include investment in public transport as a core pillar of their economic recovery – and continue to infuse money into beleaguered systems after the pandemic wanes – will likely fare better than those that don’t, says Laing. She adds it will also be key to find ways in 2021 to incentivise public transport use, since the decisions we make to get on it are typically based around time and cost.
“Everyone loves driving, except when everyone else drives,” she explains. “When we take the bus, it’s because it’s a hell of an inconvenience to take a car because you can’t park, or it’s just too expensive or you can’t afford one in the first place.”
To avoid post-pandemic gridlock, she says, cities need to “put in place measures that make it inconvenient to make a bad choice and really convenient to make a good one”. These include investing in bus and bike lanes, charging fees for street parking, maintaining new outdoor dining zones and, once economies bounce back again, looking into congestion pricing.
Could measures like these lure back those who’ve avoided public transport due to service cuts and safety fears? Vandenberg, the investment supervisor in Denver, says that “once we have a vaccine and things are under control, I'd definitely be willing to look into public transportation again”.
For her, the car commute remains a temporary fix. But for many, it’s a shift that’s becoming more ingrained by the day.
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Dreyfus model of skill acquisition
Find sources: "Dreyfus model of skill acquisition" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition is a model of how learners acquire skills through formal instruction and practicing, used in the fields of education and operations research. Brothers Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus proposed the model in 1980 in an 18-page report on their research at the University of California, Berkeley, Operations Research Center for the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research.[1] The model proposes that a student passes through five distinct stages and was originally determined as: novice, competence, proficiency, expertise, and mastery.
1 Dreyfus model
2 Criticism of the model
Dreyfus modelEdit
The Dreyfus model is based on four binary qualities:
Recollection (non-situational or situational)
Recognition (decomposed or holistic)
Decision (analytical or intuitive)
Awareness (monitoring or absorbed)
The original model included mastery as the last stage, in their book Mind over Machine, this was slightly adjusted to end with Expertise.[2] This leads to the full five stage process:
Skill Level/ Mental Function
Recollection Non-Situational Situational Situational Situational Situational
Recognition Decomposed Decomposed Holistic Holistic Holistic
Decision Analytical Analytical Analytical Intuitive Intuitive
Awareness Monitoring Monitoring Monitoring Monitoring Absorbed
Criticism of the modelEdit
A criticism of Dreyfus and Dreyfus's model has been provided by Gobet and Chassy,[3][4] who also propose an alternative theory of intuition. According to these authors, there is no empirical evidence for the presence of stages in the development of expertise. In addition, while the model argues that analytic thinking does not play any role with experts, who act only intuitively, there is much evidence that experts in fact often carry out relatively slow problem solving (e.g. look-ahead search in chess).
However, the above criticisms are based on a partial reading of the published record.[5][6] For example, the criticisms fail to take into account the notion of the “deliberative rationality” of experts, which is a kind of expert reflection in action, as developed in Dreyfus and Dreyfus, Mind Over Machine.[7]
In turn, the challenge posed by look-ahead search in chess is addressed within the scope of the skill model in a 1982 article by Stuart Dreyfus.[8] With respect to the question of experts calculating into the future, Dreyfus argues that chess is not a suitable example from which to generalize about skillful action at large: “The DeGroot reference to the well-known practice of the chess player of calculating out into the future should not be interpreted as evidence that skilled decision-makers in other domains do likewise. This examination of possible futures becomes feasible in chess because the objective and complete nature of a chess position makes a future position as intuitively meaningful as a present one”(p.151).[8]
Dreyfus' critique of artificial intelligence
Chris Argyris' concepts of Action learning
Four stages of competence
Merleau Ponty
Language proficiency, particularly ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines
^ Dreyfus, Stuart E.; Dreyfus, Hubert L. (February 1980). "A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition" (PDF). Washington, DC: Storming Media. Retrieved June 13, 2010. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^ Dreyfus, Stuart E.; Dreyfus, Hubert L. (1986). Mind over Machine. New York, NY: Free Press.
^ Gobet. F. & Chassy, P. (2008). Towards an alternative to Benner’s theory of expert intuition in nursing: A discussion paper. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 45, 129-139.
^ Gobet. F. & Chassy, P. (2009). Expertise and intuition: A tale of three theories. Minds and Machines, 19, 151-180.
^ Dreyfus, Stuart; Rousse, B. Scot (2018). "Commentary on Fernand Gobet's (2018) "The Future of Expertise: The Need for a Multidisciplinary Approach"" (PDF). Journal of Expertise. 1: 181–183.
^ Dreyfus, Stuart (2014). "System 0: The Overlooked Explanation of Expert Intuition". Handbook of Research Methods on Intuition, ed. M. Sinclair. 1: 15–27.
^ Dreyfus, Hubert; Dreyfus, Stuart (1988). Mind Over Machine (Second Edition). New York: Free Press. pp. 36–51.
^ a b Dreyfus, Stuart (1982). "Formal Models vs. Human Situational Understanding:Inherent Limitations on the Modeling of Business Expertise". Office: Technology and People. 1: 133–165.
Benner, Patricia (2004). "Using the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition to Describe and Interpret Skill Acquisition and Clinical Judgment in Nursing Practice and Education". Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. 24 (3): 188–19. doi:10.1177/0270467604265061.
Eriksen, Jørgen W. (2010). "Should Soldiers Think before They Shoot?". Journal of Military Ethics. 9 (3): 195–218. doi:10.1080/15027570.2010.510861.
The seven stages of expertise in Software engineering
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The Board of Directors is a group of community activists with a common desire to improve mobility in San Diego County.
Hon. George Gastil
BOARD CHAIR
Hon. George Gastil served on the Lemon Grove City Council from 2008-2016 and also served as his city’s representative to the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) Board of Directors. George served on the Lemon Grove School Board for ten years before being elected to the City Council....Read More
George teaches history for Grossmont College and San Diego State University. He lives in Lemon Grove with his wife Janet and two of his three adult sons. George joined the FACT Board in 2014. He was Board Secretary in 2017, Vice Chair effective January 1, 2018. George was elected Board Chair in 2019 and re-elected for 2020.
Hon. John Aguilera
BOARD VICE CHAIR
Hon. John Aguilera served on the City Council for the City of Vista. He was appointed Mayor Pro Tem in 2010, 2011, and 2014. John served as Vice Chair for NCTD and on the Board of Transportation Committee for SANDAG....Read More
John owns a financial services business in North County and holds a BA in Quantitative Economics and Decision Science from UCSD. He has been a member of the FACT Board since 2011. John was elected Vice Board Chair in 2019 and re-elected in 2020.
LaVonna Connelly
LaVonna Connelly is a large-system Social Worker who works with communities to address issues including transportation. She has a Masters in Social Work with an emphasis in Administration and Consensus-Building....Read More
LaVonna currently serves as Co-Chair of the Ramona Re-Vitalization Health and Human Services Sub-Committee and is the District 2 representative for the County of San Diego Health Services Advisory Board. She works for The Salvation Army offering health education and key resource linkages that help seniors of limited means to thrive while aging in place in Silvercrest Senior Residences. In 2013 LaVonna received the Citizen of the Year Award from County of San Diego HHSA for her work in promoting healthy eating as part of the County’s LiveWell initiative. She was also recognized for excellence by the California Insurance Commissioner for her work with wildfire disaster survivors after the Cedar Fire in 2003. After the Cedar Fire, LaVonna was part of a team that successfully introduced and lobbied SB477 that allows small communities to call on the Office of Emergency Services to coordinate disaster response when the community lacks the capacity to do so on their own. LaVonna and her husband own a small vegetable farm in Ramona. She loves nature and hiking with her dogs. LaVonna joined the FACT Board in 2009 and was Board Secretary from 2013-2016. In 2017 she held the position of Vice Chair and was elected Secretary effective January 1, 2018. LaVonna continues to serve as Board Secretary through 2020.
Hon. Phil Monroe
BOARD TREASURER
Hon. Phil Monroe served on the City Council for the City of Coronado from 2000-2008; he represented Coronado on several Boards, including SANDAG and MTS. Phil served thirty years as an Officer in the U.S....Read More
Navy where he held positions in engineering, logistics, and direct fleet support areas. Phil was Commanding Officer at the Naval Air Rework Facility, North Island. His highest military award is the Legion of Merit. Phil holds an BA in Mathematics from Cornell University and an Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Naval Postgraduate School. Phil has served on the FACT Board of Directors since 2006 and was Chair of the Board during 2009, 2010, and 2011. Phil has served as FACT’s Treasurer since 2018.
Hon. Bob Campbell
Hon. Bob Campbell served on the City Council for the City of Vista from 2002-2010. Bob served as the Economic Development Director at the City of Vista for over 9 years. He has served on various regional boards, including NCTD and SANDAG....Read More
Bob co-founded and was CEO of the North County Economic Development Council (NCEDC) and presided over the North County Collaborative. Bob studied economics and industrial engineering at Stanford; holding a degree in Advanced Management from the University of Washington and served 8 years in the Coast Guard Active & Reserve. Bob has been a member of the FACT Board since 2006 and was the 2013 Board Chair; He was elected Vice Chair of the Board effective January 2014. He was elected Board Chair in 2017 and 2018.
Hon. Jewel Edson
Hon. Jewel Edson is the Mayor of Solana Beach and small business owner. Her election in 2016 to the Solana Beach City Council follows a long, productive history of participation and leadership on local and regional boards, committees and commissions....Read More
She currently serves on more than a dozen local organizations including the Board of Directors of NCTD, as an alternate on the SANDAG Board of Directors and the SANDAG Transportation Committee. Edson’s professional background includes successful leadership and management roles in the technology sector. She is currently the Managing Director of a specialized tech consulting firm focused on GTM (go-to-market) strategy and execution in the semiconductor, wireless and software industries. Ms. Edson joined the FACT Board in 2018.
Susan Hafner
Susan Hafner served as Vice President of Bus Operations for the American Public Transit Association (APTA) and a Board Member for the California Transit Association (CTA) and APTA. Susan worked as a Director for MTS and a General Manager for Riverside Transit Agency....Read More
She is the founder of Multimodal Solutions, a consulting firm based in La Jolla. Susan joined the FACT Board of Directors in 2007 and served as Treasurer of the Board from 2008 to 2017.
Hon. Kellie Shay Hinze
Kellie Shay Hinze serves as the City of Encinitas’ Deputy Mayor and represents District 2, ‘Old Encinitas’. Prior to serving on Council, Kellie worked as the Assistant Director and then Executive Director of Leucadia 101 Main Street Association....Read More
Leucadia Main Street focuses on the intersection of historic preservation and revitalization by engaging a community of residents, business owners and property owners. As third generation Encinitas resident with a mother who uses a wheelchair, Kellie strives to improve mobility for all residents and visitors to her city. She was elected to the FACT Board in 2019.
Hon.Dave Roberts
Hon. Dave Roberts serves as CEO of J2 Enterprises, LLC. Previously, he served on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors representing the Third District from 2013 – 2017. Prior to being the first newly elected San Diego County Supervisor in over two decades, he served for two 4-year terms as an elected councilmember...Read More
Deputy Mayor and Mayor on the City Council for the City of Solana Beach. Dave has also served as Vice President for Government Relations for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). In addition, based on both his public and private sector experience Dave was appointed to serve in the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama to the Federal National Advisory Panel on Medicare Education for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Dave holds an MPA from the Department of Defense Graduate Level Financial Management Program and a BA in political science/economics from the American University (AU). Dave has served on the FACT Board of Directors since 2006 and was elected as Vice Chair in 2013 and was elected as Chair from 2014 to 2016. Dave and his spouse are the parents of six adopted foster children.
ADA Paratransit Services (Transit District)Bus Tokens/Bus PassCharter Service for GroupsCity ProgramCurb-to-CurbDoor through DoorDoor-to-DoorFreeGurney ServiceMileage Reimbursment for DriversOne on One Support (escort)One Way TripsPrivate For HirePublic Transit Training/Mobility TrainingReimburse Client for Transportation CostsRound TripsSame DaySpecial ConditionStudent TransportationTaxi Voucher ProgramTranportation for students with special needsTransport for Necessary ErrandsTransport Info & Referral to Other AgenciesTransport Mobility Device (foldable walker)Transport services for Agency Clients onlyTransport Services for CIty Residents ONLYTransport to Child CareTransport to GroceryTransport to Medical ApptsTransport to Social & Recreational ActivitiesVolunteer DriverWaiting With PassengerWheelchair FoldableWheelchair Lift
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Re: Focus on the axiom
Author: Origyptian ()
Thanos5150 Wrote:
> I do not respect your opinion as despite all that has
> been said you still have it.
More Thanos signature charm.
Yes, I still have my opinion because despite all that has been said, the evidence is not conclusive.
> Reisner was no more trying to "deceive the world"
> as Lehner was about the worker's town.
Not quite. According to your opinion, Reisner knew that the notion of a "displaced tomb" from the "original" at Saqqara to the secret pit at G7000x was pure speculation as a way to explain the artifacts in G7000x, and assuming that he monitored the acceptance of his hypotheses, he surely noticed that the field interpreted his speculation as being "historical fact" as observed by Lehner. And yet even though Reisner was quick to correct the media from initially erroneously reporting that G7000x was the tomb of Sneferu, Reisner apparently took no corresponding action to correct the misconception that Hetepheres' alleged original tomb in Saqqara was established historical fact rather than merely his speculation.
Not sure how that substantially differs from what you're objecting to.
Let's revisit Reisner's account of this episode in bmfa25_1927_01to36.pdf and see how clearly he made it known that he was merely speculating and not stating fact (bold emphasis is mine):
"...the accumulated evidence permitted us to draw certain definite conclusions, many of which have been outlined in the preceding chapters. The intact tomb at Giza, which bears on our map the number G 7000 X, was a secret tomb made during the building of the pyramid of Cheops, and by its position could only be the tomb of a favored member of the family of that king. The deposit in the tomb was a reburial brought from another tomb. The great golden canopy, a magnificent example of the metal working of Dynasty IV. and the accompanying inlaid box, bore the name of Sneferuw, the predecessor and father of Cheops. Four other objects, the carrying-chair, the jewel box containing the inlaid silver anklets, an inlaid panel, and a gold disc, bore the names and titles of the Queen Hetepheres, a mother of a king of Upper and Lower Egypt ... The queen was buried by Cheops in her original tomb, for the broken seals of his storehouse were in the rubbish gathered up from the floor of that tomb. Therefore, in all reasonable human probability, Hetepheres was the mother of Cheops and a wife of Sneferuw."
Reisner clearly and unconditionally presents that Hetepheres was relocated from her original tomb at Dashur and reburied at G7000x. There is not a hint of speculation in his narrative on that point. Further along, Reisner states:
"In accordance with Egyptian custom the original tomb of Hetepheres was at Dahshur beside the pyramid of her husband Sneferuw..."
"...and I have no doubt that Queen Hetepheres inspected her tomb [in Saqqara] repeatedly during its construction and after completion. She outlived her husband and was buried by her son Cheops in the tomb prepared by Sneferuw."
"We have no definite evidence of just when the queen-mother died, probably in the first half of the reign of Cheops. Nor have we any proof of how long a time elapsed before the royal police discovered that the tomb had been broken open by thieves, but it was certainly no great number of years after the burial."
"The anger of the king can be imagined and the penalties meted out to every one who came under the suspicion of guilt or negligence. Resolved to place the burial of his mother beyond the reach of further desecration, Cheops ordered her body with the alabaster sarcophagus and all that remained of the equipment, to be transferred to a secret grave in the precincts of his own royal cemetery at Giza. One wonders whether the “annals of the Old Kingdom’’ ever showed any record of this event."
"The Dahshur tomb of Queen Hetepheres after the plundering was left in great confusion. If there is one thing with which the Egyptian field archaeologist is familiar it is the state in which thieves leave an ancient tomb. Originally the floor of the Dahshur tomb was completely covered by the burial equipment. The alabaster sarcophagus stood in the southwestern quarter of the room under the cloth-lined gold canopy presented by Sneferuw. In the southern part of the room, in front of the canopy, the gold-cased furniture was set, together with the gold-cased boxes which contained the more valuable objects, the toilet-boxes, and the copper ewer and basin."
"The doorway was blocked with rectangular blocks of fine white limestone set in plaster. The thieves forced a way through this masonry block, no doubt near the top, so that a part of the plaster and stone fell within the chamber. These men were probably of the cemetery workmen or guards and knew exactly where the valuables in a grave were to be found. In this case, they seem to have paid little attention to the deposit on the floor but made for the sarcophagus itself. They trampled over the pottery and the furniture to the canopy which they must have upset to the east or taken down to afford room for getting at the coffin lid. They were unable to lift the lid by the four short projections, two at each end, which served as handles, for they attempted to force the lid by driving wedges, probably of metal, between the box and the lid. The edges are chipped on all four sides by these efforts, and one corner of the lid is broken off. Whether the thieves succeeded before they were discovered we shall not know until we open the coffin."
"We do not yet know the state in which the thieves left the mummy of the queen, but probably at this point the mummy of the queen was taken out and placed on a bier or in some temporary receptacle for transport. Finally the lid and then the sarcophagus would have been manoeuvred out one at a time and taken up the sloping entrance corridor.[/b]"
"The heavy coffin was loaded on a wooden sledge. That was the method used in transporting heavy blocks of stone in the Pyramid Age. It was probably dragged by large gangs of men from Dahshur to Giza, but whether by the desert or some valley road is uncertain. The sledge with its load might even have been carried part of the way by water. The time required would be measured by weeks, not months."
Nowhere does Reisner clarify that "what follows is my speculation that Hetepheres was originally buried in Dahshur and that her original tomb was plundered by contemporaneous robbers and so she was then reburied in Giza." Rather, throughout his report he repeats what clearly are factual decrees of her reburial. It seems obvious that he felt the need to do that because:
1. he believed his team was the first to breach the G7000X Old Kingdom tomb of Hetepheres I.
2. her body was missing from g7000x,
3. he believed she was the wife of Sneferu, mother of Khufu,
4. he believed she definitely was buried next to Sneferu in Dashur.
5. decreeing the reburial reconciled what appeared to be her tomb in Giza rather than Dashur.
Regardless of the specific details he offers, there is nothing in his report that would lead anyone to believe he is merely speculating that Hetepheres' original tomb is in Dashur. Rather, he repeats several times that there is no doubt that she was first buried there and then her tomb was relocated.
So sure, there are a few "probablies" and "would have beens" inserted here and there in an attempt to fill in the details, but Reisner also is teaching a series of decrees that can be reasonably inferred to be accepted as fact. And it was indeed accepted as fact for 60 years until Lehner called him on it in 1985.
To say that Reisner wasn't trying to "deceive" anyone implies that he didn't realize how baselessly dogmatic his statements were. And while that's a possibility, it only means that he would then be guilty of lacking objectivity in reporting the results of his investigation. And that leads us back to it being another example of the far lower standards of proof that were tolerated in reporting facts vs. speculation back then.
How can any of us ever know, when all we can do is think?
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08-Jun-16 03:27 by Origyptian.
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Jim Lauderdale
Two-time Grammy-winner Jim Lauderdale is a "songwriter's songwriter" who has written/co-written many modern classics for iconic artists, as well as an intuitive sideman, enhancing the music of a bevy of esteemed musicians. Throughout his three-decade career, Jim Lauderdale has helped pave the way for the current Americana movement, writing songs that cross genres from country, rock, folk, and bluegrass, to R & B and blues. As a solo artist he's created a body of work spanning 28 albums of imaginative roots music. Along the way he's won awards, garnered critical acclaim, and earned himself an engaged fan base. Jim treats his fans to a new adventure, exploring the redemptive traditional sounds of Memphis and Nashville with his double album, "Soul Searching: Vol. 1 Memphis/Vol. 2. Nashville."
jimlauderdale.com
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