Author: Robert Browning (1812-1899) was an eminent English poet of the Victorian era, known for his ambitious and dramatic lyrics and monologues. He had an evangelical upbringing, and had a home-grown love for learning. His wife of many years, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was an equally revered poet, though her career was much shorter due to a chronic illness.
Genre: Poetry, theodicy.
Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850)—the British spelling hyphenates both—is titled as one poem with two parts, and 55 small sections. It has also been published as two separate poems. Quite regardless of its visionary settings, the poem take a mostly introspective stance typical of Browning’s poetry.
Though Browning is often philosophical, this is one of his most overtly Christian poems, and some attribute this to the influence of his recent marriage to Elizabeth Barrett. She told a correspondent concerning this poem, “Certainly the poem does not represent his own permanent state of mind, which was what I meant when I told you it was ‘dramatic.'”
In the first part, Christmas-Eve, a young man enters a chapel alone for a holiday service. During the service, though, he becomes restless and begins contemplating the preacher’s hypocrisy, as he perceives it, and his own doubts of God’s goodness. He leaves the service, choosing to think to himself out in the cold. He ponders on his own faith and that of the preacher.
The contemplations he enters into are reminiscent to the relational theology of George MacDonald, or “Ugo Bassi’s Sermon in the Hospital” by Harriet Eleanor Hamilton-King. Browning reflects on the relationship between free will and creation. How can God create a good creation when he must grant his creatures some autonomy?
The main character speaks cynically of the preacher at first, but, in time, he is compelled to separate those aspects of religion that are merely social or traditional, from those aspects of faith that are real and deal with the unseen.
I recommend this poem, especially if you are dealing with doubt (or “deconstruction”) or enjoy relational theology. It starts slow but when it gets going it is very good.


عنوان مقاله [English]
In recent years, due to excessive consumption and unbalance between water consumption and water resources, Iran has led to a severe shortage of renewable water sources. Therefore, in this situation, analyzing the status and presenting appropriate strategies is the main priority for policymakers. For this purpose, by designing a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, status of consumption of water resources has been studied in the household, agriculture and industry sectors. The existence and definite status of the stable situation, both parametric and numerically, has been investigated according to estimated values for Iran's economic parameters. According to the results of the research, it should be noted that at present, per capita water consumption is 1000 cubic meters per year. In other words, with current domestic consumption per capita, water per capita is less than that on the optimal Path. It is expected to achieve sustainable equilibrium in a long-term horizons by reforming consumption and providing policy solutions. Also, based on the simulation, from different policies, Establishing a 8-year limit on agricultural products with high water consumption is the most important policy for achieving the above equilibrium.


From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level : Re-wilding of tigers
Mains level : Animal reintroduction
The recent attempt of Periyar Tiger Reserve (PTR) to reintroduce into the wild tiger cub named Mangala after rearing it in ‘captivity’ has once again brought the controversial concept of ‘re-wilding’ of abandoned or injured animals under the lens.
What is the intervention known as ‘re-wilding’?
- As per the Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines laid down by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, there are three ways to deal with orphaned or abandoned tiger cubs.
- The first is to make an effort to reunite the abandoned cubs with their mother.
- Second, if a reunion of the cub with its mother is not possible, then shift the cub to a suitable zoo.
- Third, reintroduction of the cub into the wild after a certain time when it appears that the cub is capable of surviving in the wild independently.
- This is what is known as ‘re-wilding.
- NTCA stresses that the tiger cub should be reared in an in situ enclosure for a minimum of two years, and during this time, each cub should have a successful record of at least 50 ‘kills’.
- Within the enclosure, the persons responsible for handling cubs must approach them by putting a tiger mask along with workday clothes of a tiger stripe pattern smeared with tiger urine and faeces.
- Various conditions must be complied with at the time of releasing the cub in the wild.
- The tiger cubs should be in prime health, and of dispersing age (three/four years).
- There should be no abnormality/incapacitation.
How have attempts at re-wilding of carnivores gone in India?
- The tiger conservationist Billy Arjan Singh was credited with the re-introduction of re-welding the Dudhwa forest area in the 1970s.
- The attempt, however, ran into controversy after several incidents of the killing of humans were reported.
- The re-wilding in Panna Tiger Reserve of two abandoned tigress cubs that were brought up at Kanha Tiger Reserve is considered to be a success in tiger conservation.
Re-wilding as a concept
- There are 50-50 chances of success and failure of re-wilding of hand-reared carnivores in the wild.
- Conservationists, however, maintain that the chances of success are far less than that — less than even 1 per cent.
- Tigers in India are already occurring at naturally attainable densities.
- Almost all translocations of captive-raised tigers have failed so far, with only rare successes such as in Panna after a tiger extinction, and some re-introductions in Russia into empty habitats with plenty of prey.
- The real need is to protect more habitat strictly so that the prey densities rise and more tigers can thrive.
- Putting individual hand-reared tigers into the wild cannot certainly be called re-wilding says some wildlife activists.
Answer this PYQ in the comment box:
Q.Among the following Tiger Reserves, which one has the largest area under “Critical Tiger Habitat”? (CSP 2020)


Recently, the USDA made it clear it wants you to eat your fruits and vegetables: They should take up half your plate at every meal. Fruits and veggies are low-cal, high fiber, and a very important part of the No. 1-ranked DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Diet. They can also help prevent an array of diseases and protect against daily pains and aches.
Start early. At breakfast time an 8-ounce glass of orange or grapefruit juice and banana slices, berries, or raisins on your cereal give you a delicious, mineral-rich, low-fat, high-fiber head start.You can take it with you. Fruits and vegetables are portable and give you a quick boost of flavor and energy anytime. Pack an apple, an orange, or a bag of carrot sticks, raisins, or dried apricots in your glove compartment, purse, or briefcase.
Belly up to the bar. Find a good salad bar in your neighborhood and close to where you work for times when you don’t feel like preparing something yourself. Learn to make appropriate selections. If your workplace has a canteen without a salad bar, get together with a few colleagues and ask your employer to install one. And make sure the salad bar items offer plenty of what you need — in particular, appropriate leafy green vegetables in place of iceberg lettuce, and low-fat salad dressings in place of full-fat ones.
See-food diet. Put fruits and vegetables where you can see them and within easy reach. Keep a bowl of fruit on the counter in the kitchen. Make sure fruits and vegetables are clearly visible when you open the refrigerator. Cut up your favorite vegetables and store them in resealable plastic bags. You’re more likely to eat what you see.
Stock up. Go shopping on the weekend and buy plenty of fresh, frozen, canned, and dried fruits and vegetables for you to eat through the week.
When you’re all alone. Are you shooting for three vegetables with dinner? That much food preparation can be a challenge, especially if you’re just cooking for yourself or if other household members aren’t interested in eating the DASH diet. Some tips for getting in that “third” vegetable without a lot of extra trouble:
• Don’t forget about salad.
• Keep family-size bags of frozen peas, beans, and carrots in your freezer so you can microwave a handful for yourself at dinnertime.
• Check out our vegetable recipes. Several of them are suitable for freezing and reheating. Make a big enough batch to freeze several individual servings to enjoy later — with almost no extra work!
Night moves. At the end of the day, the microwave is a quick, convenient way to prepare vegetables that preserves their nutrient contents. Pop a potato in the microwave at dinnertime and top it with your favorite salsa for a quick meal. Add microwaved broccoli and corn to your tasty tater and you’ve got a colorful, tasty, and nutritious meal. For dessert, top a scoop of low-fat frozen yogurt with fresh berries or sliced peaches.
If you’re a a fan of organic produce, get more easy-to-decipher guidelines from The Healthy Wholefoods Counter.
- Buy a copy of The DASH* Diet
- Read the Introduction to The DASH* Diet
- Read Chapter 1 of The DASH* Diet
- Browse more books about healthy living
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The Historical Composition of Transparent Paper: Constitution, Conservation and Deterioration
Methods of making paper transparent date back to the middle ages, methods supplemented and extended across the centuries. The particular characteristics of these processes affect both the properties of the material produced and the functions to which these are put to use.
Various disciplines interested in overlaying, refining and distilling technical and architectural drawings have turned to transparent paper as a support for and carrier of their work. The use of the medium as a tool for producing simple copies is complicated by this observation, and works initiated on translucent supports are often produced in multiple layered variations. Of all the works on paper in institutional stores, technical graphic documents on transparent drawing supports are the most often neglected, untreated, and stored in inappropriate conditions. Folded, rolled, stacked and notoriously difficult to display and curate, these documents call for further attention.
Mechanical damage, coupled with chemical degradation is accentuated in the case mistreated transparent drawing media which typically embrittles and yellows with time. This PhD project seeks to understand the degradation processes that threaten the survival of technical drawings on transparent media through scientific investigations in to the chemical and structural changes that occur over time. The relationship between the original composition of the transparent paper and its molecular integrity will be examined. The impact of conservation treatments on the molecular structure of cellulose within the paper will be assessed to determine their long-term impact.
You will study the history, composition and degradation of these media to determine their underlying salient characteristics and to improve our understandings of chemical interactions and structural changes within curatorial and conservation contexts.
To make an application, please visit https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/the-historical-composition-of-transparent-paper-constitution-conservation-and-deterioration/?p117693
Supervisors: Dr Craig Kennedy (Heriot Watt University) and Laura Harty (Edinburgh College of Art). The student will be registered and primarily based at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, UK.
The scholarship will cover tuition fees and provide an annual stipend of approximately £15,009 for the 36 month duration of the project and is available to applicants from the UK, EU and overseas.


Figure 3.8 The velocity is positive for the primary a part of the trip, zero when the item is stopped, and unfavorable when the thing reverses direction. Given the position-versus-time graph of , find the velocity-versus-time graph. B) The boy runs from some extent in a circular path and comes again to the same level means the displacement is the identical as zero. A) The boy runs from a degree in a round path and comes back to the identical point means he has lined a distance equal to the circumference of the circle. By it in unit time or it’s the time rate of change of distance.
To calculate Instantaneous velocity, take the restrict of change of distance with respect to time taken as time approaches zero. I.e., by taking the primary derivate of the displacement function. How to calculate instantaneous velocity from a position-time graph. This article explored the definitions, varieties and variations between velocity and velocity of a moving object.
If we hold selecting points that are closer and nearer to one another, the road will start approaching the slope of the road tangent to a single point. Determine the point on the graph comparable to timet1 and t2. What is the mass of the planet that has a satellite tv for pc whose time period is T and orbital radius is r? A mass falls from a height ‘h’ and its time of fall’t is recorded in terms of time interval T of a sim… A stable cylinder of mass 2 kg and radius 4 cm is rotating about its axis at the fee of 3 rpm. Projectile motion is an example of movement in a aircraft with ____ acceleration.
The velocity of an object at a specific instant of time known as its instantaneous pace. If the physique covers equal distances in unequal intervals of time, it’s said to be transferring with variable speed. Displacement is like distance nevertheless it has a set course, this makes displacement a vector and velocity a scalar. Displacement could be negative whereas distance will solely be constructive.
We use Figure to calculate the typical velocity of the particle. Instantaneous velocity is a steady function of time and provides the velocity at any point in time during a particle’s motion. We can calculate the instantaneous velocity at a selected time by taking the derivative of the place perform, which provides us the practical form of instantaneous velocity v. Strategy offers the instantaneous velocity of the particle as the spinoff of the position operate. Therefore, we are able to use , the ability rule from calculus, to search out the solution.
If we think about an example of a squash ball, the ball comes again to its initial level; at the moment, the total displacement and common velocity shall be zero. In such circumstances, the movement is calculated by instantaneous velocity. The amount that tells us how briskly an object is moving wherever along its path is the instantaneous velocity, normally known which writer coined the phrase “ships that pass in the night”? as simply velocity. It is the average velocity between two factors on the trail in the limit that the time between the two points approaches zero. The ratio of whole distance travelled by a body to the entire time taken known as common pace. The average velocity is always lower than or equal to the typical velocity of an object.
If the thing is moving with a constant velocity, then the average velocity and instantaneous velocity will be the similar. In all situations, they are not prone to be the same. StrategyFigure provides the instantaneous velocity of the particle as the spinoff of the place perform. Looking at the form of the position function given, we see that it is a polynomial in t. Therefore, we are ready to use Figure, the facility rule from calculus, to find the solution.
The slope of the purple line in the displacement v/s time graph provides instantaneous velocity. In mathematics, that is generally described by the right-hand rule. The particle moves with the negative fixed velocity. The instantaneous velocity is the derivative of the position perform and the speed is the magnitude of the instantaneous velocity.


I’m still backpacking with my students in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but some guest writers are stepping up in my absence. Today, blogger Erin Gettler shares the story of her “spark plant.” Read on to learn how she coined this phrase.
Growing up in a suburb of Northern Illinois, I somehow got the idea that plants only bloomed ecstatically in gardens. Tame plants, I reasoned, are coddled more than wild ones, so they flower in abundance. I only rarely ventured into the woods as a kid, so my theory wasn’t refuted until recently. Now I live on the east end of Long Island, where a wide variety of ecosystems are preserved and open for exploration. And what I’ve learned about woodland plants in the past few years has revised what I thought I knew.
There’s always a “first.” Birders call it a “spark bird,” and I guess we could also coin “spark plant,” to describe the initial instance that grabs your attention for life. In my case, it was a brittle, draggled evergreen shrub that resembled the rhododendron bush in a relative’s front yard. I first visited this wild mystery plant in March, and the narrow, leathery leaves were among the few green things relieving the dull landscape. The buds swelled noticeably from visit to visit, March to May, in tandem with the rhododendron buds in the yard. When the rhododendrons finally bloomed, I made a beeline to the woods to see if the mystery plant had bloomed as well.
It had, but it wasn’t a rhododendron.
My mystery plant turned out to be Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia), a tough shrub belonging to the same family (Ericaceae) as the rhododendron, as well as the blueberries that thrived in those woods. Mountain Laurel is easy to admire when it’s in bloom: blankets of rosy-white flowers transform the dingy green bushes into cloudy puffs floating in the woods. Dark pink anthers lodge in tiny pockets in the white petals. The stamens are spring loaded, and bounce up when you touch them, which I did over and over again for the fun of it. And then I stood back and breathed the whole thing in.
Since that first time, I’ve made a pilgrimage back to the park whenever late May swings around. With repeated trips into the woods, I’ve plotted other blooms on my annual calendar. The first week of April I go hunting for Trailing Arbutus. Mid-April is for blueberries, early May for Shadbush, then the Mountain Laurel. June brings back the Swamp Azaleas, and so on through the summer. It doesn’t get old, and each individual plant grows more familiar to me. It’s like I’m visiting friends.
What are the blooms that draw you out into the woods, fields and swamps where you live?
Erin Gettler takes pictures and writes about the natural world on the east end of Long Island, New York. She hopes to know something about everything someday, but she still has a long way to go. She blogs about these pursuits at The Familiar Wilderness.


Tapeworm Infection in Cats
What are tapeworms?
Tapeworms are flat, segmented intestinal parasites of the cat and dog. They belong to a different family than other intestinal parasites, such as hookworms and roundworms, which are the other common intestinal parasites of cats and dogs. Several types of tapeworms are known to infect pets, but the most common species observed in cats is Dipylidium caninum.
The tapeworm uses its hook-like mouthparts for anchoring to the wall of the small intestine. Eventually, adult tapeworms reach lengths of up to 11” (30 cm). As the adult tapeworm matures, individual segments called proglottids, break off from the main body of the tapeworm and pass in the cat's feces. The segments resemble grains of rice or cucumber seeds and are about 1/2” (12 mm) long and about 1/8” (3 mm) wide.
Occasionally they can be seen moving on the hairs around the anus, or more commonly, on the surface of freshly passed feces. As the proglottid dries, it becomes a golden color and eventually breaks open, releasing the fertilized eggs into the environment. A proglottid may contain as many as 20 tapeworm eggs.
How do cats get tapeworms?
First, a tapeworm egg must be ingested by a flea larva, an immature stage of the flea. Once inside the larval flea, the tapeworm egg continues to develop as the larval flea matures into an adult flea.
During grooming, or in response to a flea bite, the cat inadvertently swallows the flea. As the flea is digested within the cat's intestine, the tapeworm egg is released, it hatches, and then anchors itself to the intestinal lining, therefore completing the lifecycle. Unlike other intestinal parasites, cats cannot become infected by eating tapeworm eggs. Tapeworms must first pass through the flea (the intermediate host) before they can infect the cat.
Are certain cats more likely to get tapeworms?
Fleas are the intermediate host for tapeworm. In other words, the tapeworm is unable to complete its life cycle without the presence of fleas in the environment. Regardless of whether the owner has seen fleas on the cat, or in the home, the cat must have ingested a flea in order to have tapeworms.
"Fleas are the intermediate host for the tapeworm, Dipylidium caninum."
Consequently, tapeworms are more common in environments that are heavily infested with fleas. It is recommended to treat your cat for fleas if tapeworms are noted, and use flea control to prevent future flea infestations and tapeworm infections.
What are the clinical signs of tapeworm infection?
Tapeworms are not particularly harmful to the cat and few clinical signs are attributed to their presence.
Usually, the cat is brought to the veterinarian because the owner notices the presence of proglottids crawling on feces. Rarely, tapeworms may cause debilitation or weight loss if they are present in large numbers. A cat will occasionally scoot or drag its anus across the ground or carpet due to the anal irritation caused by the proglottids; however, this behavior is much more common in dogs than cats.
Occasionally, a tapeworm will release its attachment in the intestines and migrate to the stomach. When this happens, the cat may vomit an adult tapeworm several inches in length.
How are tapeworms diagnosed?
Most commonly, an owner recognizes that their cat has tapeworms through the observation of proglottids on feces or in vomit, and brings this to the attention of the veterinarian. When segments of the tapeworm break off and pass into the cat's stool, they can be seen crawling on the surface of the feces. These proglottid segments look like grains of cooked white rice or cucumber seeds. Less commonly, segments are seen moving around the cat's anus.
You should note that tapeworms are not readily diagnosed with routine fecal examinations. Because of this, you should notify your veterinarian when tapeworm segments are found in your cat's stool.
What is the treatment for tapeworms?
A variety of products are available to treat tapeworms in cats but they are not all equally effective. For the best advice on the type of deworming preparation most suitable for your cat, you should seek the help of your veterinarian. The most effective worming products are only available by prescription from a licensed veterinarian.
"After treatment, the tapeworm dies and is usually digested within the intestine, so worm segments do not usually pass into the stool."
The deworming medication called an anthelmintic may be given as a tablet or an injection. After treatment, the tapeworm dies and is usually digested within the intestine, so worm segments do not usually pass into the stool. Side effects, such as vomiting and diarrhea, are rarely reported with the newer tapeworm medications.
Is there anything else that I should do?
Flea control is the cornerstone of the management and prevention of tapeworm infection. Flea control products are convenient to use. Depending on the type of product you use and the presence of other pets in your home, you may also need to treat your house and yard for fleas (for further information see “Flea Control in Cats”). With some of the newer products, environmental flea control may not be needed. Circumstances vary however, so be sure to talk to your veterinarian.
"Flea control is the cornerstone of preventing tapeworm infection."
If the cat lives in a flea-infested environment, tapeworm infection can become re-established within a few weeks. This is very rarely due to treatment failure; in most cases, reappearance of tapeworm segments represents a re-infection of the cat. Additional recommendations include:
1. Promptly have your cat treated when tapeworms are detected.
2. Remove and dispose of all pet feces properly, especially in public parks, yards, or playgrounds.
3. Teach and practice strict hygiene practices for children after playing outdoors.
What is the prognosis?
New tapeworm medications and flea preventives are safe and effective. The prognosis for successful treatment is excellent. In most cases, prevention is successfully accomplished by using a monthly flea preventive.
Are tapeworms from my cat dangerous to my family or me?
Humans can become infected with Dipylidium caninum tapeworms, although infection is rare because it requires ingestion of a flea. Most reported cases have involved children living in less-than-ideal conditions. The risk for human infection with this type of tapeworm is quite remote but does exist.
What are the other tapeworms that can infect my cat?
The other common tapeworms that can infect a cat are members of a group called Taenia. The intermediate hosts of these tapeworms are mice, birds, or rabbits.
"...cats acquire Taenia infestations by eating infected mice, birds, or rabbits."
In a similar manner to Dipylidium transmission, cats acquire Taenia infestations by eating infected mice, birds, or rabbits. Tapeworm medications are highly effective at eliminating these parasites. However, if your cat continues to hunt and eat prey, reinfection can occur with passage of tapeworm segments in 6-8 weeks. In cats that hunt frequently, regular deworming may be needed.
Another less common group of tapeworms called Echinococcus is of increasing concern as a threat to human health. These tapeworms cause serious, potentially fatal disease when humans become infected. Infection with this parasite is harder to diagnose than Dipylidium because the segments are small and not readily seen. Trappers and hunters in the north central United States and south central Canada may be at increased risk for infection with this worm when strict hygiene is not practiced. Foxes, coyotes, and the wild rodents upon which they prey are important in the life cycle of this parasite.
Dogs and cats may also become infected with Echinococcus if they eat rodents carrying the parasite. When eggs of Echinococcus are passed in the feces of the dog and cat, humans are at risk for infection. In humans the disease is called hydatidosis, hydatid disease, or hydatid cyst disease, and results in cysts being formed in the liver. Free-roaming cats and dogs may need to be periodically treated with deworming medication. Rodent control and good hygiene are important in preventing the spread of this disease to humans. As with the more common tapeworm Dipylidium, human infection with Echinococcus is rare, yet possible.
Humans become infected through ingestion of the eggs, and may not show clinical signs until years after ingestion.
My child has pinworms. Did they come from my cat?
Tapeworms and pinworms look very similar. However, contrary to popular belief, pinworms do not infect cats or dogs. Any worm segments seen associated with cats are due to tapeworms. Children who contract pinworms do not get them from cats or dogs.
This client information sheet is based on material written by:
© Copyright 2018 LifeLearn Inc. Used and/or modified with permission under license.


Brassica oleracea capitata
This species has been cultivated as a food crop for many hundreds of years and, in that time, several quite distinct forms have arisen. The nomenclature of these forms is confused, to say the least, and by no means universally accepted. We have followed the treatment used by GRIN, though it is very likely to be revised in the future[
Brassica capitata (L.) H.Lév.
Brassica oleracea alba DC.
Brassica oleracea conica DC.
Brassica oleracea rubra L.
Brassica rubra Steud.
Common Name: Cabbage
Cultivated cabbages are biennial plants developed through cultivation from the wild cabbage. The plants have a highly shortened, not fleshy, stem base, they produce a few more or less horizontal leaves and then the leaves become strongly overlapping to form a compact, more or less globose head of leaves that can be 30cm or more in diameter.
The plant is very widely cultivated, especially in the temperate zone, for its edible head of leaves.
A cultivated form of Brassica oleracea
Not known in the wild.
|Other Uses Rating||
The cultivated cabbage was developed in the temperate zone and can withstand quite cold winters. It can also be grown in the tropics - though there it is best grown at elevations above 800 metres. It grows best in areas where annual daytime temperatures are within the range 15 - 24°c, but can tolerate 7 - 32°c[
]. When dormant, the plant can survive temperatures down to about -10°c, but young growth can be severely damaged at -1°c[
]. It prefers a mean annual rainfall in the range 500 - 1,000mm, but tolerates 300 - 2,500mm[
]. A difference of about 5°c between day and night temperatures appears to be necessary for adequate head development. Normally, flower initiation and stem elongation are induced by low winter temperatures of the order 4 - 7°c for several weeks[
]. Cabbages are adapted to 60 - 90% relative air humidity and low humidity may cause wilting[
Succeeds in full sun in a well-drained fertile preferably alkaline soil[
]. Prefers a heavy soil and a cool moist climate[
]. Succeeds in any reasonable soil. Succeeds in maritime gardens[
]. Prefers a pH in the range 6 - 7.5, tolerating 5 - 8.3[
There are three main types of cabbage:-
The common hearting cabbage has dark green leaves, becoming paler towards the middle of the heart,
Dutch cabbages form a much larger heart and the leaves, which have a milder flavour, are a pale green or even white.
Red cabbages, as the name implies, have red leaves.
There are many named varieties of each type and by careful choice of varieties it is possible to ensure a year round supply of fresh leaves.
Several varieties have also been developed that succeed at low elevations in the tropics, though generally it is best to grow cabbages at elevations above 800 metres there[
Some varieties have been selected for the ornamental value of their leaves, these tend to be of poor culinary quality[
Early maturing varieties can be ready to harvest within 60 - 90 days from sowing, whilst winter or spring maturing forms can take 200 days or more[
Yields of cabbages varies widely depending on the cultivar grown, but yields are generally within the range 12 - 40 tonnes per hectare[
Cabbages are good companions for dill, camomile, sage, wormwood, mint and other aromatic plants which help to reduce insect predations on the cabbages[
]. Cabbages also grow well with potatoes and beet[
]. They grow badly with strawberries, tomatoes and climbing beans[
Leaves - raw or cooked[
]. Cabbages are generally used as a cooked vegetable, though the shredded leaves can also be eaten in salads. Dutch cabbages are generally sweeter and milder in flavour making them more suitable for raw eating. Those leaves in the heart of the plants are more tender than outside leaves and so are also more suitable for eating raw. These heart leaves, though, are less nutritious because they have been excluded from the light[
]. Many people find that the raw leaves give them indigestion[
]. The leaves can be fermented and made into sauerkraut, used as a health food and said to be good for the digestive system[
]. By careful selection of cultivars, it is possible to harvest cabbages all year round[
Seeds - sprouted and added to salads. Very good eating[
A blue dye can be obtained from the leaves of purple cultivars[
Seed -sow in situ
If you have any useful information about this plant, please leave a comment. Comments have to be approved before they are shown here.


John Hunt Morgan, born June 1, 1825
Lewis Thornton Powell (aka Lewis Paine or Payne),
born April 22, 1844
Lewis Powell was born in Randolph County, Alabama, on April 22, 1844 to a Baptist minister, schoolmaster, farmer, blacksmith and slaveowner, George Cader Powell, and his young wife Patience Caroline Powell, who was a distant cousin. He was 17 when the Civil War began. He died four years later at the end of the war, at the age of 21, hanged for conspiracy in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Rosa Parks, born February 4, 1913
Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama to Leona Edwards and James McCauley, a teacher and a carpenter. She was born 48 years after the Civil War ended. The former Confederate states had passed new constitutions and electoral laws that effectively disfranchised black voters and, in Alabama, many poor white voters as well. Under the white-established Jim Crow laws, racial segregation was imposed in public facilities and retail stores in the South, including public transportation. Bus and train companies enforced seating policies with separate sections for blacks and whites. School bus transportation was unavailable in any form for black schoolchildren in the South, and black education was always underfunded.
John Brown, born May 9, 1800
John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut. He was the fourth of eight children of Owen Brown and Ruth Mills Brown. He died more than a year before the Civil War began, at the age of 59.
David Ruggles, born March 10, 1810
David Ruggles was born in Lyme, Connecticut. His parents were David Ruggles, Sr. and Nancy Ruggles, both free blacks. He died 10 years before the Civil War began.
Henry Ward Beecher, born June 24, 1813
Frederick Law Olmsted, born April 26, 1822
Frederick Law Olmsted was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on April 26, 1822. He was 39 years old when the Civil War began.
John Pierpont Morgan, born April 17, 1837
John Pierpont "J. P." Morgan was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the first child of Junius Spencer Morgan and Juliet Pierpont. He was 24 years old when the Civil War began.
Joseph Vann, born February 11, 1798
Joseph Vann was born at Spring Place, Georgia on February 11, 1798. Vann died 17 years before the Civil War began.
Alexander Stephens, born February 11, 1812
Alexander Stephens was born on February 11, 1812. His parents were Andrew Baskins Stephens and Margaret Grier, who were married in 1807. The Stephenses lived on a farm near present-day Crawfordville, Georgia. Stephens was 49 years old when the Civil War began. By the time of the Civil War, Stephens owned 34 slaves and several thousand acres.
Montgomery Meigs, born May 3, 1816
Montgomery Cunningham Meigs was born in Augusta, Georgia on May 3, 1816. He was the son of Dr. Charles Delucena Meigs and Mary Montgomery Meigs. His father was a nationally known obstetrician and professor of obstetrics at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was 45 years old when the Civil War began.
P.B.S. Pinchback, born May 10, 1837
Pinckney Benton Stewart was born May 10, 1837, in Macon, Georgia, the eighth of ten children of Eliza Stewart, a former slave, and Major William Pinchback, a planter and her former master. They lived together as husband and wife, but interracial marriage was forbidden by state laws. P.B.S. Pinchback was 24 years old when the Civil War began.
Henry Adams, born March 16, 1843
Born a slave in Newton County, Georgia on March 16, 1843, Henry Adams was originally named Henry Houston but his name was changed at the age of seven when he and his family became the property of the teen-aged Nancy Emily Adams. He was 18 years old when the Civil War began.
Henry Flipper, born March 21, 1856
Henry Ossian Flipper was born into slavery in 1856 in Thomasville, Georgia. He was 6 years old when the Civil War began in April 1861.
John Logan, born February 9, 1826
John Alexander Logan was born in 1826 near what is now Murphysboro, Jackson County, Illinois. Logan was the son of Dr. and Mrs. John Logan, a prominent family in the area. Logan was 35 years old when the Civil War began; he was a Democratic Congressional representative. He fought at Bull Run as an unattached volunteer to a Michigan regiment, then resigned his congressional seat and and entered the Union Army as colonel of the 31st Illinois Volunteers, which he organized.
Nella Larsen, born April 13, 1891
Nellallitea Walker was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 13, 1891, the daughter of Marie Hanson, a Danish immigrant, and Peter Walker, a West Indian man of predominantly African descent from Saint Croix. She was born 26 years after the Civil War ended.
Lew Wallace, born April 10, 1827
William Martin Dickson,
born September 19, 1827
William Martin Dickson was born in Lexington, Indiana. He lost his father, a farmer, at the age of 8. He was 33 years old when the Civil War began.
|Albert Sidney Johnston|
born February 2, 1803
Albert Sidney Johnston was born in the village of Washington, Mason County, Kentucky. He was the youngest son of Doctor John Johnston, a physician and one of the early settlers of that town. His mother was Abigail Harris Johnston. Johnston was 58 years old when the Civil War began; he was the commander of the U.S. Army Department of the Pacific in California. He resigned his commission as soon as he heard that the state of Texas had seceded.
Clairborne Fox Jackson, born April 4, 1806
Claiborne Fox Jackson, one of ten children of Dempsey Carroll and Mary Orea "Molly" (Pickett) Jackson, was born in Fleming County, Kentucky, where his father was a wealthy tobacco farmer and slaveholder. He was 55 years old when the Civil War began.
Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809
Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy LIncoln (née Hanks), in a one-room log cabin Kentucky. Lincoln was 53 years old when the Civil War began; he was assassinated six days after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered.
Ormsby Mitchel, born August 28, 1810
Cassius Marcellus Clay,
born October 19, 1810
Cassius Clay, nicknamed "Cash", was the youngest son of the nine children of General Green Clay and his wife, Sally Lewis Clay. He was born at Clermont, their home in the Richmond area of Madison County, Kentucky. He was 50 years old when the Civil War began.
Beriah Magoffin, born April 18, 1815
John Gregg Fee,
born September 9, 1816
Theodore O'Hara, born February 11, 1820
Theodore O'Hara was born to notable educator Kane O'Hara and his wife in Danville, Kentucky on February 11, 1820. O'Hara was 41 years old when the Civil War began.
Francis Preston Blair, Jr, born February 19, 1821
Francis Preston Blair, Jr. was born in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the the third and youngest son of Francis Preston and Eliza Gist Blair. He was 41 years old when the Civil War began.
Wiiliam "Bull" Nelson,
born September 27, 1824
William Nelson was the third son of Dr. Thomas W. Nelson (1796–1849) and Frances Doniphan (1795–1845) of Maysville, Kentucky. Thomas Nelson was well connected within the region, serving in the state legislature and on the Board of Trustees of Transylvania University. William Nelson as 36 years old when the Civil War began.
Charles W. Field, born April 6, 1828
Charles William Field was born at the family plantation, "Airy Mount," in Woodford County, Kentucky. He was 33 years old when the Civil War began.
Andrew Jackson Smith,
born September 3, 1843
Mary "Queen" Mellen Palmer, born March 26, 1850
Mary Lincoln Mellen was born in Prestonburg, Kentucky on March 26, 1850. She was 11 years old when the Civil War began.
Garrett Morgan, born March 4, 1877
Garrett Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky, 12 years after the end of the Civil War toSydney, a former slave and son of Confederate Col. John Hunt Morgan, and Eliza Reed, also a former slave.
Dorothea Lynde Dix, born April 4, 1802
Dorothea Lynde Dix was born in the town of Hampden, Maine. She was 59 years old when the Civil War began.
Roger Taney, born March 17, 1777
Roger Brooke Taney was born March 17, 1777. He was the third child and the second son of seven (four sons and three daughters) born to a slaveholding family of Roman Catholic tobacco planters in Calvert County, Maryland. He was 84 years old when the Civil War began, and died 3 years later, before it ended.
born ca. February 14, 1818
Frederick Douglass was born as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, a slave at Holme Hill Farm, Talbot County, Maryland. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was a field slave from whom he was separated during his infancy. Douglass never knew for certain whom his father was. He did know that his father was white, and he believed he was their owner, Aaron Anthony. Douglass was 43 years old when the Civil War began; he had escaped from slavery more than 20 years earlier.
Harriet Tubman, born ca. 1822
Araminta "Minty" Ross, who was later known as Harriet Tubman, was born to slave parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross in Maryland, in the early 1820s. Neither the exact year nor place of her birth was recorded. The year 1822 is based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including a later runaway advertisement. She was probably born on Anthony Thompson’s plantation in Dorchester County, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. At some point in her young adult life, Minty began calling herself "Harriet" Tubman; she was approximately 40 years old when the Civil War began.
Lucretia Coffin Mott
born January 3, 1793
Lucretia Coffin, born on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, was the second child of Anna Folger and Thomas Coffin, Jr. Her parents were Quakers; Thomas Coffin was a ship captain, and Anna Coffin was a shopkeeper. On April 10, 1811, at the age of 18, Lucretia Coffin married James Mott at Pine Street Meeting in Philadelphia. Mott was 68 years old when the Civil War began; she and her husband were living in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in April 1861.
|Charles Lenox Remond|
Margaret Fuller, born May 23, 1810
Sarah Margaret Fuller was born May 23, 1810, in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, the first child of Timothy Fuller, an attorney, and Margaret Crane Fuller. The Fullers were descended from Thomas Fuller, a pious and poetry-writing Englishman who settled in Salem in 1638. Timothy’s father, a clergyman, had opposed the signing of the United States Constitution on the grounds that it condoned human slavery. She died 11 years before the Civil War began, at the age of 40.
Susan B. Anthony, born February 15, 1820
Susan Brownwell Anthony was born to Daniel Anthony (1794–1862) and Lucy Read (1793–1880) and raised in West Grove, Massachusetts. She was 41 years old when the Civil War began.
Emily Parsons, born March 8, 1824
Emily Parsons was born on March 8, 1824 in Taunton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Professor Theophilus Parsons of the Harvard Law School and granddaughter of the late Chief Justice Parsons of Massachusetts. She was 37 years old and living in Cambridge at the beginning of the Civil War.
George Francis Train, born March 24, 1829
George Francis Train was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1829, son of Oliver Train and his wife Maria, née Pickering. He was 32 years old when the Civil War began.
Grenville Dodge, born April 12, 1831
Angelina Weld Grimké, born February 27, 1880
Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1880, 15 years after the end of the Civil War, to to a biracial family.
Lorinda Anna Blair Etheridge Hooks, born May 3, 1839
Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey, born February 16, 1829
Sarah Anne Ellis was born in 1829 to Mary Malvina Routh and Thomas George Percy Ellis, both from wealthy planter families, in Natchez, Mississpippi. She was 32 years old when the Civil War began.
John Marmaduke, born March 14, 1833
The fourth child and second son among ten children, Marmaduke was born on his father's plantation near Arrow Rocke in Saline County, Missouri. He was 28 years old when the Civil War began.
Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain, born November 30, 1835
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, the son of Jane (née Lampton; 1803–1890), a native of Kentucky, and John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), from a Virginia family that owned slaves. Sam, named after his father's father, was the sixth of seven children. Sam Clemens was 25 years old when the Civil War began.
born August 8, 1819
Charles Anderson Dana was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, the first child of Anderson and Ann Denison Dana. His paternal grandfather was a Revolutionary War soldier and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. His father. Anderson Dana, was a merchant who failed in business when his oldest son was a few years old. Charles Dana was 41 years old when the Civil War began.
George Nelson Stone, born July 17, 1839
George Nelson Stone was born in Stark, New Hampshire. When he was three years old, his parents with their three sons and five daughters moved to Lowell, Massachusetts. At ten years old, he was office boy for a year for Benjamin F. Butler, who was a successful attorney in Lowell. He was 21 years old when the Civil War began.
born October 19, 1720
John Woolman was the fourth child and eldest son in a family of thirteen children belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). His father Samuel Woolman was a farmer. The family farm was in Burlington County of the New Jersey colony. John was named after his father's father, one of the early Quaker settlers of New Jersey. John Woolman died 87 years before the Civil War began.
John McLean, born March 11, 1785
John McLean was born in Morris County, New Jersey, on March 11, 1785, the son of Fergus McLean and Sophia Blackford. He was born two years after the end of the Revolutionary War, and died a week before the beginning of the Civil War.
born January 4, 1789
Benjamin Lundy was born to Quaker parents at Greensville in Sussex County, New Jersey. He was the only child of Joseph and Elizabeth Shotwell Lundy. His mother died when he was four years old, and he was raised by his stepmother, Mary Titus Lundy. As a boy, he worked on his father's farm, attending school for only brief periods. He died 22 years before the Civil War began.
Grover Cleveland, born March 18, 1837
Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey to Richard Falley Cleveland and Ann Neal Cleveland. Grover Cleveland was 24 years old when the Civil War began.
Cornelia Hancock, born February 8, 1840
Cornelia Hancock was born in 1840 at Hancock's Bridge, Salem County, New Jersey to Thomas Yorke and Rachel (Nicholson) Hancock, she was the fourth child and third daughter in this Quaker abolitionist family. Hancock was 21 years old when the Civil War began; she became a nurse two years later.
William Seward, born May 16, 1801
William Henry Seward was born in Florida, New York on May 16, 1801, the fourth of six children born to Samuel Sweezy Seward and his wife Mary Jennings Seward. At the time there were only a dozen buildings in the village of Florida. The Seward house consisted of 5 rooms on the main floor with a staircase leading to a large loft made up of 2 bedrooms with sloping walls and a large chimney. The Sewards owned three slaves who lived in the kitchen and the attic above it. He was 60 years old when the Civil War began.
James McCune Smith, born April 18, 1813
James McCune Smith was born free in 1813 in New York City, New York; his mother, Lavinia Smith, was a slave from South Carolina who had been brought to New York by her master. He was 48 years old when the Civil War began; he would die five months after it ended.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, born November 12, 1815
Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage, born March 24, 1826
Matilda Joslyn was born March 24, 1826, in Cicero, New York, a daughter of the abolitionist Hezekiah Joslyn and his wife, Helen Leslie. She was 35 years old when the Civil War began.
Philip Sheridan, born March 6, 1831
Philip Henry Sheridan claimed to have been born in Albany, New York, the third child of six by John and Mary Meenagh Sheridan, immigrants from Ireland. Other accounts indicate that he may have been born at sea while his parents were immigrating from Ireland. He was 30 years old when the Civil War began.
Mary Edwards Walker, born November 26, 1832
Mary Edwards Walker was born in the town of Oswego, New York, the daughter of Alvah and Vesta Whitcomb Walker, who was a cousin of Robert Ingersoll. Mary was the youngest of five daughters: Aurora, Luna, Vesta, and Cynthia; they had one younger brother, Alvah, Jr. Mary Walker was 28 years old when the Civil War began.
Robert Ingersoll, born August 11, 1833
Robert Green Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York, the youngest of five children of John and Mary Livingston Ingersoll: Ruth, John, Mary Jane, Ebon Clark and Robert. Shortly before Robert's birth, Mary Ingersoll circulated a petition to Congress that slavery be abolished in Washington, D.C. Robert's middle name, "Green", was in honor of Reverend Beriah Green, a reformer and abolitionist. The family called him "Bob". He was 27 years old when the Civil War began.
Elizabeth Hamilton Halleck, born February 9, 1835
Elizabeth Hamilton was born February 9, 1835 in Westernville, New York. She was 26 years old when the Civil War began.
Elmer Ellsworth, born April 11, 1837
Mary White Ovington, born April 11, 1865
Mary White Ovington was born in Brooklyn, New York a few days before the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. She was born as the Civil War was ending.
William R. King, born April 7, 1785
William Rufus DeVane King was born in Sampson County, North Carolina, the second son of William King and Margaret DeVane. He died 8 years before the Civil War began.
born October 28, 1798
Levi Coffin was born on a farm near New Garden in Guilford County, North Carolina, the son of Levi Coffin Sr. and Prudence Williams Coffin. He was a descendant of Tristam Coffin, who came to America in 1642 and was one of nine purchasers of Nantucket from the Indians. Levi's father had been born in in 1763. In 1773, before the American Revolution, a large group of Quakers emigrated from Nantucket to North Carolina; Levi's grandfather, William Coffin, established a family farm in the New Garden community. William and Priscilla Coffin had ten children--eight sons and two daughters--all of whom lived to have families of their own. All were members of the Religious Society of Friends. Levi Coffin was 62 years old when the Civil War began.
G. W. Logan, born February 22, 1815
George Washington Logan was born February 22, 1815 in Chimney Rock, Rutherford County, North Carolina. He was 46 years old when the Civil War began.
Zebulon Vance, born May 13, 1830
Zebulon Baird Vance was born at the family homestead along Reems Creek in Buncombe County, North Carolina, the third child and second son of eight children. His parents were David Vance II and Mira Margaret Baird Vance. Vance was named for his maternal grandfather, Zebulon Baird. He was 31 years old when the Civil War began.
Edwin Stanton, born December 19, 1814
Edwin McMasters Stanton was born in Steubenville, Ohio, the first child of David and Lucy Norman Stanton. His father was from a Quaker family, but was obliged to leave the Society of Friends when he married Lucy, who was a Methodist. Lucy Norman was the daughter of a wealthy Virginia planter and miller. Edwin's middle name was in honor of a Methodist minister, Reverend David McMasters, who was Lucy's godfather. He was 46 years old when the Civil War began.
William Tecumseh Sherman, born February 8, 1820
William Tecunseh Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio. His father, Charles Robert Sherman, a successful lawyer who sat on the Ohio Supreme Court, died unexpectedly in 1829. Sherman was 41 years old when the Civil War began; he was superintendent of the Louisiana State Semimary of Learning & Military Academy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He resigned as superintendent and became president of the Saint Louis Railroad in Saint Louis, Missouri, until he received a commission in the Union Army in June, 1861.
Clement Vallandigham. born July 29, 1820
Clement Laird Vallandigham was born New Lisbon, Ohio (now Lisbon, Ohio), the fifth of seven children of Clement Vallandigham, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife Rebecca Laird Vallandigham. He was 41 years old when the Civil War began.
Abram Piatt, born May 2, 1821
Abram Sanders Piatt was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Benjamin McCullough Piatt of Ohio and Elizabeth Barnett of Virginia. He was 40 years old when the Civil War began.
John Sherman, born May 10, 1823
John Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio to Mary Hoyt Sherman and Charles Robert Sherman, a justice in the Ohio Supreme Court. He was the eighth child in the family that would eventually number eleven children: six sons and five daughters. He was 39 years old when the Civil War began.
George H. Pendleton born July 19, 1825
George Hunt Pendleton was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the fourth of seven children in the wealthy and prominent family of Nathanael Greene Pendleton. Nathanael Greene Pendleton served in the War of 1812 and was one of Ohio's representatives in the United States Congress. He was 36 years old when the Civil War began.
Peter Humprhies Clark was born March 29, 1829 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Peter Humphries Clark was 32 years old when the Civil War began.
Alexander McCook, born April 22, 1831
Alexander McDowell McCook was born the fifth son of Daniel and Margaret McCook in Columbiana County, Ohio. He was 30 years old when the Civil War began.
Albion W. Tourgée, born May 2, 1838
George Elstner, born March 14, 1842
George Elstner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio where he lived until the Civil War began. He was 19 years old at the beginning of the war. He was killed while leading his regiment at the Battle of Utoy Creek on August 8, 1864 near Atlanta, Georgia when he was 22 years old.
Ralph Ellison, born March 1, 1914
Ralph Ellison, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap. He was the grandson of former slaves. Ellison was born about 50 years after the end of the Civil War.
Thomas Garrett was born on August 21, 1789, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, the son of Thomas Garret, Sr. and Sarah Price Garrett, members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Thomas was the third surviving son of eleven children. The family lived on their homestead,"Thornfield," in Delaware County. As abolitionists, the family hid runaway slaves in their farmhouse The family's house still stands today in what is now Drexel Hill. Thomas Garrett was 71 years old when the Civil War began.
Mother Angela Gillespie, born February 21, 1824
Eliza Maria Gillespie was born near Brownsville on the Monongahela River in Washington county, Pennsylvania, on 21 February, 1824. She was 37 years old when the Civil War began.
Isaac Israel Hayes, born March 5, 1832
Isaac Israel Hayes was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania and raised in a Quaker family. He was 29 years old when the Civil War began.
Sullivan Ballou, born March 28, 1829
Sullivan Ballou was the son of Hiram and Emeline (Bowen) Ballou, a distinguished Hugenot family in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He was 32 years old when the Civil War began, and died 3 months later at the First Battle of Bull Run.
John Laurens, born October 28, 1754
John Laurens was born on October 28, 1754 to Henry Laurens and and Eleanor Ball Laurens in Charleston, South Carolina. The Laurens family were Huguenots who fled France for religious liberty. John Laurens died on August 27, 1782 at the age of 27, just weeks before the end of the Revolutionary War and 79 years before the start of the Civil War.
John Calhoun, born March 18, 1782
John Caldwell Calhoun was born in 1782, the fourth child and third son of Patrick Calhoun and his second wife, Martha Caldwell, in Abbeville District, South Carolina. He was born a year before the Revolutionary War ended, and died 11 years before the Civil War began.
Angelina Grimké, born February 26, 1805
Angelina Emily Grimké was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to John Faucheraud Grimke, a wealthy Episcopalian lawyer, judge, planter, politician, slaveholder, Revolutionary War veteran and distinguished member of Charleston society. Angelina was 56 years old when the Civil War began; she was living with her husband, children, and sister, Sarah, in New Jersey.
born August 4th, 1810
Robert Purvis was born August 4, 1810 in Charleston, South Carolina, the second of three sons. His father was William Purvis, an English immigrant who was in business with his brothers as a cotton broker. His mother, Harriet Judah, was a woman of color. Robert and his two brothers (William, born in 1806, and Joseph, born in 1812) were three-quarters European by ancestry. Robert Purvis was 50 years when the Civil War began.
Louis Trezevant Wigfall, born April 21, 1816
Wade Hampton III was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest son of Wade Hampton II, one of the wealthiest planters in the South and the owner of the largest number of slaves. He was 43 years old when the Civil War began.
Mary Boykin Chesnut, born March 31, 1823
Mary Boykin Miller was born on March 31, 1823, on her maternal grandparents' plantation, Mount Pleasant, near Stateburg, South Carolina. She was 38 years old when the Civil War began.
Martin Witherspoon Gary, born March 25, 1831
Martin Witherspoon Gary was born in Cokesbury, South Carolina, the third son of Dr. Thomas Reeder Gary and Mary Ann Porter. He was 30 years old when the Civil War began.
Joseph Rainey, born June 21, 1832
Evander McIver Law,
born August 7, 1836
Evander McIver Law was born in Darlington, in Darlington County, South Carolina. He was the first child and oldest son of eleven children born to Ezekiel Augustus Law, an attorney, judge and legislator, and Sarah Elizabeth “Bettie” McIver. His paternal grandfather, William Law, at the age of sixteen became a soldier in the Revolutionary armies. A maternal great-grandfather, Abel Kolb, fought in the American Revolutionary War under Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox" guerilla leader. His maternal grandfather, E. R. McIver. was a prominent citizen of South Carolina; during the nullification troubles in the 1830s, he was commissioned as a Brigadier-General of South Carolina troops, when the state was threatening to leave the Union and raising an army. Evander McIver Law was 24 years old when the Civil War began.
Robert Smalls, born April 5, 1839
Robert Smalls was born in 1839 into slavery, in a cabin behind the house of his master John McKee in Beaufort, South Carolina. He was 22 years old when the Civil War began.
born Febuary 5, 1793
John Rankin was born in Jefferson County, Tennessee , the fourth son of Richard and Jane Steele Rankin. Following the birth of their first son, Richard and Jane Rankin had moved to eastern Tennessee from Virginia. Richard and Jane Rankin would raise eleven sons and one daughter. Religion and reading played key roles in their childhoods. They were staunch Presbyterians; Jane “earnestly opposed the use of whiskey and tobacco, and zealously spoke against Free Masonry”. She also strongly opposed dance and frolicking in any form. The most important and lasting impression Jane made on John was her unyielding opposition to slavery.
He was 68 years old when the Civil War began.
Isham Harris, born February 10, 1818
Isham Green Harris was born in Franklin County, Tennessee. He was the ninth child of Isham Green Harris, a slave-holding farmer and Methodist minister, and his wife Lucy Davidson Harris. Harris was 43 years old when the Civil War began; he was governor of Tennessee. Harris and the legislature were for secession and the Confederacy, but the Union Army invaded and occupied Nashville. Harris joined the Confederate Army.
Nathan Bedford Forrest, born July 13, 1821
Nathan Bedford Forrest was born to a poor family near Chapel Hill in Bedford County, Tennessee. He and his twin sister, Fanny, were the two eldest of blacksmith William Forrest's children with wife Mariam Beck. Bedford, as he was called, was named for his grandfather and the county in which he was born. He had five younger brothers: John, William, Aaron, Jesse, and Jeffrey. The other children, including Nathan's twin sister, Fanny, died as children. When the Civil War began. Nathan Bedford Forrest was 40 years old and a millionaire. He was one of the richest men in the South, having amassed a personal fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million.
Jefferson C. Davis, born March 2, 1828
Jefferson Columbus Davis was the first of eight children born near present-day Memphis, in Clark County, Indiana to William Davis and Mary Drummond. He was 33 years old when the Civil War began.
Henry Thomas Harrison, born April 23, 1832
Henry Thomas Harrison, the son of Henry Hargrove Harrison and Rebecca Pearson Harrison, was born near Nashville on April 23, 1832. He was 29 years old when the Civil War began.
Martha "Mattie" Ready Morgan, born June 21, 1840
Martha Ready was born near Murfreesboro, Tennessee on June 21, 1840. She was the sixth of eight children, and the second of four girls, born to Colonel Charles Ready, Jr. and Martha Strong Ready. She was 21 years old when the Civil War began.
born August 1st, 1844
Thaddeus Stevens, born April 4, 1792
Thaddeus Stevens was born in Danville, Vermont on April 4, 1792. He was 69 years old when the Civil War began.
James Fisk, born April 1, 1835
Cyrus Pringle, born May 6, 1838
Robert Carter III, born February 28, 1727
Robert Carter III was born in Virginia in 1727, the son of Robert Carter II and Priscilla Churchill. He died more than 60 years before the Civil War, and all slaves in the United States were legally freed by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
Henry Clay, born April 12, 1777
Samuel Phillips Lee, born February 13, 1812
Samuel Phillips Lee was born February 13, 1812 at "Sully" in Fairfax County, Virginia to Francis Lightfoot Lee II and Jane Fitzgerald. He was 49 years old when the Civil War began.
Martin Delany, born May 6, 1812
Martin Robison Delany was born free in Charles Town, Virginia (later West Virginia) to Pati Peace and Samuel Delany. Although his father, Samuel, was an enslaved carpenter, his mother was a free woman and a seamstress. He was 49 years old when the Civil War began.
Wilmer McLean, born May 3, 1814
Wilmer McLean was born on May 3, 1814 in Alexandria, Virginia. He was 47 years old when the Civil War began.
George H. Thomas, born July 31, 1816
George Henry Thomas was born at Thomaston, near Newsom's Depot, in Southampton County, Virginia. His father, John Thomas, of Welsh descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Rochelle Thomas, a descendant of French Huguenot immigrants, had nine children. George was the youngest of the three boys; he had six sisters. He was 44 years old when the Civil War began.
John Wayles Jefferson, born May 8, 1835
John Wayles Hemings was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, on May 8, 1835, the first son of Eston Hemings, a former slave who was seven-eights of European descent, and Julia Ann Isaacs, the mixed-race daughter of a wealthy Jewish merchant. John is believed to have been the grandson of Sarah ("Sally") Hemings, a slave, and her master, Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. John was 26 years old when the Civil War began.
born October 8, 1837
Powhatan Beaty was born into slavery in Richmond, Virginia. It is unknown when and how he escaped slavery. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1849. While in school, he developed an interest in theater and made his public acting debut at a school concert. After leaving school, he was apprenticed to Henry Boyd, a black furniture maker, and became an experienced wood lathe operator. Powhatan Beaty was 23 years old when the Civil War began.
William Harvey Carney, born February 29, 1840
He was born simply as "William," a slave in Norfolk, Virginia on February 29, 1840. He was 21 years old when the Civil War began.
James Edward Hanger, born February 25, 1843
James Edward Hanger was born at Mount Hope, his father's plantation near Churchville, Virginia. He was an 18-year-old sophomore when the Civil War began, and he decided to leave school and join the newly formed Churchville Cavalry, which was under the command of Captain Franklin Sterrett.
Belle Boyd, born May 9, 1843
Isabella Marie Boyd was born in Berkeley County, Virginia, the eldest child of Benjamin Reed and Mary Rebecca (Glenn) Boyd. The Boyds and the Glenns were well-known families of the area. Belle's grandfather, James Glenn, served in the Revolutionary War and was presented several awards by General George Washington for outstanding service. Members of the Boyd family were merchants and owned several general stores in the area. She was 18 years old when the Civil War began.
Thomas Nelson Page, born April 23, 1853
Thomas Nelson Page was born at Oakland, one of the Nelson family plantations, in Hanover County, Virginia, to John Page and Elizabeth Burwell Nelson. He was eight years old when the Civil War began.
born February 8, 1817
Richard Stoddert Ewell was born in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., the third son of Dr. Thomas and Elizabeth Stoddert Ewell. He was raised in Prince William County, Virginia, from the age of 3, at an estate near Manassas known as "Stony Lonesome." He was 44 years old when the Civil War began.
Joseph Evan Davis, born April 18, 1859
Anderson Abbott, born April 7, 1837
Anderson Ruffin Abbott was born in Toronto, Canada, the son of Wilson Ruffin Abbott and and Ellen (Toyer) Abbott. He was 24 years old when the Civil War began.
Edward Baker was born in London, England in 1811 to schoolteacher Edward Baker and Lucy Dickinson Baker, poor but educated Quakers. He was fifty years old when the Civil War began.
"Madame Restell" (Ann Trow Lohman), born May 6, 1812
Ann Caroline Trow was born in Painswick, Gloucestershire, England. Her father, John Trow, was a woolen mill laborer. She was 49 years old when the Civil War began.
Jean Davenport, born May 3, 1829
Jean Margaret Davenport was born May 3, 1829, in Wolverhampton, England. She was 32 years old when the Civil War began.
Edgar von Westphalen, born March 26, 1819
Edgar Julius Oscar Gerhard Ludwig von Westphalen was born March 26 1819 in Trier, Germany. He was 42 years old when the American Civil War began.
Henry Villard (Heinrich Hilgard), born April 10, 1835
Hubert Dilger, born March 5, 1836
Hubert Anton Casimir Dilger was born in Engen in the Black Forest region in Germany on March 5, 1836. He was 25 years old when the Civil War began.
David Sinton, born June 26, 1808
David Sinton was born in County Armagh, Ireland, the son of Quaker linen manufacturer John Sinton, of Unshinagh, and Mary McDonnell. John Sinton was a cousin of Irish Quaker industrialist brothers, Thomas and John Sinton. Thomas Sinton made a significant impact upon the Irish linen trade, establishing the village of Laurelvale in County Armagh. The Sintons, like so many of Northern Ireland's linen families were Quakers. David Sinton was 53 years old when the Civil War began.
born March 16, 1828Patrick Ronayne Cleburne was born in Ovens, County Cork, Ireland, the third child and second son of Dr. Joseph Cleburne, a physician, and Mary Anne Ronayne Cleburne. He was born the day before St. Patrick's Day. He was 33 years old when the Civil War began.
Myles Walter Keogh, born March 25, 1840
Myles Keogh was born in Orchard House, County Carlow, Ireland on March 25, 1840. He was 21 years old when the Civil War began.
Prussia - Silesia
Henry Mosler, born June 6, 1841
Henry Mosler was born in Tropplowitz, Prussian Silesia (now in Poland), the first son of Gustavus and Sophia Weiner Mosler. The family would eventually grow to eight children: five sons and three daughters. Henry Mosler was 20 years old when the Civil War began in 1861.
John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, the oldest son of Daniel and Ann Gilrye Muir. He was the third of eight children in the family. In 1849, when John was eleven yearfamily immigrated to the United States. Muir was 23


The importance of early STEM education can never be ignored. I had already discussed this point in depth in one of my previous articles. But in this one, I am going to discuss a few of the effective STEM teaching methods that can help to create a gratifying learning experience for the children in particular.
Remember, you cannot use the conventional textual and methodical methods for teaching effective STEM to kids. You need to be a little flexible, and incorporate something out of the ordinary in your teaching techniques to create a productive STEM learning environment for kids. In this article we have provided a few tips that can come in handy for you. Let’s go through them without further ado.
- Inculcate responsibility in students
Remember STEM is all about encouraging innovation and creativity in kids. You have to encourage them to think on their own, work on their own and solve on their own.
The first step to fulfilling that goal of yours is to inculcate the feeling of responsibility in your students. Remember you cannot do the job on their behalf; otherwise it would defeat the purpose.
You should behave like a football manager. Your students are your players. You’re standing on the sidelines and shouting instructions to your players. But it’s the job of the players to execute them according to the situation. Your STEM-teaching approach should be based exactly on this model.
The inculcation of responsibility in kids from a very early age can definitely go a long way indeed. It helps to shape their career in the best possible way. So is there something not to like? Guess not!
- Promote curiosity in kids
Encourage your students to ask constructive questions that can lead to several answers. Such open-ended questions can definitely inculcate the thirst of knowledge in kids which is something that can benefit them in the long run.
Alternatively, you can also raise an open-ended question in your class and encourage your students to come up with different answers of their own. This practice can also benefit the class as a whole and can also help to inculcate a critical problem-solving mentality in kids.
- Take it outside your class
STEM is all about imagination and innovation. The best way to channelize imagination is to let it run free. So promote a STEM learning environment outside the walls of your classroom. It works you know. Here are a few tips for you.
- Using the aid of science and technology TV programs for kids can work wonders. For example, there’s a program called A.Q. that teaches various practical applications of STEM in an engaging manner. You can use such things to your benefits.
- Try basic practical STEM-related experiment sessions with your students. It can work wonders. And don’t forget to take proper safety measures for yourself and for the kids while you are involved in the same.
- Use games, puzzles, building blocks, Keva planks etc. to your benefit. They help to promote brain activities in kids.
- Hands-on STEM learning courses like LEGO robotics and coding can also help you out in such circumstances. So you can consider having such sessions in schools for the benefit of children in general.
- You should also encourage yourself with full gusto to promote participation in your students.
- Encourage your students to work in teams to promote teamwork
Teamwork is the key to getting a job done. So try to inculcate this much-necessary trait in your kids from a very early age.
You can do that through STEM-related activities that can be done in groups. Things like that are more than capable of doing the job for you.
P.S. Teamwork also helps to bring out the leadership skills in students; a much-needed trait; isn’t it?
- Connect STEM with real life
Most kids find it very difficult to connect all those complex STEM technical concepts with that of their real life. This makes it believe that the entire subject is abstract in nature.
You need to curb that belief in those kids. The best way to do that is to make your students see the connection between the STEM and our real life. Once you are able to do it to perfection, you will definitely be surprised to see the positive results that it can bring with it.
So that’s it then. If you are a tutor or a teacher, we hope these tips come in handy for you. With that, we’ll sign off for the time being. Hope you had a good read.
Contributed by https://www.myprivatetutor.com/


“The central tasks of a physician’s life are understanding illness and understanding people. Because one cannot fully understand an illness without also understanding the person who is ill, these two tasks are indivisible.”…McWhinney in A Textbook of Family Medicine
In the Human Centered Health Home (HCHH), after the Respecting, Protecting, and Connecting processes are underway, the next process, as mentioned in the last HCHH blog post on 11/22/2010 is Detecting. I refer to it as detecting patient alignment and/or misalignment. Many models might be applied to analyze the situation of patient and physician, including the Biopsychosocial Model (BPSM) developed by George Engel, MD, a cardiologist at the University of Rochester.
Please remember that the use of models may distort, delete and generalize information that is analyzed using the model. The model is not the reality, but attempts to represent reality.
The biopsychosocial model is a linear heirarchy used to review an individual situation of a patient and even a physician. From the biosphere to the subatomic level, what are the implications for the individual patient?
Biopsychosocial Model from George Engel
1. Biosphere 8. Organs/ Organ System
2. Society/ Nation 9. Tissues
3. Culture/ Subculture 10. Cells
4. Community 11. Organelles
5. Family 12. Molecules
6. Patient 13. Atoms
7. Nervous System 14. Subatomic
Let's look at a 45 year old married, male high school principal who lives with his wife of 18 years and two teenage children (girl 15 and boy 13) in their home on the edge of the 5,000 person town in which is located the school that employs both of the adults. He is seeing his family physician, with whom he has a long standing personal friendship and professional relationship, for palpitations (notable sense that the heart is beating- not supposed to be notable).
Using the model, we inquire of the patient or think about the possibility of the biosphere causing or relating to the palpitations, possibly from explosions on the surface of the Sun or the recent eclipse. Thinking of the Sun a while longer, we recall that Vitamin D3 is coming to our patient from the Sun and wonder if the decreased sunlight in the Ohio overcast fall weather could be a factor in the palpitations, recalling that a deficiency of Vitamin D3 can lead to heart attack, stroke, cancer of the breast, colon or prostate gland. We will include a D3 level in the lab tests ordered later in the office visit.
Next in the model is consideration of the impact of the society and nation on the cardiovascular system of our patient with the heart palpitations. The economy of the nation and the state is affecting the school system adversely, but the local society passed the school levy a few weeks ago, giving the principal breathing room in his budget for the next year. The work culture changed as the teachers did threaten to strike and harsh words were exchanged between the principal and union leaders as the new budget was developed, including an intensely disappointing reduction in health benefits next year for all school employees, including the principal.
Worrying about the levy and loss of friendships affected the principal's sleep. He also noted the blood pressure written down by the Medical Assistant was elevated at 144/92 and his weight was 20 pounds heavier than last year. Even his pulse rate at 82 was higher than his resting pulse of 68 two years ago after the July 4th 5 mile run preparation got him in good shape.
The subcultures of teachers and other school workers shifted to groups of strongly supportive and strongly opposed to the changes in the school system and employee benefits. Student subcultures reflected parental attitudes regarding the levy and the proposed changes. The tension seemed to lead to more student unrest and angry factions with increased fighting in the bleachers at football and basketball games. More students and their parents were meeting with the principal than ever.
The local community was mostly business as usual except there was less of it due to the economic slowdown and increasing unemployment. The principal often ate breakfast on Saturday mornings with his family at the locally owned restaurant which was popular for their whole hog sausage gravy and homemade biscuits, served with eggs, hash-brown potatoes and coffee. Community members were friendly with them and engaged socially without mention of budgets or politics until one week before the election. Then he and his wife only received polite inquiries about the financial facts of the school levy.
His family was supportive of his role as principal, but the two teens were getting flack from friends at school about why their dad wanted to get rid of teachers with seniority, a powerful rumor going around the school. They pressed him for insider details at times so they could provide secret reassurances to their friends about the security of sports and extracurricular activities. He politely informed them of the decision processes involved in school leadership and the need for some privacy as the school board considered delicate personnel issues.
His parents (his family of origin) were retired and living about 120 miles away in a senior living community. His father had experienced a heart attack at the age or 68 and had a stent placed in his left carotid artery last year shortly before his 78th birthday. Mom was politically active on the town council and took medicine for high blood pressure. They both took medicine for high cholesterol and expressed their concern that their son enjoyed eggs too much.
This scenario represents how a physician may gather and analyze information about patient health and symptoms using the Biopsychosocial Model (BPSM). We haven't gotten to the patient focused part yet, but we have some ideas about the context within which the heart palpitations occurred. Note that the "medical" information is sparse so far, but look at the rest of the model above which will be heavily medical. Usually, patients are driven to enter most clinical encounters at step 6, 7, or 8 , possibly avoiding the type of information we have gathered from this patient using the BPSM.
We'll start with step 6 in the next HCHH blog post, continuing to analyze the principal's palpitations. A lot of information contributes to clinical decision making and the BPSM is one way to stimulate an expansion of the types of information gathered. Stay tuned (and watch out for whole hog sausage gravy).


Why in News?
Government introduced a Bill to amend the Prevention of Money-laundering Act, 2002 through Finance Act, 2018
FACTS FOR PRELIMS
The Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) forms the core of the legal framework put in place by India to combat money laundering.
PMLA defines money laundering offence and provides for the freezing, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds of crime.
Amendments have been made in the Prevention of Money-laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) through Finance Act 2018. The Amendments aim at further enhancing the effectiveness of the Act, widen its scope and take care of certain procedural difficulties faced by the Enforcement Directorate in the prosecution of PMLA cases.
i)Amendment in the definition of “proceeds of crime”: The definition of “proceeds of crime” in PMLA was amended in 2015 to include “property equivalent held within the country” in case proceeds of crime is taken out or held “outside the country”. The present amendment shall allow proceeding against property equivalent to proceeds to crime held outside the country also.
ii) The applicability of bail conditions will be made uniform to all the offences under PMLA.
iii)Corporate frauds will be included as a Scheduled offence.
iv)Measures to enhance the effectiveness of investigations have been included.
v)Measures for the restoration of the property of persons adversely affected by PMLA investigation through special courts.


Cuff, Scale, and Smartphone
Checking your blood pressure on a regular basis is an essential part of measuring your health. Often this involves a conventional cuff device that estimates blood pressure from an oscillometric pressure waveform using population average methods.
New research by Jin-Oh Hahn, an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland, in collaboration with Ramakrishna Mukkamala at the Michigan State University and Omer Inan at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is paving a way toward new affordable, ultra-convenient, and patient-specific approaches to monitor blood pressure and cardiovascular risk predictors.
The Super Cuff
The "super cuff" is a suite of algorithmic technologies Hahn and his colleague Mukkamala are developing to advance the capability of conventional blood pressure cuff devices by enabling the monitoring of advanced cardiovascular risk predictors as well as traditionally measured brachial blood pressure.
"It is based on the conventional cuff," explains Hahn, "but the algorithms inside of it can adapt blood pressure and cardiovascular risk predictor computations to individual subjects and potentially improve the accuracy of the readings."
According to Hahn, who recently published a paper on the topic, the patient-specific algorithms in the super cuff may enable more accurate automatic cuff blood pressure measurement in patients with large artery stiffening while limiting the number of required cuff inflations or deflations per measurement, as well as monitor cardiovascular risk predictors whose measurement used to necessitate expensive equipment and trained operators.
In "Patient-Specific Oscillometric Blood Pressure Measurement: Validation for Accuracy and Repeatability" published in IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine, Hahn and Mukkamala point out that unlike conventional population average methods, which use the same parameter values in their empirical method for transforming the oscillogram to blood pressure levels in all patients, the new method determines the parameter values for each patient at the time of measurement to improve the accuracy of blood pressure monitoring.
"Accuracy can be maintained over a wider blood pressure range," explains Hahn. "By using a physiological model, the method could be more robust to oscillogram differences caused by respiration and variability in heart rate."
In an effort to improve the tracking of blood pressure in individual subjects, Hahn, in collaboration with Mukkamala and Inan, has also pursued research to assess the capabilities of a weighing scale-like system to calculate pulse transit time through larger and more elastic arteries by measuring ballistocardiography and foot photoplethysmography waveforms.
"Using the scale to measure your blood pressure is completely passive," says Hahn. "We don't require the user to do anything. You stand on it and that's it. This ease of use is very appealing."
The scale is equipped with sensors that measure the subject's small-amplitude vertical movement that occurs in response to an ejection of blood from the heart. "Each ejection of blood by the heart causes movement of the body," explains Hahn. "Although this amplitude is very small, we can measure it and translate that signal into a blood pressure reading."
Hahn and his colleagues found that the weighing scale-based pulse transit time is a better marker of blood pressure than conventional pulse arrival time widely being pursued. Their work involved measuring the scale pulse transit time, conventional pulse arrival time, and cuff blood pressure in humans during interventions that increased blood pressure but changed the pre-ejection period and smooth muscle contraction differently. While the scale pulse transit time tracked diastolic blood pressure changes well, the conventional pulse arrival time was significantly inferior in tracking these changes.
"Scale pulse transit time also tracked systolic blood pressure changes better than conventional pulse arrival time, but not to an acceptable level," Hahn notes. "We hope that with more development, scale pulse transit time will produce a convenient and reliable measurement of blood pressure."
More recently, Hahn and his colleagues also found that blood pressure may be monitored solely based on the ballistocardiography measurement alone. Based on a rigorous mathematical modeling analysis, Hahn and his colleagues discovered the physical mechanism underlying the genesis of ballistocardiography and showed that ballistocardiography morphology is closely associated with blood pressure waves in the aorta.
"Ballistocardiography measurement may provide surrogate measures of diastolic and pulse (systolic - diastolic) pressures, which may enable independent monitoring of diastolic and systolic pressures from the ballistocardiography measurement alone," Hahn observes.
Since convenience is a big factor, Hahn also worked with Mukkamala in developing a smartphone-based system that can conveniently measure blood pressure. The idea is to allow people to check their blood pressure anytime and anywhere.
"We came up with a system including a smartphone encasing and an app that is simple enough to use to evaluate the validity of our idea," says Hahn. "We demonstrated that it is certainly feasible to check your blood pressure with a smartphone. This convenience allows people to check their blood pressure as often as they like, wherever they are."
The technology is activated when the user presses a finger against the smartphone and the external pressure of the underlying artery is steadily increased. The smartphone then measures the applied pressure and resulting variable amplitude blood volume oscillations. To guide the amount of external pressure applied over time through the finger pressing, users receive visual feedback from the smartphone, which computes systolic and diastolic blood pressure from the measurements.
"It certainly has room for improvement," Hahn recognizes, "but we think the ubiquitous benefits of this technology could really serve to improve hypertension management."
Published April 20, 2018


After School Programs
21st Century Community Learning Centers
Community learning centers are federal grant-funded programs which provide students with enrichment opportunities before and after school and for a minimum of four weeks during summer recess. Community learning centers are created by partnerships between schools and community organizations that prioritize programs serving students in high-poverty, low-performing schools. 21st Century Community Learning Centers
At-Risk Afterschool Meal Program
The At-Risk Afterschool and Summer Meal Programs help students get the nutritious meals they need in a safe, supervised location. For many students, this is their only opportunity to access a healthy meal after the school day or year ends. Visit the At-Risk page for more information on meal programs.
Community Education promotes learning and social development through after school and summer programming for students and adults of all ages. The idea behind community education is that education is a lifelong process. The program gives shared responsibility for educating all to the entire community by providing opportunities for local citizens, schools, and organizations to become active partners in addressing education and community concerns. By linking identified needs to available resources, communities raise the quality of life for everyone. Contact your local district office for more information on opportunities for learning in your area.
Libraries recognize the importance of library services to children and teens. Dedicated State Library Services staff plan, develop and implement statewide programs and offer professional development opportunities for librarians working with youth. Find local library programs.
Targeted Services Programs
Targeted services provides before school, after school and summer programs for students in grades K-8 who may be struggling in the regular school program and need additional time to develop skills and abilities. Targeted services are designed for meeting the needs of the whole child. Therefore, it is not more of the same teaching and learning that occurs during the school day, but a different approach to engage students with the teacher, school and community. The purpose is to develop the skills needed to be successful in the regular school program. Contact your local district office for information about programs available in your community.
Minnesota can almost be called the land of 10,000 STEM opportunities. STEM stands for integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education. To help students get connected with these opportunities, this web portal has been designed to identify within a region or age group several organizations that provide services. Once you find an organization meeting your needs, you will be redirected to their site to make the contact. Explore STEM for opportunities in your area.


When I refer to early Christians, I am referring to Christians before the year 250CE.
In this post, I refer to those Christianities, later called heresies by an evolving Orthodoxy in collaboration with the Roman government and its hegemonic military.
Jesus Christ did exist. He did not exist in the way we intuitively think about the term “exist”, which is to say, as a unique, autonomous individual, but nevertheless he existed…lots of times. There were many Jesus Christs! I leave it to the reader to decide whether this condition is equivalent to non-existence.
To the earliest Christians, Jesus Christ was the member of the generation who possessed the Spirit – not the Spirit originating on Earth by the ruler of this world, but rather, the Spirit which was created in a realm above and sent to lead the way out of this material hellhole. This Spirit was transient, and would leave a person before their death. It was called the Paraclete. This early Christian framework is clearly attested by Irenaeus and other heresy hunters who were hell-bent on purging the Christianity which (IMHO) they first hijacked for their own political purposes. It is also detectable in the Synoptic Gospels, when Jesus asks God why he abandoned him (Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:46). This passage is perfectly compatible with this Spirit adoption idea which was so common among early Christian groups, such as the Ebionites, Cerinthians, and Carpocratians.
We glean the point of the earliest Gospels from Paul in Galatians 3:1, when he said “It was in front of your own eyes Christ was portrayed as being crucified”.
Paul’s lament in Galatians 3 was a clear allusion to a dramatic depiction, common in mystery religions of the 1st and 2nd centuries. Given Paul’s regular references to his own Gospel, I think this is what the earliest proto-Gospel was – a dramatic depiction performed for the benefit of new proselytes, perhaps children and those who could not read, but no doubt enjoyed by the community.
For the earliest Mark consumers, notably the Basilideans, the Spirit which Jesus inherited after baptism was given up prior to his crucifixion. The Spirit migrated to the one who bore Jesus Christ’s cross, which in the Gospel of Mark was Simon of Cyrene. Consider that same Paul letter, Galatians, 6:14: “May I never boast except in the cross of our lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me.” Paul was claiming to be in the same role as Simon of Cyrene!
One of the earliest writers against these early Christianities, Irenaeus, gives 3 early Christian sects which all hold similar views about Jesus Christ: the Ebionites, the Cerinthians, and the Carpocratians. The Ebionites and Cerinthians used different versions of the Gospel of Matthew, where the Carpocratians used either Matthew or Luke (perhaps a harmonization of both). However, one distinction Irenaeus makes is that the Carpocratians used Paul’s letters (at least Romans).
Irenaeus gives an interesting description of Carpocrates that cracks the “mystery” wide open. Irenaeus writes “[Jesus] perfectly remembered those things which he had witnessed within the sphere of the unbegotten God…”
Could this be why Paul often complained about the pains of child birth (Galatians 4:19), and why he was born from a miscarriage (1 Corinthians 15:7-8)? And why he was set apart from his mother’s womb by God (Gal 1:15), and “…crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20).
The point of the mystery, at least that which is most evident to this observer, was that the Gospel of Mark occurred in the heavenly Judea, and one of the final acts before the story’s 2nd hero, Simon of Cyrene, descended to the material realm, was that he had to carry Jesus Christ’s cross, which would cause the proper eruptions in the heavens (Revelation 8:5), which would create a path for the spiritual believers to traverse so that they could escape the material realm and the malevolent rulers who controlled it.
The Gospel story was simply the first instance of the Spirit taking this path to get to Earth. Once on earth, the Spirit could inhabit those practitioners of white magic who experienced enough material phenomena (Against Heresies i.25) and had “rendered unto Caesar” (code for the ruler of this Earth) those material possessions which were most prized by humans. This is why, in Matthew and Luke, Jesus said that practitioners were not getting out of this prison until they’ve paid the very last penny (Matthew 5:26, Luke 12:59).
There were probably many of these Paracletes who claimed to be Jesus Christ: Paul, Simon Magus, Simon of Cyrene, James, Theudas, John the Baptist, Mani, The Egyptian. At least some of these people must have existed, although we may have duplicates in the mix.
It is indeed interesting that one of the earliest infancy Gospels which had Jesus being born of a virgin was the Infancy Gospel of James. The reason for this is predictable: competition. This competition is captured in various early Christian literature, including Paul’s epistles, the Epistle of James, the Shepherd of Hermas, and others. My speculation is that the James community was trying to “one up” the Paul community, whose leader claimed to be born from an ektroma (miscarriage). Not to be outdone by that leader who “was not born of a woman” (Gospel of Thomas, saying 15), the James community gave Jesus an even more amazing woman-less inception.