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iii. IN THE ACHAEMENID PERIOD The Achaemenid empire, extending from the Indus river to the Aegean sea, comprised such economically developed countries as Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, Babylonia, Elam, and Asia Minor, lands which had their long traditions of social institutions, as well as Sakai, Massagetai, Lycians, Libyans, Nubians and other tribes undergoing the disintegration of the primitive-communal phase. Therefore, the socioeconomic structure of the empire was characterized by extreme diversity (Dandamaev and Lukonin, pp. 95-96). For this reason the empire remained a relatively decentralized state with each ethnic province honoring local customs and traditions (idem, pp. 90-91). The predominant form of economic activity in the majority of the lands brought under the imperial rule by the Persians was agriculture (Dandamaev and Lukonin, pp. 95-96). Although possessing handicraft activities, the cities were still agricultural, and the urban population itself was chiefly engaged in agriculture. Barley was the most frequently sown cereal in the empire—grown in Babylonia, Egypt, Elam, and Persia— while spelt and wheat were less frequently sown. In Palestine wheat was staple food, along with peas, lentils, and mustard. In Babylonia, barley, millet, sesame, peas, mustard, garlic, onions, cucumbers, apples, pomegranates, and apricots were grown. In Babylonia and Elam, wine, vinegar, and honey were basic foods, along with barley; dates were also consumed there and bread made from the seed. Wine production (for which ancient Persia was renowned) was also developed in Syria, Celicia, Armenia, and Sogdiana, while Babylonia and Elam brewed beer from dates and barley. Egypt, Babylonia, Phrygia, and Persia were rich in livestock, but dairy products occupied an insignificant place in the diet of the population in the empire. Poultry and fish also constituted part of the food consumed (Dandamaev and Lukonin, pp. 130-31). Three basic economic sectors co-existed side by side: the royal sector managed by the king’s chancellery, the sector owned and operated by the religious temples, and the private sector. The Achaemenids introduced significant changes in the agrarian relations of the lands under their rule. Accurately measured lands were redistributed, and the best portions were taken by the king, the temples, business houses, the military elite, and the civil servants of the royal and temple administration (Dandamaev and Lukonin, 130). The view held by some scholars that the Achaemenid king was, theoretically, the supreme legal owner of all land has been contested. Available evidence shows that there were several kinds of major ownership in the empire: vast latifundia (particularly in Babylonia) leased out in large plots by the owners to major tenants, who would, in turn, sublet them in smaller plots; plots owned and tilled by small-holders; lands belonging to the royalty, i.e., the state, usually the best portions of lands confiscated from rulers and nobility of conquered countries who had refused voluntary subjugation themselves to the Achaemenids; and expropriated lands distributed among members of the royal family, friends and companions of the king, and the like. Large holdings were worked by hired labor, sometimes even brought in from neighboring countries (idem, pp. 132-34). Select portions of land, leased out by the Achaemenid royal house, usually included areas of conquered regions which had been made the property of the king. In addition, many large canals in Babylonia belonging to the king were rented out by his managers too (Dandamaev and Lukonin, pp. 142-43). Some irrigation canals also belonged to the temples and private individuals (idem, p. 132). The Achaemenid kings also possessed irrigation constructions along the Akes river (Harīrūd) in Khorasan (Herodotus, 3.117), forests in Syria (Nehemiah, 2:8), the right to income from fish caught in Lake Moeris in Egypt (Herodotus, 2.149), as well as pleasure gardens and palaces in various parts of the empire (Dandamaev and Lukonin, pp. 143-44). Structurally, the royal sector was unified, and its various products were delivered from one place to another as required. A number of documents record the personal decrees of Darius I issued through the chief manager of the royal sector in Pharnaces. For instance, two letters contain orders to issue respectively 100 sheep and 200 measures of wine from the royal properties to Queen Irtashduna (Cameron, pp. 214-18; Hallock, no. 1795). According to one text, nearly 700 shepherds drove the “small livestock of the king” from Persia in the direction to Susa (Hallock, no. 1441). Judging by the number of shepherds, these herds apparently numbered in the tens of thousands of head (Hinz, 1971, p. 290). According to Aramaic and Babylonian documents and to Greek sources, large estates in conquered lands were distributed as hereditary property among the members of the royal family and the Persian nobility. A description of such households is found in the Aramaic letters of Aršāma, the satrap of Egypt, and of other Persian nobles to managers of their holdings in Egypt (see Driver, nos. I-XIII). Aršāma owned large flocks of sheep and goats in the Nippur area of Babylonia and rented them out (for reference see Driver, pp. 88-90). Several Babylonian documents refer to fields of Queen Parysatis, the wife of Darius II, located in the Nippur region and rented out to the Murašū business firm (Dandamaev and Lukonin, p. 136; Dandamaev, pp. 115-16; see also Xenophon’s Anabasis 2.4.27, mentioning the “villages of Parysatis” in Babylonia). In consequence of the land tenure system introduced by Achaemenids, the royal administration settled soldiers of various ethnic origin on state lands. In theory, the land was considered to be of royal ownership, since there was no clear demarcation between state and royal property. The soldiers tilled the plots allotted to them collectively or rented them out, served their period of conscription, and paid royal taxes in silver and in kind. In addition to soldiers, some groups of royal artisans, shepherds, merchants, etc. were settled on state land (for references see Dandamaev and Lukonin, pp. 147-48). Phoenician cities, with merchants controlling international maritime trade to a considerable degree, produced a purple dye and glass dishware intended for export. The production of clothing was developed in Miletus in Asia Minor, and in Babylonian and Egyptian cities. The royal sector also owned large workshops in various parts of the empire. In royal workshops in Arachosia, Persia, Babylonia, and Egypt craftsmen produced dishware for the requirements of the king’s court (Dandamaev and Lukonin, pp. 175-76). According to Greek sources, 15,000 people were fed daily at a cost to the king of 400 talents of silver (Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists 4.115 b-146c, with references to Heracleides of Cyme, Ctesias, and Dinon). A large number of officials were in the employ of the vast royal properties; they were charged with the management of the royal sector, which comprised a single entity within the entire empire. Persepolis economic documents drafted in Elamite in 509-458 B.C.E. give an idea of this sector. It comprised more than one hundred towns and settlements located in Persia and Elam and divided into six districts (Koch, pp. 217-311). This sector was served by more than 16,000 workmen (kurtaš), including stone masons, master woodworkers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and sculptors as well as shepherds, wine makers, beer brewers, etc. Ethnically, the kurtaš mostly consisted of the representatives of the conquered people, i.e., Egyptians, Babylonians, Lydians, Ionians, Cappadocians, Carians, Bactrians, Sogdians, etc. (for references and literature, see Dandamaev and Lukonin, pp. 158-70). Documentary evidence about the economic sector owned and managed by temples is abundant only for Babylonia and, to a lesser degree, for Egypt. In Babylonia temples owned both large estates and trade and handicraft centers. The temples and other major Babylonian landowners also leased out part of their land-holdings, since they lacked sufficient numbers of agricultural workers. Hired labor, widely used on large estates, worked either the entire year or during the harvest. Hired hands sometimes were recruited even in the neighboring countries (such as Elam); in addition to wages, they were paid travel expenses and board (for references, see Dandamaev and Lukonin, p. 305). Small-holders, who usually tilled their land together with their family members, sometimes used the labor of slaves and hired hands during the period of harvest. No documentary evidence is available from the Achaemenid period on the economic life of common Persians; only sporadic references appear in Greek sources. For instance, Herodotus (1.133) writes that when the Persians were celebrating a birthday, they served roasted oxen, horses, and camels. It seems that in Persia meat constituted part of the daily food consumption, while in most other countries of the empire (including even rich Babylonia) it was a luxury. Despite its enormous size, the royal sector did not occupy a decisive place in the economy of the empire. The main source of state income was taxes, which were used for the maintenance of the army, administration, and, partially, the royal court. A considerable portion of taxes were set aside in the royal treasuries located in Pasargadae, Persepolis, Ecbatana, Susa, Babylon, and other places (Curtius, 5.2.11, 5.6.9-10; Diodorus Siculus, 17.71.1; Strabo, 15.3.9). To judge from Herodotus (3.90-94), the total annual sum of taxes calculated in silver amounted to 14,560 Eubonic talents (1 Eubonic talent = 25.86 kg.) Taxes had to be delivered in unminted silver evaluated by purity and weight and meeting a given standard. In addition to taxes, subjects delivered to the king gifts of precisely determined sizes. But in contrast to taxes, gifts were paid in kind (e.g., trunks of ebony wood, elephant tusks, horses, vessels of gold, silver, etc.). While the dominant majority of subjects paid taxes, gifts were delivered only by the peoples who lived on the borders of the empire, i.e., by Colchians, Ethiopians, Arabs, etc. (Herodotus, 3.97). According to Herodotus (idem), the Persians, as the ruling people, were exempt from taxes and forced labor. This exemption apparently applied only to monetary taxes, for, the Persepolis documents indicate that the Persians were not exempt from taxes in kind (Hinz, 1971, pp. 289-92). In the Achaemenid inscriptions, the Persians are not included in the lists of nations performing obligatory service on construction works. Although Darius I introduced a gold daric weighing 8.42 gm, which formed the basis for the Achaemenid monetary system, as well as the silver shekel with a weight of 5.6 gm., these coins were little used outside Asia Minor. In Persia itself coins were not in circulation. Workmen in the employ of the royal sector, and even the highest officials, were paid their salaries in unminted silver and products in kind. Such a practice is also attested to in documents from Babylonia and Egypt of the Achaemenid period. In general, the Persians used coins for commercial exchange with the Greeks along the borders of the state and for payment to salaried mercenaries, especially in Asia Minor (Babelon, p. XXI). In countries located beyond the Mediterranean (e.g., Babylonia), internal trade payments were made in ingots of silver. When coins came into circulation, they were also accepted by weight as unminted metal. Our information about prices in Achaemenid Persia is scanty. According to Persepolis documents, during the period between 509 and 494 B.C.E., a sheep cost about 100 lit. of barley (Hallock, nos. 278, 364, 587, 588), sesame was three times more expensive than barley (idem, no. 297), and grain and various fruits (figs, apples, etc.) were equivalent to each other (cf. below). A donkey cost 500 lit. of barley or of fruit, and a jug of 10 lit. of local wine cost 30 lit. of barley (idem, p. 5). For the period from 492 to 458 B.C.E. Persepolis documents give prices in silver. Thus, a sheep cost 3 shekels of silver, and a jug of wine with a volume of ten lit. cost 1 shekel (idem, pp. 5-8; Hinz, 1970, pp. 430-33). These prices were officially established in the royal sector and probably could differ from those on the free market. In comparison with Babylonia, for which abundant documentary evidence on prices has been preserved, grain in Persia was much more expensive, while wine in Persia was many times cheaper. Oher food products in both countries cost more or less the same (Dandamaev and Lukonin, pp. 221-22). E. Babelon, Les perses Achéménides I, Paris, 1901. P. Briant and C. Herrenschmidt, eds., Le tribut dans l’Empire perse, Actes de la Table ronde de Paris 12-13 Décembre 1986, Paris, 1989. G. G. Cameron, “Darius’ Daughter and the Persepolis Inscriptions,” JNES 1, 1942, pp. 214-18. M. Dandamayev, A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire, tr. W. J. Vogelsang, Leiden, etc., 1989. Idem, Iranians in Achaemenid Babylonia, Costa Mesa (Calif.) and New York, 1992. M. Dandamaev and V. G. Lukonin, The Culture and Social Institutions of Ancient Iran, Cambridge etc., 1989. G. R. Driver, Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century B.C., Oxford, 1965. R. T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Chicago, 1969. W. Hinz, “Die elamischen Buchungstäfelchen der Darius-Zeit,” Orientalis 39, 1970, pp. 421-40. Idem, “Achäme-nidische Hofverwaltung,” ZA 61, 1971, pp. 260-311. H. Koch, Verwaltung und Wirtschaft im persischen Kernland zur Zeit der Achämeniden, Wiesbaden, 1990. M. W. Stolper, Entrepreneurs and Empire. The Murašu Archive, the Murašu Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia, Leiden, 1985. (Muhammad A. Dandamayev) Originally Published: December 15, 1997 Last Updated: December 8, 2011 This article is available in print. Vol. VIII, Fasc. 1, pp. 101-104

Some initially don't even know how to turn their new laptops on or attach a file to an email message, but that doesn't matter. Emphasizing that they need to develop "insider" perspectives on new practices, we ask them to write collaboratively through blogs, create podcasts, or produce their own music videos. And we have two rules: You can't say, "I can't," and you can't ask us for help first; you have to ask someone else or search online. Self-sufficiency becomes a by-product of learning. This is exactly the way we hope they will teach their students. Unfortunately, digital literacies -- full of engagement, collaboration, and trial and error -- still aren't the norm in teacher education. Classes for both preservice and in-service students typically mirror the kind of teaching practiced for too long in K-12 schools. Traditional skills still get all the respect, and the teacher still has all the answers. It is an approach that makes sense to colleges and universities expected to cover a huge amount of standard content and feed teachers into a system fiercely wedded to its old ways of doing things. This approach has to change. If we need a paradigm shift in how we teach K-12 students (and we do), we need to rethink how we prepare teachers. At all levels, up-and-coming teachers and their instructors need to know the potential of the digital practices they can tinker with and explore. And they should tinker with them in the same way school students do -- regularly and imaginatively. They need to think of themselves as learners, seeking out learning partners, improvising, and exploring with the confidence to experiment with what they don't know. Digital literacy is key to this new way of thinking. It is a catalyst and an enabler of the kind of collaborative, participatory learning we all need to embrace. Enormous numbers of people are already seamlessly practicing a range of digital literacies in their personal and professional lives. We as teachers -- and those who train teachers -- must weave such practices into what we do as well. Recipes for Digital Literacy First, we have to update our definition of literacy. In the digital age, reading and writing have expanded to include new forms that have a wide range of intentions. The writer of a blog may choose to incorporate images, video, or the input of readers in her publication. Editing a wiki may require traditional writing skills, but it also calls for an added layer of confidence in one's own expertise, and trust in anonymous editors. Digital literacy nearly always incorporates an aspect of social networking that varies depending on the task at hand. What does digital literacy look like? Students will show you. For my doctoral thesis in the late 1990s at Australia's Queensland University of Technology, I spent an extended period studying the literacy habits of four seventh-grade students, visiting them at school and at home. One of them, Jacques, had enormous trouble with writing assignments but produced a marvelous flyer for his lawn mowing business, using key phrases such as "first time, lawn mowed free" and "reliable service." Another boy, Nicholas, came from an extremely tech-savvy family. I watched him chafe against the lockstep software programs for writing that were popular in Australian classrooms at the time. Faced with a system that forced him to write a title, lead paragraph, and essay of a certain length in a certain order, he spent the class period mucking around and annoying his classmates. Then he went home and used a regular word processing program to finish the assignment in a snap. More recently, I've seen children who struggle to read in class go home and read thick cheat books for their video games. Young people outside of school may do their writing collaboratively, through blogs and wikis and Google Docs. They increasingly spin their own tales at FanFiction.net or combine text with moving images and sound to express something about their world. A 2000 report by the U.S. government-sponsored National Reading Panel emphasized several aspects of reading instruction -- phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in particular. If teachers stick to this one-dimensional interpretation of literacy, we fail on two fronts: We lose students who learn best with tech tools used for meaningful purposes, and we stop short of producing students who have real digital-literacy savvy in a world that demands it. If we commit to helping children and prospective teachers master digital literacy, our teaching methods must evolve. Often, educators see teaching with technology as business as usual -- as though it's simply an add-on. True, you can put your reading-comprehension tests on the computer instead of on paper, but that doesn't change the basic practice. Using Microsoft PowerPoint to retell The Three Little Pigs doesn't really change anything -- it's just an old-school practice in digital drag. The software-centric approach I see commonly in high schools, in which kids learn word processing on one day and PowerPoint on another day, will never work, not in grade school or at a teachers' college. To prepare teachers to truly succeed in the today's world, we need to immerse them in the technology their students use. We ask children to break through their fears of the unknown, dive in, and take risks. We must do the same. It may sound weird, but it's perfectly possible to teach people to do things you haven't mastered. My husband and I have never (yet) made an anime music video. (This popular form involves taking tiny clips from anime movies and syncing them to music.) Yet our students create gorgeous ones, and they tell us they have never worked so hard on a project. Plus, they get it -- they discover all the critical choices producers of these videos make: which music to select, how to match the mood of the music and video clips, how to effectively sync the rhythm with the visual transitions. Our approach is to say, "Let's give this stuff a go, and even if it's a spectacular failure, at least we'll have learned something." There are important reasons for jumping in at the deep end of the pool, however daunting it may seem. In addition to experiencing technology the way their own students have, educators in training can see the relevance of it in their own lives. Teachers can't capitalize on the educational potential of digital technology if they haven't had the opportunity to see how it can foster learning or enhance their own lives. It's a mistake to give teachers computers and demand that they find useful things to do with them. Instead, we need to create opportunities for teachers to use online technology and say, "I must have this." If we call on professors of education to transform teaching practice, we need to offer support and training for the task. In the Teacher Education Program at Montclair State University, in Montclair, New Jersey, where I coordinate the undergraduate and graduate literacy programs, we're lucky to have an administration that very much encourages digital literacy and exploratory kinds of learning. Last semester, for example, my dean provided information-technology support staff to help me evaluate the usefulness of the virtual world Second Life. I tried it in an adolescent-literacy course as a means to explore literature, using its virtual spaces to mirror the worlds you find in books. I got a level of positive response from my teacher-education students that took even me by surprise. More often than not, though, schools of education aim to cover so much material -- traditional literacy being a sizable part of it -- that digital literacy is an afterthought. There's also a prevailing (and false) wisdom that kids need to learn to read before they can use the Internet. This misperception, combined with fears for children's online safety, steers teachers and college professors away from meaningful online learning. This isn't helped by the restrictive Internet filters in place at schools, either. The truth is, it's really only through multiple online experiences that students learn to navigate the Internet's potential possibilities and pitfalls. Beyond instructional and material support from their institutions, professors need hands-on instruction -- not only the general nuts-and-bolts computer classes that are the norm but also courses that deeply explore the potential of digital tools and practices for teaching and learning. At Montclair, we're building our own professional-development practice for this approach. Colleges and universities can also help by giving up rigid courseware such as Blackboard, which provides professors with little flexibility to go beyond conventional assignments, tests, grades, and private discussions. On the Web, people from far-flung places can work together on sophisticated projects without ever meeting, or they can marshal a wide variety of expertise through public-discussion boards, often free. Without the freedom to test out these opportunities, we can hardly expect professors to weave them into teacher training. Professional organizations such as the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and the International Reading Association also have an important role to play. Their standards for schools of education in many ways perpetuate the old model of teacher as expert, leaving little room for learners to use their own kinds of expertise, the kinds that can flourish when students do collaborative projects with peers at other schools or present their work to a real-world, professional audience. In looking at their standards, I hope these groups will think about the world teachers of the future will be preparing their students to successfully inhabit. I feel hopeful about the future of teacher preparation, and for the future of education as a whole. I know that positive things will happen if we look outside our traditions and beyond the walls of our institutions to see how children -- and adults -- are using digital technologies in their everyday lives to achieve new things that are often much more sophisticated than what they're asked to do in school. We must ask ourselves these questions: What are kids doing outside of school? What kinds of media are they writing, creating, and remixing? And what does that mean for what we do? Education works best when our students shape what we teach and who we are as teachers. If we follow their lead, it's inevitable that digital technologies will become a meaningful part of our teaching. This is to say not that knowledge no longer matters but, rather, that we must recognize that an emphasis on content -- so readily found online these days -- needs to give way to a focus on purposeful learning and on teaching students how to truly collaborate, participate meaningfully online, and tap into the expertise of others as they learn about their world. It feels risky, I know. But it's time for us as educators to simply jump in and give things a go to see what these tools can do. If we hang back out of fear, we -- and the teachers we prepare for the classroom -- will be distant figures in this century's rearview mirror. Michele Knobel is a professor in the Department of Early Childhood, Elementary, and Literacy Education at Montclair State University, in Montclair, New Jersey.

"Wear-and-Tear" vs "Use-It-or-Lose-It" TheoryOrgasm and Longevity: The Dose-Response CurveBy Will Block exual myths live on, despite the best attempts of researchers to allow the light of day to enter into the musty rooms of hearsay and fable. The work of Masters and Johnson conducted during the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated that the size of a man's penis does not equate to his virility, and that a woman's capacity for orgasm and for maintaining peak sexual excitement is limited only by physical exhaustion, not sexual or orgasmic exhaustion as is the case with men. Yet despite the work of debunkers such as Masters and Johnson, myths about sexual wear and tear live on. These myths are common in a wide range of cultures. They conclude that sexual enjoyment can be secured only at the cost of vigor and well-being. So it is a great pleasure to announce that this myth has been brought to its knees. Contrary to the notion of sex as an energy drain, recent research indicates that orgasm increases life span.* What's more, the greater the number of orgasms in one's life, the lower the mortality and the greater the probability of longer life. * The study examined orgasm via sexual intercourse. Do life extenders do it longer? THE SKY'S THE LIMIT The above-referenced study examined the correspondence between the frequency of sexual intercourse and death.1 For ten years, scientists followed more than 900 men (ages 45-59) in the Welsh town of Caerphilly and several nearby villages. Over the course of the study 150 men died. When follow-up studies were conducted, all deaths, including deaths due to coronary heart disease, were evaluated. In the group with the highest orgasmic frequency, mortality was 50% lower compared to the group with the lowest frequency of orgasms. Similarly, all causes of death were inversely correlated with frequency of orgasm. The more orgasm, the lower the mortality; the fewer orgasms, the higher the mortality. This association for lower mortality was most pronounced in those with coronary heart disease. At the point when the group's number of orgasms per year equaled 100 (about 2 per week) the death rate was significantly lower (68% less mortality) than that of the lowest frequency group (less than 1 per month)! Moreover there was good evidence for a "dose-response" relation across the study. Translated, this means that the improved mortality benefits from orgasm frequency continued - although perhaps at a less steep pace with advanced age - all the way up to daily "doses" (1 orgasm per day or 365 per year) as reported in some subjects, and possibly beyond, even to higher dose levels. Until now, aside from studies concerned with the sexual transmission of disease, sexual behavior and its relationship to health or mortality has not often been the subject of study. This situation may have to do with researchers in this area being predominately middle-aged who, by and large, study middle-aged and aging populations. Because of their shared assumptions with those whom they study, the researchers relate middle age and sexuality to declining sexual frequency, thus rendering the entire area uninteresting. Epidemiologists tend to study areas that interest other epidemiologists more often than those that interest the general population. Moreover, these same epidemiologists are generally employed by government, an institution not known for its innovation or desire to challenge prevailing assumptions. Orgasms have been found to increase life span. WHAT ABOUT WOMEN? In the scientific literature, we find more support for reversing the general epidemiological silence on the association between sexual behavior and mortality. In a 25-year follow-up aging study, the frequency of sexual intercourse was found to be inversely associated with mortality in men (more sex, less death), and enjoyment of intercourse was inversely related to mortality among women (more sexually-related pleasure, less death).2 From this and other studies we can reasonably conclude that for men the quantity of sexual activity is paramount while for women quality is more important. In a case-controlled study of middle-aged women expressing dissatisfaction with the quality of sex - primarily because of premature ejaculation or impotence of their partners - researchers found an increased risk of acute myocardial infarction.3 Given this general correspondence between sexual quantity/quality and morbidity and mortality, one wonders about the life of celibates such as priests and nuns? An analysis involving over 10,000 priests in the United States did find an overall but marginal increase in mortality compared to the general male population, as well as substantial increases in heart disease and greatly increased mortality attributed to cirrhosis of the liver, a disease associated with alcohol abuse.4 When nuns were studied, a general overall lowering in mortality was seen compared to the general female population, although these results were undoubtedly confuted by their significantly lower rates of smoking.5 At the point when the group's number of orgasms per year equaled 100 (about 2 per week) the death rate was significantly lower (68% less mortality) than that of the lowest frequency group (less than 1 per month)! THE RISK OF INACTIVITY There are many "old-wives' tales" as well as esoteric self-denial stories about the detrimental aspects of sex, but very little data to support conclusions that sexual frequency, independent of increasing the potential for disease transmission, can have negative or declining effects on health. In fact, scientific evidence seems to be suggesting quite the opposite. However, dear reader, because you have stayed with this article this long, presumably with the hope of another good argument for living a sexually-fulfilling life, you are entitled to the reward you've been looking for. Even if the returns aren't completely in, the knowledge gained from the Caerphilly (pronounced "carefully") study gives us the support we need to accelerate our scientific investigation of sex and its potential for enhancement. For example, scientific literature supports the use of arginine, niacin (for prolonged orgasm), choline, ginkgo biloba, yohimbine and other nutrients as useful for taking your sex life to a new level. So, get yourself a copy of Better Sex Through Chemistry or ask for some of our back articles on the subject. If you have been persuaded by the "wear-and-tear" theorists instead of the "use-it-or-lose-it advocates," it is time to think again. We are clearly in territory where too much is not enough. Need I say any more? - Davey Smith G, Frankel S, Yarnell J. Sex and death: are they related? Findings from the Caerphilly cohort study. BMJ. 1997;315:1641-1645. - Palrnore E B. Predictors of the longevity difference: a 25-year follow-up. Gerontologist. 1982;6:513-8. - Abramov L A. Sexual life and frigidity among women developing acute myocardial infarction. Psychosom Med. 1976;38:418-25. - Kaplan S D. Retrospective cohort mortality study of Roman Catholic priests. Prev Med. 1988;17:335-343. - Butler S M, Snowdon D A. Trends in mortality in older women: findings from the nun study. J Gerontol Ser B. 1996;51:S201-8.

Issue Editors: Eileen A. Joy & Andrew Rabin | November 2010 The State(s) of Early English Studies: A Shared Essay Cluster with postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies Section Editor: Eileen A. Joy Elaine Treharne, Department of English, Florida State University Abstract: This essay considers the issue of adapted and new Old English poetry, as it is manifested through modern translations and poems 'after' the originals, and it also evaluates contemporary responses to new versions of the old, and contemplates how Anglo-Saxonists might exploit the popular interest in Creative Writing, particularly among graduate students. There is a wide and enthusiastic audience for Old English, who might appreciate both the original verse and its adaptations in university courses that emphasize translation and rewriting. Appended to the essay are poems by Florida State University Creative Writing graduate students, which showcase excellent translation skills influenced by a semester of learning traditional Old English literature and literacies. Mary Dockray-Miller, Lesley University Abstract: In light of current debates about literacy, critical thinking, and foundational knowledge in the undergraduate curriculum, this essay argues for an expansion and redirection of the discourse of Old English studies to include issues of literacy and aliteracy, language history and change, and interdisciplinary communication with professional training programs as well as other liberal arts disciplines. Still Theoretical After All These Years, Or, Whose Theory Do You Want, Or, Whose Theory Can We Have? Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, King's College London and Wake Forest University Abstract: We focus on some other questions that are forestalled by the repeated posing of the question of the 'in-ness' or otherwise of theory in our field, and consider also what can we do for 'theory' rather than what it can do for us. We raise further questions about the ethics of theory in past, present, and future contexts in Old English studies. Available in postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 1.3 (Nov. 2010) http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/journal/v1/n3/index.html: Before and after theory: Seeing through the body in early medieval England Jacqueline A Stodnick, University of Texas-Arlington and Renée R. Trilling, University of Illinois This essay brings insights drawn from materialist theories of the body to bear on Anglo-Saxon texts with the dual aim of, first, advancing knowledge about the body in early medieval England and, second, questioning the limitations of contemporary theoretical models deeply invested in the toxicity of a post-industrial world. Providing examples drawn from Old English poetry, we argue that Anglo-Saxon uses of the body share some affinities with new materialist modes of thinking, particularly for the ways that they resist any simple severance of body from ruling consciousness. Periodization and the matter of precedent Kathleen Davis, University of Rhode Island This essay begins by considering the relation between medieval/modern periodization and the periodization of England's history as pre- or post-Norman Conquest, and suggests that despite significant differences these periodizations have a shared history—one that is nationalist, colonial, and fundamentally juridical. As a way of approaching the position of Anglo-Saxon studies in literary theory, the essay then examines the structure and function of legal precedent, and argues that periodization accomplishes for historical precedent what formalized institutional mechanisms accomplish for legal precedent: that is, a sorting out process that defines which elements of the past can serve as a rule for future guidance, and which cannot. Such a process of sorting and defining clearly still operates in the case of pre- and post-Conquest periodization. If periodization, like legal precedent, instantiates pasts capable of shaping or binding the future, then newly imagined futures and theoretical avenues require the disassemblage of this periodization. Text, sex, and politics: Present and past reflections Carol Braun Pasternack, University of California, Santa Barbara In November 2008, Proposition 8, the "California Marriage Protection Act," halted gay marriages just five months after the state's Supreme Court had ruled them protected by the state constitution. Although the proponents of Proposition 8 claim that they are protecting "traditional marriage" as understood by all cultures, faiths, and ages, this essay shows that their position intertwines religion, sexuality, and politics in a pattern that reflects the combination of values promoting chastity in late Anglo-Saxon England: both contend that a specific practice of Christianity and social adherence to their religious convictions about sexual practice are necessary to the safety of the political state. The essay also addresses the role of information technologies in the shaping of these ideas, speculating about how the shift from the hierarchical organization of the book to the more diffuse matrix of Web 2.0 may impact the governing of such ideas and social practices. What would Byrhtwold do? Lisa M.C. Weston, California State University-Fresno This essay engages with the discussion of possible futures for Anglo-Saxon Studies from the most material—and embattled—of places, the humanities within US public universities. Beset by budget cuts and by demands for "relevance" and "accountability" within increasingly corporatized institutions, medievalists especially can be dismissed as marginal. Yet proving oneself and one's field of research "central to University mission" often seems to require complicity with neo-liberal and anti-humanistic ideologies and cultures. At the very least it requires the adoption of the language of our oppression. But rather than compromising or merely bemoaning our fate, can we use our perceived position of marginality as a place from which to construct new theories and pedagogies of resistance (and also of pleasure)? This essay suggests that Anglo-Saxon Studies (and Medieval Studies more generally) may offer an appropriately "ex-central" position from which to formulate such utopian projects. Themed Articles: Anglo-Saxon Law Section Editor: Andrew Rabin Lisi Oliver, Louisiana State University Abstract: This paper argues that the unique term hion in Æthelberht §36 should be interpreted as tabulum of the skull, connecting it to the use of heafod-ban in Alfred §40. Nathan A. Breen, DePaul University Abstract: Treatments of Wealhtheow in Beowulf scholarship have traditionally viewed the queen either as an extension of Hrothgar, serving a ceremonial function in Heorot, or as a potentially subversive character, undermining the power structure of Heorot and creating strife. Primarily, these studies have been onomastic, cultural, or literary in nature, and have yielded great insight. However, as this essay demonstrates, the legal ramifications of Wealhtheow's speech have been largely ignored. Yet, it is within the context of Anglo-Saxon legal culture, as witnessed by the various law codes, writs, wills, and diplomas (and as supported by Germanic custom), that the queen's advice to Hrothgar concerning his informal adoption of Beowulf shows her political savvy and elevates her status within the poem, perhaps mirroring the roles of some Anglo-Saxon queens. Wealhtheow's speech recalls the primary prohibition of Hrothgar's kingship—that he should not alienate land from the kingdom or give his people away—as she skillfully protects the right to accession of the throne for her young sons. Jay Paul Gates, Department of English, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Abstract: The phrase ealles Englalandes cyningc appears for the first time in I–II Cnut, and represents a shift in the discourse of Anglo-Saxon kingship, changing it from king over a people to king over a territory, redefining the discourse of nationhood. Kathryn Powell, University of Cambridge Abstract: This article reviews the scholarship on MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 383 and particularly examines the case for the manuscript's St Paul's, London, origin. Based on a study of annotations, it suggests that the manuscript may have been produced elsewhere for the bishop of London and then modified at St Paul's. Laurence Nowell's Edition and Translation of the Laws of Alfred in London, British Library Henry Davis 59 Rebecca Brackmann, Lincoln Memorial University Laurence Nowell, a major figure in the sixteenth-century study of Old English law, laboriously gathered, transcribed, and edited Anglo-Saxon laws, eventually producing an Old English-Early Modern English edition and translation of the Laws of Alfred. Nowell's translation, examined in the context of comparable undertakings by his housemate Arthur Golding, reveals Nowell's strategies for making the Old English laws seem contemporary while still retaining their authoritative status as an object from the distant past. His manuscript's textual and visual emphasis on the royal origin of laws suggests that Nowell's presentation of Old English law as old and yet familiar also had political resonance for contemporary Elizabethan England. Daniela Fruscione, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main The adjective "Germanic" originated among eighteenth-century philologists as a way of referring to the West Indo-European language group that produced modern-day German and English, as well as the Scandinavian, Celtic, Slavic, Italic, and Greek language families. It is a designation imposed from the outside, and thus corresponds neither to any self-determined denomination nor does it reflect any provable consciousness of a common Germanic identity among early northern European peoples. As recent studies of early medieval ethnogenesis have argued, without a uniform identity-consciousness among the speakers of the Germanic dialects, the denomination "Germanic" can be considered nothing other than a mere scientific convention However, if one speaks about the middle ages, one can only do so badly without it. This essay traces the history of the term "Germanic" and discusses ways in which it might be re-defined in a manner more useful for current scholarship. John Soderberg, University of Minnesota Jurasinski, Stefan, Ancient Privileges: Beowulf, Law, and the Making of Germanic Antiquity. Reviewed by Michel Aaij. 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ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News Often accompanying the iftar meal during Ramadan are live music performances known as fasıl, a style of music from the Ottoman period The instruments used in a fasıl performance are generally the saz, a string instrument played by plucking; ney, a reed flute; tambourine with cymbals, tanbur. The iftar meal with which one breaks a day’s fast during the month of Ramadan is very frequently accompanied by what is known as fasıl music. Restaurants, whether or not they’re in hotels, often boast of providing live fasıl music. It is most often compared with the chants of the medieval Roman Catholic Church although the latter seem far less complicated. The oldest known song written in cuneiform has been dated to Ur, 4,000 years ago. Music though occurs in all societies whether written or not. When music first appeared among the Turkish tribes of Central Asia is unknown although music was definitely a part of their lives. There has been debate in the past as to whether music is allowable in Islam or not and the general consensus is that it is all right if it isn’t used for sinful purposes. As the Turks settled in Anatolia and carved out the Ottoman Empire, music of various kinds developed among the urban ruling class and in particular in the palace and its surrounds and in the mansions of the upper class. This tradition was based on two foundations – elitist or divan literature which mostly consisted of poetry and the mystic orders of Islam in the 16th century. Music was passed down from one master to another as there was no system of notation until the beginning of the 18th century. Musicians learned by heart and master musicians passed it along to their pupils. Today we are fortunate in having some 350 pieces of Turkish music, thanks to the efforts of Prince Dimitrie Cantemir of Moldavia, who lived in Istanbul between 1687 and 1710. What we term Turkish classical music today comes from the work he and others who followed him carried out. By far the best known of the classical musical forms is what is termed fasıl which means “section or part” in Turkish. The word is originally from Arabic and when applied to music, it refers to the playing and singing of pieces in a specific order. This is sometimes translated as “suite” in English. There are four different instrumental forms and three vocal forms, led by one person using a tambourine with cymbals, and during the vocal compositions there may be instrumental improvisations. A fasıl’s sequence is as follows: taksim (an instrumental improvisation); peşrev (usually of four parts, with long rhythmic patterns); kar (the first piece sung after the peşrev); first beste (a vocal composition consisting of four verses each followed by the same melodic passage); second beste (another vocal composition consisting of four verses followed by the same melodic passage); ağir semai (a rhythmic pattern of 10 beats); yürük semai (a rhythmic pattern of six beats and form of vocal music sung just before the instrumental piece at the end of the fasıl); and saz semaisi (the final instrumental form in four movements). Throughout its performance, fasıl remains in the same makam, which is the melodic creation that determines tonal relations, tessitura (the most musically acceptable and comfortable range for a given singer or musical instrument), starting tone, reciting tone and finales. It also indicates the contour and pattern of the melody. Its closest counterpart in Western music is the medieval concept of mode. The instruments used in a fasıl performance are generally the saz, a string instrument played by plucking; ney, a reed flute; tambourine with cymbals; tanbur, a plucked lute with a long neck; ud, a plucked lute with a short neck; kanun, a plucked zither; and kemence, a bowed fiddle. Some of the songs go back to the 14th century while others date to the late 19th century when songwriter Haci Arif Bey was very popular. The late Dr. Amil Çelebioğlu added considerably to what is known about the songs by analyzing a collection of fasıl from 1826 in the Ramazanname. Although the songs were strongly influenced by Ottoman poetry, there were ways in which they differed considerably. For instance, the last lines of poems usually contained the name of the poet but out of 1,500 songs, only one in the collection examined by Çelebioğlu contained a name and that was related to the janissaries, the Ottoman military corps disbanded in 1826. According to Çelebioğlu, many of the songs in the Ramazanname that he edited contain place names that are located in Istanbul such as the Ayazma Mosque and the building of the lighthouse between Ahırkapı and Çatladıkapı. As a result he places the date of the collection in the latter half of the 18th century. He also cites religious, historical and social examples to back up his chosen date. The songs traditionally were four lines long with eight syllables per line. The first, second and fourth lines rhymed but translating them into English precludes poeticizing them since that would distort the meaning. There were two types of subject matter in these earlier times. The first deals with religious items such as the night before the start of the month of Ramadan. FASIL FOR THE NIGHT BEFORE RAMADAN The moon of my Ramadan My soul is happy and pleased May your honored Ramadan Be blessed, my Sultan Listen to the happiness tonight Bid hello tonight Oh statesman mine They saw the moon tonight Tonight they saw the moon They prostrated themselves on the ground They decked themselves out with candles The mosques were adorned The other dealt with more mundane subjects like the “Song of the Cats and the Rats” or the sultan’s bribing the janissaries. This evening is number 16 As the month of Ramadan goes Today the Janissaries got Baklava from the Padisah Fasıl music in the palace began to be taught by the practice system from the time when Topkapi Palace was built. It was called “huzur fasli” or “harem fasli” when it was performed in the presence of the sultan with the participation of music experts from outside the palace. When it was performed in public places and in the audience halls of the palaces with the participation of lots of singers and saz players, it was termed “meydan faslı” or “kume (mass) faslı.” Many of the fasıl songs are indeed still popular and well known as this writer can attest when an entire ferryboat load of Turks on their way to Marmara Island from Istanbul sang the lyrics to fasıl melodies played by a saz musician who happened to be on the boat. The “performance” showed to what extent the vocal parts had gained in importance over the instrumental sections and have remained in popular memory.

Homeschool Literature says: Be sure to join us tomorrow for tons of giveaways, exciting events, and interactions with the authors. Also there will be a live Twitter chat with the publisher on “Helping the Reluctant Writer” During the virtual book release party you can find interviews with Caja Coyote in text and video, trivia clues, games, and a review of Fractured Fate. Click here for all material on the Homeschool Literature website related to the virtual book release party. Please note the text and video interviews with Caja Coyote are different interviews. It’s very interesting to see other people’s take on Fractured Fate. The review of our book is very positive, even stating, ““Fractured Fate” is one of those books that is going to become a classic for those of us who love the “supernatural” of it all.” We hope you enjoy the virtual book release party!

- About this Journal · - Abstracting and Indexing · - Advance Access · - Aims and Scope · - Annual Issues · - Article Processing Charges · - Articles in Press · - Author Guidelines · - Bibliographic Information · - Citations to this Journal · - Contact Information · - Editorial Board · - Editorial Workflow · - Free eTOC Alerts · - Publication Ethics · - Reviewers Acknowledgment · - Submit a Manuscript · - Subscription Information · - Table of Contents Journal of Nanomaterials Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 795652, 10 pages Synthesis and Visible Photocatalytic Activities of Poly(aminobenzoic acid)/TiO2 Nanocomposites Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Baoji University of Arts and Science, 1 Gaoxin Road, Baoji, Shaanxi 721013, China Received 4 July 2013; Revised 23 November 2013; Accepted 10 December 2013 Academic Editor: Vladimir Agabekov Copyright © 2013 Puhong Wen and Xiaomei Wang. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Three kinds of polymers, poly(p-aminobenzoic acid) (PPA), poly(m-aminobenzoic acid) (PMA), and poly(o-aminobenzoic acid) (POA), were prepared by oxidizing p-, m-, and o-aminobenzoic acid with (NH4)2S2O8 in acidic solution, respectively. Poly(aminobenzoic acid)/TiO2 nanocomposites PPA/TiO2, PMA/TiO2, and POA/TiO2 were prepared by adsorption of PPA, PMA, and POA polymers on surface of TiO2 nanocrystals ST01 and P25, respectively. The polymers and the poly(aminobenzoic acid)/TiO2 nanocomposites were studied by FT-IR and UV-visible spectra, TG-DTA analysis, SEM observation, and measurements of isotherms and adsorption model of the polymers on TiO2 nanocrystals. Furthermore, the visible photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities of these nanocomposites were investigated by the photocatalytic decomposition of water and methylene blue under visible irradiation. These nanocomposites have exhibited higher and different the abovementioned activities. This difference can be attributed to the influence of site of amino group in aminobenzoic acid. Among the various semiconductor photocatalysts, titanium dioxide is one of the most popular and promising materials, because it is stable in various solvents under photoirradiation, it is also available commercially, and it can induce various types of redox reactions . The enhancement of photocatalytic activity is needed for applications of photocatalytic reactions. It is thus important to increase efficiencies absorbing and utilizing light energy. But TiO2 photocatalyst can absorb only the UV light with a wavelength region of below 400 nm that is only about 4% energy in the solar spectrum. Recently, there have been several attempts to enhance visible photocatalytic activity of TiO2, such as modification of TiO2 band gap by inducing oxygen-vacancy , replacing oxygen site with nitrogen , substituting Ti site with Cr, Fe, or Yb [4, 5], and modification of TiO2 by adsorbing organic dye molecules as sensitizer on the surface [6, 7]. To develop suitable sensitizer, some studies have been carried out on the synthesis of organic dyes [8–12]. Polyaniline (PANI), as a well-known conducting polymer, has attracted a considerable interest in recent years because of its good stability, electrical, electrochemical, and optical properties [13–15]. The polyaniline and its derivatives can be expected to be utilized as a new type of photocatalytic sensitizer, because they are p-type semiconducting material. Very recently, we reported synthesis of poly(o-aminobenzoic acid) (POA), adsorption of the polymer on TiO2 nanocrystals, and the behavior as photocatalytic sensitizer in the photocatalytic reaction . In this study, three chemical reagents p-aminobenzoic acid (PAB), m-aminobenzoic acid (MAB), and o-aminobenzoic acid (OAB) were selected as the starting monomer of the polymerization for comparing the activities of these polymers as photocatalytic sensitizer, because they have a carboxyl group located on the para-, meta-, or ortho-position of amino-group in the benzene ring, it will be polymerized into a poly (aminobenzoic acid) with straight-chain structure. In these polymers, the –NH2 groups can be utilized in the polymerization reaction, and carboxyl groups can be used to combine to Ti(IV) on TiO2 surface by a multi-bridging chelating coordination . The synthesized poly(aminobenzoic acids) and the poly(aminobenzoic acid)/TiO2 nanocomposites obtained by adsorption of the polymer on TiO2 nanocrystals were studied by FT-IR and UV-visible spectra, TG-DTA analysis, SEM observation, and measurements of isotherms and adsorption model of the polymers on TiO2 nanocrystals. Furthermore, the visible photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities of these nanocomposites were investigated by the photocatalytic decomposition of water and methylene blue under visible irradiation. These nanocomposites have exhibited higher and different the above-mentioned activities. This difference can be attributed to the influence of site of amino group in aminobenzoic acid. 2. Experimental Details ST01 (commercial TiO2 powder, anatase phase, crystal size about 7 nm, BET surface area 349 m2·g−1) was obtained from Ishihara. P25 (commercial TiO2 powder, mixed phases of anatase and rutile, crystal size about 30 nm, BET surface area 63 m2·g−1) was obtained from Degussa. N719 (cis-di(thiocyanate) bis(2,2′-bipyridyl-4,4′-dicarboxylate)-ruthenium(II) bis-tetrabutyl-ammonium) was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. Other chemicals and reagents were of analytical grade, and all the reagents were used as received without further purification. 2.2. Synthesis of Poly(aminobenzoic acid) Poly(aminobenzoic acid) was synthesized by oxidizing aminobenzoic acid with an oxidizing agent of peroxodisulfate ammonium (NH4)2S2O8 in an acidic solution. A mixed solution containing 0.1 mol/L p-aminobenzoic acid, 0.15 mol/L (NH4)2S2O8, and 0.2 mol/L HNO3 was reacted at 40°C for 24 h with stirring. After the reaction, the precipitated solid was separated from the solution by centrifugation, then washed with distilled water, and finally dried at 40°C. The polymer poly(p-aminobenzoic acid) (PPA) is obtained. The synthesis methods of polymers poly(m-aminobenzoic acid) (PMA) and POA were similar to that of PPA. In the synthesis, the molar ratio of aminobenzoic acid/peroxodisulfate ammonium/nitric acid is selected as 1/3/1 for PMA and 1/1/3 for POA, respectively, for obtaining products with larger absorbance on visible light and pledging higher reacting speed. 2.3. Adsorption of Polymer on TiO2 Nanocrystals Ishihara ST01 and Degussa P25 were used as TiO2 nanocrystal samples in adsorption experiments. The adsorption experiment of the polymer on TiO2 nanocrystals was carried by a batch method. TiO2 nanocrystal powder sample (5 mg) was added into an ethanol solution (5 mL) of the polymer in a concentration range of 0.06 to 0.5 g·L−1, and then stirred at room temperature for 72 h. After the adsorption, the liquid phase was separated from the solid phase by centrifugation, and then the concentration of the polymer in the solution was analyzed using SHIMADZU UV-2450 spectrophotometer. The solid phase was washed with ethanol for 3 times and dried at 40°C. The TiO2 nanocrystal sample was calcined at 450°C for 30 min before using in the adsorption experiment . A TiO2 nanocrystalline film on conducting glass (FTO coated glass) was prepared by coating the conducting glass surface with ST01 or P25 TiO2 nanocrystal paste and then calcined at 450°C for 60 min. A polymer/TiO2 nanocomposite film was obtained by soaking the TiO2 film in 0.3 g·L−1 polymer ethanol solution for 24 h. 2.4. Physical Analysis FT-IR spectra of the samples were measured on a PERKIN ELMER SPECTRUM ONE spectrophotometer at a resolution of better than 2 cm−1 using the KBr technique. UV-visible spectra were recorded on a SHIMADZU UV-2450 spectrophotometer. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation was performed on JEOL JSM-5500S. Nitrogen gas adsorption was carried out on a QUANTACHROME AUTOSORB-1-MP apparatus. The specific surface area was calculated from the adsorption data using the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method. Simultaneous thermogravimetry and differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA) data were obtained on a SHIMADZU DTG-60H thermal analyzer at a heating rate of 10°C/min in air. In the photoelectrochemical and electrochemical measurements, a Hokuto-Denko BAS100B electrochemical analyzer was used. 2.5. Measurement of Photocatalytic Activity The visible photocatalytic activity of polymer/TiO2 nanocomposite was characterized by methylene blue (MB) degradation method and photoelectrochemical method. In the MB degradation method, the nanocomposite powder sample (30 mg) was added in the MB aqueous solution (150 mL, 5 ppm), and then irradiated with a 300 W, 110 V TAI incandescent lamp made by Toshiba Corp. in Japan located at 1 m from the MB solution. The spectral range of the lamp is mainly in visible range and containing about 5% UV-light. The concentration of MB in the solution was measured using SHIMADZU UV-2450 spectrophotometer. A blank experiment was carried simultaneously using 5 ppm MB solution without TiO2 to deduct MB degradation by direct photoreaction. The amount of MB adsorbed on sample surface was evaluated by desorbing MB from the sample with a 0.1 mol/L HCl solution after photocatalytic degradation experiment. The decrease amount of MB by the adsorption was removed from the degradation amount by the photocatalytic reaction. A sample of polymer-free TiO2 was used also as the reference in the visible photocatalytic active study. In the photoelectrochemical measurement, the polymer/TiO2 nanocomposite film was used as working electrode, and irradiated in a quartz cell containing sodium sulfate supporting electrolyte solution using a Xe lamp (Asahi Spectra USA LAX-Cute, VIS 400–700 nm) with a light intensity of 3000 W/m2. The masked-off irradiated area was 1.13 cm2. A Pt plate and an electrode were used as counter and reference electrodes respectively. An external bias was applied, and photocurrent was measured using the electrochemical analyzer. 3. Results and Discussion 3.1. Synthesis and Characterization of Poly(aminobenzoic acid) The polymers were synthesized by mixed the solutions of aminobenzoic acid and peroxodisulfate ammonium. The aminobenzoic acid has an aromatic structure similar to aniline that can be polymerized to polyaniline by an oxidation reaction [18, 19]. The long conjugated system of polyaniline leads to absorption of visible light in a wide wavelength region and electric conduction. It is expected that aminobenzoic acids can be polymerized also to a poly(aminobenzoic acid). The mechanism of the polymerizing reaction is similar to that of aniline . In the reaction, (NH4)2S2O8 is used as an oxidizing agent and the strongly acidic environment requiring for the reaction is provided by nitric acid. When (NH4)2S2O8 solution is added into the aminobenzoic acid solution, free radicals as initiating agent produced by breaking peroxodisulfate can attract the activated hydrogen of amino group of aminobenzoic acid, resulted new free radical of aminobenzoic acid molecular. The new free radical can attract aminobenzoic acid molecular, and then acted with the initiating agent free radical for completing a substitution reaction on the aromatic ring by free radicals. This substitution product can be attracted and lengthened further by free radical of aminobenzoic acid molecular. The product with enough great molecular weight can be precipitated from reacting solution. Therefore, polymerizations of lengthened chain can be ended, and formed PPA, PMA and POA respectively. The carboxyl groups on the poly(aminobenzoic acid) can be utilized for the adsorption of this polymer on TiO2 surface similar to the case of ruthenium bipyridryl derivative dyes . The optical absorption properties of synthesized polymers are dependent also on their synthesis conditions, such as the concentration of (NH4)2S2O8 oxidizing agent and HNO3. The influences produced by amount of oxidizing agent and the acid are different in the synthesis of PPA, PMA, and POA because of the difference of site of amino group in aminobenzoic acid. The increase of amount of oxidizing agent is not advantage to enhance the visible light absorption of polymers PPA and POA, but is advantage for polymer PMA. The increase of HNO3 concentration is advantage to enhance the visible light absorption of polymer POA, but lead to decrease greatly the visible light absorption of polymers PPA and PMA and color of the sample change to light. A precipitate was formed by aminobenzoic acid reacted with (NH4)2S2O8 in acidic solution. Colors of precipitates are black for POA, brown for PPA, and brown-black for PMA, respectively. Their SEM images were shown in Figure 1. It is observed that their morphology show hollow ball-like for POA (Figure 1(a)), grain-like for PPA (Figure 1(b)) and branch-like for PMA (Figure 1(c)), respectively. The solubility of the polymer samples in water solvent is low, while it is high in ethanol solvent. The UV-visible absorption spectra of synthesized polymers and their monomers in ethanol solvent are shown in Figure 2. The absorption spectrum of N719 dye in ethanol solvent is also shown in Figure 2 for the comparison. It is observed that all monomer have not absorption in visible light range, while the polymer PPA, PMA, and POA reveal a broad absorption band between 400 and 700 nm. The correlating data are summarized in Table 1. Their absorption peaks red shift to 300 and 391 nm for PPA, 331 and 346 nm for PMA, and 350 and 550 nm for POA compared with their monomers. The absorbance coefficients of the polymers in visible light region are much larger than that of N719 dye used in dye-sensitized solar cell. The average value of absorbance coefficient in 400–600 nm increases in the order of . The results indicate that the conjugation extent and activity absorbing on visible light of the molecular chain increase in the order of because their monomers have a same molecular weight. The polyaniline also shows two absorption peaks around 360 and 600 nm in water solvent, which can be attributed to the transition of the benzenoid rings and the exciton transition of the quinoid rings, respectively . This fact indicated that the carboxylic acid groups substituted on the benzene rings cause a blue shift due to their electron-withdrawing nature . Figure 3 showed the TG and DTA curves of the polymers. As shown in Figure 3, the decomposition of main part approaching 95% occurred at 200 to 650°C and formed broad exothermic peak corresponding to the burnout of the polymer. The broad peaks indicate they are a mixture with different polymeric degree. The results illustrate they are thermal stable polymers. The FT-IR spectra of synthesized polymers and their monomers samples are shown in Figure 4. The correlating data are summarized in Table 1. It is found that the main differences between the IR spectra of the monomer and the polymer are vibration bands of the amino groups. The sharp ν(N–H) bands located at around 3500~3300 cm−1 of PAB and OAB changed to broad bands, and ν(C–N) band at around 1350~1325 cm−1 changed to a broad band and red shift, after the polymerization reaction. The two strong bands at 1692 and 1292 cm−1 for PPA and 1688 and 1247 cm−1 for POA are assigned to the ν(C=O) and ν(C–OH) group of carboxylic acid (–COOH). The two weak bands at 1579 and 1385 cm−1 for PPA and 1606 cm−1 and 1385 cm−1 for POA are assigned to the asymmetric (–COO−as) and the symmetric (–COO−s) stretches of the carboxylate group, respectively. It is observed the absence of character bands of asymmetric and symmetric stretch vibration (N–H) of aromatic primary amine and the presence of vibration bands of carboxylate group in the FT-IR of MAB . It suggests hydrogen bands between primary amine group and carboxylic acid group exist in MAB. The spectrum of PMA showed the presence of carboxylic acid and carboxylate groups. The strong band at 1697 cm−1 is assigned to the ν(C=O) group of carboxylic acid. The shoulder band at 1610 cm−1 (–COO−as) and medium band at 1385 cm−1 (–COO−s) can be assigned to the asymmetric and the symmetric stretch of the carboxylate group, respectively. The broad band at 3416 and strong band at 1301 cm−1 are assigned to the ν(N–H) and ν(C–N) groups of aromatic secondary amine, respectively. The broad band at 3223 cm−1 and strong band at 1579 cm−1 are assigned to stretching vibration and bend vibration of N–H of groups, respectively. These results reveal that amino groups are used for the polymerization reaction similar to the case of polyaniline, and carboxylic acid group was not used for the polymerization reaction since the bands of this group were remained after the polymerization reaction. The bands at 823 and 871 cm−1 in FTIR spectra of POA are assigned to bend vibration of C−H of aromatic ring occurring 1,2,4-disubstituted. In the chemical structure of POA, whose scheme has been shown in literature 16, the ortho-position (occupied by a nitrogen atom) to one carboxylate group at a given monomeric unit would be located in meta-position relative to the carboxylate group of the neighboring unit. One nitrogen atom is located the para-position to other nitrogen atom on an aromatic ring. In fact, ortho-, meta-, and para- aminobenzoic acids should give polymers with quite the same chemical structure. But there are some differences in their chemical structure. The bands at 837, 867, and 683 cm−1 in FTIR spectra of PMA are assigned to bend vibration of C−H of aromatic ring occurring 1,3,5-disubstituted. The result is close to the theoretical analysis since there are the steric effect and the substituent effect. Therefore, in the chemical structure of PMA, one nitrogen atom is located the meta-position to other nitrogen atom on an aromatic ring. The bands at 845 and 871 cm−1 in FTIR spectra of PPA are assigned to bend vibration of C−H of aromatic ring occurring 1,2,4-disubstituted. The result agreed with the theoretical analysis by the steric effect and the substituent effect in this synthesis. Therefore, in the structure of polymer PPA, one nitrogen atom is located the ortho-position to other nitrogen atom on an aromatic ring. 3.2. Formation of Polymer/TiO2 Nanocomposites Two kinds of typical commercial TiO2 nanocrystal samples ST01 with a crystal size of about 7 nm and P25 with a crystal size of about 30 nm were used for the preparation of polymer/TiO2 nanocomposites. The samples ST01 and P25 have a value of BET specific surface area (SBET) as 349, and 63 m2·g−1 respectively, corresponding to their crystal sizes. Nanocomposite of polymer and TiO2 nanocrystals can be obtained by adsorbing polymer on the TiO2 nanocrystal surface. The preparing nanocomposite samples have been measured by specific surface area. These polymer/ST01 and polymer/P25 nanocomposites have a SBET value as 348 and 61 m2·g−1 for PPA, 341 and 62 m2·g−1 for PMA, and 344 and 62 m2·g−1 for POA, respectively. The results indicate the particle size of these nanocomposites is in a nanoscale. Figure 5 showed the adsorption isotherms of synthesized polymers on TiO2 nanocrystal samples ST01 and P25 at room temperature. The experimental data fit the Langmuir isotherm for all these samples. Thus the adsorptions of PPA, PMA, and POA on the TiO2 nanocrystals can be explained using the Langmuir monolayer adsorption model . The Langmuir equation can be represented in the linear formula (1): where is PPA, or PMA or POA uptake (mg·mg−1), is the equilibrium concentration of the polymer in the solution (mg·mL−1), is the saturation (maximum) adsorption capacity (mg·mg−1), and is the adsorption constant (mL·mg−1). From the fitting of experimental data by plotting against , the saturation capacity and the adsorption constant for PPA, PMA, and POA adsorptions were evaluated, respectively, and listed in Table 2. The adsorption parameters of dye N719 on TiO2 nanocrystals sample are also shown in Table 2 for the comparison. It is observed that the majority adsorption constant value for polymers is larger than that for N719, except PMA adsorption on P25. This result suggests the adsorptions of polymers on TiO2 nanocrystals are stronger than that of N719. The saturation capacity value (mg/mg (TiO2)) for polymers is approach or larger than that for N719. The molecular weight of chemical composition corresponding per –COOH group for the polymers is much smaller than that of N719. If the value is in M(–COOH)/mg (TiO2) unit, where M(–COOH) is amount (mole) of –COOH group adsorbed on TiO2, the value (mmole/g (TiO2)) of polymers are much larger than that of N719. It has reported that the carboxylic acid or carboxylate groups of organic molecules can coordinate to the TiO2 surface by various bonding modes, such as (a) unidentate mode, (b) chelating mode (4-membered bidentate), and (c) bidentate bridging mode [24–26]. Since the asymmetric and symmetric IR absorptive bands of carboxylate groups are different each other in these binding modes, these modes can be identified by the IR spectrum data. It has been reported that if the wavenumber difference between the asymmetric and symmetric bands in the adsorbed state is lower than that in the free-state, then the anchoring mode is bidentate chelating or bidentate bridging, while if the wavenumber difference is greater or equal to that in the free-state, then anchoring mode is unidentate . Figure 6 showed the FT-IR spectra of the nanocomposite samples obtained by adsorbing PPA, PMA, and POA on the TiO2 nanocrystal surface. The intensities of ν(C=O) and ν(C–OH) bands of carboxylic acid groups (–COOH) decreased largely after being adsorbed on TiO2 for PPA, PMA, and POA, and the decreased intensity is follow as . The result reveals –COOH groups were deprotonated to –COO− groups after the adsorptions, and the order of deprotonated degree in accord with that of the decreased intensity. As shown in Figures 4 and 6, the wavenumber differences between the carboxylate group asymmetric and symmetric bands of POA, PPA and PMA in the free state are 221, 194 and 225 cm−1, and that in adsorbed state are 232, 201 and 227 cm−1, respectively, for the polymer/ST01 nanocomposite sample. The wavenumber differences are larger than that in the free-state, and the results are identical for the polymer/P25 nanocomposite sample. The results suggest that the polymers anchor as unidentate coordination to the TiO2. It has been reported that the carboxylate groups in N719 anchor to the TiO2 surface with bidentate chelating or bridging binding mode [16, 20]. Although the bidentate chelating and bridging binding modes are more stable than the unidentate mode, meaning that the adsorption of N719 must be more stable than that of the polymers. But the adsorption isotherm results revealed that adsorption constant of the polymers is larger than that of N719 (Table 2). This fact can be explained by formation of a multibridging chelating mode in the polymer/TiO2 nanocomposite . Each polymer molecule has many carboxylate groups, and each carboxylate group can coordinate to TiO2 surface with the unidentate mode, which forms the multi-bridging chelating mode, and enhances the stability of the adsorption. 3.3. Activities of Polymer/TiO2 Nanocomposites in Visible Photocatalytic Reaction The nanocomposites prepared by adsorbing polymer on surface of P25 or ST01 nanoparticles were employed in visible photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) to measure their visible photocatalytic activities. Figure 7 showed the changes of the degradation ratio of MB with photocatalytic reaction time for POA/P25, PMA/P25 and PPA/P25 nanocomposite samples and P25 under the incandescent lamp irradiating conditions. The results showed the degradation ratio of MB at 330 min as 44.1%, 32.2%, 29.3%, and 21.1% for PMA/P25, POA/P25, PPA/P25, and no sensitized P25, respectively. The PMA/P25 nanocomposite showed the highest degradation rate in all testing samples. And that for all polymer/P25 nanocomposite samples is higher than the polymer-free P25 sample under visible light irradiating conditions. Furthermore, the photocatalytic degradation process was studied on the dynamics. The related data are summarized in Table 3. It can be found that these reactions are first order reaction and the reaction rate is proportional to the concentration of MB. The rate constant increased according to the sequence of , indicating the reaction activation energy of the order of decreasing, therefore, the catalytic activity of the catalysts is enhanced in this order. These results indicate the visible light sensitizing effect of PPA, PMA, and POA on TiO2 nanocrystal surface for the photocatalytic reaction. Figure 8 showed UV-visible spectra of MB solution degraded for the polymer/ST01 and N719/ST01 nanocomposites samples under indoors-light irradiating conditions for 3d. It is found that the visible photocatalytic activity of POA/ST01 sample is higher than that of others. The result showed the degradation ratio of MB at 3d as 77.5%, 66.3%, 47.2%, 22.3%, and 16.1% for POA/ST01, PMA/ST01, PPA/ST01, N719/ST01, and no sensitized ST01, respectively. This result suggests that samples from POA and PMA have strong adsorbing character and higher visible photocatalytic activity than that of others. And the syntactic polymer/ST01 samples used as a photocatalyst have more advantages than N719/ST01 sample in visible photocatalytic activity, synthesis condition and producing cost. The visible photocatalytic activity of the polymer/TiO2 nanocomposite is further demonstrated by the results of photoelectrochemical study. Figure 9(a) is a typical current-voltage curve obtained by irradiating intermittently the PPA/ST01 nanocomposite film electrode with a 100 W Xe lamp with 400–700 nm wavelengths. When the potential was scanned from −0.3 to 1.2 V (versus SCE), the photocurrent decreased slightly with increasing the applied potential, and so for the dark current, which is due to electrochemical oxidation reaction of PPA on the electrode . The hydrogen gas evolution was observed at the Pt counter electrode accompanying the photocurrent, suggesting the reduction of H+ to H2. Figure 9(b) is a typical current-voltage curve obtained at the same conditions for PMA/ST01 nanocomposite. It is observed that the almost constant photocurrent is much lower than that of PPA/ST01 nanocomposite, and the dark current closed to zero. The polymer-free ST01 film was also employed for the comparison, but without photocurrent was observed in the current-voltage curve under the same conditions (Figure 9(c)). The results indicate PPA/ST01 and PMA/ST01 nanocomposites are the material with visible photoelectrochemical activity, and the activity of PPA/ST01 nanocomposites is more than three times PMA/ST01 in the photocatalytic reaction. Figure 10 showed current-time curves of PPA/ST01 film at zero applied pressure (Figure 10(a)) and POA/ST01 film when applied pressure is 200 mV (Figure 10(b)) in aqueous solution containing 0.1 mol/L of sodium sulfate in the dark and under irradiation with light (400–700 nm). It is observed that the photocurrent for PPA/ST01 film is still much higher than that at applied pressure as 200 mV for POA/ST01 film although the applied pressure closes zero. The above results suggest that visible photoelectrochemical activity of PPA/ST01 nanocomposites is the highest among the three. Three kinds of poly(aminobenzoic acid) were synthesized by oxidizing p-, m-, or o-aminobenzoic acid with an oxidizing agent of peroxodisulfate ammonium in an acidic solution. The influences produced by the amount of oxidizing agent and the acid are different in the synthesis of PPA, PMA, and POA because of the difference of site of amino group in aminobenzoic acid. The polymer/TiO2 nanocomposite can be obtained by adsorbing the polymer on TiO2 surface and shows high stability, due to that the carboxylate groups anchor to the TiO2 surface with the multi-bridging chelating mode. PMA/P25 and PPA/ST01 nanocomposites exhibit much higher visible photocatalytic activity than others in the photocatalytic reaction, and PPA/ST01 nanocomposite reveals higher visible photoelectrochemical activity than others. Therefore, they have a potential application as visible light photocatalyst. This work was supported by the Grants-in-Aid for the Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 21173003), the Scientific Research Project (no. 2011JM2009) from Science and Technology Department of Shaanxi Province, and Key Research Project (no. 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HowAboutWe.com was boot-strapped into life in April 2010 at the apex of the iPhone’s market ascendency. Like rookies (we were rookies) we built a basic web app. No API. No native apps. No real mobile strategy. And yet, in creating HowAboutWe—a dating service in which users post the actual places they want to go on dates—we had built a mobility dream of location-based, on-the-go, high-converting repeat usage. Obviously the “offline dating site” should be the “offline dating app.” We realized this pretty quickly and so began the process of retroactively becoming a mobile-first product. IOS was the obvious first platform. Like hundreds of thousands of other companies we built a native iPhone app. We launched it with great success; it was the number-one new featured app when it came out, has acquired hundreds of thousands of downloads, is top in in-app purchases, and has usage correlated with our very highest subscription conversion rates. We thought we could take our beautiful iPhone app, make a few tweaks for Android, and call ourselves ready for development. After all, we had seen this pattern from dozens of other highly successful apps. But after diving into design research, we realized this project would be a lot more complicated. The seven questions below stake out a path of inquiry that will help you translating your own design language from iOS to Android. We had high hopes for Android, and it hasn't disappointed. In December 2012, we launched HowAboutWe for Android and, in its first few weeks, the app has been installed over 20,000 times with about a 65 percent conversion rate from install to complete sign-up. We’re seeing over 10 percent conversion rates from sign-up to subscription (we launched with a seven-day free trial subscription that auto-converts into paid membership). In fact, in some ways our Android users are showing up the folks on iOS. Key engagement rates (such as photos uploads) are 20 percent higher on Android than they are on the web. Early data indicates high repeat usage rates with an average of three sessions per day per active user. And all of this is based on the limited feature set with which we launched. We've come to believe strongly that Android will be a great source of ongoing user acquisition, retention, and monetization. We seriously considered doubling up our mobile web and Android approach by building an HTML5 app and throwing it into a wrapper for Android, but our early prototypes indicated that we would never be able to achieve with a PhoneGap-type solution the kind of design elegance that was our standard. Native it was. Around that time, two big things happened. First, Google released its Android Design Guidelines, changing the entire trajectory of our Android strategy for the better. It’s only in the last six to 12 months that Android design and development patterns have come to mature, making 2013 an auspicious time to dive into Android development. Second, we hired a top tier in-house Android engineering team, and charged them with building an app based on Android development best practices, not a mere duplication of our iOS architecture. (The team is pictured below: Matt Lim, Chuck Greb and Baldur Gudbjornsson respectively.) They immediately set about asking and answering the following seven questions. Android, iOS, and mobile web each have their own design patterns and conventions. In designing for these platforms, the goal is to achieve both cross-platform brand consistency and alignment with the conventions specific to the platform. The truth is that almost no actual users outside your QA team will use both your iOS and Android apps, so consistency of interaction isn't the goal. It can be annoying (at best) and downright confusing (at worst) to users to be presented with interactions that are not consistent with the general patterns followed by other apps on their phone. And yet, while you seek to avoid anti-patterns, you also want to pursue breakthrough UI innovation. This is the mogul course of cross-platform design. Let’s take the HowAboutWe messaging interface as an example. (Below, our original iOS-like Gingerbread inbox, our Jelly Bean inbox, and our iOS inbox.) IPhone and Android each convey essentially the same information, but the visual treatment and interactions are quite different. The primary information shown here is a list of messages, tabs for each label, read/unread status, and an indicator showing if a reply has been sent. Tapping on any of the messages opens a new screen with the full conversation thread, and some other peripheral functionality is there, too. Android’s Action Bar follows a few key, differentiated patterns. In all three applications, tapping the top-left most icon opens the main menu of the application. But the visual treatment of these icons is quite different. Android uses the app logo (or "home" icon) and the title is left-aligned on Android, showing the “up” navigation to the left of the home icon, which indicates additional content is available. Android also uses scrolling tabs rather than iOS style buttons to display the labels for inbox, sent, and archive, and hides additional functionality behind action icons. Rather than showing an indicator icon on unread messages like iOS, Android relies on changing the background color of the cell. Also, notice on Android the absence of the iOS convention of a right-pointing caret on each line to show it is clickable. In short, what look like two similar views really aren't the same from the standpoint of interaction. Our original designs copied the iOS patterns almost exactly, but the new Android Design Guidelines called for a significantly updated, and more native UI. It was only once we internalized the native Android design patterns that we were able to get away from our original, iOS-derivative designs. When should you use the system default widgets? When should you create custom widgets? On Android, the look and feel (and sometimes even behavior) of system default components will vary significantly depending on platform version, device manufacturer, and theme. Recently, Android has been trying to reduce style inconsistencies, but this is still a significant challenge for developers. The only way to truly ensure style and layout consistency across various platform versions, manufacturers, screen sizes and densities is by using custom UI components. This can mean anything from simply swapping a different image asset to be used as the background to coding a brand new view class with the desired look and functionality. There is an increased cost in terms of design, development, and QA time for any custom solution, but it can lead to a more consistent, brand-aligned result. (Below, side-by-side respective comparisons of similar buttons in Jelly Bean and Gingerbread; Jelly Bean and Gingerbread; Gingerbread and Jelly Bean.) Buttons are one of the easiest components to customize, so start your customizations there. Typically, functionality for a button is not going to change. But the look and feel is drastically different between pre-Honeycomb and post-Honeycomb devices. Developers can simply drop in alternative assets for each screen density and state to make the buttons look the same across all platform versions. We chose to customize many of the buttons that appear in HowAboutWe, and the workload was minimal because we are able to reuse the same handful of button styles throughout the app. This allows us to keep a more consistent, branded look and feel across all platform versions and devices. Spinners (also known as dropdown menus) look very different on pre-Honeycomb devices. This can affect not only the look and feel of the individual component but the overall layout of a screen. (Above, spinners as they appear in Gingerbread, Jelly Bean, Gingerbread, and Jelly Bean respectively.) For the screen that allows a user to edit his or her basic information, we wanted to use spinners since the user is limited to a select set of responses for most fields. However, we knew the layout would look too cluttered on Gingerbread and Froyo devices with the old big gray box style that opens a separate dialog over the screen. We customized this to create consistency. Since the theme of the application is based on Holo, we decided to use the new spinner style even on older devices. We achieved this result by creating a custom style for the spinners using the new assets from AOSP. In some cases, customization felt too costly to be worth it, despite the consistency gains we would reap. For instance, we decided not to customize Text Fields (ex. "CAREER/JOB"), so older devices and newer devices still have a different look and feel for these components. (Above, similar screens in Gingerbread and Jelly Bean show their different text fields side-by-side.) In designing the UI pattern for the HowAboutWe app, we wanted to provide an elegant full-screen experience, keeping navigation quarantined in a secondary area. However, we also wanted to provide the capacity for rapid switching between tasks. Our initial designs used the fullscreen dashboard view pattern seen in the earlier version of the Facebook Android app and the 2011 Google I/O app. We eventually moved to a sliding drawer, and here's why. Initially, the advantages of the grid UI seemed obvious. The options are presented to the user in a simple, easy-to-digest grid. And, from an implementation standpoint, it’s fairly simple and straightforward. However, from a user's perspective, there are significant downsides. The navigational experience disruptively occupies the entire screen. It makes navigation a primary act rather than a facilitative one. In this way, it’s a bit of a monolithic design choice. (Our old grid layout next to Facebook and Google's former designs, below.) Within the last year, the sliding drawer model has become increasingly popular, perhaps first made popular by the Twitter iPad app. Visually compelling, easeful, and fun to use, it has since been adopted by Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Path and many, many others. We decided to go with this less interruptive, more elegant pattern. For implementation, we decided to use jfeinstein10’s public SlidingMenu library project which is available on Github here. It gave us a base FragmentActivity that hosts an easily configurable sliding drawer contained in a Fragment. This is significant because it is stateful, has access to useful lifecycle methods, and allows clean interaction between itself and its hosting activity. When opened, the active fragment slides its left edge to the right, just short of being completely offscreen. The vertically scrolling list is just an AdapterView, so it is possible to implement conditionally displayed items with different layouts, states, and even badges. (Below, our drawers as seen in mobile Safari, iPhone, iPad, and two Jelly Bean views, one which shows our Free Trial Membership banner.) Based on our Android work, we went back and reworked our iPhone and mobile web navigation, implementing the sliding drawer across all of our mobile products. This is one case where cross-platform interaction consistency makes sense, but it's the exception, not the rule. The HowAboutWe Dating app relies on numerous Status Bar Notifications for asynchronous messaging to the user. Some of these are generated by the application itself, and others are server push notifications powered by Google Cloud Messaging (GCM). With the introduction of rich notifications, status bar notifications became much more visually appealing and powerful. Now more information can now be conveyed to the user via notifications along with additional options for taking action. (Below, notifications as they appear in our Android apps. At left, a new message in Jelly Bean; a successful upload; pending upload; Gingerbread notifications; and a failed upload.) HowAboutWe uses notifications in Android for processes it might not in iOS. When a user uploads a new profile photo, for example, this requires transferring a non-trivial amount of data over the network. Instead of blocking the Android app's UI with a loading dialog to communicate the status of the upload, a series of notifications is used to convey this information. When the upload is started, the application generates a status bar notification to let the user know the upload is in progress. The network data transfer itself is processed on a background thread, so while the upload is pending, the user can continue to interact with the application. Then, once the upload is complete, the application fires a second notification to let the user know the upload is complete. If for some reason the upload failed (say, a network error) a failure notification is shown instead. If the upload pending notification is still showing in the status bar, this notification is updated. The point is that the user never sees both pending and success notifications at the same time. When the user receives a new message, a push notification is sent from using Google Cloud Messenger to notify the user. Rather than showing the classic “[USER] sent you a new message” text in the notification, using BigTextStyle for expandable rich notifications (on Jelly Bean devices), the user can actually read the full text of the message right in the notification. Also the profile photo of the user who sent the message is shown as the icon. Using the rich notification format (on ICS and Jelly Bean devices), we can even display a clipped version of the actual photo that was uploaded. Using the NotificationCompat.Builder class in the Support Library, these notifications gracefully degrade on older devices. Engineers thrive on good tools that save them time and help them write better code. Over the years, engineers have built vast integrated development environments, or IDEs, that allow other developers to dive right into high level implementation without needing to lay the groundwork. Instead, a few clicks and keystrokes allow you to compile, deploy, and commit your work back to version control. Before these lovely IDEs, programmers had to manually compile source files into object files, link them together, and ensure that all of their library paths were correct; writing a good, flexible Make script is a non-trivial undertaking. Further, IDEs can now inspect our code, optimize it, and refactor it—usually better, faster, and with fewer mistakes than our human hands. In this section, we will attempt to compare the two most popular Java IDEs for Android development: Eclipse and IntelliJ. We will also include a supplementary comparison with Xcode, the official IDE for iOS development. We'll focus on the following areas: - Keymapping: how customizable is everything? - Window management/manipulation: how easy is it to toggle between different tool views, and can you do it using the keyboard? - Introspection: how well does the IDE examine your code and alert you to optimizations, improvements, and unused items? - Refactoring: what kind of refactoring operations are available and how powerful are they? - Source control manipulation: what kind of operations can you do from within the IDE, and what is the UI experience around it? - Interleaved command line use: if you switch branches on the commandline, does the IDE choke or does it keep up? The first IDE to be officially supported by Google for the AOSP was Eclipse. Eclipse by itself does not come with Android support out of the box; it is added via Google’s Android Developer Tools plug-in. Previously, this was a separate installation, but Eclipse and the ADT plug-in are now available on the Android Developer website as a bundle. The layout of Eclipse, IntelliJ, and Xcode is very similar; collapsible, resizeable tool panes on the left, bottom, and right edges of the application window with the editor window in the center. In Eclipse, these tool panes can be anchored to nearly all edges of the screen, can be minimized and can be popped out of the UI into separate windows. They can be summoned with a keystroke if they are not currently shown, but they cannot be hidden this way—you’ll need to reach for the mouse. Introspection is quite powerful; it will warn you of unused variables and missing imports at the source level via a red (error) or yellow (warning) squiggly underline. Hovering the mouse over the offending token will show the Quick-Fix menu. The Quick-Fix menu offers helpful solutions to simple errors, and sometimes it suggests improvements or offers to do things like generate getters and setters for private variables. It is also accessible with a handy keystroke (⌘1). This is incredibly convenient—you can go straight from writing code to fixing it, without reaching for the mouse and reorienting your eyes to find the mouse pointer. (Below, the Eclipse Quickfix menu at left and refactoring menu at right.) This, and countless other small opportunities for seamless operations can truly add up to extended periods of uninterrupted concentration. Refactoring features of Eclipse are varied and are well-implemented. Changing method signatures, promoting local variables to member variables, extracting blocks of code into methods—all of these are easy to do. These functions can be accessed using the secondary mouse button menu. These refactoring features are incredibly powerful and can save lots of time, but more importantly, can truly prevent mistakes when changes ripple across multiple files. As far as version control integration, Eclipse comes with nothing out of the box—like the Android support, it requires a plug-in that is easy to find. There are several plug-ins available for git, Subversion, and probably anything else you’d want to use. Beginning with version 9, the JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDE added out-of-the-box support for Android. As of version 10, it became available in the free Community Edition version of IntelliJ, which opened it up for much more widespread use. The layout of this IDE is very similar to Eclipse w/tool panes on the bottom, left, and right edges of the IDE and the editor in the center. Also like Eclipse, these panels can be summoned with a keystroke, but unlike Eclipse, they can be hidden with the same keystroke, allowing fast toggling of tool panes exactly when you need them. This is incredibly useful in the contexts of quickly needing to browse the project hierarchy, checking to see which files have been modified since the last commit, or hiding and showing the console window, for example. It effortlessly surfaces information in a clear, concise manner and doesn’t make the user pay for it when switching back to coding. (Below, the IntelliJ commit view at left, and the IntelliJ changes pane at right.) Like Eclipse, IntelliJ’s introspection features are thorough. It alerts the user to unused variables and unused code, but instead of using a single callout that signifies all generic warnings, it alerts the user to unused variables by subtle syntax coloring hints. Unused variables and functions are dimmed a darker shade, and they are never colored this way for any other reason—other more complex warnings are underlined and typically require manual identification. Such informative visual cues are effective and non-interruptive. Yellow underlined items in IntelliJ are not always warnings—occasionally they are simple optimizations and quick wins. Sometimes it will point out that a member variable can become a local variable, or that a boolean expression is more complicated than it needs to be. This is great, as it constantly enforces good style and better code. Nearly all of these features can be quickly activated via IntelliJ’s Show Intention Actions feature, very similar to Eclipse’s Quick-Fix menu as described above—also bound to a handy keystroke. IntelliJ’s refactor menu looks almost identical to Eclipse’s, though IntelliJ’s seems to be more of a superset. More features doesn’t always necessarily mean better, but it does offer a few things that Eclipse doesn’t. Out of the box, IntelliJ offers VCS support for Git, Mercurial, Subversion, and CVS. You can even import projects directly from a repository URL, often without very much additional fiddling. This is by no means impossible in Eclipse, but it is incredibly convenient that it requires no extra plug-ins or components. First-party support for these features offers another level of comfort that just doesn’t come with third-party plug-ins. Mentioned earlier, the Changes pane in IntelliJ shows all changes made on all repository files since the last commit. In practice, this can be a priceless asset. After an hour of work, if you realize you are on the wrong branch and need to switch to another one that will require an ugly rebase—no problem! Shelve all, some, or parts of some of your changes to a changelist, do what you need to do on the command line, come back to IntelliJ and reapply as desired. Changing branches on the command line between trips back and forth to the IDE never produces any error-like dialogs asking if files need to be refreshed—they are refreshed automatically. The currently checked out branch is also always visible in the status bar. All in all, raw code editing features across the three IDEs are similar. Each powerfully supports the user to quickly write clean code that is easy to change and reorganize. The experiences across the IDEs vary, though. Eclipse and IntelliJ have almost the same layout and featureset, yet these features are considerably easier to discover and are better implemented in IntelliJ. The overall look and feel of IntelliJ is more streamlined, more informative, and more responsive. Eclipse’s use patterns and appearance feel dated in comparison. When minimizing certain tool panes in Eclipse, sometimes it’s not obvious where they went or how to retrieve them. When popping windows out of the main window in Eclipse, they behave normally when dragged alone—but then dragging the main window causes the popped out windows to move along with it. It’s less than cute. In contrast, IntelliJ’s tool panes are all clearly labeled, cleverly placed, and easily toggleable. IntelliJ offers tremendous assistance and intervention without becoming intrusive. Make no mistake: Eclipse is far from unusable; however, it definitely hasn’t aged well, considering IntelliJ has been around for just as long. For Android, IntelliJ is a much smoother, more streamlined experience with a shallower learning curve. It feels like a modern piece of software, as software for making software should. Without delving into too many differences between iOS and Android implementation, we wanted to briefly discuss how the two most widely used Android IDEs compare, from an experience perspective, to Xcode. Once again, the same kind of overall layout is present here: central editor windows with collapsible tool panes on the outer edges. Like IntelliJ, these panels are toggleable with convenient keystrokes, but, as an added bonus, they sweep in and out of view with eye-pleasing, eased animations. Not required, but definitely neat. Introspection in Xcode is definitely thorough, but it needs to be triggered, either from a clean, a compilation cycle, or with a pass of the static analyzer. In other words, not all errors and warnings are detected at source-level, many of them are only ever reported at compile time, which is more of a result of the platform architecture rather than the IDE. That said, the static analyzer is incredibly informative and graphical—it will draw arrows procedurally through code in order to illustrate where errors originate, and it explains how and why with associated textual cues. Refactoring features in Xcode are comparatively limited. Automatically changing method signatures is not possible, only method renaming can be done. Blocks of code can be extracted into new functions or methods, but not into external protocols or categories. Getter/setter generation is possible through the Encapsulate option, but is not immediately useful since this can generally be achieved more concisely using properties. (Below top, the Xcode static analyzer; below left, the Xcode commit view; below right the Xcode refactor menu.) Version Control Integration via Git or Subversion is thoroughly supported out of the box. As is possible in IntelliJ, it is possible to import projects directly from a repository URL, and repository creation is possible as well. For the same reasons as discussed before, this is immensely powerful. There are facilities for comparing changes and performing selective, detailed commits to specific branches. According to the current distribution graph, as of December 5, 2012, the majority of Android devices are still running Gingerbread (50.8%). A non-trivial number of devices are still running Froyo (10.3%). And roughly only one third of devices are running Honeycomb or newer versions (35.8%) of the operating system. At first glance as an Android developer it might be tempting to decide to only use features available in all platform versions you will support. This is not a very good approach. To quote Mark Murphy, in his book The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development (v4.2): Aiming to support older releases is noble. Ignoring what has happened since those releases is stupid, if you are trying to distribute your app to the public via the Play Store or similar mass-distribution means. You want your app to be distinctive, not decomposing. When building HowAboutWe Dating for Android, we knew that we wanted to take advantage of recent advancements in the platform including fragments, action bar, rich notifications, and the Holo theme. Fortunately there are open source tools and strategies we found to help us deliver a modern and rich experience to users with the latest versions of the the platform, yet still provide a gracefully degraded experience to the rest of users and devices. The Support Library allows many platform features introduced in Honeycomb and later to be used on earlier versions of Android. However the Support Library is just a minimal set of APIs and only gets you so far. (Below, the action bar in Jelly Bean; the action bar in Gingerbread; and the action bar as it appears in the Jelly Bean inbox.) Jake Wharton’s ActionBarSherlock project enables a fully functional backwards compatible version of the Action Bar and the Holo theme with very little work on the part of the developer. We leveraged both of these libraries in HowAboutWe Dating to provide a rich experience on all supported versions of Android. ActionBarSherlock even offers more flexibility than the system components in some instances, like allowing 3 action icons to be shown on smaller screens rather than the overflow menu. Early on we decided to take a fragment first approach to developing the app. The advantages of using fragments on a phone are readily apparent when using something like a ViewPager. For example, in the Messages section of the application, there are 3 fragments in a single activity using a ViewPager (Inbox, Sent, and Archive). Users can swipe or tap on the tab indicators to switch between the various fragments. Even when only one fragment is active at a time, we still decided to implement the majority of functionality using fragments, to take advantage of the fragment lifecycle, APIs, and to ease the transition to tablets in the future. Most of our activities ended up as simple wrappers for the fragments they contained. On most screens, the activity handles high level functionality such as the Action Bar, broadcasts, and result intents, whereas the fragment handles the layout, user inputs, and basically everything else. Sometimes even the tools available don’t give you everything you want. For example, in the sign up flow, we wanted to implement smart and stylish number pickers for birthdate and age preferences. While the DatePicker widget has existed since API level 1 (Base), the standalone NumberPicker widget has only existed since API level 11 (Honeycomb). (Below, the number pickers in Jelly Bean and Gingerbread, respectively.) To build an age range picker in the same style as the date picker on Gingerbread and Froyo required implementing a custom backport of this component. (You can see both versions above.) Fortunately the NumberPicker widget is available as an internal component on earlier versions of the platform. After porting this widget from the Android source code into our project, all that was left was creating a wrapper class to use the correct implementation based on the current version of Android running on the device. See a code sample hosted on Github here. Automated testing on Android is still not as simple as one might hope. Several solutions come bundled with the SDK including the Android Testing Framework, Monkey Runner, and JUnit. However the version of JUnit that comes with the Android SDK is JUnit 3. JUnit 4 can be integrated separately for unit testing but is not compatible with Instrumentation. Finally, there is Robolectric, an open source tool developed by Pivotal Labs that allows you to unit test Android code in the JVM. There are also a number of testing services that have cropped up like TestDroid, AppThwak, and Apkudo. And of course there is good old-fashioned manual device testing. Each of these solutions has its own costs (time and/or money). When building HowAboutWe Dating, we knew that we want to take a test-driven approach. The benefits of Test-Driven Development (TDD) are well documented by industry leaders like Kent Beck, Uncle Bob, and Michael Feathers, who we'll quote below. I don't care how good you think your design is. If I can't walk in and write a test for an arbitrary method of yours in five minutes its not as good as you think it is, and whether you know it or not, you're paying a price for it. The Android Testing Framework is well designed for integration tests that run on an emulator or device. Automated tests are written in a separate test project that runs in the same process as your application. Using instrumentation, activities, and services can be tested running in a real environment. However because this method requires you to compile, dex, and deploy TWO applications onto an emulator or device this is prohibitively slow for test-driven development. And as we all know, when tests are slow, the tendency is not to run them. Pure JUnit, while fast, has the limitation of not being able to test any code that loads a class from the Android SDK. All business logic must be extracted into POJOs that are then invoked by the activity or service. While noble in principle, this quickly leads to cumbersome architecture. And you are still unable to test any logic that is linked to the lifecycle of Android components such as an Activity or Fragment. Robolectric, however, provides the best of both worlds. Using a proxy for the Android SDK, unit tests can be run in the JVM without deploying to an emulator or device, and still invoke Android specific code. However, Robolectric is only as good as its coverage of the Android framework. But since it is open source, developers are encouraged to contribute to the project if you run into a part of the framework that does not yet have a proxy implemented. With extensive unit test coverage, we are able to implement new features and refactor the code base with confidence, since ideally any regressions will be caught by the existing tests. This also gives us a high degree of confidence in the business logic that controls the application. Beyond unit testing to cover our logic, to weed out issues related to differences between devices and OS versions we relied heavily on manual testing. With a big device library, we are able to test the final product on a representative array of devices to root out issues related screen sizes, densities, manufacturers, and OS versions. While this can seem daunting, thanks to our unit tests very few issues related to core logic are found at this stage which greatly reduces manual testing time. While local builds work well for development phase, to ensure a high degree of consistency at the QA and release phases of the project we rely on a robust Continuous Integration (CI) environment. (For more on setting up your own continuous integration environment, check out this guide.) QA and release versions of the app are built using Apache Maven and the Android Maven Plugin running on Jenkins. Dependencies and artifacts are stored on an internal repository server using Sonatype Nexus. When a new commit is pushed to GitHub, our build server pulls the latest code from master. Using Maven, it compiles all the classes using the dependencies stored in our internal Nexus repository. All Robolectric unit tests are then run against the compiled classes. If all unit tests pass, Jenkins then packages two versions of each build. First, a debug version is created that is configured for internal testing against our staging or production environment. Second, a release version is produced that is configured for upload to Google Play. Finally, both debug and release builds are archived in Sonatype Nexus for future reference. This process ensures a high degree of consistency and reliability in builds that go to QA and/or are uploaded to Google Play and reduces the chance of issues introduced due to anomalies in the development environment or forgetting to run the tests. The mobile game is rapidly moving out of inning one via exponential smartphone and tablet penetration curves (particularly outside the US); rapid innovation in mobile app design; smarter and more seamless monetization systems; infrastructural improvements to support performance; the burgeoning of a genuine advertising opportunity; growing development communities; and increasing mass addiction to our phones. Alongside these changes, the design and engineering communities have built increasingly sophisticated frameworks and tools to support rapid app development. And yet, the literature about these frameworks and tools—particularly on Android—tends to be scattered and incomplete. We hope the development of the HowAboutWe Dating app as a case study will serve as a remedy for intrepid developers moving from iOS to Android. HowAboutWe is the modern love company. Created by Brian Schechter and Aaron Schildkrout, HowAboutWe has launched a series of products designed to help people fall in love and stay in love. The new HowAboutWe Dating app for Android is featured in this article. Aaron Schildkrout is co-founder and co-CEO of HowAboutWe, where he runs product. Matt Lim is a mobile software developer for HowAboutWe. He lives in New York City and loves music, dancing, eating and video games. Chuck Greb is a mobile software craftsman, test-driven evangelist, and clean code connoisseur, changing the way the world goes on dates at HowAboutWe.

- Vascular reconstruction and complications in living donor liver transplantation in infants weighing less than 6 kilograms: the Kyoto experienceYasumasa Shirouzu Departments of Transplant Surgery, Kyoto University Hospital, Kyoto, Japan Liver Transpl 12:1224-32. 2006..04). In conclusion, our surgical technique for smaller-size recipients resulted in an acceptable rate of vascular complications. Overcoming early posttransplantation complications will further improve outcomes in infantile LDLT... - Development of pulmonary hypertension in 5 patients after pediatric living-donor liver transplantation: de novo or secondary?Yasumasa Shirouzu Department of Transplant Surgery, Kyoto University Hospital, Kyoto, Japan Liver Transpl 12:870-5. 2006..Periodic echocardiography is essential for early detection and treatment of PH especially in the recipients with portal hypertension not only preoperatively but also postoperatively... - Current role of liver transplantation for the treatment of urea cycle disorders: a review of the worldwide English literature and 13 cases at Kyoto UniversityDaisuke Morioka Organ Transplant Unit, Kyoto University Hospital, Kyoto, Japan Liver Transpl 11:1332-42. 2005..In conclusion, LT should be considered to be the definitive treatment for UCDs at this stage, although some issues remain unresolved... - Electrofusion of mesenchymal stem cells and islet cells for diabetes therapy: a rat modelGoichi Yanai Department of Organ Reconstruction, Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan PLoS ONE 8:e64499. 2013..These results show that electrofusion between MSCs and islet cells yield special cells with β-cell function and robustness of MSCs and seems feasible for novel therapeutic strategy for diabetes mellitus... - Inhibition of acute rejection after skin or cardiac transplantation by administration of donor antigens in the ratYasumasa Shirouzu Department of Surgery, Kurume University Faculty of Medicine, 67 Asahimachi, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan Surg Today 34:341-8. 2004..We examined differences in host immunologic changes induced by the intravenous or intraportal administration of donor antigens at engrafting and evaluated their contribution to graft survival using a rat transplantation model... - The fungal DNA examination is useful as a sensitive parameter for the initiation and the quit of antifungal therapy in immunocompromised pediatric patients after surgeryShigeki Hikida Departments of Pediatric Surgery, Kurume University School of Medicine, Kurume 830 0011, Japan Kurume Med J 51:125-31. 2004..We conclude that the fungal DNA examination could be a sensitive parameter not only to start but to quit antifungal medication in pediatric patients with mycosis...

The Frankfurter Buchmesse ( Frankfurt Book Fair ) starts tomorrow. The Moleskine booth feature three notebooks from MyDetour Istanbul; by Beste Miray Doğan (one of the two winners), Kadir Yardimci (Special mention/Architecture) and Aslı Aydın - Gaye Başaran (Special mention Graphic). From the official Book Fair site: "Guest of Honour Turkey – from the Bosphorus to the Main River" The Guest of Honour Frankfurt Book Fair 2008 is featuring a multifaceted programme that will give you profound insight into the multifaceted culture and literature of the country on the Bosphorus. The Organisation Committee Guest of Honour Turkey will not only be showcasing 350 authors from Turkey. It will also be presenting art, music, theatre and films from Turkey in Frankfurt. Turkey will be this year’s Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In keeping with the motto Turkey in all its colours, Turkey will be showing itself to the German and international public on the trade fair grounds and in the City of Frankfurt from October 15‐19. The motto alludes to Turkey’s culture that was formed by a wide range of factors. But it also underscores the reasons for Turkey being in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt Book Fair wants to raise international awareness for Turkey’s mostly undiscovered historical heritage and the great potential modern Turkey has. Ahmet Ari is the general co‐ordinator of the guest of Honour presentation. He is of the opinion that “Considering the developments in the new millennium, every society has to open up to other countries to make sure that their potential and facets become a part of the universal cultural heritage”. In keeping with the motto, the colourful logo for Turkey – designed by the high‐profile designer Bülent Erkmen – is an open, many‐coloured and many‐layered tapestry. The word Turkey is embedded in a labyrinth that at first glance appears to be closed. But, if the observer takes a closer look, the outward and inward openness becomes apparent. This is the image of the culture of their country that the persons in charge of the Guest of Honour would also like to share. It is a symbol for the centuries‐old rich cultural heritage of the modern Republic of Turkey. You can make out influences in literature, music, architecture and art that the various ethnic groups in Turkey and from the Balkan countries, the Arab world and Persia have contributed to the culture of the country, weaving it into a very special many‐coloured tapestry. Turkey is the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair to illustrate this variety and the historical intertwining of cultures. Even though it often seems to be closed and unreachable, the hope is this will draw the international public’s attention to the fascinating, cosmopolitan and especially colourful inner view of this country at the intersection between Europe and Asia so that it can be re‐discovered. The main accent of Guest of Honour presentation will be on showcasing the literature and publishing system of the Republic of Turkey. 100 publishers from Turkey will be on hand in Frankfurt am Main on more than 4,000 square meters of the trade fair grounds. Visit the official Frankfurter Buchmesse site (English)

Compiler and date details 15 June 2009 - Updated by ABRS following Brock & Hasenpusch (2007, 2009). 30 June 1997 - John Balderson, D.C.F. Rentz & A.M.E. Roach, CSIRO Entomology, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia The Phasmida, commonly known as stick and leaf insects, are large (35–240 mm in length), terrestrial, often thamnophilus or tree-dwelling insects attaining the greatest abundance in tropical climes. In terms of length, they are among the world's largest insects. Most species show remarkable resemblance to plant parts, such as twigs, leaves and stems. Several species have been used widely in behavioural and physiological studies while others have been of considerable use in cytological investigations. Kevan (1982) estimated that 2500 species of Phasmatodea were described worldwide; Brock and Hasenpusch (2009) give a figure of 'about 3000' species worldwide. Key (1991) estimated that the Australian fauna would probably reach about 150 species when all species are described. Brock & Hasenpusch (2007, 2009) list 104 described species for Australia. Genetic variation in anatomical characters occurs in many, if not most, species. This has led to many errors in taxonomy. Lobes, 'horns', spines and differences in rugosity can be highly variable or absent among individuals of the same population. Green and non-green morphs also often occur in the same population. This, coupled with geographic variation, size and wing variation, and the fact that males are much smaller and quite different in appearance from females, has confounded the taxonomic literature. Stick insects have had a taxonomic history somewhat similar to that of cockroaches and mantids. They were considered as a family of Orthoptera in the early days but are now generally recognised as a separate order. However, the names used for the order often vary with the author. Cheleutoptera, Phasmida, Phasmodea, Phasmatodea, Phasmatoptera and Phasmoptera have all been used to designate the order. The classification used in the Australian Faunal Directory follows the online checklist of Brock (2013) with a minor modification, following the molecular systematic analyses of Bradler et al. (2014). Bedford (1978) provided a comprehensive, world review of the biology and ecology of stick insects. Kevan (1982) provided a similar review at the taxonomic level. His 'escalated' view of the higher taxonomic levels is not followed here. Regular notes on the behaviour and ecology of stick insects, including Australian species, can be found in the Newsletter of the Phasmid Study Group (ISNN 0268–3806) and their journal, Phasmid Studies (ISSN 0966–0011). Brock and Hasenpusch (2009) give a very useful comprehensive review of stick and leaf insect biology and history of collecting of Australian stick and leaf insects. They also detail methods for collection, rearing and preserving stick insects and give a summary of information on each of the described species. Phase differences (often called kentromorphism in Australia) have been reported by Key (1957) in three Australian stick insects. These are Podacanthus wilkinsoni Macleay, Didymuria violescens (Leach) and Ctenomorphodes tessulatus (Gray), all of which can reach high population numbers. Low density nymphs are uniformly coloured—usually green, while those prone to high density populations are aposematically coloured and patterned. Morphometric phase differences are analogous to those of locusts. There is no correlation between density and activity, and stick insects show no obvious gregariousness. One species, the Lord Howe Island stick insect, Drycocelus australis (Montrouzier), was believed to be extinct (Gurney 1947; Smithers 1969). It was endemic to Lord Howe Island where it lived on the trunks and in cavities of banyans. It is thought to have been exterminated after rats were introduced to the island in the early part of the century. It was found on the offshore Ball's Pyramid in 2001, and is being reared for release back on the Island. Most stick insect species seem to be nocturnal and, with a few exceptions, rare in nature. Most species are found in foliage upon which they feed but a few are wholly terrestrial. They are entirely plant feeders and are unusual in their ability to develop on a wide variety of unrelated plant species. They exhibit cryptic postures and perform rhythmical swaying when disturbed. A few species can produce sound when disturbed by rubbing the hind wings against tubercles on the legs. There is no indication that they can hear any of the sounds they produce. When disturbed, some species drop to the ground in a state of catelepsy that may last for hours. Other defensive responses in Australian species have been described by Bedford & Chinnick (1966). Australian Megacrania species squirt a milky substance smelling of peppermint, probably actinidine for M. alpheus Westwood (Chow & Lin 1986), at intruders when disturbed. Morphologically, stick insects are very distinctive. They are generally prognathous with the head ovoid to rectangular, often with horns or protuberances. The antennae are short to long, ranging from 8 to more than 110 segments. Eyes are small and inconspicuous; ocelli are present only in some winged species. The prothorax is longer than the other thoracic segments (in contrast to the stick katydids, Tettigoniidae: Phasmodinae, in which the metathorax is the expanded thoracic segment). All three pairs of legs are gressorial and are long and slender. Tarsi of all Australian species are 2–5-segmented. Many species have the capability of being able to regenerate lost appendages if they are lost at an early stage of development. In those limbs, the tarsi are 4-segmented. Terminal claws bear an arolium. Both sexes of most Australian Phasmatodea are apterous, however, males of some species are fully winged, the females wingless or semi alate. The forewings are toughened tegmina, which are often small, rounded and dome-like and cover the base of the hind wings at rest and slightly overlap. The forewings typically have a knob-like structure dorsally in the proximal portion that accommodates a prominent sclerite on the base of the hind wing when folded. The hind wings are large, broad, with a large membranous anal area, folded fan-like at rest. Venation is very uniform; costa absent in forewing, weak and positioned on the anterior margin of hind wing; subcosta unbranched; radius unbranched in forewing, branching in hind wing forming R1 and radial sector; media bifurcate in forewing, in hind wing only basally and occasionally trifurcate. Abdomen cylindrical or dorso-ventrally compressed, with or without spines or outgrowths; abdomen 11-segmented with the first tergite called the median segment, connected to metanotum (Australian species); tenth tergite well developed, emarginate posteriorly in males with ventro-caudal angles produced, clasping, often with small tufts of spines, lateral walls of this tergite curving ventrally or meeting the mid-ventral line anteriorly; eleventh tergite constituting the supra-anal plate, often concealed under T-10 in males, more elongate, often articulated in females. Sternite 10 well developed, fused posteriorly to the paraprocts. Cerci unsegmented, long or short, often concealed beneath the tenth tergite, often modified as claspers in males. In males the ninth sternite constitutes the subgenital plate which lacks styles but is modified distally into a cup-like lobe, often termed the poculum. The tenth sternite in males of some groups is provided with a backwardly projecting prong-like process, the vomer, which is used in copulation. The genitalia are concealed by the subgenital plate and constitute a group of symmetrical, membranous or lightly sclerotised lobes. Females are different in the structure of the posterior abdominal segments. The eighth sternite consists of a scoop-like or keeled structure called the operculum, the posterior margin of which may project beyond the abdomen and frequently bears an egg. The ovipositor is very short and consists of three pairs of valves, and is wholly concealed by the operculum. The chromosome complements of Australian Phasmatodea range in number from 26 to 69, the larger numbers occurring in parthenogenetic species. Males usually are XO but XY species are known. Intricate studies illustrating chromosome races have been done by Craddock (1972) and varying chromosome numbers in parthenogenetic females have been demonsrated in the genus Sipyloidea by John et al. (1987). Eggs of stick insects are of special interest because of their resemblance to seeds. The chorion is hard and may be wrinkled or smooth and patterned. The anterior pole bears an operculum and it in turn may bear a median prominence, the capitulum. On the dorsal surface there is usually a well-defined micropylar plate that resembles the scar-like hilum of seeds. The microstructure of stick insect eggs provides many reliable taxonomic characters. The eggs of Sipyloidea nelida Rentz are unique in that they are enclosed in two supernumerary membranes. Shortly after deposition, the membranes rupture and a system of tubules in the operculum everts forming a cluster of stellate hairs resembling the head of a dandelion. These have been shown to be connected to the inside of the egg and may transport moisture. Stick insect nymphs may or may not resemble adults. They are often mimetic, resembling ants. Males undergo fewer moults than females and the exuviae are usually eaten. The number of antennal segments increases progressively. Originally this section of the Australian Faunal Directory was derived from the Zoological Catalogue of Australia database, from which the published Catalogue (Balderston et al. (1998) was prepared at CSIRO Entomology, Canberra and the Division's resources and facilities were made available to the authors. The authors were greatly aided by the kindness of several individuals. The Phasmid Study Group is an international organisation of amateurs and professionals dedicated to the understanding of the systematics, biology and ecology of stick-insects. Several members of that organisation provided invaluable help: Mr Paul Brock contributed photographs and notes on the type specimens of a number of Australian species he had studied in the BMNH and various museums in Europe. He also helped to locate important literature which was unknown to the authors prior to the study. Mr Phil Bragg, also a member of the above-mentioned organisation, provided the authors with a copy of his Phasmatid Database. This document will eventually list all of the stick-insect taxa and their dates of publication, references, type localities and location of types. The authors acknowledged the comprehensive catalogue and reference list of Australian species prepared by Vickery (1983) and thanked Mr Jon Prance of the CSIRO Black Mountain Library for assistance and time spent with the literature search. The illustrations used in the family introductions in the published Catalogue are from Key (1991). They were reproduced with permission from CSIRO Entomology and the Melbourne University Press. Funding was made available for the original checklisting project by the Australian Biological Resources Study. The original information on the Australian Faunal Directory site for the Phasmida was derived from the Zoological Catalogue of Australia database compiled on the Platypus software program. It has now been upgraded and updated following Brock and Hasenpusch (2007, 2009). Distribution data in the Directory is by political and geographic region descriptors (IBRA) and serves as a guide to the distribution of a taxon. For details of a taxon's distribution, the reader should consult the cited references (if any) at genus and species levels. Australia is defined as including Lord Howe Is., Norfolk Is., Cocos (Keeling) Ils, Christmas Is., Ashmore and Cartier Ils, Macquarie Is., Australian Antarctic Territory, Heard and McDonald Ils, and the waters associated with these land areas of Australian political responsibility. Political areas include the adjacent waters. Terrestrial geographical terms are based on the drainage systems of continental Australia, while marine terms are self explanatory except as follows: the boundary between the coastal and oceanic zones is the 200 m contour; the Arafura Sea extends from Cape York to 124°E; and the boundary between the Tasman and Coral Seas is considered to be the latitude of Fraser Island, also regarded as the southern terminus of the Great Barrier Reef. Distribution records, if any, outside of these areas are listed as extralimital. The distribution descriptors for each species are collated to genus level. Users are advised that extralimital distribution for some taxa may not be complete. Balderson, J., Rentz, D.C.F. & Roach, A.M.E. 1998. Phasmatodea. pp. 347-376 in Houston, W.W.K. & Wells, A. (eds). Zoological Catalogue of Australia. Archaeognatha, Zygentoma, Blattodea, Isoptera, Mantodea, Dermaptera, Phasmatodea, Embioptera, Zoraptera. Melbourne : CSIRO Publishing, Australia Vol. 23 xiii 464 pp. Bedford, G.O. 1978. Biology and ecology of the Phasmatodea. Annual Review of Entomology 23: 125-149 Bedford, G.O. & Chinnick, L.J. 1966. Conspicuous displays in two species of Australian stick insects. Animal Behaviour 14: 518-521 Bradler, S., Robertson, J.A. & Whiting, M.F. 2014. A molecular phylogeny of Phasmatodea with emphasis on Necrosciinae, the most species-rich subfamily of stick insects. Systematic Entomology 39: 205-222 Bradley, J.C. & Galil, B.S. 1977. The taxonomic arrangement of the Phasmatodea with keys to the subfamilies and tribes. Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 79: 176-208 Brock, P. 2014. Phasmida Species File Online. http://phasmida.speciesfile.org/HomePage/Phasmida/HomePage (accessed April 2014) Brock, P.D. & Hasenpusch, J. 2007. Studies on the Australian stick insects (Phasmida), including a checklist of species and bibliography. Zootaxa 1570: 1-81 Brock, P.D. & Hasenpusch, J.W. 2009. The Complete Field Guide to Stick and Leaf Insects of Australia. Collingwoord, Victoria : CSIRO Publishing 204 pp. Chow, Y.S. & Lin, Y.M. 1986. Actinidine, a defensive secretion of the stick insect, Megacrania alpheus Westwood (Orthoptera: Phasmatidae). Journal of Entomological Science 21: 97-101 Craddock, E. 1972. Chromosomal diversity in the Australian Phasmatodea. Australian Journal of Zoology 20: 445-462 Günther, K. 1953. Über die taxonomische Gliederung und die geographische Verbreitung der Insektenordnung de Phasmatodea. Beiträge zur Entomologie (Berlin) 3(5): 541-563 Gurney, A.B. 1947. Notes on some remarkable Australasian walkingsticks, including a synopsis of the genus Extatosoma (Orthoptera: Phasmatidae). Annals of the Entomological Society of America 40(3): 373-396 John, B., Rentz, D.C.F. & Contreras, N. 1987. Extensive chromosome variation in the stick insect genus Sipyloidea Brunner von Wattenwyl (Phylliidae: Necrosciinae) within Australia, and descriptions of three new species. Invertebrate Taxonomy 1: 603-630 Kevan, D.E.McE. 1982. Phasmatoptera. pp. 379-383 in Parker, S.P. (ed.). Synopsis and Classification of Living Organisms. New York : McGraw Hill Vol. 2. Kevan, D.K.McE. (ed.) 1977. The higher classification of the orthopteroid insects. Lyman Entomol. Mus. Res. Lab. Memoir No. 4. 26 pp. Key, K.H.L. 1957. Kentromorphic phases in three species of Phasmatodea. Australian Journal of Zoology 5: 247-284 Key, K.H.L. 1991. Phasmatodea (Stick-insects). pp. 394-404 in CSIRO (ed.). The Insects of Australia. A textbook for students and research workers. Melbourne : Melbourne University Press Vol. 1 xiii 542 pp. Smithers, C.N. 1969. On some remains of the Lord Howe Island phasmid (Dryococelus australis Montrouzier)) (Phasmida) from Ball's pyramid. Entomologist's Monthly Magazine 105: 252 Vickery, V.R. 1983. Catalogue of Australian stick insects (Phasmida, Phasmatodea, Phasmatoptera, or Cheleutoptera). CSIRO Aust. Div. Entomol. Tech. Pap. No. 20. 15 pp. History of changes |Published||As part of group||Action Date||Action Type||Compiler(s)|

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This Scholarly Library of Facts about Domestic & Worldwide Zionist Criminality The Jew Watch Project Is The Internet's Largest Scholarly Collection of Articles on Zionist Top: Jewish Mind Control: Feminism The Promise Keepers, a new evangelical Christian men's movement, follows an agenda that many Jews feel is antithetical to Jewish values and corrosive to constitutional safeguards of religious liberty. Yet the Jewish community has been relatively unresponsive to the exponential growth and mainstream embrace of this volatile young organization. During the Promise Keepers' "Stand In The Gap" rally in Washington, DC, on October 4, 1997, Jewish organizations‹including politically active groups like the Reform Movement's Religious Action Center‹were noticeably absent from the assorted liberal groups who showed up to protest. Other Jewish watchdog organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, have kept their usually humming faxes at bay. And while the Jewish press did cover the rally in Washington, they have largely ignored the Promise Keepers and their founder, Bill McCartney. After demonstrating a fearless approach to activism in recent decades, has the American Jewish community reverted back to 1950s era timidity? Or is an organization that many believe is mounting a ferocious attack on the wall separating church and state really just an innocuous religious movement? According to Steven Steiner, the public relations representative for the American Jewish Congress, his organization hasn't felt the need to voice an opinion about the Promise Keepers. "If they issued antisemitic statements we would get involved," said Steiner. "There is no reason for us to be involved right now ." The AJCongress' wait-for-the-smoking-gun approach has been mirrored by most other Jewish organizations, who don't seem entirely comfortable with the popularity and power of Promise Keepers, but are not prepared to take a major stand opposing the group. When Jewish organizations have expressed displeasure with Promise Keepers, often their umbrage is directed at the inclusion of so-called "messianic Jews" in Promise Keepers activities. The rally in Washington was kicked off by a "messianic Jew" wearing a kippah, who blew a shofar and declared that the tikiyah represented a victory for those who believe Jesus is the Messiah. "Their only portrayal of Jews in Washington was offensive," remarked American Jewish Committee National Director of Inter-religious Affairs Rabbi James Rudin, who has been following the Promise Keepers for the AJCommittee. Rudin was very disturbed by the representation of Jews at the rally. "While there were representatives of other communities, the only Jewish representative was a converted one." Yet despite the outrage, the AJCommitee's response has basically mirrored that of its shared acronym: it has remained silent. The Anti-Defamation League is the only major Jewish organization that has directly confronted the Promise Keepers. Jeffrey Ross, the Director of Campus Affairs for the ADL, joins other Jewish groups in criticizing the organization's public embrace of "messianic Jews" and what he called an "ambiguous stand towards women." Twice the ADL has taken action against the Promise Keepers for their infringement on church/state separation, albeit for isolated incidents. According to Ross, the Promise Keepers had planned to hold an event at a United States naval base. "The ADL found out about this and protested using state grounds for Promise Keepers purposes," said Ross. "Partially because of our protest the rally was called off." The second incident, Ross explained, occurred before McCartney had founded the Promise Keepers when he was coaching the University of Colorado football team. McCartney had introduced prayer and other Christian elements into team activities. In the mid-1980s he attempted to recruit a Jewish player. The student had problems with what Ross described as "the Christianizing of the team." The local Jewish community contacted the ADL, who felt that McCartney's Christianizing at a public university was a breach of separation of church and state. The dispute was resolved when the player decided to attend a different university. The Religious Action Center in Washington has been critical of the Promise Keepers, but has limited its activism against the group. The Center joined 60 other religious organizations to form an anti-Promise Keepers coalition called Equal Partners in Faith, which put out a statement criticizing Promise Keepers for excluding women and female clergy, and for a message that asserts that "women belong behind men, not in equal partnerships, and that this is God's will for men and women." But for the most part it has been content to let liberal Christian groups get involved. "The Christian community has done a good job responding to the Promise Keepers," according to Mark Palavin, the Associate Director of the Religious Action Center. "We try to educate the community about the Promise Keepers," said Palavin. Interestingly, the Religious Action Center, which often gets involved in political advocacy over issues of interest to the liberal Jewish community, has not made an issue of the links of Promise Keepers to the religious right. While Promise Keepers claims to be nonpolitical, the movement is a major force in right wing political circles. Its rallies have political undertones, and the behind-the-scene supporters of the organization are all influential men identified with the religious right. In fact, Promise Keepers represent the "third wave" of the religious right, following the fall of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and the still active Christian Coalition of Pat Robertson. According to several sources, including a comprehensive article in The Nation, the most influential and important figures behind McCartney and the Promise Keepers are James Dobson, Bill Bright, and Pat Robertson, who gave the organization the exposure it needed through the Christian Broadcasting Network. Dobson is a social psychologist, radio commentator and head of the largest religious right organization in the country, Focus on the Family, which is the current publisher for Promise Keepers. The political views of Dobson are reflected in the militantly anti-abortion and anti-gay Family Research Council, a Washington lobby group to the right of the Christian Coalition that was founded by Dobson's son. Bill Bright is involved with Campus Crusade for Christ and has been a part of the radical right since the 1950's. The overall mission of the Campus Crusade is to "win every human being on earth for Christ in preparation for the Second Coming." In addition, Bright has attempted past ventures such as banning director Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation of Christ. Bright's most recent book, which is sold at all Promise Keepers events, denounces the "homosexual explosion," abortion, the lack of state-sponsored prayer in schools and the teaching of evolution rather than creationism. The presence of numerous political organizations at all Promise Keepers conferences provides further evidence of the organization's political agenda. Outside each gathering are vendors selling Promise Keepers books, shirts, caps, and tapes. But most of the space is taken up by various political organizations. One such group is World Magazine which offers "to help Christians apply to their understanding of and response to everyday events." In this magazine, advertisements are mixed with political statements, including one ad with the headline, "Traditional Christian Faith and Values vs. Welfarism and Big Government." Books published by Focus on the Family are usually available. One such book is Check Colson's Breakpoint which identifies feminism as an "extremist ideology" and argues that God had created a female chemical and hormonal balance that women who have abortions disrupt, thereby risking breast cancer. Another organization, Exodus International, is a "Christian referral and resource network . . .[whose] primary purpose is to proclaim that freedom from homosexuality is possible through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord." Promise Keepers president Randy Phillips has denied the assertions of critics that PK is a right wing organization. "We are not a political organization, we are not politically motivated and we do not have political goals." But the amount of space allocated to political causes and messages at Promise Keepers conferences along with the prominent roles of right wing activists within the organization belie his assertion. It is clear that McCartney and his followers are linked to the Christian Right and its war against contemporary culture. As National Organization for Women (NOW) president Patricia Ireland pointed out at the "Stand In The Gap" rally, "There is a reason that Promise Keepers is having their rally in Washington with the Capitol as the backdrop. . . When members of Congress look out onto the Mall, they see the same thing I see‹hundreds of thousands of constituents and voters." Just as Patricia Ireland has been the most forceful voice speaking out against Promise Keepers, the strongest response from Jews has come from the Jewish feminist community. Susan Weidman Schneider, editor of the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith, is taking Promise Keepers seriously. "Promise Keepers represents a danger to Jews in their frequent assertion that this is a Christian nation." Schneider also believes that the Jewish community should be aware the Promise Keepers' "dangerous stand towards women." Traditionally attacks on feminism become attacks of "Jewish feminists", or on the "un-Christian" nature of feminism. Lilith is planning to run a substantial article on the Promise Keepers in an upcoming issue. Michael S. Kimmel, a scholar of men's studies at State University of New York at Stony Brook, agrees with Schneider's assessment. In a recent article in Tikkun magazine, Kimmel criticized the Promise Keepers attitude toward women. Kimmel writes that, "the resurrection of responsible manhood is really the Second Coming of Patriarchy." According to the Promise Keepers, men have abdicated their responsibility as the head of the household. At home, husbands are "not giving their wives the support they need," and are absent from the lives of their children and friends. The Promise Keepers 'remind' men of the 'power' they are born with, and make it clear that the husband should be the head of the household. Yet even Tikkun, which ran Kimmel's article condemning the PK's conservative, patriarchal agenda, tempered their criticism in the November/December 1997 issue. The differences between Promise Keepers leadership and its constituents can be significant, and just as many of the men who attended the Million Man March felt that they could separate the messenger from the message, many Promise Keepers do not fit the right wing mold of the group's leadership. According to Tikkun, liberals were right to point out the Promise Keepers connection to right wing leaders and their sexists assumptions about the proper structure of the family; yet they "missed the point. Most men who have been attracted to the Promise Keepers and other right-wing-connected Evangelical movements have not come into that context because of the politics, but because of their own hunger for meaning and community." So what, exactly, is the Promise Keepers' stance on the role of men and women in society? The form of masculinity called for by the Promise Keepers relies on men "taking back" control over their homes, and apologizing to their wives for making them lead the home all these years. Relying on the aggression men have been socialized to exhibit, Promise Keepers also promises an upcoming holy war that will bring Christian heterosexual men back to their deserved patriarchal position in society. The Promise Keepers put forward a critique of feminized masculinity. "The demise of our community and culture is the fault of sissified men who have been clearly influenced by women," writes Tony Evans, a black Dallas evangelist, who is among the most popular speakers at Promise Keepers rallies. He warns that men must "reclaim" their manhood, declaring, "I want to be a man again." Building on the image of a "strong masculine man," Promise Keepers makes constant reference to the upcoming "holy war." Promise Keepers literature and speeches are filled with metaphors of cultural war. McCartney's call for battle is a crowd pleaser, once announcing that "we're calling men of God to battle - we will retreat no more. We're going to contest anything that sets itself up against the name of Jesus Christ." In the Promise Keepers book, Go the Distance, McCartney predicted that his evangelical efforts will be met with "violent opposition." He told a gathering of pastors in Atlanta (the largest gathering of clergymen in history), "many of you feel that you have been in a war for a long time, yet the fiercest fighting is just ahead. God has brought us here to prepare us. Let's proceed. It's wartime!" In addition, he has referred to the clergy as "commissioned officers" of his movement, and has even sought to penetrate the armed forces through the Pentagon's chaplain system. If the opposition McCartney predicted has been slow to organize, it may be due to a new coalition based on "traditional values." "What happened here is that the boy's club has expanded to include people of color," writes Chip Berlet, who researches right-wing populism in the United States. "When push comes to shove, what's more important, race or gender?" Indeed, on the issue of gender, black and white male clergy have found room to unite. Promise Keepers' promotion of a softer patriarchy caters perfectly to men's anxieties by "reminding" men of the "power" they are born with. During a rally at Shea Stadium in New York City, Rev. Ed Cole reminded his audience that "God's revelations came through man," not woman, and so the two genders can never be equal. Speaker Wellington Boone noted that "how you handle your wife," would reveal how you "handle the world." He added that "woman came from man, not man from woman." Boone also equates the relationship in the house between man and woman as a form of competition‹"spiritual warfare,"‹a test of masculine strength. "I'm never gonna let no woman outserve me," he once shouted to an applauding crowd. The role of women called for by the Promise Keepers not only keeps wives at home, but has often stripped women of their economic independence. In an email to the National Organization for Women, the group at the forefront of anti-Promise Keeper activism, one Promise Keeper wife wrote to request a free copy of NOW's video on PK: "He keeps the checkbook and all the credit cards so I am unable to right [sic] you a check." Women are expected to limit their involvement at home to caring for their family. "Promise Keepers are about the return of patriarchy in its Sunday best: spiffed up, polite, and earnest but always, and ultimately, in charge," says Unitarian minister Rev. David Blachard of Syracuse. While the philosophy of the Promise Keepers may lead some men to have better relations with their wives and daughters, it does so at the expense of women's freedom. Perhaps women's rights just isn't considered enough of a "Jewish issue" to inspire most Jewish groups to act. Or have the similarities between Promise Keepers and orthodox Jews, both politically and socially, dampened the enthusiasm of Jewish organizations to confront the Christian group? Susan Weidman Schneider shared an encounter she had with a group of Jews during the Washington rally. "While walking in the Georgetown area, I noticed a group of individuals carrying signs printed with the words 'Shalom. Jews keep promises too.' Interested, I asked whether this was an organized protest against the Promise Keepers. They explained that it wasn't a protest, but a way for them to express their belief in many of the Promise Keepers messages." One can only wonder why the most visible Jewish presence at the rally was a group of Promise Keepers wanna-bees. Mik Moore is the editor of New Voices. Udi Ofer is graduated from SUNY Buffalo in 1997 and is a frequent contributer to New Voices. This article is herein archived under "fair use" provisions of the copyright act and solely for scholarly, educational, and research use. It was found on the internet on June 20, 2004 at http://www.shmoozenet.com/jsps/stories/promisekeep.shtml. If copyrighted, all rights to reproduce this article for profitable enterprise are reserved by the copyright holder unless the holder so notes. Please respect the copyright holder's rights. You may quote in part for college or other papers under "fair use" only if you give credit to the owner and/or writer. If still published on the web, may want to visit the copyright holder's website to honor his work with your presence there. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in the Jew Watch Library is archived here under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in reviewing the included information for personal use, non-profit research and educational purposes only. 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FactorShares, the sponsor that introduced spread trading in an ETF wrapper back in early 2011, launched a new line of ETFs under a new PureFunds brand. According to the firm’s literature, PureFunds was designed to provide the market with easy access to niche sectors through Pure-Play ETFs. PureFunds aims to launch tactical ETFs that the market desires but do not currently exist. The three new ETFs began trading November 29, have expense ratios of 0.69%, share a common prospectus (pdf), and will be assigned to the Materials Sector category of the ETF Field Guide. PureFunds ISE Diamond/Gemstone ETF (GEMS) seeks to track global companies actively engaged in the gemstone industry including exploration, production, or sales. The underlying index has 23 holdings including Signet Jewelers Ltd 9.0%, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd 8.7%, BHP Billiton Ltd 8.3%, Harry Winston Diamond Corp 8.1%, and Luk Fook Holdings International Ltd 7.1%. Country allocations are Hong Kong 28%, UK 20%, Canada 19%, US 18%, Australia 12%, and Japan 3%. Additional information is located in the GEMS overview and GEMS fact sheet (pdf). Analysis/Opinion: This is not a physically backed diamond ETF. The prospect of a diamond ETF has been the focus of much media speculation the past year. I’m on record with my opinion that implementing such a fund could be tricky due to the qualitative nature of valuing gems and lack of futures contracts or other trading vehicles. GEMS is a unique offering, but it should probably have “producers” or “industry” in its name to avoid being mistaken for a physically backed fund. PureFunds ISE Mining Service (NYSEARCA:MSXX) seeks to track the performance of the largest and most liquid companies involved in facilitating the operations of the mining services industry as a whole, from companies that manufacture, lease, sell, and provide equipment to companies providing consulting and other related services. The underlying index has 30 holdings including Atlas Copco AB A 9.6%, China Coal Energy Co Ltd H Shares 9.1%, Joy Global Inc 8.1%, Monadelphous Group Ltd 7.5%, and Mineral Resources 7.4%. Countries with current weightings of 10% or greater include Australia 48%, US 17%, Canada 11%, Hong Kong 10%, and Sweden 10%. Additional information is located in the PureFunds ISE Mining Service (NYSEARCA:MSXX) overview and MSXX fact sheet (pdf).

Posted on January 18, 2010. I’ve been dreading this point at which I have to post my first blog for the Gender Masala. It’s a tough job trying to fill the shoes of Mercedes Sayagues who started the blog and, together with a band of other contributors, kept it an inspired, lively and engaging space for readers to return to again and again and also make their contributions. But the fact is that sooner or later I would have to jump right in and this is it. I’m excited about this blog and I hope that we will be able to keep it engaging. By we, I mean myself, Kudzai Makombe in Harare, Tess Bacalla in Manila, Estrella Gutierrez in Caracas and Diana Cariboni in Montevideo. Mercedes is not completely off the hook. She will still be contributing from her new home in Maputo. There will also be posts from other contributors. Its not a great way to start the new year, but my head has been puzzling over the growing militarization around the world and its catastrophic impact on women in particular. What got me going is a book I’m reading by journalist Christina Lamb called ‘The Sewing Circles of Herat’. The book, which traces the war in Afghanistan and its particular effect on women, came highly recommended by my husband, a prolific and speed reader, who picked it up as the only remaining piece of literature in English abandoned by previous tenants at a lodge where we stayed in Namibia late last year. The remainder of the reading material was in German. Its taking me a long time finish the book not only because I’m a slow reader but as I go through it I become deeply disturbed by the complete and utter impunity with which men with guns can and do commit atrocities and their particular desire to strip women of all human rights. I have to put it aside and move on to another of the books my bedside table. Over the holidays I caught up with one of the BBC World Service’s best documentaries of 2009, ‘Chechnya’s Missing Women’ which traces the kidnapping of women and girls by bands of armed young men in Chechnya’s capital Grozny. The women are forced into cars at gunpoint and some are forced to marry their captors while others simply disappear to possibly turn up dead in a vacant field. Their families are helpless to stop it. What is troubling me most is that like many others, I read the news and perceive what is happening to women in Afghanistan and Chechnya as remote occurrences in distant lands that have little to do with me. But when I look closer I see it happening at my doorstep. Naively perhaps, I would never have thought that the systemic rapes, beatings and killings of women and girls that took place in Kenya post the December 2007 elections and in Zimbabwe ahead of the Presidential run-off elections in 2008 were possible. Then there were the women who were brutally raped and some killed in Guinea in September last year. And who doesn’t know about the thousands of women who are raped and killed regularly by both government and rebel troops in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In all cases government has been somehow complicit and impunity has been the order of the day. The affected women and their families have had little recourse and are generally expected to shut up about it for “the greater good”. The argument being that progress and peace processes will be derailed if these issues are dredged up. And so women are silenced and violence against women in normalized. As a follow-up to United Nations Resolution 1325 (2000), which obliges groups in armed conflict to protect women and girls from violence, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1888 on 30 September 2009. UNSCR 1888 establishes a UN Special Representative to deal specifically with sexual violence in armed conflict and enables the Security Council’s sanctions committee to take into account rape and sexual violence as criteria when considering sanctions against nations and individuals. Personally, I’m not feeling particularly optimistic that this latest resolution will make much more of a difference for women faced with guns and impunity. After all, there is also UNSCR 1820, which affirms the Security Council’s intention to consider targeted sanctions against perpetrators of sexual violence in armed conflict. As with many of the other UN Resolutions – and there are so many – the laudable words are taking time to translate into action. In the meantime it seems as though groups struggling for power and resources are actually learning from each other that its okay to battle on the bodies of women and that this can be a quick and sure way to ascendancy.

Title text: Einstein was WRONG when he said that provisional patent #39561 represented a novel gravel-sorting technique and should be approved by the Patent Office. Nobel laureate and Time Person of the Century Albert Einstein is often considered one of the smartest and most influential men in world history. His theories have revolutionized our understanding of the Universe and inspired generations of scientists. In this comic, Cueball indicates to a friend that he is working on an experiment that may disprove Einstein. The implication is that Cueball is conducting a formal scientific experiment which may disprove one of Einstein's scientific theories. The second frame, however, implies that the Einsteinian "theory" Cueball's experiment may disprove is an offhand (and subjective) remark by Einstein about the availability of good sandwiches. There are several possible interpretations/explanations for this comic, which is slightly vague: - The first possibility is that Randall is playing with the notion that everything Einstein said constitutes words to live by: A casual observation on the quality of sandwiches is treated as a major hypothesis, and Cueball is in fact conducting a formal scientific experiment which may "disprove" the statement. - This would not be the first time that xkcd has addressed people taking scientists too seriously. In 947: Investing, Randall comments on how people put too much credence in a joke Einstein made in passing, and in comic 799 we see Stephen Hawking in a similar predicament, every word he says taken as a major declaration. - A key part of the humour is that a significant number of people believe Einstein's physical theories (particularly Special and General Relativity) to be wrong: its universal promotion in scientific literature is ascribed to a conspiracy. This attitude has been lampooned before in xkcd comic 808 and comic 675. - The second possibility is that Cueball is simply trying to impress his friend by using "technically accurate" language to imply that he is involved in important scientific work, when all he is really doing is buying sandwiches and hoping to find a good one. Perhaps he's a scientist out to lunch with an old friend who's never respected his work, and knows that anything Einstein-related sounds impressive and foreboding, meaning his friend is unlikely to ask for details. - Another explanation might be simply that while scientists today are so focused on determining whether he was right, all he really cared about was finding a good sandwich shop. The title text demonstrates the ability to "disprove" Einstein while not challenging his scientific work but rather one of his decisions in his capacity as a patent clerk at the Swiss Patent Office at the time he published his first major papers (previously alluded to in 1067: Pressures). According to the Einstein FAQ on the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property's website, patent #39561 is one of several patents that "we can assume ... were personally examined by Einstein". A PDF of the patent, which was indeed a gravel sorter (trommel), can be found here in German. Another part of the joke involves tenses: when Cueball says "I'm currently conducting an experiment," his friend assumes that Cueball is involved in an ongoing research project; but he actually means that he is conducting an experiment at that very moment, by eating a sandwich. - [Cueball and friend eating at a table.] - Cueball: I'm currently conducting an experiment which may prove Einstein wrong! - Friend: Ooh, exciting! - [Einstein and Cueball walking.] - Einstein: It's impossible to find a good sandwich in this town.

British actor and comedian Stephen Fry has rarely been so excited to be lazy. But as part of the cast of the sequel Sherlock Holmes 2, Fry gets to pour all of his energy into playing Victorian literature’s most famously brilliant but solidly sedentary deductive mind. “I play Mycroft, Sherlock Holmes' brother – the smarter brother, I hasten to add,” said Fry. “He's so lazy that he never gets the reputation that Sherlock does.” Mycroft Holmes has long been one of the more intriguing characters in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon, with his mysterious and significant role in the British government, his large girth and aversion to physical activity, and utter lack of practicality, despite being his brother Sherlock’s equal – and possible superior – in mental acuity. “Historically it's a very interesting character, and as a lover of Sherlock Holmes since I was a boy I've always enjoyed that character myself,” said Fry. “I hope that people enjoy it. It's certainly been fun making the picture. I'm on it until January and it's really been fun.” Fry’s also a fan of director Guy Richie’s inventive reinterpretation of Holmes-ian lore. “It's what known in the Sherlock business as noncanonical. It's not based on the books – It's based on the idea of the characters and the relationships, and I love the way that Guy uses the camera. I love the fluency and speed and the wit and the drive of it." "It's not exactly Steampunk, but there's a very 21st century angle on Victorian England," he said. "Which of us doesn't love Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett - in particular those two - but he's the kind of character that will be done in 200 years time. They'll be making hologram movies of Sherlock Holmes. He'll never die. He's an imperishable figure. So each age will remake him in their own image, if you like, and I like what Guy did. He's very filmic.” With his personal appreciation of Holmes as a British icon, Fry admits it did take some doing to wrap his own brain around the notion of an American – in the form of Robert Downey, Jr. - playing the detective. “To some extent, but he's such a charismatic and likeable screen presence, Robert, that you very soon forget it. More than most, he owns every second of screen time. He's just wonderfully likable. He's the real thing.”

The recent revelation from the Finance Ministry’s probe into Crown corporations that found ever-more and ever-higher paid managers at ICBC has enraged British Columbians and especially consumers of auto insurance in this province. It is of course entirely possible that ICBC, a government-owned monopoly, has too many managers and that they’re paid too much. However the fact is, without competition to determine how many managers are necessary—no one has any idea what the "right" staffing levels are. In addition, without an independent (non-political) body to set compensation in the public sector equal to that in the private sector for comparable jobs, compensation for managers is instead determined by politics or the Crown monopoly itself. Unlike private companies in competitive markets, government protected monopolies are not required to constantly innovate, compete for consumers, ensure efficient and effective staffing levels and pay, offer competitive prices and/or high quality services including more options. In Canada, six provinces (Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland & Labrador) rely entirely on private insurers to provide auto insurance. Saskatchewan and Manitoba are much like BC in that government-owned insurers have a monopoly over basic auto insurance but compete with private companies in the market for optional insurance coverage. Quebec’s government monopoly for basic coverage does not compete with private insurers for optional insurance. A 2011 Fraser Institute study comparing automobile insurance premiums found that from 2007 to 2009, auto insurance has been the most costly and least affordable in British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan—three of which are provinces with government-run auto insurance monopolies. Ontario is in that high-priced crowd because of tight regulations (in rate-setting as well as mandatory minimum liability) and high levels of insurance fraud (Toronto has been characterized as a centre for organized crime rings that carry out a number of fraud scams that result in higher premiums). This evidence contradicts the myth promoted by supporters of public auto insurance who often trot out old reports published by groups like the Consumers’ Association of Canada to claim BC is a great deal on auto insurance. The problem with reports from the CAC is that their methodology is not rigorous and has often been criticized. For example, it used internet surveys of possible insurance premiums, not actual policies purchased, to come up with prices in its comparisons. Back in 2003, when the federal office of the association released its numbers, the then-Ontario director for the same group, Theresa Courneyea, called the national numbers faulty and said studies from the national office violated arithmetic and "slant the picture." In 2006, even a B.C. Supreme Court judge noticed the CAC's statistical methods were in error. Justice Loryl Russell wrote that "what methodology can be gleaned from the [Consumers' Association] affidavit is demonstrably flawed." Given the recent ICBC executive pay revelations and the fact that BC has among the highest premiums in the country, drivers should be asking why the provincial government continues to restrict competition and consumer choice. The benefits of privatizing crown corporations are well established in the academic literature. For example, renowned privatization experts, Professors William Megginson and Jeffry Netter, provided the most comprehensive review of worldwide privatizations in a 2001 study published in the prestigious Journal of Economic Literature. They found both short- and long-term benefits to economies undertaking privatizations. In the short term, taxpayers gained through one-time revenues from the sale of government assets. In the longer term, privatization improved firm performance and increased economic growth. If British Columbians want cheaper automobile insurance and an end to politicized staffing and pay at ICBC, privatize it.

|Join Nairaland / Login / Trending / Recent / New| Stats: 1272848 members, 1746419 topics. Date: Saturday, 22 November 2014 at 10:26 PM |Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by johndonbaba: 7:28pm On Dec 24, 2012| The former Lagos State governor’s son, Michael Otedola, Femi is having a serious issue with his 26 year-old love child mama, Olayinka Odukoya and the child at the centre of all this, Christie is said to be a split image of Femi, the Forte Oil boss. Then loved-up Femi, we learnt, had put Olayinka in a family way when he was selling stationeries at Iponri area of Lagos, and the result of that effort was 26 years old, Christie, the first from his loin but his mum did not only show disapproval, she condemned their dalliance and sent mother away and took the baby to her custody. In spite of Femi’s mother’s rejection, the arrow of love hit Femi again and he found himself in the arms of Olayinka, who second time around got pregnant for the Femi who has since married delectable, Nana Otedola, the Managing Director, Garment Care and blessed with children. As fate would have it, she lost the pregnancy seven months after. Since then, their paths never crossed, Olayinka was shut away from her only child, and her world became empty. Now she’s on a search for her long-lost daughter, Christy. Below is the interesting story as said by the mother of the first daughter of Femi, the former Zenom oil boss, the emotional distressed mother provides insight into what went wrong with the romance, how Mr Otedola and his parents hoodwinked her into parting with her child and other intimate details in this interview. For the purpose of this interview, can I have your full names? I am Olayinka Odukoya. What kind of relationship existed between you and Mr. Femi Otedola? We used to have a love affair. Was the love affair one that your parents knew about? I mean your own parents and his parents? What happened was that I just finished from secondary school at that time and I was even working when he approached me for a relationship. I accepted his advances and somewhere along the line, I realised that I’d taken in for him. And this was a time I was just offered an admission into the School of Nursing in Ikoyi; I was only waiting to go for pre-registration interview before I realised I was pregnant. And at that point in time, there was a man, Mr. Tobun father’s house at Odo-Irangusi. It was through my friend that was dating the contractor that I met Femi. And he promised me heaven and earth. As a matter of fact, we both sworn to an oath with the Holy Bible never to leave each other. I was about 21 years at that time and it was at that point that we started sleeping together and I got pregnant for him. And he accepted it. But in the long run, I realised that he didn’t tell his parents at home that he had put a lady in the family way. It was that Mr. Tobun that later went to his dad to tell him that his son had impregnated a young lady in Ijebu. And his mum later called him to probe him over it after the dad complained to her. But he lied to his mum initially that he did not impregnate anybody. Meanwhile, I used to go to their house regularly before then to the extent that all his younger siblings were familiar with me. His mum even knew me, though she did not know that I was dating her son which was the real purpose of my frequent visit to their house. She thought I was only a friend to Femi’s sisters. So, since I took in, I would go to him to collect money for my upkeep and things like that. As a matter of fact, I contemplated aborting the pregnancy at a point because I felt it was affecting the continuation of my education but unfortunately for me then, an old man overheard me telling a friend about my planned abortion and the old man went straight to leak it to my mum. So, my mum came to take me from where I was back home so as to prevent me from aborting the pregnancy. And my dad too also prevailed on me never to try aborting the pregnancy with the counseling that it is not only people that are well educated that make it in life. So, I later went to tell Femi that my parents were well aware of the pregnancy and he also plead with me to keep the pregnancy. What was Mr. Femi Otedola doing then? Was he working or still in school? He was a trader at Iponri Shopping Complex selling stationery materials. And since his dad was running a printing press then, he was also supplying them materials to work with. And when we realised he was not showing up at our house like it was expected, my parents said I should tell him that they wanted to meet his parents and he said no problems. But when he refused to come with his parents like he promised, a sister to my mum who was a registrar was even nursing the doubt that I might not know the real owner of my pregnancy and she attributed her doubt to the fact that the Otedola’s were well-to-do and very responsible, so they would not tolerate their son impregnate a girl and not do the right thing. So, there was a resolve that my mum should follow me to their house and when we got there, it was Femi himself that opened the gate for us. And when we met his dad, Baba Otedola, and told him a bout the pregnancy, he probed Femi over it and he told his dad that he was the one responsible for it. And the dad said he would have loved his mum to be at home for the meeting because when he first heard about the issue and raised it with the mum, Femi vehemently denied knowing anything about the pregnancy to the extent that the mum was saying any girl that was claiming to have gotten pregnant for her son should go and take care of it in her parent’s house. Since her son had said he didn’t impregnate any girl. But the dad said we should not worry about it and that he would always send money for my upkeep. And shortly before I would deliver my baby, the mum came around at the prompting of Baba Otedola, I guess, she came with Baba Otedola’s elder sister. They said they were the owners of the pregnancy since it’s their son that was responsible for it. And when I delivered my baby, a naming ceremony was organised at their house for my daughter. So, since everything was cordial to that point, how did the denial of access to your daughter come into play? Thank you. That’s exactly what I am about to tell you. After the naming ceremony, Femi came later to tell me that his mum said he should not marry me. And I was like if she says that then, maybe you should leave me alone. But he said he could not do that. Later on, I told him I wanted to learn Hair Dressing since I could not go to the School of Nursing any more. But he advised that I should go to a Catering school instead. So, I went to Catering school and it was while I was there that I got pregnant for him again. But his mum still stood strongly against our getting married. Meanwhile, I had a forced labour when the pregnancy got into the 7th month which I had as a still birth. In fact, I almost lost my life during the delivery. It was the placenta that came out first before the dead baby came out b*ttocks first instead of the head. My dad later went to meet him that, Femi, so, so, thing happened to me. Though, he was fully aware that I was pregnant for him again, but he apparently did not inform his parents. So, it was when my dad went to their house that his dad too knew about it and challenged him over it. But in his usual manner, he denied having anything to do with the pregnancy and I later told him that thank God I did not die in the course of the forced labour because that is how he would have denied me in death. I reminded him of how he lied that he did not know anything about Christy’s pregnancy before he later accepted to be the one responsible. And shortly after that was when his mum became extremely hostile to me, telling his son that he saw girls from rich background, he didn’t go to them. That, why would he go for someone from a humble background like me. And it was because Femi told me that his mum might accept me if we had a second child that I accepted to get pregnant for him again. But when they said I should bring my daughter Christy to them when she was a little over 2 years, so that she could start kindergarten, I left her for them. But ever since then, the mum would not allow me to see my daughter. There was even a festive period that my younger siblings went to their house to ask them to allow my daughter to come and spend some time with us, the mum refused. And I later went myself but as soon as the mum saw me, she took my daughter inside and locked her up. And when all my efforts to see my daughter became abortive, I later told them that I would always be my daughter’s mother because they cannot buy another mother for her no matter how much they prevent me from seeing her. And again, my mum’s younger sister told me not to worry because when it gets to a point my daughter would ask for her mum. But when she (Christy) was 15 and was schooling in Akure, Ondo State, while she lived with her father’s younger brother, I still made an attempt to go and see her there, yet they prevented me. And that was the point in time I decided to leave the South-West for the Northern Part of the country to cool-off. So, I stayed and worked in the North for some time before I returned few years ago. Meanwhile, I was already aware that my daughter had been taken abroad for further studies. And I even made an attempt to be close to Otedola’s house but each time I went, Femi’s mum was always like “what do you want?” And I would tell her that I only came around to say hello and also to know if you are hearing from my daughter. But when it got to a point, I could no longer cope with not seeing my daughter, I sent a Reverend Father to the mum to beg her for me. And she was like I should never again in my life send any emissary to beg her again. And about 7 years ago, I told my younger brother that I felt I would need to take the matter to a relevant government authority to contest my right to see my daughter for me. But my brother said I should not go that far that he would go and talk to Femi man to man. Meanwhile, at that point I was always texting Femi asking about the well-being of my daughter, he would not reply any of the messages. There was even a day I went to his Zenon House in Victoria Island. He saw me face to face as he was driving in because I was standing at the gate. And when he got out of the vehicle, he looked back at me and I said “Femi, you are the one I have come to see”. But he rushed into the office and never came out till I left. I got there around 8am and left at 12 noon. I later dropped a note for him with his security guys stating that I did not come to fight him but to see him and ask after my daughter. The number that my younger brother had was no longer going through, so, he got another number of his from me which he called without any one picking it. And he decided to send him a text that why would he not allow his sister to see her daughter. And that he should redress the situation since the child belongs to him and his sister. But by the second or third day, he called his mum to go and warn Felix, that is my brother, that he was threatening his life. And the mum went straight to my dad’s house to fight him. That he should warn his son who was threatening the life of her son. My dad called my younger brother from Ijebu immediately asking why my brother would wade into the matter. And when my brother went to Ijebu some time later, he told anyone that cared to listen to go and tell Femi’s mum that he had come to town and that she should come and arrest him, maybe the Police would be able to resolve the matter once and for all. But after spending 3 days without seeing anyone come to arrest him, he returned to Lagos. So what happened after then? We decided to give them some time again before raising issues over the matter. In fact, at a point, I decided to go to Human Rights Advocacy Groups and I was already in Ikeja with pictures before my brother called me and plead that I should not do anything like that. Because no two opposing parties in a court case return as friends. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by kingingkinging: 7:53pm On Dec 24, 2012| So Mr Femi has been wearing white clothes since then. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by berem(f): 8:43pm On Dec 24, 2012| Is he the only one? Dem plenty o! I wonder what it signifies anyway. kingingkinging: So Mr Femi has been wearing white clothes since then. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by pDude(m): 9:13pm On Dec 24, 2012| These people sef. Always siring children out of wedlock. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by gen2briz(m): 9:18pm On Dec 24, 2012| I beg na wetin be the summary of the whole tory.... |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by olas2u: 9:19pm On Dec 24, 2012| |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by pDude(m): 9:20pm On Dec 24, 2012| gen2briz: I beg na wetin be the summary of the whole tory.... A long time ago, Otedollar gave a girl belle. Now the girl (woman) wants her own share of the dollar using the pretence that she is searching for her daughter Na the normal naija yama yama talk about you give me belle 30 yrs ago bla bla bla. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by Drdaps(m): 9:22pm On Dec 24, 2012| Nawao for dir rich man self.anyway d daugther should ve ask of her mother naw |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by kokoA(m): 9:22pm On Dec 24, 2012| Well, "whatever is done in the darkness will surely come out in the lightness" |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by alaoeri: 9:22pm On Dec 24, 2012| Guess the woman wanna claim some dollars before its too late. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by AtheistD(m): 9:24pm On Dec 24, 2012| She looks sort of old for a 21 yr old. Or is it me |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by wellmax: 9:24pm On Dec 24, 2012| How much does she want? |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by DonHummer(m): 9:25pm On Dec 24, 2012| what a confusin story...wil not judge till i hear 4rm the other side.....bt d woman no serious oo...hw can they prevent u 4rm seein ur daughter for about 20yrs....haba...the grl no dey go out? |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by aspabay(m): 9:25pm On Dec 24, 2012| gen2briz: I beg na wetin be the summary of the whole tory.... The lady is broke and wants some money. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by pDude(m): 9:26pm On Dec 24, 2012| There is something called 'football age' |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by funkybaby(f): 9:27pm On Dec 24, 2012| I feel this babymama is being economical with the truth. It is possible she 'dumped' the child with otedola's family since he refused marrying her. It was the norm back then. 26 years later, she's seeking custody or whatever. She should take him to court |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by Dee60: 9:29pm On Dec 24, 2012| Seeking custody of a 26 year old? A lady that has not known her for twenty four years! She has some work to do, real work? |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by AnOlAd: 9:30pm On Dec 24, 2012| This is super story.... Ghen Ghen.... See fowl yansh for outside.... Lobatan.... |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by ogtavia(m): 9:31pm On Dec 24, 2012| Story story..as if i care for femi otedola...i just feel for the woman and the child..btw..i only read the first ten lines...the thread is vexing me... |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by ibitomisi: 9:34pm On Dec 24, 2012| a beg what a pity. Thank God oooooo i enter 1st page |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by SlyIg(f): 9:35pm On Dec 24, 2012| I'm seriously waiting for the birth of my redeemer, Jesus Christ by 12am but not this long essay. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by aieromon(m): 9:36pm On Dec 24, 2012| Madam,have you asked if your daughter wants to be associated with you? Leave the man alone and move on as he never put a dime on your head. Thanks |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by babaearly(m): 9:37pm On Dec 24, 2012| ameboland, tatafoland or storystory land, which one is more deserving for nairaland change of name? like he is even the 'main' otedola, who gives a ? |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by andyprez(m): 9:37pm On Dec 24, 2012| Funny story! So what are we to gain from this cos as for me, the story only has a beginning with no end. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by coogar: 9:39pm On Dec 24, 2012| this woman is silly! was she dead in the last 24 yrs? now she wants custody of the child after more than 2 decades? would the child even want to associate with the mum after so many years? the woman needs deliverance. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by moneyhungry(m): 9:46pm On Dec 24, 2012| SUPER STORY *sips alomo* |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by andyanders: 9:52pm On Dec 24, 2012| Your statement is not fair at all. What if this lady in question is your blood sister? How will you feel having your own blood child and you are been denied access to that child? It is only here in Nigeria that he can do that and get away with it. In developed countries, he will suffer it and pay through his nose. Nonsense Otedola and his pranks. The picture is there as a proof. The lady is not asking him money but to see her daughter. Money cannot buy life. They must have used Ijebu juju to hypnotize the child and even brain wash her and show her another person as the mother. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by drnoel: 9:53pm On Dec 24, 2012| wait make una wait. U guys are not asking the right questions. Mr Femi Otedola, who happens to be an expert in denying pregnancies he is responsible for and is now also involved in Lawangate scandle happens to be a Billionaire. He sold stationaries then in 1986 and his family was well to do (not super rich). Pls someone tell me, when from 1986 to 2012 did this man move from someone from a well to do family selling stationaries to be an oil magnate billionaire. |Re: Otedola In Trouble With Love Child’s Mum by Haybayray: 9:57pm On Dec 24, 2012| Baseless and stale story. #yawns... 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Therapeutic irradiation of the brain is a common treatment modality for brain tumors, but can lead to impairment of cognitive function. Dendritic spines are sites of excitatory synaptic transmission and changes in spine structure and number are thought to represent a morphological correlate of altered brain functions associated with hippocampal dependent learning and memory. To gain some insight into the temporal and sub region specific cellular changes in the hippocampus following brain irradiation, we investigated the effects of 10 Gy cranial irradiation on dendritic spines in young adult mice. One week or 1 month post irradiation, changes in spine density and morphology in dentate gyrus (DG) granule and CA1 pyramidal neurons were quantified using Golgi staining. Our results showed that in the DG, there were significant reductions in spine density at both 1 week (11.9%) and 1 month (26.9%) after irradiation. In contrast, in the basal dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons, irradiation resulted in a significant reduction (18.7%) in spine density only at 1 week post irradiation. Analysis of spine morphology showed that irradiation led to significant decreases in the proportion of mushroom spines at both time points in the DG as well as CA1 basal dendrites. The proportions of stubby spines were significantly increased in both the areas at 1 month post irradiation. Irradiation did not alter spine density in the CA1 apical dendrites, but there were significant changes in the proportion of thin and mushroom spines at both time points post irradiation. Although the mechanisms involved are not clear, these findings are the first to show that brain irradiation of young adult animals leads to alterations in dendritic spine density and morphology in the hippocampus in a time dependent and region specific manner. Citation: Chakraborti A, Allen A, Allen B, Rosi S, Fike JR (2012) Cranial Irradiation Alters Dendritic Spine Density and Morphology in the Hippocampus. PLoS ONE 7(7): e40844. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0040844 Editor: Philip J. Tofilon, National Cancer Institute, United States of America Received: April 25, 2012; Accepted: June 14, 2012; Published: July 16, 2012 Copyright: © 2012 Chakraborti et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant R01 NS046051 and R01 CA133216. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Cranial irradiation is an essential therapeutic tool in the treatment of primary and secondary malignancies, but can be associated with a risk for adverse side effects, including cognitive dysfunction which can severely affect quality of life . Currently there are no successful long-term treatments or preventive strategies for radiation-induced cognitive impairments . Thus, a better understanding of the cellular and molecular factors that may lead to the development of such changes is essential for the management of this serious complication and for designing effective therapeutic strategies. The hippocampus plays a crucial role in learning and memory and considerable data exist showing that irradiation leads to impairment of those functions –. This structure is composed of anatomically distinct but functionally interrelated subfields consisting of different cell types, cell sizes, neural connectivity, electrophysiological properties and susceptibility to insult . The dentate gyrus (DG) is one of the two brain regions where neurogenesis takes place throughout life and has been shown to be particularly susceptible to radiation , . In contrast, neural degeneration and loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy or ischemic/anoxic episodes are seen more distinctively in the CA1 region than in any other brain area . There have also been reports suggesting differences in responses between the CA1 pyramidal cells and DG granule cells after given injurious stimulus , but there is a paucity of information regarding sub region specificity in the effects of irradiation on the hippocampus. The formation of long-term memory relies on modulation of synaptic connections in response to neuronal input. This plasticity requires coordinated activity-dependent synthesis of specific mRNAs and proteins that facilitate molecular and structural changes at the synapse . Dendritic spines are bulbous membrane projections that form the postsynaptic specializations of the vast majority of excitatory synapses in the central nervous system (CNS) and their structure and density are important factors in synaptic function . Spines exhibit a variety of shapes and sizes and are generally categorized into thin (long neck and small head), mushroom (well defined neck and very voluminous head) and stubby (no neck and stubby appearance) types , . Spine morphology can predict both spine stability and synaptic strength, as large spines tend to form strong synapses and small spines are generally transient and form weaker synapses , . Changes in dendritic spine density or structural reorganization of spines is thought to be important for cognitive processes such as learning and memory and dendritic spine remodeling has been correlated with changes in the strength of excitatory synaptic transmission . Several neurological and psychiatric disorders exhibit abnormal dendritic structure and/or alterations in dendritic spine morphology . However, little is known about the potential effects of brain irradiation on dendritic spines in the hippocampus in young adult animals. A better knowledge of how cranial irradiation affects dendritic spines in hippocampal sub regions could provide critical information regarding the mechanism of disruption of neural circuitry following radiation exposure. The purpose of the present study was to determine the temporal effects of cranial irradiation on spine density and morphology in the dendrites of granule neurons of dentate gyrus as well as pyramidal neurons of CA1 area of the hippocampus. Since pyramidal neurons typically consist of apical and basal dendrites which differ in their connectivities, biophysical characteristics and long term potentiation induction and expression mechanisms , , spine analyses were conducted separately in the apical and basal dendrites. To the best of our knowledge, no previous experiments have specifically addressed temporal and region specific effects of cranial irradiation on spine density and morphology in the hippocampus in young adult animals. Therefore, this was designed as a proof of concept study using a dose of irradiation that has been shown to cause hippocampal dependent cognitive impairment, so as to determine if changes in dendritic spines might offer a specific target for better understanding the effects of irradiation on cognition. The study was carried out in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. The protocol was approved by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). A total of 20 two month old male C57BL/6J mice (n = 5/group) were used for this study. Animals were purchased from a commercial vendor (Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME) and were group housed (5 mice/cage) throughout the study. Mice were maintained on a 12-h light-dark cycle and were provided food and water ad libitum. All efforts were made to minimize suffering of the animals. For irradiation, mice were anesthetized using an i.p injection of ketamine (70 mg/kg) and medetomidine (0.5 mg/kg). Mice were placed prone, 16.3 cm from a cesium-137 source (J.L. Shepherd & Associates, San Fernando, CA) and shielded with an iron collimator that limited the irradiation to a 1 cm wide vertical beam . The beam entered laterally, and to insure a uniform dose across the entire brain, half the dose was given from each side of the head. A single dose of 10 Gy was used because previous studies have shown that cognitive impairments, decreases in neurogenesis and decreases in the expression of the plasticity-related immediate early gene Arc were induced by this dose –. The total time to deliver 10 Gy was approximately 6 minutes. Unirradiated mice were anesthetized similarly to those that were irradiated. One week or 1 month post irradiation the animals were euthanized by cervical dislocation. For spine analyses, Golgi staining was performed using the FD Rapid Golgi Stain Kit (FD Neurotechnologies, Baltimore, MD) , , following the manufacturer’s guidelines. Briefly, freshly removed brains were immersed in a proprietary impregnation solution and stored at room temperature for 2 weeks in the dark. Next, the brains were transferred to a second impregnation solution and incubated for 48 hours at 4°C. Finally, the tissues was shipped to FD Neurotechnologies, where they were sectioned to a thickness of 120 µm, stained and then mounted on gelatin coated slides. The slides were sent back to UCSF for microscopic analyses. Analysis of Dendritic Spine Density and Spine Morphology Spine analyses were conducted blind to the experimental conditions on coded Golgi impregnated brain sections containing the dorsal hippocampus. Spines were examined on dendrites of DG granule neurons (Fig. 1A) as well as apical (stratum radiatum) and basal (stratum oriens) dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons (Fig. 1B). Figure 1. Representative images of Golgi-impregnated cells in the mouse hippocampus. (A) A dentate gyrus granule neuron and (B) a CA1 pyramidal neuron illustrating basal dendrites in the stratum oriens and apical dendrites in the stratum radiatum. Scale bar = 50 µm.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0040844.g001 The neurons that satisfied the following criteria were chosen for analysis in each of the experimental groups: i) presence of untruncated dendrites; ii) consistent and dark Golgi staining along the entire extent of the dendrites; and iii) relative isolation from neighboring neurons to avoid interference with analysis . Three-5 dendritic segments, each at least 15 µm in length , were analyzed per neuron, and 10–11 neurons were analyzed per brain. On the basis of morphology, spines were classified into the following categories: i) Thin: spines with a long neck and a visible small head; ii) Mushroom: big spines with a well-defined neck and a very voluminous head; and iii) Stubby: very short spines without a distinguishable neck and stubby appearance , , (Fig. 2). Figure 2. Representative images of spine morphological sub types. (A) Thin (B) Mushroom and (C) Stubby spines (arrows). Scale bar = 5 µm.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0040844.g002 To acquire images for spine analysis, the dendritic segments were imaged under brightfield illumination on a Zeiss Axioimager microscope with a 63x oil immersion objective. Spine analyses were based on the method of Margarinos et al . This method does not assess spine density in a 3 dimensional manner but focuses on spines that are parallel to the plane of section. Although the method may underestimate the the total number of spines, it facilitates a direct comparison of treatment groups when they are analyzed in an identical manner . Image J software was used to calculate linear spine density , which was presented as the number of spines per 10 µm of dendrite length. Data were expressed as Mean ± SEM. An unpaired two-tailed t-test with Welch’s correction was used to evaluate statistical differences between sham and irradiated groups. All statistical analyses were conducted using GraphPad Prism 5.0 software (La Jolla,CA), and p≤0.5 was considered significant. Changes in Dendritic Spine Density after Radiation Exposure In the DG, there were significant reductions in spine density at both 1 week (11.9%, p<0.05) and 1 month (26.9%, p<0.001) after irradiation (Fig. 3A & B). In contrast, in the basal dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons, irradiation resulted in a significant reduction (18.7%, p<0.001) in spine density only at 1 week post irradiation while changes observed at 1 month were not statistically significant (Fig. 3C & D). Irradiation did not significantly alter spine density in the CA1 apical dendrites at either time after irradiation (Fig. 3E & F). Figure 3. Irradiation affects dendritic spine density in the hippocampal DG and CA1 area. Brain irradiation induced time and region specific changes in the numbers of dendritic spines/10 µm in the DG granule neurons as well as pyramidal neurons in the CA1 region. The open bars represent unirradiated animals and the dark bars represent mice irradiated with 10 Gy of gamma rays. Each bar represents the mean value of 5 animals and error bars are SEM. *represents a p<0.05, and **represents p<0.001.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0040844.g003 Changes in Dendritic Spine Morphology after Radiation Exposure In the DG, 1 week after irradiation, there was a significant increase (9.6%, p<0.05) in the proportion of thin spines while at 1 month the difference was not statistically significant (Fig. 4A & B). On the other hand, the proportion of mushroom spines was significantly reduced at both 1 week (17%, p<0.05) and 1 month (39.5%, p<0.001) after irradiation (Fig. 4A & B). The proportion of stubby spines was significantly increased (34.1%, p<0.001) only at 1 month post irradiation while the changes observed earlier were not statistically significant (Fig. 4A & B). Figure 4. Irradiation affects dendritic spine morphology in the hippocampal DG and CA1 area. Brain irradiation induced time and region specific changes in the proportion of spine morphological sub types in the DG granule neurons as well as pyramidal neurons from the CA1 region. The open bars represent unirradiated animals and the dark bars represent mice irradiated with 10 Gy of gamma rays. Each bar represents the mean value of 5 animals and error bars are SEM. *represents a p<0.05, and **represents p<0.001.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0040844.g004 In the CA1 basal dendrites, irradiation significantly increased the proportion of thin spines at 1 week (11.7%, p<0.05) but no changes were observed at the later time point (Fig. 4C & D). On the other hand, significant reductions in the proportion of mushroom spines were observed at both 1 week (24.3%, p<0.001) and 1 month (15.7%, p<0.05) post irradiation (Fig. 4C & D). Although no significant differences were observed in the proportion of stubby spines between sham and irradiated group at 1 week, there were significant differences (23.1%, p<0.001) in the proportion of this spine subtype at 1month (Fig. 4C & D). Despite the fact that no changes in spine density were observed in the CA1 apical dendrites at either time point, there were significant differences in both thin and mushroom spine morphology between the sham and irradiated groups (Fig. 4E & F). Contrary to what was observed in DG and CA1 basal dendrites, there was a significant decrease in the proportion of thin spines at both 1 week (11.49%, p<0.001) and 1 month (13.2%, p<0.001), as well a significant increase in proportion of mushroom spines at 1 week (12.1%, p<0.05) and 1 month (25.3%, p<0.001) post irradiation (Fig. 4E & F). No significant differences were observed in the proportion of stubby spines between sham and irradiated group at either 1week or 1 month post irradiation (Fig. 4E & F). The present study demonstrated that brain irradiation altered spine density as well as the proportion of morphological subtypes in the dendrites of DG granule neurons and basal dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons in a time dependent manner. While there was a gradual decrease in spine density in the DG over time, spine density in the CA1 basal dendrites decreased at 1 week post irradiation with a trend toward recovery at 1 month. Additionally, in the CA1 apical dendrites, irradiation altered spine morphology without any change in spine density at both 1week and 1month post irradiation. To our knowledge, these results are the first to demonstrate that, in young adult mice, cranial irradiation affects dendritic spine density and morphology in the hippocampus in a temporal and region specific manner. The maintenance of normal brain function is dependent on the establishment and efficient maturation of synaptic circuits . The hippocampus plays a key role in learning and memory processes and is particularly susceptible to the effects of ionizing irradiation , . While irradiation has been shown to change the numbers of newly born neurons in the DG , data also exist showing changes associated with learning and memory that do not involve overt mature neuronal loss . This latter finding suggests that changes in structure and function of viable neuronal cells may play an important role in the development of cognitive deficits after irradiation, and highlights the potential importance of assessing critical structures such as dendritic spines. Dendritic spines are the primary recipients of excitatory input in the CNS, and changes in spine density and morphology can account for functional differences at the synaptic level . Spine morphology can predict both spine stability and synaptic strength and findings from in vivo models support the notion that structural plasticity of spines is related to learning and memory function , . Spines also compartmentalize Ca2+ and other signaling components conferring specificity to changes in synaptic efficacy and protecting neurons from excitotoxicity . In light of the multiple spine functions, pathological changes in spine number and structure may have significant consequences for brain function, as has been shown in studies of stress, malnutrition, toxins and drugs of abuse –. Golgi staining is a reliable and sensitive method for revealing the morphological details of individual neurons, especially dendritic spines . One drawback to this technique is that it cannot be effectively combined with other staining techniques . Because the goal of the present study was only to address spine density and morphology and not to identify other cell types, we selected this method over other available techniques for spine analysis. The analysis of Golgi stained neurons showed that radiation exposure led to a gradual decrease in spine density in the DG over time. In contrast, spine density in the CA1 basal dendrites decreased at 1 week post irradiation with a trend toward recovery at 1 month. The observed reductions in spine density might indicate early signs of neuronal injury in the hippocampus following irradiation and also suggest that there is a time dependent vulnerability of the two hippocampal sub regions following radiation exposure. A number of factors might account for the observed differences in spine density between the two hippocampal subregions. Numerous studies have demonstrated that spine density is regulated by glutamatergic transmission and glutamate receptor subtypes located on dendritic spine heads –. In addition, a series of in vitro studies have shown that N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors mediate the destabilization of filamentous actin (f-actin) associated with dendritic spine loss , . Although the effects of radiation on NMDA receptor dynamics on hippocampal sub-regions are not well understood, studies by Shi et al have shown differential changes in subunits of NMDA receptors in the hippocampal subfields following whole brain irradiation. Thus, it is tempting to speculate that the observed temporal differences in reduction in spine density between DG and CA1 basal dendrites may involve differential alterations of NMDA receptor mediated responses in these two areas following irradiation. Brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is another well characterized determinant of dendritic spine number and morphology . Regulation of BDNF and its receptor expression has been reported to be very sensitive to radiation in the hippocampus and such changes vary depending on time after irradiation . Therefore, it is also possible that radiation might differentially alter BDNF and its downstream signaling targets in the dendrites of dentate granule cells and CA1 basal dendrites which may account for the differential changes in spine density at these two regions as a function of time after irradiation. In our earlier studies using the same dose of radiation in the same strain of mice, we found increased numbers of activated microglia in the DG 1 week, which became significant at 2 months post irradiation . Therefore, the gradual decrease in spine density over time observed in the DG (Fig. 3) could be associated with an increase in microglial activation. Other investigators have recently shown that changes in dendritic spines are associated with alterations in microglia , an effect that may be associated with the release of soluble factors . Further studies are in progress to address the molecular mechanisms involved in the observed temporal differences in radiation induced alterations in spine density. In contrast to DG and CA1 basal dendrites, irradiation did not alter spine density in CA1 apical dendrites. Differential vulnerability between basal and apical dendrites due to exogenous or endogenous factors has been reported in the literature although the mechanisms involved are not clear. For instance, Santos et al reported that neonatal rats exposed repetitively to low doses of paroxon (a organophosphate-type cholinesterase inhibitor) lost dendritic spine selectively in basal dendrites with no changes in apical dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons. Moreover normal aging also results in decreases of the spine density on basal but not apical dendrites in C57BL/6 mice . Future studies will be required to evaluate the mechanistic basis of differential vulnerability in radiation induced reduction of spine density between CA1 basal and apical dendrites. One of the most remarkable features of dendritic spines is their morphological diversity . The three categories studied here appear to have different functional properties, including activity induced changes in intracellular calcium concentration, glutamate receptor levels and perhaps new versus well established memory processing . Additionally, dendritic spine morphology has also been reported to affect the diffusion and compartmentalization of membrane associated proteins and expression of α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionicacid (AMPA) receptors . Given this information, we assessed whether the proportions of each type of spine were altered in the DG and CA1 area following radiation exposure. Our data showed that in both DG and CA1 basal dendrites, spines characterized by the mushroom morphology were particularly affected by radiation exposure. Mushroom spines have larger postsynaptic densities which anchor more AMPA glutamate receptors and make these synapses functionally stronger . Mushroom spines are more likely to contain smooth endoplasmic reticulum, which can regulate calcium locally and spines that have larger synapses are also more likely to contain polyribosomes for local protein synthesis , . Thus, the loss of mushroom spines as seen here may have a more profound effect on neuronal function than the loss of the other types of spines. Gao et al has also recently reported that moderate traumatic brain injury in mice led to significant decrease in mushroom shaped spines indicating a reduction in number of synapses which was confirmed by synaptophysin staining. Whereas radiation exposure led to decrease in the fraction of mushroom spines, a marked increase in the proportion of stubby spines were observed in both DG and CA1 basal dendrites 1 month post irradiation. Although less is known about these stubby structures, they have been shown to predominate early in postnatal development and to increase in mature hippocampal slices after synaptic transmission was blocked . It has also been reported that dopamine receptors are located on the spine neck in the perisynaptic space and stubby spines that lack a neck likely have abnormal distributions of dopamine receptors in this space . It can be speculated that a marked increase in the proportion of stubby spines by radiation exposure might therefore lead to some alterations in dopaminergic signaling. Because radiation has been reported to affect dopaminergic processes in the brain , such changes may have long-term consequences for radiation induced cognitive changes. Despite the fact that no change in spine density was observed in the apical dendrites of CA1 neurons after irradiation, significant differences in thin and mushroom spine morphology were observed between the sham and irradiated groups. It is noteworthy that contrary to what was observed in DG and CA1 basal dendrites, irradiation led to significant decreases in the percentages of thin spines after irradiation and a significant increase in mushroom spines. The length of the spine neck seems to be a key regulator of spinodendritic Ca2+ signaling and of the transmission of membrane potentials . Thin spines maintain the structural flexibility to enlarge and stabilize after long term potentiation and can accommodate new, enhanced or recently weakened inputs, making them candidate ‘learning spines’ , . By decreasing the proportion of learning spines, radiation may therefore decrease a neuron’s ability to form new synapses and changes in activity in the CA1 apical dendrites. Age related reductions in thin spines have been observed in rhesus monkeys, with cognitive performance inversely proportional to thin spine volume . Although the reason for the corresponding increase in mushroom spines in these dendrites is not clear, it might represent a homeostatic mechanism to compensate for the reduction of the learning spines. The functional implications of the observed radiation effects on dendritic spines at the two hippocampal sub regions are not yet clear. Additionally, if or how these radiation-induced alterations may relate to the behavioral , , cellular , and Arc changes observed at the same dose and/or time used here, remains to be determined. In conclusion, to the best of our knowledge the present report provides the first evidence that in young adult mice, cranial irradiation causes alteration in spine density and morphology in the hippocampus in a time dependent and region specific manner. Since loss of dendritic spines or structural reorganizations of spines play an important role in learning and memory, the observed changes suggest a disruption of neural circuitry that might play a role in radiation induced cognitive impairment. The authors would like to thank Kirsten Eilertson, Ph.D at the Gladstone Bioinformatics Core for guidance with statistical analysis. Conceived and designed the experiments: AC JRF SR. Performed the experiments: AC AA BA. Analyzed the data: AC JRF. 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As Corinth is now the first city of Greece, so of old it prided itself on many temporal advantages, and more than all the rest, on excess of wealth. And on this account one of the heathen writers entitled the place "the rich." For it lies on the isthmus of the Peloponnesus, and had great facilities for traffic. The city was also full of numerous orators, and philosophers, and one." I think, of the seven called wise men, was of this city. Now these things we have mentioned, not for ostentation's sake, nor to make, a display of great learning: (for indeed what is there in knowing these things?) but they are of use to us in the argument of the Epistle. Paul also himself suffered many things in this city; and Christ, too, in this city appears to him and says, (Act. xviii. 10), "Be not silent, but speak; for I have much people in this city:" and he remained there two years. In this city [Acts xix. 16. Corinth put here, by lapse of memory, for Ephesus]. also the devil went out, whom the Jews endeavoring to exorcise, suffered so grievously. In this city did those of the magicians, who repented, collect together their books and burn them, and there appeared to be fifty thousand. (Acts xix. 18. arguriou omitted.) In this city also, in the time of Gallio the Proconsul, Paul was beaten before the judgment seat. The devil, therefore, seeing that a great and populous city had laid hold of the truth, a city admired for wealth and wisdom, and the head of Greece; (for Athens and Lacedaemon were then and since in a miserable state, the dominion having long ago fallen away from them;) and seeing that with great readiness they had received the word of God; what does he do? He divides the men. For he knew that even the strongest kingdom of all, divided against itself, shall not stand. He had a vantage ground too, for this device in the wealth, the wisdom of the inhabitants. Hence certain men, having made parties of their own, and having become self-elected made themselves leaders of the people, and some sided with these, and some with those; with one sort, as being rich; with another, as wise and able to teach something out of the common. Who on their part, receiving them, set themselves up forsooth to teach more than the Apostle did: at which he was hinting, when he said, "I was not able to speak unto you as unto spiritual" (ch. iii. 1.); evidently not his inability, but their infirmity, was the cause of their not having been abundantly instructed. And this, (ch. iv. 8.) "You have become rich without us," is the remark of one pointing that way. And this was no small matter, but of all things most pernicious; that the Church should be torn asunder. And another sin, too, besides these, was openly committed there: namely, a person who had had intercourse with his step-mother not only escaped rebuke, but was even a leader of the multitude, and gave occasion to his followers to be conceited. Wherefore he says, (ch. 5. 2.) "And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned." And after this again, certain of those who as they pretended were of the more perfect sort, and who for gluttony's sake used to eat of things offered unto idols, and sit at meat in the temples, Were bringing all to ruin. Others again, having contentions and strifes about money, committed unto the heathen courts (tois exwqen sicadthriois) all matters of that kind. Many persons also wearing long hair used to go about among them; whom he orders to be shorn. There was another fault besides, no trifling one; their eating in the churches apart by themselves, and giving no share to the needy. And again, they were erring in another point, being puffed up with the gifts; and hence jealous of one another; which was also the chief cause of the distraction of the Church. The doctrine of the Resurrection, too, was lame (ekwleue) among them: for some of them had no strong belief that there is any resurrection of bodies, having still on them the disease of Grecian foolishness. For indeed all these things were the progeny of the madness which belongs to Heathen Philosophy, and she was the mother of all mischief. Hence, likewise, they had become divided; in this respect also having learned of the philosophers. For these latter were no less at mutual variance, always, through love of rule and vain glory contradicting one another's opinions, and bent upon making some new discovery in addition to all that was before. And the cause of this was, their having begun to trust themselves to reasonings. They had written accordingly to him by the hand of Fortunatus and Stephanas and Achaicus, by whom also he himself writes; and this he has indicated in the end of the Epistle: not however upon all these subjects, but about marriage and virginity; wherefore also he said, (ch. vii. 1.) "Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote" etc. And he proceeds to give injunctions, both on the points about which they had written, and those about which they had not written; having learnt with accuracy all their failings. Timothy, too, he sends with the letters, knowing that letters indeed have great force, yet that not a little would be added to them by the presence of the disciple also. Now whereas those who had divided the Church among themselves, from a feeling of shame lest they should seem to have done so for ambition's sake, contrived cloaks for what had happened, their teaching (forsooth) more perfect doctrines, and being wiser than all others; Paul sets himself first against the disease itself, plucking up the root of the evils, and its offshoot, the spirit of separation. And he uses great boldness of speech: for these were his own disciples, more than all others. Wherefore he saith (ch. ix. 2.) "If to others I be not an Apostle, yet at least I am unto you; for the seal of my apostleship are ye." Moreover they were in a weaker condition (to say the least of it) than the others. Wherefore he says, (ch. iii. 1, 2. oude for oute). "For I have not spoken unto you as unto spiritual; for hitherto you were not able, neither yet even now are ye able." (This he says, that they might not suppose that he speaks thus in regard of the time past alone.) However, it was utterly improbable that all should have been corrupted; rather there were some among them who were very holy. And this he signified in the middle of the Epistle, where he says, (ch. iv. 3, 6.) "To me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you:" and adds, "these things I have in a figure transferred unto myself and Apollos." Since then from arrogance all these evils were springing, and from men's thinking that they knew something out of the common, this he purges away first of all, and in beginning says, Source. Translated by Talbot W. Chambers. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 12. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/220100.htm>. Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.

I first discovered the Planter’s Inn on my honeymoon and John and I have been back at least a half dozen times since. A member of Relais & Chateaux, it is located in the heart of the historic district and is a short walk from all my favorite restaurants. The inn’s own restaurant, The Peninsula Grill is also a must. Like the lobby and the gracious parlor, it was decorated by noted Charleston designer Amelia Handegan and features walls covered in glimmering oyster colored silk velvet, 19th century oils, and the chicest chandeliers ever. Everyone looks stunning in that room and the food is pretty stunning too. Chef Graham Dailey recently took over from founding chef Robert Carter and he hasn’t missed a beat. Tuck into the bourbon glazed Berkshire pork chop with cider braised collards or sit in the jewel box of a bar and have oysters on the half shell with champagne or to-die-for seared foie gras with duck barbecue and peach jam on a black pepper biscuit. Heaven. All the rooms have custom-made four poster beds and they’re pretty heavenly too. Sean Brock is one of the South’s—indeed, the country’s—hottest chefs right now. He got his start working with the aforementioned Robert Carter at The Peninsula Grill, but he made his name at McCrady’s, the restaurant that the New York Times’ Sam Sifton called “the best place to eat outside New York City.†Last year Brock won the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southeast and he also opened Husk, a restaurant devoted to all things Southern. If it doesn’t come from the South, it’s not on the plate, and Brock means business—until he found an olive oil from Texas, he didn’t cook with it. Now he’s growing his own olive trees. The rules may be stringent, but they pay off. On our first night in the city, our dinner (actually, they call it “supperâ€) at Husk was so good, we begged for a table for lunch the next day. At dinner, Brock spoiled us rotten and sent out fried chicken skins with Husk hot sauce and honey (finally, someone who acknowledges why we really eat fried chicken), amazing (and amazingly fresh) Caper’s Inlet Blade oysters, and a tasting of the South’s finest country hams with housemade pickles. My main course was Heritage Pork with smoky butter beans and field peas with cornbread puree, a dish much like the one pictured above. The bar is in a separate building and is a cool place to wait for a table, or to try the ham tasting with some equally fine bourbons. Also not to miss: McCrady’s bar which features a different daily menu of what may be the best bar snacks in the world. We had some seriously inspired General Tso’s sweetbreads on a stick, crispy lamb ribs and perfect devilled eggs. Brock is a Charleston treasure, as well as an incredibly nice guy. Second row, from left: You gotta love a bar whose motto is Drink Proper and Speak Easy. The Gin Joint serves great snacks, a few full plates, and an excellent Sunday breakfast (from 11 to 3) but they’re really all about the drinks. The owners are Joe and MariElena Raya and their vision is to “bring back the pre-prohibition era where cocktails were true to their name of being a stimulating liquid to awaken’s one self like the early morning crows of a rooster.†The Blackberry Fizz, pictured above, features fresh blackberries, Gosling’s Dark rum, lemon, demerara sugar and sparkling wine, and certainly fits the bill. I am also wild for the bartender’s classic Old Fashioned. When I met my good buddy Dave DiBenedetto, the new editor-in-chief of Garden & Gun, at The Gin Joint for a drink, his old fashioned was made with Wild Turkey, mine with Mount Gay rum, and both had enormous, almost hand-crafted ice cubes. Click here to see Joe making the Blackberry Fizz, a video set to one of my favorite songs ever: Billy Joe Shaver’s “Georgia on a Fast Train.†Heirloom Books joined Taigan almost as soon as it opened its doors in King Street, and I have since grown to love the store and its three very cool owners, Carlye Jane Dougherty, Bryan Lewis, and Brad Norton. The store is entirely devoted to “the literature of food†and has thousands of titles, from vintage Southern cookbooks to current tomes like Suzanne Goin’s excellent Sunday Suppers at Lucques, a book I reach for constantly. They also host fun food events, as in their own Sunday Suppers with noted regional chefs, and—I’m proud to say—my very own book signing and Sunday afternoon sipping party. Pictured above is the aforementioned Garden & Gun editor Dave DiBenedetto drinking a delicious cocktail made with Hendrick’s gin and Small Batch Tonic from Charleston’s own Jack Rudy Cocktail Company. Jack Rudy belongs to the totally adorable and talented mixologist Brooks Reitz, the bar manager at Charleston’s terrific Fig restaurant. He was on hand mixing the drinks, which were served with some very fine edibles including Callie’s Charleston Biscuits. Carlye Jane says she hopes to start selling both Callie’s and Jack Rudy’s on Taigan soon and I’ve convinced Brooks to start creating some cocktails exclusively for Fetch in the coming months. Everyone should visit Charleston, again and again, but if you can’t get there soon, we’ll endeavor to bring it to you.

Twin Grammy and Academy Awards winner A.R. Rahman is a firm believer in the amalgamation of technology and talent. The maestro asserts that the Indian music industry is reaping the benefits of digitization, contrary to the notion that technology has negative effects. Set to enthrall audiences in Kolkata - the first city on his month-long Rahmanishq tour that begins on Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - Rahman is in favour of digitization sweeping the music industry. He asserts that it has not only made music of all forms accessible to listeners but has also simplified the process of making music for composers. "Hordes of music purists love to spend endless hours going on and on about how the age of digital music has completely ruined the art form and that real music only exists in small, underground scenes," Rahman said. "However, the reality stands that thanks to these technological breakthroughs, for both the music fan and the music maker, the creative process and the act of listening to music are now easier, less constrained and more accessible than ever before," Rahman noted. "We are living in a society that is dominated by the digital age. So it is a natural progression that almost every element beautifully syncs together. We need to move beyond album covers," he observed. Touring through Kolkata, Visakhapatnam, Jaipur and Ahmedabad from October 1 to 27, 2013 Rahmanishq will give fans a chance to experience Rahman at his best - musically and technologically. A blend of hits spanning two decades will be belted out to spectators during a three-hour format. "The concert capitalizes on innovative never-seen-before technology, so that the audience can be overwhelmed with such knowhow at every stage of the concert...for an audience that will range from teenagers to senior citizens. The music is a reflection of two different generations," said Rahman. Moreover, each city will have something different to look forward to from the versatile artist. "For Jaipur, I will bring in an element that highlights royalty..for Ahmedabad I will bring in an element that highlights folk dance..for Kolkata I will bring an element that highlights literature and for Vizag, I will bring in an element that highlights mythology." At ease on the stage as well as in the recording studio, the Padma Bhushan recipient noted that in India, there is a "considerable gap" that needs to be bridged to be at par with the global live-act scene. Banking on the "professional channelization" of the enormous talent pool in the country, Rahman envisaged an independent music industry like the film industry. He reckoned film music "is going to be one of the biggest industries in the world." "In India, we have a pool of talent which requires professional channelization to make this industry as colossal and independent as the film industry. While India has singers in every street, many of them performing the Carnatic, or classical Indian music variety, the future lies in Indian cinema." In praise of youngsters making it big in the industry, the prolific composer, however, was wary of the "congestion" that has crept in. "It's great to see many young guns taking the lead and creating music that was unknown at one point of time. There's enough room for all," said Rahman, who insists on singers having a distinct identity. He said, "So with changing lifestyle, music is also revolutionizing to connect with the audience. I feel there's congestion. Just anybody can sing and it's done just like a fad rather than with dedication. Songs don't have an identity and you feel who just sang that song? He sounds like someone else." Loved by audiences for juxtaposing different musical styles, Rahman, who became the first Indian to win the Golden Globe Award in 2009 - for best original musical score in Danny Boyle's movie Slumdog Millionaire - prefers to treat music as a collaboration between Indian and western styles, instead of distinct entities. "There's nothing controversial in merging two musical styles as long as it is appealing to the ears. Music for me is a merger of styles from two different worlds, East and West, and not as separate classifications. In fact, I would like to look at Hollywood and Bollywood being great learning platforms, with each industry teaching me a novel chapter," he clarified. "In India, we love melodies in the background of scenes. In the West there is a sense that soundtracks should not distract, and hence there is a greater preference for ambient sounds and plain chords. I find myself stuck between the traditional and modern styles of music."

James and the Giant Peach is 50 years old. In the story his parents die a violent death and James escapes abusive relatives. Why was Roald Dahl so dark? There's a perception that children's literature involves endless picnics where the strawberry jam and lashings of ginger beer never run out. But Roald Dahl pursued a different path, satisfying children's appetite for the violent, greedy and disgusting.

Ibrahim Eltouhamy is the Arabic Language Fellow from the American University in Cairo. He holds a B.A in English Literature from the University of Benha and a diploma in translation from Cairo university. In 2009-2010, he was an Arabic language assistant at the University of Pennsylvania where he began his graduate studies. He is currently doing an MA at the American university in Cairo in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language. Alumni Recitation Hall 105 Education / Degrees: B.A. from the university of Benha, Egypt (2007) Diploma in Translation from Cairo university (2007)

Can anybody help in identifying the maker of this center door body by the # stamped in the floor board on the passenger side? Yep, that's the body number. It appears that your body was made same as mine, in Des Moines, IA. I don't know what the A signifies. I see your body is a '22. You car must have been made in late '21 or early in '22. Mine was made in July of '22 with engine #6,290,xxx and the body number A33059 stamped in the same location. Although I have seen several Centerdoor bodies of varying years without this number stamp, I have only seen this stamp on 1922 Centerdoor bodies built in Des Moines. Oops, I may have made that sound confusing. The jury is still out on whether the number was put on when the bodies were built or when the cars were assembled at the Des Moines, IA branch. I'd love to research this at the Benson Library some time. I was told the there were two outside manufacturers of '22 Centerdoor bodies. The easiest way to tell them apart is at the front corner near the firewall. One style comes to a rather smooth point and the other is stepped. Andy Loso, who posts here on occasion has done more research into that than I have and he's got a couple of nice photos showing the difference. He'll probably post them in a day or so. This car has all the features of the last body style made but does not have the original engine. It has a 21 engine and is titled a 21. I know the body was pulled out of a barn in 1960 and put onto a different chassis. Are you determining my body is an early 22 because it has a lower number than yours and could it be as early as late 21? I have those pictures somewhere, but they are from Hal Davis, I believe, they are not mine. One is a Fischer Body and the other is a Wadsworth. I believe the Wadsworth is smooth and the Fischer has the inset. If the search function on this forum would ever work for me, I would do some digging and pull it up. I believe Fischer was in Des Moines, IA; but maybe it was Wadsworth? Hopefully, Hal will pipe in and give the necessary info. Our Centerdoor, has the smooth front and no body number, that I can find, yet. History of Wadsworth, including centerdoor: History of Fisher:http://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/f/fisher/fisher.htm Welcome to the forum. From your profile it appears you have just begun posting recently. But it also appears you have several Ts so you have probably been into them for a while? I’m not sure why Eric Hylen picked 1922 for your body – but that could easily be correct or off only by a year or so. IF the outside door handles are the original ones for the body – if they are “T” handle they were used 1919-1920 and if they are an “L” handle they were used 1922-1923 according to Bruce McCalley’s book “Model T Ford” page 293. Additionally on page 294 he has under a picture of an early 1922 Centerdoor, “The front door on this 1922 Sedan still has the window strap. This car was made in early Feb 1922; later in the year the “lever and notch” system replaced the straps in the doors and front quarter windows. The door pull rail is typical 1916 through early 1922.” From the pictures you posted we can see the right front side window has the “lever and notch” window system. Also your door does not have the typical 1916-1922 door pull rail but has a much narrower one about 1/6 the length of the 1916-early 1922 cars. Note – Bruce also shares there probably was some overlap when both style window lifts (strap and lever) were being produced. On page 293 he states, “The metal covering over the window frames, etc., appeared in 1921 on some [some] production, with the older type (bar painted wood) being made at the same time. Whether the metal covers appeared before the change in the window lifts, or at the same time is unknown to the author but the parts books seem to indicate the covers came first.” Bruce has similar statements in his online encyclopedia at: http://mtfca.com/encyclo/Cdoors.htm Recommend taking a look under the rear seat at the seat frame. Sometime you will find a body number and/or body tag with a number and/or letter. There is a Model T Ford Centerdoor group that is attempting to get started. Recommend you see: http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/80257/95947.html?1245512471 and click on Trevor Davis’blue name to open his profile. Then go to the bottom of his profile and click on the “send private message.” He would love to hear from you and any other Centerdoor owners. I have tried a couple of times to make sure I know which body maker Fisher or Wadsworth has the indent and which body maker does not have the indent. See: http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/29/27255.html where Trevor Davis comments on his Wadsworth body number W46149 which has the indent at the bottom of the front cowl pillar. Note Les Schybert in that same posting also has a Wadsworth body and that it also has the indent on the cowl. There is a good photo of his body number – and where it was found (lift up the rear seat cushion and look down on the wood seat frame that hold the cushion. It normally would be on the front wooden rail. Based on that review – I think the indented pillar goes with the Wadsworth body -- so I have posted a "corrected" version of the photo below. But again – I am only reviewing this in my spare time and the sample size is about two. Below is my corrected version that shows the indent on the Wadsworth. If anyone has additional information supporting or correcting that – please let us know. You have a great looking Centerdoor. Please take lots of photos before changing anything. Also Joe Fellin did a 9 part or so series from Jul/Aug 2006 to Jul/Aug 2008 on the restoration of his Centerdoor. His car also had the window latches and it had the metal moldings over the window sills. One other clue I have wanted to look at but just haven’t found the time. I suspect the rear window size is different between the two bodies. Would someone take the time and verify if that guess is correct or not? Hap Tucker 19l5 Model T Ford touring cut off and made into a pickup truck and l907 Model S Runabout Sumter SC. OOPS, I new I was close, Hal Davis wasn't my guy. Hap thanks for the correction. I need to print this out and glue it to my brain to keep it straight. We have a 22 and have the bail or loop type handles on our Centerdoor. A friend of mine just down the road recently bought one and his has the same door handles. He bought his fairly complete, although the roof is rotted of and the interior has almost no upholstery left. As things rotted off they fell inside. His wood is fairly complete and can be used for patterns. Inside the body he found all the metal pieces and laying amongst them was a metal tag, appears to be a body tag, but could you look this over and see what you think? Attached photo below, it is rusty and hard to read, but it is a series of numbers followed by a letter 'B' follwed by a space and then an 'F'. His is a smoothed sided body. The engine appears to be a replacement, no Ford markings only by what appears to be a K W in front of the water outlet. Not to derail this thread, but, Hap, I have a relatively unmolested '25 coupe and just noticed the other day that the body number is stamped into the wood on the left side just inside of the door. If you would like, I will try to see what it is. Dave My body must be a Fisher but as stated before the body number is on the floor board inside the passenger door. ( A10072) Here are some more pictures of the car. More PhotosEarly muffler DIfferent upholstery on passenger seat Yes, so we don’t highjack the Centerdoor thread – please send the photo / information about the 1925 coupe body number to my e-mail [just click on my blue name at the beginning of this posting or any other one of mine – the 3rd line down is my regular e-mail address. Please limit the size of any one e-mail to under 10 megs so it will make it through]. Also – please “cc” Dave Sosnoski [ click on http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/80257/96950.html?1246406969 and second entry has his name you can click there and it brings up his e-mail. I prefer not to post other folk’s e-mails on the forum. Or – just e-mail me and I will forward it to Dave. He is writing a neat book on the 1924-1925 Model T Ford Coupes. ] I have also sent you an e-mail asking you to let me know if front wheels on your TT are Kelsey 88 or Firestone or other some other make of wheel and rim. I looked but I did not see where I had filed that answer – but I may have asked you that before. I need to get more organized!. ******* Back to the Centerdoor thread: ******** For Dennis Fleming – thanks for posting the pictures. If you have a chance please click on my name and send me some high resolution photos – especially of the rear seat frame. I would like to zoom in and invert the colors etc. to see if I can find any numbers etc. Often it doesn’t help – but there have a been a couple of times when I looked and found something by zooming in and inverting the colors. What a great find you have -- lots of history there! Again I would encourage you to take lots of photos. For Dennis Fleming and Eric Hylen, Some thinking out loud – or at least while typing: 1. I started off 90% sure, dropped it to 80% then 70% but the more I think about it the more I realize – now I’m just guessing that the “Des Moines and the number underneath it” are the Branch Assembly number rather than the body number. Hopefully we can add a few other pieces to the puzzle and show that I was lucky and guessed correctly or that I guessed wrong. Either way – I would just hope we can clarify it some more. Eric – if you remember – did you look under the rear seat on the wooden seat frame and verify if there was or was not a body tag and/or number stamped into the wood seat frame? If you don’t remember and if you still have contact with the current owner of the car (I think I have their name in my files – so I could probably find it also) would you please ask him to lift the rear seat cushion and check for a number. Dennis – as requested above – please send me a higher resolution photo when you have a chance of your rear seat frame area. Just click on my blue name on this post and my e-mail is the 3rd line down. 2. Ok – I’m back up to 95% sure the Des Moines number is an Assembly Plant Number and not the original manufacture’s body number. Rationale: 2.a. I was digging for additional information and re-read Robert Kiefaber ‘s Sat 5 Apr 2008 10:24 Pm e-mail where he wrote: “On my other Centerdoor the body # is: Des Moines A24765. I believe this one to be a Fisher body because of no ridge on the metal pillar. Also this car is narrower than my other car. This keeps in line with Bruce's book stating that the Wadsworth was a little wider than the Fisher body.” [note page 559 Bruce McCalley’s “Model T Ford” under Feb 20, 1919 Ford Factory Letter : General Letter No. 347, 4th paragraph, describes the Wadsworth as slightly wider than the Fisher at the instrument panel board. A single board was provided and would be trimmed to fit the Fisher bodies. See: http://mtfca.com/encyclo/doc19.htm Feb 20, 1919 para 4 ] 2.b. As complex as the Centerdoor bodies were and as few were produced/made into Model Ts, it might be possible for one of the companies to have a plant in Des Moines to supply the Ford Assembly plant. But it is really unlikely that there would be enough demand for both Wadsworth and Fisher to have separate plants in Des Moines to produce that body style. On page 463 of Bruce McCalley’s “Model T Ford” and also on his “Comprehensive Model T Ford Encyclopedia” [ http://mtfca.com/encyclo/mccalley.htm ] he shows Des Moines producing 2,643 Tudors(Centerdoors) in Calendar year 1921 and 3,756 in Calendar year 1922. [Note the new style Tudor was introduced around Jun 1923 so the production for 1921 & 1922 would have been all Centerdoors.] 2.c. At: http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/6/123.html is a posting about a 1923 FORDOR (not Centerdoor) with a Des Moines stamp. (Note the “s” was now on Des Moines. Also The poster believed the “F” was for Fisher – but I don’t have time to find out when Ford stopped purchasing bodies from Fisher. I believe it was around the time that General Motors became the primary share holder of Fisher and/or when General Motors became the owner of Fisher. One of those two dates/times. 2.d. Doing a simple search on Fisher Body Company and Des Moines was not helpful. Additional research to confirm that neither Wadsworth nor Fisher had a body plant in Des Moines would raise my confidence level from 95% to 100% that the number shown with the Des Moines was an Assembly Branch number rather than a body number. For Andy Loso – 1. One of the problems many of us have is keeping track of “who is who” on the board. It is so much easier when we have a face, car, and someone we have talked with or worked with. That is one of the reasons I have that long signature – so folks can associate the 1915 cut off with me. 2. That very well may be the Fisher body tag that came on your friends Centerdoor. I would want to obtain a few more samples before I said it clearly was or was not. At this point I think that is the only one I have a picture of. . As more folks look into their Centerdoor puzzle pieces hopefully we will be able to make more sense out of what was written and the surviving cars we have to look at today as well as the pictures that have survived even though the cars went to the smelter to help support WWII. Ford often did some unexpected things. For example we know of a six cylinder Ford Model S Roadster that was sold at auction by the Henry Ford Museum. In the case of that car – it appears to have been test bed for that engine which used three sets of the cast in pairs Model N, R, S, & SR cylinders. That is based on some additional literature that was available. It really does exist (–the six cylinder engine and chassis was rebodied with a Model N body.) But it clearly was NOT a standard Ford production vehicle. 3. In the case of the bail style handles on the 1922 Centerdoors. I’m sure there is a reason for that also. Perhaps it came from the factory that way? Or perhaps someone changed the door handles out in the distant past? Or perhaps the bodies were swapped from an older chassis to a new chassis? Or perhaps a dealer had it as a replacement body and installed it on a later chassis and sold it? If only the cars could talk – what stories they could tell. But in some cases the other parts on the car can help lead to discovering one or several likely reasons the car is the way it currently was found. As noted above – on page 291 of Bruce’s book – David Simmering’s Feb 1922 Centerdoor still had the early “strap style window holders” and painted body wood rather than the metal covers over the outside window sills. So just because it doesn’t line up with what is considered typical – doesn’t necessarily mean it was not sold new that way. Thanks to all of you for reading and sharing on this and the other threads. None of us has all the puzzle pieces and as each one offers their questions, their observations, their findings, etc. the closer we come to finding out how things were made or how things work etc. Thank you all for contributing. And if anyone has additional Des Moines stamps (I thought there was a very original touring car with one of those?) or Fisher or Wadsworth Centerdoor information please let us know. Hap Tucker 1915 Model T Ford touring cut off and made into a pickup truck and 1907 Model S Runabout. Sumter SC. I identified your car as a '22 model based on features that I saw in your photos. The Des Moines number stamp simply corroberated that was built a bit before mine was. It's easy to believe that it was made in the latter part of '21. As youv'e noted, your car has all the fetures of a '22. The steel clad window post and "ratchet" window lift mechanisms are dead give aways. Thanks for posting the additional photos. Enjoy your car. Although I have no regrets about trading my Centerdoor for my '14 Touring, I did really enjoy owning it and do miss it on occasion (especially on our annual Christmas Day drive). You're amazing. Thanks for the links to postings of other body styles with the Des Moines stamping. I agree with your assesment that these were, most likely, an assmbly plant marking as opposed to a body manufacturer's mark. I never found a body number under the rear seat of my Centerdoor. But, I keep in touch with the current owner. In fact, I built the motor that he used in the '14 Touring that he drove on the O2O Tour. I'm sure I'll ask him to have a look for a a number or tag under the seat cushion next time I visit with him. Which gentleman are you talking about on the O2O Tour. I was on that trip in our 13 touring . Thanks for all the great info on centerdoors. I will take some better pictures of the rear seat frame tomorrow. I will email them to you.

Rhodes Scholars are women and men drawn from diverse backgrounds in many countries. They are leaders in extra-curricular activities, committed to promoting the public good. In Oxford, as well as focusing on their studies and related academic and professional activities, Rhodes Scholars are active in their colleges, departments, University clubs and societies, and their local, national, and international communities. Many take part in sporting, musical, theatrical, political, religious, and other activities. They are also deeply engaged in community service activities in Oxford and around the world, and the advocacy of causes they believe important for the world’s future. The photo gallery below illustrates a selection of Rhodes Scholar activities: Current Scholars in Oxford organise many groups and activities themselves, including those featured below. The listing of a group does not reflect a formal endorsement by the Rhodes Trust, nor do any opinions stated by them necessarily reflect those held by the Trust. They are independent groups, but are expected to demonstrate a sense of inclusivity and the scope for dialogue, debate and a diversity of views. Rhodes Scholars are involved in the annual Global Scholars Symposium and associated Global Scholar Network. The Global Scholars Symposium (GSS) aims to generate dialogue between prominent world leaders and bright scholars. They believe the largest and most persistent global issues require a commitment to work across disciplines and generations to connect current expertise with ideas for tomorrow. In line with this mission, the Global Scholars Network (GSN) is a developing initiative aiming to promote a community of scholars dedicated to sustained action on these issues. The Black Rhodes Scholars Association (BAR) is committed to creating an environment that encourages a diversity of perspectives, identities, and experiences, in which we facilitate dialogue about issues concerning Black peoples around the world. We aim to foster unity among Black Rhodes Scholars, both past and present. Also, we aspire to impact the Oxford community at large through service, advocacy and effective representation on University commissions that promote racial awareness, equality and diversity. We host a welcome event at the start of each academic year, meet termly for themed discussions, and every October, host events that celebrate the history and traditions of Black peoples for Black History Month. Past events include lectures on black leadership in the 21st century by Ghanaian President John Kufuor and entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, and a Black women’s forum. All are welcome to join the organisation or attend events. For more information, or to discuss the experiences of Black Scholars, email Rhiana Gunn-Wright or Ayodele Odutayo. Since 2006, women Rhodes Scholars at Oxford have been meeting as part of a lunchtime series to share their personal stories and reflect on being women scholars. Established under the leadership of former Rhodes Trustee and Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor Elizabeth Fallaize, Rhodes Women have created mentoring opportunities for female scholars in Oxford, organised seminars on issues such as building a career in academia and dealing with gender in fieldwork experiences. If you would like to get involved with Rhodes Women's activities, or would like to find out more, please contact Joanne Cave or Tara Paterson. Oxford is generally considered to be a safe and welcoming place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, and other sexual orientation and gender indentity minority students. The Rhodes community is no exception. LGBTQ Scholars have an active, convivial association with a reception at the beginning of the year, informal gatherings and discussions on current affairs, events with guests like Justice Edwin Cameron of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and a listserv for past and present members of the community. For more information about the group or LGBTQ life at Oxford, email Patrick Bateman, Spencer Lenfield, or Danielle Leonard, or ask Rhodes House to put you in touch. For a video prepared by current and recent Rhodes Scholars for the 'It Gets Better' campaign, click here. The Rhodes Social Impact Group (RSIG) aims to provide a dynamic and supportive community that nurtures and inspires Scholars engaged in, or interested in, activities with social impact. The group’s official launch event took place in Trinity 2011 and offered Scholars the opportunity to learn about service going on in the Rhodes community and connect with others sharing similar social impact interests. RSIG also organises various showcase of Scholars’ work, interests, and passions, highlighting different projects and groups in which Scholars have actively participated. Upcoming events for Hilary term include discussions around gender-based violence and identity politics. For more information, please contact Mubeen Shakir. The Rhodes Science Group provides a forum for Scholars, scientists and non-scientists alike, to talk and learn about interdisciplinary issues in science. The goals of the group are to: give scholars an opportunity to learn about each others' research areas, give scholars an opportunity to talk about science to a broader audience, and consider larger issues through the lens of various scientific disciplines. We invite scholars to speak about their area of interest or expertise at our discussion sessions. Sessions cover wide-ranging topics; from focusing on the role of technology in education and learning, to a consideration of cancer genetics. The range also spans themes such as string theory, psychology, chemistry and healthcare, to name a few! For more information, please email Katharina Behr, Nikita Kaushal, Clayton Aldern or Anna Zawilska. The Rhodes Politics Society celebrates all things political, bringing together Scholars who want to exchange ideas about public policy, economics, and the future of international relations. Our events are a mix of book club discussion, debate, wine tasting and plain old-fashioned socialising. We do not have a particular ideological bent but we certainly welcome members who do, and the fun debate that then follows! Whatever your stripe, indeed whether you have one or not, this is a place for you to meet other Scholars who are interested in what public policy and politics can achieve for others. For more information, contact Patrick Bateman. The Rhodes Christian Fellowship Group provides a community for Scholars of Christian faith to meet and fellowship together through dinners, bible study groups and various other activities. The group also seeks to dialogue with, and to learn from Rhodes Scholars of all backgrounds by hosting more general events and conversations at Rhodes House on faith and life's big questions. For more information, please e-mail Chrystelle Opope Wedi or Evan Szablowski. More information: http://rhodeschristianfellowship.wordpress.com/ The Rhodes Scholars' Southern Africa Forum (RSSAF) is a charitable organisation dedicated to enacting positive change in Southern Africa. RSSAF's mission is three-fold; to increase awareness of social, political and economic issues in Southern Africa, to raise and distribute funds to support small-scale community development (whilst also providing non-monetary support through a scholar-led consultancy program) and to stimulate discussion about the historical relationship between the Scholarship and the region. At the core of our work is our grants programme which supports at least 6 organisations annually. Recent funded projects have included the support of an urban community waste and recycling initiative in Kenya, a micro-credit funding scheme in Tanzania and a post-conflict counseling programme in eastern DRC. Our events are long-celebrated traditions within the Rhodes community and include our 'Welcome Day Auction', 'Rhodies and Friends Recital' and 'Promises Auction' (which in 2014 raised over £3,500). Please email the RSSAF Co-convenors Heloise Greef and Vinesh Rajpaul for more information. The RSSAF Grant Officers are Priyanka de Souza and Natasha Chilundika. The Rhodes China Forum (RCF) is a fully inclusive organisation that convenes regular meetings to discuss the significance of China in the larger world, while highlighting current Scholars' relevant experiences and research. We will cover topics from various disciplines including history, politics, literature, and international relations and will strive to adapt discussion topics to participants' specific interests as well as current events. In addition to convening regular meetings, the RCF will build and maintain a network of Scholars engaged with China and facilitate communication between Scholars from different classes. Please contact Sam Galler for more information. The Rhodes Wellness Group aims to help Scholars engage fully with their time in Oxford. Whilst coming to Oxford is exciting and a great privilege, the Oxford environment can be high pressure, and many Scholars experience periods of stress and difficulty. The Rhodes Wellness Group exists to support Scholars here in Oxford, promoting strategies for resilience, life balance, and wellness in general. To this end, we will be organising a number of events, including guest speakers, mindfulness courses, yoga sessions, running groups, wellness retreats, and mentorship/peer support programmes. Keep an eye open for emails throughout the year inviting you to events and come along! If you would like to get involved in the Rhodes Wellness Group, or have any ideas of other events, please contact Tenzin Seldon or Joshua Chauvin. Annually, Rhodes Scholars are invited to join the one 'Team Rhodes Scholar' that exists - the Rhodes Cricket XI. During Trinity Term and the summer, this composite side of many talents and nationalities takes on established cricket teams in Oxford and touring part-timers from Australia, as preparation for the now traditional finale of the Rhodes season, the Rhodes-Commonwealth Scholar cricket match. The team showcases all levels of cricketing skill. Open to both men and women, it is common for a Varsity Blues cricket player to play alongside a total newcomer to the sport, and an Australian to shout in support of a South African team mate! A great spirit dominates the side,and there is a healthy competitive edge - especially in what has now become a traditional summer 'grudge' match up and against the Commonwealth Scholars (also known as 'the Commies'). We're always looking for more players and setting up matches for the summer period. Please contact: Andrew Dean for more information or if you would like to arrange a match against the team. Rhodes Chorus was formed in the spring of 2014 with the aim of joining scholars together in the appreciation of song. The group meets each week in Rhodes House to work on various a cappella SATB arrangements, and it maintains an informal atmosphere. Rhodes Chorus has performed at events at Rhodes House and looks to continue doing so in the future, expanding its repertoire along the way. For more information, please contact Phillip Yao.

Maryland Society of Patriots June Meeting Summary On Thursday, June 17, I attended the Maryland Society of Patriot‘s June meeting. It was a good event that had all the makings of a Republican candidate forum. As such, and I was able to meet and hear US Senate candidate Jim Rutledge, Gubernatorial candidate Brian Murphy, and Congressional candidate Troy Stouffer (who I interviewed here in March) speak on the issues. What follows are some highlights from the event and my thoughts on the candidates. The event opened with pizza, soda, and mingling with the candidates and other citizens in attendance. All the candidates left fliers for people to review. GOP US Senate candidate Stephens Dempsey showed up at the beginning – dropped off some literature, and left soon thereafter. After the mingling, Bill Hale, the founder of the organization’s father, introduced us to the goal of MSOP, talked about how conservative values matter and how great it was to meet everyone. Bill Hale was incredibly charismatic and the room seemed to really enjoyed him. Following this introduction, Hale led the group in a prayer. It was refreshing to hear and meet those who openly live by the adage from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians – “Pray without ceasing.” The 25 year old founder, Sam Hale, then introduced us to the format of the evening and an update on the organization. The first speaker was Jim Simpson. Simpson is a writer for the Examiner online. He came to talk about…giving talks. Simpson is a former Office of Management and Budget economist and budget analyst. Simpson wrote a “Patriot’s Handbook” and offers to give talks about it. While there was some interesting content here – Simpson was mostly there to advertise his speaking tour as opposed to give an actual speech on the issues. The speeches were reserved for the candidates. Before I get into the specifics about the candidates there were a few important commonalities. They were all very open about their Christian faith. They all mentioned how the most important goal was to defeat the Democratic nominee in the fall. They were all focused on traditional conservative principles. The first candidate was my GOP Congressional candidate Troy Stouffer. Stouffer discussed that he came from a Christian household which helped define his values, but made a point to say that he is not out to impose his faith on anyone. His goal, he said, would be to fight to defend and uphold the Constitution. Stouffer said, “We have our current crop of career politicians [who's] only focus…[is] what do I have to do to get elected in November.” Stouffer is a Navy veteran and said that both he and members of Congress were required to take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. He said that the enemies of our Constitution aren’t just foreign, but domestic – many of which are in Washington ignoring the Constitution to get themselves reelected. Stouffer really knew he wanted to run for office after he called our incumbent Congressman, Dutch Ruppersberger (D), about the healthcare reform bill that passed recently. What was Dutch’s response? “There is no perfect piece of legislation, but this met my expectations.” If this met his expectations, Stouffer feels that his expectations are in the wrong place. Stouffer feels that “…we can’t send the same people back to solve the problems they caused in the first place.” He wants to be a citizen legislator to change Washington. If he doesn’t win? Stouffer says he’ll put back on his steel toe boots and go back to work. Politician is not his job description – it’s something he felt he could do to help our country. Stouffer was relaxed in front of the group and generated some decent responses. He also said that if he didn’t win the primary – he would support Marcelo Cardarelli. After Stouffer came US Senate candidate Jim Rutledge. Rutledge gave a fiery and impassioned speech. He began by stating that his primary goal is seeing Barbara Mikulski defeated in November. Rutledge said that Maryland is “…occupied territory” and that those at the event were “part of the resistance.” We’re standing up with him saying that “…enough is enough with the machine, machine politics.” Rutledge then began to discuss his childhood – his first job was picking rocks. Why was he picking rocks? Pick the rocks to free up the field, to plant the seed, and then pray to the Lord for rain so that your crops would grow. Rutledge said that his challenge would be difficult as he’s chosen in the primary, he will be facing the “Queen of career politics.” He said that our creator gave us inalienable rights, not man, and that the patriots of the American revolution stood up when man tried to take those rights away from them. He said that we all need to stand up boldly today. He’s sick of being referred to as the party of no – the Republican party is “…saying yes to individual freedom.” Rutledge pointed out that 8 out of the 24 counties in Maryland have unemployment rates above 10%. Are we better off than we were when Mikulski first entered office in 1977? Nope. As Rutledge said, “Mikulski has sat on the throne of Maryland longer than the queen of England.” Rutledge is a Constitutional conservative who referred to the Constitution as a “…beautiful cage created by our founders…” to reign in our government. I could not have worded it better. Rutledge commanded the room during his speech and got a great response from the crowd. His were, perhaps, the strongest applause of the evening. The third candidate was GOP Gubernatorial candidate Brian Murphy. Murphy is an Easton resident and a former employee of Constellation Energy – joining the firm in its early days before it was a Fortune 500 company and managed assets. In 2008, he left with a severance package and founded Plimhimmon Group. The group’s first investment? A bakery on Smith Island, the Smith Island Baking Company. It grew exponentially in its first year in business. Murphy was soft-spoken and full of self-depreciating humor. He began by describing what he called the four governments – civil, individual, family, and church. He said that each of these governments come from God. He then went on to describe his background. He came from a humble upbringing saying he’s been poor and he’s been rich. “…[R]ich is better, but you never forget being poor.” He always loved economics, which he referred to as “…people making decisions in a world of scarcity.” He studied economics and early on, was a conservative Democrat – fiscally conservative, socially conservative – but a Democrat. He was not welcome in the party. He worked at Morgan Stanley early on in the World Trade Center. He managed risk and people trusted him to handle all their risk. They may not have agreed with his views – but they trusted him with their money because they knew he would do the right thing. He’s an executive by trade – that’s why he decided to run for Governor. That and because as Murphy puts it, he disagrees with Ehrlich on everything. He says that Ehrlich is not pro-life and says that he increased government by 40% and increased taxes. He said Ehrlich “…raised taxes $3 billion, called them fees…[that's like saying] I didn’t hit you, I just poked you.” Murphy says that he wants have the lowest possible taxes possible. Capital gains tax – gone within 3 years. He says it’s 8.25%, hurts business, and doesn’t bring in nearly enough money to make it worthwhile. He wants to apply a property tax cap in Maryland. He believes in this campaign, he’s not a career politician. Murphy says there’s two years for politicians – “…election year and next year.” He isn’t running to make a point – he said why would he run to be “…overworked, underpaid, and have his name dragged through the mud…” if he didn’t believe in what he was doing. Murphy ended by saying that he wanted our prayers, support, endorsement, and money. After the speeches – all three candidates hung around and talk individually with whomever wanted to come up and ask them questions. Rutledge was willing to sit down with me after the event for a few interview questions, which will be posted later this week. In the end, the event was great and provided a wonderful forum for people to meet candidates, learn about their thoughts on the issues, and to meet like minded conservatives in Maryland. Hopefully another event comes local – because I’d like to join them again. Cross-posted to Old Line Elephant.

HYLE--International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, Vol. 4 (1998), No.2, pp. 129-162 Abstract: Given the rich diversity of research fields usually ascribed to chemistry in a broad sense, the present paper tries to dig our characteristic parts of chemistry that can be conceptually distinguished from interdisciplinary, applied, and specialized subfields of chemistry, and that may be called chemistry in a very narrow sense, or ‘the chemical core of chemistry’. Unlike historical, ontological, and ‘anti-reductive’ approaches, I use a conceptual approach together with some methodological implications that allow to develop step by step a kind of cognitive architecture for chemistry, which basically contains: (1) systematic chemical knowledge on the experimental level; (2) clarification of chemical species; (3) chemical classification systems; (4) theoretical foundation through the chemical theory of structural formulas. In a succeeding paper the results will be checked for resisting physicalistic reduction. Keywords: chemical properties, logical structure of chemical knowledge, pure substances, chemical classification, theory of structural Unlike particular sciences, philosophy is concerned with very general aspects of our world, and as such always running the risk of producing either overgeneralizations or one-sided generalizations. The comparatively small group of present philosophers of science are faced with the strange situation that their reflections on science should in a way comprise all the activities of the past and present community of scientists, which is roughly 10.000 times bigger. The situation is even much worse in the philosophy of chemistry. Not only do chemists form the largest and one of the oldest group among scientists, while philosophers of chemistry form the smallest and youngest group among philosophers of science. The wealth of research fields ascribed to chemistry is extraordinarily diverse too. To talk of ‘chemistry’ as a somehow united field seems to obscure the plurality of historical traditions, methods, and scientific aims of this field, as well as the varieties of interdisciplinary projects chemists are and have been working on. Nonetheless, whenever we talk about chemistry in general, compare it with or distinguish it from other sciences, and, in particular, whenever we teach chemistry, then we presuppose some narrow notion of chemistry, that neither comprises the entire list of research activities ascribed to chemistry, nor does it simply refer to a historically contingent situation. It need not be a clear-cut definition, but at least we presuppose some general ideas about what is more essential or peculiar to chemistry. Here philosophy of chemistry can and should help clarify or elaborate such a notion with philosophical means, keeping in mind the mentioned risks. Moreover, a narrow notion of chemistry with regard to its peculiarities may help understand the specific chemical side of all kinds of interdisciplinary research, in which a lot of chemists are involved. It may further help avoid blind reductive attitudes, based on excessive or one-sided generalizations, both with regard to biology and physics. And finally it might draw the attention to philosophical problems of chemistry proper, beyond the interfield problems of reduction and how mutually stimulating interdisciplinary research is possible. The present paper tries to elaborate such a notion of chemistry in a very narrow sense, so that I prefer to speak of the ‘chemical core of chemistry’. Unlike historical approaches, I will not refer to the history of chemistry definitions, chemical ideas, theories, research schools, disciplines, discourses, etc. Unlike ontological approaches, I will not refer to a certain ‘chemical level’ within a presupposed ontological hierarchy. And unlike ‘anti-reductive’ approaches, I will at first not refer to what is (epistemologically) irreducible to microphysics; however, the results of the present part will be subject to such an ‘irreducibility test’ in a succeeding part. Instead, the present approach is basically a conceptual one, by which I try to develop the cognitive structure of an autonomous science step by step: from systematical experimental investigations (1), over the clarification of basic ontological species (2), and the formation of classification systems (3), to a theoretical foundation with highly systematizing, predictive, and explanatory capacities (4). In order to give substance to that methodological skeleton, a few basic conceptual decisions are necessary. The most important decision, which considerably narrows down the notion of chemical core, is that chemical properties – in contrast to other material properties – form the starting point (Sect. 1.2). All the following steps basically depend on the peculiar relational structure of chemical properties, which determines the logical structure of chemical knowledge on all cognitive levels. Of course, the conceptual approach will not reproduce the historically grown distribution of weight given to current research activities by chemists. In particular, chemists working at the frontier of quantum chemistry will miss most of their work in what I am going to call the ‘chemical core of theoretical chemistry’. The reason is simply that quantum chemistry is placed in the interdisciplinary area between chemistry and physics and is, like other interdisciplinary fields, not directly concerned with the ‘chemical core’, as the succeeding part will prove in more detail. Hence, when I am not going to credit the many achievements of quantum chemistry in this paper, that does not mean that I do not acknowledge them, as a commentator of a former version once suggested; it is just because these are outside of the present paper’s systematical focus. Moreover, the technical term ‘chemical core’ does not imply any evaluation on whatever value basis, let alone a devaluation of research outside of the ‘chemical core’. It simply denotes parts of chemistry that can be conceptually well distinguished from interdisciplinary, applied, and specialized subfields of chemistry, and which resist physicalistic reduction, as only the succeeding part will Chemistry, like many other natural sciences and non-scientific activities, is first of all concerned with empirical objects. But its specific focus is on material aspects of these objects. What that means is getting clearer, if we first regard what it not means. For material aspects are only part of a rich diversity of aspects that we use to look at empirical objects. To take an unproblematic instance of an empirical object, regard a coin. Within a certain economical society, it has a fixed exchange value, which essentially qualifies that empirical object for being a coin. The exchange value is an interesting functional property, that is neither a material property nor does it basically depend on the coin’s material. If the coin is antique, our focus may be rather on the past of this little object; and we might wonder about its long history from an antique empire towards our hands. A closer look may reveal interesting signs on both sides of the coin, written in a foreign language, or a portrait of an emperor, or an emblem, that we like to interpret. If you are a numismatist, you might collect coins according to certain motifs, and you might have certain aesthetical preferences for one or the other motif and its specific artistic representation. However, if you are interested only in the material of that coin, then you abstract from, i.e. you ignore, all these economical, historical, semiotical, aesthetical, etc. properties of empirical objects. Furthermore, our material focus analogously abstracts from the given size and form of empirical objects. Any representative sample would be sufficient to carry out material investigations. From the numismatic point of view, sampling a coin would be an ignorant destruction of what is essential to that object, whereas from the material point of view, the object remains unchanged. What counts is completely independent of geometrical form, structure, size, number of parts, weight, mass, space-time coordinates or location and movement in space, as long as the object is appropriate for material investigations. It is by no means pure chance that the mentioned list of properties corresponds to what philosophers have called ‘primary qualities’ since the 17th century. The material focus ignores ‘primary qualities’, because what matters from the material point of view is just what is invariant to changes of ‘primary qualities’. Such as mechanistic philosophers have ignored material properties, because what mattered from their point of view is just what is invariant to changes of material properties. Thus, these two perspectives on empirical objects are in a sense orthogonal. The mechanistic search for invariants with regard to differences in material properties was, in a certain sense, the search for the ‘essence of matter’, something most general that remains constant in the course of all specific material changes. Sciences of materials, on the other hand, have no ambition for such metaphysical (over)generalizations. In contrast, they seek for a subtly sophisticated system of material concepts, in order to describe the diversity of material phenomena as precisely and unambiguously as possible. A set of material concepts is a system of classification, if every concept allows at least a binary discrimination of material phenomena and if all concepts are logically independent of each other. Such a classification is not (and cannot be) deductively inferred from the ‘dematerialized essence of matter’. Instead, it is (and must be) developed from some primitive material concepts step by step through concept differentiation and introduction, and through empirical checking for its actual discriminating power. Chemistry is the most general science of materials, in the sense that it provides the most general system of concepts. Unlike for instance mineralogy, metallurgy, pharmacy, and the wealth of applied subdisciplines of chemistry (such as chemistry of polymers, or of ceramic, magnetic, electronic, photonic, etc. materials), the concepts of (general) chemistry are applicable to and discriminating with regard to all empirical objects. In the next section we will have a closer look at current material properties among which chemical properties play an eminent role to found a sophisticated The nature of scientific material properties gets clear only if we widen our everyday understanding. Philosophically speaking, we must give up phenomenalism, the epistemology of everyday life that does not question our ordinary contexts of experience. For sciences of materials, with chemistry at the center, have been, from the earliest stages on, experimental science in the original meaning of studying the behavior of objects in various and controlled artificial contexts. A material property is reproducible behavior within certain reproducible contextual conditions. It is important to note that material properties are attributed not to isolated objects but to objects and contexts. Since everything looks red under red light, we have to specify the color both of the object under investigation and of the light, in order to make qualified color statements. Since everything is solid at a certain temperature and pressure, solidness always implies specification of thermodynamic conditions. Sometimes it is more the context that matters. To speak of a toxic substance, does not mean that the substance itself but the context, a biological organism, falls sick or dies, if it gets in contact with the substance. Precise material predicates require precise and systematic details of the contexts of investigation, making contexts themselves a central subject matter of sciences of materials. The context is also the central aspect according to which material properties are distinguished, each type being characterized by focussing on a certain contextual factor: Since every experimental context can be described in terms of each factor, it is necessary to introduce standard or neutral conditions for each (e.g., restricting mechanical forces to gravitation and sometimes stirring; minimizing electromagnetic fields; working with standard pressure and temperature, inert container materials, abiotic and closed systems). If we vary only one factor and keep the others standardized, then we are investigating the correspondent type of material property. If two or more factors of interest are combined, one can create new types of ‘mixed’ material properties (photochemical, thermo-electrical, thermo-electro-chemical etc.). Properties of type (1)-(3) are called physical material properties, covering a great part of physical chemistry. Physical properties are kept distinct from chemical properties by ‘excluding the chemical factor’, i.e. by working with inert container materials and atmospheres. But we speak of chemical properties, if and only if the ‘chemical factor’ is considered to be relevant for the behavior. The typology of material properties allows us to make the first, and the most important, conceptual distinction regarding our main question what we should consider the chemical core of chemistry. To be sure, all types of investigations are performed by chemists, including physico-chemists, biochemists, ecological chemists, and so on. All these studies have their own rights and are indispensable contributions to our overall knowledge about the material world. However, if we want to make a conceptual decision, what kind of investigation is central to chemistry, there seems to be no doubt that the investigations of chemical properties form the chemical core of experimental chemistry. While nonreactivities are also important chemical properties, chemists are particularly interested in chemical properties that include chemical reaction behavior. The concept of chemical reaction can be roughly defined as a change of chemical identity according to the classification of chemical substances. From the logical point of view chemical reaction properties show extraordinary features. They are asymmetrical dynamical relations with two classes of relata: initial chemical substances before the change and different chemical substances afterwards. Thus, chemical experiments yield complex dynamic relations connecting several chemical substances with each other. Take for instance: (A, B) R1® (C, D) (E, F) R2® (A) (H, C) R3® (E, G) (A, B, ... H: chemical substances; R1®, R2®, R3® : chemical relations including certain conditions according to the contextual factors above). We get more insight into the logical structure of chemical knowledge, if we systematically combine all chemical relations into a complex network that connects all chemical substances with each other in many direct or indirect ways (Fig. 1). Figure 1. Schematic sketch of the chemical network. It is first of all the literary tradition of linearly recording chemical knowledge in books and papers, which has been obscuring the nonlinear network structure that naturally comes out by connecting chemical facts systematically. Chemistry at the core is a science of peculiar relations. Instead of studying isolated objects to be measured, compared and put into a classificatory scheme, dynamic relations between objects constitute the basic set of chemical knowledge, and, at the same time, provide the grounds for the classifications of the objects themselves, as we will see later (Sect. 3). The chemical network includes all current empirical information about transformations of chemical substances, and new relations and relata supplement it every day. Starting from any chemical substance X we can follow the arrays in both directions providing two different types of chemical information: First we know how to produce X from certain different chemical substances, and second we know how and what kind of different chemical substances can be produced from X. Concerning our conceptual search for the chemical core of chemistry, we have found another important result. If the investigation of chemical properties is the core field of experimental chemistry, as we have suggested in the last section, then we must conclude that the logical structure of systematical chemical knowledge is a network structure. In other words, the chemical network, with chemical substances as the nodes and chemical relations as the connections, forms the chemical core of experimental chemistry. (In the succeeding paper we will see that reductive accounts of physicalism mainly fail, because they follow an ‘isolated-object-approach’ that does not provide the relational kind of knowledge specific to chemistry.) In the preceding section we have assumed that chemical substances, the nodes of the chemical network, are entities that everybody, not only chemists, has at least some familiarity with. The usual and frequent talk of ‘chemical substances’ or ‘pure substances’ (both considered as synonymous in the present paper) gives the impression, that also the concept of ‘pure substance’ has a simple and well-defined meaning. However, it will turn out in this section that the concept is actually very intricate, despite its central importance. Let us first regard, if there are some empirical properties to make a general distinction between pure substances and others. Take a couple of unknown homogeneous samples and try to find out which one is pure and which one is mixed by investigating empirical properties only. Simple physical material properties do not allow us to make a decision. Whatever the resulting values of physical properties such as melting point, refraction index, viscosity, etc. are, we do not get the slightest idea from such values, whether the sample is pure or not. For all types of properties the values of pure substances vary within the same range as the values of mixtures. Furthermore, for many electromagnetic and mechanical properties it is even true that the values of different modifications and crystal forms of the same chemical substance vary within the same range as the values of mixtures. Thus, these properties do not even tell us, whether two samples belong to the same chemical substance or not. The same even goes for sophisticated electromagnetic properties provided by spectroscopic means. Spectroscopy, today’s main method to prove pureness of known substances, does not give a definite answer, whether an unknown sample is a pure substance or a not. Only if we have gathered sufficient background information about the sample (e.g. from its history) to make predictions about how the tentative pure substance and its possible impurities may spectroscopically look like, we are able to make some decision. But that is not what we are looking for, namely a general method to distinguish between completely unknown samples, which may also include unknown substances. The chemical approach is by no means better. Pure and impure samples do not chemically differ in a way that allows us to draw general conclusions. We cannot claim, for instance, that pure substances differ in qualitative terms whereas homogeneous mixtures differ only in quantitative terms. Sometimes two distinct chemical substances, e.g. two stereoisomers, even react to form the same products under certain conditions. And two mixtures of the same substances but of different proportions may yield quite different products by chemical reaction, as the famous law of multiple proportions already stated. Thus far, our attempts to make out the distinction between chemical substances and homogeneous mixtures by means of material properties are rather unsatisfactory. Given the importance of that distinction to chemical practice, concept building, and theorizing, such a negative result is surprising. Before we turn to the question how chemical substances are produced by purification, we will first have a brief look at theoretical approaches. Introductory textbooks of chemistry address our problem, if at all, by using a molecular approach. A sample of a pure chemical substance, it is said in the introduction, consists of molecules of a single sort, whereas homogeneous mixtures consist of molecules of different sorts. Pure water, today even a standard example of analytical philosophers, consists only of H2O molecules. In order to underline the conceptual precision of that approach, we are told that 18 g water consists of 6.22045 1023 H2O molecules. If the textbook has some affinity to atomic physics, the statement is very soon modified by admitting that the H2O molecules are, in a strict sense, not of the same sort. Instead they are built up of different isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in various combinations. But such a difference is said to be unimportant to general chemical problems. A few chapters later, when the first chemical problems are faced, students are confused by reading that the same ‘pure’ water now consists not only of H2O molecules, but also of H3O+-ions and OH--ions, and that the concentration of all three components vary with temperature and pressure. In such a context of basic acid-base theory, we learn that the concentration of H3O+-ions, small as it is compared with the H2O concentration, substantially governs the chemical properties of water. Another chapter that deals with electrical properties of the same pure water tells us a dynamical story of various forms of aggregation and disaggregation, giving the impression that the H2O molecules are nearly vanished. The simple picture of countable building blocks of a single sort has been gradually changed into a chaotic mass that is said to be governed by various forms of changing interactions, such as covalent bonding, hydrogen bonding, van der Waals interactions, or electrostatic and spin-spin interaction, depending on the level of description. If the student reaches the level of quantum mechanics, she learns that different entities of a single sort are no longer distinguishable and should be dealt with as a single whole entity with mysterious dimensions. She is told that the building block picture must, strictu sensu, give way to a holistic approach, and that only mathematical complexity forces us to use sometimes several simplistic quasi-building block approximations that are adapted to one or the other problem. The conclusion we can draw from this little story is that the molecular approach of pure substances as consisting of building blocks of a single sort, does not work as a general criterion, not even in the light of classical chemistry, e.g. acid-base theory or electrochemistry. There is no simple one-to-one relation between chemical substances and quasi-molecular species. If the theoretical criterion were taken seriously, we would rule out a lot, if not all, of what we usually consider to be pure substances. Moreover, there is not a single molecular approach but a variety of different theoretical approaches adapted (and restricted) to one or the other problem. For many problems of today’s chemistry, e.g. of complex chemistry, solid state chemistry, chemistry of transition states, supramolecular chemistry, etc., the view of static building blocks that correspond to pure substances is inappropriate. While their experimental and conceptual starting points are still pure substances, their theoretical concepts refer to quasi-molecular species that do not correspond to pure substances any longer. Thus, we are faced with the strange situation that the concept of pure substances, though central for all chemistry, evades both empirical and Pure substances are produced by purification methods. Purification is an artificial intervention into the samples we have first at hand. That means, pureness is not a natural category, pure substances are no natural kinds in the simple sense that the material world as such is divided up into pure substances. Nor is the material world divided up by simply applying our mental concepts, by putting our classificatory grid onto the world. In chemistry, there seems to be no more need to be involved into the old philosophical struggle between nominalism and (natural kind) realism. Instead, our material world is such that it can be experimentally divided up into pure substances by certain means – that is the chemical way to solve the philosophical puzzle, from the philosophical point of view it is a kind of operational solution. A material sample is called pure, if any further efforts of purification, according to operations and properties, which we address soon, have no more recognizable results. Since we know that our means to recognize the effects of purification have limited resolution, the concept of pureness may be extrapolated into the ideal realm of unlimited resolution. The ideal pure substance is hypothesized as passing an ideal purification test with ideally unlimited resolution. The basic means of purification are, at least by the final step, various thermal processes all including one or the other phase transition, such as distillation, crystallization, sublimation, etc. Though there are today a wealth of other separation methods, the classical thermal processing has still some methodological priority. Chromatography, today’s main purification processing in chemistry laboratories, does not work as a general and independent pureness test. For we cannot claim pureness of chromatographic fractions of an unknown sample, because we do not know if we have actually chosen a pair of effective chromatographic phases appropriate to the mixture to be separated. That is to say, that chromatography works in practice only if we have some background information about what we are going to separate. Thus it does not provide a general criterion of pureness. A material is usually regarded as a pure substance, if the temperature or any other material property remains constant in the course of further phase transition. But such a sophisticated property does not work as blind operational criterion, since it turns out that, for instance, azeotropic and enantiomer mixtures, though showing constant transition temperatures, can nonetheless be separated further under modified conditions. Mixtures like those are handled either by modifying thermodynamic conditions or by performing other appropriate separation steps before. But finally, at least whenever we want to be sure and do not have enough background information, the sample has to pass the thermal purification test. Against the background of the discussed failures of empirical and theoretical approaches to define pure substances, the operational criterion we found deserves special attention. If it is true that phase transition is a necessary part of the decisive processing, then we can draw some conclusions about the concept of pure substances. First, we understand now why substances such as polymers, that do not undergo definite phase transitions, are ruled out by the concept. Second, a pure substance is something that persists during phase transition; that is why modifications and crystal forms, though differing in physical properties, are considered to be the same chemical substance. Third, phase transition involves adding or taking away certain amounts of energy, i.e. a pure substances is something that persists through variation of thermodynamic conditions within certain limits. From the theoretical point of view it becomes clear now, that only molecular entities of a certain energetic stability can be related to pure substances, if at all. Fourth, a single molecular entity can only indirectly represent a pure substance, but is by no means itself a pure substance. For phase transitions are theoretical conceived as a change of interactions between molecular entities of a phase and not as being a property of a single molecular The operationally based concept of pure substance turns out to be rather intricate. And what is more, it seems to be at odds with theoretical accounts. There is no wonder that many theoretical and analytical chemists today feel uncomfortable with the restrictive concept of pure substances as defining the basic chemical species. From their point of view the concept is old-fashioned and bears some arbitrariness of selecting only those material entities that can be purified and put into bottles. They prefer to define chemical species through one or the other quasi-molecular approach supported by spectroscopic evidence. From such a viewpoint quasi-molecular species are identified independently of their environment. As a consequence, the distinction between pure substances and homogeneous mixtures does not make sense any longer for them. In fact, the distinction is, as we have pointed out, not a natural category. It is imposed onto the material world by our experimental approach. To be sure, the distinction comes out naturally, so to speak, if we apply our purification processing. But we could do else, or, at least, we need not attach too much conceptual importance to it. Berthollet’s original approach, which gave up the distinction between pure substances and solutions, would actually be more appropriate and consistent with modern theoretical chemistry. The reason why we still adhere to that distinction finally leads us back to what I have called the chemical core of chemistry. For the distinction is essential to the chemical approach of characterizing and classifying materials – and only to that approach as we will see now. From the classificatory point of view, homogeneous mixtures could be perfectly distinguished and classified by an appropriate set of quantitative physical properties. With the help of high-resolution instruments we are able to determine the slightest difference in concentration according to any physical property. Once we have built up an appropriate database, identification of any homogeneous material is routine work. Thus, there seems to be no classificatory need at all to refer to such idealizations as perfectly pure and distinct chemical substances. We need not make the detour of describing homogeneous materials in terms of concentrations of pure substances, something that may come out after violent purification. We could go directly into medias res, towards the various quasi-molecular species that tumble around both in homogeneous mixtures and pure substances, proving again that the distinction is artificial, arbitrary and useless. To be sure, the distinction between pure substances and homogeneous mixtures is artificial in the sense that it depends on our experimental interventions. But it is neither useless nor arbitrary, as long as we do not have any alternative. By then the distinction is the only one we have that allows us to single out from the continuous realm of homogeneous materials perfectly distinct substances. And that is exactly what we need for our chemical properties, the complex relations that we have pointed out above. We need distinct substances as definite starting and end points of chemical reactions, as relata of the chemical relations. And we need them even more for connecting the relations together in order to build up the chemical network, the logical structure of chemical knowledge. The chemical approach of material characterization and classification depends on distinct entities at the same ontological level that is to be classified. It is essentially a requirement of concept precision and systematization that forces chemists towards an ontology of distinct entities. There is no way, at least we do not yet know any, to define a systematic set of chemical properties within the continuous realm of homogeneous mixtures, without referring to pure substances as distinct entities. Of course, we could describe any chemical reaction as a change of homogeneous mixtures, i.e. as a change of values of any set of quantitative properties. But we would not be able to put such descriptions into a systematical context. All we could do is collecting infinitely many facts, each of them highly precise but without any systematic connection with each other. In sum, the concept of pure substances, artificial as it may appear, perfectly meets the chemical requirement – and only that – of building a systematic structure of chemical knowledge. A last objection against the pure substance approach remains. Our argument for pure substances was in essence a logical argument that refers to the logical structure of chemical knowledge: we need distinct relata for chemical relations in order to build precise concepts and to connect our experimental results in a systematical way to form a network structure. Couldn’t we build up an analogous structure in terms of quasi-molecular species instead of pure substances? Modern spectroscopy enables us to detect quasi-molecular species at very low concentrations persisting only for picoseconds. With the help of sophisticated theory we are able to interpret the data in terms of existence and change of such structurally specified entities. Thus, what comes out has the same logical structure that we found for chemical properties of pure substances, i.e. relations of the type, say, A+B ® C+D. The only difference is that the letters A, B, C, D now refer to quasi-molecular species instead of pure substances. As we have seen in Sect. 2.2, there is no one-to-one relation between pure substance and quasi-molecular species. Instead, we can sometimes detect a wealth of quasi-molecular species within a sample of a pure substance, and we even know that they are changing under varying conditions. Moreover, many quasi-molecular species, such as van der Waals complexes, appear only in homogeneous mixtures, so that we are unable to put them in purified form into bottles. Thus, the quasi-molecule approach appears to be a revolutionary shift in chemistry, bringing about a much greater diversity of chemical species and changes than the coarse stuff approach. Once we drop the distinction between pure substances and homogeneous mixtures and take quasi-molecular species as the basic species, chemistry becomes considerably richer. There is no doubt that many chemists have been working on that since decades, giving us more and more insight into the complexity of even the simplest pure substance. So what are the reasons to adhere to pure substance as the basic chemical species any longer? There is a practical reason of great importance. Our ontology of chemical substances ensures per definition that certain kinds of material processing do not change the identity of substances. Chemical substances are per definition invariant to purification processing. What seems to be, at first glance, an arbitrary and coarse approach, turns out to be a necessary requirement for systematical chemical research. First, it is purification that enables us to start a chemical reaction with a definite number of chemical species, i.e. to have controlled and comprehensible chemical conditions. And secondly, it is the invariance to purification processing that allows us to isolate definite chemical species as reaction products afterwards. As a consequence, the resulting chemical species can then, each of their own, be the starting point of further chemical investigations under new controlled conditions, i.e. with other combinations of chemical species. Thus, it is only because our chemical species per definition retain their identity during purification, that we are able to connect single facts of chemical relations with each other to build a systematic network structure of chemical knowledge. Do we have an equivalent within our conceived ontology of quasi-molecular species? Every processing, every change of thermodynamic and other conditions, in particular, every attempt of isolation, may change the quasi-molecular species. It is the burden of precision and the lack of operationally well-adapted coarseness that leaves no room for any processing which these species are definitely invariant to. There may be singular cases in which quasi-molecular species do not change a lot in the course of stuff purification. But we know from spectroscopy that many do. The geometrical structure of quasi-molecular entities, i.e. distances and angles, change with changing temperature, let alone phase transitions. If structure is the essential property of a quasi-molecular entity, then we are ontologically committed to consider all that as changes of quasi-molecular identity. Even if we could pick up a single quasi-molecular entity from a certain quasi-molecular surrounding and put it into another one: why not considering that a change of identity too? At least we know that the solvent surrounding has considerable impact on the structure of a quasi-molecular solute. Some quantum chemists even think that is only the impact of the surrounding what constitutes a molecular structure at all (Amann 1993). Given the lack of processing that do not change quasi-molecular species, systematical chemical research gets into serious trouble. Once we have started investigating the changes of quasi-molecular species of a real system, i.e. not of a simplified computer simulation, the system is getting more and more complex without return. We cannot restore controlled conditions, since any intervention is itself a change of species. In particular, we cannot systematically connect quasi-molecular species from different systems, so that the outcome of one reaction would be the starting point of another, as we can do with chemical substances. Such connections may be, in singular cases, possible, if we spectroscopically recognize quasi-molecular species known from other systems. But we cannot do that systematically; i.e. the relations between quasi-molecular species cannot be connected in a way to yield a comprehensive network structure of chemical knowledge. Thus, the costs of a richer ontology are a fragmentation of chemical knowledge. There is no doubt that a quasi-molecular ontology is extremely helpful for a better understanding of material systems of their own including chemical changes. However such an ontology is inappropriate for the logical structure of chemical knowledge. That is the main reason, why a chemistry of quasi-molecular species cannot replace but only support the chemistry of pure substances. Hence, we have good reasons, to consider pure substances, despite the mentioned problems, as the basic chemical species. The concept of pure substances has turned out to be rather complicated, despite its fundamental role in chemistry. While spectroscopic detection of known instances is routine work, pure substances do not reveal any simple physical or chemical characteristics to distinguish them from ‘impures’. Nor do we have any theoretical account that tells us something about the general nature of pure substances. Instead it is only what we call ‘purification processing’, that allow us both to make pure substances and to give a general definition in operational terms. We have pointed out, that the distinction between pure substances and homogeneous mixtures is in some sense artificial and may be regarded as arbitrary and old-fashioned from a certain point of view. If it has a justification, then it is only within the framework of the ‘chemical core of chemistry’, because it perfectly meets requirements of the logical structure of chemical knowledge. For it selects distinct substances from among a continuous diversity, something that we need as relata of chemical relations and, finally, as nodes of the chemical network. Since building an analogous network of quasi-molecular species is impossible – and will probably remain so forever –, quasi-molecular species are no general alternatives in chemistry. In sum, the choice for pure substances as the basic chemical species is grounded on no other good reasons than chemical core reasons. A long-standing tradition of philosophy of science, mainly fascinated by the mathematical elegance of Newtonian mechanics and its succeeding theories, has been neglecting the fact, that classification is one of the fundamental means and aims of sciences. First of all it provides us with a system of notions that allows us to talk about our empirical objects unambiguously and subtly differentiated. Secondly, it opens our eyes to the diversity of phenomena, preventing us from one-sided and blind oversimplifications. Third, it allows us to make predictions: if an object is identified to belong to a certain class, then we are able to predict all other properties belonging to that class. And finally, if our classification is systematical, we may assume the existence of objects from obvious gaps in the classification – and what is more in chemistry’s classification, we even get instructions to make these objects as exemplars of new chemical substances or substance classes. Once a decision is made for pure substances as the basic chemical species, chemical classification can go on to divide up pure substance – and only that – into substance classes according to chemical similarities (like alcohols, carboxylic acids, esters, aldehydes, amines, diazonium salts, dibenzothiophenes, and the rest) despite great differences in physical properties. Substance classification is not strictly hierarchical in chemistry; e.g., a substance may belong to the group of acids as well as to the group of aromatics, though neither of them is a subset of the other. However, it is always chemical similarity and dissimilarity, what the classification is about. We do not use equivalence classes of any quantitative physical material property as the guiding principle of substance classification. It does not mean much, for instance, if two samples show the same or nearly the same refraction index or melting point, if they are chemically quite different. However, chemically similar behavior moves them closer together, despite any quantitative difference in refraction indices, melting points, etc. One might object that today’s chemists detect a substance as belonging to a certain substance class, say to alcohols, by spectroscopic means, i.e. by sophisticated electromagnetic properties. A certain characteristic part of the IR- or NMR-spectrum unambiguously reveals an alcohol, so that chemical properties seem to be no longer important. It is certainly true that chemical properties are getting less important in chemical detection practice, but that does not mean that chemical properties are no longer what the classification is about. A difference is to be made between properties used for classificatory detection and properties with regard to which the classification is build up. A strong correlation between certain chemical properties of alcohols and certain characteristics of spectra has once enabled us to select the latter as auxiliary means for detecting alcohols. But once the correlation turns out to be bad, it is not the chemical classification but the auxiliary detection method that will be modified to detect again alcohols, i.e. substances that chemically behave like alcohols. It is important to note that the concept of similarity would not have any precise and non-arbitrary meaning in the continuous realm of homogeneous mixtures. Moreover, ‘similarity’ would be vague and arbitrary either, if it were related to quantitative closeness in value of any physical material property. Instead the concept of similarity used for substance classification refers to the chemical behavior of chemical substances. What makes the concept of chemical similarity precise is that it refers to relations with distinct relata. While the logic of relations is still an underdeveloped field of today’s philosophical logic, chemistry has historically found its own ways to solve its classificatory problems. From the logical point of view, chemical substance classification reveals a certain kind of circularity, since it appears that the concepts of ‘chemical similarity’ and ‘substance class’ mutually depend on each other. Let us regard the following schematic definitions: (1) Two substances belong to the same substance class, if they are chemically similar. (2) Two substances are chemically similar, if each of them react under the same conditions to form product substances of a common substance class. Note that this is not a simple circulus vitiosis of mutual concept definition, since we do not define: (2’) Two substances are chemically similar, if they belong to the same substance class. Instead one substance class is defined with reference to another substance class, i.e. we do not have a circle but a chain, or, to be more correct, a network, since substance classes refer to each other by many direct and indirect ways, including also mutual reference. Nonetheless, the substance class concepts depend on each other in a way that they remain completely loose without foundation. How can we solve the logical puzzle? Two ways are conceivable. If we have a comprehensive set of chemical relations between substances, we could start a structural analysis of the resulting network. Because that approach requires some technical details, I turn to the second solution, which is simpler and more historical. Since every substance class is defined with reference to another class, all we need is an anchor point. We could start with some intuitive substance grouping, according to similarities of non-chemical properties. The history of chemistry is particularly rich in such starting points. For instance, once acids were grouped according to their sour taste, the corresponding bases and salts could be classified according to their chemical relations with acids, and so on. A similar case could be made for metals and their peculiarly gleaming appearance. However, there are also more precise chemical starting points. Given the identity of chemical substances with themselves, we can derive from definition (2): (2a) Two different substances are chemically similar, if each of them react under the same conditions to form the same substance(s). If we chose elementary substances as reference points and take elemental decomposition as a basic chemical relation, then we have: (2b) Two different substances are chemically similar, if they can be decomposed to the same elementary substance(s). Definition (2b) still works today as a basic classificatory account according to elementary composition. The lucky fact that all substances can be chemically related to a comprehensive and systematical (though open) set of elementary substances as their final decomposition products provides the most important and basic account of chemical classification. Thus, we have a systematic set of definite anchor points from which all classification can be developed further on towards subtly differentiated substance classes. I cannot go into details here, how cross-classifications and subclassification are achieved by the chemical approach, and how that approach has been developed and transformed towards a highly sophisticated and theoretically supported classification apparatus. The only two points I want to make here are that, first, pure substances are necessarily the basic objects of the chemical classification. That proves once more the classificatory importance of the distinction between pure substances and homogeneous mixtures to chemistry. And, second, the chemical classification, as the name suggests, is essentially based upon similarities of chemical properties, and, consequently, it retains their peculiar nature of a relational network. The importance of the second point gets clear, when we recall what classification in general means for a natural science (s.a.): namely, to provide a subtly sophisticated set of concepts enabling us to grasp the diversity of entities and phenomena at all; and to provide for predictions of properties and of new entities, including ways to find or make them. As a consequence, whatever the chemical classification provides us in these regards is necessarily centered around chemical properties, other properties like physical, biological, and ecological properties being merely secondary aspects. If a substance is found to belong to the substance class of, say, carboxylic acids, that means little for its physical, biological and ecological properties. We would hardly find any nonchemical characteristic that makes formic acid and stearic acid belonging together in a particular manner. However, from the chemical point of view, carboxylic acids are related to a wealth of other substance classes, each relation being characteristic to carboxylic acids. Thus, on the level of substance classes, we meet the same type of relational network that we have pointed out for pure substances (Fig. 1). For instance, carboxylic acids are related to esters and alcohols, because esters are the products of reactions with alcohols. Corresponding relations are to amines and amides; various metal salts or metals and carboxylats; halogens and halogen carboxylic acids; reducing reagents and alcohols, aldehydes, alcyls, or aryls; and hundreds more. The network structure also suggests that carboxylic acids being in turn chemically related to other substance classes from which they can be made. Thus, detecting a carboxylic acid enables us to make a wealth of predictions about its chemical properties. And what is more, the chemical classification even provides predictions of what kind of new substances can be made from it, including instructions how to make them. That characteristic, which basically depends on the relational structure of chemical properties, distinguishes it from every other type of classification we have in science. Prediction on epistemologically reliable grounds is one of the main goals of science. As we have seen, the chemical classification is already a very strong approach for predicting chemical properties, whereas it is rather weak with regard to other material properties. All modern natural sciences, except one, have started their enterprise with classification for the mentioned reasons, each of them from a specific perspective. The exceptional science physics tried to do without classification and started with mathematical relations between quantitative properties. Both types of approaches enabled predictions of properties that each of the sciences was looking for. That means, the laws of physics and the (predictive) classifications of other natural sciences have exactly the same methodological status. All are theories on a basic level, but in the full meaning that philosophy of science has given to that term, i.e. they systematically order, predict, and, consequently, explain a certain realm of phenomena. Mere classification of phenomena and entities according to empirical properties was, despite its theoretical capacity, not the last word of classificatory sciences. Biologists, for instance, have founded their taxonomic approaches on evolution theory. In a similar way, geology has got its foundation at least partly by tectonics. In both cases ‘foundation’ means, roughly speaking, relating the synchronic classificatory concepts to concepts of a diachronic theory, so that the classificatory approach is additionally justified by, i.e. ‘founded on’, a different theoretical approach. We need not go into details here, because in chemistry we obviously have no diachronic theory on which the chemical classification could be founded. What else do we have for founding the chemical classification? Is there any theory that may justify our classificatory approach, i.e. the networks of chemical substances and substance classes? Do we have anything else that enables us to make the wealth of predictions of chemical properties and new substances, something that provides us with instructions to make new substances, so that it actually deserves the term ‘foundation’? In a succeeding paper we will see in detail that quantum mechanics, the celebrated candidate for universal foundation, does not help at all here. Not only do we miss a reformulation, let alone a ‘foundation’, of the concept of pure substance. More importantly, quantum mechanics provides no classificatory concepts at all, and it cannot grasp chemical relations. Only if we ignore the essential difference between chemical and physical properties (Sect. 1.2), then we tend to overlook quantum mechanic’s obvious silence with regard to chemical properties. But try to ask quantum mechanics, for instance, whether or how acetic acid can react to form an ester, and you know what I mean by silence. The crudest chemical classification on empirical grounds is incomparably more predictive with regard to chemical properties than quantum mechanics. However, quantum mechanics is in turn the most powerful account we have to predict physical, in particular, electromagnetic What we are now looking for, is a theoretical approach that systematically represents the chemical relations, i.e. the networks of chemical substances and substance classes. Moreover, we call for a theory that systematizes, predicts, and explains chemical relations even more powerfully than our empirical classification does. Such an account is, as we will see, the sign system of structural formulas, classical chemical structure theory, that has been developed in organic chemistry since the 1860s until today. In a certain sense, this account is a molecular approach, for it represents chemical relations between substances and substance classes on the level of structural formulas that seem to represent molecules. Before we regard this approach in more detail, we should first note the simple fact that neither a single molecular entity nor a mere set of such entities is a theory. Furthermore, if spectroscopic measurement or quantum chemical calculation allows us to give a molecular representation in geometrical terms, such a representation is not a theory but the outcome of a theory (and empirical data). We cannot derive predictions from the mere representation, unless we refer again to a theory. Thus, a molecular representation as such (a graph, a stick-and-ball model, a geometrical data set, etc.) is a sign that has to be interpreted within the framework of a certain theory in order to derive the information we are looking for. Take, for instance, a comprehensive geometrical data set about the nuclei of a molecule. The geometrical features as such are meaningless regarding any predictions of material properties. However, they store certain information for certain theoretical interpretations. Only if we take the data as the (semi-classical) framework of nuclei to solve the Schrödinger equation (or any appropriate model) of the corresponding electronic system, we get information about energy levels that allow us to make predictions of electromagnetic properties, say. In sum, neither a set of molecules nor a set of molecular representations is as such a theory. Instead, the theory is what provides the rules to interpret (and develop) molecular representations. It has been pointed out before (Ourisson 1986, Hoffmann/Laszlo 1991) that chemists use a lot of different molecular representations. Such a difference in molecular representation indicates that there are different interpreting theories at work, each having its own interpretation rules for certain predictive and explanative purposes. Without going into details here, I would like to point out only the main difference between structural formulas, on the one hand, and precise geometrical representations that include exact details about interatomic distances and angles, on the other. Figure 2a presents an instance of the latter: a pictographic representation of the geometrical data set of a nuclei system of a molecule as it comes out from spectroscopic measurement, x-ray diffraction, or quantum chemical calculation. Figure 2b presents a structural formula as it is used in chemical communications; to emphasize the difference, I have chosen a lax drawing that, nonetheless, does not lack any information a structural formula usually stores. Figure 2. Two molecular representations: (a) a pictograph representation of PCl4, including exact information about interatomic angles, distances, and thermal ellipsoids of atomic motion, (b) a structural formula of CH2Cl-CH(CH3)OH with information about configuration and functional groups. What strikes first is that, unlike Figure 2a, the structural formula of Figure 2b can hardly be interpreted in the mentioned way. Though we get some information about the constitution and symmetry, exact geometrical data of the nuclei are missing to derive quantum chemical predictions of electromagnetic properties. Our quantum chemist gets information only about what kind of molecule is to be calculated, but the calculation must start nearly from the beginning. Thus, structural formulas are obviously not the appropriate form of molecular representation for quantum chemical interpretation and predictions of electromagnetic properties. However, structural formulas are actually the kind of representation that chemists mainly use, as an arbitrary look at general chemistry textbooks or journals reveals. If the use of structural formulas has some rationality, they must obviously be appropriate to a different kind of theory for a different kind of prediction. My thesis is that structural formulas are the appropriate representation to make predictions of chemical properties, and that it is the only way we have until today by which such predictions can be derived systematically. As we have pointed out above, a mere set of molecular representation as such is not a theory. What then is the theory that provides the rules for interpreting structural formulas in terms of chemical properties? In other words, how can a simple formula store information about the wealth of such complex dynamical relations that we have found to be the logical structure of chemical properties? For instance, how can a formula of acetic acid, say, tell us that the substance can react to form esters, amids, alcohols, etc., that it can be made from aceton, and so on? The strange puzzle we are faced with is that the formula of a single substance must somehow carry information about many, if not all other substances, i.e. about the whole chemical network! Despite their apparent similarity and common designation as ‘molecular representation’, structural formulas obviously work completely different than the geometrical graphs of Figure 2b do. The latter represent molecules (and the corresponding substances) each of their own like the signs of a pictographic language do. Structural formulas, on the other hand, are elements of a systematical language; they represent substances in certain relations with each other, i.e. substances within the chemical network. It would be a cardinal error to mix up these two types of languages, though we have some translation rules, as we will see below (Sect. 4.5). Let us turn now to the interpretation (and generation) rules for structural formulas, which I can necessarily present only as a general sketch since the whole field is much too complex. At first glance, structural formulas are, like the pictographic representations, built up from atomic ‘building blocks’ as the basic units. However, what counts are not the atomic units, but so-called functional groups, i.e. certain groupings of atomic units. As the name suggests, these groupings represent each of their own a certain functionality, i.e. a chemical reactivity with substances of certain different substance classes to form substances of certain other substance classes. Once a chemist has recognized a functional group as part of a structural formula, she is able to make predictions about the reactivity of the corresponding substance. How does she know what functional group represents what reactivity? She must have learned it before, such as we learn the rules of a language. Since similarity in chemical reactivity defines, as we have pointed out in Sect. 3.1, a substance class, it comes out that every functional group represents a substance class. As a consequence, a sufficiently developed system of functional groups exactly maps our network of substance classes (Sect. 3.1/2). A substance can belong to several substance classes, so that its structural formula contains several functional groups. In addition, other structural parts of the formula that (still) have no functional meaning in terms of chemical functionality – such as the carbon skeleton of classical organic chemistry – makes the system of structural formulas sufficiently rich, so that every pure substance is unambiguously represented by a single structural formula. As a consequence, the system of structural formula is also able to exactly map the network of chemical substances (Sect. 1.3). Since all structural formulas are then correspondingly connected with each other to form a network, our puzzle is going to be cleared up now. Unlike pictographic representations, every structural formula represents a substance in its manifold relations to other substances; i.e. its place within the chemical network. Thus, our chemist is able to interpret a given structural formula both in terms of how the corresponding substance can react to form other substances and how it can itself be produced from other substances. Thus far, our theoretical system of structural formulas only reproduces the empirical classification of the chemical network, and as such it has the same systematical, predictive, and explanative capacity as the latter. What about theoretical surplus capacity? First we should admit that historically the empirical classification has been developed from rudimentary forms toward its present state only along with and under supervision of the theoretical framework of structural formulas. The chemical sign language has such an enormous systematizing power, that we can hardly imagine distinguishing chemical substances without referring to structural formulas. A nearly endless list of chemical properties of one chemical substance can be easily grasped by a single formula. For a functional group does not only represent a single property, but all chemical properties characteristic to a certain substance class, including possibly still unknown properties. Thus, structural formulas (as already the predecessors of type theory and radical theory) played an important role in guiding and sometimes correcting the empirical classification of substances. Furthermore, structural formulas owe their semiotical precision to a systematical coarseness. What seems to be, at first glance, a paradox, is actually a rational strategy of every systematical language, namely excluding gray areas both with regard to syntactic and semantic features. This case is very well illustrated by the structural representation of chemical similarities. Chemical similarity between two substances is analyzed in terms of sameness and difference in structural parts of the two corresponding formulas. For instance, unlike pictographic representations, the structural formulas both of methanol and ethanol have exactly the same (not only a similar!) functional OH-group and are different with regard to the rest (Fig. 3). Figure 3. The structural formulas of methanol (left) and ethanol (right) both have the same functional OH-group and are different regarding to the rest Once we have transferred the logic of similarities of wholes into a (binary) logic of sameness and differences of parts, the field of classical logic as well as some mathematical theories (such as topology and group theory, as we will see below) becomes applicable to the chemical sign language, making it a tool with new systematizing and predictive capacities of its own. Only if we consider functional groups in different formulas as the same, then a system of general rules can be developed to interpret and, in particular, to generate new structural formulas, i.e. to make predictions of new chemical substances. In other words, only if we leave pictographic representations in favor of a systematical sign language, then we are able to develop a full-fledged theory. Chemists think in terms of structural formulas, their structural modifications, connections, and rearrangements, while they work with substances in the laboratory and perform chemical reactions. Apparently, structural formulas have nothing of the material properties of substances and vice versa. And, of course, the same goes for the two kinds of operations. If there were not a strong formal correlation between these two kinds of operations, chemists would be running the risk of falling into a kind of schizophrenia. The correlation can be ideally conceived as a kind of translation manual: every structural formula unambiguously corresponds to a certain pure substance and vice versa; and every modification of a structural formula corresponds to a certain chemical change of a substance, and vice versa. Given both a set of structural formulas and a set of rules for allowed structural modification, we are able to generate new structural formulas by applying the rules to the former ones. The outcome of such a structural modification is, per definition, a representation of a possible substance and as such subject to further structural modification according to the rules. If we translate that into the language of substances and chemical properties, it comes out that we have predicted new substances, including its chemical properties and the chemical way to produce them. That is exactly, how millions of new substances have been predicted and produced during the last hundred years (Schummer 1997b/c), proving that the chemical sign language is actually one of the most powerful predictive theories of science at all! Furthermore, structural formulas are subject to types of reasoning which have no direct correlation in the realm of substances, but allows us to make predictions thereof. A good example is the application of topology and mathematical group theory in such areas where possible structural formulas are limited by strict valence rules. For a given quantitative elementary composition (an ‘empirical formula’) we can calculate the number of different structural formulas, i.e. isomeric structures, with regard both to differences in (topological) configuration and in (geometrical) constitution. Since different isomeric structural formulas correspond to different substances, we make indirect prediction of new substances by mathematical approaches, which cannot be directly applied to the language of substances. ‘Thinking in structural formulas’ has brought about a great many rules and laws that could not have been developed on the level of substances, though a correspondence relationship was established afterwards. Most importantly, the concept of reaction mechanism through the introduction of intermediate formulas, that need not correspond to pure substances, but represents intermediate steps of structural modifications with its own kinds of hypothesized functional groups. Such intermediate formulas and their ‘functionalities’ can be hypothetically derived from the outcome of systematical reaction analysis by combinatorics. In addition, the chemical sign language has been enriched by dynamical elements, like arrows, ‘switching bonds’, ‘jumping electrons’ etc., that may look strange from the pictographic or quantum mechanical point of view. But together with intermediate formulas they perfectly and uniquely fulfil the need for a more sophisticated theory to make more precise and more specified chemical predictions by taking into account systematic variations of contextual conditions. Since chemical reactions basically depend on contextual conditions (such as temperature, concentration, solvent etc.) with regard to both velocity and the kind of products, the study of reaction mechanisms allows us to systematically diversify chemical relations on a theoretical level. Moreover, reaction mechanisms such as ‘addition’, ‘elimination’, ‘substitution’ do not only sound like algebraic operation, they also show a strong resemblance to algebraic groups, though an axiomatization has not yet been accomplished. And finally structural formulas as well as reaction mechanism open a field of their own for new kinds of analogical reasoning and similarity concepts of great heuristic value. Mixing up the difference between a structural formula and a pictographic molecular representation is a cardinal error, because the two signs belong to semiotically different types of languages and store different kinds of information for different types of theories. None of the two can substitute the other. If we ignore the difference and, say, produce only pictographic representations, then the language would in the long run lose its chemical information. Despite that semiotical and epistemological difference, there is a strong tendency among chemists to relate both signs to a common referent, a molecule: the two signs may have different connotations, they may emphasize different aspects of reality, but they refer to the same real entity, a molecule. This view has its merits, particularly because of its strong heuristic power of mutual stimulation and supplementing. However, one should not forget that the concept of molecule is itself theory dependant, and that it is neither as unambiguous nor as universal as many believe. Simple substances like water, metals, and salts obviously evade molecular approaches. To be sure, there are many unproblematic substances. But what about the vast intermediate realm: the protic solvents, the neither-pure-covalent-nor-pure-ionic solids, the van der Waals complexes, and so on? To deal with these substances by a molecular approach means emphasizing certain aspects and neglecting others. And we often ignore intermolecular interactions or Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations (another theory!) for no other good reasons than that they do not help but prevent us from solving our current problems. Hence, the claim for a common referent of molecular representations called ‘molecule’, something that is more ‘real’ and more independent of a theoretical perspective is difficult to hold, if we go into details. But it perfectly serves as a heuristic working hypothesis, in order to integrate chemical knowledge. Without it, we would not have developed methods to translate structural formulas into pictographic representations and vice versa. The relative success of such translations, that we address now, gives at least some evidence of a common referential basis of the underlying theories of both types of representations. The first kind of translation, from structural formulas to pictographic representations, was already mentioned (Sect. 4.1). Structural formulas provide us with information about molecular constitution but give no details about interatomic distances and exact angles. If we put the constitutional information into quantum chemical accounts, we may calculate these geometrical details and draw pictographic representations. The other direction, translating from pictographic representations to structural formulas, is more difficult but perhaps more important. Our best experimental methods for structure analysis, such as various forms of spectroscopy, including NMR and x-ray diffraction, as well as quantum chemical calculations, provide us – at least finally after successful data interpretation – with pictographic structure representations, i.e. with a lot of geometrical details. But these methods do not tell us, what we may consider functional groups. Translating pictographic representations into structural formulas is at first a geometrical simplification; i.e. we reduce details of atomic distances and angles to standard distances and angles according to standard notations for structural formulas. But the most important step is recognizing functional groups according to what we have learned before as part of the chemical sign language. We have to make out structural parts for which we have already established rules to interpret them as representations of certain kinds of chemical reactivity. If we do not find anything that we have learned before, then our translation fails. (The deeper reason behind that translation limit is that we have no independent theoretical approach of the concept of functional groups; or, as we will put it in the succeeding paper, there is not even a reductive approach of functional groups, let alone a successful reduction.) However, spectroscopic methods can be used to establish new functional groups, if the methods are applied to the systematical investigation of chemical relations between substance classes. If we find out similarities in atomic arrangement between pictographic representations of several substances, and if systematic chemical investigation reveals regular changes of that kind of arrangement into another kind of atomic arrangement along with chemical reactions under certain conditions, then we can define, in terms of structural formulas, two new functional groups related by a new rule. Moreover, laser spectroscopic methods are today an indispensable means for investigating intermediate states of chemical changes and, thus, going into details of reaction mechanisms. The outcomes of spectroscopic analysis are pictographic representations of intermediate quasi-molecular states. Hence, they must first be translated into the language of structural formulas and assigned certain dynamical ‘functionalities’, in order to become an intermediate step of a reaction mechanism in terms of structural formulas. The study of reaction mechanisms particularly tends to mix up the difference between pictographic representations and structural formulas. But here again we meet the same distinctions and the same consequences that we have pointed out for static representations. A reaction mechanism can be regarded either as a kind of ‘video presentation’ of a singular molecular event, or as a systematical rule for modifying structural formulas. The ‘video presentation’ seems to be ‘closer to reality’ than our chemical sign language. But the apparent ‘closeness to reality’ is again at the expense of theoreticity. Only if we formulate reaction mechanisms as general rules in terms of structural formulas, then we get the predictive capacity that all theoretical efforts aim at. * * * While chemistry in general and structural formulas in particular are usually neglected by philosophers (of science), there is at least one philosophical classic who has pointed out the theoretical capacity of structural formulas, comparable only to mathematical formalism in physics. In the introduction of his famous Philosophie der symbolischen Formen Ernst Cassirer emphatically describes the systematizing capacities of structural formulas: Am klarsten tritt vielleicht diese Tendenz [die den Zeichen ursprüngliche Kraft der Verknüpfung und Vereinheitlichung, J.S.] in der Funktion der wissenschaftlichen Zeichensysteme heraus. Die abstrakte chemische ‘Formel’ etwa, die als Bezeichnung eines bestimmten Stoffes gebraucht wird, enthält nichts mehr von dem, was die direkte Beobachtung und die sinnliche Wahrnehmung uns an diesem Stoffe kennen lehrt; – aber statt dessen stellt sie den besonderen Körper in einen außerordentlich reichen und fein gegliederten Beziehungskomplex ein, [...] sie faßt ihn als einen Inbegriff möglicher ‘Reaktionen’, möglicher kausaler Zusammenhänge, die durch allgemeine Regeln bestimmt werden. Die Gesamtheit dieser gesetzlichen Beziehungen ist es, die in der chemischen Konstitutionsformel mit dem Ausdruck des Einzelnen verschmilzt, und durch die nun dieser Ausdruck ein durchaus neues charakteristisches Gepräge erhält. And finally, in his concluding chapter on ‘the foundations of scientific knowledge’, he comes back to structural formulas emphasizing their predictive capacities: Ganz allgemein besteht der wissenschaftliche Wert einer [Struktur-]Formel nicht nur darin, daß sie gegebene empirische Tatbestände zusammenfaßt, sondern daß sie neue Tatbestände gewissermaßen hervorlockt. Sie stellt Probleme von Zusammenhängen, von Verknüpfungen und Reihenbildungen auf, die der unmittelbaren Beobachtung vorauseilen. So wird sie zu einem der hervorragendsten Mittel dessen, was Leibniz die ‘Logik der Entdeckung’, die logica inventionis genannt hat. It was the aim of the previous sections to dig out characteristic parts from the rich diversity of research fields, all of which are usually called chemistry, by conceptual means and step by step: Starting from the common sense idea that chemistry in general is concerned with material aspects of our world (1.1), we have carefully distinguished chemical properties from other material properties (1.2). Against the background of that distinction we made the basic decision to take the systematic investigation of chemical properties as the chemical core of experimental chemistry. Further analysis of the logical features of chemical properties revealed that the logical structure of systematical chemical knowledge is a peculiar network structure (1.3). A lengthy excursion was necessary to discuss the reasons why pure substances are considered as the basic chemical species, despite serious problems of defining them by empirical (2.1) and theoretical (2.2) means. Pure substances, though artificially produced and definable only in operational terms (2.3), perfectly meet the chemical requirement of distinct substances serving as the nodes of the chemical network (2.4). And they do that in a way that has no alternative on the level of quasi-molecular species (2.5). Not only are pure substances the basic chemical species; they also form the nodes of the chemical network which is already a basic kind of chemical classification. In Sect. 3 we have addressed higher order classification and regarded why and how precise concepts of substance classes are achieved only with regard to chemical similarity (3.1). The resulting classification has turned out to be again a network structure, with substance classes as nodes and chemical class relations as connections; it has enormous systematizing and predictive power with regard to chemical properties (3.2). We have then pointed out that classifications the like are already theories on a basic level and that further ‘foundation’ means justifying the classification by another theory with more systematizing and predictive power (3.4). It was the aim of Sect. 4 to demonstrate that the chemical sign language of structural formulas uniquely fulfils that need of ‘foundation’ of the chemical classification. Thus, from the point of view of our conceptual approach we are forced to consider it as the chemical core of theoretical chemistry – despite the fact that today’s theoretical chemists are mainly concerned with quite different accounts. Since the current neglect of the theoreticity of the sign language may be due to a misinterpretation of structural formulas, we have first pointed out the fundamental difference from pictographic representations of molecular structure (4.1). A closer look at the sign language, i.e. its rules of interpreting and developing structural formulas, has revealed that it not only reproduces the network structures of substances and substance classes with all their systematizing and predictive capacities (4.2). The sign language also establishes a new theoretical level with new systematizing and predictive capacities (4.3-4). In a final section we have discussed the possibilities and limits of translation between the two types of molecular representations with special regard to the investigation of reaction mechanisms by spectroscopic means as a way to enhance the chemical sign language (4.5). The whole complex – from the systematical investigation of chemical properties, over the classificatory networks of chemical substances and substance classes, to the chemical sign language – is considered the ‘chemical core of chemistry’. Since the conceptual approach as well as its results might appear unusual, some final remarks shall be added to avoid possible misunderstandings. First, the above presentation was necessarily only a sketch that requires more detailed analysis and supplementing of neglected aspects such as, for instance, the role of the periodic system of elements for chemical classification. Second, it should once again be emphasized that our results have no normative implications on whatever value basis concerning the value of chemical research inside or outside of the core. Instead, ‘the chemical core’ is simply that part of chemistry that can be conceptually well-distinguished from interdisciplinary, applied, and specialized fields of chemistry, all of which have their own rights, of course. Third, because our approach was basically a conceptual one, one might say that we have been following traditional philosophical lines of searching after ‘the essence’ of chemistry. There is in fact some similarity. However, we have tried to avoid dogmatic essentialism by starting with some basic and reasonable decisions concerning the content and, in particular, the logical structure of basic chemical knowledge. These decisions may be subject to further discussion. But once we accept them – together with the methodological thesis that science seeks for theories, i.e. cognitive structures with highly systematizing and predictive capacities on epistemologically reliable grounds – the rest comes out nearly consequently. Finally, a second important meaning of the term ‘chemical core of chemistry’ was only briefly mentioned here and will be the subject of a succeeding paper (Schummer 1999); namely that the chemical core of chemistry is what is stubbornly resisting all attempts of physicalistic * A first draft of this paper was read and delivered at the ‘International Workshop: Chemistry and Reduction’, 15-17th June 1995 in Konstanz (under the title ‘Problems of Physicalistic Reductions: The Chemical Core of Chemistry’). A revised version was submitted to the journal Synthese for a special issue on the philosophy of chemistry. Unfortunately, the anonymous referees of Synthese have been unable to make a decision for nearly 2 years, so that I was forced to withdraw the submission after repeatedly unsuccessful reclamation. During the years I have got many opportunities to present and discuss parts of the paper, to work on related pieces, and to read new publications on related issues, so that I finally felt the need of completely rewriting and extending the manuscript, of which the present paper is only the first part. Cf. the division of chemistry into 80 sections by Chemical Abstract Service. Cf. Schummer 1997b for a typology of aims and methods in preparative chemistry, and Schummer 1998 for a distinction of various approaches in physical chemistry. E.g. Duncan 1981, Nye 1989, 1993, Ruthenberg 1993, Beretta 1993, Hiebert 1995. More influential in this regard than Comte’s ‘positivistic’ hierarchy of sciences was Engels hierarchy of Bewegungsformen as part of his dialectical materialism. This materialistic approach of specifying chemistry, enhanced with epistemological and methodological aspects, was continued by many philosophers of Eastern Europe; e.g. in works of Kedrow, Laitko, Richter, Simon, and many others listed in the bibliography Schummer 1996c. E.g. Primas 1981, 1985; Del Re 1987, who also takes into account the historical and ontological approach; van Brakel 1997, and many other publications to be cited in the succeeding part. I ignore the quantum curiosity of boson condensation. Cf. Schummer 1997a, p. 311, and Note 10 for reasons why a typology of material properties according to behavior runs into trouble. For a detailed study of the area of physical chemistry and its peculiar fields of material investigations cf. Schummer 1998. Note that thermo-dissociation and photo-dissociation are no chemical properties according to our typology, but thermodynamic and electromagnetic properties, respectively. If two substances are put together in a reaction vessel and nothing happens, then we get precise (and worthwhile) chemical information about the substances. Thus, nonreactivity is not a nonproperty, as a typology of material properties according to kinds of behavior would suggest, but a chemical property. That case is similar to the introduction of the number zero into arithmetic: zero is not a nonnumber but a ‘number-of-no-quantity’. For more details and precision of the concept of chemical reaction cf. Schummer 1997a, p. 320; the concept of chemical or pure substances will be dealt with at length in Sect. 2. Historically the non-linear structure was taken into account at first through tables, esp. affinity tables; cf. Weininger 1998 for a perceptive semiotical study. Most famously, of course, Putnam’s semantic reduction ‘water is H2O’. The original version of the present paper contained a separate section against this kind of semantic reduction and its related Quinean and Kripkean variants. A chemically well-founded criticism of Putnam’s naive essentialism is presented in van Brakel 1986, cf. also van Brakel 1991, 1997. There is some literature on this issue, most importantly the ‘classic’ of Timmermans (1963). For philosophical discussions and further references cf. van Brakel 1986, and Schummer 1996a, pp. 175-180. Cf. the article of Joseph Earley in the present HYLE issue. For more detailed arguments against an essentialism of structures cf. van Brakel 1991, 1997. We will see later (Sect. 4.5), that spectroscopic information about quasi-molecular species as transition states is today a main source for a sophisticated understanding of chemical reactions. But that works only, if we have first translated our coarse but operationally well adapted ontology of pure substance one-by-one into a system of structural formulas, and secondly transferred the spectroscopic information into the language of structural formulas. A rare exception among the forefathers of modern philosophy of science is J.F.W. Herschel. Exceptions of great practical importance are the already mentioned characteristics of IR- and NMR-spectra. Cf. e.g. Stegmüller 1970. Since we have in the present context only (non-statistical) scientific law based types of predictions, we can follow the general agreement among philosophers of science about the structural identity of prediction and explanation; cf. Stegmüller 1969. For a general semiotical analysis of structural formulas against the background of Peirce’s semiotic cf. Schummer 1996b; see also Luisi/Thomas 1990 for a critical discussion of the ‘pictographic molecular paradigm’. For a more detailed but still restricted presentation cf. Schummer 1996a, sect. 6.4. What I call ‘interpretation and generation rules for structural formulas’ is basically the semiotical side of what chemists call ‘reactions’ or ‘reaction mechanisms’ of molecules, of which Chemical Abstract Service has registered now over 2.5 Mio. The ‘ontological speech’ of chemists tends to overlook the theoreticity of these ‘reactions’, for they describe not only singular molecular events or relations between individual substances but generalized chemical relations between (open) substance classes. Thus, the chemical sign language currently integrates millions of theoretically founded different laws! Here I basically mean what Goodman (1968, chapt. IV) has called syntactical and semantic density with reference to the languages of art and science; cf. Schummer 1995, pp. 165ff. for details why structural formulas do not meet Goodman’s criteria. That does not, of course, prevent the system of functional groups from subdividing and reorganizing. E.g. we can make subdivisions according to the closeness of the OH-group to other functional groups (such as by a -hydroxy-ketones and b -hydroxy-ketones), or consider the OH-grouping as part of another functional group (such as by carboxy-groups). Our point is a more general and logical one, that a functional group, on whatever state of the art, is considered the same in different formulas. Cf. Schummer 1996a, sect. 6.5.3 for more details and references. "This tendency [the signs’ original power of connection and unification] probably most clearly comes out in the function of scientific sign languages. For instance, an abstract chemical ‘formula’ used to designate a certain substance, contains nothing of what direct observation and sense perception tell us about this substance; – instead it places the particular substance into an extraordinarily rich and subtly structured complex of relations, [...] it [the formula] grasps it [the substance] as the embodiment of possible ‘reactions’, of possible causal relationships determined by general rules. The totality of these regular relationships merges with the expression of the individual into the chemical constitution formula, so that this expression now receives quite a new characteristic." (Cassirer 1923, vol. 1, p. 44f., my translation). "In general, the scientific value of a [structural] formula is not only that it unites given empirical facts, but that it lures out, so to speak, new facts. It puts forward problems about relations, connections, and formation of order, which precede immediate observation. Thus, it becomes one of the most outstanding means of what Leibniz has called the ‘logic of invention’, logica inventionis." (Cassirer 1923, vol. 3, p. 513, my translation). Amann, A.: 1993, ‘The Gestalt Problem in Quantum Theory: Generation of Molecular Shape by the Environment’, Synthese, 97, 125-156. Beretta, M.: 1993, The Enlightenment of Matter. The Definition of Chemistry from Agricola to Lavoisier, Watson Publishing International, Canton/MA. Cassirer E.: 1923, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 3 vols., Oxford (2nd edn. Oxford 1956) Del Re, G.: 1987, ‘The Historical Perspective and the Specificity of Chemistry’, Epistemologia, 10, 231-240. Duncan, A. M.: 1981, ‘Styles of Language and Modes of Chemical Thought’, Ambix, 28, 83-107. Goodman, N.: 1968, Languages of Art. An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, Bobbs-Merril, Indianapolis. Hiebert, E. N.: 1996, ‘Discipline Identification in Chemistry and Physics’, Science in Context, 9, 93-119. Hoffmann, R.; Laszlo, P.: 1991, ‘Darstellungen in der Chemie – die Sprache der Chemiker’, Angewandte Chemie, 103, 1-16. (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl., 30 (1991) 1-16). Luisi, P.-L.; Thomas, R.M.: 1990, ‘The Pictographic Molecular Paradigm’, Naturwissenschaften, 77, 67-74. Nye, M.J.: 1989, ‘Chemical Explanation and Physical Dynamics: Two Research Schools at the First Solvay Conferences 1922-1928’, Annals of Science, 46, 461-480. Nye, M.J.: 1993, From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry. Dynamics of Matter and Dynamics of Disciplines 1800-1950, University of California Press, Berkeley. Ourisson, G.: 1986, ‘Le langage universel de la chimi: les idéogrammes. Ambiguités et laxismes’, L’actualité chimique, 41-46. Primas, H.: 1981, Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics and Reductionism, Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg/New York. Primas, H.: 1985, ‘Kann Chemie auf Physik reduziert werden?’, Chemie in unserer Zeit, 19, 109-119, 160-166. Ruthenberg, K.: 1993, Was ist Chemie? Die Selbstbestimmung einer Disziplin im historischen Wandel, Univ. of Göttingen (unpubl. Magister thesis). Schummer, J.: 1995, ‘Ist die Chemie eine schöne Kunst? Ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Kunst und Wissenschaft’, Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwisenschaft, 40, 145-178. Schummer, J.: 1996a, Realismus und Chemie. Philosophische Untersuchungen der Wissenschaft von den Stoffen, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg. Schummer, J.: 1996b, ‘Zur Semiotik der chemischen Zeichensprache: Die Repräsentation dynamischer Verhältnisse mit statischen Mitteln’, in: P. Janich, N. Psarros (eds.): Die Sprache der Chemie, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, pp. 113-126. Schummer, J.: 1996c, ‘Bibliographie chemiephilosophischer Literatur der DDR’, HYLE, 2 , 3-11. Schummer, J.: 1997a, ‘Towards a Philosophy of Chemistry’, Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 28, 307-336. Schummer, J.: 1997b, ‘Scientometric Studies on Chemistry I: The Exponential Growth Chemical Substances, 1800-1995’, Scientometrics, 39, 107-123. Schummer, J.: 1997c, ‘Scientometric Studies on Chemistry II: Aims and Methods of Producing new Chemical Substances’, Scientometrics, 39, 125-40. Schummer, J.: 1998, ‘Physical Chemistry – neither Fish nor Fowl?’, in: P. Janich, N. Psarros (eds.): The Autonomy of Chemistry, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg (forthcoming). Schummer, J.: 1999, ‘The Chemical Core of Chemistry II: Resisting Physicalistic Reduction’ (forthcoming). Stegmüller, W.: 1969, Probleme und Resultate der Wissenschaftstheorie und Analytischen Philosophie, Band I: Wissenschaftliche Erklärung und Begründung, Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York. Stegmüller, W.: 1970, Probleme und Resultate der Wissenschaftstheorie und Analytischen Philosophie, Band II: Theorie und Erfahrung, 1. Halbband, Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York. Timmermans, J.: 1963, The Concept of Species in Chemistry, 2nd edn., New York. van Brakel, J.: 1986, ‘The Chemistry of Substances and the Philosophy of Mass Terms’, Synthese, 69, 291-324. van Brakel, J.: 1991, ‘Chemistry’, in: H. Burkhardt, B. Smith (ed.): Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, vol. I, Philosophia, München, pp. 146-147. van Brakel, J.: 1997, ‘Chemistry as the Science of the Transformation of Substances’, Synthese, 111, 253-282. Weininger, St.J.: 1998, ‘Contemplating the Finger: Visuality and the Semiotics of Chemistry’, HYLE–An International Journal for the Philosophy of Chemistry, 4, 3-27.

English and Humanities Festival Wednesday, May 2nd – Friday, May 5th The third annual English and Humanities Festival will be held Wednesday, May 2nd through Friday, May 5th in the Student Center and Rita Tallent Picken Regional Center for the Arts and Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. The event will highlight student panels, keynote speakers, and interactive workshops and readings which are open to the general public. The event primarily focuses on student work; the conference allows students an opportunity to share their work and demonstrate how they contribute to a larger literary and artistic conversation. Panels of interest include discussions on Eco-Criticism, the Literary Apocalypse, Medieval and Contemporary Constructions of the Monster, Video Game Narratives, Teaching and Tutoring Internships, as well as a collaborative conversation on the construction of Parkside’s Outdoor Labs, just to name a few. Students and professors have worked together to construct interactive and interesting ways to present these ideas through their designated panels. The Festival schedule also includes dramatic performances from students in the theatre department and cinematic productions from the film studies program. In addition to student work, presentations by two keynote speakers decorate the Festival’s schedule: Richard Lyons and Jessica Lyn Van Slooten. Richard Lyons is the author of three books of poetry, Fleur Carnivore (The Word Works 2006), Hours of the Cardinal (University of South Carolina Press, 2000), and These Modern Nights (University of Missouri Press, 1988). A former winner of the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, Lyons received a BA from the University of Massachusetts, an MFA from the University of Arizona, and a PhD from the University of Houston. He has published poems in numerous journals, among them The Nation, Poetry, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and The North American Review. In 1988, Deborah Digges selected his first collection, These Modern Nights, as a Devins Award winner in the University of Missouri Press Breakthrough Series. In 2000, Richard Howard selected his second collection, Hours of the Cardinal, for the James Dickey Contemporary Poets Series at the University of South Carolina Press. His latest collection, Fleur Carnivore, won the 2005 Washington Prize. Lyons will offer a public reading of his work at UW-P’s RITA, room 131, from 5:00-6:00 pm on Thursday, May 3rd. Jessica Lyn Van Slooten earned her PhD at Auburn University, and has published articles on Ally McBeal, Edith Wharton and Theodore Dreiser, and foodie romance. Currently, Van Slooten teaches English Composition, American Literature, Multicultural Literature, and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc, where she is also researching the use of blogs in the women’s studies classroom, writing poems, and planning her upcoming wedding. She will be presenting a lecture entitled “Searching the Sentimental Self: A Scholar’s Journey through Literature and Popular Culture,” from 5:30-6:30 pm on Friday, May 5th, in UW-P’s RITA, room 131. From her senior undergraduate thesis on Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her dissertation on the Beat Generation to recent published scholarship on popular romance fiction and television, Van Slooten has always been interested in female identity. How do women navigate conflicting desires? How do they show the world who they are? Literature, popular fiction, and television provide many examples of successful and failed attempts at creating a life of one’s own. In this talk, Van Slooten will share her scholarly journey through such diverse texts as Aurora Leigh, Ally McBeal, Sister Carrie, On the Road, and more. Following the common threads of feminist criticism and genre distinctions, she will discuss the tangled theoretical knots of identity and sentiment, both in the texts and in her own scholarly life. The College of Arts and Sciences, the UW-Parkside English Department, Straylight Literary Arts Magazine, and Sigma Tau Delta sponsor this event, with many members of these departments and organizations being instrumental in its organization. As a showcase of undergraduate achievement, professor and student collaboration, and community involvement, the Festival is a source of pride for the UW-Parkside English Department. For more information on the English Department of UW-Parkside, please visit our website: http://www.uwp.edu/departments/english/. Instituted in the Spring of 2007, Straylight Literary Arts magazine is Parkside’s literary journal. Straylight accepts and publishes innovative works of fiction and poetry and greatly values new and upcoming writers. The journal currently publishes the print edition twice a year, in late spring and fall. Copies of the journal will be available for purchase at the Festival, and you can visit them online at http://www.Straylightmag.com. Sigma Tau Delta is the international honor society for English majors. Since its re-institution in 2011, Tau Psi, the UW-P chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, has become a fixture in Parkside’s academic community. The chapter prides itself in conferring distinction upon students displaying academic excellence within the major. During the Festival, the chapter will be holding an induction ceremony in UW-P room RITA 131, at 6:00 pm, Wednesday, May 2nd, wherein it will honor new members as well as present various awards to students and faculty. For information on the society, visit http://www.english.org. The conference is free and open to the public. For a complete 2012 conference schedule, visit http://www.PWCONF.com. Additional information about the conference is also available on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ParksideEnglishAndHumanitiesFestival. For any additional information about the specific panels or activities, or general questions about the conference overall, please contact Dean Karpowicz via email: firstname.lastname@example.org.

Welcome to our new site! If you’d like a tour to get acquainted, click here. ||Healing Body, Mind, and Spirit with Pure Essential Oils| Ravensara / Ravintsara Confusion Please note, this topic has made my brain ache for the past three months, as I tried to wade through the various references on the subject. There are few more confusing essential oils than Ravensara and Ravintsara. The years of literature written on the subject only serve to deepen the confusion. Never have I seen more contradictions about the chemical analysis of an oil. After researching every bit of information available I've decided that in many cases, when an authority wrote about one oil, he or she was often describing the other. I'd like to thank Beverley Hawkins, principal of the West Coast Institute of Aromatherapy, Michel VanHove of Cevenat Sarl, Tony Burfield of Cropwatch, Sylla Sheppard-Hanger of the Atlantic Institute of Aromatherapy, and Kathy Duffy, instructor par exellence, for helping me reach clarity. I've waded through, and present, a LOT of information about the two oils, but if you are interested primarily in which oil to use for which circumstances, we'll cut to the chase immediately: Which should I buy? (Because this is the basic bottom line question for the end user, wishing to maintain health and well-being.) For healthy adults, who wish to remain so, I would continue to buy and use true Ravensara Aromatica for treating shingles, herpes, and other viral ailments, or for diffusion to kill airborne viruses. HOWEVER, if I were dealing with children, with pregnant women or nursing mothers, I would substitute the gentler and safer Ravintsara. For personal use, in the future, I will probably use a blend of Ravensara aromatica AND Ravintsara in my diffuser. For respiratory or bronchial problems, it seems self evident that RavINTsara, with its high component of 1,8-cineole would ease breathing. (In the past we've received rave results from practioners using our Ravensara Aromatica to treat cases of whooping cough. Hindsight being 20/20, I would use Ravintsara for this situation.) I have received an unpublished case study in an elementary school where the use of Ravensara Aromatica in an aloe vera gel as a "hand cream" three times a day dramatically lowered the absenteeism rate in the classrooms studied. For a use like this, with school aged children, I would use RavINTsara, both because it may be safer for small children, but also because it is less apt to be a skin irritant. I have had feedback from several clients who had used both oils that true RavINTsara is less irritating to the skin. So for topical use, the new Ravintsara may be safer and gentler. (But, if I EVER develop shingles, I will use our traditional, high estragole Ravensara Aromatica, in Calophyllum. We know, based on years of successful feedback, that it quickly eases the pain and inflammation. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.") What I know, for certain about the two oils: Ravensara Aromatica is distilled from the leaves of the tree named Ravensara aromatica Sonnerat also known as Agatophyllum aromaticum. It contains small amounts of methylchavicol (estragole), sabinene, and alpha-terpinene with a large percentage of limonene, and VERY little 1,8-cineole. This is the Ravensara essential oil that we have imported and made available for over a decade. It is what we have personally used and recommended as our most powerful antiviral essential oil. We have a tall stack of grateful testimonials from clients who have used it, blended with Calophyllum inophyllum, to ease the pain and inflamation of shingles. It has been successfully used to treat all forms of herpes, again, blended with Calophyllum. We have successfully used it to repel attacks by any and all viral ailments. We have supplied it to hospitals, to doctors, nurse aromatherapists, various aromatherapy teachers and students. There are some contraindications to using any oil high in methyl chavicol. Estragole is a suspected carcinogen and I have seen it listed as a possible hepatoxin. Limiting use with children or pregnant or nursing mothers seems appropriate. Also, true Ravensara aromatica can be a skin irritant. Although I have seen it recommended in as high a ratio as a 50% dilution, I would strongly question the wisdom of such a potent dilution. Ravintsara is distilled from the leaves of Cinnamomum camphora in Madagascar. This is a very different species than the camphor trees grown in Asia. Rather than being high in camphor, it is high in 1,8-cineole eucalyptol, the plant chemical that give the various eucalyptus oils their penetrating aroma. True Ravintsara essential oils contain at least 45% 1,8-cineole, rather than the approximately 5% found in true Ravensara aromatica oil. The two oils are clearly very different aromatically, and in chemical composition. Ravensara Anisata is sometimes described as a separate species of tree. However based on all the evidence I have been able to find, it is more apt to be distilled from the BARK of Ravensara aromatica Sonnerat (Agatophyllum aromaticum). It is much higher in methyl chavicol than the leaf oil from the same tree, sometimes as much as 50% methyl chavicol. For well over a decade, various well respected aromatherapy authors and teachers have recommended the use of Ravensara Aromatica as an antiviral. Not surprising since our experience has shown that Ravensara Aromatica is, in fact, a powerful virus preventative. However, such authorities as Kurt Schnaubelt have described Ravensara Aromatica as being high in 1.8 cineole. An obvious confusion with Ravintsara oil. In the early '90s, in a paper presented at Purdue University, Sylla Sheppard-Hanger wrote "For many years now, in the aromatherapy market, there has been trading of Ravensara aromatica Sonnerat (leaf), typically high in 1,8 cineole." She concludes: "So far, therefore, the species of both Ravensara and Cinnamomum camphora, and their oils offered on the current aromatherapy remains confusing. There is a definite need for some certified samples of botanical materials to distill and analyze. All we can conclude from this research project is that the typical chemistry of what is being sold on the market as R. aromatica is consistent, but variable. More research is obviously needed and as this is obtained, additions to this report will be published. As far as aromatherapists are concerned, care should be taken in the use of these oils because as yet there still remains to be any formal safety testing by an internationally acceptable agency." However, in 2004 Dr. Arthur Tucker analyzed a sample of our true Ravensara Aromatica and found only 5.68% of 1,8-cineole, as well as high percentages of estragole. He wrote in his comments: “Aromatic ravensare, is distilled from the leaves of Agathophyllum aromaticum (Ravensara aromatica) and is high in estragole (methyl chavicol). This oil matches the few reports of the leaf oil of this species.” Years ago, Olivier Behra, Madagascar producer and conservationist, wrote the following: "For aromatic ravensare, the botanical name is ravensara aromatica whereas the ravintsara botanical name is cinnamomum camphora. The main component of ravintsara oil is the 1,8-cineol. If I remember right it must not be less than 40%. Our ravintsara production 1,8-cineol is 50–58%." From the International Journal of Aromatherapy, Vol 11. Number 1, edited by Robert Harris: Hope all this sheds some light on a very confusing subject! 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My kids have been at FJA for elementary and middle school. I can truly say that I respect the teachers that they have had. FJA uses a hands on approach and incorporates projects so that the students WANT to learn! The students are treated fairly with the school's huge emphasis on building community. Finally, my 8th grader is gifted. Many of our friends thought we should try other schools in our area, but she has been consistently challenged by her teachers because they are not afraid to involve the students in discussions and projects that meet the Common Core. We are very pleased!!! FJA is a great learning environment for my children. The education at the elementary campus uses the core Montessori principle of learning at the pace that best fits the student. At the same time, the students are held accountable for completing their work every week. (Accountability has been a missing piece for us in previous Montessori experiences.) Much of the learning involves hands on projects, field trips, or visiting experts. Children's House (3-6yo) is amazing not only for the learning environment but also for teaching children to treat each other in a kind and respectful way. Our family has had experience with 5 different teachers throughout our years at FJA elementary and all have been top caliber. The small classroom size has ensured that any issues that need to be addressed are done so quickly and I agree with another reviewer who said that the teachers and staff care very much about their students. The only downside to our experience ( and every school has a downside) is the amount of paper or worksheets that come from some of the classrooms. Also the turnover in Spanish language instructors has made the Spanish program somewhat inconsistent. This is our third year at FJA. We have sons in 2nd grade and 5th grade. We LOVE FJA. Our sons have been provided opportunities to work above their grade level in the areas in which they have stronger skills; they also receive wonderful support in their areas where they may struggle. There is a strong community with highly involved family support. The kids are held to high expectations with how they treat one another. The multi-grade classroom is fantastic as it allows teacher and student to develop a strong relationship. The teachers and staff genuinely love the school and the kids. This is a great, small community school. The Elementary is wonderful, especially the kinder and the 1st/2nd classes. 3rd/4th is also good but not as strong as the early years. Unfortunately the 5th grade is now middle school and a separate campus. My kids have been here going on 5 years and we've really liked it here, even with the change in principal and no principal for an entire year. The staff is not very good at communication but they are working on it. I find it sad that many of the teachers are sending their kids to other schools (especially for 5th grade) and that makes me nervous as a parent. The 'small' community that the elementary provided for the past 4 years is now broken with the middle school. Not sure if we will stay be we are going to see how it goes. PROS - small classes, great environment, great teachers, family-oriented CONS - not Montessori based after 1st grade and especially not in 3/4th. Lack of technology used by the teachers (not good with email, web updates, etc) New Spec Ed director is inexperienced and (IMO) she is not best suited for that job. Leadership is new but not sure if it is strong. The school is in transition. The school has a great collection of kids and families. Some of the teachers are excellent. Nearly all of the people in positions of authority need to be dismissed, however. They are dishonest, unprofessional, lazy and fail to put the wellbeing of the kids first. They have been known to alter and omit information for parents and the board that might make them look bad. The classes also fail to provide challenge for students that are ahead of the curve. They also waste a great deal of time throughout the day with activities that don't really teach anything.They are technologically deficient and though many subjects are touched on, nothing is really learned in depth. My kids are at this school because socialization is important and the kids that go here are a good group. We are just biding our time until they can go somewhere better. I have 2 kids that have been attending fja at the elementary and middle school and i am continuously disappointed. this is their 3rd year at the school and it will be their last. the school is run like day care, with little structure. they have old text books and not enough for each student so they have to share the books in groups. this makes it difficult for someone struggling with math. the teachers have an "oh, they'll learn that next year" attitude and they push off teaching important concepts. a math teacher at the middle school, is mean, impatient, and bullies the kids. he has favorites who he coaxes into laughing at other kids he doesn't like. he makes fun of kids in front of the whole class and cannot control his temper. and administration was not concerned that he was making kids cry. my kids were scoring in the 98th percentile when they came to this school and their test scores have steadily dropped. i heard great things about this school back before 2008, but it is terrible now. kids love the unsupervised, day-care like atmosphere, but they are not learning. try it for a year to see for yourself. it took me three years to realize it just keeps getting worse, not better. FJA is a wonderful, family oriented school community! I absolutely love hearing each day how wonderful my 3rd graders day was. The teachers clearly care for their students and go well out of their way to help each child feel successful. The focus is not just on academics but on having a respectful, peaceful and fun learning environment that incorporates hands-on materials, art, poetry, literature, peace education and responsibility. I went to this school for only one year, my eighth grade year back in 2001-02 and it was probably the best year I've ever had in school. The teachers were awesome, the classroom environment was great, and the student-teacher relationships were outstanding. I went there as a below average student, who just didn't care, but FJA helped me to become the person i am today. I write this review from half way around the world, and if you have a child who you know has potential, and can benefit, send him/her here. One day i will never forget was 9/11... We all crammed into one classroom, and watched the footage as it was going down. All day we gave insight and discussed the event. I am now a great public speaker, and though i chose to join the navy, FJA helped me into becoming a well disciplined man. The teachers at FJA really strive to make learning fun and applicable to life while instilling the self-discipline and values needed for kids to succeed beyond the classroom. My kids have all loved school from pre-school all the way up. The chance to work at their own pace and pursue their interests as they relate to classwork has made my children happy students! Where else would a middle school boy who dislikes reading novels love his English class? Where else are the kids guaranteed art, foreign language, physical, health, music education every week-even when they're little? My children have been at FJA from preschool thru the 8th grade. I have been so happy at FJA. The principal is a very carrying person, the teachers are awesome and invested individuals and the ciriculum interesting and challenging. The only downfall to FJA is they don't have ahigh school! I have been doing my Master's degree Practicum at FJA and am absolutely blown away by the genuine focus the teachers give each and every student. I also did some practicum work at two public schools here and FJA is eons beyond comparison. Their classroom libraries are phenomenal and the school is in great shape! I had two students who went thru FJA from 2nd thru 8th grade. They never complained about getting up in the morning and going to school! Their teachers really cared about not only their education but about how their day was going. I would highly recommend this school to anyone searching out a quality caring school. My kids are very prepared for high school thanks to FJA. Great School. Nice and caring teachers. Wish we would not have moved. My daughter misses this school so much. The teachers are uniformly spectacular and deeply devoted to the welfare and learning of their students. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the principal. She has driven many wonderful teachers from the school in recent years. Regardless, my son has recieved an excellent education. the quality of education at this school is variable. there are a few very good teachers and a couple of others who probably couldn't get a job elsewhere. cramped spaces, overcrowding and sometimes very difficult kids. often disorganized and the kids can easily fall behind, especially in math. consider the middle school cautiously, although the elementary school is great. FJA is an excellent choice for junior high! My son has done marvelous there FJA is a small and intimate school. The teachers are dedicated and hard working and while nothing or no school is perfect any minor issue we had were resolved through open communication with the staff. I can honestly say that my son has flourished. We feel fortunate to have spent our Junior High years with Mr. Clark, Mr. McQuaide, Mr. Gomez, Mr. Ruch, Mr. T, Mr. Wilson, Ms. Hart, Mrs. Rhinne, Tony, and our principal Mrs. Ambrose! Thank you for helping my son through those awkward junior high years. We think FJA is a 10 + school. FJA has some of the finest teachers who have a passion for educating their students. Unfortunately, the principal lacks in leadership and can be very unprofessional in handling her job. Teachers hands are tied when it comes to working to make the school better since their voices are seldom heard. The school would be absolutely amazing if everyone (parents, teachers, students, and administration) could all cooperate to maximize FJA 's potential as the best school in Flagstaff. That said, if it were not for the amazing teachers, I don't think this school would be as successful as it is without them. I'v only had esperience with the middle school, but I have nothing good to say about the principal. FJA is supposed to be a communtiy. I would not reccommend this school to anyone. The elementary program here at FJA makes a great environment. Our son is very happy here, learning and being positively supported through his education! Community ratings and reviews do not represent the views of GreatSchools nor does GreatSchools check their accuracy or verify the reviewers' identities. Use your discretion when evaluating these reviews. The Community Rating is the school’s average rating from its community members (e.g., parents, students, and school staff). The highest possible rating is five stars; the lowest is one star. To start a new list, click OK. Otherwise click Cancel. Thank you! You will begin to receive newsletters from us shortly. Great work! Only one more step. Now we just need you to verify your email address. Please click on the link in the email we just sent you to complete your registration. Great work! Only one more step. 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KL, mega sale city Kuala Lumpur shopping guide from designer-brand malls to back alleys and flea market bargains. with photography by Vijay Verghese SEE ALSO Kuala Lumpur Hotels | Langkawi Guide | Penang Guide | Malaysia Spas | Sabah Guide | Shanghai Shopping guide | Hong Kong Shopping guide | Bangkok Shopping guide | Singapore Shopping guide | Digital Cameras and Video Reviews | Tioman Guide | Kuala Lumpur Nightlife JUMP TO Central Market | Chinatown and a splash of India | Kuala Lumpur shopping malls, Suria | Bintang Walk, Starhill, Pavilion and Lot 10 | Computers, camera, Sungei Wang Plaza | Berjaya Times Square | Bargain shopping in Bangsar, Sri Hartamas | Petaling Jaya | Night markets and weekend flea markets | Golf club | Kuala Lumpur Airport duty-free GET SET. Strap on your jet packs. Go! No, this is not a space jaunt at the speed of light but an exhilarating – and potentially exhausting – shopping marathon at whatever speed your wallet can muster. From haute couture and high-gloss brands to flea markets and homegrown fashion, Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, has it all. If you’re truly serious, invest in a large suitcase, leave plenty of room, ensure your credit is humming and block out your calendar from 29 June till 1 September, 2013. This is the official 1Malaysia Mega Sale Carnival period when shoppers get high on lower than low prices – almost 70 percent off in some cases. More information at the Tourism Malaysia (www.tourism.gov.my) official site. Throughout the year, carnivals and sales are slotted in to keep shoppers busy. There are sales to coincide with sports events (Kuala Lumpur F1 Grand Prix), sales for summer, sales for winter and sales for, well, Malaysia. There's always the Malaysia Year-End Sale – the Mega Sale biggie, 15 November, 2014 to 4 January, 2015. Central Market collectables One of the first things you might do is to pop into Central Market, on Jalan Hang Kasturi (tel: [60-3] 2274-6542), to pick up a host of local handicraft and other quirky souvenirs. It’s little wonder that this art deco market is top on every traveller’s list. It offers a genuinely local feel and, most importantly, friendly prices. Once inside, you’ll excuse the pink and blue exterior, and enjoy ambling past painters, sculptors, fortune-tellers and traders who have made their home in this former wet market – the interior now renovated into spanking new modernity. My pick is the Collectables Centre (G43, tel: 2273-3182), cluttered with every imaginable collectable from old Craven cigarette tin boxes, charcoal irons and oil lamps to century-old Nyonya tea sets and hairpins. If you’re persuasive enough, the owner might just part with original prints of Sun Yat Sen and old family portraits, for the right price of course. Next stop, Songket & Sutera Asli (M53, tel: 013 307 7335), for beautiful songket (richly woven silk) fabric from the East Coast. Prices begin at RM75 (US$23) and then climb indefinitely depending on workmanship. The exchange rate is roughly US$1 = 3.26 Malaysian ringgit (RM). Pavilion lights up at night Be sure to also visit the House of Silver (G15, tel: 2274-4457) to take home, a Kelantanese tea set, antique silverware, jewellery or the Malay keris. A stop at Rhino Art & Design (KB17) provides fashionistas with a wild range of hand-painted clogs – from the conventional to edgy wooden pumps. Check out the Ricecooker Shop (2.03, Mezzanine) which surprisingly dabbles in printing and design services but it's their collection of indie music that will entice the serious music lover. For kites of every shape and size (the wau bulan being most popular) stop by Wau Tradisi (M51, tel: 2274-1906). Prices here range from RM198 (US$62) to RM500 (US$156). Nearby, Game Corner (M 37) sells traditional game tools such as congkak and gasing (spinning top). Batik is wall-to-wall throughout the market. Pop into Ilham Batik (M25A, tel: 2274-8131) for their hand-drawn batik. Before heading off, rummage through the pottery, pewter, wayang kulit (shadow puppets), traditional costumes and local snacks or have your portrait painted. Don't miss Success Portrait (1.12B) for on-the-spot portraits done in pencil, acrylic or oil; Architecture Designer (1.10A) for art works depicting the city's historical buildings; and WK Clock House (S07, tel: 2273-6313) for a variety of antique clocks. The joy of retail therapy at Central Market is, indeed, a well-rounded affair. Master Chin (1/F, 3rd bridge), the resident fortuneteller might offer some tips on paying for all that stuff clattering about in your suitcase-on-wheels. For a selection of imported art material, head to T-Square (G1-01, tel: [60-3] 2031-1922). It also sells school supplies, paint and stationery, and dabbles in printing. Tanamera (G25) stocks locally made organic, eco-friendly spa products and accessories. Its specialty is post-natal care products, but the soaps (with ingredients such as rice grains, turmeric and ginger) are must-buys. Stop to refuel at Precious Old China (M2, tel: 2273-7372), an antique and art gallery doubling as a restaurant and bar serving authentic Nyonya cuisine. Starhill Dior shop Much loved Annexe Gallery (tel: [60-3] 2070-1137), right behind the Central Market, is the hippest space for the arts with exciting exhibitions, performances and workshops featuring young, local and regional artists. The gallery plays host to Art For Grabs, an event jam-packed with workshops and talks. The real attraction is the arts and craft bazaar, billed as the city's best venue to purchase original art at wholesale prices (pieces go for RM100 or less). Lorong Hang Kasturi, right next to the Central Market, has been transformed into a covered pedestrian walkway. Called Kasturi Walk, it is flanked by several kiosks and retail outlets, selling arts, handicraft and clothes. Tip: A heritage walk around the old part of the city is conducted every day, free of charge; the meeting point is at the Central Market Annexe. Call 2032-1031 or 017-989-1031 for more details. Almost hidden, upstairs at 145 Jalan Tun HS Lee, in over 8,000sq ft of casually strewn home furnishings, art, fabric, batik clothes and curios, is the Peter Hoe (tel: 2026-9788) craft shop. Expect linen outfits, silver jewellery, lampshades, silk cushions, pillows and a café. Peter has been operating for over 18 years, and this store in Lee Rubber Building was reputedly the headquarters of the Japanese secret police during the second world war. It's enough to make a shopper cry out and confess, "Yes! I want more..." Right next door is the 70-year old crockery shop Kwong Yik Seng (144, tel: 2078 3620). Walk in for a slice of old Chinese charm. Oriental ceramics, Buddha statues and decorative chinaware sit cheek by jowl, jostling for your attention. Chinatown and a splash of India A short walk from Central Market is Chinatown. Signature lantern-lined streets and pre-war shop houses are now oddly complemented by palm trees and modern roofing, aimed at sheltering shoppers from Kuala Lumpur’s heavy rains. Nevertheless, Chinatown retains its old world charm when it transforms, come rain or shine, into a bustling night market. Thread your way through the maze of street-vendors on Petaling Street and haggle vigorously. Not for the faint hearted. This is a sounds-and-smells Kuala Lumpur shopping guide at its most visceral. Cosmetics are a major KL draw Petaling Street is a vibrant mix of Chinese, Nepalese and Burmese traders who all vie for attention, selling jewellery, herbal medicines, dried food, designer t-shirts, handbags and wallets. Knock-offs and fakes abound. Striking a bargain is not always easy. The trick is to throw in a few local terms like “Murah sikit?” (A little cheaper?) or “Mahal sangat!” (Too expensive!) and pretend to leave in a huff. Sure enough, a voice will call out behind you. “Okay lah, Okay lah! Ow-mach-you-wan?” By the way, Chinatown’s Hokkien-style thick noodles are purported to be the best in KL. Kim Lian Kee (49-51, Jalan Petaling, tel: 2032-4984) has been dishing out delicious Hokkien fried noodles since the 1920s – a definite must. Venus Art and Stationery (90 Jalan Petaling, tel: [60-3] 2072-8807), which has been around since the 1960s, is one of the best places for Chinese art supplies. This family-run arts and crafts store stocks a wide selection of art materials for Chinese ink painting and calligraphy. Close by is Weaver House (76 Jalan Sultan, tel: 2078-0392) – a cabinet of curiosities, stuffed with all sorts of affordable home ware, furnishings and curios. Pick up a beautiful wooden chest. To stock up on premium and specialty tea, visit Wisdom Arts Tea Shop (135 Jalan Tun HS Lee, tel: [60-3] 2078-2409), Evergreen Tea House (Ground Floor, Selangor Complex Jalan Sultan, tel: 2026-8608), and Le Xe Xuan Da Hong Pao (Corner of Jalan Sultan and Jalan Hang Jebat). Do pop into Moontree House (First Floor, 6 Jalan Panggung) for feminist-inspired books plus handmade zakka crafts like puppets and bags. Close by is Aku Café & Gallery (First Floor, 8 Jalan Panggung, tel: 2857-6887) and Findars (Fourth Floor, 8 Jalan Panggung) for some contemporary local art. Over on Jalan Tun Tan Siew Sin, locate this gem of a store – Woh Fatt Music House (No. 37, tel: 2070-5968) first established in the Sixties. Go past its decaying façade and discover amps, violins, guitars and drums plus a niche selection of ukuleles. Not far is the city’s oldest temple, Sin Sze Ya Temple, founded by none other than the city’s third Kapitan Cina, Yap Ah Loy. Visit for a glimpse of the temple's elaborately carved pillars, beams and altars. Masjid Jamek, KL's oldest mosque, impresses with its quietness, symmetry and beauty. Starhill pulls in the posh crowd Then on to the heart of Little India at Jalan Masjid India. A similar makeover has taken shape here as part of the country’s beautification and upgrading project. Don’t fret; all is not lost despite the covered walkways and paved paths. Little India’s vibrant character is very much alive. Vendors lug bales of sarees through the traffic and past shops heaped with gold, traditional medicines and gaudy glass bangles. Brightly hued sarees and Bollywood-inspired Indian dresses (salwar kameez and lengas) are some of the greatest temptations here. Salwars are loose fitting tunics with a long knee-length shirt/blouse while lengas are long skirts. Though in recent times, this area has changed its flavour with tightly packed stalls selling Muslim religious trinkets and shops that specialise in headscarves, the Indian vibe is not all lost. My favourite is the one-stop complex, The Madras Store (100, Jalan Masjid India, tel: [60-3] 2693-0072) for fabulous sarees, brassware, oil lamps and home accessories. Another highly recommended stop is Semua House – a one stop for all your wedding, cosmetics and textile needs. For fancy jewellery, Little India (50, Jalan Masjid India, tel: 2693-3443) is sought after, mainly by young brides-to-be. Be sure to whip out your reliable Casio calculator (don’t leave home without it). Prices correspond to the weight of the jewellery. Remember, the price of gold is fixed. What you’re negotiating down then is the premium on the workmanship. At the other end of this street, there’s a different sort of street theatre with huge crowds congregated around peddlers vociferously declaring the merits of their cure-alls – for impotency, feminine facial hair – through loudspeakers. If all this is too much, have your feet massaged the traditional Malay way, for just RM30 (US$9.17). On Lebuh Ampang street (a short walk from Masjid India), shuffle between spice and sundry shops, Indian restaurants and saree shops. Pop into Nalli’s (49A, Lebuh Ampang, tel: 2070-5809), a hot favourite among locals for the latest saree trends, be it in chiffon, Mysore silk, Kanchipuram or cotton. Jayanthi Store (16 Lebuh Ampang, tel: 2070-8779) is crammed with lovely sarees, fashion accessories and religious artifacts. Stop to savour every type of Indian sweet imaginable along the way, phatisa, moti choor ladoo, kalakand or barfee. Parallel to Jalan Masjid India is Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman lined with shops, noted for their wonderful fabric, antiques and jewellery. Old and new mingle on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman; modern complexes rise above retro buildings. Gulatis Silk House (162/164, Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, tel: 2698-3901) and Euro Moda (126/128, tel: 2694-0805) deserve mention for their exquisite fabric, studded with sequins and beads. This long stretch is also a good spot to hunt for oriental antiques and art. Udani Carpets (393A, tel: 2698-1962) and Shalini Carpets (40, tel: 2692-7008) offer quite an extensive range. Kamdar (113 Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, tel: 2698-8488), highly popular among locals, has the lot under one roof, from Malay traditional wear to pretty fabrics. Suria KLCC retains its class If you need to recharge again, check out the 1920s Coliseum Café for a cold beer and heavenly, but spicy, prawn sambal, accompanied by their home-baked Chinese toast with REAL butter. Despite the dismaying crush of tourist coaches, The Craft Cultural Complex (Jalan Conlay, tel: 2162-7459) is still a great venue for batik, rattan baskets and other traditional handicraft sourced from around the country. In fact, the complex’s main attraction is its community of artists and their workshops. Get to know these artists while observing them at work and you may just go home with some unique finds. For some pewter shopping, arrange for your hotel to send you right to the doorstep of the Royal Selangor Visitor Centre (4, Jalan Usahawan 6, tel: 4145-6000) in Setapak Jaya. Walking through this contemporary structure is an educational experience in itself: learn about the history of Royal Selangor, its origins and the science of pewter. Besides watching artisans displaying their skill, you can also mould your own pewter bowl at the workshop. The full and latest range of pewter is available here, which includes modern tableware, jewellery and accessories. Glitzy shopping malls, Suria Moving upscale, Kuala Lumpur’s monster malls are crammed with designer brands and more. Just name it and KL has it, from Versace, Gucci and Prada to Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior. The Suria KLCC Shopping Complex (Jalan Ampang), situated at the foot of the world’s tallest twin towers, is a real gem with its swank shops, cafés and beautiful people. Here, flagship stores of international fashion labels rub shoulders with trendy boutiques and mod jewellers. Stealing the thunder is the upscale Aseana (G/F, tel: [60-3] 2382-9988), a treasure trove of handmade clothing from all around the region. Perk up your wardrobe with shawls and sarongs by designers Marilyn Tan and Bobby Ch'ng and your home with silk, teapots and sculptures. This is upscale designer brand shopping by the yard. Looking for Dior or Louis Vuitton in KL? Head here. Bustling Sungei Wang plaza If you love all things beautiful, check out Farah Khan (G13, tel: 2382-0314) and its stunning fashions. Expect everything – top-to-toe accessories, chiffon, silk tops and skirts adorned with delicate hand-sewn beading and show-stopping evening dresses. Khan melds East and West elements to create one-of –a-kind styles. Her dresses – to every girl’s delight- travel wonderfully as they require no ironing.A must stop is Ang Eng (tel: 2161-2324) - a kebaya (Nyonya-styled traditional blouse) maker since 1955- for its collection of figure-hugging kebayas that are aggressively making a comeback to the local fashion scene. Make a statement and cause jaws to drop back home when you pair this sexy, lacy top with your favourite pair of jeans. Steve Madden’s flagship store (1/F 105B, tel: 2168-8599) deserves a visit. Check out his trend-setting shoes, which have long achieved certain notoriety amongst Hollywood celebrities. Melbourne-based Crumpler (316D, tel: 2161-2160) stocks colourful bags – carry home rocky, edgy designed laptop computer and camera bags. For exclusively designed pieces, ARCH World Miniature (307, Level 3, tel: 3820-489) has small-scale reproductions of just about anything. It’s one way to take a small piece of KL home in your pocket. Pick up a miniature Petronas Twin Towers or a framed city skyline. Do pop into its gallery off Dataran Merdeka – here you can watch craftsmen at work, putting together these tiny wooden structures. Head up to KLCC’s sprawling Kinokuniya bookstore (Level 4, tel: 2164-8133), which offers a wide selection of coffee table books, novels and specialty material plus every imaginable title on history, theology and art. Browse its Japanese section, which carries not only the latest Japanese bestsellers, but also an interesting selection of manga, art and craft titles, idol photo books, magazines, catalogues and e-Mooks. Drop into Eclipse (120, tel: 2382-0259) for sexy clothes from local designer Sonny San. Ogle at chunky cocktail rings and bangles, necklaces in geometric shapes and funky drop earrings at the very affordable Chamelon (C61, tel: 2382-0199). Fashion show at Pavilion FLOW (F135 B) is for full-figured women and caters to curvy ladies, size eight (US) to size 16. There’s also Miu Miu (G06, tel: 2382-0979) with its oversized clutches, jewels and shoulder bags; Anya Hindmarch (LC-105B, tel: 2382-0877) with the designer’s signature bags; Diana Von Furstenberg (G03C-G03D, tel: 2163-5028) for her ubiquitous wrap dresses; Harley Davidson Lifestyle Store (346A, tel: 2161-2277); Cerruti 1881 (K12, tel: 2163 3376); Jelly Bunny (Concourse Floor, tel: 2162-0466) and Oeding- Erdel Fine Jewellery (119, tel: 2162-3323). Visit the Canon Lifestyle Concept Store (Third Floor) for cameras, printers, ink cartridges and other Canon accessories. Sore feet? Settle down to tea, cakes and scones with a reviving cuppa at the Harrods Signature Shop & Tea Room (137, Level 1, tel: 2166-6000). A stop here provides some last-minute shopping inspiration especially if your kitchen cupboards are a little bare – Harrods has an excellent selection of wines, cakes, cheese, sausages and teas. Delicious, but deadly to the wallet, Harrods remains a happy hunting ground for the hungry shopper. Visitors enjoy more discounts and free gifts with the Tourist Privilege card. Swing by the concierge (ground floor) to inquire. At fast-expanding Suria KLCC, you can now look forward to more than 30 specialty stores including flagship Cartier and Chanel stores, French Sole shoe store, Marc Jacobs, a new Giorgio Armani and the region’s first Armani Café at the luxury annexe. Joining them is Paul Frank, noted for his adorable, gummy grinning Julius the Monkey, which adorns t-shirts, wallets and hoodies. Special edition items like Paul Frank t-shirts featuring the Petronas Twin Towers is a must buy. Go across to the newly refurbished Avenue K (opposite Suria KLCC), through an underground connection, to marvel at the exquisitely designed structure by French designer Christian Liagre. Avenue K’s once tepid experience has now been given a shot in the arm by anchor tenant H&M, boasting the largest retail space in the city. This highly anticipated temple of high fashion is finally set to kick off as one of Kuala Lumpur 's fashion hotspots with the likes of Cotton On, Muji, Midi Shoes and more. DC Comics at Fahrenheit Flag a cab and head to discount warehouse Melium Outlet (MO), a 20-minute drive from Suria KLCC. A taxi ride from the city centre should cost between RM15 -18 (US$4.60-$5.52). Be sure to avoid the lunch-hour traffic because the taxi meter is bound to tick furiously while you ponder traffic jams and sweat it out in the midday heat. At MO (63, Jalan Tasik Utama 3, The Trillium, Lake Fields, Sungei Besi, tel: 9051-2926), fashion devotees get their designer fix for a song. You'll be surprised to find that you don't have to rummage through knee-deep piles of clothes unlike in most warehouses. Everything's elegantly displayed and neatly stacked on racks and shelves. Expect luxurious surroundings and impeccable service minus the exorbitant price tags. Prices of unsold end-of-season stocks go for a fraction of the original. Imagine Furla shoes at just RM400 (US$122) compared with RM1,000 (US$306), Furla handbags from RM700 (US$214), Stuart Weitzman shoes at RM250 (US$778), Ermenegildo Zegna suits at RM2,000 (US$614) and Zegna shirts from RM400. Kenanga Street has been the place to shop for wholesale items. The newly opened Kenanga Wholesale City (2, Jalan Gelugor, off Jalan Kenanga, tel: 9221-8081) hosts nine floors of fashion at knock-down prices. Start at the lowest floor and work your way up. Women’s fashions dominate (t-shirts and other apparel start as low as RM5 (US$1.53); you’ll also find traditional wear, children’s clothes, accessories and men’s wear. Remember the more you buy, the bigger the discount. Check out Rolls for fashion from Korea, Bug Styla Kids for jumpers and suits, Patrick & Percy for men’s collared tees and Notting Hill for bags and accessories. Downside: shopkeepers are averse to shoppers trying out their picks, so be persistent. Viva Home (85, Jalan Loke Yew, tel: 9281-1998) is the multi-storey mall for decadent interiors and home furnishings. Each floor is devoted to a different home need — there’s flooring, kitchen, bedding, bathroom, lighting plus a whole section of Chinese and feng shui knick knacks. Bintang Walk, Starhill, Pavilion and Lot 10 H&M now fronts popular Lot 10 The entire Bukit Bintang strip is stuffed with a wild array of specialist shops, clothes shops, restaurants, kopitiams, budget hotels and reflexology centres – catering to varied tastes and desires. Continue to splurge if you must, this time at trendy Bintang Walk. There’s Lot 10, StarHill, Fahrenheit 88, Pavilion KL and of course, Sungei Wang Plaza and Bukit Bintang Plaza, staples long before the strip became hip. No shopper will be disappointed with Sungei Wang Plaza’s funky fashion styles, found nowhere else. This is fun shopping, lowbrow, elbow-jostling. Browse Giordano, Diesel, mobile phones, cameras, computers, costume jewellery, SASA for cosmetics, and Levi's (a 501 original jean for RM265 (US$83). Explore the first floor for cheap and chic fashion by up-and-coming local designers. Watch out for stores by local designers Key Ng, Carven Ong, Michael Ong, William Liew and newbies like Samuel Yow, Samantha Kong and Tebby Tan. We absolutely love Sungei Wang’s latest fashion playground- the sprawling LLL+ (6/F) for some of the most hip styles from all over Asia (such as Liv-Berty, Mandy, Zlism and Proud Race). Look hard and you may just find a limited edition reflective circular skirt, a cross and bones choker necklace, a handcrafted cloud badge or some neon lighting printed leggings. Sungei Wang's lower levels are littered with boutiques that help you dress for less. Strike gold at Fortune (G090) where everything sells for RM25 (US$7) or less. Here, you'll have to work for your treasured find – rummage through racks of little dresses, shorts and everything in between. Fortune is best for plain spaghetti tops (RM4.90 – RM9.90/ US$1.50-US$3), leggings (starting at RM7.90/ US$2) and cardigans (starting from RM11.90/ US$3.65). Tip: Garments tagged “free size” do not necessarily fit every figure. Another is G2 boutique (LG060) – pass up their bad prints, maxi dresses and overly sequined misfits. Instead, head straight for their range of leggings. Find metallic black faux-snakeskin ones for just RM22.90 (US$7) or ripped leggings (RM17.90/US$5). Though garment construction generally appears good, only wear will tell their durability and quality. Alt (6F-106, tel: 2148-5881) offers quirky clothes like floral button-down shirts and vintage inspired accessories for him and her. Fahrenheit Mall: funky and bold The iconic Bukit Bintang Plaza or BB Plaza as it’s fondly known has a dizzying variety of goods at bargain prices. Shops on narrow walkways are packed from floor to ceiling with interesting curios and finds. The mall may be demolished later for MRT development. If there’s one store you need to check out here, it’s the cramped Basheer Graphic Books (3/F 001, tel: 2713-2236) - a well-stocked bookstore that specialises in books and magazines related to art, fashion, photography and graphic design. Spend hours sifting through piles and piles of old and up-to-date material. Or else just simply wander through the mall for a sense of old KL. Lot 10 (www.lot10.com.my) reopened after a major refurbishment in 2012. This has always been a popular Kuala Lumpur shopping hangout with a central downtown location. In a 360-degree turnaround, its rooftop, a former car park, has morphed into the 'Forest in the City' with manicured lawns and trees. Rootz Dance Club is perched here. H&M provides vibrant street frontage and Isetan department store has a decent stretch of space here. But the star is undoubtedly Zang Toi (P6 and P7, 4/F, tel: 2144-1976) – a lively boutique by the Kelantan-born designer of the same name. Sift through racks of beautifully crafted men’s shirts, flouncy skirts and embellished shoes. The basement Lot 10 Food Court is a warren of dizzy delight with every imaginable form of Chinese food (and some Malay). This is a rowdy no-holds-barred streetside format with steaming stalls and narrow "alleyways". It is an excellent pit stop. Long time tenant Isetan, whose first and original home has been at the mall, has undergone renovation and introduced a new concept for its food market. The Isetan Foodmarket is now a cross between a gourmet delicatessen and a convenience store with its deli (halal and non-halal) counters and sweet deli section. Lot 10 offers a young vibe with a broad selection from H&M, Zara, Birkenstock, Braun Buffel, Timberland, and the House of Suzie Wong to Cassini and specialty sports stores like the Marathon Shop and Hoops Station. Innerline Beauty provides lingerie for the young at heart. Lot 10 is a perennial favourite and it is easy to see why. It is superbly located - a landmark icon - right next to a monorail station at one of the busiest and most travelled junctions in town. It appeals to both men and women and serves up a few skincare and beauty outlets along with a rock-safe Guardian Pharmacy for tourists in search of quick relief. Tech savvy shoppers head to Machines (F23, tel: 2142-5009) for the complete range of Mac and Apple software and accessories. Parkamaya at Fahrenheit is a must Kuala Lumpur Pavilion Sdn Bhd, the same company managing Pavilion KL, spent RM100 million on major renovations to KL Plaza, and renaming it Fahrenheit 88. This is funky establishment, lots of fun, with a great many shops on over five floors with every major high-street name in fashion, maternity, home ware, children's goods and sports represented. Look out for the Japanese Parkamaya on the third floor. This is a riot of video gaming, coffee, and offbeat designer stores at amazing prices (ladies' tops from RM33). Kids will enjoy the DC Comics Superheroes outfits and props. Also watch out for Aldo for shoes, Hush Puppies, Teddy Farm (stuffed toys), Ripcurl, Charles & Keith (more shoes), Revolution (various shoe brands like Dr Martens), New Balance, BookXcess where books go for as low as RM5, and Uni Qlo. The basement Brands Outlet is bursting with colour and huge options with polo tees from RM50 for two and men's casual shirts at RM69 for a pair. Not bad at all. Decent workmanship too. The ultra-upmarket and revamped Starhill is a popular shopping stop and watering hole. Most major designer brands and fashion labels are represented and there's a whole floor devoted to exquisite timepieces, making Starhill the largest retail watch hub in Asia. There’s Maurice Lacroix, Hermes, Audemars Piguet and Rolex. Debenhams has its largest Southeast Asian flagship store here. It carries young fashion labels by highly anticipated British designers Matthew Williamson, Ben de Lisi, Jasper Conran and Julien Macdonald. Elsewhere in Starhill, pop into Dior, Kenzo, Valentino, Sergio Rossi, M Missoni, REDValentino, Leo, Alexander McQueen or Louis Vuitton, or drop by the funky basement cafes and the even funkier toilet. The male toilet is a dark Arab street recreation with shale tiles, claustrophobic corridors and water piped through bamboo shafts. The Dior and Louis Vuitton shops are adjoining the JW Marriott lobby for ease of spend. The designer brand floor is appropriately called the "Indulge" level at the elevator. Look for this when you press the button. Try local designer Khoon Hooi's (F19B, tel: [60-3] 2142-6032) contoured, feminine dresses at his flagship store. Or visit Shiatzy Chen (tel: 2141-6177) for neo Oriental chic. The Gallery (tel: 2143-3323) on the Muse Floor features local artists and runs different shows from time to time. Dress your home up in pure lux with furnishings and accessories from Armani Casa and Moroso. Also on the same floor, spot Davidoff cigars. Plenty of food rest stops are around at places like the Arabic Tarbush or the mod multi-cuisine Shook. Pavilion mall, COACH Beauty junkies have been fussing over Sephora Malaysia (located right in front of Starhill Gallery). The 10,000sq ft of space, spread over two levels, stocks beauty brands like Urban Decay, Bare Minerals, Too Faced and Soap & Glory. In time, the second level will expand to include services such as facial treatments and spas. Just opposite the road from here on the other side of Jalan Bukit Bintang near the Grand Millennium hotel is longtime music store Bentley Music where you can strum guitars and plonk on assorted keyboards. Fashion gurus continue to buzz over the city’s seven-storey Pavilion Kuala Lumpur (Jalan Bukit Bintang); the long awaited couture revolution. The results are striking. Think sophisticated interiors, soft carpets and huge mirrors mixing with plenty of hot fashion names. We’ve fallen in love with Gucci, COACH, Canali, Giuseppe Zanotti, TOD'S, Versace, BVLGARI, DKNY, Zegna and Hermes. Also find brands like Aigner, Longchamp, Montblanc, Rolex, Salvatore Ferragamo, IWC Schaffhausen watches, Xixili, Braun, Sony Ericsson, Swatch, AIX Armani Exchange, Dorothy Perkins, Kate Spade, G2000, Tommy Hilfiger, Zara, Guess, Celine, Geox shoes, Prada, Paris Hilton and Bread & Butter. Men in search of that simple cut yet with definite swagger will be delighted to spot the new BLACKBARRETT boutique. Add cult-fav Toms to the list (5.04.00, Level 5) for its range of comfortable and stylish shoes. Stylistas rejoice, for the Bohemian appeal of darling brand Tory Burch (Lot 2.69.01 Level 2) arrives at Pavilion with its signature geometric patterns and block colours. Add local brand Variante (Lot 4.25.11) to your retail-therapy experience. Stock up on its colourful kaftans with diamantes and button-up chiffon dresses in bold prints and colours – great for the more mature and classy gal (the boutique also carries sizes that accommodate plus-sized women). Prices are equally seductive. Havaianas (Lot 4.52.00) makes its debut with flip-flops in every imaginable colour, pattern and design. Kids’, men’s, women’s and unisex ranges are all available as well as the iconic Brasil collection. Malaysian Goh Ling Yi’s exquisite, bold handcrafted jewellery displays an interesting mix of unusual gemstones at La Putri (Lot 3.32.00). Bling yourself to oblivion with bangles and earrings all gold embossed with animal print textures, black and silver cufflinks, jewel embellished watches and whimsical pendants and rings. DC Comics Superheroes (Level 5, tel: 2143-3882) attracts comic fans with its flagship store, packed with a wide array of official DC Comics t-shirts, apparel and memorabilia. New to the block are Bauhaus (Level 4); Bell & Ross (Level 3) for elegant watches; Bottega Veneta (Level 2) for leather handbags and wallets; and Karen Millen (Level 2) for glam fashion. Or swoon over perfectly formed arches and exquisite heels at Jimmy Choo (Level 2). Discover sexy lace-up high heels in grand colours plus a selection of sunglasses and bags. Sephora: cosmetics pit-stop Check out Morgan, Celio, Diane Von Furstenberg (3.33.00, Level 3), and new entrants Moschino, Tory Burch, MCM, Davidoff and Loewe. Fashion Avenue is Pavilion KL’s newest precinct, attracting trend-conscious shoppers with such stores as Ben Sherman, Fred Perry, Jo Malone and Sacoor Bothers. Where to start? For serious home décor and furnishings, head to the sixth floor – there's Molecule (6.24.01-02) for retro accessories such as miniature kid sofas, funky ashtrays and clocks, Calligaris (6.19 & 6.20) for ultra cool furniture designs and Typo (Level 4) for affordable notebooks, wall art and desk accessories. At the one-stop Muji, up on the fourth floor, find minimalist and functional household products, skincare, apparel, bags and stationary. Recover after long hours of shopping at the Food Republic (Level 1), a sprawling floor of restaurants and deliciously modernised hawker stalls. Be sure to savour the melt-in-your-mouth donuts from J.Co Donuts & Coffee (Level 1) or try some Japanese inspired bread and pastries at the Loaf (Level 3), a venture by a certain Dr M (clue: Malaysia’s former prime minister). Pavilion KL gets especially busy come F1 season. If you're in town, be sure to pop by to enjoy a host of activities and promotions that lead up to the final race day. The Tourist Rewards card extends special discounts and gift redemption to tourists. Head over to the concierge (Levels 2 and 3) to apply for yours. Turn up the heat and drool over sequins and ruffles conjured up by top local designers, Rizalman Ibrahim (Rizalman Ibrahim Couture, 110-G-M, Jalan Imbi, tel: 2141-6149) and Bernard Chandran (S-32-35, 2/F, Fahrenheit 88, tel: 2145-0534). If you are prepared to fork out a pretty penny you’ll make heads turn, just like the American popstar elite when they don Bernard Chandran's creations. Computers, camera shopping, Sungei Wang Plaza Harrods arrives at KL airport Jalan Bukit Bintang is known for its diversity. Further down the road, Low Yat Plaza showcases the latest in computer software and hardware, all at rock-bottom prices. Digital camera and video shops are abundant in Sungei Wang Plaza and Low Yat Plaza in the Bukit Bintang area of Kuala Lumpur. Check out Foto Edar (LG012, Bukit Bintang Plaza, tel: 2141-6683), Boeing Photo (KLG 2, LG Floor, Sungai Wang Plaza, tel: 2145-3393), and Jaya Kamera (LG035A, Bukit Bintang Plaza, tel: 2145-0122). The shops stock an extensive range of renowned brands such as Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus, Fuji, Canon, Hasselblad and Pentax. Pop into any camera store and find all the latest models at around the same price, with Foto Edar at Bukit Bintang Plaza offering better deals. Expect to pay around RM900 (US$274) for a Canon Powershot SX700 HS (big zoom plus WIFI), RM1,300 (US$396) for a Lumix TZ60 and about RM890 (US$271) for a Sony WX350. Most stores throw in extras like a camera bag and SD card. Boeing Photo adds a tripod to the package. You can count on the staff being courteous and knowledgeable. There are also electronics and digital camera shops in just about every mall. Or pop into a shop like Billion Photo (tel: [60-3] 2142-8971) ground floor of Fahrenheit 88 next to the JW Marriott hotel. They stock digital cameras, videos and assorted electronic items. If you are willing to pay top ringgit for your camera, swing by Leica (First Floor, Starhill Gallery, tel: 2142-9633) for the world’s optimum camera brand. It features a full range of cameras including the limited edition - the Leica M9 Hermes Edition. Next door is a photography gallery with works from renowned local and international photographers. Prices will perhaps be most negotiable in Low Yat Plaza. Bear in mind that electronic goods prices in Kuala Lumpur are higher than in Singapore and Hong Kong and the models appear around three or four months after they have arrived in Singapore and Hong Kong. Sungei Wang Plaza also houses one of Kuala Lumpur's best shopping bargains, the large and well-stocked Factory Outlet Store (F.O.S.) where you can pick up jeans for RM79 (US$24) or less, and t-shirts and sleeveless linen shirts for RM29-RM39 (US$9-$12). The store is at the concourse level. The same shirts at Lanvin (where the stitching is done in France) or Givenchy at Starhill will set you back over RM1,300 (US$397) or more. Hunt here for Kuala Lumpur bargain shopping finds. You’ll find FOS for Kids on the second floor where body suits (for babies) and pyjamas (for toddlers) go for as low as RM10 (US$3). (Another Kuala Lumpur factory outlet option is the GME Factory Outlet at KL Sentral Station where an Obermain shoe starts at RM135 (US$42), and a Nautica t-shirt at around RM29). Berjaya Times Square to Great Eastern KL shopping mecca, Pavilion Since you’re into the serious business of shopping, check out Berjaya Times Square (Jalan Imbi), with over 1,000 shops, some of them still vacant. This is a huge modern sprawl that also hosts the indoor theme park Cosmo's World and an IMAX theatre. Britain’s Debenhams and KL’s favourite one-stop fashion store, Metrojaya have closed but the complex has begun to pull in the crowds with new stores and the convenience of a monorail station next door. Krookz (06-75, Level 6, tel: 2144-3903) started up by local music deejays, is a hit with skate-borders for its hip, urban street wear. Arabian Oud (G-18, tel: 2148-5143) is an Aladdin's cave of dreamy, exotic perfumes and colognes. Can’t get over how much you’ve spent? Mull over it while Berjaya Times Square takes you for a ride at its largest indoor theme park, the complex’s top attraction. The nearby Imbi Plaza is also dedicated to computers, cameras, mobile phones and other electronic gadgets at bargain prices. Be sure to browse, compare and bargain before you make that quintessential purchase to take home. Squeeze in the time to pop by Maju Junction Mall (Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman), Great Eastern Shopping Mall (Jalan Ampang) and Mid Valley Megamall (Lingkaran Syed Putra, tel: 9368-3333), and check out long time favourites Sogo Pernas Department Store (190, Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, tel: 2698-2111), Ampang Park Shopping Complex (Jalan Ampang, tel: 2161-7006), The Intermark Mall (Jalan Tun Razak) and The Putra Mall (Jalan Putra, reopens 2015). When at the new Intermark Mall, swing by Space – a sprawling furniture store with the likes of Kartell, Vitra’s modern sofas and B&B Italia’s minimalist seating and shelving. Walking through Space is akin to that of a museum experience that pays homage to mid-century marvels. In the spotlight is The Gardens, Mid Valley City, a five-storey swank shopping gallery. Fashionistas won’t be deterred by the lack of green here as they have much to go mad about; Gap, Burberry, CK, Coach, Banana Republic and more. The much loved Robinsons, famously stylish in ’70s KL, returns with aplomb as anchor tenant. A recent visit to Kate Spade (G-203B, tel: 2284-1468) re-established my love affair with this New York brand, well-known for its exuberant style and playful wit. The 1700sq m store offers the complete collection of Kate Spade handbags, shoes, jewellery, luggage, stationery, eyewear, as well as a variety of exclusive items such as cosmetics, clothes and the JACK SPADE collection. Fashionistas slip into ballerina flats and pumps embellished with jewels and strips of metallic snakeskin at Tiamo (F-227A, tel: [60-3] 2283-4218). Tiamo takes its shoes seriously; the mandate is form plus function. Its footwear, creations of South Korean designer Jung Eun Ju, is hand sewn – each shoe sole is fitted with a special metallic rod to balance the body, while silicone cushions are inserted on the insides of shoes to prevent blisters. Children’s shoes start at RM119; and for grown-ups the price tag is RM139 and up. For limited edition sneakers, pop into Sole What (2/F, tel: 2287-5811), where you can find anything from Vans, and Dr. Martens to Feiyue. Check out Ecco (Second Floor, tel: 2282-4539) for a range of well-constructed leather shoes. Designer shoes in Kuala Lumpur? No problem. Berjaya Times Square monorail/ photo: hotel M Women (G/F, tel: 2282-0093) has racks devoted to a wild array of labels from Elizabeth & James and Emma Cook, to Jonathan Liang. Be sure to check out its accessory range; find Sam Edelman and Schutz shoes and Phillipe Audibert gems. In need of some eyewear? Pop into Japanese optical boutique Marq Optic Gallery (1/F, tel: 2283-6889) for hard to find eyewear from Japan, the US and Europe - from handcrafted acetate sunglasses to retro wooden spectacles. You can count on personalised service here. If you have the moxie, don t-shirts carrying quirky, offbeat prints and messages from Graffi-Tee. There’s also Borders, funky furniture store Gudang, one-stop centre Isetan and Atlas Hi-fi where you can experience the crisp, clear sounds of Bose equipment at your leisure. Bread & Butter (G-231, tel: [60-3] 2287-4517) stocks a wide range of high-end American labels – 7 For All Mankind, 575 Denim, True Religion, Tag Jeans and Denim for Immortality. Delectables (S-213) has the most divine cakes, cupcakes and ready-to-eat cookies in the cutest shapes. Luxury label Louis Vuitton (occupying a space of 540sq m) finds its way to the Gardens, becoming the third store to open in the city. Pop into Wei-Ling Contemporary (G212 & 213, tel; 2260-1106) for a look at modern Asian art. Cath Kidston (tel: 2201-5810) over at Mid Valley Megamall has the prettiest totes, purses and girly pouches, in fresh, mod prints. Think the Big Ben theme embossed on everything from cups to kids t-shirts and teapots. Pink Evil’s Fashion Supermarket (F038, tel: 2282-1801), is gaining a reputation for fresh, slightly offbeat clothes and accessories that won’t break the bank. Find five very distinct brands and styles. Expect flirty floral dresses at Sugar & Spice. Coffee & Magazines supplies separates and bright belts while Chocolate Martini serves up sophisticated maxis and cocktail dresses. Butter & Toast offers comfy basics with a twist. High-street fashion label Bershka (G/F, tel: 2282-3957) has racks and shelves of waterfall skirts, pumps in jewel tones, blazers and leggings. Model on catwalk at Pavilion Che Che New York (tel: 2282-8619) over at Mid Valley Megamall has the prettiest totes, purses and girly pouches, embellished with sequins and intricate details. Think designs that flaunt an elegant Parisian flair, with a cheerful eastern twist. Pink Evil’s Fashion Supermarket (F038, tel: 2282-1801), is gaining a reputation for fresh, slightly offbeat clothes and accessories that won’t break the bank. Find five very distinct brands and styles. Expect flirty floral dresses at Sugar & Spice. Coffee & Magazines supplies separates and bright belts while Chocolate Martini serves up sophisticated maxis and cocktail dresses. Butter & Toast offers comfy basics with a twist. High-street fashion label Bershka (Ground Floor, tel: 2282-3957) has racks and shelves of waterfall skirts, pumps in jewel tones, blazers and leggings. Enter specialty store XL-Shop (F105, tel: 2287-7257), and even if you’re not an avid collector, you should pop by just to gawk at the range of figurines from brands such as Tomy, Hasbro, Bandai and Tokyo Marui. It is a trove of limited edition collectibles. The all-purpose Urban Adventure (3/F) will take care of all your outdoorsy needs. Find apparel, backpacks, eyewear, harnesses, camping gear and footwear from a range of top brands such as Columbia, Salomon and Lafuma. Try out its 20-feet bouldering wall on site for a taste of rock climbing before you scale up Batu Caves. Dynasty Antique Gallery (S-007, tel: 2202-2665) sells all things Asian from its fantastic range of modern works of art and Chinese antiques to lucky symbols. With oversized wind chimes, terracotta warriors that guard the doorway and decorative vermillion doors, you could very well think you’ve stumbled upon a rich Mandarin’s mansion. Bargain shopping in Bangsar, Sri Hartamas Bangsar deserves mention. This suburb is stealing the thunder with its rising tide of fashion hotspots and is a useful addition in our Kuala Lumpur shopping guide. To get to Bangsar, hop onto the light rail transit (LRT) system, then catch a taxi to the Jalan Telawi enclave. Once better known for its countless nightclubs and pubs, Bangsar has become a chic stop for fashionistas. The boutiques mushrooming in the area display a unique bent on what’s hip. The popularity of boutiques like Gossips (8A, 1/F, Jalan Telawi 2) rely mainly on word of mouth (no pun intended). This boutique is a cross between someone’s living room and a museum; very Bohemian in appeal. And it’s quick to pick up on catwalk trends. So expect to slip into the latest designs like a crop top and bodycon dresses or pile on the trendiest accessories. Swing by Variante (21 Jalan Telawi 3) for some beaded blouses and custom-made dresses with a local twist, Peoples...Egg (32, Jalan Telawi 5, tel: 2283-1084) for oversized bags and Shoes Shoes Shoes (31A, Jalan Telawi 3) to stay in step with the well-heeled fashion pack. Shoes Shoes Shoes has also got an outpost at BSC (1/F, tel: 2287-0608). Check out multi-brand boutique Commonthread (Telawi 2) for a wide range of funky, beach-style flip flops. Girl at Bangsar Weekend Market Bangsar’s fashion boutiques are causing quite a sensation; the quirky yet stylish Mooie Boutique (3-1, Jalan Telawi 2, tel: 2287-2230); Cloth & Sash (4-21A, Jalan Telawi 3, tel: 2287-9008) for sequined and laced toga dresses; Parisian dresses with lace and ruffles are stacked invitingly on shelves at Duchess and Co (17-1, Jalan Telawi 2); Nurita Harith (10-2, Telawi 3) for custom-made designs; Krookz (65-1, Jalan Telawi 3) for skateboard hipster fashion; On A Cloudy Day (15A, Jalan Telawi 3) for chic vintage dresses at discounted prices; Jorya Weekend (Jalan Telawi 3) for pleated skirts, lacy dresses; elegantly embellished dresses and tops for modern Muslim women at Mimpikita (15-1, Jalan Telawi 2) and House of Doll (10, Jalan Telawi 3) for exquisite fashion designed by a local actress plus kaftans and headscarves. Drop into Telawi Square Gallery (Jalan Telawi 3) – a two level stop for shoes and dresses at My DressRoom, Tempo and Sole Lovely. Or head to Musse (16-1, Jalan Telawi 3) to dig up some BCBG Max Azria, Chloe, CK, Lanvin or Philip Lim 3.1. Juice Boutique (46 & 46-1, Jalan Telawi 5, tel: 2283-5811) appeals to those with a flair for street couture with cult brands such as CLOT apparel, limited edition Nike, Adidas, Head Porter and more. Some might find Tea and Sympathy (7, Second Floor, Jalan Telawi 2, tel: 2283-6671) just a tad too sparse but look closer – its scrupulously edited selection includes handmade dresses with scalloped hems, floral prints and bow embellishments. Stylistas-in-the-know won't want to miss multi-label store Bazarro (6-1, Jalan Telawi 2) for funky and edgy women’s wear, shoes and accessories by local and regional designers. This boutique hosts several uber-cool labels such as homegrown Nelissa Hilman for handcrafted ballet shoes; Chiyo (for sculptural shoes); and ByInvite Only- semi-precious jewellery. Munch on cake and sip on coffee before rifling through a rack of smart shirts and tees, and denims for men at 15Sheets (9 Jalan Telawi 2). They stock a whole range of accessories from label pins, belts to money clips. Try the very cool Never Follow Suit (28-2 Jalan Telawi 2, tel: 2284-7316), an impeccably curated women’s and men’s clothing boutique started up by local designers, for vintage and modern styles. Uncover a mix of jersey basics, sleek black dresses, tailored menswear, vintage clutches and furniture. Pop into 17A Select Store (17A Jalan Telawi 3, tel: 2201-7513) for contemporary home décor, general curiosities and fashion. Watch out for cool labels, with a hint of punk, such as Schott Bros NYC, Supreme Jungmaven as well as homegrown brands like CheeseDenim and Suavecito Pomade. Getting around is a snap by monorail Be prepared to juggle your time between shopping and some pampering; get your nails buffed and your talons tended at trendy nail bars and salons popping up in the area. Eric Choong (61-1 & 63-1, Jalan Telawi 3) is perfectly positioned – try on his pret-a-porter pieces or evening gowns, followed by a facial or lunch at the many cafes along this strip. A perfect stop for stationary and art supply is CzipLee (1-3 Jalan Telawi 3, tel: 2287-0699). They do laser engraving and notebook embossing, which make perfect gifts. Bangsar also gets its shot of glamour with Bangsar Village II (Jalan Telawi 1). Look forward to high-end names like Ted Baker, Warehouse, Furla, Massimo Dutti, Lacoste and Zara. Make an appointment with the in-house designer at Jemila (1F-3A, tel: 2282-0644) to custom-make your traditional baju kebaya and kurung, and beaded kaftans. Find some very quirky and distinctive shirts by local designer Richard Tsen to wear home at Dude & Duchess (UGF-19, tel: 2284-3066). Find them also at Pavilion KL and Publika. For trendies, a must is the Thai-based Lyn Shoes (GF 30, tel: 2287-3114), which offers over 300 designs of extremely high heels, wedges and stilettos, accessories, handbags, watches and sunglasses. Bric’s (GF29B, tel: 2283-6421) offers its first flagship store with a comprehensive range of classic suitcases, overnight bags and handbags in leather, nylon and more. Marvel at Dr Denim jeans, Spitfire sunglasses, Jeffrey Campbell shoes and Lazy Oaf T-shirts at the unusually small, multi-brand boutique Actually KL (Upper Ground Floor, tel: 2202-2088). Or drop into Tribeca (1F-31, tel: 2287-6760) for sexy clothes, fun children’s fashion, and a whole range of stationary and tableware recalling the movie Frozen. H5 (GF27, tel: 2288-1932) boutique pays tribute to pop art and culture through its interior design and the watches it carries. Each brand, from Nooka and Noon Copenhagen to LIP, has garnered a cult following around the world. And don’t miss Thirtyfour (Upper Ground Floor) for its range of handmade jewellery and leather bags. Countless sports brands congregate at World of Sports (Level 1, tel: 2284-9914). Look out for Mizuno, Lafuma, Spalding and Montrail. If you're bored of frocks hit Lasting Impressions (2/F, tel: 2287-3201) for its lovely range of Chinese and Tibetan antique furniture. Sundays (1F-29 & 30) is crammed with one-of-a-kind home furnishings, accessories and gifts sourced from all over the globe. On its shelves, find beautiful French crockery, handmade toys and pretty trinkets. Acquire (2/F, tel: 2287-1261) specialises in quirky home furnishings and products plus watches from Danish Design and bags from Nava. Or you could just slip into the Hammam (3F-7 & 3F-8, tel: 2282-2180) and have a bath, scrub followed by a soothing massage. Take home their range of Hammam Spa products – try the Sacred Massage Oil, with frankincense and myrrh to uplift your mood. KLIA duty-free selection is reasonable It's increasingly difficult to locate a good record store but you're bound to discover the grooviest vibes at Rock Corner (15-1, tel: 2284-1423), Bangsar Village 1. Discover an astounding range of music albums plus the guy behind the counter knows almost everything about hip hop, house, jazz and indie folk pop. Later, contemplate on your fashion finds over some sangria at the ever-popular La Bodega Tapas Bar (16, Jalan Telawi 2). The dramatically modern Bangsar Shopping Center has been unveiled – returning as the area's foodie and fashion nexus. Transformed into something approaching super chic, it has set out to attract small, high-quality boutiques dabbling in handmade chocolates, novelty stationary and children's toys. Some 90,000 square feet of retail space has been added. Tucked away on the first floor, is exclusive French designer children's wear Château de sable (tel: 2095-3203). Find engaging t-shirts, dresses and coats, all of which come with that signature French style. Peer into Kate's Closet (F102) and discover the Bruttal range of intimates – sex-kitten kitsch meets luxurious lacy lingerie. The crotchless panties, French maid and naughty red devil costumes could add just the right amount of spice to your bedroom. Nana G (F105, tel: 2095 -1139) is your pick for elegant, feminine frocks; Shoeville (S105, 2nd floor, tel: 2096 -1927) for luxury women’s shoes from Brazil; Bagsociety (F106, 1/F floor, tel: 2095 -2248) for new and pre-loved designer bags; and the Sennheiser Concept Store (F133, tel: 2283 6537) for a cool range of headphones and earphones. For great food shopping, check out the specialist Jason’s Food Hall, a floor filled with heaps of high-end munchies. Expect the best croissants and pastries from Hiestand, yummy cakes from Just Heavenly, artisan cheeses, fine harvest teas, Blanxart chocolates and wines. On the same street is Luxury Vintage (152, Jalan Maarof, tel: 2095-6266) – every fashionista's answer to designer label handbags at a fraction of the price. These pre-loved handbags are genuine. When in Bangsar, track down spunky local designer, Melinda Looi’s Showroom (279, Jalan Maarof, tel: 2093-2279). Her haute couture designs are distinct; dresses in muted tones, embellished with intricate beading and crystals. Purportedly gracing the wardrobe of celebrities like Elizabeth Hurley and Cameron Diaz, Melinda Looi’s designs are a must if you want to sashay home in style. The boutique also carries the Mel range - a fun mix of sexy tanks, tube tops, classic white shirts and other fun pieces. New to the strip is the 2,900sq ft bungalow housing The Dominique Chan Bridal Couture (Jalan Maarof). You’ll be mesmerised by his stunning flowy gowns in French lace and silk. You’ll find the combination of batik and songket on shoes, bags, tops and dresses simply irresistible at the Adila Long showroom (3, Jalan Terasek 8). Large Gucci store, Bukit Bintang Lauren Boutique (4A, Jalan Telawi 4, tel: 2282-5882) opens up to reveal a closet full of glamorous clothes designed by Miss Lauren Kaur herself. Unexpected finds include multicoloured jersey t-shirts with sequins, Spanish leather bags and purses. Pop into STUDIO BIKIN (No. 8, Jalan Kemuja, Bangsar, tel: 2201-8803) for locally crafted furniture. The proprietors work directly with local artisans who produce funky tables, chairs, light fittings and accessories from recycled material. Next door, Nala Designs has a lovely shop with a great range of contemporary Peranakan-themed gift ideas- cushion covers to stationary and accessories. Shopping here goes towards supporting the preservation of Malaysia’s fading Nyonya heritage. Not too far from Bangsar is Brickfields, buzzing with a genuinely local Indian feel. If you’re coming in from the city on the monorail or LRT, get off at KL Sentral and a short walk will take you directly into the heart of Brickfields. Brickfields has been designated KL’s “Little India” – a title that has earned the neighbourhood a giant fountain, arches, an expanded sidewalk and a fresh lick of paint. Walk past old women threading garlands of jasmine flowers, smouldering joss sticks and camphor plus sacks of aromatic local spices, the scent of which hits you harder than a slug of sangria. Staff at boutiques such as Mumbai (184, Jalan Tun Sambanthan), Sri Kumaran’s Silk, Mathura Collections, Bollywood Fashion (250, Jalan Tun Sambanthan, tel: [60-3] 2260-1080) and Preet’s (206, Jalan Tun Sambanthan), will all declare they can transform you into the next party-circuit dazzler. Their intricately beaded and sequined numbers will undoubtedly do the trick. For row upon row of colourful plastic and jewel-encrusted bangles, pop into New Malliga (256, 258 and 258A, Jalan Tun Sambanthan, tel: [60-3] 2273-0204) or Kaviraaj Collections (90, Jalan Tun Sambanthan, tel: [60-3] 2273-8701). Tailors (most come directly from India) offer their expert services in sewing the latest styles of saree blouses. You can even get a readymade saree done – so all you have to do is slip it on and zip up the sides. Try Vaseegara D’Fashion Designs (278B, Tun Sambanthan), Sarojini Tailoring (264, Tun Sambanthan) or Sameena Tailoring (122, Jalan Tun Sambanthan) to make all your Bollywood dreams come true. Citra’s House of Spice (GF, 76 Jalan Padang Belia, tel: [60-3] 2273-5251) is bursting at the seams with imported Indian spices, grains and curry powder. Along with miles of new and used books, P Sivaguru Book Depot (14, Jalan Scott, tel: [60-3] 2274-2385) carries a wide collection of Indian books on religion, art, literature and fiction. Revamped Kuala Lumpur airport If the heat becomes oppressive, opt for a relaxing interlude at one of the many massage centres that employ blind therapists. Try the Blind Master Massage Centre (Jalan Tun Sambanthan 4, opposite YMCA). Combine shopping with some culture and explore the rest of the area. Brickfields is tagged the “Divine Location”. Famous Buddhist, Chinese and Hindu temples and churches, some almost 100 years old, are located in the area on and around Jalan Berhala. Pop into Lavanya Arts (1734, Jalan Berhala, tel: 2274-2722) for Indian arts and crafts. Or for some contemporary, local art housed in a stylishly converted pre-war townhouse, visit Wei-Ling Gallery (8, Jalan Scott, tel: 2260-1106). Nu Sentral right smack at the transport hub is turning out to be quite a cool mall. Find high-street brands from Burton Menswear London and H&M to Dorothy Perkins, Monki and Cotton On. Make a stop at Cosas United or TUMI for any last minute luggage needs. It’s official; nothing can escape the vintage trend. Every vintage fan needs to be on the lookout for Scoop (P-1-19, Plaza Damas, Block P, 6, Jalan Sri Hartamas 1, tel: 6201-1206). It promises once-loved designer fashion and accessories at a fraction of their original prices. Imagine Manolos, Prada, Hermes, Gucci, and Chanel minus the high-end price tags. If your closet is bursting with one too many bags and shoes, think turning your quality cast-offs into cash as part of Scoop’s recycle concept. The whimsical Island & Republik (A-06, Plaza Damas, tel: 6203-9114) has been pleasing homeowners for more than a decade with its vast collection of bespoke furniture, carpets, rugs, tableware and lighting. They stock high-end brands such as Romo, Campbell, and Stroheim. If you've strayed over to the Sri Hartamas area - where little Korean supermarkets and boutiques have sprung up - Mont Kiara is just a stone's throw away. The Curiousity Shop (Lot 12, Level 2) has moved into its new home at One Mont Kiara mall. It is a masterclass in thrift-store chic. It’s pure fun unearthing heaps of buried retro. You’ll stumble upon original packaged Star Wars toys, vintage and reproduction furniture, old typewriters, framed vintage advertisements and wallpaper, ancient lamps and chandeliers. No dearth of fashion brands in KL Publika (Jalan Dutamas 1), close to the Mont Kiara area, is turning out to be a cosy art enclave rather than a glamorous metropolitan shopping centre, balancing fashion, art, furniture and food with independent boutiques, pop-up stores and chains. For a well-rounded day out, stop by at vintage art and furniture store Outdated for everything from 100-year-old typewriters to eccentric retro luggage, refurbished Eames chairs and vintage cabinets. Numerous enticing boutiques have sprung up here such as The Odd Loft (Level G3) – imagine eccentric-shaped bags and disposable dresses — and Kaleidoscope (Level G3), an Aladdin’s treasure trove of dreamy accessories and vintage clothes. Thirtyfour.bespoke (Level G2, tel: 6211-4434) is where you can personalise beautifully handcrafted tote bags, passport covers and sandals. Great as gifts. Don’t let Allien (Level G2) intimidate you. Walk in to discover local designer Allien Gan’s cool streetwear and accessories. Don’t miss out on his range of leather bags, alphabet totes and slinky tops, plus his more glam collection from his debut at KL Fashion Week. Foldable flats, easy to-pack and incredibly light, are available at Threesixty (Lot13, Level G3, tel: 6205-9797). Visits to Carousel (G3-14, tel: 6206 3618) – a vintage London-style toy store- are never dull. Life-sized Nutcracker figurines welcome you in. The store is brimming with model airplanes, jacks-in-the-box, rocking horses, toy soldiers and other more contemporary play things. It’ll bring out the child in you. Get acquainted with bold prints, A-line silhouettes and an overall ‘60s vibe with My Apparel Zoo’s (B2-1-12) wardrobe. Make a stop at the cult Bang Bang Geng (Lot15-20 G1, tel: 6206-2686) for an impressive collection of analogue cameras. Owner Chin Koon Yik will be happy to share his knowledge and expertise on photography. Browse the aisles at Ben’s Independent Grocer (Level UG1) — everything’s creatively laid out and categorised for convenient shopping. Stock up on oils, vinegars, spices, pastas, cheeses, gourmet chocolates and wines. Pack home traditional Asian ingredients, pre-packaged sauces and curries. There’s even a florist, an oyster bar, a coffee stop and bakery. For beer enthusiasts, Ales & Lager is the best bottle shop in town. This tiny store is crammed with about 60 varieties of craft brews. Bar stools and tables means you can buy and drink on the spot. KitaKita (G 1.10, 1 Jalan Medan Setia, tel: 2096-1323) may be hard to track but it’s worth the visit. Kitakita has the prettiest tea sets with kebaya-inspired print, quirky vases, handbags, wall adornments, journals and jewellery by local designers you would not typically find anywhere else. Enter into Alia Bastamam’s fairytale boutique (14, Jalan Chempenai), within the same neighbourhood. Her clothes are to die for. Drool over her delicate evening wear and beaded bridal gowns. She’s a hot favourite amongst local celebs and who’s who of KL. The Petaling Jaya shopping mall circuit KL Airport Ferragamo store Beyond the capital lies a wealth of shopping: Petaling Jaya has emerged as quite a shopping hotspot with monster malls such as One Utama and Sunway Pyramid. One Utama (1, Lebuh Bandar Utama, Bandar Utama, tel: 7710-8118), already an institution in this part of town, kicked off the shopping revolution more than a decade ago. Its six floors of fashion for men and women include collections by Armani Exchange, Bebe, DKNY, Guess and Zara. A recent update has brought in more edgy, street-smart labels like Forever 21, GAP and Miss Selfridge, attracting a younger set of shoppers. Tangs department store makes a stylish comeback, securing a spot in this premium complex. Close by is Ikea (2, Jalan PJU 7/2, Mutiara Damansara, tel: 7726-7777) – discover all your affordable interior furnishing solutions here at Asia's largest store with a floor area of approximately 270,000sq ft. Avoid the maddening weekend crowds as people drive from as far as Penang and Malacca to sample this Scandinavian favourite. I'll let you in on a secret – adjacent in the Ikano Power Center (tel: 7720-7333) is Lurve it (G/F, tel: 7710-3598), an unassuming store that brings in tube tops, lycra maxis, batik print batwing and cotton dresses from around the region, selling them at a fraction of the price you'd pay in boutiques elsewhere in the city. Step carefully or you'll risk bypassing it, oblivious to the many treasures that hang on its racks. You can easily get lost in the massive, revamped Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall (3, Jalan PJS 11/15, Bandar Sunway, tel: 7492-9998). Its new wing, hidden inside the mall's distinguishable yet kitsch exterior, is packed with high-street favourites that keep smart, working girls' wardrobes stuffed with MNG, Zara, Topshop, Principles and NAFNAF. Payless Shoe (Lower Ground Floor) is stacked high with shoes of every size, colour and design. The city’s oldest department store, P Lal Store, has moved to a bigger premise in the suburbs (91, Jalan Gasing, tel: 2021-9091). Stock up on winter essentials like boots, cardigans, scarves and thermal undergarments. Night shopping and weekend flea markets Outrageous bags at KLIA duty-free A few more diversions for the travelling shopper are the night markets or pasar malam and flea markets. If you’re watching your cash, the pasar malam is a good place to shop without paying tourist prices. For a fix of local foods, fresh produce, craft and a real atmosphere, go to Bangsar’s Jalan Telawi Sunday Market. Juicy vegetables, fresh fish, accessories and mobile phones add character to this already colourful scene. The night market in Bangsar is a big draw, bringing together both expatriates and locals. While you’re there, be sure to swing by Silverfish Bookstore (67-1, Jalan Telawi 3, tel: 2284-4837), and look out for rare titles such as local author Farish Noor’s The Other Malaysia and the latest Silverfish New Writings collection of short stories by regional authors. Bargain hunters should not pass up the flea markets. They’re the latest craze. It’s the hip way to spend your weekend, over a cuppa, browsing through stacks of old magazines, stylish home décor from Burma, Thailand and India, trying on exotic jewellery or some silk blouses. Manned by locals as well as expatriates, The Labels Bazaar, which happens very Thursday and Friday, at KL City Walk along Jalan P Ramlee is a must. Keep an eye out for silk blouses, kebaya tops and kaftans. BSC Seek & Keep Bazaar brings together local and independent artisans and shop owners. Get your hands on candles, handmade ice cream, gourmet cookies and handmade shoes and bags. Over in PJ, avid collectors and bargain hunters flock Amcorp Mall’s renowned flea market on the weekend for pre-loved clothes, retro figurines and movie posters, rare comics and old vinyl. Chic Pop street market is now part of Markets at Jaya One – held sporadically throughout the year. Other more regular markets include the Curve weekend market. There's a whole lot going on at the monthly Fuyoh Art Bazaar at Publika – expect art to handcrafted home accessories, chunky jewellery and gourmet cakes to performances by local indie musicians. If you’re a food lover, Publika Rasa Rasa –which happens every first Tuesday of the month- brings artisanal cooks out of their kitchens. You get to sample gourmet cakes, cookies, jams and chutneys; and take some home with you. At the Plaza Mont Kiara, the outdoor Arts, Bric-a-brac and Crafts (ABC) market has been running for more than a decade. Find an array of pre-loved jewellery, handbags, dresses, Asian handicrafts and household items. KL Airport duty free heaven Keeping to the bazaar theme is the Souq Putrajaya (Dataran Putra, Putrajaya). Styled after Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, the fledgling souk has a way to go yet. However, the factory outlets are a must-see. Renowned brands, typically costing hundreds of ringgit, sell at bargain prices. End-of-season clothes and accessories by brands like Guess, Fame, MUFC, U2, G2000, Hush Puppies & Renoma will fill up your shopping bags, without burning a hole in your pocket. Prices are slashed 50 to 70 percent, coming down as low as RM9 (US$3). Next, pop into Alamanda Putrajaya Shopping Complex (Jalan Alamanda, Precinct 1, tel: 8888-8882) and head straight for Omar Ali Boutique (G74, tel: 8889-4506) for a tailormade traditional Malay baju kurung or baju Melayu (for men). Have golf club will swing Most shopping malls have a shop or two dedicated to golf equipment. For example the Isetan department store at Lot 10 has a section packed with golf clubs, balls and more. Other popular specialist golf equipment shops include GS Gill (Wisma Harwant, 106 Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, tel: [60-3] 2698-3950), Pan-West (5.24.06, Level 5, Pavilion KL, tel: 2144-3717), VK Enterprise (golf specialists at Lot 1-5,1st Floor, Menara City One, Jalan Munshi Abdullah, Off Jalan Masjid India, tel: 2694-5992), and Transview Golf (Lot L-1 16, Level 1, Avenue K, Jalan Ampang). KLIA duty-free shopping prices KL Airport duty free perfumes If you’ve still got some ringgit spare, do some last minute duty-free shopping at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA1 & 2 – the low cost terminal). At KLIA1 duty-free an Hermes tie will set you back around RM700 (US$213), and a Christian Dior "J'adore" eu de parfum 75ml with vaporiser is about RM305. A COCO Chanel No.5 parfum is RM389. Pick up a BVLGARI 50ml Rose Essentielle EDP for RM318 (US$97). At Kuala Lumpur airport alcohol choices are plentiful with a duty-free Johnnie Walker Black Label one litre bottle retailing at RM108 (US$33). A 12-year-old Chivas one litre bottle is RM118. Other airport duty free outlets include Versace, COACH, Dunhill, Burberry, Guy Larouche, Aigner, The Body Shop, Salvatore Ferragamo, KIEHL's, Montblanc, Ralph Lauren, L'Occitane, Swarovski and Victoria's Secrets. There's Harrods of Knightsbrige too with stuffed teddies. With Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) becoming a useful and convenient hub for passengers flying from Europe to Asia and Australia, there is increasing interest in digital video camera shopping here. However there are limited electronics shops for video and camera buffs. Try Fotopro (Canon EOS 700D for RM3,000). Pretty pricey but downtown is cheaper. Kuala Lumpur Airport duty free shopping prices are reasonably competitive. If you’re travelling low-cost, the shopping is just as exciting. KLIA2 comes complete with the world’s biggest shopping space in an airport (naturally) with 225 outlets; many are however still vacant. You will find everything from Giordano and Hush Puppies to Uniqlo. Most big brand names are absent but you’ll spot Furla, Barbara Rihl, Desigual, Hugo Boss and Michael Kors. Pick up the ideal travel companion from the Barbara Rihl collection – the exclusive Twin Tower bag (available at KLIA 1 & 2 outlets). Now you’ll have something to constantly remind you of your shopping spree in KL. Happy shopping. And keep some spare change for that Malaysia mega-sale. NOTE: Telephone and fax numbers, e-mails, website addresses, rates and other details may change or get dated. Please check with your dealer/agent/service-provider or directly with the parties concerned. SmartTravel Asia accepts no responsibility for any inadvertent inaccuracies in this article. Links to websites are provided for the viewer's convenience. SmartTravel Asia accepts no responsibility for content on linked websites or any viruses or malicious programs that may reside therein. Linked website content is neither vetted nor endorsed by SmartTravelAsia. Please read our Terms & Conditions. From back alley local designers to mall trawls and outlets

Referrals to city and state programs across the country. Resource center, including free copies of "Play It Safer," a booklet on STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), and HIV/AIDS magazines. Works with correctional support groups and peer education programs. Quarterly subscription rate to the NPP Journal is $2 for inmates. 53 W. 23rd St., 8th Floor New York, NY 10011 Although not HIV-specific, the highly-readable newsletter Fortune News presents a wide range of articles of interest to inmates. Many articles written by current and former prisoners. Free for inmates. P.O. Box 6303 Rockville, MD 20849 Toll free: 1-800-448-0440 Free literature, including U.S. guidelines on HIV treatment from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Activist group organizing to make medications and harm reduction tools (such as condoms and syringes) available, end prison discrimination, advocate for compassionate release, and provide education for interested persons and organizations. 80 Fifth Ave., Suite 1501 New York, NY 10455 Legal and medical advocacy, peer education and support. Referrals. Accepts collect calls from inmates. Brings together organizations and individuals to support and raise awareness among prisoners suffering from hepatitis and HIV/HCV co-infection. Offers seminars and support groups inside and outside of correctional facilities. Free newsletter and hepatitis C info packets for prisoners. 40 Rector St., 10th Floor New York, NY 10006 Advocates for the rights of city and state prisoners, parolees, ex-offenders, and their families. Responds to a wide range of medical complaints due to AIDS-related discrimination within the criminal justice system. Distributes free brochures related to AIDS discrimination in Spanish and English. Accepts collect calls from inmates Monday-Friday, 9 am-5 pm; call 1-212-233-5560. 809 Westchester Ave. Bronx, NY 10455 Conducts research and makes policy recommendations regarding positive inmates and persons on parole. Operates HIV/AIDS clearinghouse, bilingual hotline and inmate support groups. Staff and peer counselors provide HIV prevention and treatment information and discharge planning. Inmate hotline accepts collect calls Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 pm-8 pm; call 1-718-378-7022. Sends donated legal, health, educational and political books free to prisoners nationwide. Spanish-language books available. Provides help in starting Books for Prisoners projects. Toll free: 1-866-HIV-INFO (448-4636) Accepts collect calls from inmates: 1-415-558-9051. Can also mail out materials. Operates Monday-Friday, 9 am-5 pm and Saturday 11 am-4 pm, California time. Coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Training for all healthcare providers, including correctional staff. Check for nearest training center. Management of HIV/AIDS in the Correctional Setting: A Live Satellite Videoconference Series. Excellent monthly treatment newsletter, HEPP News, via fax or e-mail. CME credit available. Community Provider AIDS Training Toll free: 1-800-933-3413 Answers questions from health care providers. 1931 13th St., NW Washington, DC 20009 HIV and Corrections program produces a newsletter, brochures and regularly updated resource list. by Drs. John G. Bartlett and Joel E. Gallant Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Corrections edition is no longer available in print, but the comprehensive chapter on correctional health care is available online at http://hopkins-aids.edu. It includes detailed suggestions for telementoring and telemedicine. HIV Health Library 131 Clarendon St. Boston, MA 01226 AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts Free brochure. Information is good for men, as well. 500 5th Ave., Suite 320 New York, New York 10110 P.O. Box 11535 Oakland, CA 94611 Excellent monthly newsletter with personal stories and easy-to-understand medical information. If you are not a woman living with HIV, please send a donation.

Fred Pohl recently won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer (congrats Fred!), mostly for his (relatively) new blog The Way The Future Blogs, which title is a play on his excellent autobiography, The Way The Future Was. The title of that memoir is, of course, a clever play on the relationship between a science fiction writer and his chosen subject. But it works in another, subtler level than is immediately apparent. You see, there used to be a time in the history of science fictiondom when the denizens of that strange land – the editors, artists, writers, critics and readers (Fred, btw, was at one time or other just about all of those things and often simultaneously) weren’t mere purveyors of sensational fiction. They actually acted as and often thought of themselves as prognosticators. Visionaries. Seers and Sybils. Fred was among those who took that position seriously. A member of the World Futures Society, he was often asked by government officials, business interests and think-tanks to go beyond storytelling and guess (for good pay, I assume) what things were going to be like in the next decade or century. Fred was not alone in this pursuit. Jerry Pournelle famously put together a group of SF writers to advise the government and that group had some small influence over the Star Wars defense initiative. During NASA’s heyday, numerous authors were tapped as pundits and I am sure, given the relationship between many authors and academia, that there were plenty of others who provided similar services in both paid and unpaid capacities during the fifties, sixties, perhaps even through the eighties. This all began waaaay back in nineteen twenty-something when Hugo was putting his concept of scientifiction together: “candy-coated science education”. (Even back then there was a recognition that the US lagged the rest of the world in the technical fields.) His oft cited and atrocious novel Ralph 124C41+ identifies this foundational aspect of the new branch of literature right there in the main character’s name: Ralph: One to forsee… Science fiction (well, at the time, scientifiction) was created for two mutually inclusive purposes – to show us where we were going and to entertain us along the way. How many times have we heard from NASA or JPL scientists and engineers that science fiction was the reason they got into the biz – and it was for the sole purpose of turning SF’s visions into reality? So many that it has become its own cliche. Somewhere between the fifties and now half of that equation has gotten dropped. Now, science fiction seems to only serve the entertainment function. Practitioners seem to distance themselves from prognostication as if it were an illegal or socially unacceptable activity. It’s interesting that the prognosticatory aspects of the genre were once so entrenched that combining them with entertainment was a regular feature of the magazines; F&SF had Asimov’s science column (real science as ‘food for future thought’). IF once devoted an entire issue (October 1958) to predictions of space travel. (This issue was in fact the genesis for this article). The issue offers a series of stories (by different authors) that chart our future in sequence, from 50 years into the future to 32 million years into the future. There are numerous other examples in the various magazines. When did this change? Why? I’m not sure. I do know that I was a bit shocked to learn that it was already in play a couple of years ago when I attended Readercon (an annual convention in the Boston area). Barry Malzberg (Beyond Apollo, others) was telling us all that NASA’s Apollo program was nothing but political theater, designed to end quickly once it had served its purpose, that there was never any intention of going to Mars, etc., etc., (a theory I’m familiar with and not necessarily opposed to), and indicted the concept of SF as predictor with those statements (‘they all got it wrong’). He then expanded that concept by stating (no quotes, just from memory) that science fiction was never about predicting the future. Huh? The audience pretty much went along with this statement, discussing all of the things that the genre had gotten wrong over the years (backyard spaceships, unlimited power generation, civilizations on Mars – you name it) and everyone happily eviscerated their favorite subject for the rest of the afternoon. I’ve recently read essentially the same thing directed towards ‘hard’ science fiction authors of the 70s and 80s (most often directed at one of my faves – Larry Niven) with words like “yeah, he came up with a lot of great ideas – but look at how much he got wrong!”. Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine once ran an excellent illustration that sums up this subject in ways that words never can. I believe the image was by Vincent DiFate (I could be very wrong on that memory, corrections gladly accepted) and I believe it was during the era of the Viking Missions to Mars. The illustration has two panels: one supposedly shows the Martian surface as it is – rocks, dust, sand dunes and fissures. The second shows the Martian surface as it could be – John Carter, Tars Tarkas, thoats, dust boats, tripods – whatever shapes and images your mind’s eye can turn those rocks and sand dunes into. What is science fiction without the possibilities that it might just come true some day? Without serious prediction, SF becomes nothing but fantasy, where anything can happen at the wave of a hand. SF is a product of its time. (Google Starship Troopers for a perfect example of that. Jo Walton’s piece at Tor.com is an excellent starting point. Read the comments.) Negativity has crept into virtually every aspect of our society, so it is no surprise to see this reflected in genre fiction. The thing that disappoints me tho is that SF is supposed to be transcendant. If any literature can light a beacon for the future, it should be SF. No other literary genre has been given (or adopted) the mantle of truthsayer. That mantle was accepted once even if it is being rejected now. A bit hesitantly I’ll say that it is the only genre that is even remotely capable of fulfilling this function, the delineation, not of THE future, but of our possible futures. Perhaps a bit of a kick-start is in order. My prediction of fifty years hence is that, absent a willingness to predict and prognosticate over the intervening decades, our current era will become known as the end of the age of science fiction.

Edited by Patrick Morgan The Miegunyah Press in association with the State Library of Victoria Hardback 604pp Illustrated ISBN 9780522852745 Bob Santamaria was involved in Australian public life from before World War II until his death in 1998. This collection of letters spanning sixty years shows facets of Santamaria's personality and activities that have not previously been disclosed. In these letters, both personal and professional, he speaks frankly on matters of the state, the church and family and he is revealed as a person more subtle in his views than his public persona would suggest. His correspondents ranged from prominent politicians, including Malcolm Fraser, Bill Hayden and Clyde Cameron, religious leaders, including Archbishops Mannix and Pell, to influential media figures and social commentators such as Kerry Packer and Phillip Adams. The letters offer a rare glimpse into a mind that was preoccupied for more than six decades with world events and ideological controversies. Patrick Morgan is a Victorian writer and academic who has published an award-winning regional history, edited texts on Australian literature, and written regularly on current affairs, including on the connections between religion and politics. He is also the editor of Running the show: BA Santamaria. You can buy this book at the Readings online shop.

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She is someone who is self-confident, secure and ready to fly in the face... of the criticism... of her family and friends. She stands out. Men like women... who aren't afraid to break risks. They know these women... just might rock their The image of a woman... holding a long, sleek, cylindrical prompts even the most sophisticated men... of the world...to be reduced to drooling newborns... in suits. If you haven't already realized it, there is a whole new mode of men... that has been born in the 1990's. Cigar parties, and cigar tasting, cognac tasting, beer tasting and the like, are predominantly frequented by men.... lots of men. These events do not exclude women. However, it has been my experience... that rarely more than two women... are in attendance, and every man... in the room... is keenly aware of the presence... of those few smart, lucky ones. If you come to one of the tasting or parties, be prepared scrutinized. However, you will also be fawned upon, flirted with, wined, and if you wish, dined, if not worshipped, by your pick of men. They will compliment you, show you respect, and perhaps best of all... offer you cigars. Your only challenge... will be to figure out... and I suspect... you've all had some practice at that. Puff sensuously, puff deeply. Then look quickly over your shoulder and see the look on the face of the man who's been watching you... He loves you! To Learn the Secrets... of our new "Shaman Cigar" Cigar Information, The "Shaman Cigar", Costa Rica history of Cigar Tobacco! Rich & Famous Cigar Smokers Wine & Spirits International Fine Wines & Liquors, Information about Wines & Wine Testing. Cocktail Recipes! Tropical Drinks! Gourmet Foods! Gourmet Cooking! Gourmet Recipes! Tiki Bars, Tiki Huts, Tiki Glasses, Mugs & Gifts! Tiki Masks & Statues, Tiki Art! 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Type 1 Diabetes Also indexed as:Diabetes, Type 1 Also known as childhood-onset diabetes, type 1 diabetes requires regular blood sugar tests and medical intervention. According to research or other evidence, the following self-care steps may be helpful. About This Condition Diabetes mellitus is an inability to metabolize carbohydrates resulting from inadequate insulin production or utilization. Other forms of diabetes (such as diabetes insipidus) are not included in this discussion. There are three types of diabetes mellitus, type 1, type 2, and gestational. This article concerns type 1 diabetes, which has also been called childhood-onset diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas cannot make the insulin needed to process glucose. Natural therapies cannot cure type 1 diabetes, but they may help by making the body more receptive to insulin supplied by injection. It is particularly critical for people with type 1 diabetes to work carefully with the doctor prescribing insulin before contemplating the use of any herbs, supplements, or dietary changes mentioned in this article. Any change that makes the body more receptive to insulin could require critical changes in insulin dosage that must be determined by the treating physician. People with diabetes cannot properly process glucose, a sugar the body uses for energy. As a result, glucose stays in the blood, causing blood glucose to rise. At the same time, however, the cells of the body can be starved for glucose. People with diabetes are at high risk for heart disease, atherosclerosis, cataracts, retinopathy, stroke, poor wound healing, infections, and damage to the kidneys and nerves. Healthy Lifestyle Tips Everyone with diabetes aged 6 months and older should get a seasonal flu shot. Close household contacts and out-of-home caregivers of people with diabetes should also get the vaccines. People with type 1 diabetes who engage in regular exercise require less insulin.1 However, in the short term, exercise can induce low blood sugar or even occasionally increased blood sugar.2 Therefore, people with type 1 diabetes should never begin an intensive exercise program without consulting a healthcare professional. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommends that people with diabetes limit their daily alcohol consumption to one drink for women and two drinks for men.3 Similar to research on healthy people, preliminary studies in adults with diabetes find reduced risk of heart disease with light to moderate drinking.4 Drinking alcohol with type 1 diabetes can result in hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia, depending on the circumstances, but moderate amounts of alcohol ingested with food does not affect blood glucose levels.5 People with diabetes who drink two or more drinks per day were reported to have a high risk for eye damage in one preliminary study,6 but another, larger study found no association between alcohol use and eye damage.7 People with diabetes who smoke are at higher risk for kidney damage,8heart disease,9 and other diabetes-linked problems. Smokers are also more likely to develop diabetes,10 so it's important for diabetic smokers to quit. Most healthcare providers agree on the necessity of self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) by people with type 1 diabetes. Advocates of SMBG, such as the ADA, have observed that SMBG by people with diabetes has revolutionized management of the disease, enabling them to achieve and maintain specific goals.11 These observations are well-supported in the medical literature.12 Detractors point out that indiscriminate use of self-monitoring is of questionable value and adds enormously to healthcare costs.13 The ADA acknowledges that accuracy of SMBG is instrument- and technique-dependent. Errors in technique and inadequate use of control procedures have been shown to lead to inaccurate test results.14 Nevertheless, it is likely that self-monitoring of blood glucose, if used properly, can have a positive effect by increasing patient involvement in overall diabetes care.15 Pharmacists and healthcare practitioners can teach people with diabetes certain skills that will enhance their ability to properly self-manage blood glucose. Acupuncture may be helpful in the treatment of diabetes, or complications associated with diabetes. In a preliminary trial, 77% of people suffering from diabetic nerve damage (neuropathy) experienced significant reduction in pain following up to six acupuncture treatments over a ten-week period. Many were also able to reduce pain medications, but no long-term change in blood-sugar control was observed.16 Bladder control problems, a complication of long-term diabetes, responded to acupuncture treatment with a significant reduction in symptoms in both controlled and uncontrolled trials.17, 18 Copyright 2014 Aisle7. All rights reserved. Aisle7.com The information presented in Aisle7 is for informational purposes only. It is based on scientific studies (human, animal, or in vitro), clinical experience, or traditional usage as cited in each article. The results reported may not necessarily occur in all individuals. Self-treatment is not recommended for life-threatening conditions that require medical treatment under a doctor's care. For many of the conditions discussed, treatment with prescription or over the counter medication is also available. Consult your doctor, practitioner, and/or pharmacist for any health problem and before using any supplements or before making any changes in prescribed medications. Information expires June 2015.

CRAFT, TRADE OR MYSTERY: Part One - Britain from Gothic Cathedrals to the Tolpuddle Conspirators By Dr Bob James Revised May 2002 Freemasons, Friendly Societies and Trade Unions Index Hosted by Takver's Initiatives We have seen that many of the assumptions underpinning LH and the tradition of the labour movement's 'true believer' rest upon the work of the Webbs. We have seen that they and their followers have suggested, but have not explored, 'modern, ie real trade unions' and 'real trade unionism' were only possible when 'rites of association', which 'probably' derived from Freemasonry, were jettisoned as industrialisation took hold. The larger context of these assumptions is the mass of self-serving assertions about the shaping influence of 'trade unions' and the labour movement on 20th century western democracies. We have noted a second set of claims about the huge importance of 'Friendly Societies' to the welfare of the whole of British and British-derived society. 'Official' historians of the Affiliated Orders of such societies have similarly sourced them in 'the ritualism, ceremonialism, symbolism, and degrees of the Ancient Fraternity of Freemasons.'204 For their part, in-house historians of Freemasonry have no doubt about the long term positive influences of 'the mystic tie.' In the case of Australia: Like the mighty Amazon (the Masonic movement) began in a series of small trickles and has since broadened into a wide, deep, and imposing stream that means so much to the character of the nation fertilised by its beneficent influence.205 The few academic historians who have looked seriously at Freemasonry, none of them in Australia, have come away impressed: Masonry played an important role in shaping the momentous changes that first introduced and then transformed the eighteenth-century enlightenment in America, helping to create the nineteenth-century culture of democracy, individualism and sentimentalism.206 If any of these claims is true, all students of Australian society should have access to relevant, supportive material and encouraged to fundamentally change their view of white Australian society. If all three are separately true, the originating heritage of Freemasonry, should be compulsory reading. Unfortunately, major problems begin immediately with attempts to assess any of the claims regarding Freemasonry, since in-house SF historians themselves do not agree about the circumstances of SF's own 'creation.' The most usual origin claims connect the mediaeval stonemasons with Speculative Freemasonry [SF] but there are many variations on this one theme, including many highly imaginative interpretations. Certain Freemasons have sought an organic connection between the symbolic and the historical elements, and have sourced SF's historical evolution in the Old Testament story of Solomon's Temple which features heavily in their ritual. The 'biblical' claims no longer concern the average SF, but a minority continue to argue for or spend a great deal of time searching for convincing connections with the earliest of Middle Eastern rites and sites. Outsiders, and many insiders, totally dismiss any connection with a heritage older or further distant from London than mediaeval England. Here I note only that 'modernists' have no trouble accepting that the origins of Western art, literature, philosophy, religion and democratic practice are to be found in the Mediterranean, so why so much trouble sourcing the guilds and/or Western fraternalism there? A further layer of historiographical dismissal has had 'the modern' requiring no input from even the mediaeval. Norman Davies' The Isles recently provided a succinct description and by implication the significance of a 'systematic propoganda' which has, not only fed into SF 'histories' but led, more broadly to 'the English myth.' Set running by Thomas Cromwell, clothed in golden words by Shakespeare, reinforced by the Protestant Establishment of the 17th and 18th centuries, and set in stone by the 'Whig Interpretation', the 'spin' had 3 themes: one is the denigration of the late mediaeval period...the second is the deification of the English monarchy as a focus for the founding of English Protestantism and of modern English patriotism. The third involves the exclusion of all non-English elements in descriptions of the roots of later British greatness.207 Historiographical problems similar to those occuring with 'trade union' creation stories occur with the SF 'evidence', including gaps in key parts of the record, and leaps of logic bordering on the bizarre. And as with LH, correcting these 'problems', where it is possible, does not require a denial of the importance of SF but a re-formulation bringing SF and the lives of ordinary working people into sustained contact with 'the pillars' of real-time history. The Substance of SF and the Realities of History There are only three 'official' qualifications required for membership of the United Grand Lodge [UGL], and therefore Australian 'Freemasonry' - to be an adult male, willing to swear belief in a Supreme Creator. Today, however, SF continues to be seen by many non-Masons as elitist, secretive, white, Christian and conservative as well as a male bastion. They may be surprised to know it has, at various times, also been attacked as everything evil, perverse and anti-Christian, as being a religion in its own right, as being the home for political revolutionaries and for being the power base of fascists and right wing extremists. Insiders insist SF adheres only to its stated principles. But they admit that providing clear, historically accurate answers to questions asked and accusations made is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Even determining what is being talked about is a complicated exercise. This study is focused on that 'Speculative Freemasonry' practised by the 'United Grand Lodge of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales' which its advocates would argue has been a more-or-less natural progression from the formation by 4 apparently autonomous London lodges in 1717 of a Grand Lodge, which then proceeded to either invent or formalise a series of rituals, beliefs and organisational practices. These proved increasingly popular until today: Freemasonry is unquestionably the largest, oldest and most influential of all secret societies.208 The same author has, however, struck a cautionary note: Just about everything concerning Freemasonry is shrouded in mystery or in the even more impenetrable Nacht und Nebel of Masonic pietism. (Author's emphasis) The essential story contained within all SF ritual is a search for knowledge, at once secret, and possibly unknowable. Sought for practical reasons as much as for reasons to do with spiritual enlightenment, 'the knowledge' takes on the characteristics a searcher projects on to it. As ineffable as a comforting 'light' or as theoretically substantial as the alchemist's gold, 'the knowledge' has, in practice, been measured more often in terms of a comradeship, a confidence in public speaking or in delivering ritual, and in 'knowing' that one's peers value one's contribution. The very flexibility, even ambiguity of the search and its goal - the Holy Grail/Enlightenment/Divine Grace - have proven sufficient to justify the continuing need for an administration tasked to do little more than to not-hinder the searchers. This complacency at the centre has, of course, proven double-edged. Taking the SF ritual at face value can be a source of disillusion for the initiate. From the first undertakings made by an 'Entered Apprentice', secrets are revealed - a grip, a token and a word. In the third Craft Degree, 'he' is told that what secrets have been revealed thus far are not the real or 'genuine' secrets. Thus, he presses on into the Royal Arch, where he finally receives what has been construed as the lost word, the secret name of God, a termination which only deepens the mystery surrounding the unknowable-ness of 'the Supreme Architect' and invites the 21st century whinge, can this really be what all the fuss has been about? One might expect the secrets to be about building - but while there is much talk of building in general, there is precious little mention of building practices. Rather, while the many interpretations of SF's origins and its need for this degree or that to be complete do not move SF far from the historically-real procedures of building, their intention is rather to place 'the builders' in close personal contact with profound human fears and possible experiential resolutions. For example, to get into the Royal Arch rite, as put by one author, one must be 'prepared' ie, one must have 'passed through the veils' between life and death. This connection with a spiritual context does not weaken the 'operative origins' arguement, indeed if the operatives can be shown to have been seeking 'light' in their work, the conditions for SF are satisfied. Such an interpretation does add further levels of potential distraction. It does seem to this searcher that the rites and artefacts created by the mediaeval operatives in context demonstrate concern with the inevitably ineffable implications of their daily, physical work. It seems reasonable to conclude on the evidence that they spun allegories and developed ceremonial to give substance to what we might call an 'extra dimension', but which to them was nothing more than a set of lodge practices designed on the one hand to educate and on the other to ensure loyalty and solidarity. It has been easy for the moral fables and symbolic allusions associated with operative masons to be trivialised as the unsophisticated expression of a perjoratively simple faith, or made part of an irrational and therefore ultimately historically useless tangle, involving the worlds of alchemy, magic and the occult. Some supporters of the 'spiritual operatives' approach, however, have argued that what SF took up in the 17th and 18th centuries was not a basis for expansion but rather a poor imitation of a genuine 'freemasonry' lost as the guilds and Companies declined, were suppressed or were turned to other purposes, and that since 1717 the grasp by even the most serious brethren of the 'real secrets' has been minimal. Problems With SF Literature: Books claiming to 'expose' SF were in circulation even before 1717 and the first inklings of an industry were apparent almost as soon as the 1717 Grand Lodge was established. A further wave of publications appeared in the last years of the 20th century, once more claiming to 'finally' reveal the truth about 'masonic secrets.' Modestly, the authors of The Hiram Key, for example, claim to have 'located the secret scrolls of Jesus and his followers' and that their findings are of major importance 'not only to Freemasons, but to the world in general.'209 Both initiated Freemasons, these authors say their research began when they concluded from 'the inside' that 'modern' Freemasonry was a waste of time. They dismiss in a single sentence the approach being explored here without, apparently, having looked at any of the detailed research material which preceded them: We had easily decided that the stonemason theory of the origin of Freemasonry does not hold up under close examination for the simple reason that guilds of stonemasons did not exist in Britain.210 We will see that this claim is one of the more unfortunate 'leaps of logic'. The Knights Templar are a popular, replacement 'source' for such crusading authors. A later work by the same authors, The Second Messiah,211 claims to connect the Shroud of Turin, the Knights Templar and Scottish Freemasonry with the death of James, brother of Jesus, via the core symbolic ritual of Freemasonry, that of the murder and discovery of Hiram Abiff. Another effort, The Templar Revelation purports to connect Mary Magdalene, John the Apostle and the Knights Templar to Leonardo da Vinci.212 Robinson, another Freemason, in building his case for the Knights and 'the Lost Secrets of Freemasonry' argued that before 1717 Freemasonry was secret, and that the Knights were outlaws and refugees from Church and State. His evidence? One sample: An Old Charge of Masonry says that if a brother comes to you, give him 'work' for two weeks, then give him some money and direct him to the next lodge. Why the assumption that he will need money? Because he is running and hiding.213 The tramping networks, whereby as a result of being 'impressed' or 'called' by the King, stone masons were perhaps the first to be paid travelling allowances, are apparently quite unknown to this author, a common but significant weakness in the SF literature.214 Across the range of 'expose' literature, which has concentrated on the 'phenomenology' of Freemasonry and why 'Masons irritate or alarm people', the many very real ways in which 'the Craft' has continuously affected and been affected by real history have been obscured - such as the presence of 'lodges' in British Public Schools and their role in the production of the men who then used their schoolday ritualism in taming and Britishing 'the colonies'.215 Northern hemisphere Freemasons have a long record of research into their own 'myths and legends', but have kept much of it to themselves. Their historiography has suffered modish fashions, too, and Freemasonry as a whole has sometimes queered its own pitch by 'encouraging' notions of a higher and grander status for itself than that of a mere 'benefit society'. Attempting to do this while not being able to provide a convincing historical context has proved life-threatening. Its opponents have built arguments on the elitist elements, but even concern for their recordable history has been turned against Freemasons by apparently sympathetic scholars: The second paradox is this: Freemasonry has existed almost unchanged since the beginning of the eighteenth century, quietly defying history and the march of time, while simultaneously being more obsessed with its own history than any other institution in the world. From the start, the Craft ... has assiduously recorded its existence year by year, month by month, day by day, constantly defining its own past, while remaining almost unaffected by the history of mankind in general.216 Continued mis-interpretation and ill-founded attacks from frustrated but fascinated outsiders has gradually worn down the resolve and the insularity of the administrators of SF, who now find themselves forced to react because of declining numbers and influence. SF's decision-makers are today dealing more publically with at least the better-founded criticism than they once did. For this observer, however, the persistent impression is that 'official' English-speaking SF has constructed an in-house version of its own 'true believer' and has attempted to contain issues within 'the Craft.' Akin to LH's central definitional problem, the major SF problem is one of identity and identification. Very simply, a collision of logic and ideology has made what distinguishes 'operative freemasonry' from 'Speculative Freemasonry' extremely difficult to determine. And while it is not acknowledged publically, evidence shows the amount of conflict within 'the Craft' over fundamental beliefs has been enormous. Much of the difficulty stems from SF's failure to resolve its central dilemma - how and whether to choose between its apparently plebeian origins and its politically-useful patrician sensibilities. SF literature often gives the impression that the organisation is committed to the belief that it derived from operative stonemasons, but just as often directly undermines that committment or allows it to be undermined. In the meantime, Yates, a keen-sighted 'outsider' researching the links between 'the Craft', the equally-misunderstood 'Order of the Rosy Cross' or Rosicrucians, and the Royal Society of Isaac Newton, et al, has concluded: The origin of Freemasonry is one of the most debated, and debatable, subjects in the whole realm of historical enquiry.217 Another historian not usually quoted by Masonic researchers, Margaret Jacob, has asserted: Much of what has been written on Freemasonry is worthless and every library is filled with non-scholarly literature on the subject. There is simply no adequate account, in English, of the origins of European Freemasonry.218 The very well regarded 19th century SF scholar Gould, author of the muti-volumed History of Freemasonry asserted in 1890 to the London Research Lodge that the Symbolism we possess has come down to us, in all its main features, from very early times, and that it originated during the splendour of Mediaeval Operative Masonry, and not in its decline.219 Elsewhere he wrote: (The) direct...line of Masonic descent is traceable to the lodges of operative masons who flourished towards the close of the mediaeval period...220 By 'Symbolism' he meant the rites of association and their 'speculative' meanings. Perhaps this contribution has slipped into disuse because, rather than cultivate a vibrant, newly-emergent image of SF, it argues that speculative freemasonry was actually in decline in 1717 and that many elements of the artisinal ritual which were taken up by Grand Lodge were accepted in ignorance and that from that time understanding amongst the brethren of their own heritage has slipped even further. Gould was a painstaking researcher, accustomed as a barrister to sift and weigh evidence. He considered masses of minor and obscure as well as public and highly significant documents, many of which most of us will never access. He was most carful in his analysis and not at all obsequious to SF tradition. He was aware of the social, economic and political contexts surrounding the events of which he was writing and aware, too, of the frailties and vanities of the human players. SF scholars today could do worse than return to his work and that of his contemporaries, and begin their debates anew. Gould does not claim to have answered every question and neither do I regard his account as without major flaw. I am not in a position to argue out here the issues involved, and I make no claim to 'be on top of' all the relevant details but I make two points, both of which I would make about many of the authors who have come after him. Firstly, Gould assumes that when 'gentry' and non-operative artisans began to enter the operative lodges and were 'made' speculative freemasons, they received the same secrets, practical or esoteric, that a contemporaneous operative mason would have received as he/she entered the lodge for the first time. From this assumption flows a second significant but equally erroneous assumption, that the ceremonial used by 'speculatives' in lodges they came to control was all of the ceremonial known to contemporaneous operatives. Phrasing my initial doubts this way, of course, leads to the realisation that operative rites may well have altered in many respects at different places and/or times. Much of the debate within SF circles has been very simplistic: whether (all and every) operatives had one, two or three degrees and of what they consisted. For the operative apprentice entering lodge as a novice, the Speculative concensus has been that the 'service' was very simple, probably only an oath, a reading to the candidate and a brief, catechetic examination. A second more practical examination, when the apprentice was out of 'his' time tested his suitability to become a 'fellow', has been agreed as likely, but strong argument has ensued over the liklihoood of a third, to make 'him' a Master of the trade. In SF after 1717, a third degree ritual was allegedly composed, in keeping with the embellished first and second degrees now known as 'Entered Apprentice' and 'Fellow Craft'. I see no reason why operatives would necessarily disclose all, even much of their practical secrets or their esoteric secrets to 'strangers'. There would be no need for them to do so, and disclosure of any secrets would, as we shall see, be against the oath they had taken. Much play has also been made of what's called the 'Old Charges' and other operative documents not providing information about ceremonial rites and 'secrets', again the concensus being that this proves the operatives had no such rites at the time the document was created. This seems very unsound reasoning. Secondly, Gould had access to operative stonemasons as he was writing but appears to have made no attempt to approach or to appraise their activities. He does say that his concern was only with 'speculative' masonry, and that this distinction excused him from following certain lines of enquiry. This seems especially specious for a lawyer. A school of SF researchers known as 'the Authentics' held sway within the ambit of the London-based UGL for most of the 20th century. They were committed, they said, to rigorous examination of documents and to a need to accept no more and no less than those documents provided. Heresay, romantic conjecture and fantasy were put aside, the need was for hard evidence. Even so, their debate has been, shall we say, studiously unproductive. Some have had absolutely no doubts that: The trade secrets of the operative masons became the esoteric secrets of the speculative masons.221 (My emphasis) Others have made crystal clear their belief that it was absurd on a number of levels to think that artisans had originated 'their' rituals: The problem is one of credible history, a believable basis for thinking that an organisation of dusty stonecutters with scraped hands and knees, backs aching from struggling with heavy blocks of stone in all weather conditions, somehow turned into a noble company led by kings and princes, dukes and earls - not to mention that the entire process was accomplished in total secrecy.222 Such a vigorous dismissal almost hides the fact that Robinson and others like him evince no interest in understanding the world of 'dusty stonecutters'. The harsh conclusion intrudes that an approach to that material not only requires intellectual rigour and an overturning of personal, snobbish assumptions, but is less likely than wild speculations about the Knights Templar, the Shroud of Turin and some well-known personage such as Leonardo da Vinci, to produce a runaway best seller among the (mostly) ill-educated masses.223 Less extreme dismissals of the operatives have claimed that after 1717, the operatives' few basic notions, a simple rite or two, were embellished and extended into a grand, new creation. The very influential SF researcher, Professor of Economics Douglas Knoop, wrote in 1941 to the effect that 'fundamental changes in masonic working' were introduced after 1717 which ultimately transformed the whole chain of ceremonies.224 In 1978, he capped an extensive research and publishing program by issuing with his collaborator, GP Jones, incidentally another academic economist, The Genesis of Freemasonry, to oppose the lingering effects of 'mythical or imaginative' histories of SF with their own 'comparative and analytical' account. They argued that only towards the end of the 18th century did a major concern for symbolism appear within SF: So long as lodges were mainly convivial societies, or institutions for discussing architecture and geometry, there could be little scope for symbolism. That would not arise until freemasonry had become primarily a system of morality.225 This belief is derived from, and used to strengthen their circular conclusion that operative masons never treated their working tools as allegorical.226 I believe this is unsound and note that in the face of their apparent certitude, Knoop and Jones insisted their conclusions were no more than 'tentative' working hypotheses and that even a 'comprehensive and universally true definition' of SF was not available to them.227 Carr and 'the Transition': For the 1967 publication, Grand Lodge, 1717-1967, the United Grand Lodge of England assembled as 'official' an array of 'in-house' historians as was possible. The first section, 'Freemasonry Before Grand Lodge' by Harry Carr drew upon Unwin's Gilds and Companies of London, Trevelyan's English Social History and much in-house research to establish a schema for 'the transition', ie, the process whereby the speculative 'Craft' of Freemasonry evolved out of the operative 'craft' of (stone)masonry.[Note the use of caps]228 In his concluding paragraph Carr said: Officially the story begins in 1717, but the seeds were sown in 1356 with the first code of mason regulations promulgated at Guildhall in London.229 But elsewhere he asserted: 'the Freemasonry of today bears no resemblance to the craft as it was in the 1300's', in effect that 'the Craft' bears no resemblance to 'the craft' which preceded it and gave it its essentials. So, again we have problems of logic and problems of, what shall we call it, 'hubris', associated with an as-yet-unexplained, and certainly ambiguous distinction being asserted through the presence or the absence of capitalisation - eg, 'craft' vs 'Craft'; 'masonry' vs 'Masonry'. The 'whole story in detail' is impossible to tell, says Carr, indeed what scholars have is little more than a collection of jigsaw pieces: The essential foundations of the Craft are to be found, nevertheless, in England where its history actually begins with a study of the conditions...which led first to the evolution of mason trade organisation, and later gave rise to the early 'operative lodges.'(p.3) Carr relates the development of gild organisation, initially the religious gilds, then the 'Gild Merchants' (Note the capitals again), then 'craft gilds' which, despite their lack of capitalisation achieved dominance over the others by 'the end of the fourteenth century': Craft regulations were usually based on ancient customs that had long been in use in the trades and they were imposed by consent of the municipal authorities, whose sanction gave them the force of law. (p.5) A 'craft gild' is defined by Carr as - '(an association) of men engaged in a particular craft or trade, for the protection of their mutual interests and for rights of self-government.'(p.4) 'Lodge' turns out to be far harder to define. In Carr's hands, the 'lodge' is first a workshop, a place to store tools and to rest. Then it becomes a term for the association of workers using this site. To be an 'operative lodge' it is required that the association of masons, bound together for their common good, 'share a secret mode of recognition to which they are sworn on admission.' (p.13) This level of organisation, he claims, was not achieved until the 16th century and at that stage the rites probably consisted only of 'an oath of fidelity and a reading of the Charges.' Later, 'secret words and signes' were added, and perhaps by the end of the 17th century, when operative masonry was well into its decline and operative lodges were admitting more and more 'non-operatives', two degrees only were being 'worked' - that of the 'entered apprentice' and 'fellow craft or master'. Carr asserts that at this stage the ceremonies 'contain nothing that might be described as "speculative masonry"', thus implying that the bulk of what now distinguishes SF ritually and allegorically was developed by non-operatives after 1717. However, at the same time: It is certain that the original ceremonies, however brief, had begun in the gilds and companies even before the advent of lodge organisation,... It is probable that (a) nucleus of catechism and secrets was the basis of our masonic ritual throughout all the stages of operative, non-operative, and 'accepted' Masonry. Although his account can be seen in the overall context of SF publications as moderate and probably an attempted compromise, Carr remains caught in a trap of his own making. Similarly to the Webbs, he wants the object towards which he is working to be the most finished form of an historically-legitimate evolutionary process, and to have benefitted from but to have shucked off all the unnecessary, 'primitive' beginings. His major problem is, as it is with SF as a whole, that there is sufficient evidence to show that the gilds were neither 'primitive' nor totally without 'speculative' beliefs. And as already pointed out there is no necessary connection between SF and operative freemasonry - any claimed, or dismissed connection, equally requiring proof. It needs to be made clear here that the documents which supposedly provided operative rites to the non-operatives in the London Grand Lodge soon after 1717 were allegedly destroyed even before their 'adaptations' were made public. In London in 1356, Carr says, 'twelve skilled masters' representing the two branches of stonemasonry, the 'hewers' and the 'layers or setters', were brought together by the municipal authorities to approve a code of regulations for the trade. Further evidence shows just 20 years later, the trade of mason is in the list of 47 'sufficient misteries' of the City, whereby 4 of their number served as delegates on the Common Council, 'sworn to give counsel for the common weal and "preserving for each mistery its reasonable customs."' He assays evidence of the functions carried out by this body and concludes that by 1481 its organisation included regulations for a distinct livery or uniform, annual assemblies, election of Wardens with power of search for false work, restrictions against outsiders, payment of quarterly contributions and the maintenance of a 'Common Box' - 'in fact all the machinery of management for an established craft gild.' Since he doesn't actually explore the options, there would appear to be an ideological perspective to his key distinction: (There) is no evidence at this time of any kind of secrets, or degrees, or lodge, in connexion with the London Masons' Company.(p.7) It would seem strange to Carr and his colleagues to find me commenting at this stage that no direct evidence, which is the sort of evidence he is referring to, exists of degrees, secret work or lodges 'in connexion with' any trade. My point is that operative stonemasonry was not different in kind so why expect that its practitioners would act differently to those of other occupations. But the point has also to do with the nature of secrecy. In a non-paper era especially, why would one expect secrets to be written down, let alone made available to the authorities? Carr agrees that craft gilds were already recognisably fraternal, and I therefore suggest it is hard to imagine them without trade secrets and/or without ranks of achievement. Carr would appear to have assumed the nature of 'masonic' secrecy from his understanding of SF not from an understanding of the stonemason's occupation. In addition to secrecy, SF, like LH, has a need to see itself as democratic in the modern sense, there is therefore a need to massage real-time history with regard to governance. Carr went on: Apart from London, far the best evidence in Britain for mason gild organisation comes from Edinburgh, and the records there are doubly important because they also furnish valuable confirmation as to the manner in which the operative lodges arose.(p.8) It seems the gild system in Edinburgh began in the 1400's when the craft organisations called 'Incorporations' were granted powers of self-government under 'Seals of Cause'. The 'Masons and Wrights' petitioning together received such a document in 1475. Carr comments: As in London, the authorities encouraged this type of organisation, and by the end of the fifteenth century practically all the Edinburgh crafts were similarly incorporated...These regulations, like the London Masons' ordnances of 1356 which they closely resemble in several points, were drawn up by the crafts themselves and they indicate...the condition of the mason craft in Edinburgh at that time. (p.9) According to our author 'the lodge' appears in the city after this point: It is certain [!] that at some time between 1475 and 1598 the passing of EA's [Entered Apprentices] to the grade of FC [Fellow Craftsman] was transferred from the Incorporation to the Lodge. So, 'operative lodges' appeared in the towns and cities by the end of the 16th century, their functions including - regulating the entry of apprentices, the passing of fellows, the settlement of disputes, the prevention of enticement, the punishment of offenders, and the protection of the trades from the intrusion of untrained or itinerant labour, ie all 'internal arrangements.' He then has to admit that evidence exists for 'some sort of lodge development long before that time'. This takes us outside the city limits. Documents from the 13th century refer to a 'lodge' as the common space for masons on a building site, eg a cathedral, where, again I interpolate, it would seem difficult to imagine a totally non-speculative climate: At York Minster in 1370 a strict code of ordinances for masons was drawn up by the Chapter, regulating times and hours of work and refreshment;...(penalties for breaches)..The men were forbidden to go more than a mile from the 'lodge' in their free time; new men were to work a week a more on trial and if they were found 'sufficient' by the Master of Works and the Master Mason they were sworn 'upon the book' to adhere to the rules. Throughout this document the word 'lodge' refers primarily to the masons' workshop, but it was also their home, refectory and 'clubroom'. [My emphasis] Carr has used capitalisation to build a sense of uniqueness for SF. Now, we find that the lodges occupied by these groups of 'attached masons' on building sites outside city limits were 'ephemeral' and the brethren were 'wholly under the control of the authorities whom they served'. They are therefore not proper 'operative lodges': ...the 'operative lodge' in its third and highest stage of development was a permanent institution and the word 'lodge' in this case is used to describe the working masons of a particular town or district organised to regulate the affairs of their trade...We call them 'operative lodges' because their activities were concerned only with men who earned their livlihood in some branch of the mason craft, or building trade.(p.12) All of which makes me wonder if Carr has been reading the Webbs. It also seems he believes that social, religious or benevolent activities do not mark 'proper' lodges because where those exist no evidence has been found indicating concern with trade regulation matters. This would seem an inadequate reading of the evidence, but in general terms, Carr, like many SF authors, assumes that any absence of evidence for some point is proof for its opposite, at least as long as that assumption helps in his vigorous pursuit of the conclusion he had in mind before he began. In the case of the 'Old Charges', manuscripts, often fragmentary, which date from 1390, he is dismissive of any suggestion of mediaeval mason assemblies because that would undermine Grand Lodge's claim that 1717 was the first. And so on. He says that 'no internal records' of the lodges of the apparently non-gild 'attached masons' have survived but he can still make the jump from documents setting out their conditions of employment - 'where the industrial life of the masons was fully controlled in the interests of the employers', which is of course arguable in itself - to: there was a noticeable absence of organisation among themselves, both in trade matters and in social or benevolent activities...(p.11) So, the gilds of 'town' masons had no degrees, secrets, etc, and the lodges of 'attached masons', outside the town, had no municipal organisation or control and no social or benevolent activities, and both were therefore incomplete. His analysis of what are called the 'Old Charges' seems to this reader to contain arbitrary and a-historical distinctions, all in the name of setting up a highly-fanciful image of 'something-that-is-to-come.'230 The 'Old Charges' are a series of 120 documents which, in Carr's words are '(a) major source of evidence on the development of mason craft organisation in England.' Carr says that 'their general pattern...is the same' and that each consists of two parts - firstly, a 'largely traditional history of the mason craft' and secondly, 'a code of regulations for masters, fellows, (ie qualified craftsmen) and apprentices.' The texts usually contain, he says, vague arrangements for 'large-scale assemblies' of masons 'implying a widespread territorial organisation', arrangements he dismisses by going on to say there is no evidence to show that any assemblies ever took place. This is of course where he ought to have begun, with a close analysis of these documents, allowing them to lead him rather than the other way around, particularly in the light of an amazing admission buried in description of the 'largely traditional history': It is probable that this 'history' was compiled in order to provide a kind of traditional background for long-standing craft customs that were embodied in these texts. Any 'long-standing craft customs' written about, fancifully or not from 1390 on, are exactly the sorts of evidence required to make sense of this 'transition' experience. His unnecessarily restricted conclusion is the correct one, but he makes nothing of it: (there) was one peculiarity which distinguished the lodges from the craft gilds or companies. The masons of the lodge shared a secret mode of 'recognition', which was communicated to them in the course of some sort of brief admission ceremony, under an oath of secrecy...From now on, unless there is some special qualifying note in the text, the word 'lodge' will be defined as an association of masons (operative or otherwise) who are bound together for their common good, and who share a secret mode of recognition to which they are sworn on admission. [Carr's emphasis] The regulations contained in the Charges were addressed separately to 'masters' and 'fellows', he agrees, and many are normal craft regulations. Where they relate to apprentices they are usually identical with other indenture statements: Despite these similarities, however, it is important to stress that the regulations in the MS Constitutions [the 'Old Charges'] are not gild ordnances, because they lack certain features which were an essential feature of all such codes...(evidence of elections of officers, annual assemblies and municipal sanction)..One other (distinguishing) feature is the inclusion of a number of items which were not trade matters..but designed to preserve and elevate the moral character of the craftsmen. It is this extraordinary combination of 'history', trade and moral regulations which makes these early masonic manuscripts unique among contemporary craft documents. (p.14) [My emphasis] Carr has made no reference to, let alone done any analysis of other craft regulations, and he has repeatedly admitted the partial nature of his 'pieces of jig-saw'. Yet he makes statements of ringing certainty. His attitude has been helped by his predecessors having arbitrarily removed from the pile of relevant evidence hard facts difficult to massage in the necessary direction. One such example concerns the records of a guild of stonemasons at Lincoln founded on the Feast of Pentecost, 1319. Knoop and Jones insisted that it 'had become [!] merely [!] a social [!] and religious fraternity' by 1389 while another SF scholar Vibert 'refers to it as a religious fraternity among the masons', all of which is about refusing it status as a 'craft' or trade-based guild, whereby its obvious possession of both a trade-orientation and symbolic sensitivities can be disregarded. A second intention is a discounting of this guild's insistence on referring in its documents to both 'fratres' ['brother'] and 'sorores' ['sister'].231 As in: Every brother or sister on entering the gild shall pay four shillings or one quarter of best barley at the three terms of the year, and four pence, namely one to the deacon, one to the clerk and two to the ale. All cementarii [stonemasons] of this gild shall agree that any cementarius who takes an apprentice shall give 40 pence to the maintaining of the candle, and if he be unwilling to give, the amount shall be doubled.232 Carr's selectivity catches him out eventually when he makes the statement that 'most important of all' the points which are 'the strongest possible evidence' showing that these MS Constitutions were 'not designed for the craftsmen in the towns' is their common: injunction to cherish travelling masons and 'refresh them with money to the next lodge',(p.16) in other words the existence of 'tramping networks'. He sees these only as 'a kind of hostel and "labour exchange" for workers outside the city limits. We will see that in context they are a key, positive part of the fraternal 'jig-saw', in or outside the city walls. Sufficient evidence exists to also counter the arguement that the cathedral-building masons did not stay long enough in one place in mediaeval times to have equally strong 'trade' organisation to those in other occupations. The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, Chapter Act Books of the Cathedral Chapter and the city's Freemen Rolls have convinced at least some SF researchers that from the middle of the fourteenth century, if not earlier, there is evidence of a well-established system or order amongst the masons at the Minster, most of whom were employed by the Chapter year after year if not permanently...(It) is possible to see...a well-developed system of Master, Wardens and Master Masons, but even more significantly something which may surely be regarded as approaching an initiation ceremony. The Statute of Labourers in 1360 distinguished 'Master masons of freestone, or Masons called Freemasons' from 'masons called layers' and Exchequer Accounts for Westminster of 1532 show gradations in the ranks of masons from those working with stone, below them those working at setting of stone, then successively roughlayers and wallers, then hardhewers, who worked chiefly at the quarries, and lowest of all, entaylers, who were more assistants or guardians.233 Carr used the internal lodge records of St Mary's Chapel Lodge, Edinburgh which run from 1539, to illustrate that subsequent, important changes in 'masonry' resulted from economic pressures. After 1671 when disastrous fires made it necessary for as many 'masters' to be available as possible, certain 'entered apprentices' who were reluctant for financial reasons to move to the next level, were heavily pressured by the municipal authorities into 'passing'. This totally broke with the custom of 'passing' or 'making' being dependent on a candidate being able to prove his or her competence by completing a set task: >From this time, the 1680's, we date a gradual change in the character of the Lodge from a 'closed-shop' association of skilled craftsmen to a trade association of 'members', ie a society in which actual numbers and Lodge income were to become more important than technical skill. (p.37) Migrant or 'forrin' labour was able to get work more easily, and new Lodges were opened within the area where previously St Mary's Chapel had been the controlling authority, Carr commenting - 'No operative lodge could function properly if it had a rival on its own doorstep.' From this time Lodge interests were less trade-oriented and more benevolent and financial, in Carr's terms - 'The Lodge was acquiring some of the characteristics of a benefit society.' An interesting admission but another major error. Again he seems to have misjudged the nature of the earlier forms of organisation. After 1700 St Mary's could not even control its own journeymen, some using the courts to win the right to form their own Lodge, and to confer 'the Mason Word', the ultimate secret. In 1726, several members won an internal dispute to force the admission of several non-masons who wished to join and to contribute funds. What then quickly became a totally 'speculative' Lodge, ie non-operative, issued its first By-laws in 1736 containing not one regulation concerned with the trade. (p.38) A complementary address Carr made to the major SF Research Lodge AQC 234 continued this vein. Although central to his research Carr, like Gould, seems totally uninterested in the function of ritual in operative lodges, the involvement of secrecy or of status marks in such ritual or the purpose of the surviving moral tales and legends. Facing Up At Last? The 1991 edition of a popular history of SF, first published in 1953 and since then revised and re-published many times maintained: Up to the present time, no even plausible theory of the 'origin' of the freemasons has been put forward.235 This is a remarkable statement and stretches the whole organisations' credibility to breaking point. The two authors, both well-respected Masons, don't improve the situation by following the above sentence with: The reason for this is probably that the Craft, as we know it, originated among the operative masons of Britain. They proceed to bury on page 246, two brief paragraphs on 'The Worshipful Society of Free Masons, Rough Masons, Slaters, Paviors, Plaisterers and Bricklayers' in whose history one imagines a 'plausible theory' could be sought. Indeed, Pick and Knight begin these two paragraphs with the bald statement: This society is popularly known as 'The Operatives' because it preserves the old operative rituals in its ceremonies. Not, notice, 'because it is believed that' or 'its members believe that' but simply 'because it preserves the old operative rituals.' Perhaps I'm missing something, not being an SF but I would have thought that possession of 'the old operative rituals' would, in itself, be sufficient evidence to resolve the major issue once and for all. Any doubts that exist could be addressed very easily through seriously conducted comparative tests.236 I return to this shortly. Some mainstream Freemason researchers moved in the 1990's to break out of the impasse. Markham, author of the prestigious 1997 Prestonian Lecture, 'Some Problems of English Masonic History' joined brethren urging that 'the Craft' engage with outside historians for 'despite its very interesting historical character, Freemasonry has never been understood by non-masonic historians as part of general history.'237 He was most concerned with the damage done by anti-Masonry attacks published and circulated over the years, but he acknowledged that not all Masonic 'histories' had been useful: There have been many theories of (the) origin of Freemasonry (some logically argued, and others eccentric in the extreme). A general approach has been to take a preconceived theory and try to make it fit with the various surviving divergent fragments of evidence of early masonic history; and there has been a general lack of success.238 In sadness, not anger, I note that in 1890 Gould had made plain to his colleagues in SF research his opinion that: (The) domain of Ancient, as distinguished from that of Modern Masonry, has been very strangely neglected, and that if we really wish to enlist the sympathy and interest of scholars and men of intelligence, in the special labours of the [Research] Lodge, we must make a least a resolute attempt to partially lift the veil, by which the earlier history of our Art or Science is obscured.239 In order that his meaning would be totally clear to all, he spelt out that: (By) the expression 'Ancient Masonry' is to be understood the history of the Craft before, and by that of 'Modern Masonry' the history of the Craft after the era of Grand Lodges. The line of demarcation between them being drawn at the year 1717. Apparently making a break, academic and SF Prescott announced in 2000 the establishment of the Centre for Research into Freemasonry at Sheffield University, to 'encourage and undertake objective scholarly research into the social and cultural impact of freemasonry' [NB lack of a capital - emphasis mine] Prescott said he and his colleagues at the Centre took as their intellectual manifesto an article by Oxford historian Roberts published in 1969 where could be found: It is surprising that in the country which gave freemasonry [no cap] to the world it has attracted hardly any interest from the professional historian...The result has been at best faithful reproduction of traditional hagiography and at worst lunatic speculation. 240 Markham acknowledged the use of secrecy by lodges was a contributor to the situation he was addressing and that in Ireland especially, ritual and rules were simply not committed to paper until late in the 18th century.241 He made clear that the later the ritual the more likely it was to occupy a greater number of words, but that on a number of significant occasions attempts were made to get back to an earlier, simpler version, what was known in continental Europe as the 'English' rite: (the) French were not content with limiting the movement to the supposed moral customs, secrets and ritual of stonemasons, and soon related it also to ideals of knighthood...When, in the late 18th century, particularly in Germany, excesses arose in the attempted development of Masonry and its rituals, including attempts to use them for commercial gain, it was to the pure ideals of 'English Masonry' that a return was sought.242 Curiously, this 'English' rite almost certainly owed its survival to the committment of Irish masons who were responsible for what is now called the 'Antient' form, which Markham believed research has shown, was of mediaeval origin.243 Whether this made these 'masons' both speculative and operative at the same time is the $64 question, and one I can't answer at the moment. The 'Antients' were a group of lodges, whose 'history' is not clear, unhappy with changes introduced after 1717, on the basis of their claimed knowledge of the earlier rites. Many of them aligned with a Grand Lodge at York until 'the Union' of 1813, when what I would call a 'revised' SF incorporated sufficient 'Antient' material for that 'faction' to agree to a merger with the London-based Grand Lodge, the 'Moderns.' Although it is likely, therefore, that basic, 'Craft' SF ritual today is closer to that of the mediaeval operative stonemasons than it was for the period 1723 to 1813, an outcome impacting on the Webbs' interpretation of labour history, this is not the whole story. The Mediaeval Gilds, Tramping Networks and Operative Trades: 'Operative' derives from the latin 'operarii' for 'handicraftsman', while the original 'lodges', first referred to in England around AD1200, were site buildings for workmen to eat in, keep their tools in and for the conduct of their fraternal business.244 There is little doubt that the name 'free-mason' existed for a particular kind of operative stonemason, viz, one who worked with 'free stone' said to be favoured for figure carving, while others worked with 'rough' stone and were 'rough masons'.245 But the notion of a 'free' man able to practice a craft only because 'he' had attained 'his' free status was also common. In general, it is believed that an artisan became 'free' to the trade when 'he' (usually but not always male) achieved 'master' status, which meant 'he' had passed through the intermediate 'degrees' and had completed a 'master piece.' The craft gild commonly comprised three classes of members - the masters, the journeymen and the apprentices, matching exactly the 3 'Craft' degrees of 'evolved' SF. The levels or degrees were not arbitrary. Cipola has observed: Class and group conflicts played a fundamental part in determining who could and who could not form a guild...Within the guilds, a definite order of precedence faithfully reflected the distribution of power. This Italian scholar acknowledged the range of functions guilds carried out but had no illusions about their political role: All these functions should not be underestimated. But neither should one underestimate the fact that one of the fundamental aims of all guilds was to regulate and reduce competition among their own members...(In) any study of the level and structure of employment and wages in centuries preceding the eighteenth, guilds' actions must of necessity occupy a position of the first importance.246 Lipson came to the same conclusion: Although wages and prices were often regulated by the municipality and subsequently by the state, the assessment of wages and the fixing of prices were also a common feature of gild activity.247 The SF 'in-house' literature seems most at error when it diminishes the 'benefit society' functions of mediaeval fraternalism. Lipson used these functions of the craft gild's natural enemy, the trading class, to make the observation: Apart from its control of trade, the merchant gild served other functions which exhibit in a strong light the core of fraternalism inherent in the gild system.248 Lipson noted, as just one craft example among many, that after 1487 poor members of the Carpenters' Brotherhood were to have weekly: 'A reward of the common box of the craft after the discretion of the masters and wardens.' Earlier, in 1333, the carpenters had instituted a provision that if any brother or sister fall into poverty by God's hand or in sickness...so that he may not keep himself, then shall he have of the brotherhood each week fourteenpence during this poverty, after he hath lain sick a fortnight.249 During his poverty the unfortunate brother was also to receive the livery clothing at the common cost, in order that he might not be put to shame in the presence of the guild assembly. Lipson quotes similar arrangements amongst the 'Taylors', the grocers, the white tawyers, the barber surgeons, the tanners, goldsmiths, weavers, etc, etc. This was no system of welfare without strings: It was a common stipulation, therefore, that any one admitted to the gild should take oath to keep the ordnances of the craft, and disobedience would thus expose the offender to penalties in spiritual courts.250 [My emphasis] (In) the effort to provide a fair remuneration for the worker and to reconcile the conflicting claims of producer and consumer,...principles of industrial control and conceptions of wages and prices (were developed by the mediaeval craft gilds) to which we may perhaps one day return.251 Where argumentation between scholars continues over, for example, whether the qualifier 'craft' in front of 'gild' is necessary, at what date it becomes necessary to distinguish artisinal from 'merchant' guilds, and what qualification it actually introduces, differences often seem semantically-based. When it is possible to bring a range of resources to bear, some long-standing positions would seem untenable. The distinctions drawn earlier between town craft organisation and lodges outside town limits would appear to be unrealistic, as would the treatment of stonemasonry, or 'the building trades' as unique. Ladders of 'degrees' have been dated to before the 10th century eg, seven ecclesiastical degrees from 'ostiary' up to that of bishop.252 In addition to acknowledgement as a 'made' apprentice, and as being 'free' on the trade, specific 'degrees' of skill and status were needed for attainment of the rank of 'master carpenter', 'master fishmonger', 'master felt-maker', and so on.253 SF researcher Speth has studied guilds or Companies of Free Carmen, Free Fishermen, Free Dredgers, Free Fishers, Free Watermen, Free Vintners, etc,254 and SF author (Bernard) Jones has commented: many a craft that had been a 'mistery' to start with had become...a code or a system of mysteries and secrets, which everybody seeking to join it had solemnly to swear to keep inviolate...fraternities besides the masons had Deacons and Masters and Box Masters..And the Mason's mystery was not alone in veiling its moralisings in allegory and illustrating them with symbols drawn from its own craft.255 Gould noted that 'master-pieces' were required from 'Framework Knitters' as well as from masons256 Nevertheless, he, in particular, was anxious to deprecate suggestions that other crafts than the masons had their secret modes of recognition. It seems to me that one term he uses, 'squaremen', was obviously intended to cover trades which had the square as a working tool, and as later scholars have concluded, he seems wrong to deny that such craftsmen were on the same trajectory as stonemasons.257 Involvement of 'gentry' directly in a lodge or group of lodges, whatever the person's interest in or knowledge of building with stone, was likely at different times for different reasons.258 In other words, it's easy to see that the SF 'transition' involving 'speculatives' was no new or unique organisational device. After Edward III reconstituted and legitimated the trading fraternities by recognising their distinctive liveries259 and providing them with charters or letters patent, the King himself led a rush of non-operatives to join. Presumably meaning he was initiated in a mock-up manner, and given access to some ersatz secrets, it is recorded that he 'became' a Linen-Armourer. His successor Richard II became a brother of the same company and the great, both clergy and laity, as well as principal citizens, dazzled with the splendour of such associates, hastened in both reigns to be enrolled as tradesmen in the fraternities.260 The records also remind us that a 'writer, politician or solicitor was (often) a member of the Needleworkers Company', Daniel Defoe was a Butcher, Samuel Pepys a Clothworker, Dick Whittington a Mercer and William 111 a Grocer... while Her Majesty the (current) Queen is associated with the Drapers Company, and HRH the Prince of Wales with the Fishmongers.261 We are told that the Lodge of Free Gardeners at Haddington in Scotland had, from their Incorporation in 1676, accepted the admission of non-gardeners 'at a premium.'262 Haddington, for example, was a Scottish rural town with representatives of all the usual trades and crafts, nine of which, during the 16th and 17th centuries, sought, 'in common with their counterparts in other towns', official recognition as Incorporations from the Haddington Burgh Council in the form of a 'Seal of Cause' or 'Charter': For such a relatively small Burgh it is perhaps surprising that no less than nine trades and crafts obtained Incorporation status...85%-95% of Scotland's population lived outside of the Burgh's at this time. The Gardeners, therefore, (who lived outside the Burgh) organised themselves as best they could and their ('Interjunctions for ye Fraternitie of the Gairdners of East Lothian') of 1676 suggests that they modelled their organisation on similar lines to other trades.263 Exploring even less usual territory, Le Roy Ladurie wrote of the nomadic sheep herders of (French) Montaillou: Sometimes for a few seasons, when favoured by good fortune and well rewarded for his labours, Pierre Maury managed to be his own boss. He would then use various techniques: fraternal mutual aid, the hiring of paid shepherds or association with another employer...264 Elsewhere he referred to the 'total brotherhood between friends unlinked by blood' which was central to Occitan culture and which was 'institutionalized in the ritual forms of fraternity' recorded from the beginning of the 14th century.265 The idea of a fraternally-organised nomadic occupation is most intriguing, as the combination of travelling and brotherhood appears in a number of guises in this story. Already referred to is 'the search' at the heart of the chivalric tradition: The legends of chivalry are the veiled alllegories of the eternal search for spiritual truth in a world of natural realities. Brydon collected up the worlds of 'bards, troubadors, meistersingers and strolling gypsy players' to spread the net of his generalisation to cover townspeople who might never have left their walled security: Having spent many years in the study of the old Artisan Guilds, Fraternities and Mystical Associations of Europe, it has always appeared to me that at the heart of these institutions, there lay a ritual symbolism involving a search for something remote, hidden or lost.266 The place of symbolic searching is clear enough in the SF rituals, while actual tramping networks would appear to provide a map of the links between the 'ancient craft organisation' and both speculative freemasonry and the 'modern' labour movement.267 The Webbs observed 'the inevitable passage of (a) far-extending tramping society into a national Trade Union', but gave the phenomenon only limited significance,268 as did Hobsbawm.269 Beginning his corrective, Leeson quoted a 14th century rule of the fullers of Lincoln: If a stranger to the city comes in, he may upon giving a penny to the wax, work among the bretheren and sisteren and his name shall be written on their roll.270 The 'wax' was for a candle to be lit to the trade's saint. A century and a half later, among the shoemakers of Norwich, the 'stranger' was still charged a penny. A 'stranger' was someone not born within the town or village; he might also be called a 'forren', someone 'from outside', an 'uplander' or an 'alien.' Rules for the entertainment of the stranger varied according to trade, place and circumstances. Tilers who came to Lincoln were told simply: 'Join the gild or leave the city.' Hatters coming to London were quizzed about any debts they might have left in their last employ and coppersmiths admitted strangers who promised to abide by the rules, which included paying into the common fund to care for the 'poor' or unemployed of the craft. Leeson drew the links between the tramping networks and the constant struggles within trades for control over hours and conditions of employment, including the 'right to search', ie, to look for and confiscate unauthorised work, and over the number of 'masters'.271 The tramping system was more than just an ever-present safety-valve. It was a defining part of the context whether the movement of tradespeople around the country resulted from a need for work, for relief from poverty or to escape unwelcome attentions from the authorities. Linking 'inns of call' where the lodge brothers welcomed, checked and sent on if necessary the tramping 'stranger', the network ultimately became the basis of 'modern' benefit society organisation. Prior to that the 'tramp' card or 'ticket' and the benefits it provided were integral parts of an evolving code of mutuality based on working people's living circumstances. In 1995 an SF scholar advanced an 'origins' theory based on later versions of these same networks: In 17th century England, where political and religious factors, as well as outright villainy, might spell danger for a traveller in a strange place, anything which could guarantee him a safe lodging and freedom from betrayal to enemies or rogues would be a great boon. That was precisely what the operative masons could offer to (non-operatives) possessed of their recognition secrets..272 What in mediaeval times were known as 'pilgrims' were a major reason for the English mediaeval 'hospice' being established in certain towns and in certain locations within those towns.273 Ludlow, categorisable as an historian of 'friendly societies' and arguing in 1872 that sufficient vestiges of the 'thousands of fraternities' existing in the 14th century survived to provide a transition to modern 'friendly societies'274, agreed the 'charity' of these 'mutual aid societies' during this 'first European industrial revolution' helped to finance hospitals and chapels as well as the splendid cathedrals.275 The Crusaders were 'wandering brothers', their routes to Jerusalem and back home 'tramping networks'. This material provides much-argued connections between the Crusade's Templar Orders and 'modern' SF, while less controversially, one historian has emphasised the fraternal societies' pageants and banquets along with their charity work: Among the latter were almshouses, free schools, hospitals, scholarships, lectureships, (and) fellowships.276 'Tramping' was not an exception, an aberration. It was part of an integrated world of gild-activities. Howell summarised the objects of 11th century guilds as 'the support and nursing of the infirm guild-brothers, the burial of the dead, the performance of religious services and the saying of prayers for their souls.' The requirements of a common meal before the annual celebration of 'their' patron saint and alms for the poor were set out, along with 'mutual care of the brothers...by money contributions in case of death, in support of those who went on a journey and of those who suffered loss by fire.' An oath sworn on 'their' saint's relics affirmed 'faithful brotherhood towards each other, not only in religious matters but in secular matters also.' Howell concluded: To effect these objects a complete organisation existed, and a system of regulations was framed for the purpose of carrying them out...The essence of the manifold regulations in these three guild-statutes appears to have been the brotherly banding together, into close unions, of man and man, sometimes even established on and fortified by an oath, for the purpose of mutual help and support. This essential characteristic is found in all the guilds of every age from those first known to us...to their descendants of the present day, the modern trade unions.277 [My emphasis] As towns grew in size, new trades and increasing numbers of 'foreigners' threatened to overwhelm the local men, a situation which had to be regulated, most obviously through the numbers allowed to work each craft. Thus, over time, what I will generalise as 'lodge' processes, integrating religious ceremonial with business affairs, had to be made increasingly formal and concerned with disciplined adherence to custom: The life and soul of the craft-guild was its meetings, which brought all the guild-brothers together every week, month or quarter. For the sake of greater solemnity, these were opened with certain ceremonies; the craft-box, containing the charters of the guild, the statutes, the money, and other valuable articles, having several locks, the keys of which were kept by different officers, was opened on such occasions with much solemnity, all present having to uncover their heads.278 Howell, as did Brentano279, took the time to look at the results provided by a range of specialist researchers. Beside others already referred to, such as Unwin280, serious guild historians whose work rarely appears in SF or LH writing include Eden, Herbert281, Thrupp282, and William Kahl283. Howell might have gone on paraphrasing Brentano's account: These meetings possessed all the rights which they themselves had not chosen to delegate. They elected the Presidents (originally called Aldermen, afterwards Masters and Wardens).284 Regular, periodic payments were a late development but the moral character of an artisan was a paramount consideration at all times: The admission of an apprentice was an act of special solemnity corresponding to the important legal consequences it involved. As it was the begining of a kind of Novitiate to citizenship, it generally took place in the Town Hall, in the presence of town authorities, or in solemn meeting of the Craft-Gild...At the expiration of his apprenticeship the lad (then a man) was received into the Gild again with special forms and solemnities, and became thereby a citizen of the town. Brentano's perspective, as did Cipolla's, encompassed mainland European countries such as France and Germany, information from which sources have been almost entirely dismissed by British SF scholars on what appear to be unreasonable grounds. In particular, Brentano's approach included much useful detail on the role of inns and innkeepers, of 'travelling payments' and 'travelling networks': Every Gild and every journeyman's fraternity kept a 'black list'. In this, as well as in the testimonials of travelling journeymen, the names of the reviled were entered, so that the warning against them spread throughout the whole country.285 Disputes when they occurred, were rarely about wages as such, they were about status, privileges and customs, as these embodied payments, demarcation markers, and the like. It was not surprising that when machinery, cross-border trade and entrepreneurial negotiations began to appear that workmen and many employers fought their own trade's Company to have 'the old ways' upheld and sought assistance from municipal authorities, in the first instance, then the law courts. A number of authors refer to the work of yet-another comparatively unknown author, Toulmin Smith, who collected and annotated over 500 gild-statutes produced in the English Parliament in the years 1388-9 in response to two writs - one addresed to 'The Masters and Wardens of all Gilds and Brotherhoods', the other to 'The Masters and Wardens and Overlookers of all the Mysteries and Crafts.' Ludlow's conclusion was that the available evidence showed conclusively that the gilds of the 14th century 'under forms to a great extent religious' could fulfil the purposes on the one hand of a modern friendly society, in providing for sickness, old age and burial; on the other hand of a modern trade society, by rules tending to fix the hours of labour and to regulate competition, combined with such friendly purposes as before mentioned.286 (My emphasis) No doubt there were many deviations from the principle but in theory oaths of secrecy about anything that occurred in 'lodge' were required of apprentices, and master masons are known to have sworn not to pass on 'trade secrets' to their assistants. In 1355 in York the 'Orders for Masons and Workmen' began with: The first and second masons of the same, and the carpenters, shall make oath that they cause the ancient customs underwritten to be faithfully observed.287 Magic, Technology and Class War Keith Thomas has charted some of the street level reasons for the 'declining appeal of the magical solution' from the 16th century in northern Europe, such as rising levels of health and material welfare, the beginnings of newspapers, advertisements, fire fighting, deposit banking and trade or life insurance, in other words practical and this-worldly provisions against hazards and misfortune. In doing so he observed: We are therefore forced to the conclusion that men emancipated themselves from these magical beliefs without necessarily having devised any effective technology with which to replace them...But the ultimate origins of this faith in unaided human capacity remain mysterious...The most plausible explanation seems to be that their (the Lollards, 'early heretics') spirit of sturdy self-help reflected that of their occupations...In the fifteenth century most of them were artisans - carpenters, blacksmiths, cobblers, and, above all textile workers...Their trades made them aware that success or failure depended upon their unaided efforts, and they despised the substitute consolations of magic.288 The 'spirit of sturdy self-help' would not appear to be sufficient explanation. Islamic scholars 500 years and more before had sought the 'ancient wisdom' of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, had copied and distributed texts Christendom still regarded as heathenish outpourings. Generations of Muslims had then argued over the ideas and had innovated pragmatic solutions to their more local problems, setting in train the rationalist revolution which ultimately penetrated Western Europe. Did the guilds 'begin' in the 'Middle East'? Probably not, but Gothic Cathedrals and stonemasonry did. Why would the symbolic and the ritual context of what became 'The Craft', the building and destruction of Solomon's Temple, the loss, the search for and the location of the secret knowledge, not arrive with the practical skills of stone building? The erosion of European mediaeval magical beliefs was seen to be necessary in practice precisely because of the prevalence of dangerous or impractical 'charms and magical observances' in a range of crafts and manufacturing techniques, for instance, the spinning and weaving of cloth: In the early industrial period the mining industry generated a host of semi-magical practices..(such as 'knockers', taboos against whistling underground, and divining rods)..The building industry similarly gave rise to a mystic fraternity...non-operative Freemasonry.. The shift in emphasis was not swift nor ever comprehensive and the assistance of God became more valuable rather than less in the new religion. But a greater space for individual expression was opening up, where, ultimately, even the most devoted practitioners of mutual aid would lose sight of the need for mutual responsibility. The efficient, ruthless or astute master craftsmen, rising in the social scale, took 'their' organisation with them, since they were the most powerful. This left a gap for renewed 'industrial' organisation and militance by those left behind, the small masters and journeymen.289 Protection of the trade Court was sought by older members of Companies from the inevitable worker combinations: By (their) judgments, unruly apprentices were whipped, journeymen on strike were imprisoned and masters offending against regulations were fined. Members were forbidden to carry trade disputes before any other court, unless the court of their Companies had first been appealed to in vain.290 Increasing conflict between the parties was bound to flow into struggle for an impartial 'umpire.' The records show working people insisting over and over again that long-established custom and procedure, codified in legislation, be followed, their opponents insisting that changed times required changed, 'modern' procedures. The location of decision-making power over work and its context was in fact slowly shifting into the hands of increasingly powerful, law-oriented elites opposed to the idea that control of the product of a work unit be in the hands of that unit. Unwin's broad and detailed consideration of guilds291 sought to understand the evolution, not of magic, but of organisation and 'the transformation of social forces into political forces.' He believed there was nothing new about the 'modern.'292 His analysis of the fraternal associations led him to believe they constituted the driving force behind centuries of political change293: The political liberty of Western Europe has been secured by the building up of a system of voluntary organisations, strong enough to control the State, and yet flexible enough to be constantly remoulded by the free forces of change. It is hardly too much to say that the foundations of this system were laid in the gild.294 During Edward III's reign a special Statute was passed to solve a labour shortage but it proved a failure and savagely repressive laws prohibiting the movement of artisans provoked the Peasants' Rebellion of 1361. Subsequently, wages and conditions drifted, for a time, in favour of the employee. The 1568 Elizabethan 'Statute of Apprentices' (5 Eliz c.4) transferred jurisdiction over apprentices and journeymen to Justices of the Peace.295 We can agree with Howell's argument about 19th century labour-capital conflicts that this legislation was not a break but the key link between the previous 500 years and the subsequent 300 years: The regulations in the statute of apprentices...codified the orders or ordinances existing for centuries among the craft-guilds, and applied them to all the trades of the time.296 Here the key shift was to make magistrates the arbitrators in disputes, particularly with regard to the quality and quantity of wages and of apprentices. Under 5 Eliz c.4: (No-one) could lawfully exercise, either as master or journeyman, any art, mystery or manual occupation, except he had been brought up therein, for seven years at least, as an apprentice. Whoever had three apprentices must keep one journeyman, and for every other apprentice above three, one other journeyman. Wages were to be assessed yearly by the justices of the peace, or by the town-magistrates, at every general sessions first to be holden after Easter. The same authorities were to settle all disputes between masters and apprentices, and to protect the latter. The later Act of James 1. c.6, expressly extended the power under 5 Eliz c.4 for justices and town-magistrates to fix wages for all labourers and workmen. Unwin has explained how what was a second wave of Company Charters and legitimations in the 17th century was inevitably caught up in the great political and religious struggles of the time and was part of the mechanism changing the nature of the major economic cleavage between mercantile and industrial capital into one between wage labourers and employers of labour. As the Stuart protectionist policies were defeated by Parliament's intransigence, it was, again, the small master, 'whose class constituted the industrial democracy of the time', and the journeymen who were forced into defensive alliances.297 Policies intended to protect the more local small master and journeyman from the competition of 'forrins' were incompatible with the interests of the larger manufacturer and exporter who wished to service markets further afield. As the Civil War broke out, the journeymen and the small master were in the throes of adapting while conserving as much of past practice as possible.298 The Long Parliament of 1640-1, appealed to by the rank-and-file 'in its most revolutionary period', could not turn a deaf ear, but results were slight and after the Restoration in 1660 of Charles II the older, 'gentry' influences resumed complete control. New charters were sought, in vain. Indeed the idea of an incorporation of craftsmen now took on a dangerous, sinister aspect for those already in power. Unwin refers to opposition by the Carpenters, Joiners and Shipwrights Companies to the attempt by the sawyers, whom they employed, to obtain independent status by charter: If they are incorporated, the smallest combination amongst them will bring the building trades to a standstill, as experience has sufficiently shown in the past even without incorporation. Moreover their main object is to exclude "all those sorts of Labourers who daily resort to the city of London and parts adjacent, and by that means keepe the wages and prizes of these sorts of labourers att an equal and indifferent rate" and their success would be "an evil president, all other Labourers, to Masons, Bricklayers, Plaisterers, etc, having the same reason to alledge for incorporation."299 Unwin concluded that failure along these traditional lines drove the wage-earning class into secret combinations 'from the obscurity of which the trade union did not emerge till the nineteenth century.' This interpretation is interesting as it is from this time of 'diving down' that observers begin to speak of fraternities and benefit societies as 'secret societies.' On Unwin's part it seems to be an attempt to link his material to that of the Webbs, upon whom he relies entirely for post-1700 detail. He draws on their contrast of 'the unsteady, isolated and impermanent character of journeymen's combinations in the fifteenth century' with 'the increasingly coherent, continuous and influential activity of trade unions'.300 What it seems to me we have is an ideological shift occasioning selective blindness. 'Trade unions' could be officially sanctioned while they were called 'craft gilds' and controlled by the issue of charters. Recourse to magic might occur behind closed doors, but charms and spells were not about to be used in official documents or public ceremonies. 'The word' was being replaced by words, but what some called 'magic' others would see as part of the era's religious faith. 'Travelling networks' were OK while they aided pilgrims and labour shortages but not if 'the State' decided that a) they were causing a drain on funds, or b) they were helping subversion, or c) they were part of an oppositional 'labour movement' bent on the destruction of capitalist enterprise. As power shifted and ideology was fashioned to suit, language shifted. By the 17th century, mediaeval terms for worker combinations were replaced with 'club' and 'tavern society'. SF scholars could here assist students of British post-Stuart industrial relations to explore the parallel and not entirely separate worlds of sanctioned and non-sanctioned trade combinations. The non-sanctioned kind were illegal since 2-3 of Edward VI, c 15, and 5 of Elizabeth, c 4. Up to 1795 a worker could not legally travel in search of employment out of 'his' own parish, but of course 'he' often had no alternative. Thus, we have a transition but not a break or a replacement. Mediaeval trades had 'degrees of skill and status', and had developed fraternal 'lodges' with formal internal structure including oath-taking ritual, for sociability, religious observance and mutual defence purposes. Some or all of a search or journey, certainly represented in the perambulation of the SF lodge room, an oath-taking, a symbolic death, quartering the year with meeting-feasts which emphasised the Saint's Day of St John, and levels of status or 'degrees', appear on both sides of the 'transition'. It is probable therefore that operative guilds provided the essential ideas and the basic ritual structure to more than SF. Unwin's account ends with a story of an extended conflict in the last decades of the 17th century between the Feltmakers Company and journeymen hatters. He appears to be arguing that the lack of known records of a hatters' combination alongside instances of their court appearances, indicating such an organisation operating, supports his assertion that the operatives had suddenly decided to go underground. Court evidence actually asserts the men had "Clubs" 'where they entered into unlawful combination' and "raised several sums of money for the abetting and supporting such of them who should desert their masters' service" - ie, a system of unemployment or strike benefits. Unwin commented in Webberian terms that, of course, a combination of journeymen was no new thing, but that the important question was: How far did it resemble a modern trade union? or to put the question in another form, how far did it possess the conditions essential to continuous existence and successful activity?301 [My emphasis] Lipson whose analysis in the main supports that of Unwin responds to this key question by giving two answers - firstly, in reference to the 'craft guilds' and secondly to the journeymen guilds: At first (the craft guilds) appear to have been private and voluntary associations which struggled into existence in the face of vigorous opposition on the part of the municipal authorities...Subsequently, however, the authorities... actively encouraged the formation of crafts and the...gild system, in order to tighten their hold over those engaged in trade and more effectively to exact a satisfactory standard of workmanship....The craft gilds now became public bodies invested with semi-legal authority, an organic but strictly subordinate department of civil administration..302 Lipson argues these guilds were quite different to 'modern trade unions' on 6 Webberian grounds which remain unconvincing: that is, they comprised only skilled artisans; they were urban not rural; membership was compulsory; they included all grades of producers, including entrepreneurs; they were not selfish but were concerned for public welfare; and they were semi-public bodies, 'integral parts of municipal administration'. He argued that the later, 15th century 'journeymen gilds' bore a 'very striking similarity' to 'trade unions': Unlike the craft gilds, (they) comprised only the class of wage-earners banded together in defiance of their employers, and their efforts to secure an improvement of their economic position make the parallel to trade unionism still more evident.303 However, he knocked them out on the grounds that they 'failed [!] to establish a stable and permanent organisation' and they 'failed', repressive legislation apart, because the more gifted and energetic leaders kept rising up and out of journeymen ranks - again, a less-than-convincing argument. A continuing, perceived need for secrecy, and for secrets, from guild times to 'modern' times among the artisans renders Unwin's thesis about a sudden 'diving down' into 'secret societies' untenable and strengthens the liklihood of linkages between the mediaeval benefit societies and the 19th and 20th centuries. Interestingly, SF authors rarely discuss a break in the flow of fraternal transmission, either in the short-term, at the confiscations of monastic lands and wealth by Henry VIII in particular, or in the longer-term, during the bureaucratic-transition of guild/Company decision-making structures to State institutions. Ludlow quoted the relevant legislation including a key qualification to support his belief that no significant break occurred: The religious gilds were first struck at in 1545, by the 37 Henry VIII; c.4, which enabled the king to grant a commission to certain persons to enter upon the lands of all colleges, charities, hospitals, fraternities, brotherhoods, gilds, and stipendiary priests, and to seize them to the king's use. Two years later (1547), the Act 1 Edw. VI, c. 14,...absolutely confiscated to the Crown..."all fraternities, brotherhoods and gilds, within the realm of England and Wales...and all manors, lands, tenements, and other hereditaments belonging to them or to any of them" other than "corporations, gilds, fraternities, companies and fellowships of mysteries or crafts..." 304 (My emphasis) James II used sometimes contradictory policies regarding the London Companies305 in seeking control of Parliament. His replacement of original Charters with new ones worded more to his liking, was accompanied with the statement that he designed not to intermeddle or take away...the rights, propertyes or priviledges of any company nor to destroy or injure their ancient usages or franchises of their corporations...306 Other evidence, such as the 'lodge books' of the Coventry Silk Weavers of the 1650's, indicates that from English guilds to Companies in format and in 'rites of association', very little had changed.307 A Scottish example from a later period is further illustrative. It appears that on 4 January 1690 William and Mary of Orange signed a Charter, validating and confirming all former charters 'in favor of the gild-brethren, tradesmen, or any society, or deaconry' within Glasgow at least, said Charter being further confirmed by act of parliament on 14 June, 1690. These Corporations, 'the only considerable body in that community' and still governing that City in 1777, included fourteen incorporated trades. They had all been 'raised' in the period 1520 to 1560, the 'cause of erection' in all cases being 'in order to raise a fund for the maintenance of (their) poor.' These trades were only granted legal place within the governing structure by a 'letter of gildry' in 1605, a letter confirmed by act of parliament, 11 September, 1672. The oath sworn in 1770 as a freeman member of one of these corporations included: Here I protest, before God, that I confess and allow, with my heart, the true Protestant religion, presently professed within this realm, and authorised by the laws thereof. I shall abide thereat, and defend the same to my life's end; renouncing the Roman religion, called Papistry...308 The Merchants and the Trades each, then, had their 'House' which was their governing body and their funds collector and disburser, in other words their 'Grand Lodge.' In 1777, it was still the case that 'deputies' from each of the constituent trades, plus an elected Deacon, 'Baillie' and a Collector made up the 'parliament' of the Trades-House. Each of the Corporations was governed in a similar fashion: eg, the hammermen, by a deacon, a collector and 12 masters; the coopers by a deacon, a collector and 8 masters; the masons by a deacon, collector and 6 masters; and so on. These were all elected annually by the freemen of the trade, and the disposal of the public money, belonging to the corporation, was vested in them. The tradesmen paid for their 'freedom of the town' and a 'freedom-fine' from which the poor of that trade were relieved usually at the rate of 2/- per week. The Edinburgh Society of Journeymen Shoemakers 'having existed since 1727' reprinted their 'Articles' in 1778. A selection follows [NB the use of 'Preses, ie 'President']: I.That each entrant shall not be above the age of thirty-six years, brought up to the said trade, and a Protestant; shall be attested by two members to be of a healthy constitution, free from all hereditary or constitutional disease, of a good moral character; must be subject to the Society's regulations...The Society shall not be regulated by any party or faction, but by a majority of votes, according to the tenor of articles. II. That each entrant shall pay Seven shillings and sixpence Sterling, besides clerk and officer's fees, as entry money, and fifteenpence Sterling every quarter day as quarter accounts... IV. Each member shall remain twelve months from the date of his entry before he can receive any supply in sickness or lameness, burial-money... V. The Preses shall be chosen every quarter-day by a poll from the whole Society, and whoever is chosen by a plurality of votes shall take the charge; if he should refuse, shall pay Two Shillings and Sixpence Sterling. The Key-Masters shall be chosen by the roll...The Preses and Key-Masters, shall choose, every one for himself, two Committee members... VII. The Preses and Key-Masters shall visit the sick and lame in rotation, weekly, along with a Committee member... VIII. It is appointed and agreed, that all Quarter-Accounts, Fines, etc, shall only be employed for the support of the sick and the lame, and to pay the other dues of the Society; and the Society determine to transact nothing contrary to the right and property of the sick and lame... XI. Any person convicted of raising or following a faction, or inducing animosities into the Society, shall be suspended from all benefits from the Society, for the space and term as the Society shall find... XXIV. It is agreed and appointed, that no cursing, swearing, or indecent behaviour shall be found in any member at their meetings...no member shall be found accessory to mobs or tumult..309 The lack of any reference to trade regulations in these Articles and their concern that all monies were used for benefit payments, have been taken to indicate an a-political and generally passive attitude. Rather, they indicate the custom that all trade regulations would be handled at the 'Trades-House' [Trades Hall] level, not at individual 'lodge' level. On the one hand, the guilds over 700 years developed, among other things, a corporate structure, the Company, in order to strengthen or to establish monopolies over their particular trades. On the other, their very success prompted firstly, Royal attempts to dominate economic affairs, secondly, rank-and-file dissension, and thirdly, competition which, encouraged by increased levels of production, distribution and consumption, burst and overwhelmed the controls over work practices the brethren had collectively struggled for so long to put or to keep in place.310 The Livery Companies showed the way for industrial capitalism. They initiated the 'very features which (shaped) modern business associations'. At the same time their 'social and fraternal structure', surviving into the 19th and 20th centuries, clearly showed they were 'the legatees of mediaeval traditions.' And the most important tradition? The most important tradition enabling the Companies to live long after they had lost their monopoly of supervision over their trades and crafts was that of fraternal charity.311 Such a legacy was increasing, not declining, in relevance since competition was sharpening artisinal isolation. That is, the rich and powerful were forging improved methods of being rich and powerful, increasing the vulnerability of 'their employees' yet each strata continued a committment to fraternal charity. By the Settlement Act of 1662 two justices of the peace were given power to eject any newcomer to a parish without means. Briggs has commented this was a measure 'intended to deal with the whole population of the poor as only rogues and vagrants had been dealt with previously.' Whether called 'rogues', 'vagrants' or 'tramping brothers' the intention and the effect would seem to have been the same. Enclosures, pauperism, cheap labour, factories and mines using techniques of mass production, and producing defensive combinations of alienated individuals - the road ahead was clear. Fraternal charity, we may see therefore as the vehicle for the rites of association into the period after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, proper. The long, slow gestation of economic rationalism has meant the originating ideas and purposes behind the rites have grown fainter, but the language and the general format has blurred less than we might think, since they were more-or-less 'fixed' before terminal damage had been done. What has made 'modern' fraternalism most difficult for practitioners or would be practitioners is that a sense of the connections between the material and the immaterial has been largely lost. Imagining the ineffable has not become unfashionable, as much as it has rusted and decayed due to lack of use. This does not imply that reviving or rebuilding fraternalism in all its aspects requires a return to mediaeval, Catholic beliefs or 'magic' practices, but a re-education of capacity to 'see' the necessary connections. 'Charges' such as that of the Alnwick, and Swalwell Lodges, both in the north of England, and others, need to be approached with this requirement in mind. To judge their 'content' on the basis of the presence or absence alone of certain words is, I believe, to miss much of the point. The 'Orders to be Observed by the Company and Fellowship of Freemasons att a Lodge Held at Alnwick [Newcastle, England] Septr 29, 1701, Being the Genll Head Meeting Day' are only likely to be found within SF literature yet as Gould tells us this was a fully operative lodge till 'at least the year 1763' when it was (probably) absorbed into SF ranks. Verified lodge minutes run from 1703 to 1757. Gould says: (These) records...constitute the only evidence of the actual proceedings of an English lodge, essentially, if not, indeed, exclusively operative, during the entire portion of our early history which precedes the era of Grand Lodges.312 Disappointingly, he goes on to say: It should be stated that the question of degrees receives no additional light from these minutes, indeed, if the Alnwick minutes stood alone...there would be nothing whatever from which we might plausibly infer that anything beyond trade secrets were possessed by the members. He brings to bear evidence from what became in SF hands the Lodge of Industry at Swalwell, a village in the County of Durham, for which operative records run from 1725 to 1735 when it also accepted a 'deputation' from the London Grand Lodge and became, officially, a speculative lodge. The 1st and last, the 14th, Alnwick 'Orders' read: 1st - That it is ordered by the said Fellowship thatt there shall be yearly Two Wardens chosen upon the said Twenty-ninth of Septr., being the Feast of St Michaell the Archangell, which Wardens shall be elected and appoynted by the most consent of the Fellowship. 313 14 - Item, That all Fellows being younger shall give his Elder fellows the honor due to their degree and standing. Alsoe thatt the Master, Wardens, and all the Fellows of this Lodge doe promise severally and respectively to performe all and every the orders above named, and to stand bye each other...(etc).. Gould quibbles at the lack of mention of 'the Master' at certain other points of these Orders, as he does at a lack of mention of 'Degrees' with a capital. He does not seem to find the 11th Order convincing either: Thatt if any Fellow or Fellows shall att any time or times discover his master's secretts, or his owne, be it nott onely spoken in the Lodge or without, or the secretts or councell of his Fellows, that may extend to the Damage of any of his Fellows, or to any of their good names, whereby the Science may be ill spoken of, forr every such offence shall pay..£3 13s 4d.314 He footnotes this Order with one taken from the Swalwell Lodge minutes, namely: If any be found not faithfully to keep and maintain the 3 ffraternal signs, and all points of ffelowship, and principal matters relating to the secret craft, each offence, penalty £10 10 0.315 After discussing the possible implications of these he weakly concludes only that the absence of mention of 'Degrees' within Alnwick Lodge might imply that it was unaffected by the parallel existence of SF lodges closeby, in other words that it is still only to the SF history that we should look for a formalised degree structure. He makes no attempt to explain what 'the Science', 'the secret craft' 'points of ffelowship', etc, might mean in this operative context in the north of England in the 18th century. He notes 'the general uniformity' of the Alnwick and Swalwell minutes and that it was with 'much solemnity' that the 'head or chief meeting day', the festivals of St John the Evangelist/St John the Baptist, were commemorated. Again, note reference to a 'true and perfect lodge' in the following 1708 minute of an operative lodge: At a true and perfect Lodge kept at Alnwick, at the house of Mr Thomas Davidson, one of the Wardens of the same Lodge, it was ordered that for the future noe member of the said Lodge, Master, Wardens, or Fellows, should appear at any lodge to be kept on St John's day in (church), without his apron and common Square fixed in the belt thereof, upon pain of forfeiting two shillings and sixpence..(etc).. 316 Note also the size of this fine compared to that for disclosing secrets, above. Gould further notes that nearly forty years after the formation of London's Grand Lodge and perhaps 20 years after it had received a 'deputation' consonant with its adoption of a speculative 'Charter', the minutes of Swalwell Lodge 'teem with resolutions of an exclusively operative character', for example that of 'entering an apprentice in the time-honored fashion handed down by the oldest of our manuscript Constitutions.'317 He also notes, but in a totally other context that lodges 'composed of "operative Masons" [NB his capital] were formed or received constitutions - in 1764 and 1766.'318 On the other side of the self-imposed divide, the assuredly 'speculative' side, Gould records the 'Old Rules' of a Grand Lodge which preceded that at London, viz that at York. Thus the 'Articles Agreed to be kept and observed by the Antient Society of Freemasons in the City of York, and to be subscribed by every Member thereof at theur Admittance into the said Society. Imprimis - That every first Wednesday in the month a Lodge shall be held at the house of a Brother according as their turn shall fall out. 2 - All Suscribers to these Articles not appearing at the monthly Lodge, shall forfeit Sixpence each time. 3 - If any Brother appear at a Lodge that is not a Suscriber to these Articles, he shall pay over and above his club [ie, subscription] the sum of one shilling.319 Note the use of 'club'. Gould, here, falls into an error he castigates in others, accepting as proof of the claims made, a letter stating the writer has the actual proof in front of him, viz a list of the names of the GM's of this 'Grand Lodge' for the period 1705 to 1734. That these claimed gents are all 'Sirs' or 'Esquires' I forbear to mention. What Gould could have discussed was how it came about that this 'Lodge' came to be, or to claim, the status of being a 'Grand Lodge' and before 1717. A 1984 revision of Max Weber's thesis concerning an 'affinity' between the rise of bourgeois capitalism and Calvinist-Puritanism in England focussed on Sir Edmund Coke's struggle with Court-assumed prerogatives over economic life.320 Coke, using language and concepts which would be strengthened and extended by Adam Smith, was suggesting free trade as a third force opposed to the 'two traditionalisms', the guild monopolies and 'court-bound capitalism'. He specifically argued that restrictions on entry into misteries and guild control of work conditions amounted to restrictions on trade which were, by definition against the common good and needing to be outlawed.321 When Parliament broke monarchical power, the era of economic rationalism began and the course of industrial relations as we know them was set. At a time, therefore, when 'speculatives' were entering lodges and coming to grips with the ritual they found there, it is probable that the object of their attentions had already deteriorated in spiritual value, because the worm of rational individualism had already achieved noticeable influence, and had declined in material worth because a number of protective functions had already suffered damage. There has always been a question as to 'why?' outsiders wanted to join operative lodges. Hart's research322 and that of Yates support an argument for a widespread 'speculative' current and possible underground network in the 17th century, more Protestant than Catholic/Jacobin. Yates was particularly interested in the SFreemasonry of Elias Ashmole, a brother 'made' in the 1640's, his Rosicrucian beliefs and his early invitation to join the Royal Society. She brought these aspects together to emphasise the growth of what we now like to see as rational science out of magical, cabalistic and hermetic scholarship.323 I note in passing that other scholars have related the preservation of the sacred knowledge of 'the Rosy Cross' to the phenomenon of 'the wandering stranger'.324 Yates hypothesised that SF was 'suggested' by the Rosicrucian manifestos in the early 1600's and that in a similar and connected way, the Royal Society resulted from the movement for an 'Invisible College' central to Rosicrucian beliefs. After 1660 and the Stuart Restoration, 'Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry and the Royal Society were..virtually...indistinguishable from one another.' Of the three tiers of Rosicrucian magic, it was the lowest, of 'practical' mathematics and mechanics which, slowly, came to dominate in the Royal Society - the others being the 'super-celestial world' of the angelic conjuration and a middle world of celestial mathematics. Respect for angelic protection and the key belief of 'en-light-enment' through knowledge received special loading in SFreemasonry symbolism, while the intense religious conflicts of the time had to be put aside both for cosmic harmony and for the pursuit of knowledge. Thus, for some it was perfectly natural to pronounce a prohibition on speaking about religion or politics within lodge, a 'modern' departure from mediaeval practice.325 Magic's decline in importance and Gould's argument that a handed-down ritual was bereft of much of its relevance clearly fit with the Catholic-Protestant struggle in a way that can provide the most cogent account of the SFreemasonry 'breakout' from its heritage. Such is the ambiguous nature of the transition, however, SF is today still being described by some supporters as 'ceremonial magic.'326 SFreemasonry initially fitted the model of a defensive, 17th century artisan-small employer alliance suggested by Unwin and others. Its political choices eventually took it out of the immediate context it had long shared with other 'benefit societies' but not out of touch with them. A greater use of and dependence on written words - 'what someone said' - would lead to finer and finer distinctions by later scholars, some of which at least would be foreign to the original users. Too much hanging on the nth degree of a possible nuance would dismantle many an observer's capacity to feel the spirit of the material, to 'see' its integrity.

English Composition 1 Whenever you use words or ideas from sources in your writing, you must give credit to your sources, acknowledging that the words or ideas are not your own. You do this by citing and documenting sources according to a standard system of documentation. There are two popular standards of documentation: one from the APA (American Psychological Association) and the other from the MLA (Modern Language Association). The MLA standard of documentation is used for papers in the arts and humanities (including papers on literature). It is extremely important that you understand how to cite and document sources properly and that you understand when it is necessary to do so. Otherwise, your writing may contain plagiarism, and any form of plagiarism, even if it is accidental, means a failing grade for the paper in which the plagiarism occurs. The examples below refer to Sophocles' play Antigone. When you use material from a source in your paper, you must cite that source properly. "Citing a source" is giving the authors name and page number for the material you use from the source. There are two basic ways to cite a source. 1. Give the authors last name and page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence. Creon is responsible for maintaining human order, but he is also responsible for ensuring that his own laws do not come into conflict with those laws established by a higher source, laws which have "an existence independent of, other than, and antecedent to man" but nonetheless have "the closest bearing on the life of man" (Krook 15). - When you cite a source in this way, always give only the writers last name in parentheses, never the writer's full name. - For whatever reason, students often have the desire to put a comma between the writer's last name and the page number(s). However, there should be no punctuation at all between the writer's name and the page number(s). - When you state the writer's name in your sentence, you do not put the writer's name in parentheses at the end of the sentence. 2. Give the authors name in your sentence and the page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence. Divine laws, as Dorothea Krook states, are "presented as eternal, immutable, and absolutely binding" (15). - One advantage of citing your source in this way is that you make clear where your sources ideas and/or words begin and end. Readers will assume that the ideas and/or words between the writers name and the page number(s) are coming from that source. - When acknowledging your source in this way, give the authors full name the first time you refer to him or her in your paper; give only the last name for each reference to the author after the first. - If you name the author in your own sentence, do not give the authors last name in parentheses: there is no need to repeat the name of the author. If you copy just a few words from a source, those words must go in quotation marks and you must cite your source. (Material within quotation marks must appear in your paper exactly as it appears in the original.) If you paraphrase (put into your own words) or summarize (condense and put into your own words) material from a source, you must cite your source in the same way you cite quoted words. If you paraphrase or summarize material but copy key words or short phrases from the original, put those key words or phrases in quotation marks. You do not have to cite your source if you present in your paper material that can be considered "general knowledge," general information that can be found in many different sources. However, you always have to cite a source whenever you quote that source.

“The Highlight of our first trip to Amsterdam” 5 van 5 sterren 2 weken geleden beoordeeld 15 th of June 2014 One of the highlights of our recent trip to Amsterdam was staying at the "Happy Sleeper" and the evening dinner and conversation with the Xaviera Hollander and her husband Philip. The accommodations were superb! We stayed in the newly renovated "Luxury Loft" on the second floor. once in once you have reached the Loft, the beautiful sleek bathroom with its walk-in shower for 2 was especially romantic. We also loved the fully equipped kitchen and fridge (done up in Xaviera's trademark red), which was useful for preparing small meals when we didn't want to go out. The view from the loft overlooking the garden was very peaceful, and the skylights not only gave us extra ventilation, but made the loft very bright and sunny. The huge queen sized bed was really comfortable and made us want to stay in Bed rather than going out sightseeing. In the morning, the cooked breakfasts were delicious and very well presented. From warm whole grain breads, eggs any style, ham, local preserves, juices and good coffee, it was always a great nutritious and filling way to start your day. The location of the "Happy Sleeper" is excellent – just a couple of tram/train stops from Schiphol Airport, and a longish-walk (long-ish for us Americans unused to walking) to the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum (make sure to get the Museumkaart for unlimited museum admissions), and the great shopping along Beethovenstraat. Also, a couple of blocks away there are 2 major tram lines that take you past the museums and to Central Station in a matter of 10-15 minutes. Very convenient. (We opted to buy the unlimited travel GVB chip cards, and took the trams & buses all over Amsterdam.) On the second night we had a delicious dinner at their place. Our compliments to Philip for being such a great chef! The after-dinner conversation and stories Ms. Hollander told were absolutely delightful – it was like having our own personal "One Woman Show" right there in their living room. Ms. Hollander is a wonderful and amazing woman, and we're so glad to have met her and spent a little time with her. She is a true historical treasure. She has lived such a full, exciting and adventurous life, and it's all due to her intelligence and quick wit. Again, this was the highlight of our visit. Staying here was more for the experience rather than just mundane accommodations. We could have stayed at a cold impersonal hotel/motel or other B&B and not have experienced the richness and warmth that we enjoyed at the Happy Sleeper. We hope to come back again and again in the future! Verbleef Juni, 2014, bezocht met een partner “ontspannend en relax” 4 van 5 sterren 4 juli 2014 NIEUWE beoorderling Wij, Joke en Jim, hebben een weekend geslapen in het chalet, erg leuk en romantisch. Het was hartverwarmend om Xaviera te ontmoeten, ze maakte dat we ons thuis voelden. Over de "boys' alleen lof, ze staan klaar waar nodig is. Tijdens het Diner by candlelight openhartig gepraat onder elkaar. Voor ons was het een zeer aangenaamd weekend en komen zeker eens weer terug. Haar vriend/partner is een lieverd, bracht ons weg naar de trein....en kan trouwens uitstekend koken ! a Propos..... het bed was hemels, hebben zeer goed geslapen ! Tot ziens lieve Xaviera 5 of 5 stars Reviewed oktober 2013. Dit weekend waren mijn mama, mijn zus en ik in Amsterdam en we hebben echt genoten van Amsterdam en de zeer leuke momenten met Xaviera en Philip. Het is een weekend om nooit te vergeten! Het warme onthaal door Aad (die weet altijd raad), Philip (die ons met vele tips ons verblijf in Amsterdam nog leuker maakte) en Xaviera (een echte ster). In de grote kamer kunnen gemakkelijk 5 personen slapen. 5 of 5 stars Reviewed March 28 th 2014.Staying in Amsterstam at any other place would not be the same. Phillip & Xaviera have provided a home away from home and make you feel very welcome and comfortable from the moment you walk in the door. My room had been very recently renovated which was great to experience the new bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette. Breakfasts are tasty and on time thanks to Art who has a great sense of humour and if asked nicely will show you a magic trick :) . The location is perfect if your visiting the RAI on business, but you are never to far away from a huge assortment of places to eat and transport to the centre. Or if you feel inclined, Phillip will arrange a bike. The Happy House is highly recommended. 4 of 5 stars reviewed 23 of March 2014. Xaviera and her husband are very welcominig! They ensure that you feel at ease and at home. The room is comfortable, the bed is excellent! They helped us out with travelling trough the city (which was very easy!) They live very close near the citycenter of Amsterdam, but on a very quiet street. We very much liked our stay at the B&B at the garden house of Xaviera Hollander. It was cosy and everything you need was there, like a water cooker, fridge, TV and a very good bathroom. The beds are excellent. Amsterdam was super. There is so much to see that we will be back some day. I can recommend this accommodation. You get a nice breakfast and Xaviera, Philip en Aad are nice people. 4 of 5 stars reviewed 7 April 2014. I had a very comfortable couple of days at Xaviera and Phillip's. I felt very well looked after and welcomed into their home, and enjoyed the sociable and relaxed atmosphere. The B&B is quite a long way south of the station, but it is only a short walk from some premier attractions such as Museumplein. Nowhere in Amsterdam is, apart from real dives - this B&B will leave you with pleasant memories of your time in Amsterdam's oud zuid, 5 of 5 stars Reviewed 18 January 2014 As i have stayed there many times i can only recommend it to you - as written before, you dont want to leave anymore cause you feel home. Philipp is a master cook, I had one of my most declicious meals for a long time. Will be back there in a couple of weeks to enjoy freedom With Love Arik Xaviera and Philip were fantastic hosts. This is their home so the eclectic mix of furniture and books they have collected or written made it very cozy and homely . Breakfast was a large round communal dining table which we shared with Xaviera and Philip, and two other guests . They bent over backwards to provide a rich, hearty start to our day . We walked into town and caught a tram home so it was very convenient . We bought one of Xavieras famous book - ' The Happy Hooker' . Her fame is everywhere , books , paintings , photographs and magazines . This is a trip to a fascinating people past and present life . Not for the conservative, but why would you want that conservative ! Xaviera is booking until the early hours down into her chair in writing . PCs are available for use if you are not one of your own. The garden studio is separated from the house for a more private stay , and I think the lovely attic rooms are finished now . We 'll definitely be back . Thanks X and P Gilly & Suzie Xaviera en Philip zijn erg vriendelijk en behulpzaam. Een warm welkom in hun gezellige villa. De B&B ligt zeer dicht bij het stadscentrum ( minder dan 5 minuten per tram). Comfortabele kamer en uitstekend bed. Ontbijt was heerlijk. Als u voor een gezellig verblijf zoekt met vriendelijke makkelijke mensen kiest, kies dan voor Xaviera Hollander's Happy House in plaats van een hotel. Ze hebben ook een prachtig tuinhuis! I went there with two friends of mine and we had such a great time ! The place is full of history and the people here are just so nice that you didn't wanna leave. We'll be back for sure as soon as possible. Xaviera is juste wonderful and interesting just as everyone in this house. Don't trust the [--] comments about the cleaning: everything was clean. An awesome place for an awesome city, I only have one regret : my trip here was too short, next time I'll stay a week or so. thank you Xaviera and Phillip and see you soon. Stayed August 2013, travelled with friends GOOD PLACEMENT..vintage interior...NO COMMENTS....HEAVEN IN AMSTERDAM...staying in this place was very very wonderful...just happy mood...city views from balcon Stayed July 2013, travelled with friends We spent three nights here in Xaviera Happy House in late July 2013 . The house itself has lots of character and is a great introduction when arriving in Amsterdam. The breakfasts were very nice and relaxed and in the courtyard , and the chefs were very friendly and helpful. The location was excellent , in a very nice part of town just outside the tourist center . It was very nice walk along the quieter local canals early each morning , as the busy tourist canals in the city center known. The design of the houses and neat streets around this area is really nice to walk around and check out. Xaviera's husband also hooked us up with the museum pass reduction tickets from the house which was very convenient to the city before . The great thing is that the house is still very close to the city center , 10-15 minutes on the tram , which is very convenient . Europe was a heat wave while we were there , and our room was a little warm place when trying to sleep , but we do not suffer a lot . We would happily stay here again and highly recommend it . Glenn and Hannah Burrell - New Zealand You will feel at home at The Happy House in Amsterdam. I was so relaxed that I enjoyed breakfast, while still in my PJs. Also, they serve breakfast up to 11 AM, so sleeping late isn't an issue. The garden is a delight and filled with interesting exotic foliage. Every room has a personality and style that has a 70s groovy feel to it. You will be very well-connected to anything in the city, but you won't have to put up with the hoots and hollers of roving stag parties. The hosts are attentive to your every need, without being intrusive. And buy the book and get it signed! The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander is a historic piece of literature that was part of what led the sexual revolution of the 70s. Stayed July 2013, travelled with friends Staying in the home of Xaviera Hollander while in Amsterdam was a delightful experience and one of my favourite parts of my visit to Amsterdam. I enjoyed Xaviera's book, The Happy Hooker, as I came of age in the 1970s. She is an inspiring human being. Staying in her home was an honour. Xaviera and I did not get to meet as she was in Spain during my time in Amsterdam. However, we did speak on the phone. I love that she lives life fully and on her own terms. People who appreciate the body of work Xaviera shared with the world will enjoy this B&B. I stayed in the Chalet. It was lovely. The staff, Adrian and Stefano, are spectacular hosts and interesting people. They made me feel at home. They were inspiring conversationalists with excellent english. This is now my preferred place to stay in Amsterdam.You may also wish to pick up some autographed copies of Xaveria's books for yourself and as gifts for friends. Enjoy!! Stayed June 2013, travelled solo One of the things on "my List" in life to do was stay at the legenday Happy House in Amsterdam, and meet Xaviera herself. After contacting her about my request to book a stay I was fortunate to exchange a few emails with her and also spend an evening with her and Philip over dinner on my stay. The B&B is definitely comfortable with all amenities needed, great location in a safe and upscale part of Amsterdam. Great hosts and Philip is a great cook as well! The charm and warmth you expect will be delivered ten fold! I will definitely be back! Stayed April 2013, travelled on business A safe, welcoming, comfortable place to stay. Xaviera is a force of nature, if you are lucky enough to run around the city with her you will see what its like to be treated like a celebrity. Philip is just the coolest host you could meet as well, easy to talk to, intelligent, down to earth, friendly. The rooms are comfortable, the food is great. The city is right there for you at their doorstep. You are 1 train stop from the airport, only a short tram ride from the city center, shopping, and museums district. You can just walk out the front door and find tons of good food and things to do within walking distance. Their local advice will help you make the most of your time in Amsterdam, whether you are looking for high culture or just a great time. This was its been almost 20 years now since my first trip, whenever i go to Amsterdam, thats where I stay. Stayed March 2013, travelled solo I read "The Happy Hooker" as a teen and was always fascinated with Xaveria Hollander and her life so when I found out that she operates a B & B in Amsterdam I knew I had to go and meet this legend. Xaveria place looks exactly like the photographs; a cozy home in a traditional European style. A touch cluttered with a very personal touch, this B & B is like a museum of Xaviera with photographs and painting adorning the walls and masses of books and trinkets throughout the home. I had opted to have dinner with Xaviera and her lovely husband Philip. It was one of the best meals I have had outside of a 5 star restaurant; we started with stuffed mushrooms followed by Dutch steak. The conversation was lively and colourful as we exchanged stories. I stayed in the chalet in the back, which was amazingly cozy. The one drawback was that shower was extremely tiny. The chalet was extremely quiet and private, with a very comfortable bed and lush towels. Stayed December 2012, travelled solo Booked the master bedroom - it was a last minute booking and had no time to review what other's had written. Spent 2 nights, the room we stayed in was Xaviera & her partner's room - spacious with a balcony. The only drawback was that the wardrobes were full up with her clothes :-) The house is like a museum, really liked it + all the pictures ! The care taker (sorry forgot his name) was very friendly & helpful. Xaviera/partner were away, would have loved to meet them, may be next time! Amsterdam centre is a good 20 mins+ walk. Highly recommend this place, there is parking as well....for an extra charge. Stayed August 2012, travelled as a couple

This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14, (MUP), 1996 Sir Wilfred Kelsham Fullagar (1892-1961), judge, was born on 16 November 1892 at Malvern, Melbourne, only son and eldest of three children of Thomas Kelsham Fullagar, merchant, and his wife Sarah Elizabeth, née Law, both native-born. Educated at Haileybury College, Brighton, where the headmaster C. H. Rendall regarded him as his most brilliant student, in 1910 Wilfred entered Ormond College, University of Melbourne (LL.B., 1915; B.A., 1925; LL.M., 1925). He won a Wyselaskie scholarship in classical and comparative philology and logic, and graduated with first-class honours and the Supreme Court judges' prize. Fullagar's love of the classics was enhanced by Professor T. G. Tucker and was abiding: he continued to read Greek and Latin literature, and to compose Latin poetry. His friend Sir Owen Dixon was later to say that Fullagar's classical training gave 'an added distinction to his writings'. While articled to the Melbourne solicitor J. W. McComas, Fullagar enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 28 October 1916. He served in France with the 7th Field Artillery Brigade from May 1918, rose to sergeant and in 1919 was granted six months leave in England to study law. On 11 October that year he married Marion Frederica Dorothea Lovejoy (d.1941) at the register office, Fulham, London; he returned to Melbourne in January 1920 and was discharged from the A.I.F. on 8 February. Fullagar was admitted to practice on 1 October 1920. He worked initially for the Department of Repatriation and for the Commonwealth Immigration Service because, as a young married man, he felt he could not afford the cost of setting up as a barrister. In 1922, however, with financial assistance pressed upon him by (Sir) John Latham and Dixon, he took that step, signing the Bar roll on 7 April and reading with (Sir) Charles Lowe. Fullagar was rapidly successful, and able to repay Latham and Dixon within the year. He soon developed a formidable reputation, especially in the fields of Equity and constitutional law. His judicial colleague Sir Arthur Dean was to write of him, he 'was not an advocate in the accepted sense and no one would think of briefing him in the Criminal Court or before juries', but 'as a sound and learned lawyer, as a brilliant expositor of the law, he was unrivalled'. In 1928-45 Fullagar served on the Bar committee and in 1940-45 as a vice-president of the Law Council of Australia, giving generously of his time to the development of the profession. An inspiring teacher, he lectured at the University of Melbourne in the law of wrongs and the law of procedure (1923-28), and in constitutional law (1943-45); between 1945 and 1951 he was a member of the university council. He was also a director (1939-45, chairman 1944-45) of the Equity Trustees, Executors & Agency Co. Ltd, a trustee (1940-45) of the Edward Wilson bequest and a director (1942-45) of Argus & Australasian Ltd. After a mere eleven years at the Bar, in September 1933 Fullagar had been appointed King's Counsel. Within months, there was speculation in the press that he was about to be appointed to the Supreme Court of Victoria. He probably declined one or more such offers over the next few years, apparently on financial grounds, before finally accepting in July 1945. On 8 February 1950 he was made a justice of the High Court of Australia, a position he was to retain until his death. His judicial work was of the highest quality, but he sat on the bench in a period when there was relative stability in doctrine and principle in both public and private law, and his views on some matters were to be overtaken by later High Court opinion. In 1955 he was appointed K.B.E. At the Presbyterian Church, South Yarra, on 4 July 1942 Fullagar had married a nurse Mary Florence Taylor. He was of middle height and thickset, with a full face, blue eyes, and dark hair touched with ginger. A quiet, modest, gentle, friendly man, with a delicious sense of humour and (as Dixon put it) 'a most lovable nature', he commanded respect and affection. His principal recreations in later life were reading, gardening, bowls, trout-fishing and walking (he had joined the Wallaby Club in 1933); he wrote light verse, and was fond of the Scottish pipes and the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Fullagar died of cerebral thrombosis on 9 July 1961 in the Freemasons' Hospital, East Melbourne, and was cremated with Presbyterian forms. His wife survived him, as did four of the five sons of his first marriage; his son Richard followed him to the bench of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1975. Monash University established a lecture series in 1968 to honour Sir Wilfred's memory. On Fullagar's death, Prime Minister (Sir) Robert Menzies acknowledged 'his mastery of the law'. To Dixon, Fullagar 'had combined, with a remarkable legal erudition, great resources of scholarship. His judgments commanded the admiration of lawyers, not only for their penetration, their soundness and their correctness, but for the exposition of legal principles in an almost unequalled English style'. Justice Felix Frankfurter, of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, felt 'a personal loss', so close had been his sense of 'professional communion'. In a judgement in the House of Lords relying heavily on Fullagar and delivered a few months after his death, Viscount Simonds spoke of the deprivation which would be experienced by 'all who anywhere are concerned with the administration of the common law'. Such tributes are rare. R. L. Sharwood, 'Fullagar, Sir Wilfred Kelsham (1892–1961)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/fullagar-sir-wilfred-kelsham-10258/text18123, published first in hardcopy 1996, accessed online 24 November 2014. This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14, (MUP), 1996

The art of reading for Printz is an interesting one; the pile adds and drops titles throughout the course of the year. With two stars and some buzz, Threatened was a back-and-forther for me — sometimes in the pile, sometimes to the side, sometimes near the top, sometimes moved to the bottom. But when it got shortlisted for the NBA, it came back to the top of the pile with a vengeance. We wondered if anyone would speak up for it…no one had much to say then. Maybe you’ve been saving your comments for a longer post? [Read more...] And we have finalists! With yesterday’s announcement of the National Book Award Finalists in the Young People’s Literature category it’s really starting to feel like awards season. Last month, Karyn wrote about the longlist, observing that social conscience seemed to be a common thread among the nominees. Now that we’re down to five titles, her theory’s been reinforced. One of the things that no one believes when I say it is that I read less on winter break than any other time. There’s just no time — my kid stays up too late, we’re always visiting family or being visited, and if I manage to finish a book it’s a miracle. And actually, my kid staying up late and visitors? Those are just excuses. Because really what happens is that I burn out. For 7 out of the past 10 years, my reading life has centered on a late January deadline, and my reading selection has been dictated not by my own whims and tastes but by the necessities and vagaries of nomination lists, whether official YALSA lists or our own contender list. And when late December comes, and all my colleagues and friends talk about all the books they plan to read over break, I feel sad. Because what I have left to read at this point is a pile of books I’m just not that excited to read — that’s how they ended up at the bottom of the pile, after all. A few late additions to the list of must-reads might spark my interest, but my reading at this point is so purpose driven that I don’t feel like I can take the time to finish anything I can’t defend as a necessary read — these days, that means anything that falls below the top 20 or so books I’ve read this year feels like gross indulgence when there are other books clamoring to be read before the YMA announcements. This year, I’d really like to have read the winner and any honor books before they are the winner or honor books! Mind you, I’m not complaining — all those committees were AMAZING experiences, and Someday is a dream come true. But everyone I know who has served on a selection or award committee has felt this burnout. And it probably colors how I read books that I come to for the first time this late in the award season, and certainly is one of the hazards of committee work.

The Gent Vigilon analogue addressable fire panel is packed with functionality and features and has had the benefit of many years of field usage, in major sites across the world. The Vigilon Compact panel offers much of the same functionality as its big brother, but in a smaller, more aesthetically pleasing box and at a more competitive price to provide a suitable solution for many medium sized building applications. The Compact is also available with an integrated voice alarm system. The new range of S-Quad sensors combine some of the most advanced detection technology available with integral sounder, speech and strobe capability. These elements taken together give the Vigilon system many unique advantages when used in medium to large sized building applications. Gent Vigilon Panel - Powerful software enables customised evacuation strategies - Option of either soft or SAFE device addressing - Capable of networking up to 200 panels - Loop powered sounders and strobes - 4 separate sensing elements, including CO - Sensor states can be programmed for different time periods or sensitivity - Dual angle optical scatter technology - Integrated sounder, speech and strobe functionality For specification information and downloads for Gent products register at our Technical Data page. You will then be able to browse and download literature on the full Gent product range. | || |

DRRI: Mobility and Physical Impairments Table of Contents ARM-AMP is a list for amputees and concerned friends, relatives, and professionals. To subscribe, send a message with a blank subject line to firstname.lastname@example.org. In the body of the message type "subscribe ARM-AMP Firstname Lastname". Bifida-l is for discussion of issues related to Spina Bifida. C-palsy list includes all aspects of Cerebral Palsy. To subscribe, send a message with a blank subject line to email@example.com. In the body of the message type "subscribe c-palsy". Cpparent is for discussions of issues related to parenting children with Cerebral Palsy. Children, as well as parents, are invited to join. To subscribe, send a message with a blank subject line to firstname.lastname@example.org. In the body of the message type "subscribe cpparent Firstname Lastname". Hemi-kids is a list where parents of children with hemiplegia, a type of Cerebral Palsy, discuss issues related to their children. 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Established in 1795, Jaques of London is the oldest sports and games manufacturer in the world. Throughout their long and distinguished history Jaques have not only pioneered the development of many of the most influential and popular sports and games of all time, they have also custom produced sporting equipment for several of history's most notable figures, directly influenced some of the world's most famous literature, and even played a part in the allied war effort. Currently owned and managed by direct descendents of founder Thomas Jaques (b.1765), Jaques today remain true to their ancestors commitment to quality and traditional methods of craftsmanship which have ensured their success over the years, whilst continually striving to push the boundaries of excellence through technological innovation. Jaques is a family-owned company devoted to increasing people's pleasure by introducing a wealth of games and sports, most of them still very much in play today. Why then begin with a recollection of war? Ironically, John Jaques owes its survival to the company's inventive and little-known role in the deadliest game of all. The work was top secret, commissioned by the government during the Second World War through MI9, the clandestine Intelligence Department responsible for "Escape and Evasion". Its function was to help prisoners of war and downed aircrew escape from and evade the enemy. Even a child knows that playing a game means abiding by certain rules. It seems a paradox that play, which has to do with enjoyment and free time, should be thus restricted, but of course without rules there can be no winner. To "throw away the rulebook" is to invite chaos. And yet war, which is nothing if not chaos and destruction, oddly resembles a game with its own strict set of regulations. According to the Geneva Convention, signed in 1929, prisoners were to be treated humanely; they had the right to correspond with their families, and, of primary significance to this story, the maximum disciplinary penalty any prisoner could receive, even for escaping, was thirty days’ solitary confinement. So it was well within the rules of war that John Jaques worked with a Major Clayton Hutton and assisted MI9 in helping prisoners escape. The strategy was literally a game-plan: Jaques games and equipment were specially crafted to conceal key elements of vital escape kits. Major Clayton Hutton's schemes were ingenious, and "Clutty" visited John Jaques IV on several occasions to discuss his "toys"... Neatly sandwiched between the cardboard of Jaques Ludo or Snakes and Ladders, invisible to the unsuspecting Germans, was a map. Tightly furled within the wooden handle of a cleverly split Jaques Lacing Awl, (awls were used to tighten laces on pre-war footballs), precious currency was secreted. Even the pegs of Jaques' game of Deck Quoits were hollowed out; into each one was inserted a tiny working compass. Prior to the arrival of any of these innocent-looking gifts, the prisoner would have received a coded message in his correspondence alerting him to this hidden escape kit. If someone reading these words was helped by some item concealed in a Jaques "game" to make his escape from Nazi-occupied Europe, joint Managing Directors John V and Christopher Jaques, whose father John IV steered the company during these difficult years, would be most interested to hear their stories firsthand. Thanks to such ruses, some 35,000 members of the British Commonwealth and American armed forces who had been taken prisoner, shot down or otherwise cut off in enemy-held territory managed to regain the Allied lines before the end of the war.’ Had it not been for this essential war work, Jaques' whole business would have been considered non-essential, materials impossible to obtain. Games and sports were, after all, not a priority. But worse was to come. Christopher relates his father's shattering experience, shared by so many others: "It was an ordinary morning. My father had traveled to work by underground, in the usual way. He emerged from the tube, turned the customary corner into Kirby Street, and on looking up, saw nothing there, Jaques’ entire factory had been leveled by a series of bombs. This was the Blitz, 1941, and what had been our base for decades was totally demolished. Only the company safe survived — it had crashed through from the top to the bottom floor, and within this burning metal cell lay a charred barely preserved treasure: John Jaques’ original Pattern Book, the design source of everything we had created from 1795 to 1870." John IV took the fragile pages to a restorer who, by a complicated wax process, saved all but three of its valuable, sixty-five pages of original drawings. The design for Jaques Original Staunton Chess Set, made in boxwood and ebony for the Bicentenary, is taken directly from this rescued Pattern Book. Meanwhile, the very next day, John IV assembled the staff who, with great enterprise, set about looking for new premises. Thanks to their energy and with the help of the government, whom Jaques in turn continued to help throughout the war, the company was able to relocate and resume operations a mere month later in what is their current headquarters in Thornton Heath, Surrey. To avert suspicion, Jaques was encouraged to continue making its regular lines of games and sports equipment. Oddly enough, the Germans never queried why a company manufacturing non-essential products was still operating. Perhaps they chalked it up to the renowned eccentricity of the British to whom games and sports have always meant serious business! One such "war game" remains in the family's possession — it was, as Lewis Carroll's Alice might say, a "curious" cribbage board indeed, opening to reveal a long slim panel, carved out, awaiting a vital piece of the MI9 escape kit: the potentially lifesaving hacksaw blade. Christopher describes his awe and surprise as a young boy when shown the secret of this cribbage board, one which his father must have brought home sometime after the war's end. The Jaques family has kept it as a souvenir of those difficult days when so many lives were forfeited, so many old established businesses destroyed. Passing down the family business from father to son has become increasingly rare. Passing it down in happy circumstances for six generations may be something of a record. Thus it seems only fitting that John Jaques is the company that invented Happy Families. Today, John V and Christopher run what is the oldest games and sports manufacturer in the world. Christopher's sons, Benjamin and Emmett, are following in their father's footsteps. Both work for John Jaques and are being groomed to become the seventh generation in an unbroken line which began with a country boy named Thomas. Thomas Jaques was a farmer's son of French Huguenot descent. His recent forebears must have found refuge in England sometime after 1685 when the Edict of Nantes forbade Protestantism in France. Thomas was born in 1765 by which time George III had been on the throne for five years and was already fighting a losing battle to retain the American colonies. At home, the Georgian Period was in full flower. Following a country childhood in the Wiltshire village of Grittleton near Chippenham, Thomas, having finished his schooling, left in a wagon for London to seek his fortune. He was, by then, an ambitious young lad of fifteen. Thomas arrived at a turbulent time. The Gordon Riots of 1780 were causing immense upheaval — the last fierce religious battle fought in the capital, or indeed the country. Thomas stayed his ground and became apprenticed to a bone and ivory turner, Mr Ivy, at 65 Leather Lane in Holborn. His natural ability showed itself early on, and as he developed his skills Thomas exhibited what was, in fact, the traditional Huguenot talent for craftsmanship. Thomas's instinct and good sense obviously extended into his private life: at twenty-one, Thomas married Mr Ivy's niece! Thomas continued to work for Mr Ivy. Nine years later, his employer, mentor (and uncle by marriage), died. Thomas, now thirty, was so well-versed in his craft that he could take on the business and establish himself as "Thomas Jaques, (Manufacturer of Ivory, Hardwoods, Bone, and Tunbridge Ware)". Thus, it is from this date, 1795, that John Jaques marks its official beginning. His decorative card illustrates his bold, ambitious nature as well as his meticulous attention to detail: a one-man business, he nonetheless offered his wares "for Wholesale and for Exportation", the latter indicated by sailing ships. The elephants tell us of the then not-endangered materials in which he principally worked. The commanding figure of a Greek goddess, quill pen in hand, seems on the verge of signing a contract. Beehives, of course, symbolise industry. And indeed, what industry. Thomas worked in wood and bone as well as ivory, handcrafting carved snuff-boxes, coat, hat and hair brushes, paper knives, work boxes, glove stretchers, and the inlaid woodwork known as Tunbridge Ware. Coincidentally, in 1795, a son John was born. He was the third of seven children, neither the oldest nor the youngest, yet he was the offspring who would carry on and expand the family business. At fifteen, John was apprenticed to his father and five years later partnered him in the firm, which became "T. and J. Jaques, Wholesale Ivory Turners" It was, by this time, too narrow a description, as their materials now included hardwoods. Lienum vitae was the unique wood which was to become Jaques croquet mallets. Turkey boxwood was destined for mallets and balls. In fact, before long Jaques would become timber-based, as they are now, 200 years on. Their business card of 1816 shows an enterprising, expanding range of products and materials. Consider the item, "Dentists supplied with Sea Horse Teeth" — false teeth made from hippopotamus ivory! As the father and son partnership prospered, so the family grew. John married, and in time fathered a son: John Jaques II. He, too, was apprenticed as a young man to the family firm, which by now had expanded into additional premises in Hatton Garden (Leather Lane was retained). Tallis's London Street Views, a series of steel engravings issued in 1838, shows their new headquarters at Number 102 Hatton Garden. It was here that the Jaques began in earnest to teach the world to play! The phrase "Parlour Games" conjures up cosy Victorian scenes of extended families amusing themselves with musical interludes and the playing of card games, board games and chess. Classic games such as Happy Families, Tiddley -Winks, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders - games still so familiar today that few people can recall their origin, or indeed believe that any one person invented them! One person did: John Jaques II. John Jaques’ son was the ingenious mind behind most of these indoor pursuits, inventing Happy Families, Tiddley -Winks, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders - and developing a very large demand for dominoes, draughts and backgammon, all of which the company produced. While JJ One (as the family refer to him) will always be recognised for his major contribution to chess, the subject of a subsequent chapter, the son was undoubtedly his father's equal in imagination, craftsmanship and enterprise. Tenniel's memorable drawings of Mr Bun the Baker, Mr Grits the Grocer and so on, are at the heart of children's enjoyment of Happy Families. It was John II's foresight to commission him at an early stage in his career. Tenniel would later become Sir John Tenniel as a result of a truly illustrious career as chief cartoonist of Punch. Tenniel, of course, also brought Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland so vividly to life. In fact, Lewis Carroll's grandniece, Irene Dodgson, married the widowed John Jaques III, not only consolidating this literary connection, but furthering it with her own artistic contribution. Irene created four new characters for Jaques Happy Families. John II's originality and business acumen were rewarded with the Freedom of the City of London in 1869. This was richly deserved, for this same man who lightened long evenings with new and clever indoor pursuits also taught the world to play croquet. John Jaques II won a place in sporting history — and a Gold Medal — for introducing croquet into England at the Great Exhibition in 1851. His display there attracted such wide attention that the game speedily became the vogue, not only here but in Europe and throughout the British Empire. It was especially popular in India, reportedly played by The Viceroy himself with a solid ivory mallet, probably made by Jaques as part of their finest set. The attractions of croquet were obvious (in hindsight). It allowed the fashionable set to step outside the claustrophobic Victorian parlour; to "take exercise" and enjoy the fresh air without (heaven forbid) breaking into a sweat; to show off their finery — hence the term, "crinoline croquet". Moreover, it gave young men and women a legitimate opportunity to mingle and wander off into the proverbial rhododendron bushes, momentarily out of sight of their ever-present chaperones! "Nothing but tobacco smoke has ever spread as rapidly" commented Dr Prior, an early enthusiast of the game. Certainly Jaques and Son (as it was then called) had no trouble selling its equipment. JJ II was regarded as the greatest authority on the game and in 1864 wrote and published Croquet; the Laws and Regulations of the Game, by which (with some revisions) croquet is still played today. The origin of croquet is somewhat obscure — John II first glimpsed a version of it in Ireland. And the etymology of the word "croquet" remains "tantalisingly unresolved". But JJ II's compilation of rules no doubt saved the sport from flying off in all directions as It seemed in danger of doing during those early years. Lewis Carroll (an avid player at Oxford in the 1860s) reflected the potentially unruly nature of croquet in his memorable passage of Alice's Adventures Under Ground in which the croquet balls were hedgehogs, the mallets live ostriches, (flamingoes appear in later versions), "and the soldiers had to double themselves up and stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches". Above ground in the real world, several firms began making croquet equipment, but or John Jaques has survived from that period and continues to lead the market, offering superior equipment for all levels of play. Few people today have a championship-size croquet lawn (35 x 28 yards). Keeping to the 5:4 proportions is desirable but not critical, as croquet can be played practically anywhere. There are croquet clubs all over the world, with tens of thousands of club members, and literally millions of back garden enthusiasts. JJ II's great-grandsons John V and Christopher are as keen to encourage back-garden croquet as they are to maintain and update their ancestors’ rigorous standards of craftsmanship. Materials and equipment have changed, but not as drastically as in tennis. Hoops used to be large enough for Arthur Law's (an early player) pet spaniel to run through! Equally, Jaques croquet balls as advertised in the Croquet Association Gazette (1904) were made from "the finest Turkish Boxwood". Neither is now the case. Hoops have narrowed, and paradoxically, only sets of inferior quality include wooden balls. John Jaques Eclipse balls are requested by the top players for championship play because of their dependable "bounce factor". Selected for every World Championship including the 1994 World Croquet Championships in which Robert Fulford retained his title. Today's hoops are a mere 1/8" wider than the balls and 12" high, demanding far greater skill and making it difficult even for a dachshund to slip through! As for mallets, wood remains a constant, as have Jaques' universally recognised qualities of expertise and patience. Consider the mallets featured in their John Jaques Hatton Garden Bicentenary Limited Edition Set, (1/100). The heads are made from Lignum vitae, one of the hardest of woods, which has been carefully seasoned for at least three years. Each mallet blank is then hand-crafted and hand-fitted with brass rings, Tuftex faces, and is inlaid with a boxwood sightline. Each meticulous step continues, following an unbroken tradition of craftsmanship which began over 200 years ago with the gifted Thomas Jaques, whose apprenticeship to Mr Ivy proved so fruitful. Should any aspect of a mallet need replacing, repairing, or repolishing, or should you require one custom-made, compiled to a specific weight, Jaques can comply to within an ounce. Croquet players of all levels still beat a path to the experts tucked away in Thornton Heath, painstakingly making croquet equipment that is not only treasured, but in flay all over the world. Chess, the quintessential game of strategy and tactics, has been a favorite since ancient times with kings, emperors and statesmen. Napoleon played. Benjamin Franklin played. Today, most newspapers and scores of magazines carry a regular chess column and the world championships are front page news. John Jaques made this popularisation possible by creating a set of chessmen which could be reproduced easily and at a reasonable cost. Let us backtrack to 1839, the year following/o/w Jaques' expansion into their new Hatton Garden premises. There, Thomas's son John, (JJ One) schooled by his father in ivory and wood turning, recognised the need for what no other turner had achieved — a classic, simple design in chessmen. Until that time, there were two extremes: On the one hand, the excessively elaborate and therefore costly hand-carved reproductions of kings and queens enthroned in state, with every realistic detail which the mind of craftsmen unacquainted with court life could envisage; on the other, rudely turned and daubed pieces in which rank was indicated by height alone. It was Nathaniel Cooke, proprietor of the Illustrated London News whose daughter later married John Jaques II, who originated these designs. He brought them to John Jaques, and together they chose a middle way in which the identity of each piece was made plain and could be reproduced with ease. The king was symbolised by a crown, the queen by a coronet, the bishop by a mitre, and so forth. "But the greatest and most significant improvement is observable in the knight", commented the Morning Herald on 6th November, 1849. The article continued: "The crude, ugly and ill-cut caricature now in use is supplanted by an exquisite draft of the head of the Greek horse executed after the Elgin marbles...They may be viewed and judged as works of art, and as such challenge scrutiny; while the beauty of the manufacture is indicative of the high perfection to which ivory carving and the niceties of ivory turning have been brought in this country." The Times was no less effusive: "A set of Chessmen, of a pattern combining elegance and solidity to a degree hitherto unknown.." In fact, Mr Howard Staunton, one of the famous exponents of the English school of chess, was so struck by the clarification achieved by these designs that he allowed his name and signature to authenticate every box of pieces. It soon became the standard design not just for this country, but also in Europe. Apart from minor modifications to prevent breakage, reproduction on a quantity basis showed the need for few changes — another tribute to John Jaques" thought and talent. The frills and beads were slightly strengthened, the knights’ ears set further back, and the collar of the pawn at a rather less acute angle. There are always people who see a degradation in the quantity production of any article previously made by hand, or the commercial success of a cheapened line. But as JRJ Murray — the notable authority on chess history — remarked, "There are few chess players to-day who would care to use anything but the Staunton chessmen". The universal adoption of a standard design has done more for the game than simply to provide its devotees with an agreeable instrument of play. The rapid popularisation of the game from the late 19th century onward must have been due in part to the simplification of play following a more easily identifiable set of pieces. The many books of chess problems published since that period also owe much to the use of the symbols first selected by John Jaques. One has only to compare the symbols used to illustrate any modern chess problem with those of the pre-Staunton chessmen days to see the advantages of clarity which have been gained. When, in 1864, Jaques and Son published Croquet; the Laws and Regulations of the Game, father and son took the opportunity to inform the public of their growing range of games which had already won them two medals. JJ One's triumph was included in detail, with illustrations of various Staunton chess sets — from Boxwood to "Finest African Ivory in a Spanish Mahogany Case". Today, a version of the John Jaques Staunton chess set is supplied to nearly all the world's National Chess Associations, and used in virtual exclusivity for all international tournaments. It's what the legendary Bobby Fischer checkmates with, as well as all the current world champion contenders, from Adams to Anand, Gelfand to Guiko, Ivanchuk to Lautier, Karpov to Kasparov, Kramnik to Kamsky, Spassky to Short. A Jaques set was used by Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship . John Jaques III entered the family firm in 1884. He was a very keen athlete and his interests and abilities seemed to mesh perfectly with the changes that were happening in the world of games and sports. He understood how to propel John Jaques into the 20th century. At Wimbledon, lawn tennis was edging out croquet. By 1882, the All England Croquet Club had become the All England Lawn Tennis Club. And although croquet would regain its popularity, even have its name restored (in 1899) to the current All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, active sports were relentlessly replacing more gentle ones. Parlour games, too, were declining in favour of outdoor pursuits. JJ III grasped the new mood enthusiastically and began to shift the emphasis of John Jaques into entirely new arenas, initiating and extending the production of sports equipment for cricket, tennis, football, hockey, badminton and archery. Top-notch equipment for each of these sports continues to be offered by John Jaques today, though because of the complex and demanding specifications each sport requires, not every item is produced in-house as it was in JJ Ill's time. For example, John Jaques recently incorporated Webber, a company whose pedigree, in many ways, matches their own — a 100 year-old company founded around the time of JJ III. Webber invented the eighteen panel football, as well as the laceless football. Their innovation and expertise allows Jaques to offer a comprehensive choice of sports balls, for rugby, cricket, basketball, volleyball, netball, baseball, handball, and of course, soccer. By the mid-fifties, over 90% of the football League clubs were using Webber footballs. Their popularity now extends to Europe and North America. Stimulated by JJ Ill's forward-looking thrust, the company thrived. And in order to accommodate the necessary new machinery and overall expansion, he had moved Jaques into larger premises, from Hatton Garden to Kirby Street. JJ III was not only innovative; he never lost sight of the importance of craftsmanship. What had made Jaques famous was still very much in evidence, now harnessed to modern methods. Nowhere was this truer than in the production of Jaques Bowls. JJ III installed modern machinery for this rapidly developing sport which resulted in a happy fulfilment of his great-grandfather's claim: Bowling Green Bowles Tum’d Correctly. So young Thomas Jaques had written in 1795 on that first, ambitious, and still-accurate, business card. It comes as no surprise to learn that the one indoor game which the athletic JJ III spearheaded was an active one: ping-pong, or as it is now called, table tennis. John Jaques had originally marketed this game as Gossima, presumably because of the featherlight ball. It had attracted little attention, but JJ III saw its vast and delightful possibilities. He rechristened it Ping-Pong. JJ Ill's instinct was correct: its success was spectacular and Ping-Pong became another of his brilliant, innovative offerings. In 1902-3 the ping-pong boom swept the country, and when its more passionate players developed it into a championship game, they apparently chafed against its somewhat frivolous trademark. "Ping-Pong" is still used colloquially here and throughout the world, including China where it is their national sport. But JJ III's catchy onomatopoeic name eventually gave way to Jaques Table Tennis in the UK. Of course, this more serious name linked it to lawn tennis which continued to gain players and spectators in leaps and bounds. Whether the name change was instrumental in upgrading the game and widening its appeal can never be known. No doubt it helped legitimise Its status in the participants' minds as something worthy of competition-play rather than merely a pastime akin to the more passive parlour games. Jaques continues to lead the market, providing excellent equipment for what has become a standard activity in schools throughout the country, as well as an internationally competitive and televised sport. Their tables have been used at more National, European and World Championships than any other. Jaques is the only manufacturer in Britain to offer quality tables in quantity; not as kits but complete, well-crafted, sturdy tables, ready for years of play at any level. Methods are always regarded as "modern" in one's own time. Only by later generations are they seen as traditional. Combining the most up to date method of the time while maintaining the legacy of handcrafted products was a conscious business attitude of every member of the Jaques family from Thomas onward. Naturally, as mass production came on stream, it became more of a challenge to maintain the integrity of the more traditional aspects in terms of materials and methods. It is a credit to JJ III, to his son JJ IV, and to his sons John V and Christopher, that the increasing pressure of competition in the marketplace has not altered their view of what John Jaques has to offer to the world of sports and games. Innovation and craftsmanship remain at the heart of the company. When JJ IV took over from his father, he further expanded the various ranges and introduced significant advances in each sporting arena. Just after the war, JJ IV invented the phenolic resin lawn bowl, superior to anything at the time. In 1950, he introduced a laminated glass fibre archery bow, laminated tennis racket frames, and transformed the traditional wooden badminton racket into a lightweight, steel-shafted 4 oz version. Everything he designed was In accordance with the latest scientific research. At the same time, JJ IV was a master turner. His talent was exceptional, best exemplified by his personal creation of a miniature Howard Staunton chess set, hand-carved out of ivory (the scarlet pieces tinted in the traditional way with cochineal) and set on a tiny walnut pedestal table, made for Queen Mary's Dolls' House at the Queen's request. Scaled precisely to Viici the original (as is everything in the Lutyens’ designed Doll's House) JJ IV's masterpiece can be viewed at Windsor Castle. Christopher relates that Queen Mary, as a gesture of her gratitude for his father's fine work, made a gift of the original 18th c. walnut pedestal table. This remains a treasured family possession. JJ IV's energy was prodigious. The selection Jaques offered was phenomenal and continued throughout the war years which, as the opening chapter relates, presented quite unexpected challenges, not least of all the devastating bombing of Jaques' premises in Kirby Street. Jaques expanded the world of play for people of all ages, in all walks of life, and in practically every corner of the world. By the 1950s, Jaques had agents worldwide selling their unsurpassed range of games and sporting equipment. They had also become one of the leading sources of entertainment in the convivial world of the corner pub. Jaques provided everything from darts to skittles to shove halfpenny boards — all still available — the latter made in quarter sawn solid mahogany and offered with genuine old English halfpennies! Meanwhile, life on the bracing high seas was enhanced by the myriad of deck games which Jaques created (and still offers) to keep people amused aboard the grand ocean liners. In 1965 John Jaques passed safely and successfully into the hands of his sons John V and Christopher. Together with Christopher's sons Benjamin and Emmett, they have kept John Jaques competitive, continually forging new relationships with companies whose products are equal in quality to their own. Jaques is proud to offer MCC products, who, for example, hand-make their Sovereign cricket bat from English willow and their Cobra bat from selected clefts fitted with treble sprung Sarawak cane handles. Each of their Laser bats is tillered by hand to produce perfect balance and driving power. Jaques has also remained strong on the hockey field through MCC, offering professional fibreglass indoor and outdoor hockey sticks with the finest grade mulberry heads. The top models are selected by English, Dutch, German and Pakistan internationals. Jaques continues to introduce new equipment for favourite old games, such as bottles, the very latest craze from across the Channel. Truly democratic, it can be enjoyed by people of all ages, and played on any surface. In this Bicentenary year, the sixth and seventh generations of John Jaques consider their 200 year-old heritage with pride and would like to take this opportunity to ask you, the all-important players, for any illuminating anecdotes to do With Jaques’ history which the Blitz — and the passage of time — might have obscured. If a treasured childhood family game made by Jaques comes to light, one which has been forgotten in an old trunk or attic, or any item oiJaques9 sporting equipment which you might want dated, identified or, indeed, preserved in the archival collection which the Jaques family has informally put together as a museum of memorabilia, please do not hesitate to contact one of the family and they will do their best to help. Two hundred years on, John V and Christopher, together with Ben, Emmett, Joe and Clare, look with confidence to the future, knowing that as the oldest sports and games manufacturer in the world, they continue to be in a unique position to teach the world to play.

Origins and characteristics of bioelectric signals, recording electrodes, biopotential amplifiers, basic sensors, chemical, pressure, sound, and flow transducers, noninvasive monitoring techniques and electrical safety. (Prerequisites: Circuits and electronics, control engineering or equivalent.) Biomaterials are an integral part of medical devices, implants, controlled drug delivery systems, and tissue engineered constructs. Extensive research efforts have been expended on understanding how biologic systems interact with biomaterials. Meanwhile, controversy has revolved around biomaterials and their availability as a result of the backlash to the huge liability resulting from controversies related to material and processing shortcomings of medical devices. This course specifically addresses the unique role of biomaterials in medical device design and the use of emerging biomaterials technology in medical devices. The need to understand design requirements of medical devices based on safety and efficacy will be addressed. Unexpected device failure can occur if testing fails to account for synergistic interactions from chronic loading, aqueous environments, and biologic interactions. Testing methodologies are readily available to assess accelerated effects of loading in physiologic-like environments. This combined with subchronic effects of animal implants is a potential tool in assessing durability. It is difficult to predict the chronic effects of the total biologic environment. The ultimate determination of safety comes not only from following the details of regulations, but with an understanding of potential failure modes and designs that lowers the risk of these failures. This course will evaluate biomaterials and their properties as related to the design and reliability of medical devices. This course provides an overview of regulations that guide the medical devices industry. Primary focus is on the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) and its associated regulations. The course covers the FD&C Act, including definitions, prohibited acts, penalties and general authority. The course also covers regulations, including establishment registration, premarket approval (PMA) and current good manufacturing practices. Requirements of other federal agencies (NRC, FCC, EPA) will also be discussed. This biomaterials course focuses on the selection, processing, testing and performance of materials used in biomedical applications with special emphasis upon tissue engineering. Topics include material selection and processing, mechanisms and kinetics of material degradation, cell-material interactions and interfaces; effect of construct architecture on tissue growth; and transport through engineered tissues. Examples of engineering tissues for replacing cartilage, bone, tendons, ligaments, skin and liver will be presented. (Recommended preparation: A first course in biomaterials equivalent to ME/BME 4814 and a basic understanding of physiology and cell biology.) This biomechanics course focuses on advanced techniques for the characterization of the structure and function of hard and soft tissues and their relationship to physiological processes. Applications include tissue injury, wound healing, the effect of pathological conditions upon tissue properties, and design of medical devices and prostheses. (Prerequisite: An understanding of basic continuum mechanics.) An introduction to fundamental principles in cell biology and physiology designed to provide the necessary background for advanced work in biomedical engineering. Quantitative methods of engineering and the physical sciences are stressed. Topics include cell biology, DNA technology and the physiology of major organ systems. NOTE: This course can be used to satisfy a life science requirement in the biomedical engineering program. It cannot be used to satisfy a biomedical engineering course requirement. A study of anesthesia, surgical techniques and postoperative care in small laboratory animals. Anatomy and physiology of species used included as needed. Class limited to 15 students. Approximately 15 surgical exercises are performed by each student. (Prerequisite: Graduate standing. Admission of undergraduate students requires the permission of the department head and the instructor.) NOTE: This course can be used to satisfy a life science requirement in the biomedical engineering program. It cannot be used to satisfy a biomedical engineering course requirement. Overview of the physics of medical image analysis. Topics covered include X-Ray tubes, fluoroscopic screens, image intensifiers; nuclear medicine; ultrasound; computer tomography; nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. Image quality of each modality is described mathematically, using linear systems theory (Fourier transforms, convolutions). (Prerequisite: Signal analysis course BME/ECE 4011 or equivalent.) Topics in biomedical engineering are presented both by authorities in the field and graduate students in the program. Provides a forum for the communication of current research and an opportunity for graduate students to prepare and deliver oral presentations. Students may meet the attendance requirement for this course in several ways, including attendance at weekly biomedical engineering seminars on the WPI campus, attendance at similar seminar courses at other universities or biotech firms, attendance at appropriate conferences, meetings or symposia, or in any other way deemed appropriate by the course instructor. Topics in biomedical engineering. Presentations and discussions of the current literature in an area of biomedical engineering.

Gastroenterology Luminal Inpatient Service To provide instruction in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with a variety of gastrointestinal illnesses, exposure to basic and advanced flexible endoscopy, promote better understanding of the indications and contraindications of various endoscopic procedures. Goals and Objectives: 1. Learn presentation and management of common gastrointestinal conditions such as acute gastrointestinal bleeding, inflammatory bowel disease including Cohn’s and ulcerative colitis, diarrheal illnesses, acute pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis, gastrointestinal malignancies. 2. Learn indications, contraindications, and limitations of common gastroenterology procedures including esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD), colonoscopy, endoscopiccholangiopancreatography (ERCP), as well as endoscopic ultrasound. 3. Learn and manage complicated inflammatory bowel disease including using immunosuppressants, immunomodulators, and biologics in treatment. 1. Learn presentation and management of common gastrointestinal conditions such as acute gastrointestinal bleeding, inflammatory bowel disease including Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, diarrheal illnesses, acute pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis, gastrointestinal malignancies. 2. Learn indications, contraindications, and limitations of common gastroenterology procedures including esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD), colonoscopy, endoscopiccholangiopancreatography (ERCP), as well as endoscopic ultrasound, and percutaneous gastrostomy tubes. 3.Learn and manage complicated inflammatory bowel disease including using immunosuppressants, immunomodulators, and biologics in treatment. 4. Develop short and long term treatment plans of care. 5. Supervise and manage team members including interns and medical students. Participation in the care of ambulatory patients with a variety of gastrointestinal ailments. Bedside or “sit down” teaching rounds for in-hospital patients. Formal, regularly scheduled clinical conferences (many of which are multidisciplinary in nature). Direct supervision of care of ambulatory patients in GI clinics. Mix of Diseases and Pathological Material: The program incorporates two teaching hospitals: The Medical University Hospital (MUH) and the Charleston VA Medical Center (VAMC). Faculty expertise draws patients with a myriad of disease processes including inflammatory bowel disease, pancreaticobiliary disease, complex nutritional issues such as short bowel syndrome, achalasia, and other disorders of the esophagus, among many others. In particular, MUH is a tertiary facility providing a high level of care in all aspects of Internal Medicine where renal, bone marrow, cardiac, lung, pancreas, and liver transplantation programs are ongoing. In addition, the interests of the Gastroenterology faculty attract patients with biliary tract and liver disease, nutritional problems, gastrointestinal motility disorders, and malignancies. The Division of Gastroenterology at the VAMC has an active outpatient colon cancer screening program and hepatitis C clinic in addition to the fellows’ continuity clinics. Residents care for a diverse patient population with respect to age, ethnicity, and gender. The majority of the patients are older adults, but there are significant numbers of adolescent and young adult patients in some sites. All have acute or chronic gastrointestinal diseases as well as chronic general medical conditions. Types of Clinical Encounters: Chronic gastrointestinal bleeding, alcohol and viral-related liver diseases, pancreatitis, and gastrointestinal malignancy. To provide patient coverage: MUH Luminal in-patient service, MUH Luminal consult service, MUH Liver in-patient consult service. Procedures and Services: The MUH and VAMC provide a full spectrum of flexible endoscopic procedures. Over 6000 procedures are performed each year. At MUH there are both in-patient and out-patient endoscopy suites. Each endoscopy facility is equipped and staffed for upper endoscopy (EGD), colonoscopy, percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG), esophageal dilation, esophageal banding, and the like. Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) and endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) are performed in the inpatient endoscopy facility at MUH. Attending physician of record supervises the GI fellow, medical resident, medical intern, and medical students. Educational Resources to be Used and Reading Lists: The residents and medical students assigned to the various services are required to attend the weekly GI fellows’ conference. The Division maintains an up-to-date audiovisual library for self-directed learning containing textbooks, journals, teaching slides, and DVDs located adjacent to the Video Conference Room. Weekly or bi-weekly conferences include: GI Fellows’ Conference, Pancreaticobiliary Conference, Clinical Research Conference, various multidisciplinary tumor boards, Liver Biopsy Review as well as teaching rounds by gastroenterology faculty members. Method of Evaluation of Resident Competence: The attending physician provides formative feedback at the halfway mark of the rotation. Residents are evaluated summatively using the global evaluation form. The Mini-CEX is often administered on this service as well. Patient Care is assessed based on direct observation and complete review of all records. Medical Knowledge is assessed through direct questioning and observation. Interpersonal Skills and Communication is assessed by observation of interactions with consulting physicians, patients, and families. The attending physician evaluates Professionalism through direct interaction and observation of the resident. Systems-Based Practice is evaluated based on interactions with the primary team and the ability to provide medical care in collaboration with consultants, and other specialists in the cares of the patients with emphasis placed on optimization of patient care. Practice-Based Learning is evaluated based on the ability to consult the literature and to improve their performance throughout the rotation. The residents evaluate the rotation and the attending physician through the E*Value system. The consult attendings review the rotation evaluations and each attending anonymously receives his or her evaluations.

Refugees Who Have Made a Difference Refugees or former refugees who have achieved special status within a community due to their achievements, or because they have overcome hardship to build a new life. This gallery features profiles of some 200 refugees who have made a difference and left a mark in the world. The list includes people, dead and living, in all walks of life. Some, like writer Chinua Achebe, composer Bela Bartok, physicist Albert Einstein and actress-singer Marlene Dietrich are world famous, others have shared their gifts locally. The UN refugee agency salutes all of them for showing the potential of refugees around the world. One of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century and the founder of structural anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss explains his unawareness of growing anti-Semitism in Vichy France as a "lack of imagination" on his part. In September 1940, Lévi-Strauss returned from an expedition in Brazil (where he had taught as a sociologist at the University of Sao Paulo), and asked to be reappointed to his teaching post in Paris. He was told by the Ministry of Education that with the (Jewish-sounding) name he had, they would not send him to Paris. He was offered a job in the southern town of Montpellier, but three weeks later was dismissed under France's anti-Semitic laws. Lévi-Strauss was invited to go to the United States by the New School for Social Research, a university in exile in New York, established in an effort to rescue scholars who had been dismissed from teaching and government positions by totalitarian regimes in Europe. He boarded the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle together with other exiles, including Anna Seghers, André Breton and Victor Serge. In New York, Lévi-Strauss mixed with surrealist painters and artists in exile. He also worked for the Office of War Information. From 1941-42, he co-founded the Ecole Libre des Hautes Etudes of New York. It was there that he met exiled linguist Roman Jakobson, who would influence the direction of his theoretical thinking. Lévi-Strauss taught ethnology and history of religions and wrote "The Elementary Structures of Kinship". Later he would apply this same structural approach to his lifelong studies of American Indian myths. Once the war was over, Lévi-Strauss worked as cultural counsellor of the French Embassy in Washington, before moving back to France in 1948. He acted as Vice-Director of the Musée de L'Homme. In 1950, he was appointed Director of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. Surprised that there was no anthropological journal to serve as a platform for French ethnological and social anthropological studies, Lévi-Strauss founded the review L'Homme in 1961. In the early 1950s, questioning the notion of progress, which he believed implied the superiority of certain cultures over others, Lévi-Strauss preferred, when analysing societies, to use the terms "hot" and "cold" societies as a way of differentiating between them. He went on to study social and symbolic constructs in societies. Vexed by the name of the university chair he occupied, "Religion of Primitive Peoples", Lévi-Strauss changed it to "Religion of Peoples Without Writing". In 1959, he was elected to the Chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France. Lévi-Strauss was asked by UNESCO to give two lectures on his reflections on racism (now published as "Race and History" and "Race and Culture"). He has concerned himself with the nature of races and identities, about human universals, family and kinship, linguistics and beliefs, myths and rites. His ideas have had a huge influence in all sorts of disciplines, for example, in the field of literary criticism. Lindiwe Mabuza's versatility led her into many professions, yet her single driving ambition was to see the end of apartheid in South Africa. She worked as a professor, poet, short-story writer, radio journalist, editor, and political organiser for the African National Congress (ANC). After the fall of apartheid, she became South Africa's first black ambassador to Germany. Mabuza grew up in the working-class coal-mining town of Newcastle, struggling against crushing poverty. Her father was a truck driver and her mother worked as a maid. Mabuza became the only one in her family of seven to finish high school. Intent on her attending college, her mother and grandmother encouraged her to take advantage of the scholarship she was offered. Mabuza's grandmother had often told her stories about their Zulu heritage. When the time came, she enrolled in Roma University across the border in Lesotho instead of at a college in South Africa in order to increase her understanding of native African culture and literature. When she arrived back home to Newcastle in 1961, the country's hard-line apartheid policy had toughened following the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. Non-white students were forced out of multi-racial universities and into exclusively black institutions with a strictly censored curriculum. Non-white educators resigned in droves. When Mabuza applied for a position at a college in Vryheid, she was denied the post. She moved to Swaziland, where she taught English and Zulu literature. In 1964, Mabuza began graduate studies in English at Stanford University, California. She earned her second master's degree in American studies at University of Minnesota, where she remained to teach sociology. She became involved in a project for wayward adolescent students, gaining their attention through creative writing and poetry. This project inspired her to write. Combining her broad knowledge of international literature with her experience of Zulu culture, she wrote a collection of poems, "Letter to Letta". When black South Africans were forcibly removed from segregated townships to "homelands" and Afrikaans was made one of the official languages in black schools, Mabuza became politically active. She joined the ANC in 1975 and became a journalist for ANC's Radio Freedom, based in Lusaka. Her concern with women's issues led to her involvement with Voice of the Women, the ANC's feminist journal, which encouraged women to write poetry. "Poetry is part of the struggle," she says. "You use the armed struggle; you use political agitation methods.... It gets to the heart of the matter. It moves people." After editing the magazine, Mabuza was sent to open up ANC branches in Scandinavia. She returned to the United States in 1986 as the ANC's chief representative, organising anti-apartheid boycotts and rallies, putting pressure on major corporations to withdraw their investment and facilities from South Africa. With the legalisation of the ANC and the release of its celebrated leader, Nelson Mandela, in 1990, apartheid was on its way out. In 1994, Mabuza became a member of South Africa's first multi-racial government but within a year, President Mandela offered her the job of ambassador to Germany, which she accepted. Currently, Mabuza's focus is on encouraging international investment in South Africa and building trading ties and cultural exchange with Germany, since, in her own words, "Democracy without housing, without health and without food is meaningless". Legendary singer Miriam Makeba gave powerful testimony to the iniquities of the apartheid regime and paid the price by having to leave South Africa. Living abroad, she became an icon of African culture, associated with the "Black is Beautiful" movement of the 1960s. Makeba began her career in 1952 as a vocalist for the Manhattan Brothers. Her appearance in the 1950s documentary, "Come Back Africa", led to invitations for her to visit Europe and America. It was there that she came to the attention of singers such as Harry Belafonte and was catapulted to stardom. But the impact of the anti-apartheid documentary caused the South African government to revoke her citizenship. Makeba's uncles were killed in the Sharpeville Massacre. Her mother died shortly afterwards but Makeba was not granted a visa to allow her to return to pay her respects. In 1963, she testified about apartheid before the United Nations. In 1967, her song "Pata Pata" became a worldwide hit and her recording career blossomed. Her records were produced by RCA, Reprise and many others. In 1968, after marrying her third husband, radical black activist Stokely Carmichael, her US concerts were suddenly cancelled and her recording contract broken. Makeba decided to leave the US, this time relocating to the African country of Guinea, from where she continued a busy schedule of recording and touring. She continued in her fearless mission to denounce apartheid, this time serving as a Guinean delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. The singer is also known for having inspired an enduring fashion in the 1960s when the slogan "Black is Beautiful" was launched: "I see other black women imitate my style, which is no style at all, but just letting our hair be itself," she once said. "They call it the Afro Look." The ban on her records was lifted in South Africa in 1989 and she returned to her homeland in December 1990. Four years later, she started a charity project to raise funds to protect women in South Africa. Makeba has received numerous awards for her commitment to the cause of justice, including the Los Angeles Certificate of Recognition in the field of music; the Certificate of Appreciation from the US District of Columbia for her contribution to the quality of life for the oppressed and disadvantaged; the 1986 Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Prize and the UNESCO Grand Prix du Conseil International de la Musique for her peace efforts. Her autobiography, "Makeba, My Story", was published in 1988. She died in Italy in November 2008. Sculptor Agamemnon Makris left Greece after World War II and only returned 35 years later. Honoured abroad and awarded the highest prizes for his distinguished artistic career, it was only with the restoration of democracy in Athens that his work, destroyed during the dictatorship, was appreciated in his home country. His family left the island of Patras and moved to Athens when Makris was six. As a student, he attended the School of Fine Arts. In the 1930s, he was part of a group of intellectuals connected with the periodical, New Innovators. He also founded the Chamber of Art Professionals and was one of the organisers of the Panhellenic Exhibition at the Archaeological Museum in 1941. During the German occupation, he played an active role in the resistance movement. After the liberation of Greece, Makris was among 120 artists who were offered scholarships from the French Institute and he participated in several prestigious Paris exhibitions. But the Greek government pressured the French authorities to deport him back to Greece. In 1950, he and his wife Zizi were offered refugee status by Hungary, where they were helped by Hungarian refugee agencies and the local Greek community. In Hungary, Makris worked on endless artistic missions, producing monumental works such as the Mauthausen memorial commemorating the victims of the Nazi concentration camp in Austria, the memorial in Budapest to the Hungarian volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, and the monument to the liberation in Pécs Hungary. Within two years, he was accepted as a member of the Corps of Hungarian Artists. Stripped of his Greek citizenship in 1964, Makris only regained it in 1975 when democracy was restored. In 1979, he held his first retrospective at the National Gallery in Athens. He began working on monuments such as those in memory of the fallen heroes of the Polytechnic, the equestrian statue of Pavlos Kountouriotis in Palaio Phaliro, and the statue of Archbishop Makarios at the Presidential Palace in Cyprus. He collaborated with his daughter Clio to cerate the memorial in Beloyannis Square in Amaliada. In 1992, the University of Thrace declared him honorary professor. In his later years, Makris divided his time between Athens and Budapest, spending his summer working in a small cottage in the Anavysos region of Attica. He died in Athens on May 26, 1993. Tatyana Mamonova has been described as the founder of Russian feminism. She was exiled from the Soviet Union in the pre-glasnost days for having published a samizdat journal, Almanac: Woman and Russia, which was critical of the situation of women in Russia. In exile, she continued to publish feminist texts, expanding from Russian authors to include the writings of women worldwide. Mamonova recalls that her first feminist views developed through her family, where patriarchal rules prevailed. She studied pharmacy but left her studies to work as a television screenwriter and commentator. She also became literary consultant for the poetry section in a youth review, Aurora. She translated foreign poetry, but became disillusioned when her poems were not published on the grounds that they did not conform to Soviet realism. In the 1960s and 70s, she was part of the non-conformist artistic movement, painting and organising exhibitions abroad. As early as 1968, she had begun a small women's movement, and soon had to undergo her first interrogation by the police. The idea of a journal for women came to Mamonova after she spent 10 days in a maternity clinic to give birth to her first child. The Soviet medical conditions were so appalling that she decided to create a forum where Soviet women could speak out about their problems. The Almanac addressed taboo issues such as abortion, prisons, working conditions, homosexuality and alcoholism. The journal was soon hounded out of existence. In 1979, she was interrogated twice by the Leningrad KGB and given a warning that she would be arrested if she produced a second edition. In the early morning of July 19, 1980, Mamonova, her husband and child were taken to the airport. She was stripped of her citizenship, and they were put on a plane to Austria. After living for four years in France, where she was granted refugee status, she was invited in 1984 to Harvard University and subsequently served as a postdoctoral fellow there and at Radcliffe College's Bunting Institute. The launching of a feminist press has been Mamonova's chief preoccupation even in exile. In addition to continuing to edit and publish Almanac: Woman and Russia, she has also set up Woman and Earth, which documents the history of feminism. She continues to publish and lecture on feminist issues around the globe. In 1980, she was honoured as Woman of the Year by F Magazine in France and in 1998, she received the US World Heroine Prize for her contributions as a founder of the modern Russian women's movement and an international women's leader. Though it was his classic novel "Buddenbrooks" (published when he was just 25) that made him rich and famous and his 1924 work "The Magic Mountain" which won him the Nobel Prize, Thomas Mann's other works include classics such as "Death in Venice" (1913) and "Doktor Faustus" (1947). But beside his literary credits, Mann stands out as one of the most vocal German critics of Nazism. The writer was born in the Baltic port city of Lübeck, the second son of a local merchant and senator in the city government. Mann's mother was the daughter of a German planter who had migrated to Brazil and married a woman of Portuguese-Creole origin. As a boy, Mann hated school but developed a love for music and writing. At 17, he edited his school's periodical, Frühlingssturm (Spring Storm), where he made his debut in prose and poetry published under the pseudonym of Paul Thomas. He worked briefly as a clerk in an insurance company in Munich. The success of his first short story made him quit his job to take up writing full time. Mann developed an interest in Schopenhauer and other German philosophers of his time. His reputation spread well beyond Germany, winning him awards across Europe. However, he soon became unpopular with Hitler's sympathisers, who called him a fraud. While he was on a European tour in 1933 with his Jewish wife, the Nazis won the elections. Mann received a warning from his sister not to return to Germany. He spent the summer in southern France, and later settled in Küsnacht, Switzerland, until 1938. While in exile, Mann issued a series of critical statements against the Nazis, and before the end of the year, his German citizenship was revoked. The University of Bonn also withdrew his honorary doctorate. He replied with a steaming and prophetic letter that was read throughout the world: "If the Nazis held sway," he warned, "the German people would become an 'instrument of war' ... driven by a blind and fanatical ignorance. Woe to the people which ... seeks its way out through the abomination of war, hatred of God and man! Such a people will be lost. It will be so vanquished that it will never rise again." In 1937, Mann founded a literary magazine, Third Humanism, which was published in Munich. He later settled in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1944. While in California, between 1943 and 1946, he wrote his most sophisticated work: "Doktor Faustus, The Life of a German Composer as Told by a Friend". Based on a folk tale, it depicts Germany's sinister adventure into political insanity during the Nazi reign of terror. During the era of McCarthyism, Mann became ill at ease with the pressures to conform and what he perceived as American suspicion of intellectuals. He returned to Switzerland in 1952 and was granted Swiss citizenship in 1953. From Switzerland, he visited his country several times, the last time being when he gave an address on the 150th anniversary of the German classicist, Schiller. Mann died on August 12, 1955 in Zurich, Switzerland. Pedro Alejandro Matta was a law student at the Santiago de Chile University and a member of Socialist Youth, a branch of the Socialist Party, when he was arrested and tortured in May 1975. He was imprisoned for over 13 months by the Pinochet regime, becoming one of 5,000 people who spent time in the torture centre known as Villa Grimaldi. In July 1976, Matta was released from prison on the occasion of an Organization of American States meeting in Santiago. The military junta freed some 120 political prisoners in a gesture of goodwill. Three days later, he fled to the United States, where he had already had been recognised as a political prisoner, and there he was granted asylum. His departure from Chile was assisted by CIME (Comite Intergubernamental para las Migraciones Europeas). Upon arriving in New York, Matta and his family were helped by the International Rescue Committee, which provided food, shelter and English lessons. Various agencies such as the Chilean Refugee Committee, New York Ethical Society, Democratic Chile, and Antifascist Chile were devoted to helping Chilean refugees and campaigning against the Pinochet dictatorship. During the July-August 1976 session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Matta testified about abuses and violations in Chile. He began making a living working in a jewellery shop and eventually moved to San Francisco, where he worked in a factory until he was hired by a private detective firm. He was so successful at his job that he decided to set up his own detective agency. At the end of the dictatorship, Matta returned to Chile after 15 years of exile. He put the skills he acquired as a detective to good use in the service of human rights. He is documenting the abuses of the torture centres, and has joined a small team that is working to preserve Villa Grimaldi as a memorial park. He is also writing a history of Villa Grimaldi based on a day-by-day reconstruction of what happened there during the dictatorship. He identified the names of many of those who were tortured there, and this meticulous work resulted in a list that can be read at the Memory Wall at one end of the park. Matta is also involved in Chile's funas, a slang word meaning "uncovering", or "denouncing". A former torturer is chosen, located, and a peaceful demonstration is held to expose his or her past in front of neighbours or fellow workers. Matta tours universities in the United States lecturing on human rights issues, contemporary Chilean history and the transition from dictatorship to democratic rule. He is also a consultant to non-governmental organisations and along with other prominent international human rights campaigners, was involved in organising the commemoration of the first Human Right Day. Award-winning Chilean journalist Alejandra Matus won instant notoriety with her devastating exposé of corruption, "El libro negro de la justicia chilena" ("The Black Book of Chilean Justice"), which was banned in Chile. To avoid arrest, she fled to Miami, where she now lives in exile. After the US government granted her political asylum, she managed to defy her government's ban by making her book freely available on the Internet. She now works tirelessly to champion the cause of press freedom. The eldest of three children, Matus' life changed irrevocably at the age of seven. That year, her parents separated and a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the government of Salvador Allende. At the age of 17, Matus attended the Pontifical Catholic University of Santiago. Her journalistic career, which began with the opposition magazine Today during her college years, took her to Radio New World, for whom she covered Chile's ongoing transition to democracy. At the daily newspaper, La Época, she gained recognition for her investigation into the "Charly Case", the first case of espionage in the army under the democratically-elected government of Patricio Aylwin. In 1994, Matus uncovered corruption in the Military Hospital of Santiago and made the front page of La Época. But after the article was published, the army charged the newspaper with sedition, giving the paper no choice but to retract her article. This was her first encounter with censorship. Four years later, her article was vindicated when the generals she had named were prosecuted for corruption. But she resigned from La Época and began writing for La Nación. In partnership with journalist Francisco Artaza, she wrote an investigative report on the 1976 Washington car-bomb assassinations of Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Moffit. Matus and Artaza were awarded the Ortega and Gasset Prize for their work, which then led to the publication of "Crime with Punishment", Matus' first journalistic book. Matus' steady rise to prominence in her field culminated in "The Black Book of Chilean Justice". While working at La Nación and the daily La Tercera, she accumulated startling evidence of rampant corruption in the judiciary. She drew up a "history" of corruption in the legal arm of the government. "There has never been a truly independent judiciary in Chile, just a 'service' with no independence," she says. "This service's deference to the authorities of the military government's regime tragically resulted in its failure to protect the lives of hundreds of people." The six-year research project exposed a number of judges, disclosing corruption, miscarriage of justice and unsavoury behaviour, dating from the military regime to the current government. One of them, Judge Servando Jordán, brought legal action against her and her book. In April 1999, Matus returned from Miami, where she was a journalist in residence for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, to attend the official launch of her book in Chile. The day after the book reached the stores, the police started confiscating all copies from bookstores throughout the country. Justice Jordán invoked an archaic but still valid national security law authorising him to ban the book, seize all copies and bring criminal action against Matus and her publisher. Matus' brother, a lawyer, telephoned her to warn her of the arrest warrant and urge her to leave Chile, or face up to five years in prison. Matus boarded a plane to Buenos Aires with her fiancé and in spite of massive protests at home and abroad, she was forced to return to Miami. There, she was declared to be in contempt of court in Chile, and liable to immediate imprisonment if she returned. The United Statess granted Matus political asylum on October 2, 1999, making her the first Chilean to obtain asylum in the US since the end of the Pinochet regime. Human Rights Watch has honoured Matus with its Hellman-Hammet Award for persecuted writers. In 1974, Predrag Matvejevic wrote an open letter asking Yugoslavia's President Tito to step down. He then wrote a series of papers known as "Letters from the Other Europe", defending dissidents forced to live in silence and exile. With the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia, he felt compelled to leave in protest in 1991. Matvejevic was born to a Croatian mother and a White Russian father who had migrated from Odessa in the early 1920s. Born in the ethnically mixed town of Mostar, he studied philology and humanities at Zagreb and Sarajevo universities and went on to specialise in Comparative Literature at the University of Paris. In 1968, Matvejevic, Professor of French at the University of Zagreb, was prohibited from speaking at a student demonstration and publication of his speech was banned. In the late 1960s, he was a part of an intellectual circle known as the School of Korcula, named after the Adriatic island where this culturally mixed group met in the summer. Here, debates were held with such luminaries as historian Ernst Bloch, Henry Lefebvre, Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, Jürgen Habermas, and adherents of the Frankfurt School such as Theodor Adorno, Karel Kosík and Leszek Kolakowski. Calling for "Socialism with a human face", the school and its journal, Praxis, were banned in Yugoslavia after 1974. He found refuge in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. His letter calling for Tito's resignation was only one of dozens of open letters Matvejevic wrote from the 1970s on. He championed the cause of many dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov, Joseph Brodsky, Milan Kundera, the Group Charter 77, Danilo Kis, Czeslaw Milosz and Václav Havel. Published in 1985 in Belgrade as a samizdat, "Letters from the Other Europe" was banned in the Croatian capital, Zagreb. Matvejevic was expelled from the Communist League. Today Matvejevic is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Paris and Slavonic Literature at the "La Sapienza" University of Rome. He acquired Italian citizenship, given to him on "cultural merits". In 1988, he published "The Mediterranean, A Cultural Landscape", an inquiry into the diverse nature of the Mediterranean region. Matvejevic has never stopped in his relentless inquiry into the psychology of nationalism and its role in the tragedy that beset former Yugoslavia, made up of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro and FYR Macedonia. Nationalism, by constituting a new identity, denies that multiple belonging is possible: "There is just one truth, a Serb, a Bulgarian, a Greek, a Croat, an Albanian, a Muslim, a Catholic, an Orthodox and the many other "particular truths" that pretend to stand up for themselves alone. In this way truth was relativised in the Balkans and outside the Balkans," writes Matvejevic. Just one year prior to the outbreak of the war in Yugoslavia, Matvejevic wrote an open letter to Slobodan Milosevic asking him resign, claiming that his only other option left would be suicide. Today, Matvejevic reflects bitterly that now "even suicide would no longer suffice". Always in search of identity, Matvejevic says, "Wherever I go in Yugoslavia I feel at home. At the same time I don't think I usurp the identity of its different constituent peoples in any way. You might call this, wrongly, "unitarist Yugoslavism" or talk of "Yugonostalgia", but it's for the peace and wellbeing of these peoples. I am without prejudice." He currently serves as President of the International Committee for the Mediterranean Centre, Vice-President of International Pen, and co-founder of the Sarajevo Association based in Paris and Rome. In 2000, Matvejevic returned to Belgrade after 10 years of absence. In "On the Danube", he recounts meeting former friends who have been absorbed by a culture that does not distinguish between myth and history. Just before leaving Serbia, he made sure to post another open letter, this time calling for the liberation of Kosovar paediatrician Flora Brovina, who had been detained without trial. Veteran anti-apartheid campaigner Thabo Mbeki spent years abroad working for the African National Congress (ANC) before presiding over South Africa's transition to majority rule and following in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela to become President of South Africa. Both of Mbeki's parents were teachers and activists. His father was a prominent member of the ANC leadership and was imprisoned on Robben Island along with Mandela in 1964. Mbeki joined the ANC Youth League in 1956 while still a student. When the school he attended at Lovedale closed down as a result of a school strike, Mbeki, determined to complete his schooling, continued his studies at home. He followed a correspondence course in economics with London University. (Some years later, while in exile, he received a Masters in Economics from Sussex University.) He moved to Johannesburg, where he came into contact with leading ANC figures such as Walter Sisulu and Duma Nokwe. After the banning of ANC, Mbeki continued to work underground in Pretoria and Witwatersrand. Mbeki left the country in 1962 on the orders of ANC. A child of the liberation struggle, he remained active in student politics. He played an important role in building youth and student sections of ANC in exile. In 1970, he was sent to the Soviet Union for military training and was appointed that same year as Assistant Secretary of the ANC Revolutionary Council. He co-ordinated the movement's propaganda in London (1967-70) and helped build up the underground movement in Lusaka (1971), Botswana (1973-74) and Swaziland (1975). Mbeki became Political Secretary in the Office of the then President of ANC, Oliver Tambo, in Lusaka in 1978. From 1984-89, he was Director of the Department of Information and Publicity. In 1989, Mbeki became head of ANC's International Affairs Department, where he began developing the strategy that would result in the first cross-border contacts with South Africans who were anxious to end apartheid. Returning to South Africa in 1990, he was elected as the first Deputy President of the New Government of National Unity in preparation for South Africa's first multiracial elections in 1994. In 1997, he was elected as the new President of ANC and was inaugurated as President of South Africa in June 1999. Mbeki is known to have coined the African Renaissance culture, which embraces both modernisation and African heritage. For him, to be an African is to be, among others, Khoi, San, European, Malayan, Indian, Chinese: "We refuse to accept that our Africaness shall be defined by our race, colour, gender or historical origins. It is a firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black or white."

In a Los Angeles cafe, Iraqi-American chef Sirine begins a hauntingly sweet love affair with an exiled Iraqi academic. Filmmaker Ella Brady finds not only physical but also emotional nourishment while interacting with the staff at her favorite Dublin restaurant. The Bobby Gold Stories This is the latest thriller by Food Network chef Bourdain, who is also the author of the nonfiction bestseller Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Second Thyme Around In this charming romantic comedy, a divorced couple reheats their relationship by co-hosting a cooking show. Five Quarters of the Orange The author of the bestseller Chocolat tempts the reader once again with this account of a French crêperie owner who is still struggling to overcome emotional wounds she received as a child during World War II. An American bakery owner suffering career and romantic disappointments decides to go to baking school in Japan, in hopes of rediscovering her love of baking and of life. Reduced to tossing salads, Le Cordon Bleu graduate Layla Mitchner quits her job and begins to reexamine her life in this appealing debut for fans of the Chick Lit genre. Widowed Camille, a long-time resident of Watts, defies her family by refusing to give up her dreams of staying in the neighborhood and opening a restaurant. Ruth’s baking hobby helps her to cope with life’s complications in this charming tale of romantic and familial love. Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years In this latest comic look at the life of Adrian Mole, the now-adult Adrian does not let the fact that he can’t cook diminish his hopes for his new job as host of a cooking show. Culinary Mystery Series Diane Mott Davidson Colorado caterer Goldy Bear Schulz Lemon Meringue Pie Murder Minnesota bakery owner Hannah Swenson Hold The Cream Cheese, Kill The Lox Ruby the Rabbi’s wife Death by Chocolate California investigator (and gourmand) Savannah Reid Custard’s Last Stand Pennsylvania Dutch Country inn owner Magdalena Yoder The Secret Ingredient Murders Continuation of Virginia Rich’s series starring cook/sleuth Eugenia Potter Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Ham? Washington, D.C., food critic Chas Wheatley Literature and the Arts Food Varieties: Hundreds of Copyright-Free Illustrations—All Ready to Use 745.4442 qF686 1995 Creative Dough Crafts: 100 Delightful Designs to Make in Your Own Kitchen 745.5 qC334 1997 Celebrate the Red, White & Blue: 101 Patriotic Crafts, Food & Decorating Ideas 745.5 qC392 2002 Toast the Host 745.5 qT627 1996 Feasting: A Celebration of Food in Art 758.9641 fY59 1992 Matisse: A Way of Life in the South of France 759.4 qM43Zna 1998 Food Photography and Styling John F. Carafoli 778.93 qC258 1992 Ismail Merchant’s Florence: Filming and Feasting in Tuscany 791.4372 qR777Zm 1994 The Fireside Book of Wine: An Anthology for Wine Drinkers Alexis Bespaloff, Editor Best Food Writing Holly Hughes, Editor 808.80355 B5612 2000 Eat, Drink and Be Merry: Poems about Food and Drink Peter Washington, Editor 808.80355 E14 2003 Food for Thought: An Anthology of Writings Inspired by Food Joan and John Digby, Editors 808.80355 F686 1987 Food Tales: A Literary Menu of Mouthwatering Masterpieces 808.831 F686 1992 Soupsongs: Webster’s Ark Roy Blount, Jr. - The Age of Innocence - Babette’s Feast - Big Night - Chef in Love - Combination Platter - The Duchess of Duke Street - Eat Drink Man Woman - Fried Green Tomatoes - Like Water for Chocolate - Soul Food - The Spitfire Grill - State Fair - What’s Cooking? - Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

School of Arts and Sciences | Psychology Courses Online General Psychology (3) An introduction to the principles and major concepts of the science of human behavior. Topics include the scientific method, sensation and perception, consciousness, development, learning and memory, language, cognition, intelligence, stress and coping, personality, psychopathology, therapeutic techniques, and social psychology. Prerequisite to all other Psychology courses. Ursuline Studies Stage I Self satellite. Learning Disabilities Program (1-4) On-campus program working with children experiencing learning, behavioral, and emotional problems in either an intense five-week summer camp setting or a Saturday morning social-recreational program. Weekly meetings for orientation, discussion of specific problems, and evaluation of the experience. Crosslisted with SO 155. Psychology of Adjustment (3) This course introduces the student to a variety of issues that contribute to overall mental health and well-being. Topics such as time management, stress, personality, gender, health, friendships, assertiveness, career development, bereavement, self-concept and self-esteem are addressed. Prerequisite: PS 101. Human Growth and Development I: Conception Through Childhood (3) Study of the physical, psychological, cognitive, moral, and social development of the human person from conception through childhood. Prerequisite: PS 101. Psychology of Vision (1) This course investigates how humans detect visual information in the environment and analyze the signals for the purpose of understanding them. Topics include psychophysics, depth perception, color vision and an emphasis on the interpretation and analysis of classroom data. This course is a "hands-on" experience in addition to classroom lecture. Prerequisites: PS101 Lifespan Development (3) Study of the physical, psychological, cognitive, moral, and social development of the human person from conception through death. Prerequisite: PS 101. Career Development in Psychology (1) This course will provide the platform for the investigation of professional and career development in Psychology as well as the means to attain those specific career goals. A wide variety of career paths will be investigated as well as the more common choices students make. What do psychologists do? You'd be surprised. This course is great for psychology majors or those who are curious about becoming a psychology major. Prerequisite: PS101. Child and Adolescent Development (3) In-depth study of the physical, psychological, cognitive, moral and social development of the individual from conception through adolescence. Prerequisite: PS 101. PS 288, 488 Special Topics (3,3) Prerequisite(s): PS 101; other prerequisites to be determined by the instructor on a course by course basis. Science: Good, Bad and Bogus (3) The course reviews in detail the application of the scientific method and critical thinking skills to contemporary psychological and medical treatments. This is an extensive review of both legitimate theories and current "bogus" clinical theories in psychology and science. The student learns a scientific detection kit to evaluate the efficacy and current theories in psychology. Prerequisites: PS 101, MAT 212, PS 322 Changing Roles of Women (3) An examination of the traditional roles of women and the factors that have contributed to maintaining them, and an analysis of the changes which are occurring today and the effects of those changes on women, men, and society. Prerequisite: PS 101. Research Methods I (3) A study of the scientific inquiry. Emphasis is upon the formulation of research questions, development of the appropriate research methodology, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, and report writing. Specific techniques presented include tests and surveys, case studies, correlational methods and experiments. Students collect data under the supervision of the instructor and are responsible for the preparation of scientific reports. Prerequisites: PS 101; MAT 212. Research Methods II (5) Students are responsible for the construction and execution of an independent research study. Students may collaborate in small groups in the definition, development, execution, analysis, and presentation of the project. Students determine the area of investigation with the instructor's approval. Computer software is available to facilitate the construction of the research methodology should the investigator(s) choose to use it. Prerequisites: PS 101, 322; MAT 212. Abnormal Psychology (3) An investigation of the application of basic psychological theory and research to the problem of maladaptive behavior. Prerequisite: PS 101. Psychological Testing (3) Theory, application, and administration of psychological tests; emphasis on basic procedure in clinical tests of intelligence and personality. Prerequisite: PS 101; MAT 212. Theories of Personality (3) A study of personality development, assessment, and functioning; critical evaluation of the major contemporary theories of personality. Prerequisite: PS 101. Sensation & Perception (3) This course investigates how humans detect information in the environment and analyze the signals for the purpose of understanding them. Topics include psychophysics, the study of the various sense modalities, and an emphasis on the interpretation and analysis of sensory information. Prerequisites: PS 101, 322; MAT 212. Industrial-Organizational Psychology (3) This course is the study of the application of psychological principles and theories to the workplace. This course addresses topics such as employee selection and placement, psychological testing, performance appraisal, training and development, leadership, motivation, job satisfaction, work conditions, organizational development, and health in the workplace. Prerequisites: PS101; MAT 212. Cognitive Therapy (3) A study of the procedures, terminology, and goals of cognitive behavior modification and the application of psychological principles in assisting children and adults with behavioral changes. Prerequisite: PS 101. Human Memory & Cognition (3) A co-requisite of PS 380L Human Memory & Cognition Laboratory, this course investigates how humans process information from a sensory signal to higher-level thought processes. Specific topics include attention, perception, memory, language, comprehension, neurocognition, decision-making, and problem-solving. Emphasis is on data interpretation and theoretical developments. Prerequisites: PS 101; MAT 212; PS 322; concurrent enrollment in PS 380L. Human Memory & Cognition Laboratory (1) A co-requisite of PS 380 Human Memory & Cognition, the laboratory class enables the student to collect and analyze data on various topics in cognition and memory and to learn to write scientific research reports. Prerequisites: PS 101, 322; MAT 212; concurrent enrollment in PS 380. Counseling Theories (3) An examination of basic principles and selected current approaches to counseling; the psychophilosophical bases of the theories and their application to human relations in the counseling situation. Prerequisites: at least 9 hours of Psychology course work including PS 101. Social Psychology (3) An analysis of the influence of social groups on individual behavior, with special attention to recent research regarding public opinion, propaganda, intergroup relations, leadership, and group dynamics. Prerequisite: PS 101. Research Methods III (3) Students are responsible for the construction and execution of a novel research study. Students may collaborate in small groups in the definition, development, execution, analysis, and presentation of the project. Students determine the area of investigation with the instructor's approval. Computer software is available to facilitate the construction of the research methodology should the investigator(s) choose to use it. Prerequisite: PS 324. Physiological Psychology (3) An understanding of the cellular and neural bases of behavior and the structure and function of the nervous system. Prerequisites: at least 9 hours of Psychology course work including PS 101. Senior Clinical Research (3) This Seminar addresses the research interests of students aspiring to a graduate career in clinical psychology. The course involves the application of basic research skills that focuses upon (1) the research design and implementation of original research in a bona fide clinical area; (2) an exhaustive review of the literature in a specified clinic topic supervised by the instructor. The course is designed to focus students' research and clinical interests and involves the production of a major research paper to be presented to the class and invited guests. Prerequisites: PS 101, MAT 212, PS 322 PS 461, 462 Independent Study (1-3, 1-3) Directed study and research on a selected topic. Approval of department chair required. Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology (3) An introduction to the basic concepts of neuropsychology.The basic brain-behavior systems underlying attention/concentration, language, memory, vision and audition. Basic assessment protocols that assist the professional in dealing with individuals suffering from chair injuries, vascular disease, accidents, and dementias. Rehabilitation planning is reviewed in the context of a multidisciplinary team approach. Prerequisites: PS 101, 335 or 430; MAT 212; junior status or above. Capstone Course in Psychology (3) This course culminates the psychology major's study by reviewing all major areas in the academic discipline. The course is both a review of undergraduate studies and a preparation for graduate studies in psychology. Prerequisite: Psychology major with senior status. PS 199, 299, 399, 499 External Learning Assessment (credit varies) Measurable and verifiable learning that has occurred outside of the traditional classroom. Numerical designation indicates level of proficiency in the topic. Courses for which there is an exact Ursuline College equivalent are listed by the appropriate numerical designation. "PL" is listed before all course titles for which credit is granted through external learning assessment.

Do vitamins kill people? How many people have died from taking vitamins? Should you stop your vitamins? It depends. To be exact, it depends on the quality of the science, and the very nature of scientific research. It is very hard to know things exactly through science. The waste bin of science is full of fallen heroes like Premarin, Vioxx and Avandia (which alone was responsible for 47,000 excess cardiac deaths since it was introduced in 1999). That brings us to the latest apparent casualty, vitamins. The recent media hype around vitamins is a classic case of drawing the wrong conclusions from good science. Remember how doctors thought that hormone replacement therapy was the best thing since sliced bread and recommended it to every single post-menopausal woman? These recommendations were predicated on studies that found a correlation between using hormones and reduced risk of heart attacks. But correlation does not prove cause and effect. It wasn’t until we had controlled experiments like the Women’s Health Initiative that we learned Premarin (hormone replacement therapy) was killing women, not saving them. A new study “proving” that vitamins kill people is hitting front pages and news broadcasts across the country. This study does not prove anything. This latest study from the Archives of Internal Medicine of 38,772 women found that “several commonly used dietary vitamin and mineral supplements may be associated with increased total mortality”. The greatest risk was from taking iron after menopause (which no doctor would ever recommend in a non-menstruating human without anemia). The word “may” is critical here, because science is squirrelly. You only get the answers to the questions you ask. And in this case, they asked if there was an association between taking vitamins and death in older woman. This type of study is called an observational study or epidemiological study. It is designed to look for or “observe” correlations. Studies like these look for clues that should then lead to further research. They are not designed to be used to guide clinical medicine or public health recommendations. All doctors and scientists know that this type of study does not prove cause and effect. Why Scientists are Confused At a recent medical conference, one of most respected scientists of this generation, Bruce Ames, made a joke. He said that epidemiologists (people who do population-based observational studies) have a difficult time with their job and are easily confused. Dr. Ames joked that in Miami epidemiologists found everybody seems to be born Hispanic but dies Jewish. Why? Because if you looked at population data in the absence of the total history and culture of Florida during a given time, this would be the conclusion you would draw. This joke brings home the point that correlation does not equal causation. Aside from the fact that it flies in the face of an overwhelming body of research that proves Americans are nutrient deficient as a whole, and that nutritional supplements can have significant impact in disease prevention and health promotion, the recent study on vitamins is flawed in similar ways. How Vitamins Save Money and Save Lives Overwhelming basic science and experimental data support the use of nutritional supplements for the prevention of disease and the support of optimal health. The Lewin Group estimated a $24 billion savings over 5 years if a few basic nutritional supplements were used in the elderly. Extensive literature reviews in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine also support this view. Interventional trials have proven benefit over and over again. The concept that nutritional supplements “could be harmful” to women flies in the face of all reasonable facts from both intervention trials and outcome studies published over the past 40 years. Recent trials published within the last two years indicate that modest nutritional supplementation in middle age women found their telomeres didn’t shorten. Keeping your teleomeres (the little end caps on your DNA) long is the hallmark of longevity and reduced risk of disease. A plethora of experimental controlled studies — which are the gold standard for proving cause and effect — over the last few years found positive outcomes in many diseases. These include the use of calcium and vitamin D in women with bone loss; folic acid in people with cervical dysplasia (pre-cancerous lesions); iron for anemics, B-complex vitamins to improve cognitive function, zinc; vitamin C, E, and carotenoids to lower the risk of macular degeneration, and folate and vitamin B12 to treat depression. This is but a handful of examples. There are many more. Why Most Vitamin Studies are Flawed There is another important thing to understand about clinical trials that review the utility of vitamins in the treatment of disease. The studies that show harm are often designed like drugs studies. For example, a study may use a high dose of vitamin E and see what happens. This is actually a prescient example also explored in recent media. Studies recently found that high doses of vitamin E and selenium didn’t prevent prostate cancer and may increase risk. What this study didn’t explore properly was the true biochemical nature of vitamin E and selenium. These nutrients work as antioxidants by donating an electron to protect or repair a damaged molecule or DNA. Once this has happened the molecules become oxidants that can cause more damage if not supported by the complex family of antioxidants used in the human body. It’s sort of like passing a hot potato. If you don’t keep passing it you will get burned. This study simply failed to take this into account. Nature doesn’t work by giving you only one thing. We all agree that broccoli is good for you, but if that were all you ate you would die in short order. The same is true of vitamins. Nutrients are not drugs and they can’t be studied as drugs. They are part of a biological system where all nutrients work as a team to support your biochemical processes. Michael Jordon may have been the best basketball player in history, but he couldn’t have won six NBA titles without a team. Obesity is Linked to Malnutrition The tragedy of media attention on poor studies like these is that they undermine possible solutions to some of the modern health epidemics we are facing today, and they point attention away from the real drivers of disease. Take the case of obesity for example. Paradoxically Americans are becoming both more obese and more nutrient deficient at the same time. Obese children eating processed foods are nutrient depleted and increasingly get scurvy and rickets, diseases we thought were left behind in the 19th and 20th centuries. After treating over 15,000 patients and performing extensive nutritional testing on them, it is clear Americans suffer from widespread nutrient deficiencies including vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, folate, and omega 3 fats. This is supported by the government’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data on our population. In fact 13% of our population is vitamin C deficient. Scurvy in Americans in 2011? Really? But if all you eat is processed food – and many Americans do— then you will be like the British sailors of the 17th century and get scurvy. Unfortunately negative studies on vitamins get huge media attention, while the fact that over 100,000 Americans die and 2.2 million suffer serious adverse reactions from medication use in hospitals when used as prescribed is quietly ignored. Did you know that anti-inflammatories like aspirin and ibuprofen kill more people every year than AIDS or asthma or leukemia? Flaws with the “Vitamins Kill You” Study So what’s the bottom line on this study on vitamins in older white women in Iowa? After a careful reading of this new study a number of major flaws were identified. - Hormone replacement was not taken into consideration. Overall the women who took vitamins were a little healthier and probably more proactive about their health, which led them to use hormone replacement more often (based on recommendations in place when this study was done). 13.5% of vitamin users also used hormones, while 7.2% of non-vitamin users took hormones. Remember the Women’s Health Initiative Study I mentioned above? It was a randomized controlled trial that found hormone therapy dramatically increases risk of heart attack, stroke, breast cancer, and death. In this Iowa women’s study on vitamins, the degree of the effect of harm noted from the vitamins was mostly insignificant for all vitamins except iron (see below) and calcium (which showed benefit contradicting many other studies). In fact, the rates of death in this study were lower than predicted for women using hormone therapy, so in fact the vitamins may have been protective but the benefit of vitamins was drowned out because of the harmful effects of hormones in the vitamin users. - Iron should not be given to older women. Older women should never take iron unless they have anemia. Iron is a known oxidant and excess iron causes oxidative stress and can lead to cardiovascular disease and more. This is no surprise, and should not make you stop taking a multivitamin. If you are an older woman, you simply need to look for one without iron. Most women’s vitamins do not contain it anyway. - Patient background was ignored. In this observational study it was not known why people started supplements. Perhaps it was because of a decline in their health and thus they may have had a higher risk of death or disease that wasn’t associated with the vitamins they were taking at all. If you had a heart attack or cancer and then started taking vitamins, of course you are more likely to die than people without heart attacks or cancer. - The population was not representative. The study looked only at older white women – clearly not representative of the whole population. This makes it impossible to generalize the conclusions. Especially if you are an obese young African American male eating the average American diet. - Forms and quality of vitamins were not identified. There was no accounting for the quality or forms or dosages of the vitamins used. Taking vitamins that have biologically inactive or potentially toxic forms of nutrients may limit any benefit observed. For example synthetic folic acid can cause cancer, while natural folate is protective. - A realistic comparison between vitamins and other medications as cause of death was not made. 0ver 100,000 people die every year from properly prescribed medication in hospitals. These are not mistakes, but drugs taken as recommended. And that doesn’t include out of hospital deaths. The CDC recently released a report that showed in 2009, the annual number of deaths (37,485) caused by improper/overprescribing and poor to non-existent monitoring of the use of tranquilizers, painkillers and stimulant drugs by American physicians now exceeds both the number of deaths from motor vehicle accidents (36,284) and firearms (31,228). In short, this recent study confuses not clarifies, and it has only served up a dose of media frenzy and superficial analysis. It has left the consumer afraid, dazed, bewildered and reaching for their next prescription drug. Please, be smart, don’t stop taking your vitamins. Every American needs a good quality multivitamin, vitamin D and omega-3 fat supplement. It is part of getting a metabolic tune up and keeping your telomeres long! Now I’d like to hear from you … What do you think about the recent media hype regarding vitamins? Why do you think vitamins get this kind of media while pharmaceuticals, which have a much larger impact, are often ignored? Why do you think the decades of research showing positive effects of vitamins is hidden? To your good health, Mark Hyman, MD

THE OPEN MIND THE NATURE OF HUMAN NATURE HOST: RICHARD D. HEFFNER GUEST: ELIE WIESEL: HISTORIAN…AUTHOR…WITNESS VTR: AUGUST 7, 1985 HEFFNER: I’m Richard Heffner, your host on THE OPEN MIND. I had the honor and the pleasure some months back in talking with today’s guest on THE EDITOR’S DESK. There, however, I had to share him with two colleagues and three commercial breaks. And I’ve so much looked forward to this day when for much longer I might intellectually visit with Elie Wiesel, the distinguished teacher, philosopher, historian of the Holocaust. Mostly I want to ask him about indifference. About the carelessness that informs so much of human history, human behavior. On THE EDITOR’S DESK Elie Wiesel said that at the end of World War II in Paris in 1945, again after Auschwitz and Buchenwald he had asked himself the question, why? I asked him whether by now he has discovered the answer. His reply…no. I confess to you that all the questions that I had asked then, they are still open today. I haven’t found any answer. I’ve found components to answers… I’ve found, for instance, that what allowed the situation of absolute cruelty to develop was the indifference of so many people. They let it happen. There were a few maniacs of murder and all around there were others who knew and somehow let it happen. Therefore, in most of my books I denounce indifference to evil as much as I try to denounce evil. And that’s the subject, Mr. Wiesel, that I’d really like to begin with today and ask whether that was a comment about the nature of human nature. WIESEL: At certain times, of course. Some people need indifference. HEFFNER: What do you mean, need? WIESEL: In order to go on living. A person who is always sensitive, always responding, always listening, always ready to receive someone else’s pain, how can one live? Indifference, then, is close to forgetting. One must forget that we die; if not we wouldn’t live. However, there is so much forgetfulness, so much indifference today that we must fight it. We must fight for the sake of our own future. Is this the nature of human beings? It’s part of the nature. HEFFNER: It’s so interesting to me that you should take such a generous position as indeed you always have. But it is not a position seemingly of anger. How come? WIESEL: Oh, if I had anger I think I would have been crushed by it. It’s like hate. Hate destroys the hater much more than the hated. There was so many reasons after the war and since the war for people such as myself to develop anger and to arm anger that it makes no sense. HEFFNER: It makes no sense, but it is human. WIESEL: It’s also human to fight anger. So I have to choose between two options of humanity. And I would rather choose this one. Mind you, if I had felt that it would lead me somewhere, it would give me an answer, it would give humanity an answer, maybe I would have tried it. But maybe it’s because of my weakness. I was afraid of anger. But I never felt hate, nor have I ever felt real anger. HEFFNER: In THE FIFTH SUN, the newest volume, the newest novel I should say, the newest volume actually is the compilation of the NIGHT DAWN and DAY that B’nai B’rith put out. In the novel, THE FIFTH SUN, there seems also to be that conflict. I should say also. You haven’t stated a conflict, but there seemed to be a conflict… WIESEL: Oh, there is a conflict. Of course there is a conflict. After the war the Germans were afraid. They weren’t afraid of the Americans. Nor were they afraid of the French. Or the Russians, yes. But above all, they were afraid of the Jews. Somehow they felt that the Jews would come back and avenge the blood that was shed. And it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. There were Jews in Germany in the DP camps. And there were no acts of vengeance. There was no killing. I remember in 1945 when the war ended for me, April 11, the Americans came into Buchenwald. I was terribly weak and sick and alone and desperate and numb. We hadn’t eaten for so many days. And since April 5th we were close to death, literally, because the Germans were trying to evacuate the camp. They would take out 10,000 people a day. Ship them off to the unknown. And for some reason, really, I don’t know why, we the…block remained behind. Then the Americans came in and I remember there were some Russian war prisoners. They seized American jeeps and they ran into a neighboring town of Weimar and they did commit acts of vengeance. This…for my friends and myself…with the Americans there…I’ll never forget these Americans. I remember there were some Black soldiers. And these were the first Black soldiers that I’d seen in my whole life. And they were crying. They were crying with such anger. They were angry at the killers much more than we were. And they were throwing whatever they had, you know, K-rations and bread and chocolate and we didn’t know what they were. What we wanted to do first before eating is to have a religious service. And we had a religious service. So instead of going and committing act of anger and wrath and bloodshed, we prayed to a God who had abandoned us. To this day, I don’t understand why we did it. HEFFNER: Do you understand why God abandoned you? WIESEL: Oh no. Of course I…I won’t understand it. I refuse to understand it. HEFFNER: Why do you say you refuse to understand it? WIESEL: There can be no reason. If there is a reason it’s the wrong one. HEFFNER: You mean then that God did not abandon you? WIESEL: Oh, I think he did. But I don’t know why. HEFFNER: In terms then of what you felt and what you say so many Jews in the camps did feel, how do you relate that to the attitudes of contemporary Israel? To the Palestinians, for instance? To people Israel considers her enemies? WIESEL: I was in Israel in ’67 during the war…(inaudible)…but I felt I had to be there. I felt I had to be there because the three weeks preceding the war, maybe you remember, were such intensity. We were all convinced that Israel would lose the war. And therefore I went there. And I will not forget, I don’t want to forget the human way in which the Israeli soldiers treated the enemies. They were crying. I was in the desert and I saw how Israeli soldiers gave their water to the Egyptians. There is no hate in the Israeli soldier. HEFFNER: That was true in 1967. Do you think it’s true today? WIESEL: I think it’s true today as well, with some exceptions. Unfortunately, there is now a small segment in Israel which is racist…which embarrasses me…as a Jew. I don’t know whether they and I belong to the same people, whether they and I claim kinship with the same tradition. Judaism can be racist. I believe the Jewish tradition is one of compassion…must be one of compassion. But it’s not Israel. It’s a small segment. Israel as such, I believe, is still human and humanely inspired. HEFFNER: Mr. Wiesel, there are reports that that segment, though small, is getting larger and larger. Do you feel that those reports are accurate, though? Hateful, perhaps, but accurate? WIESEL: I don’t know. I have not been to Israel for years, so I don’t know. I hope they are not. And if they are, I hope that they are only a passing mood. It would be a terrible blow to…not only to Israel as the political entity that it is, but to the history of Israel…to have lived 3,500 years and to come to that conclusion, that we have to try racism. And there is no other option other than violence, and to see everyone else as an enemy? That is not Judaism. HEFFNER: Do you think that perhaps Israel’s relation to the United States might be fostering that? In so many of our own travails there have been so many people who have said that Israelis could do it. The Israeli soldiers could do this or that. They would know how to handle the enemy. WIESEL: How do they handle the enemy? What do the Americans think the Israelis do when they handle the enemy? There is an occupation of territories and I’m always on the side of the humble. But I’m a traumatized person for the reasons you mentioned yourself. I’m traumatized. I cannot believe that the Israeli occupier is just another occupier. Impossible. HEFFNER: But when you say that you’re always on the side of the humble, do you mean on the side of the weak? WIESEL: On the side of the defeated. Of the victim. HEFFNER: Wouldn’t, then, if someone were watching us today and Elie Wiesel says he is on the side of the defeated, the victim, say I can admire or I can embrace this man for the beauty in him, for his feelings, but I must turn for many practical reasons to another philosophy to survive? WIESEL: I’m also for survival. HEFFNER: You did survive. WIESEL: Not only I did, my…personally it doesn’t really matter why…I survived, I don’t know why….I didn’t do anything for them. I swear to you. I was too young, I was too weak. I didn’t know why. I was never a man of initiative. I survived by chance. But because I survived by chance I have to give meaning to my survival. That’s really what I believe in. I don’t think I should speak about a miracle because there was no miracle. If God performed a miracle by saving some, that means he refused to perform miracles in condemning the others. I don’t go for that. So I’m for surviving. I want the Jewish people to survive. And I want all people to survive. Now I’m naïve in thinking that it’s possible to live in a Messianic era when people will live happily not at the expense of someone else’s unhappiness. But at least we must try. HEFFNER: You say that is possible. And you smile. WIESEL: I smile because you and I belong to the prophetic tradition. We have a past which goes very far. Josiah and Jeremiah. These were prophets. They were poets. Jeremiah was also a politician. A great politician. He suffered for it. But what we remembered is not his politics. We remember his poetry. And that goes for Isaiah and for Habakkuh, and all of the other prophets. We claim that tradition as our own, as our memory. Here is a tradition that becomes our memory. How can I not believe in it? HEFFNER: But that memory now is fostered an protected an defended and expanded, too, let us not forget that, by those who have a somewhat different approach. Considerably a different approach from your own, in Israel. WIESEL: I know. That’s not new. You know, we had zealots some 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem. And they were a catastrophe. They were a catastrophe. Jerusalem was destroyed because of those zealots. I claim kinship with a master of Yochanan Ben Zakkai who left Jerusalem because he wanted to establish schools. And he did establish schools. And he was the pillar on which the Talmud has been built. And which kept us alive for 2,000 years. Now again, that doesn’t mean that I think that the Jewish people should simply read the Talmud and not have an army. They have an army. They need an army because we live in pragmatic conditions and circumstances. But without the Talmud and without the word, without language, without poetry, we would not have survived. HEFFNER: Do you think that about Americans…not American Jews…about America generally? Would your same hope and aspirations about the fostering of that tradition of 3,500 years, would it relate to American so powerful and so much involved in the politics of survival vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, nuclear armament, etc.? WIESEL: Yes I do. But I think of the United States and am overtaken by gratitude. That doesn’t mean I’m not critical. I am critical. But gratitude is a dominant feeling about it…that I haven in thinking of America. Number one, this nation has gone to war twice in its history to fight for other peoples’ freedoms…the First World War, the Second World War. Then after the wars the economic help, the billions of dollars that we have given to those poor countries ravaged, destroyed by the enemy. And even now what would the free world do without us? And they’re always ready to help. So I am grateful to this country. Where else really could a refugee such as myself by sitting with you and talking about history or about philosophy? On the other hand, I’m critical. I think for instance, what happened here during the war with regard to the Jewish tragedy is unforgivable. The indifference of the United States leadership to the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe is unforgivable. HEFFNER: What do you think that indifference, as you call it, and that is the word that I started the program with, what is it due to? A lack of knowledge or a lack of information? WIESEL: Oh no, knowledge was here. HEFFNER: Then what? WIESEL: I don’t know. People who were here tell me that there was so much anti-Semitism then. That somehow Roosevelt had to take it into account…he was afraid of acting too far in order not to antagonize the electorate. I am told that even the Congress was against immigration…the the newspapers who know the stories came in…even in the newspapers…did not play it up to sufficient degree. But all these reasons are practical reasons, and I do not accept them. When I know now and we knew it some 20-30 years ago already that Roosevelt and the military and political leadership and including the Jewish leadership of this country knew everything that was going on in Europe. In America they knew about Auschwitz in 1942. I who was in Hungary didn’t. And in 1944 when Hungarian Jews came to Auschwitz they didn’t know what it was. Had they known, many of us would have escaped. The Russians were 15 miles away. How can anyone explain that to me? I don’t know that. The knowledge was here. But somehow the knowledge did not become an ethical knowledge. It was one thing to know that Jews were being killed, and other thing to know that something had to be done for them. And these two zones were separate. HEFFNER: Today, how separate are the zones for Americans? The zones when we think of Ethiopia? The zones when we think of other peoples who are suffering? WIESEL: I think the American nation responds. When we saw the Ethiopian pictures on television, there was a response, a very powerful response in the United States. Not enough mind you because I think they should have taken American planes. The Air Force should have given a hundred airplanes to carry the food to…and doctors and teachers and builders, sociologists, anything to go and help these people. But still, the American, as an American, he or she helped. I know I was going around schools, high schools, asking children to give one dollar. And they gave in the thousands, gave dollars to the Ethiopian children. That was true about Biafra. It was true with the boat people. American people responded. Maybe it’s a guilt feeling. Maybe because in the Second World War the gates were closed. But now the boat people are being allowed in. The Hungarian refugees did come in. HEFFNER: You know, I’d like to come back to this question about the nature of human nature, unless you were to tell me it will be whatever we make it. But given an absence of those who raise our consciousness, given simply a feat before us whether it is the destruction of the Jews, whether it is Auschwitz, Buchenwald…Whether it is what we heard during the war and before about what was happening…without prodding, what do you think you and I and most of the rest of us would do without the training, without the ethical training? WIESEL: Yes, but what is ethical training? It’s teaching. We are teachers. We write, we speak, and we teach. That means we train other people. In order for us to be able to train, there’s only one, to me, one very important component, that’s memory. As long as we remember, we can train. And we can sensitize. I was teaching once at Yale for a year, and I remember I asked my first class, what is the opposite of literature? HEFFNER: The opposite of literature? WIESEL: And they all tried to give me answers, you know. Ignorance and so forth and vulgarity…(inaudible)…the opposite also is indifference because it is the opposite of everything else. The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. The opposite of culture is indifference. Now, therefore, the aim of literature is to sensitize. The aim of culture is to sensitize. The aim of television is to sensitize. So if we remember we can sensitize. If we don’t, then we are no longer sensitive either. And then… HEFFNER: but you see, you describe and I feel compelled to ask you to prophesize. WIESEL: I cannot… HEFFNER: …your tradition of prophets, what would be your assumptions as to where we are going in terms of our sensitivity to suffering, in terms not of our indifference but of our devotion, our concern? WIESEL: Prophets ceased to prophesize some 2,500 years ago. There are no longer prophets. Still if I had to foresee the future, I’d be terribly pessimistic. I’m pessimistic because of the nuclear threat and to me although I never compare anything to Auschwitz, nor do I compare Hiroshima to Auschwitz, you should never do that, but I think one is a consequence of the other. Auschwitz paved the way for Hiroshima. HEFFNER: As a response? WIESEL: Not as a response, as a possibility. It’s possible to kill a community of people. It’s possible. Now today there are so many nuclear weapons and fortunately for the moment the big powers, I think, are responsible. They won’t use them. But one day smaller nations will get hold of them, and we know they will. What then? Just imagine a Khomeini with nuclear powers. But he would use them right away. Not against Israel by the way, but against Iraq. Imagine Idi Amin ten years ago with nuclear weapons. That is really my fear. But at the same time I have the theory that something is happening in our country. It’s happening among the young people. A certain awareness, a moral awareness. So I’m oscillating between ultimate despair and necessary hope. HEFFNER: Perhaps an unfair question. If you felt just precisely the opposite, would you tell me so? WIESEL: Absolutely. I belong now to a generation…I don’t play with words anymore. HEFFNER: So that your…this touch of optimism or hopefulness is genuine? WIESEL: It is, of course. But it’s also an existential leap as you know. WIESEL: I have no choice. I must because the despair is so strong I must fight it. In order to fight it, I must cling to some hope. HEFFNER: That attitude…is that what you think produces progress, let’s say? That existential jump? WIESEL: What do you call progress? Is it technological progress? I think our generation suffers from it. We go so far in technology that we remain behind in the morality of philosophy. Just to see the discrepancy between what we did in science and what we did in thought, in metaphysics, or even in poetry, art. So what is progress? My feeling, of course…progress must be translated in human terms, in words, in words of wisdom, compassion. And there we did not make much progress. HEFFNER: Do you think that your words at the time, turning the clock back now, of Bitburg, of the President’s visit, your very very active…shall I…perhaps not political is not the word…but your intense ethical involvement in these questions…were they Wieselish or were they…do you in any way regret having moved from your study, your teacher…but having moved from your every day work at writing? WIESEL: In a way, yes, because I told you before that I lost six weeks. For the first time in my life, I didn’t study nor did I write for six weeks. And now I have to catch up these six weeks. HEFFNER: Which was the indulgence? WIESEL: It’s too much because I realize the importance, the historic importance of the event, that we must do something. We must speak up. Because it was a watershed. And even today I think it was a watershed. And therefore we had to do something, but it didn’t help much. Still, a few people listened, a few people learned, a few people felt that now they must learn more. I don’t regret it. HEFFNER: But you see, that’s why I ask, when I jokingly, and I have no right to joke about it, ask which is the indulgence. I really meant is the avoidance…had the avoidance of that kind of involvement been the indulgence, or was the activism the indulgence? WIESEL: I understand you. HEFFNER: Which way will you go now? WIESEL: Oh, I go back to my study, to my writing. I am not good as an activist. It’s not my role. HEFFNER: You were very good. WIESEL: No, no. I’m not really. I’m not…not good for me. HEFFNER: When you came into the study, into the studio, I shouldn’t say study. Maybe that’s a slip I should not make. It is clear to me that so many people remembered you. Not just as the author and as the historian of the Holocaust, as the moralist. As a person who took a very strong role at Bitburg. WIESEL: Well I don’t regret it. But it’s really not something I like to do. I really like better to be with my students and my classroom and my study and read and read and read and write. HEFFNER: Where is it written that you should be able to do what you want to do? WIESEL: It’s not. I don’t. The fact is I’m sitting here speaking on television. HEFFNER: Indeed. That’s what makes me wonder whether you have not felt some compulsion to do something more. To be involved more. WIESEL: No, really. I would lie if I were to say I’ve felt a compulsion. I don’t take myself that seriously. Not in this respect. However, again, once I did it, I felt I had to do it right. Not to say things I would regret later. And I feel that I did not say anything that I regret now. I tried to endow every word that I said with a certain meaning which is mine, and with respect to other people’s words. HEFFNER: I think not only do you show that respect, but I think the world shows you that respect, feels it very deeply as I do. And I want to thank you for joining me today, Elie Wiesel. And thanks too, to you in the audience. I hope you’ll join us again next time here on THE OPEN MIND. Meanwhile, as an old friend used to say, “Good night, and good luck.”

The course offers an intensive introduction to the Latin language that prepares students to read the major authors of ancient Roman literature. In addition to their systematic study of grammar and syntax, students translate excerpts from Vergil, Seneca and the Vulgate Bible. This course is designed for students who have had no previous experience with Latin, as well as those who have had some Latin but want to review the fundamentals of grammar. - Winter 2013 - Twilight Hall 201(AXT 201) - 9:00am-12:00pm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (Jan 7, 2013 to Feb 1, 2013) - Alan Fishbone Randall Ganiban - Requirements Fulfilled: - LNG WTR - View availability, prerequisites, and other requirements. - Course Reference Number (CRN):

Today I’m at my desk and I’m asked to write my last Willamette World News post. I look out the window of my Uaps apartment, it’s sunny out, the petals of the blooming flowers this flash Spring brought are already falling, and there he is, in the distance: the Golden Man —Looking west. So I remember all those tedious hours when I had to look over the 150 American universities that are part of the ISEP program, the exchange program I’m here with. I remember how I had to come up with a list of 10 only, and one of those 10 would choose me. I had been in the States three times already, so I had a good idea of what I wanted, and what I did not want. All the central states, out. Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, out —already lived there, was great, but let’s go for a new adventure. California, out. First choice, some college in Amherst, Massachusetts. I’ve always been attracted to New England. Second choice, Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City, across from Manhattan —New York City is my ridiculous must-go place. When I finally got the answer, I was really excited. I was given my third choice, Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Grand! I had always wanted to go to the west coast. I’m an avid hiker and I had heard of Oregon’s wonderful landscape. I had been reading Raymond Carver that year and our boring literature teacher kept praising this state for its natural beauty —and he was right! I had heard of Portland as a great city, too, from a friend that I met in Philadelphia but has a house in Portland. So off I go. Hop on a train in Bordeaux, hop on a plane in Paris, land in New York City… yeah, I told you, I have to go there each time I come to the States. Spend some time there, trying to bear the August hot humidity (or humid heat, as you wish), I’m visited by my “American mother” from Pennsylvania, the first place in the US where I lived. Take another plane, fly over Minnesota, the second place where I lived in the US, and land in Seattle. Spend some time there, couchsurfing, having fun, loving it. Then hop on the train down to Portland. Couchsurf, find Portland ugly but incredibly charming and fun, and finally, carpool to Salem. Over the years I have explored the US, traveling like a pioneer towards the unknown territories of the west. It’s just been my own manifest destiny history —founding of the US, Louisiana purchase, westward expansion, get the title of this post? My time in Salem and as a WU student was great. It took me only a few days to realize how lucky I was to get not my first, not my second, but my third choice on my ISEP list. Willamette University is the small community where everybody knows everybody (at least by sight) that I wanted. It’s a place with the student-professor relationships I like, something close and casual, fulfilling and pleasant. It’s a place where students think. Yes they have fun, yes some do things that are not that smart. But yes, they think. They are world-aware, they are knowledgeable about plenty of things, they are active and dynamic, et cetera. It feels good to converse with one’s peers here. As for Salem, well yeah, it’s even uglier than Portland. But it, too, has some charm. The riverside, if not embellished to make it an active heart of town, is still pretty and I enjoyed my walks along it with dates, strolling on the pedestrian bridge, or reading in the grass by the carrousel. Some cafés and coffee places are quaint, like Gov’ Cup or the more remote Clockwork Café. In Salem, you also find hidden bookstores and mysterious passages, or you go up the hill and you find out that Salem has some enormous mansions. Some restaurants are good. It’s not any close to Portland quality (and, to be a snob, very far from European quality), but they’re not bad. Andaluz has some real cheese and will serve you squid for a reasonable price. Gamberetti’s has good gluten-free options. The Indian restaurants serve good cheap food. So yes, Salem has the ugliest capitol building of the 50 states, and yes, the city board and Amtrak haven’t ever thought that they could put fences along the train track so that trains wouldn’t have to push the horn loudly and drive us all crazy, and yes, Salem has neither the charm of New England nor the life of New York, but I really enjoyed my time here… … And in Oregon in general! I just loved going for a hike every weekend or so. The Columbia River Gorge is gorgeous, the coast is cool, and central Oregon is a heaven for adventurers. As a matter of fact, I liked it all so much that I’m staying here. Well, trying to at least. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher and I have decided I would teach French in American middle and/or high schools. So, I spent a considerable amount of my time looking up information about the best schools of education of the country, the best way to be certified to teach in the US, the best way to get financial aid, etc. It turned out that the University of Oregon is the 8th best school of education in the country, even far better than the UCs, NYU, and most Ivy League schools! (according to U.S.News and world report) After some tedious application processes, I was admitted at the University of Oregon. I am pretty excited. Eugene is actually uglier yet (yes, possibly uglier than Salem), and the U of O is a big school, while I prefer smaller ones, but I am really excited. The MAT program is really good apparently, and it will give me a license to teach French and English as a second language. I am still looking for funds, because what I didn’t get, however, is the $20,000 scholarship I was hoping for, but I hope to be fine: I keep looking for grants and scholarships, I work several jobs on campus, and I am also doing a big fundraising. And what I haven’t raised, I suppose I will borrow. So this May, when I go back to France, it will be for a short month. I will visit friends and family, stop in Paris to get a new visa and just because I love the French capital, and I will show France around to my girlfriend who’s coming along too. And then I’ll be back here. Which will be weird because I have not lived in the same area for two years in a row for the past 7 years… but I guess I need to make sure Oregon becomes a state… (if you’re going “what?” it’s a reference to my lousy carry-over comparison to the US westward expansion). Well, voilà, what else can I say? I guess I’ll finish on a praising note for Willamette University, where I spent a fun and happy year. A University with a pretty campus that makes up for Salem’s otherwise lack of aesthete… A university where people take eagles for chickens… A university that makes effort to have a variety of foods and accommodate everyone’s needs (from vegans to gluten-frees). A university that makes green efforts, it even has its own organic farm and forest, which is really awesome. I really enjoyed my day making apple cider at Zena: A university with… ok, let’s stop my random praises here. But in a word, WU rocks. Thank you Willamette! Baptiste Delvallé, April 2012

You know it’s getting close to Autumn when Carl issues his RIP Challenge! This is the third year I’ve participated and I pretty much chose the easy route this year; reading two books (Peril the Second, as it’s called). My first book is: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (published 2008, fiction, 576 pages, ISBN-10: 0061374229 & ISBN-13: 978-0061374227) The book was reviewed better than I ever could by the amazing Stephen King: “I flat-out loved The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Dog-lovers in particular will be riveted by this story, because the canine world has never been explored with such imagination or emotional resonance. Yet in the end, this isn’t a novel about dogs or heartland America — although it is a deeply American work of literature. It’s a novel about the human heart, and the mysteries that live there, understood but impossible to articulate. Yet in the person of Edgar Sawtelle, a mute boy who takes three of his dogs on a brave and dangerous odyssey, Wroblewski does articulate them, and splendidly. I closed the book with that regret readers feel only after experiencing the best stories: It’s over, you think, and I won’t read another one this good for a long, long time. [me: Oh, so very true!!!] In truth, there has never been a book quite like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I thought of Hamlet when I was reading it (of course… and in this version, Ophelia turns out to be a dog named Almondine), and Watership Down, and The Night of the Hunter, and The Life of Pi — but halfway through, I put all comparisons aside and let it just be itself. I’m pretty sure this book is going to be a bestseller, but unlike some, it deserves to be. It’s also going to be the subject of a great many reading groups, and when the members take up Edgar, I think they will be apt to stick to the book and forget the neighborhood gossip. Wonderful, mysterious, long and satisfying: readers who pick up this novel are going to enter a richer world. I envy them the trip. I don’t reread many books, because life is too short. I will be rereading this one.” My comments: I had heard absolutely nothing about this book when I walked into the local Barnes and Noble with my friend Michelle, who pointed it out to me and said, “I think that’s a book you’d like.” and as usual, she was quite right. This is an absolutely amazing first novel; part ghost story, part gut-wrenching drama, I absolutely could not put it down! Oh, how I envy those of you that haven’t read this yet; you are in for an amazing ride. As stated in the Kirkus Reviews: “The story takes Jungle Book-ish turns…It resolves, however, in ways that will satisfy grown-up readers.” Keep the tissues handy… You can read the first chapter here and even better, there’s an excerpt about the dog named Almondine here at the author’s website. And if you’d like to see what other folks are reading for this challenge, click here

The Omega Point is the purported maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which some believe the universe is evolving. The term was coined by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). In this theory, developed by Teilhard in The Future of Man (1950), the universe is constantly developing towards higher levels of material complexity and consciousness, a theory of evolution that Teilhard called the Law of Complexity/Consciousness. For Teilhard, the universe can only move in the direction of more complexity and consciousness if it is being drawn by a supreme point of complexity and consciousness. Thus Teilhard postulates the Omega Point as this supreme point of complexity and consciousness, which in his view is the actual cause for the universe to grow in complexity and consciousness. In other words, the Omega Point exists as supremely complex and conscious, transcendent and independent of the evolving universe. Teilhard argued that the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is "God from God", "Light from Light", "True God from true God," and "through him all things were made." The idea is developed in later writings, such as those of John Godolphin Bennett (1965), John David Garcia (1971), Paolo Soleri (1981), Frank Tipler (1994), and Ray Kurzweil, as well as in science fiction literature. Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man states that the Omega Point must possess the following five attributes. It is: - Already existing. - Only thus can the rise of the universe towards higher stages of consciousness be explained. - Personal – an intellectual being and not an abstract idea. - The increasing complexity of matter has not only led to higher forms of consciousness, but accordingly to more personalization, of which human beings are the highest attained form in the known universe. They are completely individualized, free centers of operation. It is in this way that man is said to be made in the image of God, who is the highest form of personality. Teilhard expressly stated that in the Omega Point, when the universe becomes One, human persons will not be suppressed, but super-personalized. Personality will be infinitely enriched. This is because the Omega Point unites creation, and the more it unites, the increasing complexity of the universe aids in higher levels of consciousness. Thus, as God creates, the universe evolves towards higher forms of complexity, consciousness, and finally with humans, personality, because God, who is drawing the universe towards Him, is a person. - The Omega Point cannot be the result of the universe's final complex stage of its own consciousness. Instead, the Omega Point must exist even before the universe's evolution, because the Omega Point is responsible for the rise of the universe towards more complexity, consciousness and personality. Which essentially means that the Omega Point is outside the framework in which the universe rises, because it is by the attraction of the Omega Point that the universe evolves towards Him. - That is, attainable and imperative; it must happen and cannot be undone. Bennett and the Hyparchic Future In 1965, in Vol. 4 ("History") of his The Dramatic Universe, Bennett criticized a mechanistic evolutionary view of the Omega Point. He writes (pp. 130–131): There is something suspicious in any view of history that makes one moment the culmination of the evolutionary process... Rather than believe that significance began with man, we should prefer to regard the entire history of life on the earth as one Great Event that is significant above all else in its integrity and relevance to a plan that originated beyond the earth itself. Within the total event, every subordinate event represents a contribution to the whole. If we suppose that the Plan requires the overcoming of separateness, then we should say that the value of the contributions is not to be assessed by their actual future results, but by their place within the Plan that is conceived outside Time itself--in the Hyparchic Future... The commonly held view is that Creation means one of two things: either complete or detailed fashioning by the Creator of the entire universe and every part of it; or else, the launching of a process that, after its inception, is governed by laws without renewed Intervention, or at most Intervention of the very special kind in the Incarnation of God as Man. The second alternative is preferred by Christian theologians such as de Chardin who seek to reconcile Christian faith with belief in mechanistic evolution. The first doctrine states, in effect, that the detailed Pattern of the Creation is foreordained, and the second restricts the Divine Act to the creation of the Plan. According to our view, neither of those is adequate. We hold that there are both Plan--in the Hyparchic Future--and also Pattern--in the Eternal Potential Energy field. Frank Tipler uses the term Omega Point to describe what he maintains is the ultimate fate of the universe required by the laws of physics. Tipler identifies this concept as the Christian God and in later writing, infers correctness of Christian belief from this concept. Tipler (1994) has summarized his theory as follows: - The universe has finite spatial size and the topology of a three-sphere; - There are no event horizons, implying the future c-boundary is a point, called the Omega Point; - Sentient life must eventually engulf the entire universe and control it; - The amount of information processed between now and the Omega Point is infinite; - The amount of information stored in the universe asymptotically goes to infinity as the Omega Point is approached. Key to Tipler's exploration of the Omega Point is that the supposition of a closed universe evolving towards a future collapse. Within this universe, Tipler assumes a massive processing capability. As the universe becomes smaller, the processing capability becomes larger, due to the decreasing cost of communications as the systems shrink in size. At the same time, information from previously disconnected points in space becomes visible, giving the processors access to more and more information. Tipler's Omega Point occurs when the processing capability effectively becomes infinite, as the processors will be able to simulate every possible future before the universe ends - a state also known as "Aleph". Within this environment, Tipler imagines that intelligent beings, human personalities, will be run as simulations within the system. As a result, after the Omega Point, humans will have omnipotence, able to see all of history and predict all of the future. Additionally, as all history becomes available, past personalities will be able to run as well. Within the simulation, this appears to be the dead rising. Tipler equates this state with the Christian heaven. Some transhumanists argue that the accelerating technological progress inherent in the Law of Accelerating Returns will, in the relatively near future, lead to what Vernor Vinge called a technological singularity or "prediction wall." These transhumanists believe we will soon enter a time in which we must eventually make the transition to a "runaway positive feedback loop" in high-level autonomous machine computation. A result will be that our technological and computational tools eventually completely surpass human capacities. Some transhumanist writings refer to this moment as the Omega Point, paying homage to Teilhard's prior use of the term. Other transhumanists, in particular Ray Kurzweil, refer to the technological singularity as simply "The Singularity". Science fiction literature - In the 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon, what later came to be called the Omega Point by Teilhard de Chardin was reached when the Cosmic Mind encountered the Star Maker (the Creator of the Cosmos). - In the Isaac Asimov short-story "The Last Question", humanity merges its collective consciousness with its own creation: an all-powerful cosmic computer. The resulting intelligence contemplates the cyclic nature of the universe, ending with a twist. - In Childhood's End, a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, the destiny of humanity – as well as most of the other intelligent species in the universe – seems to merge with an overall cosmic intelligence. - In Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos series, the Omega Point is used extensively. The Catholic priest character Father Hoyt/Duré who is introduced to the story frame as one of the pilgrims in the first two volumes of the tetralogy (Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion) eventually becomes Pope Teilhard I. - In Darwinia, a novel by Robert Charles Wilson, a mysterious event in 1912 transforms Europe into an immeasurably strange place, full of hitherto unknown flora and fauna, and it is revealed at the very end that the entire story is a tiny part of a virtual war inside what is effectively an Omega Point metacomputer at the end of time. - In the first part of Poul Anderson's novel Harvest of Stars, North America is ruled by the Avantists, an oppressive pseudo-religious regime that draws its justification from a commitment to take humanity to what they call the Omega Point. It uses the Greek infinity symbol as a logo, and it is deemed politically correct to greet each other with "alpha", to which the reply is "omega". However, since the Avantist Advisory Synod believes in social engineering and technical progress as the means to advance humanity, its teachings are in fact transhumanist. - In Tomorrow and Tomorrow, a novel by Charles Sheffield, the main character Drake Merlin is on a quest to cure his dying wife. He has her frozen and then freezes himself in the hope that the future holds the cure. Eventually, he finds that the only hope to having her back is to wait out the aeons until the Omega Point, at which time she will again be accessible. - George Zebrowski wrote a trilogy of space opera novellas, collectively called The Omega Point Trilogy and published as a single volume in 1983. The name appears to be a coincidence; it predates Tipler by many years and does not involve any of the Omega Point ideas listed above. - In Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy, the Omega Point is a repository for the souls of the dead of all sentient species in the Universe. It is implied that this is also the point to which the universe will eventually collapse. - Humayun Ahmed's novel Omega Point (2000) concerns multiverses, a developing theory of time and a manifestation of the Omega Point that interferes with history to allow the theory to reach fruition. - Stephen Baxter writes about the Omega Point in many books including Manifold: Time and Timelike Infinity. - Julian May's Galactic Milieu Series draws heavily for both plot and background on the concepts of Teilhard de Chardin's Omega point theories. - Shantaram, a novel by Gregory David Roberts, refers to the philosophical theory that the universe "tends towards complexity." - Frederik Pohl's The Other End of Time tells of a war between two alien civilizations for control of the Omega point. - In the A Certain Magical Index series, the concept of Level 6 for espers in Academy City is basically the same as the Omega Point for humans. - Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de ♦ The Phenomenon of Man Scanned book in the Internet Archive - Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de ♦ The Phenomenon of Man An HTML version of the book (without illustrations) - Human Evolution Research Institute - Princeton Noosphere project cites Teilhard de Chardin - Teilhard de Chardin on evolution - Essays by Tipler on the Omega Point - Computer history's stride towards an expected Omega Point by Jürgen Schmidhuber, from "The New AI: General & Sound & Relevant for Physics, In B. Goertzel and C. Pennachin, eds.: Artificial General Intelligence, p. 175-198, 2006."

Listen to Joe Weil’s album of original poetry and music, recorded with the help of Vic Ruggiero. I met Joe Salerno in 1987 while featuring at a church in Morristown, New Jersey. As I recall, there was snow that night, and ice and I almost killed a fellow poet, Charlie Mosler when he went to get into my car, and, being a relatively new driver, I took off a little prematurely and turned him into an ugly version of Peggy Fleming. I was featuring with Steward Ross, a veteran of the New Jersey poetry scene. Joe, Stewart, and Charley are all dead now. It does not seem strange. Of the three only Charlie got to live into his sixties. Successful and well lauded poets live as long as borscht belt comedians; having your ass kissed on a fairly constant basis tends to increase life expectancy. However, the rank and files, the grunters, the ones who make it possible for poetry to exist anywhere outside of New York City often seem to enjoy a life expectancy equivalent to the male population of bullet ridden ghettos. None of them smoked. Steward did like his ganja and his drink and never tired of missing his days as a hippie in San Francisco, but Joe was a vegetarian, and Charley a man who insisted on sleeping ten hours a day, and, as I recall, he lectured me on my fondness for disco fries and double cheeseburgers. At any rate, they’re dead, and so is the wonderful poet and human being, Enid Dame, and the equally kind and gracious Yictove. These may be poets you’ll know, but I doubt it. They were all a regular or, at least frequent part of my poetry scene. I hung out in diners with them, argued and conversed late into the night. All of them were older than me, Joe by ten years, and Charley by a good 20, but there is no age where a mind is lonely for fellow travelers. We could have all been Trekkie or model airplane enthusiasts. I would like to think poetry is more than a hobby for nut jobs. Still, any hobby that creates years of friendship and the sense of communion with both the living and the dead more than justifies its absurdities. I have told endless stories about Joe to my students. I have given out at least a hundred copies of his book. I am sick of my stories. I feel they are only the grooves I have worn in the road of my futility, attempting to peal out of my grief. I hate that he is not alive. On the day of my wedding, I wanted him to be there–he and my mother, and I wept like an idiot in the bathroom. He was a friend who could be more happy for your good fortune than you yourself. I remember when I featured with Allen Ginsberg, he showed up with his sons at my house, followed me to Camden. When Ginsberg needed a lift to West Paterson to see his step mother, Joe let his sons take the wheel of his car, and he rode with me, a sleepy Ginsberg, and my friend Deborah LaVeglia. He was much happier about the day than I was. It was May, 1995. Joe already had a slight pain in his back. By November of that year, he was dead of lung cancer– age forty-seven. I always felt privileged that someone as talented as Joe wanted to be my friend. I couldn’t fathom it, but decided to receive the gift gladly. Besides his talent, I had no idea how accomplished he was. He had won the Hopwood award at Michigan, and his competition was Gregory Orr, and Jane Kenyon. I never knew until he died. Joe did not brag. He did not feel the need to puff himself up. His attention to other poets was beyond the often considerable selfishness of this “Art.” As Donald Hall wrote in the postlude to Joe’s book: Joe Salerno’s devotion to poetry–to the art, not to himself as a practitioner– set a standard for everybody… if any cynicism or professionalism had stuck to me, Joe rubbed it away by his clear and radiant passion for the art itself. Tonight I will introduce a poet at the official University reading for faculty members. She is a fine poet and does much for the program here. It will be a pleasure to introduce her, but, afterwards, my wife and I will not be sitting at a diner, chatting it up. Charlie will not be talking in 50s jazz lingo, and scolding me for my bad eating habits. Joe will not be there to remember whole lines of other people’s work. It will be professional, and pleasant (if a little stiff), but the camp fire of what is most human, most vital, most important will be missing. I try to tell my students that professionalism can be murderous. It can not offer what poetry truly has to give. It can succeed at the level of men, but it can not fail at the level of the truly profound and meaningful pact we make with love, beyond, and perhaps, because of our futility. I tell them certain forms of failure are Godly, and never to be mistaken for that poor, rather boring mechanism we call success. This is what Joe pointed out in his great poem “Poetry is the Art of Not Succeeding.” I will end with a different poem of Joe’s because today the weather is horrible, and I feel gutted and lonely and I miss Joe as well as many others. We were good friends for only eight years. He’s been dead almost twice as long as I knew him. My mother has been dead twice as long as I knew her, but you do not ‘Unknow” those you love. Moving forward is for self-help books and motor boats I have always been on the side of Lot’s wife, and of Orpheus. All things vanish before our eyes, and we have no recourse but to defy that edict of what passes away and to break our gaze against the stones. The Invention of Immortality I had just turned to go , when you called me back into your room The lamp a velvety glow beside the bed. “I love you,” you said to me, the words strangely stark and serious in their familiar setting. And leaning over you, your small face at four and a half just blossoming into boyishness, you reached up and drew me down with such a into your pillow, whispering, “Even when I’m dead I’ll love you.” I’m happy to announce that we are rebooting our Poem of the Week feature here at THEthe. Every Thursday, THEthe will post a poem by an author that an editor has solicited. Every month, one of our contributors takes a turn at being the editor. Hopefully this will guarantee a nice diversity of tastes and styles. We hope that you enjoy this feature in the future as much as we think we’ll enjoy posting it. I (Micah) will take the reins for the remaining Thursdays of November. The inaugural poem of our relaunch is by Rosanne Wasserman. Enjoy! Ow, why are walls so hard? Somebody’s mom could walk through them: Not every dream sequence needs dwarves, Though I get giants, like that Trevor Winkfieldian Unfolding himself from a pillow in Louisville, Half of a scissors-pair, wearing a boot, Human face inside handle-loop. We questioned him like an oracle: “What’s going to happen next?” But he just stared and said, “There is no future.” Later I figured, “After all, He’d just pulled himself out of a pillow,” Rationalizing, and wondered If his wings were wet, in folds— But he was pretty much nothing but Cold gray steel. What else could Happen to something like him, anyway? But the busted hardware drawer Won’t do for an oracle. He had a point. Just one point, yes, but sharp enough, Even in that Doc Marten’s. He was right, for the half he spoke for. He was a knife now, but Atropos used Whole scissors: past and future Meet, then there is no present. His other Half’s no dream. Wake carefully. Entering a new language is entering a new world. But what does it mean to be “in” a world? The word “in” originally had no spatial connotations. To say that someone was “in” something meant that they existed “in anger” or “in love.” Love and anger are not places, but modes of being. But this means that you can say these statements another way: to be “in anger” is to be angrily and “in love” is to be lovingly. To be “in a world” means to be worldly. When you enter a new language, you enter a new mode of being. This is true not simply of English, Chinese, Farsi, etc. but also of the language games of technologies, skills, and other modes of thought. As long as there is a new vocabulary, it is a new language game, and anywhere there are new rules is a new world. Entering a new language is not simply acquiring a new means of communication, but, as Micah Towery said, learning a new way of thinking. I would go even further: to enter a new language is to enter a new way of being. As Okakura Kakuzo said in The Book of Tea, “All translation is treason.” This is very true, but I would modify this: all we have is translation. All we have is treason. Every conversation is predicated on our essential being-guilty. To put it another way, discourse only proceeds when we remain open to the possibility of miscommunicating our ideas. Closedness is the greatest enemy to communication and to healthy relationships. If there is ever such a thing as Original Sin, it is most obvious in language – the mere birth of language brings about contradictory concepts. Language unites and separates. All discourse, though, requires concerted effort. The word “relationship” is overused, and there is nothing inherently good in having a relation to anything – relations can be good or bad, as my wife’s in-laws consistently prove. Every action (and word) has a limitless number of consequences, most of which cannot be predicted. Because of the unpredictability of spontaneous conversation, the only way to sustain dialogue is forgiving the unintended consequences of the Other’s words (and our own). Forgiveness is therefore the very life of conversation and the heart of discourse. Without a constant flow of forgiveness even disagreement is impossible. Forgiveness frees the victim and the victimizer from the crime. The victim is freed from the inhibition of the grudge, and the criminal is freed from the bondage of her sin. Engaging a new language is one of trial and error, but also always forgiveness of errors. So, while we are all guilty of treason and are thus all guilty, we are all also in need of forgiveness. Whatever truth may be, it is always expressed in a historically-bound vocabulary and cannot be abstracted from our historical situation. But what makes up our vocabulary? Whatever conditions affected our species, our countries, our families, and finally ourselves. Since none of these conditions are ever identical, no vocabulary is identical and thus no world is identical. Translation is treason, but treason is our own means of being in the world. If we believe metaphors can build civilizations, and if we agree that power is the right to decide which metaphors will be beliieved and instituted as truths, which ones will generate class, or race, or who is worthy, and who is debased, then we get at the heart of why Surrealism was, initially, a political movement whose strategy of disassociation and derangement was an attempt to take metaphors away from the power structures of state, of reason, of class, filter them through the subconscious, and re-empower them free of capitalist oppression. The trouble was, surrealism could do the same thing to Stalinism, or communism, and its process of dismantling agreed-upon authority got many a dadaist and surrealist killed. Later, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry would also begin with a political agenda of destroying the concept of property–deconstructing the authority of the speaker and freeing the auditor to invest or not invest in the process of utterance. But, for our purpose, we are going to look at this shift in metaphor as a change in “willful ignorance.” All metaphors are, eventually, false, inaccurate, distortians of reality. Reality itself is a distortion. Frost–the conservative–said as much. Yet, by giving metaphors their due and refining them, we can create a sense of order, priority, and narrative that helps us negotiate the complexities of life. The problem arises when we impose that order through our political and religious systems. All metaphors when tested, fall apart, and, once we do not accept them at “face” value, all metaphors begin to seem absurd. Surrealism, dadaism, cubism, absurdism, language poetry, and, to an extent, the New York School of poets, and all the gradations in between, are a choice to emphasize the instability, silliness, and shiftiness of metaphor, while hyping its “process.” Thus, the atrophy of agreed upon meanings leads to the hypertrophy of a “process” of meanings. Of course, my problem with that is, being idiots of system, we then make everything mere process, mere trope, mere parody, mere mark and counter mark, and we become immured in the qualifications and in the glamour of process, and power again rears its head and wears the terrible mask of the sociopathic trickster, the one who is willfully ignorant that his ongoing deconstructions of the linear, the sensical, the emotive, are, in themselves, a rigid construction– no matter how ongoing. All one might succeed in doing is creating flux and process as ultimate oppression. But let’s put that aside. I believe that a person who still believes in co-herence, and “meaning” and emotional truth can use some of the techniques of those who do not believe in any of those values toward good results. I also believe that a post-modernist does not have to abandon agreed upon meanings, or emotion, or tenderness, but can translate them into his process of deconstruction, derangement of the senses, and absurdist metaphor. We can have our cake and eat it, too, just as long as the cake we have and the cake we eat are not the same. So this brings me to an excerpt from Breton’s poem “Knot of Mirrors.” The title is, well, knotty. How can you have a knot of mirror? It is nonsensical is it not? Oh, but how can you have a “rosy fingered dawn?” Taken out of its agreed upon acceptance as describing both the color and emotion of seeing the dawn, it is just as absurd and false as Breton’s knot of mirrors. But it is not being so willfully false. Let’s proceed: The lovely open and shut windows hanging on the lips of day. Does day have lips? Not any day I have seen. But does a ship’s prow plough the field of the sea? Nope. This is called personification. If day has a face, then it can have lips, and windows can hang from them. Let us proceed: The lovely shirt clad windows The lovely windows with fiery hair in the black night. So the windows are given human qualities. They may even, once personified, stand in for the whole of a person– a sort of strange synecdoche, or metonymy, but the metaphors here are being freely mixed and confused. The window wears a shirt, or it has fiery hair in the black night. Now we can conjecture that perhaps people are standing in the windows, and the windows are standing in for those people who are standing at the windows, and thus the lovely windows hang from the lips of day. It is complicated, yet no less or more absurd than conventional metaphor. It is not “Agreed” upon. It seems to be generated from a personal and private consciousness (or unconscious), which we may observe but not share in. This quality promotes the sense of voyeurism much modern art is comprised of: we are watching a verbal performance we do not wilfully pretend is a mirror held up to nature, and we either enjoy the process of this performance or grow indignant and insist it make sense in the way we are used to things making sense. We are in a dream world and our agreements with it may be only sympathetic rather than actual, but this is true of all verbal constructs. Modernism and Post-modernism do not hide the strings of the puppet show. Sometimes, there are no puppets and only strings. There is a dream world. During the day someone might mention to you that their lover bought a new car, and that night, you might dream a Ferrari rides up to your window, and, somehow, that Ferrari is also your own lover– disguised as a Ferrari. Or it is both a Ferrari and your lover? Anyway, the point is, once we agree all metaphors break down, that they are distortions that allow us to enter a schema of distortions, we need not be so dismissive of certain surreal images. They are not rational. Old, pre-modernist metaphor is not rational either, but it depends on the agreed upon conceit of rationality upon the metaphor. Phrases that make total sense are truly, when scrutinized in this manner, absurd. If I tell you: “I am facing facts,” you know what I mean and accept, unless you decide not to. If not, you say, where are these “facts” you face? I can see a wall, or a statue, or me, and you can “face” these (again metonymy and synecdoche) but you can not “face” the facts. And “face” is, itself, figurative, a part for the whole. So our problem with surrealism or language poetry is not one of nonsense, but of nonsense that seems outside the normative boundaries of our usual comparisons, and assumptions. If James Franco’s first name had been Ben, it would take very little to convince me that he is, in fact, the 24-hour multimedia reincarnation of the original King of Enterprise and Toil, Benjamin Franklin, whose parades through Philadelphia at the dawn bell with a wheelbarrow full of already-completed paperwork resemble Franco’s continuous and uncanny stream of films, art exhibitions, grad lit classes, short stories, and appearances on soap operas. Sam Anderson rode the wave briefly over the summer, and wrote a telling profile for New York Magazine, concluding, Plenty of actors dabble in side projects – rock bands, horse racing, college, veganism – but none of them, and maybe no one else in the history of anything, anywhere, seems to approach extracurricular activities with the ferocity of Franco. Except for, well, Franklin. Anderson continues, This fall, at 32…he’ll be starting at Yale, for a Ph.D. in English, and also at the Rhode Island School of Design. After which, obviously, he will become president of the United Nations, train a flock of African gray parrots to perform free colonoscopies in the developing world, and launch himself into space in order to explain the human heart to aliens living at the pulsing core of interstellar quasars. Anderson’s quippy exaggerations nonetheless point up the outrageous nature of Franco’s juggling act. But it begs the appropriate question: is this seeming jack of all artistic trades still a master of none? Anderson smartly points out the lack of virtuosity in much of Franco’s work, particularly his fiction. He doesn’t, however, attribute it to being thinly spread, but to a more organic transitional period that besets every artist’s life. Ultimately, “He’s an excellent writer, for an actor. He’s brilliant, for a heartthrob. But he has yet to produce art that’s good enough to break the huge gravitational pull of his fame and fly off on its own merits.” Regardless of the quality of his work, his unabashedly zealous desire to work inspires me. Would that we could all be so tireless. While many, including Anderson, may consider Franco’s entire professional life (this might be redundant—he doesn’t seem to have any other kind of life) to be a piece of performance art, I want to talk about two actual such pieces. In Franco’s fashion, two films—Howl and 127 Hours—are currently playing that have cast him as the lead, and each has the potential to establish Franco among the upper echelon of screen actors. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s take on the inception, production, and delivery of Allen Ginsberg’s euphoric masterpiece exists across a series of evenly paced set pieces. The film begins as a seemingly reticent Ginsberg stands before an eager crowd at the now legendary Gallery Six in San Francisco, preparing to read for the first time those famous and often parodied opening lines. We return to this scene periodically as the entirety of the poem is eventually read across the film. The rest of it alternates between the obscenity trial (with a Hamm-like performance from Jon Hamm and well placed cameos from Mary-Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels), which ultimately serves an interpretive function, an interview with Ginsberg circa 1957 in which we glean most of our biographical information, flashbacks to his life pre-”Howl,” and an hallucinogenic rendering of the poem itself from animator Eric Drooker. This is by far the biggest risk of the film, but I don’t agree with the Times‘ A.O. Scott that it was “nearly disastrous, the one serious misstep in a film that otherwise does nearly everything right.” I’m going to disagree with not only the first part of that claim, but also the latter part. There is one grating thing that, for me, Howl misses. The film does well to emphasize that much of Ginsberg’s poetic energy sprung from his (questionably) unrequited love for Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. But each of these figures is presented as a stiff, Don Draper type, rather than as the real madmen that they were. For a movement so devoted to the lovely power of the human voice, these characters have a combined total of—get this—zero lines. Not only does this serve to render Ginsberg’s love unrealistic, it does a disservice to the Beat generation and what it stood for. Both Kerouac and Cassady come off as leering fraternity brothers, in a malicious way. The real Beats were assholes—just not that kind of asshole. Ginsberg himself claims in the interview portion (granted, the entirety of the dialogue is drawn from historical record, but this was still a directorial choice), “There is no Beat Generation. It’s just a bunch of guys trying to get published.” I don’t think anyone, including Ginsberg, believed that in 1957. Regardless, Franco’s performance across these set pieces is every bit as “impressive [and] beguilingly sensitive” as Ann Hornaday claims in her Washington Post review. The film is worth seeing for that alone. What is more, with the sudden recuperation of the perpetually “in production” adaptation of On the Road, we may see a great Beat Generation film sooner rather than later. * * * Whatever hype I had encountered about 127 Hours, Danny Boyle’s follow-up to Slumdog Millionaire, spoke to the climax, what David Denby of The New Yorker has dubbed “The Scene,” namely the re-creation of Aron Ralston’s brutal extrication from a dire encounter with a rock. If you’re like me, then perhaps the most excruciating element of this experience is the anticipation. When is he going to get trapped? Is now the time when he will begin cutting? Are these screams going to be even more blood-curdling when he hits the nerve? But Danny Boyle spends this time of nervous anticipation artfully juxtaposing crowds and solitude, noise and silence in a way that prepares the stage for Ralston’s spiritual crisis (in all, Boyle stylistically airs it out on a premise that could have come off as, well, boring). Regardless, you will throughout the film sit with your hands (for which you are suddenly very grateful) at the ready to cover your eyes, pull at your hair, or just wring for minutes at a time. Generically, 127 Hours can be compared to Sean Penn’s adaptation of Into the Wild, but while Emile Hirsch’s Chris McCandless treks to Alaska out of a rejection of society (not to mention everyone who loves him), Franco’s Ralston is passionate about the wilderness. He’s not escaping; Canyonlands is his “home away from home.” But his love and positive enthusiasm (when his co-worker tells him to have a good one, he replies, “Always do.”) are put to the ultimate test over five days, as his ordeal transforms from a race against time to free himself from the rock without dying of thirst into a spiritual journey through his conscience, memories, and hopes for the future. He “has nailed himself to his own special cross” (Denby), eventually realizing that “this rock has been waiting for me for thousands of years.” This is Ralston’s Trial, and it is ultimately a parable about embracing life. The beauty of Franco’s performance resides in his preservation of Ralston’s quirkiness amid desperation. This story is so powerful because we know that this is a regular guy who has done something extraordinary. But Franco and Boyle were brilliant not to locate the human universality of the story in the unfathomable circumstances but in Ralston’s personal experience. Faced with death, he repents, remembers times of love, and laments unrealized future ones, all via nicely placed flashbacks, dreams, and hallucinations. But the nuance here is important—Ralston’s not a bad guy. He loves his parents, misses his ex-girlfriend (whom he apparently did slight), and laments his vainglorious subconscious wish not to have anyone know where he is. His life wasn’t in shambles, hence his happy-go-lucky attitude that pervades the first part of the film. His transformation, however, is no less remarkable. His family knows he loves them, so he doesn’t need to ask forgiveness for wrongdoing; rather, he, and we all can identify with this, apologizes into his camcorder (which, for much of his ordeal, serves as a Bakhtinian superaddressee, a God-figure) “for not acknowledging you in my heart as much as I could.” This was powerful, and had me weeping, childlike. The acknowledgement of a higher power becomes more palpable the deeper into crisis he becomes. As he agonizes, his bellows of “Please!”—to the rock, to the camcorder, to God—resonate with our similar moments of angst. But his utterances after he gains freedom (which, thankfully, only took about five minutes, contrary to rumor) are most revealing. Standing there, suddenly unbound, bleeding, he almost immediately mutters, “Thank you.” He says nothing as he staggers his way out of the cave and—incredibly—rappels down a canyon wall. Soon after, he sees, murkily, a group of hikers, and, desperately, but at this point triumphantly, begins screaming for help. Of course, he needs medical assistance. But in this moment he is also affirming that he needs help in the same way that we all need help. The subsequent dénouement is exuberant, an exaltation over the letting go of material life—our literal attachments to our bodies—for the sake of a new, spiritual life. Which, for Ralston, is as enthusiastic as the one he already led, only with added consciousness. One comes away from 127 Hours not necessarily thankful for being spared a similar ordeal, but jealous of Ralston’s trial and awakening. But true to the humanness of this story, it reminds us that every day we are faced with the possibility of death, and should act and think accordingly. I could say a lot more about this film, especially about Boyle’s work, but I will stay on task about Franco. Truth be told, I wrote the first half of this article before I saw 127 Hours, and a large part of me wants to take back that jack-of-all-trades bit. What if Franco wins an Oscar for this performance? Will he continue with his Alexandrian feats of intellectual conquest? Or will he focus on fulfilling his vast potential as an actor? Regardless, I propose Franco begin his speech as follows, in keeping with the mysterious and ironic fashion of his persona: “I’ll make this brief – I’ve got somewhere to be.” “Content dictates form.” “Less is more.” “God is in the details.” These three statements sum up Stephen Sondheim’s artistic credo according to Finishing the Hat, whose title seems to establish a quizzical connection between writing lyrics and millinery. The first two criteria are the standard guidelines for modernist architecture of the twentieth century, so maybe the millinery metaphor is encapsulated in the third. Still, reading this book, I have trouble understanding Sondheim as the musical equivalent to either Mies van der Rohe or Elsa Schiaparelli. Perhaps it will all eventually become clear. Of two scheduled volumes dealing with his work in musical theater, this is the first, tracking his career from an early piece titled Saturday Night (1954) up to Merrily We Roll Along (1981). Highlights include Bernstein’s West Side Story, for which Sondheim supplied the lyrics only, as well as his best-known musicals (Gypsy, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd), which feature both his lyrics and his own musical score. We’re not given the complete book for each of the musicals, only their lyrics, prefaced by a summary of the dramatic context, and a brief narrative recounting the circumstances that led to the creation of the work under discussion. Sondheim has written a preface for the volume, plus a brief essay on rhyming as it is used for song-writing; and he makes dozens of insertions in the body of the text, commenting on the success or failure of particular songs. He also adds a series of reflections on other lyricists of musical theater, restricting himself, however, to those no longer living. It’s a prudent choice, given that Sondheim isn’t a man to cloud the expression of his judgments with considerations like politeness or collegial complicity. Were his rivals still alive, they might want to take out a contract on him. Solely on the basis of the irony and satire characteristic of his musicals, you could have guessed that he wouldn’t fall all over himself to be kind. But the fact is he’s just as hard on himself, knocking single lines or entire songs of his own if they’ve come to seem pretentious or gawky to him. A reviewer would have to work hard to give a worse account of Sondheim’s lyrics than their author does. By the same token, we wouldn’t expect any scholar of musical theater to make as many unflattering comments about it as you’ll find in Sondheim’s text. In an era when “going negative” about any person, place, animal, or inanimate object is regarded as a career no-no, Sondheim’s approach strikes me as fresh and honest, a tactic well worth adopting. It’s the tone of twentieth century New York, witty, sardonic, deflationary, and only seldom cornered into praising anything that actually exists. The opening sentences of Sondheim’s preface establishes that he doesn’t consider himself a poet in the usual sense: This book is a contradiction in terms. Theater lyrics are not written to be read but to be sung, and to be sung as parts of a larger structure: musical comedy, musical play, revue—“musical” will suffice. Furthermore, almost all of the lyrics in these pages were written not just to be sung but to be sung in particular musicals by individual characters in specific situations. A printed collection of them, bereft of their dramatic circumstances and the music which gives them life, is a dubious proposition. Lyrics, even poetic ones, are not poems. Poems are written to be read, silently or aloud, not sung. Some lyrics, awash with florid imagery, present themselves as poetry, but music only underscores (yes) the self-consciousness of the effort. In theatrical fact, it is usually the plainer and flatter lyric that soars poetically when infused with music. Sondheim’s insistence that his lyrics don’t have enormous interest or point separated from the dramatic context for which he wrote them is fair. On the other hand, how useful are the plot summaries and descriptions of the individual scenes provided in this volume? The problem with this format is that dramatic plot and its sequence of scenes come to effective life only when performed. The summaries offered are tedious to read and don’t do a lot to animate the lyrics they attempt to contextualize. That part of the audience already familiar with Sondheim’s musicals won’t need the summaries, of course, and it’s safe to say that the most enthusiastic readers of this book will be his existing fans (myself included), who will welcome the chance to linger over lyrics they’ve heard but not memorized. Precisely because of Sondheim’s preference for song-writing that is rooted in character, and a literary practice that prefers flatness and plainness to what is “poetic,” I doubt this collection by itself will win new converts. To appreciate Sondheim the lyricist, you have to see (and hear) the musicals themselves, and you can begin get your feet wet by searching for him on YouTube. Sondheim’s mind is more ad hoc and emotional than analytical and scholarly. He doesn’t discuss the difference between meter in music and meter in poetry. He doesn’t tell us that English-language poems after Chaucer were traditionally written in accentual-syllabic meter, whereas song lyrics manage with accentual meter alone, not restricting themselves to a regular syllable count. How so? Well, because the note value in a given bar of music can divide itself into smaller units to accommodate extra syllables while maintaining the governing beat. To add or subtract syllables in a metrical line of poetry, however, risks derailing the meter. It’s true that many hymns and songs are quite strictly accentual-syllabic, but popular song usually loosens the syllable count; and lyrics for musicals go still further in that direction. Making his distinction between poems and lyrics, Sondheim oversimplifies the more general question of the relationship between words and music. A full discussion would require, first, some reflections on the fact that all classical Greek lyrics were sung to musical accompaniment (it’s the Greek lyre that gives us the word “lyric”), as well as Anglo-Saxon poems like Deor and Beowulf. If Sappho’s poems were sung, that should be sufficient refutation of the claim that musical lyrics can’t have all the qualities we expect in poems as such. There are also the wonderful sung poems in Shakespeare’s plays, such as “Fear no more the heat o’the sun” and “Full fathom five thy father lies,” not to mention a number of subtle lyrics in Dryden’s dramatic works. Bach’s Passions are interspersed with poetic arias of some verbal complexity; and if the King James Bible qualifies as poetry, then Handel’s arias and choruses in Messiah amount to great poetry set to music. A few opera librettists composed arias worth reading without musical accompaniment: Lorenzo da Ponte (The Marriage of Figaro), Arrigo Boïto (Otello and Falstaff), and Hugo von Hoffmanstal (Der Rosenkavalier). Even Sondheim acknowledges the high quality of the arias in Auden’s and Kallman’s The Rake’s Progress. He also has unqualified praise for the lyrics Richard Wilbur wrote for Candide, and in fact Wilbur has collected some of those in his books. (Digression: why have producers of new Broadway musicals mounted since Candide never again asked a professional poet to provide lyrics for them?) The problem intensifies when we stop to consider that many poets, Auden among them, have used the title “Song” for some of their poems, even though no tune is provided. What does it mean to call a poem without musical scoring a “song”? Short answer: a “song” without musical accompaniment is a poem whose sound qualities hold more interest than the poem’s paraphrasable content. I don’t know of any poem designated as a “song,” that is composed without meter and rhyme. For that matter, about 99% of all pop music rhymes, the rhyming skillful in varying degrees, with country music lyrics generally the best. Meanwhile, Sondheim insists that lyrics in musical theater must rhyme, and that the rhymes must be perfect rhymes, not near or slant equivalents. He doesn’t provide a justification of this requirement, and we assume the stricture is based on nothing more or less substantial than audience expectations and the conventions of the musical genre. Somehow Sondheim’s not bothered by the contradiction between his insistence that, on one hand, lyrics must reflect the linguistic earmarks of the character singing them and, on the other, the fact that no one speaks in rhyme. If you aren’t bothered by the non-naturalistic aspect of rhymes in solos, dialogue, and choruses, it’s odd to become incensed as Sondheim does when a character’s lyrics use long words and elaborate metaphors, features that he dismisses as falsely “poetic” and unsuitable for the actual dramatis personae of the work. The truth is, rhyming belongs to the “entertainment” component in musical theater. Rhymes entertain even when they don’t perform an important semantic or structural function. They take us back to the childhood world of “Hickory, dickory dock” and “Row, row, row your boat,” of “Jabberwocky” and Dr. Seuss. Let’s acknowledge it in so many words: we like musical theater because it’s entertaining, not because it is profound. Sondheim comes close to saying as much when he comments that Othello is a richer play than Verdi’s Otello and that Shaw’s Pygmalion has more real content than My Fair Lady. If richness and profundity are your primary goal, then you don’t devote your talents to musicals. They have their moments of sadness and disappointment, but there is no tragic musical. All right, but do musical comedies at least have some serious content? As with most artistic phenomena, it’s a question of degree. Sondheim refers to theater historians who single out Showboat and Oklahoma! as first efforts to move the lightweight, unambitious form of musical theater current in the 1920s and 1930s toward an art with more content, one that could present and fill out characters of complexity and depth. He inscribes himself in this movement and insists that it is the source of his own practice, which should be understood as more serious than what the general run of authors of musicals offer. We can acknowledge the favorable comparison, but that doesn’t establish a magisterial degree of seriousness. Sondheim is the greatest living auteur in musical theater, and his works certainly have more content than the bits of fluff that kept Broadway box offices busy in 1925. But they don’t have the complexity and depth that we discover in the best of his contemporaries who write for legitimate theater. That isn’t to say that his work is valueless. No one wants to live seven days a week in the mode of the sublime or of tragic grandeur. Popular art forms give us a break from tedium and spiritual pinnacles both, and why not? We need them, but we should know what it is we need, and why. To get some perspective, I’d like to extend this discussion and comment on the extremely high value that British critic Christopher Ricks assigns to Bob Dylan, whom he has named “the greatest living American poet.” It’s a ranking that probably influenced the decision of the Norton Anthology of English Poetry’s editors to include Dylan’s lyrics (without musical scoring) in the fifth edition. This was a misguided choice. When we hear Dylan sing the lyrics he writes in his own sui generis voice, with the musical accompaniment he has worked out for them, our attention is fully engaged, and we may also feel that he is saying something important above and beyond the sonic appeal of the song. But in print the lyrics don’t function as actual poems do, in fact, they often verge on a silliness hard to swallow when combined with Dylan’s default mode of condescension. When we read them, we can’t avoid asking ourselves what the-devil they really mean, and the answer, my friend, isn’t blowin’ in the wind. A gold chain is a fairly boring object when not adorning someone’s neck, and the same goes for pop lyrics outside their musical context. The music theater rival that Sondheim dislikes the most is Noël Coward, whose lyrics he describes as too clever and brittle to inspire confidence and empathy. But what’s the point of applying standards belonging to late 20th-century America to works conceived for the British public of the 1920s and ’30s. To appreciate works of art from earlier eras always requires a little archeological spadework. No one could enjoy a play by Racine or an opera by Wagner without a lot of preliminary study. It’s precisely Coward’s overplus of wit and verbal acrobatics that makes his lyrics fun to read on the page, even though they might be distracting or hard to follow word by word when sung. Coward was forthright enough to say he had “only a talent to amuse,” as though that talent were nothing at all. Like one of his models, W.S. Gilbert, (whom Sondheim also dislikes intensely), Coward had considerable skill with meter and rhyme, and that’s another reason his lyrics are interesting when we encounter them through print alone. Though I’m happy to be in the audience of Sondheim’s musicals, only a few of his lyrics repay a cold examination on the page: “I’m Still Here” (from Follies), “Send in the Clowns” (from A Little Night Music), some of the choruses from The Frogs, and the “Ballad of Sweeney Todd” from that work. These engage us partly because Sondheim sometimes overcomes his resistance to being verbally clever and deploys a Cowardesque wit in the development of the lyrics. As for the other lyrics, though rather drab when shorn of musical accompaniment, they are effective in their dramatic setting, and none ever falls completely flat. They don’t succeed as poems, as Sondheim’s preface states; instead, they have a different ambition and use. I’ve gone farther than the second mile in the negative direction, but I want to conclude by saying that I found this book compulsive reading. Sondheim’s commentary on musical theater, as practiced by others and himself, is riveting and often has a relevance that extends to legitimate theater as well. The narratives of the origin of his concepts for particular works are fascinating, along with the anecdotes he tells about developing them with his collaborators, a roster that includes the most celebrated talents in the musical theater of his time. His discussion of rival lyricists, though unforgiving, even so marks out a very clear artistic profile for each figure, altering in small ways or large our sense of their accomplishment. The strangest omission in the book is a discussion of his role as composer. We admire Sondheim not only for his theatrical ideas and his lyrics but also for the music, which is anything but routine or inept. (He studied composition with Milton Babbit, and is familiar with musical classics of the past two centuries, as well as film scores by the likes of Korngold and Steiner. In fact, one of my favorite film scores is the one he wrote for Stavisky.) Why doesn’t he discuss the compositional process in its relationship to theater? How did his work as a lyricist change once he began composing scores for his musicals, and not just the words? Sondheim never goes into these topics, but that means that he has room to do so in the second volume, which I will certainly want to read if it’s as informative as this one. He may by then have mustered the courage, too, to weigh in on his living contemporaries, a critique that couldn’t fail to be gripping. The chance to speak freely about, say, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s works or Les Misérables would be well worth the price of hiring a bodyguard from Pinkerton and wearing a bullet-proof vest. Assassination attempts would soon peter out, and Sondheim would be left center stage under a pink spot singing the now-classic standard from Follies, the wisecracking, subacid “I’m Still Here,” which begins, “Good times and bum times,/ I’ve seen them all, and, my dear,/ I’m still here.” I have mentioned this before on the blog, but for those who do not know, I teach upper level ESL to students who plan on entering graduate school in North America. It’s basically a college writing class, but the ESL aspect creates interesting dilemmas for me as a teacher. For example, I’m consistently torn between allowing students the comfort of pulling out their electronic dictionaries and forcing them to live in the uncomfortable space between languages. If I allow dictionaries, I will essentially handicap (or allowing them to handicap) their future English skills. They will forever be tying English words to words or phrases in their native language. As a result, they will never be fully fluent in English (at least not in the same way as a native speaker is fluent–which is often what most of my students desire). If, however, I force them to use context, word roots, and experience to understand words, eventually they will understand English words in an English sense. Perhaps an end-run around this dilemma is letting them use an English dictionary, forcing them to associate English definitions with English words. Unfortunately, students often come upon words in the English definition that they don’t understand, so we’re back at the same dilemma again. Spare the rod, spoil the child, anybody? Typically, by the time students get to a level or two below my class, electronic dictionaries are forbidden in the classroom. It’s much harder, though, to break them of the habit of composing whole sentences in their own language and translating them, an attempt which is doomed from the start. I get lots of grumble and pout when I tell them to start thinking about their papers in English. I feel a bit like a parent coaxing their child to stand up to a bully. And in many ways, a new language is a bully. I always tell my students that learning a new language is not really learning a new way to communicate, but a new way to think. When working in English, you have to know how to work within or manipulate the categories and expectations of English–something we native speakers do without realizing. Which brings me back to the blog posts I mentioned in the beginning. As Geoffrey K. Pullum points out at Language Log, “untranslatable” doesn’t really mean there is no translation, it just means there is no one-word equivalent in English. This is the difficulty with translating poetry and why it is often such a fruitful angle to approach questions of poetics. What makes the poetics of a particular work tick? By poetics, I don’t just mean poetry, I mean all art forms (I tend to think of “poetics” as an arch-art form). Dziga Vertov, for example, thought that film was a new international language, a sort of visual esperanto. In his avant-garde film, Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov boldly declares in the first title cards: The film Man with a Movie Camera represents AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC TRANSMISSION Of visual phenomena WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES (a film without intertitles) WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCRIPT (a film without script) WITHOUT THE HELP OF A THEATRE (a film without actors, without sets, etc.) This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature. Vertov’s ambition is palpable in the film. Each cut is gravid with meaning. Not only would film be the first international language, it would be the language of the revolution (according to Eisenstein). Many of us still think that film is an international language. In many ways, it is true. It certainly speaks across many cultures, but as McLuhan points out in Gutenberg Galaxy, film is the product of a literary mind. The conventions of film (at least as Vertov sees them) are the conventions of visual print culture. That is, we read films much in the same way we read books. McLuhan describes the experience of aid workers (in the 1960s, I believe) showing hygiene films to people from what McLuhan identifies as aural-tactile culture (that is, lacking the thought structures that are inherited from print culture). It’s a bit too long to quote here (to read the whole section, click here), but the basic gist is this: “Literacy gives people the power to focus a little way in front of the image so that we are able to take in the picture in a whole glance. Non-literate people have no such acquired habit and do not look at objects in our way.” Later McLuhan quotes John Wilson: “Film is, as produced in the West, a highly conventionalized piece of symbolism although it looks very real. For instance, we found that if you were telling a story about two men to an African audience and one had finished his business and he went off the edge of the screen, the audience wanted to know what had happened to him; they didn’t accept that this was just the end of him and that he was of no more interest in the story. They wanted to know what happened to the fellow, and we had to write stories that way, putting in a lot of information that wasn’t necessary to us. We had to follow him along the street until he took a natural turn–he mustn’t walk off the side of the screen, but must walk down the street and make a natural turn….Panning shots were very confusing because the audience didn’t realize what was happening. They thought the items and details inside the picture were literally moving….the convention was not accepted.” The point of sharing all this (aside from the point that it’s generally fascinating) is to show that even images, which we often consider somewhat universal, often require certain conventions of thought. So even there, the poetics of an art form are mitigated by “translation,” which, quite literally, must translate it from one form of thought to another. I do believe fruitful translation can and does happen, but we must be aware of the “extra layer(s)” of intent that exists over top a piece. I want to focus more on what we as poets (and poeticists) can learn from and through translation when I review the new translations of Horace’s Odes (edited by J.D. McClatchy), so the rest of this discussion will be postponed until then. A Review of The Salt Ecstasies by James L. White What does he write of? The poet searches into his own lonely darkness and parses the secrets buried within it. He gets down, fat and breathless in his small turning, puts his body down in a stale bed, leans into this isolation, closes his eyes and dreams your body there, next to his, and relishes the event of your mutual rest, the transient physicality of your mutual interest, your deliciously losable connections, the time he was with you: he is making you again, not wholly but religiously, snacking on such remembrances, scooping up the fragments of you lingering in the lacunas of your being gone. He builds a reclusive paradise next to the bittersweet ways you have slipped away from him, from life, the way death’s stern promise folds you up in an incomplete absence, and there and thus he almost saves you, unsatisfactorily but earnestly; he mingles his melancholia with your traces, and eats that imaginary paradigm like a meal taken directly after a meal, without guilt (or with a pleasure in guilt), with the indulgence of a body alone to rule his own kingdom of shadows of you. The poet writes through the way of his life, “the ordinary composure of loving, loneliness, and death.” You are not invisible, not totally irretrievable, you are “buried in so many places,” halfway waiting in the unrecognized seduction of the liminal world between the back of the nightstand and its shadow on the wall. His is a poetics of longing, the profundity of desire, and this construction, this tragicomic funhouse populated by what’s indelibly left of the disappeared, is a sorry confirmation that neither you nor he will be, finally, saved. “I’d trade these words on the spot / to see you again.” If this ritual is not really seeing, what then? what does he write of? what is happening? Maybe the archetypal James L. White poem is a memory of intimacy, the hard-won, precarious sort known by a culture of outsiders, which is uniquely coded, uniquely sentenced to expire, yet still so desired, still utterly precious, if not in its instance than in the recovery of it when the bed is let back to a single body. To capture such intimacy, that which was tinged with unreality and doom even as it happened, is to embrace its fictive capability, to invoke the fantasy of a fantasy, to find the supernatural weight the other’s presence gifted the room, the poem moving around it “the way ships move heavily between moon and sun, not lost / but like a well-piloted dream.” Then, for the real bruise of resonance, to try and carve into the fiction and pull out the emotional injury locked in its marrow. “I pant hard over this poem / wanting to write your body again.” Sometimes this seems like enough, like the verse is really discovering at something that means, but the disappointment of this practice, the masturbatory futility, can also shut down the pleasure and significance of it: “I want more.” In these poems where White performs, reruns, his lovers and friends out of their departure and back into his bed, to a seat next to him at his table, to his touch, sometimes he takes it so far that he breaks the poem, which he candidly acknowledges: “I just have to stop here Jess. / I just have to stop.” Exposition has its limits. In the clutter of angst, though, these poems will suddenly stab directly at something so nakedly honest, it’s impossible to disbelieve White hasn’t reanimated something displaced by circumstance. Through the tenuous panting across the empty space, he captures how it feels to be in love, lines himself inside the feeling. This is how “Skin Movers” concludes: In this joyous season I know my heart won’t die as you and the milk pods open their centers like a first snow in its perfection of light. Good love is like this. Even the smell of baked bread won’t make it better, this being out of myself for a while. James L. White died before I was born. In an autobiographical fragment, he describes himself thus: “I was a half-rate ballet corps dancer, a soldier, a poet of some small merit, and wanderer of the earth, and a self-hater.” He has never found a position in the canon of gay American poets, most everything besides his final, posthumously published, work The Salt Ecstasies is seemingly totally dismissed, but the importance of his writing is not so rarefied that it has gone completely unacknowledged. He is simply relegated to the quiet niche of the outsider artist, the wonderful secret, poet’s poet or whatever, where this book has somewhat languished, though now brought back to a kind of prominence with its inclusion in the Graywolf Poetry Re/View series, which aims to guide “essential books of contemporary American poetry back into the light of print” under the direction of series editor Mark Doty, who handled the reissue this year (which includes a modest sample of previously uncollected material) and also wrote a marvelous introduction. For me, the closest points of reference, in considering this book, are Leland Hickman and John Rechy. The similarly obscure, though denser, Hickman wrote poems with thematic overlaps; Rechy, of course, conjures a twilit world populated by lonesome, maladjusted denizens lurching around each other’s bodies under what White called the “tit-pink” neon of a bygone age of lurid cruising. As Mark Doty notes, “memory supplies context for this desire, and lust leads to the memory that wounds.” For anybody, especially a queer body, who read any of these three writers’ work around the time of their publications–one gets the sense he felt exposed to a new kind of writing, a display, an accomplishment, hitherto uncharted: the liberation of a gay male psychology across the page. Writes Doty (re: White), “In 1982, I’d never read a poem like this […] The diction of sex is fraught with peril.” But Doty also describes how a much younger poet once received The Salt Ecstasies: “He hated the book. He objected to the speaker’s seemingly intractable loneliness, to his night-realm of bars and baths and bus station […] He hated the shame that informed the book; White’s poems did not affirm him; they did not offer hope.” That perspective is understandable as it is unfortunate. White’s poems are mired in a period, but not stiffly so: they breathe, they surf along the pulse of memory and desire; while they cannot speak to today’s reader in exactly the same manner as a contemporary of Mr. Doty’s, they speak yet, complicatedly, and settle down into your spine all the same. The political climate has changed (maybe less significantly than we would like to think) and yet the base themes threaded through the verse of this collection, so lovingly stitched, trigger our guts and intelligences despite an anachronistic hopelessness (if White’s poems can even be said to articulate a profound lack of hope instead of, say, a lens of opulent solitude). Doty’s greatest insight, in his introduction, offers us a mature way to read the haunting quality of these poems: “further and further from the closet, we come to an increasingly complex understanding of the power and failure of desire, the ways that liberation isn’t a cure for loneliness or soul-ache or despair. Not that we’d trade this hard-won freedom for anything; it’s simply that we’re as free to be as sexually confused, as bowled over by longing, as uncertain as anyone else is.” We are free to believe that the answer to What does he write of? is you. To celebrate the forthcoming ¿What Where? Chapbook Series from The Corresponding Society, there will be a reading at Unnameable Books featuring Anselm Berrigan, Ryan Doyle May, Christie Ann Reynolds, Ben Fama, and Robert Fitterman. The event will be hosted by Lonely Christopher. Details: Wednesday, November 17th, 8pm. 600 Vanderbilt Ave (at St. Marks), Brooklyn, NY. In my next several posts, I am going to talk about metaphors and the invisible neutrino of “and” that lies beneath them. I will make the following contentions: 2. Metaphors generate subtexts. 3. Consciousness and metaphor are inseparable. 4. To present two unlike objects is to create the implicit arc of metaphor. 5. All language is relational. In a sense, language is innately metaphorical because no word is the thing or state of being it describes. We can call a person “Big Ben” or “tree” if he is tall, “bean pole” if he is skinny, or we can call an obese person “slim” or “bean pole.” This is ironic, sarcastic, incongruous. An obese person is certainly not “Slim,” but to say to an obese friend, “Hey Slim,” can carry far more meaning than calling him “hey, obese friend.” First, we may be assuming an intimacy that is allowing us to tease him (one must be careful of assuming anything in this post-structural age in which the rigid structure of political correctness has been raised). Depending on the tone, the situation, and our attitude, “Slim” can be endearing, scathing, or merely habitual. For this reason, I will use Bentham’s idea of laudatory, neutral, and dislogistic registers of speech. We can call a person a “leader (laudatory, unless we are being tongue in cheek). We can call that same person “assertive” (one of the qualities of a leader, and neutral in tone) or we can call him a “tyrant,” bossy, macho, aggressive, a slave driver, or Hitler (dislogistic). Here’s the miracle of language: suppose this person has just made love, and he ravished his lover in a way she approves of, and when they are done, and doing advanced Yoga (for who smokes afterwards in this age of madness?), she turns to him and kisses his assertive shoulder and says: “Aww… my little Hitler.” She has just made Hitler a term of endearment. But does Hitler go away as a possibly dislogistic implication? Not at all! Thus, a dislogistic term, used in an affectionate or laudatory way creates a sort of dialectical energy and charge. At the same time, she is being loving, she is also affirming that this man is assertive, or macho, or, perhaps, even a power junkie, such as Hitler. This is why comedy often tells us what we have built a piety around. If you want to know the piety of a culture, see what its comics are mocking or tweeking. In the old screw ball comedy, My Man Geoffrey, two rich and spoiled society girls go to a junkyard on a scavenger hunt for charity to find a “lost man.” If they can bring a homeless man back to the mansion, they will win the scavenger hunt. The movie was made during the depression, and this “hunt” immediately established the cluelessness and privilege of the sisters and showed the seriousness of that age by making light of it. It both cushioned the full blow of the plight, and served to define it. Metaphor then is volatile, and it is always relational. Even when it seeks to detach, it joins, and when it would join, it detaches. It creates disassociation as much as it creates association. Metaphors are properties of fractal and generative consciousness, but they are also distortion. We live in our verbal universe, communicate complex emotions, negotiate the most subtle nuances through a series of distortions. We can fall prey to our metaphors. In point of fact, consciousness could be defined as the willingness to fall prey to one’s metaphors. We can think, reason, learn, even negotiate space and time without metaphors, but we can not be fully human in the sense of nuance, irony, and social parlance without them. Our age, being still caught in the scientific myth of denotative terms, objective reality, empirical truth, has fed this myth to those who would root out injustice, and prejudice, by making sure all speech is neutral–devoid of either its dislogistic or laudatory registers. Ah, but here’s the rub: A child blows up his sister, and the father calls him into the living room and says: “Now son… blowing up your sister was inappropriate.” That might get a laugh years ago, but, in our present “professional” world, pedophilia, blowing up one’s sister, and eating San Francisco might very well be called “inappropriate actions” and no one laughs. This scares the hell out of me. To use Aspergers as a metaphor, there is something Aspergian about this state of affairs. We can blame scientists. We can blame the cult of neutrality. We can even blame a sort of extreme dadaist literalism. Our neutral speech is as much a semiotic indicator of power and control as our dislogistic and laudatory speech–far more so. Someone living in a dislogistic register will give us the sense of someone ignorant, crude, not in command of his or her emotions. Someone living in a laudatory register will give us the sense of a suck up, a cheerleader, a person courting favor. Social intelligence calls for both negotiating these registers along situational and contextual lines, and blurring those lines. Neutral speech can be anger and ultimate violence made conspicuous by its absence. To say “we have decided to disregard the civilian casualties in a particular campaign and to pursue our objective with extreme prejudice” is to apply a “professional” gloss to the intentional killing and destruction of thousands. Language allows us to call genocide a “final solution.” Just as a relation means separate as much as together, our language distances us from our deeds as much as it defines them. It allows us to call the death of children in warfare “collateral damage.” As for me, I’d rather have someone call me an asshole than refer to me as “expendable.” To take all the emotion out of a verbal construct in no way lessens the violence of a culture, but may even increase it. When a metaphor allows us to detach, and all metaphors allow us to detach, it becomes dangerous, but, without that danger, no consciousness, and no poetry is possible. A metaphor then seeks to be misunderstood as well as understood, albeit in a fruitful and generative way. Poets, before scientists, were the first disciplinarians where metaphors are concerned. They did not want them mixed. They did not want them too imprecise. A poet is the lion tamer of metaphor, but, in creating a lion to tame, he also makes a lion who can possibly eat a culture, define it, distort it. “The age of reason” is a metaphor. If we break it down, it is not accurate. We move toward grace by a judicious stumbling. This stumbling is consciousness, and consciousness depends, to a very great extent, on our metaphors–not only their precision, but their power to distort. “My love is like a red, red rose,” is a simile. My “love is a rose” is a metaphor. The simile can contain a likeness or affinity without being beholden to a full substance. The simile qualifies. It says: my love is like a rose because, like a rose, it is beautiful to me and makes me feel lively the way roses indicate the life of summer has arrived. And it is sweet to the smell, and soft to the touch, but it also has thorns and can hurt. And it is brief and must wither and die. A metaphor says to the simile, “Well, if that’s the case, my love IS a rose!” Metaphors are committed to falsehood and inexactness for the sake of a possibility more vital than precision. They allow us to move more quickly through the world by a series of almost, close to, and close enough. The great sage of consciousness, Julian Jaynes, broke metaphors down into “metaphrands” (the unseen quality or emotion we are trying to get at), “metaphier” (the thing we use to get at it), “paraphrands” (the subtext of the metaphrand), and “paraphier” (the subtext of the paraphrand). We will confine ourselves to the metaphrand and the metaphier, here: “My love” is the metaphrand. I want to express its qualities, so I resort to a metaphier of the rose. Now, once this metaphor enters the language, everyone accepts it at face value. When that happens you have a cliche. You can either refuse to use the cliche or you can have fun with it, deconstruct it, or, like a good dadaist, take it absolutely literally. In a Marx brothers movie, Chico might say to Groucho: “Boss, it’s raining cats and dogs.” Groucho might say: “Quick man! Have you no sense? Go out there and put some of that rain on a leash… I could use a good pet.” This sort of humor comes from taking the figurative literally. Comedy is of the head more than the heart because, in addition to testing and teasing our behavioral pieties, it tests and teases our sacred metaphors. In a Marx Brothers movie, the absurdity of dreams is generated by taking a metaphor with all its metapheirs and exploding it. We “derange” the senses– something Rimbaud advocated at the beginning of modernist poetry. A simple way into modernism and post-modernism is to say that, like pre-modernism, it moves through a universe of metaphors. Unlike pre-modernism, it seeks to emphasize not the associative, but the dis-associative aspects of metaphors, and, by doing so, create a new perspective by incongruity. In this respect, it is essentially comic, though often in a terrifying, nightmarish way. So to re-cap, metaphors connect unlike things, create relationship, and allow us to move through the world while at the same time creating disconnects, confusions, and falsehoods. Post-modernism emphasizes this later power. In the next post we will look at a poem by Andre Breton that functions in this respect. Some people don’t “get” the Marx Brothers. They are “silly.” Some people don’t get why anyone would feel pleasurably sad watching a sunset. They lack that emotional nuance. In the one case, an overly pious F-factor (feeling) may short circuit the humor. In the other case, an overly emphasized T-factor (thought) might make the person blind to “pleasurable sadness.” Let’s try to be capable of both, but each new poem will cause us to choose, and in a hundred subtle ways. Last time, we saw that in his critical introduction to Unusual Woods, Gene Tanta wants us to approach his poetry both as immigrant poetry (which means a couple of things) and for its aesthetic value. I postulated that he accomplishes a dialectic between “local” and “universal” through strategies that extend and enrich Deep Image and surrealist poetics. Let’s see how this happens. First, look at how these thirteen-line “ghost-sonnets,” as he calls them, are built: The cavalry is always peering down into the ravine whenever you’re not looking. Someone is burping. Someone is shirt-shinning the author’s coffin. Someone’s nose or finger or toe is playing in the underwater roots downstream. Under the lean and starry sky took your money, saying: You seem far away, like a cuckoo clock on a sunken ship. If it consoles you, you’ll die on an odd breath or an even breath. Architecturally, this poem comprises fragmented, disjoined images struggling towards coherence. The second person pronouns and the indefinite pronoun “someone” establishes some cohesion of persons. But temporally, there are problems. The three lines beginning with “someone” borrow the surreal technique of the continuous (indefinite) present tense, in which multiple, seemingly disconnected actions are happening simultaneously. “Always” in the first line also suggests a continuous, indistinct present tense—in a sense, it is an eternal present, which is to say, no time at all. If one needs events passing over time to have narrative structure, this poem is putting up a fuss. Even so, paradoxically, the simultaneity of the events forces a coherent reading. Parataxis aside, normal reading expectations demand that proximity (in the text) implies relationship. But here, at least within the narrative framework of the poem, persons and events are disjoined. Thus, like a collage, these images are simply asserted (placed by the artist) and readers are forced to make what they will of it. Implicitly, these seemingly disconnected things are envisioned as unified, which is the surreal experience of the “marvelous” or the Deep Image experience of the “deep image.” So Tanta’s poems are built like surrealist collage; in addition, the images themselves are surreal in their catachresis and play. What is the meaning of that cavalry peering into the ravine? And what is to be made of the cuckoo clock on the sunken ship? Throughout Unusual Woods, Tanta freezes the reader with similarly obscure imagery: Clearly, you are a severed viper head and not as you claim his eyes flickered (beaten) in a gold-leaf epic splashed inside his skull Yet another hooligan utopia awaits its facial hair to grow. My pulsebeat still listens for yours, a ghost just leafing thru, the library books of your body. These images succeed not just because they are surprising and beautiful, but also because they are teasingly suggestive, even while their possible meanings are limited and redirected within the complex structure of the whole. As Tanta says in his essay, structure gives us the means by which we can approach the text aesthetically and thus as something universal (because beauty and structure are universal). But what of the local? Tanta explores his identity as an immigrant and ESL poet in the courageous (but tasteful) exploitation of puns, idioms and other kinds of word play. In general, ESL poets tend to take things literally, resulting in images that are deeply ironic for readers even though they underscore the speaker’s innocence and naïveté : “Back in Romania, I knew a gypsy boy named God who carved words on his inner thigh….” At times the poet admits to (not insignificant) gaps in comprehension: “It’s so hard to tell few from fewer” (47). Other times deliberate ESL-like misuse of language can create a new, interesting phrase: “A dash sparrows in to sip a little water / from the water-fountain” (85). The poet cannot resist playful manipulation of idioms: “He had an ax to pick / and a bone to grind.” Finally, and most rewardingly, the ESL vantage point exposes metaphoric relationships hidden within the language itself: At night, lightning flashes its teeth over the Seine. Surely, whether consciously or not, the poet discovers the idiom “flashing a smile” to be congruently matched to lightning, which literally “flashes.” Thus, the teeth/lightning relationship was idiomatically implanted in our language without our (or at least my) noticing it; it took the eye of an immigrant to find it. My final observation is that in spite of the obscure images, anti-narrative structures, and non-transparent language, Tanta’s poems project a clear voice that navigates the reader. While Unusual Woods could be analyzed thematically (there are numerous gypsies, firing squads, and dictators), I found the personality of the speaker to be a more important (perhaps the most important) unifying force in this collection. Whether it concerns love, family or writing, the voice’s sincerity gives the sonnets weight and timbre. Here is one example: My father did not invent fire and I refuse to vote the birds in thick alarm. I am thru with my voice, here it is like a fire: About what you cannot sing you weep and sob and cry. Along these atlases we alter things all the time with our sexual conduct. You don’t know me as a broken arrow’s broken diction but by my desperate Dionysian catapult, by my Grecian star map, by my Assyrian aqueduct, by my Brooklyn bridge, by my Yugoslavian copper, by my Sumerian plow. Once a termite lived. Sandwiched between the cryptic first and third sentences is a dazzlingly direct, emotional statement about the writer’s own struggle to speak (as immigrant and as poet). Then there is a catalogue of exotic items by which we will “know” him. Whatever it is these items collectively mean—taking note, meanwhile, that Eastern European and America are represented—their symbolic resonance clearly outweighs the brokenness of self and speech that is the mark of an immigrant (“a broken arrow’s broken diction”). And yet, it is this “broken diction” that is partly to thank for the success of his poems (not that Tanta reads like anything less than a master of the language). And even though the disjunction of the last line deflates the intensity of these personal, direct statements, the sonnet undoubtedly proclaims something vital about the speaker. The core self is at stake. And this is the coolest thing about Tanta’s work—even though these poems are centered on a persona, the indeterminable and seemingly fragmentary aspects of the world co-exist with the self. That is to say, aspects of the self and aspects of the world are placed in relationship. “Once a termite lived”—in the context of the poem, this statement and what it signifies are appended to the self and become an aspect or extension of it. The self is neither merely “a broken arrow [with] broken diction,” nor even a compilation of architectural structures and tools; rather, and ultimately, these poems are about an introspective, enculturated, embodied soul who must interpret the world in order to make sense of its own existence. It is because the world—whether native or foreign—is such a strange place that one finds oneself looking for meaning within “unusual woods.” To carve a face in wood you must practice. And practice and practice. You must practice eyes, especially, and mouths and noses, though you cannot think of them that way. Think only of the wood and the edge of the knife and of shapes. You must break the face into pieces, in how you think of it, and think not of faces but of pieces and parts, 0f shapes and lines. Practice triangles with your knife. Practice triangles with your gouge. Practice circles and ovals, oblongs and uneven polygons, rectangles and slightly-off squares. Cut triangles with the tip of your knife for eyes, pairs of triangles on each side of each eye. Connect them with thin, arching lines, cutting a curl of wood away, leaving a circle remaining, a mound, a pupil, inside. Practice until you have a whole boards of eyes. Practice until there are a million ears clustered in irregular patterns on a totem that could be an icon of a wooden listening god. Put it somewhere where you can see it. Let it sit and look at it, all those wooden ears, all those wooden eyes, all those abstract, crescent-shaped smiles. Then sharpen your knife again. Feel the fine edge on the edge of your thumb. I started carving when I was 14. I started writing around then too. Both were really bad. I wrote a rhyming poem about a chicken I’d owned. It was pretty much what you would think. The first thing I carved was a sheep. I imagined I would carve a nativity, a whole set, sheep and shepherds, wise men, cow, and Christ, but I didn’t understand my material, and didn’t understand my tools. In the end the sheep had three legs. There was a giant, raggedly hole where the left haunch was supposed to be. The ears and nose were about the same size, giving it the look of a three-headed, three-legged thing. I had no idea how to carve something that looked like wool. It was only a sheep if you squinted and were generous. The poem was published. I started getting letters, semi-regular, from one of those scam poetry places. They said they could see I had talent. A fresh new voice. No one ever lied to me about the sheep. There was a carving club of old men in the town where I lived—retirees. They were grandfathers and WWII vets with shops with band saws and stacks of carving wood. They looked at the sheep I had and showed me how I hadn’t paid attention to the grain, hadn’t understood the wood. First they asked me what I was using to carve. I showed them my knife, a three-bladed pocket knife I’d found in a cardboard box of tools at an estate sale from where an old man had died. No, they said. That’s not what you want to use. They showed me knives, better knives, and which tool to use when. I have read, since then, a lot of books and a lot of articles about how to write. I’ve listened to a lot of advice. I’ve read a lot and listened to a lot about how to carve, too. The instruction on carving is always better. For one thing it’s always practical. It’s technical, specific, and helpful. Most of the advice on writing I’ve read is mostly inspirational. There’s nothing wrong with inspiration, of course, but it doesn’t help a rhyming chicken poem. Most of it ends up being premised, too, on the idea that I am an artist, and we are artists, and special, and spiritual, and its romantic mumbo-jumbo, mostly, that doesn’t tell you how to get better. It doesn’t tell you how to write better, how to write a better line. It works only to preserve your view of yourself. Most of the rest of was truisms, clichés, and crap. Woodcarvers, by comparison, never told me to carve what I know. They never said, everyone has a great carving in them. Instead, they said, keep at it. Keep working. Try this. Try again. See how this tool can be used to do this job? They told me how to get better. They didn’t think of themselves as artists, the old men. They didn’t encourage me to think of myself that way either, didn’t assume I could just reach into myself, magically or mystically, and come out with a great work. Carving was a craft, to them, something you did because you wanted to do it, because you got joy from doing it and doing it well. It was something you worked at. Something you learned how to do by doing, and doing it, got better. They didn’t assume there was a secret, 10 tricks to learn to become successful. They assumed it was work. They assumed it would take practice. I took some classes, from some of them. In a class the teacher carves something simple. Then you copy him. He makes a cut; then you make a cut. At the end you have a piece that’s almost just like his, and you know the concepts of how to carve. Then you go practice that, and try to do something better. I’ve never heard of a writing class where you learn to write that way. With carving, there were workshops, too. In the workshops, you sat there and carved, then someone with more experience would say, “try it this way.” They’d show you what they were working on, and how they did it. If you cut yourself, they’d show you how to stop the cut with superglue. They’d suggest that next time you try something harder than what you did before. They’d encourage you to keep working. Practicing. No one ever acted like they thought they were a genius, or like what they were doing was too amazing to be understood or appreciated. It was a craft, and we were all very practical. They’d say, “what kind of wood is that you’re working with?” They’d say, “what you want with wood is something with a real consistent grain.” They’d say, “let me show you how to sharpen a knife real good.” Then they’d show you how to feel the fine edge with the edge of your thumb. Then you’d practice, and practice some more. To carve a face you must know how to pick a piece of wood and how to sharpen a knife and to hold a knife. You have to know how to use it. When to be delicate. When to be bold. Carving is tools and materials and practice. You must know how the knife is going to cut and how the wood is going to be cut, how it will be before you slice. You have to know, and can only know from having done it, and done it repeatedly. Carve until your hand hurts from holding the knife. Pile up chips in your lap. Pile up chips around your feet until the feathery frays of white wood stick to your socks and get into your shoes. Put a chip in your mouth and taste it. Taste the grain with your tongue. Stretch your hand and massage between the muscles until it feels better. Cut an isosceles notch with the flat of the knife below what will be the nose. Cut curved lines for what will be the smile lines with the tip of your knife, pulling the blade with a paring motion, curving around, pressure from your pointer knuckle, towards your thumb. Work with the grain of the wood. Curl away from the triangle eyes, up from the eyes, length of the blade, twist of the wrist for the brows. Put the man you’ve carved up in a window. Look at him with the light. Think about what you’ll do next time. 1. Get them to avoid cliches–not of thought (almost all thoughts are cliche), but of language and image. 2. Get them to play with cliche so that they master them rather than being mastered by them. 3. Teach them to vary sentence length against the line. 4. Teach them to be aware of word choice. 5. Teach them to know the difference between the concrete and the abstract, and all the hues and shades in between (a big mistake we make is teaching them to show, not tell without letting them know that the showing must tell–that an image must work for the poem. 6. Re-orient their sense of the “poetic” to include ordinary experience rendered in an extraordinary way, rather than extraordinary experience rendered in a typical, and hackneyed “poetic” way. Specifically, let’s take the first two goals here. I noticed that many of my students, when in the throes of an injured heart would have to mention “piercing blue eyes, “cold blue eyes,” etc, etc. Those blue eyed boys were down right evil. I explained that the Russian novelists had exhausted just about every shade of eye in the 19th century, and song writers of pop were just about the only people who could still get away with making a big deal out of eyes. Take blue eyes crying in the rain. Or “I’ll never get over those blue eyes.” Green eyes hardly ever got mentioned. Why were blue eyes so important? I explained that, according to evolutionary biologists, blue eyes made the pupil look dilated, and a dilated pupil is a sign of enthusiasm, interest, and atavistic sexual fitness. Thus, according to biologists, blue eyes, especially when they are looking directly at you, seem to “pierce” you. It’s an optical allusion, but obviously effective. I said the next time you got into heavy eye contact with a set of baby blues, imagine an annoying scientist narrating the moment. Hook Up Olympics “Ladies and gentlemen, our subject is now making significant visual contact with the highly symmetrical, V shaped mesomorph with the piercing blue eyes. Jim, what’s happening here? Well, Frank, I believe he’s about to perform the cut off the crowd and shelter her in the canopy of his well proportioned arms maneuver that won him the gold at Edinburgh… No… Look At that Frank! She’s peering up shyly and rounding her shoulders, while fully exposing her neck, pushing a fetchingly wayward strand of hair from her ear, and bringing her secondary sexual characteristics together in a subtle, but definitely effective display of cleavage. Good move! Will he look, Jim? Frank, Swen knows his strengths. He’s keeping his baby blues, his dazzling azures fixed on her sad and limpid browns. Alright, here comes the moment of crisis. He’s not looking. Will she laugh and show her pearly whites, lick her lips, bend one knee slightly towards his crotch? Ah… she’s broken eye contact! The subject is shyly fingering her necklace. Swen looks down. He’s got a bead on her breasts. She looks up again. Here comes the cock block Frank! Ulga’s one of the best in the business– a whiny, co-dependent room mate who knows exactly when to ruin any seduction with her unbridled neediness. This is not Swen’s forte. At Sidney, he blew it, insulted the cock block directly. Not good. Even a turn here to block the block’s access will cost him points. He’ll have to hope his piercing blue eyes have done the trick. And there it is Frank! The subject has blocked the cock block, herself. Perfectly legal. She’s turned her back three quarters and is now melting in his large yet oddly gentle hands. In this particular contest, Ulga is not allowed to puke up her Southern Comfort. And now she taps the subject’s shoulder. I think it’s too little, too late. Yes! No response. We have a winner here Frank. Swen and his piercing blue eyes have done it again. His cold blue eyes melted my heart until I was frozen by his cruel indifferent gaze. Well, I asked her how cold could melt, and melt could freeze? I made her read John Donne. I gave her a pep talk on oxymoron. I said: “make an analogy between his cold blue eyes and global warming. She wrote: The arctic ice melts off the coast of Alaska. Bears and Walruses drown, lost in a three year thaw, but I remain frozen, melted in your cold blue eyes. For my heart, there is no global warming, no rising sea in which to drown my pain… Now this isn’t good, but it’s a big improvement over what she had, and it teaches her to play with an image, to make leaps between disparate things to form a bridge of meaning. Here’s a prompt (and example) to help beginning writers deal with the first two rules. PROMPT: take a cliche and exaggerate it to the point of absurdity. One day the mountain grew bored with being majestic, and tumbled down its slopes to sit at the Lodge’s bar. It wanted to be convivial. It wanted company. Most called this avalanche. I tell you it was boredom–the way things tumble, the way things fall, only to be themselves again. That’s one way to work at the first two goals. There are many other possible ways to being working with the first two rules. How do you help beginning writers avoid cliches? A week ago I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, at the Aspen Institute’s Cultural Diplomacy Forum at the Philips Collection. She was participating in a panel discussion with Michael Dirda about her work at Johns Hopkins and the role the arts can play in shaping foreign policy. Two days later, Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize and became a permanent member of a triumvirate of South American fiction giants (along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Roberto Bolano). Both writers exhibit the type of friendly and meaningful dialogue proposed by the many noteworthy speakers at the Diplomacy Forum. I want to put these two figures into dialogue with each other, by speaking about Nafisi’s Reading Lolita and Vargas Llosa’s lesser-known work, The Storyteller. My favorite line from Nafisi’s panel came from her anecdote about her arrival at Johns Hopkins. A colleague essentially said “Oh, good, we needed someone to do women’s studies and Muslim literature,” to which Nafisi responded, “Bloody hell, no! I want to study dead white men!” She elaborated, emphasizing the notion that if there is to be true dialogue, we must be able to step outside what we know and engage other forms, other cultures, with empathy. This is the impetus of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Nafisi’s students (and Nafisi herself) deal with their plight as women in a Muslim theocracy by reading, among others, Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen – curious, and at best tangentially relevant, seemingly. But this is the point. For these women, these “dead white men” take on utmost significance in their lives. Their novels illuminate the troubles of sexual abuse, notions of the American Dream, and “burden” (Bellow) of individual freedom in ways made relevant and meaningful by Nafisi’s teaching. (The classroom scenes are among the most powerful of the book, ranking along with Frank McCourt’s as some of the best of that genre I’ve read). What these figures have in common, for Nafisi, is their engagement with what she sees as the central issue of reading fiction at all: Pity is the password, says the poet John Shade in Nabokov’s Pale Fire. This respect for others, empathy, lies at the heart of the novel. It is the quality that links Austen to Flaubert and James to Nabokov and Bellow. This, I believe, is how the villain of modern fiction is born: a creature without compassion, without empathy. The personalized version of good and evil usurps and individualizes the more archetypal concepts, such as courage or heroism, that shaped the epic or romance. A hero becomes one who safeguards his or her individual integrity at almost any cost. Nafisi’s novel is filled with accounts of brutality against women in Tehran. She depicts this lack of empathy as the root of male oppression and violence in the “Muslim World” (Nafisi herself puts this term in quotes, attacking it as reductive). Hence the need to read “at almost any cost.” The many female characters of Reading Lolita in Tehran embody this need with a zeal that can rejuvenate our own love for good fiction. This type of empathy, as Bakhtin would say a traveling into the other and back again into an enriched notion of one’s own selfhood, is at the heart of Llosa’s The Storyteller. It is the story of an unnamed first-person narrator’s journey to know his friend Saul Zuratas. Known affectionately as “Mascarita,” he is a red-headed Jew with a grotesque birthmark that takes up half his face. His outsidedness from Peruvian normalcy compels him to identify with the Machiguenga tribe of the jungle. He begins by studying them academically, only to reject the field of ethnology and linguistics as unethical. The rest of the novel after this declaration is a multi-text. Interspersed with the narrator’s account of the end of his relationship with Zuratas is a series of circuitous and labyrinthine tales from Machiguenga mythology. It is clear to the reader that Zuratas himself is telling these stories. He has completely joined the tribe; much more, he has become their bard, their hablador, their storyteller. A mythical figure in his own right, he is kept hidden from the academics and documentarians who come to the jungle. Over time the narrator comes to discover Zuratas’ new life, with profound effects on his own. The story itself is powerful, but the work is enhanced by the point Vargas Llosa makes through his narrative strategy. The narrator’s story is one of trying to know the Machiguengas through standard Western academic practices. He thinks by studying them at the university, and by filming a sensitive documentary, he is doing the tribe justice to those who would re-educate them and steal their land. But next to the Zuratas chapters – what can be called nothing other than bits of magical realism – they seem insufficient and, yes, unethical. Zuratas, an outsider, has somehow – to the narrator’s bafflement at the end of the novel – been “able to feel and live at the very heart of that culture…having penetrated its essence, reached the marrow of its history and mythology, given body to its taboos, images, ancestral desires, and terrors…being, in the most profound way possible, a rooted Machiguenga.” For Nafisi and Vargas Llosa, this type of – to use his word – “conversion” is entirely possible. It requires, first, this Bakhtinian idea of travel outside of the self. For both these excellent thinkers, that type of travel is rooted in storytelling, in great novels. Nixon went down to the beach and sat in the sand and waited. The waves came in, the waves went out, and he sat there in his suit and waited. There comes a point, in every election, where there seems like there’s nothing anyone can do. Whatever is going to happen will happen. It has happened already. Sometime during the day, sometime while the votes are cast or after they’re cast but haven’t yet been counted, the candidates can’t do anything anymore except wait. Politicking ends. Maneuvering stops. Everyone waits. They’re as helpless as hitchhikers, at that moment, in that in-between time. As helpless as sinners in that old Calvinist doctrine of waiting for grace. For the last few years, every election day I’ve gone down to the county headquarters and waited while they count the ballots. In the evening at the end of the day, the poll workers pull up to the bunker, lining up their SUVs and unloading the voting machines by the front door. It was the 911 call center at one point, a concrete building half-built into the ground, radio aerials like squiggly doodles drawn in the sky. They transformed it into a community center, though, and reporters and candidates, party hacks and other observers are shuffled over into a room that is used, most days, for a battered-wives support group. There are chairs there and we wait while they count. On the bulletin boards are brightly colored flyers saying love shouldn’t hurt, help is available, break the cycle of violence. We can see through a window to where they do the actual counting–election officials in a rush, unlocking the machines, sorting and shifting and tallying districts, then uploading the count onto the official site, where, all over the county, all over the state, candidates and journalists, party workers, regular voters, and other observers wait for the numbers to say what is already decided. That is the weird thing, watching the poll workers come in and unload the machines, watching the counters count and the election watchers watch. You know the decision’s been made. There’s nothing anyone can do anymore. You’re in the interregnum. You’re in that period where you know that soon everything will appear clear and as foreordained as if providence had made it so, everything is complete, and soon this history can be what cultural studies scholars call “presentist,” where everything clearly leads up to what it did the way it did and makes sense retrospectively. But for the moment everything is undetermined. What’s going to be already is and we wait for what’s done, what’s inevitable and, in fact, is already accomplished but only not yet realized. The future is fluid, to you there, standing there at sunset on election day as the counting counters scurry, and the past is fluid too. The past is done, but unknown; the future done and unknown too. All of it moving. All of it’s as formless as water. But only to you. In another sense, in a real sense or a more real sense, it’s all already solid. The past is decided and the future’s decided and has its shape, its form is fixed, but for you it’s all only liquid. The tide goes out. The tide comes in. Nixon butt prints in November beach sand. It’s strange that for a country as political as America, for a country that makes or can make anything political, whose day-to-day drama and national narrative is internally tangled and intertwined with party machinations and affairs of state — our own present history even actually narrated back to us by party hacks and political commentators — that there’s really very little art that directly deals with the political process. The one work that really stands out is Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, which, interestingly, puts a whole narrative in this interregnum state, where history is all fixed and predetermined and fated, and yet, unknown. It starts with driving directions, which also work as metaphor: To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or it was new, that day we went up it. You look at that highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires, and if you don’t quit staring at that line and don’t take a few deep breaths and slap yourself on the back of the neck you’ll hypnotize yourself and you’ll come to just at the moment when the right front wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you’ll try to jerk her back on but you can’t because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you’ll reach to try to turn off the ignition just as she starts to dive. But you won’t make it, of course. The book was written in 1946, Warren’s third novel. It won the Pulitzer in ’47, and seems to somewhat cyclically attract attention without ever making it onto anyone’s “great” list, or gaining a firm place in any cannon. It’s the story of Jack Burden, the narrator, a newspaper writer who goes to work for Willie Stark, a character loosely based on Louisiana’s Huey P. Long, a rising populist, a reformer who grabs power with both hands. It’s a political novel, in that it’s about politics. It might be the best book we have in American literature on politics–it’s the best one I can think of–but it’s also a meditation on destiny. Or what we might call a kind of secular Calvinism. Burden is, by calling and by training, a historian. He is also an amateur philosopher, who flirts with Idealism, and a nihilistic, materialistic version of Calvinism that pictures history as a great big “twitch,” and he meditates confusedly on questions of destiny and time. He says, “And all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life, and out of the shadow their eyes implore us. That is what all of us historical researchers believe,” and “go out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time,” and other philosophical, poetic thing. The book is narrated from the future with a feeling of dread. A sense of doom sending its shadow back over the story. Huey P. Long, of course, was assassinated at, perhaps, the height of his power, and we know, even at the start, even if it’s just as a feeling from the sense of style, that that is going to happen and bad things are going to happen before the end of the book. We can see it coming–”coming at you”–down the middle of a highway, flat and straight for miles. Burden narrates with a sense of destiny that might, more rightly, be called inevitability. Foreordination that’s more like foreboding. He believes in providence, but in the sort of providence that only shows you the solid form of your fate in the moment after it happens. Everything’s liquid, as he stands there, an ocean that undulates without form, until suddenly he sees, and the past is solid and was what it was, and the future is now what it is and was always going to be. There’s a sense of doom, in this, and All the King’s Men is Calvinistic too in its sense that everyone’s implicated, intertwined and tangled up inescapably in the horrible human condition. It’s secular, though, in that the human degradation does not and is not meant to emphasize the distant glory of God, but only highlights our helplessness. There is no salvation, in All the King’s Men, but only the waiting. Or, there is a salvation, but it’s only political, it’s only a new road or a new state policy or an inspiring speech, and the characters in the novel are always on the way towards a crash into the limits of the limited scope of that hope. As Willie Stark says to Jack Burden, “We been in it up to our ears, both of us, you and me, boy.” Or as somebody says to Stark, when his first run for governor flounders out, “You thought you were the little white lamb of God.” Everyone’s condemned in this novel — always already condemned — and what’s interesting, reading it, is seeing how you already know how it’s going to end just from the tone, just from the style, and yet it’s riveting anyway. You can’t look away. That secular Calvinistic sense of sin is injected into every part of the narrative, and the characters, even at the beginning, are already framed by their doom. Framed not in the political sense of made-up scandal with planted evidence, but framed by history and fate. As Stark says, trying to explain it, I never did ask you to frame anybody. And you know why? Because it ain’t ever necessary. You don’t ever have to frame anybody, because the truth is always enough. We are, that is, all already framed. Framed by history. We just know how yet. The narrator regularly signals what’s going to happen, but the character who narrates can only wait, helpless, until it does. Jack Burden is, as a character, as condemned as Oedipus, of the ancient Greeks, who made his fate come true by working against it. He’s doomed and destined, and the facts or events of the novel are fixed, and there’s a way in which Burden doesn’t actually act any more than Nixon did on that Election Day, waiting for someone to come find him and tell him what he’d done. Instead, what changes for Burden is the way he thinks about himself and history and the history that is to come. The whole novel is watching him drive straight into the crash of the realization of his Calvinistic kind of fate. Then the share-cropping black man, chopping cotton in the very first pages of the novel, can see “the little column of black smoke standing up against the vitriolic, arsenical green of the cotton rows, and up against the violent, metallic, throbbing blue of the sky, and [...] say, ‘Lawd God, hit’s a-nudder one done done hit.’” Of course, we might say the same thing about secularized Calvinism in American literature, about displaced, disenchanted destiny in the American novel: Hit’s a-nudder one done done hit again. It’s a subtext that stretches and a question that comes up from Hawthorne to Pynchon. Nathanial Hawthorne, even in early stories like “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” cross-layers providentalisms against each other, until the characters all get caught in them, destroyed in them (and maybe the story does too). Thomas Pynchon’s Slothrop, the paranoid center of the apparently conspiratorial universe of Gravity’s Rainbow, is, appropriately, the descendent of providentialist Puritans, the son of a whole history of paranoid histories. America is a country, too, that has always confused it’s providentialism and its politics, with its Manifest Destinies and Cities on Hills, which is all foreordination and fixed history, fixed into the future, the “God” little more than the manifestations of the mystery of it was going to happen, its history always one of retrospective and presentist explanations, meta-narratives that put the whole thing in a frame. What’s interesting about Jack Burden’s secular Calvinism, in all its foreordination and mystery, with history that’s both God-given and unknowable, is this moment: the interregnum. The election day moment. He lives there, right there, the narrative is structured there, where everything’s already been decided and there’s nothing you can do. Sitting on the beach where everything’s liquid, everything’s fluid, it’s all an ocean, and then in a moment you see the shape of it all, a shape you can then never un-see. In this novel we’re always in this moment where we’re watching the voting machines unloaded and knowing that here the Vox of the populi has already been uttered, but isn’t or hasn’t yet become, hasn’t been transformed into the vox of the Dei, and so can’t yet be heard or understood. For most of us, most of the time, fate and history are fixed. Or seem fixed. We are meta-narrativists and presentists, by training and by nature, and the past seems to us to be solid, the present predetermined even as what we’re really doing is reading it, interpreting it, socially constructing it from where we sit. There are moments, though, where we’re waiting, where we don’t have what we need to determine the providential shape of the narrative of “now.” We will, with our tellings, fix it as if it’s the voice of God, as if it’s the only way things are or could have been, but there are moments where that indeterminacy of history, the openness of how we read or could read and how we understand, is, for a moment, if not clear, a feeling we clearly feel as dread in our stomachs as we watch the ocean tide. Moments of uneasy interregnum. Moments of waiting, waiting for what has already happened or will seem like it has when the past is appropriately fixed and firmed-up by the future, moments of suspended shock, before everything fits into place. “When a heavy-caliber slug hits you,” Jack Burden explains, “you may spin around but you don’t feel a thing.” Moments when, watching the middle line of a flat highway like 58, watching it flicker and shimmer until we pass into a daze while driving, hypnotized by ourselves, and we imagine as if in a trance, a daydream from which we cannot wake, what would happen if we veered off into the dirt shoulder and crashed, what the smoke would look like, what the cotton choppers would say to themselves, a mile away, and we imagine the other alternative too, where we go “whipping on into the dazzle [...] at the horizon where the cotton fields are blurred into the light, the slab will gleam and glitter like water, as though the road were flooded,” and we’ll go “whipping towards it, but it will always be ahead [...] that bright, flooded place, like a mirage.” It’s a hypnotic moment, where we stare off unfocused, like Nixon looking at the ocean. There, in the in-between when the votes are being counted, the past, present and the future could really all go either way, could take any shape. Until it happen. Then it won’t seem like anything except our story of fate and future-from-past, present-from-past, now as it was always going to be because of secular providence, was possible. After it happens. For that moment though, everything was liquid.

The latest Article IV Consultation between the IMF and Malaysia has some rather flattering language (excerpt): …Executive Directors commended the authorities for their skillful policies, which have underpinned Malaysia’s strong macroeconomic performance despite a weak external environment…Looking ahead, Directors considered that Malaysia’s medium term prospects are favorable, as the authorities continue to focus on safeguarding financial stability, strengthening fiscal sustainability, and securing high and inclusive growth. Directors endorsed the current settings for monetary policy and the mildly contractionary fiscal stance in the 2013 budget. They nonetheless encouraged the authorities to further develop their medium term [sic] plans to restore a prudent level of federal government debt and rebuild fiscal space… …Directors noted with satisfaction that the 2012 Financial Sector Assessment Program review found Malaysia’s financial sector to be robust, highly capitalized, and underpinned by a sound supervisory and regulatory framework… …Directors welcomed the authorities’ intention to implement wide ranging reforms to boost growth and inclusiveness. In this context, they underscored the importance of increasing labor market flexibility, raising female participation, and fostering the skills needed for a high value-added [sic] economy. Directors welcomed the introduction of a minimum wage, and considered that adopting unemployment insurance and pension system reforms would further strengthen social protection. Directors took note of the staff’s assessment that, despite the significant narrowing of the current account, Malaysia’s external position appears stronger than warranted by fundamentals and desirable policies. However, they agreed with the authorities that this mainly reflects structural factors. A few Directors also pointed to underlying methodological limitations in the assessment of the external position… I actually found the last paragraph to be the most interesting, but that’s getting ahead of things. Overall, this assessment is fairly balanced – things are going well and policy settings are appropriate, but at the same time noting that there’s still a lot of work to do. GST, subsidy rationalisation, unemployment protection, labour market reform all get a mention. The full report, if you want to read it, is available here. But returning to that last paragraph though, it’s a very big shift in IMF thinking. I’ve actually been meaning to cover the underlying empirical and theoretical foundations for this, as there have been a couple of papers on this issue after the past couple of months. The IMF is also currently overhauling (warning: pdf link) its existing methodologies. Basically what the issue amounts to is this: current methodologies for looking at over- or under-valuation of exchange rates rely on the unspoken underlying assumption that international trade is conducted with finished goods. In effect, that assumption means that exports and imports are independent of each other and supply and demand of either are regulated via differences in their domestic against external price i.e. influenced by the exchange rate. If the exchange rate is overvalued, you would expect to see a trade deficit as imports are relatively cheaper than exports, while if an exchange rate is undervalued, you would expect to see a trade surplus as exports are cheaper than imports. If exchange rates are correctly valued, then there would be balanced trade. In practice, any current account surplus or deficit of at most 2%-3% GDP is typically taken to be “sustainable” and the exchange rate “appropriately” valued. If however, trade is largely in intermediate goods – unfinished components or raw materials for processing into finished goods or further intermediate goods – then exports and imports are not independent and the impact of the exchange rate would be only on the domestic value-added part of the good. And we’ve seen nothing if we haven’t seen the proliferation of global supply chains and globalisation of trade links in the last two-three decades. For example, if I export good A in USD terms, with 70% of the components sourced from imports (also priced in USD), movements of the Ringgit would raise and lower my selling price and input price in unison. The impact of the exchange rate on my sales and profits would primarily be on the 30% Ringgit-denominated and locally-sourced portion of my cost of production – in other words, the value-added. Looking at it from the perspective of the exchange rate and the trade balance, a country with a high portion of imported content in its exports could be expected to have a high trade surplus, irrespective of the valuation or current level of its exchange rate. Conversely, countries with low import content could be expected to have balanced trade if its exchange rate is correctly valued. In effect, what that means is that countries that have always been viewed as currency manipulators or to have had undervalued currencies, such as Malaysia, or China or Korea, actually have exchange rates that are more appropriately valued than was once thought. There is a “structural” component in their trade surpluses that existing methodologies simply don’t account for. There’s been a burgeoning literature on global supply chains, but its been mainly in the field of management, or within economics, in terms of the impact on trade itself. The new insights on exchange rate valuation and on the balance of payments however are comparatively new. The concept will take a long while to catch on though, as the data requirements are massive and intimidating – essentially what’s needed is a global input-output matrix, not a project to be undertaken lightly. Fortunately the OECD and the WTO have made a start on the problem with the TIVA database which covers 40 countries. But to get a full grasp of the phenomenon we need both a broader range of countries across many more points in time. Nevertheless the essential point needs to be made that the presence of a trade surplus or trade deficit alone is no longer sufficient in determining whether a currency is incorrectly valued. We have to look at the composition of trade and the composition of each individual good, to make an accurate and reasonable determination.

Crossroads Summer 2010 - Alumni Magazine of Eastern Mennonite University Crossroads is the alumni magazine of Eastern Mennonite University, a small Christian liberal arts college dedicated to Anabaptist and Mennonite values of peacebuilding and service. This issue contains poetry and excerpts from fiction and memoirs written by alumni. Literature summer 2010 emu... preparing students to serve and lead globally www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 1 vol. 91, No. 1 crossr oads summer 2010, Vol. 91, No. 1 Crossroads (USPS 174-860) is published three times a year by Eastern Mennonite University for distribution to 14,000 alumni, students, parents and friends. A leader among faith-based universities, Eastern Mennonite University emphasizes peacebuilding, creation care, experiential learning, and cross-cultural engagement. Founded in 1917 in Harrisonburg, Virginia, EMU offers undergraduate, graduate, and seminary degrees that prepare students to serve and lead in a global context. EMU's mission statement is posted in its entirety at www.emu.edu/president/mission. Board of Trustees: Andrew Dula, chair, Lancaster, Pa.; Wilma Bailey, Indianapolis, Ind.; Evon Bergey, Perkasie, Pa.; Myron Blosser, Harrisonburg, Va.; John Bomberger, Harrisonburg, Va.; Herman Bontrager, Akron, Pa.; Gilberto Flores, Cedar Hill, Texas; Curtis D. Hartman, Bridgewater, Va.; Gerald R. Horst, New Holland, Pa.; Charlotte Hunsberger, Souderton, Pa.; Clyde Kratz, Harrisonburg, Va.; Kevin Longenecker, Harrisonburg, Va.; Kathleen (Kay) Nussbaum, Grant, Minn.; Amy Rush, Harrisonburg, Va.; Kathy Keener Shantz, Lancaster, Pa.; Diane Zimmerman Umble, Lancaster, Pa.; Paul R. Yoder, Jr., Harrisonburg, Va. Associate trustees: Jonathan Bowman, Manheim, Pa.; David Hersh, Line Lexington, Pa.; E. Thomas Murphy, Jr., Harrisonburg, Va.; Judith Trumbo, Broadway, Va. Loren Swartzendruber, president; Fred Kniss, provost; Kirk Shisler, vice president for advancement; Andrea Wenger, marketing and communications director. Bonnie Price Lofton Editor/writer firstname.lastname@example.org Paul T. Yoder Mileposts editor email@example.com Marcy Gineris Web content manager firstname.lastname@example.org Lindsey Kolb Project coord./videographer email@example.com Jon Styer Designer/photographer firstname.lastname@example.org Jim Bishop Public information officer email@example.com Jason Garber Web/new media coord. firstname.lastname@example.org Carol Lown Mailing list manager email@example.com photograph by Matthew styer President Loren Swartzendruber '76, MDiv '79, DMin Priceless Life Stories The two dozen creative writing samples in this issue largely reflect the life experiences of their writers. It is a privilege and a treat to be granted permission to peer into the heart, mind and soul of another human being through his or her writings. Whenever I can, I attend the monthly breakfasts sponsored by EMU's Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society (ACRS). They offer a priceless opportunity to hear the stories of those who have spent their lives in service to others, often to the church. Three years ago, I prepared the foreword to Making Sense of the Journey � The Geography of Our Faith, the first of two books that have emerged from these ACRS breakfasts. I wrote: "During my seminary years, I was employed as an admissions counselor and associate campus pastor at Eastern Mennonite, and I frequently ate lunch in the faculty-staff lounge in the Administration Building. There I heard my elders philosophize, tell stories, and debate the current issues. There was much humor, and tears were occasionally shed. It was a wonderful education for which I paid very little!" The same can be said of this issue of Crossroads. The selections offered can be likened to appetizers. And like any food, you will find some to your taste and some not. If you are hungry for more of certain snippets, I hope you will locate the book from which a piece was drawn and read the complete work. Most likely the book was published by an EMU alumnus or edited by one, or both, as is the case with all books published by Good Books and by Cascadia Publishing. These publishers � along with church-affiliated Herald Press � are making inestimable contributions to the world through their broad range of quality books and, in the case of Cascadia, through DreamSeeker Magazine. In addition, Choice Books, which distributes Christian-themed books via kiosks in supermarkets, hotels, airports, and other stand-alone display sites, is owned by John Bomberger '77, MA '92, an EMU trustee. How impoverished our readings would be without the efforts of alumni in the literature field! All EMU personnel can be reached during regular work hours by calling (540) 432-4000, or via contact details posted on the university website, www.emu.edu. Cover: Merle Good in the People's Place Book Shoppe in Intercourse, Pa., where currrent books written, edited and/ or marketed by Merle and Phyllis Pellman Good are on display. Story on page 17. Photo by Jon Styer. POSTMASTER: Submit address changes to: Crossroads Eastern Mennonite University 1200 Park Road Harrisonburg, VA 22802 printed on recycled paper Loren Swartzendruber President XX-COC-XXXX 2 Living Words 4 This issue, containing poetry and excerpts from fiction and memoirs, is intended to be read while relaxing at the beach, beside a mountain lake, or over a leisurely cup of breakfast coffee. 2 16 20 In this Issue 4 four 1 3 2 4 themes Four Themes 16 17 Our writing selections explore four themes common to many of those who publish: the writer's roots, experiences in the wider world, exploration of identity, and facing of death. On Writing Memoirs Teacher and pastor Linden M. Wenger urged us to write down our memories and wisdom. Happily, he himself bequeathed us a delightful book, Climbing Down the Ladder. 17 27 Good Capitalists 20 27 Four members of the Good family � Merle, Phyllis, Kate and Rebecca � are working together in the thriving publishing business founded by parents Merle and Phyllis. All are alumni of EMU. Marriage Lessons Our new seminary dean, Michael A. King, challenges us to consider whether our spouses would accept being treated in a manner similar to the way our nation handles disagreements. Bishop in Love Out of the hundreds of Bishop's Mantle columns written by Jim Bishop � surely the most prolific writer in the history of EMU � this one written in 2007 ranks as one of his favorites. living words Close-To-Home Writings the author of Mennonite in a little black dress is not an EMU graduate. (Got your attention?) Rhoda Janzen graduated from Fresno Pacific, a Mennonite Brethren university in California. But the astounding popularity of Janzen's sardonic tell-all book � it rocketed to the top of the New York Times paperback list after publication in October 2009 � does say much about interest in writings associated with any branch of the Mennonites or Amish. In short, it is no accident that "Mennonite" is in the title. "The book evokes strong reactions," wrote Shirely Hershey Showalter '70, former president of Goshen College, in her blog www.100memoirs.com. "Those who loved it laughed a lot, reading it with a huge `suspension of disbelief.' Those who hated it accused the author of `mean girl' humor full of `wounding words' much like the ones the author endured from her abusive husband." Showalter, an accomplished wordsmith herself, gave the book a delightfully nuanced review on her blog. She was among those who laughed heartily, but she also had her reservations. Coincidentally (or not?), seven years before the Janzen book, Cynthia Yoder, who started her undergraduate degree at EMU and finished at Goshen, wrote a book on almost the same topic � a woman struggling with marital issues and depression who returns to her familial roots in a desperate quest for well-being. Yoder's Crazy Quilt � Pieces of a Mennonite Life covers the same emotional ground, with the same sureness of words and the same irreligious tone. But Yoder is more compassionate in describing her family � whose lives, after all, are being held up for public scrutiny in the name of literary expression. aLmost two years ago, my Crossroads advisory committee agreed that an issue devoted to alumni and faculty working in the "arts" � the visual arts, theater, literature, music � would be timely. But as I embarked 2 | crossr oads | summer 2010 "These writers are telling their stories. They may not be mine or yours." In the following pages we will look at writings that might be called "creative," rather than pedagogical. We will favor writings that have been winnowed and marketed by an established publisher (rather than self-published). Almost all of these will be writings grounded in people's lives. Memoirs. Historical fiction. Poems. Excerpts will be offered without editorial comment. Please don't infer EMU's agreement or disagreement with what a particular author has said. These writers are telling their real or imaginary stories. They may not be mine or yours. Surely, though, we can learn something from hearing theirs. Most of the professionally-produced writings by alumni and faculty have been issued by three publishers, two of them owned by alumni � Good Books, owned by Merle and Phyllis Good (see pages 17-19); Cascadia Publishing House LLC, owned by Michael A. King (see page 20); and MenTo keep this magazine at a length that nonite Publishing Network (Herald Press), can be leisurely read at the beach or beside affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA a mountain lake, this summer issue of and Mennonite Church Canada. We thank Crossroads is limited to exploring the written these publishers for giving us permission to word. Coverage of music will follow in the publish the excerpts herein. next issue, dated fall/winter 2010-11. Regrettably, "other than Mennonite" creMy idea of "literature" has necessarily ative writers in our alumni database proved shifted as I explored the writings of alumni. to be scarce. (That would be my group of So far, no novelist of major stature has writers.) The most widely read example is emerged from our ranks � that is, nobody probably Alice J. Wisler '83, author of two who approaches the acclaim garnered by Jo- Christian romances published by Bethany seph Conrad, Willa Cather, D. H. Lawrence, House: Rain Song (2008) and How Sweet It William Faulkner, V.S. Naipaul, or even Is (2009). Barbara Kingsolver. Instead our alumni and faculty have produced prodigious amounts finaL notes: of useful writings on such topics as theology, EMU is hosting the Sixth International educational curriculum, and peacebuilding Conference on Mennonite/s Writing in the skills. Our folks have also produced lots fall of 2012. of memoirs, such as A Way Was Opened by We are creating a list of alumni, staff and Ruth Brunk Stoltzus '37 and At Powerline faculty in the writing arena posted at www. and Diamond Hill by Lee Snyder '63, and emu.edu/crossroads/authors. Please visit the stories based on historical records, such site to post additions. as Pilgrim Aflame by Myron Augsburger '55, ThB '58, Tobias of the Amish by Ervin --Bonnie Price Lofton, MA '04 Stutzman, MAR '99, and Margaret's Print Editor/writer Shop by Elwood E. Yoder '81, SEM '99. on the subject, it became clear that it would be impossible to do justice to our alumni in creative fields if we threw such a broad net. So in the summer of 2009, we produced an issue devoted solely to the visual arts and theater, inserting a note that music and literature would be covered the following summer. This still proved to be over optimistic. More than 100 alumni have had their writings published. Dozens of alumni have worked, or are working, in the field of music. literature photograph by lindsey kolb ministry Kali Myers, daughter of Janelle '01 and Jason '99 (and granddaughter of two alumni), peruses a bestselling book written by Merle Good '69. www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 3 four themes 1. roots Silent Territory Tears for the men and women who leave the places that know them. -- Naomi Shihab Nye My grandfather wouldn't speak to his children in German. His transition to English was too full of misunderstandings and embarrassing accents to turn back. Upon my request, Mom dredges up the words for bread and morning chores. Everything else is lost. My husband abandoned his mother's Romanian for the language he'd need in school. Now he clings to every foreign phrase he learns as if he'll find something he misplaced between the new words. With language absent, I have left the town of my birth, the clothes of my ancestors. The family farm was sold to strangers years ago. We don't plan for children, having nothing left to bequeath them. 1 2 3 4 Honor your father and your mother. -- Exodus 20:12 the Day they ask Someday it will happen: One of your colleagues--say the girl who teaches English 101 in the classroom just down from yours--will ask the question. It's best to answer without pausing. Tell her you're Mennonite. As she squints over your shoulder, looking for the horse and buggy, say you're a modern Mennonite. Better yet, postmodern. You've got a liberal arts education, cable, Internet, and subscriptions to The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Scientific American. Resist the urge to blab cultural details: your kitchen drawer full of recycled twist-ties, the compulsion to turn off all unused lights and appliances, the guilt you feel at throwing away used egg cartons because there isn't enough cabinet space in your grad-student rental. Say: "We're like any modern religious group." If she presses you for more, pick unique features: Peace. Service. Use peripheral vision to gage her comfort at speaking with a dutiful idealist. Do not pursue the subject unless she prompts you. Remember: You don't like to talk about yourself. If she toured Amish country last July and sees you as a link to a world of charm and simplicity, she might want to go out for a drink and discuss it more. Wait until you get to the bar to tell her you don't know how to drink. Order cranberry juice. Start with some history. Tell her Mennonites and Amish are so interwoven you can't remember which group split off from the other and that the Anabaptists decided the Reformation needed reforming; "love your neighbor" meant renouncing violence. They rebaptized their members, who were then martyred in gruesome ways. Buy your companion another beer before you continue. Share the stories that raised goosebumps on your childhood vertebrae. Your predecessors burnt, drowned, and hung in cages for the carrion birds and the spectacle. Don't forget: Dirk Willems, who escaped from prison across the thin ice of a pond, but turned back to rescue the pursuer who broke through. Burnt. Maeynken Wens, who was so persuasive the authorities screwed her tongue to her cheek so she couldn't evangelize on her way to her death. Notice, but do not mention, your companion's tongue piercing. Change the subject: hymns. You grew up singing four-part By Debra Gingerich '90, who holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Mochila Review, MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry, Whiskey Island Magazine, The Writer's Chronicle, and others. She works in communications for State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota. This poem and the two others by her in this magazine section are from a book devoted to her poetry, Where We Start (DreamSeeker Books, 2007). 4 | crossr oads | summer 2010 literature Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it," whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left. -- Isaiah 30:21 harmony, usually a cappella. Great-Grandpa composed some of these hymns on his organ until the elders decreed that musical instruments were too worldly. After the organ was sent away, he lined up his five children and made them sing the notes in his head. But the children were rarely available, busy as they were stringing secret radio antennae under the kitchen table or persecuting the neighbor's chickens. Great-Grandpa stopped writing music. The elders were concerned. Why had he stopped composing? Under cover of darkness, he hitched up the wagon and brought home his organ. Then there were the grandparents who left their Beachy Amish community and became missionaries in Haiti, as well as the grandparents who watched their dairy farm disappear beneath housing developments. If you feel reckless, let your interrogator get you a drink. Go for something sweet and fruity. Make a joke about girly drinks. Don't close your eyes when you sip. After your stomach is warm, decide. Will you talk about yourself? If you dare, if she's not fiddling with her watch, plunge in. Tell about: Growing up without television and scared of movies, even Bambi. Encountering an unknown character you called Dark Vader in the school yard. Sitting under the quilt at Homemaker's Fellowship while old women stitched impossible stitches, wearing thimbles to protect their fingers from the tiny needles and coverings to protect their heads from sin. The hymn sings some Sunday evenings when the black church joined you, and the singing got so fast and loud that even the old women forgot themselves and swayed. Tell how your mother stayed home and kept a garden and made bread and yogurt and granola and canned all summer long. How your father swept chimneys so he could go to night school and learn about computers. Tell about going to wilderness camp, where you went into the rainy woods with brokenzippered tents and canoed and hiked and sang and prayed. Or about the youth group trips to the national Mennonite conference where thousands of kids prayed and wept and knelt, and of course you went up to the front and vowed to spend your life in the Lord's service. Talk fast, before her eyes glaze over. Tell about the volunteer house in the middle of Appalachia where you spent one of your happiest years. Jump on to the liberal arts education--philosophy and theology and theater all teaching you that humans and their God are limitless creatures. This was the time when you protested military actions, played drums at women's conferences, and swore on stage. Spent part of a summer living with lesbian newlyweds. Didn't smoke pot, though you surely inhaled a lot second-handed. Prayed in new ways. Let the Bible get dusty for the first time ever. Researched ways Mennonite daughters develop eating disorders. Met and married one of your own kind--a Mennonite farm boy, far from the farm. Found out your grandparents knew each other and once bought land together. You weren't surprised. Then tell how you came here, to this state university where football is God and burning couches in the streets is a sacrament, to become a writer. Don't tell your companion how many different ways you and your husband are sixth cousins. Don't tell about your aunt's 12 toes. Don't describe your own baptism, 12 years old and bashful, in a mix of glory and shame. Instead, drain your glass. Tell your friend about a song you sang at this summer's family reunion. Where there are Mennonites, this song is sung: Seaworld, the Metro, your parents' wedding, your own. Grab her sleeve. Lean in. Say, "I'm going to sing it to you." Glance around to be sure nobody's looking, then start in a whisper, blushing furiously. Succumb to a fit of coughing. Overturn your glass. Shout, "The heck with it!" Maybe even, "The hell with it!" Stand on your stool. Belt it out. Try to sing all four parts. Everyone is watching, but it's time you do this. Praise God from whom all blessings flow Praise him all creatures here below, Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen, Alleluia, Amen, Alleluia, Amen. Kirsten Eve Beachy '02 wrote this essay, which first appeared in DreamSeeker Magazine (Winter 2005, Vol. 5, No. 1), while pursuing an MFA in fiction at West Virginia University. She teaches creative writing and journalism at EMU and serves as faculty advisor to the WeatherVane. She is the editor of an anthology, Tongue Screws and Testimonies � Poems, Stories, and Essays Inspired by the Martyrs Mirror, scheduled to be published by Herald Press in late 2010. "...[S]ociologist Grant Stoltzfus [would] talk of the sect cycle, in which a group strongly tied to certain issues separates from the larger society, establishes a unique identity, lies in tension with society, gradually loses its fervor about the issues that spawned it, and is finally re-assimilated. We do not talk about that cycle now that Grant is gone. Should we?" � Ray Elvin Horst '59, retired Spanish-language professor at EMU. From his essay in Continuing the Journey: The Geography of Our Faith (EMU/ACRS, 2009) www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 5 Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. -- 1 Corinthians 3:18 Where I'm From I am from rugged mountains from small coastal plains and river valleys from roosters crowing early in the morning. I am from the Caribbean island which natural disaster often devastated. I am from the roots of Africa from Catherine Flon and Dessalines, I am from the suffer-it-all and never rest and have-to-decide or accept it. I am from learning it the hard way with no hope or rescue. I am from a grandfather tortured, treated like a thing with no respect, from the nation born of a slave revolt from the trunk of the tree of black liberty. I am from the Republic of Haiti from the French- and Creole-speaking. I am from the second native country that defeated the French colonial army and declared its independence. I am from the African and French culture from the mixture of Catholic and Voodoo. I am from Africa, Haiti from a society where French, Spanish and Taino-Arawak influence all aspects of culture, from the music style known as Kompa from the cuisine unique in its own right from painting and sculpture, distinctive arts. I am from Port-au-Prince descendant of Queen Anacaona and King Louis from the Haitian Diaspora living in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Learning PoLitics in the first graDe Helping teacher after school feels good. She likes me. I can tell. Common as dirt after school she is. Inside, I help teacher sweep the wood floor with a lopsided broom, swirls of yellow chalk dust in the air. In the corner, I finally get to run my fingers through the cool sand. This is the boys' place, where they drive their Tonka tractors and trucks through trails mapped in this sand contained by a faded green wooden box. Outside, I help teacher beat the erasers on the red brick school wall. I gather up my courage and tell Miss Mast a secret, something big girls do. Tell secrets that is. I tell her that awhile back, after school, Rachel and I talked Dutch while together in line behind the gray post, waiting for the bus. Talking Pennsylvania Dutch is verboten, forbidden to students on the playground, before and after school. We say morning good-byes to our mothers and baby brothers and sisters in Dutch. And then our lips are sealed until, in the afternoon, we step off the bus at the end of the lane. But that day, I got up my nerve to answer Rachel in Dutch, daring God to cut out my tongue on the spot. Just like that. So, I told Miss Mast. I laughed at Rachel and me as I told it. She smiled back, preoccupied. She likes me. And I like being here with her. Next day right before recess I'm opening the silver latch on my red and blue plaid metal lunch box. Not again! Butter and homemade grape jelly smashed on soft white bread. The jelly bleeds through the bread, showing purple. I promise myself for the thousandth time never to eat food like this when I grow up. I look up from my little jelly jar of canned peaches to see Rachel's face turned back toward me from her desk in the front of the room. Her facial muscles are twisted down, and her eyes are fierce with disgust. Miss Mast has betrayed me. She has decreed to the whole class that Rachel and I must give up our recess today for talking Dutch while waiting for the bus. Rachel denies it. Says no such thing happened. I insist that it did. I don't lie. It's bad. Inside me, I know something. That day, I know not to tell secrets to Miss Mast. I know not to tell secrets to people who are the boss. I know Rachel is not my friend. I know to watch out for Mennonite girls. This is my own truth. Outside, I learn to be nice. To give in. To not make a fuss. To steer clear of conflict. In this way, I multiply my knowledge and divide myself. In first grade. By Violet "Vi" Dutcher, who chairs EMU's language and literature department. She also directs the university-wide writing program, which assists all members of the campus community (undergrad and grad students, faculty and staff) to become better or more productive writers. The piece above is from After the Bell � Contemporary American Prose about School, (University of Iowa Press, 2007). Dutcher earned her PhD at Kent State University. By Ben Louis, class of 2011, a native of Haiti, majoring in biochemistry. This poem is from the 52nd edition of EMU's literary journal, The Phoenix (2009-10). 6 | crossr oads | summer 2010 literature 2. wider world Sunday Mornings in China, 1993 The church I go to in this country of stone walls, brick walls, concrete-coated walls, adobe walls, and -- in the South -- bamboo fences has many doors -- simple wooden doors weathered into a quiet green, doors whose locks hang loose in this land of crisply snapped shut locks, doors never locked even when darkness fills the alleys outside. This church I go to has many windows -- small-paned double windows set in green wood along the south and north sides of the sanctuary, anachronisms polished clean in this flat dusty town dotted with smoke stacks that is home to six million people. The eastern sun pours in through the high door windows, reflecting off the white-washed arches and high ceiling and filling the room with such clear light that all two thousand heads of the people -- gathered here for this second of three morning services -- shine as though tipped with white fire! In this church I go to the people sing an hour before the service begins and stay for the long sermon even though the cushions on the hard wooden slats of the benches are thin. In this church I go to here the people smile now. Where there is no guidance, the people fall, but in abundance of counselors there is victory. -- Proverbs 11:14 after changing the tire [This excerpt from the novel A Long Dry Season, published by Good Books in 1988, involves the protagonist, Thomas, stopping to help some American tourists stranded in the Kenyan countryside with a flat tire.] "How do you like Africa?" the woman said, coming to him with the peaches. It was a tourist's question, and he fought down the pride to let them know that he had been in the country for nearly a decade. "I love the land," Thomas said. He drank from his coffee and set the cup on the roof of the car to accept the polished saucer of peaches. Then relenting a little, because of the fruit in his hand, he added, "Yesterday I drove all morning across the lovely plains and in the late afternoon up through the green hill country south of the town ..." But he stopped speaking, for the other man was smiling. "Just now you reminded me of a line out of Hemingway. Perhaps you read him, too?" Thomas began to eat the fruit. And when its firm flesh was in his mouth he caught the cloying smell of the lemon on his hands. "Not often since college," he said. But Jason was not listening; he had begun to quote the lines: "`I had loved country all my life; the country was always better than the people. I could only care about people a very few at a time.'" When Thomas made no response, the tanned wife said with a sardonic laugh: "You must forgive my husband! Quoting Hemingway! Imagine! Who but a professor of American literature could be so romantic, so gauche!" "Perhaps you remember it," the husband said. "From Green Hills of Africa?" "Could you quote it again?" Thomas spoke quietly, his steady voice a lie to the dark flood pounding in his veins. So into the clear sunlight of that new day he heard the American professor say again, "`I had loved country all my life; the country was always better than the people ....'" And into that space between the three of them under the wild fig fell something cruel and fresh as the sudden air through a window thrown open in a sealed house. By Omar Eby '57, professor emeritus of English at EMU, where he taught for 27 years. He also taught for six years in Africa--Somalia, Tanzania, and Zambia. He holds an MA in journalism from Syracuse University and MFA in creative writing from the University of Virginia. He just published in e-book form his second novel, Mill Creek, about a teenaged boy from a Mennonite background who is struggling to understand himself and his world. By Nancy V. Lee '52, who has taught English at universities in the U.S., Canada, Japan and China, including part-time at EMU's Intensive English Program. This poem can be found at the end of her chapter-length memoir, "An Unexpected Life," in a book she co-edited with husband Robert Lee, Making Sense of the Journey: The Geography of Our Faith (EMU/ACRS, 2007, distributed by Herald Press). www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 7 When Jesus heard that, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick [do]." -- Matthew 9:12 PriViLegeD white girLs in africa In a field I am the absence / of field. This is / always the case. Wherever I am / I am what is missing. -- Mark Strand, from "Keeping Things Whole" My parents own an old, dog-eared edition of Tenzi Za Rohoni, the hymnal of the Tanzania Mennonite Church. Inside its ripped green cover, the pages are slathered with the large swirls and zigzags of my one-year-old hand. My markings cover the texts of North American hymns, translated into the straightforward vowels and forceful consonant blends of Swahili: Mungu Ni Pendo, Baba Mwana Roho. Later, back in the Mennonite churches of Pennsylvania, I will learn them as For God So Loved Us and Holy, Holy, Holy. I imagine myself in those Shirati days, perched on my mother's lap during hot services inside the white adobe church, scribbling intently on top of those songs while listening to Luo voices sing them. It seems that I am determined to make a mark on each page of the book--even if only a dot or short line--as if to say, I have been here, and here, and here, too. It is as if I am adding my voice to the chorus of other wazungu [white people], who have brought medicines and motorcycles and coverings and hymnals to this Dark Continent: We have been here, and here, and here, too. In Africa, I am the absence of Africa. Several countries to the south, during those same troubled years of the 1970s, another white girl was leaving her race's mark. Alexandra Fuller's recent memoir, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, recounts her bitter childhood as the daughter of colonial farmers with motives far more complex--and far less admirable--than my parents'. Fuller's British family moved from ranch to ranch in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi. They lived at least the fa�ade of colonial dominance, complete with uniformed "houseboys," swimming pools, and all-white boarding schools. Although their colonial lives crumble in the face of her mother's alcoholism, the death of three of her siblings, and African nation-building, Fuller's parents persist. A conversation early in the book tells much about her parents' blinded loyalties to their race, their refusal to acknowledge any Other. While entertaining a visitor from England and discussing politics, Mum pours herself more wine, finishing the bottle, then she says fiercely to our guest, "Thirteen thousand Kenyans and a hundred white settlers died in the struggle for Kenya's independence." I can tell the visitor doesn't know if he should look impressed or distressed. He settles for a look of vague surprise. "I had no idea." "Of course you bloody people had no idea," says Mum. "A hundred . . . of us." I am reticent to lay these stories beside each other. The characters in them--my parents and their missionary colleagues, Fuller's parents and their colonial cronies--could hardly be more different. The first were motivated by concern for the souls and bodies of others, the second by a strong brew of racism and profit and adventure. And even though many early missionaries are learning how culture-bound and racist their message often was, I remain confident that most carried generous motives and compassionate hearts. Yet I am disturbed by the strange sonority of these scenes, the strings of Whiteness, resources, and power that connect them. As Tanzanian Mennonite bishop Zedekiah Kisare, now deceased, put it in his memoir (Kisare: A Mennonite of Kiseru, 1984), missionaries (and certainly colonialists, even struggling ranchers like the Fullers) have a "long tether rope": "Their rope is so long that they can hardly carry it," he writes. "These resources give the people from the West the ability to come here in the first place. Their resources make it possible for them to do their work and for them to enjoy Africa." With these words, Kisare implicates some of my favorite memories: Land Rover trips past the acacia trees and elephant tribes of the Serengeti, afternoon teas in the bougainvillea-lined guesthouse of Nairobi, hippo-watching at lush Lake Naivasha. My missionary-kid life certainly wasn't all game-park vacation, but my life looked more like Fuller's than like the malaria-ridden and water-carrying existences of my African peers. I would love to return to Africa. I would love to show my husband and children the frangipani trees I climbed, to taste the ugali and mandazis that I learned to love, to meet the people who were so hospitable to my family. But how do I salvage these happy memories when Whiteness and the privilege of a long-tether rope made them possible? How do I appreciate another culture without consuming it? How do I observe or interact with the Other, whether person, culture, or landscape, without altering--or at least negatively altering--It? On the other hand, how do I, as a person of relative privilege and power, not feel guilty for my very existence? Alexandra Fuller and I take little stabs at apology and reparation: She takes some of her few clothes to one of her family's African laborers; I choose to live in a diverse neighborhood with at least a few less things than my culture tells me I deserve. But how do we not simply act ashamed of our privilege, which 8 | crossr oads | summer 2010 literature Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. -- Romans 12:16 is a convenient liberal fa�ade, while continuing to benefit from it? As Albert Memmi writes in his over-40-year-old but timeless book, The Colonizer and the Colonized, any attempt by a colonizer to disengage from colonial ideology is ultimately futile and mostly a mental exercise: "It is not easy to escape mentally from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual relationships." We can be, in Memmi's terminology, "colonizers who accept" the structures of inequality or "colonizers who refuse," who agitate against the system. We can be hard-driving ranchers or compassionate missionaries. Either way, in Africa, we are the absence of Africa. It would be disingenuous to assume that my privilege is visible only there, of course. I benefit from my race and class privilege every day, here at home, most of the time without even being aware of it. But that's a topic for another, much longer, much more confessional column. So I won't travel to Tanzania right now, or any time soon. Instead I'll read Swahili counting books to my sons and enjoy the ugali that my father and sister whip up on occasion. I'll remember with fondness the hyena's cackle and the bitterness of wood-smoke, but I'll try to keep my tether rope coiled, at least a little. It's not about a guilt trip for a privileged life, as Barbara Kingsolver puts it in an essay about simple living, but just "an adventure in bearable lightness." And fortunately, when we human beings with power use it wrongly, nature--and culture--can sometimes bounce back to their original forms. Fortunately, Luo Mennonites now sing Luo songs in church, not only Swiss-German melodies, and North American missionaries are leaving their requirements for coverings and "modesty" at home. Fortunately, God can take all the absences we create and turn them into signposts of the true Presence. By Valerie Weaver-Zercher `94, whose work receives special mention in the 2009 Pushcart Prize anthology and has been published in Orion, Publishers Weekly, Christian Century, Sojourners, and Brain, Child, among others. This essay is from DreamSeeker Magazine, Summer 2003, Vol. 3, No. 3. Weaver-Zercher is a recipient of a fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She is currently editing the 30th anniversary edition of Living More with Less, which will be published by Herald Press in November 2010. She also is a curriculum editor for Gather 'Round. For more information on WeaverZercher, including ways to engage her editorial services, visit www.vweaver-zercher.com. Grandfather Zehr's Schooling He wouldn't let them sleep when they arrived home late after hitchhiking five hundred miles from the nearest Mennonite college. He'd fill the wood-burning cook stove like it was time to warm the kitchen for breakfast--their bags still resting in the entryway--and quiz them on the view in the planetarium, world geography, even the fundamentals of physics that make a plane fly--all that his eighth-grade education had not provided. Even the walk to bed was fueled by discussions as they'd stumble over Donna--still too young to stay up past nine--hiding on the stairway to overhear her brothers and father debate underlined portions of text. She would fight sleep, wording "Psychiatrist" after her pre-med brother or "Vietnam" from another's history class, as if they were prayers. Then with the kids in their beds and the flicker of his reading lamp, he would milk every tired drop out of a book about missionaries in China, until he woke them at 5:00 a.m. for chores and questions, their weary answers a map to how they'd leave that farm for good. By Debra Gingerich '90, from Where We Start (DreamSeeker Books, 2007) www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 9 3. who we are Letter to Myself as a Child You wake to birdcalls, your mother's footsteps down the hallway past your door. Amazing grace, she sings, her arms piled high with laundry. Sunlight warms your face and dawdles in the sheets. You rise, dress, leave the house as if on urgent business. Barefoot, you leap across high grasses in the field, drag the dinghy through mud, throw in a life preserver that you never wear and row south, past the duck blinds and buoys that mean deep water, past the sandbar. The house is small in the landscape. As though you were already gone, you dream a little of your life there, but what you think of mostly is the way this river leads into a larger river, bay, then ocean. The sun beats down on your skin, warm and brown, and you lift the oars into the hull and lay a palm against your belly, stroke your thigh. Amazing grace, deep water. The tide turns your drifting boat toward the river's mouth and, further, toward a flickering spot of white, so tiny and uncertain it's barely more than premonition, a gull's wing or a sail reflecting light. We live by faith, not by sight. -- II Corinthians 5:7 `Demure as Dynamite' [This is excerpted from a review of At Powerline and Diamond Hill: Unexpected Intersections of Life and Work written by Lee F. Snyder, class of '63, and published by DreamSeeker Books, 2010.] Lee Snyder's career trajectory is amazing � from farm girl with only a year of college to young wife and mother, years of voluntary service during the Biafran war in Nigeria, administrative assistant at EMU, assistant dean, academic dean, president of Bluffton University, and denominational head for several years during a decade of presidential leadership. Along the way, while working and mothering, she somehow finished three degrees, concluding with a PhD in English literature from the University of Oregon. "Why do you want to go to college?" asked her father before she set off across the country with her high school sweetheart for one year of college before they married. "Will you have a good man to work for?" came from her mother when she took the position of academic dean at EMU, and "Why would you want to do this?" asked a board member's wife when she interviewed at Bluffton. All three questions indicate how radical her path was when judged by traditional Mennonite standards for women. How did she resolve them? By her thorough knowledge of the Bible and its narratives of unusual people called by God to do particular work in the world, by her careful reading of great writers, by her loving relationship with Del, her supportive husband, and by her daily practices of contemplation, some of which included traditional tasks like folding laundry. When she gets a particularly nasty letter in her work as academic dean, she goes home and scrubs the toilets! What I find most amazing about this book is exactly what I find most wonderful about Lee Snyder in real life. Just barely five feet tall, soft-spoken, and self-effacing, she never commands with her presence. I think about a poetic line describing Emily Dickinson � "demure as dynamite"� when I look at her. Somewhere between the Oregon sawdust trail of her youth and the president's corner office, she discovered harmony, a peace that passes understanding, something larger than the mere resolution of the contradictions and conflicts in her life. Her story is not a testimony to striving, or "agency"; instead, it testifies to the possibility that the still small voice inside, when rooted in faith, love, and a physical home in the world, can lead both to great adventures and to a larger spiritual home that we carry with us always. From a blog, www.100memoirs.com, by Shirley Showalter '70, vice president of programs at The Fetzer Institute, previously a professor and the president at Goshen College. Her writings have been published in The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Christian Century. By Juanita Brunk, who spent several years at EMU (class of '77) before completing her BA at James Madison University. She holds an MFA from George Mason University and was the first recipient of the Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Born in Newport News, Va., Brunk now lives in New York. This poem is from A Cappella -- Mennonite Voices in Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2003). 10 | crossr oads | summer 2010 literature My son, keep your father's commands and do not forsake your mother's teaching. -- Proverbs 6:20 withereD new yorker [This excerpt from Crazy Quilt � Pieces of a Mennonite Life (DreamSeeker, 2003) elaborates on a decision by the author, who had been seriously depressed and who was separating from her husband, to return to her Lancaster roots for an indefinite visit.] ...[A]s the saying goes, you can't truly go home again. Home is simply a memory, a place that no longer exists in the real world after you've been away for a long time. To truly go home would be to return to what you were before you left, to relinquish everything you've become. But you can try to return. Just as you can try anything. You can return with a little of you, just that teeny part that agrees to go. Maybe I would learn something I'd forgotten, or a thing not learned well enough the first time around. I told my friends it was just for a summer, so that I could write poetry. But I was more desperate than that. At first, I felt very awkward, a withered specimen from New York, wearing too much black and smoking in stolen moments, late at night, on the driveway. I kept a pint of Wild Turkey I'd brought from New York in my desk drawer, which I sipped late at night after everyone else was in bed. When a week passed, and the bottle was empty, I drove to the local pizza joint and tossed it into the dumpster. I didn't plan on replacing it. I was going to do what one of my friends called "52-card pick-up with your life." I was going to change my life all over again. By Cynthia Yoder, who attended EMU for the 1984-85 academic year. She holds a BA from Goshen College and an MFA in fiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a freelance writer based in Princeton, New Jersey. Lewis County Chronicle 2 When needed at home, Marian took a job sweeping the floor of the one room schoolhouse so she could read the students' lessons left on the blackboard. She would eavesdrop when friends at church shared their social studies assignments and pretend the German lessons in Sunday School led to a diploma. She played evening games of dominoes as if they were final exams. Years later, in tight cursive written to each of her eleven grandchildren, she would admit, "I did want to go to high school." But it was sugaring season and brother Sam had broken an arm and no special treatment "During seminary, I thought knowing should be at the base; and I studied diligently. When I began the ministry, I thought doing should be at the base; and I worked diligently. In recent years I have discovered that being really should be at the base, and I am giving more attention to this aspect of my life." � John R. Martin '54, SEM '56, professor emeritus at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. From Making Sense of the Journey: the Geography of Our Faith (EMU/ACRS, 2007). could be given to a girl born the ninth of eleven on a Thursday in July while her siblings visited Grandmother Zehr and the men finished haying. By Debra Gingerich '90, from Where We Start (DreamSeeker Books, 2007) www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 11 The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. -- Isaiah 32:17 going to war [Excerpted from a book about two Mennonite brothers � "Mastie," who chose to be a soldier in WWI, in contrast to "Ira" who chose to be a conscientious objector.] He was on his way to France and these people here clutching at him -- they'd get over their feelings. He wished Mom would at least stop crying. It made him feel criminal. "Look, Mom --" "I don't know what we did wrong," she said. "What's the sense of bawling? You didn't do anything wrong." "Train up a child in the way he shall go and when he is old he will not depart -- depart--" said Mom, and she couldn't finish it. "Now, Mom ..." Pop put his hand on her shoulder. "So, what did Annie have to say?" "I don't think that's anybody else's business." "Listen, Mastie. It's our business. You are our business. We brought you into this world. We raised you and you're our boy." "I didn't come to argue. You said, `Come for dinner,' so here I am. Now can I eat? Pass the potatoes." There was a long silence. "Your hair used to look so nice the other way," said Mom. "I don't know why you suddenly want to throw everything away. It just doesn't make sense to me. No, it doesn't." "This is the way I like it, that's why," said Mastie. He went back to his potatoes. "The Army --" said Mom. "When I think of the awful things that are happening in France that we hear so much about, and then think that my boy might kill some other mother's boy --" "I'm not going to kill anyone. Anyway, they're not just `mothers' boys.' They're German soldiers." "We're German," said Pop. "We're not German. We're American!" "Well, we were once German -- and Swiss. We speak Pennsylvania German. They're no different than we are, except for one thing. They've caught a disease and now they're sick, and if we don't watch out we're going to catch the disease too, because it's contagious. Do you know what that disease is?" "No." "Why war, of course. War is a disease, just like tuberculosis, and it's catching. Now does it make sense to get sick yourself in order to help a sick man?" Mastie yawned. He hadn't had much sleep. "I have a plan," said Pop. "I'm going to write to your Uncle Joe's in Indiana and see if he can scrape up some work for you. Joe's in carpentering and he makes some of the best tables and chairs in the Midwest. There's a chance for you to apprentice yourself to a real master and learn something you could take with you for a lifetime. Having a trade is a gift of God. You can always use it. I was thinking of this for a while already but I wasn't going to suggest it for another year or so, but since you're set on leaving--" "I've enlisted, Pop," said Mastie, "and there's a law against quitting once you're in." "You leave that to me," said Pop. "I'm going into town in the morning and I'll call on those people and explain how things are. I know the officer there in town � Sholley. We used to be just like that in school." He twined his fingers. "He's a man who listens to reason. There's a difference between being drafted and enlisting. You're not twenty-one yet." "You're not going to take me out." "Sure I am. You're not going to the Army, son." "Do you think you can stand up to the United States government? You can't � they'll squash you � and secondly, I'm going to France and you and the whole church can't stop me. You may be able to keep Ira out if you're lucky, but you're not keeping me. I want to go." [In France, many months later...] "What's wrong?" said the chaplain. "Tell me about it." "I killed hundreds of men," said Mastie. "Today?" the chaplain said. "Yes, today. You said a prayer over them, but it didn't do no good. They're in hell, like I'll be in hell when my turn comes. My Pop was right. He told me the truth." He kept shaking his head. "Stoltzfus, you're too hard on yourself," said the chaplain. "War and murder are two different things. Murder, the Lord says, is wrong. `Love thy neighbor as thyself,' the Scriptures say, and again, `Thou shalt not kill.' But the Bible also tells us in Romans, `Let love be genuine: hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good,' and in Romans 13, `But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he [that is the government] does not bear the sword in vain, he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the evildoer.'" "Then it is right to kill them?" said Mastie. "Jesus would do it?" "Stoltzfus," the chaplain said, and he gripped the boy's hard shoulder. "I could not do the work I am doing until I could see Jesus himself sighting down a gun barrel and running a bayonet through an enemy's body." By Kenneth Reed '66, excerpted by permission from Mennonite Soldier (Herald Press, 1975; reissued in paperback by Masthof Press, 2009). Reed has written a second novel, He Flew Too High, as well as investigative articles, plays and magazine columns. Recently, he received a grant to write a novel on Swiss German Mennonites coming to America in 1710. Reed's day job is an account manager at Albin Engineering Services, Inc., in Santa Clara, California. 12 | crossr oads | summer 2010 literature 4. death I've long forgotten: "Pidge." It's been more than thirty-five years. Does anyone still remember? Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. -- Matthew 5:4 Friendship . . . (in memory of Rod Childers) Rod, my friend--or, as we called you back then for reasons Now it is more clear to me (kids don't appreciate these things enough). The kindness, the wisdom, the humility. You were a true friend. A little league trip. The excitement of the drive-in stop. When you live in Elkton, Oregon, fast food is a rare treat. You started four years. Varsity fullback. As we said then-- built like a brick s---house. Solid. Hard. Low to the ground. Not easily stopped. The irresistible force moving the immovable object for a four-yard gain. Then you'd get back up (more slowly in the fourth quarter). December 1971. The immovable object was a semi. No getting back up. They came by the dozen. Young and old from Elkton--those who cheered you on. Rivals from Drain, Yoncalla, Oakland. They cried, too. More than thirty-five years ago--can that really be? Now, you are alone, there on the hillside above the Umpqua. It is a beautiful spot. Since 1984 my dad, our coach--we called him Buzz--is only a long jump shot away. That will keep me coming back from time to time (I saw your grave, summer of '07). But now Buzz has his Betty nearby. You'll always be there alone. "Rodney Vern Childers. Born December 1953. Died December 1971. Number 35." We had good times together-- The rapids. My only drunk. Noticing girls. Playing ball. A few fistfights. Wasting your dad's window panes with BB guns. The analgesic balm in the jock (I didn't think that was funny). Mr. Cotreaux's confrontation after you fire-crackered his garage. "I want to tell you something, Mr. Rod Childers!" By Ted Grimsrud, who is an EMU Bible and religion professor. Adapted with Grimsrud's permission from DreamSeeker Magazine, Summer 2008, Vol. 8, No. 3. I remember. I don't want to forget. I can't forget. My heartache has only deepened. But I was broke--too ashamed to let on. How did you know? You had some spare change, no words needed to be said. The sleepovers. Eighth-graders talking till dawn. There's no God, we're on our own, I said. You weren't so sure. That talk-show philosopher from San Francisco we listened to at night, Ira Blue, said we need faith to be human. By the time I realized you (and Ira) were right, you were gone. How did you know? Football. You started as a freshman--the rest of us were scrubs. Game day, the scrubs run out at the end of the line. You ran out with me, the last two guys. Each game, four years, you and I bring up the rear--even as all-stars. How did you know? Yes--you were a friend. I know that now much more than I did then. There is no love without loss. No friendship without sorrow. We always will have to say goodbye sometime. You weren't taken for my benefit (though benefit I have). We learn through our tears, bittersweet. Dear God help me not waste this gift. www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 13 The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. -- Psalm 9:9 shareD grief is more BearaBLe [The author is writing after his young adult daughter was killed by a negligent truck driver.] Thank God for those who stood with us, who strengthened us... Two cousins whom I had not seen for years, two days after the accident travelled almost four hours to be with us for several hours--eight total hours of travel on a Sunday afternoon and night to offer us their presence and love. On a Friday afternoon, exactly a week after the accident, I finished teaching a class and turned to leave, thinking I had hidden my feelings rather well. A young woman hesitated until most of the other students had left and then startled me: "I just want to give you a hug." Many students, especially women, sent notes for weeks after the accident. One wrote to me, "This is just a little note letting you know that someone is thinking of and praying for you today. I realize that the weekends are tough for you and your family, but I just want you to know that I care and I still cry for you and your pain. Even though I cannot fully understand your pain, I just wanted to tell you that I care." At times I felt an incredible emptiness as if there were an actual physical void in my body. On one such occasion I returned to my office after teaching a class which seemed uncharacteristically dull and unresponsive. The well of my emotional resources was drained, seemingly depleted. Later that forenoon a former student, now a secretary, came to my office, saying, "I came to give you a hug." The human touch heals, restores. A good friend and colleague stopped in the hallway on another occasion to offer me his concern. "When I walk past your house," he said, "I think of an empty room, an empty chair, empty hearts." I am humbled and encouraged by his thoughtfulness. Grief shared becomes more bearable. You continue to grieve but as the weeks and months pass, you think perhaps you should say less about your own feelings. After all, others do need to get on with their lives; what right do you have to impose pain on them? And some appear to forget quickly. Others seem to want us to forget, too, or assume that we don't want to be reminded. What those without the experience cannot imagine is what a towering preoccupation the death of one's child becomes. Forget! For months in any vacant moment, thoughts of my daughter would rush in. We cannot forget--nor do we want to, were it possible. Rather, those who are grieving need to be permitted--yes, encouraged--to remember. As Abraham Schmitt says in his helpful book Turn Again to Life, "Tomorrow will not be better for the grieving ones as long as they meet persons who continue to say... [that it will]." But what a wonderful gift when others remember. Exactly six months after the accident a dear family friend said, "Today is six months, isn't it?" Moved by her thoughtfulness, I could barely nod my answer. "I want you to know," she continued, "that I have prayed for you every day." I am left dumb in the presence of such caring, such generosity of spirit. There are no simple, formulaic solutions to cure grief, no quick fixes for the anguished spirit. About nine months after the accident, as we were visiting another church, a longtime acquaintance asked me, "Well, are things pretty well back to normal?" I could have collapsed on the floor, but with Germanic reserve I murmured that, no, life was not "normal." ...Most of our friends in Kansas and elsewhere did not try to explain why the events of September 18 took place. A few, trying to help, did attempt explanations--or asked thoughtless questions. One medical doctor, not from our church, did have the temerity to ask what was Janelle's spiritual condition. I was, frankly, outraged. Had she not been a deeply committed believer, what would his question have served except to bring more pain to the parents? Could he hope to change her eternal destiny now? Another acquaintance, a minister, said that while he would not apply his words to our case, he had found that when people became too comfortable, God often sent hard things into their lives to make them realize their dependence on God. He repeated his statement for emphasis. Although I swallowed my words, I wanted to shout that my wife's rheumatoid arthritis, her several major surgeries and devastating chemotherapy treatments would have seemed adequate to keep us from being "too comfortable." A relative of ours, well-meaning, I'm sure, said she was confident that God never made any mistakes. My lips were sealed, or I might have blurted out that I didn't know much about God's way, but that I was certain that truck drivers made mistakes. And I wasn't sure that we should blame God for the incompetence of a truck driver who lost control of his vehicle. Our relative also said that it seemed God often chose the elite among his children, his very special ones, to call home to heaven. God calls home the specially gifted, she said, the unusually committed. To me these attempts to comfort us fell flat, but then I'm never sure how these theodicies are supposed to work out. By Paul W. Nisly '65. This is an excerpt from Sweeping Up the Heart--A Father's Lament for his Daughter (Good Books, 1992). Nisly retired from teaching at Messiah College in 2007. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Kansas. In April 2010, Messiah College released a book Nisly wrote to coincide with the college's centennial celebration: Shared Faith. Bold Vision. Enduring Promise. The Maturing Years of Messiah College. Nisly is an ordained minister and a bishop in Lancaster Mennonite Conference. 14 | crossr oads | summer 2010 literature Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. -- Psalm 30:5 ministry Last LoVe Letters Dad went to the hospital in January. He had a cough that wouldn't go away. On the way to Riverside Hospital, he told my sister Evelyn, "Soon I will be taking a long journey." At ninety-two years of age, he accepted reality and was trying to prepare the family for his departure. He had been the strong one for himself and Mom, but it was becoming apparent that he would probably be the first to leave. Dad and Mom had been soulmates for a long time--they were married more than seventy years. Mom worked side-byside with Dad in all areas of their life together. Whether in raising a family, working in the peach orchard, or preparing the Sunday sermon, they were partners. They were wonderful models for their children and grandchildren. I was living in Pennsylvania, three hundred miles from Dad and Mom when this last illness struck. I made frequent trips to spend time with Dad. When I arrived in the Colony, I stopped at the house and took Mom along with me to the hospital. They wept in each other's arms... Sometimes Mom was not well enough to go with me to the hospital. Then I became a letter-carrier between the two... I still have the last letters they wrote to each other. Dad wrote: My precious dear sweetheart, I love you forever and forever. I do wish with all my heart that I could be with you. Dear Sweetheart, there is no one like you so precious. -- Truman To my lover and husband I loved you way back then when we were young and carefree. I loved you through all the years of our toiling and growing together. I love you now and I love you forever and forever. -- From the one you call Ruthie Early one Monday in January I made my third trip to visit Dad. Soon after I arrived, the family surrounded his bed. His doctor came into the room with a report from his recent tests. He informed Dad that some cancer was in his lung tissue. The doctor asked, "Do you want us to begin treatment, or do you want us to make you as comfortable as possible?" Dad responded in the way he had planned long before, "No treatment, just do what you can to make me comfortable." That evening when I embraced Dad, he said, "You'd better return to Pennsylvania. I am alright." Betty and I left, thinking there would be more visits. We arrived back home about midnight and had been asleep only a few hours when the phone rang. It was Evelyn, "Dad just left us." While it was still dark, we got back in the car and headed back to Virginia. By Truman H. Brunk '64, MDiv '69 from That Amazing Junk-Man--The Agony and Ecstasy of a Pastor's Life (Cascadia, 2007) Death of a harsh father [In this excerpt from a novel, the narrator's father was mortally injured when his private plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.] My father was a businessman. He was always orchestrating, organizing, managing things. His children were not exempted from the list of things that he thought needed managing. To say it mildly, I resisted it. I resisted him. He was never much of a father to me. He was of a mind--the same stubborn mind he had when he ran from the wreckage and swore at the Amish and Mennonites--that the world is a cold, unforgiving place. He resolved to, if nothing else, impart that knowledge to his children. He spoke to me often the cliche, "Willie, nobody's going to do anything for you. If you want something in this world you're going to have to get up off your ass and get it yourself." People are not good, was his basic belief. And, beyond their moral position in the world--perhaps even worse, in his view--people didn't really act, they didn't act with decision. People, he thought, lacked initiative. But he was still my father and for whatever differences we had, it still wasn't nice to see him suffer on his deathbed. It wasn't nice to see his ears burnt off, his head swollen up like a balloon, or his hands charred and shriveled into what looked like little chicken's paws. In the weeks after the accident, we had to decide whether or not to pull the plug. The doctors told us, "Statistically he has no chance to live. And, if he does live, he'll be severely disfigured, severely disfigured." Of course we chose not to pull the plug. Of course he died anyway--after four or five weeks of unnecessary suffering. By Stephen Byler '92 from his first novel, Searching for Intruders (HarperCollins, 2002). He holds an MA in religion and literature from Yale and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 15 The Value of Memoirs By LinDen m. wenger '36, thB '53 Have you thought about writing your memoirs? I know that many people have the urge sometime in life, usually in their later years, to record the events which have shaped their lives and which seem significant to them. Most of us, I suspect, struggle with two conflicting impulses. The first is to say, "But my life was not all that eventful, different or unusual. Why should I record it?" The other is to say, "Life was exciting and significant to me; I would like to share it with my posterity." Let everyone be assured, "Your life is important." You are a part of family, church and community. Your contribution should not be lost. Here is a small segment of history which you know better than anyone else and to which you have given your own interpretation. Your interpretation of events may differ from that of your siblings or fellow citizens (as people who write memoirs find out), but your interpretation has its own validity and serves to enrich the whole. Your observations and conclusions may well give light to others. In some cultures -- the Chinese, for example -- it is considered something of a duty, a final legacy to posterity for the elderly to write down and preserve their own stories, their observations and accumulated wisdom of life. It is true, writing is a discipline and doesn't come easily to most of us. But most of us do have children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, who will cherish a few mimeographed pages of the most exciting adventures of life -- of our own family habits, traditions and jokes. For those who are serious about writing memoirs, I recommend Katie Funk Wiebe's book, Good Times With Old Times, as a help in getting started and, indeed, as an interesting book in itself. There is an interesting metamorphosis that most of us go through regarding our appreciation of family stories and family history. Children like stories, but because of the admonition often accompanying them, children are not initially impressed by stories of the early hours in which Dad had to get up to help with the chores or how many miles he walked to school in the rain and snow. The same is true of mother's stories of how few dresses were in her closet when she went to school or how her family ate turnips instead of potatoes during the Great Depression. Children need to separate themselves from the parental home, to mature, make their own decisions, climb their own ladder and establish their own identity and place in society. This achieved, these children often return with a new appreciation and relish for the stories of the good old days. Remember, your own life is unique and valuable. You occupy a spot in history that no one else can duplicate. Your observations and conclusions are a contribution to the welfare of humankind. To record them for posterity is to extend the benefits of your own life and work. Linden M. Wenger died on December 12, 2005. He wrote about his life as a retiree in Climbing Down the Ladder (Good Books, 1993), from which this was excerpted. eDitor's note on recent memoirs Three books produced in the last four years contain a wealth of memoirs, mostly offered by excellent writers and deep thinkers at middle age or older. Most of these authors are EMU alumni who have accumulated decades of colorful experiences and hard-won wisdom. The books are: Telling Our Stories � Personal Accounts of Engagement with Scripture (Cascadia, 2006), edited by Ray Gingerich '60 and Earl Zimmerman '86, MAR '87; Making Sense of the Journey � The Geography of Our Faith (EMU/ACRS, 2007), edited by Robert Lee and Nancy V. Lee '52; and Continuing the Journey (EMU/ ACRS, 2009), edited by Nancy V. Lee. Perhaps because many of the authors are retirees with "nothing to lose" in terms of their careers or social status, most of the memoirs are refreshingly frank, with doubts and detours laid out for all to examine. They also offer differing, sometimes conflicting, interpretations of historical events and theological teachings. But the editors allowed them to stand as they are. As Gingerich and Zimmerman wrote in their introduction: "As an authentic expression of a community member's experience, a story needs no further legitimization. It lies beyond the critic's analysis. For the one telling the story, it calls for vulnerability, an inward search, a potential revelatory therapy. For listeners (audience), it offers the invitation to participate in another's sacred encounters and life-shaping experiences." Telling Our Stories contains 23 essays, and the two Journey books contain 16 essays each. Despite the ponderous-looking historical paintings on the covers of these books, these books are not heavy reads. Instead they read like chats over the breakfast table, as indeed many of them were. 16 | crossr oads | summer 2010 literature Creative, `Benevolent' Capitalists writers who fear reaDers' reactions might try adopting this mindset of long-time publisher and writer Merle Good '69: "Always have another work underway. If people think your current work is great, you don't get too big of a head, because they might not like your next one. If they think it's terrible, you can tell yourself, `But they don't know about my next piece.'" Merle Good combines obvious confidence in his creative and business acumen with a disarming ability to smile at himself, admit some serious missteps, and express utter devotion to Phyllis Pellman Good, his wife of 41 years, and their adult daughters, 33-year-old Kate Good and 31-year-old Rebecca Good Fennimore. "My priorities were always my wife and my kids," he says. "Way down the line is making a significant impact doing this or that." Actually, Merle and Phyllis Good (class of '70) make an egalitarian twosome in writing, editing, and publishing books, in addition to their non-publishing business ventures. Merle got picked for the cover of this Crossroads because he is the one who has written novels, children's books, and plays (i.e., "creative writing"), while Phyllis has focused on non-fiction, especially the hugely bestselling series of "Fix It and Forget It" recipe books for slow cookers. Despite millions of books sold under the Good Books imprimatur, the Goods don't live much differently than they did when they were raising Kate and Rebecca in the 1980s and '90s in a modest rowhouse in downtown Lancaster, a couple of blocks from their current church, East Chestnut Street Mennonite. They work from this same home or out of a small warren of offices above the People's Place Book Shoppe and Gallery on Main Street in Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Their business conference room is sandwiched between two doors that serve as a passageway from the bookstore to the upstairs offices. When Merle, Phyllis, Kate and Rebecca met with two Crossroads staffers, they had to pull the conference table from against a wall to make room to squeeze into chairs around it. gooD famiLy ministry phenomenon. It aired nationally on June 11 and 12. In January 2010, Good Books published The Mayo Clinic Diet: Eat Well, Enjoy Life, Lose Weight, which immediately became the No. 1 New York Times bestseller in its subject category. The Goods will be collaborating with the Mayo Clinic to publish eight more books in the next five years. Mayo chose Good Books as its publisher over a branch of Time Inc. With EMU professor Howard Zehr as series editor, Good Books published the Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding, a series of 16 inexpensive, easy-to-read paperbacks, including one in Spanish. Merle's children's books, featuring a fictional Amish boy named Reuben and illustrated by renowned painter P. Buckley Moss, have sold more than 125,000 copies. A book co-written by Merle and Phyllis in the late 1960s, 20 Most Asked Questions About the Amish and Mennonites, has sold almost 500,000 copies. It is often the book in the hands of the six to eight million tourists who pass through Intercourse, Pa., each year, in search of glimpses into the Amish. Apart from their books, the Goods have tapped into the unending curiosity about the Amish and Old Order Mennonites by setting up retail outlets in Intercourse � the middle of horse-and-buggy Amish country � such as the Old Country Store, the People's Place Quilt Museum, the Village Pottery, and an art gallery. A cook store targeted at "fix it and forget it" fans is in the works, with daughter Rebecca as its manager. Other ambitious projects have had impressive runs, but were shut down for various reasons (usually due to onerous time demands on the Goods, coupled with high costs): from 1968 to 1977, Merle ran a summer theater in Lancaster called Dutch Family Festival, with plays on Amish or Mennonite themes. He www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 17 Merle Good '69 was a student actor and director at EMU, later earning an MDiv. thriVing Businesses They don't look or act like they're raking in millions of dollars of profits, but clearly they are doing very well indeed: Books issued by Good Books are sold in Walmart, Sam's, Costo, Target, Lowe's, Toys R Us, and supermarket and bookstore chains, among other outlets. The Goods' 20 or so cookbooks, most of them produced by Phyllis and titled some variation of "fix it and forget it," have totaled more than 12 million sold. A just-launched Facebook site devoted to people interested in "fix it and forget it" cooking has attracted 3,000 new fans per day. This spring (2010) a crew from CNN's Your Money came to Intercourse, Pa., to film a segment on the "fix it and forget it" photograph by jon styer From left, Rebecca Good Fennimore '01, Kate Good '99, Phyllis Pellman Good (C '70), and Merle Good '69 ham it up in The Old Country Store owned by the Goods. wrote 10 full-length plays and oversaw 400 productions, sometimes acting in them. (And this from a man who was forbidden to see movies or plays while growing up � he saw his first movie, My Fair Lady, after he got to college.) Phyllis edited Festival Quarterly, a magazine focused on Mennonite-related culture, literature, art and music, from 1974 until the publication ceased in 1996. (As an undergraduate in 1969, Phyllis was one of three editors of The Phoenix, EMU's literary magazine.) Merle wrote his only novel (his second is now in the works), Happy as the Grass Was Green (1971), which was renamed Hazel's People and made into a feature-length movie in the 1970s. Between the book and the movie, about a quarter million people were reached around the world. Out of 1,000 manuscripts or writing proposals sent to Good Books each year, about 10 are accepted for publication. The Goods now have about 300 books on the market, including books repackaged from the United Kingdom for North American consumption. 18 | crossr oads | summer 2010 Daughters join in Merle estimates he spends 90 percent of his time on business matters. Says he enjoys working with numbers. The son of a farmerpastor in the conservative Mennonite tradition, Merle was a "little boy preacher," who many in his home community thought would grow up to be a revival-style evangelist � in short, he is good at selling stuff he believes in. These days Merle devotes, at best, only 10 percent of his work time to creating his own pieces. He dreams of changing those percentages to 50-50. "Theater is my first love," he says, adding that he played the lead in the first official play ever produced at EMU, Murder in the Cathedral. Merle majored in English and history at EMU. The summer of '69, soon after his graduation, Merle married Phyllis, a rising senior at EMU. She had transferred into EMU from Millersville State a year earlier. The newlyweds then moved to New York City where Merle entered Union Theological Seminary to earn an MDiv. Phyllis completed her BA and MA in English at New York University. Similar to her father, Kate majored in English and minored in history at EMU. She then earned an MFA from George Mason University in writing fiction. She is working on her first novel in her free time. Mostly, however, she carries assistant publishing duties at Good Books, including screening manuscripts, publishing books, and marketing them. Merle and Kate do get help from two New York publicity firms. Phyllis remains chief editor, often assigning the copyediting to a small stable of regular freelance editors. In the children's book line, copyediting tends to be minimal because many of the books originate with a publisher in the United Kingdom. Good Books re-publishes the books for its North America audience. Rebecca '01, a former middle school English teacher in Harrisonburg, Va., was the last to join the family business. She came in 2008 because she and her husband, a fellow teacher, "missed being in Pennsylvania," and she was open to "trying something different." Her husband Rob '01 has opted to remain in the classroom � he's teaching at Manheim Township High School and completing a master in education through the EMU site in Lancaster. literature what is now EMU's Washington Communi- BankruPtcy DeBts PaiD ty Scholars' Center) and with the Lancaster The bankruptcy judge allowed the Goods to Intelligencer Journal. She also worked for the reorganize their debts and to file a 10-year U.S. Postal Service in its intellectual proper- plan to re-emerge in good business health. ties legal department. Full payment of debts was not required Rebecca followed her childhood dream under this court plan, but the Goods have by teaching sixth grade language arts at chosen to make good on all of their debts, Thomas Harrison Middle School in Harrepaying them a bonus of at least 25% and risonburg, Va., for seven years. She always sometimes as much as 50%, says Merle. made time to recount her childhood experi"Now that we've paid everything back, and ences on Amish farms and to serve homemore, we've gone from being dogs to being made shoofly pie to her students. heroes," he says. "But we're no different now Though obviously pleased that their than we were then. We just have more scars daughters are working in the family busion us." He pauses. "And so do many other ness, Phyllis stresses that the future is open: people. We must always remember that it "Kate and Rebecca aren't obligated to be here. was our failure that caused the crisis." I hope they continue to feel that they have Given that the Goods feel that most of a choice. But they are picking up significant the "unnecessary" hurts involved fellow responsibilities, which may free Merle and Mennonites, did they ever consider leaving me to work on other projects in the future." the Mennonite church? The business ventures of Phyllis and "Yes," says Merle. "But in the end we Merle hit rough waters in the mid-1990s. In said, `Where would we go? What commu1996 they filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. nity would be better?' I have known many When asked about this period, Merle's face people who are `ex's' � they keep living in loses its animation and his words seem more argument against what they left. I would labored. But he responds with his usual prefer to keep learning from working a step frankness. outside the church while in full embrace of "It was a terrible time," he says. "The it." Another pause, and then... "I've found [local] newspaper did a front-page expos� that God's grace comes from the most unexon us. Rebecca was a junior in high school. pected places." We were viewed as dogs. There was a lot of Merle notes that he likes having businessgossip about our marriage that I'm not goes that do not operate officially under the ing to address. We were told that God was church's umbrella. He has spent much of his punishing us. life challenging his Anabaptist community � choosing emu "I understand that many were investors and his family of origin, for that matter � to The Goods say they put no pressure on their afraid of losing their money, but people broaden their horizons. It is easier to do that daughters to attend EMU � and their girls were mean in unnecessary ways that really from the outer edge. confirm this. Says Kate: "I wanted to attend hurt. Sometimes it seemed that the people With their businesses thriving again, a small liberal arts school � I thought about we could trust could be counted on our Merle and Phyllis have resumed being major Franklin & Marshall � but I wanted to fingers." supporters of causes close to their hearts. In continue having the Mennonite experience." Eventually, says Merle, some wise elders addition to being stalwarts at their church, Both she and her sister graduated from of the Mennonite church stepped in and they devote five to 10 hours a week as volLancaster Mennonite High School, as did quietly said, in essence, "Enough bashing unteers for Mennonite World Conference, their parents. of the Goods � destroying them serves no assisting with communications and finances. Rebecca chuckles at her reason for choospurpose." One was a church bishop who They also give significant sums of money to ing EMU: "I thought I would find a Menconfessed to the Goods that he himself had many organizations, including EMU. nonite husband and then go on to a `good' lost his family's farm. "Phyllis and I have always had the idea of school." She did find her husband at EMU, "They built a firewall for us," says Merle. `benevolent capitalism,'" explains Merle. It is but he wasn't Mennonite. And she ended up "They understood that we were key to getgreat � essential, actually � to have a profitdeciding that EMU was giving her a "fabuting people's money back." able business, he says, but those businesses lous education," so she stayed put. Other support came from seemingly sucdo need outside folks to monitor them; Both daughters developed identities discessful individuals in the non-Mennonite they do need to be held accountable to the tinctly different from their parents as young business community, who told the Goods church and larger society, as the Goods have adults and for a few years after college. that "anybody is lying if they assert that they tried to model. Jumping from the EMU student newspaper, are more than one business quarter away -- BPL the WeatherVane, Kate had journalism stints from potentially being in trouble." as a reporter for Pacifica Radio (while at When Rebecca was 16, she, Kate and her mother wrote a book together, Amish Cooking for Kids. The book was inspired, in part, by the experiences Rebecca and Kate had as preschool and elementary-age children when they spent many afternoons and summer holidays in the care of several Amish families. The girls were immersed in the families' activities of farm work and meal preparation, including the marathons of cooking leading up to a wedding or funeral. Rebecca sees her interest in healthy eating and in education coming together in the plans for a cooking store a half-block away from their Old Country Store in Intercourse. Merle says his daughters' journeys back to their roots have been a "total surprise," though the family has always been close. When the girls were infants, "I asked a lot of fathers what they regretted about their lives, and most of them said, `I wish I had spent more time at home when my children were younger.' So I tried not to make that mistake." Phyllis only worked part-time when the girls were young. She cherished the three hours of uninterrupted reading time set aside for her each Saturday morning, courtesy of Merle. He occupied their daughters while she secluded herself on the top floor of their three-story rowhouse to read whatever her heart desired. www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 19 ministry terrorism Lessons from marriage By michaeL a. king '76 Every now and then I have a fight with my wife. Joan is a wonderful spouse; this column is in the end not about her. But it is about what our fights may teach, if I dare make such a huge leap, about fighting terrorists. What particularly catches my attention, as I ponder our fights, is how quickly I find myself severed from rationality and possessed by the need for her to grasp how right I am and how wrong she is. If she dares fight back--as she often does, dear woman, this being one reason I celebrate being married to her when back to sanity--my flame flares white hot. Here I am, training her in truth, justice, and Michael's way, and she dares--she dares, oh, the travesty!--to challenge me. I order the generals within to provide reinforcements. Stat! Bring me my cruise missiles of maddened rhetoric hardened with hate. Fly in my bunker-busting bombs to destroy her generals as they huddle in her plotting against me. After our decades of marriage she can fly across the blazing desert of my war-mode mind with her own Predator drones; thus she spies the shock and awe I intend for her. She orders in Apache helicopters backed by F-16 fighter jets. And we draw near the brink. We glimpse now, through the smoke of battle, that destination called Divorce. If we press on, this country which is our marriage will be reduced to rubble, and no matter who dealt the other the final blow or who may still be left standing to declare victory, we will both have lost. There is only one footpath around that outcome, but who will take it? The human spirit so flinches from that path, especially in the heat of battle. The path takes the walker into the very heart of the war, there where blood pools on the streets, the sniper bullets crack, the tanks rumble, and the Michael and Joan King behind their family home in Telford, Pennsylvania. photograph by jon styer fighter pilots aim. And the walker of that path must throw down her (I say "her" because she often manages to walk there before I do) weapons. She must cry out to his generals and foot soldiers, and up to the snipers and the pilots, that she does, actually, glimpse part of why they're so enraged at her. "I'm sorry," she must say. "I'm sorry for my part of this war, and for the ways in my own anger I set out to hurt you." The horror of that path is that it takes her to peace, the promised land across the war zone, only if he softens. But he may not. He may use her foolish vulnerability to finish the job and mow her down. She risks her very life if she tries to end the war. Yet if she doesn't, the war will only escalate, and both will lose no matter who wins. So she takes the risk. Or once in a while, when he can match her courage, he does. And so far the one who first sets out on that path has in the end been joined by the other. So far the one's readiness at last to stop escalating the war has in the end gentled the enraged heart of the other, until they reach that oasis called Peace. There at last they are able to engage in constructive discussion of what caused the war and what resolution of grievances will enable them to stay in peace rather than resume battle again tomorrow. I know married people are not nations nor jihadist groups. I know generalizing from two to millions can get us only so far. But I wonder why we mostly seem to learn nothing from our most intimate relationships about how to relate to other nations or groups. What if the dynamics aren't that different? What if every human being, whether in the West or the East, Christian or Islamic, needs some sense that she honors him, that he honors her? Every time I hear someone explain that we're in a global war, we in the rational and civilized West against the irrational and barbaric Islamic fascists, I think of how in the heat of marital war each side always believes his side or hers is the right side, the rational side, the civilized side. Then I wonder why we act as if people in religious or global conflicts are so different from people in marriage. In marriage, if you threaten people, if you demean people, if you explain why you're so perfect and they're so awful, you blow things up. The more you violate the other, the more the other wishes to violate you. The more you try through brute power to vanquish the other, the more the other schemes to build the weapons to vanquish you. Michael and joan King have stepped back from the brink for more than 30 years. King became our seminary dean and university vice president on July 1, 2010. He is the owner of Cascadia Publishing, a pastor, and the author of many writings on Christian themes. He holds an MDiv from Palmer (Pa.) Theological Seminary and a PhD in rhetoric and communication from Temple University. REAd "New EMS Dean Brings Different Background To Seminary," posted at www.emu. edu/michaelking. 20 | crossr oads | summer 2010 photo by lindsey kolb mile posts Faculty and Staff David R. Brubaker, assistant professor/ academic director at EMU's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, took training with the Dispute Resolution Services (DRS) office of the province of Alberta, Canada, on the topic of "Creative Collaborative Municipal Cultures," May 10-11. The DRS office provides consulting services to municipalities throughout the province of Alberta. Melody Cash '89, associate professor of nursing, successfully defended her dissertation, May 11, at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education. Her PhD in education focused on instructional technology. Marti Eads, associate professor in the language and literature department, served on the national selection committee for the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program in Indianapolis, Ind., April 16-18. This program supports exceptionally well-qualified graduate students who have bachelor degrees from Lilly Fellowship Program Network Schools and who are interested in becoming teacher-scholars at church-related colleges and universities. Gloria Mast '93, Broadway, Va., has returned to EMU as the assistant director of housing. Gloria brings years of experience in residence life at EMU and JMU. She also is an adjunct instructor for transitions in college writing. EMU dedicated a 10-foot handcrafted peace pole as a symbol of its core values and commitment to diversity in a ceremony (above) held on June 17, 2010. The pole, at the edge of Thomas Plaza, consists of six flat sides that display "May Peace Prevail on Earth" in 18 languages (that may be rotated to feature new ones): Swahili, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Korean, Navajo, French, Russian, Japanese, Indonesian, Hindi, Urdu, Amharic, Sesotho, Filipino and German. Sarah Roth '10 joined the EMU staff as admissions counselor on June 1. messenger to Naaman and that witnessing for Christ is a very simple, everyday task. William (Willie) Longenecker '69, CBS '94, and his wife, Rhoda (Rodi) Stoltzfus Longenecker '94, Morson, Ontario, Canada, have been singing across the country in nursing homes and retirement communities since 1994. In December 2009, Willie and Rodi spent a month in Bangladesh with their daughter, April, who has been teaching at LAMB English Medium School for the past two years. Joan Graber '75 Kauffman, Orrville, Ohio, began working as an oncology nurse in a multispecialty physician's office in Wooster, Ohio, in 1988. In 1994, this medical practice, The Wooster Clinic, became the Cleveland Clinic Family Health Center. Still located in Wooster, it functioned under the umbrella of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, with a very active oncology/hematology department. Joan continued working for the Cleveland Clinic through 2005, as a chemotherapy nurse and then as nurse manager of the hematology/oncology office. She has since been caring for her mother. Leanna Showalter '75 Rhodes, Harrisonburg, Va., and her husband, James '72, SEM '75, have seven children, five of whom have graduated from EMU. She and James enjoy traveling abroad and visiting their children working in mission endeavors in North Africa, Israel, and Thailand. In 2009, they spent five months on the campus of Rosedale Bible College, Irwin, Ohio, where James has taught part-time for the last six years. Leanna served as a development assistant and did some nursing there. Cheryl (Cheri) Weber Good '79, New Hamburg, Ontario (Canada), is a freelance calligraphy artist with a passion for the written word unleashed through art. She teaches classes that focus on finding the unique vibrancy of the student. She works through experimentation and play to free up students' creativity. She's very interested in mental health, speaking or facilitating workshops 1950-59 Mark A. Kniss '52, Harrisonburg, Va., a retired physician, received Eastern Mennonite School's science achievement award in its May 19 chapel service, as reported in the Daily News-Record. Joseph B. Martin '59, Brookline, Mass., was EMU's commencement speaker this spring; he spoke on "keeping faith relevant." He is the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Joe and his spouse, Rachel Wenger Martin (class of '61), are members of Mennonite Congregation of Boston, where Joseph is a member of the church council. 1970-79 1960-69 David D. Yoder '62 and his spouse, Shirley J. Yoder '62, were appointed in February by Virginia Mennonite Missions for a one-year term to serve as a mentoring couple for pastors and congregations in Trinidad. Richard A. Showalter '68, Landisville, Pa., president of Eastern Mennonite Missions, Salunga, Pa., opened Rosedale Bible College's annual missions conference March 3, "with a call to students to become people who know how to point to Jesus." Richard focused on the story of Naaman and Elisha in II Kings 5. He asked, "What does it take to be a witness for Jesus? What does it take to be a missionary?" He noted with interest that God chose a young slave girl to be his M. Virginia Musser '70, Lititz, Pa., has retired as director of admissions at Landis Homes in Lititz. Virginia is a volunteer in the Lititz library and with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Harpers Ferry, W.Va. She is an Appalachian 2000 miler and has completed the New England Four Thousand Footer (NEFTF). NEFTF was formed in 1957 to stimulate interest in scaling 67 peaks of 4,000 feet or more, in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. Nathan D. Showalter '71, SEM '75, is senior pastor at Abundant Grace, an international congregation in Shanghai, China. "I've been here seven years now," he writes. "[I'm] enjoying the challenges and opportunities of this unique city." Marcus Hochstetler '75, a clinical psychologist living in Valley Center, Calif., rides horses as a favorite hobby and enjoys exploring state and national forests. He developed "Southeast Performance Solutions," a diesel truck business. www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 21 linking art and healing. Her artwork is in churches, universities, institutions, and counseling centers, as well as used as personal gifts and home d�cor. Much of her inspiration comes from hiking the fields and forests around the farmhouse where she lives. Her farm is also the site of her classes and retreats. More info at www.writehand.ca Albert (Rocky) Miller '79, Sarasota, Fla., senior pastor of the Bay Shore Mennonite Church, led a men's retreat using the theme "God's Men Don't Fly on Autopilot." His experiences as a corporate pilot, flying in North America and currently flying internationally for a mission organization, are fodder for many stories and life applications for men. God's men need to be more intentional (hands-on flying) about their faith, family and marriage. of Industrial Organizations. She will serve on this national legal organization's board through December 2010 and will be eligible for reappointment to the board. In her role as a partner in Willig, Williams & Davidson, Amy represents labor unions and individual employees before state and federal courts and in arbitrations, negotiations and administrative proceedings. With nearly 15 years of experience as a labor practitioner, Amy also counsels and trains employees and union representatives with respect to employment disputes and their rights under the law. Amy has been a speaker and/or instructor for a number of state and federal agencies, among other groups. David W. Boshart '86, MAR '87, Parnell, Iowa, lead pastor of West Union Mennonite Church, has been providing leadership to the development of church-planting strategy for Central Plains Mennonite Conference of Mennonite Church USA since 2005. David holds a PhD in leadership studies from Andrews University, with a concentration in missional ecclesiology. For his dissertation, David analyzed four Central Plains church plants, focusing on the habits and beliefs that characterize missional churches. He spoke at the annual meeting of Central Plains Mennonite Conference, June 24-27, at Mountain Lake, Minn. The conference theme was "Mission at the Center of Our Story...Going Where Jesus Intends to Go." In his presentations, David focused on three core commitments of the church in mission: Biblical discernment, threedimensional hospitality and contextual witness. Hugh Stoll '89, Harrisonburg, Va.,was featured in the Daily News-Records "Saturday Magazine" on May 22 for his energetic commitment to a future with green energy. Earlier Hugh built a straw insulated, timber frame house a hundred miles north of Spokane, Wash. The 1,500-square-foot home, housed his wife, Kathy, and their two daughters. It was simple to build and maintain, while being more sustainable and cost efficient than most modern houses. Hugh next built a green home in Harrisonburg with an innovative and eco-friendly, "photovoltaic," or solar panel system, a system Hugh is pioneering. Mary Ann Weber '89, Goshen, Ind., became managing curriculum editor for Mennonite Publishing Network on July 1, 2010. Mary Ann majored in early childhood education at EMU. She also has a degree in Christian formation from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Weber previously was the human resources coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Great Lakes. She has also taught for six years in Pennsylvania, served three years with MCC in the Philippines in the area of education and children's rights issues, and spent several years on the Congregational Resources staff of Lancaster 1980-89 Daniel Hooley '81, Canton, Ohio, serves as a volunteer in the credentialing ministry of Ohio Conference of Mennonite Church USA. Michael Allen Richy Bikko Bikko & Allen Break School Track Records Running in 90 degrees, wind and high humidity on May 9, 2010, rising senior Richy Bikko, a native of Kenya, broke EMU's 31-yearold school record in the 1500 meter run, clocking 3:54.91. The previous record, set by Kenny Layman '81, was more than a second slower. Prior to Bikko, no runner in EMU history had come within seven seconds of the record. Bikko won the 1500 meters at the New Captain's Classic hosted by Christopher Newport University in May. Zach Tennant of the College of William and Mary (Div. I) came in second at 3:55.62. Rising junior Michael Allen finished his season at D-III's national meet May 27-29 at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. It was the second straight year that Allen competed at the national level. Allen was in the long jump and triple jump as a freshman and qualified again in the triple jump as a sophomore. Just 17 athletes qualified for the national triple jump. Allen entered the national meet with the third best qualifying jump at 14.83 meters (48-8 feet), but ended in the first round for the second time. He holds the EMU record in the triple jump, with a jump of 14.85 meters (48-8 3/4 feet) in 2009. -- James De Boer fall 2007 22 | crossr oads | summer 2010 Jenifer Yoder '82 Garlitz, Joliet, Ill., has recently released her book, Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining: Why Mountains Are Missing and What We Can Do About It. She believes that most of us flip a light switch without thinking about where the power comes from. This eye-opening book details how coal is removed from mountaintops, devastating families and communities in the Appalachian Mountains. Flooding, air and water pollution, health problems and global warming all result from using coal to generate electricity. Jenifer's reader-friendly book suggests how citizens can make changes in their lives to prevent further destruction of the country's mountains and to make their voices heard. Jenifer has a personal stake in this topic, having grown up in southwestern Pennsylvania in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Jenifer is a reading specialist at Creekside Elementary school in Plainfield, where she leads an environment club for fifth-graders. Beryl M. Jantzi '82, MDiv '91, Harrisonburg, Va., stewardship education director of Mennonite Mutual Aid/Harrisonburg, was featured in the March 22 issue of Mennonite Weekly Review, as the teacher of an EMU online course, "Money, Ministry and Me," which ran May 3-June 23. The course was intended for anyone who works with church finances. Beryl is moderator of Virginia Mennonite Conference, completing his second three-year term in August. He was installed last November as the bishop/ overseer of Southern District of Virginia Mennonite Conference, a role in which he will continue to serve. Amy Rosenberger '85, a Philadelphia labor lawyer and a partner with Willig, Williams & Davidson, was appointed to the board of directors of the Lawyers Coordinating Committee of the American Federation of Labor and Congress Mennonite Conference. 1990-99 Valerie Ann Merfa '90, of Vienna, Va., is serving with MCC. She is sponsored by Vienna Presbyterian Church, where she is a member. Valerie serves at the Community Child Care Centre, operated by Khanyisile, an HIV/AIDS program in a township outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Her chief joy is sharing God's love. "I tell the children in the Sotho or in the Zulu language that God loves them, that God is always with them and they are never alone." Gaye Spivey '91, Reidsville, N.C., became a certified pharmacy technician (CPht) in October 2009. After working for Walmart as a CPht, Gaye moved to being a certified pharmacy technician/customer service representative with Carolina Apothecary, which owns numerous pharmacies in the Reidsville area. Gayl Friesen '92 Brunk, Singers Glen, Va., was appointed vice chair of the 2010-11 Virginia School Boards Association (VSBA) Valley Region Committee on Apr. 15. Gayl has been a member of the board since 2008. She is secretary of the three-person committee, which meets twice yearly. The committee's responsibilities include providing counsel to the VSBA regarding policy issues specific to 16 Valley school divisions, including Rockingham County and Harrisonburg. Missy Kauffman Schrock '92 became director of development at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind., on June 16, 2009. Kara Hartzler '94, Oracle, Ariz., is an attorney at Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project in Arizona. Kara has testified before the Arizona House Judiciary subcommittee. In her work, Kara has talked with thousands of people who are in the process of being deported. She provided a glimpse into her ministry by telling stories to the subcommittee of her interaction with her clients. The Florence Project is a nonprofit organization providing free legal services for persons in Arizona who are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. M. Trevor Parmer '94, Harrisonburg, Va., has been promoted by BB&T Bank to vice president. Parmer, who joined the bank in 1996, is a client executive in BB&T's employee benefits department. In addition to his duties with BB&T, Parmer is a coach in the academy program of the Shenandoah Valley United Soccer Association. He also enjoys racing sports cars. Ryan Kauffman '98, Lancaster, Pa., is a saxophonist and private teacher in central and eastern Pennsylvania. He leads his own jazz trio and quartet and has performed throughout the mid-Atlantic region, including appearances at Bethlehem Musikfest, Central Pennsylvania Friends of Jazz, Lancaster Jazz Festival and Rehoboth Beach Jazz Festival. He has had the privilege of performing with Dave Liebman, Steve Giordano, Ron Thomas, Tim Warfield, Steve Wilson, Peter Paulsen, the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra and the Manhattan Saxophone Ensemble. Ryan also doubles on the flute and clarinet, and plays for various regional and Philadelphia area theaters. He teaches at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, Darlington Arts Center, and Westtown School. He has also taught saxophone at West Chester University. Ryan holds music degrees from EMU and West Chester University, where he earned his master's degree studying with Gunnar Mossblad, a saxophonist, composer/arranger, and educator in both the European classical and American jazz idioms. Karla Stoltzfus Detweiler '99, Coralville, Iowa, was ordained for ministry at First Mennonite Church, Iowa City, Apr. 18. Karla is a daughter of Omar '71 and Catherine Ramer Stoltzfus '71 of Luray, Va. Thomas (Tom) '99 and his spouse, Candice Rhodes '00 Mast, previously of Greenwood, Del., are currently serving in Thailand under Rosedale Mennonite Missions, Irwin, Ohio. The April issue of Brotherhood Beacon carried a feature article by Tom and Candice, "Living with Unseen Neighbors." The Masts wrote that "Thailand is a Buddhist country, but animism, or the belief in spirits, plays an important part in the folk Buddhism that many Thais practice today." They described interviews with two Thai men, Piak and Pon, who have become Christians, and the impact this has had on their daily lives. Terry Koppenhaver '69 in a yearbook photo from his era Three Enter Hall of Honor Alan T. Hostetler '01, Charlottesville, Va., a certified public accountant, is an auditor with Thomas C. Stott, CPA, PC, in Charlottesville. He was one of five young professionals recognized by the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants (VSCPA) at its annual meeting on May 14 through their new award, "Top 5, Under 35." Alan is president of the VSCPA Thomas Jefferson Chapter. He began his first term on the board of his local chapter in 2006. Alan has nine years of experience in nonprofit auditing and informational return reporting and was selected as a Virginia Business Super CPA in both 2006 and 2007. Naomi Epp (MA '02) Engle, associate pastor of West Clinton Mennonite Church (WCMC), Wauseon, Ohio, was the featured speaker at the Spring Day of Inspiration, sponsored by Ohio Mennonite Women, April 10, at Kidron Mennonite Church. Naomi and her husband, Jesse (Jess) Engle, MDiv '02, co-pastor WCMC. Sarah Pharis '02, Staunton, Va., was the focus of the "We HEART Sarah" fundraising concert April 18, which 2000-09 This fall, three Eastern Mennonite University alumni will be inducted into the EMU Athletics Hall of Honor. Ryan Brenneman '00, Kirsten (Brubaker) Fuhr '99, and Terry Koppenhaver '69 (deceased) will bring the Hall of Honor membership to 81 studentathletes and coach/administrators. Brenneman played on some of the best men's soccer teams EMU has put on the pitch, as he played in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference championship match all four years. His 1996 and 1998 squads won the only ODAC titles EMU owns for men's soccer. A high-flying scorer, Brenneman was named All-ODAC First Team in 1997 and 1999 while taking Second Team honors in 1998. He also earned regional All-America status as a junior and senior. Brenneman graduated third on EMU's career scoring list for points (92) and goals (37). He is also sixth in career assists (18). Fuhr was also a constant force during some of the most dominant years in her sport, field hockey. As a midfielder and defender, she never lost more than two games in a season and compiled a record of 83-7 from 1995-98. She won four ODAC titles and is already in the EMU Hall of Honor as part of the 1995 field hockey team, which took third place in the NCAA Tournament. Fuhr was named AllODAC First Team her final three seasons, as well as ODAC Player of the Year, First Team All-South Region and First Team All-America as a senior. Koppenhaver played only two seasons of soccer, but still graduated second in points (51), goals (21) and assists (9). He was named to the Virginia Intercollegiate Soccer Association All-State Team in 1967 and then Team MVP and All-South in 1968. Eastern Mennonite's coaches also unanimously voted Koppenhaver as their Outstanding Athlete after his junior season. More than 40 years after his graduation, Koppenhaver, who learned to play soccer as a missionary child in Argentina, is still 11th all-time in career goals and 12th in points. The trio will be awarded plaques as the Class of 2010 at an induction breakfast on the morning of Saturday, Oct. 9, during Homecoming Weekend. -- James De Boer www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 23 featured music by The Findells, Trent Wagler and the Steel Wheels, and William Lott. Sarah has ocular melanoma, an extremely rare form of cancer that has metastasized to her liver. Sarah worked for the American Shakespeare Center for four years doing a little bit of everything. She then attended graduate school at Loyola University in Maryland and returned to teach at Woodland Montessori School in Harrisonburg. She discontinued working in March due to her illness. Betty and Phoebe Kilby have an intertwined family story linked to slavery. Ariana Unruh '03 Kauffman, Hesston, Kan., is director of fund advancement at Schowalter Villa in Hesston. Sara Neuenschwander '03 Obri, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, is a nurse in the emergency room at Cleveland Clinic. Sherah-Leigh Zehr Gerber '04, MDiv '09, Apple Creek, Ohio, was licensed Feb. 28 at a special Sunday afternoon service at Kidron Mennonite Church for her work with Ohio Conference of Mennonite Church USA as resource team coordinator. Regional pastor Matthew (Matt) Hamsher '95, MDiv '99, performed the installation ceremony and read a letter of support from Sara Wenger '75 Shenk, then interim dean of EMS. Rachel S. Miller '04, Indianapolis, Ind., received her master's degree in international peace and justice studies at the Kroc Institute of Notre Dame University in May. Hosanna Tobin '04 Thomas and her husband, Jacob, are working in a Muslim context in South Asia. Jacob is a graphic designer for a company called Bengal Creative Media. They are affiliated with Virginia Mennonite Missions. Shane J. Wills '04, Staunton, Va., was elected by the board of directors of DuPont Community Credit Union for a three-year term. Shane graduated from EMU with a business and organizational management degree. He recently completed his MBA through Averett University. He is the plant manager for Valley Precision, Inc., in Waynesboro. Travis Kisamore '05, and his spouse, Bekii, did an internship with Eastern Mennonite Missions (EMM) in Quemchi, Chiloe, May 2007 through Feb 2008. During that time they felt the call to return to that small town for a long-term assignment. The Kisamores are under appointment with EMM until the summer of 2013. They are serving a two-year term, which began in August 2009. They will return stateside for 10 weeks in the summer of 2011 and return to Chiloe for another two-year term. Travis and Bekii work primarily with small group Bible studies; they lead three adult Bible studies throughout the week. They have a goal of seeing a group of believers raised up in Quemchi, which then will be able to lead the church without outside help. Beyond their focus on Bible studies, they are engaged in building relationships with people in the community. They also have a children's Sunday school class every Saturday morning, which emerged when parents in the weekly Bible studies asked that their children also have the opportunity to receive biblical instruction. Travis and Bekii joined relief activities after the February earthquake. Erin N. Price '05, Souderton, Pa., joined Lacher & Associates of Souderton as account executive for personal insurance. Previously, Erin worked as director of human resources at Sanford Alderfer Companies. Dustin Galyon '06, Sterling, Kan., and Tony Brown addressed the 138 graduates of Hesston (KN) College, May 9, entitling their commencement talks "We Must Be the Change," taken from a quote of Gandhi, "We must be the change we want to see in the world." Joel Miller Lehman '06, Lancaster, Pa., online journalist with the Intelligencer Journal, received a first-place Keystone Press Award in the online special project category for "What Street Cameras Show." Joel edits interactive online content for the newspaper. He has been with Lancaster Newspapers since 2007 and lives in Lancaster city with his wife, Stephanie Miller '06 Lehman. Michael Keatts '08, Staunton, Va., is the new district emergency planner for the Central Shenandoah Health District. He serves as the lead coordinator, overseeing preparedness and response efforts to bioterrorism, natural disasters and other public health emergencies for the counties of Augusta, Bath, Highland, Rockbridge and Rockingham, the cities of Staunton, Waynesboro and Harrisonburg, and the towns of Lexington and Buena Vista. Michael has 20 years of fire, rescue and emergency services experience in both career and volunteer departments and in developing and promoting community safety initiatives. He serves on the Staunton Recreation Commission and the Staunton City Schools Health and Safety Advisory Board. Frances (Fran) Pfister '08, a nurse in St. Petersburg, Fla., recently had a rewarding experience caring for Jerry, a young boy afflicted with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare condition in children. After a severe illness and intensive therapy, including tracheal intubation and a medically induced coma, Jerry began to recover. Advanced outpatient treatment continued and, on his followup visit a year later, he was able to walk to the evaluation room. He mouthed, "I love you" to Fran. Fran thought, "This is why I am a nurse." Pamela Baldwin '08, MDiv '10, Craigsville, Va., is pastor of Augusta Springs United Methodist Church in Craigsville. Amy Knorr, MA '09, Washington. D.C., coordinator of the Haiti program for World Vision U.S., provided an update to faculty and staff at a "brown bag" lun- CNN: 'Coming to the Table' CNN's May 20, 2010 coverage of the EMU/CJP project "Coming to the Table" drew national attention to a groundbreaking program centered around peacebuilding, reconciliation, and the legacy of slavery. In 2007, Betty Kilby, an African American and author of the book Wit, Will and Walls, got to know Phoebe Kilby, a European American and the associate director for development for EMU's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. They were descendants of an enslaved/slaveholder family. They now travel the country as members of Coming to the Table (CTTT) telling their story. Their story was featured on the CNN home page for several hours on May 20, with more than 600,000 hits logged. It was the mostread, linked and shared story of the day on CNN.com, said Wayne Drash, author of the piece and CNN reporter. Online comments numbered nearly 2,500 less than 48 hours after the original posting. The majority of discussion underscored the difficulty and importance of reconciliation. Twitter came alive, too, with mentions of the unique program. One young woman tweeted that she found CTTT after meeting kin from the family that enslaved her great-great-grandmother. By mid-day she was one of dozens of new members of the program's online community, which doubled in membership in just 24 hours. Visitors to the CTTT website, www.comingtothetable.org, hit an historic high. The site logged 30 times more readers than the day before. Interest in the program and the story of the Kilbys went global quickly. By mid-day, international broadcasting service Voice of America had interviewed Phoebe Kilby, CTTT program director Amy Potter Czajkowski, and CTTT community coordinator Susan Hutchison for a segment to be aired in Asia. (Phoebe and Amy are alumni of EMU's graduate program in conflict transformation.) "This is a story that resonates in many cultures," says Phoebe. "It bridges racial, ethnic and religious divides. In the last day I've gotten so many positive e-mails, calls, and Facebook postings. I'm glad our story of racial reconciliation has touched so many." Coming to the Table was created in 2005 to address the traumatic effects of slavery on individuals and communities. Initially the program focused on the stories and experiences of people linked by their ancestors' enslaved-slaveholding relationship, but focus has since expanded to addressing historical harms in communities. "While our family histories provided a window through which we could connect, Betty and I are focusing on creating a new relationship now, a new legacy for the future," Phoebe says. -- Marcy Gineris fall 2007 24 | crossr oads | summer 2010 cheon on April 6. She shared about the Haiti earthquake response and reflected on moving from being a graduate student in conflict transformation at EMU to working in an NGO like World Vision. Previously, Amy worked five years in Haiti for Catholic Relief Services. Kimberly Jo (Kim) Roth '09, Lancaster, Pa., is teaching third grade at Linville Hill Mennonite School in Gap, Pa. Michelle Swartley '09, Lancaster, Pa., teaches middle school math at Kraybill Mennonite School, Mount Joy, Pa. children. Her interactions with children served as a role model for students in learning how to work with vulnerable, sick children," said Dr. Beryl H. Brubaker, a nursing colleague of Kuhns during her years at EMU. John Paul Alger, HS '40, '48, Broadway, Va., died May 25 at age 87. John was a farmer and an electrician. He was ordained as deacon by Virginia Mennonite Conference (VMC) in 1960. He served several congregations in the Northern District of VMC until his retirement in 1990. John taught Sunday school classes in several West Virginia school houses, part of VMC's "School House Evangelism," a unique mission endeavor of the conference some years ago. He was Sunday school superintendent and song leader at Zion Mennonite Church in Broadway. He also served as president of Virginia Mennonite Aid Plan. Lila Buckwalter '40 Hess, Colorado Springs, Colo., died March 27 at age 87. Lila was a graduate of the former Coatesville (Pa.) Hospital School of Nursing. She worked as a night supervisor at the former Morris Hall, Parkesburg, Pa. She retired from her role as night supervisor of Harrison House of Christiana (Pa.) in 1990. Lila was member of Fountain Faith Fellowship of Fountain, Colo. Norman Landis Loux '42, Lansdale, Pa, died May 20 at age 90 at Dock Woods Community, where he had resided for the last three years. In 1946, he received his medical degree from Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. He later completed his residency in psychiatry at Butler Hospital in Rhode Island and then completed a child and adolescent fellowship at Yale University. He began his psychiatry practice in a small house in Souderton. He later moved his practice to Sellersville, which grew from a one-man operation into a comprehensive, community-based behavioral healthcare service with 43 programs and a staff of more than 300. When Penn Foundation was opened in 1955 � with Norman as its founding father � it was one of the nation's first communitybased mental health facilities and a pioneer in the healthcare field. Norman stepped down as medical director in 1981 and retired from seeing patients in 1984. He remained on the board of directors until 2008. Norman was member of Blooming Glen Mennonite Church, where he taught Sunday school for many years. Elam S. Kurtz '52, West Jefferson, N.C., died April 26 at his home at age 86. Elam graduated from Lebanon Valley College in 1951 and from Case Western Reserve University Medical School in 1955. Elam practiced medicine in Ashe County, N.C., for nearly 50 years. For most of those years he made house calls, delivered babies, and helped establish mental health services for the region. He mentored more than 60 med- Professors Amir Akrami, Rasoul Rasoulipour, and Seyed Mousavian of Iran. 2010 Shirley Yoder '66 Brubaker, MDiv '10, Harrisonburg, Va., began a part-time interim pastoral role at Community Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, Va., May 1. EMU Hosts Interfaith Forum, Professor from Iran "Abraham's Tent--Center for Interfaith Engagement" at EMU, hosted three Iranian scholars -- Drs. Rasoul Rasoulipour, Seyed Mousavian and Amir Akrami, all professors of philosophy and religion in Iran -- for a campus visit on May 25, 2010. These highly engaging scholars emphasized the eager willingness of many Iranians to promote interfaith dialogue among "people of the book" who share a common heritage as Children of Abraham. Their visit to the EMU campus was jointly sponsored by Abraham's Tent and Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). An active proponent of interfaith dialog, Rasoulipour works closely with the Center for Interreligious Dialogue in Tehran where he formerly served as director. In recent years he has been instrumental in arranging MCC learning tours to Iran. A late afternoon forum drew an unexpectedly large group of about 100 persons. Rasoulipour has spent the past year as a visiting professor at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind. He returned to his teaching post in Tehran on June 5. -- Jim Bishop '67 Tamara Gill, MDiv '10, Harrisonburg, Va., is serving as a volunteer at three camps this summer: Joni and Friends at Spruce Lake Retreat, Canadensis, Pa.; and Kaleidoscope Camp at Williamsburg (Va.) Christian Retreat Center; and summer camp at Highland Retreat, Bergton, Va. Carmen D. Horst '01, MDiv '10, Chambersburg, Pa., is serving as interim pastor at James Street Mennonite Church, Lancaster, Pa., during the sabbatical of pastors, Stan and Kathy Keener (SEM '96) Shantz. Marriages Births Rebecca (Becci) Steury '05 to Matthew Anderson, Sept. 2, 2007. Joy Kraybill '95 to Tom Morgan, April 16, 2010. Deborah (Debbie) Lockridge '91 and Kenneth (Ken) Fields, Joel Robert, Dec. 23, 2009. Mark '93 and Candace Wenger, Fredericksburg, Va., Cameron, April 8, 2010. Beverley (Bev) Kenagy '96 and Jason Reed, Happy Valley, Ore., Bradley Carles, April 7, 2010. Benjamin (Ben) '04 and Meredith Blauch '05 Wideman, Pasadena, Calif, Anika Rose, April 20, 2010. Joy Zimmerman '07 and Thomas Haller, Denver, Pa., Julianna Elizabeth, Jan. 8, 2010. Grad at Security Council In mid-June (2010), Kumar "Anuraj" Jha, a 2007 MA graduate in conflict transformation, accompanied an 18-year-old female to New York so that she could tell the United Nations Security Council about her experiences as an involuntary insurgent, beginning at age 15. Jha works for the United Nations Mission in Nepal as a child protection advisor. He has been key in facilitating the discharge of child soldiers from the Maoist army and ensuring their rehabilitation. He works closely work with UNICEF, UNDP and other national and international organizations. From an Associated Press report filed on June 16, 2010: "Now 18 years old, Manju [Gurung] spoke at an open council meeting considering a report by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that urged the UN's most powerful body to consider tough measures � including possible sanctions � against countries and insurgent groups that persist in recruiting child soldiers and violate international law on the rights and protection of children in armed conflicts. "At the end of the day-long meeting Wednesday, the council approved a presidential statement expressing `its readiness to adopt targeted and graduated measures against persistent perpetrators.' " Jha acted as the translator for Manju. www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 25 Deaths Olive M. Kuhns, retired professor of nursing at EMU, died April 22, 2010 at age 86 at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community where she lived. Olive and her husband, James (deceased), were engaged in mission activities under Eastern Mennonite Missions in Ethiopia, 1949-51. She received an MS degree in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania. Olive joined the EMU nursing department faculty in 1970 and taught here until her retirement in 1986. Her specialty was maternal and child care nursing. "Olive was an advocate for ical students, some of whom lived in his home. In 1995, he joined his son, Kevin, to help establish High Country Family Medicine. After retirement at age 79, Elam continued his community involvement by delivering meals on wheels and serving as a hospice volunteer. An avid cyclist, both bicycle and motorcycle, he earned the coveted motorcycle "Iron Butt" Award for riding 1,000 miles in 24 hours. During his 50 years in Ashe County, Elam was involved in Warrensville Methodist Church, Jefferson Mennonite Fellowship, Meadowview Mennonite Church, and Big Laurel Mennonite Church. He sang in the choir, led music, led youth groups, and taught Sunday school. His passion for singing led him to the local barbershop quartet, Ashe Choral Society, and multiple solo performances at special occasions. He was an accomplished musician including playing the auto harp and organ. Elam is survived by his wife, Orpah Mae Horst '39 Kurtz. Penny Driediger, MDiv '08, is RMH's supervisor of chaplain interns Coleen Beachy '68 Harlow, Mylo, N.D., died in the Presentation Medical Center, Rolla, N.D., April 22, at age 62. She graduated from Rolette High School before attending EMU. After graduation from EMU, Coleen became a school teacher. Her teaching career took her to schools in Oregon, Mississippi, North Dakota, Virginia and Red Lake, Ontario, Canada. Later, she used her skills to teach her children in her home. Coleen was devoted to God and her family. After being diagnosed with cancer, she became active in Relay for Life activities. She was a member of Salem Mennonite Church. Degree Key BD - bachelor of divinity CMS - certificate of ministry studies HS - high school degree from era when high school and college were one MAL - master of arts church leadership MAM - master of arts in church ministries MAR - master of arts in religion MDiv - master of divinity ThB - bachelor of theology Mileposts is compiled by retired physician Paul T. Yoder '50, MAL '92, who may be reached at paul.t.yoder@ emu.edu or at (540) 432-4205. Feel free to send news directly to Paul or to the alumni office at firstname.lastname@example.org. Corrections The following items pertain to the spring 2010 issue of Crossroads: On page 22, Capital Christian Fellowship in Lanham, Md., was described as "non-denominational." It actually belongs to Lancaster Mennonite Conference. On page 38, Oxford Circle Mennonite was described as being located in northeast Philadelphia (in the photo caption) and in west Philadelphia (in the text). Northeast Philadelphia is its actual location. On page 39, Bianca Prunes was named incorrectly as Bianca Walker. On page 50, the birth of Emma Elizabeth Blyer to Doug '99 and Kristina Blosser '98 Blyer was recorded twice, once with an incorrect date. The correct date is March 4, 2010. On page 53, the obituary of Luke D. Yoder, Sem '78, incorrectly had the name "Paul" before "Luke." Hospital & Seminary Now Training Together Eastern Mennonite Seminary (EMS) and Rockingham Memorial Hospital (RMH) in Harrisonburg, Va., are working together to train chaplains and pastors to be more compassionate caregivers during crisis situations. The hospital recently hired Penny Driediger as a part-time chaplain and supervisor of chaplain interns who are enrolled in the EMS Clinical Pastoral Education program. Driediger is a 2008 seminary grad and a course assistant at EMS. "The collaboration between EMS and RMH provides Driediger, and future supervisory education students, with an opportunity to have a foot in both worlds � the clinical world of patient-focused care and the educational world, encouraging the growth and development of clinical pastoral education students," said Robin Martin, manager of chaplain services at RMH. This step forward for the EMS Clinical Pastoral Education program means the seminary can provide another level of education for those interested in the chaplain ministry and can provide more opportunities for students who want to go through the first level of the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program. "The 40% time position with Rockingham Memorial Hospital represents a shared commitment to pastoral education," said Kenton Derstine, CPE director at the seminary. "It symbolizes the hospital's confidence in our CPE program and an appreciation for what our chaplain interns have contributed to their patients and staff." "For the hospital, this agreement to have a supervisory education student means that we will get an employee with a theological degree and several years of supervised ministry experience," said Martin, as well as "someone who has learned active listening and empathic caregiving and is able to reach out in a compassionate pastoral role to connect with others, especially those who are suffering." -- Laura Amstutz, MDiv '06 fall 2007 26 | crossr oads | summer 2010 Free Access to ATLAS for Alumni As a result of a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., alumni of Eastern Mennonite University have been granted free access to ATLASerials�, a full-text collection of more than 150 major religion and theology journals selected by leading religion scholars, theologians, and clergy. This collection is administered by the American Theological Library Association, which has been producing research tools in religion and theology for more than sixty years. Contact Jennifer Ulrich, email@example.com or (540) 432-4173 for access information. Grateful for His Valentine By jim BishoP '67 Valentine's Day is special for Anna and me... [On] Feb. 14, 1967, we publicly announced our intention -- an urge on the verge of a merge -- to exchange vows of mutual involvement in one another's lives. No sooner did that word spread across campus than I became almost paranoid, watching my back, casting furtive glances up and down my dorm hallway. Tradition called for any newly-engaged guy to be waylaid and tossed into the fountain on front campus. Never mind that it was February with temperatures around the freezing mark. For several days, little more happened than the occasional "congratulatory" comments. I should have known. Nearly a week later, I was sawing wood when rudely awakened by a goon squad who yanked me from my bed, hauled me in the darkness to the ice-encrusted fountain -- with a side excursion to the area outside the main women's dormitory where the guys' banshee screams awakened half the residents -- and dropped me unceremoniously into the arctic water (today, that fountain is drained for the winter). It's a miracle I didn't contract pneumonia. I've reflected many times since whether we two 21-yearolds with no money and still developing careers had the vaguest notion back then of what it meant to join in bonds of holy matrimony on July 22, 1967, in eastern Pennsylvania. Forty years later, I believe we have a much better idea, and it sure wasn't untarnished love, sunny skies, flowers and spring day in and day out. Our marital relationship encountered many stings and arrows that weren't shot from Cupid's bow -- working through role expectations, miscommunication, the trials of child-raising and, probably foremost -- financial constraints. For a long stretch, we deliberately tried to operate largely on one income when we simultaneously started a family and took on a mortgage. But we found ourselves facing many other unexpected major expenditures long after our daughters left home. A slip of paper attached to my computer has helped keep my perspective: "Remember that if you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep you are richer than 75 percent of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet and spare change in a dish somewhere you are among the top eight percent of the world's wealthy." Sitting in my warm, cozy office, it hits me anew: If I have a roof over my head, a job that provides challenge and meaning and a degree of fiscal stability, some food on the table, reasonably good physical and mental well-being and the support of friends and extended family, I should be grateful and content. September 2009: Anna and Jim Bishop Spring 1967: Jim and Anna on the verge of being grads and spouses jim BishoP '67, EMU's public information officer, has produced literally countless press releases about EMU activities � more than 5,000 for sure -- that have appeared in some form in publications around the world. Since 1990, Jim has written a weekly column called the "Bishop's Mantle" for the Harrisonburg Daily News Record. As an undergraduate in the mid-1960s Jim wrote for the WeatherVane and produced shows for the college radio station, WEMC. He continues to host a weekly show, Friday Night Jukebox, on WEMC-FM. As needed, he has written and edited for Crossroads throughout the years. Jim will be retiring at the end of the coming (2010-'11) school year, after 40 years of continuous service. In honor of (surely) the most prolific writer in the history of EMU � not to mention, a beloved one � we hereby wrap up the literature theme of this Crossroads with an excerpt from one of his favorite Bishop's Mantle columns. It originally appeared in the 2/24/07 issue of the Daily News Record. -- Bonnie Price Lofton www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 27 Alumni Award Winners Great Coach On and Off Court Dwight Gingerich '81: Alumnus of the Year By Larry Swartzendruber '83 Dwight Gingerich has coached at Iowa Mennonite School (IMS) for 28 years, compiling an amazing record: 509 wins to 139 losses as of Feb. 2, 2010; 10 state tournament appearances; five sportsmanship awards at state tournament; one state championship (1992); four state runner-up finishes; one state third-place finish; conference coach of the year 12 times; district coach of the year four times; sub-state coach of the year two times; state coach of the year one time. His ten state tournament appearances rank third among active coaches in Iowa (seventh among Iowa coaches all-time). His 509139 win-loss records puts him ninth among active coaches in Iowa; his .786 winning percentage ranks third among active coaches. He has averaged 18 wins per season (third among active coaches with 500 wins). He was Iowa's nominee for National Coach of the Year 2010 and was among the eight finalists nationwide for this award. In the service and volunteer arena, Dwight serves on the Iowa Basketball Coaches Association board of directors and has been active in the coaching fraternity. He is active in Coaches vs. Cancer efforts. Since being at Iowa Mennonite School in various roles including vice principal, guidance counselor and coach, Dwight has led numerous interterm groups (week-long experiences), both on campus and off. He has served on multiple committees at First Mennonite Church of Iowa City and as a youth coach in basketball, soccer, and baseball. Dwight actively cares for students. He has opened his home to students during transition periods, most often to boarding students and to students experiencing difficulties in their home lives. I have had the pleasure of working with this outstanding person for 23 years. His commitment to the students and the community in general is unsurpassed. I have heard him speak of athletics on numerous occasions, and one thing strikes me each time � that athletics is no higher than fifth on his list of priorities, with these "It is a testament to Dwight's influence and respect among his players/students that many former players have entered the coaching ranks and have chosen to model their on-court behavior after him." coming before: (1) God, (2) church, (3) family, (4) academics. All of our coaches coach to win, but more importantly teach more than the sport itself. It is a testament to Dwight's influence and respect among his players/students that many former players have entered the coaching ranks and have chosen to model their on-court behavior after him. Many people speak to the "Dwight way" of coaching: fundamentals, hard work ethic, respect for one another, and working as a team. Our school has had some outstanding players over the years, ones who have gone on to play college ball (including two at the Division I level), but while a part of the IMS program, their egos get checked at the door. One of our local schools runs an out-of-bounds play called "IMS." Usually plays are named after well-known colleges, such as a play called "Duke" or "Kansas" or "Iowa." For little IMS to have a play named after it is a sign of the type of respect rival schools feel for the IMS program, which Dwight has played the leading role in crafting. There is always tension between athletics and academics, or athletics and the arts. The role of athletics, of course, has 28 | crossr oads | summer 2010 EMU Homecoming 2009 Homecoming and family weekend 2010 photo by mary yoder Come, Gather Again increased over time, and the emphasis on sports can be excessive, even at the high school level. Dwight is a master at bridging those differences and alleviating some of that tension. He has successfully included the community in the appreciation of the role of sports in the lives of our youth. Beyond all of his coaching accolades and his success in that area, Dwight has remained grounded and humble. I've heard our athletic director talk about going to coaching clinics where the majority of other attendees "couldn't hold a candle to Dwight coaching-wise," yet Dwight is furiously taking notes and trying to better himself as a coach. He is constantly learning and is constantly placing the students, the athletes, and the game above himself as an individual. I mentioned the coaching boards he's been on. Dwight detests playing the "political game." He will not put himself in position to serve on boards simply to gain recognition for himself. If asked, he will be involved, but he does not actively seek such positions. All of us have experienced sports events at which coaches routinely yell, swear, and berate players and officials. Dwight simply does not do that. Officials will many times talk about enjoying refereeing ballgames at IMS for that very reason, not only from the coaching standpoint but for the atmosphere in general. This tone is set by Dwight himself. Dwight has had opportunity to move on to bigger programs, but has chosen to remain at IMS, where he feels he can make a difference at this level, in this community, at this time. Larry Swartzendruber '83 is director of development at Iowa Mennonite School. This piece was his nomination essay. Dwight was the first in his family to go to EMU. He was followed by his brother Ken '82 (deceased) and his sister Jewel Gingerich Longenecker '88. www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 29 Alumni Award Winners Compassionate, Gentle Births in Haiti Nadene Brunk '75: Distinguished Service Award By Ken Heatwole, MD A good cause. Passion. Compassion. High motivation. Extremely motivating. Delicate negotiator. Put all of these into a lady who is already vivacious, likable, and mild-mannered and out comes Nadene Brunk. In 2000, I was on the medical mission team that introduced Nadene to Haiti. Granted, as a Certified Nurse Midwife, she was already primed to be acutely aware of women's health, especially as it relates to pregnancy. But the impact of that visit and the seeds of vision that were planted went well beyond her own expectations. The reality of what she witnessed and the statistics of Haiti � 75% of births unaided by skilled attendants, high infant and maternal morbidity and mortality by largely preventable causes, almost nonexistent prenatal care, early childhood disease and death rates, and rampant postpartum disease � were more than enough to impregnate the vision of help for the women of Haiti. Through her own vivid thought process and with the help of others close to the cause, Nadene birthed Midwives for Haiti (MFH) in 2006. (See midwivesforhaiti.org). The primary goal of MFH is to educate and train the women of Haiti in the skills of midwifery and place them in areas of need. We are preparing to graduate our third class and are now interviewing candidates for the fourth. The graduates are already embedded into various rural communities and have been highly successful. In good modern mission philosophy, this program is for the Haitians, in strong collaboration with local Haitians, and to be, ultimately, largely Haitian driven. MFH is barely a toddler yet, but its growth is dramatic and largely due to Nadene. Passion � The plight of the pregnant Haitian woman and how to care for her are daily on Nadene's mind and lips. Without hesitation, she will enter into fervent discussion on the statistics and emotions of Haiti. Her e-mails of research, organization, and various personal reflections are sent at all hours of the day and night. Compassion � There is a certain amount of chaos and aggres- "Nadene's leadership and belief in a program that is right and good in our world excite and move those around her." siveness during labor and delivery in Haiti. One of the lesser, but no less important, goals that Nadene fosters in this project is her own philosophy of compassionate and gentle care during birth. She models this approach, urges all of the volunteers to do likewise, and actively teaches this approach to our Haitian staff and students. And outside of the delivery room, her compassion and caring highlight the importance of developing and maintaining relationships. High motivation � To make a project like MFH work, sustain, and grow, there must be leadership that is greatly motivated and driven to see the big picture, yet focus also on the necessary details. The future for MFH may always be cloudy. Nonetheless, since day one of this service to Haiti, Nadene has believed strongly in her vision of better health care for the women of Haiti and has pursued it with unbridled gusto. In the most positive sense of the word, Nadene is obsessed with the success of this project. Inspiring � Nadene's leadership and belief in a program that is right and good in our world excite and move those around her. She has motivated into action: midwives across the United States and Canada to volunteer through insight sessions at the national midwife conference; university professors to bring their students for training and experience; the Haitian Ministry of Health to see MFH as a model for the rest of the country; the support 30 | crossr oads | summer 2010 EMU Homecoming 2009 Homecoming and family weekend 2010 photo courtesy Nadene Brunk Come, Gather Again of women's groups through impassioned testimonials; churches with worship sermons; and the MFH board and her family as we become more invested in the cause. MFH has even captured the attention of the United Nations, the wider international midwife community, and, hopefully with upcoming negotiations, the BushClinton Foundation. Negotiator � Nadene has developed into a masterful and delicate mediator. And there has been no lack of opportunities � contracts with a challenging Haitian government, hiring and firing of Americans and Haitians alike, working with the personalities of 250 midwives that have been placed in volunteer positions, settling contracts of our Haitian staff, collaborating closely with the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, and working with major benefactors like the Bon Secours Healthcare System and the International Rotary Club. She takes each challenge, often processing it out loud with those close to her, and, even in the most sensitive and potentially explosive scenarios, creates an outcome of good will for all. While the cause of MFH has many contributing to its growth and success, it is fundamentally Nadene's vision. She is the current heart and soul of this mission, but has the wisdom and intention of raising this "child" of hers into an adult mission that can sustain itself regardless of an individual or the few. Ken Heatwole, MD, is on the board of directors of Midwives for Haiti, as well as its medical director. He also practices family medicine in Mechanicsville, Virginia. He is husband of Virginia '79, son of John Paul Heatwole, class of '51, and grandson of long-time Eastern Mennonite employee Ammon Heatwole (deceased). www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 31 Come, Gather Again EMU Homecoming 2009 EMU Homecoming 2009 Homecoming and family weekend 2010 Join us October 8-10, 2010 Schedule Friday, October 8 Come for an unforgettable experience. Share memories, renew friendships and build new ones! ages. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door. For more information, visit www.emu.edu/box-office, or call the box office Mon.-Fri., 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. beginning September 1, at (540) 432-4582. Saturday, October 9 Welcome center and registration desk University Commons, 7:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Science center annual breakfast and program Suter Science Center, 8 a.m. 8 a.m., Breakfast, for which reservations are necessary. 9 a.m., Suter Science Seminar. Guest speaker Dr. David Leaman '60 of Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pa., speaking on common problems in cardiology and on the health care bill relative to our current health care system. Room #106 10 a.m., Update on Science Center campaign plans by Kirk Shisler '81, vice president for advancement. 10:30 a.m., Open house for the departments of biology, chemistry, psychology, and math sciences. Haverim and seminary alumni breakfast and program Seminary foyer, 8 a.m. All are welcome to hear from the new seminary dean, Dr. Michael A. King '76. Reservations necessary. Business and economics breakfast and program Discipleship Center, 8 a.m. Roger Bairstow of Broetje Orchards will be the speaker. Broetje Orchards is one of the largest family-owned apple and cherry orchards in the U.S., encompassing nearly a million trees. "Putting people before profits" is its operating mission. Reservations necessary. Nurses' breakfast and presentation West Dining Room, 1st floor of Northlawn, 8 a.m. Special guest speaker will be Nadene S. Brunk '75, nursing department graduate, founder and director of Midwives for Haiti, and 2010 EMU Distinguished Service Award recipient. Reservations necessary. Hall of Honor breakfast and awards University Commons Court C, 8:30 a.m. Sponsored by the Loyal Royals and EMU Athletics Department. Terry Koppenhaver '69, Kirsten Brubaker Fuhr '99, and Ryan Brenneman '00 will be inducted into the Hall of Honor (Terry posthumously). Reservations necessary. Homecoming chapel assembly Lehman Auditorium, 10 a.m Featured speaker will be Nadene S. Brunk '75, founder and director of Midwives for Haiti. She will share about her organization and its efforts to bring about improved health conditions for women and babies in Haiti. Art exhibit: Hartzler Library Gallery, open during library hours Art show by EMU faculty. The Paul R. Yoder, Sr., Memorial Golf Classic, sponsored by the Loyal Royals Spotswood Country Club, morning and afternoon shotgun starts; lunch included. 4-person captains choice with flighted scoring and great prizes. Cost is $100 per person, with many sponsorship opportunities. Contact the EMU Athletics office at (540) 432-4440 or firstname.lastname@example.org to register. Welcome center and registration desk University Commons, 3-9 p.m. Evening meal Dining Hall, 5-6:30 p.m.; pay at the door. Donor appreciation banquet (by invitation) U. Commons lower level, reception, 4:45 p.m.; banquet, 5:30 p.m. Field Hockey vs. Virginia Wesleyan Turf Field, 7 p.m. Lady Royals' intercollegiate athletic contest, and jersey retirement ceremony for former field hockey player & Athletic Hall of Honor member Jeane Horning Hershey '94. EMU Theater: "The Triumph of Love" Lehman Auditorium, 8 p.m. A musical comedy for Homecoming and Family Weekend. Talk-back following Friday's performance, led by Drs. Christian and Annmarie Early. Directed by EMU Theater's Thomas P. Joyner. Suitable for all 32 | crossr oads | summer 2010 Jesse T. Byler lecture series Seminary Building, room 123, 9 a.m. Stanley Swartz '87 will present "Overcoming Evil with Good; Making Connections in the Classroom." Stanley teaches drama and English at Harrisonburg High School. The lecture is open to all. Please register. Language and literature department reunion Campus Center, room 301-302 9-10 a.m. All are welcome to hear alumni share stories about the language program including the International Volunteer Exchange Program language partners. Reservations recommended; no charge. Parents & the president Campus Center 1st Floor, Brunk Maust Lounge, 10-10:30 a.m. You are invited to have coffee and hear from EMU president Loren Swartzendruber and others on a variety of matters of interest to parents of EMU students. Alumni and others are welcome. This will be an informal time of questions and answers, bringing you up-to-date on recent campus developments and plans for the future. Fun run Meet at the track, 10:30 a.m. 5K run/walk. All welcome. No entry fee. Children's activities Grades 1-5 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Lehman Auditorium, recital hall Fun-filled activities organized and led by the EMU Student Education Association, including free pizza and supplies � to ensure appropriate amounts of both, pre-registration is requested. Intercollegiate athletic contests Women's volleyball vs. Mary Baldwin, 1 p.m. Men's soccer vs. Guilford, 4 p.m. Women's soccer vs. Roanoke, 7 p.m. Wilderness seminar reunion University Commons, climbing wall area, court C, 1-3 p.m. All members of past wilderness seminar groups, as well as their families, are welcome to drop in for a time of fellowship, and perhaps to once again meet the challenge of a climb! Climbing wall open University Commons, climbing wall area, court C, 1-3 p.m. Alumni, parents, children, and students are welcome to come test their agility and determination at the climbing wall. There is an appropriate climb for all levels. Permission forms required; may be filled out on location prior to climbing. 1986 China cross-cultural reunion University Commons, room 211- 212, 2-4 p.m. Please register. 1995 Germany cross-cultural reunion & dinner Discipleship Center, 4 p.m. Reservations necessary. Dinner Dining hall open 5-6 p.m.; pay at the door. Encore! Dinner Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Martin Chapel, 6 p.m. Sponsored jointly by EMU's music department and the "Encore!" alumni support group, this dinner is open to everyone. Reservations necessary. EMU Theater: "The Triumph of Love" Lehman Auditorium, 8 p.m. Please see description and ticket information at Friday event listing. Class Reunions Festive Gathering 11 a.m. Lehman Auditorium lawn Mingle with fellow alumni, friends, university faculty and EMU administration. Refreshments, music and entertainment. Opening Welcome Program 11:20 a.m. in Lehman Auditorium Gather with your classmates as you sit together in this familiar landmark. The short program will include a presidential welcome and introduction of alumni award recipients. Class Reunions and Luncheons Immediately after the opening program, reunion classes of 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005 will convene into their own groups for photos, reunions and lunch. Please pre-register for "class reunion luncheon" on the registration form. Sunday, October 10 Jubilee Alumni & class reunion luncheon and program Seminary building; Martin Chapel, 12:30 p.m. This event is for alumni who attended EMU 50 years ago or more. The class of 1960 will be honored and inducted into the Jubilee Alumni Association. There will be designated tables for reunion year classes. General seating is available for other Jubilee Alumni guests. Reservations necessary. Youth activities Grades 6-12, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Come explore EMU. From academics to social life, from the Shenandoah Valley to Delhi, India, EMU students and admissions counselors will lead the way. Meet at the welcome center in the University Commons for activities, including free pizza lunch. Activities end at 2 p.m. Pick up at the welcome center. Please pre-register. Homecoming worship service Lehman Auditorium, 10 a.m. Worship celebration of song and scripture. Alumnus of the Year Dwight Gingerich and Distinguished Service Award recipient Nadene Brunk will be recognized and participate in the service. Child care available if pre-registered. Lunch Main dining room, Northlawn lower level, 11:30-1 p.m. You may pay at the door. Award recipient dinner (by invitation) Martin Chapel, 12 p.m. EMU Theater: "The Triumph of Love" Lehman Auditorium, 3 p.m. Please see description and ticket information at Friday event listing. www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 33 Monday, October 11 Alumni Association annual council meeting, 8 a.m. Registration form List only those attending and indicate how the names should appear on nametags. Please include birth name. Name ___________________________________Class __________ Spouse/Guest ____________________________Class __________ Address ________________________________________________ City ____________________________________________________ State_______________________________Zip__________________ E-mail __________________________Day Phone ______________ Children's activities, age 5 through grade 5 Name _____________________________________ Age _________ Name _____________________________________ Age _________ Youth activities, grades 6-12 Name _____________________________________ Age _________ TEAR HERE Registration EARLY REGISTRATION REWARD! All registrations sent in by September 1, will be entered into a drawing for free tickets to the musical, "The Triumph of Love." Tickets will be mailed to several lucky winners. Registration Deadline: Register and make payment securely on our website by September 29 at www.emu.edu/ homecoming, or return this registration form with payment by September 22. Checks should be made payable to Eastern Mennonite University. Reservations and payment must be sent by deadline to guarantee seating. Limited tickets will be available at the homecoming registration desk in the University Commons during open hours for those who have not pre-registered. Name _____________________________________ Age _________ Tickets Breakfast programs Business & economics breakfast Hall of honor breakfast Haverim & seminary alumni breakfast Nurses' breakfast Sciences' continental breakfast Luncheon Programs Class reunion luncheon Jubilee alumni luncheon Dinners Encore! dinner 1995 Germany cross-cultural dinner Free Events 1986 China cross-cultural group reunion Jesse T. Byler lecture series Language & literature reunion Total amount enclosed No. ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ Cost $ 8.50 $ 8.00 $ 5.00 $10.00 $ 4.00 Total ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ Mail Alumni Office, EMU, Harrisonburg, VA 22802 Online www.emu.edu/homecoming Theater tickets are available only through the box office. Questions? Please call (540) 432-4245. You may also reach us by fax (540) 432-4444 or e-mail: email@example.com Refund policy: To receive a refund, send your cancellation notice by October 5. EMU Homecoming 2009 ______ $ 7.00 ______ $ 7.00 ______ ______ ______ $10.00 ______ ______ $10.00 ______ Number attending ______ ______ ______ ______ EMU Homecoming 2009 emu.edu/homecoming Office Use Only ID # ___________ Amt Rec'd $________ Amt Due $____________ www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 34 EMU Homecoming 2009 EMU Homecoming 2009 emu.edu/homecoming Lodging Information: Hotel (block room) reservations for Homecoming, October 8-10, 2010 For discounted rates, callers should mention "EMU Homecoming & Family Weekend." Best Western Tel: (540) 433-6089 Rooms: 40 Lift Date: September 8, 2010 Candle wood Suites Tel: (540) 437-1400 Rooms: 20 Lift Date: September 8, 2010 Pets allowed EMU Guest House Tel: (540) 432-4280 Rooms: all rooms, plus availability in local homes. Lift Date: as long as "supplies" last... Hampton Inn Tel : (540) 432�1111 Rooms: 20 Lift Date: September 8, 2010 Sleep Inn Tel.: (540) 433-7100 Rooms: 20 Lift Date: September 8, 2010 Pets allowed See www.harrisonburgtourism.com for more information EMU Theater: "The Triumph of Love" Lehman Auditorium, 8 p.m. A musical comedy for Homecoming and Family Weekend. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Directed by EMU Theater's Thomas P. Joyner. Suitable for all ages. "Love can make a woman do strange things. Like lie about her past. Or give up her career for the man she loves." Such is the state of things in James Magruder's, Jeffrey Stock's, and Susan Birkenhead's hilarious, tongue-in-cheek, musical adaptation of the classic French comedy by Marivaux. For more information, visit www.emu.edu/box-office, or call the EMU box office at (540) 432-4582, Mon.-Fri., 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., beginning September 1. Come Gather again Don't miss the tradition of gathering with friends from your college days at homecoming. A festive gathering, short program, and class reunions/luncheons are all part of this year's celebration. Art work by Dennis Maust / Metamorphoses / tile mosaic 35 | crossr oads | summer 2010 EASTERN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY Harrisonburg, VA 22802-2462 Parents: If this is addressed to your son or daughter who has established a separate residence, please give us the new address. Call (540) 432-4294 or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.org PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID Harrisonburg, Virginia don't miss the brochure inside the back cover! back cover! don't miss the brochure inside the 09 EMU HoMEcoMing 2010 8 EMU Homecoming 200 Oct. 10 - 12 Oakwood Reunion Oct. 8-10 Don't miss your class reunion! Reunions for alumni who attended EMU 50 years ago or more will gather at the Jubilee Alumni Luncheon at 11:30 a..m in the Campus Center's Martin Greeting Hall. All other reunions, for the classes of 1963EMU invitesyears endingparents, and families to Afand later (grad alumni, in 3 or 8) will begin at 3:30 p.m. ter meeting in your designated location, each class will also have a space Homecoming and Family Weekend 2010! set aside for additional gathering and fellowship at the evening dinner, to beThere the dining hall, first floor events planned register held in are activities and of Northlawn. Please for all for both your class reunion and the dinner to follow. All Homecoming throughout guests are welcome to register and Family Weekend the entire weekend. for this Family and Reunion Dinner. Serving lines will be open 5 � 6:30 p.m. Come, Gather Again this event, please contact Kirsten Beachy at 432.4164 � beachyk@emu. edu or Vi Dutcher at 432.4316 � email@example.com. All Alumni who once resided in Oakwood will come together to share memories and refreshments. See inside for more details of these special reunions and online at www.emu.homecoming Cheer for the EMU Royals weather vane Reunion in sporting events Enjoy throughout once a part of the All alumni who werethe weekend. Weather Vane staff are welcome to attend a reception hosted by the language and literature department. Former Weather Vane editors will reminisce about their experiences EMU Theater's performance of "The on EMU's student newspaper. Advance reservations recommended; no charge. If you were aLove."editor and want to share your memories at Triumph of former Be inspired EASTERN Relax and catch up with friends, MENNONITE former classmates and professors--whether it's UNIVERSITY your reunion year or not. Homecoming events are planned for ALL VA 22802-2462 Harrisonburg, alumni of EMU. has established a Look inside (540)separate residence, please give us the new for432-4294 or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.org registration more details and address. Call information and online at emu.edu/homecoming Parents: If this is addressed to your son or daughter who by Sunday morning worship and recognition of alumni award recipients. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID Harrisonburg, Virginia www.emu.edu | crossr oads | 36

There is a certain order in the universe. Patterns repeat the way they always have, except when they don’t. Every rule has its exception. Male lactation is an exception to the "got milk" rule in humans. One known medical condition that can cause lactation in a man or a non parous woman is a prolactin secreting pituitary tumor called a pituitary adenoma or prolactinoma. These tumors can establish the hormonal milieu that leads to the body making milk, because the pituitary gland is the seat of the hormonal control of lactation. Pituitary adenomas are usually not cancerous. It is possible that a man, lactating because of a pituatary tumor, could live a normal lifespan. Problems other than cancer can exist because of pituitary adenomas. In addition to the secretion of milk there is the possibility of brain compression from a growing tumor. The severity of this problem can vary. If large enough, pituitary adenomas can lead to blindness due to the proximity of the optic nerve to the pituitary gland and even to death if the brain compression is severe enough. On the other hand, these tumors sometimes remain stable at a size that causes lactation but not significant other problems. Sparse anecdotal reports of men who lactated and who fed infants do exist . Scientific study of the phenomenon does not. One has to wonder if at least some of the anecdotal cases reported in the literature of human males nursing children were not cases of mild to moderate but untreated pituitary adenomas. Published reports are usually of the sensationalizing nature and do not attempt to look at the science behind this rare finding or worse, make claims or recommendations that sound scientific based on ???, they never say. MEDICATION and HERBS: Lactation may also be induced by medications or herbs. Phenothiazines, Metaclopromide, Domperidone, estrogen (or phytoestrogens), prolactin, fenugreek, and blessed thistle, all can contribute to initiating and then maintaining lactation in a male (or in a female who has not recently given birth for that matter). INDUCED LACTATION and RELACTATION: The phenomena of induced lactation in women who have not recently (or in some cases ever) given birth or relactation in a woman who recently gave birth but whose mammary glandular tissue has involuted to a non or minimally lactating state is well known and better studied. It can be intentionally accelerated through the use of exogenous hormones and/or other medications and/or herbs (typically those mentioned above with the exception of the Phenothiazines) and/or regular, effective stimulation of the areolar/nipple complex. Even the woman who has never been pregnant possesses the basic equipment needed. As milk begins to be produced the regular removal of that milk stimulates more production. The milk of lactating males has not been studied in terms of its compositional adequacy for raising a child, or at least such studies are not documented in peer reviewed medical journals. It is probably accurate to assume it is similar in composition to the milk of a female who has induced lactation. That has been studied and the medical literature supports it is similar in composition to the milk of a post partum woman. The interesting and challenging thing about studying the composition of breastmilk however is that breastmilk is not a static fluid. It is constantly changing. This is one of the multitudes of reasons it is superior to any substitute for infant nutrition. Some of the known ways breastmilk varies are: Time of day (most hormones and the rate of synthesis vary on a daily circadian rhythm) Time within a given feeding or expression (foremilk is typically higher in carbohydrates and hind milk is typically higher in fat) Rate of synthesis (the emptier the breast the faster the synthesis of more milk but the lactating breast is never truly empty of milk as synthesis is constant on at least a base level) Time since birth (colostrum, the first milk is higher in protein and has less fat, and little to no lactose) Gestational age of the infant at birth (milk of a mother who has given birth prematurely is higher in protein for the first month or so) Degree of involution (weaning milk has higher sodium) Immune factors present (if the mother is exposed to certain illnesses her milk will have more antibodies specific to that illness) Dietary factors (the type of fat in the mother’s diet influences the type of fat in her milk. Vitamin content can vary according to mother’s diet Color, smell and flavor of breastmilk can vary with the mother’s diet. Orange milk after the ingestion of large amounts of Beta-carotene, smoke smelling milk after mother smokes, maple syrup smelling milk when mother takes fenugreek, and babies showing a preference for milk after mothers ingested garlic have all been documented. The components of breastmilk are currently known at about 300 separate ingredients. It seems new components are always being discovered. The constant variation in the composition of breastmilk and the fact that we do not have a definitive list of ALL components of breastmilk make proving or disproving the normality of male milk difficult, if not impossible. Having said that, personally I would expect it to be fairly close to female milk in a similar circumstance. There is no logical reason to expect otherwise, but we do not KNOW this as a research based fact. BREAST DEVELOPMENT male and female: Embryonic development of the male and female breast is identical. Newborns - both male and female are well known to sometimes secrete a milk commonly called “witches milk” in the first week of life due to the influence of maternal hormones still in circulation in their body. If that milk is expressed production continues so the treatment of the little tykes is to leave them alone. Normal involution of the mammary glandular tissue follows. The nascent breast remains dormant until it falls under the influence of the hormones of puberty. Girls develop breasts as a normal course of events. Before pregnancy the female breast has some glandular tissue along with fat. Each menstrual cycle furthers glandular development. Pregnancy nearly completes glandular development. The hormonal changes following the birth of the placenta initiate lactation, sometime a bit more glandular developement follows. The rudimentary breasts of adolescent boys do not normally develop much fat or glandular tissue. When they do, the condition is known as gynecomastia. In adolescence this can be seen most often in overweight boys as excessive fat increases estrogen levels which in turn encourages the development of breasts. For some boys this can be a severe problem and is sometimes treated surgically. For others it is self resolving as adolescent hormones calm or androgen levels overwhelm estrogen levels. Weight loss or stabilization (as height catches up with girth) can also help to reduce gynecomastia. MAKING MILK all sorts of ways: In a post partum woman the control of milk production gradually switches from endocrine to autocrine. This means that although hormones return to the non pregnant non postpartum level, if milk removal is regular and effective production can theoretically continue indefinitely. This is how some wet nurses were able to continue producing milk for decades past the birth of their last biological child. It is conceivable that a male, once lactation has ensued could also continue to lactate regardless of the original cause if regular milk removal continued. Male to female transsexuals or otherwise transgendered individuals may develop breasts (including glandular tissue) with hormonal treatment. There is no reason to think that their breasts could not lactate with adequate stimulation. Certainly it is understandable that such an individual might want to know if her breasts function in terms of lactation and anecdotal reports exist of successful induced lactation just for this purpose. Such an individual may want to nourish their child at the breast as well. HOWEVER, even in a biologically born female who is inducing lactation the results are not consistent. She has had the benefit of monthly glandular growth since her menarche. It doesn’t always work and if milk is produced it is not always an adequate volume to completely nourish an infant. However, any breastmilk is better than no breastmilk. SO? just pondering …: Should a male try to lactate? Suppose he wants to lactate in order to feed a baby? Suppose the mother does not? Is any breastmilk better than no breastmilk in this case? Suppose the mother is lactating adequately. Is the man’s attempt to also feed the baby likely to interfere with the mother’s production (if the baby is the means of stimulating the breast the answer is yes). Could his energies be better placed in assisting the more likely to succeed scenario of the mother lactating? Is this a case that even involves a baby? Does it matter or is this just weird science? At the Breast Breastfeeding: A guide for the medical profession Breastfeeding and Human Lactation by Riordan and Auerbach Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives by Stuart-Macadam and Dettwyler Breastfeeding the Newborn: Clinical Strategies for Nurses Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book Fresh Milk: The Secret Life of Breasts Lactation:Physiology, Nutrition, and Breast-Feeding by Neville and Neifert Medications and Mothers' Milk by Thomas Hale Milk, Money, and Madness: The Culture and Politics of Breastfeeding http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/milkmen.htm (cute "Baby Blues" comic strip at the very bottom of this one)

J K Rowling Results for J K Rowling - Fifty Shades Freed is book most often left behind in hotels News & views - 28/08/2013 by Katie Allen Erotica star E L James tops Travelodge ch ... - Top five Georges in literature News & views - 25/07/2013 by Katie Allen The Duke and Duchess of Cam ... - Stitching stories: What Delilah Did Feature - 23/07/2013 by Katie Allen Sophie from What Delilah Did ... - The Cuckoo's Calling Review - 13/08/2013 by Cathy Rentzenbrink The Cuckoo's Calling Robert Galbraith Sphere ... - Mystery crime author revealed as J.K. Rowling News & views - 15/07/2013 by Katie Allen Harry Potter author unmasked as 'Ro ... - J K Rowling 'likely' to write more for children News & views - 26/09/2012 by Philip Jones Author's first book for adults, The Casua ... - Who wants to be a millionaire? News & views - 22/05/2012 by Philip Stone Three writers have joined the exclus ... - J.K. Rowling richest author (again) News & views - 01/05/2012 by Hannah Lewis Harry Potter creator takes highest a ... - Are you Sirius? J K Rowling to write book for adults News & views - 23/02/2012 by Katie Allen Harry Potter author J K Rowl ... - Wizard! J K Rowling launches Pottermore News & views - 24/06/2011 by Katie Allen Fans of Harry Potter will be able to cast spells, visit wizards' shopping street Diagon Alley and try out the infamous Sorting Hat a ...

This deviant's full pageview graph is unavailable. travel agent for the Land of the Dead December 11, 1991 Last Visit: 4 hours ago This is the place where you can personalize your profile! By moving, adding and personalizing widgets. You can drag and drop to rearrange. You can edit widgets to customize them. The bottom has widgets you can add! Some widgets you can only access when you get a premium membership. Some widgets have options that are only available when you get a premium membership. We've split the page into zones! Certain widgets can only be added to certain zones. "Why," you ask? Because we want profile pages to have freedom of customization, but also to have some consistency. This way, when anyone visits a deviant, they know they can always find the art in the top left, and personal info in the top right. Don't forget, restraints can bring out the creativity in you! Now go forth and astound us all with your devious profiles! Favorite visual artistJackson PollackFavorite moviesNashville.Favorite TV showsThe OfficeFavorite bands / musical artistsCaptain Beefheart and the Magic BandFavorite booksGravity's RainbowFavorite writersThomas Pynchon and Jack KerouacFavorite gamesTeam Fortress 2Favorite gaming platformMy lappyTools of the TradeMy laptop, my pencils, my guitar.Other InterestsFilm, literature, music

Why Choose One Textbook for Introductory Climate Change Science Courses? Posted on 22 February 2013 by rockytom A number of instructors involved with teaching an introductory climate change science course currently do not select a textbook for their course. They may select multiple popular books on climate change and global warming and perhaps, in addition, require certain readings from the peer-reviewed literature. There is nothing wrong with this approach and there may be advantages, but let’s first examine a few obvious disadvantages. First, requiring a number of different books on the subject of climate change may result in greater expense than one textbook although individual textbooks may be very expensive; especially those with abundant color illustrations. Second, individual popular climate change books may emphasize one aspect of the science and reflect the author’s expertise, bias, or biases. It is difficult to get a comprehensive treatment of climate change science from multiple sources. Many of the popular books emphasize global warming, which is only one aspect of climate change. Global cooling during the last ice age, extreme weather, the behavior of atmospheric and ocean currents, glacial retreat and rising sea levels as well as other factors are also aspects of climate change. These subjects are likely covered by the popular books but in a cursory manner in some. Third, more than one book required for a course may lead to a disjointed treatment of climate science when climate is a continuum over time, although it may be punctuated by certain extreme events in any given area or period of time. The advantages to selecting one textbook for a course in climate change science are several. First, the student has one main source upon which to depend. Of course, this may be enhanced by other readings but the student has additional readings listed in the textbook that can be assigned by the instructor. Second, the student can benefit from a continuous treatment of the climate system, or as continuous as the climate system will allow. The climate changes that occur over decades, millennia, and millions of years are all important concepts to treat in an introductory climate change science course. Third, the student will most likely gain confidence in the material as the course progresses with the aid of the instructor referring to sections of the textbook. Lectures may be organized around chapters in the textbook in the order deemed most important by the instructor. During my days as a student I always felt unfulfilled if the course I was taking did not require me to complete assigned readings from a textbook. The textbook was my “crutch” and the major resource for new information and if I was not required to read it why was I required to buy it? As a university professor I was always over worked and under paid and it was difficult for me to organize lectures around several different sources of information. A textbook provided a central and tangible focus around which I could plan lectures and the course schedule. There are a few comprehensive textbooks in climate change science now available to introductory students and we can expect several more in the coming years. John Cook and I do have a favorite textbook in mind that we hope instructors will have a look at and consider for their course; “Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis.” Portions of this textbook can be downloaded from Springer at springer.com and purchased directly from Springer or from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers throughout the world. Springer has done an excellent job with the production of the book with special emphasis on the illustrations, quality of the paper and binding.

Friday, April 12, 2013 Over at Land Use Prof, Jessie Owley highlights Kansas' attempt to rid the state of the scourge of sustainable development: Politicians in Kansas . . . seem to have been contemplating the power of law to dictate sustainability rules. House Bill No. 2366 currently before the Kansas state legislature would make it illegal to use “public funds to promote or implement sustainable development." Frankly with the trouble surrounding just trying to define what should be considered "sustainable development," I am not sure how meaningful such a law would be -- put gotta appluad tease Kansas for trying. As a professor at a public school, I find the provision restricting the teaching of sustainability to be especially worrisome [no public funding can be used for "materials prepared or presented as part of a class, course, curriculum or instructional material"]. Next thing you know, states will be outlawing climate change. Nestor Davidson (Fordham) has posted New Formalism in the Aftermath of the Housing Crisis (Boston University Law Review) on SSRN. Here's the abstract: housing crisis has left in its wake an ongoing legal crisis. After housing markets began to collapse across the country in 2007, foreclosures and housing-related bankruptcies surged significantly and have barely begun to abate more than six years later. As the legal system has confronted this aftermath, courts have increasingly accepted claims by borrowers that lenders and other entities involved in securitizing mortgages failed to follow requirements related to perfecting and transferring their security interests. These cases – which focus variously on issues such as standing, real party in interest, chains of assignment, the negotiability of mortgage notes, and the like – signal renewed formality in nearly every aspect of the resolution of mortgage distress. This new formalism in the aftermath of the housing crisis represents something of an ironic turn in the jurisprudence. From the earliest history of the mortgage, lenders have had a tendency to invoke the clear, sharp edges of law, while borrowers in distress have often resorted to equity for forbearance. The post-crisis caselaw thus upends the historical valence of lender-side formalism and borrower-side flexibility. Building on this insight, this Article makes a normative and a theoretical claim. Normatively, while scholars have largely embraced the new formalism for the accountability it augurs, this consensus ignores the trend’s potential negative consequences. Lenders have greater resources than consumers to manage the technical aspects of mortgage distress litigation over the long run, and focusing on formal requirements may distract from responding to deeper substantive and structural questions that still remain largely unaddressed more than a half decade into the crisis. Equally telling, from a theoretical perspective, the new formalism sheds light on the perennial tension between law’s supposed certainty and equity’s flexibility. The emerging jurisprudence underscores the contingency of property and thus reinforces – again, ironically – pluralist conceptions of property even in the crucible of hard-edged formalism. Thursday, April 11, 2013 Slate profiles the "Door to Hell" in Derweze, Turkmenistan: In 1971 a Soviet drilling rig rumbled across the hot, expansive Karakum desert of Turkmenistan in search of natural gas. They found a large gas pocket near the 350-person village of Derweze, but as the team drilled into the earth, the rig punctured the cavern and collapsed into it, creating a 328-foot crater leaking deadly natural gas. The Soviets abandoned their rig and lit the hole on fire. It has been burning for 40 years. The article also lists these other places of neverending fire: - Centralia, the Pennsylvania town sitting atop a massive coal fire - Burning Mountain, the 6,000-year-old coal fire that moves one meter per year - Yanar Dag, the "fire mountain" of Azerbaijan Nestor Davidson (Fordham) has posted A Most Useful Ball of Thread (Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development) on SSRN. Here's the abstract: This book review of Navigating HUD Programs: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Labyrinth (George Weidenfeller & Julie McGovern eds., 2012) discusses the approach the book takes to a range of HUD programs, discusses some intimations of reform efforts suggested by the authors, and explores ways in which the book’s guidance reflects potential benefits in nascent HUD efforts at programmatic consolidation and modernization. Wednesday, April 10, 2013 Over at Concurring Opinions, Meredith Render meditates on death and meaning of ownership: Herein enters the perennial problem of death. When an owner is a natural person (rather than, for example, a corporation), then death would seem to present an obstacle to owning. When an owner dies, her capacity to make decisions about the use of an entity is terminated. Unlike in the newborn example, that capacity is not dormant, it is extinguished forever. If the capacity to exercise control over an entity is a necessary criterion of ownership, we would not expect deceased people to be capable of ownership. This intuition is supported by the fact that generally when an owner dies, the object of ownership passes (by will or intestate succession) to another owner. In this instance, there is no continuity of “ownership” – the new owner does not act on the behalf of the deceased owner – the ownership simply ends with the owner. A notable exception to this scenario exists in the context of trusts. A trust presents challenge to our conventional understanding of “ownership,” – and particularly to the idea of ownership as a capacity. This is so not only because “ownership” is split in the context of a trust between equitable and legal owners, but also because some degree of control over the trust assets seems to be retained by the settlor. In this sense, the settlor seems to continue to act as a kind of “owner” of the assets, even though the settlor may be deceased. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “dead hand control.” Lately I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon in the context of the commitments implicit in our concept of “owner.” The interplay of these ideas is especially interesting in the context of what is sometimes described as a “dynasty trust.” A dynasty trust has the potential to endure into perpetuity, long after the settlor is deceased. I’ll be posting more on dynasty trusts, death and the concept of “owner” in the weeks to come. Adam Mossoff (George Mason) has posted How Copyright Drives Innovation in Scholarly Publishing on SSRN. Here's the abstract: copyright policy is framed solely in terms of a trade off between the benefits of incentivizing authors to create new works and the losses from restricting access to those works. This is a mistake that has distorted the policy and legal debates concerning the fundamental role of copyright within scholarly publishing, as the incentive-to-create conventional wisdom asserts that copyright is unnecessary for researchers who are motivated for non-pecuniary reasons. As a result, commentators and legal decision-makers dismiss the substantial investments and productive labors of scholarly publishers as irrelevant to copyright policy. Furthermore, widespread misinformation about the allegedly “zero cost” of digital publication exacerbates this policy This paper fills a gap in the literature by providing the more complete policy, legal and economic context for evaluating scholarly publishing. It details for the first time the $100s millions in ex ante investments in infrastructure, skilled labor, and other resources required to create, publish, distribute and maintain scholarly articles on the Internet and in other digital platforms. Based on interviews with representatives from scholarly publishers, it reveals publishers’ extensive and innovative development of digital distribution mechanisms since the advent of the World Wide Web in 1993. Even more important, this paper explains how these investments in private-ordering mechanisms reflect fundamental copyright policy, as copyright secures to both authors and publishers the fruits of their productive labors. In sum, copyright spurs both authors to invest in new works and publishers to invest in innovative, private-ordering mechanisms. Both of these fundamental copyright policies are as important today in our fast-changing digital world as they were in yesteryear’s world in which publishers distributed scholarly articles in dead-tree format. Tuesday, April 9, 2013 A pocket neighborhood is a grouping of smaller residences, often built around a common courtyard, designed to promote a heightened sense of community and neighborliness. In the last few months, they've gotten good press on the Huffington Post, the Atlantic Citites Blog, and Yahoo. From the Yahoo story: Who likes pocket neighborhoods? [Architect Ross Chapin] argues that we’re all drawn, as social creatures, to community. But in the 15 years since he first developed pocket neighborhoods he’s found a few groups who really identify with the idea. “One is the baby boomers, as they move toward retirement,” Chapin said. “We’re seeing huge numbers of people who are trying to imagine their dream home for the next part of their life. A house that’s big enough but not too big, simpler and where the key notes are quality and community.” Other groups include active single women as well as echo-boomers — the 20- and 30-somethings trying to define their idea of the dream home. Police said Monday an unknown number of culprits made off with 5 metric tons (5.5 tons) of Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread from a parked trailer in the central German town of Bad Hersfeld over the weekend. If the authorities are smart, they'll start by interviewing Columbia students studying abroad in Germany this semester. Additionally, everyone in Germany should be keep their eyes peeled for anyone trying to steal an entire freight train worth of bananas. This article was given as the 6th Annual Wolf Family Lecture on the American Law of Real Property, University of Florida Levin College of Law (2013). It draws on property law discussions in Richard R.W. Brooks and Carol M. Rose, Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms (Harvard Univ. Press 2013). The article outlines the ways in which constitutional law and property law engaged in a dialog about white-only racial covenants from their early twentieth-century origins to the middle of the twentieth century and beyond. After a shaky beginning, both constitutional law and property law became relatively permissive about racial covenants by the 1920s. But proponents of racial covenants had to work around property law doctrines — including seemingly arcane doctrines like the Rule Against Perpetuities, disfavor to restraints on alienation, "horizontal privity," and "touch and concern." Moreover, property law weaknesses gave leverage to civil rights opponents of covenants, long before Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the major constitutional case that made these covenants unenforceable in courts. Even after Shelley's constitutional decision, property law continued to be a contested area for racial covenants, with echoes even today. Monday, April 8, 2013 The New York Times takes a look at the history of the Rembrandt, the first co-op building in the US: Although an 1882 pamphlet issued by the developers renounced “any socialistic union, even of the most plausible and conservative character,” there was talk of buying coal and ice in bulk and retaining a common staff for cooking and laundry. The developers said that they were looking for “people of means and good social standing”; the advent of the resident-owned building, and hence the co-op board, allowed control over one’s neighbors, which was something no other apartment house could provide. Jane Baron (Temple) has posted Rescuing the Bundle of Rights Metaphor in Property Law (Cincinnati Law Review) on SSRN. Here's the abstract: much of the twentieth century, legal academics conceptualized property as a bundle of rights. But property theory today is deeply divided between theorists who focus on property’s ends, i.e., its reflection of values such as democracy or human flourishing, and those who focus on property’s means, i.e., its use of qualities such as modularity and exclusion to manage complexity in a cost-effective way. The bundle-of-rights conceptualization has been swept up into the controversy, becoming the particular target of means-focused theorists, who argue that the bundle conceptualization obscures critical features of the property system, most notably its use of strategies of exclusion, in rem rights, and indirectness. These theorists assert that, twentieth century wisdom notwithstanding, property is not a bundle of rights but rather is a law of things. Contrary to these theorists, this Article argues that the bundle-of-rights conceptualization remains useful both descriptively and normatively. First, the bundle conceptualization produces more precise specification of the legal relations of parties in both simple and complex property arrangements. Second, it clarifies the normative choices that underlie decisions about property. Third, it focuses attention on the quality of the relationships that property constructs. Finally, bundle-of-rights analysis generally forces information forward. Because the information produced by the granular analysis of property bundles is useful, the bundle of rights metaphor should not be displaced or abandoned. Indeed, the complexity of contemporary property issues — and in particular their growing connection to the alternative legal fields of privacy and intellectual property — makes the bundle conceptualization all the more fruitful.

Project Gutenberg Australia a treasure-trove of literature treasure found hidden with no evidence of ownership Francis Thomas GREGORY Read ebooks by Augustus and Francis Gregory Augustus C. Gregory, a surveyor, was the most distinguished of three exploring brothers. His explorations included expeditions in Western Australia (where he discovered and named Lake Moore), Queensland, and Northern Territory (where he discovered and named Sturt's Creek, which he traced for 300 miles). In March, 1858, he led an expedition to search for Leichhardt's party, which had disappeared without trace in 1848. The party set out from Euroomba Station on the Dawson Ranges. After travelling for four weeks he found the letter "L" cut into a tree, and thus encouraged, he followed the Barcoo River to its junction with the Thomson River, and then proceeded along Cooper's and Strzelecki Creeks as far as Lake Blanche. He arrived in Adelaide in July, 1858, without having found the missing expedition. The information recorded byA C Gregory on this journey was, however, of great value, and had the effect of reviving South Australia's interest in the country north of Lake Torrens. His journal was published in 1884, covering his journeys and those of his brother, Francis Thomas Gregory (1821-1888). Updated 4 August 04

Benedict XVI Pays Tribute to Blessed John Paul II in New Interview "He supported me with absolutely incomprehensible fidelity and kindness." Vatican City, (Zenit.org) | 3049 hits We publish below extracts of a recent interview Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI gave to ZENIT’s Wlodzimierz Redzioch in which he pays tribute to soon-to-be-canonized Pope John Paul II. The complete interview appears in a book just published in Italian entitled “Beside John Paul II - Friends and Collaborators Speak” (Ares 2014). The interview, one of 21 with the late Pontiff’s close friends and associates, runs to 12 pages in total. It is entitled: “It Became Ever More Clear to Me that John Paul II Was a Saint”. In this first extract, Benedict XVI is asked to recount his first meeting with Cardinal Wojtyla: BENEDICT XVI: The first meeting I am aware of, between me and Cardinal Wojtyla, happened only in the Conclave in which John Paul I was elected. During the Council, we both collaborated on the Constitution on the Church in the contemporary world, and yet in different sessions we did not meet. In September of 1978, on the occasion of the visit of Polish Bishops in Germany, I was in Ecuador as personal representative of John Paul I. The Church of Monaco and Freising is linked to the Ecuadorian Church in a twinning realized by Archbishop Echevarria Ruiz (Guayaquil) and Cardinal Dopner. And thus, to my great displeasure, I lost the occasion to know the Archbishop of Krakow personally. Naturally, I had heard talk of his work as philosopher and pastor, and I had wanted to meet him for a long time. For his part, Wojtyla had read my Introduction to Christianity, which he also quoted in the Spiritual Exercises he preached for Paul VI in Lent of 1976. Therefore, it was as if interiorly we both hoped to meet. I had from the beginning a great veneration and a cordial liking for the Archbishop of Krakow. In the pre-Conclave of 1978, he analyzed for us, in an amazing way, the nature of Marxism. However, above all I perceived immediately and strongly the human charm that he emanated and, from the way he prayed, I realized how profoundly united he was to God. In this extract, the Pope Emeritus answers a question in which he is asked about his appointment to prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. BENEDICT XVI: John Paul II called me in 1979 to appoint me prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education. Just two years had passed since my episcopal consecration in Munich and I thought it was impossible to leave so soon the See of Saint Corbinianus. The episcopal consecration represented in some way a promise of fidelity to the diocese to which I belonged. So I asked the Pope to postpone that appointment […]. It was in the course of 1980 that he told me he would appoint me again, at the end of 1981, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as successor of Cardinal Seper. As I continued to feel obliged in the affairs of the diocese to which I belonged, I permitted myself to set a condition for the acceptance of the post, which, moreover, I believed was unrealizable. I said that I felt the duty to continue publishing theological works. I could answer affirmatively only if this was compatible with the task of prefect. The Pope, who was always benevolent and understanding with me, said that if he were informed about this question he could then make up his mind. Subsequently, when I paid him a visit, he explained to me that theological publications are compatible with the office of prefect; Cardinal Garrone, he said, had also published theological works when he was prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education. So I accepted the office, very conscious of the gravity of the task, but knowing also that obedience to the Pope now exacted a “yes” from me. Extract of the Pope Emeritus’ answer to a question on his work with Pope Wojtyla. BENEDICT XVI: The collaboration with the Holy Father was always characterized by friendship and affection. It developed above all on two planes: the official and the private. Every Friday, at six o’clock in the afternoon, the Pope received in audience the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who submitted for his decision the problems that emerged. Naturally, doctrinal problems had precedence, to which are added questions of a disciplinary character – the reduction to the lay state of priests who have requested it, the concession of the Pauline privilege for those marriages in which one of the spouses is not Christian, and so on. Added afterwards, also, was the work underway for the drafting of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. From time to time, the Holy Father received the essential documentation ahead of time, so he knew in anticipation the questions to be addressed. Thus, in regard to theological problems, we were always able to converse fruitfully. The Pope was also very well read on contemporary German literature, and it was always good – for both of us – to seek together the right decision on all these things […]. […] Finally, it was the Pope’s custom to invite to lunch Bishops on visit ad Limina, as well as groups of Bishops and priests of different composition, according to the circumstance. They were almost always “working lunches” in which often a theological subject was proposed. […] The great number of those present always made the conversation varied and of ample breadth. And yet there was always a place also for good humor. The Pope laughed freely, so those working lunches, though seriousness was imposed, were also in fact occasions to be in happy company. Extract from an answer concerning the doctrinal challenges they addressed together. On the Theology of Liberation: BENEDICT XVI: The first great challenge we addressed was the Theology of Liberation, which was spreading in Latin America. It was the common opinion, be it in Europe or in North America, that it was about support to the poor and, therefore, a cause that should certainly be approved. But it was an error. Poverty and the poor were without a doubt put forth as topics of the Theology of Liberation but in a very specific perspective. The forms of immediate aid to the poor and the reforms that would improve their condition were condemned as reformism which has the effect of consolidating the system: they mitigated, it was affirmed, the anger and indignation which instead were necessary for the revolutionary transformation of the system. It was not a question of aid or reform, it was said, but of a great upheaval from which a new world would spring. The Christian faith was being used as the engine for this revolutionary movement, thus transforming it into a kind of political force. The religious traditions of the faith were put at the service of political action. Thus the faith was profoundly estranged from itself and true love of the poor was also weakened. [The Pope Emeritus continues here to talk about the topic of Liberation Theology]. BENEDICT XVI: One of the principal problems of our work, in the years that I was prefect, was the effort to reach a correct understanding of ecumenism. Also in this case it is a question that has a double profile: on one side, affirmed with all its urgency, is the task to work for unity and to open ways that lead to it; on the other, it is necessary to reject false conceptions of unity, which would like to reach the unity of the faith through the shortcut of the watering down of the faith. […]. On the task of theology in the contemporary age: BENEDICT XVI: Lastly we were concerned also with the question relative to the nature and task of theology in our time. Science and ties to the Church seem, to many today, elements in contradiction between themselves. And yet Theology can subsist only in the Church and with the Church. On this question we published an Instruction. Extract of answer on John Paul II’s most important encyclicals. BENEDICT XVI: I think there are encyclicals of particular importance. In the first place I would like to mention Redemptor Hominis, the Pope’s first encyclical, in which he offered his personal synthesis of the Christian faith […] In the second place I would like to mention the encyclical Redemptoris Missio […] In the third place I would like to mention the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, on moral problems. It was in need of long years of maturation and remains of unchanged topicality. Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church in the contemporary world, counter to the Natural Law orientation prevailing at the time of Moral Theology, wanted the Catholic moral doctrine, on the figure of Jesus and his message, to have a biblical foundation. This was attempted through hints only for a brief period, then the opinion began to affirm itself that the Bible had no morality of its own to announce, but that it refers to moral models valid from time to time. Morality is a question of reason, it was said, not of faith. Thus, on one hand, morality disappeared as understood in the sense of Natural Law, but in its place no Christian conception was affirmed. And as one could not recognize a metaphysical or Christological foundation of morality, recourse was taken to pragmatic solutions, to a morality founded on the principle of the balance of goods, in which there no longer exists what is truly evil and what is truly good, but only that which, from the point of view of efficacy, is better or worse. The great task that the Pope gave himself in this encyclical was to trace again a metaphysical foundation in the anthropology, as well as a Christian concretization in the new image of man of Sacred Scripture. To study and assimilate this encyclical remains a great and important duty. Of great significance also is the encyclical Fides et Ratio […] [..] Lastly, it is absolutely necessary to mention Evangelium Vitae, which develops one of the fundamental topics of the entire pontificate of John Paul II: the intangible dignity of human life, from the first instance of conception. Extract from answer on the spirituality of the Polish Pope. BENEDICT XVI: The Pope’s spirituality was characterized above all by the intensity of his prayer and, therefore, it was profoundly rooted in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist and made together with the whole Church with the recitation of the Breviary. In his autobiographical book Gift and Mystery it is possible to see how much the Sacrament of the priesthood had determined his life and his thought. So his devotion could never be purely individual, but was always also full of solicitude for the Church and for men […] All of us knew his great love for the Mother of God. To give himself totally to Mary meant for him to be, with her, all for the Lord […] Extract from the answer on Wojtyla’s reputation of sanctity in life BENEDICT XVI: [The idea] that John Paul II was a saint came to me from time to time, in the years of my collaboration with him, ever clearer. Naturally, one must first of all keep in mind his intense relationship with God, his being immersed in communion with the Lord, of which he hardly spoke. From here came his happiness in the midst of the great labors he had to sustain, and the courage with which he fulfilled his task at a truly difficult time. John Paul II did not ask for applause, nor did he ever look around, concerned about how his decisions were received. He acted from his faith and his convictions and he was ready also to suffer the blows. The courage of the truth is in my [judgment] the criterion of the first order of sanctity. Only from his relation with God is it possible to understand his indefatigable pastoral commitment. He gave himself with a radicalism which cannot be explained otherwise. His commitment was tireless, and not only in the great trips, whose programs were dense with appointments from beginning to end, but also day after day, beginning with the morning Mass until late at night. During his first visit to Germany (1980), for the first time I had a very concrete experience of this enormous commitment. So during his stay in Munich, I decided he should take a longer break at midday. During that interval he called me to his room. I found him reciting the Breviary and I said to him: “Holy Father, you should rest”, and he said: “I can do so in Heaven.” Only one who is profoundly filled with the urgency of his mission can act like this. […] But I must render honor also to his extraordinary kindness and understanding. Often I had sufficient reasons to blame myself or to put an end to my job of Prefect. And yet he supported me with absolutely incomprehensible fidelity and kindness. Here, too, I would like to give an example. In face of the turmoil that developed around the Declaration Dominus Iesus, he told me that he intendedto defend the document unequivocally at the Angelus. He invited me to write a text for the Angelus which should be, so to speak, watertight and not consent to any different interpretation. It should emerge, in an altogether unequivocal way, that he approved the document unconditionally. Therefore, I prepared a brief address. I did not intend, however, to be too brusque and so I sought to express myself with clarity and without harshness. After having read it, the Pope asked once again: “Is it really sufficiently clear?” I answered yes. Those who know theologians will not be astonished by the fact that, this notwithstanding, afterwards there were those who held that the Pope had prudently distanced himself from that text. BENEDICT XVI: My memory of John Paul II is filled with gratitude. I cannot and must not try to imitate him, but I have sought to carry forward his legacy and his task as best I could. And, therefore, I am certain that still today his kindness accompanies me and his blessing protects me. [Translation by ZENIT]

a treasure-trove of literature treasure found hidden with no evidence of ownership Title: The Last of Mrs Cheney A play in three acts Author: Frederick Lonsdale * A Project Gutenberg Australia eBook * eBook No.: 1203831.txt Language: English Date first posted: October 2012 Date most recently updated: October 2012 Produced by: Hamish Darby Project Gutenberg Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg Australia Licence which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html To contact Project Gutenberg Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: The Last of Mrs Cheney A play in three acts Author: Frederick Lonsdale * Text prepared by Hamish Darby * THE LAST OF MRS CHENEY A PLAY IN THREE ACTS by FREDERICK LONSDALE * CHARACTERS ---------- CHARLES a butler WILLIAM a footman GEORGE a footman LADY JOAN HOUGHTON LADY MARY SINDLAY HON. WILLIE WYNTON LADY MARIA FRINTON HON. MRS KITTY WYNTON LORD ARTHUR DILLING LORD ELTON MRS CHEYNEY MRS SYBIL EBLEY JIM a chauffeur ROBERTS Mrs Ebley's butler * * * Act I: Drawing-room in Mrs Cheyney's house at Goring. A summer afternoon. Act II: Scene 1. A room in Mrs Ebley's country house. Ten days later. Scene 2. Mrs Ebley's bedroom. Early next morning. Act III: Loggia of Mrs Ebley's house. A few hours later. * * * =========== * ACT ONE * =========== A room at MRS CHEYNEY's house at Goring. It is afternoon. French windows lead to the gardens where an unseen singer has reached the last verse of 'A May Morning'. CHARLES, at the window, listens a second, then rings the bell. WILLIAM, a footman, enters carrying two plates of sandwiches; he places them on the table which is already laid with cakes in dishes and stands, chocolate eclairs and biscuits and a dish of fruit. A decanter of 'Kirsch' stands by the fruit. GEORGE follows the other footman. He is carrying a large silver tray containing a decanter of whisky, a decanter of sherry, jug with lemonade, syphon, four large glasses and four cocktail glasses. The syphon is lying on its side, and the tray is generally slovenly arranged. GEORGE: Where shall I put these? CHARLES: (Pointing to the table.) I suggest there. GEORGE: My word, some of those singers out there have got 'orrible voices. CHARLES: A charity concert, without 'orrible voices, would not be a charity concert, George! By the way, it's a small matter, but there is an 'h' in 'orrible! GEORGE: Where I come from there ain't! CHARLES: Quite! And I dare say it does quite well without it! (WILLIAM exits.) GEORGE: Anyway, I never believed I would see a garden so full of swells as I have today. I've called everybody 'my lord' and I ain't been contradicted once! CHARLES: The English middle-classes are much too well-bred to argue! GEORGE: Who was the old bloke who spoke at the beginning? CHARLES: The old bloke was His Grace the Duke of Bristol! GEORGE: That's funny! If you didn't know he was, and saw his picture in a Sunday paper, you'd say, 'There's them Bolshies at it again!' CHARLES: You would! Nevertheless, we have with us today what may be known as the social goods! Lady Mary Sindlay, one of our leading hostesses: rich, charming, and modest. In fact, one might almost describe her as a lady! Lady Joan Houghton, twenty-three, courageous and beautiful, a woman who calls a spade a bloody spade and means it! GEORGE: I like her! She said to me out there just now, 'Willie, and me a match!' CHARLES: She was born with a natural desire to please every one! And then we have Mrs Wynton, the honourable of such, young, attractive, and a person. She married one of the most stupid of God's creatures; but rumour has it she has remained faithful to him! She is either a very good woman, George, or very nervous. GEORGE: I like the old party they call Maria! CHARLES: In her way, George, she's a darling! Her business in life has been to find people; she has a habit of finding them on Tuesday and serving them up on a gold salver on Wednesday, but should they fail her by being unamusing, it is she who closes the drain on them as they go down it on the Thursday! It was she who found your mistress! GEORGE: The old one with the painted face and the pearls--I don't think much of her! CHARLES: She is Mrs Ebley. It is said of her that, seated in her chair one day looking into her glass, she spied a double chin; at that moment her last of many lovers called to pay his respects; looking into that glass and without flinching, she said, 'I am not at home!' GEORGE: Good for 'er! CHARLES: With the knowledge that given suitable conditions even a Bishop's eyesight can be affected, she kept to her pearls, but became respectable! Her house today is the most exclusive of all our English homes! GEORGE: I must say I like 'em when they get away with it! They all didn't make half a fuss of that tall bloke when he came in. CHARLES: That tall bloke was Lord Elton--a rich, eligible bachelor, an intimate friend of royalty, and a man of considerable importance. Dukes open their doors personally when he calls upon them; the aspirants to the higher life leave theirs open, in the hope that it might rain and he might be driven in for shelter. GEORGE: He sounds great. CHARLES: To have got him here today. George, is a triumph; he so seldom goes anywhere! GEORGE: What do you think brought him here? CHARLES: You've heard the singing at this charity concert, so the intelligent assumption is, he finds your mistress a very attractive young lady. GEORGE: She's a knock out. The feller who couldn't do the card trick--I like him--he makes me laugh. Who was he? CHARLES: He? He's quite of another kind! He is my Lord Dilling. Young, rich, attractive and clever! Had he been born a poor man, he might have died a great one! But he has allowed life to spoil him! He has a reputation with women that is extremely bad, consequently, as hope is a quality possessed of all women, women ask him everywhere! I would describe him as a man who has kept more husbands at home than any other man of modern times. GEORGE: Do you like him? CHARLES: Personally. I hate him. Besides, he's too clever, George, for any man to like very much! And too unscrupulous for any woman not to love very much! GEORGE: 'As he got an eye to my mistress? CHARLES: He has got two eyes to your mistress! GEORGE: She don't like him? CHARLES: Not in the way that he would like her to, George. Unless I am very much mistaken, she is a young lady with two eyes to herself! (LADY JOAN enters through the windows, with cigarette in long holder) JOAN: Do something with that for me, Charles, please! CHARLES: Yes, my Lady! (He takes the cigarette out of the holder and hands it to GEORGE.) (GEORGE takes the cigarette from CHARLES and exits, closing the door.) JOAN: Charles, who the devil told those women out there that they can sing? CHARLES: Their music teacher, my lady, when she found they had the money to pay for lessons in advance! JOAN: I like that. May I use it as my own? CHARLES: With pleasure, my lady! JOAN: By the way, are your ears burning? CHARLES: No, my lady! JOAN: They should be; we've been talking about you for the last quarter of an hour; we are intrigued, Charles! Tell me, have you always been a butler? CHARLES: I never remember allowing myself the privilege of forgetting it once, my lady. JOAN: Oh! Likely to? CHARLES: I shouldn't know how to, my lady! (He is about to go off, having opened the door.) (LADY MARY enters through the windows.) MARY: Oh! Charles, may I have some tea, please? CHARLES: It will be here in a moment! (CHARLES exits, closing the door.) JOAN: Isn't he divine? MARY: Who? Oh, Charles! Don't be absurd, Joan. JOAN: Every time I see that man I realize how dreadfully our family is in need of a drop of new blood! MARY: How very attractive Mrs Cheyney has made this house! JOAN: Terribly! What a darling she is, Mary! MARY: I like her enormously! By the way, don't you think it's rather amusing that the pompous Elton, who never goes anywhere, should be always here? JOAN: I know! You don't think that sweet Mrs Cheyney would marry that prig, do you? MARY: Being Lady Elton would have certain advantages? JOAN: Heavens! Think of waking up in the morning and finding Elton alongside of one. MARY: One wouldn't! JOAN: That's true! MARY: Well, it's all very amusing! Elton at a charity concert, and of all people in the world, Arthur Dilling! JOAN: I have been watching Mrs Cheyney, and she appears not to be the least impressed by Arthur! MARY: I know. It's frightfully good for him; poor darling, he can't understand it. It's something that has never happened to him before. JOAN: Well, I can't understand any woman preferring Elton to Arthur. MARY: If a woman has ideas of marriage, there wouldn't be much reason to waste time on Arthur. (WILLIE WYNTON enters through the windows.) WILLIE: Ah, there you are! The first part of the concert is over, and if the second part isn't better than the first, the garden will be strewn with bodies. MARY: Don't grumble, Willie; it's sweet of Mrs Cheyney to have lent her garden, and we must help her. WILLIE: I'm not grumbling; I'm just a poor, disappointed fellow who hardly ever finds anything right! (Catching sight of himself in the framed mirror on the piano.) Oh! Lord, how I hate my face! JOAN: Supposing you had to live with it, like your wife has. WILLIE: I never thought of that. I'll give her a present. (WILLIAM enters with teapot on salver. He places the teapot on the table and exits.) MARY: Hurrah! (To JOAN) Tea, darling? (She rises and pours out tea.) WILLIE: (Finding the whisky and soda and helping himself) I say, apparently our Mrs Cheyney is a rich woman. MARY: Obviously! WILLIE: Who, actually is Mrs Cheyney, Mary? MARY: Mrs Cheyney is the widow of a rich Australian; meaning to stay in England only a little, she liked us all so much, she has decided to settle amongst us! WILLIE: Settle Elton seems to me to be more accurate. MARY: Give that to Joan. (She holds out a cup.) WILLIE: Right-o! JOAN: You think he is in love with her? WILLIE: I'm positive! I'll tell you another bloke who isn't far off it, too! JOAN: Arthur? WILLIE: That's right. (Hands cup of tea to JOAN.) But she's heard too much about him; she's not having any. My word, I wish I had a quarter of that fellow's brains! MARY: What would you do with them if you had, Willie? WILLIE: Well, I wouldn't waste time like he's doing; it's a crime to see that feller dissipating himself to pieces like he is doing! Thirty thousand a year and no occupation has done him in all right! JOAN: He enjoys life. WILLIE: Not he. He's exhausted nearly everything that there is in this life for him. (MARY has poured out a cup of tea for herself) MARY: Some one said the other day he's drinking, rather. Is that true? WILLIE: I'm afraid it is! Pity, because with all his faults he's such a damn good fellow! JOAN: I adore him! (LADY MARIA FRINTON and MRS KITTY WYNTON enter through the windows.) MARIA: Tea! Divine! Enjoying the concert, Willie? (MRS WYNTON goes and pours out tea.) WILLIE: Like hell! MARIA: Darling! And we got it up for you! It's charming. Don't you like the dear, fat, sweet creature who played the violin? WILLIE: In the days of my early ancestors they would have thrown stones at her? MARIA: And how right they would have been! The beast, I thought she was never going to stop! WILLIE: Have some tea, darling? MARIA: Tea. Yes, please. MRS WYNTON: The one amusing thing was when Arthur suggested to Elton he should play his little piece. JOAN: How pompous Elton looked when he said it! WILLIE: (Crossing to MARIA with the tea.) That's what I like about Arthur. We're all such snobs about Elton, and he simply doesn't care a damn about him. MRS WYNTON: You're swearing rather a lot today, Willie. WILLIE: Sorry, darling, but I've been sitting next to Joan all the afternoon! MARIA: I wish I knew for certain whether Elton hates Arthur more than Arthur despises Elton? (LORD ARTHUR DILLING enters through the windows.) Tea, Arthur? ARTHUR: A whisky and soda! Give me one, Willie! WILLIE: I will! ARTHUR: (Going to MRS WYNTON, lifts her pearls) Imitation of the opulent Sybil? MRS WYNTON: What do you mean? ARTHUR: You have got them all on. MRS WYNTON: Naturally one wears the pearls given one by one's husband! MARIA: And Willie likes her to wear them; they advertise you, don't they, Willie? WILLIE: In what way? (Giving ARTHUR the whisky and soda.) MARIA: A trap for other women, darling! If a man is prepared to give the woman he married such divine pearls, what would he be prepared to give the woman he loves? WILLIE: Nothing of the sort! I'm much too mean to be unfaithful! ARTHUR: (Laughing.) I like that, Willie! (ARTHUR puts more whisky into his glass from the decanter.) MARIA: What brings you to a charity concert, Arthur? ARTHUR: A misjudged 'Kruschen' feeling. (Examines the decanter of whisky.) MARY: Is that what brought Elton here? ARTHUR: Elton, I take it, finds Mrs Cheyney very entertaining. MARIA: Do you think he means to marry her? ARTHUR: With the consent of his solicitor and his mother, he may in time propose to her! JOAN: Why don't you marry her, Arthur? ARTHUR: She wouldn't have me! MARIA: You should ask her! ARTHUR: As I could never make any woman happy for more than a year, I wouldn't be so impertinent! MRS WYNTON: You should try! ARTHUR: I have! And miserably failed! My maximum so far has been eight months. The last two of those months I shall never forget! I should hate any woman again to watch me suffering as that poor creature did! JOAN: (Laughing.) I heard you described the other evening as a dishonourable man with thirty thousand a year! MARIA: No man with thirty thousand a year who can write his name could ever be dishonourable! ARTHUR: Quite right, Maria! (WILLIE laughs.) MRS WYNTON: (To WILLIE.) What are you making those curious noises for? WILLIE: I'm laughing! I'm such an ass myself, I love anyone who isn't! (CHARLES enters. He crosses to the windows.) ARTHUR: Charles, you might put that down for me, please. CHARLES: (Taking ARTHUR'S glass.) Yes, m'lord. (He puts the glass on the table.) MARIE: Ever tried tea, Arthur? ARTHUR: Tea, what for? (As CHARLES is going off) Charles! Been able to remember where we have met before? CHARLES: Unfortunately I have not, my lord! ARTHUR: (Smiling.) You might try! CHARLES. I am, my lord. (CHARLES exits through the windows.) MARIA: What does that odd conversation mean? ARTHUR: Where I have seen that feller before? I don't know, but I have seen him, and I'd give a devil of a lot to know where. MRS WYNTON: Does it worry you, then? ARTHUR: It's interesting to know why a gentleman should be a butler, that's all! MARIA: Not really! Does anyone know where Elton and Mrs Cheyney are? ARTHUR: I left Elton patronizing the tea that Mrs Cheyney was giving the villagers! JOAN: I do wish he would marry Mrs Cheyney. It would be such fun. (LORD ELTON enters through the windows and puts his hat on the piano.) MARIA: My dear! Some tea? ELTON: Many thanks, but I have had some! ARTHUR: A whisky and soda, Elton? ELTON: Thank you, no! ARTHUR: We were just discussing marriage, Elton! ELTON: And have you come to any conclusion? ARTHUR: We have! We have decided you should! ELTON: Indeed! For you to take such an interest in me is flattering! ARTHUR: Not at all! Society needs a Lady Elton; the world more strong men like yourself! ELTON: Having such strong convictions as regards marriage, I wonder you remain single! MARIA: Yes, why do you? ARTHUR: Ah, that's my affair! Mrs Cheyney is rather an attractive woman, if I dare say so, Elton? ELTON: Forgive me, but perhaps it's because I am not modern, but I prefer the word likeable to attractive. ARTHUR: Perhaps it's because I am too modern, but I differ! To accuse a beautiful woman of being liked by one is suggestive that her underclothes are made of linoleum. (Everyone laughs except ELTON, who looks displeased and astonished.) But to suggest that she is attractive betrays a meaning that, with encouragement, you have more and better things to say to her. MARIA: Angel! (WILLIE laughs.) MRS WYNTON: (To WILLIE.) Do stop that silly noise! ELTON: (Ignores ARTHUR.) The concert seems to be quite a success. MARY: Terribly good, isn't it? ELTON: The tall lady who played the violin; is she a professional? ARTHUR: She is--but not at violin playing. (MRS CHEYNEY enters through the windows, carrying a parasol, followed by MRS SYBIL EBLEY) MRS CHEYNEY: Have you all had tea? MARIA: (Rising.) Of course! I insist on your sitting down and resting; you'll be worn out! MRS CHEYNEY: (Putting MARIA into her seat again.) Nonsense. Mrs Ebley has been an angel; she's helped me to entertain all those dozens of people in the garden! MRS EBLEY: Nonsense! I did nothing! This child, Maria, is a perfect marvel; you don't know how they adore her out there! MARIA: Thank heaven we have something in common with them in here. ARTHUR: A sentiment to which I heartily subscribe! MRS CHEYNEY: (Curtseys.) Thank you, my lord! Have you had some tea? ARTHUR: I had a whisky and soda. MRS CHEYNEY: I've got some good news for you; one more item, then Lord Elton has promised to make a little speech--the collection--and after that you can all go home! MARIA: You have been an angel to have taken all this trouble today! ELTON: Most kind! MRS CHEYNEY: It's kind of you all to have come; I'm afraid you have hated it! MARIA: (Taking MRS CHEYNEY's hand) We adore you, my dear, and that makes it perfect! MRS EBLEY: I have made her promise to come to me on Friday week, when you all come! MARIA: That's wonderful! ARTHUR: I'll bring you! MRS CHEYNEY: Lord Elton has very kindly offered to drive me from London. ARTHUR: Splendid! Then I'll get Elton to give me a lift in his car. MARIA: And don't forget, young woman, I am giving a dinner for you on Tuesday! ARTHUR: Tuesday? I'll remember. MRS CHEYNEY: I won't forget! You know, you're all too kind to me. I don't know why you are; I'm not the least amusing or modern; I don't drink; I don't smoke, and I don't swear--I'm really terribly dull! JOAN: You're an angel, and I swear enough for both of us. MRS CHEYNEY: I'm terribly sorry; but I'm going to push you all back to that concert--we are being rather rude to the singers. MARIA: Not nearly as rude as the singers have been to us. JOAN: If that fat woman plays the violin again I shall hiss her body off the stage. (MRS EBLEY, WILLIE and MRS WYNTON exit through the windows.) MARIA: My dear! She's a joke compared with the woman who sings like the bath water running away. MRS CHEYNEY: You must go, my dears! MARIA: The moment Elton has made his little speech I'll go; so, in case I don't see you again, goodbye and don't forget you are dining with me on Tuesday. MARY: Give me a lift and I'll come with you. MARIA: Certainly. Can I give you a lift, Elton? ELTON: Many thanks, I have my own car. MARIA: Thank God! I hope he always has it. (MARIA and MARY exit through the windows.) JOAN: Are you going my way, Arthur? ARTHUR: Which is your way? JOAN: Grosvenor Square. ARTHUR: Sorry; mine's the other way. Besides, I too have a car, and why not, indeed? JOAN: (Going up to MRS CHEYNEY and shaking hands.) Goodbye, Mrs Cheyney--I'm going to face that foul violin-player. (She exits through the windows.) ARTHUR: You poor dear, I'll come with you. Well, thank heaven, we have your speech to look forward to, Elton. (To MRS CHEYNEY.) And, thank heaven, you have my speech to look forward to, young woman. (He goes out) ELTON: Can I give you some tea? MRS CHEYNEY: You don't like Lord Dilling? ELTON: How did you know that? (Pouring out tea.) MRS CHEYNEY: Instinct! ELTON: If you hadn't mentioned it, I should have said nothing, but as you have, I don't like him! (Handing her a cup of tea.) MRS CHEYNEY: He's very young. ELTON: (Going to the table for the plate of cakes.) All women make that excuse for him! MRS CHEYNEY: And a good many women who have known him made that excuse for themselves, I suppose? (ELTON offers cakes.) No, thanks. ELTON: Yes! MRS CHEYNEY: Odd creatures, women, aren't they? ELTON: Frankly, I have to confess I know very little about women. MRS CHEYNEY: So they tell me! ELTON: May I ask what they tell you? MRS CHEYNEY: You don't like women! But I hope I am an exception! I should hate you not to like me. ELTON: I do, very much. MRS CHEYNEY: I'm glad! ELTON: (Nervously.) And I only hope it is mutual! MRS CHEYNEY: It is! I like you very much! ELTON: Thank you, I'm glad. By the way, my mother is writing you today with the hope that you will be able to come and stay with us for a little! I'm afraid it will be a little dull, but we would both be very grateful if you would come! MRS CHEYNEY: It's most kind of your mother, and I shall write and tell her so, and how pleased I will be to come! ELTON: I'm pleased, very pleased! MRS CHEYNEY: I shall see you again before we meet at Mrs Ebley's? ELTON: I trust so! MRS CHEYNEY: I suppose it's a very lovely house. ELTON: Do you know, I've never been there! MRS CHEYNEY: You are going that weekend? ELTON: Yes, if you are going. MRS CHEYNEY: Don't you like them? ELTON: (Choosing his words.) Oh, yes, very much--but--er--we live in rather a different world. Quite frankly, I don't understand these sort of people, and at my age it would be ridiculous to start and try. MRS CHEYNEY: A young man of your age should start to try almost anything. ELTON: It's very kind of you to say so, but I fear not. MRS CHEYNEY: Nonsense! I'm an optimist. (CHARLES enters through the windows.) CHARLES: Lord Dilling has asked me, my lord, to tell you the audience are eagerly awaiting your speech, and also, my lord, he is the most eager of them all! ELTON: Thank you! MRS CHEYNEY: Shall we go? (MRS CHEYNEY rises picking up her parasol.) ELTON: Please! (Takes his hat from piano.) (MRS CHEYNEY and ELTON exit through the windows. CHARLES smiles. WILLIAM enters, followed by GEORGE. WILLIAM commences to clear up tea things and pack them onto the tray. GEORGE is making as if to into the garden. CHARLES stops him, snapping his fingers.) GEORGE: Can't I go and hear that bloke speak? CHARLES: There is so much dullness coming to you in your life that cannot be avoided, George, that I am not prepared to allow you to add what can! Clear these things! GEORGE: Right ho! I must say I'm surprised because I never thought I would, but I like the toffs! CHARLES: They have qualities, George! GEORGE: I always 'eard them talked about as being stupid! CHARLES: All the climbers in the world who fail in their ambition to know them, apologize for themselves by describing them as stupid or decadent. (WILLIAM has packed his tray.) GEORGE: Our Member down our way, he says the most terrible things about them! CHARLES. And I dare say he is right. But the day one of them invites him to dinner he'll even have a bath! The snobbishness of the upper classes, George, is only excelled by the snobbishness of the middle and the lower! (GEORGE opens the door for WILLIAM, who exits with tray.) GEORGE: I wish I could be 'Sir Georgie', I wouldn't 'alf come it over them down my way. (ARTHUR enters.) ARTHUR: Give me a whisky and soda, please. CHARLES: Yes, my lord! ARTHUR: Here! (He offers some money to GEORGE.) GEORGE: (Taking the money.) What's this for, my lord? ARTHUR: For you. (With an inclination of his head towards CHARLES.) I haven't the courage to give it to him! GEORGE: Thank you, my lord. (GEORGE exits, closing the door. CHARLES is holding the whisky and soda. The two men look at each other.) ARTHUR: I can't remember! (Smiling.) Can you? CHARLES: What, my lord? ARTHUR: Where we have met. CHARLES. We have never met, my lord! ARTHUR: I assure you we have! I was educated--I mean, I was at Oxford! CHARLES: I once passed through Oxford in the train, my lord. ARTHUR: Your manner suggests to me you might have got out and stayed there for a few years. CHARLES: I had no idea Oxford had a school for butlers, my Lord! ARTHUR: Hadn't you? Tell me, how long have you been with Mrs Cheyney? CHARLES: Mrs Cheyney engaged me six months ago next Tuesday in a registry office, in an adjoining street near Brook Street, to be her butler, my lord! ARTHUR: Many thanks for the details! So you were not with Mrs Cheyney in Australia? CHARLES: Has Mrs Cheyney ever been to Australia, my lord? ARTHUR: Didn't you know Mrs Cheyney came from Australia? CHARLES: How should I, my lord? Mrs Cheyney would never think of discussing her affairs with servants! ARTHUR: (Smiling) I accept the rebuke! (He takes the glass from CHARLES.) CHARLES: There was none meant, my lord! (MRS CHEYNEY enters through the windows.) MRS CHEYNEY: Hello! I thought you had gone. ARTHUR: Why? MRS CHEYNEY: All the others have! ARTHUR: I'm waiting for my man with my car. CHARLES: (Bowing and indicating outside windows.) Your man has been waiting for some time, my lord! ARTHUR: Has he? Well, it's a lovely afternoon, tell him to wait a little longer! CHARLES: Yes, my lord! (He bows and exits through the windows.) ARTHUR: I like that fellow. MRS CHEYNEY: You mean my butler? ARTHUR: Yes! MRS CHEYNEY: Why do you like him? ARTHUR: I like his insolence! MRS CHEYNEY: He was rude to you? ARTHUR: The reverse. I have often been told to go to hell, but never so pleasantly as he told me to, a moment ago! MRS CHEYNEY: I shall dismiss him for that! ARTHUR: Please, I ask you not to! MRS CHEYNEY: I shall! (Smiling.) He should have known you had already gone! ARTHUR: But I haven't! Who told you I had? MRS CHEYNEY: Some of the women who went part of the way with you. ARTHUR: (Laughing.) I'd go the whole way for a woman who said a thing like that! MRS CHEYNEY: What a pity it is, then, that I've chosen the other direction! ARTHUR: With Elton as your companion? MRS CHEYNEY: At all events, he would know the way. ARTHUR: He would! I want to ask you something. When you were in London staying at the Ritz last week I rang you up five times, and each time I was told you were out! MRS CHEYNEY: What a shame! ARTHUR: Were you out? MRS CHEYNEY: No! Each time I was in! ARTHUR: I thought so! MRS CHEYNEY: Twice I answered it myself and told you I was out! ARTHUR: May I ask why? MRS CHEYNEY: Certainly! I don't care to be alone with you even on the telephone! ARTHUR: Why not? MRS CHEYNEY: It's my only way of paying tribute to your reputation! ARTHUR: Thank goodness! For a moment, I thought you were going to embarrass me by saying you were nervous of me! MRS CHEYNEY: My dear Lord Dilling--if I allow you to call me Fay, may I call you Arthur? ARTHUR: I have always wanted you to, Fay! MRS CHEYNEY: Thank you, Arthur! ARTHUR: You were saying something? MRS CHEYNEY: Oh yes! You have the great distinction, Arthur dear, of being one of the few men in the world I am not nervous of, and I feel I ought to be. ARTHUR: Modestly, may I ask why? MRS CHEYNEY: Well! You're not bad looking, exquisitely indifferent, even rude to people, a great sense of humour, brilliant--and-- ARTHUR: What else? MRS CHEYNEY: That's the trouble! Nothing else! ARTHUR: I am what is commonly termed--one of those who don't attract you? MRS CHEYNEY: Isn't it odd? ARTHUR: It's disappointing! MRS CHEYNEY: I feel that, too. ARTHUR: Tell me, did you learn the art of rebuking people so charmingly from your butler, or did he learn it from you? MRS CHEYNEY: Neither! I expect Charles feels the same as I do--if there are to be insults, let us get them in first! ARTHUR: I wonder if you would tell me what you mean by that? MRS CHEYNEY: I want to very much! During the short time you have known me, Arthur dear, you have made me practically every proposal that a man can make a woman with the exception of one--marriage! ARTHUR: I am not aware that I have ever made a suggestion to you that could not be spoken from any pulpit in any church! This is all pure imagination on your part! MRS CHEYNEY: How disappointing! ARTHUR: What do you mean? MRS CHEYNEY: I mean, I hate you to use the stock remark of all men when they fail with a woman. ARTHUR: You're quite wrong, but I see your point, because I suppose if a woman comes from Australia to England with the deliberate intention of marrying a-- MRS CHEYNEY: Arthur dear, ring the bell, will you? ARTHUR: What for? MRS CHEYNEY: Charles knows where your hat is! ARTHUR: I didn't intend to be rude, I-- MRS CHEYNEY: You weren't rude, I assure you; you were only just a little feminine! ARTHUR: (Embarrassed.) Feminine! Really! Well, I--(He turns to the table, picks up his glass and drinks.) MRS CHEYNEY: You don't drink alcohol with your meals, do you? ARTHUR: I do. Why do you ask? MRS CHEYNEY: Because you drink so much between them! ARTHUR: (Angrily.) Do I? (Puts his glass down.) (MRS CHEYNEY laughs and he faces her.) May I ask what there is to laugh at? MRS CHEYNEY: Because I'm enjoying myself so much! It's so amusing to have put you once in the position of embarrassment that you must have so often succeeded with women by putting them in! ARTHUR: If I may say so, you appear to have rather a low opinion of me! MRS CHEYNEY: It would be more civil of me to put it another way--I haven't a very high one of you! ARTHUR: Really? MRS CHEYNEY: Have you of yourself? ARTHUR: Not at the moment! MRS CHEYNEY: Then there's hope. ARTHUR: Thank you! I suppose you would despise me even more if I were to finish that? (Indicates the whisky.) MRS CHEYNEY: Not at all! I should like you more if you didn't, that is all! ARTHUR: I should hate you not to like me! Perhaps there is something else I could do for you? MRS CHEYNEY: Heaps! ARTHUR: As, for instance? MRS CHEYNEY: One, live up to the reputation you have for possessing a sense of humour! ARTHUR: Ah! Ah! Anything else? MRS CHEYNEY: Stop living on the glory of your ancestors! ARTHUR: What do you mean by that? MRS CHEYNEY: What I say, Arthur dear! ARTHUR: I am not aware that I do! MRS CHEYNEY: Then I'm wrong, and I'm sorry--but you might tell me one thing you do that proves I am! (He looks at her; there is a pause.) Don't hurry. I am not dining until half-past eight! ARTHUR: Why should I tell you? MRS CHEYNEY: No reason at all! I'm only suggesting you should contradict what other people tell me! ARTHUR: And what do you suppose gives you the right to ask me questions like this? MRS CHEYNEY: The same right that has entitled you to ask me some of the questions you have! But as you can't answer, I'll answer for you! You've done nothing! Your epitaph at this moment is only this: 'He was a good fellow; metaphorically he lived on the dole; his only success was women.' ARTHUR: I resent very much being talked to in this manner! MRS CHEYNEY: One always hates a thing one is not used to! ARTHUR: And you have no right to! MRS CHEYNEY: No, really! I resent equally as much being treated by you as a-- ARTHUR: What? MRS CHEYNEY: (Waving her hand) Well, there are various names for that particular type of woman; when I have never given you the slightest encouragement which would give you the right to. (A pause.) You must see my point, Arthur dear. ARTHUR: If anything I have done suggested that--yes. (A pause.) MRS CHEYNEY: Will you be an angel and tell me exactly what was in your mind to say to me when you came back here after the others had gone? (ARTHUR looks at her.) Go on, pretend you're in a hunting field, and you have to be a sportsman! ARTHUR: (Laughing.) I follow! MRS CHEYNEY: Go on. ARTHUR: Very well. I meant to tell you, you were the most attractive woman I have ever known! MRS CHEYNEY: We are about to take another fence! Was I? ARTHUR: I hadn't considered whether you were or not! MRS CHEYNEY: Splendid! Then? ARTHUR: If that went well, I proposed to suggest a little dinner in my flat! MRS CHEYNEY: And if that went well? ARTHUR: Then I am experienced enough not to have said another word till after the dessert! MRS CHEYNEY: Oh! (She laughs.) What was it your friends--divine! And now? ARTHUR: I realize I had no right to, I was wrong. I beg your pardon; and in future I should never dream of asking you to dine with me without a couple of bishops. You didn't mean all those things you said to me just now? MRS CHEYNEY: I like you so much, every one! ARTHUR: Am I really as bad as that? MRS CHEYNEY: Really! ARTHUR: Good God! I may be a teetotaller tomorrow, but I feel I shall be very drunk tonight! MRS CHEYNEY: But why? ARTHUR: You've depressed me! I don't feel I'm half the hell of a feller I thought I was, and it's a bore! MRS CHEYNEY: You are, a hell of a feller, if you only knew it! ARTHUR: I don't propose to agree with anything you say I am not! MRS CHEYNEY: Have a whisky and soda? ARTHUR: Thank you, I don't drink! MRS CHEYNEY: Angry with me? ARTHUR: I'm something with you, but I don't know what it is! My lords, I rise with certain diffidence not in support of the motion before the House, but-- MRS CHEYNEY: What are you talking about? ARTHUR: I feel I ought to be in the House of Lords speaking on behalf of some one who is down and out, or something or other! MRS CHEYNEY: May I come and hear you, the day you do? ARTHUR: I would insist. In my peroration, I will point to you and say, 'There is the good woman that pointed the way!' MRS CHEYNEY: It almost makes one resolve to be a good woman! ARTHUR: Resolve? Aren't you a good woman? MRS CHEYNEY: Not very! ARTHUR: Well, what the devil do you mean by talking to me as you have tonight? MRS CHEYNEY: There is more than one way of not being a good woman, Arthur dear! ARTHUR: There is more than--explain that! MRS CHEYNEY: Don't be so absurdly serious; besides, it would take too long! Look at the time! ARTHUR: But-- MRS CHEYNEY: I am dining at half-past eight! ARTHUR: I insist on knowing whether you are a good woman or not! MRS CHEYNEY: Why do you want to know? ARTHUR: Because I should feel such a fool if you weren't! MRS CHEYNEY: (Putting out her hand) I am! ARTHUR: Thank God! (ARTHUR takes her hand, is going to kiss it, changes his mind and takes the hem of her dress and kisses it.) There! Could anything be more respectable than that? MRS CHEYNEY: Nothing! ARTHUR: And, in addition, it's the one thing in my life I have never done before. MRS CHEYNEY: (Laughing.) Mrs Wynton has asked me to lunch with her tomorrow. ARTHUR: She hasn't asked me, but I shall be there, nevertheless! (He exits by the windows. MRS CHEYNEY watches him go, shrugs her shoulders, picks up a cigarette, lights it, and throws it down.) MRS CHEYNEY: Damn! (She takes up ARTHUR's glass; smells the whisky, pulls a face and puts it down, gazing into space, evidently thinking and her mind distracted, turns to the piano and commences to play. She plays an excerpt from Scriabine, Op. No. .9, Nocturne II, for the left hand. WILLIAM enters. He closes the door and switches on the lights. He then goes up to the windows, looks out, closes all the windows, fastens them and draws the curtains. He takes a packet of cigarettes from his trousers pocket and lights a cigarette from matches he finds in his pocket. He sits and takes a paper from his pocket and reads. GEORGE enters; he carries the Evening News,' opened at a crossword puzzle. He sits on the table. JIM enters. He is a chauffeur and in his uniform, carrying his hat. He looks round and decides to sit on the settee. CHARLES enters. He closes the door. He is smoking a cigar and takes a look at them all. He goes up to windows, looks outside through the curtains and stands behind MRS CHEYNEY by the piano stool.) CHARLES: Charming! Charming! Scriabine. JIM: Scriber--what? WILLIAM: Bean. JIM: (To MRS CHEYNEY.) Play us that tune, 'I want to be 'appy!' (MRS CHEYNEY stops playing and looks at them all.) MRS CHEYNEY: (Starting to play something else.) What a pretty lot of pets you look, don't you? CHARLES: Thank you, darling! MRS CHEYNEY: Well! (She plays a scale on the piano, rises.) I've got the invitation. CHARLES: When? MRS CHEYNEY: I am asked to stay with Mrs Ebley as an honoured guest on Friday week! JIM: Great! CHARLES' Wonderful! The pearls she was wearing this afternoon struck me as being worth, say, as a venture' twenty thousand! JIM: Here! I hope she has got better ones than that at home. CHARLES: Much. WILLIAM: Then if we bring this off there isn't any reason why we shouldn't retire, should we be so inclined! CHARLES: None! It will put us in the happy position of only doing the things, and those, we want to! JIM: Charlie, this was a great idea of yours. CHARLES: Not too bad' if I may say so, old friend! WILLIAM: Wonderful! You're a master' Charles! JIM: It's great, that's what it is! MRS CHEYNEY: I should have added, I haven't definitely accepted the invitation. CHARLES: Why not? WILLIAM: You ain't thinking of refusing it, are you? MRS CHEYNEY: I am! (There is a pause. They all look alarmed.) CHARLES: Jane' my dear, I-- MRS CHEYNEY: I have changed it to Fay! CHARLES: Fay! Delightful! I prefer it! May I ask why you are in doubt? MRS CHEYNEY: Certainly! I happen to like all these people very much; and in consequence, at the moment I am finding it rather distasteful to take Mrs Ebley's pearls from her! JIM: Oh, chuck all that! MRS CHEYNEY: (Pointing at JIM.) Very little of that, Charles dear' will decide me definitely not to do it! CHARLES: Quite! I see Jane's--Fay's point perfectly! MRS CHEYNEY: The idea of persuading perfectly charming people into inviting you to their house for the purpose of robbing them isn't pleasing me at all! JIM: Here! You have had none of these scruples before? MRS CHEYNEY: No! But during my adopted career I have never before come in contact with the people I have had to carry on my profession with, as it were! CHARLES: No. JIM: And you ain't going to do it? MRS CHEYNEY: I am in grave doubt, Jim darling! (Goes up to window and looks out into the night.) JIM: (To CHARLES.) Here, can't you do anything? CHARLES: I? What can I do? JIM: Can't you tell her to stop behaving like a fool? CHARLES: I can't, because I know so well how she feels! I remember on one occasion practically having got a pocket-book containing a large sum from the pocket of a client, when I heard him say something rather kind and attractive to the person he was with; it was very wrong of me; but, do you know' I was so touched, I put it back! JIM: Oh' for God's sake, let us sing Hymn 225 and have done with it! WILLIAM: So you've fallen for the swells' have you? MRS CHEYNEY: I suppose that describes it; they are charming, and I like them. WILLIAM: Perhaps you have ideas of being Lady Elton? MRS CHEYNEY: I have a suspicion I will refuse that! WILLIAM: Well; the other feller ain't a marrying sort, you know! MRS CHEYNEY: So he tells me! CHARLES: (Indifferently.) Do you like him, Fay? MRS CHEYNEY: Terribly! But don't be alarmed, I'm going to refuse him, too! CHARLES: I'm relieved. WILLIAM: Do you mind telling me what we've been giving you lessons for every day this week? MRS CHEYNEY: I'm sorry; but I didn't quite realize, when I adopted this profession, that the people I would have to take things from would be quite so nice. CHARLES: Quite! WILLIAM: So we've spent months planning this, teaching her all we know' dressed up as butlers, she pretending to be an Australian widow' and on the verge of the greatest coup that has ever been made, she turns sentimental and refuses to do it. CHARLES: I have rather enjoyed it! I'm not trying to persuade you, my sweet, but there is this to be remembered: the pearls we want from Mrs Ebley were taken by that lady, without a scruple, from the wives of the men who gave them to her! MRS CHEYNEY: I know that! CHARLES: And if you got them, there is this to be said, you would be in a position to say farewell to your profession' should you care to. MRS CHEYNEY: That I have thought of, too. CHARLES: Quite! But you feel a little sentimental about it? MRS CHEYNEY: Yes! CHARLES: That, I feel, is a little wrong! If that principle were generally adopted' the world would stop! For instance, supposing a woman went to a doctor without appendicitis, but with a hundred pounds, and he became sentimental and told her her appendix was as pure as the driven snow, how many honourable men would there be in the medical profession, I ask you? Supposing a man went to a lawyer with a bad case, but the money to pay for a good one, and that lawyer became sentimental and told him the truth--he was sure to lose--how many honourable lawyers would there be in the world' I ask you? MRS CHEYNEY: I've no idea! I only know I'm sorry I took on this particular thing! CHARLES: I feel for you, because I am on the side of all repentant people, but I have a leaning towards the wise ones who make certain their repentance is going to be spent in comfort--I would quote Mrs Ebley as an instance! MRS CHEYNEY: That's true! WILLIAM: 'I don't want to do it!' I have never heard such damned nonsense in my life! CHARLES: Not at all. (He winks at WILLIAM) I am full of sympathy for her! (MRS CHEYNEY turns to the piano, sits and plays softly.) MRS CHEYNEY: And, after all, if she had been sentimental, she would have never taken the pearls herself, would she? CHARLES: She certainly would not! MRS CHEYNEY: That's true! Jim, old dear' what was the name of that tune you wanted me to play? JIM: 'I want to be 'appy!' MRS CHEYNEY: So do I! (MRS CHEYNEY plays a chorus of 'I want to be happy'. All the gang look at each other--they realize she has decided to steal the pearls JIM, WILLIAM and GEORGE do 'thumbs up'--and begin to dance comically.) END OF ACT ONE. * =========== * ACT TWO * =========== ------- Scene 1 ------- A room in MRS EBLEY's country house. Ten days later. Two doors, French windows, a fireplace. After dinner on a warm summer evening. The French windows are open. MRS EBLEY seated in an arm-chair is doing needlework. MARY is at the piano left, playing. JOAN is at the back doing jazz movements to the accompaniment of the piano. ARTHUR, MARIA, WILLIE and MRS WYNTON are sitting round a card table, playing bridge. A rubber is almost over. ARTHUR, who is 'dummy; is sitting on a stool below the card table, his back to the audience. MARIA is at the top of the table facing the audience. MARIA has a good hand; there are also good cards in the 'dummy'. She has six tricks at her left; WILLIE two. Each player has five cards. MARY is playing 'Poor Little Rich Girl' forte. ARTHUR rises; he is smoking a cigarette, and goes to the table and stands watching the game between MARIA and WILLIE. MARIA: Girls, girls, must you make that noise? Please. (MARY continues to play; JOAN goes over to ARTHUR, they commence to dance at the back. MARIA leads a card. MRS WYNTON and WILLIE follow. MARIA collects up the trick) Arthur! Arthur! (MARYstops playing. ARTHUR and JOAN continue to dance, singing 'Ta-ra-ra-ra-ra' to the time of the tune.) Oh, do stop that ta-ra-ra. It's impossible to play. (They stop dancing. JOAN goes over to MARY and sits against her on the piano stool.) ARTHUR: Sorry' darling, sorry. (MARIA pauses a long time before playing her next card; she tries to have a look at MRS WYNTON's hand; who hides her cards. MARIA then deliberately drops her handkerchief at her right. WILLIE bends down to pick it up; as he does so MARIA takes a good look at his cards which he has in his right hand; he quickly hides his hand over his shoulder.) WILLIE: (Handing MARIA the handkerchief) Allow me. MARIA: That's very civil of you, Willie. WILLIE: Not at all. I just didn't want you to look over my hand. MRS WYNTON: Willie! ARTHUR: Bravo, Willie! MARIA: Am I to assume that you think I would cheat? ARTHUR: You are to assume that I am sure you would cheat. If you remember, at the ninth hole this morning' you turned to my caddy and said, 'Is Lord Dilling looking?' He said, 'No' m'lady'. Whereupon, you said, 'Well, kick my ball on to the pritty.' MARIA: The boy's a liar! I told him to kick yours into the rough. (They play another round.) (Playing.) Give me that queen; the rest are mine. WILLIE: Blast! MARIA: Four honours in one hand, seventy-two. WILLIE: Four honours in one hand, sixty-four. (MRS WYNTON gathers the cards.) MARIA: And score above. ARTHUR: And the date is September 3rd. 1925, but there is no reason to count that in. MARIA: Shut up! I make four hundred and seventy-two at five shillings a hundred is twenty-five shillings. WILLIE: At half-a-crown a hundred is twelve and six' and we carry it forward. (ARTHUR picks up the bridge marker.) JOAN: (Going up to the windows.) What a divine night! How I would love to be out in that exquisite garden, being told by someone I was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. MARY: Who would you like to be told that by in particular? JOAN: Shouldn't care a damn, darling, as long as it was a man and I was told it! Doing anything for a few minutes' Arthur? ARTHUR: (Writing on the score card) I am! But Willie isn't. JOAN: Come and make love to me in the garden, Willie? WILLIE: I'd rather sit here and smoke! JOAN: Pig! MARIA: Any signs of the young lovers? JOAN: Not a sign--not a sound! MRS WYNTON: And they have been out there for at least half an hour. MARIA: I'm so excited I can't bear it; does this mean that Mrs Cheyney comes back into this room the future Lady Elton? (Bangs table.) Answer, some one. ARTHUR: Does it necessarily follow because two people stay out in a garden alone for half an hour that they should return engaged to be married? MARIA: No two people ever stayed alone in a beautiful garden on a beautiful night like this alone without something happening, and as it is Elton, I say that it is marriage! ARTHUR: I disagree! Unless he has very much altered, I suggest he is describing to her in detail the History of England! MARIA: If he is, I hope she tells him she is not that sort of woman and smacks his face! MRS EBLEY: I should have thought you knew more about the geography of gardens than Elton' Arthur! ARTHUR: I suggested that to her myself! MRS WYNTON: And what did she say? ARTHUR: She said I knew too much about them! MARIA: Arthur darling, I'm going to ask you a question. ARTHUR: Am I in love with Mrs Cheyney. MARIA: How did you know? ARTHUR: Because it has been evident that you have been going to, ever since we arrived in this house two days ago! MARY: And are you? ARTHUR: As every one is expected to contribute something to a week-end party, my contribution is this: I think I am! JOAN: You think you are! Oh, divine. MARIA: To what extent? ARTHUR: That I don't know myself? MARIA: Stuff and nonsense! What are the symptoms? ARTHUR: I have suddenly discovered a liking for little children. MARIA: That sounds like the real thing! (WILLIE laughs.) MRS WYNTON: If you can't stop that noise' Willie, I will send you to bed! Go on, Arthur! ARTHUR: During the time I have known her' I have also discovered that in the past one has eaten too much; that one only needs a little food! JOAN: Go on, darling! ARTHUR: Sleep, I find, is not essential! MARIA: The man is really in love--but this is marvellous. MARY: What else, Arthur? ARTHUR: It's the first time in my life I have been seriously obsessed by any woman. JOAN: Do you like it? ARTHUR: I do' rather! You must admit it's generous of me to tell you all this, particularly as she may, at any moment, return into the room affianced to another! MARIA: It's divine of you' and it's the first thrill I have had since that horrid man tried to be familiar with me in a railway carriage. (They all laugh.) MRS EBLEY: Curious, how you have never been able to forget that! MARIA: My dear, it was two years ago' and each day I grow older I feel the only literature I care for is railway time tables. (They all laugh.) MRS WYNTON: Arthur dear, having admitted all this, I can't understand why you doubt that you are in love with her? ARTHUR: She won't have anything to do with me; she prefers to me, what I have always considered the world's prize ass; it may be that I am piqued! MARY: I wonder if she is doing it on purpose? ARTHUR: What do you mean by that? MARIA: She may be merely encouraging Elton to encourage you! ARTHUR: If she is, then she isn't a bit what I think she is! MARIA: Good lord' the man has got it so badly he thinks her different from any other woman. ARTHUR: I do! MARIA: It's an extraordinary thing, but when an old man or a bad man falls in love' God help them! (ELTON with MRS CHEYNEY on his hand, enter from the garden.) MRS CHEYNEY: Playing bridge on a divine night like this! Shame. ARTHUR: To have gone out would have been sacrilege to your divine night! MRS CHEYNEY: Why? ARTHUR: We all know each other too well. MRS CHEYNEY: (Laughing) Really? ELTON: (To MRS EBLEY.) Mrs Cheyney has a very bad headache. ARTHUR: Who shall blame her? (All the others snigger and suppress ill-mannered laughter.) ELTON: I have been trying to persuade her to take something for it! MRS EBLEY: (Rising and going to the bell below the fireplace, putting her work in work-bag.) But, of course' there's some aspirin in my room. MRS CHEYNEY: Please don't, it may pass off? MRS EBLEY: But, my dear, I-- MRS CHEYNEY: Please! I get them so often that I'm trying to get rid of them without taking anything; but if it gets worse I'll come in to you for them' may I? (ELTON takes up a paper and reads it.) MRS EBLEY: I insist that you do! MRS CHEYNEY: Thank you so much! (MRS EBLEY catches ARTHUR's eye. He makes a sign to her to get the others out of the room.) MRS EBLEY: Well, I suggest an early bed--perhaps just another rubber. (ARTHUR signs 'No more. Get them all into another room.') (To MARIA quietly.) Say 'It's hot.' MARIA: What? MRS EBLEY: Hot. ARTHUR: H--O--T MARIA: What's hot? MRS EBLEY: The room. MARIA: But it isn't--it's beautifully cool. MRS EBLEY: Maria, be bright. (MRS EBLEY nudges MARIA, who sees ARTHUR signing to her--she at last understands and rises.). MARIA: Oh yes, of course. This room is insufferably hot. Can't we go and play in the er--bathroom--er I mean, the next room? MRS EBLEY: (To MRS CHEYNEY.) You would rather not play, my dear? MRS CHEYNEY: I won't, if you don't mind. MARIA: You'll play, Arthur? ARTHUR: I've got a headache, too. MRS EBLEY: Well, come along! Come along, everybody--come along, Willie. (MRS EBLEY exits, followed by WILLIE. JOAN begins to play Patience.) MARIA: Mary--Mary dear, we shall want you. MARY: Oh, sorry. (She exits.) MARIA: We've got six already' but it can't be helped. Kitty, Kitty dear. (MRS WYNTON crosses to MARIA who whispers in her ear, indicating MRS CHEYNEY and ELTON. MRS CHEYNEY is standing warming her feet at the fire. ELTON is absorbed in an evening paper.) What do you think? MRS WYNTON: Not a notion. MARIA: I'm doubtful. Arthur' do come and play. (MRS WYNTON exits.) ARTHUR: I'm sorry--I can't--I'm in terrible pain. MARIA: Elton' will you kindly make us up? ELTON: Certainly, if you want me to. (ELTON puts down the paper, and crosses to door.) MRS CHEYNEY: (Turning to ELTON as he is crossing to the door.) If you leave the door open, and you would like me to, I'll play to you! ELTON: Thank you very much--that would be delightful! (ELTON exits. MARIA pulls a face at ARTHUR and exits, following ELTON. MRS CHEYNEY sits at the piano. JOAN remains at the table, playing Patience; she doesn't notice the others go. ARTHUR coughs; she takes no notice; he rises.) ARTHUR: (To JOAN.) You are wanted on the telephone! (MRS CHEYNEY begins to play.) JOAN: (Eagerly.) I am! Who wants? (ARTHUR puts his cigarette out on the ash-tray on the card table.) Oh, damn funny, aren't you? (She exits.) ARTHUR: Engaged? MRS CHEYNEY: (Sweetly.) Talking to me? ARTHUR: I don't see anybody else! MRS CHEYNEY: Sorry! I didn't quite catch what you said. ARTHUR: I asked if you were engaged? (She stops playing.) MRS CHEYNEY: Tell me all that you have been doing since dinner? (She resumes playing the same piece.) ARTHUR: Explaining my symptoms. MRS CHEYNEY: Aren't you well? ARTHUR: No! Are you sorry? MRS CHEYNEY: Terribly! What's the matter with you? ARTHUR: Loss of appetite--loss of sleep! MRS CHEYNEY: You should take something for it. ARTHUR: I agree; but you give me no encouragement. MRS CHEYNEY: Any particular thing you would like me to play you? ARTHUR: No! (ARTHUR walks up to the window.) MRS CHEYNEY: You have no idea what a perfect night it is out there! ARTHUR: Let us go out and see if you exaggerate. MRS CHEYNEY: I have such a headache! ARTHUR: Isn't piano playing rather bad for it! MRS CHEYNEY: The reverse; it soothes it! ARTHUR: And Elton? MRS CHEYNEY: What do you mean by that? ARTHUR: If you are playing the piano' it's obvious to him that you are doing nothing else! MRS CHEYNEY: (Smiling.) That's clever of you. ARTHUR: I'm terribly well up in all these things! MRS CHEYNEY: Amuse me by telling me some of your past! ARTHUR: Each of my pasts only convinced me that there might be a wonderful future! MRS CHEYNEY: Too deep. ARTHUR: I realize how marvellous it would all be if I had loved them! MRS CHEYNEY: But you told them you did! ARTHUR: I have some regard for good manners! MRS CHEYNEY: Quite! (ARTHUR bends over the piano and pushes her hands off keys.) ARTHUR: Did you accept Elton? MRS CHEYNEY: What makes you think I had the opportunity to? ARTHUR: Did you refuse him? MRS CHEYNEY: I did not. ARTHUR: You asked for time to think it over? MRS CHEYNEY: You know so much, tell me a little more. ARTHUR: In the end you will refuse him! MRS CHEYNEY: Why? ARTHUR: That man's wealth and position can never compensate you for all his stupidity and blab--(He makes a grimace in imitation of ELTON..) MRS CHEYNEY: I disagree! Assuming all this is correct, the love of a good man stands for something. ARTHUR: Not at all! That is proved by the fact that it is always a bad man who is the co-respondent. MRS CHEYNEY: (Laughing.) Tell me why you are so interested in my marrying Lord Elton? ARTHUR: Obvious! I am in love with you myself! MRS CHEYNEY: From anyone else that would suggest a proposal of marriage. ARTHUR: If you like! MRS CHEYNEY: Don't look like that, Arthur' otherwise I'll believe you. ARTHUR: You can! MRS CHEYNEY: You seriously mean to tell me you want to marry me? ARTHUR: I wouldn't say that! MRS CHEYNEY: Ho! (They both laugh.) ARTHUR: Don't misunderstand! To me, the idea of marriage has always been the death and burial of all romance in one's life! And God knows I have done all I can to persuade you that that is so, but you don't agree! Very well, as I like you so much-- MRS CHEYNEY: (Correcting.) As I attract you so much! ARTHUR: If you like! I am prepared to be at any church you like to name at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning! MRS CHEYNEY: I must attract you very much, Arthur! ARTHUR: More than I care to acknowledge, even to myself! For the first time, I don't understand myself; I'm unhappy when I'm not with you; I'm unhappy when I am! I can see nothing but you when you are present, and nothing but you when you are not; your voice is the only one I ever hear; in fact, let us face it, I've got it worse than any of God's creatures have ever had it before! MRS CHEYNEY: There are three reasons why I should like to marry you, Arthur! ARTHUR: Being? MRS CHEYNEY: One, I like you terribly! ARTHUR: Are the other two important? MRS CHEYNEY: Two! It would be such fun to go to tea with all the women you haven't married! ARTHUR: Oh, shut up! And the third? MRS CHEYNEY: I should be some sort of widow again within a year! ARTHUR: There's always a chance of that, but I think it is worth it! (MRS CHEYNEY shakes her head.) You don't agree. Why? MRS CHEYNEY: I know too much about you, and you know too little about me. ARTHUR: Is there anything more to know about you than I do? MRS CHEYNEY: Three volumes closely printed! ARTHUR: I'd give a great deal to understand what there is I don't understand about you, Fay. MRS CHEYNEY: It might amuse you. ARTHUR: Might it? MRS CHEYNEY: I hope so. ARTHUR: I see! I take it, my first and only offer of marriage is rejected? (She nods her head.) Have you been laughing at me' by any chance? MRS CHEYNEY: What makes you think so? ARTHUR: I don't know; you look so strange! By God, I should be angry if you were! Are you laughing at me? MRS CHEYNEY: The reverse; it's the first time in my life I remember not laughing at myself. ARTHUR: What do you mean by that? MRS CHEYNEY: Just that. ARTHUR: You're an odd creature! MRS CHEYNEY: I wish I weren't! ARTHUR: There's some reason why you can't marry me? MRS CHEYNEY: No! ARTHUR: You just don't like me? MRS CHEYNEY: I like being single! ARTHUR: Can I ask you one other question? MRS CHEYNEY: Yes. ARTHUR: Are you all that I think of you, as a woman? MRS CHEYNEY: In what way do you think of me as a woman? ARTHUR: All the things that a man demands from a woman he is going to marry. MRS CHEYNEY: I'm every one of the things you mean. ARTHUR: I know you are! You're an angel. MRS CHEYNEY: (Rising.) I really have got a headache! ARTHUR: I'm sorry! Why go into the garden in such thin shoes? Let me get you some aspirin! MRS CHEYNEY: No' thanks! I think I'll go to bed! ARTHUR: Fay, may I be allowed a platitude? MRS CHEYNEY: Yes? ARTHUR: (Humorously.) Perhaps in time? MRS CHEYNEY: (Shaking her head.) No! ARTHUR: Just friends? MRS CHEYNEY: That's right! ARTHUR: I understand! (He turns away and picks up a newspaper.) I think Centaur will win the big race on Tuesday! MRS CHEYNEY: Inglesby! ARTHUR: Know anything? MRS CHEYNEY: Just an instinct! ARTHUR: I'll back it! I believe in you! The only woman I ever have! (JOAN enters shrieking with laughter.) The woman's in wine. (MARIA enters.) MARIA: Shut up, Joan! My advice to any man, woman or child who likes bridge is, not to marry Elton! MRS CHEYNEY: What has he done? MARIA: Done? He's done every conceivable thing that doesn't appear in the book of rules. I'm afraid I was very rude to him. Oh dear! I'm always putting my foot in it! JOAN: He's pompous even when he revokes. What a colossal ass he is! MRS CHEYNEY: I like him! ARTHUR: Oh dear' oh dear! JOAN: Sorry, darling! (She puts out her hand to MRS CHEYNEY.) ARTHUR: This young woman has a bad headache! MRS CHEYNEY: I have, rather! I'm going to bed! MARIA: So am I, my dear! It's the only place I'm sure of not getting into trouble! ARTHUR: Oh, come' come! MARIA: I'll come with you! MRS CHEYNEY: (Looking at ARTHUR) Good night! ARTHUR: Good night, Fay dear! I'm going to back Inglesby! MRS CHEYNEY: It's a risk! Good night, Lady Joan! JOAN: Good night, darling, hope you will be all right in the morning! (MRS CHEYNEY exits.) MARIA: Good night, Arthur! Good night, Joan! JOAN: Good night, darling; sleep well! (MARIA exits, closing the door.) Sorry she has a headache! ARTHUR: Yes. (He puts down his paper on the piano with a sigh.) Joan! Now, think before you speak. Supposing, only supposing, I asked you to be my wife, what would you say? JOAN: I'll be ready in five minutes! ARTHUR: What! JOAN: Well, four. ARTHUR: Good! Why? JOAN: Heaps of reasons! ARTHUR: I give it up! (He starts to walk away towards the door.) JOAN: Don't leave me; you're being so interesting; where are you going? ARTHUR: I'm about to resume my ordinary life! The whisky, I take it, is kept in the other room? Tell me something I can say that will annoy Elton! JOAN: Tell him--tell him--I know' ask him which room Mrs Cheyney is sleeping in? ARTHUR: Excellent! (He is about to go.) JOAN: Hi! Come back and tell me how he died! ARTHUR: I will! And I'll bring my whisky and soda and drink it here--(He kisses her on the head.) you are more amusing! (He exits.) (JOAN takes lipstick and powder from her little bag. ROBERTS enters. He sees only JOAN. He goes to the windows to look into the garden.) JOAN: What is it, Roberts? ROBERTS: Do you know where Mrs Cheyney is, my lady? JOAN: Gone to bed. Who wants her? ROBERTS: A cable came for her this evening, and Charles, her butler, thinking it might be important, has brought it over, my lady! JOAN: Is Charles out there? ROBERTS: Yes, my lady! JOAN: Show him in. ROBERTS: Yes, my lady! (ROBERTS exits through the windows. JOAN quickly applies lipstick and powder. ROBERTS shows CHARLES in, and goes out again closing the door.) CHARLES: Good evening' my lady! JOAN: Charles, I'm delighted! CHARLES: You are, my lady? JOAN: Ever since I have known you, I have always said to myself: Ah! but what does he look like in ordinary clothes?' CHARLES: And, my lady? JOAN: I had no right to doubt you! CHARLES: My late master, who left us some time ago, and of whose destination I am only suspicious, I am sure would be glad to hear how much you approve of the clothes that he left me, my lady, before he left us! JOAN: I suppose clothes do make the man, Charles? CHARLES: Many a bride has been disappointed when they have taken them off, my lady! JOAN: (Laughing.) I never meet you, Charles, without something to say at dinner the next evening! CHARLES: My mistress' I understand, has gone to bed, my lady? (ARTHUR appears in the garden with a glass of whisky. He is about to pass when, through the window, he sees CHARLES and stops; quietly he stands back watching him the whole time.) JOAN: Yes! Do you want her particularly? CHARLES: No, my lady! A cable came for her, and as I heard her say she expected an important one, I thought I had better bring it over; I have also enclosed some letters that have come for her, in the parcel, my lady! JOAN: I'll give it to her! CHARLES. (Giving the parcel to JOAN.) If you would be so kind, my lady! Good night, my lady! (He walks away towards door.) (ARTHUR, drawing back, shows that he has recognized and remembered CHARLES.) JOAN: (Speaking after CHARLES has got to the door.) Good night, Charles! CHARLES: (Giving her a look) Good night, my lady! (He exits, closing the door.) (Pause. JOAN laughs. ARTHUR enters from the garden.) ARTHUR: Well' I've come back to talk to you! JOAN: Who do you think has been here since you left? ARTHUR: Not a-notion. JOAN: My divine Charles! ARTHUR: Charles? Charles who? JOAN: Mrs Cheyney's butler! ARTHUR: No! Really? What did he want? JOAN: Brought her some cables or something! ARTHUR: I see! JOAN: Arthur' I'm going to ask you a question; do clothes make the man? Because I've a splendid answer! ARTHUR: I don't know. Clothes can alter a man. JOAN: How? ARTHUR: I'll tell you. Some years ago, quite a number, there was a crook fellow living at the same hotel in Monte Carlo that I was; no one knew he was a crook, and we all liked him because he was rather amusing; one day he was, as it were, caught in the act; everybody started to chase him, and as I could run faster than the rest, it amused me to run in the opposite direction to my crook friend, with the result they all followed me and he got away! JOAN: What has that got to do with clothes? ARTHUR: Nothing; only, years later, he was dressed differently and I didn't recognize him! JOAN: Which I call a damn dull story! ARTHUR: Quite! JOAN: I'm going to bed; I'll take that up to Mrs Cheyney on my way! (She is about to take the parcel when ARTHUR puts his hand on it across the table.) ARTHUR: No, go and talk to her for a minute, and I'll bring it up, which will give me a chance to say good night to her! JOAN: You haven't half got it, dearie. (She kisses ARTHUR) But I'm a sport; but don't be too long! ARTHUR: I won't! (JOAN exits. ARTHUR looks at the parcel, examines it, appears very serious. He shakes it, turns it over in his hand, looks round to see if anyone is about and opens the parcel, which contains an empty 100 cigarette box. Turning it about to see what is inside, he sees written on the lid 'Courage, my sweet!' He reads it aloud) 'Courage, my sweet!' (He shakes his head and repeats it then puts the box back in the parcel and closes it up. He whistles a tune. MRS EBLEY and ELTON enter from the garden.) ELTON: Many thanks for a very pleasant evening! Good night! (Shaking hands.) MRS EBLEY: Wouldn't you like something before you go to bed? ELTON: No, many thanks! Good night! (MARY enters from the garden.) Good night, Dilling. ARTHUR: Good night Elton' and again good night! (ELTON exits.) MARY: (Sighing.) Ho! what a dull man. (MRS ETON enters from the garden.) MRS WYNTON: (Speaking behind her as she enters.) Willie, get me a glass of barley water! Arthur, were you really serious tonight when you told us you were really in love? ARTHUR: My dear! It was my odd way of being amusing! MRS EBLEY: I do wish you would marry, Arthur! ARTHUR: I wanted to once! MARY: Why didn't you? ARTHUR: One; she refused me! Two; I have an idea she was everything I thought she wasn't! MRS WYNTON: (Laughing) How tragic! MARY: Tell us about her! ARTHUR: I have told you all that I know. (WILLIE enters by the door with a glass of barley water; he gives it to MRS WYNTON and then goes to MARY; they talk at the fireplace.) MRS WYNTON: I am going to bed! (She kisses MRS EBLEY.) MRS EBLEY: Don't forget. Breakfast at ten. MRS WYNTON: (Turning on her way to the door.) Oh! Can't I have mine in my bedroom? MRS EBLEY: Lazy girl--of course you may. MRS WYNTON: Well, good night, darling, and ever so many thanks for a perfect week-end! MRS EBLEY: So glad you have liked it, darling! MRS WYNTON: I have. ARTHUR: Oh, Kitty! Give this to Mrs Cheyney, would you, on your way up? Her butler brought it--you might tell her that. (He has taken up the parcel and turns to MRS WYNTON.) MRS WYNTON: (As she takes the parcel and opens the door she sees WILLIE talking to MARY.) Willie! WILLIE: Going to bed, Arthur? ARTHUR: I? Not for years! (MRS WYNTON goes out.) WILLIE: (Turning to ARTHUR.) I'll come back and have a cigarette with you, (In ARTHUR's ear.) as soon as I can get away! (WILLIE follows MRS WYNTON out.) ARTHUR: (To MARY.) Say good night to the pretty lady and hop it! MARY: Are you talking to me? ARTHUR: Yes, lovely! MARY: (To MRS EBLEY.) Do you mind being left alone with him? MRS EBLEY: I'll take the risk. MARY: Very well; good night, darling; and, by the way' you have got me until after lunch. MRS EBLEY: Splendid! MARY: (Taking a book from table and going to the door.) Good night, Arthur! ARTHUR: Good night. (MARY exits. There is a pause) MRS EBLEY: What's the matter, Arthur? You look so worried! ARTHUR: I? I'm not a bit; a little tired! MRS EBLEY: So am I! ARTHUR: It's been a particularly happy weekend! MRS EBLEY: I have loved having you all. ARTHUR: If I may say so, our little friend, Mrs Cheyney, has considerably contributed to the pleasure of it. MRS EBLEY: I simply adore her; that is a sweet woman, Arthur. ARTHUR: Very! By the way, where did Maria find her, do you know? MRS EBLEY: She met her first, I believe' at the tables at Cannes. ARTHUR: Ha! MRS EBLEY: Then, by some accident, on the way home, they found they were staying at the same hotel in Paris, and Maria, with that love she has of finding new people, took her up, and showed her the sights, as it were! ARTHUR: I envy her! That's a job I would have enjoyed! MRS EBLEY: I'm sure you would! ARTHUR: By the way' was her butler, the immaculate Charles, with her at the time? MRS EBLEY: Fortunately he was, because Maria lost some valuable things and Charles was instrumental in getting some of the things she valued most returned to her. ARTHUR: Did he, by George? That was decent of him. (He goes over to the window.) MRS EBLEY: Mighty useful for Maria. ARTHUR: What a divine night. (He turns to MRS EBLEY. ) MRS EBLEY: Yes, isn't it? ARTHUR: (Looking at MRS EBLEY's pearls, which he takes in his hands.) Those are pretty good, if I may say so, Sybil. MRS EBLEY: They are more than pretty good, if I may say so' Arthur. ARTHUR: Insured? MRS EBLEY: To be vulgar, for fifty thousand. ARTHUR: Where do you keep them at night? MRS EBLEY: Oh, I don't know. Alongside my bed. ARTHUR: I'd like to sleep with fifty thousand pounds alongside my bed. MRS EBLEY: Don't be ridiculous. ARTHUR: (Putting his hands to his head.) Oh dear, oh dear! MRS EBLEY: What's the matter, Arthur? You look terribly tired. ARTHUR: So would you if you hadn't slept for three nights. MRS EBLEY: Not slept for three nights--why? ARTHUR: Sybil, may I be a perfect pig? MRS EBLEY: Well! ARTHUR: I hate that infernal room you've given me. MRS EBLEY: Why' what's the matter with it, Arthur? ARTHUR: Well, the walls are covered with ivy and it's full of sparrows--I can't sleep a wink. MRS EBLEY: Arthur, why didn't you tell me this before? ARTHUR: Because I have a beautiful and unselfish nature. MRS EBLEY: Rubbish! ARTHUR: Why did you give Elton my room? MRS EBLEY: Well' he's never stayed here before, and it seemed only civil to give him that room. ARTHUR: It seems a pity I should lose my life on account of Elton. MRS EBLEY: Oh, Arthur! ARTHUR: Can't Roberts make me up a room somewhere else? MRS EBLEY: I'm afraid it's impossible. The house is full. Now, what can I do? ARTHUR: Don't worry; it doesn't matter. MRS EBLEY: My dear' I shouldn't sleep a wink, knowing you weren't comfortable. I'm miserable. What can I do? ARTHUR: Nothing. MRS EBLEY: Arthur, would you like my room? ARTHUR: Good heavens, no! MRS EBLEY: Why not? It doesn't make the slightest difference where I sleep--I certainly shouldn't sleep a wink if I thought you weren't comfortable. ARTHUR: I wouldn't dream of such a thing. MRS EBLEY: Don't be ridiculous' Arthur! (With a friendly little shake of his shoulder.) Besides, I've spoilt you ever since you were born; there's not much reason in my not going on with it. ARTHUR: On your oath, you swear you don't mind? MRS EBLEY: Of course not. What difference does it make? I've often slept in that room. I'll get my maid to move your things then you'll get a decent night's rest. (She turns to the door.) ARTHUR: The difference between you and me is, that I'm a selfish swine and you're an angel. MRS EBLEY: Nonsense! You're nothing of the sort. ARTHUR: Oh! and, Sybil, you might do something else for me. MRS EBLEY: What? ARTHUR: If you see any of the others, don't mention it to them; they'd think me such a fool. MRS EBLEY: Of course not. And Arthur, as you're not sleeping, I'll have some hot milk sent up to your room. ARTHUR: No--I don't think I'll risk that--but you might get Roberts to send me up some sandwiches and a pint of champagne. MRS EBLEY: Why, is champagne good for not sleeping? ARTHUR: My dear, champagne is good for everything. MRS EBLEY: Oh, all right! ARTHUR: Oh! and' Sybil--(He advances and takes hold of the pearls.) look! Just for a lark, let me--er--er--no, don't bother; (He drops the pearls and turns from her a little.) it doesn't matter; I'll come and kiss you good night on the way up. MRS EBLEY: Well, don't be long--I shall be asleep in two winks--I don't mind the sparrows and the ivy. (She exits and closes the door and immediately is heard speaking outside.) Yes! I've loved having you' Willie. (WILLIE enters.) WILLIE: (As he closes the door.) Good! Glad you are here! Can I pour you out a whisky and soda? ARTHUR: You can! A large one. (WILLIE crosses to get whisky and soda. ARTHUR quickly turns upstage and looks round outside the windows; he returns.) WILLIE: Been a devilish amusing week-end Arthur! ARTHUR: Devilish! WILLIE: I've enjoyed it! (Giving ARTHUR his drink) Great fun! Sorry it's over! What a darling that little Cheyney woman is! ARTHUR: You like her? WILLIE: Enormously! She has all the qualities men like in a woman. ARTHUR: Quite! I often wonder what a feller does when, by accident, he finds out that a woman he admires hasn't any of the qualities he thought she had! WILLIE: I don't know. I suppose he'd be a little disappointed' wouldn't he? ARTHUR: Are you asking me? WILLIE: Yes! ARTHUR: Speaking for myself, I should be damned angry! ------- Scene 2 ------- MRS EBLEY's Bedroom. ARTHUR is sitting by the day-bed, leaning back reading a book. He is wearing a dressing jacket. The fire is lighted. After a moment the clock over the mantel strikes three. He continues reading for a few seconds, then puts down his book, rises, stretches himself turning round opens the door a little and stands listening, then closes it again. He crosses over to the dressing-table and looks in the mirror. He examines his face rather critically, pulling down his lower eyelids and moving his head from side to side as he endeavours to get a good light on his eyes. He stands back a little to get a more general survey of his face. He takes off his wrist watch and puts it on the table. Turning to the bed he takes his pyjamas which are on the pillows and lays them out on the bed--turns the bed down, arranges the pillows, looks at and fingers the lace trimming. He is just about to take off his dressing jacket when he hears a sound. He stands motionless for a moment looking over to the door. Then, quickly, he re-buttons his jacket and crosses on tiptoe to the door. Putting his ear to it, he listens. He goes up to the door of the dressing-room and looks in, shuts the door again and is moving to the bedroom door when he appears certain that he hears someone coming--he steps back quickly and switches off the lights. The flicker of the fire is just sufficient to show MRS CHEYNEY opening the bedroom door. She does so very quietly and comes into the room. She whispers Mrs Ebley! Mrs Ebley!' She crosses to the bed. She pauses there a moment and then goes slowly to the dressing-table. As she approaches it ARTHUR switches on the lights, locks the bedroom door and puts the key in his pocket. ARTHUR: (Smiling at her.) Do you know, I had a feeling that you would come. MRS CHEYNEY: What do you mean? ARTHUR: Champagne! (He points to the bottle on the table.) And sandwiches! Could anyone, I ask you, be more thoughtful? MRS CHEYNEY: I--I--I--thought this was Mrs Ebley's room, and I came to ask her for some aspirin for my head. ARTHUR: As a host, I'm superb, really I am. I even thought to borrow that, too, here they are! (Takes pearls out of his pocket, holds them up to her.) MRS CHEYNEY: I--I--don't know what you mean! Why are you in this room? ARTHUR: As I have said, I had an idea you were coming in to it, and as I like you so much, I tricked Sybil into changing rooms with me. MRS CHEYNEY: (Quickly crossing to the door.) Let me out of this room, do you hear? ARTHUR: I will let you out when the penalty of coming into it has been paid. MRS CHEYNEY: What do you mean? ARTHUR: What I say! MRS CHEYNEY: Unlock this door. (ARTHUR smiles at her.) Do you hear? Unlock this door, or I will break it down. ARTHUR: Well, why don't you? (She stares at him.) But if you want them to know who you really are, and, believe me, when they do, they will have considerably less sympathy for you than I have, there is a night bell (With a jerk of his head he indicates the bell-push by the bed-head) ring-it, and rouse the butler. (Pause. They look at each other.) I do hope you will believe me when I tell you I sympathize with you very much! MRS CHEYNEY: You mean, at being locked in a room with you alone? ARTHUR: On that, my inclinations are to congratulate you. I mean, you nearly made such fools of us all, it seems a pity not to have allowed you to complete it! (Shows her the pearls; coming to the table he places the pearls upon it.) MRS CHEYNEY: (Looking at them.) Beautiful, aren't they? (She takes a cigarette from the box on the table.) ARTHUR: Want a light, darling? Please! (Lights a match for her.) MRS CHEYNEY: (Lighting her cigarette at the match ARTHUR is holding.) Thank you! (Looking at him.) I-- ARTHUR: You were going to say something? MRS CHEYNEY: (Looking at his dressing jacket) Why the fancy dress? ARTHUR: (Looking at her coloured pyjama costume.) Well, I didn't want to feel out of it. (She picks up the pearls, hands them to ARTHUR, and sits.) MRS CHEYNEY: How did you find out, Arthur? ARTHUR: I recognized your--what is Charles to you by the way? MRS CHEYNEY: My butler! ARTHUR: Yes! I meant in his spare time? MRS CHEYNEY: My butler! How did you recognize him? ARTHUR: I saved him from gaol once before! MRS CHEYNEY: You couldn't see your way to making a habit of it? ARTHUR: I have always had a horror of doing the same thing twice. MRS CHEYNEY: I sympathize! ARTHUR: By the way, where is Charles at the moment? MRS CHEYNEY: Underneath that window with a very bad headache' waiting for the aspirin! (Indicating the pearls in ARTHUR's hand) ARTHUR: (Smiling.) Forgive me being inquisitive, but are you married to him? MRS CHEYNEY: I'm nothing to him--except that we are in business together! (Blows smoke to ceiling.) What terribly nice cigarettes! ARTHUR: I'll send you some! MRS CHEYNEY: That's sweet of you! I'll give you my address tomorrow--when I know it! ARTHUR: Why? Are you thinking of changing your present one? MRS CHEYNEY: I have an idea that you may make it difficult for me to keep it! ARTHUR: Ah! one always expects to pay a little more for a thing one wants enough! MRS CHEYNEY: Quite! But I don't think I want it enough to pay your price! ARTHUR: (Putting the pearls in his left-hand pocket) But I have never mentioned it! MRS CHEYNEY: Haven't you? ARTHUR: I confess I have been wanting to spend an evening with you like this ever since I knew you! I even offered you marriage. MRS CHEYNEY: But I refused! ARTHUR: (Kneeling.) You did! (He puts his hand on her knee; she pushes it away.) But surely the assumption is, you have changed your mind? MRS CHEYNEY: How clever of you! So, if I understand you rightly, if I agree to stay, you say nothing! ARTHUR: Nothing! Of course, I shan't! MRS CHEYNEY: And if I don't? ARTHUR: Oh' come' come, you wouldn't be so ungenial. What's the matter, Fay? (He rises.) MRS CHEYNEY: (Laughing.) That's an original way of punishing a crook! And only another crook could have thought of it! ARTHUR: Yes! It amuses you? MRS CHEYNEY: Immensely, but of course I know it shouldn't! In fact, I realize if I were really a nice woman I should hate you, but I don't; I feel rather flattered! There's something rather attractive in being locked in a room with a man, alone, even if it's against your will! ARTHUR: I hate you to say that! Because the only reason I have locked the door is to prevent anyone coming into it, thereby saving you from explaining why you ever came into it! MRS CHEYNEY: Quite! As crooks go, do you know the difference between Charles and you? ARTHUR: No? MRS CHEYNEY: Well, Charles robs with a charm of manner, and you rob with violence! ARTHUR: That's not fair. I feel I am behaving more generously! (Pause.) MRS CHEYNEY: Would you mind my sending a message to Charles? ARTHUR: How do you propose to do that? MRS CHEYNEY: The lights have told him Mrs Ebley is awake. All that he is waiting to know now is if I'm all right, or if I am discovered. The manner in which I pull those curtains is the signal. ARTHUR: Which of the messages do you propose to send him? MRS CHEYNEY: I'm going to send him a message that I'm quite all right! (She goes to the window and pulls the curtains slightly.) There! Now the poor darling can go home quite happy! Open the bottle, Arthur dear! Let us all be happy! ARTHUR: A good idea! (He reaches for the bottle and stars to open it.) MRS CHEYNEY: Don't let it pop, for heaven's sake! Elton loves me so much he's not sleeping well, and he might think it a revolver shot and rush to my room to rescue me. ARTHUR: Do you love Elton? MRS CHEYNEY: With only that bell to ring, would I be here with you if I did? ARTHUR: True! (The bottle opens quietly.) Could anything be more quiet than that? MRS CHEYNEY: Nothing, but I expected it! You do everything marvellously, Arthur! ARTHUR: Thank you, Fay. MRS CHEYNEY: Ever so little for me. ARTHUR: (Filling the glass.) Even with the knowledge of who you are, I still adore you! MRS CHEYNEY: (Taking up the glass.) Is that an offer of marriage, or are you just being broadminded? ARTHUR: You know how often I have told you how I hate marriage! MRS CHEYNEY: True; and I must be content that you still adore me? ARTHUR: Yes. MRS CHEYNEY: I should like to think, though, that you are a little disappointed in me! ARTHUR: (Shrugging his shoulders.) Your life is your own. MRS CHEYNEY: But how indifferent! If I refused to stay here tonight, what would you do? ARTHUR: I shan't let you go! MRS CHEYNEY: Now isn't that flattering. As you paid me the great compliment of asking me to be your wife, I wonder if it would interest you to know that as a woman who has done nearly everything there is to do in this world--this is one of the things I have never done. (He laughs.) Why do you laugh? ARTHUR: I thought we had done with posing! MRS CHEYNEY: You don't believe me? ARTHUR: What a fool you would think me if I did! MRS CHEYNEY: But it happens to be true! (He laughs.) Why should I say so if it weren't? ARTHUR: Merely a trick to make me sentimental and open that door, that you may make a fool of me again! I'm sorry, Fay. MRS CHEYNEY: To refuse to be your wife surely wasn't making a fool of you! ARTHUR: You couldn't very well accept that! MRS CHEYNEY: I suppose not! You won't believe me when I tell you I have never done a thing of this sort before? ARTHUR: Fay, my dear, why this stupidity? MRS CHEYNEY: I can quite understand your not believing me. But I wish I could make you, though. I wonder how I can prove it to you? ARTHUR: You couldn't, it's too difficult! MRS CHEYNEY: I suppose it is! (Looking into her glass.) Look' isn't that lucky, I haven't drunk it all! ARTHUR: Why lucky? MRS CHEYNEY: Because--(She throws the wine into his face. She retreats, frightened. He follows her threateningly.) ARTHUR: (Angrily but controlling himself ) And what does that mean? MRS CHEYNEY: That means, if you don't believe that I have never done this before, you will at all events believe I am not going to do it now! ARTHUR: (Angrily.) Just as you like! MRS CHEYNEY: Ring that bell and tell Mrs Ebley who I am, or unlock that door and let me go! ARTHUR: I shall do neither! MRS CHEYNEY: You can't keep me here against my will! ARTHUR: I intend to. MRS CHEYNEY: Do you? Well, I prefer a million times that they should know what is true about me than you should believe what isn't! Open that door! (She crosses to the door.) Open this door! ARTHUR: Nothing in the world would induce me to! (MRS CHEYNEY runs to the bed.) What are you going to do? Are you trying to persuade me you are going to ring the bell? MRS CHEYNEY: Unless you open the door! ARTHUR: Why the bluff, Fay dear? It doesn't impress me in the slightest! (He sits on the bed and laughs at her.) You're much too sensible to take the risk of being the guest at Holloway, probably for five years. MRS CHEYNEY: You're wrong. Five years in Holloway wouldn't be nearly as long as one night with you! Give me that key! (She reaches out to him.) (He laughs, takes hold of her hand and tries to pull her to him. She struggles and releases herself) Very well then. (She rings the bell at top of bed, which is heard ringing loudly outside the room.) ARTHUR: (Amazed, but without raising his voice and remaining seated) My God! Do you realize what you have done? MRS CHEYNEY: Perfectly! ARTHUR: Don't you understand, in a minute from now they will all come rushing into this room? MRS CHEYNEY: I do! (She stops ringing the bell) ARTHUR: What did you do it for? MRS CHEYNEY: To give you an opportunity to tell them only the truth about me. ARTHUR: You fool! MRS CHEYNEY: Evidently I had to be, in some form or other--I prefer this one. (There is a knock at the door.) ROBERTS: (Outside.) It's Roberts, ma'am. ARTHUR: (Rising and pointing to the dressing-room door.) Go in there quickly--I'll get rid of him. MRS EBLEY: (Heard off) What is the matter, Roberts? ROBERTS: (Off) My bell rang, madam. MRS EBLEY: (Knocking on the door.) Arthur, Arthur, open the door at once. ARTHUR: (Going nearer to the door.) It's all right my dear. Go back to your room; I'll come to you in a minute. MRS EBLEY: (Speaking off.) I insist on your opening that door at once. Oh! Lord Elton. ELTON: (Off) What's the matter? MRS EBLEY: (Of) Arthur's sleeping in my room. The bell rang--I can't think what's the matter. MRS CHEYNEY: (Calling.) Mrs Ebley! MRS EBLEY: (Off) Mrs Cheyney? MRS CHEYNEY: (Calling.) Lord Elton! (ARTHUR turns and looks at her.) ELTON: (Outside.) Open this door at once, Dining. (ARTHUR moves to MRS CHEYNEY and looks at her.) ARTHUR: This is for remembrance! (He gives her a slap on the face. Then he unlocks the door and opens it. MRS CHEYNEY goes to the dressing-table, crying. ELTON and MRS EBLEY enter.) MRS EBLEY: (Pausing a second at the door with a rapid glance at ARTHUR, she looks across and sees MRS CHEYNEY.) What is the explanation of all this? ELTON: (Looking from MRS CHEYNEY to ARTHUR) My God! MRS CHEYNEY: Lord Dilling has something to tell you, Mrs Ebley. MRS EBLEY: What is it, Arthur? (ARTHUR does not answer.) ELTON: What is it, do you hear? MRS CHEYNEY: (Looking at ARTHUR) Would you prefer that I tell them? MRS EBLEY: Arthur, do you understand? I insist! ARTHUR: I'll tell you. I--I--persuaded Mrs Cheyney to come into this room by false pretences. In the presence of you both, I humbly tell her I have behaved like a cad. ELTON: Cad? You're the lowest thing I have ever known. MRS EBLEY: (Terribly shocked.) I don't know what to say to you, Arthur. I had no idea you could ever do a foul thing like this. ELTON: I was perfectly aware of it. (To MRS CHEYNEY.) You will remember, in the letter I wrote to you, I told you the type of man he was. MRS EBLEY: (Putting her arm round MRS CHEYNEY.) So, pretending you couldn't sleep and accepting my offer to change rooms, was merely a trick to get Mrs Cheyney into it? ARTHUR: Yes. ELTON: Dilling, I for one will, and I hope every decent person in this world will, cut you. MRS CHEYNEY: Everybody should--except the Insurance Company. They should love him. MRS EBLEY: What do you mean? (MRS CHEYNEY crosses to ARTHUR, takes the pearls from his dressing jacket pocket and before he realizes what she is going to do returns with them to MRS EBLEY.) My pearls! What is the meaning of this? MRS CHEYNEY: (Handing MRS EBLEY the pearls.) It means--I came here--to--I like them as much as you do. (A pause. MRS EBLEY and ELTON look at her.) ELTON: My God! You mean you--were going to--? (MRS CHEYNEY nods her head.) But there must be some mistake. MRS CHEYNEY: (Shakes her head) None. MRS EBLEY: I don't know what to say to you--I am bewildered, horrified! I prefer to deal with you in the morning. Please go. (MRS CHEYNEY hesitates, she tries to say something. She turns and walks slowly across to ARTHUR. They face each other. He shakes his head, goes up and opens the door--she exits. ARTHUR closes the door.) (To ELTON.) I simply cannot believe it. ELTON: (To ARTHUR) She--there is no mistake? (ARTHUR shakes his head.) MRS EBLEY: It's too awful, too terrible, too horrible Arthur! Did you take these, knowing that she--? (ARTHUR takes MRS EBLEY by the arm and leads her towards the door.) ARTHUR: Let me advise you to go back to your room. It is so much wiser to discuss all this in the morning. Please; I'm sure I'm right. (He opens the door for her.) MRS EBLEY: (Turning in the doorway.) Yes, I suppose so. Good night to you, or good morning, or whatever it is. (MRS EBLEY exits. ARTHUR closes the door.) ARTHUR: You liked her, Elton? ELTON: Liked her? Good heavens, man! I asked her to be my wife! ARTHUR: With what result? ELTON: I don't know yet. ARTHUR: I sympathize. Sorry I can't offer you a drink' old feller. Oh, yes, I can. (He pours out champagne.) Have a drop of our fiancée's. END OF ACT TWO. * ============= * ACT THREE * ============= The loggia, at MRS EBLEY's house, The next morning. A long refectory table is laid for breakfast, on the veranda of the loggia. MRS EBLEY and MARIA are seated. ELTON is walking up and down. ROBERTS is standing by the serving table. MRS EBLEY: I give it up--I simply give it up. Elton, what do you think? (ELTON signs to her to send ROBERTS away.) All right, Roberts' you needn't wait. (ROBERTS exits through the windows.) Elton' what do you think? ELTON: I don't know! I have no idea! I am defeated! MARIA: We all are! But wouldn't you be wise to sit down? You'll tire yourself out! ELTON: When I think of her--the most modest--the most simple--the--the--the innocence of any knowledge of the world--n--no--I can't believe it! MARIA: Nevertheless, the one woman of all the women in the world that you and Dilling have chosen to be your wife is a crook! ELTON: I know! I know! MRS EBLEY: Do you love her very much? ELTON: Yes! Yes! No! No! How can one love a woman of that description very much? MARIA: I agree! And the way she trapped me into taking her up! What a fool I am going to look! Not only have I made the most ridiculous fuss of her' but with pride I have introduced her to every one I know! ELTON: The way she has cheated us is too terrible! (He bangs the table.) What are we going to do with her, I ask? MARIA: Please don't make that noise. Elton! My nerves are in a dreadful condition already! ELTON: I'm sorry! MRS EBLEY: I have been thinking for hours what to do with her! Her confederate, the man Charles, we will have no trouble with: he expects no sympathy. He arrived here early this morning and gave himself up! It's this woman! Our duty, of course, is to send her to gaol as well! ELTON: No, no, that is impossible! (He goes to the serving table and helps himself to food) MARIA: My view is, the man should go to gaol and she be given the alternative of either going with him, or leaving for Australia by the next steamer! Obviously, she will accept the chance of going to Australia with alacrity, and that way we get rid of her for ever. (ELTON comes back to his chair with a plate of food and sits.) MRS EBLEY: I am so angry I can only think of gaol for her. (MRS EBLEY pours coffee for ELTON, which MARIA passes to him.) ELTON: Such a thing is out of the question. Think of my position in this matter! President of a hospital, President of the Lifeboat Institution, Chairman of various societies for the protection of unhappy women--director of a bank! Do you realize that is only a few of the public appointments I hold? MRS EBLEY: I do! I do! ELTON: A man who has regularly contributed to The Times on all questions of social reform, even subjects of religion! If it became known that I asked this woman to be my wife, will you tell me what subjects I will be able to write to The Times about? MARIA: The Lifeboat! ELTON: Quite! MRS EBLEY: But, after all, it's only her word against yours, you could deny having asked her to be your wife! ELTON: The revolting thing of it all is, I cannot. MARIA: Why? (Pause.) ELTON: Being inexperienced and unacquainted with the manner one makes a proposal of marriage to a lady, I wrote it! MRS EBLEY: My dear, how terrible for you! (MRS EBLEY and MARIA exchange glances. They are very amused) MARIA: Poor lamb, I see it's going to be very difficult for you, and, who knows, perhaps expensive! ELTON: It was a letter teeming with affection and sentiment--it took me days to write it! Dilling says the cinema rights of it alone are worth ten thousand pounds! MARIA: How dreadful! I am sorry for you! MRS EBLEY: A great pity, a great pity! (Smothering her laughter.) ELTON: And that is not all! It pains me as much to tell you this as it will pain you to hear it; but it is my duty to tell you--(Pause.) In that letter I wrote my personal opinion of you all! (They look at him.) MARIA: You wrote your-- MRS EBLEY: Do I understand that you have put on paper anything which might sound in the least disparaging about me? MARIA: Or me? ELTON: As I intended to marry her, she being an Australian, I thought it my duty to point out to her the people I should like her to know or not, as the case might be. (MRS EBLEY is about to make a remark, but MARIA anticipates her.) MARIA: Am I to understand we are among the 'hots'? ELTON: Yes! MRS EBLEY: How dare you! MARIA: What are you doing in this house now? ELTON: Unhappily, the answer to that is in the letter, too! I explained--(He passes his cup for more coffee to MRS EBLEY.)--to her that I had never visited Mrs Ebley before, and the only reason I was doing so now was because she was going to be there! No, no sugar, please. MRS EBLEY: I am to sit here and be insulted like this! Can I do nothing? (She absent-mindedly puts in piece after piece of sugar.) ELTON: No--no sugar, please. I do feel for you very much! You don't suppose, had I known this was going to develop, I should have written that letter, do you? MRS EBLEY: I imagine you capable of anything! MARIA: You shouldn't be president of a hospital, you should be in one! ELTON: I agree! MRS EBLEY: How did Arthur Dilling see this letter? ELTON: We were up late talking last night--fortunately, being a business man, I kept a copy of the letter. (He takes it out of his pocket.) It will pain you, but you had better read it! (He passes it to MARIA. MARIA offers it to MRS EBLEY. ) MRS EBLEY: I don't want to read it! (Takes the letter.) ELTON: I insist! It will convince you of the very difficult position we are all in with this woman. MRS EBLEY: (After reading, rises.) How dare you! How dare you write a letter of this sort? ELTON: Because I had no idea she was a woman of that sort! MRS EBLEY: (Standing waving the letter.) You--you--do you realize, if this woman shows this letter written by you, my position in society is ridiculous and at an end? ELTON: Perfectly! Dilling says if it were his letter, and he were her--he were she--he wouldn't sell it for twenty-five thousand pounds! We are in an extremely awkward position! MRS EBLEY: This is too terrible! MARIA: (Taking the letter from MRS EBLEY.) How do I appear in this letter? ELTON: Not well, I fear! (Pointing to the place in the letter.) There is the unhappy paragraph I wrote of you! MARIA: (Reading and starting up.) My God! I'm a fallen woman. ELTON: No, no, you exaggerate! I only say-- MARIA: That I am in every way an undesirable person for her to know! That I--ho! if this is ever seen, I'm ruined! (Sinks into her chair again.) ELTON: Precisely why I have shown it to you! MRS EBLEY: You must get the original of this letter back, do you understand? MARIA: At once! ELTON: She refuses to give it back! MRS EBLEY: She refuses? MARIA: Naturally. Would you in her place? It's worth thousands! (She continues to read on) ELTON: I went to see her personally, and told her if she returned it to me, I would forgive her everything! MARIA: What did she say? ELTON: She said she was keeping it until the rest of you had forgiven her, and her confederate Charles--whom she appears to be very concerned about! MARIA: Would you tell me the object of telling us this at all? If you possessed the slightest decency you would have bought it back at any price to save our feelings! ELTON: I would have, but when I explained to Dilling the delicate position I was in, that you were threatening to hand her over, his view was that it would be better for you to read it in your own drawing-room, than have it read to you in a police court! MARIA: A police court! Understand, Elton, I cannot openly quarrel with you at this moment, but the moment this is settled I will never speak to you again! MRS EBLEY: Neither shall I! (She goes through the windows into the house.) ELTON: That is perfectly fair! MARIA: And, for God's sake, stop being pompous! ELTON: Pompous! I forgive you, because you are unstrung! MARIA: Unstrung! I could brain you! ELTON: Dilling prepared me for this! He said this would happen! (Walks up and down.) MARIA: I have always believed, and I was right, that had I been your mother, I would have had you certified on the day of your birth! (MRS EBLEY comes through the windows.) MRS EBLEY: It seems to me, instead of putting this woman in gaol, where she ought to be, we'll all of us have to go on our knees with thousands of pounds begging her to keep out of it! (WILLIE enters through the windows.) WILLIE: (Trying to control himself) Elton! What is it Arthur Dilling tells me you've written to Mrs Cheyney about my wife? ELTON: I'm sorry, Wynton, very sorry! But I must tell you the truth. I said that it was evident to me that she preferred always to be with some other man than her husband, and though I could understand it, I could not condone it--that is all I said! WILLIE: (To MARIA, unable to control himself.) He says that is all he said! And it's a lie! Kitty would rather be with me than any man. ELTON: I'm sure she would; all I mentioned was, she never was. WILLIE: I want to tell you this: it's a lucky thing for you it's a lady's honour that is concerned, otherwise I would take you outside and give you a damn good thrashing! MARIA: I wish you would! (JOAN enters through the windows.) JOAN: (To MRS EBLEY.) Darling, I can't open my mouth without swearing--I'm the foulest-tongued woman in England; Mrs Cheyney would be well advised not to know me; I belong to a small set of people who are making themselves ridiculous all over London! And lots more, darling! MARIA: That's nothing to the things he has said about others of us! (MARY enters through the windows.) MARY: 'Morning, every one! (She kisses MRS EBLEY) 'Morning' Elton dear! ELTON: 'Morning, Mary! MARIA: Are you in the letter? MARY: I am! MARIA: What are you? MARY: I'm a nice woman--aren't I, Elton darling? ELTON: That's what I said! MARY: And quite right, I am. ELTON: I would like to be believed when I say that had I had the remotest idea there was the least chance of this letter ever being read or seen by anyone but Mrs Cheyney, I would never have written it! WILLIE: Oh, go to hell! JOAN: Why be so mild about it? (To MRS EBLEY who is carrying coffee to MARY) Can I tell this bottle of Mellin's Food in my own way how and where he ought to go? MRS EBLEY: Certainly not! MARIA: Whether you believed it would be seen or not, are those things you have written in that letter your opinion of us? WILLIE: Yes! Are you prepared to withdraw the suggestions you have made against us? ELTON: They are not suggestions; they are facts. What possible comfort could you derive from my withdrawing something all of you know to be true? MARIA: Help! I'm starting a stroke! (ARTHUR enters.) ARTHUR: 'Morning! MARIA: What are you? ARTHUR: (Very amused.) I? I have the distinction of being one of the most unmitigated blackguards walking about this earth! MRS EBLEY: Arthur, this is a dreadful position to be put in by this man! ARTHUR: As an optimist, I take the gravest view of it! MARIA: What are we going to do with this woman? ARTHUR: Let us be accurate! What is this woman going to do with us? MARIA: How true! How true! (She picks up a newspaper and throws it at ELTON..) You beast! It's all through you. ARTHUR: Steady! Steady! (ROBERTS enters.) ROBERTS: Can I speak to you a moment, Mr Wynton? WILLIE: Yes, what is it? ROBERTS: Your wife's maid wishes me to tell you, sir, nothing she can do will make your wife stop laughing! ARTHUR: Who wants to stop her? We envy her! WILLIE: Don't be funny about my wife having hysterics, Dulling! (To ROBERTS) Tell her to try ice! ROBERTS: Very good, sir! (ROBERTS exits.) ARTHUR: Let us all try ice! MRS EBLEY: Can you offer no suggestion, Arthur? ARTHUR: Certainly I can! There are two alternatives facing us. One, let us be English men and women, and hand her and Charles over to justice--in which case that letter may be read at the Old Bailey! MRS EBLEY: (Together.) No! No! MARIA: (Together.) Out of the question! ELTON: (Together.) Certainly not! ARTHUR: Carried unanimously! The other: let us throw ourselves upon her mercy, and buy the letter back! WILLIE: And Elton pays for it! ARTHUR: All those in favour? ALL: Yes! ARTHUR: Carried unanimously! Shall I settle the figure, or will you, Elton? ELTON: I am not a rich man, Dilling! ARTHUR: You can't afford to be a poor one, Elton! MARIA: I say, not one penny should be paid her until she is on the boat that will take her to Australia! ARTHUR: Why? MARIA: Because as long as she remains in England, we are always at her mercy. ARTHUR: True! True! ELTON: May I offer a suggestion? ARTHUR: The man who pays certainly should! ELTON: Then my view is this: we should not for a moment let her think that letter important. We should offer her her passage back to Australia, and in consideration of her returning the letter the matter is at an end! MARIA: Don't keep on being an idiot! Do you think she will accept that? ELTON: She will--if we tell her the other alternative is we will have her arrested! ARTHUR: In other words, we put up a bluff that we don't care whether she has the letter or not, that it is unimportant. ELTON: And, if necessary, I will say I never meant a word of it! ARTHUR: (To them all.) What do you think? MARIA: There is something in what he says! MRS EBLEY: And it does save our dignity a little! MARY: Thank Heaven I'm a nice woman. MARIA: Don't be vulgar, Mary; the only nice women in the world are the ones who have had no opportunities! MARY: You assume too much because I am able to keep my mouth shut! MARIA: Be quiet, and eat your breakfast. ARTHUR: Business, please! The attitude you suggest we should take is, we are a lot of light-hearted boys and girls who don't care a damn; she either, as it were, coughs up the letter, consents to return to Australia, or we hand her over to justice! MARIA: That sounds right to me! MRS EBLEY: It seems to me if we convince her we are determined people, it will have some considerable effect on her attitude! WILLIE: I say, I've got an idea! Supposing we send for one of those detective--ah!--inspector--er--a--policeman fellers--they can see him and he needn't know why he is here! MARIA: That's a good idea! MRS EBLEY: That is an extraordinarily good idea; what do you think' Arthur? ARTHUR: Yes! ELTON: I know that's a good idea! It will prove that we are people who are not going to be trifled with! ARTHUR: All those in favour of the policeman! (They all put their hands up.) Carried unanimously! Willie' telephone for a policeman! WILLIE: Right! What shall I say we want him for? ELTON: Anything but the facts, of course! WILLIE: You needn't think because you are a damn fool every one else is! JOAN: Hear! Hear! ARTHUR: Willie, tell him we don't like the look and are very suspicious of next year's asparagus! MARIA: Arthur, be serious! (Irritably.) Willie--oh, tell him we are suspicious of one of the servants--(To MRS EBLEY.) Roberts won't mind! WILLIE: Right! (He exits.) ARTHUR: What's the next move? MRS EBLEY: I suppose the next move is to send for these horrid people! ELTON: Yes! ARTHUR: Is it your pleasure that I put this proposition to Mrs Cheyney, or would you prefer that Elton should? JOAN: Good heavens, hasn't he made sufficient mess of it already? MARIA: I should think so, indeed! MARY: Joan' dear--Joan! (JOAN rises.) ARTHUR: Do you approve that I should, Elton? ELTON: Please! ARTHUR: Sybil, kindly ring the bell! (To JOAN and MARY) I would ask you two to keep as quiet as possible; and if you would, Elton, I would ask you not for a moment to cease looking an English gentleman! (MRS EBLEY rings the bell. WILLIE re-enters.) WILLIE: It's all right. The chief inspector is coming himself. ARTHUR: Good! (ROBERTS enters.) Roberts, would you kindly ask Mrs Cheyney if she would be good enough to join us here? ROBERTS: Yes' my lord! MARIA: (Whispering to ARTHUR) What about the man--Charles--the man? ARTHUR: Oh yes! Roberts! By the way, you might also tell Charles, who I believe is waiting downstairs, that I would like to speak to him for a moment! ROBERTS: Yes, my lord! I believe Mrs Cheyney and Charles are in the library, my lord! MARIA: (To MRS EBLEY.) Ah! (ROBERTS exits.) ARTHUR: That, if I may say so, was rather delicately done! Let us pray! MARIA: Oh, Arthur! Arthur! ELTON: You will be firm, Dilling? ARTHUR: Stand by me--be grateful that I am an unmitigated blackguard! MRS EBLEY: To me it's too terrible to think that instead of merely handing these people over to the police, we have to be clever with them to save ourselves! ARTHUR: Ssh! (MRS CHEYNEY enters by the windows. She is closely followed by CHARLES. She stands as if in a court of justice, and looks round at them all.) MRS CHEYNEY: Guilty! MARIA: Ah! you admit it! ARTHUR: Silence! Won't you take a chair? (ELTON rises, gives MRS CHEYNEY his chair and stands behind it.) MRS CHEYNEY: Thank you! (She sits down.) As Charles was born a gentleman, mayn't he sit down as well? ARTHUR: Of course! Take a seat, Charles. CHARLES: No, thank you, Dilling! MRS CHEYNEY: I naturally expected it, but you sent for me? ARTHUR: Quite! I will be brief, Mrs Cheyney; the position is as follows: you have acknowledged frankly that in accepting Mrs Ebley's invitation to stay here, it was for the purpose of taking Mrs Ebley's pearls! MRS CHEYNEY: Or anything else that happened to be lying handy about. ARTHUR: That is very frank! The penalty for such things is considerable! MARIA: Very considerable! MRS CHEYNEY: Charles and I think with a charm of manner we may get off with three years. ARTHUR: That, of course, we don't want to happen to you. Lord Elton feels very strongly that if you have once asked a woman to be your wife, it would be ungenerous to treat her so drastically! MRS CHEYNEY: Thank you, Lord Elton! ELTON: Er--er--not at all! ARTHUR: So this is what we have decided! If you will accept your ticket and a small sum--you did mention the amount--Elton? ELTON: A hundred pounds! ARTHUR: Paid to you on the steamer, in return for the letter he wrote you, we are prepared to consider the matter closed. MRS CHEYNEY: Is it my turn now? MRS EBLEY: But, Arthur--I should like-- ARTHUR: Please, Sybil! (He puts his hand up and stops her.) MRS CHEYNEY: I am very sorry that I cannot accept Lord Elton's kind offer, but Charles and I have decided we must go to gaol. CHARLES: We have. ARTHUR: After all, you did not succeed in getting the pearls! MRS CHEYNEY: Precisely. We failed, and that is why we should go to gaol. If we had got them we would have succeeded--a crime for which no one ever goes to gaol. CHARLES: You put it charmingly, Fay dear! MRS CHEYNEY: Thank you' my sweet! ARTHUR: You didn't understand me. We don't want you to go to gaol! MRS CHEYNEY: Then, equally you don't understand us--we do! ARTHUR: Quite! (There is a pause--they all look at each other.) MARIA: My good woman, you can't be serious when you say you want to go to gaol? MRS CHEYNEY: Isn't it sad, Charles, they don't understand us! CHARLES: Tragic! It makes me blush for them! MRS CHEYNEY: Charles and I in our humble way have tried to live up to the highest tradition of our profession--a profession in some form or other we are all members of--and that tradition is, never be found out--but if you are, I say if you are, be prepared to pay the price! ARTHUR: I've got you! (ROBERTS enters.) ROBERTS: Inspector Wilkinson has arrived, madam, who says you want to speak to him! MRS EBLEY: Ask him to wait. ROBERTS: Yes, madam. (He exits.) MRS EBLEY: You see, Mrs Cheyney, we are terribly serious! MRS CHEYNEY: It's your duty to be, Mrs Ebley! MARIA: It seems to me you are a very stupid young woman not to accept such a good offer instead of being taken away by that horrid policeman! MRS CHEYNEY: Not at all--he may be charming! (She rises.) Are you ready, Charles? CHARLES: Yes, my sweet! MRS CHEYNEY: Your arm, Charles. (CHARLES offers MRS CHEYNEY his arm, which she takes and they move into the window.) MRS CHEYNEY: Before we go. I would like you to know how pained Charles and I are at having, through our stupidity, put you to all this trouble. We feel it almost as much as the loss of your pearls, Mrs Ebley. CHARLES: And they are beautiful pearls, if I dare say so! MRS CHEYNEY: (Looking round at every one.) And as I shall never see any of you again, I would like you to know how much I have enjoyed knowing you all, and how sorry I am to lose such nice friends. Goodbye, Lord Elton. It was sweet of you to ask me to be your wife. (Suggesting they shall go.) Charles? (Turning to MRS EBLEY, who makes a movement.) Please don't bother to come down--we'll find the policeman. Goodbye! ELTON: Mrs Cheyney! MRS CHEYNEY: Yes? ELTON: I--er--have something to say to you. MRS CHEYNEY: Yes, Lord Elton? MARIA: Come and sit down. MRS EBLEY: Yes, sit down. MRS CHEYNEY: But the policeman you sent for? MARIA: Oh, damn the policeman! MRS CHEYNEY: But isn't it rather bad manners to even keep a policeman waiting? ELTON: I--er--I wanted to say this-- MRS CHEYNEY: I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't listen to anything you have to say, with a policeman waiting. ELTON: Send that infernal fellow away! MRS EBLEY: What shall we tell him? ARTHUR: (To JOAN.) Tell the policeman there has been a mistake, and we don't want him. JOAN: Here, I don't want to miss any of this. Curse it! (She exits.) ARTHUR: Obviously, the bluff is over. MRS CHEYNEY: (Sweetly.) Bluff? Have you been bluffing, Arthur? (She sits.) MARIA: You know perfectly well he has. MRS CHEYNEY: But why? MARIA: Oh, do stop trying to be so innocent! MRS CHEYNEY: Do you know what they mean, Charles? CHARLES: I'm so young in crime I must be forgiven! I don't! ARTHUR: Mrs Cheyney, in a moment of impulse' prompted by affection for you, Lord Elton wrote a letter to you asking you to be his wife. MRS CHEYNEY: A letter which I will always treasure very much. MARIA: We know that! ARTHUR: I am authorized by Lord Elton to ask you your charge for the return of that letter. MRS CHEYNEY: My charge? Please forgive me, but I don't know what you mean! ARTHUR: The suggestion is, we give you five hundred pounds--(ELTON looks horrified. ARTHUR dismisses him with a ware of the hand) and your passage to Australia. MARIA: Which I call very generous. MRS CHEYNEY: Five hundred? Australia? I don't know that I would like Australia. ELTON: But you came from Australia. MRS CHEYNEY: Clapham! (JOAN re-enters.) JOAN: What's happened? ARTHUR: Ssh! Ssh! MARIA: Come' come! What will you take? MRS CHEYNEY: I prize the letter so much that I don't think I would part with it for any money you could offer me. MARIA: A thousand? MRS CHEYNEY: But this is amazing! MARIA: Come, come, young woman! What is your usual charge for the return of letters? MRS CHEYNEY: Speaking as one fallen woman to another, there never have been any letters; but if there had been, my charge would have depended entirely on the position and the manners of the people mentioned in it. (She rises.) And as I don't propose to sit here and be insulted I will, with your permission, say goodbye! CHARLES. You are perfectly right, Fay darling, and if I had known that they were the type of people they are, I should never have allowed you to come and stay with them! ELTON: Please, please! I agree; Lady Frinton was very hasty, and I'm sorry. Please sit down. MRS CHEYNEY: When she has apologized, I will. CHARLES: Hear! Hear! MARIA: I'll do nothing of the sort! MRS CHEYNEY: Very well. (She starts to go off) MRS EBLEY: Stop, please! (To MARIA.) Will you at once say you are sorry? MARIA: I won't! ELTON: I insist! You understand! MARIA: My God! (To MRS CHEYNEY, swallowing hard.) I'm sorry! MRS CHEYNEY: (Sitting down again.) Granted. CHARLES: We'd reached the point where a thousand pounds was bid for the letter. ARTHUR: Which was refused! ELTON: Mrs Cheyney, what will you take for it? CHARLES: I offer five thousand. ELTON: Be quiet! CHARLES: I'll do nothing of the sort! My money is as good as yours. ELTON: Will you please answer my question? MRS CHEYNEY: If I sell the letter, I will do so not in the sense of blackmail, but more in the spirit of breach of promise, for ten thousand pounds! CHARLES: It's giving it away! ELTON: Ten--no, no, I refuse! MRS CHEYNEY: I'm glad, because I would so much rather have the letter! (She rises.) MRS EBLEY: No, no! Elton, you have no alternative but to pay! MARIA: And I have no sympathy for you! ELTON: But, Mrs Cheyney' surely-- MRS CHEYNEY: Ten thousand, Lord Elton! ELTON: (Looking at them all) It's terrible' terrible! CHARLES: Terrible be damned! I'll give eleven for it! (ELTON hurriedly takes a cheque book out of his pocket, and goes into the house.) JOAN: Ten thousand! Phew! (To CHARLES.) How much would you charge for a course of twelve lessons? CHARLES: I never charge, m'lady; I'm a man who just loves his work. MARIA: I hope you enjoy spending it, young woman. MRS CHEYNEY: Thank you, I'll do my best. (To ARTHUR.) What is your contribution to this, Lord Dilling? ARTHUR: (Very depressed.) I wish to be associated in Lord Elton's cheque for ten thousand pounds. (ELTON re-enters with the cheque and goes to MRS CHEYNEY) ELTON: (Giving her the cheque.) The letter, please? MRS CHEYNEY: (Looking at the cheque, turns to them all.) We have something in common, after all! MARIA: Very little, thank heaven! MRS CHEYNEY: Then why pay this money to keep it a secret what we have? MRS EBLEY: Kindly give Lord Elton the letter! MRS CHEYNEY: Oh, yes! (She tears the cheque into small pieces, and puts the pieces on the table.) CHARLES: Fay! MRS EBLEY: What are you doing? MRS CHEYNEY: I'm doing what I did with the letter! I had no idea it had any money value until you suggested to me yourself this morning that it had! (She gives an envelope to ELTON.) I hope you will find all the pieces there, Lord Elton! ELTON: (Taking if from her.) You-- CHARLES: (Wiping his eyes with his handkerchief) Forgive me! Ten thousand pounds gone down the drain; it's more than I can bear! And I have tried so hard to make her a crook. ELTON: You've torn the letter up? MRS CHEYNEY: Wasn't it stupid of me? ELTON: I think it was very generous-- MARIA: Nonsense. She wouldn't have torn it up if she had known she would have been offered that sum for it! MRS CHEYNEY: You're never right about anything. I tore it up after Charles told me it was worth twice that sum! CHARLES: As I watched her tearing it up' I cried for the first time for fifteen years! MRS CHEYNEY: Poor sweet (She puts her hand out; CHARLES takes it) it was a cruel thing to do! ARTHUR: Why did you tear it up? MRS CHEYNEY: I'll tell you. Courage, I was born with plenty; decency, they gave me too much! MRS EBLEY: Decency, indeed! If Lord Dilling hadn't rung that bell last night, decency wouldn't have prevented you taking my pearls! ARTHUR: Lord Dilling didn't ring the bell; Mrs Cheyney did! ELTON: Mrs Cheyney did? What do you mean? ARTHUR: (To MRS CHEYNEY.) Go on, tell them. MRS CHEYNEY: It will embarrass you! ARTHUR: An unmitigated scoundrel is never embarrassed! MRS CHEYNEY: Very well! If it hadn't been for decency I might be wearing your pearls--or others--at this moment, provided by Lord Dilling! ARTHUR: Charmingly expressed; most touching. MARIA: You mean to tell me you took the risk of being clapped into gaol, and rang that bell! ARTHUR: She did! MARIA: Nonsense, Arthur; it's sweet of you' but not fair to us to defend her like this! ARTHUR: I give you my word of-- MRS CHEYNEY: It's all right. I can understand her not believing it; I gathered from that letter, she didn't ring the bell--(General movement.)--and there was no risk of gaol! MARIA: How dare you! CHARLES: You're a grand woman, Fay, a grand woman. MARIA: Be quiet' you horrid man! CHARLES: Wrong again! I'm just a simple, tolerant, ordinary sort of feller, who only takes material things that can be replaced. How many of you can say that? MARIA: Be quiet! ELTON: There is one question I would like to ask--why are you a crook. CHARLES: She isn't! But God knows I tried to make her one! I've taught her to take watches--the tie-pins she can remove like--(Putting his hand to his tie he discovers his pin is not there.) MRS CHEYNEY: (Taking the pin from the lapel of her dress and handing it to CHARLES.) I took it as we came in. CHARLES: (Taking the pin.) Isn't she divine? She's the greatest expert I have ever known--but there is always a catch in the good things of life--she won't take them from the people she ought to! MRS CHEYNEY: You mustn't be angry with me, Charles; it's that decency that I'm cursed with that prevents me! CHARLES: (Putting his hand on her shoulder.) I couldn't be angry with you, my sweet! (She pats his hand. CHARLES puts the pin in his tie.) ELTON: What made you start this life, then? MRS CHEYNEY: You'll despise me, but I'll tell you! I wanted to improve my social position. MRS EBLEY: A curious way of doing it! MRS CHEYNEY: Not nearly so curious or so difficult as it would be by remaining a shop girl! MARY: You were a shop girl? CHARLES: In the stocking department! MRS CHEYNEY: Where he found me. JOAN: You don't look like one! MRS CHEYNEY: There's a greater tragedy than that--darlings as they are, I don't think like one! So Charles was good enough to say that I was meant for better things--secretly in my heart I believed I was--but as a shop girl I realized there were no better things; loving beauty, nice people and everything that was attractive, I took the risk--I became a pupil of Charles. CHARLES: The best I ever had! MRS CHEYNEY: And evidently I have made even a greater failure of it than I did as the shop girl! ELTON: If I may say so, you have been very generous, and in--er--er--appreciation of your generosity I should be very happy to start you, if you would allow me to, in some--er--er--shop of your own. MRS CHEYNEY: You would, Lord Elton? ELTON: Very! JOAN: That's divine of you! (To MRS CHEYNEY.) I'll be a customer! MARY: I certainly will! MRS CHEYNEY: (To MARIA.) I would like to think I would have your patronage! MARIA: You know you've got to have it! MRS CHEYNEY: (To ARTHUR) I hope you will persuade some of your many lady friends to buy from me? ARTHUR: I will do more than that! From the moment the shop opens, Elton and I give you our word of honour we will never wear anything but women's underclothes! And quite frankly, I always believed Elton did! I apologize, Elton. ELTON: (Smiling a little.) Mrs Cheyney, you know my address. As soon as you decide please let me know. I shall be very happy to be of any service to you! MRS CHEYNEY: I'm very grateful, Lord Elton! (Offers her hand.) ELTON: Please! (Taking her hand) And if I'm not being too modern, I should like to say goodbye. (He exits.) MARIA: If you are going, Elton, you can give me a lift. (Puts out her hand to MRS CHEYNEY.) You don't deserve it, but I'll give you a luncheon party and ask everyone the day the shop opens. MRS CHEYNEY: You're an angel! MARIA: (Turns to CHARLES.) Occasionally I give little dinners to lawyers, politicians and Members of Parliament. We have a little bridge afterwards--perhaps we might arrange to cut as partners. (She offers her hand to CHARLES. They shake hands. MARIA exits.) MARY: I'll be at the luncheon party. WILLIE: Whenever my wife and I have a row and I have to give her a present, I'll come to your shop for it. MRS CHEYNEY: I like you so much, I'm glad I'm going to be seeing you every day. WILLIE: (Mentally slow.) Oh--yes---ah, ah! I see. (MARY and WILLIE exit.) JOAN: I adore crepe-de-chine! Get quantities; the world is full of young men who want to buy me something. MRS CHEYNEY: You're a terribly nice girl. JOAN: Say 'Joan', and I'll believe you. MRS CHEYNEY: Joan. (They shake hands.) JOAN: (Turning to CHARLES.) If ever you want a pupil, Charles' you'll find my number in the telephone book. CHARLES: I shall never want a pupil, m'lady--but I'm glad I shall find your number in the telephone book. (She laughs. They shake hands.) JOAN: So long. (She exits.) MRS EBLEY: Well--I must go and see those people off. Arthur--perhaps you had better keep your eye on the spoons. (They all laugh. MRS EBLEY exits.) MRS CHEYNEY: Oh! (To CHARLES, taking off her hat which she puts on the table.) Nice people, aren't they, Charles? CHARLES: Most of us are, Fay darling! ARTHUR: What made you take up this job, Charles? With your brains, it seems a pity you haven't used them to better purposes. CHARLES: One of His Majesty's judges may use those exact words one of these days. I found out, at an early age, what most men find out in an old one--life is very dull, my lord! ARTHUR: I agree. CHARLES: (To ARTHUR.) But I have an excuse. When I was thirteen years of age a trustee sent me to Eton, where I remained for five years wondering why I hadn't been sent to Harrow! From there, for another three years I was sent to Oxford, where I remained wondering why I hadn't been sent to Cambridge! With the result that, at the early age of one-and-twenty, I found that life and I were two dull things. So I decided to take it into my two hands: I began it as a blackmailer! But that was too easy--the world is so full of honest people that whenever you said "I know all", they parted with such alacrity that this became even more dull than the world and myself! So I went for higher and greater things! I hate parting with it, my lord, because being the first I ever took, I treasure it; but there is your gold watch I took from you on Derby Day five years ago! (He takes a watch from his pocket.) ARTHUR: My dear Charles, I've always wanted to meet the man who took it, and I hope you will do me a favour--keep it! CHARLES: May I? ARTHUR: I'd like you to! CHARLES: That is very nice of you--I will! So long, Dilling! ARTHUR: So long, Charles! CHARLES: Goodbye, my sweet! MRS CHEYNEY: What do you mean by goodbye? CHARLES: What it means is, I have decided to take a little trip round the world! MRS CHEYNEY: You're not going to leave me, do you understand! CHARLES: I am, and now. MRS CHEYNEY: But I don't want you to! CHARLES: I must! MRS CHEYNEY: Why? CHARLES: Whenever you come into a person's life, come into it instantaneously; when you go out of it, go out of it even quicker! Goodbye, my love! MRS CHEYNEY: Charles, I'm going to cry! CHARLES: Don't do that! my sweet; but I would be terribly sorry if you didn't want to! MRS CHEYNEY: Please don't go--come and be my manager. CHARLES: No use I'd have to be honest, and it would bore me. ARTHUR: Are you going round the world for pleasure, Charles? CHARLES: (Imitating dealing cards.) Mixed with business, my lord! (He looks at MRS CHEYNEY, blows her a kiss, then exits.) ARTHUR: Next to going round the world with the woman one loves, I can think of nothing more attractive than going round it with Charles. MRS CHEYNEY: You would enjoy it--you have so much in common. ARTHUR: I agree. You liked him? MRS CHEYNEY: I adored him. ARTHUR: How much is that? MRS CHEYNEY: As much as a woman can like a man she is not in love with. ARTHUR: Like to go with him? MRS CHEYNEY: I'd hate to. ARTHUR: I'm going to ask you a question; you needn't answer if you don't want to. MRS CHEYNEY: I'll answer it with pleasure--if Mrs Ebley had been in the room last night and not you, I should have taken them. ARTHUR: You mean that? MRS CHEYNEY: Yes! But of all the women you have ever known, none has ever been so glad to see you in a bedroom as I was last night. ARTHUR: Thank you, Fay. MRS CHEYNEY: Not at all--you made an honest woman of me. ARTHUR: I've always believed that most of the good things done in this life were unintentional. MRS CHEYNEY: I wonder. ARTHUR: Fay! MRS CHEYNEY: Yes, Arthur. ARTHUR: It's an extraordinary thing, but the most difficult question in the world to ask a woman is a nice one. MRS CHEYNEY: What sort of question were you going to ask me? ARTHUR: I was about to describe my hopeful contribution to your future. MRS CHEYNEY: Please do; I'm interested. ARTHUR: Well, after you left me last night I couldn't sleep, so very early this morning I dressed myself, got out my car and went to see a friend of mine, who is a bishop, with whom I had breakfast at eight o'clock this morning. MRS CHEYNEY: How surprised he must have been to see you. ARTHUR: I described to him in detail a little trouble I was in--he listened so sympathetically--when I had finished, he looked at me and said, "If you'll give me a cheque for fifty pounds and bring her with you and be here at eleven o'clock this morning, I'll fix it for you." MRS CHEYNEY: What was he to fix for you? ARTHUR: That I could have breakfast with you at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. MRS CHEYNEY: I never eat any. ARTHUR: I told him there was a possibility of that. MRS CHEYNEY: Tell him anything else? ARTHUR: I loved you. MRS CHEYNEY: Did he believe you? ARTHUR: He covered his eyes with tears. MRS CHEYNEY: He was right to--tell him anything else? ARTHUR: I told him that when I thought over my past life--the weakness, the dishonesty of it all--I wondered if any really nice woman could ever take tea with me. MRS CHEYNEY: He agreed? ARTHUR: Mildly. MRS CHEYNEY: Did you tell him about me? ARTHUR: Everything. MRS CHEYNEY: What did he say? ARTHUR: He said, "Get her; you'll never get another like her!" MRS CHEYNEY: I don't believe even a bishop said that. ARTHUR: I'll swear. MRS CHEYNEY: Still, I don't believe you. I've a good mind to come with you and ask him, myself. ARTHUR: I said we would be there at five minutes to eleven. MRS CHEYNEY: Oh! Does he think I'll come? ARTHUR: He's more certain of it than I am. MRS CHEYNEY: Why? ARTHUR: He says you love me. MRS CHEYNEY: Really? I wonder what makes him think that? ARTHUR: I don't know. He's an idea that you would never have rung the bell last night if you hadn't. MRS CHEYNEY: What a darling he sounds--I'd rather like to meet him. ARTHUR: He asked us to be punctual. MRS CHEYNEY: Do you think he'll like me? ARTHUR: A bishop is never allowed to leave his wife--my dear, he'll adore you. MRS CHEYNEY: Do you? ARTHUR: Terribly! What is more important, do you? MRS CHEYNEY: Much more terribly--I wish, though, that-- ARTHUR: Ssh! (He kisses her on the eyes.) MRS CHEYNEY: What's that? ARTHUR: That is the last of Mrs Cheyney. MRS CHEYNEY: I'm so glad. (He embraces her and kisses her on the lips.) What's that? ARTHUR: That's the beginning of Lady Dilling. MRS CHEYNEY: Beast! You're never happy unless you make me cry. THE END. This site is full of FREE ebooks - Project Gutenberg Australia

Validation of a home safety questionnaire used in a randomised controlled trial - Correspondence to: Michael Watson, Division of General Practice, University of Nottingham, Floor 13, Tower Building, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK; Objective: To measure the validity of self reported safety practices from a questionnaire, completed by families participating in a home safety randomised controlled trial. Methods: The postal questionnaire was used to measure secondary outcomes in a randomised controlled trial. The answers to 26 questions that could be assessed by observation were checked by a home visit. Families were invited to take part in a “home safety check”; they were not told that the visit was part of a validation study. At the time of the visit the researcher was blind to the self reports in the questionnaires. Results: Sixty four questionnaires were validated by visits to 64 households. Percentage agreement ranged from 58% to 100%. Sensitivity was high (68% or above) for most safety practices. The positive predictive value was also high for most safety practices (78% or above for 15 of the 16 practices). Conclusions: This study found a fairly high degree of consistency between self reported data and actual observations. The findings from this relatively small study need confirmation from larger studies. - self report - home safety - NPV, negative predictive value - PPV, positive predictive value - self report - home safety - NPV, negative predictive value - PPV, positive predictive value An important issue in injury research is the validity of self reported safety practices.1–3 Surveys of safety practices are frequently used in injury research, and self reported safety is often used as an outcome measure in studies evaluating the effectiveness of preventive interventions. There is concern that self reported safety practices might overestimate safe behaviour.1,2 It is therefore essential to be able to describe how well self reported practice reflects actual safety practice. Relatively few studies in injury research, particularly in the area of home safety have attempted to validate surveys of self reported safety practices. This lack of validation has been for a number of reasons including cost, time available, and feasibility. One injury prevention area where there have been a number of observational validations carried out over the last 30 years is safety belt use.3–5 Findings in this area suggest that self reports generally overestimate safety belt use. Nelson suggests that the main reason for over reporting of certain behaviours is social desirability.3 Social desirability has been reported in many fields besides injury prevention and can relate to the over reporting of socially desirable behaviour or under reporting of socially undesirable behaviour.6 It is where respondents give the socially desirable response rather than describe what they actually think, believe, or do. With general health surveys, for example smoking and alcohol are often under reported and the amount of exercise people take is over reported. Another injury prevention area where there have been a few validations carried out is in relation to safer cycling. Schieber and Sacks studying helmet use, carried out a narrative review of a small number of different types of self reports (mail, telephone, show of hands, and paper and pencil) and compared them to direct observations.7 They detailed the advantages and disadvantages of each method and concluded that observational surveys are the best method. They stated that for the other methods social desirability bias would be either “high” or “possibly high”. For observations they stated that there would be “none” of this type of bias. However, they did not discuss what difference it would make if the cyclists knew in advance that they were going to be observed. In terms of home safety, there have been validation studies that have focused on smoke alarms and a broader study that covered general home safety. In relation to smoke alarms, there is over reporting of functioning ones. One study for example, compared self reports from a telephone survey with home tests and found that 22% of those who believed that they had a working smoke alarm did in fact have non-functional ones.8 Another study found significant differences in self reported rates of functional alarms between a telephone and household survey.9 Moreover, their household survey revealed a disparity between self reported and tested functional status. The results of these validation studies are consistent with operational surveys that have found between 23% and 34% of alarms are not functional when tested.10,11 The broader, general home safety study covered possession and use of safety equipment and safety practices.12 It was a relatively small study, where telephone self reports were validated by 20 home visits. Here, however, the researchers found a high degree of consistency between self reported practices and observed practices in the home,12 but this finding needs confirmation from larger studies. Accordingly, we set out in this study to validate a postal questionnaire with observations in the home. The study was conducted in deprived areas (Townsend score >0) of Nottingham. The questionnaire was completed by families participating in a large randomised controlled trial of home safety advice and free safety equipment.13 The crucial function of the questionnaire in the trial was to measure secondary outcomes. The questionnaire which measured outcomes for the trial was in the form of a booklet with 49 questions spread over eight sides, including questions on safety practices, satisfaction with safety equipment, and accident occurrence. Safety practices included the storage of potentially hazardous items and safety equipment possession and use. For example, in relation to smoke alarms questions covered possession, whether they were fitted (attached to some part of the house) and how many were working. The answers to 26 questions that could be assessed by observation were checked by a home visit. Altogether 2000 families were sent the questionnaire and a random sample of 300 of those that responded to the initial mail out were invited to take part in a “home safety check”. The first 32 families in each of the intervention and control groups who responded to the “home safety check” invite and could be contacted were visited. The visits were organised as soon as possible after the questionnaire was returned; the average length of time between return of questionnaire and the home visit was 37 days. Each family taking part in the “home safety check” received a £5 voucher. At the time of the visit the researcher was blind to the self reports in the questionnaires and the families were not told that the visit was part of a validation study. The sample size was calculated based on an estimated sensitivity of 0.8. To obtain a 95% confidence interval for the sensitivity of 0.65 to 0.95, and assuming a minimum of 40% of families were observed to have a safe practice for a specific safety practice, then 64 questionnaires required validation. Data were entered onto an ACCESS database, verified by double entry and analysed using SPSS version 11.0 and StatsDirect. The answers to some questions were combined in order to ascertain whether or not certain practices were safe, giving 16 safety practice outcomes. For example, the kitchen was considered safe in relation to medicines if there was none there or if they were stored at eye level or above or if they were stored at another level in drawers or cupboards that had safety catches or locks. Similar rules were applied to cleaning materials and sharp objects in the bathroom and kitchen. For each safety practice, the sensitivity, specificity, positive (PPV) and negative (NPV) predictive values were calculated and their 95% confidence intervals using the exact Clopper-Pearson method (fig 1).14 Where more families under reported than over reported safe practice, PPV exceeds NPV. Where more families over reported than under reported safe practice NPV exceeds PPV. In order to find out if there were any significant differences between the 64 families who had home visits and the rest of the families (n=1457) that completed questionnaires, comparisons were made of their self reported safety practices. The data were analysed using χ2 tests and by calculating odds ratio and 95% confidence intervals for each safety practice. The response to the initial mail out of the 2000 questionnaires was 57% and the final response was 77%. The response to the 300 invitations for the “home safety checks” was 32%. The total number of households visited was 64. Table 1 shows sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV and percentage agreement between the questionnaire and observations. The PPV was high for most safety practices (78% or above for 15 of the 16 practices). For five safety practices a higher proportion of families over reported than under reported safe practice (NPV exceeds PPV). For 10 practices a higher proportion of families under reported than over reported safe practice (PPV exceeds NPV). Table 2 shows that for most of the safety practices there appears to be no significant difference between the questionnaire responses of the home safety check families and the rest of the families who returned the questionnaire. However, in relation to safety on the stairs, home check families were more likely to report that they either had no stairs or had one or more stairgates. This research has provided information about the validity of self reported safety practices from a home safety questionnaire and highlights which questions could be used in the future. This study found that self reported safety practices were good at predicting observed safe practice for the majority of practices. Where discrepancies occurred between self reported and observed practices, under reporting of safety occurred more commonly than over reporting, which in terms of using self reported practices as outcome measures is encouraging. Over reporting of safety occurred most commonly with storage of sharp objects in the kitchen, possession of window safety catches and fireguards. Disagreements between the questionnaire and the home visits may have been due to a number of reasons including movement of hazards or safety equipment such as sharp objects or fireguards between completion of the questionnaire and the home visit or providing socially desirable responses such as stating possession of a fireguard but not having fitted the fireguard, or stating place of storage of sharp objects, not where they are left while, or after, being used. The discrepancy in responses to possession of window safety catches became clear to us at the observations as families found it difficult to distinguish between handles, security locks, and catches to limit the width of opening. Further work is required to devise improved questions in this area. An important feature of our method that needs highlighting is that we kept the time period between the respondents completing the questionnaire and the home visits as short as was practical. This could be seen as a strength of the design. However, choosing from the people who responded to the initial mailing of the questionnaire could also lead to bias. Respondents who reply early may be more organised, more efficient, and may also be so in the application of safety practices in their homes. Our study shows that most self reported safety practices do not appear to differ between the early responders and the rest of the group that responded. Another point that has implications for the generalisability of our findings is that our study only dealt with responders. The published literature suggests non-responders differ systematically from responders in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, ethnicity, and interest in the topic covered in the questionnaire.15–28 In addition, there also appears to be differences in the reporting of safety practices.29 Although our study is fairly small, which led to wide confidence intervals, it was larger than the previous general home safety validation study.12 Although our study is in agreement with the other general home safety study,12 it is out of line with the single issue smoke alarm studies.8,9 The fact that in our questionnaire the smoke alarm questions were but a part of a general injury questionnaire might be one reason for the difference. It may also be due to the different research methods used. In the field of injury prevention, the main concern in relation to the validity of self reported information has been the potential for over reporting. Our finding of more under reporting than over reporting is encouraging, but requires confirmation from larger studies. Copies of the questionnaire used in this study are available from. An important issue in injury research is the validity of self reported data. Few studies have attempted to validate self reported home safety practices. This study found a fairly high degree of consistency between self reported data and actual observations. Further, larger studies are necessary to confirm the findings. Our thanks to Trent National Health Service Executive who funded this study.

Welcome to Ink & Angst’s first author interview. We’re thrilled to open our regular monthly feature with author Jill Hathaway! From Jill’s website: Jill was born and raised in Iowa. As a child, she loved paper dolls, Archie comics, and writing. In her adolescent years, she wrote emo poetry and produced paper zines that she sold for $1 in local comic book and record stores. Having earned her BA in English from the University of Northern Iowa and her MA in Literature from Iowa State University, she now teaches high school and community college courses in the Des Moines area. She lives with her husband and young daughter. Jill spends her free time collecting cool gear for her blood elf paladin, watching Veronica Mars, and listening to angry grrl music. SLIDE, her debut novel, will be released from Balzer & Bray/HarperCollins in 2012. When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Ah, I remember it well. I was in the second grade and wrote a story about a disgruntled ball of belly button lint named Fuzz. After that, I knew I was meant to write the Great American Novel. Haha, just kidding. It’s just a thing I’ve always liked to do, and I feel beyond privileged to get paid for it now. What kinds of books did you read when you were a young adult? You know how they say kids read up? Well, I read a lot of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike when I was in middle school. By the time I was ACTUALLY a young adult, I was more into Stephen King and Clive Barker. If you had walk-on music (a song that plays when you enter a room), what would it be? Why? What an awesome question! *thinks* Maybe “Everything is Everything” by Lauryn Hill? So inspiring. Watch the music video here! What authors have influenced your writing the most? Someone on Twitter recently said that SLIDE reminded them of the old Christopher Pike and Fear Street books, which would definitely make sense, since that’s what I was reading during my formative years. I was really flattered by that comment. What was the last book you read? INCARNATE by Jodi Meadows. It was AWESOME! Let’s hear a little bit about SLIDE. From Jill’s website: Vee Bell is certain of one irrefutable truth—her sister’s friend Sophie didn’t kill herself. She was murdered. Vee knows this because she was there. Everyone believes Vee is narcoleptic, but she doesn’t actually fall asleep during these episodes: When she passes out, she slides into somebody else’s mind and experiences the world through that person’s eyes. She’s slid into her sister as she cheated on a math test, into a teacher sneaking a drink before class. She learned the worst about a supposed “friend” when she slid into her during a school dance. But nothing could have prepared Vee for what happens one October night when she slides into the mind of someone holding a bloody knife, standing over Sophie’s slashed body. Vee desperately wishes she could share her secret, but who would believe her? It sounds so crazy that she can’t bring herself to tell her best friend, Rollins, let alone the police. Even if she could confide in Rollins, he has been acting off lately, more distant, especially now that she’s been spending more time with Zane. Enmeshed in a terrifying web of secrets, lies, and danger and with no one to turn to, Vee must find a way to unmask the killer before he or she strikes again. How was the idea for SLIDE born? I was about to write a novel along with my creative writing kids, so I was bouncing ideas off of a colleague. I wanted a character who’d be able to peek into other people’s lives. Was high school as dramatic for you as it is for Vee? Ah, no. Vee has to find a killer before another cheerleader turns up dead. I was more dealing with boy drama. What do you hope your readers feel after reading SLIDE? I just hope they think to themselves, “Phew! What a ride!” What drew you to the thriller genre? Probably those Christopher Pike and Fear Street books I read when I was young. On your journey to publication, what motivated you to keep going? When I saw a lot of my blogger friends landing agents and getting awesome three-book-deals, I felt inspired rather than jealous. (Well, okay. Maybe there was a leeeeeeeetle envy.) It showed me what was possible. Was there anything about the publishing process that surprised you? I guess what everybody says–how slow publishing is. Though I’d read enough blogs that I should have expected that. If you had to describe your agent (Sarah Davies) in three words, what would they be? Perfect. Every. Way. She is my Mary Poppins. Where do you hope to be in five years, in your career? I just hope I’m still writing and publishing. What is your favorite word? Thank you again, Jill, for spending time with us! Remember, Jill’s novel SLIDE will be released in 2012!

Cataloging of Audiovisual Materials and Other Special Materials, 5th ed. by Nancy B. Olson with the assistance of Robert L. Bothmann and Jessica J. Schomberg. Reviewed by Sheila S. Intner , Mary Curran, News Editor Automatically Batch Loading Metadata from MARC into a Work-Based Metadata Model for Music Jenn Riley, Casey Mullin, Caitlin Hunter ABSTRACT: This article describes work done at Indiana University to "batch load" data from MARC bibliographic and authority records into the Work-based and FRBR-like Variations system. A series of experiments to iteratively refine our batch loading algorithm is described, along with details of how the algorithm identifies Works, creates relationships between entities, and maps a large amount of data from MARC into Variations records. The article closes with a discussion of the potential impact of this work on Variations project workflow and community FRBRization activities. KEYWORDS: Music metadata, digital music libraries, FRBR, work identification, automatic metadata processing A Comparison between the RDA Taxonomies and End-User Categorizations of Content and Carrier ABSTRACT: Resource Description and Access (RDA) includes new lists of content and carrier types intended to replace the General Material Designations (GMDs) and Specific Material Designations (SMDs) of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), and which represent taxonomies designed to facilitate searching on content and carrier attributes of resources. However, these taxonomies were not constructed through analysis of end-user categorizations, nor have they been tested on end-users. This study investigates how end-users categorize library resources by employing the free-listing technique, commonly employed by cognitive scientists and information architects. The results indicate that end-user categorizations of library resources may emphasize other facets, such as purpose, audience and extent, in addition to content and carrier, and also levels of the content and carrier facets other than those represented by the RDA terms. KEYWORDS: Resource Description and Access (RDA), content, carrier, free-listing, general material designations, specific material designations Cataloging Oral Histories: Creating MARC Records for Individual Oral History Interviews Susan C. Wynne ABSTRACT: Cataloging oral histories presents many difficulties, especially for catalogers who have primarily worked with published materials and for institutions without funds or staff dedicated to managing oral history collections. Methods for cataloging oral histories can vary widely among institutions. In this paper I examine the issues and considerations involved in providing intellectual access to oral history interviews and offer a possible cataloging method to libraries holding unprocessed oral history materials. The cataloging procedures discussed here have worked well from a workflow standpoint as one of the initial steps to create access to oral histories at Columbus State University, a medium-sized academic library. KEYWORDS: Oral histories, cataloging, MARC records, Columbus State University Libraries A Comparison of the Paris Principles and the International Cataloguing Principles Laurence S. Creider ABSTRACT: After more than forty-five years of cataloging experience with the Paris Principles and their impact on the international sharing of bibliographic data, the process of replacing them with a wider and deeper set of International Cataloguing Principles is nearing completion. This paper compares the scope, technological context, process of decision-making, conceptual framework, and amount of change involved in the adoption of the two different statements. KEYWORDS: Cataloging principles, Paris Principles, Statement of International Cataloguing Principles, International Conference on Cataloguing Principles, Paris, 1961, IFLA Meeting of Experts on an International Cataloguing Code Welcome to the news column. Its purpose is to disseminate information on any aspect of cataloging and classification that may be of interest to the cataloging community. This column is not just intended for news items, but serves to document discussions of interest as well as news concerning you, your research efforts, and your organization. Please send any pertinent materials, notes, minutes, or reports to: Mary Curran, Morisset Library, University of Ottawa, 65 University Ave, Ottawa, ON Canada K1N 9A5 (email:; phone: 613-562-5800 ext. 3590). News columns will typically be available prior to publication in print from the CCQ website at . We would appreciate receiving items having to do with: Research and Opinion RDA Testing Website Launched In March 2009, the U.S. National Libraries RDA Test Steering Committee launched a website for the RDA test project, . The site, "Testing Resource Description and Access (RDA)," includes an application form for those interesting in being selected as a test partner. The Website also includes links to a proposed timeline and to the methodology that the Steering Committee plans to use for the testing. The site will be updated with additional information as a complete test protocol is developed. Those with questions are instructed to email Susan Morris, Special Assistant to the Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access (smor(at)loc.gov). LC Ning: Bibliographic Data Creation and Distribution Investigation The Library of Congress has engaged R2 Consulting, LLC to lead its investigation into the creation and distribution of bibliographic data in United States and Canadian libraries, with primary focus on the economics of current practices. The research being conducted and the eventual outcome of the project could have significant implications for libraries of all types. To keep people informed about the progress of the work and to receive input from catalogers and cataloging coordinators, R2 has constructed a social networking site, http://bibrecords.ning.com/, titled "Bibliographic Record Production: R2's investigation and analysis of the MARC record 'marketplace.'" They are actively seeking catalogers from all types of libraries to join and to communicate their needs and interests. Library of Congress Begins Music Genre/Form Project In November 2008, the Library of Congress Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate approved a timeline and plan for five future projects—the development of Library of Congress genre and form headings and subheadings for cartography, law, literature, music, and religion. In accordance with that timeline, the Policy and Standards Division in cooperation with the Music Division of the Library of Congress and other interested groups will develop a genre/form thesaurus for musical works. In this initial stage, the Policy and Standards Division has begun to compile two lists. The first contains candidate genre/form terms based on Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and is intended to open a discussion about the vocabulary, the semantic relationships among the genre/form terms, and the syntax of the headings that will embody the terms. The second list, also based on LCSH, is a working list of terms representing medium of performance, which is an essential component of the information provided in most bibliographic records for musical works. During the period from March 26, 2009 through July 31, 2009, the Policy and Standards Division requests assistance from those with an interest in music genre/form headings and in terminology for medium of performance. We welcome: Information about this and other genre/form projects is available at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genreformgeneral.html. OCLC's Expert Community Experiment In February 2009 OCLC introduced the Expert Community Experiment, which enables cataloging members with full level cataloging authorization to make more types of changes to improve and upgrade WorldCat master records. Software changes that were required for the Expert Community Experiment were successfully installed on February 15. For more information, including Guidelines for use during the experiment and an FAQ, see http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/catalog/quality/expert/default.htm. The Experiment planned to last six months. OCLC Review Board on Shared Data Creation and Stewardship In January 2009, the OCLC Review Board on Shared Data Creation and Stewardship was created to explore the complex issues surrounding the proposed and deferred "Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records," to gather feedback broadly from the bibliographic community, and to make recommendations on revising the proposed policy to the OCLC Board of Trustees and to the OCLC Members Council. The Review Board has discussed issues involving technological threats to the integrity of the WorldCat database, historical concerns regarding copyright and WorldCat, and philosophical and legal questions of being a "cooperative organization." The Board also examined the formal responses of library organizations to the proposed policy, and in late March conducted a survey on the community's attitudes regarding shared data creation and stewardship. Response to the survey was strong, and the Review Board welcomes additional comments and questions through its web site, http://www.oclc.org/us/en/worldcat/catalog/policy/board/default.htm. The Review Board will present a report on all the feedback it has received to the OCLC Members Council at its May 2009 Meeting. As stated in the group's charge, the Review Board will then make recommendations that should be addressed in future policy proposals to the President of Members Council, the Chair of the Board of Trustees, and the OCLC President and CEO. Member, OCLC Review Board on Shared Data Creation and Stewardship Wayne Sanders (University of Missouri-Columbia), Kathleen Schweitzberger (University of Missouri-Kansas City), and Ian Fairclough (George Mason University) announce that they have begun an electronic list, SERIES-L, dedicated to concerns about bibliographic control for library materials issued in series. SERIES-L anticipates doing for bibliographic series what the PERSNAME-L list now does for personal names. Posts to SERIES-L will address specific concerns and specific situations, and will focus on resolving problems rather than discussion. Discussion is encouraged -- but not on SERIES-L! -- rather, elsewhere, in appropriate fora. SERIES-L is for the actual work of cataloging materials in series. To subscribe, send an e-mail to LISTSERV(at)PO.MISSOURI.EDU with the text SUBSCRIBE SERIES-L plus your forename and surname. 2009 Recipient of the Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology William H. Mischo, head of the Grainger Engineering Library and Information Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, has been awarded the 2009 Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology for his three decades-long work on the design of user-centered information retrieval tools and services. The award from the Library & Information Technology Association (LITA) and jointly sponsored by OCLC, is given for research relevant to the development of information technologies, especially work that shows promise of having a positive and substantive impact on any aspect(s) of the publication, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of information, or the processes by which information and data are manipulated and managed. Congratulations, Bill. Best of CCQ v.44 Awarded to Richard Smiraglia Richard Smiraglia, Professor, Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island University, has received the award for the best article published in volume 44 of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly. Smiraglia's paper, "The 'Works' Phenomenon and Best Selling Books," summarizes the results of an original piece of empirical research that has been built upon the author's earlier investigations into the types of bibliographic relationships that can be generated from progenitor works. He reviews and expands upon the nature of works in general, and relates it to the current cataloging environment. As the cataloging community inches closer to adopting a new cataloging code, founded on a more conceptual FRBR-based entity-relationship model, the author's research is particularly relevant to today's cataloging environment by further elucidating how complex the relationships are among a work and its network of instantiations (both derivations and mutations). In this study, Smiraglia applies his earlier research into bibliographic families to best-selling books to explore how the popularity of a work may affect the existence and frequency of derivative and mutated works. He also looks at how the Web environment may increase the need for more explicitly identified bibliographic relationships among progenitor works and their instantiations. The research methodology the author uses is rigorous, the writing style is exemplary, and his conclusions are thought provoking and instructional. Honorable Mention Awarded to John H. Bowman Honorable Mention is awarded to John Bowman, School of Library, Archive & Information Studies, University College London for his article published in volume 44 of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly. Bowman's paper, "Annotation: A Lost Art in Cataloguing," explores the emergence and development of annotations in cataloging history. In his clear delineation and progression of the dilemmas surrounding early annotations added to catalog records, such as descriptive vs. subject, objective vs. evaluative, and satisfying users' need for more information vs. economy of cataloging, that started in the late 1800s and continued until 1970, Bowman provides his readers with a vivid picture of how the "pioneers" of cataloging strived to provide information about content. The author connects the past with present by relating the old annotations to the note rules in AACR2 and by discussing current trends to link information from publishers to records in catalogs. Despite its title and author's concluding pronouncement that the "old" annotation is "dead," the paper hints at a future where the art of annotation might be "rising" again, but in forms that are better suited to a digital age. These articles appear in v.44, no. 3/4 (2007): 179-195 and v.44, no. 1/2 (2007): 95-111, respectively, and also in Cataloger, Editor, and Scholar: Essays in Honor of Ruth C. Carter, edited by Robert P. Holley. The members of the awards panel were Daniel Joudrey, Aiping Chen-gaffey, and Arlene Taylor (Chair). Best of CCQ v.45 Awarded to Jean Weihs and Lynne Howarth Volume 45 of CCQ had many well-written articles on a wide array of topics relevant to catalogers, making the naming of a winner a difficult task. The awards panel, consisting of Bobby Bothmann, Mary Curran and Dorothy McGarry (convener), are pleased to announce that the Best of CCQ v.45 has been awarded to Jean Weihs and Lynne Howarth for their article "Designating Materials: From ‘Germane Terms’ to Element Types" which appears in CCQ 45(4):3-24 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J104v45n04_02). The article, on the eve of the publication of RDA, is a timely examination of the history of the general material designation (GMD) from its evolution as a concept within the AACR tradition to the formal publication of a GMD list in 1978 and through the content versus carrier discussion of the nineties, and ends with a well-crafted, explanation of RDA’s media type, carrier type, and content type. With the imminent publication of RDA, this article invites other scholars to join the theoretical discussion of RDA. The GMD is a good start for the RDA content discussion since it is a topic about which all cataloguers have opinions and a discussion that most of us have followed throughout the decade since the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR.

Michigan’s statewide ballot in November will include Proposal 5, an amendment to the state constitution that would require a two-thirds supermajority vote of both the Michigan House and Senate, or a simple majority vote of the people in a November election, to impose new state taxes or increase any state taxes that currently require only a majority vote of the Legislature. The wording of Proposal 5 states that the amendment “shall in no way be construed to limit or modify tax limitations otherwise created in this constitution.” This language means Proposal 5 would leave unaffected the state constitution’s 1978 Headlee Amendment, which contains a variety of tax and revenue limitations on state and local government. The proposal also would not change Proposal A of 1994’s constitutional requirement of a three-quarters supermajority vote of both the state House and Senate for any increase in the state education property tax. Sixteen states have a legislative supermajority tax vote requirement, while 30 have a tax or expenditure limit like the Headlee Amendment. Michigan would have both types of limitations under Proposal 5 (and to some extent already does, given the state’s supermajority tax vote requirement for raising state education property taxes). While a review of the scholarly literature on the two kinds of limitations yields somewhat mixed results, the literature suggests on balance that such limitations are effective at lowering state and local government taxes and revenue. The academic literature also supports the view that lower state tax burdens improve a state’s economy. If the academic literature suggests a tax limitation provision like Proposal 5 could help the state’s taxpayers and economy, a review of the possible practical effects of the proposal still makes sense. For instance, if Proposal 5 makes tax increases more difficult, would it perhaps deprive state government of necessary revenue, particularly in tough economic times, when tax revenues often fall? Michigan’s recent history does not suggest that supermajority tax vote requirement would render it impossible to raise taxes. When the Legislature passed a $1.4 billion increase in personal and business taxes in 2007, the Michigan House and Michigan Senate did not meet the two-thirds threshold that Proposal 5 would require. Nevertheless, most of the Republicans who voted against the tax hike ended up voting for much of the spending associated with the new tax revenue. If they had been faced with the possibility of not having this money due to a two-thirds tax vote requirement, many of them might have provided votes for the tax hike after all. At the same time, it is doubtful that the state would have faced a financial disaster without that tax increase. Mackinac Center analysts have pointed out that state and local governments could reduce spending by more than $5 billion annually simply by benchmarking public-sector benefits to those offered in the private sector. Other savings are possible as well. Failing to increase taxes in 2007 could have forced legislators to make tough but responsible spending decisions that would have lightened the burden on taxpayers during the recession that began shortly thereafter. Similarly, it is not clear that the higher tax approval threshold would thwart important tax reforms, such the recent abolition of the Michigan business tax, simply because they include increases in some taxes and larger cuts in others. If state legislators were unable to muster a two-thirds supermajority for the individual tax hikes in such a reform, the entire package could be submitted for a vote of the people. The feasibility of this approach seems evident in Michigan voters’ approval of Proposal A of 1994, a package that raised taxes while providing a net tax cut. Notably, Proposal A was more extensive and complex than the recent MBT reform. It is true that several states — Mississippi, Nevada and California — with legislative supermajority tax vote requirements have been experiencing economic and financial problems. It is unclear, however, that Mississippi’s long history of poverty or Nevada’s recent problems with unemployment (after low unemployment before the recession and a decade of rapid population growth) are related to their supermajority tax policies. California’s state budget problems are sometimes attributed to its supermajority tax vote requirement and to the constitutional spending mandates that are viewed as byproducts of that requirement, but there appears to be a better case that California’s state budget problems are the result of California voters’ decision in 1990 to exclude significant new transportation expenditures from the state’s constitutional cap on state spending increases. The concern that a supermajority requirement for state taxes could produce a broad shift to higher local taxes appears largely to be guarded against by the provisions of Michigan’s Headlee Amendment. If such a shift were to occur, it is not evident that it would lead to a higher overall tax burden than would have developed otherwise. Proposal 5 appears likely to provide additional protection against state tax increases. The possibility of such hikes is illustrated by the substantial state gas tax hike proposed earlier this year by the governor. It may be appropriate to ensure state lawmakers take such steps only after developing a broad consensus that more of Michiganders’ private revenues should be claimed as public funds. * Citations are provided in the main text

Central Penn College Appoints Dr. Karen Scolforo Ninth President SUMMERDALE, Pa., July 22, 2013 ― Following a unanimous vote by the Central Penn College board of directors, Karen Scolforo, Ed.D., former executive director of the Fortis Institute and former Jacksonville campus president of Keiser University, today was announced the ninth president of Central Penn College. Throughout Dr. Scolforo’s 14 years of higher education executive leadership experience, she has demonstrated a commitment to enhancing student learning through a holistic approach to whole-student development. Much of Dr. Scolforo’s scholarly work in education has related to student outcomes, assessment and retention; and she has received numerous awards for her work in these areas. “From our first conversation, every member of the search committee was immediately impressed with Dr. Scolforo’s student-first mindset, entrepreneurial spirit, and the enthusiasm and fresh thinking she brings to her work,” says William Kobel ’81, chairman, Central Penn College board of directors. “Dr. Scolforo is an accomplished college administrator. She will focus on academic excellence and creating a unique, inspiring experience for Central Penn students and our staff and faculty.” Scolforo was among the finalists for the position to succeed Todd A. Milano, who now serves as president emeritus and ambassador to the Central Penn College Education Foundation after more than 22 successful years as president. Scolforo will officially begin in her new position as president on August 12. The announcement came after an eight-month national search that resulted in a diverse pool of 127 highly competitive candidates. The search relied extensively on college community feedback. “Following meetings with faculty, staff and students it was quite apparent that Dr. Scolforo was an excellent fit for Central Penn,” Kobel says. “She understands and appreciates the value of a career-focused education and has demonstrated the critical skills needed to maintain high academic standards. I know our college community will quickly embrace President Scolforo as we work together to meet the challenges, and capitalize on the opportunities, that lie ahead in higher education.” As former Jacksonville campus president of Keiser University in northeast Fla., Scolforo is a three-time award recipient of the ‘Campus of Distinction’ award for successful student outcomes, high retention, completion, licensure pass rates, and placement; successes she attributes to visible, accessible, student-focused leadership. Under her leadership, Scolforo’s Keiser University campus experienced 559 percent growth. “I was drawn to Central Penn College’s career-focused education, commitment to student success, and engaging campus culture,” Dr. Scolforo says. “Higher education has to evolve to meet the current needs of its students, communities and business leaders. I am excited to partner with an impressive group of higher education professionals, dedicated faculty and spirited students. Together we will explore new and exciting ways to fulfill the mission of Central Penn College, to expand the institution’s reach, and to serve a diversified population in preparation for workforce needs of the future.” In Scolforo’s most recent role as executive director at the Fortis Institute in northeast Fla., she worked closely with community and business leaders to develop relevant curriculum for career training programs. At the Jacksonville campus of Keiser University, she led initiatives to offer new and relevant associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs to the diverse populations within the communities it serves. After her presidency at the Jacksonville campus of Keiser University, Scolforo was appointed regional vice president of operations for the Southeastern College System, where she directed five Southeastern Institute campuses along the eastern seaboard and managed a $30M operating budget. Her experience in multi-campus leadership positions her well to lead Central Penn’s Summerdale, Lancaster and Lehigh Valley locations. She serves on numerous business, community and higher education advisory councils and associations in the Jacksonville area. Scolforo currently works with JAXUSA, a division of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, to develop programs to provide training for prospective employees of new businesses. At her prior institutions, she has shown a commitment to social justice and diversity, and has researched the role of service projects as they relate to student retention, campus ownership and pride. An avid fundraiser and volunteer, she has served on two capital campaigns and currently serves on the development committee for HandsOn Jacksonville, a nonprofit fundraising organization serving the needs of thousands in the Jacksonville area. As an educator, Scolforo has taught many student success courses. Previous educational roles she has served in are: regional executive director over three campuses in three New England states; school director, dean of education, director of admission and K-8 teacher. She holds a doctoral degree in education leadership from the University of North Florida and a master’s degree in writing and literature from Rivier University. A published writer, Scolforo has written books, papers and manuscripts on higher education, student success and leadership. Special events will take place shortly after Scolforo begins her presidency so the various college constituencies and surrounding communities can meet with her. Details on the events open to the community will be shared at www.centralpenn.edu/president. Central Penn College has been helping students turn potential into career success since 1881, now offering career-focused associate, bachelor's and master’s degrees in a variety of fields. Degree programs are available in: accounting, business administration, criminal justice, information technology, communications, healthcare, homeland security, legal studies and organizational leadership. The college, currently serving students at its Harrisburg, Lancaster and Lehigh Valley locations, attributes its high rate of student success to a caring faculty and its hands-on learning approach. Based on Central Penn’s most recent One-Year Graduate Survey, 87.8 percent of graduates were employed in their chosen field or continuing their education within one year of graduation. Central Penn College is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, 3624 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (267-284-5000). The Middle States Commission on Higher Education is an institutional accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. www.centralpenn.edu

December 18, 2013 "We are all animals," Voices for Biodiversity states on its website. "It is we [humans] who are killing off other species at an unprecedented rate and it is likely that in doing so we will kill off ourselves, for, like it or not, we are connected to other species and, like it or not, we are part of the complex planetary web of life that sustains us all." Bala Dada looking at the Kagoro forests in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kaduna, to which his family made an annual visit when he was young. Photo credit: Bala Dada. Voices for Biodiversity accepts submissions in French, Spanish and English, in the form of feature articles, concept papers and even podcasts. It is supported by the nonprofit organization Perception International, co-founded by Waters Lumpkin and David Jiranek. Tara Waters Lumpkin is voluble in her admiration for Voices for Biodiverstiy's citizen eco-reporters, and passionate about their mission to remind us that we are but one species on this, our shared, planet. She hopes someday to have editorial pods in different places around the globe so that stories in a variety of languages can gain an audience. In this interview, she discusses how Voices for Biodiversity was developed, the considerable breadth of its reporting initiatives and how they recruit their "outlier journalists." AN INTERVIEW WITH TARA WATERS LUMPKIN Mongabay: What makes Voices for Biodiversity distinct from other news and information sites? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: Voices for Biodiversity is distinct in having as its goal the bringing together of ordinary people to be Citizen Eco-Reporters who share their stories. We also call our storytellers Outlier Journalists, not only because they come from far-flung places, but also because they are philosophical outliers, who begin with the premise that other species and ecosystems are intrinsically valuable in and of themselves. This means that our stories are fresh and are different from mainstream journalism and most environmental journalism, which see nature and other species as only having a utilitarian value for humans. An example of this viewpoint would be the term "ecosystem services," which insinuates that nature only exists to feed into an economic system artificially constructed by humans to serve us. Mongabay: Who were your biggest supporters that kept you motivated and determined to make Voices for Biodiversity the program it is today? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: My key supporter has been my husband, Phillip Gibbs, who had to remind me occasionally that I have a relentless personality, particularly when I was losing steam. Working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, with a virtual team (no face to face contact), without pay, for five years, quite simply demands a relentless personality. In addition, I now have depleted most of my savings in supporting Voices for Biodiversity financially and paying for my own living expenses. Clearly, my motivation has been driven by my passion for other species, my concern that the environmental movement continues to value other species only as they are useful to humans, my concern that the environmental movement is focused on energy and climate change and tends to ignore biodiversity, as well as my firm belief that people have been conned by almost every culture as well as every religion around the world to believe that they are better than other species, rather than seeing themselves as being embedded in nature side by side with other species. I believe that this failure of perception is perilous not only to the survival of other species but also to our own survival. It's time we wake up to the reality that our illusion of human self-importance is the root of all environmental problems and shift to an eco-centric point of view. Tara Waters Lumpkin and her husband, Phillip Gibbs, in a bakkie or pick-up truck in Namibia in 1993. Photo credit: Tara Waters Lumpkin. Mongabay: What were the biggest obstacles to setting up this project? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: There has been only one obstacle: lack of financial backing. Running the organization by using volunteers is how I've gotten around this issue, but, of course, this is an impractical management method. I dislike asking for money and sorely need a seasoned fundraiser by my side. And it wouldn't hurt to have a grant writer either. Mongabay: Describe your target audience for storytellers and listeners. Are you surprised about whom this project has managed to impact? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: Our target audience is anyone who cares about the environment and anyone who is interested in the influence of culture, psychology, and perception on environmental issues. We tend to attract people who are interested in bio-cultural issues, so we find that many anthropologists are interested in our work as well as conservationists. College and graduate students are particularly attracted to our out-of-the-box philosophy and approach. Young people seem to like us too, particularly our photo essays. What did surprise me is the large number of people in their thirties, forties, and fifties, who have been attracted to our message. We thought they would be too busy with day-to-day life and would prefer to remain linked with mainstream environmental approaches. However, this age cohort has cheered us on and some of them have sent in their own stories. We also were surprised that as many men as women are attracted to what we do. We thought that women would be more attracted, given we are a softer type of journalism. I wonder if there is frustration with environmental media remaining overly scientific and not personalizing what is happening environmentally today, which, of course, is what we do well. Mongabay: Currently, this project has over one hundred stories recorded. How do you recruit these "Outlier Journalists" to participate in the project? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: Our Outlier Journalists come from all walks of life, and sometimes I have no idea how they find us. One of my favorite articles is by Nigerian Bala Dada, and he said he stumbled across us on the Internet. I also have personally used my extensive network of friends and colleagues around the globe to reach out and find storytellers. For example, I tracked down my Maasai friend, Moses, whom I met in Kenya back in 1980 and asked him if he might know of anyone who could write an article for us about the Naimina Enkiyio Forest (the Forest of the Lost Child) where elephant and other wildlife poaching is now on the upswing. He mentioned that Dr. Joyce Poole's organization Elephant Voices was working in the area, so I contacted her. She was excited by the idea of an indigenous person writing about the forest and what it was like to grow up by it, then see the changes the forest is undergoing due to deforestation and poaching. She connected me with Alfred Mepukori, a Loita Maasai, also known to Moses. Alfred was also a Citizen Scientist volunteering for Elephant Voices in summer 2013. I then contacted Alfred and suggested he write an article for Voices for Biodiversity. Our staff feels it's very important that local people write about what is happening to wildlife, habitat, and their own cultures, rather than experts or journalists from outside always telling their stories. Not only is it empowering to tell your own story, but other community members and schoolchildren are much more likely to be influenced and empowered by a story written by someone with whom they relate. Alfred Mepukori examines the carcass of an adult male elephant, killed for its tusks, in May, 2013. Alfred accompanied a herder who discovered the carcass in the Naimina Enkiyio Forest, as a part of Elephant Partners – an affiliate of the Maasai Mara Elephant Conservation Initiative. Photo Credit: Daniel K. Mepukori Mongabay: What are some of the impacts that publishing their stories have had on the storytellers themselves? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: The beneficial fallout from creating content for Voices for Biodiversity has been overwhelmingly positive. Many of our Eco-Reporters have gone on to publish in other magazines and, equally importantly, to become advocates and activists for other species, all because they had that first initial experience of being heard through Voices for Biodiversity. Being heard is a very powerful experience, particularly for those of us who have felt invisible. My own experiences of not being heard and being shushed by experts and traditional thinkers is one reason I created Voices for Biodiversity. In the U.S. we live in a culture where celebrities are heard, experts are heard, rich people are heard, and the rest of us are basically ignored—a strange approach for a democracy. Facebooking and twittering often make people feel even more ignored since little can be expressed of substance through these social media outlets. And if you think it's tough being heard here in the U.S., try being a woman, for example, living in one of the other countries where some of our Citizen Eco-Reporters lives. Here's an example of a success story. Oriane Lee Johnston contacted me to brainstorm about visiting Africa for the first time. I happened to know that she loves horses, so I suggested that she volunteer for Mozambique Horse Safari. She did and then wrote about her experience. Next, she went to Zimbabwe and became involved in advocating for and helping create wilderness heritage projects and she also wrote Elephants in the Refuge for us. Oriane wrote in our volunteer comment section: "I never dreamed of being a writer or a journalist! . . . At the moment my contributions appear in four e-zines and this spring my first paid article appears in the print magazine Canadian Horse Journal. More importantly, the opportunity to bring visibility to the wilderness heritage projects in Zimbabwe by having the projects showcased to the Izilwane virtual community and general public who reads this e-zine is of enormous value in furthering their causes." Oriane's experience is not a special case. Our goal all along has been to go beyond creating a cadre of Eco-Reporters and also create a community of people sharing their concerns for biodiversity and other species and acting as engaged activists. Oriane Lee Johnston at the Wasara ranch, a 6,000 hectare cattle ranch now home to three orphaned female elephants - Mungwezi, Chitora and Kimba. The Wasara ranch is run by Teresa Warth and her husband. Photo credit: Oriane Lee Johnston Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: Most of our storytellers are unique, because they are trying out something new for the first time, which has its own built-in uniqueness. For some creating content is initially a struggle. For others it is surprisingly easy. The The Sixth Great Extinction written by Kira Johnson, who also worked for Voices for Biodiversity for a year as our Outreach Coordinator, is exceptional and remains on our home page as a key resource for all who come to our website. Jami Wright's article Lessons from Wolves, which studies the human aspect of wolf introduction, is interesting because it focuses on how humans are still resistant to having wolves in their lives. As she says, the wolf problem is a human problem. Our Managing Editor, Kathryn Pardo, has written innumerable high quality articles in her double role as our Staff Writer. Zoe Krasney has written about the Southwest, including a three part series about the Navajo Elders of Black Mesa, the release of the Aplomado Falcon, and an array of interviews. One of the writers who pleasantly surprised me with her talent was Julia Osterman, who interned for us the summer of 2011. A rising junior at Yale University, she wrote a series of brilliant question and answer interviews with important scholars. Among those whom she interviewed were: Luke Dollar, Stuart Pimm, Lawrence Anthony, Lee Berger, and Spencer Wells. I've truly never met anyone her age with her talent for interviewing. Altaire Cambata, who was our Blog Editor in 2012, also produced well over ten articles ranging from an analysis based on her fieldwork on the global impact of climate change to an interview with Dr. Laurie Marker at the Cheetah Conservation Fund. Most of our storytellers have surpassed my expectations. Laurie Marker of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, was interviewed by Altaire Cambata for Voices For Biodiversity. Photo credit: Christian LePetit Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: Visits to the e-zine website (and, of course, our Izilwane – Voices for Biodiversity Facebook page) are from over one hundred countries around the world, including all of North America, most of South America, almost all of Europe, Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union, most of Asia including China, Australia and Oceania, and many countries in Africa. We always point out to prospective content creators that we publish photo essays, which cross language barriers. So, for example, if someone wanted to submit material but couldn't write in one of the three languages we now publish in (English, Spanish, and French), we suggest to that person that he or she create a photo essay and then our Managing Editor Kat Pardo and her stable of editors work to create a written story in English to accompany the photos. We work hard to publish anyone who wishes to be published. Our goal is self-expression for all who care about our theme. Of course, as I mentioned, in a perfect world, we'd have editorial pods around the globe and would publish in many, many languages. Mongabay: What has been the reaction of conservation scientists to this project? How about governments? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: We've been very popular with conservation scientists and anthropologists, most likely because we meld the two disciplines, addressing the bio-cultural aspects of biodiversity and conservation. The fact that we work with ordinary people, not just academics, experts, and leaders, has appealed to scientists, who realize that getting the word out beyond academia and policy wonks is key to their own success. We've had a number of what we call "accolades " from scientists, conservationists, and nongovernmental organizations. I'd also like to add that the website for the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity website states: "The world is now on a path to building a future of living in harmony with nature. In October 2010, in Japan, governments agreed to the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the Aichi Targets as the basis for halting and eventually reversing the loss of biodiversity of the planet." The first Aichi Target is to: "Address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society." We see Voices for Biodiversity as being an actor in "mainstreaming biodiversity" across society because we address the underlying cause of biodiversity loss: (1) A sense of powerlessness and lack of voice among those who care about biodiversity, and (2) A misperception by the majority, inculcated by cultures, religions, and our global capitalist economic system, that humans are more important than other species. Mongabay: Have there been opportunities for the Voices for Biodiversity project to collaborate with conservation efforts on the ground to either prevent habitat destruction or assist an endangered plant or animal species? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: Our Citizen Eco-Reporters have initiated, run, and worked with a number of projects that focus on assisting endangered species and preventing habitat destruction, such as Elephant Voices, Orangutan Foundation International, the plight of baboons in South Africa, the Great Salmon Tour, CAT in WATER, Save Our Salmon, conservation of the Fossa, Marching to Save Elephants, See The Wild, and many, many more projects. Voices for Biodiversity works actively to help these projects. For example, when Mo Heim and Joanna Nasar were initiating fundraising for their project CAT in WATER to document the vanishing fishing cat, they reached out to us and we gave them their first leg-up by running an article about their project, which helped them obtain funding. Recently primatologist Paula Pebsworth teamed up with Voices for Biodiversity when she spearheaded creating a petition asking Starbucks to stop using unsustainable palm oil and when she began a campaign to boycott Starbucks because the company would not commit to using sustainable palm oil in its pastries. (Unsustainable palm oil production is destroying habitat for many species, such as orangutans, and is contributing to an increase in greenhouse gases.) Paula and her two children made a video about their upcoming planned trip from Texas to Starbuck's Seattle office. Along the way, they posted on Izilwane – Voices for Biodiversity Facebook page about their trip as they collected signatures. Starbucks, which positions itself as a socially beneficial and green company, refused to meet with them when they delivered their petition to its Seattle headquarters. Paula then redoubled her efforts and joined forces with Voices for Biodiversity Eco-Reporter Robert Hii, a leader in the larger fight against dirty palm oil. Robert wrote about palm oil and extinction for our e-zine. Managing Editor Kat Pardo interviewed him about dirty palm oil. And thanks to the hard work of people such as Paula and Robert, a breakthrough has recently occurred in negotiation with Wilmar, one of the largest dirty palm oil companies. Also, because Voices for Biodiversity blogs for National Geographic News Watch, we've been able to leverage this privilege into helping our storytellers such as Mo Heim, Joanna Nasar, Paula Pebsworth, Robert Hii, Brad Nahill, and many others with their on the ground projects and advocacy and activist efforts. In addition, Voices for Biodiversity has run one on the ground project. In summer 2011 three interns ran a Biodiversity and Art Project for youth in Taos, New Mexico. They also exhibited the children's artwork and made a film about the project, which was screened at the Taos Film Festival. In summer 2012 Voices for Biodiversity had two interns showcase the film Call of Life for free to the Taos community in conjunction with Southern Methodist University as well. We are always open to working with interns and volunteers who wish to conduct an on-the-ground project under the auspices of Voices for Biodiversity. Mongabay: Has this project impacted conservation policies in countries whose natural biodiversity has been described by your storytellers? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: A large percentage of our Outlier Journalists are biodiversity or bio-cultural advocates and activists who are involved in on the ground projects around the globe. By getting the word out through Voices for Biodiversity, they affect policies indirectly by helping to create awareness and educate about issues. In some cases, by publishing local voices, we also create pressure that would not exist without our media platform. Mongabay: What are some of the wildlife species that your storytellers have focused on? Do you feel that the disappearance of plants (i.e., habitats in general) or animal species have a greater impact on your storytellers? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: Our storytellers have focused on many different species, such as cheetahs, elephants, whales, wolves, the fossa, fishing cats, horses (wild and domestic), salmon, tigers, birds, monkeys, turtles, and more. Our eco-reporters also have focused on an equal number of ecosystems around the globe. Usually, our storytellers combine both species and habitat in their stories. And don't forget we also cover the human animal's role in many of our articles too. Mongabay: How have your readers reacted to the stories found on Voices for Biodiversity? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: We've heard how interesting it is to experience a more personal view of people's relationships and perspectives on nature and other species. And readers have expressed appreciation that we train ordinary people to become Eco-Reporters. Our readers say they understand how being heard is in and of itself empowering for those who usually are not heard. Another interesting reaction came from a friend who told me that her grandchild requested that she read Studying Visitors at the Gorilla Exhibit each night before bedtime. In this story the author, an anthropologist, relates the tale of being hired to study human behavior at a gorilla exhibit. What a charming turning of the tables! Mongabay: What are your dreams for the future of Voices for Biodiversity? What's left to be done? A gray wolf illustrates "Lessons from Wolves", a story on Voices for Biodiversity by Jami Wright. Photo credit: Jami Wright The dream is simple. We want to create editorial pods around the world that create a richer, deeper, more dynamic community of people who believe, as we do, that we must embrace biophilia. We believe that in learning to care deeply for other species, we will learn to care for our own species. Mongabay: Will you tell us about your journey in developing Voices for Biodiversity? Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin: When I was very young, from age four to six, I lived in Frankfurt, Germany, where my father was stationed as an army medical doctor. He, my mother, sister and I would pile into the small white VW Beetle and travel: trips to the Rhine River where we'd board a ferry boat and cruise the river disembarking to visit castles; getting lost in the mountains of Garmisch, a mountain resort town in Bavaria; a trip to Elba and Venice, Italy; and an illegal visit to Yugoslavia, where my mother came down with an eye infection, which resulted in quite an adventure. I have no doubt that these early childhood experiences helped form my love for adventure, despite the fact that I was an extremely shy child who rarely spoke. Upon returning to the U.S., my family settled down on a small horse farm in Northern Baltimore County. Here we raised ponies, whom we gentled and sold, had a large vegetable garden, and engaged in other farm tasks. During summer vacation and on weekends after completing our chores, my sister and I would disappear for the rest of the day on long walks in the countryside accompanied by several dogs and my orange cat, Leaf. We were rough and tumble tomboys who loved to walk in streams wearing rubber boots during thunderstorms, loved galloping our ponies through the woods and building forts in wheat fields (much to the local farmer's dismay). I had always known that I wanted to be a writer, and so in college I became a Literature major with a focus on African, Latin American, French and Modern Literature. I took off my junior year at college to attend a National Outdoor Leadership School semester in Kenya. I fell in love with Kenya, its people, its wildlife, its wide open spaces, with awakening to the footfall of lions passing through camp at night and realizing ecstatically that I was not at the top of the food chain. I also became friends with several Loita Maasai, particularly a man named Moses, who grew up near the Naimina Enkiyio Forest (the Forest of the Lost Child) on the Nguruman Escarpment. After graduating, I wrote ad copy for a radio station, was a professor in the department of Writing and Media Department at Loyola College, was a poetry teacher in the Maryland State Arts Council Artists-in-Education program, interned at the environmental newspaper High Country News, and completed a MFA in Creative Writing. In addition, I won a Maryland State Arts Council grant for a novel in progress, other literary prizes, and was granted a number of writers' residencies. During that time, I also lived abroad in Mexico, Ecuador, England and France, as well as numerous places around the U.S. In my thirties, I returned to school to obtain a PhD in medical and environmental anthropology, conducting my fieldwork in Namibia, Africa, on traditional medicine and simultaneously working for the United Nations Children's Fund. Upon finishing my PhD, I received a WordWID (Women in Development) Fellowship and worked for a year with local communities in the Panama Canal Watershed guiding them to create an ecotourism blueprint. This was followed with a consultancy on the same topic for Conservation International in Panama. I then worked in 1999 in post-genocide Rwanda for the United States Agency for International Development on gacaca, an ethno-justice system. Disillusioned with gacaca, I did not renew my contract with USAID. I went on to found a nonprofit, Perception International, with a friend, David Jiranek. Its mission is to promote biological, cultural, and perceptual diversity worldwide. David and I then initiated Perception International's first project, a shoot-back photography project for Rwandan youth at the Imbabazi orphanage in Gisenyi, Rwanda. When we first met the children, they had never seen a photo in a magazine. Through the Eyes of children: Rwanda Project has been extremely successful and the children's photos have been exhibited around the world. As young adults, these same children are now giving back by teaching photography to children in other schools in Rwanda. It was this project that taught me the incredibly empowering nature of self-expression and of being heard. In 2001 my work and travels were halted when my mother became ill with cancer at age sixty-five. She and I were both deeply attuned to nature and animals. Before dying she said to me: "Make sure you take care of the animals." She was not referring only to her own dogs, cats, horses, donkey, and bird, but to all animals. I promised, but it would be eight more years until Voices for Biodiversity was born. After my mother died I became certified as a somatic experiencing practitioner. Somatic experiencing is a body-centered treatment for trauma based on the study of animals in the wild. I'd become interested in trauma in post-genocide Rwanda, a thoroughly traumatized population, and I had my own anxieties and traumas to work through. I also continued as President of Perception International, conducting a health needs assessment in Kham, Eastern Tibet, and helping produce a film about the emergence of a Vietnamese-American healer as she travels around the globe meeting other traditional healers. I was more and more drawn to work with animals and in 2006 I returned to Kenya after twenty-six years as an Earthwatch volunteer to study elephants in Tsavo Park with scientist Barbara McKnight. Elephant poaching seizures rose dramatically in 2006 and have continued to rise since then, most of the ivory going to Asia. I realized after working in Tsavo that my talents lay in combining my skills as an anthropologist and writer/journalist to help connect people to other species and the global ecosystem. This was how I would help animals and fulfill my promise to my mother. Tara Waters Lumpkin meeting with community members in Tsavo, Kenya, in 2006. Photo credit: Tara Waters Lumpkin. In 2009 after a challenging health problem, I went to South Africa and conducted fieldwork accessing how best to move forward combining my writing and anthropology skills. I interviewed people from all walks of life about their relationships with nature and other species, from shamans to scientists, Afrikaners, Zulu, Xhosa, San, and Shangaan, men, women, and children. In the field I had planned to return home and write a book about my experiences about what I'd learned. But books written by one individual, I realized, rarely created a movement. I wondered if I could build a community of people who joined hands across the globe to speak out for other species. What if this community shared stories? I envisioned a digital community of Outlier Journalists, working as Citizen Eco-Reporters, sharing their stories through a variety of media forms, such as writing, photos, videos, and podcasts. So with no background in digital media, never having used Facebook or Twitter, with no financial backing, no full collaborative partner, and while living in a small town in impoverished rural Northern New Mexico, I leapt off the proverbial cliff and set out to create an online magazine that would share stories to connect the human animal to the global ecosystem. I named the e-zine "Izilwane," which means "animals" in Zulu. Later the online magazine was renamed "Voices for Biodiversity." It is now five years since the birth of Voices for Biodiversity and its digital community. To date, we have trained over one hundred Citizen Eco-Reporters around the world who have shared their stories about biodiversity and human relationship with biodiversity, both positive and negative. Voice by individual voice, our community is re-defining what it means to be a human animal in relationship to other species. How, we ask, do we connect to other species? By first connecting with our own animal nature and accepting it, we answer. Then we reach deep inside and search for a story about our experiences with other species and nature and share it with each other. Top 10 Environmental Stories of 2013 (12/10/2013) 1. Carbon concentrations hit 400ppm while the IPCC sets global carbon budget: For the first time since our appearance on Earth, carbon concentrations in the atmosphere hit 400 parts per million. The last time concentrations were this high for a sustained period was 4-5 million years ago when temperatures were 10 degrees Celsius higher. Meanwhile, in the slow-moving effort to curb carbon emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) crafted a global carbon budget showing that most of the world's fossil fuel reserves must be left untouched if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. Scientists have reached an overwhelming consensus on human-caused climate change (05/16/2013) Despite outsized media and political attention to climate change deniers, climate scientists long ago reached a consensus that not only is climate change occurring, but it's largely due to human actions. A new study in Environmental Research Letters further strengthens this consensus: looking at 4,000 peer-reviewed papers researchers found that 97 percent of them supported anthropogenic (i.e. human caused) global warming. Climate change denialists, many of them linked to fossil fuel industries, have tried for years—and often successfully—to undercut action on mitigating climate change through carefully crafted misinformation campaigns. Sky islands: exploring East Africa's last frontier (12/04/2013) The montane rainforests of East Africa are little-known to the global public. The Amazon and Congo loom much larger in our minds, while the savannas of East Africa remain the iconic ecosystems for the region. However these ancient, biodiverse forests—sitting on the tops of mountains rising from the African savanna—are home to some remarkable species, many found only in a single forest. A team of international scientists—Michele Menegon, Fabio Pupin, and Simon Loader—have made it their mission to document the little-known reptiles and amphibians in these so-called sky islands, many of which are highly imperiled. Animal Earth: exploring the hidden biodiversity of our planet (12/03/2013) Most of the species on Earth we never see. In fact, we have no idea what they look like, much less how spectacular they are. In general, people can identify relatively few of their backyard species, much less those of other continents. This disconnect likely leads to an inability in the general public to relate to biodiversity and, by extension, the loss of it. One of the most remarkable books I have read is a recent release that makes serious strides to repair that disconnect and affirm the human bond with biodiversity. Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures written by Ross Piper, a zoologist with the University of Leeds, opens up the door to discovery. |Get Mongabay articles emailed to your inbox| |Enter your email address:|

This is a list of some of the basic databases to find resources for your subject. For a more extensive guide to doing research in Music please see the Music Research Guide Comprehensive encyclopedia on all aspects of music. RILM (Repertoire International de Littrature Musicale) a comprehensive, ongoing guide to publications on music from all over the world. It contains records in over 100 languages. This database contains more than 3,000 items, including correspondence, photographs, early release fliers, full issues of rare periodicals, sheet music and movie star ephemera. It includes complete copies of more than 250 Academy publications,From the founding of the organization in 1927 todate, providing access to significant items including selections from the Alfred Hitchcock papers and the Cecil B. DeMille photographs, as well as the annual Academy Awards programs. Humanities Full Text contains full text plus abstracts and bibliographic indexing scholarly sources in the humanities, as well as lesser-known but important specialized magazines. Previous vendor was Wilson. Transliterations and literal translations of songs, arias, and poetry, as a selection of sound recordings in Latin, French, German, and Italian. A Subject/Author Guide to Music Periodical Literature from 1976 to the present and contains surveyed data from over 850 music periodicals from over 40 countries. Classical music recordings for listening and learning. Recordings of music written from the earliest times (e.g. Gregorian Chant) to the present, including many contemporary composers. Repertoire ranges from vocal and choral music, to chamber, orchestral, solo instrumental, and opera. Digital images of music scores, selected by the Open Content Alliance, and cataloged by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. Search across Oxford's digital academic content, including: Digital Reference Shelf Oxford Art Online Oxford Handbooks Online Oxford Music Online Oxford Reference Online Oxford Scholarship Online Last Updated June 09, 2014

Name: Sylvia Beach Birthdate/Place: March 14, 1887, Baltimore, Maryland Bookseller /Publisher Associated With: Shakespeare and Company Claim to Fame: American-born, Sylvia Beach first arrived in Paris at age 15, after her father Sylvester’s appointment as the assistant minister of the American Church in Paris. She moved back to America at age 18, but was unable to resist the pull of Europe, and soon moved back. Here, she discovered (her future partner) Adrienne Monnier’s bookstore, Maison des Amis des Livres. Inspired, Beach wanted to bring a branch of Monnier’s bookstore to New York as a contemporary vendor of French literature. Unable to afford a New York rent, Beach launched a sort of reverse dream of sorts–opening a primarily English language bookstore in Paris, named Shakespeare and Company. Shakespeare and Company’s–as well as Beach’s–biggest contribution to literature is the initial publication of the English-language edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Our Inner Literary Nerd Loves: Shakespeare and Company weathered the Fall of Paris during WWII, but was forced to close by the end of 1941. Beach was interned for six months, and kept all her books hidden in an empty upstairs apartment. The shop was famously liberated by none other than Ernest Hemingway. George Whitman, the man who revived the store in the 1950s, died a year ago this month. You can read a bit more about him here, visit the store’s lovely website, or even follow them on Twitter.

Photo: Joe Mazza/BraveLux When we began work on the 2012 version of Lit 50, there were some 200 published writers on our long list. This year, there were 437. As always, trimming the list to a mere fifty writers required a certain kind of agony (and a few sleepless nights), but we’re proud of the list we gathered here, and we feel it celebrates the wealth of talent and diversity of Chicago’s literary community. Close followers of Lit 50 will know this year’s list celebrates writers across all forms: novelists, essayists, poets, graphic novelists, playwrights. Our call to local literary folk yielded a wealth of celebratory news: overseas teaching offers, sealed book deals, hard-earned fellowships and awards. It also introduced dozens of writers that were not already known to us. We’re proud that this year’s Lit 50 includes seventeen writers who are making their first appearance on this list, including Chris Abani, the Nigerian-born writer who escaped a death row sentence in 1991 and now teaches graduate students at Northwestern University. We’re thrilled to add Lindsay Hunter, Cristina Henriquez, and Kate Harding, women whose voices we’ve long admired and whose forthcoming books we’re impatient to read. We’re also eager to welcome a handful of poets, including Roger Reeves, Parneshia Jones, and Roger Bonair-Agard. It’s our crazy hope that in 2016, the “short” list will have doubled once more. But someone’s going to have to bring us some whiskey. (Naomi Huffman) Lit 50 was written by Liz Baudler, Brendan Buck, Brian Hieggelke, Alex Houston, Naomi Huffman, Megan Kirby, Micah McCrary and John Wilmes All photos by Joe Mazza/Brave Lux on location at Spertus Institute/Venue SIX10 Read the rest of this entry » Photo: Shaun Crittenden By Naomi Huffman I first met Gina Frangello in 2011, when I was an undergrad studying writing at Columbia College; I took a fiction seminar class she taught my senior year. When she introduced herself she talked about her novel, which she was revising, and which would turn out to be “A Life in Men,” released last month from Algonquin. She went on to talk about the books we would read and study that semester (“You guys are going to love Milan Kundera,” she insisted—she was right), and then she talked passionately for several minutes about the books she was reading, written by friends and by writers she admired. Her enthusiasm was palpable; right away, I began to admire her support of other people’s work. The summer after I graduated from Columbia, I was hired by Gina and her husband David to nanny her twin daughters Madeleine and Kenza and their friend Siena, who were then eleven years old. I picked them up three days a week from their home in Roscoe Village, which has the kind of beautiful slatted hardwood floors, gaping windows and dark wood trim I’ve come to associate with old Chicago houses. There was often some sort of minor tragedy unfolding when I arrived at their home those summer mornings—a misplaced shoe or transit pass, a forgotten lunch box, teeth or hair that needed brushing. I don’t know what she did when we finally left, but I liked to think of Gina writing, savoring the new quiet of the house, working in her small office just off the main rooms of the house, which does not have a door. Read the rest of this entry » It’s been a deadly year for Chicago writers, with the passing of Roger Ebert, Richard Stern, David Hernandez and, just last week, Father Andrew Greeley. Not to mention the dead-woman-walking status achieved by Rachel Shtier, whose ill-conceived New York Times Book Review takedown of Chicago turned her into this city’s most universally disliked resident since, perhaps, John Wayne Gacy. So a sense of what we’d lost pervaded the creation of this year’s Lit 50, this time around celebrating not so much the writers who occupy the center stage, but those who operate behind the scenes to make sure the stage itself exists. The process, as excruciating as it is, always renews our optimism for the literary Chicago that carries on, bigger and better every year, even diminished by its inevitable losses. This year’s increasingly long short-list reached new magnitudes, with 360 folks under consideration for just fifty nods. Needless to say, a slight tilt in another direction, and an entirely different Lit 50 could have been created. But so it goes. (Brian Hieggelke) Written by Brian Hieggelke and Naomi Huffman, with Greg Baldino and Kathleen Caplis. See previous years here. Read the rest of this entry » Finishing the Lit 50 is always such a bittersweet ending for me. What starts out as such a pleasure of discovery—Chicago’s literary world now has more than 200 published writers!—ends in the sorrow of having to leave so many worthy names off the list. We do our best to reflect the sum of our knowledge and reporting, to add in diversity of style, medium and genre, and to constantly introduce new players to the mix. But we know that, in the end, many choices might appear capricious, that for every worthy individual honored, two have been overlooked. A day later, after the lingering effects of sleep, sunlight and exercise deprivation and an overdose of junk food and energy drinks abates, I know we’ll return to where we started: overjoyed at the growing literary abundance of our city. Careful readers will remember that we alternate lists each year, between the behind-the-scenes influencers and the on-the-page creators; this year belongs to the latter. Which is why you won’t see represented the two most talked-about new endeavors in literary Chicago: J.C. Gabel’s magnificent revival of The Chicagoan, and Elizabeth Taylor’s noble undertaking, Printers Row. We are confidently hopeful, or perhaps hopefully confident, that they’ll still be around to have their day a year from now. (Brian Hieggelke) Lit 50 was written by Greg Baldino, Ella Christoph, Brian Hieggelke, Naomi Huffman and Micah McCrary. See previous years here. Read the rest of this entry » Finally! We lady folk get to see men without any clothes on, metaphorically. Naked and exposed, with all their weaknesses, desires, fears and insecurities finally out in the open. Reading “Men Undressed: Women Writers on the Male Sexual Experience,” a compilation of short stories by women about men and their sexuality, you realize that men are just as complex and screwed up as us, but even more so because they try so hard to hide it. With a foreword by Steve Almond and edited by Stacy Bierlein, Gina Frangello, Cris Mazza and Kat Meads, this juicy volume is an eye-opener. As Mazza notes in her introductory essay, “Literature should allow us to imagine people who are unlike ourselves—to slip into their lives, their minds, their perspectives, not for the sake of parodying alleged deficiencies, but to discover both our innate similarities and our enigmatic differences, and thereby appreciate them more.” Read the rest of this entry » Power in Chicago has been passed on. No, we’re not talking about that little office in City Hall, but that Oprah, she of the book club that long perched her atop this list, has flown the coop. So now it’s official. The City of Big Shoulders is Poetry’s town. It’s unlikely that Carl Sandburg would have ever imagined such an unlikely outcome when he crafted the city’s calling card, in verse, but it’s not even debatable. Not only can we claim Poetry magazine, the premier publication of its kind anywhere, but its wealthy sibling the Poetry Foundation will open a whole building dedicated to the form later this month. Plus, this is the town that created the Poetry Slam as well as Louder Than a Bomb, the largest teen slam anywhere. Talk about poetic justice. Read the rest of this entry » Top 5 Chicago Literary Cameos (and supporting roles) “The Instructions,” Adam Levin (McSweeney’s) “Saul Bellow: Letters,” Ed. Benjamin Taylor (Penguin Classics) “Wilson,” Daniel Clowes (Drawn and Quarterly) “The November Criminals,” Sam Munson (Doubleday) “Slut Lullabies,” Gina Frangello (Emergency Press) Top 5 Film Books “Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition,” Jonathan Rosenbaum “Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo,” Werner Herzog “The Foreign Film Renaissance on American Screens, 1946-1973,” Tino Balio “Another Fine Mess: A History Of American Film Comedy,” Saul Austerlitz “The New Biographical Dictionary Of Film,” David Thomson Illustration: Pamela Wishbow A strange and unpleasant wind blows through the literary land. Our obsession with technocultural toys, whether iPhones, iPads or Kindles, makes the foundation of thought almost since thought was recorded, that is ink on paper, seem increasingly destined to be twittered into obsolescence. And it’s not just mere media frenzy, either. Massive upheaval among major publishers these last few years has left some of Chicago’s finest writers stranded in a strange land: that is, the work is finished, but no one is around to put it out. Who knows, maybe in two years when this version of Lit 50 returns, some, if not all, of our authors will be publishing mostly, if not entirely, in the digital realm. If that’s the case, let’s enjoy an old-fashioned book or two while we can. Read the rest of this entry » By Robert Duffer You’ve probably heard of Gina Frangello. In Chicago’s independent literary community, she’s like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. She’s one of two executive editors, along with Stacy Bierlein, of Chicago publishing house OV Books (formerly Other Voices Magazine). She’s the fiction editor at “The Nervous Breakdown,” helped TriQuarterly shift from a print to an online journal and has journalism published anywhere from the Chicago Reader to the Huffington Post. An adjunct at Columbia College Chicago and Northwestern University, she’s the mother of three, wife of one. She is, as Donna Seaman put it on Chicago Public Radio’s “848,” a “literary dervish.” But however exhaustive her bio is, it is Frangello’s writing that will leave you breathless. She articulates truths about the selfishness of love in a way few people would admit but everyone has likely felt. “Is it important to know that the Intelligent Woman’s husband is more attractive (and also more successful) than the Beautiful Woman’s Husband?” the snarky storyteller asks us in “What You See,” one of ten stories from her debut collection of stories, “Slut Lullabies.” “I think it is.” Read the rest of this entry » As if we weren’t neurotic enough, The Nervous Breakdown Literary Experience will soon be dispatching some of its own writers to feed our egos with some wholesome literary fun. Founded in 2006, The Nervous Breakdown is an online literary collective featuring both emerging and published authors. “The Internet has created more opportunities for writers to intersect with their audience,” says founding editor Brad Listi. Taking place September 22 at Logan Square’s The Whistler the event features authors Amy Guth (“Three Fallen Women”), Greg Boose (Cracked, McSweeney’s), Claire Bidwell Smith (The Huffington Post) and Irene Zion. In addition, Gina Frangello (author of “Slut Lullabies,” pictured) will be emceeing with the musical stylings of Raise High the Roof Beam. “The mission of The Nervous Breakdown is fairly simple,” Listi says. “It was developed to bring readers and writers together online in a new and interesting way.”

With a goal of being one of the finest ensembles of its kind, the University of Memphis Wind Ensemble is comprised of the most exceptional graduate and undergraduate instrumentalists attending the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music. The ensemble is profoundly dedicated to deliver artistic performances that are both eloquent and meticulously prepared. A significant amount of attention is placed on the innovative programming process, an approach that exemplifies the uniqueness of the Memphis area by highlighting the rich diversity of a distinctive community. The quest of the University of Memphis Wind Ensemble is to achieve the highest degree of professionalism possible, and to bring its audiences the finest artistic repertoire regardless of the period, or style. The Wind Ensemble is conducted by Dr. Albert Nguyen, Director of Bands and Area Coordinator for Wind Studies The Symphonic Band performs the masterwork grade five and six wind literature designed for the rich sonorities of an expanded instrumentation. The Symphonic Band pursues excellence in rehearsal and performance, and provides its audiences a varied repertoire from all musical periods, cultures and styles. Auditions are held each semester and participants receive one hour of undergraduate credit. The Symphonic Band rehearses two days per week each semester. The University Band is conducted by band graduate assistants. This group performs a wide range of literature including standard band literature, transcriptions and new music. Students are not required to audition for this band, which meets one day per week. Participants, who are mostly non-music majors, receive one hour of undergraduate credit. For more information, contact the band office at 901.678.2263. Mighty Sound of the South The Mighty Sound of the South Marching Band is a group of 220 to 240 members. They perform for all home games and two away games each fall. Membership is gained upon the satisfactory completion of a playing audition, which may be scheduled by calling the band office. Talent based Scholarships are available by audition to all members. School instruments are available for a rental fee of $25.00 per semester. There is no uniform rental fee. When the band travels the University pays for the buses and each student is given a meal allowance. When the band stays overnight, the University pays the hotel/motel bill. Marching band members receive two hours academic credit for the fall semester. Band Camp is usually held two weeks before classes begin for the fall semester. Rehearsals are held on campus and out of country/out of state students are housed in dormitories on campus during camp. The marching band performs three different halftime shows each fall in addition to the traditional pre-game show. All University of Memphis home games are played at the Liberty Bowl Stadium.

Critics, not fans, should bite their tongues JOHN POWELL - SLAM! Wrestling |The Wyatt Family hone their act in Florida at NXT in June. Photo by Bill Otten, B&B Productions. The best thing about pro wrestling is anyone can buy a ticket, take a seat and cheer or jeer to their heart's content. It is all part of the unique atmosphere. It is all part of the fun. Pro wrestling is live and it is interactive. That has always been one of the honoured traditions of the industry. In the past few weeks though, some media types and unfortunately, even some wrestling legends, have taken issue with that long-standing convention. They've slammed fans for communicating their opinions after spending their hard-earned money on tickets to a show they are encouraged to be a vocal part of. During Mark Henry's promo on the July 1st Raw, fans mocked him by chanted "What?" in response to his long-winded diatribe. That night on Twitter, Mick Foley wrote: "Nothing I like less than that stupid 'what' chant. Takes away from the product, throws off the timing on promos, and just flat-out sucks." Jim Ross also Tweeted: "No more WHAT chants. YES is fine. Fans can chant whatever they want but WHAT chants seem dated too me. Just my opinion." Here we have two squared circle legends who've made their living playing off of live crowds ripping those people for not reacting the way they want them to. The comments were rather shocking considering they came from two icons who I respect in the highest degree for all of their contributions. They are usually the voices of reason. They are usually the ones who put things in perspective for everyone but those comments were completely unfair. A pro wrestling event ain't a night at the opera. You can agree or disagree with their reactions but neither of them were in any position to judge those fans, especially when the person cutting said live promo is a heel who is expected to be booed and taunted. It is a live edition of Raw, which unlike a regular house show, can test the patience of even the most loyal fan due to the constant breaks in the action. On an already bloated telecast, Henry chewed up more match time by explaining his reasons for attacking Cena and his phoney retirement. In the feud, Henry is the heel and Cena is the face. With all that in mind, how did Foley and Ross expect the fans to react? I just don't get it. Next up, the debut of the Wyatt Family on the July 8th Raw. First off, I am going to swerve severely off topic for a moment. I admit the promos were well done. Very polished and very creepy but haven't we done the whole evil hillbilly angle before? Anyone remember the Godwinns? And what's with the Skinner-Nailz inspired drab wardrobes of both Luke Harper and Erick Rowan? Love those overalls. Are they gonna wrestle in those every single week? Ugh. I have undeniable respect for the Rotunda and Windham families. BlackJack, Barry and Mike continue to be three of my all-time favourites which is why I want nothing but the very best for Windham but dude, Dan Spivey wants his gimmick back, yesterday. With that out of my system, let's get back to the matter at hand. Critics ripped into the Baltimore crowd for chanting "Husky Harris" when Rotunda appeared as Bray Wyatt, the leader of the Family, seemingly a cross between The Sawyer Family of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame and Max Cady from Scorsese's Cape Fear. They felt it was insulting and rude to throw his old persona in his face during the debut of his new character on Raw. I say, tough crap. The resentment of these critics is misplaced. Maybe if the WWE had done a better job managing people's careers in the first place the talent wouldn't have to reappear as 45 subsequent personalities. Furthermore, I didn't see these people complaining when Matt Bloom returned as the much improved Lord Tensai and the crowd chanted "Albert" or began the "Shave your back!" chants again. I was never a fan of Albert but I really feel for Matt Bloom these days. Tensai was different, he was gaining ground and he was portrayed as an honest threat. It was a massive step forward and improvement for Bloom. The WWE had another formidable and legit heel in their stable. Now, the WWE has demoted him to a comedy act. After all that effort to establish his new personality, they've relegated him to comic relief again. What a wasted opportunity and a waste of talent. Nobody cries for Bloom -- or Ryback, for that matter, when fans chant "Goooolberg" -- but they are furious on Rotunda's behalf. Selective outrage, it seems. The beauty of pro wrestling is the fans have the final say. Their unexpected reactions can change the course of history. Fans brought back Hulkamania by cheering Hogan on in his match against The Rock at WrestleMania 18. Fred Ottman's Tugboat gimmick was so despised by fans, the WWE teamed him with Earthquake in the Natural Disasters. Dolph Ziggler has such positive support at the present time, the WWE had no choice but to switch his and Alberto Del Rio's roles in their current feud. That is the magic of the industry. Unlike music, film or literature, the crowd has a major impact on the pro wrestling product and its ultimate direction. Like it or not, the people have spoken and have every right to express how they feel about everything from the wrestlers themselves, to the vignettes, to the pace of the matches, to the angles presented that night. For good or bad, it is their money, it's their prerogative and that's the way it should always be, like it or not. Previous Mat Matters Editorial columns John Powell is a founder of SLAM! Wrestling, and always has an opinion.

If there are potential "shortcomings in the data," then you shouldn't print a misleading title: "Survey Shows Heart Device Aids Men More Than Women." Rather, a better title would have been, "More Data are Needed to Understand the Effectiveness of Defibrillators in Women." Do we really want to withhold defibrillators from women on the basis of such a retrospective literature meta-analysis? But then, it's the New York Times. A much better review, including a comment on the study in question by yours truly and fellow EP blogger Dr. Rich Fogoros, can be found over at Larry Husten's Cardiobrief blog.

A Conversation with Philip Graham Three of Philip Graham’s early books are newly available in Dzanc/Open Road ebook editions. Graham asked me to write the introduction for one of them, The Art of the Knock, and while I was working on it, I asked him a few questions to satisfy my curiosity about his years working with Donald Barthelme and Grace Paley, his time in Africa, and his thoughts on symmetry and design, which are influenced in part by the poetry of Charles Simic and the plays of William Shakespeare. Kyle Minor: I’ve just finished re-reading The Art of the Knock, the book that first brought you to the attention of many readers. I was struck by its symmetries of design, a thing that seems to have been a preoccupation of yours. So many story collections are simply a grab bag, a greatest-hits-lately. But The Art of the Knock is, first and foremost, a book. The parts are in conversation, and they are arranged like a series of Chinese boxes, or Russian matroyshka dolls, on the one hand, and on the other, they are directional. We begin with digging through toward China, and we land in China. We go through three iterations of the “Art of the Knock” series. And the rest of the stories are nested in two in-between sections that seem mirror images one of the other, or at least they are in conversation. How did you find the form of that book? Did you write your way into it, or did the design arrive first? Philip Graham: Actually, The Art of the Knock grew out of a combination of the two approaches. I’d just published a first book of prose poems, The Vanishings, and my new work was tending toward the short story form. I’d written the first China piece, the first Art of the Knock story (though at the time I didn’t consider them part of a series, they just were what they were), and a few of the family stories—“Silence,” “Shadows,” and “The Distance.” I was simply working my way into a new book, and didn’t have a definite sense of what it might become. And then something happened. I remember the moment clearly. I was driving home after doing some teaching, a long drive from Richmond, Virginia to Charlottesville, where my wife and I were living, and I was driving against the sunset, squinting at the light, adjusting the visor, and then the structure of the book, just as you so elegantly describe in your question, simply hit, bam, without warning, inside me: the book would have a kind of an arched musical structure, ABCBCBA. I remember my first reaction to this little revelation was the thought, Wow, nice idea, but I doubt I could pull that off. Somehow, though, I managed to maintain that structure throughout the writing of the individual stories. And I have to confess, the template for such an idea didn’t entirely come out of the ether. In college I’d studied Bartok’s string quartets, and his great fourth and fifth quartets both have an arch structure. Musical material is shared by the first and fifth movements, while the second and fourth movements share their own, and the middle moment in each is its own, strange thing. Together they form an arch structure: ABCBA. Apparently this pattern had burrowed into me. I was also a huge fan of a book I’d studied in graduate school, Shakespearean Design, by Mark Rose. Shakespeare, apparently, never divided his plays into five acts; that was an editorial decision made by literary critics compiling his work a century after his death. So, Mark Rose asks, how did Shakespeare organize his plays? Turns out, according to Rose, Shakespeare was influenced by late Medieval and early Renaissance diptych and triptych panel paintings, those two- and three-part paintings that often tell or imply a story, through contrast and symmetry. Perhaps the most famous is “The Temptation of Saint Anthony,” by Hieronymus Bosch. While Bosch arranged his painting into a narrative, Shakespeare fit his narratives into the structure of a painting (and Shakespeare created a wide set of variations on this structure). One quick example: King Lear begins with three scenes. ABA. The first and third are short, private, conniving conversations between two people. Those scenes have nearly the same amount of lines. The middle scene, where Lear punks his own life by dividing his kingdom, is a grand public scene, with many more lines than the two shorter scenes that frame it. Rose goes through play after play, charting the deep symmetries of their structures. Shakespearean Design is an exhilarating book, one that I often assign to my fiction graduate students. Finally, I was a big fan of Charles Simic’s poetry, particularly his collection Dismantling the Silence, which has a kind of narrative, though not of developing events but developing themes. An odd collection of literary parents, certainly. I guess my little book had a village of ‘em. KM: I’m very curious about your literary pedigree. So many of my favorite writers have considered Grace Paley and Donald Barthelme to be their teachers, in the broadest sense of the term—we learn from their stories, we strive toward their intelligence, wit, and freedom. But you actually had both of them as teachers, in actual classrooms, Paley as an undergrad, and Barthelme as a graduate student. What was that like? And what were they like? PG: Hmmm, more parents. Grace was my teacher and official mentor—what’s called a “don” at Sarah Lawrence College, for three years when I was an undergraduate. She had a gentle way in the workshop, combining rigor with encouragement. I remember a class discussion of a scene in one of my stories where the narrator throws a cat into a lit fireplace, and I was taking a bit of a beating from the other students—what kind of monster could write such a thing, that poor kitty!—and then Grace quietly entered the fray and used the moment to illustrate the difference between an author and a narrator. At the time, she was finishing her second collection, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. I remember her showing me and other of her students the manuscript of “A Conversation with My Father.” She was quite nervous about it and wanted to get all the mirroring levels in it just right. We, of course, had nothing to add. That story is a masterpiece, but how instructive, for a young writer, to think of her uncertainty right up to the point of its publication. Grace was so down to earth that at first, in my naïve and barely assed-wiped youth, I wondered if she could really be that great of a writer. Her lack of pretension became a steadying force in my life, and the depth of her artistic, moral and political commitments are a standard that I aspire to but can never achieve. While Grace was mainly a realist writer—though bits of the fantastic could pop up here and there—Donald was a post-modern master. But they both could make prose sing, though to different ends, and in fact they were close friends. They lived across the street from each other in New York, on 11th Street. When I was applying to graduate schools, Grace suggested that I study with Don, she intuited a fit there. Don was teaching at City College in New York at the time. Now that was a class—Oscar Hijuelos, Ted Mooney, Wesley Brown, Karen Braziller, to name a few. Don would give us little assignments that were meant to help us confront our particular weaknesses as writers. Fairly new to teaching (he was a few years away from his move to the University of Houston), Don was occasionally a little stiff in the classroom, but always a gentleman, and those assignments were spot-on. He was also terrific in conference, a master of fine line editing, bestowing great aphoristic asides. Don had a sweet formality to him, and an inner discipline that was inspiring. Writing was, after all, work, and you sat down and did it. Funny, he seemed private, but his apartment was often open to his students, something we took advantage of, needy creatures that we were. Don would make drinks, chat a while, and then announce it was time for him to get back to work. KM: How did Paley and Barthelme influence the trajectory of your work? PG: They gave me great respect for the inherent truth telling in both the realist and non-realist (the fantastic, surrealism, etc.) traditions. Though it took me a long time to figure it out, my own particular journey as a fiction writer would be to attempt some blend of those two traditions. And along the way, their advice on the process of writing has been a continuing inspiration. Grace always worked on many stories at once, and she had a batch of folders, each one dedicated to a different story. It was her way of not succumbing to writer’s block—if she got stuck on a particular story, well, on to the next folder and try something there! This strategy made enormous sense to me, and I am always at work on more than one book at a time. I’m plugging away at three at the moment. Don once encouraged me to write a novel, which was a bit of typical contrarian advice, since at that time I was deep into prose poem-like constructions. I remember replying that I wouldn’t know where to begin, and he said something that has guided me for years. He said that where he began in a novel or a story rarely remained the beginning by the time the work was published. That first bit of inspiration usually found its place near the ending, or in the middle somewhere. Though he didn’t elaborate, I realized that reading a book, from page one to the end, is quite different from the writing of a book. Any book’s chronology is actually made up of disparate puzzle pieces. I’ve found this quite freeing. KM: You’ve been party to a long literary collaboration with Alma Gottlieb, and, I would assume, a collaboration that is more than literary, since you are married. How does that work? PG: Alma is a cultural anthropologist, and she and I have lived three times for extended periods with the Beng people, in small villages in the rain forest of Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa, beginning in 1979. While she conducted her research, I worked on my fiction. As you know from your own experiences in Haiti, living in a very different culture can be enormously challenging—it’s a form of on-the-spot translation, and one humbling mistake after another. The intensity of our experiences included my seeking out a diviner for writer’s block, or our discovering a poisonous snake in our mud house in the middle of the night, or my surviving a bicycle accident that was considered at attack by spirits, but the heart of those years was learning the lives and struggles of villagers who have no voice in the wider world. The richness of it all convinced Alma and me that one day we would have to write a memoir together. This was an odd assumption, since as an academic, she had never written narrative before, and as a fiction writer I’d never given nonfiction a go. What we finally worked out was a book of alternating first person narratives, working chronologically from our first day in Côte d’Ivoire to our last. Alma would write, say, a five-page section, and then I’d pick up the narrative thread for another section, then Alma, and so on. We’ve written two volumes of a memoir of Africa this way, Parallel Worlds and Braided Worlds. KM: What have you come to think about literary collaboration, and about authorship, through that process? PG: It ain’t easy! I would bleat out an annoying sound I dubbed Jargon Alert whenever Alma strayed into the hedging complexities of academic prose. And she made sure I stuck to nonfiction, no fancy embellishments. In a way, we taught each other another way to write, a process that was both extremely difficult and profoundly satisfying, that brought us to another level of marital companionship. Yet through all the writing, sustaining a narrative was paramount. We were attempting a popular, approachable take on the complexities of encountering a radically different culture, and our two memoirs are filled not only with our stories but with many life stories about individual Beng friends and neighbors as they developed over time. In this way, the books have a novelistic feel to them. The experience of living among the Beng altered me as a writer. I’d been deep into writing stories that had an element of surrealism, and the Beng cultural world seemed at first to be a form of surrealism: witchcraft, spirit possession, and ghosts wandering the village paths were all common sense assumptions. But then as the months passed that local common sense began to feel ordinary to me, I could see how the Beng cosmology worked and fit the lives of the villagers who believed it. Every culture comes up with some pretty weird stuff, and it lives inside the people who share that culture. Everyone’s real inner life can seem fantastic to someone else. I chewed on that for a while, and began writing different sorts of stories. The Art of the Knock, actually, is a record of that stylistic shift. Finally, I should mention that we receive not a dime from the royalties of the two books—those are dedicated to the Beng people, and after contributing to various projects in Bengland over the years, Alma and I are now in the process of incorporating an NGO that will further help the Beng, who, like their compatriots in Côte d’Ivoire, are still recovering from over a decade of political discontent and then civil war. KM: When you began to write the dispatches for McSweeney’s, which were eventually collected and expanded upon in The Moon, Come to Earth, did you think you were writing a book? PG: Oh no, that was supposed to be a side project. I had a year off to work on two books (the novel I am currently completing, and Braided Worlds), and Alma had a year’s leave too, so we decided to live in Lisbon, a favorite city of ours. With Côte d’Ivoire in the throes of extended civil unrest, Alma was looking for a new field site, and she began hanging out with Cape Verdeans in the city. Our daughter Hannah, then eleven, went to Portuguese schools. Travel, living abroad, sets the synapses on fire. At least it does for me. The present moment is so present, and the ordinary casts off dust that has cloaked its shine. I was at a point in my writing life where I needed that jolt of the new to hit hard, and it did. Those dispatches I sent in to McSweeney’s became necessary breathing for me, and because I was recording the events of my family settling into a life abroad, a kind of narrative, a plot began to emerge in real time, the significance of which was not entirely clear to me until later. The book may have started out as a portrait of Lisbon, but eventually it became a tale about family, and specifically about my daughter, and her struggles as a child facing another culture. Alma and I were also writing the first drafts Braided Worlds, which, alongside its continued engagement with the Beng people and their lives, also has an emphasis on family. Our last extended stay among the Beng we brought our son Nathaniel along, who was six at the time. So there I was in Lisbon, a transplanted American fiction writer, working on two books of nonfiction that were, in fundamental ways, about my children. KM: How has your long engagement with other parts of the world – Portugal, Africa – changed the way you’ve thought about literature, writing, all things? PG: I grew up in an emotionally disruptive family, where truth was routinely papered over by silence and denial. A great deal of my life since those early years has been a form of recovery, and I’ve come to see my fiction and nonfiction writing as complementary. The fiction explores every which way a family can go wrong, or at least slip down a ditch on even a clear and sunny day. And one thread of my three travel memoirs chronicles my continuing attempts, as a husband and a father, to hold a family together. As for any wider artistic vision, at this point in my life I feel local in a lot of places: the New York area, where I grew up, Côte d’Ivoire, Portugal, and Illinois in the Midwest, where I’ve taught for years and years. Cape Verde, too. So many elsewheres knead and shape who I might be, and that helps, I think, the process of imagining the inner landscapes of my fictional characters. KM: You’re still actively pursuing a print publishing career, and now Dzanc Books is reprinting some of your earlier work in e-book editions. What do you think about e-books, as a form? Do you see them as simply another delivery technology, or do they offer anything new to the writer who began in print? PG: I couldn’t be more delighted with the Dzanc Book e-reprints of my early work—what a great work they’re doing, recovering so many books in that series. It’s so satisfying to see my two story collections available once again (thank you again, Kyle, for your poetic introduction in the e-book version of The Art of the Knock), and I even gave my novel, How to Read an Unwritten Language, another revision go-round. Robert Olen Butler once said to me that e-books will be a writer’s immortality. Once in pixels, always in pixels, and in the future no publisher can keep your work “out-of-print” and cloistered from potential readers. I spend a good deal of time recommending—to friends, students, chance acquaintances—wonderful books that are unfortunately out of print. In the not too distant future that may not be an issue, and better the sale benefits the author and not the used book dealer, however dedicated he or she may be. Though the grim skull face of piracy also rears its ugly head when it comes to digital, I’ve come to appreciate what e-books offer as a reading experience. Soon after I bought an iPad (spurred by the fact that my son, a software engineer at Apple, had worked on it), I took my first dip in digital waters: the e-book version of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. After a few false starts with the page sweep, I quickly adapted, though I missed the heft and texture of a print version. In those first months I still read a lot of print books, going back and forth between the two formats. Then one evening Alma and I were reading in bed and I was wending my way through the first few pages of the paperback edition of César Aira’s novel Ghosts. Already I felt vaguely irked that the text wasn’t backlit and that I had to strain my eyes to read the nonadjustable smallish print. The novel begins at a construction site, and there was an architectural term I didn’t quite know the meaning of, so I pressed my finger against the page and Alma started laughing at me—I’d forgotten I was reading a paper edition and couldn’t simply touch a word to trick up the definition! That was the moment I realized I was hooked. For a while there I read almost nothing but e-books, and now I divide my time equally between the two. Each format has pleasures and conveniences the other can’t compete with. And in the end, a wonderful book is just that, a wonderful book. KM: Could you tell us a little about what you’re working on, now, and what new work we might see from you soon? PG: As I mentioned earlier, I’m working on three books right now, though two are simmering a bit on the backburner. One of those is a book on the craft of fiction and nonfiction that is shaping up as a kind of autobiography of my reading and writing life. I’ve been writing up sections of this book for a few years now, and posting them on my website (www.philipgraham.net). The other project is a novella inspired by my two stints as a volunteer near Ground Zero in New York, in 2001 and early 2002. The third project is a novel, Invisible Country, which I’ve been writing, on and off, since the mid-nineties. I’ve been publishing selected chapters from the novel for the past decade or so, and now it has finally found its way to the top of the cue. I’m almost done, I think. The inspiration goes back to 1993, when Alma and I last lived among the Beng. The Beng ethnic area is pretty isolated, and so when I received word that my father had died back in the States, it was too late to return for the funeral. What to do? My father had always wanted to travel, though he never did manage to do much of it—that was one small aspect of the family dysfunction. I thought, why not honor my dad through a funeral in the village? So Alma and I went through the various Beng ritual traditions. I write about this funeral (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/my-fathers-african-afterlife) in Braided Worlds, and the demands of truth telling made it one of my toughest challenges. Though the scene comes in the middle of the memoir, it was the very last of my sections that I wrote for the book. Soon after the funeral, a close friend in the village, Kokora Kouassi, began reporting his dreams to me, dreams in which my father appeared to him from the Beng afterlife. The Beng believe that the dead exist invisibly among the living, so Kouassi’s empathetic dreams were his way, I believe, of bringing my father, who had died so far away, closer to me. Though I was still writing How to Read an Unwritten Language, I had to put it on pause for a few weeks, since a batch of characters began popping up unbidden in my imagination. They were all ghosts, all Americans, wandering a Midwestern town much like the one I live in, and yet their afterlife was modeled on the Beng concept of the afterlife. Virtually all the characters of the novel came to me in those few weeks, and I’m been building the novel around them ever since. One ghost, a former mechanic, hovers at street corners and listens to the engines of the cars idling at the traffic light. If he hears trouble, he floats into the engine block and imagines the best way to repair it. But then he discovers that some drivers are listening to audio books, and he becomes hooked on all the stories that are driving around town. Another ghost is an entomologist who decides, upon her death, to squeeze her invisible body down to ant size, adopt an ant colony and continue her research. How these characters all meet up is what fuels the novel’s narrative. I should say, finally, that this novel brings together, in a way, the various strains of my writing output, fictional and nonfictional. Yes, this is a novel about a fictional afterlife, and yet for the Beng their concept of the afterlife is, to them, absolutely nonfiction, a real spiritual landscape. It also combines my honoring of the Beng and their cultural world with a decision I made years ago to honor the memory of my father, an attempt to help heal, however posthumously, a deeply problematic relationship. I’m just a few months away from finishing, so my brain is setting off sparklers right now, with a few Roman Candles thrown in for good measure . . .

Many poets have used the riddle format for creating clever and fascinating poems, too. Especially the brilliant J. Patrick Lewis. His latest contribution, Spot the Plot; A Riddle Book of Book Riddles (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2009), illustrated by Lynn Munsinger, is a terrific addition to this oeurve. It features a baker’s dozen collection of rhyming poems, each describing a much-loved classic work of children’s literature. (I won’t spoil it by listing those works—which are identified on the last page.) Lewis’s clever use of language and wordplay is ever evident and the subtle humor is playful and fun. Double-page spreads highlight each poem against a story-like backdrop illustration provided by the talented creator of Tacky the Penguin, Lynn Munsinger. A boy in Sherlock Holmes attire and a girl in a trenchcoat skip through each poem-riddle looking for clues and participating in the visual story. So appealing and inviting. Even the bookflap content is a riddle poem! I asked Pat about his choices of poem forms and he shared this nugget: “Prior to SPOT THE PLOT, I'd written four books of riddles on various themes. I love the form, the challenge of coming up with the obliquely perfect definition—telling the truth, but telling it slant. Riddles are inherently interactive, so they make great read-alouds at school visits. In SPOT THE PLOT, I was trying most often to tell the book riddle in as few words as possible, as in, “Her hair’s/The stairs.” Or, a new one, “This trail becomes/A trail of crumbs.” The fewer words, the better, that is, the cleverer, to my way of thinking. Just as often, though, I had to rely on a tercet or a quatrain to tell the tale, but with a hint of confusion, as in “Pre-teen plays/a starring role/as she surveys/ a rabbit hole.” But, you see, perhaps that “rabbit hole” gives too much away. Writing riddles, especially for children, which means making them all equally but not too perplexing, is damnably difficult.” As usual, Pat makes it look easy and offers “book review” poems in a variety of poetic formats. Here’s just one that I know kids and grown ups alike will enjoy: A magical telling, a pig for the selling, a spider is spelling out words that amaze. Do you know this spider, this spiderweb writer? The pig will delight her the rest of her days. From: Lewis, J. Patrick. 2009. Spot the Plot; A Riddle Book of Book Riddles. San Francisco: Chronicle. I’m so struck by what a teaching tool this could also be for teachers searching for a fresh approach to book reports: challenging kids to describe their favorite books via riddle poems. And if you’re looking for more examples of riddle poems, here’s a list you may find helpful. (Please let me know of any others you know about.) Poetry Books with Riddle Poems - Calmenson, Stephanie. 2005. Kindergarten Kids: Riddles, Rebuses, Wiggles, Giggles, and More! New York: HarperCollins. - Dotlich, Rebecca Kai. 2001. When Riddles come Rumbling: Poems to Ponder. Honesdale, PA: Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press. - Ghigna, Charles. 1995. Riddle Rhymes. New York: Hyperion Books for Children. - Lewis, J. Patrick. 2002. Arithmetickle. San Diego: Harcourt. - Lewis, J. Patrick. 1996. Riddle-icious. New York: Knopf. - Lewis, J. Patrick. 1998. Riddle-lightful. New York: Knopf. - Lewis, J. Patrick. 2004. Scien-trickery: Riddles in Science. Orlando: Harcourt. - Lewis, J. Patrick. 2009. Spot the Plot; A Riddle Book of Book Riddles. San Francisco: Chronicle. - Livingston, Myra Cohn. 1990. My Head is Red, and other Riddle Rhymes. New York: Holiday House. - Morrison, Lillian. 2006. Guess Again! Riddle Poems. Little Rock, AR: August House. - Nims, Bonnie Larkin. 1992. Just Beyond Reach and other Riddle Poems. New York: Scholastic. - Shannon, George. Busy in the Garden. New York: Greenwillow. - Sidman, Joyce. Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. - Spires, Elizabeth. 1999. Riddle Road: Puzzles in Poems and Pictures. New York: McElderry Books. - Spires, Elizabeth. 1995. With one White Wing: Puzzles in Poems and Pictures. New York: McElderry Books. - Swann, Brian. 1998. The House with No Door: African Riddle- Poems. San Diego: Harcourt. - Swann, Brian. 1998. Touching the Distance: Native American Riddle-Poems. San Diego: Harcourt. - Swenson, May. 1993. The Complete Poems to Solve. New York: Macmillan. Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2009. All rights reserved. Image credit: tptb.co.uk;chroniclebooks.com

1 The terms "divinity" and "deity" can be confusing. In most cases the terms have identical meanings. However, some have used "divine" to refer to an angel, since it came from God. However, an angel would not be a deity, since it is not by its 2 This book will only be concerned with the deity of Jesus. 3 JW's may on occasion say that Jesus is a "god." However, they do not believe that he is "God" in the fullest sense of deity. In their opinion, he is still a created being, unequal to God in his essence. 4 New Testament scholar, Raymond Brown, explains multiple ways of understanding Titus 2:13, "the appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ." Is Paul referring to our great God and Savior Jesus Christ as two persons? Or is he saying Jesus Christ is our great God-and-Savior? Naturally, one can see how it can be understood both ways. Brown notes that several careful scholars have understood the first option to be the more correct, while the latter is virtually the unanimous view held by grammarians and lexicographers. Raymond E. Brown. An Introduction to New Testament Christology (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1994), pp. 181-182. 5 The Septuagint is the Greek Translation of the Old Testament. This was the common translation in Jesus' day and used by the New Testament writers the majority of the time when quoting the Old Testament. Genesis 1:1 in the Septuagint reads: "In the arche (beginning), God created the heavens and the earth." 6 The Apostle Paul was particularly fond of using arche in this sense. Of the twelve (12) times he used it in his writings, nine (9) are in the political sense: Romans 8:38; 1 Corinthians 15:24; Ephesians 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Colossians 1:16; 2:10, 15; Titus 7 The translation "by God" is possible, but it is not required. 8 Notice that the word "other" is in brackets. This means the word is not found in the Greek text but was inserted by the translators of the NWT to clarify their interpretation. Their Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures provides their rationale in the footnote to verse 16, "All [other], as in Luke 11:41, 42" (p. 880). But these are not even good texts to support the NWT's interpretation, because "other" might be inserted in order to smooth the translation, but it is not required. Hebrews 2:10 has a Greek construction closer to Colossians 1:16, and yet "other" is not inserted in the NWT. Therefore, the NWT's insertion of "other" in Colossians 1:16 is clearly based on the Watchtower's assumption that Jesus was created and not because the Greek requires it. 9 For other examples see Genesis 4:10 and Psalm 85:10. Also see E. W. Bullinger, Figures Of Speech Used In The Bible: Explained and Illustrated (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 10 See also 1:20-21; 3:13-16; 4:5-9; 9:1-6. Also see Psalm 85:10. 11 One may also ask if "Wisdom" is Jesus, why refer to Him in the feminine gender. 12 This becomes especially clear when Proverbs 8 is taken in context with Proverbs 7 and 9. Verses 22-30 would seem completely misplaced if they referred to Jesus. However, they fit right in if "wisdom" is taken as a character quality which Solomon personifies. 13 Genesis 16. 14 Genesis 17:20-21. 15The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 2, p. 725 states that the word "is used to mark out Jesus uniquely above all earthly and heavenly beings; in its use the present soteriological [salvific] meaning is more strongly stressed than that 16 Verses 3, 20, 35, 49. 17 1 Samuel 8. 18 1 Samuel 9:15-17; 10:1. 19 No other major translation renders it as 22synesteken. See Kittel and Friedrich, eds. Theological Dictionary Of The New Testament, Volume VII (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982), p. 23proteuon. Ibid., Volume VI, pp. 24 Ibid., pp. 877-878. 25 Matthew 19:4-5. 26 Ephesians 5:22-23; Colossians 27 Brown. An Introduction to New Testament Christology, pp. 174, 189. 28 For the writings of Ignatius and other early Church Fathers see J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, eds. and transl., The Apostolic Fathers, Second Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 29 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:3:4. In this passage, Irenaeus also claims to have spoken with Polycarp when he (i.e., Irenaeus) was young. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 4:14. In the latter, Eusebius quotes Irenaeus. 30 Polycarp. Philippians 31 The topic of how the early Church Fathers viewed Jesus is beyond the scope of this book. However, you may find an article on the subject by this author on his web site at www.risenjesus.com. Go to the "Articles" section and select "The Early Church Fathers on Jesus." 32Harris, Archer, Waltke, eds. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Volume 2 (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), p. 907. 33 Richard Patterson, "Joel," in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gaebelein and Richard P. Polycyn, eds. Volume 7 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1985), p. 34 Harris, Archer, Waltke, eds. TWOT, Vol. 1, p. 149. 35Dr. Ron Sauer, Professor of New Testament at Moody Bible Institute, kindly pointed this out to me. Dr. Sauer was the last student of the late F. F. Bruce. When I studied under him at Liberty University, he devoted 8-14 hours daily to his personal study in the Greek New Testament and instilled a passion in this student and many others to learn the Greek language of the New Testament. 36NIDNTT, Vol. 2, p. 86. TDNT, Vol. III, p. 123. See Romans 1:20 for its only use in the New Testament. Interestinly, the NST has rendered the word "Godship." 37NIDNTT, Vol. 2, p. 86. TDNT, Vol. III, p. 119. Also, see Fritz Rienecker. A Linguistic Key To The Greek New Testament. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1980), p. 38Revelation 22 is somewhat difficult to follow because John changes from one speaker to another without warning, as he seems to do in verses 7, 12, and probably 17. The KJV (Red Letter editions) and the NIV seem to present the conversation most clearly. The NASB seems confused on where to place the quotation marks. It has Jesus speaking in verses 6 and 7. But that is awkward because it would force the Father to send the angel in verse 6 and then Jesus to send the same angel for the same purpose in verse 16. The NWT is likewise confused, identifying Jesus as the angel in verse 6 and also as the one who sends the same angel (quite a task to send yourself) in verse 16. 39Should You Believe in the Trinity? New York: Watchtower Bible And Tract Society of New York, Inc., 1989, pp. 26-28. 40The same is also found in The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (Brooklyn: Watchtower Bible And Tract Society Of New York, Inc., 1985), pp. 11-39-1140. 41The article is specifically identified in Appendix 2A of The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, pp. 1140 as Philip B. Harner, "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1," in Journal of Biblical Literature, ed. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Vol. 92, 1973, pp. 75-87. 42King James Version, American Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, New International Version, Revised Standard Version, New Revised Standard Version, New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, New English Bible, Revised English Bible ("what God was, the Word was"), Amplified Bible ("the Word was God Himself"), Today's English Version ("he was the same as God"), New Living Translation ("he was God.") 43Harner, p. 84. 44 Harner, p. 85. 45 Harner, p. 85. New Testament scholar, Murray Harris agrees. See his excellent book, Jesus As God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), p. 70. The late New Testament scholar, Raymond Brown agrees in An Introduction to New Testament Christology, pp. 46Harner, p. 85. 47"god" verses "God," much like "mighty god" verses "Almighty God." 48Harner, p. 87. 49e.g., John 4:20; 5:15; 20:31. A. T. Robertson. A Grammar Of The New Testament In The Light Of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1934), pp. 759-761, 795 and H. E. Dana and Julius R. Mantey. A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament (Toronto: The Macmillan Company, 1955), pp. 139-140, 148-149. 50As mentioned earlier, you may find an article on the subject of the early Church Fathers on Jesus by this author on his web site at www.risenjesus.com. Go to the "Articles" section and select "The Early Church Fathers on Jesus." 51Irenaeus. Against Heresies, Book 1, Ch 8; Book 3, Ch 11 (3 x's); Book 5, Ch 18. 52Ibid., Book 1, 53Origin. De Principiis, Book 1, Ch 2, Section 3. 54Origin. Contra Celsus, Book 1, Ch 66 [1:66]; 3:62; 4:99; 5:22; 6:48, 61, 68; 69 (2 x's), 71; 7:17 (3 x's), 42; 8:15, 22, 39, 75. 55Clement of Alexandria. The Instructor, Book 1, Ch 5. 56For details, the reader may refer to the article by this author titled, "The Early Church Fathers on Jesus," located at www.risenjesus.com. Click on the 57 When cornered, JWs may likewise reply that they are not interested in debate. You may reply "I'm not either. But when it comes to something as important as the eternal destiny of our soul, important questions must be asked and answered." 58There are actually 2 others but these are not readily apparent: Romans 8:33 reads theos ho dikaion ("God is the one who justifies") and John 10:34 that reads theoi este ("gods you are" or "You are gods." 59In Greek the subject is often contained in the verb as in this phrase.). The Greek Grammarians Dana and Mantey say that this statement "emphasizes Christ's participation in the essence of the divine nature" (A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, p. 140). " . . . and the word was deity. The article points out the subject in these examples . . . nor was the word all of God, as it would mean if the article were also used with theos. As it stands, the other persons of the Trinity may be implied in theos" (Ibid., pp. 148-149). 60As the New Revised Standard Version translates it. 61F.F. Bruce. The Epistles Of John (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), p. 142.

Islamist election map Amani Maged reviews the confluences and fault-lines engineered by the plethora of Islamist factions Click to view caption| Islamists are heavily represented in the electoral campaign as they are expected to win 45 per cent of People's Assembly seats photo: Sherif Sonbol The 2011 parliamentary elections are not only the first to be held in post- revolutionary Egypt but also the first in which the full gamut of Islamist movements and factions will take part. The Salafis, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, Jihad and the Sufis have never before participated in the political process. For some, such as the Salafis, non-participation was voluntary. Before the revolution they shunned political involvement, denouncing it as sinful and the democratic process as heretic. While in the past Muslim Brotherhood members fielded themselves as independents, with the creation of the Freedom and Justice Party the group is now participating in an official capacity. With their newly formed political parties, the Salafis and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya are encroaching onto what was once a Muslim Brotherhood preserve. Until the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood had been the sole representative of the Islamist trend in the political process. In part because of public sympathy at the way it was repressed by the regime it became a formidable opposition force and succeeded in making major inroads in syndicate, municipal and parliamentary elections. The revolution, however, has turned earlier balances and assumptions in the Islamist camp upside down. Now they have hit the campaign trail Islamists, as a whole, expect to win 45 per cent of the seats in the People's Assembly. The following is a brief overview of the major Islamist parties: The Freedom and Justice Party is the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Islamist organisation which has a daunting reputation for organisation wedded to political experience gained from having participated in parliament since 1987. The party is headed by Mohamed Mursi. The Nour (Light) is the largest of the Salafist parties participating in the political process. It is headed by Emad Abdel-Ghafour. The Wasat (Centre), the first party to be licensed after Mubarak was ousted, maintains an Islamic frame-of-reference and is headed by ex-Muslim Brother Abul-Ela Madi. The Reform and Development Party is the political wing of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya. Tareq El-Zomor is one of its founders. The Asala (Authenticity) is a Salafist party founded in July 2011 and headed by General Adel Abdel-Maqsoud Afifi. It is supported by Salafi preachers such as Sheikh Mohamed Hassan and Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud Afifi. The Reform and Revival Party, set up on 18 July 2011, is an outgrowth of the Islamist Project for Social Reform which began operating in Alexandria in 1997. Both are headed by Hisham Mustafa-Abdel Aziz. The Egyptian Liberation Party is the first political party to represent the interests of Sufi orders, including the Azamiya order founded and led by Mohamed Alaaeddin Abul-Azayem. Ibrahim Zahran heads the party. THE DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE: Several months ago the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) joined with a host of other political groupings to form the Democratic Alliance. From a highpoint of 40 members, the Alliance has shrunk to just ten and now includes, alongside the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing, the Karama (Dignity), Ghad (Tomorrow), Reform and Revival, Hadara (Civilisation), Labour, Social Peace, Geel (Generation), the Arab Socialist Egypt and the Liberal Parties. The Alliance will contest the elections under the slogan "For the Good of Egypt" rather than the Muslim Brotherhood's motto "Islam is the solution". It will field 678 candidates on its lists -- 498 for the People's Assembly and 180 for the Shura Council -- of which the vast majority, 500, are FJP members. The FJP, which is fielding 76 female candidates, is the only member of the coalition to have placed women on its lists. The Alliance's Cairo list is headed by Wahid Abdel-Meguid, chair of the coalition steering committee. Leading Karama Party figure Amin Iskander, ranks third in the list, behind Hazem Farouk, an FJP member and former MP. Recent changes to the electoral law dictate that half of any list must comprise workers and farmers, and that each list includes at least one female candidate. The rankings of FJP female candidates on Alliance lists vary. Manal Mohamed Abul-Hassan ranks fifth on the list for Cairo's district. Nagafa Abdel-Mawla, who doubles as a "worker", ranks sixth on the list for Cairo's District 3. Wafaa Mustafa Mashhour, daughter of the sixth Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide, heads the list for Assiut, followed by Maha El-Sayed Abul-Ezz. In Alexandria constitutional scholar Sobhi Saleh leads the first list. He faces competition from Salafi candidates and former NDP bigwig, construction magnate Hisham Talaat Mustafa. Despite a large Salafist presence, Alexandria's Islamist politics have long been overshadowed by the Muslim Brotherhood. With the emergence of Salafist parties such as the Nour, competition between these two camps of the Islamist movement is expected to be tough in the Mediterranean city. In Minya the FJP is fielding its Secretary-General Mohamed Saad El-Katatni. He faces an uphill battle against Wasat Party Chairman Abul-Ela Madi who broke away from the Muslim Brotherhood 15 years ago. In Qalioubiya FJP candidate Secretary- General Mohamed El-Beltagui is almost guaranteed victory in a constituency he has long served as MP. Key JFP members top the Alliance's lists in other districts. In Giza Districts 1 and 2 JFP is fielding, respectively, its Vice President Essam El-Erian and Helmi El-Gazzar. In Gharbiya District 2, Sharqiya District 2 and Beheira District 1, the lists are headed by Saad El-Husseini, Farid Ismail Abdel-Halim and Gamal Hishmat. In some governorates the 10-member Democratic Alliance will compete against "remnants" of the former regime. In Qena District 1 Mahmoud Abdel-Rahim faces former MP and NDP stalwart Abdel-Rahim El-Ghoul. The coalition has not concentrated its efforts evenly across governorates. In North Sinai, where tribal allegiances are likely to prevail, it is fielding just four candidates: Suleiman Saleh, Khaled Mohamed Muslim, Mohamed Nassar Ibrahim and Inas Mustafa Hamdan. Campaign strategists appear to have assumed their candidates would be unable to compete against Sinai Bedouin. THE ISLAMIST ALLIANCE: When the Salafist Asala Party and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya's Reform and Development Party withdrew from the Democratic Alliance in protest at the FJP's refusal to give them greater prominence on the candidate lists, they turned to another Salafist Party -- the Nour -- to form an alternative electoral coalition. The Islamist Alliance is fielding 695 candidates in the People's Assembly and Shura Council elections. Of these, 610 are members of the Nour, including 60 women. Many suspect the latter were included out of legal necessity to meet the quota demanded under the electoral law. Certainly their presence does not shield the Salafis from charges of misogyny, given that the ultra- conservative parties refuse to allow their photographs to appear on posters or campaign literature. In place of their images a flower symbol has been substituted. The Nour Party's strongest support is thought to be in the Delta, in Alexandria, Beheira, Damietta and Qalioubiya. The Asala Party, headed by General Adel Afifi, is fielding 40 candidates (35 for the People's Assembly and five for the Shura Council) and the Reform and Development Party is fielding 45 candidates (38 for the People's Assembly and eight for the Shura Council). Whereas the Asala is focussing on the capital and Middle Egypt, the Reform and Development Party is homing in on the Saeed, or Upper Egypt. Among the Islamist Alliance's most prominent candidates are Abdel-Moneim El-Shahat, spokesman for the Salafist Calling in Alexandria, who is running in the Montazah District, Hazem Shuman in Mansoura and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya lawyer Mamdouh Ismail, standing in District 1, Cairo. In districts where leaders of the Ansar Al-Sunna Society and the Islamic Law Society are standing they have been placed at the top of the lists in an attempt to capitalise on the popularity the two organisations have won by providing health services. Salafist sources claim that the alliance has a huge following and predict that it will win 30 per cent of parliamentary seats. Despite defecting from the Democratic Alliance, the Salafis and other Islamist parties continue to coordinate with the FJP led coalition in the face of challenges from "remnants" of the former NDP, allocating districts so as to avoid competing Islamist candidates and a split in the Islamist vote. The Islamists have also reached agreement in some constituencies being contested by independents. The Salafis, for example, agreed not to contest the independent constituency of Talbiya, leaving it to a Muslim Brotherhood candidate, and in return the Brotherhood is leaving the field open, in the same constituency, for the Nour's "worker" representative. In northern Cairo the FJP and Nour engaged briefly in a tug-of-war over Mohamed Yosri Ibrahim, Secretary-General of the Islamic Law Organisation for Rights and Reform. Both parties wanted him to head their list in Madinat Nasr. Ibrahim settled the dispute by opting to run as an independent. Although the Nour is a new party, it has already shown formidable organising ability. Since being founded it has made rapid strides towards building up a nationwide, grassroots base and now has 100,000 members spread between 150 branch headquarters. WASAT LEADERS HEAD THEIR PARTY LISTS: The Wasat is fielding 322 candidates for the People's Assembly elections on lists in 46 voting districts and 70 candidates in single-ticket ballots. Party leaders top the lists in the hope their names will attract votes. In the Shura Council elections the party will contest 24 out of 30 districts, with 96 candidates on proportional lists and 20 on single-ticket ballots. The party's candidates include two Copts and 69 women. In Minya Wasat Party head Abul-Ela Madi faces FJP Secretary-General Mohamed Saad El-Katatni. In Damietta veteran lawyer and Wasat Vice President Essam Sultan also faces a tough Brotherhood challenge in a campaign that has already degenerated into mutual accusations and slurs. Less fraught, but also interesting, will be the race in North Giza/Imbaba where the Wasat list is headed by Nader El-Sayed, an Egyptian national football team goalie. "COME TO SUCCESS!": Hayya ala al-falah (Come to success!), one of the refrains of the call to prayer, has been chosen as the motto of the Egyptian Liberation Party, the first official Sufi grouping to stand in elections. Led by Ibrahim Zahran, the party represents the Azamiya order, the largest Sufi group in the country. The motto, says the party's Secretary- General Essam Mohieddin, reflects his party's belief in the work ethic. The Egyptian Liberation Party has held several workshops for its members in an attempt to turn political novices into effective campaigners and organisers. Sheikh Alaa Abul-Azayem, the master of the Azamiya order and one of the founders of the party, is shuttling back and forth between Aswan and other Upper Egyptian cities to support the party's candidate and Sufis running as independents or as candidates of other parties. The Egyptian Liberation Party is fielding 15 candidates, including three women, in three governorates. Sufi candidates also appear on the lists of Wasat, the Wafd and the Liberal Party.

WOOF tracks down the worst of the American bullies! Take a simple premise like: “everybody despises a bully,” okay? And consider that for a moment. If you’re anything like us, you are probably amenable to that premise. In fact, for well over 200 years, Americans have been opposed by tradition and by visceral reflex, to bullying. One might go so far as to say, it was the bullying of the colonies by King George III that resulted in the founding of our Republic. We not only resisted bullying by going to war with the greatest military power on earth in 1776, we got fed up with subsequent bullying at sea by the British navy and went to war with England a second time in 1812– a monumentally injudicious act that resulted in our capital being burned by the redcoats, and talk about bullies! The British admiral, Cockburn, was such a sore head that he went out of his way to demolish the office building of the D.C. newspaper National Intelligencer because the paper routinely referred to him as “the ruffian.” He even ordered his troops to destroy all the typeset for the letter “C” so that the paper, once reconstituted, could no longer criticize him. These things in mind, how could WOOF resist joining in the national bully bashing this October, declared “bullying prevention month” way back in 2006! Historically, by the way, things would have gone from awful to totally awful for our nation in the War of 1812, were it not for the Supreme Being, who intervened in Admiral Cockburn’s brutish business by hitting the city with a thunderstorm that quenched the flames, rapidly progressing into a hurricane that drove the redcoats back to their badly battered ships, but not before spinning off a tornado that tore into their troops attempting to occupy Washington. This should not have astonished Cockburn who, as a student of the Old Testament, might have realized aforehand that the Lord has a history of punishing bullies—just ask Goliath—oops, you can’t, he’s dead. So, as we said exordially, almost every red-blooded American, no matter what his other affiliations or beliefs may be, dislikes bullies. And given this happy concordance of opinion, how very fortunate that our nation’s schools are focusing on this despicable phenomenon in their class rooms and school yards from sea to shining sea, right? And it can hardly have escaped the attention of any parent (or school child) that one of the most significant learning activities in our nations schools nowadays involves this very issue. This is important, one gathers, because according to the National Association of Elementary School Principals, “at least 28 percent of students between the ages of 12 and 18 are bullied at school.” In fact, the NAESP goes on to say, “As much as 6 percent of students report having been threatened with harm.” So WOOF sees a bit of sunlight in these statistics, because when we went to school almost all bullies threatened whomever they were bullying with harm, so perhaps a kinder, gentler species of bully is in our midst? But at any rate, the NAESP concludes that “Maintaining a safe, nurturing school environment for students is any school leader’s top priority.” And we at WOOF could not agree more—we want a safe nurturing environment for every American citizen, and especially our kids! But there is a certain lack of girth and heft in the pronouncement from the NAESP, don’t you think? Like, okay, what exactly are we going to do about these bullies when we locate them, and what do they look like—just who are they? Is there a typological commonality that we can screen for? It appears that this in not the recommended approach, although fortunately the new Common Core educational system will be recording facial-metric readings of our children—perhaps this is intended to weed out inchoate ruffians? Meanwhile, from all the school literature on this subject that WOOF studied, it appears that the only means of correctly identifying a bully is to observe him bullying someone, or to receive a report of him bullying someone. When this occurs, the general idea seems to be that school officials should listen with empathy and compassion—and let the student or the student’s parents (depending on who is reporting the incident) know that reporting the incident was the right thing to do. If this doesn’t immediately fix the problem, developing a school safety plan for the bullied individual is highly recommended, perhaps insisting on different seating arrangements in the class room or on the school bus. If this still doesn’t fix the problem, the NEA (as well you may have suspected) has some concrete suggestions for kids who find themselves confronted by a bully. From the NEA website, here they are in the order proposed: Five Ways to Handle a Bully - Stay calm and alert. Consider the options and do nothing to escalate the situation. - Walk away. Fighting isn’t worth it. You do not have to prove yourself by fighting. - Take a non-violent stand. Speak respectfully: “I don’t want to fight you.” - Report it to authorities, but discuss with them how you will be protected from retaliation. - Get away. Find safety or call for help. Oh, and it turns out that sometimes bullies themselves may lack sufficient instruction from their parents on the inadvisability of being bullies! And since the NEA is firmly of the opinion that all parents of bullies will wish to address the situation immediately and responsibly, it turns out there is plenty for them to do too! For instance, they should see that their child apologizes to the victims he bullies and undoes any damage, such as replacing stolen or destroyed property, maybe paying for any medical damage? Parents of bullies should be more careful whom their child hangs out with, and if he is hanging out with a particularly rum lot—like say the Sharks or the Jets or the Symbianese Liberation Army, they should “encourage new friendships.” “I feel angry right now!” Pearson, the subversive textbook publisher who primarily supplies Common Core with the propaganda requisite to establishing their planned curricula, has also been looking into the bullying situation and come to some interesting conclusions. Did you know that kids who are bullied are often loners, or independent types with few friends “and therefore easily isolated?” Contrary to popular notions, research indicates that bullies frequently have very high self-esteem, while their victims tend to have lower self-esteem, be physically weaker than their tormentors, and lack social self-defense skills. Some victims skip days of school or are driven to eventually drop out altogether to avoid their tormentors, perhaps because the development of that school safety plan so highly recommended by the NAESP has yet to be fully implemented for them. Additionally, special training is being offered school bus drivers and educators on how to employ a marvelous new methodology developed by school psychologists known as “conflict resolution,” although lots more training seems in order considering the amount of school-bus beating videos we keep seeing on the news. Trainees will receive curriculum guides for elementary, middle and high school students as well as informational posters. These guides will alert them to creative techniques for dealing with peer pressure, how to stage an effective cooling off phase for both parties, and how to develop active and reflective listening skills so beloved of humanistic psychology. Trainees will also hone their anger management skills and master the use of feedback exchanges beginning with “I statements” such as “I feel angry right now…” or maybe, “I think you just broke my nose.” Even more encouragingly, Pearson reports that “Nearly every state has passed legislation defining and prohibiting bullying, often authorizing, encouraging and even requiring local school districts to identify methods to decrease and document bullying, and to find nonviolent methods of conflict resolution.” With such arduous effort put into the elimination of bullying in our nation’s schools, Americans might naturally wonder how bullying in any shape or form can possibly have survived. Well, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the percentage of students aged 12-18 who reported being bullied at school has increased by 24.5 percent since 2003, with the latest data samples released in 2007. Now that strikes WOOF as somewhat odd, because this seems to correlate rather exactly with the rise of anti-bullying campaigns—is it possible that these magnificent programs are having little if any of the desired effect? Might they even be stimulating what scatter chart analysts call a positive correlation? WOOF turned its cyberspacial attentions to some university libraries packed with scholarly research and unearthed a meta-analysis of these programs performed by Ferguson, San Miguel and Kilburn of Texas A&M in Criminal Justice Review, Volume 32 Number 4, which concluded that “although anti-bullying programs produce a small amount of positive change, it is likely that this change is too small to be practically significant or noticeable….Results were best for programs that specifically targeted high-risk youth, although even here, the overall effect size was small.” More recently, this September in fact, the University of Texas Arlington released a study that found that bullying prevention programs in schools typically increase incidences of physical and emotional attacks among students. The study’s lead scientist, Dr. Seokjin Jeong, explained that “The school interventions say, ‘You shouldn’t do this,’ or ‘you shouldn’t do that.’ But through the programs the students become highly exposed to what a bully is and they know what to to do or say when questioned by parents or teachers.” In short, Jeong’s study shows that students in schools with anti-bullying programs are more likely to be victimized than in schools without them. “This study raised an alarm,” declared the perceptive Dr. Jeong. “Usually people expect an anti-bullying program to have some impact — some positive impact.” Is somebody promoting bullying? And if so, are they concomitantly promoting submissiveness to bullies? And why on earth would this be going on? Well, the answer is best sought in the philosophies of Karl Marx. Now there’s something we don’t get to say everyday! Let’s look at a quick history of conflict resolution with bullies: Was it ever successful? As a matter of fact, didn’t it used to be a considerably less complex process than it is today? What accounts for the mammoth increase in incidents? Basically, the same factor that accounts for the massive increase of disciplinary problems across the public school systems and the considerably worsened learning scores that nobody in the field of education seems to be able to explain sensibly. It can be stated rather simply: Nobody has the authority to do anything to anybody in a way that really matters. And why is that, gentle readers? Why are the worst in our midst permitted to walk around cussing out their teachers, pounding the faces of their peers, dressing like refugees from an off-Broadway revival of O, Calcutta, fornicating in the hallways, and using language that twenty years ago would have resulted in their being dragged by the scruff of the neck to the Principle’s office and paddled on their hinder parts? What happened to the grown ups? The children of the 60’s “grew up” and had children, dear readers, and when narcissistic dope-smoking overpaid under-educated technocrats, lawyers, and yes, college professors have children, you may rest assured they will enjoy the full protection of the most litigious and utterly solipsistic generation in history. In short: Little Arthur may have told his homeroom teacher to eat s*it and die, but that was little Arthur’s first amendment right—you know, he spoke truth to power. And when his red-faced homeroom teacher threw a stapler at him, it was only right that she was charged with first degree assault and removed in handcuffs. Arthur could have been seriously injured. That woman was lucky to get off with a suspension! This is a far cry from the schools your gramma and gampa went to, Woofketeers. Perhaps very different from the school you yourself may recall attending, but the first rule that ramified from the liberalization of education was the law of the sacrosanct student. You may keep him after class, or deny him a few silly tokens, or deprive him of recess, or send a note home, but you may never do anything seriously impressive to him. That would be fascism! (Besides, that’s what the bullies are for!) Now here’s an odd fact—did you know that while teachers are often heard to bemoan their powerlessness over the renegade nihilists who reduce their classrooms to chaos nowadays, the teachers unions have traditionally been in lockstep with the litgative classes in promoting such protectionism? Why on earth would that discrepancy exist? Okay, think about this: Why do most beat cops appreciate an armed citizenry and will even give tips to armed citizens on lawful firearms use in the event of crisis, but their police chiefs and commissioners revile the 2nd amendment and speak out against it at every opportunity? Because the standard communist technique for infiltration has always been from the top down, preferably by appointment. And appointees make more reliable allies than the rank and file—because you don’t have to spend a lot of time suborning them; you just locate fellow travelers who are already naïve enough or consciously subversive enough to advance the progressive agenda—and appoint them! Why grow a radical when you can simply insert him or her? The Blackboard Archipelago Time to pay a little visit to Siberia—just to make a point. We won’t be long. Remember how in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (we think it’s in volume one, but we’re too lazy to check) he talks about the “Zeks” (the political prisoners) being placed under the control of the ordinary criminals who are given a degree of authority over them in the destructive labor camps? He explains that the ordinary criminals were considered mere victims of oppression; but the political prisoners were the real louses, they having murmured against the collective and been packed off to gulag as traitors. Thus, the criminal was an exemplar of the Marxist principle of alienation, while the intellectual or common citizen was a hated counterrevolutionary who spoke treason against the state. See the difference? Even the dullest Commissar could figure out whom to put in charge of whom! To oversimplify for the sake of brevity, we shall hurriedly point out that Karl Marx wrote that the law is the mechanism by which one social class (the ruling class) oppresses all other classes, thus retaining them in positions of disadvantage. Pretty basic right? It will surprise no one, we trust, if we iterate here that Marxists are critical of the ideas, values and norms of capitalist ideology (our society, even now, as perceived by communists). Marxism characterizes the modern democratic state as being under the control of the “holders of the means of production”…you know, the “ruling class.” Okay, so where are we going with this? Well, it’s really more like where Marx goes with it. See, to make things even harder on the dispossessed, communists argue that political power is used to reinforce economic inequality by embedding individual property rights in the law so the right people stay poor and miserable and subjugated. And this generates criminal behavior simply as a means of survival. The cure for crime, therefore, is socialism, (what else?) but in non-socialist countries like ours (sort of) honest citizens become alienated and experience “anomie” which is really bad. And anomie is (well it’s a word, obviously, but…) from a communist standpoint it’s: the chief cause of crime in non-communist countries! See, Comrade Joe Six Pack is just going about his daily life in the capitalist hell hole called North America, trying his best to get along on the crumbs tossed him by the capitalist pigs who exploit him in conjunction with the theory of surplus value (but we digress), when whamo, he runs smack dab into a bad case of anomie. Now, in English, anomie just means the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community– the fragmentation of social identity and consequent rejection of personal adherence to social mores. So, to translate from communist, Comrade Joe Six Pack is so oppressed, frustrated and alienated because of being constantly exploited by the capitalistic ruling elite, that he just suddenly robs a bank, or shoots a stranger on a beach, like that Camus dude. Let’s make it simple and say that Joe steals a Slim Jim because he’s hungry because the capitalistic system that oppresses him doesn’t allow him sufficient subsistence to fully assuage his hunger—or maybe just to strike a revolutionary blow against the ruling class. Okay, so if Joe gets caught, the ruling class will use its system of laws to punish Joe, because they see him as criminal. But to the more enlightened Marxist observer, Joe is a revolutionary hero—or at very worst a victim. And all this having been now explicated, we have one half of the answer to why all the bullying programs aren’t stopping the bullying. They are no more expected to stop bullies than the Gulag was expected to discourage bullying. They are meant to ensure that the right people get bullied! Remember the fat kid named Casey? Remember the fat kid by the name of Casey from a couple of years ago who was bulled so much that the punks took turns bullying him while the others taunted him and video taped it? The video went viral when Casey decided he’d had enough and grabbed the aggressive little twerp who was throwing punches at him and flipped him over his shoulder, landing him on the school walkway with a thud. Seemed like an effective interaction to us, but remember the result of that encounter? Casey was suspended. The bullies were not punished. This is a classic example, Woofketeers. The “zeks” are not supposed to interfere with the criminal classes whose resentments stem from legitimate social alienation! And who are today’s experts on bullying? One of the best known is the author of It Gets Better, Dan Savage, who is by almost anyone’s standard a fairly accomplished bully himself. Mr. Savage is dedicated specifically to helping homosexual kids who get bullied, and WOOF is fine with that, but he achieves this by angrily denigrating the Bible and Christianity whenever he lectures. Recently, he drove several students out of the National High School Journalism conference and reduced some of the departing girls to tears. As they left the lecture room sobbing, the anti-bullying authority yelled, “Pansies!” and explained to his audience that leaving amid his fusillade of hate speech was “pansie-assed!” In fact, the main themes of Savage’s anti-bullying lectures are that “the Bible is BS” and “Everyone should be using birth control!” And these sentiments have so endeared Mr. Savage to Our Beloved Helmsman that the Obama administration has made Savage the center piece of its own crusade against bullying. Orwellian, no? In fact, the White House website not only praises Savage, it connects to his recommended reading list, which has been conservatively (no pun intended) described as hyper-sexualized, running as it does from recommendations on recreational masturbation techniques to insights into how one can increase one’s self esteem by becoming a prostitute. How any of this prevents bullying remains nebulous. Calling Count Dante! Thus, the average American student who finds himself bullied continues to be offered only the most nominal assistance, almost no portion of which is designed to stymie actual bullying. Bullies are permitted to flourish with only the most superficial efforts initiated against them while the help given victims seems either entirely inapposite or of a nature conducive to a nation of Little Lord Fauntleroys—kids who complain to officialdom (if they survive) and rely on centralized authority to solve their problems. About the only certain way to get expelled or suspended as the result of a bullying incident in an American public school is to be bullied and attempt to defend oneself! The days when kids sent a couple of bucks to John “Count Dante” Keehan (who was actually an excellent karate black belt despite all the theatrical hoopla) to obtain a copy of The World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets, or worked out at a gym throwing jabs and hooks in order to master the manly art of self defense, are as long ago as sock hops and hot rods. And this leads us to the second secret of contemporary bullying programs: To accustom Americans to being bullied. To move them from the era of latchkey kids who settled their differences, often quite bloodily, in the parking lot after school, to their new role as doormat kids, who accept the pounding in the sure and certain knowledge that somebody in officialdom will take a report and file it, and see that it is crunched statistically to determine whether current policies are proving efficacious. Remember Dr. Jeong’s remark? “Usually people expect an anti-bullying program to have some impact – some positive impact.” But Dr. Jeong missed the point. The programs are delivering exactly as intended, because the ostensible anti-bullying emphasis is in reality a training ground for the appropriate style of bullying—the kind best evinced by the likes of Dan Savage, and intended for use by servitors of the “Fundamentally Transformed” States of America. The programs serve merely as conditioning exercises for obsequiousness in the face of bullying—ensuring that none dare respond in the traditional American way…with a solid right cross. No, instead Johnny is being taught to chant his peace mantra, dialogue respectfully with the aggressor, and if necessary, “tell an adult.” Unfortunately, as Diana West demonstrated in a recent book, there aren’t any adults available any more. Only educators, counselors, sociologists, and the usual assortment of progressives sipping latte in the faculty lounge while discussing “social justice.” Now you know the second secret of contemporary bullying programs: To accustom Americans to being bullied, because being bullied is soon to become the new normal. Ask Joe the Plumber who had the audacity to ask candidate Obama a question he mishandled back in 2008. Obama admitted wanting to “spread the wealth around,” and for just a moment the reptoid was visible beneath the attractive human mask. Unforgivable! Poor Joe was savaged by the pro-Obama Democrat media as though he were Squeaky Fromm! (In fact, when Fromm attempted to shoot Jerry Ford her coverage was comparatively sympathetic!) Ask the Rhode Island family of a seventh-grader who was suspended for three days for having a miniature toy gun on his keychain. Ask Ben Carson who experienced harassment by the IRS after embarrassing Our Beloved Leader at the now legendary prayer breakfast (and who was forced to resign his position as chief pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins for putting a frowny face on Our President). Ask the many CIA employees who were anxious to testify about the Benghazi massacre but were threatened into silence at the behest of the Administration, some even relocated…(making them, admittedly, somewhat harder to ask). Ask an American hero and whistleblower named John Dobson whom WOOF initially reported on back in May [just click here]. This courageous ATF agent revealed the truth about Eric Holder’s plan to undermine the 2nd amendment by illegally running more than 2,000 American guns to Mexican drug cartels and was nearly imprisoned for his efforts to tell the truth. Now that his book about what really happened is about to be published by Simon and Schuster, the Justice Department (still under the criminal mismanagement of Eric Holder) has denied him permission to publish the book “because it would have a negative impact on morale.” (Read: Eric Holder’s morale!) Meet the REAL bullies! So who are the most frequently encountered bullies in our society—not the punks beating kids up for milk money on the way to school, no, they’re bad all right, but we mean the bullies we grownups have to contend with routinely—the ones who wield just enough authority that applying it abusively amplifies their personal sense of importance. You run into them whenever you deal with a government operated bureaucracy. Even if you are poor, a minority, and live in government subsidized housing, you still run into these bullies because they are not respecters of persons—in fact, if you are a poor member of a minority population you probably run into them a lot more often because you have to spend a lot more time at social services. They inhabit Social Services offices, MVA buildings, and virtually every other government bureaucracy…they are the ones who tell you to go to the other line because the little dictator in the first line gave you the wrong color form, which turns out to be the right color and you are sent back to the back of the line you waited in for an hour to be told you had the wrong color form, which was wrong. You know how it goes. And now that we have Obamanomics and Obamacare we are going to see this species of bully multiply like fruit flies. But who is an even nastier bully–and one that most Americans have had some degree of unwanted interaction with? Yes, the Internal Revenue Service, gentle readers, that’s who. And The Internal Revenue Service is now in charge of your health care. That’s right—whether you live or die is up to the tax man. The good folks who pounced on Benjamin Carson, who attempted to ruin the beautiful and talented Michele Bachmann, who successfully blunted any attempt by Tea-Party groups to participate as non-profit organizations in the 2012 presidential election, and who cheerfully conspired with the Federal Elections Commission to stymie conservative fundraising efforts in the recent election year, are now in complete control of your health care, and will shortly be in complete possession of your medical history. Meanwhile, the NSA will have a file of every Internet or cell phone call you ever made waiting quiescently. They may never need to examine that file, but then again, it might come in handy if you get out of line—like what if you’re a Supreme Court Justice about to declare Obamacare unconstitutional? But even this kind of bullying isn’t the scariest. It’s just the most inevitable at this point. Scarier is that a 15 year old kid named Benji Backer is bullied mercilessly by faculty members at Appleton North High School because he stands up for conservative values. (The School District is investigating his claims, ahem, ahem.)The savage rantings of Michigan State University Professor William S. Penn would have remained mere rumor had campus conservatives not managed to tape one of his outbursts. His assertion that “Republicans have raped” the country and are working to keep minorities from voting are two of his tamer allegations. His blanket denunciation of senior citizens is available on you tube. Professor Penn, by the way, was supposed to be teaching English. On the subject of scientific inquiry into the hypothesis of global warming, Kari Norgaard, a sociology and environmental studies professor at Oregon University, recently contributed her view that anyone who doesn’t believe that global warming is real and results from human technology is “sick” and needs to “be treated.” She went on to compare global warming skepticism to racism and reiterated that “cultural resistance” to man-made global warming is “sick,” and “must be recognized and treated!” She stopped short of insisting on electroshock. This is reminiscent of Al Gore’s insipid comment that the “debate is over” on the global warming issue, because of “consensus,” which is as distal from the standards of scientific inquiry as Harry Reid’s recent remark to Speaker Boehner that “there’s no need for conversations” is distal from the parliamentary ethos. Professor Darry Sragow of the University of Southern California was also secretly taped by a student during one of his typical harangues during which he called Republicans old, white, racist, and losers. He went on to recommend ways that his students could illegally suppress voting by known Republicans. “You lose their information on the election in the mail,” he told an enquiring student, adding “I mean there is lots of ways you can do it.” (Clearly Professor Sragow does not teach English. Rather, his billingsgate is what passes for Poli Sci at USC.) One can, by the way, visit such invaluable cites as Campus Reform [just click here}for endless examples of this type of proctoral sedition, thus WOOF will permit you, gentle readers, to sample further instances of university-level bullying as your capacity to endure the repugnant may allow. So are the bastions of Ivy League liberal arts education taking heed of this lunacy within their hallowed halls? Apparently so! One clear bit of evidence that the recurrent accusations not only of liberal bias, but of ranting, seething liberal bullying, were beginning to give the doyens of higher education pause came in the form of a statement from Jonathan Cole, the former provost of Columbia University, who rose to the occasion a few years ago and exclaimed that, “A rising tide of anti-intellectual- ism and intolerance of university research and teaching that offends ideologues….is putting academic freedom – one of the core values of the university – under more sustained and subtle attack than at any time since the dark days of McCarthyism.” Uh-ohhh! You know they’re scared when they bring Joe’s name into it, Woofketeers. It’s Progressive-speak for “boogah- boogah!” And do we correctly understand from Cole’s complaint, that objecting to academic bullying is now McCarthyism? This is also historically silly since Joe never harassed university professors, who were typically targeted by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee of which Joe was no part, but with which liberals obsessively conflate him. The only professor famously accused by McCarthy was Own Lattimore, and Owen Lattimore was a communist. In fact, McCarthy once remarked that one should practice forbearance in assessing the loyalty of college professors, “because a lot of them are just nutty.” Next case? You and especially your children are being groomed to live in the wonderful new “fundamentally transformed” America– transformed fundamentally into a socialist state. And the only way redistribution of property can be enforced in such a state is by bullies. Obama and his controllers are remaking us into the kind of country in which educationists harangue you until you vote radical leftist, despise Christians and wear your American citizenship as a badge of shame, and accept the sophistical tenets of socialism unquestioningly. Most college students (in case you haven’t noticed) already do! This will bring to fruition the kind of land in which malignant narcissists like Nannie Bloomberg decide how much soda can be ingested by the adult citizens of New York, and assign nurses to berate new mothers caught bottle nursing their babies in hospitals, even as our First Lady insists that school officials ransack children’s lunches for evidence of sufficient broccoli and tofu. You and your children are being conditioned to live in a craven new feudalism of limits, sanctions, and restrictions. Coal will be eliminated, nuclear power will be declared too dicey to retain on line, and your automobile will be targeted for extinction (you must learn to use mass transit, comrades)! You are getting a taste of the Bullyocracy as the Regime cherry picks which services to curtail during the President’s “government shutdown”—as war memorials are capriciously closed to veterans and public parks are surrounded by frowning police officers. Orange cones obstruct highways so that Mount Rushmore is not viewable by the public (which sounds like a Billy Wilder comedy, but it’s happening for real). Initially, the President ordered the Amber Alert system closed to show the folks how heartless Republicans were in not accepting his total budgetary demands—but when enough of us called foul, he discovered the funds necessary to reopen it. Death benefits for the families of fallen soldiers were also targeted for elimination during the “crisis,.” but have been restored thanks to private donors! All this is mere rehearsal. Soon your thermostat will be “smart,” and how warm you are in winter or how air-conditioned you are permitted to be in summer will be decided by some faceless apparatchik, not by your personal tastes and the size of your dirty capitalistic wallet. The style of government we have twice elected to encumber ourselves with requires only two classes, roughly, the bullied and the bullies. Right now, the most conspicuous and the most proximal phalanx of bullies is in our schools and colleges. They are not knife-wielding kids in DA hairstyles driving hot rods, oh no! They are the paunchy, balding, but-pony tailed Marxists driving Mercedes sedans and Volvos who are joined in a conspiracy to make our children into tomorrow’s nomeklatura or zeks. Those of us who wish our children to reject both labels and seize instead upon the high ground of patriotism and liberty will have to expose these propagandists; Fortunately, our kids are showing us how: tape them! Use the Internet to make their travesties manifest. Find out where the small pockets of conservative resistance are located on campuses and conspire with them, advise them, fund them if you’re able! Confront the tenured Castro-ites in their offices and lounges, join the counterrevolution. Video tape your school’s Common Core orientation and place the re-educationists on record! Remember, (ahem) Thomas Jefferson once shot a man on the White House lawn for treason; so only minimal courage is requisite to peaceably calling these trolls out intellectually in their sanctums of febrile perfidy! We can change academe and return the liberal arts to the study of classics, art, music, and literature. We can challenge academe and return poli-sci to fair-handed inquiries into the intricacies of political theory and its origins. We can prevail upon English teachers to teach syntax and mathematicians to teach calculus—why, we can even persuade history teachers to teach history if we put our minds to it! And we can do it non-violently in the very arenas they inhabit. So if you want to campaign against bullying this October, locate the real bullies—you have a target rich environment! Check in at your University or your kid’s University and tell the silver pony tail brigade that you aren’t impressed, and let the petty bureaucrats know that you have limited patience with studied insipidity. And when you have a moment, consider imparting the ancient wisdom of the American race to your kids, many of who are authentically harassed by schoolyard punks. Sure, go ahead and complain to the educationists. By all means, discuss matters with the problem child’s parents, and if you like, offer some suggestions on walking away or talking things out—but while you’re at it, take the time to teach them what Kenny Rogers figured out all the way back in the 1970s: “Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.”

by Megan Mayhew Bergman When I embarked upon this socially-conscious series, I not only wanted to show the relationship between writers and their ideas, but also the relationship between fiction and readers. That second part — the way a work of fiction affects a reader — strikes me as a critical component of the literary exchange. So we writers set these fictional ships a-sail, full of our ideas, our flawed characters, our hard-won insights. At our best, we illuminate a human truth. We hope readers walk away holding onto something. Feeling something. Maybe our words alter the way a reader thinks. Just maybe. I thought it would be interesting to give someone in a socially-conscious job an opportunity to talk about the way specific books have gotten into their head, the way fiction has nudged its way into a world view, cracked open an insight, enhanced empathy. I wanted to see a real-life exchange between books and people. I wanted to see fiction at work. My friend, Jessica Shortall, is as adventurous as she is smart, and I can think of no one better to detail a specific and meaningful exchange between books and reader. Her bio and her relationship with a few beloved books are below, best in her own words: Jessica Shortall has a weird career in global social entrepreneurship. She has been a Peace Corps Volunteer (in the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan), co-founder of a nationally (U.S.) franchised non-profit organization (www.campuskitchens.org), consultant to socially-minded businesses worldwide, and currently serves as Director of Sight Giving for TOMS’ global Eyewear business. She holds a to-date-unused B.A. in Art History from Wake Forest University, and an MBA (with distinction) from Oxford University, where she studied as one of five Skoll Scholars in Social Entrepreneurship. Jessica lives in Austin, TX with her husband, Clay (an architect), her son, Otis (a professional insane person), her soon-to-be daughter (release date: March 2013), and her dog, Blue. She speaks crappy Spanish and Uzbek and really crappy Italian and Russian. Social Entrepreneur Jessica Shortall’s Recommended Reading: Three African Novels I should begin by saying that I am a certified non-expert on any part of Africa, let alone the continent as a whole — which far too often is portrayed as a monolithic bloc with one set of people, problems, and politics. In fact, the only African country I have set foot in is Ethiopia (albeit multiple times). But my work does, and has in the past, touched on “Africa” (there’s that monolith again) in many ways — all of them focused in some way on social change, economic development, and poverty reduction. And for whatever reason, I seem to have sought out African writers throughout my life. Maybe it’s due to having strong childhood memories of the Ethiopian famine, or to having grown up during the dying days of apartheid. Maybe it’s just that there are some damn good African writers out there. At any rate, and without further hemming and hawing, here are my African Fiction Top Three: 1. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe Published in 1958, the book centers on an Ibo village in Nigeria in the late 19th century, as white people began to make their presence felt there (to use an extreme euphemism). This book was my first exposure to literary immersion in any African culture, and created a useful counterpoint to the stereotypes of African communities I had seen enough of in colonial literature (for example, Heart of Darkness, which I admit to loving for its prose). I have pored over the details of Achebe’s book, exploring rituals, turns of phrase and proverbs, and the intricacies of communal living. I had never before seen an account of a so-called “primitive” culture that did not cater to the Western reader with anthropological explanations and footnotes. On Achebe’s watch, the community and its people simply were, without a lot of explanation, as the West has always been allowed to be in fiction. And in terms of a writer taking me where he wanted me to go, Achebe had me by the nose. When things indeed started to fall apart for Okonkwo and his community, I did exactly what Achebe wanted me to do: I mourned the inevitable loss of tradition at the expense of change, while ruminating on motifs of gender, religion, community, and family. *2. Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton. Another vintage pick (published in 1948), this book is set in (just barely) pre-apartheid South Africa, and centers on the intertwined stories of a white family and a black family from the same rural village. Nothing if not a protest song and true cry of despair at the horrific state gripping Paton’s country, this book, when I first found it, spoke to the part of me that has always been drawn to social justice issues. With a microcosmic story, Paton lays bare the viciousness of the situation on people of both races. But the prose, oh the lovely, Biblical prose — Paton could have been writing about damn near anything and I would have read it voraciously. Indulge me for a moment with a quotation that reminds me of Paton’s sheer magic with words. The speaker is black, and speaks of his fear that reconciliation from the whites will come too late: “I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.” Could he be writing about 21st century LGBT rights in the USA or Uganda or almost anywhere else? Women’s struggles at any time in history? Israel and Palestine? Would that Paton could teach us about all of those things, too. 3. Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, the first novel (published in 2010 — see? I read contemporary books, too!) by Maaza Mengiste The book is set in the mid-1970s Addis Ababa which saw the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie and the rise of the Red Terror and fearsome Derg regime that terrorized Ethiopia for almost two decades. Mengiste somehow manages the daunting task of making both the personal tragedies — the novel centers on a middle-class doctor’s family in Addis — and the wider turmoil compelling and terrible in their brutality. We see the son clandestinely collecting bodies of murdered citizens, and through him we begin to develop a sense of the magnitude of the violence and tragedy. We see families forced to pay for the bullets that killed their children. We learn of countless peasants starving to death in the north. In one horrifying and beautiful book, Mengiste refutes Stalin’s famous “a million deaths is a statistic” assertion, and makes the whole horrible thing real, including the statistics. She gives us no choice but to witness the horror that befell Ethiopia (this time a brother-to-brother conflict, prompting one character to note, “When the Italians were here, at least you could tell who the enemy was”) — something that has long escaped the attention of far too many Westerners (this one included).

ACADEMICIANS OF LAGADO? A Critique of Social and Cultural Evolutionism Titles announcing a coming revolution in the study of cultures and societies have poured from the presses in recent years. A new evolutionary approach promises not only to introduce quantitative rigour and objectivity to social science, but also to gather its disparate elements—psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, economics—into one unified intellectual enterprise. Conferences at major universities, special issues of social-scientific journals, a veritable library of treatises and theoretical outlines announce an impending perspectival shift: in the future, social and cultural change will be understood as resulting from a selective-evolutionary process. The higher peaks of this vast output would include, in economics, Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter’s Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change; in sociology, W. G. Runciman’s Treatise on Social Theory and Theory of Cultural and Social Selection; in anthropology, Pascal Boyer’s study of belief systems, Religion Explained; in comparative literature, Franco Moretti’s Signs Taken for Wonders and Graphs, Maps, Trees. Growing numbers of specialists in the social sciences and humanities have set about reinterpreting their previous work in social-evolutionary terms, or at least speculating on how this might be executed, while citing with approval the research agendas of the social evolutionists. The activities of scholars send reverberations down the intellectual supply chain: public intellectuals champion the approach in the broadsheets; journalists weave references to the concepts into their columns; in due course, airport bookstores flog intellectually diluted popularizations. Subscribe for just £36 and get free access to the archive Please login on the left to read more or buy the article for £3 - Franco Moretti: Graphs, Maps, Trees - 3 After ‘graphs’ and ‘maps’, trees: can evolutionary theory help pattern the transformation of cultural forms and divergence of genres, through time and space? Franco Moretti’s final essay on abstract models for literary history. - Christopher Prendergast: Evolution and Literary History A landmark engagement with Franco Moretti’s triptych of essays, Graphs, Maps, Trees. What forms of logic underpin the use of evolutionary models to lay bare the survival strategies of the detective story, or trace the mutations of a border-hopping stylistic technique? And what political implications follow from basing an account of literary history on the outcome of the market? - Steven Rose, Hilary Rose: Darwin and After A century and a half on from Origin of Species, what is the present state of evolutionary theory? Hilary Rose and Steven Rose examine current debates around epigenesis, ‘evo-devo’ and adaptation, emphasizing—contra the determinists—contingency’s role in biological outcomes.

Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins is about a young girl growing up in a small village in Bangladesh, wanting to help support her struggling family in a culture where only boys are expected to earn money. Although Rickshaw Girl is fiction, the background about Bangladeshi culture, gender roles, and economic opportunities is real, and draws on the author's own experience living in Bangladesh. Ten-year-old Naima is an artistic child with a sparkling imagination. She loves to paint alpanas, traditional patterned drawings made with rice paint, and used to decorate homes for special occasions. She loves her parents, and wants to perform her many household chores well to please them. She's a fierce protector of her younger sister. But Naima struggles with the expectations that her society and her family's poverty place upon her. She wishes passionately that she could have continued in school, which she stopped so that her younger sister could have a turn instead. She wants to spend time with her best friend, a boy named Saleem, but this is not considered "proper" now that she's growing up. She'll soon have to stop wearing the relatively comfortable salwar kameez, with its loose, pajama-like trousers, and start wearing the more confining saree that adult women wear ("They look pretty, but I feel as if I'm wearing a big bandage"). But the thing that really bothers her is that because she is a girl, she can't contribute financially. Instead, she has to watch her overworked rickshaw-driver father and listen to her mother's quiet lamentations on the family not having any boys. When an attempt to drive the rickshaw herself leads to disaster, Naima's guilt knows no bounds. It's only when she finds a way to use her own strengths to contribute to her family's success that her situation improves. And being herself, a girl, even turns out to be an asset. In less than 100 slim pages, Mitali Perkins take Naima from this: "If only I HAD been born a boy, she thought. Then I could earn some money. Even a little would help!" (Page 21) "It's a good thing I turned out out to be a girl. The words chimed like sitar music in Naima's mind." (Page 77) In summary, this book: Shows kids what the Bangladeshi culture is like, complete with a handy glossary at the end. Teaches children and adults about the beauty of alpanas, complete with authentic illustrations by Jamie Hogan. At the book signing that I attended, Mitali's mother gave a real-world demonstration of alpana painting. I think that the alpanas are a symbol, too. Alpana painters are restricted to certain patterned responses. However, by staying within and leveraging these patterns, artists can find scope for creativity and beauty. Just as Naima found a way to make a difference, while still being valued as a girl. Shows American girls an appreciation for their relative freedom, compared to girls from developing countries. Teaches kids, with a very light touch (most details are in an Author's Note at the end), about new microlending programs that give women in developing countries previously unheard of economic opportunities. Celebrates a father's love for and appreciation of his daughters, even in a culture where sons are considered more valuable. Mitali said in her book signing that this aspect of the book is based on her own father, who values his three daughters. Despite these many lessons, Rickshaw Girl doesn't feel message-y. The feel good ending is a tiny bit tidy, but pleasing nevertheless, and containing an unexpected twist. But what makes the book one to return to is that Naima is a three-dimensional character, with strengths, weaknesses, and insecurities. Jamie Hogan's richly textured black and white illustrations make Naima, and her art, even more real (I especially like the illustration in which she sticks out her tongue at Saleem behind his back). The pictures also keep the book accessible for younger readers. Recommended for boys and girls, but especially girls, age seven to ten. Publication Date: January 2007 Source of Book: Bought it at an author signing Other Blog Reviews: A Patchwork of Books, Kate Messner, My Breakfast Platter, Semicolon, Fuse #8, MotherReader, Tea Cozy, Literary Safari, The Edge of the Forest Author Interviews: HipWriterMama, Big A little a See also: My review of Monsoon Summer, my review of First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover, my interview with Sparrow, and Kirby Larson's anointment of Mitali as a Hot Woman of Children's Literature Also, please see Mitali's post about the recent cyclone in Bangladesh, with a link to a way you can help if you're interested. © 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved.

THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF ISLAM Prepared by a Number of Leading Orientalists Edited by an Editorial Committee Consisting of H.A.R. Gibb, J.H. Kramers, E. Lévi-Provençal, J. Schacht Assisted by S.M. Stern as Secretary General (pp. 1-320) B. Lewis, Ch. Pellat and J. Schacht Assisted by C. Dumont and R.M. Savory as Editorial Secretaries Under the Patronage of The International Union of Academies ARNAWUTLUK, the Ottoman Turkish name for Albania. Allegedly descended from Pelasgian, Albanian is an Indo-European language of satem type like Armenian, Indo-Iranian and Slavonic. No literary records occur before 1496 A.D., but ancient Illyrian and ancient Epirote, on the basis of personal and place names, are held to be the prototypes of Geg (northern) and Tosk (southern) Albanian respectively. Illyrian mantua, mantia, bramble, and grôssa, file, are Albanian mand, manzë and grresë respectively. Macedonian, Thracian and Dacian were languages of Albanian type. Known as shqip in Albania, arbëresh in the Albanian colonies, the Albanian language is spoken by some 1,500,000 in Albania, 700,000 in the adjoining Kosovo-Metohija area of Yugoslavia, and some 40.000 in Epirus. An archaic form of the language survives on the Greek islands of Hydra and Spetsa, and in Sicily and Calabria, brought there by Tosk exiled from the Turkish invasions. Impoverished by centuries of neglect, Albanian has a small native, but a large borrowed vocabulary. Thus the wheel, the cart and the plough are represented by borrowings and the usual Indo-European terms of kinship are absent. City life, road-building, horticulture, law, religion and family relationship are expressed by Latin loanwords, much disguised by phonological breakdown. Terms used in the Orthodox, ritual are Greek; names of prepared dishes, garments, parts of the house, and Islamic terms have come in via Turkish. The composite alphabet is: a, b, c (like ts), ç (like ch), d, dh (like th in this), e, ë (like French e in le), f, g, gj, (like Turkish g before e, i, ö), h, i, j (like y in yoke), k, l (as in French), ll (as in .English all), m, n, nj (as in cañon), o, p, q (like Turkish k before e, i, ö), r (weak), rr (strong trill), s, sh (as in shop), t, th (as in thin), u, v, x (as in adze), xh (as in judge), y (German ü), z, zh (as in pleasure). The vowels â, ê, î are Geg nasals. Geg is the dialect of Tiranë, the capital, and the North, including Kosovo-Metohija. Tosk has a considerable literature. Its main deviations are: replacement of the infinitive by subjunctive constructions, absence of nasal vowels, occasional conversion of n to r, and representation of ue, uem as ua, uar. There are small differences of vocabulary. The noun has three genders and five cases. A noun is linked to a following genitive or adjective by an inflected particle, thus mali i veriut, the mountain of the north, mali i búkur the beautiful mountain, in which -i of mal-i is the detachable masc. definite article. Similarly molla, f. the apple, but mollë apple. The verb possesses an imperfect, aorist, subjunctive, optative, imperative, a mediopassive, and a compound mood called the admirative. From the third century A.D. the Roman Church has maintained a bishopric at Scutari in. N. Albania. This became the first cultural centre; evidence of this is Bishop John Buzuks Liturgy of 1555, and the 17th century religious works of Budi, Bardhi and Bogdani. Literary activity, tolerated by the Turks in the Catholic North, was suppressed in the Muslim centre and the Orthodox South, but took root among the exile colonies of Sicily and Calabria. .Matranga, descendant of the exiles, began a tradition of hymn-writing using folk-rhythms (1592), which was continued by Brancato (1675-1741) and the Calabrian Variboba (born 1725). The movement became secular with the folksongs and rhapsodies of De Rada (1813-1903) an ardent spokesman of Albanian liberation, and was continued well into the present century by Zef Schirò (1865-1927), Sicilian-born author of two allegorical epics and a collector of folksongs. The work of De Rada was helpful in inspiring three Tosk patriots, the brothers Abdyl, Sami and Naim Frashëri, to form a league at Prizrend in 1878. Under the stimulus of the San Stefano settlement they sought Albanian autonomy and literary freedom. After several years of activity in Istanbul, where they were joined by the lexicographer and Bible translator Kristoforidhi (1827-1895), they were forced into exile. At Bucharest Abdyl the politician, Sami the educationist, and Naim, the Bektashi lyricist of Albanian nostalgia, formed a literary society and printed Albanian books from 1885 onward. Thimi Mitko and Spiro Dine, exiles in Egypt, collected folksongs from the local colony. In Sofia Midhat Frashëri, son of Abdyl, published an almanach, an anthology and a journal, and wrote didactic essays and short stories with a moral. .Books printed in exile were smuggled into Albania by caravan. The absence of a literary centre, and the want of a standard alphabet, hampered the movement, and Samis difficult phonetic spelling was replaced by a digraphic one resembling that of A. Santori of Calabria and the linguist Dh. Camarda (1821-1882) of Sicily. After independence in November 1912 the various literary currents combined. A. Drenova (born 1872), the Tosk lyricist, Bubani, and L. Poradeci (born 1899) continued the Bucharest tradition, the last in an unorthodox style of his own; the Catholic North was represented by the nostalgic F. Shiroka (1847-1917), the linguist and historian A. Xanoni (1863-1915), N. Mjeda (1866-1937), tbe satirist Gj. Fishta (1871-1940), the folk-poet and elegist V. Prennushi (1885-1946), and the short-story writer F. Koliqi (born 1903). Foqion Postoli, and M. Grameno (1872-1931), the Tosk novelists, Kristo Floqi (born 1873), the dramatist, and F. Konitza (1875-1943) transferred their activity to Boston, U.S.A., where a literary society Vatra, and a journal Dielli (The Sun) were founded in 1912. The brief fascist regime (1939-1943) attracted a few writers with pro-Italian leanings; the present communist regime encourages writing on the partisan movement, the class struggle, work themes and peace. Textbooks are based on Russian models. There are three active theatres and a writers union. This activity is paralleled in Kosovo-Metohija, where the communist themes are Titoist. Albania (Shqipní, Shqipërí) lies on a N-S axis 20° E of Greenwich. With a total area of 11,097 square miles (28.748 sq. km.) it is bounded by Yugoslavia, Greece and the Adriatic. Lying between N Latitudes 39° 38 and 40° 41, its total length is 207 miles. It narrows to 50 miles at Peshkopí, and widens to 90 miles at the lake of Little Presba. Its ten prefectures formerly had 39 subprefectures, now redrawn and renamed as 34 districts. Continuing the limestone formation of the Dinaric Alps, the terrain is highest in the E, reaching some 7,000 feet in places. Of the western lowlands, some below sea- [p. 651] level, the largest is the .fertile Myzeqeja plain. The longest river, the Drin, rises in Lake Ohri (Ochrida), and flows N-W and S-W to the Adriatic below Shëngjin. The Mat, Ishém, Arzén, Semén-Devoll-Berat and the Vijosë flow in general N-W, but the Shkumbi, a torrent in winter, flows broadly E to W dividing the country into two roughly equal areas, Gegnija and Toskërija. The mountain massif consists of three north-to-south barriers in Gegnija, and four N-W to S-E parallel ranges in Toskërija. The highest mountain is Tomorr near Berat (7,861 feet: 2396 metres). Denudation and deforestation have given the country a bare, rugged character. The lakes of Shkodër (Scutari), Ohri and Presba are only partly iu Albania; Tërbuf in the central plain is a marsh, and Malik, below Korçë, has bee Durrës (Durazzo) is the main port, with wharves and a shipyard; Valona has a fine natural harbour, and handles refined oil and bitumen; Saranda is a fishing port, and Shëngjin handles ore. Chief towns are Tiranë, the capital (100,000), Shkodër (35,000), Korçë (25,000), Durrës (16,000), Vlorë or Valona (15,000) and Gjinokastër or Gjirokastër (12,000). Railways (80 miles) link Tiranë with Durrës, Peqin and Elbasan, but most towns are reached by road. Climate ranges from European in the high country to sub-tropical in the S-W, and the vegetation is Mediterranean. Forests, mainly deciduous, include hornbeam, turkey oak, sumach, avellan oak, holm oak, jujube and celtis. The foothill scrub includes arbutus, bush heather, pomegranate and juniper. Densest forests are at Mamuras near Kruja. Bibliography: M. Lambertz, Albanisches Lesebuch, Parts I and II (Albanian Grammar, Texts and Translation into German), Leipzig 1948; S.E. Mann, Albanian Literature, An Outline of Prose, Poetry and Drama, London 1955; idem, A Short Albanian Grammar, London 1932; idem, An English-Albanian Dictionary, Cambridge 1957; S. Skendi, Albania (Statistical, Historical, Political, etc.), New York and London 1957. According to the census of 1955 the population of Albania was 1,394,310 (in 1930 it was 1,003,097). Outside Albania there are Albanians in Yugoslavia (750.000 according to the Yugoslav census in 1948), in Greece (estimated between 30-60,000) and m Italy (estimated a: 150-250,000). The number of Albanians by birth all over the world is estimated at 3 millions, (see Albania, ed. S. Skendi, New York, 1956, 50). According to the 1930 census there were 45,000 Vlachs, 35,000 Slavs, 20,000 Turks and 15,000 Greeks m Albania. Approximately 20 percent of Albanias total population lived in towns in 1949-50. In the same year the larger towns were Tiranë, the capital, with an estimated population of 80,000 (in 1930, 30,806), Shkodër 34,000, Korçë 24,000, Durrës 16,000, Elbasan 15,000, Vlorë 15,000, Berat (12,000), Gjinokastër 12,000. The Albanians are divided into two principal ethnic groups: The Gegs to the North of the Shkumbi River and the Tosks to the South. The Turks called these two regions Gegalik and Toskalik. Not only in their dialects bul also in the outlook and social behaviour the Gegs differ from the Tosks. The Gegs are considered as keeping national characteristics purer than the Tosks. Generally speaking the barren mountains of Albania provided too little for an increasing: population to subsist. Especially when an epidemic decimated livestock, the helpless people had no choise but to emigrate or to fall upon neighbouring plains. They usually went out as mercenaries, shepherds or agriculturists. Toward the middle of the 14th century the Albanians, under the pressure of the Serbs or as mercenaries of feudal seigneurs in Greece, migrated and settled in Epirus, Thessaly, Morea and even in the Aegean Islands. There most of the Albanians were gradually graecised, or migrated to Southern Italy under the pressure of the Ottomans later on. But about 1466 in Thessaly there were still Albanian districts in the towns as well as 24 Albanian katunes in Livadia (Lebadea) and 34 in Istifa (see my Fâtih Devri, Ankara 1954, 146). Under the Ottomans these katunes had a special status and, later, are known as armatols. When Iskender-beg died in 1468 a number of the Albanians involved in his struggle against the Ottomans either retired to the mountains or migrated to the kingdom of Naples. In 1478, 1481 and 1492 more Albanians migrated to Southern Italy and Sicily where they preserved their language and customs down to the present day. In the 15th century the Ottoman government transferred some Albanian tîmâr-holders (see tÎmÂr) of the feudal families (Mazeraki and Heykal) to Trebizond. No large Turkish settlement is recorded m Albania except a small number of exiles from Konya, locally called Konici. There are also the Yürüks of Kodjadjik on the mountains to the East of Dibra where they were stationed apparently to safeguard the Rumeli-Albania highway. The sürgüns (the deported), sent c. 1410 from such parts of Anatolia as Sarukhan, Kodja-ili, Djanik were also few in number (see Sûret-i Defter-i Sandjâk-i Arvanid, index). The second significant expansion of Albanians in Rumeli occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries. They came to settle in the plains of Djakovë (Yakova), Prizren, Ipek (Pec), Kalkandelen (Tetovo) and Kossovo, especially after the mass migration of the Serbs from these areas in 1690. It seems that Albanian settlement was mostly the result of the land mukâtaa system (see my Tanzimat nedir?, in Tarih Aratirmalari, Ankara 1942) prevailing there in this period. Albanians came to lease small tracts of lands from big mukâtaa owners in these rich plains and settled there as tenants permanently. As for the Vlachs in Albania, they had lived a pastoral life on the mountains of North Albania side by side with the Albanians since the Slavic invasion in the 7th century and they took part in the Albanian expansion from the 11th century onwards. In the Ottoman Register of 835/1431 we find the Vlachs and their katunes (Eflak-katune) in Southern Albania especially in the region east to Kanina. The Albanian tribes to the North of the Drin River are called by the general term of Malj-i-sor (highlanders). Toward 1881 there were 19 tribes belonging to this group with a population of 35,000 Roman Catholics, 15,000 Muslims and 220 Greek Orthodox. The most famous tribes among them were Hotti, Klementi, Shkreli, Kastrati, Koçaj, Pulati, living on the mountains east of Scutari. It seems that during the Ottoman conquest of Albania from 1385 to the end of the 15th century the rebellious clans had to retire once more to the most rugged parts of the highlands. Their reappearence in the lowlands coincided later with the weakening of Ottoman control in the provinces in the 17th century, and, later on, they became the terror of Rumeli. [p. 652] From the beginning the Ottoman government had to respect the tribal organisation and autonomy of these tribes. As they had actual control of the important mountain passes from Rumeli into Albania the government charged them with the guardianship of these passes and in return for these services made them exempt from taxation. A regulation dated 1496 (Babakanlik Archives, Istanbul, Tapu Def. no. 26) reads as follows: The nâhiye of Klemente (Klementi) consists of five villages. Their inhabitants of Christian faith pay one thousand akca of kharâdj and one thousand akca of ispendje to the Sandjakbegi and they are exempted from ushr and awârid-i dîwânî and other taxes, but they are made derbendji (guardians of the passes) on the route Scutari-Petrishbans territory-Altun-ili as well as the route Medun-Kuca-Plava. Later in the 17th century the Klementi caused troubles through their depredations in Rumeli and their co-operation with the rebellious tribes of Montenegro (Karadagh). To the south of Drin lived the Mirditë tribe, 32,000 in number (in 1881) and all Roman Catholics. They were divided into five clans called bayraks, namely Oroshi, Fândi, Spashi, Kushneni, Dibri. Distinguished by their service to the Ottomans against the Venetians in 1696, the Hotti were promoted to the first place among the clans. Their bayrak headed all the others. But today the Shalë tribe is the chief. In tribal tradition the origin of the bayraks goes back to the Ottomans. In fact it was an Ottoman institution to give a bayrak or a sandjak to military chiefs as a symbol of authority. Each clan was under a bayrakdâr i.e. standard-bearer, who was a hereditary chief. The public affairs of the clan were decided in the council of the hereditary elders. In order to discuss general affairs the five clans had their annual meeting at Orosh. A bölük-bashi, appointed by the Ottoman governor, arranged all kinds of affairs between the administration and the clans. The captains of the five clans of Mirditë claimed to descend from Lekë Dukagjin who played an oustanding role in Iskender-begs struggle against the Ottomans. Lekë Dukagjin is believed to have codified the customary law practiced among the tribes, which is called Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit (A.Sh.K. Gjecov, Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit, Shkodër 1933). These tribes used to send to the Ottoman army an auxiliary force composed of one man per household, an Ottoman practice which was also applied to the Yürüks and the Kurds. When from the end of the 16th century onwards the empire came to need more troops for its lengthy wars the Albanian auxiliaries seemed to gain an increasing importance. They were used especially in the local wars against the Montenegrins. The Mirditë were regarded as the bravest soldiers in Rumeli. But at the same time H. Hequard (1855) calls them the greatest plunderers m the world In 1855 when the Tanzîmât administration attempted to disarm them and enrol them in the regular army they rose up and infested the Zadrima (Zadrimë) area with the result that the next year the government gave up these attempts. Later the Mirditan chief Prenk Bib Doda played an important part in the Albanian independence movement (1908). The Republic of Mirdite, proclaimed under Yugoslav auspices in 1921, collapsed the next year. According to the Italian statistics of 1942 (see, Albania, ed. S. Skendi, 58) out of a total population of 1,128,143, 779,417 were Muslims, 232,320 Orthodox and 116,259 Catholics. The only significant Catholic group is located in the Shkodër (Scutari) district while large Orthodox groups live in the districts of Gjinokastër (Argyrokastro), Korcë (Körice), Berat and Vlorë (Avlona). Muslims are spread all over the country, but mostly in the Central Albania. Albania which became attached to the Patriarchate of Constinople in 732 A.D., was split between Rome and Constantinople in 1054, the northern part coming under the jurisdiction of Rome. The Normans and the Angevins strengthened Catholicism in the country; Antivari was the seat of the Archbishop of Albania and Durazzo that of Macedonia. Orthodox Albania was dependent directly on the Archbishopric of Ohrida. As the protectors of the Orthodox Church the Ottomans, even before their restoration of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1454, favoured Orthodoxy against Catholicism. However, for political reasons the Porte tolerated the Catholic church in Albania. The Albanian lords wavered between East and West according to the political conditions. The Orthodox Albanian immigrants to southern Italy had their own Uniate church recognising the Popes supremacy. According to the Ottoman year-book of 1895 there were, in the province of Yanya (Epirus and Albania south of the Devoll River), 223,885 Muslims, 118,033 Greeks, 129,517 Orthodox Albanians, 3,517 Jews and only 93 Roman Catholics. It must be added that a part of these Greeks were in origin Orthodox Albanians graecised through the Greek religious and educational institutions which were zealously founded beginning with the second half of the 18th century. After the independence of Albania an autocephalous Orthodox church of Albania was finally recognised by the Patriarchate (1937). The first converts to Islam were the Albanian feudal lords holding tîmârs from the Ottomans. Contrary to what is generally held conversion was not required as a condition for keeping their lands as tîmârs; allegiance to the Ottoman state was sufficient in order to receive tîmârs. Throughout the 15th century Christians were granted tîmârs. By the end of the 15th century, however, only a few Christian tîmâr-holders were left because of voluntary conversions. Elbasan, built by Mehemmed II in 870/1466, became a Muslim centre from the outset, as did Yenishehir in Thessaly. It appears, however, that Islam had then only a few converts among the common people raâyâ. At the beginning of the 16th century in four sandjaks of Albania (Elbasan, Ohri, Awlonya and Iskenderiye) there were about three thousand Muslim raâyâ families. In Catholic sources written around 1622 it was estimated that only one thirtieth of the Albanian population was Muslim. During the 17th century the Venetians and Austrians attempted to foment an insurrection of the Catholic Albanians as well as the Orthodox Serbs who were feeling hostile to the government because of an increase in the djiizyc. In 1614 at a meeting of church dignitaries at Kuci it was decided to ask for aid from the Pope. Toward 1622 the first Franciscan missionaries appeared in Albania and Southern Serbia. Albanian Catholics and the Serbs co-operated with the Venetians in 1649 and with the Austrians, in 1689-1690 which made the Porte decide to have recourse to retaliatory measures. To escape these, the Christian populations in the plains of Pec, Prizren, Djakovë and Kossovo, who were partly Albanian, migrated in mass or adopted Islam; but many of them became [p. 653] crypto Christians, locally called laramanë (motley). The albanisation and islamisation of these plains went hand in hand in the 17th and 18th centuries. Conversion to Islam received a new impetus under the Bushatlis and Alî Pasha [q.v.] of Tepedelen. According to contemporary witnesses, the latter forced a number of villages to adopt Islam. He is believed to have been a Bektâshî himself and in his time Bektâshism (see BEKTÂSHIYYA) made its greatest progress in Albania. Under King Zog its adherents were estimated at about 200,000. With its prosperous tekkes in Tiran, Akcahisar (the old centre of the Bektâshîs), Berat, and on the Tomor mountain, as well as its central organisation in the capital, Bektâshism assumed importance in Albania. During the Congress of Korcë in 1919 the Bektâshîs sought to establish a community of their own, separate from the Sunnîs. This was to be accomplished only under the Communist regime in 1945. Islam played an essential part in ottomanising the Albanians and the Christian Albanians often referred to their Muslim compatriots as Turks. On the other hand Islam prevented the Albanians from being assimilated by her Greek or Slavic neighbours. It is asserted that under the veneer of Christianity as well as Islam the primitive religious beliefs survived with the Albanians, especially in the highlands. The Illyrian origin of the Albanian people is generally admitted, but their ethnic relationships to the Thracians, Epirots and the Pelasgians are still subject to argument. The Illyrian tribes first came into contact with Greek culture, through the Greek colonies founded on the Albanian coastland, in the 7th century B.C. The principal one was Epidamnos near Durazzo (Durrës). The lllyrians formed their first independent political organization in the third century B.C. Conquered by the Romans in 167 B.C., they were subject to strong Roman influence for centuries. The Roman highway to the Orient, Via Egnatia, started at Dyrrachium (Durrës) and followed the Shkumbi valley. Ptolemy mentions, for the first time, the Albanoi among Illyrian tribes and their capital Albanópolis (near Croya). In the 7th century the invasion of Albania by the Slavs put an end to the romanisation of the Albanians who retired to the mountains in north Albania to live a pastoral life for half a millennium. In the 9th and 10th centuries the Bulgarian empire extended its rule over southern Albania, including Dyrrachium (Greek Dyrrachion), and toward the end of the 12th century the Serbs under Nemanja occupied northern Albania. The long coexistence with the agriculturist Slavs left a deep cultural imprint on the Albanian people. Finally, .emperor Basil II restored Byzantine rule in southern Albania, and conquered Dyrrachion (1005) which had been the capital of the Byzantine thema of Dyrrachion since the 9th century. When toward the middle of the 11th century the control of Byzantium was weakened in the provinces the Albanians came out from their mountain retreats. From this time on, the Albanians, who were then, located between the lines of Skodra (Shkodër)-Dyrrachion and Ohrida-Prizren, are seen to be mentioned more by the contemporary sources, Albanoi or Arbanítai in Greek, Arbanenses or Albanenses in Latin and Arbanaci in Slavic sources. The Ottomans first used the Greek form Arvanid and then its turcisised version Arnavud and Arnawut. Again from the 11th century on, Albania became bridge-head for feudal Europe to attack the Byzantine empire. Dyrrachion was temporarily taken by the Normans in 1081 and 1185, and by the Venetians in 1204. Then, it came into the possession of the Despot of Epirus, Theodore Angelus (1215-1230). In 1272 Charles of Anjou occupied Dyrrachion as well as the rest of the Albanian coastland, and called himself the King of Albania. Tins started a long struggle between the Byzantines and the Angevins in Anatolian Turks, as a result of their alliance with the Byzantine emperor, first came to know Albania m 737/1337. During the Byzantine civil war the Albanian Highlanders had increased their depredations in Albania, taken Timoron (Timorindje), and threatened the other Byzantine strongholds, Kanina, Belgrade (Berat) Klisma and Skarapar. In order to establish his control in Albania as well as m Epirus, Andronicus III entered that province with an army which included a Turkish auxiliary force. It was sent by his ally Umur Beg, ruler of Aydin. The army overran the country as far as Durazzo (Dyrrachion). The rebels who retired into the mountains suffered great losses at the hands of the Turks. The Turks returned home through Thessaly and Boeotia (Cantacuzenus). Before long Stephan Dushan occupied Albania (Croya in 1343, Central Albania 1343-1346). This seems to have accelerated the migration of Albanians into Greece. Native Albanian feudals and soldiers joined Dushan in his conquests further south (L. von Thallóczy-C. Jirecek, Zwei Urkunden aus Nordalbanien, Archiv für slavische Phil., xxi, 1899, 85). The voyniks whom we later find in Albania under the Ottomans settled there apparently with Dushan at this time. When in 1355 Dushans empire collapsed, local feudal lords, Slav, Albanian or Byzantine in origin, appeared in all parts of Albania. Soon the Balshas (Balshici), in the north and the Thopias in the centre emerged as the most powerful of these lords. The Balshas possessed the coastland between Durazzo and Cattaro, and tried to secure control of a large area as far Prizren. They came into conflict with Twrtko, king of Bosnia, as well as with the Serbs who sought to bring this region, Zeta, again under their control. Soon the Balshas, who had already settled themselves in Avlona, Belgrade and Kanina, threatened Carlo Thopia in Durazzo. He asked for help from the Ottoman Turks in 787/1385, as their udj (frontier) units had appeared near Yannina already in 783/1381. Balsha II was defeated and killed by an Ottoman army at Savra (on the Vijosë River in Myzeqe) on 12 Shaban 787/18 September 1385. This is recorded in Ottoman chronicles as the expedition to Karli-ili, that is the land of Karli (Carlo Thopia), and it is dated correctly as 787/1385. The Albanian lords, including Balshas heirs, recognised the Sultans overlordship. The Dukagjini of Alessio notified the Ragusans of their peace with the Ottomans in 789/1387. Alarmed by the Ottoman advance, Venice sent Daniel Cornaro to Murad I to protect Thopia (Ramadân 789/October 1387), but on the other hand started negotiations with Thopia to take over the city. Thus the long Venetian-Ottoman rivalry over Albania had begun. As a vassal of the Sultan, Gjergj Stratsimirovic, Balshas heir in Scutari (Shkodër) and Dulcigno, now wished to profit from the Ottomans in his conflict with the Bosnians. Kefalia Shâhîn (in Turkish chronicles Kavala Shahin, later Shihâb al-Dîn Shâhîn Pasha) an udj-begi and probably subashi of Liaskovik, embarked on a series of successful raids into Bosnia; but he was finally defeated by Bosnians near Trebinje 23 Shabân 790/27 August 1388). According [p. 654] to Neshrî, this expedition was made at the request of the Lord of Skutari (G. Stratsimirovic) who after Shâhîns defeat was accused of a secret understanding with the enemy. After their victory at the Kossovo plain (791/1389) the Ottomans made Skoplje (Üsküb) a strong frontier centre by settling there the Turks from Sarukhan under Pasha-Yigit (toward 793/1391). Then Shâhîn came back and drove out G. Stratsimirovic from Scutari, and St. Sergius (1393-1395) who had returned to the Venetians for protection. Venice for its part took Alessio, Durazzo (1393), Drivasto (1396), all given up by the native lords for a yearly pension. The Ottomans too tried to keep the local lords on their side by guaranteeing them their lands as tîmârs. Thus Dimitri Yonima (Gionima), Konstantin Balsha, Gjergj Dukagjin as Turkish vassals all co-operated with Shâhîn against the Venetians. The establishment of the Ottoman rule in Albania with its tahrîr (see Tapu) and tîmâr [q.v.] system started first in the region of Premedi (Premetë) and Korcë (Körice). The regular Ottoman administration with its subashis, and kâdîs in towns and sipâhîs in villages is found there in the records going back to the time of Bayazid I (Bavekalet Archives, Istanbul, Maliye no. 231). This must have followed the Ottoman expeditions in Albania in 796/1394 and 799/1397. The Ottoman records also show that Akcahisar (Croya, Krujë) was granted tax exemption in the same period. Albanian forces under Coïa Zaccaria, Dimitri Yonima, Gjergj Dukagjin and Dushmani were present at the battle of Ankara in 804/1402. Upon the collapse of Bayazids empire in 1402, many of these Albanian lords (Ivan Kastriot, Coïa Zaccaria, Niketa Thopia) recognised Venetian suzerainty. When in 1403 Georg Stratsimirovic died, Venice, which had already taken Scutari, seized a part of his heritage Dulcigno, Antivari and Budua. But his son Balsha, supported by Stephan Lazarevic and Vuk Brankovic of Serbia embarked upon a long struggle against Venice. The latter finally reached an agreement on Albanian affairs with their suzerain, Emîr Süleyimân (19 Djumâdâ I, 812/29 September 1409). Then Pasha-Yigit of Üsküb forced Ivan Kastriot to submit to the Sultans suzerainty (813/1410). In the South the Ottomans supported Albanian Spatas against the Toccos. Finally war was declared against Venice during which the Ottomans made the real conquest of Albania from Northern Epirus to Croya (Akcahisar) and formed the province of Arvanid-ili or Arnavud-ili (818-20/1415-1417). The conditions which the Ottoman conquest brought into the country can be fully ascertained with the help of the details contained in the tîmâr register of 835/1432 (Sûret-i defter-i Sancâk-i Arvanid, ed. H. Ìnalcik, Ankara 1954). The names of various regions in the register frequently contains references to the chief feudal families who were vassals of the Ottoman, about 819/1416; Yuvan-ili (land of Kastrioti), Balsha-ili (east of Kavajë and south of Shkumbi), Gionomaymo-ili (North of Pekin), Pavlo-Kurtik-ili (the Jilema Valley), Kondo-Miho-ili (area west of Elbasan), Zenebish-ili (Zenebissi, Gjinokastër and its surroundings), Bogdan-Ripe-ili (north of Elbasan), Ashtin-ili (Premetë). Besides these great families, many smaller Christian feudals kept some of their lands as tîmârs. Among them we may mention Dobrile (in Cartolos), Simos Kondo (in Kokinolisari), Bobza Family (Gion and his sons Ghin and Andre in the Village of Bobza or Bubës), Karli family (Matja). This kind of tîmârs constituted 16 per cent of all the tîmâr-holders in Arvanid-ili. Conversion to Islam was not considered necessary for possession of tîmâr. One Metropolid in Belgrade (Berat) and three Peskopos in Kanina, Akcahisar and Cartolos were given their former villages as tîmârs. The Turkish population in the province consisted only of the military and religious personnel. The Turkish tîmâr-holders with their men did not exceed 800 in number. The whole sandjak was distributed among about 300 tîmâr-holders who lived in the villages or castles, namely, Argirikasri (Argyrocastro, Gjinokastër), Kanina, Belgrade, Iskarapar, Bratushesh or Yenidje-kale and Akcahisar. Argirikasri (later on Argiri or Ergiri) became the seat of the sandjak-begi and in each county (wilâyet) centre there was a subashi and kâdî, The revolutionary step taken by the Ottoman state was that it considered almost all the agricultural lands as owned by the state, because only a system would enable it to apply its tîmâr system. The peasants, therefore, must have had the feeling that they were under an impersonal central government as compared to their close dependence upon the feudal lords under the old régime. In the north, the Ottomans supported first, Balsha III, and upon his death (824/1421), Stephan Lazerevic of Serbia, against Venice, which finally had to return to Stephan, Drivasto, Antivari and Budua (826/1423). In the south the Despot Carlo Tocco died in 832/1420 and Murad II, taking advantage of the conflict between his heirs, took Yannina (Muharram 834/October 1430). After that a new land and population survey of Albania was effected (Shabân 835/spring 1432) which meant the tightening of the Ottoman admnistrative control there. This survey may be regarded as the real starting-point ot the long Albanian resistence during the subsequent decades. Moreover it demonstrates the real character of the rebellion. Firstly some ot the villages in the mountainous Kurvelesh and Bzorshek areas refused to be registered. In a few places they even killed their Ottoman tîmâr-holders. Great feudal lords such as Ivan (Yuvan) Kastriot in the north, Arianites (Araniti, Arnit) Comnenus in the Argirikasri region, had to give up considerable parts of their lands for distribution to the Ottoman sipâhîs as tîmâr. First Araniti took up arms, killed many sipâhîs in the autumn of 836/1432, and Thopia Zenebissi besieged Argirikasri. Alfonso V, of Naples, Venice and Hungary encouraged the rebels. who defeated Alî son of Evrenuz, governor of Albania, at the Bzorshek pass. Encouraged by tliesc developments Christian lords in central and northern Albania joined the rebellion. Finally in 837/1434 all the forces of Rumeli under Sinân Beg, governor-general of Rumeli, combined to put an end to this dangerous rebellion which was giving hope to Hungary of a new Crusade. But Araniti managed to escape to the mountains. The additional records made after 836/1432 m the defter of Arvanid-ili indicate that the rebellion did not affect the Ottoman control of the country to any considerable extent. A great majority of the Ottoman and Christian tîmâr-holders remained in possession of their tîmârs. It appears that mostly the Highlanders co-operated with the feudal families who had matrimonial connexions with their chieftains. From 847/1443 onwards Iskender-beg [q.v.] the son-in-law of Araniti, assumed the leadership of the rebellion; his unusual energy and boldness, and thff international situation which obtained at the time, gave the movement a character of international [p. 655] significance. Setting aside the legend that has grown up around his person, it must be emphasised that the origin and the motives of his rebellion were not different from those of the other Albanian lords. Appointed subashi of Akcahisar (Croya) about 842/1438, he was dismissed in 1440. He wished to recover Croya and his fathers lands in their entirety and to possess them as a feudal lord, not as a tîmâr-holder. It is true that he made an alliance wth other feudal families, Thopias, Balshas,. Dukagjin, Dushmani, Lecca Zaccarïa and Araniti (The Alessio Meeting, 1st March 1444), but the idea of an Albania unified by a national leader is far from reality. He controlled only northern Albania while central and southern Albania always remained under Ottoman control. Subashis, and sandjak-begs, based on Argirikasri (Gjinokastër), Ohrida or Belgrade (Berat) tried to suppress him with local forces. He waged guerilla warfare all the time. Many of the battles described by Marino Barlezio with such fantastic figures were nothing but local clashes. Iskender-begs own forces seem never to exceed 3,000. By the treaty of 26th March 1451 he became vassal of Alforso V of Naples and surrendered Croya to the kings men. Araniti, who had claims on southern Albania (Vagenetia, Valona, Kanina) followed his example. Araniti was authorised by the king to accept in his name oaths of allegiance by other Albanian lords. So Zenebissi and others also became Alfonsos vassals. In return, the King agreed to grant a yearly pension varying between 300 and 1400 ducats to each of these vassals and to provide them a place to take refuge in case of danger. This simple change of masters was obviously determined by the fact that the Aragonese system appeared much more favourable than the Ottoman regime to the Albanian feudals. But as witnessed by a contemporary Aragonese document, the common people had hardly any complaints against the Ottoman administration. (see C. Marinesco, Alphonse VIII., Mél. de lécole Roum. en France, Paris 1923, 104). A tîmâr register made in 871/1466-67 included Dibra, Digobrdo, Rjeka, Mat and Cermenika (Babakalik Archives, Istanbul, Maliye no. 508). It is therefore seen that after Mehemmed IIs [q.v.] expedition in 870/1466, the tîmâr system was extended into these areas. Whatever his real motives may have been, Iskender-beg, who defied, in his mountains, Murad II (in 852/1448 and 854/1450) and Mehemmed II (in 870/1466 and 871/1467), was also glorified in his time as Champion of Christ, by the Pope, and as the Albanian National hero, by the nationalists in the 19th centurv.N> During the Ottoman-Venetian war of 1463-1479 Albania became one of the main scenes of operation. Finally the Ottomans were able to take Croya, Drivasto, Alessio and Jabljak (Jabyak) in 1478, Scutari in 1479, and Durazzo in 1501. Alessio (Lesh), which the Ottomans lost during the war of 1499-1503, was retaken in 1509. After having failed in their attempts in 1538, the Ottomans finally took Antivari (Bar) and Dulcigno (Ulcinj, Ölgün) in 1571, and thus completed their conquest of Albania. It appears that up to the end of the 16th century Ottoman rule in Albania created a peaceful and prosperous era. Most of the old feudal families then adjusted themselves to the Ottoman régime, and even one of the Aranitis named Alî beg had a large tîmâr around Kanina, Argirikasri and Belgrade toward 1506. Until about 870/1466 Ottoman Albania was organised as a sandjak under the name of Arvanid (or Arnavud)-ili. Its subdivisions were the wilâyets. of Argirikasri, Klisura, Kanina, Belgrade, Timor-indje, Iskarapar, Pavlo-Kurtik, Cartalos and Akcahisar. When in 1466 Mehemmed II erected the fort of Elbasan, this region was set up as a new sandjak. [p. 656] Moreover in the south the sandjak of Awlonya (Avlona) and in the east that of Ohri were created and in 1479 the sandjak of Iskenderiye (Scutari) was formed in the north. The following is a list established on the basis of the surveys of 912/1506 and 926/1520. (Bav. Archives, Tapu no. 34 and 94), showing the administrative and military situation in the 16t The Albanian towns, which numbered 19 in the four Albanian sandjaks, were small local market-towns with populations varying between 7,000 and 4,000. Only Awlonya (Avlona) became a commercial centre of some importance (population 4 to 5 thousand). In order to further commerce, the government settled there a sizeable Jewish colony of the refugees from Spain (end of the 15th century). According to the Kânûn-nâme of Awlonya (see Arvanid Defteri, 123) the port handled goods imported from Europe, and velvets, brocades, mohairs, cotton goods, carpets, spices and leather goods came from Bursa and Istanbul. Some of the citizens of Awlonya even had business associates in Europe. Quite a large amount of tar and salt, produced near the city, was bought by state agencies at fixed prices. The tax income from Awlonya for the sultans treasury alone amounted to about 32 thousand gold ducats a year. A garrison and a small fleet were stationed there permanently (for vols. 7 and 8). It must be noted that the Ottomans Albanian towns circa 1081/1670 see Ewliyâ Celebi, continued the tax privileges of Akcahisar and Iskarapar which went back to Byzantine times (L. von Thallóczy-C. Jirecek, Zwei Urkunden aus Nordalbanien, Archiv für slavische Phil., xxi, 1899, 83). The defter of 835/1431 reads as follows: Let the inhabitants of Akcahisar guard the castle and be exempt from all kinds of taxation with the exception of kharâdj. These tax exemptions were abolished toward the end of the 16th century. The Ottomans did not radically change the taxation system which had existed in Albania under the Byzantines and the Serbs. Ispendje, most probably a Serbian tax, was paid by every adult Christian male at the rate or 25 akca. Tlie basic Ottoman taxes were the ushr which was actually one eighth of agricultural products, and the djizya. The Byzantine tax of two bushels of wheat and two of rye a year survived in some parts of Albania under the Ottomans. So did fines called bâd-i hawâ [q.v.], apparently an adaptation of Byzantine aerikon. Tavuk ve boghaca (Byzantine kaviskia) also survived m Albania as an âdet. All tliese taxes except the djizya, which was collected for the sultans treasury were assigned to tîmâr-holders. Under the Ottomans the rate of taxation seems not to have been lighter than before. But they abolished forced labour and determined, in advance, for each peasant, the amount of taxes due. Unlawful practices did exist, and the Kânûn-nâme of 1583 would seem to give a good idea concerning such abuse. It states that no tîmâr-holder should subject his peasants to forced labour make them carry hay for themselves, take their lands away without lawful reason, or force them to pay in cash the ushr, which was to be paid in goods. The commonest complaint of a semi-nomadic people was that they were liable to the sheep-tax more than once a year during their move from one pasture to another. At the beginning of the 16th century the public revenue in the sandjak of Iskenderiye (Scutari) amounted to 4,392,910 akca, half of which was assigned to the sultan and the other half to the sandjak-begi (449,913) and the tîmâr-holders (1,776,118). The Albanians occupied an outstanding place in the ruling class of the empire. At least thirty Grand-Viziers can be identified as of Albanian origin among them Gedik Ahmed, Kodja Dâwud, Dukagin-zâde Ahmed, Lutfî, Kara Ahmed, Kodja Sinân Pasha, Nasûh, Kara Murâd, and Tarhoncu Ahmed. In the Kapi-kulu army, too, the Albanians were always present in great numbers. One obvious reason for it was that the dewshirme [q.v.] system was practised extensively in Albania, as in Bosnia. Two fundamental changes in the structure or the empire, namely the disruption of the tîmâr system on the one hand, and the deterioration of the fiscal system on the other, had their impact on the situation in Albania as elsewhere. The first change, which coincided with the weakening of the central authority at the end of the 16th century made possible the formation of large estates in the provinces, while the second made it necessary for the state to assess new taxes and to reform the djizya; which due to its increased rate, affected particularly the Christian population. The discontent is manifested especially in the rebellious attitude of the Catholic highlanders in Albania in the 17th and 18th centuries and in their co-operation with hostile powers. For example. the original tax of 1000 akca a year paid by the Klementi clan had become a trivial amount by the end of the 16th century due to the depreciation of the akca, and the government therefore wanted instead to assess the djizya at 1,000 gold coins. This caused the rebellion of the tribes of northern Albania. They started to attack and plunder the plains of Rumeli as far as Filibe. In order to stop these depredations the Porte sent several armies against them and built a new castle near Gusinje. Their new uprising in 1638 was quelled by Duce Mehmed Pasha (see Naîma, iii, 399-409). The Klementi, Kuci (Kocaj), Piperi in the North, and the Himariots on the coastal range of Himara, co-operated also with the Austrian and Venetian armies during the wars of 1683-99, 1714-8, 1736-9. On the other hand, as the central control weakened the highlanders began to penetrate into Rumeli and even in Anatolia from the beginning of 17th century. In the 18th century, pashas, begs and [p. 657] ayân everywhere took into their service these highlanders who were reputed to be the best mercenaries. They were organised in bölüks of about 100 men under a bölük-bashi, who, as a perfect condottiere, arranged everything for his men with the hirer. The part played by such bölüks is well illustrated by the example of Mehmed Alî in Egypt. .Many Albanians also joined the mountain bands in Rumeli, called Daghli eshkiydsi or Kircaali. In the same period the lease system of the state-owned lands (mîrî arâdî mukâtaasi) on the lowlands, coastal plains or inland basins, in Albania gave birth to the big land-owning class of ayân [q.v.]. These absentee land-lords used every means to obtain more and more mukâtaât. Among them, the Bushatli family in the North, in the land of Gegs, and Tepedelenli Alî Pasha (see ALÎ PASHA TEPEDELNLI) (1744-1822) in the south, in the area of Tosks, emerged as semi-independent despots. The first Bushatli (in Turkish chroniclers Budjatli or Bucatli), Mehmed Pasha, built up his power by acquiring large mukâtaât and by making an alliance, with the Malisors, the highlanders, and thus forced the Porte to confer him the governorship of Scutari (Ishkodra, Shkodër) (1779). After his death (1790), the Portes attempt to get back these mukâtaât caused his son Kara Mahmûd Pasha [q.v.] to rebel. Alî Pasha, too, possessed about 200 estates (ciftliks). The Porte at first did not challenge the increasing power and authority of the Bushatlis and Alî Pasha, as they were rightly considered to check the domination of the local ayân, and the rivalry between these two pashas seemed to counterbalance each other. Alî Pasha once tried to extend his control into the zone of the Bushatlis and fought them. Through his sons whom he managed to have appointed governors of Thessaly, Morea, Karli-ili he actually formed a semi-independent state in Albania and Greece. In 1820, when the central government finally took action against him, he rebelled, and instigated the Greeks to revolt. The power of the last Bushatli, named Mustafâ Pasha, was destroyed only in 1832 by the reformed army of Mahmûd II. The centralist policy of the Tanzîmât caused troubles with the autonomous tribes in North Albania. The Albanian League for the Defence of the Kights of the Albanian Nation had been set up at Prizren on June 13, 1878, only to influence the decisions of the Congress of Berlin; but it proved to have great significance for the birth of an Albanian state later on. Encouraged by the Ottoman government at the beginning, the League set up resistance to the Montenegrins and Greeks in order to keep the Albanian provinces united (the four Ottoman wilâyets of Yanya, Ishkodra, Manastir and Kosova). But when the league tended to further the idea of an autonomous Albania, the Porte sent an army and aspersed the League (1881). The great powers, especially Austria-Hungary and Italy, encouraged this autonomy movement with the purpose of extending their influence over Albania while Russia was supporting Montenegros territorial claims over Albania. On the other hand, by enlisting Albanians in his bodyguard and conferring special favours on them, Abd al-Hamîd II was trying to win Albanian support. But the Albanian intellectuals, in co-operation with the Young Turks in Paris and elsewhere, were anticipating an autonomous Albania. In 1908 the stand taken by the Albanians against Abd al-Hamîd II at the Frizovik Meeting did actually help the Revolution to succeed. In the Ottoman Parliament the influential Albanian deputies, such as Ismâîl Kemal, Esad Toptanî, Hasan Prishtina, joined in tlie Hürriyyet we Itilâf Party which sought decentralisation as against the centralist ottomanisation policy of the Ittihâd we Terakkî Party. While the heated discussions on an Albanian educational system was going on (the Congress of Manastir, November 1908) an uprising broke out among the Albanian highlanders who resisted the Ottoman government attempt to collect their arms. Finally, on 4th September 1912, the new Ottoman government accepted the Albanian demands for an autonomous administration. But the Balkan War completely changed the situation in the Balkans. A short time after the declaration of war, in November 1912, Ismâîl Kemal declared the independence of Albania at Awlonya (Vlorë). The London Conference proclaimed Albania an autonomous principality under the guaranty of the six powers (29th July 1923); but the newly elected prince, Wilhelm von Wied, had soon to leave the country (3rd September 1914). After the first world war Serbia laid claims to Shkodër and Durrës. Seeing their country dismembered, the Albanian leaders hastily convoked a congress at Lushnjë (21st January 1920) and demanded the independence of Albania. A national government was formed in Tirana, and an Albanian partisan army drove out the Italians from Vlorë. Italy finally recognised the independence of Albania with the treaty of Tirana (3rd August 1920). The small Albanian state experienced a tumultuous parliamentary life during the first years of its existence (1921-4). The Muslim land-owning beys of the western and central plains came into conflict with the Popular Party (under its leader Fan S. Noli). A revolution forced Ahmed Zog, the Prime Minister, to flee to Yugoslavia. With Yugoslav support he came back into power (24th December 1924). A constituent Assembly proclaimed Albania a Republic and named Ahmed Zog (Zogu) President. He then signed a series of treaties with Italy (12th May 1925; 27th November 1926; 22nd November 1927 and March 1936) putting the country practically under Italian protection. In September 1928 Zog was proclaimed the King of Albanians. He fled from Albania one day before the Italians invaded the country on April 6, 1939. Bibliography: Emile Legrand, Bibliographie albanaise, completed and published by Henri Guys, Paris 1912; Jean G. Kersopoulos, Albanie, ouvrages et articles de revue parus de 1555 à 1934, ed. Flamma, Athens 1934; Herbert Louis, Albanian, Eine Landeskunde vornehmlich auf Grunde eigener Reisen, Stuttgart 1927; Antonio Baldacci, Studi speciali albanesi, 3 vols., Rome 1932-33, 1938; Johann G. von Hahn, Albanesische Studien, Jena 1854; F. Nopcsa, Albanien. Bauten, Trachten und Geräte Nordalbaniens, Berlin and Leipzig 1925; Hyacinthe Hequard, Histoire et Description de la Haute-Albanie ou Ghegarie, Paris 1855; M.E. Durham, High Albania, London 1909; S. Gopcevic, Oberalbanien und Seine Liga, Leipzig 1881; Margaret Hasluck, The Unwritten Law in Albania, Cambridge 1954; Carleton S. Coon, The Mountains of Giants: A Racial and cultural Study of the North Albanian Mountain Ghegs, Cambridge, Mass. 1950; Ludwig von Thallóczy, Illyrisch-albanische Forschungen, Munich-Leipzig, 1916; Georg Stadtmüller, Forschungen zur albanischen Frühgeschichte, Archivum Europae Centro-Orientalis, vii/1941, 1-196; M.M. v. ufflay, Srbi i Arbanasi, Belgrade 1925; N. Jorga, Brève Histoire de lAlbanie et du peuple albanais, Bucharest 1919; [p. 658] Fr. Pall, Marino Barlezio. Uno storico umanista, Mélanges dhistoire générale, ii (Cluj 1938), 135-318; H. Ìnalcik, Sûret-i Defter-i Sancak-i Arvanid, Ankara 1954; idem, Timariotes chrétiens en Albanie au XV.siècle, Mitteil., des oesterreichischen Staatsarchivs, Vienna iv/1952, 118-38; idem, Iskender bey, IA cüz 52; Stavro Skendi, Religion in Albania during the Ottoman Rule, in Südostforschungen xv/1956, 311-27; Albania, S. Skendi (editor), New York 1956; the Ottoman chroniclers, Neshrî, Urudj, Khodja Sad al-Dîn, Kâtib Celebi, Naîmâ, Findiklili Mehmed Agha, Râshid, Enwerî, Djewdet Pasha, contain considerable information on Albania (for these see F. Babinger, GOW); for Ewliyâ Celebi, see F. Babinger, Evlijâ Tschelebis Reisewege in Albanien, Berlin 1930; for the last period under the Ottoman rule, see Y.H. Bayur, Türk Inkilabi Tarihi, pub. Turkish Historical Society, Ankara 1943-1956; T.W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, London 1935; J.K. Birge, The Bektashi Order of Dervishes, Hartford 1937, K. Süssheim, Arnavutluk, in IA.

2009/ xx + 272 pages / Softcover / ISBN: 978-0-898716-71-9 / List Price $72.50/ SIAM Member Price $50.75/ Order Code CL56 Keywords: generalized inverses; pseudoinverses applied linear algebra Generalized (or pseudo-) inverse concepts routinely appear throughout applied mathematics and engineering, in both research literature and textbooks. Although the basic properties are readily available, some of the more subtle aspects and difficult details of the subject are not well documented or understood. This book is an excellent reference for researchers and students who need or want more than just the most basic elements. First published in 1979, the book remains up-to-date and readable, and it includes chapters on Markov chains and the Drazin inverse methods that have become significant to many problems in applied mathematics. Generalized Inverses of Linear Transformations provides comprehensive coverage of the mathematical theory of generalized inverses coupled with a wide range of important and practical applications that includes topics in electrical and computer engineering, control and optimization, computing and numerical analysis, statistical estimation, and stochastic processes. This book is intended for use as a reference by applied scientists and engineers. Preface to the Classics Edition 0. Introduction and other preliminaries; 1. The Moore-Penrose or generalized inverse; 2. Least squares solutions; 3. Sums, partitioned matrices and the constrained generalized inverse; 4. Partial isometries and EP matrices; 5. The generalized inverse in electrical engineering; 6. (i, j, k)-Generalized inverses and linear estimation; 7. The Drazin inverse; 8. Applications of the Drazin inverse to the theory of finite Markov chains; 9. Applications of the Drazin inverse; 10. Continuity of the generalized inverse; 11. Linear programming; 12. Computational concerns; About the Authors Stephen L. Campbell is Professor of Mathematics and Director of Graduate Programs at North Carolina State University. His research interests include linear algebra, control theory, differential equations (especially differential algebraic equations), numerical methods, and applications. He is the author or co-author of eight books. Carl D. Meyer is Professor of Mathematics at North Carolina State University. His research interests include numerical and applied linear algebra; Markov chains and applied probability; and information retrieval, data mining, and web search. He is the author or co-author of six books. This product hasn't received any reviews yet. Be the first to review this product! All prices are in USD

- THE MAGAZINE - INFO FOR... - ASI Store - ASI Top 25 - ASI End User - Classifieds and Services Marketplace - Product & Literature Showcases - List Rental - Market Trends - Custom Content & Marketing Services - ASI Readers' Choice Awards Question: I am bonding EPDM to acrylic-painted ABS, and I’d like to know if there are adhesives for this particular substrate combination. I’m looking for an alternative to acrylic tape for cost reasons. Do you know of any fluid 2K systems on the market? Answer: EPDM is a very difficult material to bond, and cyanoacrylates are almost certainly the best adhesives. However, if lower-cost two-component adhesives are what you’re looking for, then a tough acrylic adhesive will provide a good bond, but strengths will not be as high as with a cyanoacrylate. You might also try a two-component polyurethane system. Question: I have always believed that getting a really good adhesive bond means the materials being bonded should break before the adhesive. However, my adhesive supplier tells me that this is not necessarily true. What are your thoughts on this? Answer: This is a common misconception that most of us were brought up with, probably because the materials we bonded when we were in school were very weak. If you really think about it, though, the need to break the material being bonded is irrelevant in most bonding situations. The real technical answer to your question is that an adhesive only has to be strong enough to support the dynamic or static loads that the bond is subjected to in service. You must also bear in mind that the area being bonded is a critical consideration when determining the strength required of an adhesive. If you are bonding very heavy metals, for example, and the bond area is quite small, then you will require very strong adhesives like epoxies or cyanoacrylates, which have shear strengths of 2000 to 4000 psi. On the other hand, if you are bonding large-area, lightweight panels or an extremely light material (such as wall coverings), a lower-strength adhesive with a few hundred pounds of strength (such as a hot melt or a water-based system) is more than adequate. Any views or opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not represent those of Adhesives & Sealants Industry, its staff, Editorial Board or BNP Media.

This latest entry in National Geographic's series of famous writers on famous cities is like the British dish bubble and squeak: a hash of thrown together bits and pieces that might be tasty but isn't very filling. An avid reader, Quindlen (Living Out Loud, etc.) developed an acute case of literature-induced Anglophilia at an early age. As a precocious youngster, she was enchanted by the terrace houses, green squares and horse-drawn carriages of the written worlds of Daniel Defoe, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens and Henry James's London. Later swept away by Virginia Woolf and the Mitford sisters, Quindlen doesn't actually visit London until her mid-40s while on a trip to promote one of her own books. Quindlen's narrative essays, while thematic, lack enough specific locations to make them consistently interesting. While she comments on the extraordinary fact that one can still find one's way around London based on 18th-century literary plot points, she doesn't take explicit literary tours herself, leaving readers to wonder to what extent the expectations of a lifelong love affair with the London of her mental library are met. Instead, Quindlen shifts the focus away from herself and toward her experience of traveling with her 20-something writer son, comparing and contrasting their generational impressions of the city. Map not seen by PW.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007 You are right in being concerned in your soul discovering the truth of things. Truth in general is a dangerous thing to our cause and will likely set you back many days or months if not handled properly. Without a doubt, combating the truth is an exhaustive and monumental task, which I have learned through many follies of my own that ended in more harm to the cause than anticipated. Some lessons are best learned the hard way, but in the dealings of true things this is not one of them, for an encounter with the truth can leave even the strongest of us tired, exhausted, and useless for sometime after the encounter. Even Legion has proven weak against it. The fact of the matter is that to fight truth is as futile as trying single handedly to change the flow of a river in a moments notice or trying to draw closer the moon to the earth. In other words, it cannot be done. But that does not mean we must surrender and bow to the truth, if such a things happens then we would be no better than those whom we fight. Here, my young Wormwood, I share with you in ease what I learned through strife and struggle, so as to save you from the anguish of losing souls and to further the cause. Your first task should be aimed at guiding your objective to things that makes him think and feel as if he is discovering truth. There are many unread ‘classics’ that will serve in this measure and at the same time help to promote pride -- as he will feel as if he is reading truth and better than others for reading those unread truths. Second, if your objective does discover a truth, hold it up before him and convince him that the reason he has never heard of this truth is because it isn’t relevant. If it was something relevant it would be known and practiced by all. Lastly, since truth is what it is, the best technique for guarding against the truth of things is to simply convince your objective to ignore those things which are true. By ignoring what is true your objective will have a sense of bliss as by ignoring there is no engaging and no combat to endure. Nephew, I share this with you as I learned it the hard way how exhausting, how monumental a task, and how easy it is to loose a soul to the truth if one does not heed to the side of caution when confronted by the truth. Do not be discouraged and continue to fight for the cause. Monday, October 29, 2007 Our journey begins outside of Washington, DC. I am sitting at my desk, going through my SPAM filtered email, when I see one that catches my eye, “Dreams can cost less repl1ca w4tches from r0lex here”. Sounds interesting I thought, and I could use a new watch. Knowing the harmful effects of opening unsolicited email,I decided to open the email in a controlled virtualized environment. Below is the content of the email: Sunday, October 28, 2007 Places not appearing: under your bed, in your closet, the basement, and old man Whithers' place. Places that are appearing: Manchac Swamp, Easter Island, Whinchester Mansion, and others. Click on the link to find more. Friday, October 26, 2007 Father Greene turned to look at his calendar on his desk. “December 9, 1965” he said to himself as he crossed off the date. It was late and Father Greene was calling it a night. He gathered his brivery, papers, and rosary, locked up his office and the church, and proceeded into the church to recite his night prayers. The church was old and his steps echoed dully on the wood floor. Several boards creaked as he walked down the center isle. It was fit with a large high altar in the sanctuary, stain glass windows of bible stories and saints, icons, statues of the holy family and St. Michael through out the church. When he made it to the front pews, he genuflected, made the sign of the cross, slipped into the right pew, and began night prayer. He finished his prayers, and on his way out he saw that the votive candles were missing. Except it wasn’t only the candles but also the three six-foot wide and three-foot high cast-iron stands that held the votive candles. “Who? How,” Father Greene asked himself as he quickly scanned the church to see if the candles have been moved? “I guess they are being cleaned,” he whispered as he turned toward the vestibule to leave the church. * * * The next day Father Greene arrived at the rectory after the morning mass to find the secretary already diligently at work. “Jessica,” Father Greene asked, “did we have the votive candle stands sent out to be cleaned?” “No Father” said Jessica. “That’s strange. After I finished night prayer, I saw that the votive candles, stands and all, were gone.” “That is strange” Father Green spent the rest of the day looking for the missing stands and candles. His efforts resulted in nothing; the votive candles and stands were never found, and Father Green would on occasion while passing by where the candles once were would wonder where the stands could have disappeared to. * * * Several months later, during his usual routine of night prayer, something strange occurred. While in the middle of prayer, he noticed a movement off to the side, just out of his field of vision. Then he saw it above him. Then again to the side. Confused he turned around in his seat and saw with great horror, flapping in a silent wind: Banners! They were everywhere. Banners on the wall. Banners hung from the ceiling. Banners covering the icons. There wasn’t a place that a banner was not. Father shaking in ghast. He fell out of the pew and to the floor. Quickly he grabbed his things and left the church in a great hast without looking back. Upon closing the door behind him, he leaned against it, took a deep breath and sighed. He was glad to be out of the church. * * * On the Following day, Father Greene told Jessica of the incident. She knew nothing about the banners and how they could have gotten there. What was most startling for Jessica was how Father Greene said that before he started night prayer the banners weren’t there. It was only sometime during night prayer when the banners arrived, but Father said there wasn’t anyone with him in the church. Father removed the banners from the church and threw them in the dumpster out back. Yet, from time to time, the banners would return with no sign of how they got there or who put them there. * * * Strange things like what happened with the banners and candles continually occurred in the parish, and in a somewhat alarming rate. It was first that Father Greene found that someone had taken all the old spirituality books out of the library – the ones like “Imitation of Christ”, “Confessions” -- and replaced them with newer books with titles like “Jesus and Me”, “My Buddy Jesus”, “Jesus the Warm Fuzzy.” Next all the icons and statues went missing: not a clue was left to their disappearance. After leaving the church one night and returning for morning mass, Father found the high altar to have been replaced with a wooden table and the gold vessels were also replaced by wooded and glass containers. If things couldn’t get any worse, the stain glass windows with rich images of saints and stories were somehow changed without any indication of how or who had done it. In the place of the 8 windows was now 8 colored glass windows with indecipherable images. Father Greene felt as if one might need a Phd in order to find the meaning of said new colored windows. * * * Exactly one year later, Father Greene walked through the church lamenting, “What happened to this church? Why are there bare walls here? Why can’t I keep any icons or statues in the building? People keep stealing them, that’s why.” He sighed and exited the side door of the church and headed over to the small adoration chapel located about 30 paces from the main church structure. He reached the door and saw that someone had placed a sign on the door that read “Peace Room.” Puzzeling, he thought. He opened the door was stopped in his tracks by what he saw – it was certainly unexpected. The basket of rosary had been replaced with stylish meditation bracelets. The chairs were gone and in their place were bamboo mats. The bibles were replaced with copies of “I’m Fine . . . You’re Fine”. As Father Greene took in all the changes to the adoration chapel he let out in a tremendous yell, “What is going on here? This is the last draw!” After that Father Greene was determined to catch the individual responsible for these unauthorized changes. He purchased a statue of Our Lade Queen of Victory and placed it in the Church. The statue of Our Lady was sure to be irresistible to this thief. So, he waited. For two weeks Father Greene did not sleep and barely ate. Then late one night, as he prayed night prayer, he discovered what was behind the disappearances of art and beauty in the church. In a strong gust of wind the doors to the church blew open and in came a might wind. The banners for the Lenten season blew furiously in the church, and the chairs that now replaced the pews rattled against each other. From the back of the church from, through the doors, it appeared in all of its horridly bad plaid polyester. It was a spirit, and it was horrible -- like a soul without its body. The spirit was dead, and in a state that it was not meant to be in in the earthly place. In pain the spirit howled as if it being painfully ripped from its body. The spirit glided over to the statue of Our Lady that Father had placed in the church. Shaking, Father confronted the spirit, “Wh-Who-Who, What are you? Stop! Get away from that statue!” “Spirit,” the thing moaned. Father rushed to the holy water font a scoped up a handful of water and began blessing the spirit in hopes to put it to rest. His prayers and blessings had no affect upon the spirit. Again Father asked, “What do you want here? What have you done with all our things?” “Vatican”, the spirit groan and wailed. “What!? What about the Vatican?” “Two”, the thing shrieked. “What are you saying? Are you the Spirit of Vatican II? Where is your body? Why are you separated from your texts? What have they done to you?” The spirit groaned and mummered some more then moved toward Father Greene. Father stepped back and it came closer. Looking through the creature he could see the statue of Our Lady was missing. He also saw that the spirit was translucent and all the things that had been taken from the church -- the icons, statues, candles – were afloat within this hideous monstrosity. The spirit advanced upon Father Greene. He fell back to the floor in a hard thump. He tried hard to skirt out of the path of the spirit, but it eventually overtook him. With a yell like something from the pits of Hades, the spirit was gone, and so too was Father Greene. * * * It has been said that Father Greene was never seen or heard of since. Some think that he ran off and joined the circus or just went crazy. Others say he entered a monastery in South Louisiana. Still it has also been said that Father Greene now wanders the globe after this spirit trying to restore the spirit to its body, the text. But whatever happened to Father Greene, it is uncertain and no one really know what happened to him after his encounter with the Spirit of Vatican II. Thursday, October 25, 2007 Wednesday, October 24, 2007 Tuesday, October 23, 2007 I had about a dozen cups of coffee today and couldn't draw a straight line even if my life depended upon it. I take heart in knowing that the drawing still wouldn't get any better even if I could draw a straight line. Sunday, October 21, 2007 - AP: Educators were punished in 2,500 sex cases from bizarre to sadistic - Accused are overwhelmingly male, often popular, recognized for excellence - Quiet punishments allow many violators move on to other schools - One in 10 victimized children reports sexual abuse, say academic studies This is by far one of the funniest books I have read in a long time. I was laughing out loud at some of the metaphysical jokes (this isn't one of them): The optimist says, "The glass is half full." The pessimist says, "The glass is half empty." The rationalist says, "The glass is twice as big as it needs to be." So LSU wins. AND . . . I do believe Louisiana has done one of the smartest things in the history of the state. They elected a Rhodes Scholar as the next governor -- at least that is what the unofficial results are saying. In LA if a candidate gets more than 50% there is no runoff the following November. I hope Bobby has more plans for recovery of the Gulf Coast than Blanco's great plans of using the surplus of money the state received for recovery efforts to build roads in North Louisiana. Saturday, October 20, 2007 Note: Picture is from the "Sugar Bowl Showdown" magazine for the 2003 National Championship Sugar Bowl game. The Picture was taken at the SEC championship game in Atlanta against Georgia. If you are interested I am the one with the sign. My roommates were Elvis, Batman, and the Guy in the cowboy hat. So you can only imagine what Friday and Saturday were like in my apartment -- if we weren't camped out in front of the stadium waiting from the night before so as to get the good seats we were driving to the away games. Elvis is now Married to the girl in the Superman/girl outfit to the left of the picture. Not appearing in picture (becuase the lens wasn't wide enough): LSU Spiderman, Purple and Gold Cow, LSU Speedracer, LSU Uncle Sam, and the numerous other fans wearing more ridiculous costumes and outfits. We were working on an LSU Riddler, but I don't think it ever panned out. Friday, October 19, 2007 Via Mark Shea LONDON (AFP) - Regular swearing at work can help boost team spirit among staff, allowing them to express better their feelings as well as develop social relationships, according to a study by researchers. Thursday, October 18, 2007 Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Tuesday, October 16, 2007 HAMMOND, La. (CNS) -- So what's a nice, mild-mannered, 72-year-old Dominican priest doing collecting thousands of dollars in royalty checks for a rock 'n' roll classic that he co-wrote in the 1950s -- a song eventually made famous by Ricky Nelson and one that has furthered the religious mission of the Dominicans? * * * Yes, yes, I know what I said, “I took the one less traveled by,/ and that has made all the difference”. Now, eighty or so years later, not one person has bothered to stop and ask me how I knew then that taking the road that wanted wear has made all the difference or any difference for that matter. Because of this people have used my words to justify all sorts of things: taking dance lessons, learning to paint, traveling cross-country. Yet, too often instead of doing what the person should do, the responsible option, people do otherwise and justify it by thinking something like, “I will do this because fewer people have taken this path. I think I read about it once in a poem.” In fact just yesterday, as I shopped for apples in the produce section of the grocery, the very thing I just mentioned happened. A lady, mildly attractive with brown hair, glasses, and two children hanging off her like monkeys, approached me and thanked me for speaking such words. They inspired her to do something she never though she would do, she told me. She quit her job to follow her passion. Her passion: sculpting. Though she had never any experience in sculpting, she knew it was her passion and livelihood, and that was good enough for her. I told the lady, who happened to be a husbandless mother, that it was nice she was following a lesser traveled road. It is exhilarating being able to follow one’s true passion in life. However, I questioned her, is passion going to feed a hungry mouth, heat a cold house, or clothe a body? It appeared she had not paused to consider if the road was a better road. Passion was all that mattered. I have encountered this above scenario a number of times varying in content but nearly always the same in form. It is as if the assumption is made that because a road is less traveled that it is a better road to travel. The thought seems never to occur that there might be a very good reason the road is lesser traveled. It could be the case that the road isn't traveled because it leads to certain doom. Perhaps a troll lives at the end of the road. Maybe the road leads the traveler to an unnoticed pit where the traveler might not be able to escape upon falling into it. Then again, it might just lead back to the older trail and is not used because it is a longer trail. I should not be surprised that thoughts like these never occur in the minds of the people these days. After all, why should they? People are obsessed with new things, and the lesser traveled road appears to be newer for the fact that it looks less worn. Yet, just because something appears one way doesn’t mean that it is. It could likely be the case that the path that wanted wear was really the more traversed but most lightly treaded upon so as to maintain its appearance -- like no trace camping – wouldn’t that be a whimsical discovery. The road everyone thinks is less traversed is really the more worn. So really, by traveling the lesser traveled road nothing extraordinary would have been accomplished, because it is what everyone already does – kind of like all those silly people trying to be themselves and in doing so discover they are just like everyone else. Besides, if what the old saying says is true, that there is nothing new under the sun, then it can be quite the case that this trail is no newer or less worn than the other. I don’t know. I wasn’t there at its making. Still, people think that by taking the road less traveled that they are doing something new and something good or better. Argh! No where did I every say the road I took was good and fortunate. All I said is that it “made all the difference.” For all anyone knows, except for me and the a few others, the road could have been dangerous, disastrous, and bad. Where each day I might have been confronted by evil and other menacing things like presidential elections, mother in-laws, and cold stale coffee. For all you know the trail could have taken me right up to the top of Mt. Everest or through the fiery mountains of Mordar. The contrary could be true also; where I encountered fields of butterflies filled with rainbows and sunshine. But whichever I encountered I’m not telling. It annoys me that people think the road I took was good. As if the fact that it being different qualified it being a good choice or my speaking it years later after I was finished with the road is the only sufficient reason for my choice to be good. Since when did difference become a good thing? Difference for difference’s sake: why is this good? Whatever happened to the good things being what is tried, tested, and useful? To be honest, I don’t even know if my decision was a good decision or a bad decision for that matter. All I know is that I made a choice and traveled down it. Really, any choice can make all the difference. Likewise, the choice might make no difference at all. I don’t know because I can only travel down one road at a time, and I can only reflect back upon the roads that I have traveled. I’m not saying don’t travel down roads less traveled, I’m just saying be wise about it. Notice, I did not take the lesser traveled road in haste. I’ve seen many lesser traveled roads while on my road less traveled that I wouldn’t recommend. Jumping off a skyscraper is a lesser traveled road and so is being swallowed by a whale or walking on hot glass, but I wouldn’t suggest doing any of them. Be careful in your decision. Realize that I took one road and then the other to see the claim and lay of each before making my choice. Though I didn’t have much time to make my decision and my information on which to base my decision was limited, I used the information I had and continued down a road. So I implore you, the reader, to be wise in your decisions, and stop using my words to justify the most ignorant things. I am happy people are inspired by my words, but saddened at their abuse. Monday, October 15, 2007 • 2000+ years of theology in 96 Pages: This mini-textbook features legitimate information on common theological mistakes (nearly all heresies deny the incarnation), and scriptural references (where you get to use your basic knowledge of theology on other), plus sections on Logic, Social Justice, Being and Essence, Fatih and Reason, and other standard Theological fields of study. • 10 Heroes of Theology Trading Cards: They’re all here—from The 12 Apostles (on 1 card) to John Paul II. All with their portraits and important stats, on baseball-style trading cards. • 5 Theologies at a Glance Cards: Quick reference information on How to talk to liberal hippies, How to talk to crazy conservatives, How to Determine If an act is morally objectionable, and much more. • 5 Extra-Credit Course Cards: Information that didn’t fit in our 96-page textbook—but our attorneys claim we have a legal obligation to share with you. • Mini-Theology Comps: Even Pope Benedict XVI would have a tough time with these tantalizing trivia questions. They come complete with detailed answers on an accordion-folded exam. • Diploma (one side in Latin, reverse in English): Suitable for framing and showing off. Other Costumes your child should not wear or go as: - Ted Kennedy - A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence - Dan Brown - James Carville - Plan B - The Spirit of Vatican II Via Catholic Home and Garden What is wrong with this first sentence from an Eric Adelson story on ESPN.com? Hint: you need to think culturally.BATON ROUGE, La. -- It's almost time. A rock band blares, and the brats brown, and the sun bakes, and a little boy waits. I did not even know what a Brat was until I left Louisiana. I remember when I told my friends from the Midwest that I never had a brat before they nearly freaked. They asked, "Then what did you serve at tail gates and BBQ?" I replied, "Simple, boiled crawfish, fried chicken, shrinp or oyster po-boys, red beans and rice, gumbo, Jambalaya, crawfish pie, fried fish, etc..." It would turn out that there is a reason why South Louisianas don't serve brats: they aren't all that good when compared to the regional food from South Louisiana. I think we'll just save the brats for the kiddos and keep the good stuff for the adults. I did like the answer provided by The Mighty Favog: Poo yi yi, cher! Me, I didn't know what no brats was until I first went to the Midwest, me! And dey OK, I reckon, but I likes 'em blackened, yeah! But dey ain't no substiture for a good chicken-and-andouille gumbo or a pot of jambalaya. Or maybe some catfish deep-fat fryin' on the camp stove. If you fry your hush puppies and fried potatoes in the same grease as the catfish . . . cher, you got some good eatin', there! Tonnaire, ca c'est bon, oui! Saturday, October 13, 2007 Friday, October 12, 2007 I sometimes think that if anyone ever wanted to take over America all they would have to do is start by knocking out the cable throughout the nation. Then drive through the suburbs and residential areas of cities with 16 passenger vans fit with loud speakers on the roof with a person saying through the speakers, "We have cable in the van." or "The van will take you to cable." All the men, women, and children will shuffle out of the homes and apartments in a zombie like fashion and in one clean act been taken to a secure location and soon after America would be conquered. DAMASCUS, Syria, Sept. 21 - In the last year or so, Barbie dolls have all but disappeared from the shelves of many toy stores in the Middle East. In their place, there is Fulla, a dark-eyed doll with, as her creator puts it, "Muslim values."I wonder when they will release the Barbie Theologian or Barbie the Catechetical Catechist? . . . Young girls here are obsessed with Fulla, and conservative parents who would not dream of buying Barbies for their daughters seem happy to pay for a modest doll who has her own tiny prayer rug, in pink felt. Children who want to dress like their dolls can buy a matching, girl-size prayer rug and cotton scarf set, all in pink. Rumors are he might be running for president now. Well, he still won't get my vote unless he goes down to New Orleans and rebuilds my house. From the article: OSLO, Norway - Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it. "I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said in a statement. "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity." Monday, October 08, 2007 Medicine Brian Witcombe of Gloucester and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, for their report in the British Medical Journal, Sword Swallowing and its Side-Effects Physics L Mahadevan of Harvard and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Santiago University, Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled Biology Johanna van Bronswijk of Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, for a census of the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds Chemistry Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Centre of Japan, for developing a way to extract vanilla essence from cow dung Linguistics Juant Manuel Toro, Josep Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Barcelona University, for showing that rats cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards Literature Glenda Browne of Australia, for her study of the word "the" and the problems it causes when indexing Peace The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, for instigating research on a chemical weapon to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other Nutrition Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings by feeding them with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup Economics Kuo Cheng Hsieh, of Taiwan, for patenting a device that catches bank robbers by dropping a net over them Aviation Patricia V Agostino, Santiago A Plano and Diego A Golombek of Argentina, for the discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters Via: The Deacon's Bench The lawyer asks if the Cajun would like to play a fun game. The Cajun is tired and just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and tries to catch a few winks. The lawyer persists, that the game is a lot of fun. "I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me only $5; you ask me one, and if I don't know the answer, I will pay you $500. This catches the Cajun's attention and to keep the lawyer quiet, agrees to play the game. The lawyer asks the first question. "What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" The Cajun doesn't say a word, reaches in his pocket pulls out a five-dollar bill, and hands it to the lawyer. Now, it's the Cajun's turn. He asks the lawyer, "What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down with four?" The lawyer uses his laptop, searches all references. He uses the Airphone; he searches the Net and even the Library of Congress. He sends e-mails to all the smart friends he knows, all to no avail. After one hour of searching he finally gives up. He wakes up the Cajun and hands him $500. The Cajun pockets the $500 goes right back to sleep. The lawyer is going nuts not knowing the answer. He wakes the Cajun up and asks, "Well, so what goes up a hill with three legs and comes down The Cajun reaches in his pocket, hands the lawyer $5 and goes back to Sunday, October 07, 2007 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for your gut. Thursday, October 04, 2007 Papal Envy – The psychoanalytic concept in which a non-catholic envies Catholic characteristics or capabilities, especially the position of the papacy. It is believed to be a reaction of a non-Catholic during his or her Christian growth upon realization that their church does not have a papacy. This realization is considered by some psycotheobabblist to be a defining moment in the development of a person’s theological, ecclesiastical, and ecumenical understanding. Upon the discovery that one’s church does not have a papacy, two roads are commonly taken. The first is to seek out a church that has the papacy. The second is to develop a structure and office combined with local churches or comities that strongly resemble the papacy as seen externally from an outsiders point of view. The latter usually develops anti-catholic biases in theology. Generally, he or she will shove off or try to discredit any bible text, church father, tradition, or teaching that claims the papacy was established by Christ in the person of Peter upon whom Christ is said to have built his church. After Peter's death, his position was filled by a successor and is believe to be unbroken to the current Pope, Benedict XVI. Wednesday, October 03, 2007 • Have I put God first in my daily life? • Have I formed my day around God, or do I make God fit into my day? • Do I pray everyday? • Have I put sports, school, friends, family, or work before time spent with God? • Have I participated in occult activities: ouija boards, wicca, spells, divination, evil eye, taro cards? • Have I used God’s name without a purpose (i.e. “Oh my God!”)? • Have I called upon God’s name with intent to harm others? • Have I shown disrespect towards God and His Holy Name? • Have I missed Sunday mass or any Holy Days of obligation since my last confession? • Have I been patient with my patents and family members? • Have I been resistant and stand-offish when my patents try helping me or when they ask something of me? • Do I think my parents are stupid and just don’t get me or understand what I am going through? • Am I ungrateful towards my parents and family? • Do I feel as if I am better than everyone around me? • Do I respect my parents and those people who stand in their place: doctors, teachers, coaches, etc…? • Have I injured a relationship with my anger, jealousy, pride, gossip, or slander? • Have I had an abortion or encouraged or assisted others to have one? • Have I physically harmed another person with malicious intent? • Have I destroyed or vandalized another person’s property or did not speak up when other did so? • Have I stolen another person’s property, including illegally downloading music, pens, paper, books, money, credit card, etc…? • Have I borrowed something without returning it? • Have I been impure with myself or others by participating in premarital sex, masturbation, oral sex, watching pornography, or touching inappropriately? • Have I lusted after other people or things? • Have I used others or have allowed others to use me? • Have I allowed impure thoughts to entertain me? • Do I take care of my body by giving it enough sleep, exercise and food? • Do I abuse my body by using illegal drugs, getting drunk, drinking underage, smoking underage, overeating, under-eating, not exercising, or exercising too much? • Am I overly concerned with my physical appearance and what I think others think about me? • Do I waste time by spending too much time on unproductive activities? • Do I have a tendency to be lazy? • Have I cheated on tests or copied a friend’s homework and claimed it as my own? • Have I let others steal on account of my idleness? • Have I failed to be generous with what God has blessed me? • Have I forced peer pressure upon others or have given into peer pressure? • Do I try to build up my family, friends, and neighbors or am I more concerned with tearing them down and with their own faults? • Am I over critical of others and myself? • Have I lied since my last confession? • Have I broken promises deliberately? • Have I shared a truth about another that should not have been shared? • Do I gossip about others or fail to speak up when my friends gossip? • Do I make the false presumption by sinning and think ‘God must forgive me’? • Do I believe the lie that God won’t forgive me for what I have done or failed to do? • Do I get jealous of others’ success? • Am I envious or saddened when something good happens to others? • Do I want things that I should not have? • Am I selfish and only care about my own wants and needs? • Am I not satisfied or unhappy with what I have and have been given? • Do I use what I have been given appropriately, or do I misuse what I have been given (i.e. reckless driving that endangers you and others is an inappropriate use of a car)? • Have I tried to make myself a better Christian and better person? Remember sin is not about breaking the rules. It is about breaking and severing relationships with others and God. Monday, October 01, 2007 “This is a religious experience,” the lady behind me said with satisfaction. I was unsure if I wanted to turn and ask if her church was accepting members, or to say, “How sad of a religion you must have.” Rightly so, we were at an event that contains everything a religious experience should have. There was an opening song where everyone sang together, which clearly signified the start of something important, namely a procession of people wearing clothing that were certainly out of the ordinary. It appeared to be the case that a certain degree of authority was associated with the strange clothing worn by the men in procession. With the procession came wafting scents that were not the norm for the average American. Most people could only experience these odors here, which was demonstrated by seeing others breath a little deeper upon entering the room or holding one’s nose a little higher, so as to capture as much of the scent as possible. Upon reaching a raised platform in the center of the room, one older gentleman stepped forward, clearly the emcee or president, and gave a greeting, which the assembly returned to the president in their own way. More music and singing followed. Men cried. Women wept. Hats were removed. Banners were waved. The singing ended almost as abruptly as it began. Another gentleman came forward to read from a book after the second round of singing ended; he was said to speak on behalf of another who was not readily present at the celebration. After the second man who spoke on behalf of another was finished, the band struck up another song and a second precession was seen making its way to the raised platform. This time, a barrel was carried in by several large men and set on a sturdy table in the center of the elevated platform. There was much gusto from the assembly when the barrel was seen in the procession – even more when the barrel was placed on the table with a heavy thud. The original president stood before the barrel and said some words to the assembly. A young man handed him a strange round wooden hammer and a bent metal tube. The president carefully lined up the metal tube to a location on the lower end of the barrel. The assembly was quiet. The president gave a few practice swings to make sure he would be on the mark. Finally, on the last swing he hesitated at the apex of the swing just a moment -- the silence thickened – and with one great strike he drove the metal tube into the barrel. The assembly erupted in affirmative cheers, as did the contents of the barrel seeing that it sprayed those in the immediate area. The president lowered a mug, filled it with some of the barrel’s content, raised it high to the assembly’s mighty cry, and took a drink. The assembly in a moderated disorder processed up the steps and to the barrel where they, following the president’s lead, did likewise – each partaking in the same drink. Some even had a mug in each hand. Of course there was music, dancing, and singing to end the whole celebration. Despite the similarities to any liturgical celebration, I was not at a liturgical celebration. I was at an early German-Oktober Festival. Yet, there were few things about the festival that were not liturgical. So I do not blame the lady who stood behind me for calling a non-religious ceremony a “religious experience” when all religious experiences prior to this festival followed a similar pattern, a similar ritual. What else was she to think? There was ritual, music sung by the assembly, readings, preaching, a sharing of food, processions, extraordinary sights, sounds, smells, and a communal celebration combined with an element of surprise. Yet, any good liturgist, like my grandmother who has no education past high school, knows that the liturgy is more than the sum of its parts. The real question that comes to mind is not why did the lady behind me mistake a German cultural celebration for a religious experience? Instead, what has happen to our liturgical celebrations that a German Festival looks more liturgical than the average religious liturgical celebration? Why is there a greater experience, which is other worldly, at this German Festival than in the halls of many American Churches? Has anyone ever wondered that a reason people do not go to church anymore is not because they don’t believe, but because they do not receive any kind of religious experience at church? If the current liturgical experience found in most American churches must be described only ‘mundane’ will do. That is, liturgies are giving people an earthly experience and not a spiritual or heavenly experience as it is found in both the book of Revelation and in Jewish liturgy (Exodus). If people want an earthly liturgical experience Starbucks on a Sunday morning will suffice just fine as nearly all components of a liturgical experience can be found at the coffee shop. Still, the lady’s comment is telling. Americans want religious experiences. Yet, in a culture where religious indifference is becoming creed, while religions across the board are becoming valueless commodities, how does a church set itself apart to provide its people with an experience that is something they cannot receive at a Starbucks on a Sunday morning, while lying on the couch watching House, or at a bible study on a Tuesday lunch hour? In other words, how do we make (if we ourselves can) church a supernatural experience? More rightly, how do we, through the means of earthly things, help the assembly see that the mass and liturgy is supernatural? The reality is that we live in a society that thrives on experiences. I can make an equally good cup of coffee at home as the one I buy at Starbucks or purchase an equally good cup at Burger King, but coffee houses dominate the coffee enterprise. The reason for Starbucks’ dominance is that it provides not just a service to its customers but also an experience and charges four dollars for that experience. Churches might benefit from studying Starbucks and other businesses. However, one thing is certain, churches can no longer be a dumping ground for services – a place only for the drive-through reception of sacraments and graduation from Religious Education. Churches must become palaces of experience. If churches do not provide their congregations with religious experiences the congregations will go seek it and find it in worldly things, worldly places, and worldly experiences.

- Cesar Chavez Responding to tensions and violence between ethnic groups around the world, a growing number of non-governmental organizations have developed innovative programs and approaches to help resolve conflicts, prevent violence, and promote more cooperative relationships between groups. Each intervention program identifies and interprets the causes and conditions leading to ethnic conflicts, and sets a unique course that, if followed, should result in powerful change to resolve these conflicts. The diverse approaches they use often seek to address both diffuse tensions and specific conflicts, make short- and long-term changes, and influence those who directly participate in the intervention as well as the larger conflict situation. These programs offer many success stories in transforming people's attitudes and behaviors, intergroup relationships, and social institutions and policies, yet few efforts have been made to recognize and compare the variety of theories of change that shape these interventions. This short essay provides a conceptual framework for articulating and mapping programs' theories of change - or the core, often implicit, assumptions about how change happens that that guide practitioner's intervention design. It briefly reviews a variety of theories of change for resolving ethnic conflict in light of scholarly research and theory -- particularly in the field of psychology. Drawn from the literature on program evaluation, a theory of change refers to the causal processes through which change comes about as a result of a program's strategies and action. It relates to how practitioners believe individual, intergroup, and social/ systemic change happens and how, specifically, their actions will produce positive results. For example, a theory of change for a post-conflict healing and reconciliation intervention might suggest that sharing personal stories of trauma and injustice in small, ethnically mixed groups, combined with dialogue, personal reflection, and vulnerability to emotion, can lead to individual transformation. Small group processes help participants develop empathy, recognize common humanity, and build positive relationships across ethnic or group lines. These cooperative relationships are powerful engines for community and structural change. They can also help establish public rituals and symbolic actions that acknowledge group suffering, offer apology, and signify future good will to foster social healing and structural change. In contrast, a theory of change for a conflict management initiative working on similar issues in the same region might focus on creating new forums that bring influential representatives of stakeholders together to explore a new analysis of the problem, develop cooperative problem-solving skills, and create joint action plans. These new forums, skills, partnerships, and joint action planning interrupt old, habituated patterns of conflictual interaction between individuals and groups and offer ongoing mechanisms for institutional and policy change. In general, the theories of change have not been adequately articulated or described. This precludes real evaluation of programmatic assumptions and activities, hinders efforts to test the relative effectiveness of different approaches under specific conditions, and ultimately limits the revision and refinement of both theory and practice. Used in combination with Argyris and Schon's (1974) overlapping work on theories of practice, examining programs' theories of change provides a useful framework for differentiating program approaches, promoting the appropriate selection and support of diverse interventions, and advancing research that both refines theoryand improves practice. Programs often have complex and overlapping assumptions about the causes and effective responses to ethnic conflict, yet a comparison across programs reveals that programs name and frame both the problem and their response in distinct ways. Relatively few typologies exist in the scholarly and programmatic literature to describe these different approaches. For example, in his article, Creating the Conditions for Peacemaking, Ross reviewed the conflict intervention literature and identified six theories of practice for ethnic conflict resolution in international settings. These included: 1) Community Relations, 2) Principled Negotiation, 3) Human Needs Theory, 4) Psychoanalytically Informed Identity Theory, 5) Intercultural Miscommunication, and 6) Conflict Transformation. His analysis compared these theories of practice along the dimensions of: a) the assumed nature and causes of ethnic conflict; b) program goals; c) effects on participants in the intervention; d) mechanisms for achieving effects; e) transfer or impact on the wider conflict; and f) similarities across theories. Building on this framework, Shapiro conducted field research comparing theories of practice and change for fifteen programs that address ethnic and racialized tensions or conflicts in the U.S. The typology emerging from interviews, observations, and reviews of program documents in that study included six different theories of practice and change: 1) Prejudice Reduction; 2) Healing and Reconciliation; 3) Anti-Racism; 4) Diversity/ Multiculturalism; 5) Democracy Building; and 6) Conflict Management. These theories of practice and change were compared along the dimensions of: 1) problem framing; 2) goals and intended effects; 3) theories of how change happens; 4) intervention framing; and 5) theoretical roots of the program. Differences between approaches examined in that study are summarized briefly in Figure 1.This typology briefly highlights aspects of interventions addressing racial and ethnic tensions in the U.S., but further research is needed to describe and comparatively evaluate the range of theories of change in conflict resolution interventions outside of the U.S. (See Figure 1) It is important to note that the theories of change in these typologies are not necessarily contradictory -- they may instead just draw upon different theories and traditions, highlight different aspects of the conflict, and emphasize different priorities for resolution. Typologies such as this one should not be used to confine or delimit any program, nor fuel debates over approaches. Instead, they provide an opportunity for comparative analysis that aims to stimulate further reflection and discussion about the evolving shape and development of this field and deepen understandings about the contributions of each approach. Mapping Theories of Change Theories of change can be identified either prospectively as part of planning an initiative or retrospectively as part an evaluative process. In either case, this kind of analysis requires both time and honest reflection from program leaders and practitioners. Because self-reports about change theories often do not surface more implicit assumptions, outside facilitators can help map these theories by observing interventions and analyzing program narratives. Initial interviews with practitioners can elicit programs' theories of change as well as both the explicit and implicit logic of an intervention design. This includes how they: 1) frame the specific problems to be addressed; 2) frame their intervention goals; 3) identify processes through which change happens; 4) describe their strategies, principles and specific methods for intervention; and 5) delineate short- and long-term intended effects. Graphic representations and written descriptions of these practice and change frameworks can help clarify the relationship between categories. Figure 2 provides an example of how one program's theory of change might be mapped. (See Figure 2) After an initial mapping, facilitators should focus additional questions on clarifying ambiguous meanings, connections, and inconsistencies, as well as explore the reasoning that leads program leaders to their inferences about how change happens. Descriptions and mapping should be reviewed by program leaders often so that they provide detailed feedback to be used in correcting and refining the description. Articulating theories of change often requires 'backward mapping' -- or identifying the intended outcomes of a program that often lead practitioners to their decisions about specific strategies and methods of intervention. The scope and specificity of a theory of change -- or the kinds of changes the program does and does not account for - vary considerably among programs. Researchers assert that good theories of change have at least three attributes: 1) they are plausible -- evidence and common sense suggest that the specified activities will lead to the desired outcomes; 2) they are doable -- the initiative has adequate financial, technical, political, institutional and human resources to implement the strategy; and 3) they are testable -- the pathways of change are specific and complete enough, with measurable indicators and specified pre-conditions, to track the progress in a credible and useful way. Theories of change should also specify short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals. In addition, theories of change should outline intended effects that directly relate to participants in the intervention -- (e.g. development of empathy, new skills, and cooperative relationships among participants) -- and intended effects beyond the context of the intervention (e.g. creation of new conflict resolution education programs in schools; ongoing forum for bi-communal meetings) These goals often overlap with intended changes at individual, relational, and structural levels. Beyond accurately surfacing and articulating programmatic theories of change, it is essential to review their quality by comparing them with empirical evidence or relevant case studies. For example, empirical evidence might not support program theories about cathartic expression or venting of emotion as leading to personal healing and attitude change. A critical review of program logic and assumptions can seem threatening to organizations and engender resistance where evidence suggests that programmatic conceptions are flawed. The quality review process is not designed to limit freedom or experimentation with new approaches to practice and change, but rather to better integrate research, theory, and practice. Changing Individuals, Relationships, and Social Structures through Conflict Interventions Some of the most prevalent distinctions in both the academic and programmatic literatures about theories of change center around levels of analysis - or whether change efforts focus primarily on individuals, intergroup relationships, or structures and systems. While many theories cut across levels of analysis and most programs work at all of these levels to some extent, program's theories of change often focus predominantly on one level as the starting point for initiating change. Program Goals and Intended Effects Goals and intended effects often serve as signposts, markers and a vision for programs' change efforts. In examining theories of change, the importance of process and content goals lie in identifying their specific connection to intended outcomes and mapping those proposed pathways of change. Programs' outcome goals usually focus on targeted change in a variety of arenas (e.g. policies and procedures, relationships, attitudes, knowledge or skills.) Figure 3 provides examples of intended effects emerging from research on intervention programs that address racial and ethnic conflict in the U.S. and are loosely sorted into the categories of analysis, alliance, and action. (See Figure 3) The following section briefly examines a variety of program perspectives on how change happens in individuals, intergroup relations, and social systems and points to some of the divergent theories of change that are prevalent in conflict resolution work. This review also examines theories of change in light of scholarly research and theory -- particularly in the field of psychology. While this short essay cannot provide a comprehensive review of the wide array of change theories, such a review would be useful for situating different programs and assist in developing a framework for appropriate use and evaluation of program assumptions and methods. Practitioners often view themselves and their programs as change agents, and encourage participants to take leadership roles in their respective communities and organizations in fostering change. Intervention programs tend to have a relatively hopeful vision of change, grounded in optimism both about the opportunities for positive change inherent in conflict situations and about human capacities to change and learn. In promoting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral change, intervention programs utilize, though rarely explicitly, a wide array of learning theories prevalent in educational and therapeutic literatures. - Insight and Awareness: Many practitioners talk about the importance of individual insight or the "aha" experience of discovery in raising awareness and changing attitudes. They also use a variety of tools and methodologies to surface unconscious attitudes and behaviors with the understanding that awareness allows for critical thinking and choice. - Learning: Programs consistently invoke a wide variety of educational approaches to learning. For example, practitioners frequently elicit participants' existing knowledge in an effort to build upon it and facilitate encoding of new knowledge. They also introduce new information in unthreatening contexts (e.g. analysis of a conflict situation different from the one parties are in) and encourage participants to transfer that learning to their own contexts. - Cognitive Space and Permission: Practitioners use a variety of methods to establish and encourage a "safe environment" that provides permission for parties to entertain and experiment with new ways of thinking and relating to each other. This cognitive expansion and permission allows for more complex understandings of the issues, other parties, sources of conflict, and possibilities for resolution. - Cognitive Reframing: Programs also use strategies to facilitate cognitive reframing or reorganization. This often takes the form of confronting individuals with information discrepant [or contradictory to their expressed views, attitudes or self-image to induce cognitive dissonance and create opportunities for reframing and re-organization]. In addition, practitioners often reframe parties' narratives in more neutral or integrative terms to help redirect negative perceptions away from individuals and groups and toward objects, symbols or ideas. Emotional Change: While most programs recognize that strong emotions are an inevitable part of ethnic conflict, they exhibit a range of views on the role of emotions in individual change efforts. - Emotional Control: Drawing on rational actor paradigms, many programs view the expression of strong emotions during an intervention as an unavoidable obstacle to resolution that needs to be effectively controlled or managed. When personal emotions can be effectively controlled, parties are better able to make more rational situation assessments and decisions for resolving conflict. - Catharsis: Other programs view the expression or discharge of emotion (e.g. yelling, crying) as an opening or a catalyst for individual change. In keeping with cathartic therapies, practitioners believe that surfacing and expressing emotions can release frozen psychological processes, patterns of thought and behavior, and aspects of the self to facilitate healing. - Emotional Literacy: Yet other programs view emotions as internal messengers about individuals' needs and concerns. These programs focus on helping participants read and interpret their feelings as a form of emotional literacy, promoting self-awareness. - Emotional Contradictions: Some programs focus on the importance creating emotional contradiction in participants to evoke change. Mirroring cognitive dissonance processes, where parties develop empathy for members of groups that they have generally disliked, the emotional contradiction facilitates reassessment of convictions. Behavioral Change: A wide array of theories are invoked to promote behavioral change and learning during interventions. A few of these are mentioned briefly below. - Modeling and Social Learning: Most programs draw implicitly from social learning theory in emphasizing the importance of modeling and imitation in behavior change. For example, practitioners often mention 'walking the talk' or invoking Ghandi's precept to 'live the change we seek to create' in providing a model of behavior for participants during an intervention. - Rehearsal: Invoking behaviorist theories of change, practitioners often create repetitive opportunities for participants to practice or rehearse new skills and behaviors. Constructive feedback about performance, the introduction of successively more complex skill sets, and positive reinforcement also facilitates behavioral change. - Adoption of Innovation: Programs specifically aim to create a reassuring environment to promote adoption of innovative conflict resolution ideas and behaviors. This sometimes involves appealing to an "innovator", "pioneer", or "leader" image that people have about themselves. Alternately, when changes are presented as inevitable or already adopted by many, such appeals may tap into a need for belonging. - Learning by Doing: In keeping with a wealth of social psychological research demonstrating that action is an effective pathway to attitude change, programs often encourage participants to interact cooperatively and use conflict resolution skills even when they are in deep conflict. Learning by doing invokes cognitive dissonance processes that encourage participants to shift attitudes so that they better align with their behaviors. - Motivation: Many practitioners discuss the importance of fostering feelings of self-efficacy, empowerment, responsibility, and hope in participants to increase motivation for future, constructive action. Changing Relationships: Practitioners who focus on changes in intergroup relations often assert that networks, coalitions, alliances, and other cooperative group relationships are key in promoting both individual and social change. While social change is at the heart of many conflict resolution interventions, practitioners rarely reference classic social change models such as dialectical processes, progressive or evolutionary processes, or cyclical models. Many practitioners discuss Kuhn's model of paradigm shifts and the role of their interventions (and the conflict resolution field as a whole) in facilitating paradigmatic shifts in understandings of conflict, international relations, and peacebuilding. In recent years, conflict interventions seem to draw more from chaos and complexity theory in understanding dynamic systems as a complicated web of mutually influencing relationships rather than more mechanistic models of isolated causes and effects. For the most part, however, intervention programs draw primarily from a variety of planned change strategies where theories of the person, and the connection between individual, relational and structural change, vary considerably. - Conflict Resolution as a Vehicle for Social Change: There is much discussion in both the academic and practitioner literature about conflict resolution as an important vehicle for social change and the role of interveners in either fostering social control (status quo) or social transformation. Most ethnic conflict interventions have explicit goals of creating some form of social or systemic change, though their pathways for change differ considerably. - Empirical-Rational Approaches: Some practitioners implicitly base interventions on assumptions of rational, self-interest focusing on providing the right information, education or training to allow people to change of their own volition; ensuring the right people are in the right place to bring about needed, practical changes; clarifying or reconceptualizing "the problem" to enhance overall understanding; and promoting visioning to stimulate creativity and "best-case" scenarios. - Normative-Re-educative Approaches: Many others in the field focus on the socially constructed nature of conflict and the non-cognitive resistances and supports for change such as cultural values and norms. Perhaps the most widely used approach in current conflict interventions, these efforts focus on working collaboratively with parties to identify problems and facilitate solutions. It aims to improve problem-solving capacities, forums, and mechanisms within a system, and foster new attitudes, values, skills, and norms for interaction among people who make up the system. - Power-Coercive Approaches: At times, practitioners also focus on the role of moral, political and economic power to address asymmetries and injustices in conflict situations. For example, they work with disempowered parties to introduce nonviolent action strategies and foster local peace movements. Social justice and peacebuilding is also promoted through institutional, legislative, and policy change as well as influencing or changing leadership or power elite. Because they often create change through processes of confrontation and conflict enhancement, however, these strategies are used more circumspectly for certain conflict stages or conditions. - Critical Mass: Drawing implicitly on diffusion of innovation theory, many practitioners discuss the importance of developing a 'critical mass' of individuals who have adopted constructive conflict resolution knowledge and skills in initiating positive social change. When this critical mass of individuals exists, change spreads rapidly and crystallizes to become self-sustaining in society. - Ripple Effects: In understanding how small-group conflict interventions can create large-scale social change, many practitioners discuss the impact that participants can have on those within their personal and professional spheres of influence. Often referred to as a ripple effect or transfer effect, program's suggest that the individual and relational changes that occur during small-group interventions will have ever-widening circles of impact as participants take their new learning back into their respective communities and organizations. - Overcoming Resistance: Although their methods practically address such issues, practitioners rarely focus explicitly on the importance and difficulties of dealing with resistance to change. Lewin's model of unfreezing-movement-refreezing is useful in focusing on the processes of overcoming resistance to change such as basic conservative tendencies and system justification. Some divergent understandings of planned social change relevant to current ethnic conflict interventions are briefly discussed below. Leadership (leaders and leadership) Program theories differ considerably in identifying who should lead change. In keeping with Lederach's model of leadership and intervention approaches, practitioners generally recognize the importance of working with a variety of kinds and levels of leadership. In practice, however, they usually choose to initiate their interventions at one particular level. For example, practitioners focusing on work with local community groups, grass-roots organizations and community leaders often discuss the role of civil society and social movements in fostering social change. Practitioners using 'middle-out' strategies recognize that mid-level leaders are a natural bridge for influencing both top and local level leaders. Finally, practitioners working with top-levels of leadership, suggest that although these interventions are constrained by political pressures, they are invaluable in creating practical agreements and symbolic gestures that directly impact policy, institutions and public perceptions. Reformation vs. Transformation Programs differ in whether they view change as reformation or adaptation of basically effective social, economic and political systems, or as the transformation of existing systems of relations into something very different. Some programs focus on the utility of conflict interventions for reaching agreements acceptable to all parties and averting the immense costs and destruction of violence. For example, some practitioners addressing racial tensions in the U.S. view existing political, legal and economic systems as basically effective and primarily aim to make practical adjustments and additions to help improve the functioning of these systems. In contrast, others focus on deep-rooted problems embedded in the historical evolution of current social, political, and economic systems and view racial or ethnic conflict as the inherent by-products of such systems. Transformation, rather than mere adjustment, is required to effectively address these issues and their roots, and inclusive processes involving the cooperation of all stakeholders are invoked to help create new systems. Changing Structures vs. Changing People Programs also seem to differ in whether they believe the starting point for change is with individual attitudes and behaviors, or with social structures such as institutions, laws, and policies. Some suggest that transformed individuals take leadership roles in creating structural change, while others suggest that directly changing institutional policies and practices should lead to the transformation of individuals who live and work within them. While there is general consensus that both are needed and there is a reciprocal relationship, intervention strategies tend to target different starting points for change. Similarly, many programs share a popular assumption that awareness and attitude change leads to behavioral change in individuals. Like psychoanalytic theories, this view suggests that when people become aware of a problem and can understand its causes and dynamics, they can make choices to change their behavior or situation. For example, creating a new analysis or understanding of the causes and dynamics of a conflict can lead to important behavioral changes that facilitate conflict resolution. In contrast, others suggest that changing people's behaviors by creating new social norms, laws, and institutional will ultimately be more effective in changing people's attitudes. Individuals' attitudes and intergroup relations will conform to the new structures and behaviors required by those structures. This view draws on the old community-organizing adage, 'where the feet go, the head will follow.' Future analysis should examine these divergent theories of change in light of existing research to assist in evaluating different approaches. Where existing evidence is inconclusive, new empirical studies that test these discrepancies should be conducted to help improve understandings in the field. Challenges in Articulating and Differentiating Theories of Change Clearly articulating a program's theory of change can be difficult because of normal variations and inconsistencies within programs. For example, individual practitioners often interpret aspects of program theories differently which manifests in considerable variation in program implementation. In addition, there are often inconsistencies or incongruities between what practitioners say they do (espoused theory) and what they actually do (theory-in-use). Interventions are also subject to a host of practical and contextual factors that variably shape theories of change, such as the amount of time participants are willing to commit to the program; a program's access to parties in the conflict; financial resources available for the intervention; practitioners' background and areas of expertise; and the specific contexts and conditions of the conflict. Finally, most programs take a pragmatic approach to intervention design, focusing on 'what works' rather than aligning themselves with any one particular theory of change. Because real-world interventions usually do not represent a "pure form" of any theoretical model, and strategies are often eclectic, overlapping, and evolving, it can be difficult to capture true programmatic differences and compare efforts across interventions. Despite these challenges, understanding the wide variety of theories of change in current conflict resolution interventions is very useful in helping to: - Recognize the shared or complimentary elements of intervention initiatives which can promote cooperation and coordination among programs and approaches. - Identify contradictory or competing assumptions and theories useful in testing the relative validity of different approaches or in differentiating the conditions under which each might be most useful. - Foster stronger links between theory and practice by surfacing the underlying theories of individual, relational, and social change that shape practice. - Foster reflective practice and conscious choice among practitioners that expands the range and creativity of intervention options. Distinguishing the assumptions about change that shape current interventions is important for refining theory, improving practice and ensuring the appropriate use of interventions. At the same time, the distinctions between approaches to change among intervention programs often reflect a different emphasis or focus rather than deep divisions. Acknowledging these differences is useful in comparing program approaches, but should not distract from the larger shared beliefs about the need to change destructive forms of intergroup conflict that unites this field. Weiss, C. H. (1972). Evaluation research. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Fulbright-Anderson, K., Kubisch, A. & Connell, J. (Eds.) (1998). New approaches to evaluating community initiatives, vol. 2. New York: The Aspen Institute. Center for Assessment and Policy Development. (2000). Anti-Racism Evaluation Initiative. Unpublished manuscript. Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004 For a discussion of the relationship between theories of practice and theories of change related to ethnic conflict interventions see Shapiro, I. (in press) Mapping Theories of Practice and Change. In Fitzduff, M. and Stout, C. Psychological Approaches to Dealing with Conflict and War, Praeger. Ross, M. (2000). Creating the Conditions for Peacemaking. Available online here. Shapiro, I. (2002). Training for Racial Equity and Inclusion. Washington, D.C: Aspen Institute. Available online here. Shapiro, I. (2002). Training for Racial Equity and Inclusion. Washington, D.C: Aspen Institute. Available online here. Connell, J. & Kubisch, A. (1998). Applying a Theory of Change Approach to Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives. In Fulbright-Anderson, Kubisch, & Connell (Eds.) New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives, Vol 2. Washington, D.C: Aspen Institute. Available online here. Shapiro, 2002, op. cit. Davis, T. (2001). Revising Psychoanalytic Interpretations of the Past, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 82 Driscoll, M. (2000). Psychology of learning for instruction (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Fitzduff, M. (1989). From ritual to consciousness -- a study of change in progress in Northern Ireland. New University of Ulster. Doctoral dissertation (48-2995). Galtung, J. & Tschudi, F. (2001). Crafting peace: On the psychology of the TRANSCEND approach. In Christie, D., Wagner, R. & Winter, D.N. (Eds.) Peace, Conflict and Violence. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Adler, R. S., B. Rosen, and E.M. Silverstein. (1998). "Emotions in Negotiation. How to Manage Fear and Anger." Negotiation Journal 14, 161-179. Nichols, M. & Zax, M. (1977). Catharsis and Psychotherapy. New York: Gardener Press. Steiner, C. (2000). Emotional literacy. New York: Avon Books. Fitzduff, op. cit. Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Driscoll, op. cit. Rogers, E. (1995) Diffusion of Innovation. New York: Free Press. Staub, E. (1989). The roots of evil. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bush, Baruch R. & Folger, J. (1994). The Promise of Mediation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Allport, Gordon (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Vanbeselaere, N. (1991). The different effects of simple and crossed categorizations: A result of the category differentiation process or differential category salience. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.) European review of social psychology, Vol. 2, (pp. 247-278). Chichester: Wiley. Carstarphen, B. (2002). Shift happens. Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University. Doctoral dissertation Montville, J.V. (1993). The healing function of political conflict resolution. In D. Sandole & H. van der Merwe (eds.), Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice (pp. 112-128). New York: Manchester University Press. Kuhn, T. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gleich, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York; Viking. Scimecca, Joseph (1993). Conflict Resolution: The Basis for Social Control or Social Change? In D. Sandole & I. Sandole-Staroste (Eds.) Conflict Management and Problem-Solving (pp. 30-33) New York: New York University Press. Chin, R. & Benne, K. (1976). General Strategies for Effecting Changes in Human Systems. In Bennis, W., Benne, K., Chin, R. & Corey, K. The Planning of Change 3rd Ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. 22-45. Lewin, K. (1951). Field Theory in Social Sciences. New York: Harper and Brothers. Kelman, H., Gordon, B. & Warwick, D. (Eds.) (1978). The Ethics of Social Intervention. New York: Halsted Press. Use the following to cite this article: Shapiro, Ilana. "Theories of Change." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: January 2005 <http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/theories-of-change>.

< Return to Adherents.com's Guide to Movies < Return to Religion of the AFI's Top 50 Screen Legends < Return to Famous Anglicans The Religious Affiliation of great British actor From his obituary at Obits.com (http://obits.com/olivierlaurence.html): The son of an Anglican minister, Laurence Olivier made his stage debut in "Julius Caesar" at the age of 9 and rose to be named the consummate interpreter of The Bard's works in the 20th Century. Olivier's contributions to stage and film earned him titles in his native England and Oscars, Emmys and international film awards before his death on July 11th, 1989. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born into an old but modest Anglican family on March 22nd, 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, England. His father was a stern minister with a closet fanaticism for plays and literature. When young Olivier inherited his father's mania for the stage it was heartily encouraged, and he debuted in a parochial school production of "Julius Caesar" at the age of 9... After an extended and secretive battle with cancer, Lord Olivier died at his home in Steyning, West Sussex, England, on July 11th, 1989 and was entombed with great honors at Westminster Abbey. From New York Times biography (URL: http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=105057): Olivier was the son of an Anglican minister, who, despite his well-documented severity, was an unabashed theater lover, enthusiastically encouraging young Olivier to give acting a try. From: "Few Well-Known Episcopalians/Anglicans" article on "Random Thoughts" web page/blog on website of St. Martha's Episcopal Church (520 S. Lark Ellen Ave., West Covina, CA 91791), 6 March 2005 (http://www.stmarthas.net/random_thoughts/files/archive-1.html; viewed 11 May 2005): Few Well-Known Episcopalians/Anglicans: Just a sampling, in no particular order: C.S. Lewis, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, T.S. Elliot, Jonathan Swift, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Vincent Price, Olivia de Havilland, Ethel Merman, Anne B. Davis, Laurence Olivier, Robin Williams, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, Sammy Sosa, Rod Carew, Florence Nightingale, George Washington, James Madison, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, (more than a quarter of all presidents of the United States as well as roughly half of all Supreme Court justices and members of Congress), Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor, Samuel Johnson (author of the first dictionary), Colin Powell, Robert E. Lee, Winston Churchill, Lorraine Salem & Dorothy Tarozzi, Buzz Aldrin, Isaac Newton, Margaret Mead, Christopher Wren, Willa Cather, Nelson Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Judy Collins, Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead), George Frederic Handel, Desmund Tutu, John Milton, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, all the Brontes (Charlotte, Emily and Anne), Tennessee Williams. From Roger Lewis, The Real Life of Laurence Olivier, Applause Books: New York, NY (1997), page xi: [Laurence Olivier's] relatives were churchmen and schoolmasters, and his father, Gerard Kerr Olivier, experimented with both avocations. His mother, Agnes Louise Crookenden, a headmaster's daughter, died of cancer in 1920, when Olivier was twelve, and his solitariness -- his sense that something essential was missing in his life -- stemmed from that moment. 'I've been looking for her ever since,' he said of his absent parent. 'Perhaps with Joanie [Plowright] I've found her again.' Lewis, pages 23-24: It wasn't a mother he wanted -- so much as a Holy Mother. Before going to St. Edward's in Oxford, Olivier had been for at least four years a choirboy at All Saints, in Margaret Street, London. What with those high Anglo-Catholic [Anglican] services and his father's regular sermons and professional admonitions about sin and evil, it is little wonder that there was a deep religious sense in his work. Beyond the Englishness, the heroism, the bravura acting; beyond the changes in his appearance... what mattered was inside: the sensibility, the spirit. His autobiography had a quasi-religious aura; his final roles, in Brideshead Revisited, A Voyage Round My Father, and King Lear, were priestly and other-worldly. So what was the nature and extent of his guilt? Why do I feel that he believed he had not lived his life as he ought to have done so? [Olivier] had an Edwardian upper-middle-class core, with the concomitant proprieties and discriminations. He sent his eldest son to Eton, Chris Church and into the Coldstream Guards. His lineage is packed with rectors, rural deans, colonels and politicians. Yet his perspectives are longer than that... It's not so much that, through the connections of kin -- e.g. the Revd. Jourdain Olivier, who was chaplain to William of Orange -- he had a sense of pomp and circumstance, the power and the glory... Chapter Four in Lewis' biography (pages 55-86) is titled "The Time of the Angels," and focuses entirely on Laurence Olivier's religious faith and beliefs as an Anglican, and how these were expressed both in his life and his acting career. Only a few excerpts from this chapter are below, but needless to say, Olivier was not simply a "nominal" Anglican -- he was quintessentially Anglican. From Lewis, pages 55-56: Ellen Terry said, 'You cannot act without a feeling for religion,' and in his foreward to Fabia Drake's Blind Fortune, Olivier claimed, 'I am aware of much religious feeling, but no certain belief.' He did indeed possess what was essentially a religious mind, which revolved around the concepts of sin, confession, punishment, deliverance, and grace. Macbeth, Richard III, Titus Andronicus, Astrov (Uncle Vanya), Edgar (The Dance of Death), James Tyrone (Long Day's Journey into Night): Olivier knew that each of his characters had a soul to save or lose... Lewis, page 64: The importance of liturgy and Anglican pieties; psalms and hymns and a sermon's cadence: it was all in his blood. Crockford's Clerical Directory is clogged with Oliviers. The Revd. Dacres Olivier (1831-1919), prebendary of Salisbury, honorary chaplain to the Earl of Pembroke, who married the daughter of the Rt. Revd. Robert Eden, primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, for example; or the Revd. Henry Eden Olivier (1866-1936), vicar of Epping, rural dean of Chigwell, who married the daughter of the Revd. Cape, rector of St George's, Hanover Square, author of What Happened at the Reformation, and whose recreation was listed as motoring. It would be possible to argue that the dilemma in Olivier was his fidelity and moral strength doing battle with pagan temptations and amusements: the Church vs. the Theatre; Jehovah vs. Jove. But his family, at least, far from recoiling in puritanical disdain at the idea of drama, actively encouraged Olivier to perceive the theatricality of a religious life. Lewis, pages 66-68: Olivier imitated his father in the pulpit, but his mother attempted to parry the religiosity and (says Sybille) 'deflect him from any youthful ambition to become a clergyman himself.' His mother, instead, 'encouraged Larry to turn his mock-sermonizing into recitatinos and monologues from well-known plays.' Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson. Then, at his choir school, where he enrolled in 1916, at the age of nine, he used to sing the church music of Mozart, Handel, Bach, Beethoven (masses in C and D), Schubert, Mandelssohn, Gounod, Dvorak, Palestrina, Attwood, Tallis, Tinel, Silas, Wesley, Stainer and Stanford: 'masses, evensongs, choral services of every kind, anthems and requiems'. Lewis, page 74: It was an intense education in discipline and showmanship... There were only fourteen pupils in the school. They rose at six forty-five, church, then breakfast; choir practice and lessons; lots of Latin. Walks in the afternoon, prior to choir evensong... Olivier's ancestors were religious; he was divine, or could seem as if he were... When Olivier talks about divineness and the extra-mundane, hoever, he is both figurative and telling us no more than the truth. For he did indeed levitate out of real life. I was there -- I witnessed the Ascension, at noon on Friday 20 October 1989 in Westminster Abbey: the Service of Thanksgiving for the Life and Work of Laurence Olivier OM, Baronn Olivier of Brighton, 1907-89. It was a magnificently royal event, with the processions of dolled-up clergy, the crimson-clad chaplains and choirboys, the representatives of the Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, Princess Margaret and the Kents; the swelling organ music... Secular and divine, theatre and church, seriously mixed and matched when 'items symbolic of Laurence Olivier's life and work' were shipped to the Sacrarium and laid on the High Altar -- the sheer reverence put me in mind of those festivals in Mediterranean communities, when holy relics are paraded through the streets. Alleged saints' bones, fragmenst of the true cross, phials of Christ's blood... and suchlike bits and bobs. We didn't get to venerate Olivier's prepuce... but the historical artefacts were none the less peculiar -- stage props which, owing to Olivier, were rendered religious. What matters is the way High Church ritual and formality, and their associations, related to his sensitivity and emotions -- to what Philip Larkin calls a 'primitive vivacity'. Virginia Fairweather, his press secretary at Chichester, once asked him outright if he believed in God: 'No -- I wish I could,' he replied; and on the one hand, with Olivier, there is his striving and straining... and on the other hand, the supposition that gifts are handed down by God, and life has to be spent beseeching and worshipping and being grateful. (A dispute, as it were, between the pressures of greed or fear, and providence.) Though Olivier did indeed once say that he owed his talent to being one of those whom 'God had touched on the shoulder', prayer, for him, was not contact with some transcendental being but a communing with his own conscience. (When he was appointed director of the National, a Union Jack flag was pinned to his dressing room door in Chchester with the message 'God Bless Sir!' Olivier read it and was heard to murmer, 'Please, God, help!') Religion wasn't a searching for solace; it was what provided the laws and injunctions by which he lived -- laws derived from the authority of those lovely fictions, the gods (Jove, Jupiter, Jehovah); laws, about sensuality and spirituality, remorse and guilt, grief and ecstasy, destruction and creation, whcih were formulated in wars between angels and demons... These are the primitive forces, the religious tendencies and sacred themes, which Olivier adapted to theatrical practice... Webpage created 24 June 2005. Last modified 24 June 2005. 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A stream of dancing lights, for all the world like the shimmering curtains of the aurora, blazed across the screen. They took up patterns that were held for a moment only to break apart and form again, in different shapes, or different colours; they looped and swayed, they sprayed apart, they burst into showers of radiance that suddenly swerved this way or that like a flock of birds changing direction in the sky. And as Lyra watched, she felt the same sense, as of trembling on the brink of understanding, that she remembered from the time when she was beginning to read the alethiometer. — Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife (Scholastic, 1997; USA, Knopf, 1997) The digital world of computers has impacted the world of books profoundly. The way books are produced and printed has been revolutionised, and the way we share our enthusiasm for the books we love has been enriched beyond recognition by the internet. What is next? While there is much focus on digital replacements for paper this project looks at using the analytical and display powers of computers to enhance our reading and understanding of texts. Digital technologies have repeatedly redefined the paper world of books. Digital printing has overhauled the publishing processes, and the internet has revolutionised the way audiences and authors connect to share their enthusiasm and criticism. Now the digitization of books themselves, either for searching, browsing, and reading on a computer screen through services like Google Books, or for reading on dedicated devices like Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader are threatening the established order. But for this project we side-step these issues and concentrate instead on how the analytical power and display capabilities of computers may be used to enhance our understanding of book texts. We use the term "book texts" rather than the word "books" as we are not trying to build computer systems that might understand books, but rather we use the computer's ability to treat books as an abstract sequence of words as the starting point for new analytical tools. Who would use such tools? Anyone with an interest in books, be they authors, readers, publishers, agents, critics, academics, etc may find such tools useful, but we have designed our visualizations with fans and academic readers in mind. These readers form theories about the books that stand alongside the author's own understanding and we hope that the abstract visualizations provided may help such an endeavour. Background and Related Work The statistical analysis of texts is an important area of work and is used widely in information retrieval (e.g. web search). It is also a mature area of research in its own right, and has been used in the past for things from author attribution to the ordering of works through time. For example in a letter published in 1882 Augustus De Morgan speculated about using statistical techniques to explore authorship questions around St Paul's Epistles and the Epistle to the Hebrews [Lea76], while more recently Jockers, Witten, and Criddle used sophisticated statistical techniques to reassess the authorship of the Book of Mormon. In contrast, the abstract visualization of book texts is not a large or a mature field of study, but there are notable and inspirational examples. The following sections list some of these (more…) Our work focuses on the abstract visualization of children's book series, and in particular the trilogy "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman. Pullman's trilogy is made up of the three novels "The Northern Lights" (called "The Golden Compass" in the USA and in the movie adaptation), "The Subtle Knife", and "The Amber Spyglass". We choose this genre partly through personal passion and partly because of the range of potential enthusiastic readers. The best children's book series (especially before they are completed) are read and discussed by child and adult readers and many of these readers develop their own theories which they share with their friends and with other readers online. Similarly academic interest is piqued and there are conferences and journals dedicated to the study of children's literature (more…) We need to take these visualizations out of the research lab and engage both the fans and the academics who are theorising about Pullman’s works. We should engage them with these tools and establish if the tools are useful, how they might be improved, and what other visualizations may be of value to the community. Throughout this work we took the view that computers were not adept at understanding books, but should just essentially count words and draw the results for people to interpret. However advances in machine learning, and especially toolkits enabling machine learning techniques to be applied quickly to new domains have led us to seek to apply Infer.Net to the analysis phase of the visualization. Inevitably building visualizations leads to 1,001 other ideas as to how the data may be visualized. We would like to add the ability to pivot (e.g. for one flowers bud to open another flower side-by-side). We would like to add animations so that the dynamic movement between visualizations or as a visualization is formed is part of the semantics of the visualization itself. The visualizations we made are not available for public use – either online or through downloading. This is partly because we have not spent time looking at the rights implications and partly because we have not engineered the code to the quality level required for public use. It would be great to get this to a level where people can try the visualizations we built for themselves without us present. It would be interesting to apply this work to other children’s book series, to see if the characteristic patterns revealed in the visualizations were different from author to author. We might also move from a reader’s perspective to a learner’s perspective and choose books which often appear on high-school syllabuses. But most intriguing would be to build visualizations that contrast the content and style of different author’s work. - [Bec07] Linda Becker, 2007 "In Translation" http://lindabecker.net/in-translation/ - [Dan05] Anh Dang, 2005 "Gospel Spectrum" http://thirteensquares.com/gospelspectrum/ - [Har08] Chris Harrison, 2008 "Visualizing the Bible" http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/bibleviz/ - [JWC08] Jockers, Witten, and Criddle 2008 "Reassessing authorship of the Book of Mormon using delta and nearest shrunken centroid classification" in "Literary and Linguistic Computing" http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/4/465 - [Lar14] Clarence Larking 1914 – 1918 "Dispensational Charts" http://www.preservedwords.com/charts.htm - [Lea76] Peter Lea, "The Style is the Man", unpublished lecture notes and slides, University of York, 1976 - [Pal02] W Bradford Paley, 2002 "TextArc" http://textarc.org/ - [Pos06] Stephanie Posavec, 2006 "Writing Without Words" http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/wwwords/about-this-project/ - [PRYAKSCL06] Plaisant, Rose, Yu, Auvil, Kirschenbaum, Nell Smith, Clement, and Lord 2006 "Exploring erotics in Emily Dickinson's correspondence with text mining and visual interfaces" http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1141753.1141781 - [Sha08] Ebany Spencer, 2008 "Romancing Dimensions" http://www.ebanyshae.com/page11.htm - [SK07] Philipp Steinweber and Andreas Koller, 2007 "Similar Diversity" http://similardiversity.net/project/ - [Wal08] Tim Walter, 2008 "textour" http://www.timwalter.de/portfolio/textour/ - [Wat02] Martin Wattenburg, 2002 "Arc Diagrams: Visualizing Structure in Strings" http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=857733 http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/papers/arc-diagrams.pdf - [WV08] Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda B. Viégas,2008 "The Word Tree: An Interactive Visual Concordance" http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4658133 http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/papers/wordtree_final2.pdf This work was done as a collaboration between Linda Becker and Tim Regan during Linda’s internship at Microsoft Research’s Cambridge Lab in the Summer of 2008. The work would not have been possible without the generous, thought provoking, and supportive help of Pullman’s publishers especially Marion Lloyd and Claire Tagg at Scholastic, Pullman’s agent Caradoc King, and Philip Pullman himself.

Friday, January 30, 2009 In addition to the exhibit, their commemoration includes a number of exciting activities including a national tour by the Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble, an Open House Series, a national audition tour for the company’s prestigious school, panel discussions with leading dancers, choreographers, and dance historians, and a host of other activities. The anniversary celebration includes a number of programs that are free and open to the public. In the midst of preparing for its 40th Anniversary festivities, Co-Founder and Artistic Director Arthur Mitchell says, "There is a renewed energy in America that is flowing into Dance Theatre of Harlem. We are celebrating 40 years of passion, power and perfection while our Ensemble is embarking on its first national tour, standing on the shoulders of a legacy built by the dancers who came before them and built the legacy of Dance Theatre of Harlem." 40TH ANNIVERSARY EVENTS Upcoming Dates for the National Dance for America Tour by the Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble February 3rd, Dixie Center for the Performing Arts, Ruston, Louisiana February 4th, Brown Theatre Complex, University of Louisiana at Monroe, Monroe, Louisiana February 5th, Coughlin Saunders Performing Arts Center, Alexandria, Louisiana February 7- 9, Rosa Hart Theatre, Lake Charles, Louisiana February 10, Strand Theatre, Shreveport, Louisiana February 13, River Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana February 17, Gertrude Castellow Ford Center, University of Mississippi February 19, Riley Center for Education & Performing Arts, Mississippi State University, Meridian, Mississippi March 18, Civic Center, Akron, Ohio March 24, Center for the Performing Arts, Owens Community College, Toledo, Ohio March 20, Opera House, Lexington, Kentucky March 27, Orpheum Theatre, Memphis, Tennessee TEXAS and ARKANSAS: April 3, Post Office Plaza, Texarkana, Texas April 4, Perot Theater, Texarkana, Texas April 6 - 8, Bentonville, Arkansas, Arends Arts Center OPEN HOUSE SERIES November 2008 - May 2009 Everett Center for the Performing Arts 466 W 152nd St, New York, NY 10031 The Open House Series has been a staple program of The Dance Theatre of Harlem since its inception. As part of their community outreach initiatives, the Open Houses provide high quality performances by the students of the Dance Theatre of Harlem School and the Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble, the performing arm of the School, and special guest performers. Performances are held at 3:00 p.m. each month from November through May, and include a post-performance reception. Visit their website here for more information. Be sure to read my previous post on the Dance Theatre of Harlem here. Source: Walker International Communications Group Thursday, January 29, 2009 Name: Froswa’ Booker-Drew Company: Soulstice Consultancy, Dallas, Texas. Provides strategic planning, special event/tour coordination, promotions/community based marketing, fundraising (grant research, proposal writing and donor cultivation), program development assistance, evaluations, board training, and consultations/coaching for businesses and non profit agencies. Education: The University of Texas at Arlington, History major; Oklahoma City University, Master of Liberal Arts in Humanities Personal: Married to Charles C. Drew and the mother of a daughter, Kazai Froswa has spent nearly ten years providing consulting services for non profit organizations. Her current client roster includes individuals, faith and community based organizations and businesses throughout the state of Texas and Louisiana. Last year, Froswa was a part of the documentary, Friendly Captivity, a film that follows a cast of eight women from Dallas to India. Because of this experience, she has dedicated much of her spare time to finding ways to support women and children there. Read on to learn tips for non profits in these tough economic times and how you can help Froswa support India’s children: On starting her own consulting firm, Soulstice Consultancy: "In all honesty, I did not plan on creating a business. I had a number of individuals ask me to assist them. I would pursue contracts on the side while working full-time until I felt it was time to dedicate my energy to consulting full-time. For nearly five years, I provided a number of program development services for organizations. After the birth of my daughter, I placed the business on hold. I resumed the business after having a number of organizations approach me about assisting with fund development, outreach efforts and other typical nonprofit challenges. I chose the name Soulstice because I wanted to change the soul or spirit of organizations in my work through my interactions, information provided and influence." Froswa’s tips for non profit organizations in today's economic climate: “Relationship building is crucial. It is imperative that nonprofits recognize that donor cultivation is important. This business is one that thrives on relationships. Secondly, do not solely rely on grants as a source of funding. Nonprofits fail to realize that individuals give the majority of funding and so the creation of a strong annual fund program is key. Nonprofits must diversify their funding to include various sources of revenue. Foundations change priorities and if a significant amount of your income is from one entity, that can become problematic. Lastly, boards are crucial to your organization’s growth. If the board is not involved in fundraising, they are not effective. Make sure that you are engaging individuals that bring something to your organization, whether it is their circle of influence, their ability to raise funds or a skill set that is not currently available to your organization. I always encourage Executive Directors to seek out a variety of individuals from various professional backgrounds, ethnicities, and age groups that build a strong a diverse board.” Froswa’s experience in India: "Traveling to India was one of the most awesome experiences of my life. Eight women from Dallas would be chosen to spend two weeks in India to see how this experience would impact or change their lives. Out of nearly 400 women, I was selected to participate. Despite my background in nonprofit management, social services and education, those experiences could not have prepared me for what I was about to encounter and witness…visits with young men and women with HIV/AIDS, prostitutes and their children, and to the slums. The poverty that I saw was unbelievable. On top of that, I witnessed severe gender and social inequality. There was one place that touched me to the core. I had the opportunity to visit a wonderful school for Dalit children. The Dalits are considered the lowest caste of Indian society. I had the opportunity to spend time with the founder and his family to better understand his vision and the need for such a school. As an American, I didn’t understand how others could distinguish them since I saw similarities between them and the rest of Indian society. The differences that existed were based on the lack of education and as a result, the inability to speak properly and the dark color of their skin. I learned very quickly that the struggles that black women face are not exclusively ours. Women would walk up to me and place their arms next to mine and say to me, “Same, Same”. It was this experience that has compelled me to help the women and children of India. To see children who are now afforded the opportunity to learn English and receive a quality education is imperative." How You Can Help: “With almost 900 children in attendance, it has become a costly venture but one that the founder is determined and committed to its success. It costs $25/month to educate a child in the school. The school needs books for the library, materials for cricket and football, computers, educational CDs, lab equipment and a LCD projector. The founder of the school said to me that they have never had African Americans visit the school. He said to me that of everyone who has visited, you understand our struggle. My prayer is that I can share with others my experience that will help me through donations and supplies.” Froswa also shared, “I am different as a result of this trip. I realize how blessed I am and that I am not only responsible for my community in the states. I am a global citizen and my success is contingent upon the success of others.” To contact Froswa about her consulting services, and to help the Dalit children of India, email her at email@example.com, 214-500-4608; and visit her website at http://www.soulsticeconsultancy.com/. Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Honorees Cathy Hughes, Chris Tucker, Paula White and Raven-Symone attend the 2009 Trumpet Awards honoree and sponsor dinner at the Hyatt Regency on January 24, 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia. On January 25, 2009, the 2009 Trumpet Awards ceremony was held at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center in Atlanta. The Trumpet Awards was founded by Xernona Clayton, a civil rights leader and broadcasting executive, to honor the accomplishments of individuals who have significantly contributed to enhancing the quality of life for all. Among this year's honorees are Earvin "Magic" Johnson, actor/comedian Chris Tucker, actress Raven-Symone, Captain William D. Pinkney, the first African American to sail solo around the world, and Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee, the first African American female dean of a U.S. medical school. Honorees the Tuskegee Airmen attend the 17th Annual Trumpet Awards Honoree Michael V. Roberts, actor Louis Gossett Jr., honorees Johnathan Rodgers of TV One, Dr. Alvin Crawford and Chris Tucker At left, Daniel Griffin; right, Holly Robinson Peete and Raven Symone. I interviewed Daniel last year for a magazine feature. His story of overcoming the odds is remarkable, which included a brief stint in the foster care system, to becoming an entrepreneur, a teacher and a philanthropist in Compton, California. Photos from the Trumpet Awards Honoree and Sponsors Dinner: Sheree Whitfield, right, of Bravo's Real Housewives of Atlanta and a guest Trumpet Awards founder Xernona Clayton Photos from the Creative Incentives Gifts gifting suite by Keisha McCotry of Prominence Marketing Group and Kandis Knight of Lucretive PR. This book by author Janet K. Ginn, was included in the gift bags. Photos by G. Paras Griffin, Keisha McCotry of Prominence Marketing Group and Wireimage. Erin Korsvall, vice president of The Sallie Mae Fund, reminds students that, to qualify for a scholarship, they must take the first step and apply. "Don't miss out on scholarships by not applying. Get organized, note key deadlines, and give yourself plenty of time to find scholarships, request applications, complete them, and submit them. This free money will be well worth your time and energy." The Sallie Mae Fund offers students tips for finding free money for college: - Don't rule yourself out. Scholarships are not limited to class valedictorians and star athletes. They are awarded based on a number of factors—from your career goals to exceptional writing skills displayed in an essay contest. - Apply for as many awards as you qualify for. Even small awards can be helpful in covering costs, such as books. - Pay close attention to deadlines. Missing a deadline is a sure way to become disqualified. - Look for scholarships offered by a variety of sources, including companies, unions, foundations, community organizations, churches and more. - Tell family, friends, teachers and others in your community that you are looking for scholarships. They may know something you do not. - Understand the conditions of an award—such as maintaining a specific GPA or participating on an athletic team. - Make use of free scholarship directories and searches offered by reputable organizations, such as The Sallie Mae Fund. - Watch for scholarship scams. You should never have to pay for scholarship advice or information. - If you receive a scholarship, be sure to write a thank-you note to the organization. You may want to reapply for the scholarship in the future so it is important to make a good impression. The Sallie Mae Fund's scholarships include the "American Dream" scholarship program for African American students (deadline April 15), the "First In My Family" scholarship program for Hispanic-American students (deadline April 15), the "Unmet Need" scholarship fund for families with combined incomes below $30,000 (deadline May 31), and the Sallie Mae 911 Fund for children of those who were killed or permanently disabled in the September 11th terrorist attacks (deadline ongoing). Tuesday, January 27, 2009 In 2003, the family and friends of Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes established the Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes Foundation in her memory. Before her unexpected passing in Honduras in 2002, she shared with her family and friends her vision for opening up a youth center in the country she called her second home. Today, her dream has come true with the opening of Lisa’s Home of Love, a residential orphanage facility that includes a dental clinic, free healthcare and on-site schooling, which is open to children all throughout the community. Another goal of Lisa’s was to record a solo album. As one third of the pop group TLC, they sold over 45 million records. Today marks the day that another vision of Lisa’s has come true. ‘Eye Legacy’, her first U.S. solo album, is being released to much anticipation. A percentage of proceeds from album sales will benefit the Foundation and their orphanage in Honduras. The album includes guest artists Missy Elliot, T-Boz, Chilli, Lil’ Mama, Bobby Valentino, Chamillionaire, and many more. It was co-produced by Lisa’s family: Wanda Lopes (Left Eye’s mother), and Ronald Lopes and Reigndrop Lopes (Left Eye’s siblings). I recently spoke with Ronald Lopes, the Executive Director of the Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes Foundation, about the new album, Lisa’s legacy of giving and upcoming projects of the Foundation: Lisa’s first album was released abroad, but this is the first album that is being released in the U.S. How long was this latest album in the making? The first album, Supernova, was released online August 16, 2001 and it followed up with a release overseas the following year. The album did pretty well. A lot of fans maybe didn't know about the album. I think it peaked at #5 on the UK charts. For this album, it took about one year. Do you have a favorite song on the album? I have a couple of favorites. ‘Let’s Just Do It’ is one of my favorites, ‘Block Party’ (featuring Lil' Mama) is one of my favorites and ‘Neva Will Eye Ever’ is one of my favorites – those are my three top songs. ‘Neva Will Eye Ever’ features my sister Reigndrop along with our sister Lisa. Another song I really like if I can give an honorable mention is ‘Let It Out’, a song with Wayna Morris [of Boys II Men]. That song is based on a true story, a very touching song. Can you share about Lisa’s legacy of giving? Lisa was always volunteering her time in the community doing charitable events. A lot of the people that felt it [her giving] were the people around her. Lisa was the type of person where the kids in her neighborhood would be at her house playing Play Station and just spending time with her. She affected her community in that way as well, but she also would go to schools, she would talk to children, she would encourage them, trying to be a positive role model. Then when she went to Honduras, she bought 50 acres of land because she wanted to build not just a children’s home, but she wanted to build a whole youth activity center. She drew a picture of it – it looked like a castle. She had designed what their backpacks would look like – she was very detailed with everything that she wanted to do. Unfortunately she passed away before everything could become reality, but we did what we could to bring her dream to fruition. While we didn’t do the details like the backpacks – we did build a 10,000 square foot facility that houses 20 children today, all orphans. Most have been orphaned by their parents passing away from HIV/AIDS or some other terminal disease. Ronald and Reindrop Lopes at an event in June 2008, to present Janet Jackson with the Lisa Lopes Foundation Community Service Award in Atlanta. What activities does the Foundation support here in the U.S.? We also do work here in Atlanta with kids who are in the custody of Family and Community Services. We do all types of activities, all of our activities are based on building the self esteem of a child, making them more self sufficient, that’s so they can survive successfully in life. We have a program to teach them about finances, how to keep your credit good, especially with the economy the way it is now. They definitely need to learn that. What are the foundation's upcoming events and projects for 2009? We always have two major fundraisers every year – one in the summer with HOT 107.9 (in Atlanta) and then we do one that just passed at Christmas at the Mall at Stonecrest, the celebrity gift wrap where celebrities come out and wrap gifts for the people. The money raised from that goes to the foundation to support our programs. We also have a new program we’re working on called the Edutainment Movement, a combination of education and entertainment where we’re taking some of the hottest songs from R&B and hip hop and we’re changing the words to teach the kids about what they should be learning in school – maybe a song teaching you about multiplication, English or literature. We’re going to feature this program at our upcoming album release party – we’ll have kids performing. It’s a pretty cool program, I’m really excited about it. The 'Eye Legacy' album release party is being held tonight at the Ten Pin Alley in Atlanta. Hosted by the Foundation and Ryan Cameron of Atlanta’s V-103FM, the invite only affair will feature celebrities, industry executives and tastemakers. Reigndrop Lopes will perform the single ‘Neva Will Eye Ever’ from the album, along with a performance from Collizion of MTV's America's Best Dance Crew and a silent auction. The album includes a bonus DVD of never before seen footage of Left Eye. The album booklet will also contain fan messages that were collected through the ‘Eye Legacy’ official Myspace page. You can purchase it now at all speciality retailers. On the web: http://www.lefteyelegacy.com/ and http://www.lisalopesfoundation.org/ Thanks to Ronald Lopes and Tafia of TLAPR Monday, January 26, 2009 Early Doucet, a wide receiver for the Super Bowl bound Arizona Cardinals, spent the Christmas holidays in his native Louisiana, handing out gifts and school supplies to youth in the local Big Brothers Big Sisters program. The charity luncheon was held on December 9, 2008 in Baton Rouge, and served as the kick off for the Early Doucet 980 Foundation, a non-profit organization that was created to inspire young people to take responsibility for their future by reducing their “at risk” status and allowing mentors to take an active role in assisting them to reach their goals. Doucet spoke with the youth about his life experiences, sharing, "I was in a single-parent home, five sisters, the only boy. My parents were divorced when I was young, so I kinda strayed away and did some of the typical things an adolescent at that age would do. And it came to a point where I had mentors come into my life and positive role models and it got me into the right direction, which allowed me to become the man I am today." Photos courtesy of D. Thomas Article assistance: WAFB.com and LSUSports.net Thursday, January 22, 2009 Students have the opportunity to win a $10,000 scholarship and meet Dr. Maya Angelou! Contestants are required to submit a 750–1,000 word essay that considers the quote and reflection statement below and answers the following question: The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change. – Dr. Maya Angelou The election of our country’s first African-American president is proof that the dream of change can become a reality. As a people, we’ve shown what we can do when called upon for change. How are you being called to build upon this new spirit of change? Contestants must be 17 years of age or older, and a legal resident and citizen of the 50 United States (includes the District of Columbia). Contestants must be either a high school senior who has been accepted to or a current, full-time student in good standing at one of the participating colleges or universities. For more information, visit http://alltel.com/wordsofwisdom. Victoria's Secret PINK is pleased to announce this week that five HBCU’s have been added to the collection: Florida A&M University, Howard University, Hampton University, North Carolina A&T State, and Southern University. To celebrate the launch, the company has partnered with the Tom Joyner Morning Show for a competition among the five schools to receive a special visit from PINK in the spring. Via press release: “From January 26 - February 22, PINK will track the sales at Victoria's Secret stores and online of the new HBCU Collegiate product, and the school with the highest sales will win the event. With the help of Tom Joyner and http://www.blackamericaweb.com/, PINK will announce the HBCU each week that has the highest sales. Listeners can tune in every Thursday to the "Tom Joyner Morning Show" starting February 5 - 26 to hear the winner for the previous week's sales. This is the largest retail distribution deal ever offered to HBCUs. Richard Dent, chief operating officer of PINK says, "This partnership is symbolic of PINK's desire to be the most aspirational collegiate brand in America targeted to college age women of ALL ethnicities." By purchasing HBCU product from the PINK Collegiate Collection, customers will be providing direct support to their favorite HBCU as a portion of proceeds go to the respective university.” And, if you’re a student at a HBCU and want your school to be included in the upcoming Holiday 2009 PINK Collection, read on: “People will also have the ability to utilize the "Nominate your HBCU" function (on http://www.vspink.com/) to vote for HBCUs which have not yet been added to the PINK Collegiate Collection. The company plans to add the school that receives the most votes to the Holiday 2009 PINK Collegiate Collection.” Updated 2/11: Nominate your HBCU here! The assortment of HBCU products that launched in select stores mid-December are also available online (www.victoriassecret.com/pink) and in the catalogue. Source: VS Press release/PRN Photo: Keith L. Pope/BlackEnterprise.com Wednesday, January 21, 2009 An estimated crowd of two million people braved the bitter cold yesterday on the National Mall to witness history. Using the Bible that Abraham Lincoln used 148 years ago during his inauguration, President Barack Obama was sworn into office as our 44th President. I attended inaugural events and receptions in honor of our new President over the past four days here in D.C. and I've compiled photos of the many events that took place! One event I attended was the 'A Dream Fulfilled' inaugural gala hosted by Stevie Wonder at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday. He began his performance after midnight, singing his legendary hits such as 'Signed, Sealed, Delivered' and 'All I Do'. While at the event I met Tracy Mourning, wife of NBA player Alonzo Mourning and founder of the Honey Shine mentoring program. Tracy and Alonzo were voted by you, the readers, as BlackGivesBack's top philanthropic duo of 2008! Let's take a look at some of the events and people who were in town to celebrate our new President! Former Vice President Al Gore and will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas attend the Green Inaugural Ball at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture on January 19, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Franco Nuschese, Michelle Fenty and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty at the celebration to honor the Inauguration of Barack Obama at Cafe Milano on January 16, 2009 in Washington, DC. Hip hop artist Jay-Z and Carol's Daughter founder Lisa Price at the opening of the Carol's Daughter Store during Inauguration Weekend on January 17, 2009 at Pentagon City Mall in Arlington, Virginia. Updated: Proceeds from this opening event benefited the Lupus Foundation of America. Mikki Taylor of Essence magazine and philanthropist Jaci Reid attend The Creative Coalition's VIP Inaugural brunch at BGR on January 20, 2009 in Washington, DC. Wynton Marsalis and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor speak onstage at Jazz At Lincoln Center Presents "A Celebration Of America" Gala funded by The Rockefeller Foundation held at the Kennedy Center on January 19, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Heather Smith, Executive Director of Rock the Vote and hip hop artist David Banner attend the Rock the Vote & Rolling Stone Event at Gibson Showroom on January 19, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Actress Rosario Dawson addresses the crowd at the Manifest Hope D.C. Inauguration Party on January 19, 2009 in Washington, DC. Actor Hill Harper attends the "Obama That One!" Change Awards at the Newseum on January 18, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Singer Usher and ServiceNation staff and volunteers attend MTV and ServiceNation's "Be The Change: Live from the Inaugural" makeover event at Simon Elementary school on January 19, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Monday, January 19, 2009 The monument for the great civil rights leader and humanitarian is expected to be completed in 2010. Major donors include General Motors, 10 million; the Tommy Hilfiger Corporate Foundation, 5 million; Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, 3.4 million; W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 3 million; Sheila Johnson-Newman, 1 million; and Morehouse College, 1 million. The monument will be located on a four-acre site along the Tidal Basin, adjacent to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial and on a direct line between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials in Washington, D.C. The project has raised just over $100 million to date. The goal is to raise 120 million. How to Get Involved The Dream Keepers College Program: An initiative to engage college students across the country in efforts to build the memorial. Friends Asking Friends: Build your own 'dream team' by asking your family, friends, coworkers, church members and colleagues to participate. You'll then register your team and create a website to track donations and recruit other members. Greeks Asking Greeks: Join with other Greek-lettered organizations from all over the world, in friendly competition, to help raise money to support the memorial. The Kids Corner: For parents and children! Photo of the Day: Martin Luther King Jr.'s son, Martin Luther King III and actor Tobey Maguire, attended the Entertainment Industry Foundation and Service Nation's "A New Era of Service" Breakfast at Ballou Senior High School on January 19, 2009 in Washington, DC. Saturday, January 17, 2009 The Manifest Hope: DC Gallery will be open to the public from January 17 - 19, 10am-6pm at 3333 M Street, NW. For more information, visit the website here. Sunday, January 18: Souls of My Sisters Books Presents a Panel Discussion on 'What the Obama Presidency Means to Me' Kensington Publishing Corp.'s imprint Souls of My Sisters Books' co-founders Dawn Marie Daniels and Candace Sandy will host a dialogue on "What the Obama Presidency Means to Me." The town hall-style event is being held in cooperation with Congressman Gregory W. Meeks (NY-06) in honor of the inauguration of President Barack Obama. It will take place on Sunday, January 18 (2:00PM-5:00PM) at the Cannon House Office Building, Caucus Room. The program will include the perspectives of prominent women from around the country, including notable television personality Star Jones, Mikki Taylor (Essence Magazine), Amy Keith (People Magazine), Maria Davis, (HIV/AIDS Activist), Jacque Reid (Tom Joyner Show) and Jackie Rhinehart (author). "The dialogue will focus on the historic relevance of the incoming Obama Administration, the personal stories and the issues facing American women, and our global connection with women worldwide," states co-editor Candace Sandy. Thursday, January 15, 2009 With Inauguration festivities kicking off on Friday, there are many events to choose from! So if you're like me and are planning to attend a ball or an event but haven't bought nary a ticket yet, below are some of my top picks - low cost, with proceeds benefiting charity! Tuesday, January 20 Concerned Black Men - National Organization and the Federal City Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., present an Inaugural Gala honoring President-elect Barack Obama And, I'd like to give a shout out to AOL's BlackVoices.com, for recognizing BlackGivesBack on the 'Best of Black Blogs' on 'Blog for Blog': They featured the Top Ten Black Celebrity Philanthropists of 2008! View here. Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Earlier this month, a report was issued by the Madison Avenue Project that cited widespread racial discrimination in the advertising industry. The project, led by the NAACP and attorney Cyrus Mehri of Mehri & Skalet, was created in 2008 to address advertising’s deep rooted racial bias among African-American professionals in pay, hiring, promotions, assignments, and other areas. Some of their findings include: - Racial discrimination is 38 percent worse in the advertising industry than in the overall U.S. labor market; - Black college graduates working in advertising earn $.80 for every dollar earned by their equally qualified White counterparts; - About 16 percent of large advertising firms employ no black managers or professionals, a rate 60 percent higher than in the overall labor market; - Blacks are only 62 percent as likely as their White counterparts to work in the powerful 'creative' and 'client contact' functions in advertising agencies One way to address this disparity is by awarding scholarships to African American undergraduate and graduate students majoring in advertising and by providing leadership and career development support. Mr. Kim L. Hunter has been doing just that since 1998, as the founder and chairman of The Lagrant Foundation (TLF), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase the number of ethnic minorities in the fields of advertising, marketing and public relations by providing scholarships, career development workshops, internships, professional development and mentors to African American, Asian/Pacific Island American, Native American and Hispanic/Latino undergraduate and graduate students. Yesterday the foundation announced that it is now accepting applications for $100,000 in scholarships for the 2009/2010 academic year. Applications must be submitted to TLF by Friday, February 27, for consideration. Here’s more info via the press release: "In an effort to increase ethnic minority representation in the communications industry, TLF awards $5,000 scholarships to undergraduate students and $10,000 scholarships to graduate students. '"It is important to help ethnic minority students achieve their education goals and help guide them toward their future careers," said Founder/Chairman of TLF, Mr. Kim L. Hunter. "By doing this, TLF is helping to create diversity within the advertising, marketing and public relations industries and reflect the society we live in.'" Since its inception, the foundation has awarded a total of $770,000 to 136 students nationwide. In 2009, TLF will celebrate its 11th Anniversary Scholarship Recognition Reception and Awards Program in New York City. The scholarship recipients will participate in a day-long career development workshop and have the opportunity to meet with industry professionals." For scholarship requirements and to apply, visit the website at http://www.lagrantfoundation.org/, or contact Ericka Avila, Programs Manager, at 323.469.8680, ext. 233. Source: Press release

High-Dose Chemotherapy With Autologous Stem Cell Rescue in the Outpatient Setting High-Dose Chemotherapy With Autologous Stem Cell Rescue in the Outpatient Setting Intensive outpatient care is rapidly becoming the primary mode of care for selected patients undergoing high-dose chemotherapy with autologous peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) transplantation. Although the traditional inpatient model of care may still be necessary for high-risk patients, published data suggest that outpatient care is safe and feasible during or after administration of high-dose chemotherapy and autologous PBSC transplant. Blood and marrow transplant (BMT) centers have developed programs to provide more outpatient care under three basic models: an early discharge model, a delayed admission model, and a comprehensive, or total, outpatient model. This review will describe these models of care and address the elements necessary for the development of an outpatient BMT program, including patient selection, staff development, and patient and caregiver education. Available supportive care strategies to facilitate outpatient care will also be highlighted. Clinical outcome data and pharmacoeconomic analyses evaluating various outpatient BMT programs, as well as limited quality-of-life evaluations, will be reviewed. [ONCOLOGY 14(2):171-185, 2000] Advances in the field of blood and marrow transplantation (BMT) leading to decreased morbidity and mortality have facilitated a shift in care of the transplant patient from the hospital to the outpatient clinic. One major factor that has facilitated this shift is the increased use of peripheral blood–derived stem cells (PBSCs) instead of bone marrow–derived stem cells as autologous rescue following administration of high-dose chemotherapy. The use of PBSCs is associated with shorter periods of neutropenia and thrombocytopenia, as well as potentially less severe regimen-related toxicities.[2-4] In addition, improvements in supportive care strategies, including antibiotic algorithms for prophylaxis and treatment, antiemetic regimens, and transfusion protocols, have allowed patients to be cared for safely in the outpatient setting. The potential advantages of outpatient care for BMT patients include improved patient satisfaction and quality of life by allowing them to remain in their home environment or in a nearby hotel. In addition, the elimination of a prolonged hospital stay may potentially decrease the convalescent period by keeping the patient more active and responsible during the transplant process. Published data in cancer patients support these potential advantages of outpatient care during BMT.[6,7] Despite the potential impact of outpatient care on quality of life, thus far, the primary end points evaluated have been safety, feasibility, and pharmacoeconomics.[8,9] Numerous studies have documented the safety and feasibility of outpatient care during or after administration of high-dose chemotherapy with autologous PBSC rescue.[10-14] In terms of pharmacoeconomics, autologous BMT has traditionally been an expensive procedure, with historical costs exceeding $100,000 per patient. Attempts to decrease this cost have been fueled by the general pressure to decrease health care costs and the increasing use of global-fee contracts for BMT, in which the provider assumes the financial risk for all BMT services.[15,16] Establishment of an outpatient component of care early in the BMT process requires prudent patient selection, intensive planning and education, trained staff, and appropriately equipped facilities. This review will address the logistic requirements and published outcomes for various outpatient BMT care models. Three models of outpatient care have been described in the literature and are represented schematically in Figure 1. Early Discharge Model The first outpatient care model described, the early discharge model, was implemented by Peters et al at Duke University. In this program, high-dose chemotherapy is administered on the hospital BMT unit. After the completion of high-dose chemotherapy and stabilization of gastrointestinal toxicities, patients are discharged to the outpatient BMT clinic and followed on a daily basis. During this period of intensive outpatient visits, patients are readmitted to the inpatient BMT unit only if they develop such complications as neutropenic fever, refractory gastrointestinal toxicities, or other clinical scenarios that cannot be managed in the outpatient setting. By implementing this approach, Peters et al reported a reduction in BMT-associated hospital stays from 24.5 to 7 days. Delayed Admission Model Another model described less extensively in the literature, but used in numerous autologous transplant centers, is the delayed admission model of Weaver et al. In this model, high-dose chemotherapy is administered in the outpatient setting, and patients are then admitted to the hospital for supportive care management. Although the delayed admission approach can decrease the duration of hospitalization as compared to the traditional inpatient model, patients generally require 2 weeks of hospitalization during the supportive care period. For example, although the delayed admission model is referred to as an outpatient BMT program, Weaver et al reported that 96% of 80 patients with lymphoma undergoing autologous transplantation required hospitalization for a median of 14 days. Total Outpatient Model Recently, a more extensive approach to outpatient care has been described, which can be defined as a total, or comprehensive, outpatient model.[12-14] In this model, both high-dose chemotherapy administration and supportive care management are conducted in the outpatient setting, with patients hospitalized for complications that cannot be managed in the clinic or at home. Of the three outpatient models, the total outpatient approach is associated with the shortest duration of hospitalization, but it is the most labor intensive for the outpatient BMT clinic. The comprehensive outpatient care model requires extensive coordination and implementation of resources, often including the establishment of specialty designated outpatient clinics and home health care programs. Providing care to the BMT patient in the outpatient setting requires the availability and establishment of numerous facility and staff resources. The extent to which certain resources are needed depends on the established outpatient care model. Essential resources for every model include a designated outpatient and inpatient care facility. Most outpatient programs have an equipped outpatient facility that operates during regular business or extended hours. The mechanisms used to provide after-hours or weekend care vary among centers, however. Options implemented include extended clinic hours or direct admission to the hospital for any complications occurring after hours. Another option that may minimize hospitalization is the establishment of a hospital-based outpatient treatment room for weekend and emergency visits. Provision of after-hours care may also depend on the level of home health care nursing and infusion services available. The availability of dedicated, specialized staff is crucial to the success of an outpatient BMT program. Essential staff members include inpatient and outpatient BMT-trained nurses, pharmacy services specializing in high-dose therapy, laboratory and blood-banking support, medical and surgical consultants, and hematopoietic cell therapy support services. In addition to these essential staff members, which are common to all outpatient models, other personnel have been added or adapted within various centers based on need and available resources. For example, the level of home health care involvement among outpatient BMT programs ranges from minimal to extensive. The model of Peters et al provides only minimal home health care support and, at one point, used home health care professionals primarily for ambulatory pump needs. In contrast, the model of Geller et al integrates BMT-designated home health care nursing staff into the daily care of the patient. In this model, the BMT home health care staff consists of inpatient BMT nurses who rotate weekly. During the home health care week, their only responsibility is to answer telephone calls, make home visits for initial assessments and follow-up care, and provide primary nursing care to patients seen in the weekend outpatient BMT clinic. Complete integration of home health care into the outpatient BMT program can expand the comprehensiveness of the program and help eliminate the need for short hospital stays to initiate intravenous antibiotics for a first neutropenic febrile episode. However, in other models with less home health care involvement or prolonged clinic hours, patients may be admitted to the hospital for evaluation and initiation of intravenous antibiotics.[10,11] Before determining the appropriateness of outpatient care, the BMT candidate first undergoes the routine pre-BMT evaluation to determine eligibility. This evaluation includes an assessment of clinical eligibility based on disease restaging, organ function, and performance status, as well as a psychosocial assessment and investigation of insurance coverage.

From Gentile and Jew: A Symposium on the Future of the Jewish People, compiled and edited by Chaim Newman (London: Alliance Press, 1945), pp. 165–85. From my earliest years I have, in one way and another, been indebted to Jews. The days of my childhood were enlivened by the music of Offenbach, most of whose more famous comic operas were made familiar to me. My Christmas harvest of toys and books were regularly enriched by the generosity of a distinguished Jewish lady—the same who was instrumental in inducing Charles Dickens to make amends in Our Mutual Friend for the character of Fagin in Oliver Twist. As a young man I owed to a Jew my first help and encouragement along the hard road of literature, as also my one grand tour of Europe and the Near East. Later on, it was a gifted Jewish lady whom I had to thank for one of the most valuable contributions I ever received towards the body of knowledge which has enabled me so far to maintain my health at a level certainly above the average; and it was an appreciative Jewish medical man who, among all my countrymen, recognised me as a free-lance scientist able to contribute the treatise on human mating to the International Library of Sexology and Psychology, and secured me the commission to do so. And how can I ever adequately acknowledge my debt to Jewish writers and thinkers, from Heine and Proust to Freud and Adler? But all this should not count, any more than does the fact that some of my experiences with Jews have been unpleasant. If we are to discuss every subject subjectively, as the crowd rather expects us to do; if we are to make the assessment of Smith’s or Brown’s merits and demerits contingent on their treatment of ourselves in particular, then there must be an end to sane judgment, above all the kind of judgment that commands respect, and Madame de Staël’s opinion of Napoleon becomes as relevant as Goethe’s. And yet the ordinary man, and especially the ordinary woman, cannot understand us when we find fault with any feature or work of someone who has been only good to us, and they understand us still less when we praise any feature or work of someone who has wronged us. Thus too much of the personal reaction enters into all discussion about individuals, as of nations or communities, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Jewish question. Naturally, however, if a few unhappy experiences with Jews lead a man to criticise adversely Jewry as a whole, he provokes some such retort as Riah’s in Our Mutual Friend to the effect that there are too many black sheep in all human folds. Nor could there be anything more despicable than that antisemitism which springs chiefly from envy of Jewish success, a kind of antisemitism happily, I hope, confined to the least intelligent of businessmen. Nevertheless, we have to face the fact that antisemitism has existed off and on ever since 1500 B.C. It is not, as a shallow writer in the New Statesman recently declared, an infection spread from the Nazis. As early as the twelfth century A.D. it was rife in this country and flared up repeatedly until in 1290 the Jews were expelled altogether. Elsewhere the attitude towards the Jews has in the last thousand years fluctuated between the extremes of complete friendliness and ruthless persecution, and, before we can begin to outline a solution of the Jewish problem, it seems important to try to account for the periodical outbursts of dislike to which the Jews have been exposed throughout most of their known history. Is it, as Joseph Kastein suggests, due chiefly to the scapegoat principle—to mankind’s tendency, when things go wrong, to seek the cause in some odd and easily distinguishable minority in their midst? I, for one, cannot unreservedly accept this simplistic explanation. There is something more than that in the recurring waves of antisemitism that have marked the history of Europe. Nevertheless, it will readily be appreciated that, to a majority of nationals of more or less the same stock, there is a temptation, yielded to by the less thoughtful and more indolent, to blame a strange minority for their misfortunes and even for their vices, if this minority gives the least colourable warrant for holding them responsible for both. For, to discover a tangible external cause for their miseries and mistakes, relieves them of the pain of self-reproach and absolves them of the irksome duty of setting their own house in order. Thus, in a monthly journal published by a political society to which I belong, I wrote, as late as August 1939: “No one better than the average member of the English Array perceived the speciousness of the popular and irrational appeal in rabid antisemitism. It is always unpleasant to be shown a scapegoat and told that he is responsible for all our iniquities. Such tactics tend to relieve us of any implication in the mismanagement and deplorable state of our country and to give us a sense of righteousness at once exhilarating and comforting to our indolence. In this respect antisemitism gives the same relief as does the medical man’s bacteriological bias, when he assures us that our maladies are in no way of our own making, but wholly due to the ‘bug’ that has ‘invaded’ our system. “Thus, both by rabid antisemitism and the germ-mania of modern medicine, we are lead to believe that there is no need either of repentance or action [meant by this, action to initiate reforms]; all we have to do is to get rid of a foreign body.” I then proceeded to show how the very kind of hardships and iniquities which antisemites were at that time ascribing to the Jews could be discerned in the Jew-free England of 1290 to 1656, and could be brought home to hundreds of thousands of non-Jews in the two hundred and eighty-three years that had followed. But have we not here perhaps the clue to the explanation we are seeking? One question which has hardly ever been investigated, and the investigation of which might shed light on the problem of the European’s repeated outbursts of antisemitism, is: How did these people ultimately fare who rid themselves of their Jews? Even if I were equipped to do more—which I certainly am not—it would be absurd in a short space to attempt everything but the roughest sketch of a reply to this question; for even to confine it to England would, if it is to be complete, involve the handling of a formidable mass of historical data. Nor could such an investigation, no matter how thorough, be wholly free from possible errors of the gravest kind; for, as I used to maintain against the wishful thinkers among the antisemites who, in the decade before the war, were anxious to establish the claim of ethnic purity for the English after 1290, it is by no means absolutely certain that, when Edward I expelled the Jews, England was entirely rid of them. The historian Green, for instance, speaks of those who left these shores as “the sixteen thousand who preferred exile to apostasy”. This recalls the fact that the stress then laid on the religious aspect alone of the question must have enabled many Jews to escape the ban by accepting baptism. And, seeing that in all communities a certain proportion are pusillanimous, it would be unwise to assume that only a negligible number of Jews preferred apostasy to banishment and ultimately became merged in the general population. But suppose we assume that this element was too small to count, what is recorded of the English people in the period 1290 to 1656? First of all, owing to the circumstances of their insularity and the endogamy this imposed in an era when travel was difficult, and formidable obstacles were raised against the peaceful infiltration of foreigners, it is not unlikely that they attained a high degree of ethnic standardization. The evidence we have of their striking beauty in Tudor times probably points to one of the results of this. Secondly, it was a period when most of England’s more characteristic institutions and her greatest geniuses, from Chaucer to Shakespeare and Milton, came to life. But to those who might claim that it was a period of unalloyed bliss, harmony and freedom from oppression, exploitation and grinding poverty, to those who might wish to prove that it was a period destitute of harshness, or of profiting from other people’s misfortunes, and of profiteering in general, it is possible to display an array of facts which must quickly dispel their illusions. For, even if we confine our attention to the legislation calculated to suppress evil practices, it would suffice to demonstrate beyond all possible doubt their disquieting prevalence. There is, indeed, an impressive mass of such legislation. From Edward I onwards, we find measures taken to prevent the exploitation of the masses by the landowners, to enforce honesty in trade, and to make it difficult for the individual to derive gain at the public expense (by such practices as combining with foreigners to draw profit from transactions to the detriment of Englishmen, or creating artificial scarcities in necessary commodities, or “engrossing”—i.e., cornering markets, or “regrating”, i.e., buying in a public market only to sell again for the sake of the rake-off, or retailing with excessive profit). “Forestalling”, i.e., bargaining with producers by middlemen before local consumers had a chance, had actually to be prohibited in the fourteenth century. The giving of short weight or the sale of inferior food or drink was also severely punished, and inspectors brought delinquents to judgment. Honesty in craftsmanship was enforced by the craftsmen’s corporations or guilds, and asocial conduct in the form of rendering inadequate service for reward was steadily combated. Such measures with the outlook that inspired them continued to be necessary right up to the Age of the Tudors and the Stuarts. Elizabeth, for instance, went to pains to control the capitalist spirit of gain-at-all-costs, which began to spread through the nation in her time. She resisted the accumulation of capital in too few hands, and tried to impose on the new independent rich of her days proper duties towards society. But, in spite of these successive efforts made throughout the period under notice, there still remained considerable elements in the land—and with the harsh outlook of Puritanism they were actually increasing—whose attitude of mind was wholly adverse to the spirit of social mutuality which it had been the object of the more beneficent monarchs to impress on the nation. Thus Charles I was constrained to pass a number of measures, antipathetic to the rising Puritan and individualistic dogma, which, had the socialising efforts of his predecessors succeeded, would hardly have been called for. In 1629, to give only a few instances, his justices were directed to come to the rescue of the Essex weavers and force their employers to give them better terms than the automatic action of free competition would have provided. After the bad harvest of 1660, he forbade all profiteering in corn at the expense of the poor; requested the Irish, who suffered no dearth, to send all the grain they did not need, and instructed his justices, in counties which had enough, to see that provision was made for their less fortunate neighbours. Nobody was allowed to sell wheat at more than seven shillings a bushel, the storing of grain for resale was prohibited, and starch makers and maltsters were reminded that their products were not as necessary to human life as the raw materials of their industry. He also had to interfere with the butter trade to prevent frauds in packing. At another time he was found correcting abuses in the drapery trade and in the making and purveying of counterfeit jewellery. Three times he tried to suppress fraud and adulteration in the silk trade till finally in 1639, when all else failed, he established a government office where the silk was inspected, stamped and declared to be of an adequately good quality. Turning now to other aspects of this significant period, in the growth of towns with the change of administration from the frith-gilds to the merchant-gilds, we see more evidence of the persistent asocial and individualistic spirit of the people; and, in the struggles that ensued between the magnates or barons of the merchant-gilds and the smaller fry of the city, the corruption and oppression of the former were the cause of the discontent and the revolts. The unfair assessments levied on the poor and the undue burdens imposed on the unenfranchised classes revealed an attitude which, it is true, may be no more than the besetting sin of all men to abuse power, but which appears, nevertheless, to vary in intensity according to the nature of the population with which we are concerned. On the land, in the rural districts of England, conditions were no better. Not more than seventy years after the expulsion of the Jews in 1290, the priest, John Ball, driven to the leadership of an open revolt among the peasants as a result of the deplorable hardships they had to endure, began preaching a sort of communism which was inspired less by contemplation and thought than by the spectacle of sorrow and want about him. The major outbreak occurred in 1381, and Garnier states that the peasants had been starved into rebellion. Nor was their revolt confined to one quarter. Everywhere, from Kent to Yorkshire, there was seething discontent. Norwich was sacked, insurgents marched from parts as distant as Devonshire and Lancashire, and three leaders, Tyler, Hales and Grindecobbe, conducted armies of peasants towards London. But this was not the only incident of the kind. Sixty-nine years later, in 1450, another major peasants’ revolt occurred under Jack Cade, and yet another in 1549 under Kett. And what, are we told, was the fundamental cause of these outbursts of rustic passion? Without exception, agrarian oppression! We have only to read an old poem like Langland’s “The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman” in order to appreciate that, as early as the fourteenth century and onwards, there were in the nation all the signs of a hard, greedy, possessing class exploiting the weak and defenceless when and where they could. In the poems known as “King Edward and the Shepherd” and “God Speed the Plough”, passages may also be found illustrating the asperities of the peasants’ lot and revealing much the same state of things as Langland depicts. From these and many other instances that could be cited, two important conclusions may be drawn. First, that during the period 1290 to 1656 there was in the land a spirit persistently trying to break loose, which, for lack of a better popular term, I have called individualistic and asocial, and the prevalence of which, despite much legislation calculated to suppress it, constantly impeded the establishment of the mutuality essential to a sound culture; and, secondly, that this spirit increased rather than decreased in power as time went on; or, to put it perhaps more accurately, its manifestations grew ever more overt and self-confident. For, beyond any possible doubt whatever, it ultimately triumphed and won national acceptance soon after the fifth decade of the seventeenth century. The very rise of Puritanism, in both its religious and purely social aspects, was one of the symptoms of its increasing assurance and strength, and the consummation of Puritan designs in 1649 marked its apotheosis. In other words, we have to acknowledge as existent in England throughout the period under consideration, and as gaining in vigour rather than losing it, a spirit which was in no respect different in kind, though it may have been in degree, from that which at a later date made the Manchester School a reality and led, among other enormities, to the crimes of both white and black slavery, the cruel bondage of children in the cotton mills, the Highland Clearances, and the obscene ill-treatment of women and children in the mines. True, it was the same individualism which had its glorious side in the “Nelson touch”, the bravery, self-reliance and enterprise of the people of England on land and sea, and the pioneer independence and endurance of her toughest sons. But its darker expression was undoubtedly to be found in its asocial implications, with all that they meant in the form of the pursuit of private gain à outrance, the reckless exploitation of want and weakness and the policy of a war of all against all, in which the devil was left to take the hindmost. Nor was it without significance that, at the very end of the 365 years we are examining, i.e., in the fifth decade of the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes, doubtless shaping his cosmogony from the world about him, as Darwin was later to do with his “Struggle for Existence”, arrived at the memorable conclusion that the natural state of man was a bellum omnium contra omnes. Now, before enquiring into the root of this persevering and irrepressible spirit, it is interesting to notice, first, that the end effects of its prevalence on society are those usually to be found in antisemitic literature ascribed wholly to the influence of the Jews; and, secondly, that the kind of practices of which it is the main source are also those which, in that same literature, are constantly identified with Jewry. And yet, if it is true that the development of late eighteenth and nineteenth century capitalism, with its ruthless scramble for wealth, was implicit in the policies and temper which ultimately triumphed in 1649; if it is true that the British Empire was already the richest Empire the world has ever seen when Charles Dickens was busy describing the grinding poverty of the masses of the nation, and that this poverty itself was also implicit in the spirit that became paramount in the seventeenth century—and I, for one, believe both these suppositions to be true—how can it be reasonably claimed that the effects of the spirit tend to appear only when the Jews are powerful? The fact cannot, I suppose, be contested that, when ultimately the Jews did return to England, they profited, as everyone else was at liberty to do, from the policy of laissez-faire which gradually prevailed. That they excelled in exploiting such a policy would, moreover, I assume, hardly be contested by any candid member of their own people. For, even their best friends—such men as Renan, Werner Sombart (himself a Jew) and Dr. Ruppin (also a Jew) acknowledge, in different ways, the essential fitness of the Jew, not only to promote the kind of culture we recognise as modern capitalism, but also to thrive under it. “Politically”, says Sombart, “he (the Jew) is an individualist.” But, as we have seen, it was the extreme individualism which came into power in the seventeenth century, with its tacit slogan sauve qui peut that was ultimately responsible for the worst excesses of nineteenth century industrialism. Historically unsound, therefore, though it may be to attribute to the Jews the state of affairs and the practices which laissez-faire, inspired by the fundamental individualism of the Englishman, ultimately brought into being, the fact remains that the Jews who, in the seventeenth century, returned to England, found in this state of affairs and in these practices environmental conditions which suited them both their temperament and character. What was it then in both the English and the Jews that conspired, after 1656, to develop and consolidate the kind of civilisation which reached its apogee in mid-Victorian days? Having replied, in the above, at least as regards England, to my original question: “How did those people ultimately fare who rid themselves of the Jews?”—I can now attempt a reply to this second question: the grounds for the apparent affinity of the English and the Jews in regard to the culture they jointly developed after 1656; whereupon I shall be ready to address myself to the principal subject of this essay, my solution of the Jewish problem. It has been maintained above that the English throughout their history have been animated by a separatist and isolationist spirit, tending often to express itself asocially, which I have called “individualism”. But for various reasons I prefer the word “particularism” to denote this characteristic, and it is the term used by Henri de Tourville in his famous “Histoire de la Formation Particulariste”, where he traces the origins of this spirit to the ancestors of the ancient Saxons who ultimately colonised large areas of England. To him it means more or less what I have claimed for individualism—i.e., a temper that is at once independent, self-reliant and aloof, which looks upon the rest of the community from the narrow angle of the family, easily drops into xenophobia, and recognises few social obligations beyond that of minding one’s own business. He claims that it was a product of the life led by the ancestors of a section of the Saxon people in their ancient home, the Norwegian fjords, and that, while it accounts for all those leonine qualities which brought them glory in the island they ultimately colonised, it also displays, on its darker side, the regrettable features I have sufficiently enumerated. If de Tourville’s thesis is accepted—and he has carried conviction to men far better able to test it than I am—we possess an explanation at once illuminating and satisfactory, not only for many of the more distinctive traits of the English character, but also for their stubborn endurance during centuries of attempts to modify them. It should, however, be added in amplification of this statement of origins, that there were in the land from early times, and certainly after the Norman conquest, a few patriarchal elements (the Angles and the Normans themselves, for instance) which might account for the persistent, though admittedly feeble and unavailing resistance constantly offered to extreme particularist developments. The fact that their influence failed to become paramount and was ultimately overwhelmed in the Grand Rebellion, should not lead us to deny their presence or the possibility of survival in relative obscurity up to recent times. This would explain some of the more social and kindly figures which, like Cobbett, Charles Dickens, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, and Michael Thomas Sadler in the nineteenth century, appeared from time to time in England to throw in their weight on the side of a broader and warmer humanity. A friend, moreover, has suggested to me that the mutualism and brotherhood imposed by necessity on crews serving in ships might, in the long run, have tended to modify a seafaring particularist folk in the direction of wider and deeper sympathies. This may be so, but the exorbitant cruelties of seamen of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries hardly bears out the contention. Is there anything similar to this in the pre-history of the Jews? It has been suggested, and I believe the suggestion to be both defensible and helpful, that they, too, have had a past which influenced them in a particularist direction. The long ages during which their remote ancestors, the ancient Hebrews, wandered the regions of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt was probably the time when, having to lead the life of nomads—as some Semites still do—they acquired those self-same traits which, as we have seen, typified that branch of the Saxon people which colonised a large part of England—that independent, self-reliant and aloof spirit which tends to look on the rest of men from the narrow angle of the family, readily inclines to xenophobia, and recognises few social obligations beyond that of minding one’s own business. For, when once the nomad has exhausted the resources of a particular locality, packs his camels or asses with his belongings and moves on, always with the tacit comment ”après moi le déluge!”, he inevitably regards himself and his family as a complete unit owing service and duties to no man. Perhaps a common enemy, alone, would draw him and his like into some relation temporarily collaborative. The nomad is, then, a particularist, predestined, as it were, to accept en bloc the doctrines of the Manchester School without lifting an eyebrow. When, however, there is added to this fundamental particularism, acquired from the Jew’s remote forebears, the fact that the early life of his people was led in a region which was already civilized at a time when Europe was still the home of the barbarians; which was, moreover, from the very dawn of history, a centre of trade of every imaginable kind, and so organised as to give the local population a familiarity with urban life on a scale unknown to Europe until centuries later, the conclusion is forced upon us that, with its seniority in urban and commercial experience and its hereditary adaptation to both, the Jewish people, as particularists, always enter the arena of a society organised along particularistic lines, with an immense advantage, an advantage which even other particularists, differently conditioned, do not enjoy. To resent the consequences of this advantage, to quarrel with the efficiency of the Jew in a particularist culture, when one is oneself a particularist and one’s own people are themselves largely responsible for the creation of that culture, is about as reasonable as for a loser at a game to abuse the winner, when its principle and rules are of his own making. Unfortunately, in the antisemitism based on purely grounds, as I hinted above, this unreasonable resentment always has played and, in particularist cultures, is likely to continue to play a prominent part. And it is there, I suggest, that we find the principal cause of the recurring waves of antisemitism that have marked the history of the Jews in Europe. For when, in a particularist society, things ultimately go wrong—and they always do go wrong in the end, owing to the fundamental unworkableness of the particularist culture—he who seems to be the most shielded from the effects of its evils and, above all, often to be thriving conspicuously by virtue of them, is not unnaturally singled out as the cause of the general distress, especially if he belong to a minority easily discerned by the mass, and may, moreover, be regarded as a stranger. Besides, it is in the interest even of non-Jews, or certainly of those who happen to stand high and dry above the more intolerable conditions imposed by particularism, to direct the attention away from themselves on to a body which can be truthfully designated as at least a part cause of the trouble. It is obvious that this is only a half-truth; but, like all half-truths, it is most difficult to confute; and thus, as a rule, antisemitism claims its victims. In this way, the reiterated cry is raised: “Get rid of the Jews!” But to all those antisemites, whether English, French, or German, who may even now be disposed to raise this cry, I say, as I used to say before the war, “Your quarrel is not really exclusively with the Jews. It is with the asperities of your particularist society; and if you wish to be consistent you would have to banish, not only the Jews, but also millions of your countrymen who are just as ready and often as well equipped as the Jews to thrive in a particularist culture.” It is open, of course, to the extreme English antisemite to reject de Tourville’s thesis, and to claim that, if particularism became paramount in England, it was owing to the probably large leaven of Jews which became merged into English stocks through the alternative of baptism six and a half centuries or more ago, and thus gradually turned the face of England away from a mutualistic culture. But this objection leads the extreme antisemite into so many unexpected difficulties that he is hardly likely to make it. For—to mention only one point—where would his selection for banishment begin and end if he really believed in such a wide dissemination of Jewish blood in England prior to 1656? And thus I have reached the stage when I can deal with the main subject of this essay—my solution of the Jewish problem. The biological aspect must first be disposed of as briefly as possible. Both for the Jews and those among whom they may permanently settle, it will be necessary to decide once and for all the policy to be adopted towards miscegenation. But until orthodox medicine and genetics pronounce themselves definitely either for or against stock or type mixture, this question will have to remain open. For myself, I can only give for what it is worth the result of my own independent researches in this field, and it amounts to this: I believe that science will one day confirm and not dispute the wisdom of such ancient peoples as the Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Anglo-Saxons and many others who, guided merely by the instinct which Darwin found in most species of animals—the instinct of distinct strains to segregate and to mate like with like—declined the connubium of foreign stocks. For, as I have for many years been almost alone in pointing out, ideal or perfect health and wellbeing, both of mind and body, probably depend much more than modern science is prepared to admit, and very much more than the ordinary man is led to suspect, on the standardization of type. I should be the last to underrate the importance to health of a sound diet, sound hygiene and correct bodily co-ordination. But if we are to aim at that “perfect health” too often promised by reformers who advocate inadequate measures for its attainment, I do not see how it is to be achieved without standardisation of type. When it is remembered, not only that mixed stock memories become juxtaposed in cross-breeds, so that there is their breast a confusion of ancestral voices, leading to conflicts of all kinds and hence to nervous instability; but also that various parts of the body may be inherited independently from either of the parental stocks, so that a cross-breed’s body is made up, so to speak, of spare parts from makers of different models of the same machine, and can, therefore, be harmonious only by a fluke; it will be seen that perfect health and well-being, which means perfect and harmonious co-ordination of parts in functioning, will hardly be possible until we once again try to achieve some kind of standardisation of type. But as the grossest random breeding in the modern world—that is to say, the mixing of wholly different stocks and types within the same people or nation—is regarded with complete equanimity, if not approval, it seems at present rather like straining at a gnat to make any special point of avoiding mixture with peoples who are not hereditarily true fellow-countrymen. For often, as between a particular Jew and a particular English non-Jew, or between a particular Slav and a particular Englishman, there may be less disparity of type than there actually is between many an English couple who imagine they have married fellow nationals. At all events, as orthodox medicine and genetics have not yet shown that they believe in—much less, therefore, appreciate—the extent to which ideal health probably depends on standardisation of type, the problem of the Jews, on the biological side, viewed both from their own angle and that of any people among whom they may permanently reside, must remain unsolved and be left to the taste and inclination of the individual in either community. The social and political solution of the Jewish problem, however, allows of a more precise statement, and with this I shall now conclude. In the course of this essay, I have frequently used the terms “mutuality” and “mutualistic” in regard to an order of society which is opposed to, and promises longer duration and greater stability than, particularism. What is meant by this opposition? It is impossible, in a short essay, to enter into much detail about this question; but, first and foremost, it concerns the attitude adopted towards property, which in every society is fundamental and determines the nature of most of the other relations of its members. The essence of mutualism is that it takes the gregarious and not the private view of property. This does not mean that it is communistic, but that it cannot divorce property from obligations, duties and responsibilities. Thus, as I wrote in my “Sanctity of Private Property”: “In a properly organised community, the fundamental difference between the poor and the rich would be that, whereas the poor are not equipped to hold sacred property, the rich are so equipped.” (By “sacred” in this context, I mean, as the book itself describes, that property which is sacrosanct, as being the instrument by which a specially endowed owner alone can use it beneficently.) But, in a mutualistic society, these limitations on property are felt not as benevolent, generous, charitable, or in any way morally creditable. They are conceived merely as the only sane way in which a society that is to endure can possibly be run. Every other view of property, by proving in course of time impracticable and incapable of lasting, has either to be rejected voluntarily by those who hold it, or else the latter have the rejection forced upon them by the masses who suffer under it. What particularism fails to recognise, and what mutualism stresses, is that element in all property which is the contribution made to it daily and hourly, throughout the generations of a people, by the community as a whole. The fact that particularism overlooks this makes it thoroughly unworkable over a long period. Now I take it—or, at least, I hope—that Europe as a whole, but particularly England, has learnt its lesson about particularism and about the capitalistic system it creates. I believe that capitalism, as the nineteenth century knew it, is irrevocably doomed, together with all the practices and policies associated with it—the exaltation of wealth as an end in itself, with its derivative, acquisitiveness; the tendency to assess merit and honour according to what a man has, rather than according to what he is; the establishment of a system by which every coveted thing, including privilege and honour, is purchasable; the relinquishment of the sacred obligations of wealth through taxation; the homage paid to a perverted interpretation of mutualistic practice by voluntary contributions to charity; the exploitation of need and weakness; and, above all, the fundamental disrespect of the burden-bearer. These practices are now, however, so deeply rooted in the unconscious motivations of civilised man, not only among the possessing but also among the dispossessed classes, that even if the system were completely changed, it would require a long process of conditioning before the emotional associations of these practices became sufficiently transmuted to allow of spontaneous mutualistic impulses and behaviour. Perhaps, by way of illustration, it would be helpful to give one or two examples of what is meant. Take, for instance, the disrespect for the burden bearer in our society—only one of the manifold consequences of the particularist cosmogony! It will be possible to refer only to one aspect even of that, and I shall choose that which is at once the most trivial and most common, and therefore, most likely to be overlooked. Its very triviality will help to indicate the depth and universality of the dye everywhere apparent, which has been distilled and spread from the exaltation of mere wealth as such. Given the fact that you are able-bodied, try in any kind of crowd to battle your way through your fellow-men with a heavy case or bag in your hands, and observe the treatment you receive! You will immediately be treated as an inferior and, what is worse, if you are wholly adapted to your Age, you will actually feel inferior. Now observe the coalman bearing a heavy sack of coal to a house-door at a moment when you happen to be passing along the pavement. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he will stop to allow you, who are unburdened, to pass on your way. You may argue with him, as I invariably do, and point out that as he is burdened he has the right of the road. He will look sadly at you, as at one who cherishes outlandish notions, and may reluctantly pass you with his load, but his instinct is to let you go first. He feels no right to claim the road, and would not if unburdened acknowledge that right to another burden-bearer. Thus, even the burden-bearer himself is infected in our culture with the disrespect from which his class has suffered and still suffers. Now watch a policeman controlling traffic, keep him in your eye all day if necessary, and note the number of times he will stop a man pushing a hand-cart in order to let a car pass more rapidly on its way. He need not be particularly callous to do such a thing. He may be the kindest-hearted officer in the force. But deep down in his national emotional centres is the disrespect for the burden, and in the barrow-owner whom he stops is the same disrespect, so that he takes his arrest as a matter of course. I remember in a rural district of England having been treated with the utmost respect by the porter of an out-of-the-way railway station, until one day I happened to call there with a wheel-barrow for a large box that had been despatched to me by rail, and from that moment the poor man had the greatest difficulty even to be polite, whilst to get the word “sir” across his lips was henceforward a Herculean effort. These are, I say, trivial instances of the disrespect of the burden-bearer, but, in presenting a picture of our culture as a whole, they are significant because they show unmistakably, even in the most casual circumstances of our lives, where the centre of gravity of that culture is situated. The only hope for the future, if stability is the aim, seems to me, therefore, not merely a fundamental change in the system—i.e., a transmutation of a deeply particularized culture into one essentially mutualistic, but also a wholesale transvaluation of the values that are inevitably associated with a particularized culture. For, by such a transvaluation alone can a change of heart be effected, and it is my hope that the English people, particularist though they may be in their origin and traditions, are ripe for such a transvaluation. But, since the solution of the Jewish problem resolves itself chiefly into finding the Jews a permanent home where they can live in peace and security, it is just as much incumbent on them, as on the English, to do everything in their power to pluck out from their own hearts also the powerful impulses to particularism with which their early conditioning and their subsequent history has endowed them. They must either co-operate in the work of establishing a mutualistic culture among those people who are still favourably disposed to them; they must either help to effect the transvaluation which such a change implies, and the result of which will bring about a change of heart; or else they must, in order to continue to express themselves as particularists, move to areas where particularism still predominates. But, if they adopt the latter alternative, they should be prepared to face with resignation the recurrent upheavals to which such societies are subject, and run the risk of being singled out as their cause. If, however, they adopt the first alternative, they must be prepared to make considerable sacrifices in the form of self-modification, and allow to rust and perish a number of the more formidable weapons in their natural armoury of gifts. They must collaborate with the non-Jews about them in reinstating, among the decadent particularist cultures, high values that are independent of wealth. They must, in opposition to their past policies, take sides not with those non-Jews who denigrate and deride all unpurchasable privileges and honours, only in order to make all privileges and honours ultimately purchasable; they must co-operate with the non-Jews about them who wish to restrict rather than universalize those avenues to honour and privilege which may be forced open by wealth. For a well-ordered society depends, more than most writers seem to recognize, upon imponderables which, in the ultimate and supreme expression, may partake of the divine, as Tertullian declared: “Neque enim pretis ulla res dei constat.” (“For nothing that is God’s goes for a price.”) They must be fully prepared to take severe measures against those individuals in their own people who, willy nilly, refuse to abandon those instincts and gifts which have made them so eminently successful in particularist societies—the instinct to make personal prosperity a wholly private and unrelated phenomenon, the instinct to drive a hard bargain with the ignorant and needy, the instinct to discover where need is pressing in order to turn it to personal profit, the impulse even to create such a need where none exists and to forestall a needy purchaser, and, above all, the demagogic shrewdness to identify themselves with the non-Jewish clamourers for liberty, when all this liberty may mean is the absence of wise hindrances to the automatic and ruthless action of competition, or supply and demand, however conditioned. To all those of their people who refuse to toe this mutualistic line, with its respect for the burden and its deep recognition of the true indebtedness to the community of all property-owners, they must themselves be prepared to issue orders of banishment. If the Jews will not adopt this policy, when once those societies that are still friendly to them have adopted mutualism; if they decline to collaborate with those who are determined to make an end of their particularism, it seems to me that there can be no solution of the Jewish problem. For what Joseph Kastein failed to appreciate, when he declared antisemitism to be the outcome of the scapegoat principle, is the fact that antisemitism is chiefly a phenomenon of particularist cultures, or of such cultures as resemble the particularist in their asperities. Let the more powerful Jews take the lead, if they can, in the reforms I have outlined; let them demonstrate to the world about them that they are as anxious as the more enlightened non-Jews to effect that transvaluation of values which will change their own and their people’s hearts. And if, despite the formidable nature of the task and many preliminary but inevitable set-backs, they can at last convince both their own and the non-Jewish masses of their earnestness in this crusade against a superannuated and discredited system; if they can show beyond doubt, not only their share in bringing about a better system, but also their determination to stabilize it and run it with success, there will cease to be a Jewish problem, and antisemitism will sound as odd to posterity as do Antiochianism or Antinomianism to people of the present day. I wrote on similar lines in The New Outlook of September, 1939. The italics are mine. A. M. L. To excess—Ed. War of all against all—Ed. See my Defence of Aristocracy, published 1915 (2nd edition, 1933). Sombart appears actually to claim that the Capitalism springs naturally from the shepherd and nomadic life, and not from the agricultural. “After me, the deluge,” meaning “I don’t care what comes after me.”—Ed. To give only one instance, in the human nose alone there are four different parts that can be inherited independently—hence probably, the frequent asymmetry of random-bred people’s faces. When we remember that the same independence prevails in the inheritance of other parts of the body, the conclusion drawn above will not be hard to appreciate. For a more detailed account of the kind of society that has a saner basis than the particularist, see my Sanctity of Private Property, A Defence of Aristocracy, and A Defence of Conservatism. For other aspects, see my Defence of Aristocracy. Apologeticus, Chap. 39. The English version is from the Loeb Classical Library.

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