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Republican Text Book for the Campaign of 1902
By Republican Congressional Committee
wonderful development that this country has ever known in the same period of time.
It demanded not only that the support of the Government should be largely from duties upon imports, but also that these duties should be so imposed as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country. It took up the cause of labor and demanded a policy of national exchanges which secured to the working man liberal wages, to agrieulture remunerative priees, to mechanic and manufaeturer an equate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the Nation commercial prosperity and independence. It also protested against the sale or alienation of public land except to actual settlers, and demanded the passage by Congress of a complete and satisfactory homestead
It insisted that river and harbor improvements of a national character were required for the accommodation and seeurity of commeree, and were authorized by the Constitution. It demanded that a railroad to the Pacific Ocean should be built for the interests of the whole country, and that the Federal Government should render immediate and efficient aid in its construction.
In that platform the Republican party mapped out a stupendous programme, changing the whole character of legislation, and in fact nationalizing the Government for the first time in history. It was a new party without experience in national affairs, and ifs platform was regarded as one of mere theories, but that party has carried out to the letter every principle laid down in that platform on which Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States,
The Republican party found labor in the North wandering in rags upon the public streets, and in the South receiving its wages in lashings upon the naked back and in chains.
It has lifted all labor to prosperity and independence, and increased the wages of the laboring man by protecting the product of his labor from competition abroad.
It found a bank note currency so incoherent and worthless that everybody was in despair. The money was so bad that the people named it after the color of their dogs, and the only reason that all business was not done with bogus money was that most of the bank notes in use were so worthless that there was nothing to be made by counterfeiting them.
This has been changed, until to-day the United States has all its money as good as gold and equal to the best money in the world. In fact, American money is at a premium now in nearly every country in the world.
It has, through wise and liberal hòmestead laws, changed the
Great Plains of the West from the herding ground of the buffalo into the greatest food-producing section of the world.
It has built up ten great States in that section of the country which was when it succeeded to power regarded as a wild and profitless country given over to the Indian and buffalo.
It has built trans-continental railroads from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and it has improved the rivers and harbors of the whole country in the interest of commerce.
The Republican party has done these things to glorify the nation and to unite the people into a harmonious and compact union with common interest.
Republican legislation.--The following are some of the acts of legislation and administration by the Republican party:
1. The Homestead Law, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by Abraham Lincoln.
2. The acts for the issuance of legal tenders and national bank notes, which gave the people a currency of equal and stable value in all parts of the country.
3. The system of internal revenue taxation, by which approximately one-half of the ordinary expenses of the Government have been visited upon malt and spirituous liquors, tobacco, and cigars.
4. The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery.
5. The fourteenth amendment, which created citizenship of the United States as distinguished from citizenship of the several States, and provided that no State should abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
6. The fifteenth amendment, which established equality of suffrage.
7. The Civil Rights Act, which extended to all persons the equal protection of the laws.
8. All existing laws for the payment of pensions to veterans of the civil war and their surviving relatives.
9. The liberal legislation respecting mineral lands, which built up the mining industry, added enormously to the wealth of the country in the precious and semi-precious metals, and made it possible to resume specie payments.
10. The resumption of specie payments.
11. The reduction of postage, the money-order system, the establishment of the Railway Mail Service, free delivery, and other improvements, that make the Post-Office Establishment of the United States the most efficient agency of that character that can be found on the globe.
12. The Life-Saving Service.
13 The artificial propagation and distribution of fish.
14. The distribution of seeds, and other measures of vast importance in the promotion of agriculture.
15. The endowment of public schools, agricultural colleges, etc., by grants of land from the public domain.
16. The Administrative Customs Act, which ensures justice and equality in the collection of duties.
17. The International Copyright Law, which respects the rights of authors in the product of their brains, but the same time protects our publishing industry by requiring that books shall be printed in this countrị to entitle them to copyright.
18. The establishment of the Circuit Court of Appeals, to relieve the Supreme Court and no longer require litigants to suffer a delay of three or four years in securing a decision on appeal.
19. The principle of reciprocity, by which we reduce the duties on certain imports from countries that offer corresponding advantages to our exports and thus extend our foreign markets.
20. The admission of the States of Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Washington, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
21. The Anti-Trust Act. (This was drawn by Senators Sherman and Edmunds, and introduced by the former. In the House its passage was secured by William McKinley against an attempt to have it side-tracked in behalf of a bill for the free coinage of silver, which received the vote of every Democratic member with one exception. So it may be said that the law was placed upon the statute books over the united opposition of the Democratic party as represented in the House.)
22. The National Bankruptcy Acts of 1867 and 1898, which relieved many thousands of unfortunate men from their burdens of debt and restored them to commercial or industrial activity.
23. The establishment of the gold standard, which placed our monetary system on a stable basis and in harmony with the great nations of the world.
24. Every schedule of duties on imports adopted within the past fifty years in which the policy of protection to American labor has been distinctly recognized and efficiently applied, has been the product of a Republican Congress.
25. On logical lines with the policy of protection, the acquisition of the Philippines. That is to say, having built up our industries to a point where their output was in excess of our consumption, we secured a grand depot and distributing point to command in great part the markets of the 600,000,000 inhabitants of Asia..
There must be no scuttle policy.-President McKinley to Notification Committee July 12, 1900.
PROTECTION AND PROSPERITY.
RESTORATION OF GOOD TIMES UNDER REPUBLICAN
POLICIES AND LEGISLATION. The protective tariff under which prosperity has been restored was inaugurated by the Republican party in 1861, after seventy years of almost continuous low tariff; while since 1861 there has been an unbroken period of protective tariff, with the exception of the period 1894-1897. "It may not be improper, therefore, at this time to compare present conditions with those existing in 1860. Since that year the population has grown from 31,443,321 to 76,303,387 in 1900, an increase of 143 per cent. In 1860 the national wealth was, according to official statistics, $16,159,616,000, or $514 for each individual, and in 1900 it was $94,300,000,000, or $1,235 for each individual. The money in circulation in 1860 was $135,407,252, and in 1900 it was $2,655,150,998, the per capita circulation being, in 1560, $13.85, and in 1900, $26.93, and at the present time $28.40. The deposits in savings banks in 1860 amounted to $149,277,304; in 1900, to $2,449,547,885. The number of depositors in savinys banks in 1860 was 693,870, and in 1900, 6,107,183.
Individual deposits in the national banks, brought into existence under Republican legislation in 1863, had reached $500,000,000 in 1865, and were, in 1900, $2,623,997,522. The imports of merchandise in 1860 were $353,616,119, and in 1900, $849,941,184, an increase of 143 per cent; the exports in 1860 were $333,576,057, and in 1900, $1,394,483,082, an inerease of 318 per cent. The insports per capita in 1860 were $11.24, and in 1900, $10.88; the exports per capita in 1860 were $10.61, and in 1900, $17.96.
The growth in domestie manufactures is suggested by the fact that the importations of raw silk have grown from 583,589 pounds in 1870 to 13,043,714 pounds in 1900; of india rubber, from 9,624,098 pounds in 1870 to 49,377,138 pounds in 1900, and the domestie cotton consumed by American mills, from 979,000 bales in 1860 to 3,644,000 bales in 1900. The railways in operation have been extended from 36,626 miles in 1860 to 194,321 miles in 1900; the receipts of the Post-Office Department, from $8,518,067 in 1860 to $102,354,579 in 1900;. the number of post-offices have increased from 28,498 in 1860 to 76,688 in 1900, and the salaries paid in public schools, from $37,832,566 in 1870 to $136,031,838 in 1900. Protection Supersedes Free Trace. The inauguration of Presi
dent McKinley was quickly followed by the substitution of a protective tariff for the Democratic principles of free trade, under which the country had experienced unexampled suffering, and by the enactment of legislation firmly establishing the gold standard as the basis of the currency of the nation. The changes which have followed in the condition of the business of the country and of all classes of our citizens not only fully justify that action but have proved the most remarkable in the history of this country.
Business Activity Under Protection.-From a condition of the greatest business depression, lack of employment and suffering among those dependent upon our industries, the country quickly passed to a state of the greatest business activity, in which employment was given to all who nright desire it, and at wages higher than ever before. With this came an unexampled demand for the products of the farm, the forests, and the mines, and a development of the manufacturing and other industries heretofore unknown. The home markets for manufactures were fully supplied and the surplus products of the workshops were sent into the markets of the world, until now the exportation of manufactures constantly exceeds the importation of manufactures, a condition never known in the history of the country prior to 1897. Meantime the manufacturers' demand for the raw materials not produced in the United States has so increased that manufacturers' materials now form about one-half of the total importations of the country.
Value of Products Increased.-The demand of the busy and well-paid workman for the products of the farm has so stimulated production that the value of farm products has doubled, while the product of the mines has also greatly increased. With the surplus which these enlarged operations in the field and mine and factory have furnished, our domestic exports have come to exceed those of any other country of the world, and the United States has permanently placed herself at the head of the world's list of great exporting nations. The balance of trade in our favor has become the greatest known, not only in the history of the United States, but in the history of nations. The excess of exports over imports in the 108 years, from 1790 to March 4, 1897--from the first year under the Constitution to the inauguration of William McKinley--was $383,028,497, while the excess of the five years from March 4, 1897, to March 4, 1902, was $2,707,993,194, or more than seven times as much in this five-year period as in the entire 108 years preceding. The excess of exports over imports in each year since 1897 has been greater than that of the entire 108 years prior
to 1897.


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'Let's Play Railway' opens this weekend at Centennial Library
Entertainment // Arts and Theater
Jacy Lewis, MRT.com/Midland Reporter-Telegram
1of18"Let's Play Railway" exhibit being set up Tuesday, May 18, 2021 at Centennial Library. Jacy Lewis/Reporter-TelegramJacy Lewis/ Reporter-TelegramShow MoreShow Less
2of18???Let???s Play Railway??? exhibit being set up Tuesday, May 18, 2021 at Centennial Library. Jacy Lewis/Reporter-TelegramJacy Lewis/ Reporter-TelegramShow MoreShow Less
10of18???Let???s Play Railway??? exhibit being set up Tuesday, May 18, 2021 at Centennial Library. Jacy Lewis/Reporter-TelegramJacy Lewis/ Reporter-TelegramShow MoreShow Less
14of18"Let's Play Railway" exhibit being set up Tuesday, May 18, 2021 at Centennial Library. Jacy Lewis/Reporter-TelegramJacy Lewis/ Reporter-TelegramShow MoreShow Less
Centennial Library is hosting an interactive train exhibit this summer, and it opens Saturday. The exhibit "Let's Play Railway" will deliver educational fun for children, bring together train enthusiasts and remind parents and caregivers of childhood memories, Community Engagement and Social Impact Coordinator Megan Buck said. The big train is modeled after the Walthers brand wooden train and railway toys. The exhibit offers interactive, educational and pretend play opportunities for children.
"There are a lot of education components as far as manipulatives for little kids to really teach those kids of school readiness skills," she said. "The exhibit will also aid in language development and social skills. There is a lot of opportunities with the exhibit for pretend play."
The exhibit is designed for children ages 3 to 10 years old and features three large train cars that can be climbed and explored. The train is on loan from Betty Brinn Children's Museum in Milwaukee. Local train enthusiast Michael Dobey will also display his model train collection, which will feature a Harry Potter train, while the exhibit is on view.
The library will host Transportation Week from June 21-25. During this week, patrons will have the opportunity to meet community members with transportation-related careers and also learn about their jobs and vehicles they use while working.
"We have invited several people in the community whose careers center around transportation," Buck said. "We will bring in firefighters with their fire engines and have law enforcement bring their vehicles."
The library will be hosting a Trains, Grains and Tomatoes with Keep Midland Beautiful at 2 p.m. July 8. The event will focus on learning about what food grows well in the area, as well as what foods are transported into the area. The exhibit will be cleaned and disinfected daily. Centennial Library hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. The exhibit will be at the museum through Aug. 22. The exhibit was made possible by the Rea Charitable Trust, Helen Greathouse Charitable Trust and Carnegie Circle of the Midland County Public Library Foundation.
Summer reading kickoff
This year's summer reading kickoff will be 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. June 5 at Centennial Library. Community partners will have games and giveaways at the event. There will be volunteers to help kids and families sign up on the summer reading platform to log reading points.
The Midland County Public Library Foundation has several bikes to give away to kids at the end of summer reading. Kids will be entered in a drawing to win a bike if they finish the summer reading program and reach their goals. Teens and adults can be entered into a drawing for a new kindle.
Jacy Lewis
Jacy Lewis is a reporter and photographer for MRT.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


You are here: Home FAQs How do I become a member?
Becoming a member of Operation Wildflower is not an onerous process, nor is it a demanding membership. An annual fee is payable to the office of OWF, and should you wish to particpate in a specific collection there is an additional collection fee payable. This fee includes the required permits issued by the provincial department of conservation and environment.


Offering a restaurant and a la carte restaurant, Sol da Barra is located in Barra Nova, Ceará. Free WiFi access is available.
Boasting a rustic style, each room here will provide you with a terrace and a minibar. Private bathroom also comes with a shower. Extras include bed linen and a fan.
At Sol da Barra you will find a 24-hour front desk, a terrace and a bar. An array of activities can be enjoyed on site or in the surroundings, including darts. The property offers free parking.


Gift giving is a joyful activity. But if you are short on gift ideas, the search for a suitable gift can become quite exhausting. But don't worry, we got to work for you and put together our supermagnete gift finder. Just select below for whom or what occasion you need a gift for and a few clicks later you will see a selection of suggested magnetic gifts. Let our gift finder inspire you!


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Mum 'addicted' to being a surrogate planning tenth baby after five stone weight loss
Laura McCarthy has four children of her own and has carried five others for parents unable to have their own children
Lorna Hughes
Laura McCarthy decided to lose weight so she can continue being a surrogate mum (Image: Laura McCarthy)
A mum who says being a surrogate is "addictive" is planning to have her tenth baby.
Laura McCarthy has four children of her own and has carried five others for parents who are unable to have their own.
The single mum recently lost more than five stones in weight with Slimming World so that she can continue having more surrogate babies for those people who are desperate for children of their own.
She is now hoping to have a surrogate baby for a single man with a donated egg, Yorkshire Live reports.
Laura said: "I love being a mum, it's the best job in the world, and I love that I can help someone fulfil their dream to become a parent."
Laura McCarthy with surrogate twins she gave birth to in 2021 (Image: Laura McCarthy)
Laura had always wanted to be a mum growing up and has often felt for people who longed to have kids but aren't able to become a parent naturally.
She decided to become a surrogate mum after seeing a TV programme and after having her first two children.
The former nursery nurse is mum to April, 13, Rowan, 11, Ada, six, and Eira, two.
She said: "That unconditional love that I felt, I thought how lucky I was to have that and so thought if I could help others, then why not?
"I wanted others to be able to have that unconditional love for their own children."
Laura had her first surrogate baby, a girl, 11 years ago and eight months ago gave birth to surrogate twins, a boy and a girl, for another family.
Each of those surrogate pregnancies came as a result of IVF (In vitro fertilisation) where the would-be parents' egg and sperm were used to create an embryo which was then placed in Laura's womb.
Laura McCarthy has four children of her own and has had five surrogate babies (Image: Laura McCarthy)
It means that, genetically, none of the babies are hers.
She gets to know each family beforehand and stays in touch afterward. Once the children are old enough to understand they are given more information about how they were born.
"Once they are old enough they will know who I am and that they grew in my tummy."
After her weight loss, Laura is now around 11 stones.
She said: "Having had nine babies, and definitely wanting more, I couldn't risk a tenth baby whilst being so overweight because of the associated risk factors."
Laura is happy to talk about her own experiences and says a misunderstanding is that surrogate mums become overly attached to their newborn babies.
She said: "People think I would be attached to the baby. Of course, I want to keep that baby safe, but you don't have the same feelings (you have) towards your own child when you are pregnant with someone else's."
She also says some people wrongly believe that surrogate mums "get lots of money", adding: "In the UK, surrogacy is altruistic. Expenses are covered, such as travel and maternity clothes."
Laura McCarthy with her four children, April, Rowan, Ada and Eira (Image: Laura McCarthy)
UK law states that you cannot pay a surrogate, except for their reasonable expenses.
Laura says that what she does is not a service and she is not permitted to advertise, although she is allowed to 'raise awareness'.
Some people ask her 'funny questions", she says.
She said: "They ask 'do you know who you are doing it for? Yes, I would not have a baby for a stranger.
"Nowadays there's a really supportive surrogacy community and there are groups on Facebook. The words used are 'intended parents'. It is a community to support each other."
Now that she has given birth to nine children, some people have started asking about 'double figures', she admits.
She says: "I would like to carry on helping people to have their family. If my body gets to the stage where it is struggling with pregnancy, or if I get health problems or the birth is not going well, that is where a line will need to be drawn because my children need a mum.
"I never rule anything out, I play everything by ear. I have always coped well with pregnancy and have had straightforward births."
And she says her parents and own children have been supportive.
Laura McCarthy after she lost five stone with Slimming World (Image: Laura McCarthy)
Laura says handing over the newborn baby to the parents is an incredible feeling.
"Once you see the baby in their arms you can see that unconditional love immediately," she said. "It is just so worth it. That feeling can be slightly addictive."
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Finding a storage facility to rent from can be a pain! There are a lot of factors that go into finding the storage facility that's right for you. Most people might think that the only factor would be the cost. This article will explain other factors that are just as important as cost when searching for the correct self-storage facility.
Forget about the old days of using the phonebook to call a bunch of different storage facilities, with half of them answering their phones ... and half of those people having what you need available to rent ... and then half of those not being able to meet you at the facility to let you in. Today we have the greatest resources ever, including the Internet. You can quickly search on the Internet find a website for the storage facility and see everything they offer, the units that are available, etc. When it comes to finding a storage facility, the Internet is the source to go to. After you've found a bunch of different storage facilities, it's time to ask yourself some questions about them.
Cost: How much does the storage unit cost?
Location: Is it close to roads? How is the neighborhood? Are the neighboring businesses kept in good shape?
Lighting: Is there good lighting on site?
Features: Do they have any convenience features, such as the ability to have 24-hour access or receive text/email notifications about your account? Can you access your account online and make a payment online? Can you be set up on recurring billing?
Keep all of these questions in mind as you search for and rent your next storage unit. It could save you some headache down the road.


Darren Aronofsky's new film, mother! comes out in a month's time. After two trailers, we know very little about the plot – a nice feeling when approaching a release date – but the mood in the trailers has spelled raw doom. The marketing has communicated a strong, tangible feeling of terror, which is how mother! all began. Aronofsky had an indescribable emotion he wanted to capture on Super 16mm with this film.
Below, Aronofsky thankfully reveals nothing about the mother! plot, but talks about the genesis of the project and his intentions.
You can see the tension in their relationship as it's pulled by all these forces. Jen and Javier are experiencing things in different ways.
Aronofsky has said his previous films are about ideas. In the case of mother!, it's about a single emotion. That single emotion might've been influenced by Stephen King's Carrie, which scared him "shitless" and led him to write a draft of his thriller in a day and a half.
I was always jealous of singer-songwriters who can pop out a song in a couple of days or a few hours. I had this idea, and I felt it rise up in my head. I took a long weekend and got into this fever dream and just pumped it out. [Laughs] We'll see what the results are. It's been an interesting way to approach it — trying to capture a single emotion and trying to tell a two-hour story out of that emotion.
The best thing about this film will be the surprise of it. It's an intense journey and it's definitely the biggest roller coaster in the park. Only get on it if you really want to do the loop-the-loop.
Only "if you really want to do the loop-the-loop" is a great way to describe your movie without really saying anything about it at all. His movies are more often than not roller coasters, which typically leave you with all sorts of emotions to sort through. The emotion that stands out the most, of course, being misery. Like Black Swan, perhaps mother! will be both entertaining and grueling.
mother! opens in theaters September 15, 2017.


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Residents Assess Damage in Aftermath of Looting on South Side, Loop
Paris Schutz | June 1, 2020 8:35 pm
It was eerily quiet Monday evening in the Loop.
Most of the bridges over the Chicago River remained lifted to restrict access to the area. Along State Street, the windows of Macy's — which saw heavy looting Saturday night — and other familiar retail stores were boarded up.
Protests bubbled up across the city Monday over the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged with his murder.
A peaceful demonstration of about 100 people outside of City Hall turned into a march that headed north along LaSalle Street.
Another peaceful march took place on the North Side, as demonstrators made their way through the neighborhoods of Lakeview and Uptown. Earlier in the day, a tense situation unfolded on 71st Street in South Shore as police stared down angry protesters.
Monday also brought more mass looting to some South Side neighborhoods.
Looters emptied out a Jewel grocery store at 75th and Stony Island in the city's Grand Crossing neighborhood as volunteers worked to clean the site of broken glass. Store managers stood by and asked looters to be peaceful — the damage had already been done.
Some onlookers were stunned by what they saw.
"I do understand the anger, however I don't think this is the answer to solve anything right now," said Cornelius Parks, pastor at the First Bethel Missionary Baptist Church. "Those in there shopping, trying to get things off the shelves, it's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous."
In nearby South Shore, crews worked to board up the 3 Smokin Sisters Tobacco Shop.
Owner Renee White said the store was nearly wiped clean by looters, but she was able to remove some of her inventory as she boarded up windows. She hopes to remain partially open.
It's hard enough to be a small businesses owner in the neighborhood to begin with, she said.
"My thoughts last night were, 'You know what, I don't want to do it anymore,'" White said. "But due to the overwhelming support and help to clean things up, I'm second guessing that."
Across the street, South Shore residents mobilized to clean up other stores along 71st Street that were damaged over the weekend.
A local Fresh Market, which had displaced a food desert in the neighborhood years ago, was not hit, but is being guarded and is not open for business.
Ald. Leslie Hairston, 5th Ward, says the looting is accomplishing the opposite of what she and other community activists have fought for for years.
"We say we want businesses in our neighborhoods like in other neighborhoods, and then we destroy them," Hairston said. "That's not right, that's not the way to get your voice heard. Think of who you're hurting. We fought for six years to get a grocery store. And now we can't go to it."
Earlier Monday, the mayor and police superintendent defended the deployment of police across the city, saying they rejected claims the police guarded downtown while the neighborhoods burned.
But that view isn't shared by all aldermen.
Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th Ward, lamented the weekend's staggeringly high crime statistics: 27 homicides, 92 shooting victims from Friday night to Sunday night.
Beale has called for 3,000 National Guardsmen to be deployed to keep peace in the neighborhoods, even as Gov. J.B. Pritzker has ordered 250 more Monday to be deployed across the state; he send 375 to Chicago on Sunday.
"They're trying to protect downtown at the expense of the communities, while we're fighting for resources," Beale said. "There was nothing in place for the South Side, West Side or North Side, so that's why you see chaos happening right now."
Follow Paris Schutz on Twitter: @paschutz
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Douglas Fisher is professor of language and literacy education in the department of teacher education at San Diego State University and a classroom teacher at Health Sciences High & Middle College. He is the recipient of an International Reading Association Celebrate Literacy Award, the Farmer award for excellence in writing from the National Council of Teachers of English, as well as a Christa McAuliffe award for excellence in teacher education. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, differentiated instruction, and curriculum design, and he has coauthored several books, such as Creating Literacy-Rich Schools for Adolescents (with Gay Ivey), Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessments for Your Classroom (with Nancy Frey), Better Learning Through Structured Teaching (with Nancy Frey) and Content-Area Conversations: How to Plan Discussion-Based Lessons for Diverse Learners (with Carol Rothenberg).


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Tamara Chernyakhovska : Encircled by Friends
By Eileen Condon, Ph.D. | Published February 1, 2009
Tamara Zaika Chernyakhovska was born just after the Second World War in southeastern Ukraine, in the city of Dnipropetrovsk, in Ukraine's industrial center, then under Soviet rule. Tamara's mother, Anastasiya Rubanenko, grew up in Diivka-Kodaky, the oldest part of the Katerinaslav district. In the early 1930s, as a young woman, she found work in the city of Dnipropetrovsk as a telephone operator. Tamara's father, Olexa Zaika, was an engineer, employed in an electrical plant in the same city. His family had come from Bozhedarovka, further south, a district associated historically with the Zaporozhian Sich—Kossack territory.
Tamara was just eight when her oldest sister married at eighteen. The dancing, singing, feasting, and house-to-house visits lasted two weeks and made an indelible impression on her. The Rubanenko-Zaika family built the traditional bonfire just outside the gate to their home the day of the wedding. Tamara remembers her mother proudly greeting the guests who arrived, and receiving from them the ceremonial "admission fee" they paid in the form of money or gifts for the bride and groom. They would then hop over the bonfire to enter the house.
When the guests reached critical mass, Mrs. Zaika realized it was high time to return to the kitchen to get the dinner under control! She leaped over the flames, Tamara recalls, and dashed into the kitchen, pulling together a huge feast for the guests in record time. She was a real Berehinya, Tamara explains, a Ukrainian Supermom. Like Berehinya (the pre-Christian goddess who protected home and crops), Mrs. Zaika was a wonderful mother and a skilled homemaker who kept these and many other traditions alive within the family.
The wedding featured many different kinds of dancing—each generation had their favorites. Tamara remembers aunts, uncles, and family friends dancing "city social dances" like the polka, the karapeth, or the nareychinka—graceful couples dances that mixed ballroom style with folk elements. Couples and individual dancers could also show off their best moves in solos and duets inside a kolo (circle of dancers). The older generation—mostly the grandfathers—hopped, jumped, and kicked their heels in the hopak, presyatka, or kozachok, dances characteristic of Zaporozhia and central Ukraine.
Tamara recalls her paternal grandfather dancing in this Kossack style—not too strenuously, for by then he was already in his 60s. The up-and-down motions reminded her of a rider on a horse. Other men would take a turn at this, in a friendly competition that might last for 10 or 20 minutes. The wedding was a very special occasion, Tamara says, but music and dance were also part of everyday life in her home and neighborhood, all year round.
"All of my relatives, all of the friends of my parents, all of them cared about tradition, you know? Always we would do events together, always there would be food, singing, and dance. Dance was second place after song. My Mom, my Dad, my godmother, their friends, they were always dancing and singing. I think it was natural. It was normal." On cold winter nights, dancing and singing passed the time. Tamara's mother also sang long, sad Ukrainian love ballads while she was sewing—songs which Tamara can still sing today.
The Closest of Friends (and Neighbors)
Two generations before, both sides of the Rubanenko-Zaika family had lived in the Ukrainian countryside, but by the time Tamara and her two older sisters were born, the family had adapted to life in Dnipropetrovsk. Neighborhood friendship networks—kumushky–were essential to survival. Tamara's family photo album contains dozens of photographs of her parents, their siblings, and their friends, huddled together affectionately, posing for the camera, in clothing and hairstyles—suits, uniforms, dresses, skirts, blouses, crewcuts, updos—that date the photos according to recognizable global fashion trends. Photographs from the previous generation, though, capture the embroidered blouses, accessories, and dress styles more characteristic of southeastern/central Ukrainian rural dwellers.
Tamara's parents' neighborhood friendship network was a multicultural group, composed of about 10 families—Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Jewish, Christian–who "worked together, socialized together, and studied together." Free expression of religion was limited at the time but Tamara, whose family was Christian, recalls reading the Bible out loud in private to her grandmother and other older people, when she was a child. The kumushky had ways of cooperating that made hard times more bearable, and good times better.
Tamara recalls neighbors and family gathering together to share food with each other when food was scarce. Women working at the telephone company devised their own creative solutions to childcare. Friends on the first shift would leave children—even nursing babies—with a friend on the second shift, who would care and even co-nurse, if need be, until her own shift began. When the first shift mothers got home they would switch off, and do the same for their friends' babies. Children co-nursed this way grew up together as friends, referring to each other as my "milk sister" or "milk brother" (moluchny brat). The children of the kumushkygrew up closely bonded and aware of their parents' explicit agreements to care for each other's families should anything happen to any one of the adults.
Destined to Dance
From age six onward, Tamara remembers "performing shows" with friends—complete with costume, songs, and dancing–for her parents, relatives, and friends at house parties. What seemed like no more than childish fun became, by the time she was fourteen, a ticket into the most competitive theater and dance school in Dnipropetrovsk. After four days of testing and auditioning in 1961, Tamara found out that she had gained admission to the Glinka State School of Theater Arts.
She would spend the next four years there earning her diploma as a professional choreographer and dancer. For the first two years she studied many dance forms–classical ballet, jazz, and character dance (folk dance adapted for stage performance). She also learned other theater arts—production, costume design, and direction. Later in the program, along with some thirty other students, she was permitted to specialize in choreography and international folk dance.
After graduation in 1965 she began the life of a professional dancer, first for the State Folk Ensemble of Ukraine, based in Cherkasy (1965-1986) and, later, for the G. G. Veriovka National Dance Company of Kyiv (1971-1986). For the next two decades Tamara enjoyed performing on stage throughout the Soviet Union, and she toured internationally, traveling through Spain, Brazil, and Portugal to Mexico, Canada, Czechoslovakia, and the Canary Islands.
She particularly valued summers doing fieldwork all over Ukraine with both companies, and a number of famous choreographers and composers who served as her teachers. The dancers, orchestra, and choir members in these companies traveled across rural Ukraine to put on shows. While visiting a particular region, the company's choreographers and composers doubled as ethnographers, arranging for the company to meet with elder dancers, who would share regional folk dances with them.
The young dancers and musicians would sketch the elder dancer's movements or transcribe the accompanying songs/tunes into their notebooks. Later, directors and performers would work together to adapt these folk dance forms for the stage. The elder teachers would be invited to the rehearsals, too, to critique the company's adaptations of what they had shared. Tamara remembers traveling in two big trucks out to farmland, where her company would set up a stage right in the middle of the field, to perform for farm workers.
Sometimes cameramen would come along to capture the elder dancers' movements on a Kino Camera. The Kino Camera was an early European movie camera manufactured by Zeiss Ikon, used for filming for television. By the seventies, Tamara's company was working more frequently with film crews for televised government productions. This is how Tamara Zaika met Pavlo Chernyakhovsky—a pioneer in the film and television industry.
He courted Tamara for two years, waiting for her to return from her long international tours, and proposed. The couple married and became parents to a son, Dmitri. Like her mother before her, Tamara kept right on working after her son's birth. "I took only a few weeks off after Dmitri was born," Tamara laughs, "No more than two months or so, because I didn't want to lose my place in my company!" To manage, Tamara's mother pitched in to care for Dmitri during Tamara's longer tours and the couple hired a nanny to help out.
The year 1992 was a crisis year for the Chernyakhovsky family. Ukraine was in the midst of political upheaval after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and having declared its independence, and Pavlo was seriously ill with heart disease. Dmitri was a teenager. The couple's circle of friends in Kyiv pitched in to raise funds to help the family get to the United States, where Pavlo could have surgery, but he didn't make it. Friends in the United States invited the grieving mother and son to come to New York nevertheless. They left Ukraine grateful for new opportunities, but with a heavy sense of loss.
Friends again assisted Tamara to find work, at The Westchester Ballet and in Riverdale, where she was hired immediately as a dance instructor. Dmitri remained homesick for Ukraine for the next two years, but Tamara encouraged him to enroll at the City College of New York, where he studied media technology. While still a student, he found a job like his father's–working as a video/media technician for the college, a position which he holds to this day.
Enlarging the Circles: Teaching Ukrainian Dance in New York
The rest is a slice of New York Ukrainian dance history. Tamara was delighted to find that one dance company gladly recommended her to another, all over metropolitan New York, and over the years she has taught Ukrainian folk dance and many other dance forms to children all over the five boroughs. She founded her own dance group, the Holubka Ensemble, to perform Ukrainian folk dance at festivals and other engagements.
The group is composed of children and adults from some of the many dance classes she has developed and taught at multiple venues—at city public schools and community centers, in Ukrainian and Russian churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and now with The Center for Traditional Music and Dance and its Ukrainian Wave Community Cultural Initiative. Tamara teaches Ukrainian folk dance at CTMD's vechornytsi (village dance party) programs in Brooklyn and the East Village.
The vechornytsi recreates the spirit of traditional Ukrainian village dance parties—the kind Tamara's mother would have attended before she got married. Unmarried Ukrainian girls would gather in the homes of older women to embroider clothes for the coming year; boys would arrive at the door with musical instruments, and a dance would ensue, under the watchful eye of the mistress of the house. There would be food and drink, courting, singing, and other forms of fun.
Tamara describes the vechornytsi as an exchange. It is this aspect of informal learning—whether it's joining in a song, trying out a new dance, exchanging stories, acquiring a new recipe, catching up on local news—that she hopes to continue to preserve while teaching Ukrainian folk dance in these programs.
Tamara's family circle has expanded as well. Remarried recently to artist Yury Parshenov, she enjoys spending time with her son Dmitri, his wife Alla, and her granddaughter Anastasia (who already dances in her grandmother's Holubka Ensemble), and with Yury's son Misha, wife Margaret, and their daughter Lily, who plays the piano and the violin. In this way Tamara has passed much of the music, dance, song, and caring companionship her parents and friends so appreciated along to two more generations, and out into an ever-widening circle of friends in New York who wish to learn what she has to teach.
Tamara will be teaching Ukrainian folk dance at CTMD's next Vechornytsi starting at 6 p.m. on Thursday, February 26th at the Brooklyn Ukrainian Restaurant (1223 Avenue U between E. 12th Street and Homecrest, take Ave U stop off the Q train). Join us for a tasty buffet dinner and an evening of Ukrainian dance, music, and song! (See listing in this issue of Global Beat of the Boroughs E-Newsletter.)
Eileen Condon, Ph.D.
Eileen Condon, Ph.D., was Project Director for the Ukrainian Wave Community Cultural Initiative, the Chinese Community Cultural Initiative and Verite Sou Tanbou: the Haitian Community Cultural Initiative.
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text:
City of York
Howardian Hills AONB
Nidderdale AONB
Appletreewick
Aysgarth Falls
Bolton Abbey Village
Burnsall
Catrigg Force
Cote Gill Waterfall
Forbidden Corner
Gaping Gill
Gordale Scar
Hardraw Force
Horton in
Hubberholme
Ingleborough Cave
Ingleton Waterfalls
Janet's Foss
Malham Cove
Malham Tarn
Muker Meadows
Pen-y-Ghent
Reeth
Snaizeholme Red
Squirrel Trail
Stainforth Force
Victoria Cave
West Witton
White Scar Cave
Thwaite
OS grid reference:-	SD 89 98
The pretty and unspoiled village of Thwaite is situated in beautiful Upper Swaledale, a remote dale and one of the northernmost valleys in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
The name 'Thwaite' derives from the Old Norse language, from the word þveit, meaning 'clearing, meadow or paddock'.
Parts of the Swaledale are particularly striking due to the large old limestone field barns which litter the landscape and its stunning profusion of wild flowers. From Thwaite and near the head of the dale the famous Buttertubs Pass leads up over the high moors and down into neighbouring Wensleydale. The road winds its way north from Simonstone near Hawes towards Thwaite and Muker past 20 metre deep limestone potholes called the Buttertubs. It is said that the name of the potholes came from the times when farmers would rest there on their way to market. During hot weather they would lower the butter they had produced into the potholes to keep it cool.
Thwaite is situated low on the north bank of Thwaite Beck, which is crossed by a quaint stone bridge. The village is over looked by Kisden Hill which rises to 499 metres (1,637 feet) and was named by early Norse settlers.
The village was the home and birthplace of the brothers Richard and Cherry Kearton, the sons of a local gamekeeper, who became writers and pioneers in wildlife photography at the end of the nineteenth century. The brothers left the Yorkshire Dales to pursue their careers. Richard Kearton (1862-1928), a naturalist, reached the Outer Hebridean islands of St Kilda and many other remote places, such as the African savannah and the Australian outback. Cherry (1871–1940) become a famous wildlife documentary filmmaker and was the source of inspiration for a young David Attenborough.
The Kearton surname lives on in the Kearton Café, Restaurant (pictured below right) and guesthouse which stand in the centre of the village. The Kearton Café and Restaurant has recently been refurbished. The restaurant has a large dining room, offering reasonably priced food.
Kearton Country Hotel in Thwaite provides a warm traditional Yorkshire welcome. The cosy hotel bar has an open fire and serves a selection of local ales, as well as a wide selection of fine malts. The hotel also serves delicious food and clean, and comfortable ensuite accommodation.
Thwaite Congregational Chapel is a Grade II listed building dating back to 1863, since the 1980s it has been in use as two houses.
Kidson Force (pictured left) is a picturesque series of waterfalls on the River Swale near Thwaite, (OS grid reference NY 898 010).
It is one of several waterfalls on the Swale in the area, the others are East Gill Force, Catrake Force and Wain Wath Force. All occur where the river cuts a limestone gorge between the hills of Kisdon and Rogan's Seat. Kison Force drops 10 metres (33 feet) over two cascades and are surrounded by Kisdon Force Woods, a Site of Special Scientific Interest. In the springtime wild primroses grow profusely in the area.
There are a number of stunning walks from the village to the nearby village of Muker with its colourful wildflower meadows.
Towns and Villages of Yorkshire
Copyright © 2005 - 2006 All rights reserved ®


Chrissy Teigen, John Legend and their daughter Luna attend Disney On Ice Presents Dare to Dream Celebrity Skating Party at Staples Center on December 14, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. Ari Perilstein/Getty Images for Feld Entertainment, Inc.
Chrissy Teigen isn't the only budding chef in her house! The model took to Instagram and Twitter on Sunday, January 20, to show her millions of social media followers that her daughter Luna, 2, is yet another force to be reckoned with in the kitchen.
The mother-daughter cooking session played out via both Twitter and Instagram Stories. In one video, little Luna, who is rocking a pink princess dress while she cooks, is shown seasoning two raw racks of lamb with her hands. "You're so helpful," Teigen, 33, says.
Later, the toddler directs her mom to put some soy sauce on the meat, and then salts the racks of lamb herself, much to Teigen's dismay.
Things began to fall apart when the oldest Legend offspring (whose full name is Luna Simone Stephens) requested a mystery ingredient from the other side of the kitchen that even Teigen couldn't figure out. For the record, rosemary, cheese, pepper and bananas all got a resounding "no" from Luna. "She's tough but she's fair," Teigen tweeted of her adorable sous chef.
The Lip Synch Battle cohost later declared on the social media platform that she still has "no idea" what ingredient her daughter was pointing at.
With the racks of lamb presumably cooking, the Cravings author got to work on a roasted veggie side (with some help from her hubby, John Legend) and even filmed herself slicing a tomato with a knife from her own Target housewares collection that bares her signature. "Oh worrrrrd my own knives!!" she wrote on Twitter along with a video clip.
"Wow, what kind of knife if that?" Legend asks off camera.
"Oh, I'm not sure," Teigen replies as she zooms in on her signature on the side of the knife.
Speaking of the knife set, when a Twitter user told Teigen that her mother was saving up to buy another knife from the collection after purchasing just one, the cookbook author asked for the dedicated fan's address, presumably so she could send her the knives herself.
As for the dinner that Luna helped cook? Teigen later said, "Oh god," in a good way, as she shared a video of the final product on Instagram Stories. Sounds like all that hard work paid off!


The supply list below are what the teachers are asking for with the needs of the Special Area Teachers also. Please do what you can and do not feel like you need to purchase all of the item listed. Traditional Teachers may ask for additional items at Open House July 30th 5:00pm - 6:30pm.


Even after weeks of electro-shock treatments, after months of amitriptyline, and desipramine, after years of behavioral therapy, even after all of this I know that being judged insane is not the worst thing that can happen to a man. And I have had the time to scrutinize my entire life before drawing that conclusion, before knowing that psychiatric commitment is not the sole way to reach bottom. Witness my first vision. 1964. A black woman. A teacher. At a time when black women barely taught, certainly not at white schools in white districts like mine. That alone is enough to discredit a man's veracity. A young woman. A black woman. A teacher, of all things. Witness my first vision. 1964—although my doctors assure me that they must have been there long before, that I had simply repressed them or ignored them. On what they base this diagnosis, I do not know, since neither my mother nor my father nor any member of my family had ever been prone to bouts with depression or delusions or visions or faith in visions or faith in anything, in heaven or on earth. My visions were secular; the last thing I would wish is to pass myself off as a prophet.
I mention all this not to justify my actions as school principal in the Unega School District, nor to excuse my own blindness through pleas of insanity or delusions. I only wish to place in my life's context, insignificant as it is, my first meeting and subsequent relationship with Leon Blakely—six years old, and a new student to Walt Whitman Elementary School.
I had first heard about Leon during the fourth week of the '62-'63 school year. Mrs. Crow, the Unega District art teacher, had requested a meeting so that I might look through her portfolio of students' drawings. A woman as punctual as she was severe, she arrived at my office that morning before I had even unlocked the door, and to avoid any chance of my eluding her, positioned herself in the seat closest to my office. Clearly, it was the ideal chair for her. Her rigid spine conformed perfectly to the hardwood slats, and her neck, thin and white rose from the stiff rails as if part of its design. Her black portfolio leaned against her gray skirt. Her knees were fixed and steady, the back of her legs stiff and perpendicular to the heels of her firmly planted black oxfords. I took a sip from my coffee cup and invited her into my office, but she barely acknowledged me as she followed me thorough the doorway.
She immediately removed a folder from her portfolio and set it on the conference table, which might have raised my suspicions had my morning coffee had time to take hold. From the folder, she pulled a large sheet of paper.
I stepped beside her and peered over the dark rims of my glasses. Mostly, the paper was blank, the standard off-white color of district issued art tablets. At the bottom of the page were blocks of white and gray, a crude but convincing rendering of the vinyl tiles that wound their way through every office and corridor of Walt Whitman Elementary School. Rising from the tiles and filling the center of the page were two legs—dark brown, slender at the ankles, a widening curve at the calves and knees. Two inches above the knees was the draped hem of a chocolate brown skirt, its material fading into the margins of the paper.
While it seemed an accomplished drawing for such a young child, I had no artistic training, and was not certain how Mrs. Crow expected me to react. Was I to comment on the pupil's skill? Then I could admit to admiring the work. Or was she fishing for praise for her own skill as a teacher? I could admit to that too. As I stared at the drawing, and followed the outline of dark skin and dark fabric to the upper border, I was struck by the maturity of the drawing, the volume, the motion. Oddly, I felt a slight envy toward this child-artist, and would have confessed that too had Mrs. Crow asked.
She abruptly pulled another drawing from the folder and laid it next to the first. As with the first drawing, the background was blank. And again, the vinyl tile was rudimentary, but recognizable. In this drawing, however, the legs were in a seated position and crossed gently at the ankles—the same brown legs—rising and disappearing beneath the chocolate brown skirt.
She then removed the remaining drawings from her folder and lined them up in front of me, edges touching. All were by Leon Blakely, all renderings of brown legs— standing, walking, sitting, kneeling.
"Are you seeing a pattern?" Mrs. Crow asked as she scanned the row of drawings.
The pattern was obvious, but I remained puzzled by the point of her demonstration. Had she arranged this meeting simply to praise the work of a new student? If so, her tightened lips and narrowed eyes revealed no joy in the display.
"The lesson was to draw people," she went on. "The children's drawings do vary—from simple profiles of their mothers and fathers, to stick figures of entire families. Leon is the only student who refuses to draw people," she said.
"So this is about following instructions?" I asked.
"We can begin there," she said as she stacked the drawings on the table.
"They are people in a way," I replied, smiling and touching the smooth surface of the top drawing. She resisted my humor and pulled the art from the table. The brown waxen legs slipped beneath the tips of my fingers.
"Seven drawings of one person may be a symptom of a student's inability to follow instructions," she said. "But it may also be a symptom of an obsession. That's my concern." She lined up the edges of the drawings, placed them back in the folder and zipped her portfolio.
"Whose class is Leon in?" I asked.
I did not make a practice of keeping track of the characteristics of this woman's legs or that woman's legs over the course of the day and did not remember taking notice of Molly Benjamin's. One feature, however, was apparent—their color. Molly Benjamin was the only African-American teacher in the school—the only African-American employee in Unega District, with the exception of James "Jimmy" Smith who was the evening custodian at Melville Junior High.
Molly Benjamin had been hired the previous year, and was part of the state's five-year plan to introduce people of color into the educational system. While she had to travel from Eastwood and through Gigage Township to the school every morning—45 minutes on a good day—superintendent Krump praised the school board's decision to hire her as well worth the effort and the commute, and a valiant first step toward racial inclusion. The board had even hinted about plans to bring a second colored teacher into the district if Molly Benjamin worked out.
I was aware of the political pressure surrounding the outcome of the project, which made Mrs. Crow's concerns all the more pressing. After our brief meeting, I was not sure what form Leon's obsession, if it was an obsession, was taking, and whether it reflected badly on the long term goals of the school, but for the moment I was willing to take her concerns seriously.
My first observation took place during Molly Benjamin's class reading session. I chose not to go into specifics about the reason for my visit in deference to any sensitivity she may have had—either as a woman or as a woman of color. The children were seated in a circle of chairs, with Molly Benjamin's chair at the far end near the blackboard. Leon sat three chairs over. Although he was older than many of the other pupils, he was the smallest child in the class—a head shorter than the children on either side of him, and his hunched posture diminished him more. His chestnut bangs draped over his eyes as he hung his head. On his lap, he clutched a small notepad and in his other hand, a pencil with which he scratched randomly on the open page.
Leon's behavior did not seem unusual for a boy his age, and I was beginning to wonder about the substance of Mrs. Crow's concerns. So I made a second visit to the classroom the following day, this time to observe the drawing class. During this session, the children were seated at their tables with blank pages from the standard off-white district issued art tablets in front of them.
The children stared silently for a moment, then whispered and giggled as six-year-olds are apt to do, but soon everyone was drawing something. I circled the ring of tables. Familiar forms begin to take shape—small white heads and sparse yellow hair and chubby pink arms jutting out from their sides, chubby fingers jutting out from their palms, tight-lipped grins and round eyes. I stopped behind Leon's chair. There, in the center of his off-white paper emerged a pair of brown legs disappearing beneath the hem of a chocolate brown skirt. The legs were in an active gait this time, the ankles arched forward, the calves more muscular than in past versions.
At first, I justified the drawing by noting that is was definitely not a member of Leon's family, but as I watched him scrawl his crayon across the page and color in the brown flesh of Molly Benjamin's legs, it was becoming clear that he knew the subject as well as a boy would know his mother or his father. Seemingly without effort, he revealed the hue and depth—a crease, a scar, a curve. I glanced toward Molly Benjamin's desk, but was able to see only her crossed ankles and dark shoes. I peered down at Leon's depiction of those same ankles, but I could not focus on the task at hand, wondering only if my vision were acute enough to enable me to draw with such vitality from a single glance. I closed my eyes. In an instant I had forgotten Molly Benjamin's ankles. All I could see was Leon's depiction of them—the crease, the scar, the curve, the darkness. When I opened my eyes, he had already moved on to a new page.
That night, as I sat in my own home and read the evening paper—the local news of the new high school construction and the complaints of higher taxes to pay for it, stories of racial unrest in the outlying neighborhoods and union progress in the factories, my mind wandered away from issues of politics and race and toward Leon Blakely, to his drawings. I could not imagine the source of the power of his images, and why they remained in my thoughts so vividly. Even after a second scotch, the shape and tone of his drawings remained a constant blinding image, a bright light that shut out the periphery of my room and the gravity of world events.
My third observation took place the following week, and I decided to approach Leon directly since he might be more relaxed and more open to speak. I stood at the classroom door and watched him take a cookie and a carton of milk from the snack tray. I was surprised by my apprehension as I walked toward his table; my fingers fumbled in my jacket pocket for a coin or a key or a piece of thread, anything that would ground me to my task. I sat beside Leon and asked if I could join him and helped myself to one of the cookies on the tray. While Leon was chewing, I placed Mrs. Crow's folder on the table.
"Delicious cookies," I said, and Leon continued to chew, his eyes cast down.
"Can I ask you a question, Leon?" I said.
Leon ate his cookie and nodded.
"You're a fine artist, Leon. And I've been looking at the drawings you've done this year," I said.
Leon leaned forward and took a sip from the straw poking up from his milk carton. I removed his drawings from the folder and placed them in front of him.
"Could you tell me what this is a drawing of, Leon?" I asked.
I was somewhat relieved that Leon had a grasp of reality, and was not mistaking a leg for a man or an eye for a stalk of corn.
I slid out the next drawing.
"And what is this one?" I asked.
"That's Mrs. Benjamin too," he said after giving it a passing glance.
Without question he knew what he was drawing, which was an excellent sign from my perspective, but apparently not for Mrs. Crow, who reappeared in my office the following week with a new drawing. When she placed it on my desk, I immediately recognized it as the work of Leon Blakely—his most recent and most accomplished representation of Molly Benjamin's legs.
Even if I had had a rebuttal to her argument, it would not have pleased her. I wondered what was driving her anger over a child who refused to follow instructions. Surely she had dealt with that before. Perhaps it was a genuine concern for his psychological well-being. Perhaps it arose from a true desire to further his artistic ability. Then, it could have been a question of her own ego; he was, after all, not drawing her legs.
While I agreed to follow up on the matter, I was quickly losing patience with Mrs. Crow's own obsession. Leon was only one of hundreds of children I had to deal with, and I could not focus on school board initiatives or administrative problems if all I thought about was Leon Blakely. I could not manage the work of two dozen teachers if all I could see were the drawings of Molly Benjamin laid out against the grid of vinyl tiles and off white borders.
I felt a desperate need to bring an end to this, so I decided to speak with Leon once more, this time in my office. I brought a small chair in from one of the classrooms and set it next to my own. As small as the chair was, Leon's feet still did not touch the floor, and he swung them back and forth and stared at my shoes as I spoke to him.
"She thinks that you may not be following the directions she gives you in class as carefully as you could," I said.
"Are you following directions?" I asked.
"Yes," he said simply, as he swung his legs and stared at my feet.
I took out his latest drawing and held it low enough for him to see it clearly. He looked at the drawing and smiled.
"Leon, are these Mrs. Benjamin's legs?" I asked.
Leon looked at the drawing once again and laughed.
"That's her lap," he said.
I looked once more. It was surely a lap, different from his previous drawings of legs that were walking or standing or posed or crossed. In this one, Molly Benjamin's feet and calves and knees were side by side and nearly joined as one appendage. Just above her knees, the plateau of her chocolate brown skirt was drawn tightly across her thighs.
"Why Mrs. Benjamin?" I asked.
At first Leon seemed confused by my question, but I was beginning to have my doubts even about that. Was it confusion or obfuscation? What was he not telling me?
Leon stared up at me.
"It's hard to draw my own lap," he said.
While I found it difficult to argue with Leon's logic, his preoccupation with Molly Benjamin's legs was now my preoccupation, and scarcely a day went by when I was not driven to distraction by the possibility of another visit from Mrs. Crow. At our next meeting, I told her of my conversation with Leon and his explanation of legs versus laps, but she seemed unmoved in her position that this was a problem much deeper than a child not listening to instructions. She insisted it could be a sexual obsession or a need for attention. She hinted at his unhealthy preoccupation with a black woman. I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the direction of her concerns. I was well aware of the politics of the school board and of the desire to pursue their progressive program of northern integration. But I felt myself caught in the middle, and I hated it.
I wanted my reasoning to be noble, logical, or at least informed. I wanted to explain how times were changing and how racial intolerance was a thing of the past. I wanted to tell her that having Molly Benjamin as a role model was a healthy influence for Leon and for her pupils in general. Above all, I wanted to defend what Leon Blakely saw, every day with his own eyes, and what he understood from those visions, and the images that arose in his imagination, and his right—his right to see the world. But my animosity toward the boy was overcoming my nobility. While I wanted to protect his vision, I wondered what gave him the right to see what I could not, to experience what I could not, to render images that I found impossible to even visualize. Mrs. Crow's reaction to Leon's drawings suddenly carried more power than the drawings themselves, and I felt my anger grow, transformed by resignation and fear.
Strangely, she did not respond one way or the other, perhaps because she never expected me to concede her point and take action, but I never knew for certain. Reluctantly, she agreed to give me the opportunity to sway Leon toward other subjects for his drawings. I soon realized the task would not be easy. I studied his stack of artwork, searching for some hint of interest beyond Molly Benjamin's legs, but each time I looked at the drawings, I was confronted with the power of the images. They were flesh and color. They were strength and beauty. His images had begun to appear in my dreams—Molly Benjamin walking inside the circle of young students, gracefully following the path of white and gray tiles. And my frustration grew with each imagined step.
The following morning, Leon sat before me for the last time. I nervously tapped at the corner of his drawing. I rubbed my eyes, red and watery from lack of sleep.
"Leon, you need to draw something other than legs," I told him bluntly.
He stood and walked to the stack of drawings on the shelf along the wall. After searching through the stack, he pulled out a single page.
"Like this?" he asked, placing the drawing on the table in front of me.
It was a drawing of Molly Benjamin's legs—one kneeling on the white and gray tiles, the other with the foot set firmly on the floor for balance. I stared at the piece, and inside I longed for redemption—for some nurturing phrase, some gentle words to come to me, but I could think of nothing through the haze of my fatigue that was not brutal.
"Why?" he asked, his eyes narrowing in confusion.
The anger in my voice startled me. I grabbed the edge of the drawing and yanked it from the table. I tore it through. The quiet curve of brown calf drifted from the table to the gray-white tiles below, the knee left crumpled in my grasping fingers.
My head pounded, and in that moment I felt something terrible, a separation between my desires and my actions, but it was action born of anger, an action that could not be undone, even if the issue at hand were ever resolved to the satisfaction of Mrs. Crow and the school board. Now, my images of Leon's drawings were gone, replaced by dreams of his tight lips, his squinting eyes, his small hand hovering above the torn paper, his brown crayon poised and trembling. I had been the one chosen to tear apart Leon's passion, and I cursed myself for it, but I could not stop it.
Later that week, I walked to Leon's classroom. On a shelf, near the back of the room, sat a stack of student drawings—streets, trees, mothers, fathers, homes, bricks, concrete, grass, fields —oval eyes, jutting arms, fingers reaching out into empty white space. Toward the bottom of the stack were Leon's drawings—the familiar white and gray vinyl blocks of the floor. Except now, the space above it was empty; only the standard off-white color of the district issued art tablet was visible. I furiously searched through the stack. Under that drawing was another, then another, then another, all identical renderings of the same empty space.
Although I feared raising the question to Mrs. Crow, I wondered why she had not brought this new repetition of images to my attention with equal fervor. I wondered why Leon's continuing determination to ignore her instructions to draw different objects was now ignored. Surely, she had not told him to draw nothing, but in Leon's case, she must have thought it was better than something. It was done, and the fear over reproaching my decision was greater than my desire to confront the issue.
The door opened and Molly Benjamin walked in. She stopped and stared first at me, then at the stack of drawings strewn across the back table.
"Looking for something?" she asked.
"Just checking students' progress," I said, frightened by her sudden appearance.
Molly Benjamin pulled a chair next to her desk and sat down. She crossed her brown legs, smoothed the material of her skirt, and placed her book on her lap.
"Leon's drawings," I said, but I did not know the question to ask.
"Leon draws what he sees. That's all" she said.
"Is that what you see?" she asked.
"Yes," I whispered. "Once." I stared down at the vacant tiles and empty walls in Leon's drawing.
Molly Benjamin walked toward me, her heels clicking slowly and deliberately. She raised her skirt a few inches above her knees.
I looked up briefly, but I could not see beyond the haze of my own fatigue. The flesh was distorted, the knees ragged, the calves thin and distended. She released her skirt.
She walked to the front of her desk and removed a group of folders from the lower drawer. With one bent knee, she pushed the drawer shut.
She put on her jacket and straightened the hem of her chocolate brown skirt.
"I've seen you look at his drawings," she said. "His brown legs. My brown legs. But I don't know what they bring to your life. Joy. Wonder. Shame. Disgust. You chose. Something. What I do know is when Leon doesn't see, you don't see. That's your truth of your own sanity," she said.
Soon, I became compelled to capture what Leon had lost. I closed my eyes, strained to remember, to imagine Molly Benjamin. I put pencil to paper, sketched primitive outlines of her face, her legs, her hands. My attempts were always in vain, and the floor of my house became littered with crumpled flesh, torn ankles, discarded knees, the dark remnants of vague memories. I tried to hear the timbre of her voice, see the strength of her eyes. But there was only emptiness. When I was able to see Molly or Leon or the limbs of women or the perilous hands of the young, I did not trust my own visions. I could no longer distinguish memory from hallucination or imagination from delusion.
My emptiness, my vacantness, and eventually my delusions led the board to rethink my tenure as principle at Walt Whitman Elementary School. Even after my departure, my search continued. Soon, the bridge from desire to obsession to fear was complete, and I travelled from one to the other with ease. Mostly, I dwelt in fear—fear that I had provided Leon Blakely with a new and unintended direction in his world and in his art. I knew that one day, unlike me, Leon's canvas would be filled with something—border to border, margin to margin, edge to edge— and I trembled at the thought of what it might be.
JEFFREY IHLENFELDT'S work has appeared in various publications including Louisville Review, Southern Humanities Review, Columbia Review, and City Primeval.


We realised early on that with our portfolio of planned improvement initiatives, we would require a radical improvement in the state of our volumetric master data. We also knew that with Blackwoods' massive supply base of thousands of vendors ranging from multinationals to small, local businesses that we'd have to be able to provide for our own requirements.
The diversity of our product range meant we needed to be able to scan both cartons and irregularly-shaped units. SCACO were the sole Australian distributor of the CS125, which we determined was the best product fit for our requirements, but they also offered the assurance of providing strong, local technical support and business guidance from having worked with other Australian businesses.
SCACO combined a positive attitude with a willingness to craft a unique, end-to-end solution for Blackwoods. With their help we've laid the groundwork for ongoing improvements in customer satisfaction and productivity.
Our freight business is built around the unique needs of our customers and the requirement to handle their valuable and sensitive freight as safely and gently as we can. We pride ourselves on our "fussy" attitude and our approach to handling freight to ensure our customers receive the value-add that peace of mind and continued customer satisfaction brings to them and their own business.
To further ensure maximum customer service we wanted to explore how we could implement a trade- approved process of weighing and dimensioning our clients' freight to confirm they were being charged correctly by either the weight or cube as the particular case may be. Often the freight we move is both sensitive and irregular in shape and some of our customers are not equipped to accurately dimension or weigh their goods. We were looking for an automated, "hands-off" way of accurately determining these cubic measurements. At the same time, we wanted to obtain a digital image of the freight as part of our ongoing quality control procedures.
At about this time SCACO also contacted us for a chat and together we decided to trial the CubiScan 1200 AKL at our Melbourne site. The CubiScan uses overhead volumetric laser scanners and so nothing touches the freight. Although the technology is not new we were initially unsure as to whether the equipment would be practical in our operation. We essentially operate a cross dock operation and due to the specific requirements of our customers' goods we do not operate sortation systems and minimise exposure to ride-on forklifts for safety reasons. Most of our handling is either by hand or simple mechanical aids e.g. pallet jacks.
SCACO were great to work with because they took the time to understand the particular needs of our business and our customers freight requirements. Once the trial was completed SCACO even supplied a purpose built over dimensional platform scale and arranged the civil works to have these embedded in our concrete dock to provide a flat, safe working environment.
The end result certainly met our expectations and the service provided by SCACO was exceptional. We have since installed another system in our Sydney facility.
To safeguard SICK Australia's leading position in a highly competitive environment it is vital that we work with systems integrators who are able to continually drive strong innovation in factory, logistics, and process automation.
As one of SICK's key master integrators in Australia, SCACO plays a fundamental part in our mission to deliver customers leading automation and sensor-based technology solutions that drive greater productivity, profitability, and more efficient use of client resources.
SCACO are always very flexible to the customers' needs; filling a unique place in the market for customers that require flexible value-added services to remain competitive in their industry.
What sets SCACO apart from other partners we work with is their willingness to be small enough to listen to our customers but big enough to execute, streamline, and support complex systems integration.
This means our joint customers can always trust SCACO to find the solution that takes high performing barcode scanning and data capture capabilities from SICK, and customise it to meet the customer's unique requirements.


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Q: How to do hyperparameter tuning in reinforcement learning? Currently I am learning Proximal Policy Optimization(PPO), an algorithm of deep reinforcement learning, by following the tutorials from Huggingface(https://huggingface.co/blog/deep-rl-ppo). They have the tutorial code (https://github.com/huggingface/deep-rl-class/tree/main/unit8) and I compete for the leaderboard of LunarLander(https://huggingface.co/spaces/huggingface-projects/Deep-Reinforcement-Learning-Leaderboard) task as well. However the performance of the agent highly related to the hyperparameter tuning and reward shaping, are there good tools that i can easily tune parameters automatically?
Not tried any package yet.

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Calling all low-carbon star bakers!
If you're a baking magician with a few tricks up your sleeve, this is your time to shine.
There are plenty of options for low carbon eating. But what makes the biggest difference?
Cutting food waste and food loss is one of the biggest potential climate wins, and there are some signs of progress.


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Alonso dreams of triple crown
Posted by Bill Buys | Aug 18, 2018 | Bill Buys, News & Advice | 0 |
SPANISH Formula 1 superstar Fernando Alonso has announced he will leave the McLaren team, and probably his F1 career at the end of this season.
"After 17 wonderful years in this amazing sport, it's time for me to make a change and move on," he said.
"Let's see what the future brings; new exciting challenges are around the corner.
"I'm having one of the happiest times ever in my life but I need to go on exploring new adventures."
A move to Indycars looks likely.
The 37-year-old has often talked about winning the "Triple Crown," made up of the Monaco Grand Prix, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500.
He's already achieved the first two and just needs to win the Indy 500 title to realise his dream.
He had a drive in the Indy 500 last ear, but retired with engine problems.
In F1 he has twice won the world title (with Renault in 2005 and 2006) and amassed an incredible total of 32 wins, 22 pole positions and 97 podiums in F1, making him one of the most successful drivers in the top category of motorsport.
Question now is who will take his place at McLaren?
Fellow Spaniard Carlos Sainz is a strong possibility, although he has also been favoured to replace Daniel Ricciardo in the Red Bull team.
Sainz drives for Renault at present, but is on loan from Red Bull, which has him on contract until later this year. However, it is known the talented Sainz is keen to be with McLaren.
Similar Article: Ricciardo splits with Red Bull
Such a move is reinforced by tempestuous rivalry between him and Red Bull's Max Verstappen, dating back to the time when both were with Toro Rosso.
Latest thinking is that Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly could be the one to replace Ricciardo.
Then there's also the chance Alonso could return to F1 – and McLaren – at a later stage.
"My heart is with the team forever," he said.
"I know they will come back stronger and better in the future and it could be the right moment for me to be back in the series; that would make me really happy."
McLaren boss Zak Brown said open dialogue with Alonso allowed him to plan for the future and he has already confirmed Sainz was a contender for a 2019 seat.
"If he was free, and if we had a seat, he would certainly be high up the list," he said.
The future of McLaren's second driver, Stoffel Vandoorne, is also uncertain.
Brown says the team has not lost confidence in the 26-year-old Belgian, who is a former GP2 champion, but so far he has scored just eight of the team's 52 points.
His contract expires this season and unless there is a marked improvement in the second half of the season he could be dropped in favour of young British star Lando Norris, who was impressive in testing for McLaren and has been described as "a potential star of the future."
An intriguing few months await.
PreviousReboot time for Prado mamas
NextGarage of dusty forgotten supercars
Girl power comes to motor sport
No party for this porker
Sometimes Bentley just can't match Skoda
HEARD of Doug Nye?


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'Favourite Friend' is an original drawing measuring 230mm x 105mm in size. Favourite Friend' has been drawn in pencil and ink. Texture and detail has been added with the skinniest of pen nibs which creates lots of detail to look at. I love to experiment with abstract shape and pattern within a drawing and my imagination meanders in a happy way as I draw using words to tell a small tale within the drawing.


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Home / Artist / Tine Thing Helseth
Tine Thing Helseth
Tine Thing Helseth, born in 1987, started to play trumpet at the age of 7 and is one of the leading trumpet soloists of her generation. Highlights of the 2009/10 season included her U.S. recital debut in Washington. D.C, a return to the Ulster Orchestra and performances with the Norrköpings Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Bern and a UK tour with the Trondheim Soloists. Tine will make her recital debuts in Berlin, Brussels, Luxembourg and New York, at the Carnegie Hall, during…
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Tine Thing Helseth, born in 1987, started to play trumpet at the age of 7 and is one of the leading trumpet soloists of her generation. Highlights of the 2009/10 season included her U.S. recital debut in Washington. D.C, a return to the Ulster Orchestra and performances with the Norrköpings Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Bern and a UK tour with the Trondheim Soloists.
Tine will make her recital debuts in Berlin, Brussels, Luxembourg and New York, at the Carnegie Hall, during the 2010/11 season. This season also sees her perform with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Lille, the Prague, Danish and Swedish Radio orchestras, the Gavle Symphony, Swedish Chamber and NDR Hannover orchestras as well as a tour of Switzerland and Germany with the Trondheim Soloists.
Helseth's debut album (Classical Trumpet Concertos with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra) was released in November 2007 on Simax Classics label and named "Classical Recording of the Year" by the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. Also on Simax, her second album 'My Heart is Ever Present', a collection of Tine's favourite Christmas songs and hymns released in November 2009, went to 'gold' in the Norwegian classical chart after just three weeks.
Appearances for Ms. Helseth at European festivals have included the Schleswig-Holstein, Bergen International and Kissinger Summer Festival where, in 2007, she was awarded the Luitpold Prize as the most outstanding and interesting young artist of the year.
Amongst the long list of awards garnered by Ms. Helseth, she has received the 2009 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, "Newcomer of the Year" at the 2007 Norwegian Grammy Awards (the first classical artist ever to be nominated), second prize in the 2006 Eurovision Young Musicians Competition and the prestigious Prince Eugen's Culture Prize in Stockholm.
www.tinethinghelseth.com
Tine Thing Helseth: Never going back
When Tine Thing Helseth now is releasing her new album "Never Going Back", we'll hear something completely different from what we've heard from her earlier.
My Heart is Ever Present
– Tine Thing Helseth plays with an extraordinary beauty. This recording stands out with its genuine feeling for the chamber musical format. [Aftenposten]
Tine Thing Helseth: Trumpet concertos by Haydn, Hummel, Neruda and Albinoni
- plays with an especially beguiling, sweet and shimmering line, nonchalant technical authority and stylish understatement. [The Gramophone]


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Max Salminen (Lund, 22 september 1988) is een Zweeds zeiler.

Salminen won samen met Fredrik Lööf de gouden medaille tijdens de Olympische Zomerspelen 2012 in de star. Na afloop van deze spelen stapte Salminen over naar de eenmansboot Finn. Tijdens de Olympische Zomerspelen 2016 behaalde Salminen de zesde plaats. In 2017 werd Salminen in de Finn wereldkampioen. Een jaar later behaalde Salminen de zilveren medaille tijdens de wereldkampioenschappen 2018.

Resultaten

Wereldkampioenschappen

Olympische Zomerspelen

Externe links

  Profiel van Max Salminen op sailing.com

Zweeds zeiler
Zweeds olympisch kampioen

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


When looking to start a business on the internet or creating a website for your existing business, the most important thing that should not be overlooked is website design. It is quite fascinating to know that most companies and online business have invested a lot of money o design their website in a unique and attractive manner. Although it may appear to be a huge investment, the results are overwhelmingly significant.
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To ensure that your website is attractive enough for customers to check out every now and then, you should leave web design to the experts and those who really have the skills to design your website well.


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Yakult Goes to Space
Home/Articles, Immunity/Yakult Goes to Space
Outer space, or simply known as space begins 100km above the Earth, where the shell of air around our planet disappears. With no air to scatter light rays from sun and produce a blue sky, space appears as a black blanket dotted with stars.
Space is usually regarded as being completely empty but that is not true. The vast gaps between the stars and planets are filled with huge amounts of thinly spread gas and dust. Even the emptiest parts of space contain at least hundred atoms or molecules per cubic meter. Space is also filled with many forms of radiation that are dangerous to the space traveler, also known as astronauts and much of this infrared and ultraviolet comes from the Sun.
The lack of gravity is the astronauts greatest ally and enemy when exposed to microgravity over a long period of time. Prolonged orbital spaceflight affects the human body both physically and psychologically.
Fluids throughout our body are constantly moving with gravity pushing these fluids down into the legs, while in space, these fluids float into the head and this fluidic drift can be dangerous causing serious conditions including pressure on the optic nerve, which can affect vision. Cosmic rays, the high-energy radiation that originate from outside our solar system which usually absorbed by the atmosphere also create momentary flashes of light which may be damaging to the vision.
When on earth, our bones and muscles work hard to keep us standing still. Without the downward force of gravity, the body works considerably less, causing muscle deterioration and loss of bone density. According to NASA, a one-month orbital spaceflight can cause the loss of bone mass as much as a postmenopausal woman does in a year, causing a large decrease in calcium levels in the blood, which in turn can lead to a host of health issues. Muscles are also not really needed to hold up the body. Over time, muscles become weaker and deteriorate. Therefore, astronauts work out an average 2 hours a day to combat the extreme loss of bone mass and shrinking of muscle.
The heart also slacks off in space just like the bones and muscles. In a microgravity environment, the heart does not have to work as hard as it does on Earth. This can potentially lead to heart muscle deconditioning, making it weaker and smaller. Space radiation may also affect the lining of blood vessels, which could initiate or accelerate coronary heart disease where the arteries that supply our heart muscle with oxygen rich blood become narrowed.
Normally, there is a natural curve in a person's spine, but in space the lacking of gravity to pull down on those bones will cause the spine to straighten out. As the surrounding muscles weaken, the bones may stiffen further, causing the vertebrae to stack on top of each other and ease the natural curvature. Muscle atrophy around the spine may cause the spine susceptible to injury when astronauts return to Earth.
The intestines digest food, absorb nutrients and water, form stool, and discharge it out of the body. They also protect the body from enemies, because they are always exposed to not only food, but bacteria and other foreign invaders entering from the outside. In other words, the intestines not only digest food and absorb nutrients, they are the largest immune organ in the body.
Astronauts who work in space, which is an extreme working environment of microgravity inside a closed spacecraft are known to experience deterioration of immune function. In healthy individuals, the flexibility and resilience of the immune system allows rapid recovery with little or no adverse effect. However, with high intensity and/or duration of extremes in environment, disrupted circadian rhythms, altered nutrition, and other factors, adverse consequences to the immune system can occur.
Yakult Contributes to Astronaut's Health
As one of the measures to tackle astronauts' health issues, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has signed an agreement with probiotics manufacturer Yakult Honsha (Japan) to study the impact of probiotics on astronauts' health. This study has commenced in 2016, and examines the effect of daily consumption of the Yakult probiotic drink on astronauts stationed at the International Space Station (ISS) for long periods.
Hiroshima Oshima, JAXA's Manager of Space Biomedical Research said, "Space is a model for accelerated ageing, so if we can find preventive measures in space, these could be applied on the ground too." Therefore, this ongoing study also aimed at making contributions to promote people's health in general by utilizing the knowledge that is gained in the joint research for development of probiotics research on the ground.


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Home » Elden Ring: Cool user reviews on Steam, Valve hiding them for a few hours?
Elden Ring: Cool user reviews on Steam, Valve hiding them for a few hours?
Elden Ring arrived and a good chunk of the PC audience started playing right after midnight, to jump straight into the Interregnum. This allowed the players to Steam to publish your own review. The result? For the moment the audience is quite cold in front of FromSoftware's game and settles at 59%. Furthermore, it seems that Valve has also blocked reviews, at least for a few hours.
At the time of writing, there are more than 10,000 Elden Ring reviews on Steam and the end result is a 59% positive responses, with a cataloging therefore "Average". Of course, most of the reviews were made pretty much instantly after launch, with many users having their say after less than an hour of play. Most of the criticism revolves around optimization issues, with an Italian review stating that Elden Ring is basically one big infamous City Open World version.
Furthermore, according to what was reported by a Twitter user, as you can see below, it seems that for at least a few moments the Elden Ring reviews on Steam have been deleted or blocked. However, we don't know what really happened (and the image shared by the user doesn't show the whole page, so it could be a clipping from another Steam page, of a game not yet published). At the time of writing, as mentioned, there are reviews on the game's product page. Even assuming something happened, it could have been a mistake that was quickly corrected by Valve.
In any case, Elden Ring doesn't have to worry too much about reviews right now, as it shattered contemporary player records of Sekiro and Dark Souls 3.
Cool Elden hiding hours reviews Ring Steam user Valve
Elden Ring for PS5, a gameplay video featuring the first 23 minutes of the campaign
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