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Revolutionary resistance, anti-imperialism — Irish, Basque, Spanish, other. Also song, nature, poetry, humour
The RTE 'Rebellion' series, from The Irish Republic blog, by Tom Stokes
More Than Just a Museum
On June 11, 2017 June 12, 2017 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Peace Process, Political Analysis
by Déaglan Ó Donnghaile
(previously published in the Irish Dissent blog https://irishdissent.wordpress.com. Photos chosen and inserted by Rebel Breeze by agreement with author)
On Friday, 2nd June, a protest was held at the so-called "Museum of Free Derry" in opposition to the its memorialization of British forces killed in Derry during the early 1970s. I refer to this institution as the "so-called Museum of Free Derry" because, with its commemoration of the British state's highly paid, heavily armed and judicially-protected professional murderers – agents of state violence whose brutality peaked (but did not end) with the massacre of 14 Civil Rights demonstrators on January 31st, 1972 – it has distanced itself irrevocably from the concept and philosophy of liberation that Free Derry stands for in the popular imagination. As one protestor suggested, we should rename it "The Museum of Unfree Derry"; I would add that the title, "The Crown Forces Museum of Unfree Derry", will reflect even more accurately the ideology that this institution serves and promotes.
The iconic Free Derry gable monument, replacing the original gable of the house in the barricaded Bogside in 1969 which bore the same announcement. One of the Bogside's impressive murals is visible on the right of photo. (Photo source: Internet)
Free Derry was the part of Derry City, comprising the Bogside, Brandywell and Creggan districts, that had been liberated from police control following the decisive defeat of heavily-armed RUC, B-Special and Orange Order attackers by an unarmed popular insurgency, known as the Battle of the Bogside, that took place in August, 1969. Notwithstanding the efforts of Paddy Doherty to have barricades dismantled and the RUC redeployed in the Bogside, Free Derry persisted until the entire city was overrun by British troops during Operation Motorman in July, 1972. During this three-year period, Free Derry became recognized globally as a site of intense resistance to British political, military and police control.
Protest at the Free Derry Museum recently.
(Photo source: Internet)
Last week's protest was called because the museum, which many people regard as a Sinn Féin-controlled front organization, has installed an exhibit recording the names of British troops and police killed in Derry. This has outraged a broad spectrum of people who have confronted the issue because they recognize it as contributing to the wider, decades-long policy of "normalization": the policy whereby the aberration that is the British presence in Ireland is represented as normal, even natural. A fundamental policy of modern imperialism, normalization (also referred to during the 1970s and 1980s as "Ulsterization") was also the key strategy behind the 2003 Iraq invasion and occupation, where it became known as "Iraqi-isation". (1)
POWER AND ITS DISCOURSES: FROM BURKE TO KITSON
Burke monument in front of Trinity College, Dublin.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
These ideas and policies can be traced back to Edmund Burke's conservative political theories, as outlined in his 1790 book, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Here, Burke described the authority of kings as "the natural order of things", and claimed that the subjugation of people by imperial and monarchical authority was an organic, and therefore just, phenomenon. (2) In his earlier work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), Burke also argued that the natural human response to displays of power should be one of surrender because power and terror, the basic currencies of political authority, were inseparable from one another.
While these ideas have influenced British imperialism and guided its coercionist policies since the late eighteenth century, they were very significantly modernized by the British army Brigadier, Frank Kitson. Having participated in and directed counter-insurgency efforts in Kenya, Malaya, Oman and Cyprus, Kitson updated the sublime object and function of imperial power by urging the state to facilitate its flow through every circuit of military, police and civilian organisation in a thoroughly integrated pattern of oppression and violence. The key to controlling entire populations, Kitson urged in his 1971 book, Low Intensity Operations, was to ensure that the interests served by state violence should become so normalized as to be obscure, untraceable, unidentifiable, even invisible.
Frank Kitson (now Brigadier) in 1971 (Photo source: Internet)
In doing so, he brought Burke's theory of the invisibility of power into the modern imperialist age: "To make anything very terrible," Burke advised, "obscurity seems in general to be necessary", (3) and state violence is no exception to this very basic rule. Whereas, for Burke, power was best administered from the Olympian position of the aristocracy, Kitson, by 1971, saw the need to co-opt local organizations directly into its grid and to create compliant front-groups (he called these "pseudo-groups") that were loyal to the deep state. As we have seen since the ceasefire of 1994, these state-funded front organizations have spawned very rapidly, although study of their boards and memberships reveals very familiar patterns and networks of interest.
2017: A NEW START FOR COUNTER-INSURGENCY
Kitson's policy eventually succeeded with the total integration of Sinn Féin and its party militia into the British establishment, and this is most apparent (for those who look beyond the obscuring veil of Stormont power) in the fusion of their pro-British terror tactics with official policing. However, while this objective has been achieved, total control remains the final objective and, as every reader of Orwell knows, controlling the present depends very heavily on exercising dominion over the past: this is what every colonial power pursues through means of coercion, violence, manipulation and co-option. Through various fronts disguised as "community groups" controlled by Sinn Féin, which is itself controlled by MI5, this policy has been intensively pursued since the mid-1990s on political, economic and cultural fronts. Those who remember the various "peace groups" that emerged to serve British interests during the 1970s and 1980s, many of which were directed by the Officials and their political front, the Workers' Party, will recognize an emerging pattern here.
The Crown Forces Museum of Unfree Derry is the latest addition to this long line of front organizations working in the service of British state power. Its inclusion of British military and police personnel in its exhibitions is a significant move towards normalizing the brutality and violence unleashed on the people of Derry from the late 1960s (and, indeed, since the inception of the state in 1922), and their present activity should be considered against this longer history of normalization.
The Museum of Free Derry (sic`).
Indeed, the museum's spokesman, Robin Percival, has a long record of service to Sinn Féin front organizations since he first joined the party. Since then, he has been appointed to prominent roles within the Pat Finucane Centre, The Bogside Residents Group (from which he graduated onto the Parades Commission), the Bogside and Brandywell Health Forum, the Gasyard Centre, Cunamh and the Bloody Sunday Trust, as well as this museum. His close friend and colleague at the Pat Finucane Centre, Paul O'Connor, participates in Sinn Féin electoral videos, exposing that organization's very close ties to the party. During last week's protest, Percival took photographs of those who had come to voice their opposition to the memorial, and it can only be assumed that these images will be shared with his friends in Sinn Féin (these associations can be seen by checking the organizations' boards and memberships on the Companies House website).
Robin Percival of the Museum speaking at an unintentionally somewhat ironically-named conference. (Source photo: Internet)
In a letter sent to the Pensive Quill website in 2014, Percival responded to criticism of the museum's earlier but unsuccessful plan to build a garden that would commemorate crown forces personnel. He stated: "there never was a plan to construct a memorial garden to include British soldiers in the Bogside…. Nor are there any plans to construct a memorial to include British soldiers now or in the future. The focus of the Bloody Sunday Trust (which manages the museum) is about civilians killed by the state." Percival publicly announced that he had "no plan to construct a memorial… to include British soldiers in the Bogside." (4) However, things can change very rapidly in the world of colonial doublethink, and now he is defending the projection of the names of British personnel on his museum's walls.
THE LONG LINE OF COOPERATORS
Frank Kitson argued that co-option and cooperation are the basic requirements of colonial political control. Percival is among a long line of cooperators, ranging from Paddy Doherty and Brendan Duddy to the present class of professional, managerial "community representatives" and mysteriously-appointed "spokespeople". While these figures have, largely, been involved in the political and economic management of the people of Derry on behalf of Sinn Féin, Stormont and the British establishment in London, what is novel about this museum it is dedicated to controlling the present through its representation of the past.
The normalization policy outlined by Kitson and the principles that he first proposed in 1971 are very relevant today. The museum operates entirely into line with British policy and represents a watermark of what he termed "civil-military relations" – the conscious fusion of military and civilian interests through long-term "popular projects" serving the occupier's "single effective policy" : "the necessity for close co-ordination between the civil and the operational effort is apparent to everyone", wrote Kitson in 1971. It remains so today because it is through this "unity of effect" that oppression becomes normalized and authority internalized by the target population, and how a people's sense of their own selfhood is softened and eroded. It is the latest manifestation of psychological operations (still abbreviated by militaries, police forces and governments as "psy-ops"): the use of psychological means to distort and undermine a population's sense of its own place in the world and in history, and to subvert its own understanding of itself. (5)
IDENTIFYING THE OPPRESSOR
The museum has a single purpose: encouraging people to identify psychologically with the British army and police, and with the colonial violence that has repressed them for centuries. The British army's infamous Bloody Sunday Massacre of January 1972 was key to the wider counter-insurgency policy that began in August, 1969, and its impact can still be felt in Derry, over four decades later. The Crown Forces Museum of Unfree Derry is dedicated to convincing the people that they should see something of themselves in the very murderers who shot down children, women and men during this period of particularly brutal state violence. It symbolizes a false and misleading ideology of reconciliation based on the assumption that we have much in common with these professional agents of colonial violence and the structures that they serve.
Last week's demonstration registered popular refusal to conform to this ongoing process of normalization. The philosophy and practice of liberation that was practiced and displayed four decades ago by the people of Free Derry showed the world that refusal is a very powerful weapon. This protest articulated and renewed that refusal by addressing the still current problem of state violence and the ideological coercion that accompanies it, exposing its acceptance by organizations such as this museum, all of which, ultimately, act in the interests of the state.
Michael Bridge, who was wounded in the Bloody Sunday Massacre 1972, arguing during the protest with Colm Barton of the Museum.
The fundamental strategy of any empire is invasion, and this requires a considerable degree of integration on a number of levels, particularly within the cultural, political and psychological spheres. Imperialists occupy the physical territory of the countries that they invade with their military and police forces but they also work hard to colonize the minds of those whose lands they occupy with the relentless propaganda and distortions of the past that are circulated by their local agents. In Derry, however, this is being resisted because there are plenty of minds and imaginations that still remain free.
1. See Paul Reynolds, "Rush to Iraqi-isation", BBC News, 12th November, 2003 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3263545.stm), accessed 8/6/1017. See also "Letter (declassified): Rycroft to Baker", 3rd June, 2003, The Iraq Inquiry(http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/212061/2004-06-03-letter-rycroft-to-baker-iraq-prime-ministers-meeting-3-june.pdf), accessed 8/6/2017.
2. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, The Works of Edmund Burke, Vol. 3 (London, John C. Nimmo: 1887), p.296.
3. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ibid, Vol. 1, pp.131-2.
4. Robin Percival, "No Plan to Construct a Memorial Garden to Include British Soldiers in the Bogside," The Pensive Quill, Friday, 8th August, 2014 (http://thepensivequill.am/2014/08/no-plan-to-construct-memorial-garden-to.html, accessed 31st May, 2017).
5. Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping (London: Faber and Faber, 1971, reprinted 1991), pp.51-3, 71.
Anti-imperialismCapitalismcivil rightsIrish historyIrish LeftIrish Republicansnational liberationpeace processespolitical analysis
TWO DEATHS, FOUR FUNERALS AND THREE BURIALS
THE MOORE STREET HISTORIC QUARTER – REALITY AND WISHFUL THINKING.
2 thoughts on "More Than Just a Museum"
socialistfight
Reblogged this on Socialist Fight and commented:
Excellent anti imperialist piece with the unbroken spirit of resistance to oppression and their lackies.
Pingback: A SECTARIAN WAR OF SYMBOLS | rebelbreeze


SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft's new Windows 10 operating system debuts today, as the longtime leader in PC software struggles to carve out a new role in a world where people increasingly rely on smartphones, tablets and information stored online. No one's expected to line up overnight for Windows 10, the way people did 20 years ago for Windows 95. But Microsoft is counting on tens or even hundreds of millions of people to download its latest release for free in the coming months. The launch will be accompanied by a global marketing campaign for an event the company hopes will be pivotal – both for its own future and for a vast audience of computer users around the world. Windows 10 is coming to PCs and tablets first, but it's also designed to run phones, game consoles and even holographic headsets. It has new features, a streamlined Web browser called Edge and a desktop version of Cortana, the online assistant that is Microsoft's answer to Google Now and Apple's Siri. Still, the company insists Windows 10 will seem familiar to users of Windows 7, the sixyear- old operating system still running on most PCs. Microsoft and PC makers want to erase the memory of the last big update, 2012's Windows 8, which alienated many with its jarring, unwieldy design. Microsoft skipped the name Windows 9, as if to distance itself further from the last release. While many analysts believe Windows 8 made sagging PC sales even worse, it's unclear if Windows 10 will spur the industry back to growth. Here is a look at the launch and why it matters.
What happens this week? Microsoft plans promotional events in several cities today, tied to a global ad campaign and a series of charitable donations. About 5 million people who enrolled in an earlier test program will be able to download Windows 10 right away. The company is also offering Windows 10 as a free download, any time over the next year, to anyone who has the Home or Pro versions of Windows 7 or 8 (but not the Enterprise versions used by big organizations). Some may not get it the first day; Microsoft says it will deliver downloads in waves, to ensure things go smoothly, but it hasn't said how long that will take. Retailers such as Best Buy, Staples and Wal-Mart will have some desktops and laptops with Windows 10 already installed. More models are coming.
Why is Microsoft giving Windows 10 for free? The company wants to get the new software on as many devices as possible. Microsoft needs a large pool of users to convince independent programmers that it's worth their time to build useful or entertaining apps for Windows 10 devices. Executives also believe that if people are exposed to the latest and best Windows, they're more likely to try other Microsoft products on PCs and mobile devices. CEO Satya Nadella says he wants to have 1 billion devices running Windows 10 in three years. Microsoft estimates there are 1.5 billion people who currently use some kind of Windows. Rather than charging them to upgrade, as Microsoft used to do, it's embracing the free download model pioneered by Apple and Google.
How will Microsoft make money? Microsoft will still collect licensing fees from PC makers that install Windows 10 on new machines. In recent years, most consumers have waited until they bought a new computer to get the latest Windows. Microsoft also makes money from selling Windows and other software to large businesses and organizations. In addition, Microsoft is counting on Windows 10 to spur more use of other services. Microsoft makes money from selling advertising for its Bing search engine, and Windows 10 comes with many apps that steer people to Bing. The company also collects fees from people who use premium versions of its Office software, OneDrive cloud storage and Skype.
Why does this matter to consumers? Microsoft says Windows 10 is designed for the way people use computers today – with a faster Web browser and features that make it easier to start tasks on a PC and then switch to a hand-held device. (Apple and Google tout similar features in their software.) Windows 10 also lets users log in with their face, iris or thumbprint, instead of remembering passwords, though this works only with computers equipped with the right hardware. Most PC users are still working with Windows 7, thanks to Windows 8's unpopularity. But Microsoft plans to phase out maintenance and security support for Windows 7 over the next five years, and for Windows 8 by 2023, as it did with the older Windows XP. Still, there's no need to panic about upgrading right away.
Facebook has scrapped its previously unknown plans to build a satellite, according to a report by Amir Efrati in The Information.
The satellite, had it been built, could have cost an estimated $500 million. The plan was to use it to help provide cheap internet access in the developing world. But this pricetag was apparently prohibitive, and the scheme has since been abandoned — before it was ever even announced.
Facebook has been exploring ways expanding internet access — and along with it, access to its products — in emerging markets. One of the key ways is Internet.org, a Facebook-led initiative involving multiple companies to subsidise data costs in certain countries.
But not all of Facebook's efforts in the area are related to Internet.org. For example, it announced Facebook Lite last week, an ultra-lightweight Android app designed to make the social network easier to access on low bandwidth connections. That had nothing to do withInternet.org.
Similarly, while Mark Zuckerberg had openly discussed using satellites to help with Internet.org, this new, cancelled scheme was apparently unrelated.
The Information's report, based on "a person with direct knowledge of the project and a person briefed about it," says it would have been a geostationary satellite that could have helped provide internet access to dozens of countries. Instead, it may now lease a satellite off another provider, if it does decide to push ahead with its plans.
Facebook's plans to bring internet access to the emerging markets have the potential to positively transform the countries targeted — but there's also a direct financial incentive for the social networking giant. By providing the tools required to access the web, it can ensure it has first access to previously untapped markets of billions of people.
BEIJING: A pilot said yesterday that he is anxious but excited about flying a solar plane solo from China to Hawaii on the longest leg of the first attempt to fly around the world without a drop of fuel. AndrÈ Borschberg, 62, is due to fly over the Pacific Ocean for five days and five nights in the plane that has more than 17,000 solar cells on its wings to power its motors and recharge its batteries for nighttime flying.
The aircraft will climb to the altitude of Mount Everest, almost 9,000 meters during the day to get more sunlight, recharge the batteries and store more energy. At nighttime, the plane will fly lower, at a minimum of 1,000 meters The pilot will experience temperatures ranging from 35 degrees Celsius (in the morning to minus 20 degrees Celsius early in the evening while the plane is still high up. "It's winter and summer every day in the cockpit," said Borschberg, who flew military jets for 25 years as a reserve pilot in the Swiss army and is an entrepreneur by profession. He plans to take periods of rest of 20 minutes up to eight times a day, but said he doesn't know if the weather or turbulence will let him. Borschberg said the plane has a "virtual co-pilot" that is a stabilization tool.
This was discovered by Luigi Galvani in 1780 when he connected two metals to the legs of a frog, causing its muscles to twitch. But you can put many materials between these two electrodes to get the same effect. Alexander Volta, around the time of Galvani, used saltwater-soaked paper. Others have made "earth batteries" using two metal plates and a pile of dirt, or a bucket of water.
Potatoes are often the preferred vegetable of choice for teaching high school science students these principles. Yet to the surprise of Rabinowitch, no one had scientifically studied spuds as an energy source. So in 2010, he decided to give it a try, along with PhD student Alex Goldberg, and Boris Rubinsky of the University of California, Berkeley.
They found that by simply boiling the potatoes for eight minutes, it broke down the organic tissues inside the potatoes, reducing resistance and allowing for freer movement of electrons– thus producing more energy. They also increased the energy output by slicing the potato into four or five pieces, each sandwiched by a copper and zinc plate, to make a series. "We found we could improve the output 10 times, which made it interesting economically, because the cost of energy drops down," says Goldberg.
Their cost analyses suggested that a single boiled potato battery with zinc and copper electrodes generates portable energy at an estimated $9 per kilowatt hour, which is 50-fold cheaper than a typical 1.5 volt AA alkaline cell or D cell battery, which can cost $49–84 per kilowatt hour. It's also an estimated six times cheaper than standard kerosene lamps used in the developing world.
Which raises an important question – why isn't the potato battery already a roaring success?
In 2010, the world produced a staggering 324,181,889 tonnes of potatoes. They are the world's number one non-grain crop, in 130 countries, and a hefty source of starch for billions around the world. They are cheap, store easily, and last for a long time.
Yet three years on since their experiment, why haven't governments, companies or organisations embraced potato batteries? "The simple answer is they don't even know about it," reasons Rabinowitch. But it may be more complicated than that.
First, there's the issue of using a food for energy. Olivier Dubois, senior natural resources officer at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), says that using food for energy – like sugar cane for biofuels – must avoid depleting food stocks and competing with farmers.
In a country like Kenya, the potato is the second most important food for families after maize. Smallholder farmers produced around 10 million tonnes of potatoes this year, yet around 10-20% were lost in post-harvest waste due to lack of access to markets, poor storage conditions, and other issues, according to Elmar Schulte–Geldermann, potato science leader for sub–Saharan Africa at the International Potato Center in Nairobi, Kenya. The potatoes that don't make it to the market could easily be turned into batteries.
Yet in Sri Lanka, for instance, the locally available potatoes are rare and expensive. So a team of scientists at the University of Kelaniya recently decided to try the experiment with something more widely available, and free – plantain piths (stems).
Physicist KD Jayasuriya and his team found that the boiling technique produced a similar efficiency increase for plantains – and the best battery performance was obtained by chopping the plantain pith after boiling.
With the boiled piths, they found they could power a single LED for more than 500 hours, provided it is prevented from drying out. "I think the potato has slightly better current, but the plantain pith is free, it's something we throw away," says Jayasuriya.
Despite all this, some are sceptical of the feasibility of potato power. "In reality, the potato battery is essentially like a regular battery you'd buy at the store," says Derek Lovley at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "It's just using a different matrix." While the potato helps to prevent energy being lost to heat, it is not the source of the energy – that's actually extracted via the corrosion of the zinc. "It's sacrificial – the metal is degrading over time," says Lovley. This means you'd have to replace the zinc – and of course the potato or plantain pith – over time.
Still, zinc is quite cheap in most developing countries. And Jayasuriya argues that it could still be more cost effective than a kerosene lamp. A zinc electrode that lasts about five months would cost about the same as a litre of kerosene, which fuels the average family home in Sri Lanka for two days. You could also use other electrodes, like magnesium or iron.
But potato advocates must surmount another problem before their idea catches on: consumer perception of potatoes. Compared with modern technologies like solar power, potatoes are perhaps less desirable as an energy source.
Gaurav Manchanda, founder of One Degree Solar, which sells micro-solar home systems in Kenya, says people buy their products for more reasons than efficiency and price. "These are all consumers at the end of the day. They need to see the value in it, not only in terms of performance, but status," he explains. Basically, some people might not want to show off their potato battery to impress a neighbor.
Still, it cannot be denied that the potato battery idea works, and it appears cheap. Advocates of potato power will no doubt continue to keep chipping away.
After ten years of bonding and strong connections, Orkut decides to call it a day.
An email from Google reports that the growth of other social networking communities on its own platform had outpaced Orkut hence they decided to focus their energy and resources on making the experience of other social platforms as amazing as possible for the users.
Orkut users would face not impact until the website closes down on September 30, 2014. They would also be able to export profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout, which will be available until September 2016.
Google apologised to those who still actively use the service.


The London GT with both tourny and big game is inspired. Excellent news and well done to all those involved with organising it.
If there is a gap in January there are loads of ways to expand Titan v Goliath to allow more people to attend. The vibe is painting/the look of the game and socialising rather than competitive, so is a bit different to most other events.
Hi all, i can now confirm a date for another Scottish competition.
The date will be Saturday the 21st of July 2018.
The event is a one day event comprising of 3 games starting at 9am (rules/day pack still to be released closer to the date).
For those traveling and needing a place to stay the hotel is offering a twin room for £72 for 2 people. Although we are also trying to arrange other accomodation for those who want cheaper.
Entry fee is: £20 per person. First come first served. Bookings will be by paypal and refund is available for cancellations before March 2018.
All proceeds will go to Team Scotland Epic Gamers to fund future events.
Last edited by hypostatic on Sun Dec 17, 2017 3:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Calendar updated with Glasgow tournament and date for Bristol.
No problem, ticket bought for both days What's the plan for the Sunday big game?
Given we've already got 2 tables of good snow terrain & mats in London building on that could be a move. Personally, something involving all 6 chaos factions on one side against tbc could be fun?
Thats the McPocalypse II venue booked for Sat 27th January.
I am planning on running it as a team competition with plenty of funky special rules in place, trying stuff out to see what works. It will not be a normal tournament.
This sounds like a lot of fun! Chaos. Chaotic fun! Count me in.
Got my ticket for the London GT.
Hi guys. Ive tried emailing Redar about Counter Attack but not heard anything. Anyone know if its still happening on the 10th March?
Just an update to our competition.
So only two spaces left.
We have also changed the venue to be closer to town.
We are now in a social club that will operate a bar from 11am and there's a buffet included in the ticket price.
Still in same town of Whitburn, West Lothian.
We are also now asking for people to start making payment for the competition as we have had a lot to layout for this to work.
Registration is between 8:30 and 9:15 and we have to be finished for 6pm as the club gets used in the evening.
With the London GT now being a 2 day tournament should I book the two day tickets seperately for £40? Or does just the £20 tournament ticket cover it? I'll go in either case but was it 3lk or 4k?
You should create a seperate thread on here for the tournament like normally happens, to perhaps get more interest. I hadn't realised tickets were on sale for it.
Also that guy who played years ago and popped in sounded quite keen to go to this tournament too and we arranged a guard army for him to borrow. We exchanged ciontacts and are going to meet up sometime for a game or two to get him back into it.


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Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts… wins Whiting Award | LATimes.com
The Whiting Foundation announced its 2012 literary award recipients Tuesday. The 10 authors will each receive a $50,000 grant, no strings attached.
The Whiting Awards are geared to help extraordinary new writers find the footing to achieve success. Awards are made to poets, novelists, short-story writers, playwrights and writers of nonfiction.
Past recipients include Jeffrey Eugenides, Tony Kushner, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Mark Doty, Colson Whitehead, C.D. Wright, Douglas Kearney, Michael Cunningham, Tracy K. Smith and John Jeremiah Sullivan.
From the Whiting Foundation's release:
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, nonfiction. Her first book, "Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America," published by Little, Brown in 2011, was named among 100 Notable Books of 2011 by the New York Times Book Review and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Originally from Houston, she lives in New York City.
via 2012 Whiting Award winners announced – latimes.com.
February 2011, Ron Kavanaugh editor of MosaicMagazine.org, sat with Ms. Rhodes-Pitts to discuss her newly releases book "Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America"
This entry was posted in Blog, Uncategorized and tagged 100 Notable Books of 2011, Brown, Colson Whitehead, Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America, Little, National Book Critics Circle Award, New York Times Book Review, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Whiting Foundation. Bookmark the permalink.
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton | NYT
William Melvin Kelley: Interview

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Barrett Bookstore and the Community Fund of Darien welcome Kelly Corrigan, author of the funny, thought-provoking memoir "Glitter and Glue" as the keynote speaker for a benefit luncheon at the Country Club of Darien, 300 Mansfield Avenue, on February 12 at 11:30 a.m.
Corrigan, a newspaper columnist and mother of two, has been critically acclaimed as the "Poet Laureate of the ordinary." Kelly's latest book tells the story of her adventure post-college, armed with a backpack and a wad of traveler's checks, to see the world and Become Interesting. But quickly her fanny pack full of savings dwindles and she needed a job—or go back home, which as Corrigan recalls, would please her mother to no end. That's how she met John Tanner, a newly widowed father of two young kids looking for a live-in nanny. In that house in a suburb north of Sydney, Kelly's mother's voice was suddenly everywhere, nudging and advising her through a terrain as foreign as the rapids she rafted and glaciers she climbed. And most surprising of all was that for the first time ever, she was really listening to her mother's words—and in a way that would lay the foundation for their relationship to come.
Reading a book by Kelly Corrigan is an intimate event. With graceful prose, intimate voice, and keen insight into the daily workings of our lives and our connections to those in it, Corrigan is time and time again able to relay her singular personal experiences while transforming them into the universal threads we instantly understand and see ourselves reflected back. "Glitter and Glue" is about the journeys we all take in life—both literal and emotional—and what really counts as 'life experience' and how that too, changes over time.
Not all of us are mothers—but all of us has one. Kelly Corrigan's "Glitter and Glue" is as heartfelt as it is provocative and will urge you to re-examine the woman behind your mother.
"Kelly Corrigan's heartfelt homage to motherhood is every bit as tough and funny as it is nostalgic and searching. It's a tale about growing up, gaining wisdom, and reconciling with Mom but it's also an honest meditation on our deepest fears of death and abandonment. I loved this book, I was moved by this book, and now I will share this book with my own mother—along with my renewed appreciation for certain debts of love that can never be repaid." Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of The Signature of All Things and Eat, Pray, Love.
She won the hearts of many during her last visit to Darien, to discuss her first memoir, "The Middle Place," an account of both her and her father's battle with cancer.
Tickets are $55 and include a light lunch and a copy of "Glitter and Glue". Tickets are available through the Community Fund of Darien website, or at Barrett Bookstore, 314 Heights Road, Darien. For more information call 203 655-2712.


New Zealand's plantation forests are increasingly grown in tiger country – on steep hills that are often prone to erosion. To harvest those hills, you need highly skilled roading engineers and operators who can construct low-cost, fit-for-purpose, roads, culverts and landings that meet high environmental standards.
To do this, they need a source of reliable information about what works and what doesn't work in difficult terrain and across a wide range of soil types.
Launching the New Zealand Forest Road Engineering Manual and associated Operators Guide, associate minister for primary industries Nathan Guy complimented the Forest Owners Association for taking the lead. Principal editor Brett Gilmore was praised for putting a huge amount of work into the project.
"The purpose of the Forest Road Engineering Manual is to provide a one-stop shop for information on all aspects of the planning, design, construction and maintenance of unsealed forest roads," said Mr Guy.
"Road engineering is one of the most technically challenging and expensive parts of forestry. This manual documents best practice and provides all forest owners – large and small – with access to important information.
The annual harvest is forecast to climb to a projected 35 million cubic metres a year from the early 2020s. This could equate to 14,000 km of new harvest access roads required in the next 10 years, at a cost of around a billion dollars.
"A major part of this will come from smaller owners, many of whom may be harvesting for the first time. These owners will be looking for practical guidance on road planning and construction to make existing tracks suitable for heavy vehicle access," Mr Guy said.
FOA transport committee chair Brian Pritchard said building roads through the bush was a core forestry skill, but in recent years harvesting crews have found themselves working more frequently in steep hill country.
"This has tested the roading and landing making skills of forest owners and contractors at a time when council water quality plans have been paying greater attention to the run-off of silt and other debris.
"But to their great credit, forest owners and contractors have risen to the challenge. They have identified practices that have performed well under storm conditions in very difficult country. They have also identified those practices that don't perform well.


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Dvla contact number Orangeville 61060 - 0844 448 5990
DVLA Orangeville Contact Number
DVLA Contact Number for Customer Service in Orangeville
The contact number provided will connect you to the DVLA. Call DVLA Orangeville now!
Driving and find more information Medical Condition 0300 790 6806
The services was exceptional and the menu was, also. Specially liked the salmon epernay. This is among our favourite Portsmouth cafe. a lot more
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We are sorry to listen to regarding your issues with your home at Portsmouth Apartments. We do our greatest to make certain we have been offering inhabitants with the very best knowledge achievable. We entire market surveys on a regular monthly basis for being educated area housing companies. This facts signifies that our price ranges are very competitive with the realm and normally, we've been the bottom in comparison to apartments with very similar facilities.
"the objective of the Portsmouth faculties is to teach all students by difficult them to become contemplating, accountable, contributing citizens who continue to know all through their life."
Traditionally, Portsmouth has played An important purpose in British history, specifically as the home from the Royal Navy. The wealthy heritage in town delivers various routines for that visitor, not minimum the Historic Dockyard which properties one among An important collections of historic warships in the world.
Portsmouth is usually a university city, residence on the University of Portsmouth and so has a sizable multicultural student population.
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just one major complaint (noize), in any other case relatively very good apartments on the whole. There Orangeville is an issue with lease that keeps heading up. Was going to be more than $900 (up from $840) future calendar year if I stayed. Mostly only moving out since I got a job in another metropolis. For particulars:
On 6 may well 2008, Portsmouth unveiled a new crest which differed substantially through the old crest. The "star and moon" experienced a three dimensional appear along with the "three factors" at the very best on the shield were removed to be replaced with two corners. The "moon" also had additional diameter and General bore far more resemblance to that of the city's Coat of Arms. As A part of the WW1 Centennial Commemorations while in the 2014–15 time, the club opted to interchange the crest on the house kit with that which was applied back again in 1914. This was a more classic-searching club crest that includes a few points at the very best of a rather rounded shield but which has a silver 5-pointed Orangeville star within instead of the usual 8-pointed a single. The moon showcased around the crest was also silver, both appearing on the blue history.
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Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency;
Long View Rd Swansea, West Glamorgan SA6 7JL
You may book your driving test for cars, motorcycles, lorries, buses and coaches, and taxis. The service is currently available from 6am to 11:40pm. To apply for the same, you need some valid documents that include UK driving click for info license number, credit or debit card, driving instructor's personal reference number. You may even book a test to upgrade your current license for which you need to call the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA). The agency is open Monday to Friday, 8am to midday.


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Social Media Apps Updates and Stories
Anything about social media apps features, updates, and stories
Snapchat Has More Than 200 Million Daily Users
by admin · July 24, 2019
Snap is trying to get back up from adversity. In the Q2 earnings report released, Snap announced its social network had 203 million active Snapchat users in the last quarter.
This number increased by eight compared to the same period last year, and increased by seven percent compared to the previous quarter, as reported by Engadget.
One of the achievements was caused by the design changes that were rolled out by Snap for the Android version of its social networking application last quarter.
Snap says that users use this new application seven percent more, although this statement is considered confusing with the number of new users of Android devices.
The number of users is estimated in recognition that there are Android users with older devices that don't run the new version of the application. Snap also mentions that new users use Snapchat application for a longer duration.
also read: Deadpool Snapchat Filter
Snap found an increase of more than 10 percent at the level of recognition of people who just accessed Snapchat for the first time.
As for financial performance, Snap still has not experienced profits even though it is reported to be happening in the near future.
Snap reportedly made a profit of USD388 million (IDR5.4 trillion), an increase of 48 percent compared to Q2 in 2018. But Snap still suffered a loss of USD255 million (Rp3.5 trillion) in the last quarter, a decrease of 28 percent compared to the loss in Q2 2018.
also read: Snapchat voice commands filters
Meanwhile, the Discover Snap platform also gained more attention from users in the last quarter. Audience content grew by 35 percent last year, although Snap was reluctant to share the exact numbers to qualify for the number of viewers.
The total daily consumption time on the Discover platform also increased by 60 percent compared to 2018. Previously, Snap announced that the Creator Show will soon appear on Snapchat in order to welcome the VidCon event.
This three to five-minute program reported The Verge will air eight to 10 episodes per season, starting this summer on the Discovery page on the Snapchat app.
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At the Beyer watch museum you can admire hundreds of watches without worrying that a shop clerk is about to ask you which one you're interested in buying. But it's more than just beautiful watches and clocks - the exhibition shows the very different instruments used for time measurement from Egyptian times to today, like oil clocks or sundials. And we are sure the very passionate staff will answer any question you have. The museum is within the premises of the Beyer watch shop.
Open 14:00 - 18:00. Closed Sat, Sun.
Although quite small, this museum has some really interesting pieces like the smallest wrist watch in the world and even the watch worn by Sir Edmund Hillary when he climbed Everest. The best part of the museum is its passionate staff who describe each exhibit as if they made it themselves.


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I Was Kidnapped and Raped by My Neighbor
"As the days went by, I agonized: How long would it take before I was rescued?"
Locked in a hotel room with an abusive man for more than three months, Jessyca Mullenberg actually forgot who she was.
Early on the morning of Sept. 16, 1995, a friend of my dad's—a 38- year-old writing teacher named Steve Oliver—picked me up for a trip from Eau Claire to Madison, Wisconsin. We were going to oversee the layout of a book of my writings. Although I was only 13 years old and in the seventh grade, Oliver had told my dad that he'd submitted my work to Random House, and they actually wanted to publish it. I packed CDs, a T-shirt, a pair of pants, and a swimsuit. We left at 7 a.m., while my brothers, sisters, and stepmom were still sleeping. I dozed off during the drive, and when I awoke, I was tied up.
"Here's how it's going to be," Oliver said in a low, terrifying voice. "You are no longer Jessyca. Your name is Cindy Johnson. My name is David Johnson. I'm your father. If anyone asks why you look so sad, it's because your mother and twin brother recently died in a car accident."
That was the beginning of the most horrifying three months of my life. Oliver drove to the Kansas City airport, where he held a concealed knife to my back as we boarded a plane for Houston. There, we stayed in two different seedy hotels before settling into a Days Inn near the airport. That's where I remained—most of the time locked inside a room—for the next 101 days. And almost every day, my captor forced me to have sex with him.
How did he get away with this? Why did I do what he told me? Why couldn't I escape? Why did I forget who I was for a while? These are the questions people asked me then ... and now, more than 10 years later. I tell them it is simply an unimaginable experience—an experience I am still recovering from today, at age 24.
A Child's Nightmare
I first met Oliver in third grade, when he was a teacher's aide at my school. He and his son lived next door to my mom (my parents were divorced). Oliver invited kids over to play in his yard or watch videos. A balding man with thick glasses, he made me sit on his lap. I remember the awful smell of his body odor mingled with cigarettes and coffee. Although he always wore a dress shirt buttoned right up to the collar, he looked dirty.
Steve Oliver before the abduction.
He began sexually abusing me in his house—he would tell me I'd done something bad and order me into the kitchen. There, if I didn't touch him the way he wanted, he'd hit me. Eventually he was forcing intercourse and oral sex on me, sometimes twice a day. He would punch me on the legs or back, or strike me with a broom.
His abuse was psychological as well as physical. He told me I was stupid, useless, and ugly, and no boy would ever date me. He terrorized me with threats of what he would do if I ever told anyone about us. The one time I resisted, he stabbed me in the stomach with the tip of a knife. I bled all over, but he refused to take me to the hospital, ordering me to bandage myself. If anyone ever found out, he warned, he'd murder my entire family. After that, I didn't resist anymore.
Why did he choose me? Psychologists say pedophiles can spot a victim, so maybe Oliver recognized my vulnerability. Before he came along, two grown men had already abused me sexually. At 5, the father of my dad's girlfriend, who frequently babysat me, fondled me in my bed and made me masturbate him. The second abuser, a roommate of my dad's, forced me to give him oral sex repeatedly.
But finally, in the fifth grade, it seemed my gruesome nightmare was over. My stepfather and mother moved our family to another town. I was so happy—at last I was free! But I wasn't. Almost immediately, Steve Oliver showed up and began calling my house, asking me and my brothers to play with his son. My mother called the police, but that didn't stop him. He returned to Eau Claire and moved into a trailer near my dad, knowing I visited him every other weekend.
Oliver convinced my dad that I should join his children's publishing workshop. Each week, we wrote poems and essays, but now I think the main purpose was to lure kids to have sex with him. I'm pretty sure he abused another girl in the group. I didn't know it then, but the police were closing in on Oliver for wire fraud, and he decided to flee. But he wasn't leaving without his little girl.
Jessyca Mullenberg before the abduction.
A Life in Hiding
After my abduction to Houston, Oliver cut my hair short and dyed it from blonde to dark brown, and he made me wear baggy clothes so I looked almost like a boy. He told the management at the Days Inn the story about my mom and brother's death in a car accident. They felt sorry for him and hired him as a maintenance man. We lived among a block of vacant rooms that weren't up to building code, and he used to lock me inside all day and night, checking in every now and then. If I didn't follow orders, he'd tie me to the bed or beat me.
At first, I was hopeful that my parents would find me. As the days went by, I agonized: How long would it take before I was rescued? Was I ever going to return home? Would I ever see my family and friends or have a normal life again? As long as I was with Oliver, I knew the pain would never end. I tried calling home but kept getting wrong numbers. I finally figured out that he'd altered the phone so that if I dialed a two, it might actually be a five or an eight.
Then I stopped trying. Something in me had started to change —to give up. Over and over, Oliver told me my real parents hated me and no one would ever love me. I'd heard that from different adult men since I was 5. If you hear something enough, you believe it. He also made up memories for me as Cindy Johnson until I could no longer discern the difference between my life and this false life that was forced upon me.
Jessyca and her family.
The Rescue
Oliver watched America's Most Wanted religiously for anything that indicated the police were on his trail. The one evening he didn't watch, I later learned, was the night the pro- gram aired a segment about my kidnapping. A woman working in the hotel restaurant recognized Oliver from his photo and called the show.
Some time around 2 a.m., FBI agents entered our room. They shoved Oliver against the wall and took me aside and asked me my name. "Cindy Johnson," I answered. "No," an agent said. "Your name is Jessyca."
But by now, I really thought my name was Cindy Johnson. Only after they showed me photos of my parents at the field-office headquarters could I remember my mom and stepdad. I knew part of our address, but our home phone number was gone. I'd been brainwashed. The agents tried to help me understand. They questioned me from the time they rescued me until my mom's plane landed the next afternoon, Dec. 29, 1995.
As soon as my mom got off the plane, I didn't need anyone's prompting. I ran into her arms. One hundred and five days after Oliver kidnapped me, I was back with my family. From every direction, reporters shouted questions and took my picture. The FBI agents told me that at that time, I was 1 of only 13 missing children to be found alive in the entire country.
I didn't talk to my parents about what happened during my kidnapping. I came home on a weekend, and that Monday, I went back to school because I desperately wanted life to return to normal. My old friends didn't know what to say to me though, and other kids taunted me, asking, "Why didn't you try to get away?"
It's a question that's haunted me ever since. Everyone says, "I would have done this or that," but they weren't there. Could I have gotten away? No. I'd just turned 13, I weighed 100 pounds, and Oliver had previously stabbed me to keep me quiet. I figured if he had it in him to do that, he could kill me.
Fortunately, some wonderful teachers helped me overcome the bullying and keep my spirits high. I earned good grades, created art projects, and worked at after-school jobs. They enabled me to not let Oliver take over my future as he had my childhood. When the trial took place in June 1996, I testified for hours. Oliver and his lawyers argued that I'd run away willingly, luring him to Texas. The jury didn't believe them, and my tormentor received a 40-year prison sentence without parole. I'd also told the FBI and police about the two other men who had molested me as a little girl, and they both were convicted.
Jessyca in Wisconsin in 2007.
After high school, I went to the University of Wisconsin at Stout and majored in psychology with minors in criminal justice-law enforcement and sociology. I graduated last year with honors. It's very unusual for a kidnapped kid to finish high school, much less college. But the more anyone said I couldn't, the more determined I became to succeed.
My kidnapping changed me for life—on the inside and on the outside. Oliver hit me in the face so many times, my bones never fully developed and started to deteriorate, resulting in 10 jaw surgeries in a year. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a muscular disorder so debilitating that at times, I can barely walk. I hate to fly on planes because I was forced to board one shortly after I was kidnapped. I can't stand the smell of coffee, because Oliver's breath always smelled of it.
For a while, I believed violence was normal and became the victim of an abusive boyfriend. As I grew stronger, I left that relationship, and now I won't tolerate anyone who yells at me, hits me, or degrades me in any manner.
Even though trusting people is very hard, I hope to marry one day and have children. I met my current boyfriend, Curt, at the bowling center where we worked. We began as friends and have now been together for more than two years. We have our good times and bad times, and I still have difficulties opening up, but I'm trying to remain positive.
I simply won't let Oliver win. Whenever I can, I speak at schools and conferences about sexual abuse. My goal is to attend graduate school and then to have a career as an advocate for those who have been kidnapped or sexually abused, or I may work in foster care. I'm leaving my options open. But I'm devoted to doing everything I can to prevent another little girl or boy from becoming a victim.
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Kitten Struggling To Stay Afloat In The Gulf Of Mexico Gets Rescued By A Fishing Boat
December 1, 2020 by William Lewis
A ship from Still Flyin Charters departed for a regular day cruise on the Perdido Pass in Orange Beach when it encountered a heartbreaking scene.
As the boat made its way through the Perdido Pass, which connects the waterways between the Perdido Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, they saw what they first thought was a sea turtle. But after a closer inspection, the crew realized it was a kitten that was drowning. The crew turned the boat around to rescue it.
Photo credit: Still Flyin Charters
"He was struggling to stay awake," Captain Steve Crews, owner of the sailing company, later reported.
The crew quickly set out to save the terrified animal. According to Crews, the drowning kitten was constantly meowing as the crew tried to find a way to get him aboard the boat without further traumatizing him.
Once the soaked kitten was safely on board, the crew dried him and comforted him as they returned to shore. The episode was documented in several snapshots taken during the time of the dramatic rescue and was later shared by the company on their official Facebook page.
"Our catch of the day," the crew reported. "We caught him just outside the pass in the gulf."
From now on, the crew can only speculate on how the cat ended up so far out to sea. They reasoned that "the poor thing was sucked out by the tide".
Once the cat dried up and calmed down a bit, it became clear that it was a young orange male. There was no confirmation of his age, but according to photos the company posted online, the kitten could not have been more than several months old.
However, this rescue story that could have turned tragic found a somewhat happy ending. According to the company's publication, one of its sailors tried to place the kitten in a home for good, but the animal refused.
So Crews and his family are taking care of him. Crews added that the animal remains nervous, but will accept food and water from him and his wife. He also believes they might call him "Sharkbite" or more appropriately, "Lucky".


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MUSIC SATURDAY - PIETRO NARDINI
"Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on." - Samuel Butler
For Music Saturday, Pietro Nardini's delightful Sonatas for Strings. Pietro Nardini, (born April 12, 1722 , Livorno, Tuscany; died May 7, 1793 , Florence), was an Italian violinist and composer, one of the most eminent violinists of the 18th century. He was the most famous pupil of the composer and virtuoso violinist Giuseppe Tartini. Nardini was solo violinist at the court at Stuttgart from 1753 to 1767. He then returned to Livorno and lived with Tartini during Tartini's last illness until his death in 1770. In 1770 Nardini became music director to the duke of Tuscany. He enjoyed great fame as a composer and performer, his playing praised by contemporaries for its beauty and emotional power. His violin compositions, though not numerous, are melodious and highly playable and are valued as technical studies.
Labels: biography, classics, italy, music
FOOD FRIDAY - MACARONS
"If God hadn't meant for us to eat sugar, he wouldn't have invented dentists." - Ralph Nader
A little bit of whimsy for Food Friday today. As we had egg whites left over after making mayonnaise, we decided to make some French macarons. These are all the rage in Melbourne presently and there are even some shops completely devoted to making and selling these dainty biscuits.
French Macarons
4 large egg whites (or 5 small)
70g caster sugar
230g pure icing sugar
120g almond meal, finely ground
2g salt (tiny pinch)
gel food colouring (optional)
vanilla essence (or flavouring of your choice)
Preheat the oven to 150 degrees C
Place egg whites and caster sugar in a bowl and mix with electric mixer until stiff enough to turn the bowl upside down without it falling out, continue to whip for 1-2 more minutes.
How long this takes will depend on your mixer. Add gel or powdered food colouring and continue to mix for a further 20 seconds.
Sift the almond meal and icing sugar and salt twice, discarding any almond lumps that are too big to pass through the sieve. Fold into the egg white mixture. It should take roughly 30-50 folds using a rubber spatula. The mixture should be smooth and a very viscous, not runny. Over-mix and your macarons will be flat and have no foot, under mix and they will not be smooth on top.
Pipe onto trays lined with baking paper, rap trays on the bench firmly (this prevents cracking) and then bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Check if one comes off the tray fairly cleanly, if not bake for a little longer (make sure you are using NON-stick baking paper or they will stick).
Ganache filling
100g chocolate
Bring the cream to the boil and pour over the chocolate. Let stand for a minute and then stir. If it is not adequately melted then microwave for 20 seconds and stir – repeat until smooth. Allow to cool and thicken before piping onto macarons.
Buttercream filling
1-4 tablespoons of milk or cream
Vanilla essence (or flavouring/colouring of your choice)
Leave the butter to soften at room temperature then beat together with the icing sugar and 1 tablespoon of milk or cream until smooth and light in colour. Add extra spoons of milk one at a time until the desired consistency is reached.
Labels: food_friday, france, recipes
A TIMELY REMINDER...
For the Festive Season.
Labels: peace, serenity, social_change
OUR LADY AND TWO SAINTS
"Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected." - Mahatma Gandhi
Today is Mexico's Guadalupe Festival; The Feast Day of St Finian, and the Feast Day of St Spyridon.
It is also the anniversary of the birth of:
Henry Wells, founder of American Express/Wells Fargo Co. (1805);
Gustave Flaubert, French writer (1821);
Henri Becquerel, Nobel laureate (1903) physicist (1852);
Edvard Munch, artist (1863);
Frank Sinatra, US actor/singer (1915);
Joe Williams, singer (1918);
John Osborne, playwright (1929);
Connie Francis (Concetta Franconero), singer (1938);
Dionne Warwick, singer (1941).
Coriander, Coriandrum sativum, is today's birthday plant and in the language of flowers it symbolises hidden wealth and concealed merit. Astrologers assign the plant to Saturn. Since ancient times, coriander has been enjoyed in many cultures for its culinary and medicinal values. Coriander is the most popular herb in the world and its use can be traced back to 5,000 BC where it was found in Egyptian tombs, making it one of the world's oldest spices.
Considered a member of the carrot family coriander has a love hate relationship in some parts of the world. The herb is widely used in cooking in Latin American countries, the Caribbean, India and China, but not in Japan or Spain. Traditionally coriander is used to treat migraines and indigestion to help purify the blood and to relieve nausea, pain in joints and rheumatism. Researchers found that coriander can assist with clearing the body of lead, aluminum and mercury.
St Finian was a native of Leinster and was instructed in the elements of Christian virtue by the disciples of St. Patrick. He travelled to Wales but about the year 520 AD he returned into Ireland. To propagate the work of God, the Saint established several monasteries and schools. St. Finian was chosen and consecrated Bishop of Clonard. In the love of his flock and his zeal for their salvation he was infirm with the infirm, and wept with those that wept. He healed the souls, and often also the bodies, of those that applied to him. He died on the 12th of December in 552 AD and his feast day commemorates this.
St Finian is especially celebrated in the Highlands of Scotland and the islands. It is very unlucky to go to bed without having supper on this night as anybody who does so will be spirited away over the housetops by fairies. This was a good excuse for many a feast and a carousal where much whisky and delicacies were consumed well into the night.
St Spyridon was born in Askeia, in Cyprus. He worked as a shepherd and was known for his great piety. He married and had one daughter, Irene. Upon the death of his wife, Spyridon entered a monastery, and their daughter, a convent.
Spyridon eventually became Bishop of Trimythous, or Tremithous (today called Tremetousia), in the district of Larnaca (while the tradition of the Eastern Church does not allow the ordination of married men cohabiting with their living spouses as Bishops, the ordination of widowers is fairly common). He took part in the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325), where he was instrumental in countering the theological arguments of Arius and his followers.
He reportedly converted a pagan philosopher to Christianity by using a potsherd to illustrate how one single entity (a piece of pottery) could be composed of three unique entities (fire, water and clay); a metaphor for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
As soon as Spyridon finished speaking, the shard is said to have miraculously burst into flame, water dripped on the ground, and only dust remained in his hand (other accounts of this event say that it was a brick he held in his hand).
After the council, Saint Spiridon returned to his diocese in Tremithous. He later fell into disfavour during the persecutions of the emperor Maximinus, but died peacefully in old age. His biography was recorded by the hagiographer Simeon Metaphrastes and the church historians, Sozomen and Socrates Scholasticus. St Spyridon is the Patron Saint of the Greek island of Corfu.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe, is a title of the Virgin Mary associated with a celebrated pictorial image housed in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in México City. Official Catholic accounts state that on the morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw an apparition of a young girl at the Hill of Tepeyac, near Mexico City. Speaking to him in Nahuatl, the girl asked that a church be built at that site in her honour; from her words, Juan Diego recognised the girl as the Virgin Mary.
Diego told his story to the Spanish Archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, who instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and ask the "lady" for a miraculous sign to prove her identity. The first sign was the Virgin healing Juan's uncle. The Virgin told Juan Diego to gather flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill. Although December was very late in the growing season for flowers to bloom, Juan Diego found Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, on the normally barren hilltop. The Virgin arranged these in his peasant cloak or tilma. When Juan Diego opened his cloak before Bishop Zumárraga on December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Juan Diego was canonised in 2002, and his tilma is displayed in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most visited Marian shrine in the world. The representation of the Virgin on the tilma is Mexico's most popular religious and cultural image, and under this title the Virgin has been acclaimed as "Queen of Mexico", "Patroness of the Americas", "Empress of Latin America", and "Protectress of Unborn Children" (the latter three given by Pope John Paul II in 1999). Under this title, she was also proclaimed "Heavenly Patroness of the Philippines" in 1935, a designation revised by Pope Pius XII in 1942.
Labels: anniversaries, biography, calendar, folklore, greece, ireland, mexico, religion
POETRY JAM - SEASON'S GREETINGS
"He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree." - Roy L. Smith
This week, Poetry Jam has urged followers to write about childhood beliefs. The approaching holy days of Christmas cannot be overlooked and in the jolly consumer's paradise we have created for ourselves, we try to recapture the magic of childhood and the wonder of true belief.
The Season's Greetings
The greeting cards announce in cursive script:
"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year"
As mailboxes fill with hollow cardboard wishes,
Stock sugary images – empty felicitations…
The carols blare in lifts, in shopping centres:
"Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth".
Children bright-eyed in greedy innocence,
Stare with hungry eyes at toy store displays.
The Father Christmases in their thousands, chuckle:
"Ho, ho, ho!", with white beards and hair a pale caricature.
The milling crowds around them hope to be infected
By their scarlet pretend jollity and ersatz joviality.
The decorations brightly sparkle, the Christmas lights shine:
"Noël, Noël" the electronics tinkle as they flicker on and off.
As families gather united under the same roof,
Their enmities are suspended, temporarily, under false smiles.
Somewhere a tiny baby is in a hovel born,
Its mother unmarried, only a distant relative present.
The stars burn bright in the firmament,
And one falls, streaking bright across the blue velvet.
In the cold air, the lowing of the cattle breaks the silence,
While somewhere in the distance a shepherd's pipe
Begins to play a simple tune that's carried by the wind.
Christmas again this year has come.
Labels: childhood, christmas, personal, poetry, poetry_jam, relationships, society
HUMAN RIGHTS DAY 2013
"To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity." - Nelson Mandela
The UN General Assembly proclaimed 10 December as Human Rights Day in 1950, to ensure awareness of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations. The UN General Assembly adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France, on the December 10, 1948.
In 2013, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights marks 20 years since its establishment. The United Nations General Assembly created the mandate of High Commissioner for the promotion and protection of all human rights in December 1993. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Conference in 2003, marked the beginning of a renewed effort in the protection and promotion of human rights and is regarded as one of the most significant human rights documents of the past quarter century.
Many events on this commemoration day aim to educate people, especially children and teenagers, on their human rights and the importance of upholding these in their own communities and further afield. The day is also popular for organising protests to alert people of circumstances in parts of the world where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not recognised or respected, or where the upholding of these rights is not considered to be important. Cultural events are also organised to celebrate human rights through music, dance, drama or fine art.
This is a good day for writing letters of support, hope, inspiration and expressing opinions about human rights. It is timely to think of those who live in countries and under regimes where they are not permitted to freely express their opinions. Several organisations around the world are active in promoting human rights and giving these people unable to claim their rights a voice for doing so, albeit indirectly.
Nelson Mandela's death recently reminded people all over the world of the struggle in South Africa where the battle for equality, and against racism, has resulted in a situation where new hope may flourish in a reinvented country. It is also timely to remember many other African countries where huge social and economic problems deny people may of the rights that in Western countries take for granted. The rights of women, people with disabilities, homosexuals and those belonging to religious minorities are also human rights and very often these individuals may be under multiple attacks every single day of their lives.
Labels: anniversaries, calendar, current_affairs, peace, social_change, society, tolerance
MOVIE MONDAY - PILLARS OF THE EARTH
"Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft." - Winston Churchill
At the weekend we started watching the 2012 eight-part mini-series "The Pillars of the Earth". This is based on Ken Follett's book of the same name and is directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. It stars Ian McShane, Matthew Macfadyen, Eddie Redmayne, Hayley Atwell, Natalia Wörner, Anatole Taubman and Rufus Sewell. It is a joint German/Canadian/UK production and has the expansive historical cavalcade type of approach that suits the mini-series format very well – certainly a movie of this book would not have done it justice.
The plot unfolds in the England of 1135 AD, a dark and violent time. King Henry I's only legitimate heir has died in a shipwreck, and the king has neglected God and the church during his reign. The priests and bishops are most eager to put a religious man on the throne after the poisoning of the king, and in return for swearing allegiance to them, they promise Stephen, the nephew of the king, to enthrone him. A fierce battle of succession ensues between Stephen and King Henry's only legitimate child Maude.
At this time, a young and ambitious monk named Philip is made Prior of Kingsbridge, a town that has suffered in recent times and that is in dire need to have its church rebuilt. Tom Builder travels through England with his son Alfred, his daughter Martha and after his wife Agnes died in childbirth, they are joined by the two outlaws Ellen and Jack. Finally, Tom finds a job in Shiring, but the earl, Lord Bartholomew is conspiring against the new king Stephen and the William Hamleigh, who was rejected by the lord's daughter Aliena. Philip, Tom and his family and Aliena are faced with several challenges and hardships, but their paths cross in Kingsbridge, and they all will play a vital role in the construction of the brand new cathedral.
There is intrigue aplenty, politics, love, sex, battle, violence, incest, skullduggery and lots of sweeping, inspiring panoramas of life in the twelfth century at all levels of society. The acting is good, the costumes and sets well-produced and the direction tight enough for such a mammoth undertaking of filming a novel of this scope and intricacy. Be warned that the series contains lots of violence and sex and also some very colourful language and mature themes.
We look forward to watching the rest of this series, but also I believe there is a sequel, "World without End", which I would like to get hold of to watch too. This sequel doesn't rate as highly on IMDB as does the original series, but nevertheless, it does get good reviews. Definitely worth watching if you like epic historical dramas.
Labels: canada, england, germany, history, movies, society, violence
ART SUNDAY - SEURAT
"Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science." - Georges Seurat
Georges Seurat (2 December 1859, Paris, France; to 29 March 1891, Paris, France from diphtheria), one of the members of 'Salon des Refusés' who learned from classical training and from contemporary art and was rejected by the official Salon, became the founder of Pointilism (Divisionism) in art. He was born Georges-Pierre Seurat, the youngest of three children in the family of a wealthy lawyer, Chrysostome-Antoine Seurat. His mother, named Ernestine Faivre, came from a prosperous Parisian family.
During the early 1870s young Seurat was taking private drawing lessons from his uncle, painter Paul Haumonte, who took him on regular art expeditions. From 1875 he studied drawing under the sculptor Justin Lequien. From 1878-1879 Seurat studied art at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His teacher Henri Lehmann was a disciple of the great neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who was the student of Jacques-Louis David. That training was formative for his meticulous working procedure, which Seurat developed in his mature works. Having served at Brest Military Academy for one year, he returned to Paris and continued his art studies.
During the year of 1883 Seurat was working on his first large painting 'La baignade a Asnieres' (Bathers at Asnieres 1883), which was rejected by the official Salon. However, the painting was exhibited by the Societé des Artistes Indépendants, which was organised as a second 'Salon des Refusés' (Salon of the Refused). At their initial show in 1884, Seurat's 'Bathers at Asnieres' was exhibited along with the works by Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh, and Paul Signac. That was the beginning of Seurat's friendship with Signac, who connected him to the avant-garde group 'Les Vingt' in Brussels.
Seurat exhibited seven of his works in Brussels in 1887. His collaboration with Signac led to foundation and development of Neo-Impressionism, the artistic movement also known as Pointillism or Divisionism. Seurat himself preferred the term Divisionism. Seurat was a man of modest means and modest lifestyle. He was abstinent from alcohol, or any other drugs and stayed totally devoted to his art. He was known as a quiet and at times depressed, but robust and generous person. He was always helping his friends and arranging their exhibitions and hanging the paintings.
Seurat lived in his art-studio with his young model Madeleine Knobloch, whom he met in 1889. She came from a working class family and was not fully accepted by Seurat's established friends. In February of 1890, she gave birth to their son Pierre-George. Seurat was secretive about his private life, a trait he inherited from his father. He became traumatised at the news of the death of Vincent van Gogh in 1890.
Seurat introduced his young family to his parents just days before he was "choked to death" by a throat infection, diagnosed as diphtheria, which also killed his little son two weeks later, and killed his father after another month. Seurat died on March 29, 1891, and was laid to rest in the Cimitière du Pere-Lachaise in Paris, France. Georges Seurat produced most of his works during the 1880's, which are regarded as one of the most salient periods of aesthetic change. He exhibited his last ambitious work, 'Le Cirque' (The Circus 1891), while it was still unfinished. It was Seurat's visual retelling of the story of 'Frères Zemgano', a novel by Edmont De Goncourt.
During his short life Seurat made only seven large paintings, working for a year or more on each one. At the same time he made about five hundred smaller paintings and drawings. Seurat produced a strong stimulating effect on his fellow artists. Neo-Impressionists were later joined by Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Rousseau, and other artists who developed the idea of Pointillism (or Divisionism) in other artistic movements, such as Fauvism.
Dividing colours in order to produce special effects was attempted by many artists. Seurat was the first one to meticulously fill every centimetre of his paintings with swirling swarms of small colourful dots which represented the desired color, when a painting was looked at from a distance. His work quality ascended to such an artistic height, that it attracted masses of followers and made a lasting impact on generations of artists, designers, architects, photographers, cinematographers, and even on today's cutting-edge digital software developers.
Seurat's influence on fashion design was evident in some successful fashion collections from such acclaimed couturiers as Oleg Cassini, whose use of colour patterns alluded to those of Seurat's, as well, as Vyacheslav Zaytsev and Pierre Cardin among many others. Seurat's visual language, his innovative and thoughtful interplay of colours, has the ability to trick our mind into a special way of looking at the world, and gives us an impression of the wonderful ways in which art can imitate nature.
The "Circus Sideshow" (La Parade du Cirque) of 1887–88 (Oil on canvas; 99.7 x 149.9 cm) is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is one of six major figure paintings that Seurat produced during his short career. More compact than his other mural-size compositions, and more mysterious in its allure, Seurat's first nocturnal painting debuted at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants in Paris. On a balustraded stage, under the misty glow of nine twinkling gaslights, a ringmaster (at right) and musicians (at left) play to a crowd of potential ticket buyers, whose assorted hats add a wry and rhythmic note to the foreground.
Seurat made on-site sketches in the spring of 1887, when Fernand Corvi's travelling circus was set up in a working-class district of Paris, near the place de la Nation; he then developed the composition through several preparatory studies. "Circus Sideshow" represents the first important painting Seurat devoted to a scene of popular entertainment. In effect, it sets the stage for his last great figure compositions, "La Chahut" of 1889–90 (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo) and "Circus" of 1890–91 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris).
Labels: biography, france, impressionism, modern_art


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text:
Balian d'Ibelin: Knight of Jerusalem (Jerusalem Trilogy)
By: Helena P. Schrader
Publisher: Wheatmark
Reviewed by: Amy Lignor
Review Date: August 3, 2020
There are things you need to know up front in regards to this book, especially if you are a huge fan of this author, like I am. This is actually Book 1 of a "biographical" trilogy spotlighting the interesting life of Balian d'Ibelin. Now, if readers remember this amazing man from Helena's previous work, it's because in 2014, the first edition of Knight of Jerusalem was released after two years of research. But, as the author states, after learning even more about the Ibelins, as well as the Crusader states, it turned out that Balian needed a longer look when it came to his life, work, the battles he fought, and the man he truly was throughout his life.
Upon diving into this new series, you will once again be transported back to Jerusalem and learn more about the always fascinating land of "milk and honey." Not only will this in-depth look perhaps alter your views of Jerusalem, but the author also gives us much more to think about when it comes to the look, feel, and beliefs that were held dear in the twelfth century.
Born the same year his father died, Balian's beginnings included a mother who remarried. As the third son, his inheritance was zero; however, Balian was later granted the right to marry a dowager queen who brought quite a bit of financial security to the union. When it comes to documentation, Balian is best known for what falls between the years of 1177 and 1192. But, as this author always does, the fictional pieces of this story are brought to life with a true richness and color that shows in detail the path Balian took to eventually become a crusader noble of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. As the Lord of Ibelin during those pivotal years, he became the leader of the defense of the city during the siege of Jerusalem in 1187, and readers will be amazed to watch Balian's life in this book as it all starts to play out.
We see this world at a time when the Holy Land was predominantly Christian. We also see a world where different faiths lived together in harmony; not pain. We are introduced to Maria Comnena, Queen of Jerusalem and the wife of King Amalric, and learn about her beginnings, her feelings about her marriage to Amalric I, and the cravings she had for more. This much-maligned woman, who was later called "scheming" by English chroniclers, is shown in other ways as Balian is inserted into her world, and every emotion is felt by the reader. From passion to anger, you can almost feel the building of a war that will explode further down the line as the relationship of Balian and Maria commence.
Although Balian has been a character in the Hollywood realm, portrayed as a blacksmith, it is the Arab writings that focus on Balian as being far more "like a king." When it came to the roles of warrior, diplomat, and even servant, Balian had the skills and talents for each; he even had the backbone and strength to defy the famous Richard the Lionheart.
As a fan, it is no surprise that I loved this book. As a person who is intrigued by history, Helena has chosen to do this "historical biography" on someone who has now found a place on my list of the most memorable souls who ever swung a sword. I cannot wait to read the next phase of Balian's life story as it unfolds.
Quill says: This goes beyond the "historical" label and straight into the realm of fascinating!
For more information on Balian d'Ibelin: Knight of Jerusalem (Jerusalem Trilogy), please visit the author's website at: helenapschrader.com


text:
David M. Krinsky
dkrinsky@wc.com
David Krinsky is a litigator who focuses on patent and other high-technology litigation. He has litigated major patent cases in technical fields ranging from molecular biology and medicinal chemistry to software, telecommunications, and energy. As a former software engineer, David focuses a significant part of his practice on litigation in the field of computer technology, and he has defended several major software companies against charges of patent infringement. Another significant portion of David's practice is Hatch-Waxman pharmaceutical patent litigation, in which David has worked to uphold the validity and infringement of patents covering both active pharmaceutical ingredients and pharmaceutical formulations. In addition to practice before the federal district courts, David has an active appellate practice, having argued multiple appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
David also is a registered patent attorney who routinely appears before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings. In this capacity, he has served as lead counsel in numerous IPRs in the software industry as well as on behalf of pharmaceutical clients.
In 2020, David was recognized as a BTI Client Service All-Star, a "select group of attorneys who deliver superior client service to Fortune 1000 clients."
Raised in Connecticut, David received an A.B. in Physics, cum laude, from Harvard College in 1999, and a J.D., summa cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center in 2005. At Georgetown, he was an Executive Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. After clerking for Judge Roger Titus of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland and Judge Richard Linn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, David joined Williams & Connolly in 2008.
Represented Eli Lilly and Company at multiple trials and in the Federal Circuit in its defense of a patent covering the blockbuster anti-cancer drug ALIMTA.®
Argued on behalf of Google in multiple inter partes review proceedings, and in Federal Circuit appeals from those proceedings, challenging patents asserted against Google and its customers.
Represented a biopharmaceutical company in a bench trial defending one of its leading products in Hatch-Waxman litigation in the District of New Jersey, as well as in IPRs before the PTAB.
Represented Bayer in the district court and Federal Circuit in a patent suit filed by Biogen relating to recombinant DNA technology, as well as in a related ex parte reexamination proceeding.
Represented Petroleum Geo-Services, including as arguing counsel before the PTAB, in multiple inter partes review proceedings relating to seismic surveying technology.
Represented Alcon at trial and on appeal in multiple Hatch-Waxman patent litigations relating to ophthalmic pharmaceutical products.
Represented an inventor in a patent dispute regarding a computerized financial trading system, in which he argued a summary judgment motion regarding invalidity under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and subsequently drafted panel and en banc appeal briefs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Represented a major processor manufacturer in products liability litigation relating to microprocessor security.
Represented a major computer company in trade secret litigation regarding software for processing Big Data.
Represented a major smartphone manufacturer in standards-essential telecommunications software litigation.
Georgetown University Law Center, J.D., summa cum laude, 2005; Order of the Coif; Executive Editor, Georgetown Law Journal
Harvard University, A.B., cum laude, 1999
Judge Richard Linn, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 2006 - 2008
Judge Roger W. Titus, United States District Court for the District of Maryland, 2005 - 2006
Practice Focus
Merck Prevails in Patent Trial
Federal Circuit Affirms Dropbox Victory
Three Partners Named to the 2020 BTI Client Services All-Stars List
David Berl and David Krinsky to Speak at IAM's IP 2020 Conference
Alice Turns 2: How Fed. Circ. Treats Computer-Related Patents
How to Sue Without Standing: The Constitutionality of Citizen Suits in Non-Article III Tribunals
The Supreme Court, Stare Decisis, and the Role of Appellate Deference in Patent Claim Construction Appeals
BTI Client Service All-Star, 2020
Selected to Washington, D.C. "Rising Stars" list, Super Lawyers, 2014-2017
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth and Federal Circuits
United States District Court for the District of Maryland, District of Columbia, District of Colorado, and District of Indiana