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The Eroding Character of the American People — Paul Craig Roberts
July 23, 2015 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: | Print This Article
The Eroding Character of the American People
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.—Bob Dylan, "Hurricane"
Attorney John W. Whitehead opens a recent posting (see below) on his Rutherford Institute website with these words from a song by Bob Dylan. Why don't all of us feel ashamed? Why only Bob Dylan?
I wonder how many of Bob Dylan's fans understand what he is telling them. American justice has nothing to do with innocence or guilt. It only has to do with the prosecutor's conviction rate, which builds his political career. Considering the gullibility of the American people, American jurors are the last people to whom an innocent defendant should trust his fate. The jury will betray the innocent almost every time.
As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book (2000, 2008) there is no justice in America. We titled our book, "How the Law Was Lost." It is a description of how the protective features in law that made law a shield of the innocent was transformed over time into a weapon in the hands of the government, a weapon used against the people. The loss of law as a shield occurred prior to 9/11, which "our representative government" used to construct a police state.
The marketing department of our publisher did not appreciate our title and instead came up with "The Tyranny of Good Intentions." We asked what this title meant. The marketing department answered that we showed that the war on crime, which gave us the abuses of RICO, the war on child abusers, which gave us show trials of total innocents that bested Joseph Stalin's show trials of the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the war on drugs, which gave "Freedom and Democracy America" broken families and by far the highest incarceration rate in the world all resulted from good intentions to combat crime, to combat drugs, and to combat child abuse. The publisher's title apparently succeeded, because 15 years later the book is still in print. It has sold enough copies over these years that, had the sales occurred upon publication would have made the book a "best seller." The book, had it been a best seller, would have gained more attention, and perhaps law schools and bar associations could have used it to hold the police state at bay.
Whitehead documents how hard a not guilty verdict is to come by for an innocent defendant. Even if the falsely accused defendant and his attorney survive the prosecutor's pressure to negotiate a plea bargain and arrive at a trial, they are confronted with jurors who are unable to doubt prosecutors, police, or witnesses paid to lie against the innocent defendant. Jurors even convicted the few survivors of the Clinton regime's assault on the Branch Davidians of Waco, the few who were not gassed, shot, or burned to death by US federal forces. This religious sect was demonized by Washington and the presstitute media as child abusers who were manufacturing automatic weapons while they raped children. The charges proved to be false, like Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," and so forth, but only after all of the innocents were dead or in prison.
The question is: why do Americans not only sit silently while the lives of innocents are destroyed, but also actually support the destruction of the lives of innocents? Why do Americans believe "official sources" despite the proven fact that "official sources" lie repeatedly and never tell the truth?
The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed. We have failed Justice. We have failed Mercy. We have failed the US Constitution. We have failed Truth. We have failed Democracy and representative government. We have failed ourselves and humanity. We have failed the confidence that our Founding Fathers put in us. We have failed God. If we ever had the character that we are told we had, we have obviously lost it. Little, if anything, remains of the "American character."
Was the American character present in the torture prisons of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and hidden CIA torture dungeons where US military and CIA personnel provided photographic evidence of their delight in torturing and abusing prisoners? Official reports have concluded that along with torture went rape, sodomy, and murder. All of this was presided over by American psychologists with Ph.D. degrees.
We see the same inhumanity in the American police who respond to women children, the elderly, the physically and mentally handicapped, with gratuitous violence. For no reason whatsoever, police murder, taser, beat, and abuse US citizens. Every day there are more reports, and despite the reports the violence goes on and on and on. Clearly, the police enjoy inflicting pain and death on citizens whom the police are supposed to serve and protect. There have always been bullies in the police force, but the wanton police violence of our time indicates a complete collapse of the American character.
The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought "freedom and democracy" to Iraq. "Mission accomplished," declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush.
The question is: how can the US government make such an obviously false outrageous claim without being shouted down by the rest of the world and by its own population? Is the answer that good character has disappeared from the world?
Or is the rest of the world too afraid to protest? Washington can force supposedly sovereign countries to acquiesce to its will or be cut off from the international payments mechanism that Washington controls, and/or be sanctioned, and/or be bombed, droned, or invaded, and/or be assassinated or overthrown in a coup. On the entire planet Earth there are only two countries capable of standing up to Washington, Russia and China, and neither wants to stand up if they can avoid it.
For whatever the reasons, not only Americans but most of the world as well accommodate Washington's evil and are thereby complicit in the evil. Those humans with a moral conscience are gradually being positioned by Washington and London as "domestic extremists" who might have to be rounded up and placed in detention centers. Examine the recent statements by General Wesley Clark and British Prime Minister Cameron and remember Janet Napolitano's statement that the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus from terrorists to domestic extremists, an undefined and open-ended term.
Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness. As John Whitehead makes clear, the American people cannot even prevent "their police," paid by their tax payments, from murdering 3 Americans each day, and this is only the officially reported murders. The actual account is likely higher.
What Whitehead describes and what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own sense of truth and falsity, any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples. Americans accept no sense of responsibility for the millions of peoples that Washington has exterminated over the past two decades dating back to the second term of Clinton. Every one of the millions of deaths is based on a Washington lie.
When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the affirmative.
Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise.
The American Nightmare: The Tyranny of the Criminal Justice System
Justice in America is not all it's cracked up to be.
Just ask Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit. Despite the fact that Deskovic's DNA did not match what was found at the murder scene, he was singled out by police as a suspect because he wept at the victim's funeral (he was 16 years old at the time), then badgered over the course of two months into confessing his guilt. He was eventually paid $6.5 million in reparation.
James Bain spent 35 years in prison for the kidnapping and rape of a 9-year-old boy, but he too was innocent of the crime. Despite the fact that the prosecutor's case was flimsy—it hinged on the similarity of Bain's first name to the rapist's, Bain's ownership of a red motorcycle, and a misidentification of Bain in a lineup by a hysterical 9-year-old boy—Bain was sentenced to life in prison. He was finally freed after DNA testing proved his innocence, and was paid $1.7 million.
Mark Weiner got off relatively easy when you compare his experience to the thousands of individuals who are spending lifetimes behind bars for crimes they did not commit.Weiner was wrongfully arrested, convicted, and jailed for more than two years for a crime he too did not commit. In his case, a young woman claimed Weiner had abducted her, knocked her out and then sent taunting text messages to her boyfriend about his plans to rape her. Despite the fact that cell phone signals, eyewitness accounts and expert testimony indicated the young woman had fabricated the entire incident, the prosecutor and judge repeatedly rejected any evidence contradicting the woman's far-fetched account, sentencing Weiner to eight more years in jail. Weiner was only released after his accuser was caught selling cocaine to undercover cops.
In the meantime, Weiner lost his job, his home, and his savings, and time with his wife and young son. As Slate reporter journalist Dahlia Lithwick warned, "If anyone suggests that the fact that Mark Weiner was released this week means 'the system works,' I fear that I will have to punch him in the neck. Because at every single turn, the system that should have worked to consider proof of Weiner's innocence failed him."
The system that should have worked didn't, because the system is broken, almost beyond repair.
In courtroom thrillers like 12 Angry Men and To Kill a Mockingbird, justice is served in the end because someone—whether it's Juror #8 or Atticus Finch—chooses to stand on principle and challenge wrongdoing, and truth wins.
Unfortunately, in the real world, justice is harder to come by, fairness is almost unheard of, and truth rarely wins.
On paper, you may be innocent until proven guilty, but in actuality, you've already been tried, found guilty and convicted by police officers, prosecutors and judges long before you ever appear in a courtroom. Chronic injustice has turned the American dream into a nightmare. At every step along the way, whether it's encounters with the police, dealings with prosecutors, hearings in court before judges and juries, or jail terms in one of the nation's many prisons, the system is riddled with corruption, abuse and an appalling disregard for the rights of the citizenry.
Due process rights afforded to a person accused of a crime—the right to remain silent, the right to be informed of the charges against you, the right to representation by counsel, the right to a fair trial, the right to a speedy trial, the right to prove your innocence with witnesses and evidence, the right to a reasonable bail, the right to not languish in jail before being tried, the right to confront your accusers, etc.—mean nothing when the government is allowed to sidestep those safeguards against abuse whenever convenient.
It's telling that while President Obama said all the right things about the broken state of our criminal justice system—that we jail too many Americans for nonviolent crimes (we make up 5 percent of the world's population, but our prison population constitutes nearly 25% of the world's prisoners), that we spend more money on incarceration than any other nation ($80 billion a year), that we sentence people for longer jail terms than their crimes merit, that our criminal justice system is far from color-blind, that the nation's school-to-prison pipeline is contributing to overcrowded jails, and that we need to focus on rehabilitation of criminals rather than retribution—he failed to own up to the government's major role in contributing to this injustice in America.
Indeed, while Obama placed the responsibility for reform squarely in the hands of prosecutors, judges and police, he failed to acknowledge that they bear the burden of our failed justice system, along with the legislatures and corporations who have worked with them to create an environment that is hostile to the rights of the accused.
In such a climate, we are all the accused, the guilty and the suspect. As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we're operating in a new paradigm where the citizenry are presumed guilty and treated as suspects, our movements tracked, our communications monitored, our property seized and searched, our bodily integrity disregarded, and our inalienable rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" rendered insignificant when measured against the government's priorities.
Every American is now in jeopardy of being targeted and punished for a crime he did not commit thanks to an overabundance of arcane laws. Making matters worse, by allowing government agents to operate above the law, immune from wrongdoing, we have created a situation in which the law is one-sided and top-down, used as a hammer to oppress the populace, while useless in protecting us against government abuse.
Add to the mix a profit-driven system of incarceration in which state and federal governments agree to keep the jails full in exchange for having private corporations run the prisons, and you will find the only word to describe such a state of abject corruption is "evil."
How else do you explain a system that allows police officers to shoot first and ask questions later, without any real consequences for their misdeeds? Despite the initial outcry over the shootings of unarmed individuals in Ferguson and Baltimore, the pace of police shootings has yet to slow.
For those who survive an encounter with the police only to end up on the inside of a jail cell, waiting for a "fair and speedy trial," it's often a long wait. Consider that 60 percent of the people in the nation's jails have yet to be convicted of a crime. There are 2.3 million people in jails or prisons in America. Those who can't afford bail, "some of them innocent, most of them nonviolent and a vast majority of them impoverished," will spend about four months in jail before they even get a trial.
Not even that promised "day in court" is a guarantee that justice will be served.
As Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals points out, there are an endless number of factors that can render an innocent man or woman a criminal and caged for life: unreliable eyewitnesses, fallible forensic evidence, flawed memories, coerced confessions, harsh interrogation tactics, uninformed jurors, prosecutorial misconduct, falsified evidence, and overly harsh sentences, to name just a few.
In early 2015, the Justice Department and FBI "formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period…. The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country's largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the nation's courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said."
"How do rogue forensic scientists and other bad cops thrive in our criminal justice system?" asks Judge Kozinski. "The simple answer is that some prosecutors turn a blind eye to such misconduct because they're more interested in gaining a conviction than achieving a just result."
The power of prosecutors is not to be underestimated. Increasingly, when we talk about innocent people being jailed for crimes they did not commit, the prosecutor plays a critical role in bringing about that injustice. As The Washington Post reports, "Prosecutors win 95 percent of their cases, 90 percent of them without ever having to go to trial…. Are American prosecutors that much better? No… it is because of the plea bargain, a system of bullying and intimidation by government lawyers for which they 'would be disbarred in most other serious countries….'"
This phenomenon of innocent people pleading guilty makes a mockery of everything the criminal justice system is supposed to stand for: fairness, equality and justice. As Judge Jed S. Rakoff concludes, "our criminal justice system is almost exclusively a system of plea bargaining, negotiated behind closed doors and with no judicial oversight. The outcome is very largely determined by the prosecutor alone."
It's estimated that between 2 and 8 percent of convicted felons who have agreed to a prosecutor's plea bargain (remember, there are 2.3 million prisoners in America) are in prison for crimes they did not commit.
Clearly, the Coalition for Public Safety was right when it concluded, "You don't need to be a criminal to have your life destroyed by the U.S. criminal justice system."
It wasn't always this way. As Judge Rakoff recounts, the Founding Fathers envisioned a criminal justice system in which the critical element "was the jury trial, which served not only as a truth-seeking mechanism and a means of achieving fairness, but also as a shield against tyranny."
That shield against tyranny has long since been shattered, leaving Americans vulnerable to the cruelties, vanities, errors, ambitions and greed of the government and its partners in crime.
There is not enough money in the world to make reparation to those whose lives have been disrupted by wrongful convictions.
Over the past quarter century, more than 1500 Americans have been released from prison after being cleared of crimes they did not commit. These are the fortunate ones. For every exonerated convict who is able to prove his innocence after 10, 20 or 30 years behind bars, Judge Kozinski estimates there may be dozens who are innocent but cannot prove it, lacking access to lawyers, evidence, money and avenues of appeal.
For those who have yet to fully experience the injustice of the American system of justice, it's only a matter of time. America no longer operates under a system of justice characterized by due process, an assumption of innocence, probable cause, and clear prohibitions on government overreach and police abuse. Instead, our courts of justice have been transformed into courts of order, advocating for the government's interests, rather than championing the rights of the citizenry, as enshrined in the Constitution.
Without courts willing to uphold the Constitution's provisions when government officials disregard them, and a citizenry knowledgeable enough to be outraged when those provisions are undermined, the Constitution provides little protection against the police state.
The day I read John Whitehead's article (July 22), there were new reports of a number of police murders of innocent American citizens. Sandra Bland, a black women who protested police violence against blacks was found hanged in her cell in a Texas jail after her false arrest.
Just a few days ago Samuel Dubose was murdered by a police officer with a shot to his head while he sat inside his car.
A 3o-year old asthmatic white chemical engineer was without cause hog-tied by Mississippi police with face positioned to prevent breathing, resulting in his death.
Americans are in more danger from police than from terrorists. During the Iraqi war, American police murdered more Americans than the number of US troops killed in combat.
In this age of perverted justice and government-sanctioned tyranny, the Constitution is no safeguard against government wrongdoing such as SWAT team raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of unarmed and unthreatening citizens, indefinite detentions, asset forfeitures, prosecutorial misconduct, etc.
Today in the United States of America citizens are as unprotected by law as the aristocracy in England prior to the Magna Carta. America has far more in common with the Medieval dungeon state than it does with the Declaration of Independence.
In a country in which the citizens have no protection from the state and can be shot down in their streets and homes by unaccountable police, detained indefinitely without charges or conviction, executed on suspicion alone without due process of law, there is no freedom, no democracy, no accountability of government to the people.
The United States of America is no longer the hope of mankind. The USA has become the source of evil and dread. Will America destroy the world as well as itself?


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Pig talks, tidbits and facts (or in other words, usapang baboy)
Life / By Angelo Ancheta
Chinese New Year 2019 marks the Year of the Pig, the 12th animal sign, who answered late to the call of the Jade Emperor for the animals to assemble. The pig symbolizes luck according to Chinese culture. Globally, however, the pig is a domesticated animal and is a common food source. Among Filipinos, there are various names of food items that have pigs in them like lechong baboy or lechon, hopiang baboy, chicharong baboy, among others.
As 2019 marks the Year of the Pig, here are interesting information and references pertaining to the pig.
In most Asian countries the pig is symbol for good luck or prosperity, especially among believers of the Chinese zodiac. In Europe, it stands as symbols in heraldry, while its meat or pork is forbidden food among Muslims.
Metaphor. The pig often has a negative connotation. When used in a sentence, a pig is someone who eats too much or exhibits gluttony or a greedy person; anyone who is ugly and extremely fat or obese, a dirty or sloppy person, an officer, and a Black or Caucasian
Idioms and expressions. There are interesting expressions in various countries.
• Americans: eating like a pig, sweating like a pig, like a pig in clover; guinea pig, though there is a pig in the phrase, this in reality refers to a species of rodent and not in the pig family; male chauvinist pig, used in the late 1960s, referring to a man who thinks highly of himself and that women are inferior to him.
• British: a pig in a poke, refers to something that one buys without giving enough thought before buying it.
• Spanish: each pig gets its St. Martin, this expression is the counterpart of the English expression "everyone gets their just deserts." St. Martin's Day in Spain, which is Nov. 11, is a day for slaughtering pigs.
• German: "as happy as a pig in muck," an expression which is also popular among the British and the Irish, meaning extremely happy, contented and carefree.
• French: "if the little pigs don't eat him," meaning if nothing gets in the way.
• Afrikaans: "to be the pig in the tale," this means to play the bad guy.
Local lines, phrases, expressions
Filipinos have their own unique pig expressions and famous lines as well:
• "My brother is not a pig!" This is a famous line from multi-awarded actress Nora Aunor's movie "Minsa'y isang Gamu-gamo," referring to her brother who was shot dead by an American.
• pork barrel refers to the use of government funds for the benefit of the people or the electorate, but has earned the negative connotation for being misused or abused.
• kababuyan, often refers to any immoral act.
• lechon baboy, roasted pig which is almost always present in feasts or celebrations anywhere in the country.
• kaning-baboy, in English, this is equivalent to a pig slop which consists of a variety of food and scrap food that humans do not eat. In the Philippines, this is mostly any leftover food that is made up of solid and liquid food.
Association with virtues or values or lack thereof
Pig characters in most movies, television shows and literary works are usually depicted as either the heroic main character or as someone standing for ideal human values and virtues.
There's "Peppa Pig," a British preschool animated series about a female pig, her family, her different animal friends who are of her age; "Babe" and "Babe: Pig in the City," a comedy film about a piglet raised as livestock but ended up working as a sheepdog;
Porky Pig, an animated cartoon character in Looney Tunes, famously known for his "Th-th-th-that's all folks!" at the end of the show; Miss Piggy, a diva-like personality in "The Muppet Show" who speaks French and practices karate; and "Three Little Pigs," a fable about three little pigs who each built houses of different materials and a big bad wolf came to tear them all down. The fable was adapted into a Disney animated short film.
Then there's Robert Phillips' Pig Tales: Stories of Law Enforcement and Harvey Kurtzman's Pigtales comedy comics during the 1980s. Locally, we have Pugad Baboy, a popular comic strip by cartoonist/illustrator Pol Medina Jr. which depicts a community of obese people.
Nowhere is it written more specifically about the dirtiness of the pig than in the Bible.
In Matthew 8:31-32, "And the demons begged him, saying: 'If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.' And He said to them, 'Go.' So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters." In Leviticus 11:7, "And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you."
Despite the mostly negative references, pigs are in fact incredibly intelligent animals. And despite poor eyesight, they have exceptional sense of smell. They are also disciplined, contrary to what most people think.
A group of young pigs is called a drift, drove or litter; while older pigs are called a sounder of swine, or a team/passel of hogs. A male pig is called a boar while a female is called a sow, baby pigs are called piglets.
Pigs are peaceful creatures and pose no threat to humans. Contrary to common portrayal of them, pigs are in fact clean. They look for a place away from where they rest for bowel movements.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Department of Engineering / Profiles / Miss Jennifer Ward George
Miss Jennifer Ward George
jwg39
Research Student
Academic Division: Civil Engineering
Research group: Structures
Email: jwg39@eng.cam.ac.uk
Understanding the Process of Shelter Project Design in Displacement.
Jennifer's research focuses on the strategic decisions behind shelter projects that occur as a result of post-conflict and post-disaster displacement situations. This research analyses shelter response on a global scale and includes discussions with governments, international NGOs, Global Cluster Groups, private sector, academia, and beneficiaries of shelter. In 2018, she was appointed the Design Fellow for the Exhibition of 1851 to develop a software-based method of information management for shelter projects in post-crisis situations.
Publications / Talks
Ward-George, J. (May 2020) "Could you shelter in 3.5m2?" Conversations, Centre for Geopolitics, Cambridge. https://centreforgeopolitics.org/could-you-shelterinplace-in-only-3-5m2/
"The Politics of Emergency Shelter", Panelists: Jennifer Ward George, Sanj Srikanthan (CEO ShelterBox), Tom Newby (Former Head of Humanitarian, CARE International UK), Mark Breeze (DoS Architecture, St John's College), Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge, May 2020.
'A Day in the Life of a "Shelter Academic": Humanitarian Aid and Academia with Jennifer Ward George', Great Exhibition Road Festival, London (Postponed to Summer 2021)
'The Shelter Schema: Rationalizing Design Decisions in Shelter Projects', Jennifer Ward George, New and Visiting Scholars Forum, Cambridge, March 2020
'Invisibility and Virality in Shelter Projects', Jennifer Ward George, Engineering Structures Seminar Series, Department of Engineering, February 2020
Ward George, J. and Hodgkin, D. (2020) "Invisibility and virality in urban shelter response" Forced Migration Review: Cities and Towns, Issue 63. Oxford. https://www.fmreview.org/cities/wardgeorge-hodgkin
"Finding Shelter, Defining Shelter", chaired by Dr Mark Breeze for his film launch 'Shelter without Shelter' at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Panelists included Dr Tom Scott-Smith, Dr Georgia Cole, Jennifer Ward George, and Dunya Habash. https://www.crim.cam.ac.uk/newsandawards/news-folder/festivalofideasglobalhumanmovement
'The Shelter Schema', Jennifer Ward George, Alumni Talk at Peterhouse, June 2019
The Shelter Schema: https://www.royalcommission1851.org/the-shelter-schema-designing-for-dis...
Innovate UK Business-led Innovation Award for Response to Global Disruption (Covid-19): https://www.businessweekly.co.uk/news/academia-research/cambridge-trio-h...
Co-Chair, Sustainable Shelter Group, Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement
https://www.humanmovement.cam.ac.uk/Research/cedg
Design Fellow, Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851
Steering Group Member, Information, Education, Communication (IEC) Materials, IOM
President, Peterhouse MCR, 2020-21
Secretary, Cambridge University Polo Club, 2020-21
Jennifer studied Project Management for Construction at The Bartlett, UCL before joining the University of Cambridge in September 2017. She completed an MRes in Future Infrastructure and the Built Environment and is now in the second year of her PhD.
Jennifer's research focuses on the design of shelter for displacement under the supervision of Dr John Orr and Professor Peter Guthrie, and is EPSRC funded. She is also the 2018 Design Fellow for the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, who fund the research and development costs of her project: The Shelter Schema.


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Home » Blog » 2017: A Year Of Patience and Wisdom
2017: A Year Of Patience and Wisdom
December 31, 2016Rabbi Richard AddressBlog0
Written by: Rabbi Richard Address on December 31, 2016.
Happy New Year! 2016 is ending, and for many, not a moment too soon. Certainly the news of the world and the loss of so many headline making people have taken a toll, and kept the news people very busy. However, beyond this, the reality ion life left moving. People met and fell in love, children were born and life continued to play out, often oblivious to the tumult that surrounded us. And what of 2017?
I am in the midst of reading Tom Friedman's new book "Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist's Guide To Thriving In The Midst of Acceleration". The thesis, as far as I can gather, is that we continue to be in the middle of a great transformation of society marked by the rapid changes with technology, business and climate. There are some parallels to the rapid changes within our Jewish world, but that is another story. Friedman makes the observation early in the book about the importance of patience; that we are so consumed at times, with speed, that we forget about time.
This is becoming more and more relevant to us as we get older. We've written about this, as have a host of others, that we are at a period of life that allows us to understand that patience can be its own reward. Indeed, having patience allows us to gather wisdom; wisdom brought about from life experience. Friedman quotes Leon Wieseltier on this. Commenting on the fact that so many now question the need for having patience, he wrote: "But the ancients believed that there was wisdom in patience and that wisdom comes from patience…Patience wasn't just the absence of speed. It was space for reflection and thought." (p.6)
There is, then, a certain celebratory aspect of our own stage of life. For many, we may have the ability to see the world and life through a different lens. Having patience may mean having the gift of being able to reflect and be free of being a slave to time. In a world where gigabytes and bandwidth speeds and nanoseconds acquire celebrity status, it may be good, even necessary to step away from this every once in a while and to look at the world in from a slower, more patient perspective.
Wisdom can be garnered from that choice. Indeed, cultural respect for elders comes from this position. This was reflected again in a Wall Street Journal piece from the weekend edition of the Journal(Dec 31 2016-Jan. 1 2017).Dr. Alison Gopnik wrote a small reflection entitled "Human At Every Stage" (page C-1. www.wsj.com) in which she talked about the time of youth and elder hood not fixated on acquisition of goods, etc. She wrote of the importance, in this stage of out life, of understanding our own life history and the fact that our life is part of something greater. "Life history is an important idea on evolution, especially human evolution. But it also gives us a richer way of thinking about our own lives. A human being isn't just a collection of fixed traits but part of an unfolding and dynamic story"
So, as 2017 dawns, I am hopeful that we all will have the courage to reflect on our own life's journey and to have the patience to step outside of the world of speed and know that our own life experience has so much value and worth. In doing so, perhaps we can find the time to share that wisdom of experience with others, and thus, continue, in some small way, the cycle of passing forward what we have learned to the next generation. Not a bad hope for a new year!
Stay healthy and happy 2017.
Rabbi Richard F Address
About Rabbi Richard Address
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ's Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M'kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.


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Languages of Africa
SOAS Student Charter
Miss Portia Owusu
BA (Hons) English and American Literature (Kent); MA Cultures of Empire, Resistance and Postcoloniality (York)
581410@soas.ac.uk
Thesis title:
Spectres from the Past: The Politics of 'History', Memory and Slavery in West African and African-American Literature.
Internal Supervisors
Kai Easton
Kwadwo Osei-Nyame, Jnr
I was born in Ghana but grew up in the UK, with some of my education in the States. I feel privileged to have had these experiences for my encounters with different cultures and traditions have impacted on and shaped my personal and academic interests. Upon completing my BA in English and American Literature, a programme which included an exchange year at the University of Kansas, I headed to the University of York.
The MA at York focused on Postcolonial Literatures and my dissertation examined the narrative of 'return' in African-American and West African Literature. I concentrated on the politics of home and belonging in the two bodies of literatures, looking at African-Americans and their perception of Africa as home and the response of Africans to the ideologies that encourage the 'return' to Africa.
After York, I worked in International Education before applying to SOAS for my doctorate. The research is an opportunity for me to develop my MA dissertation; specifically engaging with the politics of memory on the slave trade and its impact on individual and collective identities in West African and black American contexts.
I have also taught literature on a cover basis at secondary and primary schools in London.
My research examines the politics of 'History' and representations of slavery in contemporary African-American and West African literature.
I am interested in interrogating the impact of 'official' historiographies of slavery on individual and collective memories of communities in West African and African-American contexts. As such, the project looks at how slavery is memorialised in written narratives by writers from these two geographical sites of subjugation. The project moves beyond discourses on memory/amnesia and forgetfulness/remembrance. Instead, it seeks to show that there are different articulations of painful memory and where one form is more obvious than another, we need to examine why this is so in the context of the traditions and cultures from which a text or a writer is situated. In particular, I engage with theories of trauma as conceptualised by western academics and practitioners to question their (in)applicability in examining pain, loss, absence and horror in the experience of slavery by people of African descent.
In addition to materials available to me in Britain, I have conducted research in Ghana and in 2015, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to return to the States as a Visiting Researcher at the University of Kansas (KU). I will finish the dissertation there under the supervision of Prof. Maryemma Graham, an expert in African-American literature. At KU, I will also be contributing to the work of The Project on the History of Black Writing, a national research institute committed to the recovery and preservation of literary texts by writers from Africa and the diaspora.
Converging Identities: Blackness in the Modern African Diaspora (Book Review). African Studies Quarterly Volume 15, Issue 2, March 2015
In Toni Morrison's Latest Novel, Black (Children's) Lives Matter (Book Review). The Project on the History of Black Writing (http://projecthbw.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/in-toni-morrisons-latest-novel-black.html) May 4, 2015
"If it hurts, why don't you cry?" The Burden of memory in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Conference Proceedings: Revisiting the First International Congress of Africanists in a Globalised World, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon (Forthcoming)
Invited Participant (New Scholars Panel): "Dialogue Between Africa and the African Diaspora in Languages, Literatures, and Film" at Seventy-Sixth Annual Convention of the College Language Association, April 6-9, Houston, Texas.
Portia Owusu: ""All God's Chillun Got Wings": The Search for Home in twentieth century African-American Travel Narratives. The Collegium of African American Research (CAAR), Liverpool Hope University, 24-28 June 2015
Portia Owusu: "An Immoveable Bridge or Breach? The Slave Forts in Ghana and the Question of Black Cultural Identity. ASAUK Conference 2014, University of Sussex, 11th September 2014
Portia Owusu: "African-Americans in Paris: An Illusion of Freedom?" Callaloo / University of Oxford's 'Race and Resistance across Borders in the Long Twentieth Century' Network. Postgraduate and Early Career Workshop: Britain, Europe, and the African Diaspora. Oxford, 27th November 2013
Portia Owusu: "Reading the Silence as Trauma: Memories of the Slave Trade in West African and African American fiction. Revisiting the First International Congress of Africanists in a Globalised World, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. October 24-26, 2013
Portia Owusu & Sara Marzagora: "Decentred and localised constructions of memory, nationhood and 'home' in Africa and its diaspora" Critical methods beyond Eurocentrism: First annual postgraduate conference of the Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies (SOAS), SOAS, University of London. 14 June 2013
Invited Participant: Inaugural Conference of the BMBF-Project "The Americas as Space of Entanglement(s): (Trans)Cultural Mobility in the Americas". Monday, May 6 -8th, 2013. Bielefeld University, Germany
Invited Participant: Language Matters IV: Reading and Teaching Toni Morrison in Translation, Paris, France. November 2010
Conference Moderator: 'Virtually Brilliant: interpreting Morrison's Works in the Virtual World in Second life / l' œuvre de Toni Morrison à l'heure du virtuel (Second life)' Toni Morrison and Circuits of the imagination, Sixth Biennial conference of the Toni Morrison Society (hosted by Université de Paris 8 - Saint Denis) November 4-7, 2010


Lyndhurst House Review – The Lyndhurst House is a detached Victorian residence set in a quiest road only a few minutes walk from the beach and shops and within easy reach of the railways station and buses. The small tastefully decorated and furnished hotel is run under the personal supervision of the resident proprietors. A hundred years ago Sandown was a favourite watering place for the Crowned Heads of Europe with many having holiday homes in the town. Nowadays it is a modern cosmopolitan resort with visitors coming from all over the world to enjoy three miles of safe sandy beaches the Pier and the lively night life. There is also a superb leisure centre only two minutes from the Hotel.
From Sandown Train station: walk up Nunwell Street.Turn left at the top then cross over the crossing.Walk straight down Melville Street first Road on the right by the post box.


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Angela Danadjieva is a landscape architect who founded the multidisciplinary design firm Danadjieva & Koenig Associates with her partner Thomas Koenig. She is well known for her work with Lawrence Halprin & Associates, including the Ira Keller Fountain in Portland, Oregon and Freeway Park in Seattle, Washington.

Early life and education
Danadjieva was born in 1931 in Sofia, Bulgaria. She graduated from Bulgaria's State University in Sofia in 1960 with a degree in architecture. She worked as a set designer and art director for the Bulgarian film industry for 7 years. Danadjieva won the Golden Rose Award (the equivalent to an Oscar award in Bulgaria) for her work on the movie The Captured Squadron.

In 1963 Danadjieva and her partner Ivan Tzvetin entered an international design competition in Cuba, and placed second for their design of a plaza, museum, and monument. After this, Danadjieva became increasingly interested in architecture, and went to study at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1964 to 1966. While there, Danadjieva worked for the architectural firm Denieul-Marty-Paoli.

Career in the United States

In 1965, while Danadjieva was at the École des Beaux-Arts, she and Ivan Tzvetin won first prize in an international design competition for the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza. While the project was never built, this brought Danadjieva to the United States. She met Lawrence Halprin soon after, and joined his firm Halprin and Associates as a project designer. There, from 1967 to 1976, she led more than twenty urban design and city-planning projects with the firm, including the Washington State Capitol in Olympia, the Jewish Home of San Francisco, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. Notably, she was lead designer on the Ira Keller Fountain Park in Portland, Oregon, and Freeway Park in Seattle, Washington.

After leaving Halprin and Associates in 1976, Danadjieva founded Danadjieva & Koenig Associates with architect Thomas Koenig. Their major projects include the White River State Park in Indianapolis, Indiana, a planning study for James River Park System in Richmond, Virginia, and an extension to Seattle's Freeway Park to include the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.

Danadjieva maintains her practice with Koenig today in Tiburon, California.

Major works

 Ira Keller Fountain Park – Portland, Oregon
 Freeway Park – Seattle, Washington
 Thomas Polk Park - Charlotte, North Carolina
 Washington State Capitol – Olympia, Washington
 Jewish Home of San Francisco – San Francisco, California
 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts – Richmond, Virginia
 White River State Park – Indianapolis, Indiana
 James River Park System – Richmond, Virginia
 Freeway Park Extension – Seattle, Washington

References

External links
A Woman, a Sculpture, a Park, 2007 article in The Stranger (newspaper)

American landscape architects
Women landscape architects
École des Beaux-Arts alumni

People from Sofia
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people

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Zebra murders meant to start race war
Entertainment // Books
Reviewed by Eddie Muller
Sep. 17, 2006 Updated: Jan. 11, 2012 5:33 a.m.
ZEBRAMURDER-22APR1974-SE - Mayor Joe Alioto, on his way to his card outside of City Hall. Protesters of the Zebra Murders, holding signs, follow him. Photo by Susan EhmerSusan Ehmer
The Zebra Murders
A Season of Killing, Racial Madness, and Civil Rights
By Prentice Earl Sanders and Bennett Cohen
ARCADE; 270 Pages; $26
As anyone who survived this town in the early 1970s will tell you, San Francisco was dangerously close to exploding. Zodiac was on his murder spree, armed radicals regularly battled police, prison breaks and assassinations were common, the Panthers and Weathermen and Black Liberation Army spewed rhetoric and bombs. When the Symbionese Liberation Army snatched Patty Hearst, and she morphed into "Soldier of the People" Tania -- surrealism become the norm. Years later, the Unabomber's antics would seem quaint by comparison.
Yet the most shocking crime of the era, oddly enough, is largely forgotten. Even people who lived through those scary months of 1973-74 rarely talk about the Zebra murders, including mayor-to-be Art Agnos, who survived a Zebra attack. Nobody wants to remember.
The murders and maimings weren't the work of a solitary loon gone ballistic; they can't be spoken of with the gallows humor we often use to cauterize the horror of serial killings. In this case, young religiously enflamed Black Muslims killed white people, totally at random, in the hope of igniting a race war. As co-author Earl Sanders declares in "The Zebra Murders": "When people talk about Zebra, it's usually as a serial killing. That may be technically true, but the most accurate description of what Zebra was is terrorism, plain and simple."
That's clearly why Sanders (and co-author Bennett Cohen) feel it's time to revisit the crime wave that paralyzed San Francisco 32 years ago -- because of its pertinent reverberations. Sanders, who'd eventually become the city's first African American police chief, believes Zebra offers crucial lessons in how to deal -- and not deal -- with acts of terrorism.
Zebra's reign of terror peaked on Jan. 28, 1974 -- not coincidentally, the night of the second Ali-Frazier fight, which was symbolically (if naively) seen as a contest between radicalized Black Power (Ali) and kowtowing Uncle Toms (Frazier). The theme of how black men chose to perceive themselves in '70s America is the subtext of "The Zebra Murders." Do you fight the power, or work within it? Revolution or reform? Ali or Frazier?
As the boxers squared off, five shootings occurred across San Francisco, escalating what had started three months earlier as a string of ".32-caliber killings" into "Operation Zebra," named for the police radio's Z channel. After that night, Z-channel was dedicated to the biggest manhunt in local history. (Astoundingly, although the shootings were committed by different men, they used the same gun. If they hadn't, it's doubtful they ever would have been caught.)
What pushed Zebra into the national limelight was the desperate and ill-advised plan, endorsed by Mayor Joe Alioto, to have cops treat every black man on the street as a potential suspect. Once ID'd and "cleared," they were issued a "Z-card," to be presented to the next cop who juked them up for DWB (Driving While Black). "Racial profiling" had entered the lexicon of U.S. law enforcement.
The white establishment didn't understand that this "sweeping" strategy played into the hands of the black separatist killers by widening the racial divide. When the African American community reacted with outrage to the police sweeps, Police Chief Donald Scott tried to assuage their fear: "We're not going to stop very young blacks or big fat blacks. We're not going to stop seven-foot blacks or four-foot blacks."
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A race war suddenly seemed not only possible, but imminent.
What differentiates this book from "Zebra," Clark Howard's far more detailed 1979 book on the subject, is the Hollywood-style hook of telling the story through the eyes of two black cops helping to hunt down the killers -- while they're bringing a racial discrimination lawsuit against the SFPD. At the time of Zebra, Earl Sanders was one of the few African American cops in the Police Department. He and partner Rotea Gilford were the only blacks in the homicide unit. Much is made of their grappling with the same racism that fueled the killers' acts of "retribution."
"From what I could see," Sanders says of the manhunt, "the one thing that seemed to guide every other possible motive, whether it was to start up a race war or just avenge what they saw as injustice, was rage. A crazy, insane rage over what they thought whites had done to blacks. Once you got to that realization, if you were black, you had to pause. Because the truth was there wasn't a black I knew who didn't feel at least an inkling of the same thing."
A powerful premise, to be sure. But for much of its 288 pages, "The Zebra Murders" unfortunately plays like a formulaic Court TV docudrama, due no doubt to co-author Cohen's screenwriting background.
On the page, he struggles to deftly integrate back stories into the flow of the investigation, and Sanders isn't so much a narrator as he is a talking head. In rendering the '70s milieu, it feels more like Cohen is cueing film and audio clips rather than weaving a story. A cynic might think the book was created to pitch a movie version starring Denzel Washington and Jamie Foxx.
Not that there isn't value here. At first, during the book's awkward expository passages, the details of the Officers for Justice lawsuit seem annoyingly self-serving. Whatever your take on quotas, it's bad form to talk about salary and promotions as bodies are piling up. By the end, however, Sanders makes a persuasive argument as to why quotas are essential, at least in police work.
Both Sanders and Gilford suspected early on, as did many cops, that these were racist hate crimes and that the Nation of Islam's Temple No. 26, at Geary and Fillmore, might be the epicenter of the conspiracy. But the Police Department had no way of infiltrating the temple. It simply did not have enough black cops qualified for undercover work.
"That's what people don't understand about the OFJ (Officers for Justice) lawsuit," Sanders says. "Integrating a police force isn't about what's 'fair.' It's about good policing. The reason the SFPD tried the sweeps was that they felt they couldn't police the black community from the inside. So they tried to impose their will on it from the outside. That might fly in a dictatorship, but not in a democracy. When people are free, the only way to police their community is from within. And the only way to do that is to have a force that's representative of that community, one that makes them feel they're included rather than excluded."
Needless to say, Sanders believes more Arab American police officers need to be walking beats in America today.


With 14 teams battling it out to come top of the leaderboard, the competition was in full swing as golfers enjoyed glorious sunshine at the popular Swailend course in Newmachar.
Unusually, 3 teams came top with the exact same score of 57.1. On count back for the back 9, minus the individual handicap allowances, a winner was determined and we are delighted to announce that the winner was the Interwell team. The team walked away with golf vouchers and goodies, as well as the coveted ICoTA Golf Challenge trophy. Runners up, Hunting Energy Services and TAM International, did not go home empty-handed, also receiving golf vouchers and gifts.
So who will look to challenge the reigning champions in 2017? To register your interest in attending next year's golf day, contact us.


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Reviews, Lenses
Could this lens possibly become the best 70-200mm f/2.8 on the market?
Sigma first unveiled their new series of lenses series at Photokina in Cologne, Germany last September. This new collection includes five new lenses to their three Global Vision product lines: Art, Sports and Contemporary. As a sports photographer, I was really intrigued by the announcement of their highly anticipated 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens. I made sure to stop by their booth at PhotoPlus Expo to get more information about this new high-performance telephoto lens.
10 exclusive low-dispersion glass elements
What in the world is a low-dispersion glass and why should I care? (This is actually a real-life question that I have asked myself.) Low-dispersion glasses (which can be called UD, ED, FLD or SLD depending on the manufacturer) helps maintain sharpness, resolution and color accuracy of images made with this type of glass. It also optimizes spherical aberration by minimizing distortion and help create the beautiful bokeh (the "blurry" effect we love so much).
The Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM has 5 UD elements. The AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II has 6 ED elements. The new Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 DG OS HSM has 9 FLD elements and 1 SLD element.
Lenses construction comparison between the 70-200mm f/F2.8 Canon, Nikon and Sigma.
Weather sealed and tough build
I don't know about you, but I am always get involved in some way with dirt, rain, snow or other less than ideal situations for my gear. Sigma uses magnesium (smelted in their own magnesium factory!) to create a portable, durable, dust-and-splash-proof lens structure. They also use a water and oil repellent coating on the front lens to make it even safer. To know that the Sigma Sports line is made exactly for this kind of purpose makes me feel more confident in investing my hard earned money into a significant piece of equipment like this lens.
Hyper Sonic AF motor
The HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor) guarantees a high-speed AF (Auto-Focus). But between you and me, as long as I feel like "High-Speed AF" means "High-Speed As F**k", that's what really attracts my attention!
The soon-to-be-shipping Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 DG OS HSM in all its glory.
A complete f/2.8 zoom line up
This 70-200 is the third high-speed zoom lens Sigma has introduced recently. This lens completes the range of zooms with focal lengths from 14mm to 200mm that feature a f/2.8 large-aperture.
Left: Sigma 14-24mm f/2.8 DG HSM | Art lens, Right: Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 DG OS HSM | Art lens
Outshot
No doubt, this lens seems really promising with all its professional features and special glass. Whether it's used for sports, landscape, nature or portrait photography, the new Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 DG OS HSM | Sport might just become the next "best telephoto" zoom on the market.
It will soon be available in Canon, Nikon and Sigma mount. If you want more information about this lens and the complete list of new Sigma lenses, have a look at the Sigma website. To stay updated about the upcoming release, click this B&H link! I can hardly wait to put one to the test in my dirty, splashy, snowy photographic environments.
Michèle Grenier is an independent photographer based in Quebec City, Canada. She specializes in high-performance and strength-related sports. Michèle is also an author, a Skylum Software and HoldFast ambassador, a speaker and educator.
michelegrenierphoto.com
SigmasporttelephotoPhotoPlus Expof/2.8sports photography70-200ppe 2018
I was torn when I was offered the chance to review the Sigma 100-400mm f/5-6.3 DG DN OS Contemporary lens (B&H | Amazon) for Sony.
Sigma 85mm f/1.4 shines with beautiful bokeh and background separation
The Sigma 85mm f/1.4 Art lens for Sony provides creamy bokeh and background separation that I was quite impressed with. But with so many 85mm lenses
Hanging a gigantic print
Nothing compares to the satisfaction of seeing the result of your vision, your work in a print. What is it like to create a GIGANTIC
Battle of the 35mm: Sigma, Sony and Tamron
One of the most popular prime lens focal lengths is 35mm. It gives a great view for everything from landscapes to environmental portraits. But with
Sigma 24-70mm Art lens for Sony offers a unique view in a traditional footprint
Ever since I started photography professionally, the 24-70mm f/2.8 range has been a staple in my bag. It's a lens I simply have always relied
Wide-angle beauty: The Sigma 14-24mm f/2.8 Art lens for Sony
As I've photographed more and more landscape scenes in recent years, having a good wide-angle lens has become important. So in testing the Sony a7


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CONSULT October 2018
CAY lecture series offers dinner, healthy parenting info at children's museum
Published on Monday, October 1, 2018
By: Annie Oeth
Dinner, child care and informative programs led by medical experts – all free, and all available at the Mississippi Children's Museum?
More than 60 people said, "Yes, please!" to this year's kickoff of "Play. Eat. Learn." the result of a partnership between the University of Mississippi Medical Center's Center for Advancement of Youth, the Junior League of Jackson and the Mississippi Children's Museum.
During the events, which will continue through April 30, 2019, JLJ members provide dinner and care for children 3-10; the museum provides space for families to connect during dinner, children to play and parents, teachers and clinicians to take part; and CAY experts offer lectures on topical subjects. The free program is open to the public.
"Parents can hear from experts and help our children grow and become healthy adults," said Susan Garrard, Mississippi Children's Museum president and CEO.
To start the year's slate of topics, Dr. Dustin Sarver, assistant professor of pediatrics and a clinical child psychologist, spoke on "The Overactive Brain: ADHD at School and at Home."
An audience of more than 60 parents, grandparents, clinicians and teachers listen as Dr. Dustin Sarver discusses ADHD during the first "Play, Eat, Learn" event at the Mississippi Children's Museum. Photo courtesy of the Mississippi Children's Museum
"I really enjoy having the opportunity to meet and reach out to families in the community," Sarver said. "It gives professionals like myself an opportunity to engage in a two-way conversation: for us to share up-to-date information with a wide audience, but more importantly, listen to the needs, interests, and questions that are important to families.
"This dialogue helps keep us grounded to the issues that our patients have and enables us to better serve them in all the missions that UMMC has related to clinical, research and education activities."
Lisa Davis-Doty of Brandon was among parents taking part in the evening's event. She brought along her children, Rigdon, 10, and Ruby Cate, 5.
"This is a great learning experience," Davis-Doty said, "and having dinner and child care included makes it easy for us to go on a weeknight."
Rebecca Mullican, Jackson Autism Center founder, teacher and clinician, said the program was "really helpful and informative. The whole series of programs will be very helpful to the community."
"Our volunteers were excited to kick off this year's 'Play, Eat, Learn' series in a new setting," said Amanda Woodruff, JLJ "Play, Eat, Learn" chair. "The Mississippi Children's Museum is the perfect environment for the program.
"We were so excited to see some familiar faces from families who attended last year, and we are looking forward to watching the program grow."
The next "Play, Eat, Learn" event, scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 16, features the topic, "The Developing Child: The Zany Brain Science Behind Children's Behavior." In 2019, "Play, Eat, Learn" events are planned for Jan. 29, Feb. 26 and April 30.
Registration and dinner is at 6 p.m., with the program to follow at 6:30. Children 3-10 will be allowed to play in the museum with supervision by JLJ members while parents attend the program.
The partnership between the CAY and the JLJ started in 2017 as "Food for Thought," with the programs at the Norman C. Nelson Student Union on the UMMC campus.
Dr. David Elkin, CAY executive director, said adding the Mississippi Children's Museum as a partner "makes perfect sense. The museum and CAY can work together throughout the year in providing needed information on health and parenting to families."
Upcoming "Play, Eat, Learn" topics
Oct. 16: "The Developing Child: The Zany Brain Science behind Children's Behavior"
Jan. 29, 2019: "Connections: How Social Relationships and Social Media Impact a Child's Development"
Feb. 26, 2019: "Come Play with Me! The Importance of Play in the Developing Child"
April 30, 2019: "The Sensory World of a Child: Unpacking the Significance of the Sensory World of All Children, Including Those with ASD and ADHD"
Registration and dinner (first come, first served) is at 6 p.m. The program follows from 6:30-7:15. All "Play, Eat, Learn" sessions are at the Mississippi Children's Museum, 2145 Museum Blvd., in Jackson.


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Because we are nestled in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the winter season makes Grandfather Golf and Country Club a prime location for some of the best skiing in the southeast. While the Club does not offer any skiing on the premises, we are situated just minutes from three beautiful ski resorts offering several favorite winter activities. Enjoy cross-country skiing, ice-skating, and exploring the snowy woods with a thermos of hot chocolate.


Do you find it difficult in your busy life to be able to connect with your higher self? Your higher self is the voice of wisdom that only you hear. This is an important part of us, to connect with our higher selves and intuition, is integral in our spiritual journey.
In this guided meditation you will be guided in connecting with the higher part of you, your Spirit, which is the higher part of you.


This short story was written by Zanymuse in the Writers and Words Cubit. The writers were given a beginning, and those who wanted to do so could use their own words to end it. The beginning is italicized, followed by Zany's ending. Please share your comments with Zany at the end of this article.
"She rocked gently in the creaky old rocker that had belonged to her grandmother. The setting sun reflected on the still lake in front of her, no breeze to be felt, no sound to be heard. From the corner of her eye, she saw a slight grayish movement, over there, just beyond the porch...but when she turned, there was nothing to be seen.
This wasn't new. She'd seen it before on other nights when she rocked in her grandmother's old rocker. It wasn't new...."
Back, forward, back, forward, faster and faster, creak swoosh, creak swoosh, tears running down her cheeks, swoosh, creak, and there it was again, just in the far right corner of her eye, but she didn't look again, it was better if she didn't look, creak, swish, creak swish.
The nurse stood watching her, the Doctor was speaking to those people again, the ones who came every week and when they were done speaking, they would come over to her and kiss her forehead and the little boy would call her mama, and hide shyly behind the man. The man would say, "How are you today, Sheila?" Swish, creak, swish...She was glad they came, they were nice, Swish, creak, swish...But she couldn't understand who they were, Swish, creak....Maybe when the shadow came into the light....swish, creak...maybe then she would know.


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AREA 51, Humans collaborate with Aliens to build "Space Ships"
An American engineer working in Area 51 has decided to speak and affirm what no one or a few could imagine, that Humans work together with some alien races for the construction of Spaceships and antigravity aircraft. Gray-type aliens would be held hostage to collaborate with engineers and other human scientists to develop unthinkable technologies.
Everyone would like to know what is hidden at the mysterious Area 51 in the Nevada desert, where researchers of the UFO phenomenon (especially people who may have conducted investigations such as reporter George Knapp) have always believed it could be a secret military base where they work Alien with Technology.
Occasionally witnesses and insiders come out who have worked at this Top Secret facility. Every alien race is known to be thousands of years older than we are.
But the government long ago came out and said "yes" there is a secret base located in the area of the Groom Lake, the famous Area 51 of the S4 site. This is a military installation without public use, and it's still off limits. "But yes, it's there. We know this. Area 51 exists and is still top secret. You can find tons of information about Area 51 everywhere on the internet. What you may not know, to date, is that there are more mysterious things going down in the base of Area 51 than you have been told so far.
In this function, a boy named Bill Uhouse claimed to be an engineer from Area 51 and came out of the closet to expose the truth of Area 51. You say, "Yes, we know, there are Aliens being held there for the study of new aircraft, and secret planes such as the TR-3B are developed with the reverse engineering of technology found by alien spacecraft captured in some accidents (UFO Crash). The structure houses new spaceships built thanks to the collaboration of these Aliens "
Bill says he got help in the facility from an alien being called the "J-Rod". It was a small gray alien that Bill could communicate with. This gray would guide him in his work. According to Bill, there are many alien species on Earth and they are working together with the governments of this world. In Area 51 there are "Extraterrestrial Biological Entities" known as EBE that work in this Off – limits base, creating new spaceships and anti – gravity aircraft.
Is it something to praise or avoid? Demonstration is always the determining factor, and Bill discusses his relationship with this alien entity, in great detail. Could only Bill's account of what happened during his time in Area 51 and with "J-Rod" be the smoking gun we are looking for. This testimony corroborates that of physicist Bob Lazar who worked in Area 51, specifically, on the retro-technology of some extraterrestrial aircraft.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXIWKQOu-k8
In this article:Area 51, Grays
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Aladdin Cash Flow Steady
LAS VEGAS –- The bankrupt Aladdin hotel-casino improved its cash flow in February thanks in part to high occupancy rates.
The Aladdin also earned a profit for the second month in a row, the company reported Thursday in a federal bankruptcy filing. Court records show that the Aladdin posted a profit of $171,201 last month, nearly doubling January's figure of $96,000.
The Strip casino bolstered its cash flow for February with $5.35 million, compared with $5.34 million in January. In February 2002 the casino had a cash flow of $1.6 million.
Cash flow, which reflects earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), is a common measure of profitability in the gambling industry.
"February 2003 was a tremendous month for the Aladdin," spokeswoman Tyri Squyres said. "We improved our year-over-last monthly EBITDA performance by nearly 237 percent. This improvement was in part due to a 97 percent average occupancy rate and an average daily rate in the $113 range."
Revenue dropped slightly to $20.1 million in February after the Aladdin posted $21.4 million in January revenue. Revenue had dipped to $18.3 million in December after rising to $22.5 million in November.
The $1.4 billion casino filed for bankruptcy Sept. 28, 2001, and has been working to control its finances while it seeks a buyer. The casino has laid off one-third of its work force while adding attractions, such as a nightclub and theater for nightly entertainment.
Squyres said that the casino hopes it can keep up the positive momentum, despite the war with Iraq, which could severely affect tourism traffic to Las Vegas.
"It's the question of the day," she said. "We have not received any cancellations. But we all know the world can change on a dime."


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Home > Death Records > Cremation Records and Tracing Your Family History
Cremation Records and Tracing Your Family History
By: Chris Nickson - Updated: 14 Jul 2021 | *Discuss
To those familiar with the idea of Vikings having funeral pyres for their dead, or the practice in India, it might come as a shock to learn that the first crematorium in England didn't open until 1885 (it was in Woking). What spurred it was an 1884 trial, following the cremation of a Welshman by his father. He was tried for it and acquitted; because there was actually no law stating that cremation was illegal (actually the Cremation Society had already been running for 10 years at this point).
By the end of the 19th century, there were three crematoria in England, although that figure quickly rose, and since the late Sixties more than half the people dying in England and Wales have been cremated.
The ashes are the property of the family, who can dispose of them as they wish - which can be anything from scattering in the country to being kept at home in an urn. It was only in 1944 that the Anglican Church allowed ashes to be buried in a churchyard (although the 1902 Cremation Act gave clergymen the right to refuse a funeral service for those being cremated unless the ashes were to be buried in consecrated ground). In that case it was entered in the church burial register. There have even been rare instances of ashes being scattered on football pitches, although clubs don't publicise this.
Cremation Records and Burial Register
The cremation records give the same information as a burial register. Permission to cremate has to be given by a medical authority attached to the crematorium (some crematoria are private, others under the control of the local authority).
However, you're not going to be able to see those records. Because they might contain information about people still alive, access is restricted to those appointed by the Home Secretary, the Environment Minister or the top police officer. That said, you can still get the information: it will simply be provided orally, at the discretion of the registrar of the crematorium, although it will be probably only be given in the case of records old enough that confidentiality isn't a factor.
Obituaries and Death Notices
Given that you might not be able to obtain cremation records, then another route to your answers is through obituaries. They may not be as common now as they once were, but they still exist for people of note at local, regional, and national levels, and death notices can still be widely found.
Obituaries have appeared in print for the best part of 300 years (the oldest are from The Times and The Gentleman's Magazine). In some cases they can prove to be the only surviving notice of burial or cremation, at least that you can access. However, it wasn't until the latter part of the 19th century that death notices became very common. Check with a central library close to where your ancestor lived to determine the local paper of the period, and to discover where you can browse old copies. A death notice will probably include time and place of death and interment or cremation, as well as naming survivors. If there's an obituary, it's an excellent way to learn much more about your ancestor - their civic and family lives. If you know the year of death (or an even closer range), then you should be able to find an obituary (if it exists) without too much trouble. If your ancestor was in a specific trade (a butcher, for example) you might try old trade journals, and parish magazines sometimes also carry obituaries of ardent parishioners.
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My sister finance was cremation and she stayed up by his bedside at Augusta university for days on out while he was on life support and his daughter came in out of state and decided that they wanted to pulled the plug on him and after seven years of not coming and seeing him and the wonderful life he had they just ignore the fact thay sister matter to where he might be or even the thought of how she might be greivin to how he rest in peace ???
Mimi - 14-Jul-21 @ 6:18 PM
I am trying to find out where my partners mother was cremated. Patricia Florence Bennett. Cremated 8.3.1967. possibly Dagenham or ladywell....many thanks
Kaz - 13-Jul-21 @ 6:37 AM
I am trying to find out where my friends mother was cremated. Patricia Florence Bennett. Cremated 8.3.67..possibly Dagenham or ladywell
my son was cremated the end of oct 1978 at daldowie cemetary in glasgow ... I knew nothing about arrangements as i was mentally incapable to do it ..I do know that his ashes wer scattered there and there was no plate to tell me where he was scattered he was only 3 months old and now i would want to put a plaque were he is could you olz plz help me his name is Gordon oswin thomas henderson he died 23-10-78 thank you
grandma - 15-Jun-21 @ 10:17 PM
My husband's dad died about 4 years ago no one in his family told him and he has just found out we don't no were he is buried or cremated does anyone no how we can find out please
Help - 11-Apr-21 @ 12:04 PM
I'm trying to find out about mymum patricia ann saunders died this year in QA hospital inPortsmouth uk in april this yr but I haven't a clue where she was cremated I just want to pay my respects.How do I do this
Joy - 1-Oct-20 @ 7:57 PM
my brother was cremated in August 1984 with full met police honours.I believe he is laid to rest in Nazing church cemetary can you confirm this?
None that I know of. - 19-Sep-19 @ 9:42 PM
my late brother P.C Peter Douglas ERswell was cremated st Harlow Crem in August 1984 with full police honours , I believe he was later interred at Nazing Alll Saints but they have no record , can you confirm that he is in Nazing ?
Hi,im trying to find my uncles ashes to lay him to rest,iv tried 3 local cremetoriums but they didnt cremate him please can you help
Jabba - 15-Jul-19 @ 3:00 PM
my father was cremated summer 1954. we lived in Penarth (Vale of Glamorgan) and died in Brecon (powys ) i would like to know what crematorium was usedbut cannot get hold of this information any ideas of how i might go about this tad?
linds - 10-Nov-18 @ 7:33 PM
@Wee stitt - sorry to hear this. The church will have a record if she has a head stone. I hope you find it, if it gives you comfort. Mil
ABJ - 4-Jul-17 @ 2:43 PM
My mum passed away when i was about 5 im am now nearly 40 the subject never gets spoke about in front of me. She was creamated and i know where i went once to see if i could find if there was anything in the gatden of remembrance but the place was closed andfound it very difficult i was wondering would there be a record of this basically what can i do if anyone can help or send me in the right direction it would mean alot thank you in advance
Wee stitt - 30-Jun-17 @ 7:20 PM
I am experiencing similar problems as 'Bambi' Where can I record the disposal of my late wifes' ashes? I DO NOT REQUIRE TICKETS FOR THE TEST MATCHES!!!!!!
Cambus - 17-Nov-13 @ 9:35 AM
I am experiencing problems trying to enter the disposal of my late wifes' ashes. according to a pamphlet entitled " THE ASHES REGISTER". When I enter the details I constantly receive all the latest cricket news!!!!!!!! Can you please advise?
Bambi - 31-Aug-13 @ 10:43 AM
Cremation only really became popular in the 20th century - the fact there there were only three crematoria at the end of the 19th century highlights that very well. So when looking back into Victorian times, you should really only check crematoria records as a source of last resort, because the likelihood of finding the names there is small.
David - 30-May-12 @ 2:09 PM