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Ontario and Québec Set to Update Legal Requirement...
Ontario and Québec Set to Update Legal Requirements on Loyalty Programs
Recent legislative changes regarding loyalty programs enacted in Ontario and confirmed in Québec provide more insight into how loyalty programs will be regulated moving forward.
There has been uncertainty in Canada with regards to whether consumer-incentive programs involving loyalty or rewards points fall under the scope of provincial consumer protection laws, given their free nature. Loyalty programs encourage consumers to be loyal to a specific merchant in exchange for the opportunity to obtain goods and services either at a discounted price or for free or for other exclusive offers. In return, merchants that offer these loyalty programs often gain repeat customers and valuable information from consumers' purchasing habits. In many cases, loyalty programs are linked to consumer accounts or contracts which themselves are covered by consumer protection laws. In recent years, Aeroplan and Air Miles announced miles and points older than a certain number of years would expire, but both ultimately opted to abandon their plans in the face of consumer backlash.1 Recently, growing consumer concerns have prompted provinces to enact legislation prohibiting expiry dates on gift cards (prepaid purchase cards). Regulators have now become more interested in consumer rewards programs and have pushed to amend consumer protection laws to cover them.
The recent legislative changes regarding loyalty programs that have been enacted in Ontario and confirmed in Québec provide more insight into how loyalty programs will be regulated moving forward.
On December 8, 2016, Ontario's Consumer Protection Act2 (the "Ontario CPA") was amended to include in the definition of a "consumer agreement", contracts under which a supplier agrees to provide rewards points to a consumer. In addition, the new amendments prohibit suppliers from entering into or amending a consumer agreement to provide for the expiry of rewards points due to the passage of time alone. As a result, organizations offering rewards or loyalty points to its consumers may no longer require that its customers use their earned rewards points by a specific time.
The amendments are not yet in force and on October 20, 2017, the Ontario government introduced regulations (the "Regulations") supporting the implementation of this new rule prohibiting the expiration of rewards points. When they enter into force, the new amendments to the Ontario CPA will have a retroactive effect to October 1, 2016.
The Regulations specifically exclude stamp or punch card incentives offered by retailers, therefore permitting the expiry of these types of offers. Moreover, the Regulations also provide that the general rules for specific types of consumer contracts such as future performance contracts, internet agreements or remote agreements (distance contracts) will not apply to the portion of a consumer agreement that relates to the provision of rewards points. The Regulations also impose a prescribed value for application of the ban on expiry points — the value of any one of the goods or services, or single set of goods or services that the consumer may receive in exchange for points redeemed must be more than $50. The prohibition on expiry points still applies where the good or service that the consumer receives in exchange for points is a gift card or voucher which can be combined with other gift cards or vouchers to purchase any good or service with a value of more than $50. Practically speaking, this would mean that rewards points would be permitted to expire when the value of any one of the goods or services that the consumer may receive in exchange for these points is not more than $50.
Ontario's new rule against the expiration of rewards points still provides for certain other exceptions. Most notably, upon the termination of the consumer contract (either by the consumer or the supplier) under which rewards points are provided, the consumer's accumulated rewards points may expire if this was provided for in the consumer agreement. Moreover, the Ontario CPA does not prevent rewards points from expiring if there is another reason for expiry in addition to the passage of time. The additional reason must be a substantive factor and not simply a disguised means of expiry on the basis of time alone. As an example, the Regulations permit the expiry of rewards points due to account inactivity or if a consumer does not engage in transactions for a certain period of time.
Québec is set to follow in Ontario's footsteps regarding imposing a ban on the expiry of loyalty points. On February 22, 2017, Bill 791: An Act to Amend the Consumer Protection Act was introduced as a Private Member's bill by a member of Québec's second opposition party. This Bill proposed a prohibition on the expiration of consumer's rewards points. On May 2, 2017, the Québec government itself introduced Bill 134: An Act mainly to modernize rules relating to consumer credit and to regulate debt settlement service contracts, high-cost credit contracts and loyalty programs ("Bill 134"), which included substantially similar wording regarding the prohibition against expiry of rewards points in addition to amendments to other parts of the Québec Consumer Protection Act3 (the "Québec CPA").
Of note is that unlike the Private Member's bill, Bill 134 does not specifically prohibit the change of the value of rewards points. In effect, the new proposed amendments would permit merchants to amend essential elements of a non-fixed-term contract provided that it previously specified, in the contract, the elements that may be amended unilaterally. This provision would give Québec merchants the ability to modify terms of their loyalty program contract with consumers on the condition that they provide the consumers with specific details of the amendment. This rule is aligned with the current general rule in the Québec CPA regarding modifications to consumer contracts.
As in Ontario, the Québec CPA would now explicitly cover contracts involving a loyalty program, which is defined as a program under which consumers may receive goods or services at a reduced price or free of charge through the use of exchange units. As such, a consumer loyalty contract would be subject to the various rules and requirements found in the Québec CPA.
Bill 134 was adopted unanimously by the Québec National Assembly on November 15, 2017. There is currently no indication as to when Bill 134 may enter into force, however, its sponsor has indicated that draft regulations may be ready by February 2018.
Takeaways for Businesses
The soon-to-be harmonization across Ontario and Québec of a prohibition against the expiry of loyalty and rewards points will provide consistency across Canada's two most populous provinces and may inspire other provinces to follow suit.
Merchants in Ontario that offer rewards points programs currently in place or which existed as of October 1, 2016, may not provide for the expiry of their loyalty points. In Québec, Bill 134 has become law, but is not yet in force. Bill 134, as adopted, does not include a retroactive effect for its proposed amendments, but merchants should be reviewing their practices to take into account the new changes, which will likely come into effect in early 2018. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that in Québec, loyalty programs are also considered contracts of adhesion and therefore subject to the same stringent rules (e.g. prohibition against abusive clauses).
With the legislative changes in Ontario and in Québec, it is clear that consumer laws will now apply to loyalty programs in these two provinces.
1 See Air Miles backs off from plan to let points expire and Good news: 7-year points expiration scuttled for Aeroplan.
2 2002, S.O. 2002, c. 30.
3 c. P-40.1
By: Éloïse Gratton, Vinay Desai
Services: Corporate Commercial, Cybersecurity, Privacy & Data Protection, Advertising & Marketing


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Haws® Axion eyePOD is the easy way to turn an existing tap into an effective emergency eyewash, offering a medically-superior way to remove eye contaminants with just the flick of a wrist.
The Axion MSR (Medically Superior Response) technology provides an inverted water flow pattern consistent with first aid protocols used by medical professionals which mitigates the risk on inhalation or ingestion of hazardous contaminants during eye cleansing. The eyes are irrigated by introducing flushing fluid at the inner corners of the eyes and letting it flow across the eyes to the outer edges. This is specifically done to avoid driving contaminants into the inner eye's lacrimal punctum and the nasal cavity. Axion eyePOD is the only tap mounted eyewash product that duplicates the methodology.
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Installation is easy, with a variety of industry standard adapters included the Axion eyePOD can be used with most standard taps, just unscrew the existing aerator from the bottom of your tap and replace it with the Axion eyePOD. And it couldn't be easier to use, simply turn on your tap and rotate the front of the Axion eyePOD one-half turn to point the eyewash spouts upward. Water is discharged from the twin eyewash nozzles for a soothing eye cleansing experience. Once completed, simply flick the Axion eyePOD back to its standard position and water will flow naturally through the tap.
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The chief financial officer from Cayman Airways gave evidence today… In the trial of a travel agent accused of stealing thousands of dollars from customers.
Ingrid Scott was part owner of Sea2sky Travel. She is charged with stealing around $25,000 by telling people she had booked their flights. But when customers turned up at the airport, nothing was booked.
On Wednesday, the jury heard from Paul Tibbetts, who told them when he was contacted by police and given a list of names of people who had paid for tickets. He checked, but found none of them were booked on flights.


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Organolepticians Number Eleven (Oct 17, 2000)
Posted on March 11, 2014 Written by Edmunds St. John
UPDATE: VINTAGE TWO-TRIPLENAUGHT:
Rainy Day, Man
This has seemed like a difficult year to gauge ripeness. I hear reports, from everyone I know who makes wine, of high sugars, most often concurrent with high acid levels in the grapes, and low pHs.(Usually, as ripening proceeds, the heat that pushes sugar levels higher also serves to lower acidity. pH tends to move most significantly when the grapes actually pass physiological maturity.) Back down at ground level, that might mean that when I walk through the Syrah blocks at Parmelee-Hill that produce grapes for us, I can taste lots of grapes that, while quite sweet, will still have, beneath that sugar, a big dose of tartness (not in and of itself a bad thing — what's more important is whether the flavors seem green, or unripe). Even at the point when the grapes were picked, I could still find quite a few green seeds, though the flavors seemed really good in nearly all the fruit. So, it's been tougher, much tougher than normal, this year, to decide the best moment to pick.
But decide one must, and we brought in all 12.1 tons Thursday the 5th. The people that work for Steve Hill really seem to take some pride in their work, and these grapes were exceptionally clean and easy to sort through. I don't know how many grapes there were in those 12 tons, but most every one of them passed through my hands, and it only took a few hours — less time than the 3 and 1/2 tons of Grenache I complained so much about. When the Syrah from Durell came in 9 days later, the Parmelee-Hill was at the peak of its fermentative activity, and from where I stood in the hopper on the 14th, sorting that fruit, my nostrils were bombarded with the sweet, smoky ham-smell that fermenting Syrah gives off — a good sign, from my perspective — that smell is almost a trademark of the grape, particularly from that site.
Those 9 days took some getting through. I knew I'd need to get up to Sonoma to check the Durell fruit fairly soon after the Parmelee-Hill grapes arrived; there have been years when they've ripened almost simultaneously. The weather was nice, but moving toward the cool end of the spectrum, and there was a change imminent, pointing toward rain. Steve Hill was anxious to get some picking lined up since so much fruit was still hanging (for so many wineries), and he'd never be able to pick it all the day before that imminent rain finally showed up.
I drove up on Saturday, the 7th. It was breezy and none too warm, or bright. The kind of weather that tends to make you feel like it's getting late, and it's time to tarp the firewood, buy that weather-stripping you've been meaning to get, pick the last tomatoes. Get the car tuned up. Patch your raincoat. Whatever you do to get ready. I had two blocks of Syrah to check at Durell. One is on a terraced slope, rather steep. From the top, on a clear day there's a marvelous, full view east and south to Mt. Diablo, that's really lovely. The ground in the Terrace is red, rocky clay-loam, and the wine can, in the best years, be truly brilliant. It's quite good in almost all the other years. Today the fruit tasted like it was getting there, but could really use another 5 days. Still some signs of greenness here and there, in both flavors and tannins. It was pretty clear that the next five days would not provide ideal conditions, but, unless the weather got pretty disastrously nasty, the fruit could benefit from the extra hang-time, even with a bit of rain. In any case, it was definitely too early to pick, if really good wine was the objective.
Looking downslope, Parmelee Hill Vineyard
Sonoma County, California
Gateway to Durell Ranch
Syrah at Durell Ranch
The other block, just to the north on a slightly different exposure, was more perplexing. The soil in this section starts, at the top of the hill, with the very same red, rocky clay-loam, but as it descends, the color and nature of the clay changes to a cobbly grey adobe, the kind of soil prevalent on so much of the valley floor in Sonoma and over in Napa as well. These vines behave differently on different soils, and in this particular case I think the rootstocks are an issue. To make a long story short, the vines on part of this second block (which I've referred to now for 8 or 9 years as Raccoon Hill, because the first time I visited at harvest to check for ripeness, I noticed a lot of clusters with the bottom grapes missing, and a certain amount of raccoon scat in the vicinity) have a tendency to want to shut down early, and timing theharvest to optimize flavor is exceedingly tricky. (This kind of problem is one of the legacies of pyhlloxera, which, itself was a legacy of the monoculture of the AXR1 rootstock in California.) When I visited on the 7th, the relative ripeness at Raccoon Hill seemed to be all over the board, and there were lots of grapes beginning to soften up (usually a sign of ripening) but still alarmingly short in the flavor department. I worried some that physiological maturity may have arrived, and that the possibility of rain in this block could have a nightmarish outcome. Still, it made no sense to think of picking yet, either. I called Steve Hill later that day, and told him I wanted to wait out the weather.
Sunday the 8th I drove to the foothills to look at Mourvèdre grapes at Izay vineyard near the town of Lotus, a little north and west of Placerville. This is the third year in production for the vineyard and for the first two the quality has seemed pretty promising. The vineyard is in an area that can get pretty hot now and then and this year there were a couple of gargantuan heat spikes that caused some of the fruit to raisin as if it thought it was Zinfandel. That, itself, was discouraging, but now the bees were getting pretty active in the grapes, as well, so the growers were becoming increasingly uncomfortable about how this growing season was going to turn out. (Me, too.) And there was that imminent rain.
Rain during harvest is always depressing. You feel so completely helpless and powerless, and even if it's early enough in the season so that the effect may not be too dramatic, it's agonizing waiting for it to end, and for the sun to reappear, for the wind to blow, for the temperatures to rise and drive off the sense of the season dying on the vine. But when it comes just at the point when the grapes are poised at the brink of maturity, one feels stricken, and it takes a lot of getting used to.
It started raining off and on in Berkeley Monday morning. It started raining at Izay just as they wrapped up picking that afternoon. They'd picked the ripest sections, and tried to get only the fruit in the best condition, and they tarped it and stuck it in cold storage overnight. We took the grapes in Tuesday and I was worried, because they'd sat overnight in humid conditions. Not ideal, but what I sorted into the destemmer seemed pretty sound, and the smell and taste of what's in the fermenter is appropriate and encouraging.
It rained off and on through Wednesday evening. Steve Hill called Wednesday to ask if I'd come up to Durell on Thursday to decide when I wanted the Syrah, indicating that more inclement weather was due in on Sunday. I was already planning on a Thursday visit to take bunch samples and see what the statistics could tell me, though I was much more concerned about what my eyes and hands and palate would say.
I get pretty attached to the places my grapes come from, and I've loved the time I've spent at Durell. Part of that is the long and satisfying friendship that has developed between myself and Steve Hill, over the last 14 years. Much of it is just the land itself, where the company has often been provided by bluejays, jackrabbits, deer, raccoons, a Great Blue Heron, now and then. Lizards, red-tail hawks, turkey vultures, crows, the late afternoon sunlight, the wind, the magnificent live oaks, the fragrant bay laurels. The grapevines…oops, sorry, I was daydreaming. I was surprised to find, when I made the trip to Durell, that there had been only about a third of an inch of rain, and that it's impact had been negligible to nonexistent. The vines may have been slightly refreshed by it. Things seemed in pretty good shape; if anything the flavors in the fruit were more pleasing than they'd been the previous Saturday. (But then, again, I'd said I thought they needed another five days, hadn't I?) I filled a bucket with bunches from Raccoon Hill, and filled one from the Terrace as well, and returned to Berkeley to check out the numbers. Brix around 24 and 1/2, pH between 3.5 and 3.6, TA .56-.58. I got Steve Hill on the phone right away, and we arranged to pick Saturday the 14th. (I asked for the 13th, and was told that it was impossible because it would take too long to get ready. A reasonable explanation. But I wonder if maybe picking on Friday the 13th just sounded a little too unlucky. You never know.)
So, now it's the 17th, the Durell and Parmelee-Hill Syrahs are in the fermenters, as is the Izay Mourvèdre, and I have only Syrah from Fenaughty, (and enough Nebbiolo from Santa Barbara County to make 100 cases or so of rosé) left to bring in. C'mon, legs! Don't fail me now; I can smell the finish line…
–Steve Edmunds


Suitable for immunoblotting (western or dot blot), ELISA and immunohistochemistry as well as other phosphatase-avidin/biotin based enzymatic assays.
No reaction was observed against anti-Protein G.
This product was prepared from chromatographically pure Protein A. Assay by immunoelectrophoresis resulted in a single precipitin arc against anti-Alkaline Phosphatase (calf intestine) and anti-Protein A.
Protein A is an Orphan-U GPCR with an unknown ligand. This gene was identified from genomic analysis of a gene-dense region at human chromosome 12p13. It appears to be expressed mainly in the brain. However, its function is not known. Three alternatively spliced variants have been described; the full length of the third variant is yet to be determined.


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The 7 -- DGUSA 09/10/2011: "Untouchable"
The 7 - Pro Wrestling - DGUSA 09/10/2011: "Untouchable"
There were also at least one and maybe two dark matches. A train broke down on the Blue Line, and I didn't get in until halfway thru The Fray multiman match (won by Silas Young over Sugar Dunkerton), and I believe there was supposed to a match prior to that.
Actual iPPV opener is evidently part of a tag team tournament to spotlight/discover new talent, where the winner here went onto fight in Milwaukee. I was not familiar with any of these guys and have no impression of them two days later. The impressive guy was the 'fan' going crazy for one of the teams during the match, then eventually jumping the rail and joining them in the ring post-match. (I believe I overheard it was EVOLVE manager Larry David, not sure.) Brodie Lee walked in and took out the losing team, because he could.
Swan/Davis was a surprisingly good match; not that I thought it'd be bad, but that I hadn't given much thought to at all. Very much big man/little man dynamic. More a showcase for Davis rather than Swann, opposite of what you'd expect given their importance to the current storylines. Both guys looked good. Brodie Lee took out Rich Swann after the match. Gregory Iron (also in the Fray) stood up to Brodie Lee and got taken out. This might have been where newcomer Uhaa Nation ran Brodie Lee off, or that might have been next match.
PAC & Richochet was hyped to be a battle of the greatest high flyers in the world (except Mexico, I assume was written in tiny print) and it was a lot of high flying, but it also felt like it could've gone 5-8 more minutes and everyone would've been happy. Maybe we're all greedy. First time seeing Pac, he was good. Ricochet's heel look works. No dives in this match, which felt odd, but the post match (Ricochet's heel friends in Blood Warriors attacking Pac and alleging non-existent cheating was responsible for the loss) turned into everyone doing dives on everyone. Almost everyone on the card, really, ending with Sabu coming to dive on the increasing pile. Brodie Lee, who is a tall angry looking man, 'retreated' by stepping over the guardrail and pushing his way thru the fans. This included picking up MY chair and tossing about ten years away. A mean guy!!!
Tozawa/Gargano was my match of the night. Tozawa is very popular among people who go to or watch these sort of shows, but it was all about Gargano to me. When I first saw Gargano a couple years ago, he came off as a guy trying too hard to be wacky cool or ironic cool or whatever, but the trying to hard part is the important part. Gargano was a dictionary definition of Indy Dork, and now he's a real live wrestler. He was pretty smooth on the CHIKARA show, but he really looked great here. Simple story of Gargano being able to hang with the much 'better guy', and nearly being able to beat him, but only nearly able in the end and you really want to be there when he finally does get the win. (Sting vs Flair? Maybe not Sting vs Flair, but the concept of Sting vs Flair.) Evenly matched, went about the right length, a good time.
CIMA/YAMATO was alright. Slow starting match that eventually got going well, but YAMATO wasn't as interesting to me as he had been when he was a heel, and CIMA really didn't seem like a threat to win. CIMA pretty much indicated as much after the match, immediatly shifting to hyping up YAMATO's next title challenge.
Dragon Gate USA didn't have the MOTYC that they've delivered the last few years in Chicago, and so by that measurement it was a bit of a disappointment. Still, I felt like I got my money's worth; there was a lot of very good stuff here. The show is up on iPPV now, though I can't figure out how much they're charging for it on the website. Supposedly the Milwaukee show on Sunday was better, so maybe check that one out if/when they put it up.
The 7 - Pro Wrestling - DGUSA 09/10/2011: "Untouchable" Register and log in to post!


Collins opposed Trump's presidential nomination, but also voted against Obamacare in 2009.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) says Trump's executive order on Obamacare is "confusing."
The Trump administration will not allow 20 million people who rely on the Affordable Care Act for their health insurance to go without coverage when the law, known as Obamacare, is repealed and replaced with a new plan, a senior White House official said on Sunday.
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus intensified the Trump administration's criticism of the news media on Sunday, accusing it of trying to delegitimize Donald Trump's presidency and vowing to fight such coverage "tooth and nail."
In his first briefing as White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer lashes out at the press Saturday over its reporting of the attendance at Donald Trump's inauguration, vowing to hold the media "accountable."
President Donald Trump's inauguration got a 20.1 percent share, according to the Nielsen ratings. By comparison, President Barack Obama's second inauguration got a 14 percent share. But his first inauguration got a 25.5 percent share. And that was on a Tuesday. The last time a first term inauguration was as low as Trump's was George H.W. Bush in 1989.
Despite what you heard at inauguration, crime is down in NYC. Historic lows. Shootings, homicides, robberies... all down. Spread the word.
An estimated 40,000 packed the plaza facing San Francisco City Hall at the start of San Francisco's Women's March, according to Bay Area organizers.
But with crowds expected to greatly exceed early figures by the end of the night, organizers passed out a leaflet asking protesters to do their part to maintain peace.
Women's March Bay Area Spokeswoman Martha Shaughnessy said the group had trained between 80 and 150 volunteers to serve as peace ambassadors and to support crowd control at events in San Jose and Oakland in addition to the San Francisco march. In San Francisco, a committee dubbed "crowd cuddlers" was tapped to usher VIPs such as Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and folk singer Joan Baez from the stage to a green room set up in the Asian Art Museum.
In the Trump administration, the press secretary will ask the questions and the reporters will be forced to answer them.
Spicer: "This was the first time... that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the mall."
1. Spicer (& Trump) are skilled at what we used to call "the spread" in high school debate. Make a lot of dubious arguments really fast.
2. Buried among the many bad arguments there are usually a few grains of truth, i.e. examples of stories the media really did screw up.
3. This is challenging to deal with. You can be 85% right and a skilled debater can usually pivot the conversation to the 15% you got wrong.
4. In general, the correct response is to disengage and not let the other guy dictate the terms of the debate.
5. Still, this gets into some hiccups for how the press evaluates itself. There can be too much focus on narrow truth vs. broader truth.
7. Sometimes the reverse is true also. In a well-reported story, the conclusion should hold even if some nonessential details are wrong.
8. I have no foolproof solutions, but a more iterative approach might help? Build on prior knowledge but be ready to revise conclusions.
There has been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Donald Trump accountable. And I'm here to tell you that it goes two ways. We're going to hold the press accountable as well. The American people deserve better and as long as he serves as the messenger for this incredible movement he will take his message directly to the American people where his focus will always be.
"Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way in one particular tweet to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the mall."
No one had numbers because the national park service, which controls the national mall, does not put any out. By the way this applies to any attempt to count the protesters in the same fashion.
From the platform where the President was sworn in to 4th Street holds about 250,000 people. From 4th Street to the media tent were about another 220,000 people. And from the media tent to the Washington Monument another 250,000 people. All of this space was full when the President took the oath of office. We know that 420,000 people used the DC metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 people who used it to President Obama's last inaugural. This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe.
White House tradition: President yells at chief of staff. Chief of staff yells at press secretary. Press secretary yells at the press.
On Sunday, said @PressSec, Pres Trump will attend the swearing-in of his top aides, who'll then be briefed on ethics & classified material.


Croque Monsieur - Bacon & Cheese Toastie for Dad!
With it being National Bacon Week & Father's Day this Sunday, I wanted to share with you a dish that our kids make each year and serve as a breakfast in bed for dad.... Croque Monsieur! What you may ask - its a bacon & cheese toasted sandwich, that you can do in a toasted sandwich machine if you have one, or in a fry pan or under the griller... its super easy, so the kids can do it on their own, or if you want to get a little fancy you can also adda Bechamel sauce to make it a little more traditional too!
In a small heavy bottomed pot, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Once it starts to bubble and foam add the flour and whisk for another 30 seconds, stirring continuously. Add the warm milk and stir until smooth.
Spread the Dijon on one side of each piece of bread. Top 2 pieces of bread with even amounts of the bacon and cheese. Then place the other two pieces of bread on top to make the sandwiches.
In a large pan melt another tablespoon of butter. Add each sandwich and lightly brown on both sides.
Place the sandwiches on a sheet pan and top with the béchamel sauce. Top each with the grated Gruyere and place under the broiler until golden brown and bubbly.
Do you ever need to whip up a quick meal and don't know what to do... give this one a try... for those busy midweek dinners, using mostly ingredients that you probably already have at home in the pantry/fridge... this is a winner!
1. Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add sausages and cook, turning occasionally, for 6-8 minutes until golden on all sides. Transfer to a plate.
2. Add onion, garlic and mushrooms to pan and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4-5 minutes until onion is tender and mushrooms are golden.
3. Sprinkle paprika and flour over mushroom mixture. Stir in the tomato paste and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Gradually add stock and Worcestershire sauce to pan, stirring constantly, until well combined.
4. Add sausages to pan. Stir until well combined and mixture comes to the boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, partially cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until sausages are cooked through. Stir through sour cream and chives. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with pappardelle or fettucine pasta or some steamed rice. Sprinkle with extra chopped chives to serve if liked.
Our little man Jonah & I have some annoying tummy issues, which means that we have to eat Low Fodmap, which means low fermentable products... unfortunately that includes quite a large range of ingredients, so I am always on the look out for a good LOW FODMAP recipe, that we can enjoy with the whole family. This is just one of those dinners, that I can cook and we will all enjoy it, with the added bonus of no upset tummies for Jonah & me! So, crack out your peanut butter - the crunchier the better, if you ask me, and get the kids to help you prepare this in the kitchen... it is super easy and super tasty! Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
Heat the olive oil with the garlic clove in a large pot over medium–high heat. Remove the garlic clove.
Toss in the chicken and cook for 2–3 minutes, or until golden brown, turning often to ensure even color.
Cover the chicken with water and let it cook over medium-low heat for approx. 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.
In a separate bowl whisk the coconut milk and peanut butter until well blended.
Add the preparation to the chicken and cook for about 20 minutes.
Give everything a good stir and salt to taste.
Remove from the heat and serve with your favourite rice. I suggest jasmine.


If you don't see something you'd like to see here, send me mail!
This is the repository for our laser rangefinder data. In addition to the data, there is (will be) some documentation on how the whole thing works, as well as information on our calibration techniques.


Is Language Holding Back New York's Bengali Voters?
Ahmed works in finance, as a bond researcher. When it comes to the election, he's most concerned about the economy and "where we're headed." Ahmed is a Democrat, and Tuesday he will be voting for Obama.
Ahmed was born in the US but his parents are from Bangladesh. He grew up speaking both English and Bengali. For him, language assistance at the polls isn't an issue. He didn't even know that Bengali translations of the ballot would be available—or for that matter that the local Bangladeshi population has grown as much as it has.
According to the latest census, there are enough limited-English speakers of South Asian decent to require language assistance in Bengali, Punjabi and Hindi at certain polling places in Queens. Of those languages, there are more Bengali speakers who speak limited English. While there will be interpreters available for all three languages, officials chose to translate the ballot into just Bengali.


It's a clichto say that the geology of a place defines so much of what occurs on it, but the case of dolerite in Tasmania truly bears this theory out.
This igneous rock is prevalent throughout the island, defining many of its distinctive mountains and soaring sea cliffs, and was among the first physical attributes noted by 17th and 18th century seafarers - indeed, Abel Tasman saw little else other than dolerite coastal scenery in his 1642 voyage.
Tasmania's dolerite correlates with similar formations in Antarctica and South Africa - evidence of Gondwana's violent break-up during the Jurassic period, when vast quantities of molten rock pushed up from deep in the earth through weak points in the Earth's crust.
Tasmania's dolerite-capped highlands were at the right latitude to experience erosion by the freeze-thaw phenomenon during the most recent Ice Age.
Dolerite has influenced the settlement and development of Tasmania, including the location of roads, rail, mines and agriculture.
The rock has also directly affected the biology of the island, creating unique habitats for plants and animals; indeed, it was the botanist, Robert Brown, who made the first recorded geophysical observation related to dolerite - when he climbed Mt Wellington in 1804 and noted that the "perpendicular rocks atop Table Mountain affected the compass needle".
Despite its majestic appearance, dolerite's physical properties have not always been warmly received, being a very hard rock, difficult to drill, shape or quarry, and forming only thin, rocky soils.
"... in the central plateau and the higher portions of the State all the overlying sedimentaries have been denuded away and the diabase [i.e. dolerite] forms the surface. It destroyed the coal measures and itself is barren of all mineral wealth and use, except as road metal. It is so dense and hard that the soil washes away as rapidly as the rock decays. It is Tasmania's curse."
Object display location: Henry Hunter Galleries level 1. Tasmania. Life and Environment.


text:
The Delicious Life of Nick Offerman
Why this Illinois guy is suddenly, somehow, the perfect actor for America.
By Jeff Ruby
Published Sept. 25, 2013
Admits to taking two semesters of ballet at the University of Illinois to meet women PHoto: Chris Buck; dancer: Nancy Owen
Nick Offerman hasn't slept in three nights, nor has he bathed. Even his famous mustache looks tired. "Go easy on these," he tells the photographer conducting a lengthy photo shoot in the parking lot behind his Los Angeles wood shop. He is pointing at the bags under his eyes. "My face looks like Burt Reynolds's asshole," he quips.
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Everyone laughs, then Offerman stops kidding around. For the next two hours, he politely obeys the photographer's direction, changing costumes four times without complaint, like the good
Minooka, Illinois, native that he is. His interior monologue could involve any number of pressing subjects: We're the Millers, his new movie with Jennifer Aniston; the upcoming season of the critically acclaimed NBC comedy Parks and Recreation; his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! the previous night; his new memoir and how-to book, which comes out this month; or American Ham, his folksy-profane traveling revue of "songs and woodworking tips with minor nudity" that has toured intermittently for nearly two years.
Or perhaps Offerman is thinking about the routine physical he has later today. One can easily imagine his doctor begging him to lay off the red meat and single-malt Scotch as if he were addressing Ron Swanson, the dyspeptic, government-hating Luddite with a heart of gold that Offerman plays on Parks and Rec. And Offerman is cool with that. Because Ron is an inspired character—a once-in-a-lifetime role tailored to the actor's quirky comic peccadilloes, so pitch-perfect and timely that he has advanced beyond the sitcom and entered the realm of the cultural phenomenon.
At a moment when humans find themselves neutered by the comforts of the modern world, it turns out we need Ron Swanson, a steely-eyed, helmet-haired paragon of masculinity who keeps a sawed-off shotgun on his desk and pokes holes in our self-seriousness with gleeful irreverence. If the average man said, "Fishing relaxes me: It's like yoga, except I still get to kill something," he might be thought insensitive. When Ron says it, we learn something about where America currently resides, culturally speaking.
Maybe Offerman is wondering what it all means, being famous enough to cause a stir in airports among people who call him Ron Swanson with no apparent irony. What is he to think when fans say things like "If Nick Offerman is not as much of a libertarian as Ron Swanson, I'll punch him in the face"? Because Offerman is not a libertarian. He's a gregarious lug who lives for the theatre, believes in gun control, works extremely hard, smokes pot when he can, and listens to Tom Waits. Trying to imagine him in Ron's knit polos and pleated khakis, spouting crackpot government rants, is impossible.
It's entirely possible he gets through the photo shoots and interviews by musing at the absurdity of it all: He's a former pig-shit-shoveling farmer being fawned over and scrutinized at every turn. Or maybe he really is thinking about red meat and Scotch.
Interviewer: Would you rather slide down a razorblade naked into a bucket of iodine or eat a barrel of monkey snot?
Offerman: Definitely monkey snot. It's probably not that far off from bone marrow. Especially if you had something really good to spread it on. That could be quite palatable.
It may seem as if Nick Offerman is suddenly everywhere. He is, but there's nothing sudden about it. He compares his career, which began in Chicago theatre and shifted to L.A. in the mid-1990s, to a slowly rolling snowball that has taken two decades to gain momentum. "I'm finally getting offered movie parts I've been craving for 20 years," says the 43-year-old. He's sitting in the office of his wood shop, where he and his small staff craft heirloom furniture to sell online (at offermanwoodshop.com). He's clad in a worn Willie Nelson T-shirt and a musky baseball cap flecked with sawdust. "People said to me, 'Where have you been?' I'm like, 'I'm right here in your pocket. I was driving your car last week.' "
Offerman in his Los Angeles wood shop Prop Stylist: Ward Robinson for WRP; Hair and Makeup: Barbara Guillaume
Somehow, at this particular moment, Offerman is the perfect actor for America. This may sound like a stretch, considering whole swaths of the population don't know his name, but plenty of people hate the Brad Pitts and George Clooneys and Leonardo DiCaprios for their impossible beauty and their self-righteousness. Not many people hate Nick Offerman. Maybe that's because he looks and acts like the rest of us.
When he goes on Conan and talks about rubbing bacon grease behind his ears, men laugh; when he serenades his wife, the Will & Grace actress Megan Mullally, with a goofy love song on Letterman, women swoon. Despite his paunch and hairy back, People magazine named him one of the sexiest men alive in 2012 (mustache edition), and it wasn't really a joke.
But nowhere is he more popular right now than online. Memes. Hashtags. Fan pages. A Tumblr blog called Cats That Look Like Ron Swanson. Even throwaway videos, like "How to Grow a Moustache with Nick Offerman," garner more than a million YouTube hits. Though Offerman is well aware of all this stuff, he steers remarkably clear of the Web. "If I get on the Internet, that's more time away from woodworking, guitar playing, lovemaking," he says. "All the things that are delicious in life."
"Delicious" is one of Offerman's favorite words these days. When he talks about turning a piece of cherrywood into a canoe paddle, he calls the feeling "delicious." The afternoons he spent in the Wrigley bleachers over the years? "The most delicious hours of my drunken life." Working with Jeff Bridges, a personal hero, on The Men Who Stare at Goats was incredibly delicious. His life right now is an orgy of deliciousness.
A few years back, when Ron Swanson was beginning to look like Parks and Rec's breakout character, various colleges begged Offerman to visit their campuses. His agent told him it would be an easy paycheck: fly in, tell some stories, do a Q&A, shake a few hands, and fly out. "What an asshole move that would've been," Offerman recalls. "You know, to be like, 'Hello, welcome to me. Feast your eyes on 5 foot 11 inches of Illinois meat. You're welcome.' "
Instead, he wrote American Ham, an eclectic 110-minute variety show. The traveling revue, which has visited 50 or so cities over the past two years, includes a shirtless Offerman playing raunchy songs on his guitar, dispensing sincere advice, and telling uproarious sex stories. His wife's rootsy band, Nancy and Beth (which includes Stephanie Hunt, best known as Devin on NBC's Friday Night Lights), often performs. The whole thing is like Garrison Keillor after smoking a bowl—a notion Offerman would undoubtedly call delicious. (American Ham lands at the Chicago Theatre on October 3.)
The performance, which The Onion's A.V. Club called "amazing and inspirational," has been generally well received but is a bitter pill for more-conservative Parks and Rec viewers. "My balloon filled with love, admiration, and devotion for Ron Swanson was soon to become deflated with this other impersonator whose show consisted of continual 'f' this and 'f' that, hyperfocus on sex and drugs . . . [and] his exhaustingly long defamation of Christian beliefs," wrote one audience member on Ticketmaster.com. "I would have preferred to continue to live in the fantasy of Parks and Recreation and the characters within."
That commenter probably won't buy Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living (Dutton, $27), the honest and funny new memoir that firmly establishes who Offerman is. And isn't. At first glance, the book plays up old-fashioned manliness, its cover featuring a photo of the rugged author in a canoe he built himself. Offerman touches on everything from his days as a break-dancing, football-playing farm boy in Minooka (about 50 miles southwest of the Loop) to his freewheeling, hedonistic 20s in Chicago to the inevitable Hollywood struggles that followed.
But he doesn't gloss over embarrassing moments, including his two trips to jail during college at the University of Illinois—one for shoplifting Ronnie Milsap cassettes from Kmart as a joke; the other, he says, a convoluted case of mistaken identity. Between anecdotes, he delivers impassioned pleas and rants about abortion (pro-choice), creationism (ridiculous), religion (too often exploited), and gay rights (a no-brainer). "I'll never go on Bill Maher and get in a fight with him, because I'm just not as smart as that guy," he says. "I have as many foibles as the next guy, but I'm in the business to dispense a little social medicine."
Even if it means alienating a certain percentage of his fan base?
"Look, if they read the book and they dislike me, there's nothing I can do," Offerman says. "But for every one of those, maybe I'll bring a few people around to a more open-minded sensibility. Sure, I'm like Ron Swanson a little bit. I love steak, I love Lagavulin [Scotch], I love woodworking. But I'm a human being; I'm much more complex or flawed than this character. Many fans want to believe that I am making all this shit up when I'm Ron or that I'm speaking my own mind. The thing they can never imagine is that the writers are so good. I'd be a jerk if I didn't cop to the fact that I'm a lucky son of a bitch to be handed that script every week. All I have to do is say this line! It's a racket."
Interviewer: If you had to eat a crayon out of a box of 64, which would it be?
Offerman: Chocolate brown, in hopes there would be something of the latte about it.
Offerman has been starstruck exactly once in his life. It was 1995 and he was an understudy for Ethan Hawke in Sam Shepard's Buried Child at Steppenwolf. Neither Hawke nor the director, Gary Sinise, spooked Offerman; it was Shepard. The Pulitzer Prize winner popped into the theatre to do rewrites and gave a very green Offerman $40 to fetch him a bottle of Maker's Mark. "It was like King Arthur handing me a sword and saying, 'Please have this sharpened so I can go into battle with Excalibur,' " Offerman recalls. "It wouldn't have been half as cool if he'd asked for something else, like, 'Hey, can you get me a two-liter of Sprite?' "
The whole "Gosh, I'm a lucky bastard" theme runs through Offerman's life like a mantra. The second of four children of a social studies teacher and a nurse, he spent much of his childhood on his grandfather's farm, where he learned how to use tools. By fourth grade, he sensed he was different from the other kids, announcing to his class that he wanted to be a nonconformist. "It was basically like saying, 'Excuse me, world? I'm a weirdo,' " Offerman recalls. As an altar boy at St. Mary's Church, he would make the congregation laugh simply by raising an eyebrow while sniffing the Communion wine—a move inspired by John Belushi.
His many interests in high school ranged from playing the saxophone and sports to making comedy videos with his cousin. So when it came time for college, he surprised his parents by telling them he wanted to enroll in the U. of I.'s acting conservatory. "It was as though I had informed them that I wanted to study wizardry so that I might travel into alternate dimensions," he writes in Paddle Your Own Canoe. They urged him to have something to fall back on.
After graduation, he moved to Chicago and with his friends founded Defiant Theatre, a scrappy experimental company driven in equal measures by Kabuki, slapstick, and surrealism. "I wasn't a great actor," says Offerman, who subsidized his meager income by doing scenic carpentry and roofing. He found acting jobs here and there, doing experimental plays like The Questioning of Nick with Michael Shannon and Guy Van Swearingen at A Red Orchid Theatre. "He's always been a character," Van Swearingen says. "He had a great sense of comedy and timing. And he made a point of standing out."
Offerman worked as the "fight captain" for Richard II at the Goodman and A Clockwork Orange at Steppenwolf. "I was living in abject poverty," he recalls. "When people ask, 'Do you like going back to your old haunts?' the answer is no. My old haunts were whoever had the cheapest burrito."
Offerman's first film job was a bit part in Chain Reaction, a 1996 action movie starring Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman that was shot in Chicago. Though both his scenes were cut, he earned the equivalent of two months of carpenter's wages for two days of work—plus the all-important Screen Actors Guild card. Later that year, while acting in Going All the Way with Ben Affleck and Rachel Weisz, his cast mates convinced him to move to Hollywood. He packed up his rusted Subaru station wagon and left for Los Angeles.
Interviewer: You've discovered that you were mixed up as a baby at the hospital. Do you turn yourself in?
Offerman: Fuck no. I'd destroy those records.
In L.A., Offerman built cabins and decks for rent money while toiling as a journeyman actor on TV shows including ER, 24, The West Wing, NYPD Blue, Gilmore Girls, and Deadwood. When he made it to the big screen, he was usually cast in such thankless roles as a construction worker in 1998's City of Angels or as the corpulent, incompetent hit man in 2005's Sin City. No one in Hollywood seemed to recognize the potential of an intense Shakespearean actor who looked like a plumber.
In 2000, while working on a play at the Evidence Room in L.A., he met Megan Mullally. Already a star from NBC's hit show Will & Grace, the Oklahoma City native—a vet of Chicago theatre herself—immediately made an impression. "She was so hilarious and gorgeous," Offerman says. "What first attracted us to one another was our filthy sense of humor." One night, they made out for two hours in her Range Rover while listening to the Beck song "Beautiful Way" on repeat 38 times.
Around that time, both were cast in a John McNaughton movie, Speaking of Sex, which was filming on location in Calgary. Mullally, however, would not allow Offerman overnight access to her hotel room. "I was trying to keep the puss-ay on reserve for as long as possible," she told BuzzFeed years later.
They'd been dating for only a few months when she took him to the 2000 Emmy Awards. When she won best supporting actress, he was ecstatic. When she lost in the same category the next year, he was enraged: "I was like, Who says someone else is funnier than Megan? Who do I punch?"
In 2003, the day before the Emmys, Mullally and Offerman got married at a tiny backyard gathering at her home in Beverly Hills. Their pairing has morphed into that rarest of Hollywood occurrences: a normal, healthy marriage. "The fact that we truly like each other is foremost," says Mullally, who is 11 years older than Offerman. "Then there's the fact that neither of us comes from an industry background, but from everyday upbringings. Our relationship is more romantic now than when we met. It's in the small things, the minutiae of every day, as well as in the grand gestures. I'm not sure why that is."
Offerman will tell you, without a hint of insincerity, that he's not sure how a jackass like him managed to woo and marry the most beautiful and talented woman alive. And that all he ever wanted was to "tickle" people and to build things. Now he gets to do both. He also gets to do Megan Mullally.
Interviewer: Have you ever French-kissed your poodles?
Offerman: (deadpan): Yes.
Offerman's career took off, sort of, in 2004. That's the year he auditioned for the part of Michael Scott on the American version of the breakout British comedy The Office. The job, of course, went to Steve Carell. Offerman read for various other roles on the show, none of which he ended up getting. But Michael Schur, one of The Office's producers and writers, scrawled Offerman's name on a Post-it note and attached it to his computer. "It was his economy of action," Schur recalls over e-mail. "He stood perfectly still and said the words as succinctly and straightforwardly as they could be said—they were like missiles coming out of his mouth. Often, actors think they need to be 'memorable' in auditions for guest roles by putting a ton of spin on the lines. Nick was memorable because there was no spin at all."
Three years later, Schur found himself in charge of casting his own show, Parks and Recreation, and he persuaded NBC to give Offerman a part. "I'm not sure what he saw in me," says Offerman. "But he couldn't have had any idea at the time that Ron Swanson would come out of it."
Now in its sixth season, Parks enjoys rabid fandom and critical acclaim, but last year, it ranked a tepid 131st in average viewers among network primetime shows, according to Nielsen.
"Parks and Recreation is a smart, warm, and insanely funny TV show that's had the misfortune to air on a network in dire shape, ratings-wise," says Alan Sepinwall, a TV critic on the website HitFix. "A more popular network would have either made Parks a hit or canceled it."
Year after year, around Emmy time, Parks fans go ballistic. Amy Poehler gets her usual best actress nod for playing the ditzy and indefatigable Leslie Knope, but the rest of the cast is overlooked. When the nominations are announced, Offerman goes fishing with his family in Minnesota. "I would rather be snubbed for playing Ron Swanson than win a trophy for being on any other show," he says. "Because the trophy is meaningless. I consider us Guinness and most of the mainstream comedies Budweiser. They'll give you a buzz, but it's not nearly as delicious as our pint."
Interviewer: Do you worry that Ron Swanson could get overexposed?
Offerman: No. Ron Swanson is garlic aïoli that goes amazing with meat and fries, but if I give you a big bowl of garlic aïoli, that's way too much flavor.
"This is sort of my man cave," Offerman says, gesturing around his 3,200-square-foot wood shop. Like everything he touches, the mellow, sun-drenched space tucked away among back-alley warehouses on a quiet stretch of east Los Angeles has that easy, lived-in look: tons of books, a dusty piano, movie posters and tchotchkes, a marked-up periodic table of elements, a fridge filled with Guinness, and Johnny Cash on the stereo. And wood. Lots of wood, all from salvaged trees. "Megan and I have a deal," Offerman says, rubbing a diseased camphor tree saved from a friend's yard in Burbank. "I like to make a mess, usually with sawdust, and so it's better to do it here."
This, obviously, is Offerman's secret. While many Hollywood actors drown in a frustrating business driven by ego and money—an environment where you may not see the results of your work for years, if ever—Offerman retreats to his fortress of solitude. "After a few meditative hours here, I've accomplished something tangible," he says.
When a talk show host calls Offerman "manly" simply because he builds things, he always seems slightly embarrassed. In a family full of firefighters, paramedics, and farmers, he's the oddball who went to theatre school and studied ballet. "If you had told me when I was 12 and my uncle Don taught me to use a socket set that I would be celebrated for that skill one day, I would have laughed long and hard," he says. "It's not a manly thing. It's a human competence thing."
His wood shop colleagues ("a charming and ragtag fellowship of elves" that periodically includes Offerman's father, Ric, and brother Matt, a brewer at Solemn Oath in Naperville) don't see him as a star; to them, he's just Nick, the nice guy over there with the table saw. "Whether he's here in the shop or doing something in Hollywood, he's the same," says Michele Diener, who has worked at Offerman Woodshop since 2010. "His personality really comes through."
Here is a polar bear of a man, not the best-looking guy by any means, living smack-dab in the most superficial city on earth—but by being himself, he succeeds. There's something commanding yet comforting about his presence, as though you're watching the goofy uncle, the one with the ridiculous giggle who cracks up the whole family at backyard barbecues, finally make it big.
The ride won't last forever. Parks and Rec's moment will pass, as it always does with sitcoms, and he'll be forced to live in a post–Ron Swanson world and find other work as an actor. Supporting roles in The Lego Movie and Diablo Cody's upcoming Paradise, with Russell Brand and Holly Hunter, imply that he will. But he knows that the snowball of his career, rolling so fast now, could melt completely.
"If I had to trade all future TV and film work for the role of Ron Swanson, I would do it in a heartbeat," he says. "Because then I could spend the rest of my life working in theatre and the shop. And that's delicious."
Where to see him next: Offerman's comedy tour American Ham stops at the Chicago Theatre on Oct. 3. For info, ticketmaster.com
This article appears in the October 2013 issue of Chicago magazine. Subscribe to Chicago magazine.
Other Jeff Ruby stories
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Lemon balm, botanically known as Melissa officinalis, is part of the Lamiaceae, or mint, family. The herb's medicinal value lies mostly in the terpenes, tannins and eugenol found in its leaves. The University of Maryland Medical Center recommends taking 2 to 3 ml of lemon balm tincture three times a day. Though lemon balm is generally safe to take, be sure to consult a health care professional for proper dosage and safety information.
Terpenes, parts of the volatile oil that gives lemon balm its distinctive smell, are also responsible for its efficacy as a sleep aid and sedative. Lemon balm tincture is especially potent in treating insomnia when blended with valerian root. A study published in "Fitoterapia" by A. Cerny and K Schmid found that patients who took a combination of valerian and lemon balm slept significantly better than patients who took a placebo.
"The Complete German Commission E Monographs: Therapeutic Guide to Herbal Medicines" lists lemon balm as a carminative--a substance that prevents or eases gas. The University of Michigan Health System attributes the carminative property of lemon balm to the terpenes constituents. The herb may help dyspepsia, calm nervous stomachs and relieve colic.
The terpenes and tannins in lemon balm have antiviral properties, while eugenol kills bacteria. The herb's antimicrobial properties are specifically linked to the constituents neral, citronella, trans-caryophyllene and geranial. One study in "Revista Medico-Chirurgicala A Societatii De Medici Si Naturalisti Din Iasi," a Romanian journal, found that lemon balm is particularly effective against Candida albicans, the fungus that causes yeast infections.
Lemon balm may be a possible aid for improving cognitive function and decreasing agitation in Alzheimer's patients. Lemon balm extracts may bind directly to specific receptors in the brain that make it an effective and relatively safe treatment for dementia.


Studying the Corinthian church of the Bible is like taking a look inside the modern church. Many of the problems encountered there are the same we are facing today in Fort Worth Texas and in America. So, to get the answers to what we are facing let's take an ancient look inside the modern church.
A little history and background helps to understand why Corinth is relative to us today.
Paul founded the church in Corinth during his second missionary journey somewhere around the time 50 AD. You can read the story in Acts 18:1-17. Paul came to Corinth after a visit to Athens and stayed in Corinth at least a year and six months preaching and teaching the word of God. Corinth was a wealthy, commercial center – a port city on the peninsula in southern Greece. Corinth was known for its temple of the goddess Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. It is reported that 1,000 ritual priestess-prostitutes served the worshipers in the temple. As a matter of fact, in ancient Greece if you were involved in fornication or sexual sin, they said that you were "acting like a Corinthian", so Corinth was known for its carnality.
About five years after starting the church, Paul was in Ephesus on his third missionary journey. He stayed in Ephesus about three years, and it was during this stay that he received a disturbing report about problems in the Corinthian congregation. No, you're right, the church is not perfect! A delegation from Corinth arrived with a letter seeking Paul's advice on various issues of disagreement affecting the church. Why don't we jump headfirst into Paul's response to the reports and his response to the delegation from the church.
Questions about being married to an unsaved spouse.
The role of the sexes in the church.
Questions about how far is too far into sin.
The proper use of spiritual gifts in the services.
Questions about the return of the Lord.
How different are their problems from ours?
So to begin with, Paul addresses the issue of division in the church.
They were arguing over who was their favorite preacher and teacher in the church!
You see, each group was trying to prove to be more spiritual than the others. Pride, the sin of Satan had entered into the ministry of the church of Jesus Christ.
In Greek culture, intellectualism was highly valued, so someone who spoke well was seen as superior to others. This "comparing" of the styles and methods of the preachers was causing pride and pride causes division.
Paul tells the Corinthians that, where you find division and competition in the church, biblical wisdom is absent. Their schisms didn't reveal maturity but immaturity in the Spirit.
If someone is being used by God it is not because he is greatly talented but because he is gifted. The ministry is done by the Spirit of God – men who are used are only tools, each active in their own calling. Each is a gift to the body – a gift to be embraced, not to be rejected.
Paul warns the Corinthians not to lean on wisdom because it was through leaning on wisdom that the world rejected Christ. Their comparison of themselves was actually a sign of spiritual weakness which would lead to the rejection of Christ's call for humility and agape love.
While they are scrambling for the premier praise and position and promotion, Paul points out the life of the apostles who are being persecuted for their belief in Jesus.
Finally, Paul reminds them that every gift is given to them by God but although they have many instructors, they don't have many fathers. They are called to imitate their fathers in the faith. Find your spiritual father and stay with him! You can leave a teacher but are connected to a father!
Spiritual pride is still pride and is contrary to the Spirit. Paul says that when he comes, he will not hesitate to use correction on those who are acting in a spirit causing cliques and division.
Good leaders will work in love to correct divisive attitudes and actions. So, don't be dismayed if your church has problems! Corinth sure did!! When God adds you to a marriage, you don't just leave it upon the appearance of problems or division. Stay where God added you and you and the church will grow up into God's character.


text:
Le Droit Humain è il più antico Ordine massonico misto della storia, ufficialmente costituitosi in Francia il 4 aprile 1893 su impulso di Maria Deraismes e Georges Martin, nonché il più vasto sul piano geografico: fin da subito infatti nasce internazionale e si sviluppa in 64 Stati del mondo tra Federazioni, Giurisdizioni e Logge Pioniere. A maggio 2020 conta più di 32.000 iscritti tra uomini e donne. È anche la prima Massoneria mista in Italia (1904).

Storia
Nel 1881 Georges Martin chiede il nulla osta alla Grande Loge centrale de France di iniziare alla massoneria Maria Deraismes, intellettuale e attivista impegnata nella lotta sociale per la rivendicazione dei diritti della donna, considerata ancora oggi un personaggio fondamentale della cosiddetta Prima ondata femminista. La loggia designata per il suo ingresso è la loggia Les Libres Penseurs nella città di Pecq. Tale concessione non gli viene accordata e l'intera Loggia, che si diceva favorevole all'ingresso delle donne, si distacca dall'Obbedienza ed entra a far parte della Grande Loge symbolique écossaise, ritenuta più liberale. Georges Martin può dunque procedere all'iniziazione di Maria Deraismes, che viene celebrata il 14 gennaio 1882. Sebbene diverse donne fossero già state iniziate in massoneria in diversi paesi d'Europa, inclusa l'Italia, come alcune appartenenti a famiglie reali oppure all'alta borghesia, l'iniziazione di Maria Deraismes provocò un vero e proprio scandalo all'interno delle Obbedienze massoniche in quanto era evidente l'intenzione di Georges Martin di formalizzare in senso organico l'ingresso dell'intero genere femminile. La stessa loggia che pure aveva accolto Maria venne sospesa, e pur di ottenere la reintegrazione nell'Obbedienza, rinunciò ad averla tra i suoi iscritti. Da quel momento, per quasi dodici anni, Maria Deraismes restò una Sorella massone regolarmente iniziata ma senza logge in cui poter lavorare. Georges Martin, portato dalle sue convinzioni umaniste e femministe, continuò a chiedere e discutere per un'iniziazione egualitaria delle donne in massoneria, sostenendo le sue convinzioni durante le conferenze massoniche circa il ruolo determinante che queste ricoprono nella società, nella famiglia e nell'educazione. Nel gennaio del 1890 espose un progetto per creare una loggia mista qualificata come sperimentale con il titolo di Droit des femmes (Il Diritto delle donne) e chiese il parere della Grande Loge symbolique écossaise. Se alcune logge che ne facevano parte si dimostrarono favorevoli, il Consiglio esecutivo dell'Obbedienza si oppose e diede il suo rifiuto ufficiale. Martin cominciò allora con Maria Deraismes la progettazione di una struttura indipendente finalizzata a iniziare le donne.

Nacque così la Grande Loge symbolique écossaise mixte de France: "Le Droit humain", che diventerà Loggia Madre delle successive che in pochi anni vennero create. Durante gli anni in cui era stata costretta al silenzio massonico, Maria Deraismes aveva cooptato e istruito ai valori massonici altre sedici donne di grande valore intellettuale e umano; considerate pioniere di quello che sarebbe poi diventato, nella sua denominazione per esteso, l'Ordine Massonico Misto e Internazionale di Rito Scozzese Antico e Accettato Le Droit Humain, quali Marie Béquet de Vienne (1854-1913), filantropa e animatrice di numerose opere sociali, fondatrice di un "rifugio-laboratorio" aperto alle donne incinte o in difficoltà, associazione riconosciuta di pubblica utilità fin dal 29 luglio 1880 e che esiste tuttora con il nome di Fondation Béquet de Vienne; Marguerite Cremnitz (1848-1918), detta Parrhisia, presidente dell'opera degli asili nido parigini; Alexandra David-Néel, Charlotte Duval; Anna Férès-Deraismes, sorella di Maria; Maurice Lévy, Maria Arundale-Martin, omonima della coppia, animatrice del giornale La Citoyenne, redattrice al Journal des Femmes (1891-1910) e cofondatrice del gruppo de La Solidarité des femmes (1891); Irma Lâiné, detta Marie-Georges Martin (1848-1914), moglie di Georges; Eliska Vincent (1841-1914), cofondatrice della Società per la rivendicazione dei diritti della donna (1868), presidente-fondatrice dell'organizzazione militante socialista come pure sua sorella di sangue Florestine Mauriceau, prima donna amministratrice di un istituto di beneficenza a Parigi (1896); Julie Pasquier, tesoriera della Federazione francese delle Società Femministe (1892) e cofondatrice dell'Unione Femminista Socialista (1901); Marie Pierre, sorella di Eugénie Potonié-Pierre, una delle prime donne medico; Myrtille Reugenet e la sorella di sangue Maria Pognon, della Ligue du Bien Public, Clémence Royer (1830-1902), femminista, filosofa, antropologa, archeologa, giornalista, economista, fisica, insegnante, conferenziera, traduttrice e divulgatrice di Darwin, romanziera, membro della Società di Antropologia di Parigi, fondatrice e segretaria generale della Società di studi filosofici e sociali, e Louise Wiggishoff, vice-presidente della Società per il miglioramento della condizione della donna (Associazione Léon Richer), una delle prime donne amministratrici di una mensa della cassa delle scuole di arrondissement, fondatrice del patronato "gli Amici dell'adolescenza" e del Consiglio nazionale delle donne francesi e delegata a tutti i congressi femministi svoltisi in Francia fino alla sua morte, avvenuta il 21 dicembre 1903. A queste si aggiunsero poi Louise Michel e Annie Besant che nel 1902 ottenne dal Supremo Consiglio il mandato di fondare la prima loggia del Droit Humain in territorio inglese. Un passo decisivo per espandersi poi in tutti i paesi anglosassoni.

Caratteristiche distintive
 è un Ordine iniziatico;
 è un Ordine Misto;
 nasce internazionale;
 è integrale e unitario, possiede quindi una continuità iniziatica dal 1° al 33° Grado (RSAA);

Descrizione
Le Droit Humain mette allo stesso livello uomini e donne, e non fa distinzione di nazionalità, etnie, culture o religioni. È internazionale e ha una continuità iniziatica dal 1º al 33º Grado, ovverosia non riconosce una separazione tra l'Ordine (gestione dei primi tre gradi) e il Rito (i gradi dal quarto in su), se non da un punto di vista puramente amministrativo. Nella pratica vuol dire che i Maestri da introdurre al quarto Grado e ai successivi non sono cooptati arbitrariamente da chi già detiene i gradi superiori, ma tutti vi hanno accesso se lo desiderano e se hanno dimostrato tale desiderio con il lavoro iniziatico.

Il Droit Humain si è dato un'organizzazione di tipo federale, al fine di consentire sia l'organicità dell'Ordine nella sua interezza, sia la maggiore libertà possibile della sua rappresentanza nei vari territori nazionali in relazione alla cultura e alla sensibilità delle popolazioni in cui opera e comunque entro i limiti della Costituzione internazionale. L'unità minima della sua presenza in un determinato territorio è la Loggia pioniera, cioè una singola loggia che per prima viene costituita laddove il Droit Humain non è ancora presente e dipende direttamente dal Supremo Consiglio di Parigi. Seguono le Giurisdizioni e le Federazioni, che vengono costituite quando sono presenti una quantità minima di logge e di iscritti secondo i parametri stabiliti dalla Costituzione internazionale. In ogni Giurisdizione e Federazione il Supremo Consiglio nomina un suo Rappresentante, che nelle logge pioniere è il Maestro Venerabile.

Ogni Federazioni e Giurisdizione è retta da un Consiglio nazionale di 16 membri rappresentato da un Presidente eletto o Gran Maestro nazionale (la denominazione da utilizzare è a discrezione della persona eletta). Il Presidente del Consiglio nazionale della Federazione italiana è Daniela Carini, eletta il 5 settembre 2020 succedendo a Michele Ferraro.

Nessuna figura apicale nella gestione dell'Ordine riceve appannaggi o retribuzione per il servizio che presta, sia a livello nazionale che internazionale, incluso il Gran Maestro.

Le Droit Humain è membro dell'Alleanza Massonica Europea (abbreviato AME o EMA in lingua inglese).

Il Droit Humain nel mondo
Diversamente da quanto si sente dire a volte, l'Ordine nasce internazionale da subito. Già nel 1894, nel Bollettino internazionale, è riportato che l'organizzazione di logge in Belgio e Svizzera è a buon punto, e già nel 1895 viene aperta la prima loggia oltre i confini francesi, a Zurigo. Il 1901 viene erroneamente considerato l'inizio dell'internazionalismo, ma ciò che avviene in quell'anno è la messa ai voti e la proclamazione della costituzione del Supremo Consiglio, di fatto già operativo nel 1899.

Il Droit Humain è presente in tutti i continenti.

 in Europa: Islanda, Finlandia, Danimarca, Svezia, Norvegia, Francia, Belgio, Lussemburgo, Gran Bretagna, Irlanda, Svizzera, Germania, Austria, Italia, Spagna, Portogallo, Lituania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Repubblica Ceca, Serbia, Repubblica Slovacca, Polonia, Ungheria, Grecia, Cipro (Nicosia) e Russia.

 in Asia e Oceania: Libano, Israele, Giappone; Australia, Nuova Caledonia e Tahiti;

 in Africa: Marocco (Rabat), Benin (Cotonou), Ruanda, Senegal (Dakar), Congo, Costa d'Avorio, Camerun (Douala, Yaoundé), Togo, Nigeria, Ciad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sudafrica (Città del Capo, Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria), Reunion, Madagascar e Mauritius;

 in America: Canada (Montréal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Toronto), Stati Uniti, Messico, Guadalupa, Martinica, Guyana, Brasile, Argentina, Cile (Santiago, Valparaiso), Colombia, Paraguay, Perù, Uruguay e Venezuela;

Le sedi più importanti restano tuttora quelle dei paesi francofoni, Francia e Belgio in testa, e la sede centrale è situata a Parigi, in Rue Breton n.5. Le varie Federazioni nazionali mantengono una loro autonomia e il coordinamento è demandato al Supremo Consiglio con sede a Parigi.

Ogni cinque anni l'Ordine organizza il Colloquio Internazionale, vero e proprio organo deliberante in occasione del quale, tra le altre cose, viene nominato il nuovo Gran Maestro, e ai cui eventi correlati possono partecipare tutti gli iscritti che lo desiderano.

Nel 1998, in seguito agli studi di questioni sociali e in particolare al tema del maltrattamento dell'infanzia, alcune Logge Francesi e Colombiane hanno promosso un'azione in favore dei ragazzi e degli adolescenti abbandonati per strada, creando la Fondazione "Enfance 232 France-Colombia" e nel 2002 è stata creata una scuola di arti mestieri tradizionali nel paese sud-americano. Aderiscono al sostentamento del progetto molte Federazioni dell'Ordine tra cui quella italiana. Lo stesso progetto è stato poi realizzato nel Togo, in Africa, ma attraverso l'Associazione SPES (Sostegno all'infanzia che soffre); attualmente sono accolti in quella struttura oltre 170 adolescenti.

Il Droit Humain in Italia

Dalla prima loggia alla costituzione della Federazione

L'introduzione del Droit Humain in Italia è fortemente legata al pensiero teosofico, sebbene successivamente e fino a oggi rimarrà solo una delle diverse sensibilità al suo interno. Basti pensare che a celebrare l'accensione dei fuochi della prima loggia nel territorio italiano, sorta a Roma nel 1904 e contraddistinta dal numero di matricola 16, fu Annie Besant in persona e gli ufficiali di loggia appena eletti: l'editore Giuseppe Sulli Rao, fondatore della casa editrice Ars Regia, con la carica di Maestro Venerabile, Decio Calvari con quella di Oratore, anch'egli teosofo e scrittore, fondatore e primo direttore della rivista «Ultra», e Isabel Cooper-Oakley, cognata e assistente di Madame Blavatsky in qualità di Primo Sorvegliante.

Le logge italiane si costituiranno in Federazione nel 1916 per opera dell'allora Rappresentante del Supremo Consiglio di Parigi in Italia Giovanni Domanico, il quale ebbe modo di rafforzare la Massoneria mista nonostante gli ostacoli rappresentati dalle difficoltà dovute alla Prima Guerra mondiale, che aveva posto in secondo piano le istanze sociali di emancipazione della donna tanto care al Droit Humain, così come dall'ostilità del Grande Oriente d'Italia. Fra tutte le potenze massoniche europee, infatti, Le Droit Humain era l'unica che portasse avanti una battaglia morale per l'ottenimento del voto politico alle donne, e la Federazione italiana, che nel 1919 contava sul territorio italiano circa 70 logge, riuscì nello stesso anno a far abrogare l'istituto dell'autorizzazione maritale attraverso il sostegno del senatore e ministro di Grazia e Giustizia Ettore Sacchi, consentendo alle donne di esercitare tutte le professioni, incluse quelle pubbliche (ad eccezione di quella militare, per la quale si dovrà attendere il 20 ottobre 1999).

In vista della Prima Guerra mondiale e durante gli anni del conflitto la Federazione italiana produsse una continua opera di critica sociale dimostrando di nutrire al suo interno sia ragioni per intervenire nel conflitto che no. Per mezzo del suo periodico «Il Diritto Umano» voluto e progettato dal già citato Giovanni Domanico, la Federazione denunciò gli scontri come «la vergogna e il disonore dell'umana società [...] l'incubo di quanti veramente amano l'Umanità [...] un'immane carneficina [...] Una istituzione indegnissima di persone civili» che avrebbe procurato «mostruose conseguenze». Questa posizione fu adottata cercando di non giudicare la guerra come un conflitto particolare ma rimandandola al paradigma di umanesimo universale tipico del Droit Humain. Nella direzione contraria, fondamentali furono gli interventi di Maria Rygier, appartenente del Droit Humain e collaboratrice del quotidiano «Il Popolo d'Italia», che essendo di natura socialista vedeva in questa guerra i prodromi della rivoluzione e dunque si professava interventista. Maria Rygier, pur rivendicando la causa patriota, avrebbe da lì a poco, se non cambiato idea, almeno nutrito dubbi sulla natura del conflitto. Intuendo le sorti dell'Italia in quello che sarebbe stato il dopoguerra, coniò il termine «Fascio» per descrivere la deriva di Benito Mussolini e profetizzando il regime a cui questi avrebbe dato vita.

La critica alla guerra non era da parte del Droit Humain solamente un atto ideologico, ma come ha tenuto più volte a specificare col suo periodico, era qualcosa che nasceva dall'osservazione della condizione umana per mezzo degli strumenti esoterici, dunque dell'uso della ragione necessario affinché gli esseri umani siano consapevoli della loro qualità divina, il cui primo sentimento è la fratellanza con i propri simili. A questo proposito si rimanda all'articolo dove si narra di cinquanta ostaggi destinati al plotone d'esecuzione graziati da un ufficiale massone tedesco dopo che uno di loro gli aveva mostrato il «segno massonico di soccorso».

Sotto il fascismo e il dopoguerra
Negli anni successivi, la Federazione continuò il proprio consolidamento sotto la reggenza di Valentino di Fabio anche per mezzo dell'implementazione del precedente bollettino nazionale, creato sull'impronta di quello parigino, e dell'organizzazione di grandi eventi soprattutto nella città di Napoli, che allora ospitava la sede centrale della Federazione. Al pari delle altre organizzazioni massoniche italiane, le attività subirono una battuta d'arresto nel 1925, quando il regime fascista promulgò la legge Mussolini-Rocco che ordinava la chiusure delle logge, in difesa delle quali non valse l'intervento in Parlamento da parte di Antonio Gramsci. Da alcuni documenti acquisiti nel 2020 dalla Federazione italiana, tuttavia, risulta evidente che, se non tutte, diverse logge continuarono a operare clandestinamente.

Le attività ripresero nel 1944 e più solidamente due anni dopo per opera di Agostino Caporlingua, che riorganizzò le Logge del Sud-Italia. Mentre il Supremo Consiglio di Parigi si adoperava per far sì che Di Fabio riprendesse il suo ruolo interrotto dal conflitto bellico, che aveva procurato alla Federazione un consistente ridimensionamento della quantità di iscritti, nasceva a Milano la loggia "Salvatore Mistretta", ancora oggi attiva, che si rivelò di strategica importanza per la ripresa delle logge del Nord, che impiegavano più tempo a trovare un nuovo assetto in quanto la guerra era finita più tardi.

In una relazione sulla situazione della Massoneria italiana, datata 1946, richiestagli dal Supremo Consiglio di Parigi, Valentino Di Fabio scrive a proposito della ricostituzione della Federazione italiana: "...il risveglio fu immediato, anche di coloro che temporaneamente si misero sotto altra Obbedienza. Tutte le Logge prima esistenti furono ricostruite [...] La maggiore difficoltà si ebbe a riallacciarsi con Supremo Consiglio, che aveva subito la stessa sorte [della guerra]. Il Petain l'aveva sciolta e ne aveva sequestrato la sede centrale: asportato mobili, archivi, rituali. Finalmente nel maggio scorso furono ristabilite regolari relazioni col relativo decreto di ripristino del Supremo Consiglio."

Comincia la rifioritura della Federazione che raggiunge nei vent'anni successivi uno splendore simile a quello prima della guerra. Con le gran maestranze di Ugo Villani, Amulio Antonelli, Sebastiano Caracciolo (poi divenuto Gran Maestro dell'Ordine Martinista e Sovrano Gran Generale Ierofante dell'Antico e Primitivo Rito Orientale di Misräim e Memphis) si assiste alla preparazione del picco di fecondità che l'apporto del Gran Maestro nazionale Maria Montanari, eletta nel 1971, renderà stabile, dotando la Federazione di un Conventum nazionale, di nuovi Tribunali, Concistori, di un Areopago nazionale, di un Sovrano Capitolo nazionale, di una Gran Loggia e un Grande Oriente Scozzese.

Le successe Vito Pisani, la cui gran maestranza è ricaduta a ridosso degli anni della Legge Anselmi promulgata a seguito dell'inchiesta portata avanti dalla Commissione parlamentare sulla loggia P2. Sebbene Le Droit Humain possa vantare di non avere avuto nulla a che fare né con la loggia P2 né con l'inchiesta della Commissione, chiaramente le tensioni sociali l'hanno influenzato indirettamente come del resto è accaduto a tutte le Obbedienze massoniche. Una delle conseguenze del dibattito da parte dell'opinione pubblica fu una riduzione degli iscritti e la necessità di intessere con la società civile nuove forme di espressione dei valori massonici. Riuscì nell'impresa Amedeo Incerpi, eletto Presidente del Consiglio nazionale della Federazione nel 1985 e il cui mandato si è concluso nel 1994. Egli diede un'impronta unitaria a tutti gli organi amministrativi interni, rinforzandone la reciprocità e similmente ha ristrutturato la gerarchia iniziatica. È stato il fautore di una revisione generale dei rituali e colui che ha introdotto il Seminario Nazionale di Studi Iniziatici della Federazione Italiana che consiste nella riunione annuale di studi massonici cui partecipano tutti gli aderenti dal 1º al 33º Grado, in uso ancora oggi. Infine, rispettoso del concetto della sovranità delle singole logge ma anche di una coordinazione centrale in linea con l'ampiezza internazionale dell'Ordine, Incerpi ha fatto sì che tale sovranità di esprimesse anche sul piano della responsabilità e trasparenza verso il mondo civile, ha perciò lavorato affinché a ogni loggia corrispondesse una struttura associativa ufficiale, una visione che portò a una massiccia organizzazione di eventi culturali e conseguente intensificazione del proselitismo.

L'epoca contemporanea
Successore di Incerpi è stato Giovanni Moretti il cui mandato ha coperto gli anni 1994-2002. Col supporto di Vito Pisani, divenuto nel frattempo Gran Commendatore della Federazione, egli ha traghettato nella dimensione internazionale la compattezza interna ottenuta da Incerpi. Si intensificano in questi anni, dunque, i rapporti col Supremo Consiglio di Parigi e lo scambio partecipativo con le delegazioni straniere. Introduce gruppi di lavoro come quello per il notiziario, un bollettino di informazione sull'Ordine; quello per il proselitismo e quello internazionale, che permise alla delegazione italiana di prendere parte attiva nella costruzione del Convento internazionale. In ultimo, durante il mandato di Moretti vengono ratificati i nuovi regolamenti generali, è intensificata l'opera di beneficenza su base nazionale essendo tra i membri fondatori della Associazione SPES (sostegno all'infanzia che soffre), menzionata altrove in questa voce enciclopedica, e ha fatto sì che la Federazione avesse una nuova sede nazionale, a Milano.

È in questo periodo che la Federazione perfeziona il suo statuto e pone il limite di due mandati (di tre anni ciascuno) per il Gran Maestro nazionale.

Segue dunque la gran maestranza di Aldo Biolchini, il quale, consolidata la struttura interna e i rapporti internazionali, lega il tutto all'unità iniziatica. Si osserva chiaramente come l'eredità dei Gran Maestri nazionali precedenti si orientino attraverso il suo operato verso la solidità degli ambiti della Federazione coordinando i piani iniziatico, culturale e amministrativo. Sotto la sua reggenza viene istituito il primo Consiglio nazionale e il Convento nazionale così come appare oggi. il 27 giugno 2010 cessa il suo mandato per ricoprire prima la carica di Presidente dell'Areopago nazionale e poi quella di Gran Commendatore e Rappresentante in Italia del Supremo Consiglio, ovvero la massima carica iniziatica in seno a una Federazione. Ricade nel suo mandato il centenario della fondazione della prima loggia in Italia e indice un congresso nazionale straordinario nella città di Napoli.

La gran maestranza successiva è di Nadia Galbiati, 2010-2014. Sotto la sua guida viene data pubblicazione del volume Gran Maestri a voi la parola, si tratta di un'opera in fieri in quanto contiene i contributi morali di tutti i Gran Maestri dell'Ordine internazionale ed è dunque in continuo aggiornamento. Viene risvegliata la storica loggia nella città di Albenga e fondate quelle di Roma e di Reggio Calabria, punti nevralgici di un nuovo riassetto territoriale. Col sostegno del Gran Commendatore Aldo Biolchini lavora affinché sia l'Italia, con la città di Roma, a ospitare il Convento internazionale nel 2013.

È Gran Maestro nazionale per gli anni 2014-2020 Michele Ferraro. Sotto la sua guida la Federazione viene dotata di una seconda sede nazionale nella città di Roma, nello stesso quartiere in cui il Droit Humain ebbe il suo primo tempio nel 1904. Vengono varati i nuovi Regolamenti generali e fondate nuove logge a Firenze, Perugia, Udine, Grosseto, Cosenza, mentre parallelamente vengono fondate logge di perfezione e di alti gradi. Comincia con lui la digitalizzazione dell'archivio nazionale e si assiste a un considerevole aumento di iscritti per la nuova spinta che dà alla comunicazione verso l'esterno. La Federazione viene dotata di un canale YouTube e un blog istituzionale; sono intensificati gli scambi con agenzie di stampa e testate giornalistiche. Ricade nel suo mandato il centenario della fondazione della Federazione italiana, avvenuta nel 1916, quando le prime logge italiane, sufficienti in numero, si organizzarono in tal senso. Per l'occasione indice dunque un congresso nazionale straordinario all'interno del Convento di quell'anno.

Gli succede l'attuale Daniela Carini, in carica dal 5 settembre 2020. Da subito ha costituito in seno al Consiglio Nazionale quattro commissioni di lavoro: comunicazione, solidarietà, prospettive sociali e Pubblicazioni. Viene quindi attivato il blog progettato durante il mandato di Ferraro per la comunicazione verso l'esterno; nasce un nuovo bollettino nazionale riservato agli iscritti dal titolo «Nodi d'Amore» e vengono indette iniziative sia proprie che di sostegno morale e operativo verso Associazioni terze che abbiano per finalità la difesa dei diritti, la lotta alla violenza contro le donne e la libertà di espressione e di stampa. È con lei che la Federazione aderisce al Codice etico dei Media promosso dalla Good News Agency. Già nel primo anno del suo mandato vengono erette le Colonne di nuove Logge, a Viareggio, a Lamezia Terme, e una seconda Loggia a Cosenza.

Le Droit Humain è la prima struttura massonica a occuparsi di ambiente ed ecosostenibilità.

Personaggi storici appartenuti al Droit Humain

Oltre ai personaggi storici già citati, si annoverano appartenuti al Droit Humain anche, a titolo d'esempio, Victor Hugo che compare tra i firmatari del progetto di fondazione, Curzio Malaparte, il premio nobel per la pace Henri La Fontaine, il Presidente della Repubblica islandese Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Curuppumullage Jinarajadasa, Janusz Korczak, Lina Borgo Guenna, Marco Levi Bianchini, Ettore Sacchi, Mary Tibaldi Chiesa, Edith Cowan, George Arundale, Paul Pisk, il filosofo e critico d'arte surrealista Pierre Mabille, Josephine Baker, la contessa Ellen Bille Brahe Selby membro della famiglia reale danese, il padre dell'omeopatia moderna Pierre Schmidt, la scrittrice Paulette Nardal, la danzatrice Rukmini Devi e Michel Renaud, tra i giornalisti uccisi nell'attentato terroristico di Charlie Hebdo.

I Gran Maestri
Dal 1893 al 1903, il governo dell'Ordine era in forma collegiale. Componevano il Collegio le 16 donne menzionate sopra, più Georges Martin e Maria Deraismes, che però morirà nel 1894.
Marie Georges Martin, dal 1903 al 1914;
 Marie Bonnevial, 1914 - 1918;
 Eugène Piron, 1919 - 1928;
 Lucien Lévy, 1929 - 1934;
 Henri Petit, 1934 - 1940 e dal 1945 al 1947;
 Marguerite Martin, 1947 - 1954;
 Charles Cambillard, 1954 - 1969;
 André Clement, 1969 - 1976;
 Jacques Choisez, 1976 - 1990;
 Marc Grosjean, 1990 - 1997;
 Njördur Njardvík, 1997 - 2007;
 Danièle Juette, 2007 - 2012;
 Yvette Ramon, 2012 - 2017;
 Daniel Bolens, 2017 - 2022;

L'attuale Gran Maestro è René Motro, eletto il 22 maggio 2022 con un mandato di 5 anni.

Note

Voci correlate
Massoneria
Massoneria e donne
Maria Deraismes
Georges Martin
Maria Rygier
Annie Besant
Marie Béquet de Vienne
Maria Pognon
Marie Bonnevial
Alexandra David-Néel
Eliska Vincent
Léon Richer
Prima ondata femminista

Collegamenti esterni

Massoneria

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Welcome to South Cambridgeshire HO Racing or SCHORC (pronounced scorch) for short!
At SCHORC we race a variety of 1/64 scale slot cars on large 4 lane tracks with computerised lap counting and timing. Small scale racing but big fun!
To read our most recent race reports, visit our News and Race Report page.
New members are always welcome. Your first night with us is FREE and all equipment is provided. There's no minimum age for membership, but we ask that children under the age of 18 are accompanied by an adult.
If you have any questions or would like to Join SCHORC please go to our contact page. We also have a Frequently Asked Questions section for those new to HO Racing or to SCHORC.
Our full calendar for the year is available and you can add it to your own digital calendar. You can also check out the latest club discussions on our forum here.