text:
Interviews of, and Articles about, Sonia
Interviews of, Articles about, and Books that Include Sonia
Articles about Sonia are also contained in the section on Belgium.
On Apr. 2, 2019, author Pamela S. Nadell's book, America's Jewish Women: A History From Colonial Times to Today, was published. Ms. Nadell interviewed Sonia for the book, and Sonia is included in it. The New York Times' Mar. 29, 2019, review of the book included the following statement: "From Betty Friedan to Sonia Pressman, Bella Abzug and Gerda Lerner, Jewish women had an outsize role in the feminist struggle."
The November 30, 2018, issue of the Washington Post contained a column by Petula Dvorak about the ERA and Sonia's comments on it.
In its October 2018 issue, Sarasota's newspaper, West Coast Woman, announced Sonia's Oct. 24, 2018, talk to the Sarasota chapter of AAUW.
The Washington Post has a newsletter that explores identity and culture in America called About US, which included Sonia on July 13, 2018.
On Dec. 20, 2017, Sonia was featured on the cover of the Sarasota section of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune with regard to her talk scheduled for Jan. 11, 2018, to the Ladybugs, the Sarasota chapter of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots founded in 1929. The local chapter was founded a year ago.
From Nov. 9 through 11, 2017, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's website contained the following article about a talk Sonia was due to deliver at the first anniversary of the Sarasota chapter of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of female aviators that was founded in 1929.
In the Jewish Women's Archive blog of July 27, 2017, in the entry, "Combatting Sexual Harassment and Assault in Schools," by Sara Lebow, Esther Warkov, co-founder and co-executive director of SSAIS (Stop Sexual Assault in Schools), refers to Sonia as a senior mentor and a "distinguished feminist lawyer."
On July 1, 2017, SSAIS (Stop Sexual Assault in Schools) issued its Final Report on its action under an AAUW Community Action Grant Awarded to Stop Sexual Assault in Schools 2016-2017. Sonia is one of seven women quoted at the beginning of the report, as follows:
Two of the critical areas in gender discrimination today are sexual harassment and sexual assault. Most of the attention has, however, been focused on college and university campuses. SSAIS is performing a vital service in fighting sexual harassment and assault in an otherwise forgotten area: K-12. "Sexual Harassment: Not in Our School!," using experts and student activists, sets forth the applicable law in this area and suggests ways in which families, students, school administrators, faculty, and the community can fight this scourge in grades K-12. -Sonia Pressman Fuentes, attorney, co-founder National Organization for Women
Sonia in Jewish Women's Archive quiz.
On Mar. 1, 2017, in its blog, the Jewish Women's Archive for Women's History Month recognized Jewish women lawyers and researchers of second wave feminism, of whom Sonia was one.
Minnah Stein, a 16-year-old student at Sarasota's Pine View School for the gifted, mentions Sonia in her blog post about the Violins of Hope program brought to Sarasota by the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee. Minnah's picture is at the end of her post.
On Jan. 26, 2017, Sonia's friend and mentee, Minnah Stein, a 16-year-old student at Sarasota's Pine View School for the gifted, blogged about Sonia's escape from Nazi Germany in 1933.
Sixteen-year-old feminist activist and fighter against sexual assaults in schools, Minnah Stein, describes participating in the Women's March (attended by 10,000) in Sarasota, FL and dedicates her first picture to Sonia.
In connection with the 50th anniversary of the founding of NOW, the Fall 2016 issue of Beacon, the bi-annual magazine, in hard cover and online, of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, PA, included a profile of Sonia called "Founding (Jewish) Mother." Click the arrow at the right of the magazine cover until you come to page 4. To enlarge the print, click on the icon of the open square box to the right of the sliders that are at the bottom of page 4. To leave the page, click "Esc" on your keyboard.
Sonia was profiled in the May/June 2016 issue of Suncoast Living Magazine, a magazine for people on Florida's West Coast.
Sonia is included among six women highlighted by the National Women's History Project on Mar. 1, 2016.
On Feb. 29, 2016, the Veteran Feminists of America, published an ebook of biographies and pictures called Our Fabulous Feminists, which includes Sonia. It can be downloaded for free.
This picture of Sonia appears on page 36 of the Summer 2015 magazine, Jewish Currents, a progressive, secular voice, as part of an article called "The Jewish Left: A Visual History, Part Two: 1946-2015," written by the editorial board of that magazine.
On July 24, 2015, Zoe Nicholson, a feminist activist who is specializing in Alice Paul, sent out an enewsletter, which contained the following about Sonia:
"When I began to study Alice Paul to the exclusion of everything else I realized that phone interviews would be pivotal and rare options. Miss Paul was 92 when she died in 1977 and those who knew her, interned for her or worked for her hold priceless memories that need to be harvested.
"I made calls. Some were emotional. Some were poetic and nostalgic. Of course some were all about politics. But then I made a call that set my sails; it was with Sonia Fuentes. I can still hear her impatience and disgust that most do not know the brilliant strategist mind, the lifelong commitment, the legislation and international impact of Miss Alice Paul. I felt challenged and dug deeper than I had previously planned."
An article about Sonia in the Winter 2015 issue of Gravitas, an online and hard copy magazine that focuses on women in the Sarasota and Tampa, FL areas.
In March 2015, Sonia's story went on the website of Just Do Your Dream. To access it:
Go to justdoyourdream.com,
click on the drop down menu under "Stories" at the top,
select "Speaking, Coaching, Teaching," and
scroll down to Sonia's story when you reach that screen.
See references to Sonia on the blog of Candy Dawson, the wife of Greg Dawson, author of Hiding in the Spotlight (March 1, 2015).
Sonia is quoted in a Sarasota Herald-Tribune article of Nov. 5, 2014, about the political campaign for Congress of her 101-year-old friend, Joe Newman.
Announcement of Sonia's interview on radio station WBAI in program commemorating the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, among other things, prohibits gender discrimination in employment by covered employers, employment agencies, and labor unions.
The Jewish News of Sarasota-Manatee, Vol. 44, No. 6 (June 2014, p. 10).
Excerpt from the June 5, 2014, "Jewdayo" section of Jewish Currents.
Sonia participates in a Holocaust Survivors program at the Al Katz Center for Holocaust Survivors and Jewish Learning in Sarasota, FL. Front-page article, Bradenton Herald-Tribune, April 28, 2014.
Dec. 2013 Newsletter of the E.B. Crawford Public Library in Monticello, NY, to which Sonia's publisher, Xlibris Corp., donated a copy of her memoir.
Danielle (DanYang) Yu Interviews Trailblazing Feminists, November 7, 2013.
Xlibris, the publisher of Sonia's memoir, featured her in its Author Spotlight in November 2013, and also published this article in its November newsletter.
By Catharine Skipp, "A Conversation with the Remarkable Sonia Pressman Fuentes, J.D. '57," Miami Law Magazine, University of Miami School of Law, Fall 2013. (If you need to enlarge the text to read it in your browser, click on it with your mouse.)
Jewish Women's Archive, This Week in History, Week of July 1, 2013, recognizes Sonia's work at the EEOC on the anniversary of the opening of the EEOC.
June 13, 2013, Report of Leita Kaldi, head of the UN Women's Book Club, Sarasota, FL, on the discussion of Sonia's memoir, with Sonia present, on June 10.
Sarasota's Sonia Pressman Fuentes to Receive Breaking the Glass Ceiling Award, April 17, 2013.
On March 14, 2013, the Veteran Feminists of America (VFA), an organization dedicated to recognizing the pioneer feminists of the second wave of the women's movement, announced the revamping of its website at www.vfa.us. Sonia is mentioned throughout the website.
On February 21, 2013, the Women's Herstory Initiative, Words of Women, International Women's Day, based in Dallas, TX, announced that the essay of seventeen-year-old Talia Weisberg about Sonia on the subject "The Most Influential Woman in My Life" won the Words of Women Essay contest.
The book, Jews of Sarasota-Manatee, by Kim Sheintal (Arcadia Publishing, Feb. 2013), contains a 2002 photo of Sonia in front of a sign about the Jewish Genealogical Society (JGS) of Southwest Florida (p. 25). Sonia gave a talk to JGS on March 2002. The link will open to page 25.
"Boston Commons," by Talia Weisberg, was published on January 8, 2013, in Fresh ink for Teens, an online newspaper sponsored by the Jewish Week in New York City.
"Groundbreakers or Ground Takers?" by Talia Weisberg, was published on December. 8, 2012, in Fresh ink for Teens, an online publication sponsored by the New York Jewish Week.
By Tyler Whitson, "Women's Rights Pioneers Strive to Influence and Inspire a New Generation," Sarasota News Leader, November 16, 2012. (Visit the Sarasota News Leader Web site.)
"Women's Rights Pioneer Sonia Fuentes Speaks at Law School," enewsletter of the Cornell University School of Law, Oct. 31, 2012.
By Deborah Carney, "Sonia Pressman Fuentes Interview About Feminism and Her Memoir," October 8, 2012.
Interview with Sonia Pressman Fuentes as a Featured Writer on authormepro.com, August 30, 2012.
By Nick Friedman, "Neighbors: Sonia Pressman Fuentes," July 4, 2012.
Sonia is mentioned in an article commemorating the 46th anniversary of the June 1966 founding meeting of NOW. (Jewdayo section of Jewish Currents, June 30, 2012)
Sarasota Observer, June 28, 2012: Sonia presents copies of her memoir to prizewinning young women students at Booker Middle School, Sarasota, FL.
RTIRonline asks Sonia to comment on the death of Nora Ephron, June 28, 2012.
Is Laura Bush feminist enough for Alice Paul Award?, Washington Post, June 20, 2012.
Sewall-Belmont House draws fire for honoring Laura Bush, Washington, DC's The Examiner, June 20, 2012.
Who Will Speak Out Against an Outrageous Insult to Former First Lady Laura Bush?, The Huffington Post, June 18, 2012. It says at the end of the article "Continue reading" but we don't have access to any additional material.
Laura Bush's fight for women, Washington Post, June 19, 2012.
Sonia initiates campaign to protest the National Woman's Party/Sewall-Belmont House & Museum's plan to give the Alice Award to Laura Bush, Washington Post, June 18, 2012.
Cary Franklin, "Inventing the `traditional concept' of sex discrimination," Harv. Law Review, Vol. 125, # 6, p. 1307 (2012), Univ. of Texas Law, Public Law Research Paper #219.
"Eva Alexandra Countess Kendeffy, Sonia Pressman Fuentes and Rabbi Jonathan Katz", Longboat Key Observer of March 11, 2012. This picture also appeared in the Sarasota, FL, Jewish News (April 2012, p. 14B).
By David Beard and Bethonie Butler, "The keys to a better life? Everyone has an opinion," February 21, 2012.
Interview of Sonia by Talia bat Pessi, a high school student, that went online on Feb. 9, 2012.
Feb. 5, 2012, Interview with Cyrus Webb, editor of Conversations Magazine.
"Jean Faust, First President of the First Chapter of NOW," December 8, 2011.
By Abby Weingarten, "Feminist Revisits Her Birth Country," November 9, 2011 (Online version | Photocopy)/Sonia with Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger.
Generations of the Shoah International Newsletter, October 2011.
"NOW Conference: Action, Inspiration and Connection," Now National Times, Fall 2011.
"Sonia Fuentes, writer, speaker, and feminist activist, tells us about her life," HavaMAG Life, Issue 4, September 2011. (To access the article: Click on the arrow to the right until it takes you to the Table of Contents on the left. Next, click on the first item in the Table of Contents, which is the article about Sonia, on page 10. When you come to the article, double click on each page to make the type readable.)
"Featured Author," Published by Sonia's publisher, Xlibris Corp., in a newsletter and on its website, July 27, 2011.
By Slavica Monczka, "Feminist Sonia Pressman Fuentes. Her Passion for Women's Rights," appeared in the e-zine, Inspirational Woman's Magazine, on July 24, 2011, and was written by Slavica Monczka.
On July 21, 2011, Amanda Gonzalez wrote an article about Sonia for the blog of Ms. JD, an e-zine targeted to women law students and beginning women lawyers.
By Slavica Monczka, "Something Beautiful is Happening," seductivelyfrench.com, July 5, 2011.
"Blending motherhood and working: Moms work by choice — and also out of necessity," Deseret News, June 26, 2011.
"Second Wave Founder" by Sonia Fuentes, girlscantwhat.com, June 9, 2011.
The CHJ Connection (Vo. XIV, No. 9, May-June 2011).
Sonia's March 3, 2011, letter to the editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is discussed in "Religious Rehab at Florida Jail Sparks Protest," Church & State (Vol. 64, No. 4, Apr. 2011), the magazine of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The letter is included and can be read in the Letters to the Editor section of this website.
The CHJ Connection, the newsletter of the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism in Sarasota, FL, December 2010.
TILES, the newsletter of the Jewish Museum of Florida, December 2010.
The Quotable Woman, The First 5,000 Years (6th ed., October 2010), an anthology by Elaine Partnow, includes three quotations from Sonia.
By WomensRadio Staff, October 12, 2010.
By Cathy B Stucker, sellingbooks.com, September 8, 2010.
Column called "WorkWise BlogTip: Know when to be direct" by Dr. Mildred L. Culp, which appeared in the Modesto [Calif.] Bee of Sept. 6, 2010.
Radio-TV Interview Report, "Elena Kagan—Fifty and Fabulous," July 7, 2010.
By Joan Collins, The Sullivan County Democrat newspaper on June 18, 2010.
Author Spotlight, Xlibris, June, 2010.
By Andrea Kay, USA Today, May 17, 2010.
By Nancy Gibbs, "Love, Sex, Freedom and the Paradox of the Pill, A Brief History of Birth Control," April 22, 2010.
By David Ball, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, February 20, 2010.
By Tamar Burris, published on the Web site, Story of My Life, January 19, 2010.
By Marita Meegan, akgmag.com interviews, August 2009.
By Corie Russell, She Knows, July 2009.
By Meigs Glidewell, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 30, 2009.
By Heather Dunhill, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 4, 2009.
By Veronica I. Arreola, Viva la Feminista, April, 2009.
By Amanda Joe, The Cornell Daily Sun, April 23, 2009.
StopGap Magazine, the members' magazine of the Fawcett Society in the UK, Spring 2009.
Sonia, who graduated from Monticello High School, in Monticello, NY, was profiled in the October 2008 issue of the newsletter of the Monticello Central School District and is on the district's website.
By Bill Hutchinson, "A life of standing up for women," Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 9, 2008.
By Kristen J. Tsetsi, Journal Inquirer, March 31, 2008.
By Evelyn L. Moya, The Docket, February 2008.
By Linda Jimenez Glassman, "English Corner" Radio Sefarad interview, August 2007.
By Ruth Lando, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, July 1, 2007.
By Steven A. Bibb, Passages, Summer 2007.
By Marsha Fottler, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, May 12, 2007.
By Erica Brody, National Council of Jewish Women Journal, Winter 2006 (pdf. file).
Featured Author, Xlibris, November, 2006.
By Adam Levin, Washington Jewish Week, June 29, 2006.
By Susan Weidman Schneider, The Reporter (Spring 2006, Vol. 55, No. 2, p. 10), a publication of Women's American ORT.
The Barrister, the University of Miami (FL) School of Law alumni magazine, Winter 2005.
By Debra Rubin, "The f-word Online exhibit features local Jewish feminists," October 27, 2005. Sonia is one of six Washington, DC area women included in the exhibit of the Jewish Women's Archive called Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.
By Jacqueline Sternberg, Washington Jewish Week, April 28, 2005.
Sonia was one of seventy-four Jewish women included in an exhibit of the Jewish Women's Archive (JWA) called The Feminist Revolution at jwa.org/feminism Her write-up is at jwa.org/feminism/fuentes-sonia-pressman. She is also pictured on JWA's website.
By Ken Millstone, The Potomac Almanac, October 13-19, 2004.
Sonia was featured in the August 5, 2004, issue of the University of Miami Alumni E-Newsletter (she is an alumna of the law school) as follows:
Featured Alumna Sonia Pressman Fuentes Leader of the Women's Movement Isn't Slowing Down
For most immigrants fleeing Nazi Germany in the early 1930's, America was a land of freedom and opportunity that usually came with the price of hard times and hard work that left little room for philosophical or social conviction. Not so for Sonia Pressman Fuentes, JD '57, who even today is continuing to work hard in support of her convictions. Fuentes is one of the most lively and active feminist public speakers and authors today, not allowing herself to rest on the laurels of her past accomplishments or slow down in the twilight of her life. From being the first female attorney in the Office of General Counsel at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to being one of the co-founders of the National Organization of Women (NOW), Fuentes continues today to be driven and energetic in her pursuit of women's rights. Recently, Sonia has been traveling the globe and continuing her experiential education in culture, society, and the arts. She has also spoken on behalf of candidates supportive of the women's movement, and will be featured in an upcoming documentary by Jennifer Lee regarding a revival and the second wave of the women's movement. Her memoir, Eat First. You Don't Know What They'll Give You; The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and their Feminist Daughter continues to be a popular and inspirational selection for all people in all walks of life...
By Jeanette Friedman, Lifestyles Magazine, Fall 2003 (pdf file).
By Sheri' McConnell, National Association of Women Writers, May 2003.
By Michael Pollick, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, November 25, 2002.
By Magdalena Ball, The Compulsive Reader, July 2002.
By the Editor of WomenWriters.net, June 2002.
By Phil Fink, radio interview on Shalom America, WELW 1330 AM, Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 3, 2002 (not available on the www).
By Norman Simms, Chadashot, August 2001.
By Bill Adams, The Senior News, July 2001.
By Jenna Glatzer, WriteRead University, May 14, 2001.
Publishing Success Magazine, May 2001.
By Lisa Katz, "The Making of a Jewish American Feminist: Sonia Pressman Fuentes." This is a seven-part piece about Eat First and Ms. Fuentes.
Part 1: Book Synopsis - "Let it be"
Part 2: Book Synopsis - A Meaningful Contribution
Part 3: Book Synopsis - The Focus of Sonia's Life
Part 4: Book Synopsis - The Fight for Women's Rights
Part 5: Book Synopsis - Underground Activity
Part 6: Jewish Q&A
Part 7: Eat First--You Don't Know What They'll Give You
By Barbara Ruben, Senior Beacon, October 2000.
Cornell Chronicle (Vol. 31, No. 31, April 20, 2000).
By Lynn Laframboise, Word Wrangler Publishing, February 2000.
Shalom, newspaper for the Reading, PA, Jewish community, February 2000.
By Linda Eberharter, Bridge Works Publishing, January 2000.
By Marlena Thompson, Washington Jewish Week, December 16, 1999.
By Linda Davis Kyle, "Writers Around the World," August 1998.
By Eva S., "Evenings with Eva," July 21, 1998.
By Ellen Joan Pollock, Wall Street Journal, May 1998. (This article is a follow-up to a 1975 Wall Street Journal article by Mary Bralove.)
By Risa Molitz, "Fuentes' lecture leads to talk on uniting women," University of Virginia's The Cavalier Daily, October 22, 1997.
By Frankee Nesta, West Coast Woman, May 1997.
Beginning of interview of Sonia on the early history of the EEOC by Sylvia Danovitch, assistant to the EEOC's chairman, on Dec. 27, 1990.
By Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement, 1976.
By Mary Bralove, Wall Street Journal, May 13, 1975.
Excerpt from Betty Friedan's article, "Up from the kitchen floor," NY Times Magazine (March 4, 1973), crediting Sonia with giving her the idea to start an organization to fight for women like the NAACP fought for its constituents.
Sonia Fuentes makes news : June 24, 1970 : Woman Fights For A Job As Park Guard
Courier-Times, Bucks County, PA, June 25, 1970.
By Dorothy Gilcrest, Anniston (AL) Star, October 21, 1969.
By Louise Hutchinson, "U.S. Hearings to Weigh Sex in the Skies," Chicago Tribune Press Service (July 23, 1967).
"Women's Equality Is Pressed," Hartford (CT) Courant (Dec. 7, 1966, p. 1).
By Sylvia Porter, Post-Crescent, May 28, 1963.
B'nai B'rith Women's World, November 1959.
By Susie Marbey, The Miami Hurricane, May 10, 1957.
Organize for a multi-tasking room
By Marsha Fottler
marsha.fottler@heraldtribune.com
Photographs by Chip Litherland
This article was published in Sarasota Herald Tribune, May 12, 2007.
Sonia Fuentes wanted a well-organized and attractive library/file room, but she needed a guest room, too. Clever custom built-ins, including a fold-down bed and plenty of closed storage, solved her problem.
Sonia Pressman Fuentes moved to Sarasota last October to permanently occupy a 1,200-square-foot vacation home at The Meadows she's owned since 1999. She brought 54 cartons of books, albums and files, which she stacked floor-to-ceiling in the second bedroom of her compact condo. And that was after she had gotten rid of at least that many boxes, plus a houseful of furniture, when she sold a three-story town house she owned for 20 years in Potomac, Md.
"I don't move easily or lightly," she said.
Part of her de-acquisition program included giving boxes of documents pertaining to the early days of the feminist movement to the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, in Cambridge, Mass. Fuentes, along with Betty Friedan, was a co-founder of the National Organization of Women (NOW).
"I actually gave Betty the idea in 1965, when I was general counsel -- the first woman to have that position -- at the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) in Washington, and she came looking for a story to write about women's concerns," said Fuentes.
"The EEOC sprang from the Civil Rights movement and was primarily concentrating on race issues; there wasn't enough attention being paid to gender issues," she added. "I told Betty we needed a separate organization like the NAACP, only for women. She started NOW right after the Commission on the Status of Women convention in June 1966. The next September, I was with a group of about 50 women who met in the basement of the Washington Post building to draft NOW by-laws."
Those papers were just part of a career as federal government lawyer, activist writer and public speaker that added to the Fuentes accumulation of files and other resource material that had to be dealt with in Sarasota. She had retired in 1993 from a paying career, but not from her work as a feminist.
Fuentes needed help fitting her big life into a small space. When a friend suggested Closet.Tec, Fuentes called in the professionals. The result is a library/file room/guest bedroom that was accomplished with attractive built-in storage and a fold-down double bed.
After interviewing Fuentes and measuring items she'd need to store, the experts determined that the answer was two walls of versatile built-ins. The built-ins would occupy the long walls of the room, because one short wall had a window and the other, the door leading to the en-suite bathroom. The experts got rid of the two twin beds and night tables and replaced those pieces of furniture with a fold-down bed flanked by twin storage units containing upper cabinets with deep shelves, open shelving in the middle section, and drawers in the lower cabinets.
For the opposite wall, the experts designed a bookcase with open shelving and file drawers for both letter- and legal-sized folders. Fuentes originally thought she'd have to get rid of her copier and fax machine, but Closet.Tec created a space for both.Today the second bedroom is a practical library and file room that quickly converts into a welcoming guest suite in less than 15 minutes -- and that's counting the time it takes to dress the bed.
One of the cabinets beside the bed holds 24 albums of family photos, including many of Fuentes' daughter, Zia, who lives in California. Another set of shelves display cookbooks, a testament to Fuentes' zeal for reading and saving her mom's recipes -- but not cooking. She stirs the pot in other areas of life. Fuentes had half her kitchen (the breakfast nook end) converted into a home office so she can work at her computer and look out the window to a hibiscus garden and the little lizards that fascinate her.
She's not interested in interior design. "I bought this place furnished," she said. "So when it came time to pick out a finish for the storage units and the fold-down bed, I just went with the light finish that was already on all the living room pieces so that everything would match." The color scheme of her condo is soft aqua, apricot and sand.
Having everything organized and within easy reach has increased Fuentes' efficiency and greatly eased her mind. "I love knowing that I go to a certain spot and can lay my hands on what I want. And it's all so neat and good-looking. Those few times a year that I have overnight guests, I move a couple things, pull down the bed, and then I have a convenient place for friends. Getting professionals to come in and organize that room was the smartest thing I did since moving here."
Since her retirement in 1993, Fuentes has been a public speaker, activist, and, in 1998, she published a memoir about her family called "Eat First -- You Don't Know What They'll Give You: The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter." Born in Berlin, Fuentes was 5 when her family fled Nazi Germany in 1934, going first to Belgium and then to Woodridge, N.Y.
Fuentes is being featured in an upcoming documentary by Jennifer Lee called "Wavelength," which deals with the second wave of the women's movement, and she volunteers her legal expertise with several national organizations.
While she's happily adjusted to life in Sarasota, the fearless feminist says she does have a few concerns.
"In all the years I've come to Florida, and I've been coming since I was a child and our family spent winters in Miami, I've never gone through a summer. I wonder how I'll do with the heat. Also, I'm afraid of hurricanes and I hate bugs. But, I have never been happier in a home than I am in this little condo. It's perfectly organized and just the right size for me. I have everything I need and not one thing more. It's a good feeling."


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Blue Raider Sports
SportsWomen's Soccer
Soccer: What to watch for in MT's matchup with North Texas
Logan Ward | Sports Reporter 3 years ago
Photo by Devin P. Grimes / MTSU Sidelines The 2017 regular season was an up-and-down period for the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders (8-9, 5-5). Despite the losing record overall and a .500 conference record, the Blue Raiders qualified for the C-USA Tournament after missing it last season. Middle Tennessee State University enters the conference tournament …
Soccer: 5 players to watch during Conference USA play
Photo by Joi Williams / Contributing Writer The Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders (3-4) are scheduled to play host to the University of Texas at San Antonio Roadrunners (1-7) in the first conference game of the year on Sunday at 2 p.m. MTSU comes in red-hot, riding a three-game winning streak. On the other hand, UTSA …
Blue Raider FootballSports
Blue Raiders shake off loss, ready for Bowling Green
Tyler Lamb | Reporter 4 years ago
Photo by Devon Arnold/MTSU Sidelines The Middle Tennessee football team is hungry and ready for redemption this Saturday. After committing costly mistakes which led to a 47-24 loss at Vanderbilt last Saturday, it would be easy for many to assume the Blue Raiders morale has taken a hit. However, fans who believe that couldn't be …
SportsVolleyball
MTSU volleyball falls 3-0 at Wake Forest
David Chamberlain | Sports Editor 4 years ago
Photo by Austin Lewis/MTSU Sidelines Middle Tennessee volleyball traveled to North Carolina to take on Wake Forest for a one-off matchup Wednesday night. The Blue Raiders came off a weekend where MTSU only came away with one victory against Tennessee Tech in a five-set thriller in their final game. The Blue Raiders were unable to …
Men's BasketballSports
Middle Tennessee bounces back to beat South Alabama 68-55
Photo by: MT Athletics//Brent Beerends Middle Tennessee (5-2) took on South Alabama (3-5) at the Murphy Center on Saturday evening, just days after losing a heartbreaker to nationally acclaimed VCU. The Blue Raiders were able to pull out the 68-55 victory over the Jaguars, even after turning the ball over 19 times. The Blue Raiders …
BaseballSports
MTSU Topples WKU With Three-Run Eighth
By Rickey Fuquay, Jr.//Contributing Writer MURFREESBORO – Middle Tennessee rallied in the eighth inning, scoring three runs, to edge rival Western Kentucky, 5-4, Friday night at Reese Smith Jr. Field. The win gives MTSU (26-20, 16-6 C-USA) its seventh win in its final at-bat. With a loss by Florida Atlantic Friday night, the Blue Raiders …
How celebrity endorsement and youth activism could translate to Gen Z votes

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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I'm trying something different today at It's Not All Gravy. Instead of me writing a review, or having a guest who is a professional writer, today the review is by a reader and a fan of fantasy stories – Dany Russell, who is also my daughter and a wonderful cover designer. We both met the author of this book, Scott Roach, otherwise known as S. Cameron Roach, at the Take 190 West Art Festival in Killeen, Texas, and Dany bought his book. She wanted to try her hand at writing a review, and I came up with the idea of letting Scott ask her a couple of questions. Reviews don't normally have that kind of exchange between author and reader, at least not the professional reviews that are a step above some of what you see on Amazon, but I thought this could be fun and interesting. I'll let you weigh in on that after you read the review.
This book portrays what could happen to a boy living in a suburban town who is so bored out of his gourd that adventure finds him. The Wandering Bug takes Bartholomew Fix to another world with kings, knights, wizards, and wayward wandering. He has no manual and while he has a host, in the beginning he has no guide.
I found this book an enjoyable read. After the first chapter or so, the story really picked up and took me for a ride. There are two other books I have read with "Game" in the title and they were slow starters for me as well, even though they have become immensely popular.
While reading this book, I became deeply involved with Bart's life and travails. As he learned lessons in basic combat, teamwork, philosophy, or the Ka'uun, Bart steadily, and sometimes unsteadily, matured. The lives of the other characters and their skills intrigued me. How would Bart's next lesson in the local magic called Ka'uun take place? How would Yuari, the teacher's ward, respond to the diverted attention and uncharacteristic requests? Would Yuari's people accept Bart?
SCR: Was the relationship development between the boy and girl paced well and authentic?
A: I found the interaction between Bart and Yuari to be believable and sometimes amusing. As with any relationship, trust takes time to become a bond. Sharing that time with them was a pleasure.
SCR: What about the author's writing style needs improvement or further development?
A: Frequently interchanging proper names like first "Bartholomew" then "Fix" was uncomfortable to read. Thus when you used "the boy" so close in another paragraph, I winced at the awkward word usage.
SCR: Was the growth of the boy realistic and was he easy to identify with?
A: For the most part he was very realistic. However, there are a couple of spots toward the end where Bart expresses knowledge or comprehension I thought was well beyond his teachings and growth.
SCR: Do you think a sequel is in order?
I hope you enjoyed this "different" review. Perhaps I might try this again sometime. Please do try to come back on Wednesday to meet Scott as Wednesday's Guest this week.


text:
Radiation levels in Fukushima zones still above government target despite cleanup: Greenpeace Japan
A member of Greenpeace checks radiation levels in the village of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, in October. | GREENPEACE / VIA KYODO
Kyodo
In the wake of the 2011 nuclear crisis, radiation levels at homes and areas nearby in a Fukushima village remain around three times higher than the government target despite cleanup work having been performed, an environmental group has said.
In some areas of the village of Iitate and the town of Namie, levels of radioactivity detected at some points among tens of thousands checked in surveys last September and October were higher than they had been the previous year, Greenpeace Japan said in a report released Thursday.
Most of the six houses surveyed in Iitate, located around 40 kilometers northwest of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 complex, logged radiation levels higher than the government-set target of 0.23 microsieverts per hour, ranging from 0.2 to 0.8 microsieverts per hour.
Some areas in the village had seen radiation levels rise from 2016, Greenpeace said. "There is a possibility (the environment) was contaminated again as radioactive materials that had accumulated in nearby forests may have moved around," it said.
One house, located near a municipal office with slightly wooded areas nearby, marked lower radiation levels compared with the 2016 survey, but levels at another five houses — which are near forests that have yet to be cleaned up — have remained almost the same.
The points surveyed covered areas in Iitate and Namie where evacuation orders have been lifted as well as some parts of Namie that remain designated as "difficult to return" zones following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which was triggered by the massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The survey also showed that the effects of cleanup work conducted in 2011 and 2012 in the Tsushima district of Namie, located 40 km northwest of the Fukushima plant, had been limited, with one house there logging radiation levels of 5.8 microsieverts per hour at the highest readings and 1.3 microsieverts per hour on average.
The district is among areas designated as special reconstruction zones by the government. The state plans to carry out cleanup work and promote infrastructure development intensively at its expense to make such areas livable again.
fukushima, radiation, 3.11


This page is about the 2013 symposium.
The next UMS will be held at UIC on Saturday, October 5, 2013.
Download the symposium poster — then email us when you identify its mathematical theme!
Abstract: Given a field (a number system), we can build a "geometry" --- something with points and lines. For instance, starting with the field of real numbers, we consider ordered pairs of reals, and we get the Cartesian plane.
What if we instead started with the geometry? Could we, from the points and lines, recover a field? Sometimes, yes! The geometries we start with will be "projective geometries" where any two lines meet, maybe "at infinity". How do we then get a field? Commutativity of multiplication --- among the other axioms for a field --- are encoded as gloriously complicated diagrams of points and lines. Desargues' theorem and Pappus' theorem show up to save the day.
A reference is Hilbert's Grundlagen der Geometrie.
Abstract: I will describe several surprising real-life and mathematical instances in which models involving randomness provide excellent descriptions for deterministic situations. The main mathematical tool are random matrices, which live at the intersection of linear algebra and probability theory. I will describe these objects, and some of the expected, and the utterly unexpected, instances in which they are used.
Abstract: I will talk about three surprising mathematical ideas that have revolutionized computer science and had enormous impact on our society. To give a broad perspective, I will jump from computability theory to cryptography and then to machine learning. I will also describe some current research directions and open problems in these areas.


Vanilla, the vanilla orchids, form a flowering plant genus of about 110 species in the orchid family (Orchidaceae). The most widely known member is the Flat-leaved Vanilla (V. planifolia), native to Mexico, from which commercial vanillaflavoring is derived. It is the only orchid widely used for industrial purposes (in the food industry and in the cosmetic industry). Another species often grown commercially but not on an industrial scale is the Pompona Vanilla (V. pompona).
This evergreen genus occurs worldwide in tropical and subtropical regions, from tropical America to tropical Asia, New Guinea and West Africa. Five species are known from the contiguous United States, all limited to southern Florida.
Vanilla was known to the Aztecs for its flavoring qualities. The genus was established in 1754 by Plumier, based on J. Miller. The word vanilla, derived from the diminutive of the Spanish word vaina (vaina itself meaning sheath or pod), simply translates as little pod.
This genus of vine-like plants has a monopodial climbing habitus. They can form long thin stems with a length of more than 35 m, with alternate leaves spread along their length. The short, oblong, dark green leaves of Vanilla are thick and leathery, even fleshy in some species. But there are also a significant number of species that have their leaves reduced to scales or have become nearly or totally leafless and appear to use their green climbing stems for photosynthesis. Long and strong aerial roots grow from each node.
The racemose inflorescences short-lived flowers arise successively on shortpeduncles from the leaf axils or scales. There may be up to 100 flowers on a single raceme, but usually no less than 20. The flowers are quite large and attractive with white, green, greenish yellow or cream colors. The flowers' sepalsand petals are similar. The lip is tubular-shaped and surrounds the long, bristlycolumn, opening up, as the bell of a trumpet, at its apex. The anther is at the top of the column and hangs over the stigma, separated by the rostellum. MostVanilla flowers have a sweet scent.
Blooming occurs only when the flowers are fully grown. Each flower opens up in the morning and closes late in the afternoon on the same day, never to re-open. If pollination has not occurred meanwhile, it will be shed. The flowers are self-fertile but need pollinators to perform this task. The flowers are presumed to be pollinated by stingless bees (e.g. Melipona) and certain hummingbirds, which visit the flowers primarily for nectar. Hand pollination is the most reliable method in commercially grown Vanilla.
The fruit is termed "vanilla bean", though true beans are fabaceaen eudicotsnot at all closely related to orchids. Rather, the vanilla fruit is technically an elongate, fleshy and later dehiscent capsule10–20 cm long. It ripens gradually for 8 to 9 months after flowering, eventually turning black in color and giving off a strong aroma. Each pod contains thousands of minute seeds, and both the pods and seeds within are used to create vanilla flavoring.
Vanilla species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, such as the wooly bear moths Hypercompe eridanus and H. icasia. Vanillaplantations require some sort of tree planting for the orchids to climb up on; off-season or when abandoned, they may serve as habitat for animals of open forest, e.g. on the Comoros for Robert Mertens' Day Gecko (Phelsuma robertmertensi).


text:
tag Prison
UK Probation services to be renationalised
The supervision of all offenders will be undertaken by the state in a major renationalisation of the probation sector. Only five years after introducing a widely derided programme of privatisation. Following years of damning criticism from MPs, inspectorates and former probation officers, the justice secretary, David Gauke, has decided to bring all offender management under the National Probation Service (NPS) by spring 2021. He said the private sector would still play a part in the provision of services, with £280m worth of contracts for rehabilitation services such as the provision of unpaid work and accredited programmes. But the core function of the service – supervising and managing about 250,000 offenders in the community – will once again be publicly provided.
CUPE denounces the plans to build a new prison using a public-private partnership
CUPE Newfoundland (@CupeNL) denounces Dwight Ball, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, for planning to build a new prison using a 'public-private partnership.' "Naturally, Ernst & Young recommended using a public-private partnership. P3s= higher-cost private financing, 'off book debts' now that will mean less available funding in future years."
G4S plc
Unions call for public control over private prisons
Unions are calling for public control over private prisons after outsourcing giant G4S is permanently stripped of its contract to run the troubled HMP Birmingham. "For the Prison Officers' Association, the return of Birmingham to the public sector was welcome. 'We have campaigned tirelessly since it was wrongly privatised in 2011 to have it returned to the state,' POA chair Mark Fairhurst said. 'The more recent events enabled us to pressurise the government into making what is undoubtedly the correct decision for staff, prisoners and the taxpayer.' But Fairhurst said other private prisons must follow suit. 'The obsession this Tory Government has to outsource and privatise public sector work must cease. It is obvious that when you put profits above safety you sow the seeds of disorder, mismanagement, cover ups and misery.'"
Source: The Big Issue
G4S stripped of contract to run Birmingham prison
G4S is to be permanently stripped of its contract to run Birmingham prison after the government was forced to take control of the failing jail. The Ministry of Justice took the unprecedented step of seizing control of the prison last August, removing its governor and moving out hundreds of prisoners, hours before a severely critical report was published by the prisons inspectorate.
GEO Group
GEO Group has paid its executive officers $45,558,172
Over the past three years, the private prison corporation GEO Group has paid its executive officers $45,558,172 (p. 36). Meanwhile, in Scotland it's getting blowback for paying asylum seekers just £1 an hour in wages.
Source: www.sec.gov
Labour reveals plan to ban privatisation in prisons, health and benefits services
The Labour Party has said it will end the outsourcing of public services for Britain's most vulnerable to private companies.Shadow Communities Secretary Andrew Gwynne said the party would "shift the scales and bring democracy and accountability back to government."
Source: www.politicshome.com
Bill would prohibit Nevada from contracting with private, for-profit prisons
Legislation has been introduced in the Nevada Assembly to prohibit the state from contracting with private, for-profit prisons. American Civil Liberties Union attorney Nick Shepack told lawmakers "what we have seen in states that allow private prisons to operate within their borders, is a major lack of oversight. It becomes extremely difficult for legislative bodies to have oversight. It becomes difficult for government entities, and it becomes difficult for third party entities such as ourselves to find out what is actually going on in these facilities. For that reason, we believe private prisons should not be used in the State of Nevada."
Source: Nevada Capital News
In a major victory for opponents of the role of banks in propping up for-profit private prison and immigrant detention companies, JPMorgan Chase announces it will no longer provide financing to them.In the Public Interest, a national anti-privatization resource center based in Oakland, reports that over 100 organizations came together to push back against #BackersofHate.
Source: Forbes
'Dangerous' part-privatisation of probation services
The "dangerous" part-privatisation of probation services is costing taxpayers an extra £467m, The National Audit Office (NAO) reports. "Sir Amyas Morse, head of Whitehall's spending watchdog, said the Ministry of Justice had 'set itself up to fail' as Chris Grayling ignored warnings over contracting out the supervision of criminals. 'Its rushed roll-out created significant risks that it was unable to manage,' he added. 'These have had far-reaching consequences. Not only have these failings been extremely costly for taxpayers, but we have seen the number of people on short sentences recalled to prison skyrocket.'" Meg Hillier MP, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, "said the NPS had performed better but was being 'hampered by a shortage of staff and intolerable workloads.' Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: 'The so-called rehabilitation revolution has actually just put more people back into prison with damaging consequences.'"
Source: The Independent
Public Service Association of NSW
General secretary of Public Service Association: "the NSW juvenile justice system is in crisis"
Stewart Little, the general secretary of Public Service Association, says the NSW juvenile justice system is in crisis, with violence against staff spiking and inadequate care. "The relentless cuts and outsourcing of public services mean that opportunities for intervention with these kids are consistently missed David Tune's independent report on child protection, which the government kept secret for 18 months, revealed a system in failure. Of the $1.86 billion the state spent on vulnerable families, $960 million, half, is spent on outsourced, privately provided out-of-home care. It costs nearly double to put a kid in an NGO-run home rather than a Family and Community Services (FACS) -managed service. The erosion of funding for FACS means it is now a crisis-driven system. Case workers are operating in survival mode, unable to deliver long-term outcomes for anyone."
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
PSI in the news
AFT says: Investments in private prisons put our retirement savings at risk
PSI affiliate the American Federation of Teachers is encouraging pension funds to consider avoiding private equity investments in companies that profit from mass incarceration.
Source: PSI
Serco Group plc
Private contractors paid millions to run UK detention centres
The British government has paid hundreds of millions of pounds to private contractors to run its detention facilities, but no one knows for certain just how profitable the industry is. "One of the 10 UK facilities is run by Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service, but the rest are contracted out to outsourcing firms G4S, Mitie, Serco and the US-owned GEO Group. (…) Commercial confidentiality agreements mean the Home Office and outsourcing companies are not obliged to publish detailed financial information about immigration detention centers in the UK. But figures released under freedom of information laws and published on the government's Contracts Finder website show the value of some contracts when they were awarded. (…) The profitability of detention facilities has proved to be a contentious issue for the contractors. A Guardian investigation last year pointed to a 20.7% profit margin at the G4S-owned Brook House in 2016, while at Tinsley House the margin was 41.5%. (…) GEO Group, which operates Dungavel House, Scotland's only detention center, may be making up to 30% profits on its contract, according to an analysis by Corporate Watch."


text:
May DEC Oct
21 Mar 2009 - 25 Oct 2015
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Off Off Broadway
On London Stages, the Devil in Loveís Deep Blue Sea
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By BEN BRANTLEY
LONDON — When lovers meet on London's stages this summer, the odds are it's not violins they're hearing. It's alarm bells.
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Johan Persson
Paul Hilton and Helen McCrory in Ibsen's "Rosmersholm."
London Theater Journal
Ben Brantley, chief theater critic for The Times, reports on his theatergoing marathon.
Alastair Muir
2,000 FEET AWAY Charlotte Beaumont and Joseph Fiennes in a complex portrait of pedophilia.
Nobby Clark
THE DEEP BLUE SEA Dugald Bruce-Lockhart and Greta Scacchi in a Rattigan play.
Keith Pattison
THE GOOD SOUL OF SZECHUAN Jane Horrocks in the Brecht play, which just ended its run.
BRIEF ENCOUNTER Tristan Sturrock and Naomi Frederick in a stage version of the 1945 film.
Consider the strange, sad case of the Norwegian minister and the freethinking new woman, natural soul mates who find each other, only to destroy each other. Or the kindhearted Chinese prostitute whose affair with a pilot drives him to heroin addiction. Or the middle-class man and woman who consign themselves to lives of loneliness with the wrong people because that is what good people do. And that's not to mention the passion-addled barrister's wife, who, having left her husband for a younger man, is first seen trying to gas herself to death.
These typically tabloidish tales, which I've seen enacted quite compellingly during the past 10 days, were written by Ibsen, Brecht, Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan. And the new work I've sampled — including Anthony Weigh's "2,000 Feet Away," a symbol-heavy play at the Bush Theater about pedophilia in the American heartlands, starring Joseph Fiennes — suggests that the contemporary outlook for romance is, if anything, less rosy. If one pattern has emerged from my theatergoing here, it's that the course of true love runs straight off a cliff.
I suppose it could be argued that this view of the mating game reflects the jadedness of a culture whose favorite pulp reading (as in the United States) concerns the fast public couplings and uncouplings of the rich, famous and (preferably) beautiful. But the fact is that since Oedipus met Mom, bad love has been the stuff of good drama, providing friction, frissons, character excavation and opportunities for scenery chewing that rarely occur in the realm of happily ever after.
And in the hands of a master dramatist like Ibsen, whose "Rosmersholm" has been given a gripping revival at the Almeida Theater, a doomed affair becomes a prism that refracts the flaws and conflicts of a dysfunctional society. It seems safe to say that is the sort of society in which most Britons would say they are living these days.
Written in the 1880s, "Rosmersholm" was a pivotal work for Ibsen, looking back to his earlier studies of warping conformity (like "An Enemy of the People") and ahead to his psychologically complex portraits of dissatisfied and manipulative women ("Hedda Gabler"). It balances the virtues of both aspects of his career as it charts the collapse of ideals of Johannes Rosmer (Paul Hilton), a sheltered minister from an old family, and Rebecca West (Helen McCrory), a restless, charismatic woman who joined his household as a caretaker for his ailing (and now dead) wife.
The strength of Anthony Page's understated but intense production, which appears to take place in a cool, pervasive light that draws revelation from shadows, is its steady evocation of the corrosive chemistry not only between Rosmer and Rebecca but also between them and the milieu they inhabit. Mr. Hilton and Ms. McCrory are quietly magnificent, transforming melodramatic plot turns into natural steps in two people's unwitting and dangerous self-discovery.
There's no equivalent emotional nuance in Richard Jones's lively production of Brecht's "Good Soul of Szechuan," which recently ended its run at the Young Vic Theater. Brecht's parable about a kindly streetwalker who discovers that following your heart isn't possible in a society driven by money, was largely performed in a broad, comic-strip style that worked best in the show's moments of song. (It's not easy making Brechtian disaffection affecting.)
In the title role of the (literally) divided heroine forced to assume a double identity, Jane Horrocks (of the films "Life Is Sweet" and "Little Voice") exuded the arch, heightened sweetness of a Gilbert and Sullivan ingénue. But there was a sad, genuine warmth when her character was surprised — via an ambitious airline pilot (John Marquez) — by love, a rhapsodic state pathetically at odds with the festering greed and corruption of working-class Sichuan.
What is it about women and pilots? In Rattigan's "Deep Blue Sea," staged by Edward Hall at the Vaudeville Theater, a proper preacher's daughter leaves her husband for a hunky, unemployed test pilot to pursue the ecstasies and (mostly) agonies of physical passion. Mr. Hall is not a subtle director, and without one, this product of 1950s repression can sound as if it were made to be parodied. ("He said we were death to each other.")
There is nothing dated, though, about Greta Scacchi's performance in a role originated onstage by Peggy Ashcroft and on film by Vivien Leigh. Ms. Ashcroft has said she hated being in the play because it made her feel as if she were walking around naked onstage. That is what the part requires, and that is what Ms. Scacchi, whose face maps the ravages of love as a cancer, delivers here and more.
Because Rattigan was gay in an age when homosexuality was illegal, "The Deep Blue Sea" has been read as a coded portrait of a love that dare not speak its name. So has Coward's screenplay for the four-handkerchief film "Brief Encounter" (1945), directed by David Lean. But the Kneehigh Theater's enchanting stage version looks beneath the movie's surface, not for evidence of thwarted same-sex passion, but for a sense of how the film was a product of its time and why its appeal endures.
Emma Rice, the show's director and writer, has staged it in a movie theater at the Cinema Haymarket, and presents it with the accouterments of a night at the pictures in the 1930s, right down to flashlight-wielding uniformed ushers. She also uses a louvered screen on which film is projected and through which the live performers regularly step. Like the current West End (and Broadway) hit "Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps," this "Encounter" features a small cast conjuring assorted scenes and characters with do-it-yourself ingenuity.
Love — as it's experienced by a doctor and a housewife, each comfortably married, who meet at a train station when she catches a cinder in her eye — is regularly annotated via Coward songs both romantic and silly, film footage of crashing waves and a fantasy sequence that has the lovers swinging from chandeliers.
It all seems too precious at first. But with the excellent Naomi Frederick and Tristan Sturrock playing it straight in the leading roles, the show acquires a haunted poignancy that can't be laughed off. You realize that in exploring a genre of movie that caters to disappointed lives by mythologizing them as nobly self-sacrificing, Ms. Rice has pulled off the difficult trick of deconstructing something without destroying its heart.
The songs that interrupt the action, whether insinuatingly burlesque or urbanely forlorn, all trace a pattern of love as a disruptive if unavoidable force that informed most of Coward's work. As his "I Am No Good at Love" puts it:
For I feel the misery of the end
In the moment that it begins,
And the bitterness of the last goodbye
Is the bitterness that wins.
That song might well be the anthem for the London theater's summer of love.
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Get rid of exam stress!
A little bit of stress can be a good thing as it motivates us to knuckle down and work hard. But exams can make stress levels get out of hand, which often bars us from giving our best in the examination. So it's important to address it and get it back under control. Everyone gets stressed during exams but it's important not to let it get out of control.
1.	Learn to recognize your triggers. We all experience stress for different reasons. Situation that makes a person run for the hills may be a minor inconvenience or even an invigorating challenge to another. The first step in conquering your personal stressors is to identify them.
2.	Avoid comparing yourself to others. We all have a unique set of capabilities and qualities. We cannot compare ourselves to other human beings. In order to evaluate our progress we can compare ourselves with our past performance only.
3.	Eat right. Treat yourself like a well honed machine – eat a balanced food that must contain proteins, fresh fruit and vegetables and always have a proper breakfast. Avoid too much coffee and tea. Fuel your brain as well as your body.
4.	Sleep well. Wind down before bed and don't revise under the duvet – your bed is a sanctuary, not a desk. Get your eight hours sleep daily and avoid stimulants like energy drinks that keeps you up while your body needs to take rest.
5.	Exercise. Nothing de-stresses the mind faster than physical activity, so build it into your timetable. Walk for at least 35 minutes every day. If it's not possible in a go. Divide into different parts but don't over stress your body.
6.	Avoid unhealthy ways to manage stress. Cigarettes, Drugs and alcohol gives temporary relief by making us feel good but they cannot manage the stresses. They have never stopped anyone being stressed for very long.


text:
15 Thoughts We Bet You've Had Upon Finding Out That Your Ex Has Moved On
Anannya Chatterjee
"Some people move on, not us". Captain America nailed it in the recent trailer of the Avengers Endgame. The endgame of every relationship is tough, and moving on is never easy. Doesn't matter how bad you were treated by your partner--moving on is way more difficult than you actually imagine.
However, when your partner moves on faster than you, it drains you emotionally. All of a sudden, the walls close in and your world comes tumbling down. It's rare to find someone who feels happy for their partner when they move on. In most of the cases, it's the other way round -- it hurts deep within. No matter how long it's been since you broke up, it still scars you.
Any news about your ex is a whirlwind of emotions, but finding out that they've moved on takes you on a rollercoaster ride. Many thoughts bolt through your head. Thoughts like...
1. "Did he even love me? It barely took him any time to move on!"
2. "Was he dating both of us simultaneously?"
3. "What a fool he made outta me!"
4. "I am prettier than her. I deserve better!"
5. "Thank God, I am over him. She can deal with all his drama!"
6. "If I am over him and he doesn't matter to me anymore, then why am I still thinking about him? Argh!"
7. "Oh! He is still wearing the shirt I gifted him. Cheapster!"
8. "I hope he's nice to her and doesn't repeat the same mistakes he made in our relationship."
9. "Why am I thinking nice things about him? He deserves to go to hell!"
10. "I wish he regrets what he lost out on. I hope one day he realises his mistakes."
11. "Wait, till Karma bites you!"
12. "Will he ever apologise to me? I wish he does."
13. "I should thank him for everything he did. Otherwise, how else would I have found the perfect man with whom I can spend the rest of my life? "
14. "Should I be happy for him or pity his partner?"
15. "Move on! That's the only way forward."


text:
'The Many-Headed Hydra': An Exchange
Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, reply by David Brion Davis
We write to protest David Brion Davis's misleading review of our book, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic [NYR, July 5]. Readers should understand that scholarship is not the issue. Most of the "errors" Davis lists are simply differences of judgment or interpretation. He writes, moreover, that the book is "based on impressive research." No, his attack is essentially political.
David misrepresents the book from the beginning. It is not, as he implies, a history of the origins and growth of African slavery in the Americas, although the enslaved are an important part of it. Rather it is a history of the origins and rise of capitalism in the English-speaking Atlantic and more especially a history of the resistance to this process by sailors, slaves, indentured servants, women workers, peasants, and those dependent on common rights. The book seeks to recover two hidden histories. First, the endless mutilations and executions, the terror, and the killing labors used by the ruling classes of the day against European, African, and American workers in building Atlantic capitalism. The violence was greater than most historians have been willing to acknowledge. Second, and more hopefully, the connections among the multi-ethnic workers of the Atlantic as they resisted the violence. The linkages were more important than most historians have been able to see—because of the blinding effects of concepts of race, class, and nation that have guided most accounts of the past. Davis fails to explain the first theme and unfairly summarizes the second.
Davis writes: "Because the Hydra's heads include romanticized pirates as well as prostitutes, religious zealots, bandits, highwaymen, and criminals of all sorts, one tires of the authors' perspective of 'looking down from below'…." We do not doubt that Davis is terribly tired of history from below and all of these poor people, but a deeper truth is that he never considered them especially worthy of his attention in the first place. Davis has long been known in his own work to privilege top-down intellectual history over bottom-up social history: written texts over other kinds of evidence; white and well-to-do historical actors over darker and poorer ones. Indeed, in his book, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (1975), slavery appears to be a problem for many people, but not the slaves themselves, whose resistance to an inhumane system seldom registers. Moreover, proletarian abolitionists such as Olaudah Equiano, Robert Wedderburn, Lydia Hardy, or the workers of Sheffield find no place in his 576 pages.
Equally revealing in his review is his emphasis on the claims of pro-slavery newspaper writers that Equiano was not born in Africa, over and against the discovery by the Nigerian anthropologist, Catherine Obianju Acholonu that Equiano is remembered in an oral history of his family in the very region in Africa where he said he was born—"Essaka," in his spelling, now Isseke. Against Davis's view that cultural and intellectual changes among the middle and upper classes launched antislavery movements, The Many-Headed Hydra argues that people like Equiano and Wedderburn—and the mass rebellions that stood behind them—were central to the development of abolitionism and the larger intellectual history of the Atlantic. Davis should have told readers that The Many-Headed Hydra challenges his own assumptions and interpretations.
Davis also complains that The Many-Headed Hydra raises "the possibility of perfectionist 'alternatives' to the flow of history. The authors seem blind to the fact that it was precisely such alternative visions, from communism (which they applaud) to the Thousand Year Reich, that were repeatedly used to justify the most appalling crimes in human history." In order to engage in this little piece of red-baiting, Davis must falsify what the book actually says. It does not use the word "perfectionist" and it is not, as he claims earlier in the review, about utopia (which means "no place" in any case). It is, rather, about what working people actually did for themselves—their persistent efforts, against great violence, to organize practical alternatives to capitalist forms of social organization, ranging from the common field to the radical religious conventicle, to the maroon village, to the pirate ship, to the political club. None of these is the forerunner of Stalinism or Nazism, and to suggest otherwise is a grotesque ideological distortion. Davis's vehemence has given away his political preconceptions. As John Matshikiza, director of the Goree Institute in Senegal, says, "Only when lions have historians will hunters cease to be heroes."
Marcus Rediker
Peter Linebaugh
David Brion Davis replies:
When historians are criticized for making a succession of careless, egregious mistakes, the more ideologically inclined writers often dismiss the criticisms as "political." Yet it is not a difference in "interpretation" when one writes, as Linebaugh and Rediker do, that the British Parliament "agreed to abolish slavery, but only 'gradually'" in 1792, forty-one years before the actual parliamentary bill was presented and passed; or that Virginia's royal governor, Lord Durmore, issued his famous proclamation to slaves in 1774, instead of November 1775; or that the Gambia Castle was a slave ship, when the authors were sent proof some two years ago that the ship carried only ivory and other produce when it was taken over by mutinous sailors; or that Denmark Vesey "led thirty people into open insurrection….[a] revolt, which expressed the power of transatlantic pan-Africanism," when it has always been known that the potential insurrection was crushed after two slaves revealed the supposed conspiracy to their owners. (In the coming October issue of William and Mary Quarterly, Professor Michael Johnson, of Johns Hopkins, presents strong evidence that the Vesey conspiracy was imaginary and that tortured slaves told alarmed whites what they wanted to hear before the whites began hanging dozens of suspects.)
In truth, The Many-Headed Hydra is riddled with similar blatant errors from the start to the finish. An expert on Bermuda and the wreck there of the Sea-Venture in 1609, the subject of Chapter One, has given me a long list of mistakes and misconceptions which show, like the chapters which follow, that Linebaugh and Rediker have selected and distorted sources to fit their own ideological purpose. Thus, contrary to one of their major arguments, pirate ships were far from being "multiracial maroon communities." As one of the leading authorities on the slave trade observes, looking at 474 cases of shipboard slave revolts, there is not a single example of a vessel not completing its journey as a result of joint action between crew and slaves.
Linebaugh and Rediker seem to be saying, even in the letter above, that their version of "history from the bottom up" can ignore all the conventional criteria of accuracy. This point is well illustrated by their charge that I have relied on old pro-slavery newspapers when I raised the question whether Olaudah Equiano had originally come from Africa. In actuality, I made it clear in a footnote that I was drawing on Vincent Carretta, probably the world's leading expert on Equiano. Apart from borrowing heavily from earlier accounts of the African slave trade in his Interesting Narrative, Equiano listed "Carolina" as his birthplace when he was baptized in England in 1759; he was later listed as "an able seaman, aged 28, and born in South Carolina" in the muster book of the ship Racehorse. The "oral tradition" of his African origin comes from Catherine Obianju Acholonu, who claims that people in her part of Africa commonly lived to the age of 150. I'm told on good authority that she has not achieved agreement even on the location of "Essaka" and is not taken seriously by either ethnolinguists or anthropologists.
As for my failing to describe the major subject of Linebaugh and Rediker's book, I wrote, in words very similar to their own, that the book combined "the plight and resistance of slaves with the aspirations of religious radicals, sailors, and various oppressed groups in a survey of the Atlantic world from the 1500s to the early nineteenth century." I added that "the title refers to Hercules as the symbol of the rising capitalist state attempting to behead the repeated outbursts of revolt generated by a proletarian Hydra."
In view of these words, it is a blatant untruth to say that I imply that the book is simply "a history of the origins and growth of slavery in the Americas." Since I was also reviewing Lamin Sanneh's Abolitionists Abroad, which begins with the Arab enslavement of black Africans, I focused the overall essay on Mediterranean, Atlantic, and African slavery. But I even raised the question, ignored by Linebaugh and Rediker, regarding the consequences for other forms of exploited labor of selecting and isolating chattel slavery as a wholly unique evil. I also stressed that the subject matter of The Many-Headed Hydra, meaning the history of the Atlantic world "from the bottom up," was "of tremendous promise." But because of their disregard for factual accuracy, to say nothing of a simplistic and romantic Marxist framework that merges all victims and rebels of every kind into a continuous, coherent, and heroic "proletariat," I found the present work a deeply "disappointing book."
Any reader of my own Problems of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, which in part turns on questions raised by E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, will know that Linebaugh and Rediker's description is a hostile caricature and total misrepresentation. (The book does include Spitalfields silk weavers as well as Toussaint Louverture and Haitian guerrillas.) And their use of the vicious slur, "red-baiting," refers to my commonplace observation that the pursuit of twentieth-century utopias (which literally turned out to be "no places") became a justification for the worst crimes against humanity from the time of Lenin to the time of Mao and Pol Pot.
In 2001, long after the fall of communism and the revelation of the murder and starvation of millions, this is hardly an extremist or controversial statement. Of course the deadly failure of communism in no way lessens the historical and contemporary crimes of capitalism. But the rigid ideological stance of people like Linebaugh and Rediker blocks the way to new coalitions and new ways of curbing and mitigating the worst effects of global capitalism (including new forms of slavery). As for "politics," as distinct from good history, this is the key question for those of us well to the left of center.
The Scholar Who Shaped History
David Brion Davis's 'The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation'
The Idea of Slavery
J.H. Plumb
Spreading the News


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Home Victor Vasarely
Oct 17, 2020 to Apr 5, 2021
Vancouver Art Gallery 750 Hornby St, Vancouver, British Columbia V6Z 2H7
Ian Lefebvre, Vancouver Art Gall
Victor Vasarely, "OERVENG," 1968
tempera on wood composite board, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of the Estate of Kathleen E. Reif, © SOCAN, 2020, Photo: Ian Lefebvre, Vancouver Art Gallery
Celebrated as the father of Op Art (Optical Art), the Hungarian-French artist Victor Vasarely (1906–1997) is internationally renowned for his colourful abstract patterns and playful Pop aesthetic. Stimulating the eye, his vibrant paintings, prints and sculptures produce the optical illusion of dynamic movement: they appear to pulse, shimmer and vibrate. This exhibition showcases Vasarely's artistic production primarily from the 1960s and '70s, at the peak of his popularity.
With a background in graphic design, Vasarely was deeply invested in making art that could easily reach the broadest possible audience. To this end, he created his Plastic Alphabet, an abstract language that comprises a series of geometrical shapes in varying colours. Vasarely's easily reproducible language could be applied in countless configurations across multiple media—and was ambitiously intended for the entire world to share.
The utopian nature of Vasarely's vision can be found in his desire to take art beyond the gallery, and to make it accessible to people in their homes as well as in the public domain. Merging artworks and commercially printed multiples, his abstract language is featured not only in his paintings, sculptures and architectural integrations but also reproduced on prints, posters, dishware and textiles. Vasarely's interest in the democratization of art for all, his use of mass production and his embracing of interdisciplinarity continue to resonate with artistic practices today.
A large number of the paintings, sculptures, tapestries and multiples shown in this exhibition come from the Simonyi Collection in Seattle. Its generous loans provide a rare opportunity to consider the breadth of Vasarely's art of the 1960s and '70s. Victor Vasarely was conceived in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.
Location Vancouver Art Gallery 750 Hornby St, Vancouver, British Columbia V6Z 2H7
Date & Time Oct 17, 2020 to Apr 5, 2021


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