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Home Features Joining the small movement: GHS teacher converting bus to tiny home
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Joining the small movement: GHS teacher converting bus to tiny home
Anna Goodman
The idea of living in a tiny home for some sounds like a dream. Having the freedom for a house on wheels, going anywhere, and seeing everything. One of the Godwin teachers decided to make this their reality.
Social Studies teacher Olivia Kay started this special project in Oct. 2020. She and her husband are converting a school bus into a home.
"I've always wanted to live in a small or tiny house. When I met my husband we both wanted to travel but we both work in professions that do not make a lot of money so we wanted to live tiny to save money. The bus is the perfect solution," said Kay.
Kay and her husband started converting the bus at the height of the pandemic, resulting in some unforeseen issues. They originally planned to have the bus done by August of 2020, however they had to push the finish date to this coming August.
One of the biggest problems they ran into was supply line issues making the cost of products rise.
"The biggest issue so far has been being able to get materials, because of the pandemic and the Suez canal situation, supply lines have been backed up," said Kay.
Another problem with the bus is that it is old. Some of the hardware is not being made anymore. This caused Kay to search all of the hardware stores for specific pieces they needed.
Even after they acquired the pieces, they still had to figure out a way to install them. Since they are converting the bus by themselves, they had to figure it out all on their own.
However, these problems did not stop them from enjoying the experience of converting the bus together.
"My husband and I laugh a lot at all the little things. That is probably my favorite part, just getting to spend time together working on something we both love," said Kay.
Olivia Kay and her husband
The process of converting the bus has been really rewarding for Kay and her husband. People they haven't spoken to in years have reached out for updates on their journey. "[Repurposing the bus] has really brought people back into our lives that we may not have gotten to reconnect with," said Kay.
The bus has given Kay a sense of freedom and creativity to do what she wants.
"The most rewarding [part] is definitely knowing we built the home we want. While there are changes we had to make because of space or practicality, we are in charge of every decision and at the end of the day we will have the perfect home for us," said Kay.
Once the bus is converted, they plan on moving into it full time until they are ready for kids.
One of their goals is to travel across the country with their bus., "I would love to travel full across [the] country to hike every national park," said Kay.
In order to find inspiration for the idea, Kay took to social media. Some of those accounts on Instagram that Kay uses are @Dixietribe, @artwethereyet, and @that.miller.life.
Kay also has an Instagram and TikTok account dedicated to their bus conversion process to inspire others.
This bus conversion journey has been an experience for both Kay and her husband. They dedicated a lot of time, effort, and money into this bus. They decided on "The Gap" for the bus name.
"We named the bus 'The Gap', because we met in a town called Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania. We thought it symbolized this gap' in our lives where we aren't ready to buy a house but we want to be out in the world," said Kay.
The projected finish time for the bus is August 2021. Even though this is a year past the intended finish date, both Kay and her husband have enjoyed the process even with challenges along the way.
They are both looking forward to the many adventures that the bus will take them on.
To find out what Kay is up to next, look for her on Instagram and TikTok @livinitskoolie.
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A lifeguard competition was held in Sandy Hook today for women lifeguards.
Hundreds of participants competed in a series of 10 events, showcasing essential lifeguard and rescue skills.
The most grueling event of the tournament was the "ironwoman," which incorporated running, swimming and paddling back-to-back for 1,500 yards.
The event was also designed to encourage others to consider becoming lifeguards. As part of the tournament, Coca-Cola donated $10,000 to help buy a new lifeguard rescue boat.


We all need to have time to rest and reconnect with God. We all need time to be able to reminded ourselves why it is that we are Christians and what our walk of faith looks like. If you can give your pastor a sabbatical then you should – she or he deserves it! If you can take some time for yourself then you should – you deserve it!
A conversation with Pastor Cheryl Harris about relaxing and enjoying life. This is something that we do not do very well as we are often told that we should be moving faster and faster. We need to figure out how to relax and let that feed our spirituality. Also, the book of Ruth, and some other great books to read.


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Otherworldy Things
Tag: Arthurian
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Metaphysical Journey
This is another slight diversion from the realm of faerie, but the subject matter is intimately connected to our understanding of metaphysical realities through texts from our past. The poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is important, loaded as it is with symbology and deep insights into the human condition, that speak to us from over half a millennium ago. The characters, their motivations and their inner-lives, as expressed by the poet, remain recognisable to us in the 21st century. And at the centre of the story (even though she doesn't utter a word) is a faerie, perhaps the most prominent faerie in English literature: Morgan le Fay. A version of this article was originally published on the Ancient Origins Premium website.
'The paths he would take were strange,
With little cheer to glean,
And his hopes would often change
Till that chapel could be seen.'
Sir Gawain and Green Knight is a late 14th-century poem, set in an Arthurian world of the past, but which invokes the chivalric codes and environment of the time it was written. Despite numerous attempts to identify the author, it remains anonymous, although the Middle-English dialect used in the poem has been pinned down to the North-West Midlands of England, perhaps the county of Staffordshire. It is written in alliterative verse, suggesting that it was designed to be read aloud, with the alliteration acting as both a memory aid to recitation and as a prop to convey the humorous intonations, which run throughout the poem. It is generally seen as one of the most important examples of English medieval literature and fits within the corpus of Arthurian stories known as 'The Matter of Britain.' It certainly adheres to the usual frames of reference that medieval authors used when describing the Arthurian world, where a supernatural Otherworld was consistently interacting with physical reality, and symbolic layers of meaning provide an allegoric purpose that would have been recognised by the elite classes listening to, or reading the stories. Many of the characters in the poem are familiar from other Arthurian sources, but as the title suggests, the main protagonist is Sir Gawain, nephew of King Arthur. His adventures tell us much about 14th-century society, but also about a metaphysical belief system operating below the radar of Christianity, which, as usual with later medieval Arthurian literature, invokes an older, pagan atmosphere, perhaps more redolent of the immediate post-Roman Dark Ages, when the stories are ostensibly set. The use of such magico-folklore in the Arthurian stories can tell us much about the continuity of pre-Christian beliefs throughout the Middle Ages, and the motifs used consistently through Sir Gawain and the Green Knight retain a timeless folkloric quality, making the poem a commentary on humanity's interaction with supra-natural dimensions that still manages to resonate with the 21st-century reader.
Image from original manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, late 14th century. 'Gawain sleeps in the open air during his quest' British Library
The Plot and Landscape of the Poem
The action begins on New Year's Day at Arthur's court of Camelot, where feasting is in progress. Much Arthurian literature uses the device of Camelot as representative of a golden age in the past, often making derogatory (even satirical) comparisons to contemporary aristocratic courts. This is especially true of several stories from the Welsh cycle of stories known as The Mabinogion (also composed in the 14th century, although containing much earlier material) and the Gawain poet follows this trope, ensuring the reader is aware that Arthur's court exemplified the pinnacle of chivalric code. But this standard description becomes turned round upon the arrival of the mysterious giant knight, who makes his abrupt entrance into the midst of the feast mounted on a horse. His apparel, his skin and even his horse are green:
'Wonder at his hue men displayed,
set in his semblance seen;
he fared as a giant were made,
and over all deepest green.'
The Green Knight is not impressed with Arthur's court or courtiers, who he calls 'beardless children.' And after some more disparagement he challenges one amongst them to a 'Christmas game' where the Green Knight is struck once with his own axe, on the proviso that in a year and a day's time he is able to return the blow at his own 'Green Chapel.' This is the point of entry into the plot for Gawain, who spares Arthur the need to strike the blow, and takes up the challenge, lopping off the Green Knight's head with one blow of the axe. But, to the amazement of all, he then proceeds to pick up his own head, mounts his horse and, from his decapitated head, reminds Gawain of his oath, before wheeling away out of Camelot, head in hand.
'The Green Knight enters Camelot' by Herbert Cole (1906). This is from the 1913 edition (but painted in 1906) of English Fairy Tales by Ernest and Grace Rhys
This sets the scene for a quest journey, which takes up the rest of the poem as Gawain sets out alone to fulfil his pledge a year later. The first part of the quest describes his journey through a winter landscape; a desolate wilderness but firmly rooted in the real landscape of 14th-century Britain. Gawain takes a circuitous (but definitive) route through Wales, perhaps insinuating that the poet thought of Camelot as being situated in southern Wales (Caerleon is one of the traditional locations for Camelot) before heading east from Anglesea to the 'wilderness of the Wirral' and inland to the Peak District. Once here the descriptive qualities of the landscape becomes more detailed, with localised words for features in the environment being used such as frith (enclosed scrubland on the edge of a forest), knot (a hillock), and kerre (a marshy thicket), which has been a main element in allowing the interpretation for the author being a native of this part of the country where the counties of Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire meet. Eventually, Gawain arrives at the moated castle called Hautdesert.
'Now he had signed himself times but three,
when he was aware in the wood of a wall in a moat,
above a level, on high land locked under boughs
of many broad set boles about by the ditches:
a castle the comeliest that ever knight owned,
perched on a plain, a park all about,
with a pointed palisade, planted full thick,
encircling many trees in more than two miles.'
Image from original manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, late 14th century. 'Lady Bertilak tempts Gawain' British Library
The castle is most likely identified as Beeston Castle, built by Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester in the 1220s, now a ruin, but in the late 14th century an imposing hilltop citadel. It is here that Gawain enters a somewhat hallucinogenic episode in the tale, as he is given hospitality by the Lord Bertilak. During the next three days Bertilak goes out to hunt (described in elaborate detail), leaving Gawain to rest in the castle. Bertilak proposes that what he gains in the hunt shall be Gawain's, providing Gawain gives him what he receives during the days in the castle. Gawain soon finds out that the seductive Lady Bertilak has designs on him, and while her lord is out hunting she slips into his chamber to let him know that 'You are welcome to my body; your pleasure to take all.' She does this each day, but Gawain resists temptation and gives her only kisses, which are in turn exchanged with Lord Bertilak, on his daily returns, for the spoils of the hunt (a deer, a fox and a boar).
In the final segment of the poem, Gawain sets out for the Green Chapel (usually identified as Lud's Church, an atmospheric deep sandstone chasm near the village of Gradbach, Staffordshire) to meet his fate with the Green Knight, although arraigned with a 'green and gold girdle' given to him by Lady Bertilak for his protection. The pair meet, and Gawain submits to three blows from the Green Knight's axe, the first two of which are feigned and then the third merely nicking his neck to draw blood. Honour is satisfied, and the Green Knight reveals himself to be none other than Bertilak himself, magically transformed into the green knight by Arthur's arch-enemy, his half-sister Morgan le Fay.
Lad's Church, Staffordshire, possible inspiration for the 'Green Chapel'
'For it is mine that you wear, that same woven girdle;
my own wife gave it you, I know it well forsooth.
Now, know I well your kisses and conduct too,
and the wooing of my wife; I wrought it myself.
I sent her to test you, and truly I think you
the most faultless man that was ever afoot.'
Gawain returns to Camelot, chastened but wiser, realising that the whole ruse had been manipulated by Morgan le Fay in one of her perennial attempts to undermine Arthur's precedence in Britain.
Arthurian Symbology and Metaphysics
The poem is loaded with symbology and metaphysical motifs, and while the themes of chivalry and Christian virtues run through the work, there is a clear undercurrent of pre-Christian, pagan value-systems integrated into the tale. The beheading game is evidently one of the central features of the story, and there are several precedents for it, for instance in the 12th-century Arthurian story Perceval by Chrétien de Troyes and the anonymous Perlesvaus from the 13th century. The earliest version is from the Irish story of Fled Bricrenn, dating from the 8th century, where the hero Cú Chulainn faces the same three blows as Gawain, from a giant. This would appear to be an ancient Celtic motif, embodying an ultimate test for the virtue and worthiness of the hero, that the author of Gawain was picking up from these and perhaps other sources.
The 'game' is intimately connected to the timespan allowed between blows by the disparate characters; a year and a day. This specific timeframe is important and frequently appears in medieval romances and folktales as the amount of time protagonists were given to succeed in quests. In The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer highlights the ancient global concept of the Divine King, who was to be ritually murdered after a period of time in charge, which was often a year and a day. The time period was also used in common law to substantiate the legal situation of unwed couples, and it was (in theory) the amount of time a person living under feudal serfdom needed to be absent from his lord's manor to gain his freedom. Interestingly, a year and a day is also used in Wiccan and other neo-pagan traditions for the time of learning required before being initiated into the first degree. The year and a day motif is evidently embedded within the Gawain story as a message, conveying the idea that it is a magical time-frame. It was a symbolic time-marker for life quests, ruling over others, decisions being made, learning a tradition, securing a marriage, or gaining freedom as one year tips over into another. It is a motif deeply ingrained in both esoteric tradition and everyday life from an early date, and rooted in the cycles of the natural world, in Gawain's case from one New Year to the next.
Image from original manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, late 14th century. 'Gawain approaches the Green Chapel' British Library
The overarching theme of the colour green in the poem links with this natural cycle. Although all the action takes place during winter, everything is dependent on the colour, from the Green Knight himself through to the protective girdle and the numerous descriptions of green vegetation, such as the holly branch held by the green knight when he enters Camelot and the 'verdant dripping moss' coating the Green Chapel. Green can be representative of rebirth and fertility, and one interpretation of its use in the poem is as the purveyor of life over death – the 'Green Man' sculptures found in so many medieval churches may be a codified pagan representation of fertile life overcoming death through the natural cycle. Many of these 'Green Men' date to the 14th century, and the Gawain poet would have undoubtedly been intimately aware of them, perhaps even conversant with their pagan cosmology. He certainly imbues every part of the poem with the colour, heightening the sense that the natural world (with green as its symbol) is more powerful and authentic than the veneer of the civilised world represented by the castles and chivalric codes of the stylised Arthurian world. The fact that no-one dies in the poem (unusual for an Arthurian story) strengthens the interpretation that it is at root an allegory about life triumphing over death.
Green Man sculpture from All Saints church, Sutton Benger, Wiltshire (14th century)
But everything that happens in the poem is dependent on the intrusion of the supernatural into consensus reality. The clue given during the Green Knight's entrance into Camelot, when he is described as 'of phantom and faerie', is confirmed after Gawain is let off at the Green Chapel, and we find out that Morgan le Fay has manipulated the entire proceedings:
'Through the might of Morgan le Fay, that dwells in my house,
and is mistress of magic, by crafts well learned
the mysteries of Merlin, many has she taken,
for she has dealt in depths full dearly sometime
with that excellent sage, and that know all your knights at home.'
'Morgan le Fay' by Frederick Sandys (1864)
It turns out that she had been lurking in the shadows of Bertilak's castle as 'an ancient withered lady', evidently disguising herself through faerie glamour. Despite having no dialogue in the poem, and appearing only briefly upon Gawain's arrival at the castle, she has been pulling the strings with her usual metaphysical aplomb. The Green Knight/Bertilak even describes her as 'a goddess.' Despite having made her first appearance in Arthurian literature as a benign faerie half-sister of Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini (1136-50), by the 14th century she invariably played a villainous role in The Matter of Britain, and always executing her machinations via supernatural means. She is an arbiter of fate and representative of an accepted metaphysical intrusion into the physical world, in the case of Gawain and the Green Knight as a tester of courage and rectitude. Her presence in the poem (and her ubiquity in the Arthurian corpus) ensures a magical, supernal dimension, which is unquestioned and establishes a medieval understanding of the world where the natural world could be transcended through what is essentially a pagan belief-system, even if the anonymous poet was wrapping it up within an orthodox Christian worldview.
Arthur, Ross G (ed.), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1999) Original Middle English text
Brewer, Elisabeth, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Sources and Analogues (1992)
Brindley, Noel C., A Medieval Mystery (accessed 2018)
Elliott, Ralph WV, The Gawain Country (1984)
Elliott, Ralph WV, 'Searching for the Green Chapel' in JK Lloyd Jones (ed). Chaucer's Landscapes and Other Essays (2010) 293–303
Friedman, Albert B, 'Morgan le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' Speculum 35 (1960) 260–274
Hebert, Jill Marie, Shapeshifter: The Manifestations of Morgan Le Fay (2008)
Frazer, Sir James, The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion (1900)
Kline, AS, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Modern Translation (2007)
Rushton, Neil, Faeries in the Realm of King Arthur, Ancient Origins (2018)
Rushton, Neil, The Mabinogion: Ancient Welsh Tales Bridging the Celtic Mindset and the Otherworld Ancient Origins (2108)
Rhys, Ernest and Grace, English Fairy Tales (1913)
Smith, Michael, In Search of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2017)
Wilson, Anne, Plots and Powers: Magical Structures in Medieval Narrative (2001)
Simon Armitage's BBC4 Documentary Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Author neilrushtonPosted on December 4, 2018 Categories faeriesTags Arthurian, Gawain and the Green Knight, medieval, Morgan le Fay14 Comments on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Metaphysical Journey
The Mabinogion: Worlds and Otherworlds in Medieval Wales
The medieval Welsh stories contained in what has become known as The Mabinogion hold many faerie motifs, and certainly resonate a magical folkloric ambience. This is an introductory overview of some of the stories from the collection. It only scratches the surface, but the references suggest some possibilities for further study into these preternatural tales. A version of this article first appeared on the Ancient Origins Premium website.
"On the bank of the river he saw a tall tree: from roots to crown one half was aflame and the other was green with leaves." The History of Peredur Son of Evrawg.
The Mabinogion
The Mabinogion is a collection of eleven stories from medieval Wales. Although only first committed to manuscript during the 13th century (the oldest surviving fragmentary manuscript dates to c.1225), the tales are generally accepted as fossilising an oral tradition that dates back many centuries previous to this. They contain a heady mix of history, pseudo-history, mythology and folklore, and provide our most direct route into the Celtic mindset and worldview of ancient Welsh culture. The stories of The Mabinogion appear in complete form in two 14th-century Welsh manuscripts, 'The White Book of Rhydderch' (Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch), and 'The Red Book of Hergest' (Llyfr Goch Hergest). They were all, originally, separate stories, written by different (unknown) hands, and were only collated into an autonomous group in the 19th century (first published as a complete set in 1849) by Lady Charlotte Guest, who translated the Welsh texts into English, using in part the earlier work of the Welsh antiquarian William Owen Pughe (d.1835). The eleven stories are usually split into the 'four branches':
Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed (Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed)
Branwen, daughter of Llŷr (Branwen ferch Llŷr)
Manawydan, son of Llŷr (Manawydan fab Llŷr)
Math, son of Mathonwy (Math fab Mathonwy)
and three 'romances':
The Lady of the Fountain (Chwedl Iarlles Ffynawn)
The History of Peredur son of Evrawg (Historia Peredur ab Efrawg)
Gereint and Enid (Geraint ac Enid)
and supplemented by four further stories of various dates:
Culhwch and Olwen (Culhwch ac Olwen)
The Dream of Macsen Wledig (Breuddwyd Macsen Wledig)
Lludd and Llefelys (Lludd a Llefelys)
The Dream of Rhonabwy (Breuddwyd Rhonabwy)
Peredur Son of Evrawg and the flaming tree, artist unknown
The quote from 'Peredur', describing the tree half aflame and half alive, illustrates well the preternatural quality that resonates through all the stories, where a magical Otherworld imbricates itself consistently into the landscapes of early medieval Wales. For those telling, listening to and reading the stories, this metaphysical overlapping would have represented a legitimate way of describing a past, where mythology and folklore were as authentic realities as the historical narrative. The characters, and their environment, were in physical reality and the Otherworld at the same time with no contradiction.
An Oral Tradition
Although the scenes and settings in The Mabinogion would have been immediately recognisable to people in the 13th and 14th centuries, when they became codified in manuscript form, the stories are nominally located in a post-Roman Wales, sometimes known as the Dark Ages. While it is not possible to trace the route sources of the stories, It seems certain that they developed from an oral tradition, a body of recitation lore, which has been given the Welsh name cyfarwyddyd (cer-var-with-id). The Mabinogion scholar Will Parker sums up the nature of this dissemination: "In pre-modern societies such as these, the oral tradition is the medium of collective memory; fluid in its details, but essentially static and conservative in its overall ethos… and we might assume that much of this material was informed, directly or otherwise, by the ambient oral tradition."
The White Book of Rhydderch, National Library of Wales
Current academic opinion suggests that at least some of the stories in The Mabinogion can be dated back to the early 11th century, based on the structure and style of the narrative units, known by the medieval authors as chwedlau. But many of the themes contained within the stories are replete with pre-Christian imagery and tropes, and it is conceivable that they are transmitting much older traditions, originating from the 5th and 6th centuries. Although the stories would have evolved and mutated over such a long period of time, they do appear to represent a mythologised set of narratives, which could have been recited by storytellers at the courts of Dark Age chieftains just as well as within those of the later medieval Welsh aristocracy. But whatever the true origination of the lore, the subject matter portrays the real world of ancient Wales consistently energised and influenced by an Otherworld that was fully integrated into the consensus reality of both the storytellers and those consuming the stories.
The Arthurian Connection
One of the most intriguing aspects of The Mabinogion is that several of the stories connect to the Arthurian mythos. Without these stories, the earliest literary renditions of the activities of Arthur and his court are found in the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who, between 1135-1150, wrote the highly influential Historia Regum Britannia and Vita Merlini. Geoffrey appears to have utilised much oral folklore in his works, but there is a minimum of overlap with The Mabinogion tales, suggesting that he was using different branches of oral (and perhaps lost written) testimonies. The Mabinogion stories do transmit as more 'folkloric', with a heavier Celtic footprint and more reliant on folk motifs, which might insinuate they are the older corpus of material. Apart from some of the names, the Arthurian elements in the stories certainly bear little resemblance to what became 'The Matter of Britain'; the recognisable story of King Arthur, begun by Geoffrey of Monmouth and then propagated by continental authors such as Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach, before ending up in the hands of Sir Thomas Malory in the late 15th century. For all the supernatural components included in this later literature, they are not as embedded with the surreal as the stories in The Mabinogion.
Culhwch and Olwen at Ysbaddaden's court' by Ernest Wallcousins (1920)
In the story of 'Culhwch and Olwen' (often seen as the earliest of the tales) the role of Arthur's court is paramount. But the king's men, who are requisitioned to help Culhwch in his quest to obtain the hand of Olwen from her father (the giant Ysbaddaden Bencawr) are evidently drawn from otherworldly stock and are given supernatural attributes, such as Sgilti Yscawndroed, who is able to transport himself great distances by treading over the tops of trees and even flying over mountains by utilising the tips of reeds. This was a skill shared with the Tylwyth Teg, the folkloric faeries of Wales. The giant father demands that forty tasks are achieved before he allows Culhwch to marry Olwen, a common folktale motif, and the story proceeds to recount a small number of these tasks, all of which have fantastical qualities. The task of hunting the magical boar Twrch Trwyth takes up the most prose, and seems to be partly based on the 9th-century Irish legends of Diarmuid Ua Duibhne. But the deeper Arthurian connection is made in the task of retrieving the cauldron of Diwrnach. This cauldron can be equated with the grail of the later Arthurian mythos, and its alchemical significance is confirmed by the firepower Arthur and his men implement in its retrieval. The grail motif is made more explicit in 'The History of Peredur son of Evrawg,' where the hero Peredur, after being dispatched to his uncle's castle by Arthur, is confronted by a procession lead by an entity carrying a salver with a severed head. As usual in The Mabinogion, the significance of this is left ambiguous, but the motif of a magical salver/grail seems to have seeped into later renditions of the Arthurian mythos, where it was given more prominence, until (in the early 13th century) Robert de Boron classified it as the cup in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood of Christ on the cross.
There is some contention as to how much cross-pollination there has been from The Mabinogion Arthurian stories to the later 'Matter of Britain', and even whether the Welsh manuscript sources were reintegrating French and German literature from the 12th and 13th centuries. But even if they were capturing motifs from these continental sources, the Welsh stories retain decisive elements of a magico-folkloric quality that appear to come from a pure stream of Celtic mysticism. This is best demonstrated in what is usually thought to be the latest of the stories, but the one that includes the most magical symbolism, hinting at an early source to its metaphysical prose. This is 'The Dream of Rhonabwy.'
Magico-Folklore in Medieval Wales – 'The Dream of Rhonabwy'
Although the beginning of the story is set in the mid-12th century, with known historical personages from the kingdom of Powys, the main bulk of the prose consists of Rhonabwy's dream, which takes him into a magical Otherworld that interfaces with a Dark Age, Arthurian pseudo-history. The first clue that the writer of the story is tapping into some ancient belief-systems comes as Rhonabwy finds himself in the squalid, dilapidated home of 'Heilyn Goch son of Cadwgan son of Iddon.' Rhonabwy sleeps wrapped in a yellow ox-hide situated on the dais of the hall. Sleeping in an ox-hide in order to gain oracular insights is attested to in Inuit and Siberian shamanic cultures from the 19th and 20th centuries, and is also portrayed in pre-Christian Irish texts such as Togail Bruidne Dá Derga. Such an episode even finds its way into Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae. Listeners to (and readers of) the story may not have been aware of the significance of Rhonabwy's action, but it is clearly a symbolic deed that indicates the story is about to enter the metaphysical.
Rhonabwy's dream has the hallmarks of an out of body experience, where he is mostly a discarnate observer of events, consistently described as a vision: "As soon as sleep entered his eyes he was granted a vision." This is enabled by his (spirit) guide Iddawg who discloses that it was he who was responsible for the disastrous last battle of King Arthur (termed emperor throughout the story) at Camlann. But, after the appearance of a horseman "with curly yellow hair and his beard newly trimmed, on a yellow horse, and from the top of its forelegs and its kneecaps downwards green," the dream then immediately transposes back in time as Rhonabwy is taken by his guide across a plain to witness the prequel to the Battle of Badon, the scene of Arthur's first and greatest victory of the Saxon armies at some point in the early 6th century. When they come upon Arthur, Iddwag tells Rhonabwy that by seeing the stone set within a ring on Arthur's finger "you will remember all that you have seen here tonight; had you not seen the stone you would have remembered nothing." The stone may be seen as a magic talisman, serving as the link between physical reality and the Otherworld, another common shamanic trope and folkloric motif.
Arthur and Owain play a game of gwyddbwyll by Alan Lee
In his visionary state, Rhonabwy witnesses a series of surreal events, centred around a game of gwyddbwyll (a chess-like board game) between Arthur and his retainer Owain mab Urien. At one point the players are asked to intervene as a flock of ravens dismember a number of their men (dismemberment in the Otherworld is another shamanic device, meant as a sign of spiritual renewal before return to physical reality), before the enigmatic arrival of twenty-four donkeys with baskets of gold and silver, which were to be given to Arthur's bards. The story ends before any battle takes place, and the purpose and meaning is left undisclosed, as Rhonabwy awakes on the ox-hide having slept for three days and three nights.
Much of the otherworldy symbolism in 'The Dream of Rhonobwy' remains undecipherable, and it seems probable that even the late-medieval purveyors of the story were not fully aware of the pre-Christian and shamanistic elements contained in the narrative. But like all the stories in The Mabinogion, it was transmitting an ancient set of folkloric and mythological motifs that relied on an Otherworld to give meaning to the historic past of Wales. In this sense, the stories retain an embedded function and purpose that transcends their historical context, and continue to enhance our understanding of the ontological inheritance of metaphysical belief-systems so fundamental to the Celtic (and especially Welsh) cultural mindset.
A map of the stories of The Mabinogion
Ashe, Geoffrey. The Origins of the Arthurian Legends (1995) http://faculty.smu.edu/bwheeler/arthur/ashe.pdf
Davies, Sioned (tr.), The Mabinogion (2007).
Green, Thomas. Concepts of Arthur (2008).
Guest, Lady Charlotte (tr.), The Mabinogion (1877 ed.) http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mab/index.htm
Historia Regum Britannia by Geoffrey of Monmouth http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/gem/index.htm
Lacy, Norris, J. et al. The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (1996).
Parker, Will. http://www.mabinogion.info (2010). This site contains an in-depth discussion and interpretation of The Mabinogion, with links to the full translated texts with notes.
Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/vm/index.htm
Wilson, Anne. The Magical Quest: The Use of Magic in Arthurian Romance (1988).
Wilson, Anne. Plots and Powers: Magical Structures in Medieval Narrative (2001).
A round-table discussion about The Mabinogion on the BBC series 'In Our Time' can be streamed or downloaded here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b1p5k7#play
The cover image is 'Culhwch' by Arthur Joseph Gaskin (1921).
Author neilrushtonPosted on July 22, 2018 July 28, 2018 Categories faeriesTags Arthurian, Mabinogion, Medieval Wales5 Comments on The Mabinogion: Worlds and Otherworlds in Medieval Wales
Faeries in the Arthurian Landscape
The faeries who appear in the Arthurian mythos are a distinctive breed; ontologically different from the entities that most often surface in folklore. They usually have specific roles to fulfil, catering to the literate classes who were consuming the stories. But the genesis of the faeries in the Arthurian landscape is deeply rooted in an embedded folk belief-system, developed from a Celtic oral tradition, which informs many of the motifs within the legends. This article is a brief overview of a very complex subject, serving as an introduction for any readers who may be inclined to delve deeper. A version of the article appeared originally on the Ancient Origins Premium website.
The Development of the Arthurian Mythos
When Geoffrey of Monmouth produced his Historia Regum Britannia and Vita Merlini between 1135 and 1150, he became the central transmitter of the Arthurian mythos; from a largely oral testimony to a written body of legend that has continued to develop to this day. Geoffrey may have had access to some of the early sources, which suggest Arthur could have been a 5th/6th-century British chieftain, such as St Gildas' De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (6th century) and Nennius' Historia Brittonum (9th century), and possibly other lost literary sources. But it seems clear that much of his Historia and the Vita Merlini used an orally transmitted folklore to construct the ontology of the inhabitants of his Arthurian stories. Although many scholars of the following generation, such as Giraldus Cambrensis, derided Geoffrey's account of Dark-Age history as 'a book full of lies and made-up fables', it retained its influence over later medieval authors and helped to imbue a supernatural ambience into the literary mythical cycle that would come to be known as 'The Matter of Britain'. Writers such as Chrétien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Sir Thomas Malory took the core of Geoffrey's Historia and Vita Merlini, and proceeded to convert it to their own literary ends. In part this involved them taking the opportunity to culturally code the stories to their own social milieus, but they were also channeling some of the deeply embedded folkloric motifs contained in the legends that have their roots in an ancient Celtic oral tradition. One of these sets of story motifs include the genus of characters who seem to be part of the physical world but also part of a metaphysical otherworld. These are the faeries, and they play a critical role throughout the Arthurian landscape. Their forms and functions contain clues to help decipher some of the deeper meaning ingrained within the Arthurian mythos.
Arthurian Faeries
'The Matter of Britain' was written for the elite class of European medieval society. The stories were consumed by the small proportion of literate population, and were codified accordingly to suit their social expectations. The appearance of characters with supernatural qualities within these stories had, therefore, to adhere to certain doctrines, which would be acceptable to their social mores and belief systems. Subsequently, the cast of characters specifically ascribed faerie qualities in the Arthurian mythos were invariably given the attributes of nobility. Much medieval and later folklore includes facets of a royal hierarchical organisation within the metaphysical faerie realm, but in the Arthurian cycle of stories the quality of 'faerie' is subsumed into an unique set of players whose nobility ensured their respect and credence among the aristocratic audiences listening to or reading the stories. However, the embedded supernatural elements of the medieval Arthurian landscape, most especially the faerie motifs, contain the footprints of an older, Celtic tradition, which demonstrates that the faeries who found their way into The Matter of Britain represent a deeper cultural legacy than their plot-line actors may suggest.
'The Fairy Circle' by Gustav Doré, illustration for Tennyson's Idylls of the King (1867)
One of the primary faerie characters in the Arthurian mythos, throughout the medieval period and beyond, is Morgan le Fay. She makes her first literary appearance in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini, where she resides within the Insula pomorum que fortunata vocatur, that is "The island of apples which men call The Fortunate Isle." This is evidently a faerie otherworld where Morgan le Fay retains some form of precedence. Geoffrey describes the isle and Morgan's magical abilities:
"The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. There, nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country. She who is first of them is more skilled in the healing art, and excels her sisters in the beauty of her person. Morgen is her name, and she has learned what useful properties all the herbs contain, so that she can cure sick bodies. She also knows an art by which to change her shape, and to cleave the air on new wings like Daedalus; when she wishes she is at Brest, Chartres, or Pavia, and when she will she slips down from the air onto your shores… Thither after the battle of Camlan we took the wounded Arthur… and Morgen received him with fitting honour, and in her chamber she placed the king on a golden bed… At length she said that health could be restored to him if he stayed with her for a long time and made use of her healing art."
'Morgan le Fay' by Frederick Sandys (1863)
This is an important passage, which sets the gauge for all later representations of Morgan. Geoffrey's spelling of the name as Morgen is also significant. The Morgens appear in Breton and Welsh folklore as shapeshifting water faeries, and it is possible that Geoffrey was basing his character on this folkloric oral tradition. Morgan represents a metamorphosic otherworldly creature, detached from physical reality on an enchanted island, with magical healing abilities. By the time the Arthurian mythos made its way to France and became what is now known as the Vulgate Cycle of stories, Morgan had become a more ambiguous personage, still retaining her faerie nature, but often with more malicious intent than in the early stories. In the late 13th-century Prophesies de Merlin, for instance, she is a shaman/witch-like character with zoomorphic abilities, living in 'The Vale of No Return.' In this text she even comes to be known as Morgan the Goddess. And in later medieval renditions of Arthurian stories, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 14th century) and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (first published 1485), Morgan comes to be portrayed as Arthur's nemesis, losing some of her faerie attributes and instead becoming an evil enchantress, bent on destroying Arthur and his chivalric order.
While Morgan slipped under the radar in many post-medieval Arthurian retellings, she re-emerged as a magical figure in the 19th century, most notably in the poetic cycle The Idylls of the King by Tennyson (1859) and through her portrayal in art, especially as a model for the pre-Raphaelite movement. And she has certainly found her place in modern cultural representations of the stories, most often as a malevolent character, as in John Boorman's 1981 film Excalibur, but also in more sympathetic roles that emphasise her faerie roots, such as in the novels of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Fay Sampson. Since the mid 20th century Morgan has been characterised in over 200 portrayals, in literature, film, television, theatre, and even video games.
Of equal importance to Morgan in Arthurian plotlines, although less well-developed as a character, is The Lady of the Lake. She first appears in Chrétien de Troyes' Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart in the late 12th century, and thereafter becomes almost ubiquitous in the Arthurian mythos. Her main role in these stories was as a water faerie, responsible for raising Lancelot in an otherworldly land, usually described as a magical island populated by faerie maidens under the command of a queen; frequently this queen was The Lady of the Lake. The conception of a faerie island inhabited by maidens matches Geoffrey of Monmouth's earlier description of 'The Fortunate Isle', which suggests that this plot device was being drawn from earlier folkloric and mythological sources. These sources may have had Celtic origins; early Welsh, Irish, Breton and Cornish stories including various supernatural islands, did not usually find literary form until the 12th century, but the convention appears to have been well modelled in an oral tradition before this time.
'The Lady of the Lake Steals Lancelot' by George Wooliscroft Rhead (1898)
By the mid 13th century (in the French Arthurian prose cycle now known as the Post-Vulgate) The Lady of the Lake became a more integral part of the mythos, while retaining her faerie qualities as a metaphysical entity. Most importantly it is she that provides Arthur with the magical sword Excalibur from within the waters surrounding the otherworldly isle. In several stories she also appears as one of the faerie hierarchy taking the wounded Arthur across the sea/lake to the island after the final Battle of Camlann, and it is here that her personality becomes somewhat enmeshed with that of Morgan le Fay, perhaps demonstrating that in the original folkloric traditions they were one and the same faerie construct. In Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur The Lady of the Lake (here named Nimue) is used as a magical, usually benign, figure who appears every time there is a major transition in the plot.
The Mabinogion and the Metaphysical Roots of Arthurian Faerie Tradition
The Lady of the Lake and Morgan le Fay represent a consistent supernatural element in the Arthurian landscape. Their characters developed within the courtly story cycles of medieval Europe, always culturally coded to the times, but also maintaining the components of an earlier tradition, where they constituted faerie entities, manipulating plotlines where the physical world was consistently affected by a metaphysical reality. There are many other characters in the Arthurian mythos with faerie qualities; Lancelot, Niniane, Mordred, Merlin, and sometimes even Arthur himself, giving a legitimate interpretation that the entire cycle could be seen as an elite faerie folklore, taking themes and motifs from vernacular folklore and overlaying them with tropes acceptable to noble and literate audiences.
But these themes and motifs seem to have been spilling over into the medieval literature from older sources; an oral tradition that was encapsulating a deeply embedded belief system that included a metaphysical faerie otherworld. There is no direct route to this tradition but there is a cycle of stories, including many Arthurian narratives, that are disconnected from the main body of the mythos, and seem to retain a very ancient transmission, fossilised in writing during the later medieval period. This cycle has come to be known as The Mabinogion, a corpus of Welsh literature dated to the 13th and 14th centuries, but which were evidently drawing on much earlier material. Several of the stories are concerned with Arthurian narratives, and in them we can glimpse the genesis of the mythos, transmitted from a Celtic oral tradition that pre-dates Geoffrey of Monmouth and provides a window into the thought-worlds of early medieval culture. The Mabinogion Arthurian stories differ widely (in style and content) from the later medieval 'Matter of Britain', and there are none of the faerie characters, such as Morgan and The Lady of the Lake, that came to be central to the later mythos. But faerie themes and motifs are everywhere in the stories, creating a distinctly magical, sometimes surreal narrative landscape. The otherworldly nature of the stories seems more connected to vernacular folklore than courtly literature, and perhaps are filtered down forms of distinct early faerie belief systems in Wales.
'The Mabonigion: Culhwch and Olwen at Ysbaddaden's court' by Ernest Wallcousins (1920)
Three of the stories from The Mabinogion, 'Culhwch and Olwen', 'Llud and Llefelys' and 'The Dream of Rhonabwy' are especially replete with faerie motifs. In 'Culhwch' Arthur's retinue are given faerie-like attributes, such as Sgilti Yscawndroed, who is able to transport himself great distances by treading over the tops of trees and even flying over mountains by utilising the tips of reeds. This was a skill shared with the Tylwyth Teg, the folkloric faeries of Wales. And in 'Llud' the first part of the story deals with the Coraniaidd, a hostile race of diminutive invaders with supernatural powers, including the ability to hear any conversation held outside, another feature in common with the Tylwyth Teg.
But it is 'The Dream of Rhonabwy' that perhaps captures the deeper roots of what faerie themes represented in this ancient culture. The story is in the form of a dream-vision of the various deeds of Arthur, instigated when Rhonabwy sleeps wrapped in an ox-hide, itself a shamanic motif described in 19th- and 20th-century Siberian shamanic traditions and in Old Irish texts such as Togail Bruidne Dá Derga. This initiates a metaphysical story, replete with supernatural faerie motifs and disjointed timeframes, where Rhonabwy interacts with the esoteric Arthurian narrative almost in the form of a disembodied consciousness. This Arthurian story from the perspective of someone in an altered state of consciousness is an explicit indication that the people listening to or reading these stories were aware, at some level, that the faeries in the Arthurian landscape were attributes of non-physical consciousness rather than historical figures operating in physical material reality. By locating the stories at some indefinite location in the past, a type of magical-realism was invoked, allowing the supernatural and metaphysical elements of the stories, dominated by faerie themes, to become acceptable plot devices within the mythos. But ultimately, the characters in The Mabinogion and the later magical faeries such as Morgan le Fay and The Lady of the Lake are pointers towards an Arthurian cultural legacy that treat the faeries with reverence, as arbiters of wisdom, alchemy and power. The faeries were representative of an esoteric and occult knowledge that physical reality can be interacted with, and manipulated by, metaphysical forces beyond our full understanding.
Ashe, Geoffrey. The Origins of the Arthurian Legends (1995)
Briggs, Katherine. An Encyclopaedia of Fairies (New York, 1976).
Green, Caitlin, R. Arthuriana A resource for all things Arthurian.
Green, Thomas. Concepts of Arthur (London, 2008).
Hebert, Jill Marie, Shapeshifter: The Manifestations of Morgan Le Fay (Western Michigan, 2008).
Historia Regum Britannia by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Lacy, Norris, J. et al. The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (New York, 1996).
Le Morte D'Arthur (1485) by Sir Thomas Malory
Loponen, Mika. 'Faerie Folklore in Medieval Tales – An Introduction' (2017)
Paton, Lucy Allen. Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance (Cambridge, US, 1903)
Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Wilson, Anne. The Magical Quest: The Use of Magic in Arthurian Romance (Manchester, 1988).
Wilson, Anne. Plots and Powers: Magical Structures in Medieval Narrative (Florida, 2001).
The cover image shows a knight meeting a lake faerie from a manuscript illustration to Chrétien de Troyes 'Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart' (c.1350) – BNF Français 1433 Le Chevalier au Lion.
Author neilrushtonPosted on March 22, 2018 June 1, 2018 Categories faeriesTags Arthurian13 Comments on Faeries in the Arthurian Landscape
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Interpreting the Faeries March 5, 2017
Altered States of Consciousness and the Faeries February 3, 2017
Distancing Ourselves from the Faeries January 8, 2017
The Miracle of the Sun, 1917: Ancient Angels at Fatima? The Possible Common Origins of Star Gods by David Halpin December 9, 2016
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text:
The Waiver
July 4, 2018 · transcript
President Trump's travel ban has been upheld by the Supreme Court. People from the seven banned countries can still come to the U.S. if they get a special "waiver." So far, few people have gotten them. We follow one Yemeni family as they try to get a waiver to escape a civil war. Supreme Court audio in this episode comes from Oyez.
00:00:00Support for embedded in the following message come from epic provisions on a mission to alter the food industry with epic performance bars fuel your day with non gmo ingredients cage free egg whites and twelve grams of protein available at target stores or a target dot com hey i'm
00:00:18telling recovers and i'm chris bender of and this is embedded this is cnn breaking news let's go back to jessica the decision has been announced go ahead jessica the supreme court has reversed the ninth circuit what that means is that the supreme court is up holding the president's
00:00:36travel ban in june two thousand eighteen the supreme court upheld the trump administration so called travel tonight president trump's first major supreme court victory his president tweeted this response to the ruling supreme court upholds trump travel ban wow actually this travel ban is the third travel ban signed
00:00:57by the president the first one was right after trump got inaugurated remember all those protests against the bandit airports across the country A federal court blocked that band and there was another band blocked again and the third ban as you just heard was upheld by the supreme court
00:01:14which means that if you're from one of the banned countries libya iran somalia syria yemen north korea or venezuela you cannot be granted a visa to the us but there is an exception in that exception is what we're going to be talking about today It's called a waiver
00:01:34and it means that if you live in one of these countries but you're not a security risk to the united states and you would face what's called undue hardship in your country You can apply for one of these waivers and then if you get it you could get
00:01:48a visa and come here The trump administration says that these waivers mean there is no muslim ban Muslims with a waiver can still get in and this is actually one reason that the supreme court upheld the ban But other people say that these waivers are arbitrary and really
00:02:04hard to get People who seem to meet all the criteria are still getting rejected Sick people elderly people whose families are already here And as you're about to hear for people who live in these band countries especially countries that are in the middle of a war these waivers
00:02:21khun b the only chance they have to get out and what you have to do to try to get a waiver It's not easy Support for this podcast and the following message come from zip recruiter Hiring is challenging but zip recruiter can make it simple smart and fast
00:02:54zip recruiter sends yourjob to over one hundred job boards with one click Then it scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience and invites them to apply to your job Try it for free at zip Recruiter dot com slash embedded zip recruiter the smartest way
00:03:10to hire hey there I'm joshua johnson the host of one a There are lots of places to debate today's issues if you don't mind getting attacked for speaking your mind or asking a simple question but one a is different You'll find the one a podcast on the npr
00:03:24one app or wherever you listen to podcasts So kelly what is the plan for today so i think to really understand the travel ban and to really understand these waivers i'm gonna need to tell you a story all right it's about a man whose family got caught up
00:03:46in the trump travel ban and who believes his only chance to save his family it's to try to get one of these waivers okay so let's start with this guy named najeeb al ahmadi he's from yemen we met him recently so tell yeah maybe just start from the
00:04:03beginning when i still been ninth on behalf later with the philadelphia way talked him through an interpreter first enter to the state was he first comes to the u s in the nineties like a lot of men from yemen do he makes his money working gas stations condition
00:04:18a few gestation sends the money back home gets married he has three daughters so what the hell's in two thousand ten he gets american citizenship us citizen and his plan is to stay in the u s keep the family in yemen maybe eventually they join him in the
00:04:38rest later but then there these massive protests in yemen the president of yemen is ousted and eventually this militant group called the houthis launches an attack and takes over the capital of yemen this's in two thousand fourteen ravaged by war yemen is in the midst of the worst
00:05:02humanitarian crisis in the world and it's basically the beginning of the civil war that yemen is in right now amnesty accuses all sides in yemen civil war of leaving a bloody trail of civilian deaths which may amount to war crimes soneji be still in the u s he's
00:05:19starting to really worry about his family especially about his oldest daughter her name is shima and she has severe cerebral palsy she can't speak she can't move she can't eat by herself and she needs to take medicine for five times a day keeper muscles relaxed and to keep
00:05:40her from having spasms but she's living in this war so there's a shortage of medicine i think could get her into the physical therapy plus the medications that she needs to take they couldn't find it on the pharmacy so so najeeb applies for visas for his wife and
00:06:02daughters to come to the u s then in two thousand sixteen there's a bombing like right near his family's house i thought it was the bombing very next to them they didn't know what to dio you know he reached him by phone they're like hiding in the basement
00:06:26you know they're trying to like stay away from the windows so at that time after that bombing he decided they need to be with me and the jeep's like i have got to get my family out yeah while all this is happening right back here in the united
00:06:41states we put out a statement a little while ago and these people are going crazy donald trump is campaigning for president Donald j trump is called promising a total and complete shutdown of muslims entering the united states and then he gets elected And a few days after he's
00:07:00inaugurated he announces this thing called the travel ban I'm establishing new vetting measures to keep radical islamic terrorists out of the united states The president has ordered all travelers from iran iraq libya somalia sudan syria and yemen to be denied entry to the united states for the next
00:07:23ninety days and writes the first weekend after the inauguration You remember right Oh my gosh What started out saturday as a spontaneous demonstration at jfk had spread to airports from coast to coast sunday And najeeb remember this man from yemen who's trying to get his family out now
00:07:54his family is a target of this band at this point the jeep is living in san francisco he's working at a gas station and after work that day he actually goes to the airport to protest chester's packed sfo's international arrival area near where they believe travelers might be
00:08:14detained so wait i think that it was a few days after the inauguration and we all received this cable full of kind of misspellings and loopholes and it made no sense and i think a lot of us were understandably at that time outraged this is chris richardson he
00:08:39used to be a consular officer in the state department at an american embassy overseas and the reason i'm introducing you to chris richardson is because he's the kind of person who decides whether or not najib's family gets to come to united states what do you mean he gets
00:08:57to decide like he's the guy who would meet the jeep's family in an embassy overseas review their application for a visa and decide whether or not to accept it so he's the person on the other end of the table like during an interview with people who want to
00:09:10emigrate right So chris richardson he does not like this ban He does not like this band We knew it for what it wass i think that they wanted to meet this promise of banning muslims as soon as possible and sort of ram it down our throats chris says
00:09:25Not everybody in the state department felt this way but some people felt so strongly that they put together something called a descent cable This is where people across the department right thiss like collective letter to secretary of state at the time rex tillerson saying we disagree with this
00:09:43there have been officers who talked about doing walkouts that have been officers talking about you know wearing certain clothes and protest because at that time we were all pretty shocked and outraged by because they were going to have to be the ones to enforce it you know they
00:09:57were the ones who like on the front lines of enforcing this thing that some of them didn't agree with but then they learned pretty quickly that if they do that kind of stuff don't get fired We got word that a lot of the things that we wanted to
00:10:10do actually would permit the administration to immediately fire us And so if we did a walk out for example we were told by our union that you know if you do a walk out you guys might lose your jobs All right so like we said in the beginning
00:10:24the travel ban gets put on hold and there's another travel band then it gets put on hold and so the application for new jobs family to get a visa keeps moving forward and i should say in the gym's pretty confident they're going to get the visas so at
00:10:39this point he decides to go back to yemen and be with them until they get the visas and then they could all come to the us together but the thing is it is not easy to get into yemen i mean yemen's in middle of a war the main
00:10:55airport in the country and the capital is closed has been closed for a long time and the other airport is in the south but no jeeves family lives in the north so to get from that airport to his house he's basically crossing a frontline in this war and
00:11:11there's checkpoints along the way you never know who's controlling each one eventually najeeb gets home and he's back with his family and the next thing that happens is he gets an e mail from the united states government and it says the family needs to provide proof of medical
00:11:31exam proving that family has the right vaccinations stuff like that But to do that najeeb is gonna have to go to djibouti it's the nearest country to yemen with a u s embassy that's open so djibouti how far away is that it's Across the red sea from yemen
00:11:49It's about an hour flight away So naggy piles the family in a car to make the drive from his city to the airport again basically crossing the frontline of this war And so our producer tom dreisbach asks about that trip And how long was the cart ride from
00:12:09ip Get that thing Almost fifteen hours he says The drive was really hard for shima najib's oldest daughter who has cerebral palsy and can't speak The can it she was itself trying to get some now and sleep but she couldn't because of like the bumping the road and
00:12:37broken and she was like crying screaming so they finally get to add in they check into a hotel and the next morning yemen's iran backed houthi government is now taking credit for a long range missile fired at saudi arabia the saudi government says they find out that the
00:12:55houthis have launched an attack on saudi arabia and the airport in aden is closed so it's about a month before the airport reopens and they can finally fly to djibouti for the medical exams actually have to fly from yemen to sudan to ethiopia to djibouti so three flights
00:13:17three flights with three children three children in shame a the thing to know about shima she doesn't have a wheelchair they carry her wherever they go so they get to do beauty and they take shame a to a clinic it's not cheap you know i've started to think
00:13:35when you were talking teo najeeb like how much money has this whole saga it cost that we could do it twenty five thousand dollars all in people in you know i'm only your commission that twenty five thousand dollars yes you get some of this money from his savings
00:13:50from working in the us the rest of it he has to borrow from friends and relatives because he has to buy furniture and pay rent and pay for these medical appointments and food and everything to keep the family going So he gets the medical exam And then after
00:14:07waiting two years since they first applied for these visas they finally get a phone call from the embassy who come to the phone saying they have an appointment for an interview Well i asked you but that feels like he's like fear Hubby is was a local from the
00:14:25embassy you know So yeah this is it Yep It's a big moment End there's another big moment happening back in the u s we're in late two thousand seventeen right now and what's happened is the third travel ban has been announced and eventually it goes to the u
00:14:46s supreme court which rules that the band can stay in effect until it hears the case and now at this point part of the band is the people can apply for these waivers but the problem is nobody knows exactly how these waivers work like there's no form to
00:15:03fill out to say i am applying for this waiver instead if you're from a band country you still apply for a visa and you automatically are considered for a waiver and to get a waiver you have to meet these three criteria in the criteria are quote one denying
00:15:24entry would cause the foreign national undue hardship two entry would not pose a threat to the national security or public safety of the u s and three entry would be in the national interest chris richardson says in order to get a waiver not only do you the consular
00:15:45officer have to prove it you're a consular manager in the embassy has to approve it and then washington has to improve it it's got to go all the way to d c yeah it has to go all the way to d c which is very different then the
00:15:58regular visa process chris says like with visas the officer has a lot of discretion to make his own decisions And chris has The thing to remember about this job that they dio is that you're seeing between seventy eighty ninety one hundred twenty applicants a day maybe even in
00:16:18a single morning And so basically an applicant has five minutes And so to push someone through those layers of theocracy right there's no incentive to do that you know during review time as an officer you can't say well the reason why i did forty visas and my colleague
00:16:33did ninety visas because i tried to issue as many waivers as possible You know it was going to look at you Like what You know they're going to look at you like you're some kind of do gooder a hero but that's not going to help you move up
00:16:46in the state department And it's Not long after this that chris richardson actually quits his job He decides he can do more good on the outside talking about all this than he could do on the inside I ultimately believed that you know this decision by this president will
00:17:03go down as a black mark on american history And i want it to be known to my son one day and my family that i tried to do something about this I might not be successful But at the very least not only myself But i can't speak for
00:17:20other consul officers that we didn't go and support this without fighting both internally and externally Again not all consular officers feel the same way as chris he says some of them who originally imposed the ban actually came to believe they could work with it over time so for
00:17:47najeeb going into this visa interview this travel ban is now in place yemen is on the list to get the visas for his wife and his daughters his family is goingto have to now qualify for a waiver so the appointment is in early two thousand eighteen at the
00:18:06american embassy in djibouti and jeb still really confident they're going to get this waiver as he calls it an exception for him he was so happy and he was really optimistic they has the lawyer assured for him that everything is going to be fine don't worry you are
00:18:25exception your cases exception so don't worry so the waiver right this way everybody got dressed up they all go to the embassy he's carrying shame a and his arms and held up tio can fear how he was in the waiting room and watches his two families untold woman
00:18:43go in for their appointments and come out and say they all got rejected although he's still keeping the hall of saying i'm okay so no jeeps time comes up he walks into the consulate's office and the consular officer is looking at the application for the family at first
00:19:02he looks at the youngest daughter's applications she's five and she was born after energy became a citizen So the consular officers like she's fine she's already a citizen and he looks at the other two daughters shima who's ten and selma who's seven and that the mother's application and
00:19:21the counselor officer says the rest of you are rejected We are under a band and then he says it in arabic a presidential decision I think I just wanna make sure that he understood the whole thing Like this american guy says it to najeeb in arabic as if
00:19:42to just make sure it's very clear almost like it's not coming from me Come from the president How long was the meeting at the consulate With Officials have walked a remarkable ability consul and ricky homes that i will give you five minutes Summit When he left he was
00:20:06really in a terrible situation and kids were crying and he was like really disappointing He didn't know what to do So g it's just totally surprised I mean he's just completely shocked devastated thing about the jib He's like he's like all right what's Next go back to the
00:20:26apartment try to figure out a plan and yeah This message comes from npr sponsor hbo from the author of gone girl the producer of get out and the director of big little lies comes the limited siri's sharp objects amy adams operating at the peak of her abilities says
00:21:01variety stars as camille prik er a reporter who returns home to investigate a string of child murders the grizzly case soon brings ca meals own scars to the surface sharp objects premieres sunday july eighth at nine what's unique about the human experience and what we all have in
00:21:19common i'm guy raz every week on ted radio hour we go on a journey through the big ideas emotions and discoveries that fill all of us with wonder find it on npr one or wherever you get your podcasts at this point najibullah all marty's wife and daughters have
00:21:35been rejected for a visa to the united states and the jib does two things a friend put him in touch with a group of lawyers who represent muslim americans you jib tells him his story and then the lawyers put his story into an amicus brief that's in front
00:21:51of the court brief that they're filing in that supreme court case that's going to determine whether or not the travel ban stands trump versus the state of why and in the second thing that he does and he starts talking to reporters gets interviewed by al jazeera and the
00:22:09jeep thought that given shame is conditioned on the fact that he's an american citizen they would qualify for a waiver Also cnn is reporting on the job in his family and then on april twenty fifth We'll hear argument Today In case seventeen supreme court of the united states
00:22:25hears oral arguments in trump for swipe president united states versus hawaii and shame A najib's daughter who has cerebral palsy is mentioned in these arguments They're brought up by the lawyer for the state of why a ten year old with cerebral palsy who wants to come to the
00:22:44united states to save her life and she can't move or talk The ten year old was denied a waiver justice prior Then just skins berg asks the lawyer for the government about can you deal with the example that was brought up The tablet Your honor the waiver is
00:23:03built Teo address those issues I am not familiar enough with the details of that case to tell you what happened in that particular case But that's What The waiver present provisions that two days later najeeb reads an email from the united states government The email is actually from
00:23:30that same consular officer who did their interview and the officer says that during the interview it was clear that shame a did in fact have cerebral palsy And then he writes i determine the very same day that your family's case clearly met the standard of hardship And i
00:23:50therefore recommended your family for a waiver However i could not inform you of this the time because under department rules the waiver still required review from my supervisor But he writes the waiver was approved and as of today april twenty fourth two thousand eighteen your family's case is
00:24:09still in administrative processing This is april twenty fourth It's actually the day before orel arguments in the supreme court Najeeb just didn't read the email until april twenty seven What so what does that email mean What it means is the consular officer is saying we made the decision
00:24:33to grant you a waiver it's going to take a little more time to actually get it but you're gonna get a waiver no it's a strange email right because najib's family had already been rejected in this one on one interview with the consular officer and then he gets
00:24:48this email which seems to totally reverse that decision Yeah we tried to get clarity from the state department on this They say they don't comment on people's individual cases So the point is this should be good news for energy It says his wife and daughters have been recommended
00:25:08for a waiver but here's the crazy thing nog doesn't believe it He just read the email like oh they're just trying to save face Najeeb at this point it's just really devastated he does not think the family's going to get the waiver look a dim yellow fish e
00:25:30i lost hope totally It was like all the doors are closed in front of me in a thousand shima tomorrow and shame a herc is getting worse remember they're still living in djibouti at this point and shima starts having trouble swallowing food and water and has to be
00:25:53hospitalized it's really hard I mean here there they thought djibouti was going to be this jumping off point for the u s but they don't get the visas and they can't afford to live in djibouti anymore and they're no other countries that will take them in So no
00:26:10jeeves like i'm just going to take the family back to yemen even though there's a war there i'm just going to try to make a life for now So now he's back in yemen Yes So then what A month later they get it from its armaments availability He
00:26:42received a phone call from the american embassy People teach in djibouti actually have a recording of this phone call and snow jeeps wife asma on you could hear interpret or talking to them speaking to the family in arabic and then speaking tio someone in the u s embassy
00:27:01in english thie call is super confusing Let me try to explain it happens on may seventeenth two thousand eighteen and what they're saying to him is your medical records will expire on may twenty nine twenty nine twenty nine may you need to go to the united states before
00:27:22made twenty nine what's happening here is it sounds like they're going to get the visas but no one's saying that like we're not saying congratulations hey didn't mention clearly that you get there you go the visa He mentioned that you need to come and enter the states before
00:27:40the twenty ninth and our interpreter tells us that the interpreter on the call is like he kind of wants to tell najib's wife you've got the visa but he can't tell her this is what our interpreter thinks it's happening So one more time dr from m ped adan
00:28:04thiss time they'd look out they get a direct flight from adam to djibouti they get a message like when they land saying right now leave everything and go to the embassy right now he walks right into the same room close enough silk johnson meets the same consular officer
00:28:21that they met before the same one The first meeting we reached out to this officer to confirm some of the details of this case but he did not respond to our email And so the consular officer tells mcgee there's one little thing that he has to change in
00:28:37his applications Hollywood the passport and he asked him where the passports and he said these are the passport he said that's what i need i'm like tuna gbm like did you say anything to him the way one of your ward down Not a lot not a letter more
00:28:57he's like not a letter more than i needed to A couple days later Made twenty six Two thousand eighteen Najib asthma shima sela and lamia land a dick Ah a lot of people from the yemeni american community and the immigrants rights community there to welcome them with presents
00:29:29and balloons and american flags A month later the supreme court upholds the travel ban President trump gets what he wanted People from seven countries are banned and what many say is a vague and arbitrary waiver program is here to stay shamus case is mentioned in a dissenting opinion
00:29:56by the court it was written by justice breyer and he says it appears that shame I got the waver because of the international attention to her case which he says is quote more reason to believe that waivers are not being processed in an ordinary way He also says
00:30:13even though the administration said it would provide guidance on how to get waivers there still is no guidance Like i said there's no form to fill out and apply for a waiver and a lot of people in bam countries don't even know there is a waiver we should
00:30:28say we reached out to the white house to comment on all the criticisms of the waiver program but we did not get a response Do we know how many of these people that might be eligible for a waiver are actually getting one According to the state department as
00:30:42of mid june eight hundred and nine of these waivers have been granted out of more than thirty thousand applications So yet new jeeps family makes it to the u s but it's after that weird email on april what do you think happened Well we asked chris richardson about
00:31:07this because he's done that job before huh He says it's likely that the consular officer in new jobs families case gave them a formal rejection but was actually still pursuing a waiver for them behind the scenes the officer would like a personal e mail like that that's pretty
00:31:24remarkable that means the officer really felt strongly about that case and really felt that something had to be done And then the jeep talks to these lawyers who work for this muslim advocacy group and becomes part of the same mika's brief and his story appears on the mainstream
00:31:41media Do you think that could have had an effect Oh yeah oh yeah and everyone knows that in state that you know sometimes if cases get national or international attention things that were denials suddenly become approvals And if you're one of the tens of thousands of people who
00:31:58have applied for one of these waivers chris richardson says it doesn't hurt to be mentioned at the supreme court We should put all thirty thousand names on an amicus brief maybe everyone will then kid away for like their case is the exception not the rule so after all
00:32:26this house najeeb doing has his family The jib and his family are living in the central valley california And when we were there his two younger daughters were warning way What's your name Yeah thank you for coming Shaimaa was in the other room resting she's stable now and
00:32:55najib's says they're working with an organization that provides services for people with disabilities And the jeep's wife asma just got a green card The family has been told that the green cards for the girls are on the way What about other people from yemen though what's going to
00:33:15happen with them Well again we're just not seeing that many people getting waivers Our colleague npr Joel rose had a story on npr recently He was talking to this other dad from yemen whose trying to get visas for his family and he talks about how hopeful he and
00:33:33everyone else had been because of shame as case like they don't know her name I don't know you know about kramer the little girls They give a reason And even though their cases aren't related shame on getting the waiver made them think that the supreme court might rule
00:33:53in their favor But of course it didn't And now it just feels so final People have less hope than before This story was reported by me chris bender of nor woz woz and tom drives back It was produced by chris nor and tom It was edited by lisa
00:34:28pollock With help from neil caruso jerry holmes and mark mem it Our lawyer is actually messenger Our theme song is by kong Guam scans other original music by ram teen arab louis supreme court audio in this episode is from okay big thanks to our interpreter dahlia hussein and
00:34:44to npr's Joel rose also to monica villas and shirin s m e of valley public radio Patrick garrett of member station w amc and sean powers of georgia public broadcasting Embedded is executive produced by me anya grand men and chris turpin subscribed to this podcast If you haven't
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Studio Craft & Technique is a one-stop handbook for undergraduate students of architecture. Based on the belief that technology and craft are at the heart of design studies, this book encourages students to think of them as aspects of an integrated whole. The book provides step-by-step techniques for skills that students use in their undergraduate studies, such as drawing, model making and surveying and explains the conventions of architectural representation. It also explains the primary elements of construction and structure from first principles, using clear diagrams and drawings. Students can use this handbook on a daily basis in their design and technology studios through their first years of study. Recommended to first year students at numerous architecture schools, this new edition has been extensively revised and updated.


text:
Stanley Clarke's "Stanley Clarke Band"
Words By Benjamin Michael Solis
Stanley Clarke's self-titled Stanley Clarke Band won the Grammy for "Best
Contemporary Jazz Album" this year at the prestigious music awards ceremony. It deserved album of the year.
Keeping in line with his jazz-rock-fusion roots, the record is a stunning
achievement for the genre, and Clarke as well.
"I Want To Play For You Too," a track of solid, old-school funk, revisits Clarke's
ability to slap over chord changes – a feat most of his predecessors were unable to accomplish.
Songs like "Soldier" (penned by Israeli pianist and band member Ruslan
Sirota), "How's The Weather Up There?" and "Larry Traveled 11 Miles and Waited A Lifetime for Vishnu's Report" are all heavy bangers in the purest sense of what the fusion of hard rock and straight ahead jazz should sound like.
Even SCB's reworking of Chick Corea's Return To Forever masterpiece "No
Mystery" is heavier. Cleaned up by modern recording technology and a new
arrangement, this song in particular offers a stronger back-beat and cleaner licks.
And the comparison of the two bands is palpable. Guitarist Charles Altura, Sirota, pianist Hiromi Uehara all eerily resemble Corea, Clarke and RTF guitarist Al Di Meola, while drummer Ronald Bruner, Jr.'s playing pays homage to Billy Cobham and the late Tony Williams.
If you didn't know any better, you would assume that this was all new material
released by RTF.
"I don't care what they do with it," Clarke told The Washtenaw Voice,
commenting on the future of jazz and his young backing band. "It's their thing and they can take it where they want."
www.stanleyclarke.com
Categories: Album, Clarke, Heads, International, Marauders, Music, review, Stanley, Up | Leave a comment


adjective. bright blue in color, like a cloudless sky.
noun. a bright blue color.
a small butterfly that is typically blue or purplish, with color differences between the sexes.
noun a person who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs. verb kill (someone) because of their beliefs.


text:
Poor whites feel worse about life than poor blacks, even though they're better off
Down and out.
Image: AP images/David Goldman
Aamna Mohdin
Rising inequality in the US is not isolated to one race or class, but the feeling of despair is more particular. Even though poor minorities—blacks in particular—carry with them a long history of oppression, they are far more hopeful than their poor white counterparts.
That's the finding of a new book by Carol Graham, a researcher at the Brookings Institution that studies the impact of rising inequality on hopes and aspirations. The book—Happiness for All?: Unequal Lives and Hopes in Pursuit of the American Dream—concludes that the poorest people are suffering from crippling levels of hopelessness relative to the wealthy, which deters important investments in their and their children's health and education. It also finds that hopelessness varies significantly between races.
Graham measured hopelessness through interviews and detailed Gallup data, which has been tracking US public opinion since 1935. She compiled the data in a ten-point optimism scale, showing that poor blacks are almost three times as likely to be a point higher than poor whites. Poor Hispanics are 1.2 times more likely to be a point higher on the optimism scale than poor whites.
And yet, poverty is more likely to follow black people from one generation into the next, according to the Urban Institute. Among poor black and white children born in the late 1960, black children are twice as likely as white children to be poor as an adult, according to the institute.
In fact, poverty is so persistent among black Americans that they are as likely to be poor as adults regardless of whether they grew up in poor families. Black and Hispanic Americans are still behind white Americans in terms of wealth and educational attainment.
Despite these setbacks, why are poor minorities more hopeful than poor whites? First, over the last few decades, compared to whites, minorities have made greater gains in education and life expectancy relative to their parents. As such, minorities are more likely to compare themselves to parents who were worse off than they are, while blue-collar whites are more likely to compare themselves with parents who were better off then they are. According to one analysis, 67% percent of African-Americans and 68% Hispanic without college degrees say they were better off then their parents in 2014, compared with 47% of whites.
Graham also notes that previous studies have shown a higher level of resilience among minorities than whites. In a 2016 study, blacks were less likely to report depressive symptoms or hopelessness, or try to commit suicide when faced with a stressful situation compared to whites.