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The Strange History Of Sin-Eaters
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By Debra Kelly/April 25, 2022 10:15 am EST
While religion can provide a sense of meaning and the belief that life in this world isn't all that's out there, it's no secret that it also provides a blueprint for how everyone should be living their day-to-day lives. Sinning is a huge deal, and here's the weird thing: No one can even decide just when it got a first mention in the Bible.
There are a few candidates: Biblical Archaeology says the first sinners could be arguably Adam and Eve with that whole forbidden fruit thing, but throughout antiquity, it was Cain who shouldered that burden with the murder of his brother. Answers in Genesis says there's still another possibility, and that's the idea that Satan/Lucifer was the first sinner. Whoever the first was, ZME Science says humankind has been dealing with it ever since — and they've had numerous ways of cleansing the soul. The outlet suggests that the first person to offer themselves up to wipe away the world's sins was Jesus Christ, and it even goes as far as to suggest that he may have been the first sin-eater ... even though Christianity on a whole was absolutely not on board with this particular practice.
So, what was it? It's a very old tradition that sees one person shouldering the burden of the sins of others, and it's even more heartbreaking than it sounds.
It was the solution to a very Christian problem
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In order to talk about sin-eaters, we have to back up a bit first and talk about just why they were such a big deal.
St. Paul, Minnesota pastor Ryan Griffith says (via Desiring God) that the idea of confessing sins forms the basis of a person's relationship with God and allows them to be forgiven — that's what gets the good people into heaven. He also says that God already knows what all our sins are, and it's our acknowledgment of them and desire to do better that's the important part. In Luke 11:4, Christ talks about just how important confession is, and it's basically his sacrifice that gives people the chance at forgiveness post-confession.
That's all pretty straightforward, but the real world is often anything but straightforward. Death is a sneaky, sneaky guy who could be lurking around any corner, and even if a person attends church and confession regularly, there's a pretty good chance that they will die carrying unconfessed sins. That, says History Collection, is what purgatory is for, but who wants to spend time there when you can get right to the good stuff?
And this is where the sin-eater comes in. These were people who were believed to be able to draw the sin out of a recently deceased person's soul and take it upon themselves to allow that person to go straight to heaven.
The sin-eater subjected himself to eternal damnation
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Different parts of the world have long had different ways of ridding people of their sins. The ancient Aztecs, for example, had a goddess that would appear to a person as they died and relieve them of their sins as long as they confessed. ZME Science says this is similar to what was believed in ancient Egypt and Greece, but let's hop over to the British Isles. There, one way of ridding someone who had died of the burden of sin was to call the sin-eater. It was a tradition that was particularly common in the 18th and 19th centuries in Scotland, Wales, and the areas bordering Wales, and it's eerie stuff.
The sin-eater would place bread on the chest of the corpse and then sit beside the body. The belief was that the bread would absorb all of those unconfessed sins, and when the sin-eater consumed the bread, they would take on those sins as their own. Since they wouldn't know what the sins were, they wouldn't be able to confess themselves, and the act essentially condemned them to eternal damnation.
Sin-eaters, says Atlas Obscura, would proclaim "the ease and rest of the soul departed," and what would they get for doing this? They were paid, but the average — as far as historians can tell — is about 4 pence per body. In today's money, that's just a few bucks.
There are few first-hand accounts
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Megan Campisi did an impressive amount of research into this little-studied and even more rarely talked about phenomenon for her debut novel, "The Sin Eater."
It's so obscure, in fact, that she found there were few first-hand accounts from those who had seen a sin-eater at work. One of them was published in 1852 by Matthew Moggridge in a report presented to the Cambrian Archaeological Association. He wrote (via Pan Macmillan): "When a person died, the friends sent for the sin-eater of the district, who on his arrival placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the deceased." Upon finishing the ritual, the sin-eater immediately left.
Campisi had a few ideas about why there were so few accounts of sin-eaters, and it basically boiled down to the fact that no one wanted it to be known that they had associated with one. The result is that almost everything that's known about them and their custom comes from just a few sources, although the practice was undoubtedly much more widespread than historical records suggest.
It's not entirely clear where and when the tradition started
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No one really knows just how, when, or where the tradition of sin-eaters started, but written references to sin-eaters dating back to the 1680s already call the tradition an old one, says Atlas Obscura. History remembers the last one, but the early ones? That's iffy. There's one theory that suggests it grew out of ancient pagan traditions, and History Collection reports that some theorize it existed in that strange realm between pagan and Christian. Is it a pagan tradition adapted to exist in the world of Christianity and save the sinners no matter what they believe? Maybe.
Scholar Ruth Richardson — who wrote "Death, Dissection, and the Destitute" — has another theory. Go back to the Middle Ages, and you'll find a custom where the nobility handed out food to the poor on the occasion of someone's death. The idea was that the food was given as an appeal to ask the poor masses to pray for the person who had recently died to see if they could help guarantee that their journey to the afterlife was a peaceful one.
And still others suggest it developed among the offshoots of Catholicism as a way of kind of giving Christianity's heavy hitter the big ol' middle finger. The Catholic Church didn't approve of the idea of sin-eaters — forgiving sins was supposed to be the prerogative of the divine — and it may have been seen as a way to find agency over the spiritual realm.
It's not the only tradition that involved eating food off the dead
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The idea of eating something that's been sitting around on a dead body might make 21st-century stomachs queasy, but it's worth mentioning that it's not a super weird idea as far as historical funeral traditions go. As Vice notes, it's only recently that people started dying in hospitals and other clinical settings, like nursing homes. Prior to our modern era, the ill and the elderly would have been cared for at home and likely would have died there, too. People were a lot more accustomed to getting up close and personal with death, and with death often came food.
Go back to the Victorian era, there were funeral biscuits alongside sin-eaters. They would be handed out during memorial services, and they were a huge industry. But actually eating off the corpse? In the Middle Ages, some areas of Europe — particularly in and around Germany — observed a tradition called a corpse cake. Pastry dough would be mixed and left to rise ... while sitting on the chest of the dead. It would be baked and eaten by those who came to mourn the deceased, and the idea was that as the dough rose, it absorbed some of the best and most honorable characteristics of the dead, which were absorbed by the mourners who ate the cake. It's incredibly similar to the idea of the sin-eater, only it's passing on good qualities instead of sins.
Sin-eaters were outcasts, eternally damned, and hunted by the church
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Being a sin-eater was a pretty awful occupation, even if you could get past eating bread off the dead. Even for an atheist who might think it's a nifty way to make some extra coin with minimal work, it would have been the furthest thing from a dream job.
As Atlas Obscura explains, there were plenty of people who did believe in the occupation. And given that the sin-eater was taking the sins of the dead and putting them squarely on their own shoulders, it was believed that with each piece of bread, they became more and more evil. They were universally reviled, pushed to the edges of town and the fringes of society. Even when they were called to a home to do their job, the sin-eaters were often beaten and thrown out the door the moment they consumed the sins, lest the house and mourners be contaminated by their presence (via Vice).
They weren't just hated by their inevitable customers, either. Given that they were going against the doctrine of the church, they were seen as heretics. History Collection says that if the church found a sin-eater, they could expect anything from ex-communication to torture and execution. That meant they needed to be extremely careful about when and where they did their job, and this all also meant it was only the most desperate of people — or, those who had already committed unforgivable sins — who turned to sin-eating.
The idea of paying your way into heaven is a big one
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The bottom line to the existence of the sin-eater is the idea that someone can pay their way into heaven. If that sounds like a not-very-Christian sort of thing to do, let's talk about how the church was actually doing the same thing.
According to World History, the church had been selling indulgences for a long time before people finally said enough was enough — that's not how sinning and forgiveness should work at all. It started with something called the "treasury of the Church," which was basically a bank for goodness. People could, in theory, buy an indulgence with the promise to perform good deeds to help keep the Goodness Bank topped up, and in return, they'd get a speedier trip past the Pearly Gates.
The earliest indulgences go back to the mid-3rd century when Christians who were forced to deny their faith in the face of Roman persecution could buy their way back in. By 1400, selling indulgences had become a major source of income, and there were two schools of thought. One believed there was nothing wrong with padding the coffers this way, while the other said the rich shouldn't be able to do whatever the heck they wanted and pay to have their sins removed.
History Collection suggests that part of the church's hatred of sin-eaters is that they were cutting into their profit margin by also being paid to remove sins.
It may have spread to the US
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Folklore devotees may have heard the rumor that the practice of sin-eating spread to the U.S. What's the story, and how true is it? While researching her book, "The Sin Eater," Megan Campisi looked into the likelihood that there were American sin-eaters. She told Pan Macmillan that she reached out to the Appalachian State University and the Western North Carolina Historical Association and asked them about the stories of Welsh immigrants bringing the practice of sin-eating across the Atlantic with them.
Campisi says that they — along with a handful of research librarians from the localities that would have been the perfect place for these sin-eaters to establish themselves alongside their old-world countrymen — found little evidence of American sin-eaters. Any of the few references were second-hand and further removed from the source. But while Campisi says she was disappointed not to find more, it's still worth noting that even original sin-eaters left behind little in the way of evidence and stories of their sad lives on the outskirts of society.
There are other versions of the tradition
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Bertram S. Puckle's "Funeral Customs" was written in 1926 and talks about sin-eaters, albeit briefly. He addresses it in the chapter on the wake, a tradition he says stems in part from the need for grieving friends and family to come to terms with the fact that they are no longer needed by the deceased. Puckle likened sin-eating to another one half the world away, where some groups were known to slaughter an animal on a recently dug grave, hoping that the sins of the dead person would be transferred to the animal. (He also recorded an experience with a sin-eater, but again, this is a second-hand testimony that came from Professor Evans, who was said to teach at Presbyterian College. He, interestingly, noted that the sin-eater he saw in 1825 burned the plate he ate from and the bowl he drank from after every death.)
The Takeout says that while sin-eating reached a high point in the 18th and 19th centuries, there's still a form of it practiced at some traditional Chinese funerals. They say that sometimes, families ask monks to perform a ritual that transfers the sins of the dead into dim sum. The dim sum is then eaten by a modern-day form of sin-eater, helping to send the spirit onward and upward.
It may have been connected to Leviticus and the scapegoat
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Way back in 1931, The Irish Times published an article about the sin-eater. They'd learned that it was normal for most areas to have a dedicated sin-eater, and after giving a run-down of just what that involved, they mentioned that it's a modern extension of the Biblical idea of the scapegoat.
The scapegoat shows up in Leviticus 16:1-34, and according to My Jewish Learning, it's a passage that's commonly read for Yom Kippur. It tells the story of Aaron making amends to God, and he's given some very specific instructions. In addition to being told how to dress and prepare himself, he's also told to "take two he-goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering."
The goats were then taken before God, and it was decided that one would be slaughtered and sacrificed, and the blood was used to cleanse the meeting area. Then, a priest would touch the other goat, confess all the sins of all of the Israelites, and in doing so, they would be transferred to the goat. The scapegoat would then be sent into the wild, taking all the sins with it.
Got Questions says that the goat was then considered to be unclean, and the fate of the goat — to be driven out of society and into the wilderness — sounds a heck of a lot like the fate of the sin-eater.
The last sin-eater died in 1906
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By the end of the 19th century, the practice of sin-eating was pretty much an extinct one — save a few remaining hangers-on. According to the BBC, the very last sin-eater was a man named Richard Munslow, and he died in 1906. The life of a sin-eater was the life of an outcast, so it was usually a person who was already an outsider or destitute who took up the mantle. Munslow was an exception: Before he became a sin-eater, he was a successful farmer. National Geographic investigated why he would have chosen this unlikely profession, and it's heartbreaking stuff rooted in unthinkable family tragedy.
Munslow had four children, and in 1870, three of his children fell ill and died — all in the same week. Munslow's attempt at reconciling his loss was the belief that unforgiven sins were accumulating in the village and bringing down the luck of the damned. The souls of those who weren't allowed to move on were thought to be haunting the living and causing tragedies like the ones suffered by Munslow's family, so it's believed he became a sin-eater in an attempt to free his village of the evils that walked among them.
His own sacrifice was believed to condemn him to eternal damnation, but at the same time, he passed along a sense of peace to those around him. Sin-eaters may have been viewed as increasingly evil creatures, but at the same time, they were a necessary evil.


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Tag Archives: John Franklin Davis
September 25, 2021 AviationEdwards Air Force Base, FAI, Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, Jeff Davis, John F. Davis, John Franklin Davis, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, McDonnell F-4 Phantom II, McDonnell F4H-1F Phantom II, Test Pilot, USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63), World Record for Speed Over a Closed Circuit of 100 Kilometers Without PayloadBryan Swopes
Commander John F. Davis, United States Navy, with a McDonnell F4H-1 Phantom II. Note the F6F-5K drone "kill" mark under the windshield. (U.S. Navy)
25 September 1960: At Edwards Air Force Base, California, Commander John Franklin ("Jeff") Davis, United States Navy, flew a McDonnell F4H-1 Phantom II to a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) World Record for Speed Over a Closed Circuit of 100 Kilometers Without Payload, averaging 2,237.37 kilometers per hour (1390.24 miles per hour).¹ Commander Davis flew the 62-mile circular course at an altitude of 45,000 feet (13,716 meters).
Diagram of the 100-kilometer closed circuit. (McDonnell Aircraft Corporation)
"On 25 September 1960 Davis flew the shorter, 100-kilometer course at 1,390.24 miles per hour, roughly Mach 2.2. He went around the course in a continuous circle, at 70° of bank and three g's. The heavy bank put the honeycomb structure of the right stabilator directly in the engine exhaust the entire way around, but it held on. These two flights demonstrated the brute strength of the airframe and the sophistication of the F4H navigation system around the curves."
— Engineering the F-4 Phantom II: parts into systems, by Glenn E. Bugos, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1996, Chapter 5 at Page 104.
McDonnell F4H-1F Phantom II, Bu. No. 145311 (after 1962, redesignated as F-4A-2-MC). This is probably the Phantom flown by Jeff Davis for the 100-kilometer record. This airplane was damaged when the nose gear collapsed during an emergency landing at MCAS Cherry Point, 9 April 1964. (U.S. Navy)
John Franklin Davis was born at Chicago, Illinois, 4May 1921. He was the son of John E. Davis and Bernice B. McNair Davis.
On 11 July 1940, John Franklin Davis was admitted to the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, as a Midshipman. He graduated and was commissioned an Ensign, United States Navy, 9 June 1943. Ensign Davis served aboard the battleship USS New York (BB-34). He was promoted to Lieutenant (junior grade), 1 September 1944. He was promoted to Lieutenant, 1 April 1946.
Also in 1946, Lieutenant Davis qualified as a Naval Aviator. He was assigned as a pilot VF-74 aboard USS Midway (CVB-41). During the early 1950s, Lieutenant Davis served as operations officer for VF-191 aboard USS Oriskany (CVA-34). The squadron was equipped with the swept-wing Grumman F9F-6 Cougar. He then commanded VF-191, flying the Chance Vought F8U Crusader. Commander Davis was then assigned to the Bureau of Weapons as project officer for the McDonnell F4H Phantom II.
Following that assignment, Commander Davis was selected as executive officer of the Midway-class aircraft carrier, USS Coral Sea (CVA-43).
Captain John Franklin Davis, United States Navy.
United States Navy aircraft carriers are traditionally commanded by Naval Aviators, but they usually are required to have experience commanding a "deep-draft" ship. Early in his career, Captain Davis had served aboard the 27,000-ton USS New York. He was given command of the Haskell-class attack transport USS Talladega (APA-208) from 10 April 1965 through 1966. From 30 September 1968 to 15 November 1969, Captain Davis commanded the supercarrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) during combat operations in Southeast Asia.
USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63) (U.S. Navy)
Captain Davis was married to the former Miss Bonnie Adair of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. They had six children.
Captain John Franklin Davis, United States Navy (Retired), died at Marrero, Louisiana, 16 May 1993. His ashes were spread at sea from his last command, USS Kitty Hawk.
¹ FAI Record File Number 8898

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Home » » 'I'm a f**ker', have slept with 1000 women in the last six- months– Rapper, Blueface Boast On Los Angeles Radio Station, Real 92.3 (Video)
'I'm a f**ker', have slept with 1000 women in the last six- months– Rapper, Blueface Boast On Los Angeles Radio Station, Real 92.3 (Video)
American Rapper, Johnathan Michael Porter, with the stage name Blueface has revealed on a live radio show that he has slept with 1000 women in the last six- months.
Blueface, 22, who is currently in a relationship with two women, made the shocking claims during an interview with Los Angeles radio station Real 92.3 on Thursday, August 8.
When asked "How many females you think you knocked down in the last six months?" Blueface responded, "1,000, I'm a f**ker."
He went on to explain how he was able to sleep with 1000 women in a short amount of time.
"It's like sometimes it might be a threesome, a foursome…I done had a fivesome!" Blue said. "[It was] me and four girls. It was pretty hard."
See video below:


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Graffers R Us in Butte, Montana
Today at the blog, I thought I'd share something special about my adopted hometown. Since we moved to Butte, Montana five years ago, my wife and I have settled into a comfortable lifestyle in what we're calling our "forever home." We're happy here--not only in this Craftsman house which was built in 1920, but in the town as a whole. Though on the surface, Butte might look like the victim of urban blight, if you look past the crumbling walls of its historic buildings, you'll find a resiliency (they call it "Butte tough") and a spirit of generosity ("Butte nice") which is bound to carry this mining city far into the future. My wife and I are certain that Butte has reached the end of its boomerang trajectory and is on its way back. Butte, we tell ourselves, is the Next Big Thing.
Nance Van Winckel has also discovered Butte's beauty--in the unlikeliest of places. My thanks to Nance for sharing her essay about graffiti and grace with Quivering Pen readers. Nance calls her hybrid work PHO-TOEMS. Click here to see more of her work.
from "Astral Project Town"
I am not a fearless person, but I play one in Butte. This place calls out of me the kind of chutzpah I can't seem to manage anywhere else. Alone, I roam past boarded-up bank buildings, the noodle palace, and the miners' homes, the majority of which are empty now. In their faded terracotta hues and poses of slump or demise, the structures' haunting beauty hauls me out of bed to shoot their graffiti-covered facades in the sweet soft early-morning light.
And since apparently no one leashes dogs in Butte, when I see a snarling snout coming at me, I yell at it. "I have pepper spray," I tell the beast, "and I'm not afraid to use it." I grip the canister I keep in my pocket. The beast backs off. Butte makes me over into....what? A force? Someone who can at least put on the face of force?
The poor sad alcoholics half asleep in the doorways offer me curses or kind greetings or obscene remarks. A morning's walk in Butte adds up to equal amounts of each.
Roo N Boom Love More Than You says the graffiti on a crumbling tavern. At 39 degrees on this early mid-August morning, it seems to me that is as lovely a poem as I could want. Later when the shot is on my computer screen, I may have to add a little something to that wall. Perhaps some faces from the old family photo album I found in a Butte junk store. I stood in the store with tears dripping ridiculously down my cheeks as I turned those pages. Hand-written notes on slips of yellow paper explained who each figure is, or was. This is your great uncle Rudolph's 1911 graduation picture.
At $14.95, the deep burgundy leather album was a steal. (And apparently one receives a ten percent discount if one is weeping while handing over the cash.) Gradually, over the last dozen years, I've been putting these figures back up around Butte. I like them in the windows where they may gaze over their city's streets. Like me, they seem to appreciate some aspects of the future more than others.
roo n boom love more than you
Today I wear a heavy hooded sweatshirt. My camera, hanging from a strap around my neck, is zipped inside the hoodie. This cuts down on the camera's annoying bounce as I walk. But I realize, as I catch my reflection in a window, that I look about seven months pregnant.
People are amazingly kind to pregnant women. They get out of my way in the crosswalk; they motion for me to go first through doorways. Even the sad residents of the alleys where I most like to shoot don't bother the pregnant lady. Especially not one who's clearly past fifty years old.
What Is the Who?
Just off Church Street, a wall speaks to me: Go Fuck Yourself, it says. To stand and look at the wall is to recognize that there are others who aren't like me and/or don't like me. From a most primal urge of "graffiari," to scratch, someone has made a clear statement. I AM HERE, TOO. I LIVE AMONG YOU. READ THIS AND REMEMBER ME.
And obviously Go Fuck Yourself is, basically, shorthand for that.
What, Inc.
The wall speaks. It's all about the wall. I'm starting to get that.
The wall is what you walk beside. It keeps what's out OUT and what's in IN: people, sewage, animals, merchants. It keeps things moving in the "correct" directions, in the "correct" channels. Pompeii was a city of many walls, an impressively large functioning underground sewage system. One of many graffiti left after Mt. Vesuvius wiped out the town was Hello, we're all wineskins. As with a lot of poetry I admire, the message here may not be totally clear, and an exact paraphrase may be impossible. The "wineskins" remark was seen frequently on walls—apparently a shared joke in 79 A.D.
In Butte I climb over crumbling chest-high walls. I want to shoot their backsides. All the good stuff's on the backsides. And as I climb I recall how, as a girl, I went over a wall I wasn't supposed to and almost died. It was a hot summer day in Roanoke, Virginia. I was 5. There'd been a big rain and the drainage trench behind my family's house was a flowing stream. I scrambled over a wall, lowered myself into the murky water, and let myself be carried gently downstream. When I was thoroughly drenched and happily cooled off, I stood up and walked home; I climbed back over the wall. By early evening I was running a very high fever. It was all the poison ivy and poison oak—weeds people had culled out of their yards and thrown into the blocks-long trench—that almost killed me. A concentrated poisonous sewage. I had blisters internally.
I spent a few nights in the hospital. Respiratory problems, erratic pulse, etc. I had defied the walls. Bad. I disobeyed the walls' boundaries. And I had been duly punished.
Butte Carriage Works
Susan Stewart in her book, Crimes of Writing, discusses the nature of "criminal art," and graffiti's position as both crime and art. Graffiti, she says, "combines the remoteness, abstraction, and simultaneity characteristic of mechanical modes of production with the ethic of presence, signature, and individuality characteristic of handicrafts."
Art, she reminds us, is usually experienced in a "closed arena of consumption." Museums and galleries contain the visual art. You go to the printed page for your poetry. So graffers call into question the whole idea of how/if art is to be/should be contained. Graffers negate the very notion of art as commodity. Back in 1988 when her essay first appeared, Stewart made a good case about this non-commodity idea as a reason graffiti had stayed (until then) outside mainstream art. Nobody made money off the graffiti artist. But in the last 30 years, this has dramatically changed. As with other outsider arts, eventually a door somewhere is tipped open. In the 1990's as the art establishment began to embrace graffiti as a kind of pop art, or the hip-hop version of pop art, graffers moved indoors. To canvases. A part of a building graffitied by Banksy can sell for a hundred grand.
Like graffers everywhere, Butte's graffers blur preconceptions about the ownership of space. They convert the "privately" owned into "public" sphere. Or, put another way, just how privately owned is it if some Boston bankers (who've never set foot in Butte) are, by default, the deed holders?
Summer's Whistle of Wind
Walls stand betwixt and between anyway. A here and a there. But the two aren't so mutually exclusive. After that five-year-old girl defied the wall and was poisoned by what lay beyond the protected domicile, in her poison-ivy fever-dream her dead father appeared at the foot of her bed and spoke to her.
He was, in point of fact, killed when she was two. What happened to this child is a wondrous thing—a thing forever after associated for her with transgression, for now she, by virtue of her transgression, has somehow trespassed through one sort of wall into a realm she'd believed was forbidden to the living. But WTF? There she was. Her deceased father, three years after his death, was wearing a white cummerbund. The girl can see him and the outfit to this very day.
And to this day, linked in her little mind are the words TRANSGRESSION and TRANSFORMATION.
Some sort of message was conveyed. From behind an unfathomable wall.
What marks I leave (albeit just "digitally") on Butte's walls are brief "passings," like the cigar sign from 1923, or the faded 1951 school logo, or the 2007 graduates' hooray for their class. Leaving a mark, we enter the wall. We state our biggest joys and curse our crazy foes. We tag back to all the wall holds—between us and it.
Footnote Palace
Nance Van Winckel, originally from Roanoke, Virginia, has lived in Spokane, Washington since 1990. Pacific Walkers, Nance's sixth book of poems, was recently released from U. of Washington Press. A fourth collection of linked short stories, Boneland, came out with U. of Oklahoma Press in October 2013. Nance's other books of poetry include: No Starling (University of Washington Press, 2007), Bad Girl, with Hawk (U. of Illinois Press, 1987), The Dirt (Miami U. Press, 1994), Beside Ourselves (Miami University Press, 2003), and After A Spell (Miami U. Press, 1998), which received the Washington State Governor's Award for Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Gettysburg Review, Field, Volt, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Ploughshares. Nance's three books of short stories are Curtain Creek Farm (Persea Books, 2000), Quake (U. of Missouri Press, 1998) which received the 1998 Paterson Fiction Prize, and Limited Lifetime Warranty (U. of Missouri Press, 1994). Her stories have appeared in The Georgia Review, Colorado Review, and AGNI. A former editor of Willow Springs and creator of Spokane's Writers in the Community Program, she is an emerita professor in Eastern Washington University's creative writing program and currently teaches in Vermont College of Fine Arts' low-residency MFA in Writing Program. Click here to visit her website.
Posted by David Abrams at March 08, 2014
Labels: Butte
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Employer's operational needs relevant to reasonable adjustments
In Chief Constable of Lincolnshire Police v Weaver the EAT has held that the operational objectives of an employer and the interests of other employees can be considered when deciding what amounts to a reasonable adjustment under the Disability Discrimination Act 1998.
Mr Weaver was employed as a police officer by Lincolnshire Police. In 2000, because of his disability, he was placed on restricted duties and was not permitted to carry out any physically exerting tasks. The following year he successfully applied for a desk job investigating traffic offences. Although this role had not been specifically designated as a restricted post, it was suitable for him.
In 2006, Mr Weaver completed 30 years' service and at that point was entitled to retire on a full pension. He chose not to retire and instead applied to stay on under a Retention Scheme operated by the force, which sought to ensure that key skills and experience would not be lost through retirement. Officers retained under this scheme benefited financially by being able to retire and receive their full pension whilst continuing to work for the force. Mr Weaver's application was initially supported, however the policy in relation to the scheme was revised, partly because of its financial position. In considering the business case for Mr Weaver's application, the force took into account its wider operational capabilities and the impact on other employees. By not allowing him to have access to the scheme and encouraging him to retire, they would be freeing up an office-based job for another officer who had yet to complete 30 years' service and who, if no post could be found for them, would be medically retired. As a result of these wider considerations, Mr Weaver's application was rejected. He was however allowed to remain in the post under his existing terms and conditions, without being allowed to retire and receive his pension. He raised a claim that the force had failed to make reasonable adjustments by not placing him on the scheme.
The EAT overruled the employment tribunal's decision and held that the tribunal should consider not only the situation from the employee's point of view, but should also consider the wider operational objectives of the force when assessing whether he should have been placed on the scheme. The tribunal, in particular, should have considered the need to free up suitable posts for officers on restricted duties who were still in active service.
Impact on employers
Although this decision confirms that employers may take into account their own operational objectives in deciding what adjustments to make, decisions should be reasonable and should take into account all the circumstances.


Despite self-identifying as a "post-punk soul band," on first pass JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound don't seem to be innovating within the genre. Instead, they stick to absolutely killing within templates that have existed for what feels like eons.
They'll rock The Basement with Vitek this Friday.


Last week, without a lot of fanfare, Apple released the beta version of its new Mac chat program, simply called Messages. Messages also happens to be a sneak preview application of what's to come in the next version of its operating system, Mountain Lion—to be released later this summer.
The following is a basic overview of the chat program and what you should consider before downloading and installing it.
You access and download Messages Beta not through the Mac App Store, but directly from the Apple website. It requires running OS Lion (10.7.3) on your Mac and that you have an Apple ID. In the initial developer preview of Mountain Lion, there are reports that Messages does not work with some older Macs, like the 2006 iMacs, even though those machines are running Lion.
There have also been reports that the full version of Messages will only work in Moutain Lion (OS 10.8) when it is finally released.
If you download and install Messages on your Mac, it will entirely replace the existing iChat application but retain your Buddylist of contacts and your existing iChat accounts. Perhaps the most significant feature of Messages is that it syncs with your other Macs or iOS devices, and you can send and receive unlimited free messages between these devices.
Apple says Messages supports other IM clients, including AIM, Google, Talk, Jabber, and Yahoo Messenger. But in a few test cases I performed, messages sent as IM's to YahooIM and GoogleTalk users did not get delivered. Nor did I receive messages from these recipients.
If on the other hand you're sending messages to other Mac and iOS users, similar to using Messages on your iPhone, your instant messages will sync between the Messages client on all your open devices. So you can say start a conversation with someone while at home on your Mac, and then pick up and continue that conversation on your iPhone or iPod touch.
It is, however, a little annoying to have the same messages you're posting on your Mac pop up on your iPhone which may be sitting next to your computer. There should be a way to temporialy disable syncing between devices.
Messages is similar in many ways to iChat and the Messages app on iOS devices. You can send photos, videos, attachments, contacts, locations, etc, for free to other Messages users.
As with iChat you start a message by clicking the message icon on the left side of Messages (or use the keyboard shortcut, Command+N) and then type the recipient's address or phone number in the To field. You can also click the blue + button and access names from your Address Book and the Buddies list started in iChat.
When you right- or Control-click on the name of a user in the left panel of Messages and select Show Info, which is under the Profile section, you will see a list the chatting capabilities for that selected user, e.g. Chat, Inline images, Chat Rooms, Offline messaging, Send Files.
Messages uses the FaceTime program for video chat, and it too only works with other Mac and iPhone users.
Apple says that you can share screens with other Mac, Jabber, Google Talk, and Bonjour users. But in my tests it didn't work, not even with the Mac users I contacted.
If you poke around in Messages you will see that many of the user interface features can be changed, such as customizing the font styles and size, changing the messages from bubble to box format, and how you want messages listed.
As Messages is in its beta stage, many of its features may not initially work. However, it is a great step forward that Apple is bringing SMS and improved iOS integration to the Mac, which is basically the intent of the Mountain Lion upgrade.
If you decide to install and use Messages, let us know what you think of it.
It's a great concept, but after having multiple iMessage conversations with my iPad and iPhone, the same conversations show up on my mac. The annoying thing is that they show up delayed, so I keep thinking i'm getting new messages when they're just replays of the old ones. Once they fix this sync issue it will be indispensable. Right now it's really irritating.
I haven't tried using Yahoo, but there were no problems with Google Talk for me.
Oh, cool, thanks for letting us know.
Been VERY buggy for me, have only had it work successfully twice. Doesn't work with Yahoo!. I have an early 2011 Macbook Pro with 8 Gigs of RAM i5. However, when it does work it was nice, I can't wait till it is out of Beta and have polish. Lot's of potential.
Yeah, looks we're going have to wait for the final version to see how well it will really work. I had similar problem as you.
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text:
Irish Republican News · November 15, 2013
British Army stupidity increased IRA support
Brian Feeney (for the Irish News)
Christopher Quinn was 39 when a British soldier killed him near his home in the Unity Flats complex at the junction of the Shankill Road and Carrick Hill in west Belfast.
He was a member of the St Patrick's branch of the Catholic Ex-Servicemen's Association (CESA) which performed unarmed vigilante duty at flashpoints mainly in Belfast.
It was November 1971, a dangerous time in a dangerous place. Unity Flats had been the target of sectarian attacks from the Shankill most notably August 2-4, 1969 when, in the words of the then Mr Justice Scarman, the flats were 'besieged by a vast crowd' from the Shankill. Since 1969 local men had guarded barricades at the entrances to the flats. CESA had tried to acquire licensed weapons by virtue of their service records in the British forces but the Unionist regime at Stormont and the RUC refused, though there was no problem with loyalist gun clubs being legally armed to the teeth.
However, while sectarian attacks on Catholic districts tended to be confined to assaults and petrol bombing, the real danger to men guarding the barricades came from the British army whose so-called Military Reaction Force or Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF) set up in summer 1971 killed or injured an unknown number of men at barricades. On each such occasion the Ministry of Defence concocted a cock and bull story about the incident. Christopher Quinn wasn't killed by the MRF who preferred to drive around in cars and fire sub-machineguns at vigilantes but by a soldier on patrol in the district. While in the case of MRF killings and injuries the MoD usually denied any military involvement, the army did admit a soldier killed Quinn but as usual claimed 'the army opened fire on a gunman'. Equally as usual there is no evidence there was any gunman.
Now thanks to the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC), it has emerged that the MoD knew perfectly well that Christopher Quinn was completely innocent. It's difficult to know which is worse: denying as in the MRF cases any army involvement and thereby dramatically reducing the level of compensation to relatives of the deceased, or admitting responsibility as in the Quinn case and then deliberately doing his wife and family out of proper compensation. All of course to ensure as the MoD document admits, that 'the settlement would reflect well on the MoD from a political viewpoint.'
In the case of Mrs Quinn they did her out of £10,000 and wrecked her family's prospects. She got £500, spent £300 on the funeral and gave £50 to each of her four children. Paul O'Connor of the PFC told the BBC of a case in Derry when the army killed a woman the same month and the MoD offered £84.70 which her family refused.
Unjust, dishonest, disgusting, disgraceful and stupid. Stupid because 'from a political viewpoint' which the genius writing the cynical note thought paramount, it was disastrous. Everyone in nationalist districts in Derry and Belfast knew the army lied, individual soldiers lied, perjured themselves as a matter of course and swore away the lives of men without a qualm. Everyone in those districts knew which people the army killed were innocent, which were reprisals for a soldier being shot and which were IRA men.
We know now the MoD didn't care. Their stupidity and callousness meant that more men and women joined the IRA, more people helped the IRA, more of their own men got killed or injured in IRA attacks because of the boneheads in the MoD. By how long did the dishonest, sneaky, secretive unjust behaviour of the MoD prolong the conflict? Who knows?
What we do know for certain is that the researchers of the PFC have demonstrated beyond peradventure that local witnesses to many military misdemeanours were telling the truth and that the army and the MoD routinely lied and in the case of soldiers, lied on oath. However, anyone unfortunate enough to have dealing with the British army knew that. What the PFC has done is to prove it.
What we've also learnt as a result of recent court cases and video evidence from Afghanistan and Iraq is that they're still at it.


The track titles are ripe with science references. And, the mixology, concoctions and cutting and splicing are evident in each track. If a science lab project and an after-hours underground party collided, it might sound like Ample Mammal. Ample Mammal is bringing his highly unique sound to the oft-times formulaic and duplicitous electronic dance genre. And, he's poised to find his infectious dance music and live performances embraced by a larger International audience.


Lee Ann Womack has parted ways with Universal Music Group her record label of 14 years. Womack is best known for her song 'I Hope You Dance', which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks and Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks charts. In her time with Universal, she has had more than twenty Top 40 singles and sold over five million albums.