AUTHOR R. ANN SIRACUSA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It isn't the destination that matters -- It's the journey that counts!

Elephant Appreciation Day and the Elephant Orphan Project

9/20/2019

This coming Sunday, September 22, is Elephant Appreciation Day. I thought it fitting to post this blog about the elephant rescue and rehabilitation projects in Africa.

ELEPHANT FACTS
African Elephants, the noblest of pachyderms, are the largest land mammal on earth today. We've all seen them in zoos and perhaps at the circus, but up close and personal, they are really big. The drawing to the left shows the comparison between an elephant and a six foot man.

Their average life span in the wild is 70 years, their height at the shoulder is from 8.2 to 13 feet, and can weight from 2.5 to 7 tons. They are slightly larger than their Asian cousins and can be identified by the larger ears. Asian elephants have smaller, rounded ears.

Elephant ears radiate heat to help keep these large animals cool, but sometimes the African heat is too much. Elephants are fond of water and enjoy showering by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it all over themselves. Afterwards, they often spray their skin with a protective coating of dust. An elephant's trunk is actually a long nose used for smelling, breathing, trumpeting, drinking, and also for grabbing things—especially a potential meal. The trunk alone contains about 100,000 different muscles.
▼ Photo Credit: R. Ann Siracusa, 2008, Zimbabwe

Elephants are social animals and travel in herds of 6 to 12 (but can expand to 20). The family consists of the matriarchal head, her daughters, and their calves. The matriarch dictates where the herd goes and helps to teach the younger elephants proper behavior. Female elephants, or cows, live in multigenerational family groups with other females, and they remain with their natal group for life, sharing responsibility for calves,. The females will assist each other with the birth and care of their young.

Males stay with the family until they reach 12 to 15 years of age, when they leave the herd and live alone or join up with other bulls. Male and female elephants live separately with bulls only visiting when some of the females are in their mating season, known as estrus.

Elephants are a keystone species and dramatically affect their landscape. They are seed dispersers and influence forest composition, creating clearings to boost tree regrowth and reducing cover to create suitable habitat for browsing and grazing animals.

AN ELEPHANT RIDE
In 2008, I traveled in Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia. There, we not only observed and photographed elephants in the wild... but we rode them. To be truthful, we rode elephants that are part on an elephant rescue project and not in the wild.

Poaching is a major issue throughout Africa, as well as loss of habitat. The Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust plays a role in the rescue of injured or trapped animals and their rehabilitation. This is one of the many elephant rescue/ rehabilitation projects in Africa

Donald, Shirley Wilder and Ann Siracusa riding Tatú Don't get on an elephant this way Off we go into the bush

The elephants we rode are part of a program which rescues injured and "homeless" elephants. Usually, these are babies who have lost their mothers or sick elephants left behind by the herd. After they are brought back to health, and when they are old enough, some of them provide tourists with a half-hour to forty five minute thrill. This helps finance the rescue program.

This elephant's foot was damaged in a elephant snare set by poachers.►

The older elephants are not released back into the wild even though elephants are social animals and one of the few species that will take outsiders into the herd. However, they accept the outsides on a trial basis, but if the visitor misbehaves, it may be thrown out. Donald told us he had taken care of Tatú for fifteen years.

THE ELEPHANT ORPHAN PROJECT
The African elephant is endangered due to poaching (for ivory) and loss of range through deforestation. In the early 1900s, there were about 10 million elephants in Africa. By 1970 there were 1.3 million; by 2007, somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000; by 2016, an estimated 352,000 survived.
▼Photo credit: Friedkin Conservation Fund
Photo Source: News www.foxnews.com/science/queen-of-ivory

Elephant Orphanages exist in several locations in Africa, but the most significant is in Kenya. It exists within the Nairobi National Park under the auspices of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and was overseen by Dr Daphne Sheldrick who had a life-time of experience with elephants. Dr. Daphne Sheldrink diesf in 2018 at the age of 83 and, happens in her beloved society, the mantle of matriarch has been passed to her daughter Angela, who has run the DSWT for 17 years, supported by her husband Robert Carr-Hartley, and sons Taru and Roan.
Daphne Sheldrick & daughter Angela 1968 Daphne Sheldrick, daughters Angela (lft) & Jill Woodley (rt)
▼Photo Source: www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/obituaries PhotoSource: www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/obituaries Photo credit: The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust ▼ David Sheldrick Photo Credit : The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust/A.F.P. -Getty Images▼

At the heart of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's conservation activities is the Orphan’s Project, which has achieved world-wide acclaim through its hugely successful elephant and rhino rescue and rehabilitation program. Animals and humans are increasingly coming into conflict over space and food, especially on community-wildlife borders. The Trust works in partnership with the Kenya Wildlife Service and offers hope for any orphaned elephant fortunate enough to be found alive.

YOU TOO CAN ADOPT AN ELEPHANT
As with most mammals, the baby elephant's world is its mother, then the extended family. Elephants are particularly vulnerable to psychological despair if it loses its natural family. Even bulls, which separate from pod, never forget their female family.

In the orphanages, the orphaned elephants need a replacement human family i.e. enough keepers to represent a “family”. The orphan needs physical and mental care to grow up psychologically stable. If they are psychologically unstable and neurotic they will not be welcomed into the wild herds and risk rejection.

Photo credit: The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

The keepers are with the young elephants 24 hours a day, traveling with them as a group during the day, sleeping with them at night. Babies need contact at all times. Keepers rotate so that a different keeper sleeps with a different elephant each night, to avoid strong attachments to just one person.

As you can imagine, the orphanage costs a lot, in part because they are labor intensive, in part because elephants eat a lot. As part of the funding raising, you can adopt a particular elephant for fifty dollars and contribute to their upbringing, while receiving information about the rescue and ongoing progress report and photos. There are 18 pages of elephants waiting for adoption but I’ve shown here a few of the recent rescues.
https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/orphans

Name: Malima (F) Name: Nabulu (F) Name: Mukkoka (M) Name: Larro (F)
Current Age: 3 years Current Age: 2 years Current Age: 23 months Current Age: 17 months
Rescued: 30-10-2016 Rescued: 01-02-2019 Rescued: 23-09-2018 Rescued: 02-01-2019

   Name: Kiasa (F) Name: Kiombo (M)    Name: Ziwadi (F) Name: Karisa (M)
   Current Age: 2 years Current Age: 2 years    Current Age: 18 months    Current age: 4 years
   Rescued: 10-30-2017 Rescued: 07-17-2019    Rescued: 04-07- 2019    Rescued: 10-24-2014

It took Daphne Sheldrick nearly three decades of trial and error to perfect the milk formula and complex husbandry necessary to rear an orphaned infant African elephant yet today, with support from many caring people world-wide, the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is proud to have saved over 150 orphaned infant calves, which would otherwise have perished.

More importantly, every one of these orphans can look forward to a quality of life in wild terms, living free in Tsavo East National Park protected by their new extended orphaned family and friends amongst the wild herds.

Sources
http://vicfallswildlifetrust.org/VFWT%20Website/Wildlife%20Rescue.html
https://www.safarious.com/en/posts/4555-elephant-rescue-at-camp-hwange
http://www.rescue.org/program/programs-zimbabwe
http://www.amanzitravel.co.uk/rhino-and-elephant-sanctuary
http://www.afrizim.com/Activities/Victoria_Falls/Elephant_Rides.asp
http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/fostering.asp
http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/html/raiseorphan.htm
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/a/african-elephant/
http://www.elephantsforever.co.za/family-structure.html
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/31/africa/great-elephant-census/index.html
http://mentalfloss.com/article/82974/10-royal-facts-about-babar-elephant
https://nationaldaycalendar.com/elephant-appreciation-day-september-22/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/24/dame-daphne-sheldrick-obituary
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/obituaries/daphne-sheldrick-who-saved-orphaned-elephants-has-died-at-83.html

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/424534702347703553/?lp=true
https://www.elephantand.co/blogs/blog/world-wide-elephant-charities
https://gifts.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/gifts/species-adoptions/african-elephant.aspx
https://www.foxnews.com/science/queen-of-ivory-africas-infamous-poaching-mastermind-nabbed
https://sciencing.com/elephants-mate-4574022.html

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BAD THINGS HAPPEN: Friday the Thirteenth

9/13/2019

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BEWARE!
This notice is for everyone, not only paraskavekedatriaphobians, triskaidekaphobians, and friggatriskaidekaphobians! Be careful and don’t go outside. Bad things happen to good people on Friday the 13th.

Although science assures us that bad things are just as likely to happen on any day of the week and any day of the month, as they are to happen on Friday the 13th, there are people who have a true physical condition which is an exaggerated, irrational fear of Friday the Thirteenth.

This fear even has a name. Several, in fact. The term paraskavekedatriaphobians was first used in the 1990s by Dr. Donald E. Dossey, an American psychotherapist specializing in phobias and stress management. The term uses the Greek word paraskevi (Friday) and dekatria (thirteen). He is reputed as saying that if someone can pronounce the name of the phobia, he/she is cured.

Symptoms
The symptoms resemble any panic attack:
● Hyperventilation
● Rapid heart rate
● Trembling
● Lightheadedness or dizziness
● Refusing to leave home on this day
● Indulging in ritualistic behavior
● Talk of death or dying

Who Is Affected?
The bad news is that millions of people have this phobia, and even more people fear the unlucky number thirteen, a phobia with another long name. The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute estimated that between $700 to $800 million dollars are lost every Friday the 13th because people are afraid to shop, travel, and conduct business.

IT’S JUST A SUPERSTITION … RIGHT?
The law of averages answers “yes,” but that doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen on Friday the 13th. They happen on other days, but believers don’t take the time to look at all bad luck. Here’s a look at some of the events of the past taken from a number of online articles regarding Friday 13.

October 13, 1307
French King Philip IV arrested and tortured hundreds of Knights Templar, of the Temple of Solomon, for accusations of blasphemy and homosexuality.

August 13, 1521
Conquistador Hernán Cortés captured Cuauhtémoc, the ruler of Tenochtitlán, claiming the city for Spain, marking the end of the Aztec Empire, and renaming it Mexico City.

November 13, 1789
Benjamin Franklin wrote "Everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," according to U.S. government documents.

July 13, 1821
Nathan Bedford Forrest (born July 13, 1821) was the Confederate general in charge of the infamous Fort Pillow Massacre, where he and his men allegedly killed over 200 unarmed Union soldiers that had surrendered (many of whom were black).

July 13, 1923
While hunting fossils for the American Museum of Natural History in Mongolia, an expedition team led by Roy Chapman Andrews discovered the first scientifically recognized dinosaur egg fossils.

July 13, 1923
A group of letters was inaugurated in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, to signify a housing development owned by H.J. Whitley called Hollywoodland.

March 13, 1925
Tennessee Senate voted to prohibit Evolutionary Theory from public universities and schools.

October 13, 1933
British Interplanetary Society, the oldest space advocacy group in the world, was founded to boost public awareness of astronautics.

September 13, 1935
Hughes h-1 racer sets a world airspeed record.

January 13, 1939
The “Black Friday” bush fires in Australia killed 71 people in the Victoria province. Ash fell as far away as New Zealand.

September 13, 1940
In World War II, the Nazis dropped five bombs on Buckingham Palace on Sept. 13, 1940, while the King and Queen were both at the residence.

July 13, 1951
State of Kansas was hit with over 25 inches of rain, and over two million acres of land were damaged by the flood. The storm also affected oil tanks, some of which caught on fire and exploded.

June 13, 1952
A Swedish military plane with a crew of eight was reported missing. Two planes were sent to search for the original plane and were later shot down by the Soviet air force.

March 13, 1964
In New York City a woman was murdered in front of 30 witnesses, and not one person intervened.

November 13, 1970
The Bhola cyclone hit Bangladesh, the deadliest storm in the Bay of Bengal, killed an estimated 150,000 to 550,000 people, 45% of its population.

October 13, 1972
A plane carrying a rugby team crashed into an Andes mountaintop with only sixteen surviving. The rescue efforts were called off 10 days after the crash. 72 days later 2 of the 16 left and managed to alerted authorities there were 16 other survivors trapped in the mountains. 16 survived.

October 13, 1972
A plane in Moscow crashed into the ground trying to land in bad weather, killing all 174 on board.

December 13, 1974
Malta becomes an independent republic.

January 13, 1989
A widespread computer crash infected hundreds of IBM computers in England, causing anxiety over lost files and the threat of then-new technology.

October 13, 1989
The “minicrash” often referred to as "Black Friday" was, at the time, the second-worst stock-market crash in American history.

September 13, 1996
Rapper Tupac Shakur died after being shot multiple times in a murder that remains unsolved.

October 12-13. 2006
Western New York was hit with two feet of snow, leaving over 300,000 people without power and damaging thousands of trees.

March 13, 2009
"SAW – The Ride" premiered at Thorpe Park amusement park in England, only to be temporarily shut down due to "minor teething problems."

November 13, 2009
NASA announces evidence of water on the moon.

August 13, 2010
A 13 year old boy was struck by lightning in England at an air show and received burns only on his shoulder. The hospital stated he was expected to make a full recovery. Wikipedia says about 240,000 people are injured by lightning strikes each year. One estimate is that the annual global death toll is 6,000.

January 13, 2012
The Costa Concordia was wrecked off the Italian coast, killing more than 30 passengers.

HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND?
The Insider (https://www.insider.com/worst-things-friday-the-13th-2017-12) precedes its list of Friday the 13th events with this sentence: “Still think it's just a superstition? These events might be enough to convince even the most determined non-believer.”

I don’t think so. Supposedly, this superstition has been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, yet we only list four events before the 20th century and less than thirty total. Sure, there are a zillion things that have happened on these cursed days, but I thought the list was rather paltry.

A Bad Luck Day of its reputation ought to be able to come up with more disasters than listed herein and in most articles you find on the subject. And some aren’t disasters at all.

A FEW INTERESTING FACTS
● President Franklin D. Roosevelt would not travel on the 13th day of any month and would never host 13 guests at a meal. Napoleon and President Herbert Hoover were also triskaidekaphobic, with an abnormal fear of the number 13.

● Superstitious diners in Paris can hire a quatorzieme, or professional 14th guest.

● Some believe that the 13th or Friday the 13th was the day Eve tasted the forbidden apple from the Tree of Knowledge. I'm not sure how that figures, since humankind at the time didn't have a calendar with either Fridays or Friday the 13th, but what do I know?

● In the New Testament, thirteen people attended Jesus' last supper on Maundy Thursday, the day before Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday. Judas was the thirteenth to be seated.

● Numerology first appears in written records in Egypt and Babylon, and in numerology, the number 13 is considered unlucky.

Note, however, that while 13 meant death to the ancient Egyptians, it was a joyous time when the person ascended into eternal life. Death was not considered bad luck to them.

Middle Ages
● This is a more likely time for such superstitions to be tied to Christian beliefs surrounding the last supper and crucifixion.

● In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in his Canterbury Tales a reference to Friday as being unlucky.

● While some historians point to evidence of both Friday and the number thirteen being considered unlucky, there are no references connecting the two before the 19th century.

Nineteenth Century
● Henry Sutherland Edward's 1869 biography of composer Giaochino Rossini, is credited with the first documented reference. According to Edwards, Rossini regarded Friday as an unlucky day, thirteen as an unlucky number, and died on Friday, November 13, 1868. While I have no way of knowing if Rossini himself believed 13 was unlucky, I do know that Italians consider 13 a lucky number. The Italian bad-luck-number is seventeen, and that superstition has been around since the early Romans. I lived in Rome and know there are many buildings that don't have a 17th floor or a room #17 and so on.

● Another early reference comes from a club [The Thirteen Club] formed by William Fowler, whose intention was to debunk the superstitions as baseless.
□
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/friday-13th-does-come-unlucky/
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/09/the-origin-of-friday-the-13th-as-an-unlucky-day/
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/13-things-friday-13.html
http://www.ibtimes.com/friday-13th-history-origins-myths-superstitions-unlucky-day-395108
http://www.snopes.com/luck/friday13.asp
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0212_040212_friday13.html
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/entries/paraskevidekatriaphobia.html
http://www.cogwriter.com/hebrew-calendar-postponements.htm
http://aboutnumerology.com/history-of-numerology/
http://gizmodo.com/why-people-think-friday-the-13th-is-unlucky-1306401570
http://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-vanir-gods-and-goddesses/freya/
http://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-vanir-gods-and-goddesses/freya/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freyja
http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/goddess-freya.htm
http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/goddess-freya.htm
https://www.allaboutcounseling.com/library/triskaidekaphobia/
http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/p/paraskavedekatriaphobia/misdiag.htm

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Richard Lederer’s “World History According to Student Bloopers”

9/6/2019

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It’s become a real chore this summer to come up with something more interesting to write about than what my husband is cooking for dinner or my latest medical miseries. My apologies to you folks who enjoy recipes and where other people are taking their family vacations, but I just can’t make myself write about those.

While I was flailing around, looking at materials I’ve accumulated and toying with an idea for a blog I should have started working on two weeks ago, I can across this Richard Lederer piece. I’ve read it many times before, but I couldn’t help taking another look. Soon I was laughing so hard my cleaning lady came in to my office to find out if I was crying. It’s too funny not to share.

The World According to Student Bloopers
By Richard Lederer

Photo source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lederer#/media/File:Richard_Lederer_at_2006_Mensa_WG.jpg

Richard Lederer writes, “One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following “history of the world'' from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.”

Read more about Richard Lederer at the end. He’s so much more than a teacher.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

● The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
▼Photo Source: encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn

● The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, once asked, ``Am I my brother's son?'' God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother's birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

● Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

● Without the Greeks we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns---Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth.

● One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in The Iliad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

● Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

●In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing.
When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

● Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlics in their hair.

● Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

●Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames.

● King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery. King Harold mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings. Joan of Arc was cannonized by Bernard Shaw, and victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

● In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

● The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great invention and discoveries.

● Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood.

● Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.

●The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee.

● Queen Elizabeth was the ``Virgin Queen.'' As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted, ``hurrah.'' Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

●The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived at Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies, and errors.

●In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

●During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.

● Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this was known as Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on their backs. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1680 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

● One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the War, the Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

● Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence.

Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared, “A horse divided against itself cannot stand.'' Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

● George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

● Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, “In onion there is strength.'' Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. Fourteenth Amendment gave ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It claimed it represented law and odor. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

● Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy.

Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees.

● Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

● France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napolenonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were tremoling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorillas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks.

Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear children.

●The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

●The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code of telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.

●The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
□

I would love to read a similar composite from WWI through 2019, but I would die of laughing long before I got to the end. Maybe that’s why there isn’t one. Or maybe there is more in one of Mr. Lederer’s books.

WILL THE REAL RICHARD LEDERER PLEASE STAND UP?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lederer
Quoted Directly From Wikipedia

“Richard Lederer (born May 26, 1938) is an American author, speaker, and teacher. He is best known for his books on the English language and on word play such as puns, oxymorons, and anagrams. He refers to himself as "the Wizard of Idiom," "Attila the Pun," and "Conan the Grammarian." His weekly column, "Looking at Language," is syndicated in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States.

"Lederer invented the words 'aptagram',an anagram which means the same as the other word, and 'antigram', an anagram which means the opposite.

"He has written more than fifty books, including Anguished English (1987), Get Thee to a Punnery (1988), Crazy English (1989), A Man of My Words (2003), The Word Circus (1998), The Miracle of Language (1992), The Cunning Linguist (2001), Word Wizard (2006), and Presidential Trivia (2007). Known as a "verbivore", a word he coined in the early 1980s, Lederer's interests include uncovering word origins, pointing out common grammatical errors and fallacies, and exploring palindromes, anagrams, and other forms of recreational wordplay. Lederer wrote the foreword to Words at Play: Quips, Quirks and Oddities, by O.V. Michaelsen (Sterling Publishing Company, New York, 1998), and to Weather Facts and Fun (2009), a children's book on weather, co-written by Josh Judge and Kathe Cussen and published by SciArt Media. He was elected International Punster of the Year in 1989[4] and was the 2002 recipient of the Golden Gavel of Toastmasters International.”
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EVEN CONGRESS DIDN'T KNOW: the 30 Year Secret

8/30/2019

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Do you believe that under the constant and intense scrutiny of the American press, the US government was able to keep a rather important secret for thirty years?

SETTING THE STAGE
Let’s travel to the beautiful Allegeny Mountains of West Virginia to a luxury resort near White Sulphur Springs: The Greenbrier Resort. The venue, situated on 11,000 acres, enjoys the accolades of being acclaimed as one of finest, most luxurious resorts in the world.

he Greenbrier Resort - Photo Source: www.atomicheritage.org/greenbrier Ariel - Photo Source:www.hippostcard.com/greenbrier-hotel

The area has been a popular destination for visitors since 1778, but the current facility was built in 1913 by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. The property now belongs to a local entrepreneur, Jim Justice, and is operated by a subsidiary of Justice’s company, the Greenbrier Hotel Corporation. Patrons of the resort include a long list of the rich and famous, the PGA tour, and twenty-six presidents. The last to stay there during a presidency was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In 1957, the Greenbrier Hotel broke ground on a new West Virginia wing and massive conference facility to provide unparalleled meeting space for organizations such as the auto companies, the West Virginia Medical Association and others large corporations.

At least, that’s what everyone believed.

PROJECT GREEK ISLAND
Imagine building a 112,544 square foot facility 720 feet underground, under the very noses of the vacationing élite, with only a couple dozen of people knowing what is being built. Pretty tricky, but it was accomplished.

The Greenbrier Bunker, previously titled Project Greek Island, is a once-secret bomb shelter behind four giant reinforced steel doors (made by a company that built bank safes), intended to house the 535 members of the United States Congress plus staff -- a total of 1,000 people -- in the event of a nuclear attack.

No doubt the changing of the name from the original, not-so-original Project X to Project Caspar and, during the 1980s, to Project Greek Island, may have helped to confuse people who might have had questions.

A Relic Of The Cold War
You might say Greenbrier Bunker is a relic of the Cold War, the nearly five decades of political tension between the Soviet Union and the United States after World War II.

In the late 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, faced with the Cuban revolution and the real possibility of nuclear war, decided it would be essential to continue the operation of the US Congress in the advent of atomic warfare. It is said Eisenhower himself came up with the idea of the secret bomb shelter for Congress. The president had visited the Greenbrier Resort before. It was close enough to Washington D.C. to evacuate Congress, but far enough not to be destroyed by a direct hit on Washington DC or by fallout. And he was aware that the hotel was planning the addition of a large new wing for the hotel. He decided West Virginia was the ideal location.

The Architect of the Capitol negotiated an agreement with the owners to build the bomb shelter under the new wing. In exchange for permission -- and silence -- the government would pay for the new wing as well as the bunker itself. Because both would be built at the same time, the thinking went, the shelter wouldn’t attract much attention. Apparently, they were correct on a national scale, but the locals and construction workers had plenty of unanswered questions.

Public Press reported that President Eisenhower was holding a summit with the President of Mexico and Prime Minister of Canada, but he was really at the Greenbrier closing the deal for the bunker.
Photo source: https://vandaleer.com/the-bunker-at-the-greenbrier/

The cost at the time was about $14 million, probably well over $100 million today. Fortunately, both projects were completed in October, 1962. Later that month, during the Cuban missile crisis, the facility was put on alert and Congress came within 12 hours of being moved to the location. Other than that, the facility was never activated.

Photo credit: Flicker Commons Project Under Construction – Photo Credit: Flicker Commons
Photo source: allthatsinteresting.com/greenbrier Photo source: www.todayifoundout.com/project-greek-island/

Only two members of Congress knew anything about the project and its purpose. The rest were in the dark, most likely for the best since they would not have been allowed to bring their families with them. Tip O'Neill, as speaker, was briefed on the project and said, “Jesus, you don't think I'm going to run away and leave my wife? That's the craziest thing I ever heard of.”

Home Away From Home
Basically, the shelter is a two story, underground box with 3 foot thick walls. The four entrance doors weigh in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 tons each and can be sealed air tight. Since the members of Congress didn’t even know the place existed, you can imagine how they might have felt entering the door in the photo below.
Photo Source: www.civildefensemuseum.com/
Photo Credit by: Lenox Carruth

Once sealed, the facility was designed to have enough air for 72 hours before the ventilation system would bring in filtered air from outdoors.

One of the four entrances opens into the conference facility which is used by the hotel. Joint-use spaces include an exhibit hall, the meeting room designed for Congress to conduct business, and two smaller auditoriums. The hidden passage into the bunker is market “Danger: High Voltage Keep Out”.

Congressional Meeting Auditorium Doors between Conference and Bunker Hallway beyond door leading to the bunker
Photo source: allthatsinteresting.com/greenbrier Photo Source: https://frustratedpaulrevere.com Photo Source: abcnews.go.com/top-secret-greenbrier

According to Atomic Heritage Organization, in case of an attack while Congress was housed at the facility, the whole conference center could be closed off. “Congressmen would have first been ushered to the decontamination room, where they would have stripped, showered, and put on uncontaminated clothes. The dormitories consist of 18 rooms, each built to house 60 people in metal bunk beds. There is also a kitchen and a 400-seat dining room, which was at one point decorated with fake windows featuring scenic views. The upper level contains storage space and offices for Congressional leaders.” Being built before computers and electronic information storage, the bunker contains a large amount of space for storing records, as well as a hospital clinic.

Metal bunks in dormitories The Dining Room Dental office in medical clinic
Photo source: //frustratedpaulrevere.com Photo Source: onebeardedgolfer.com Photo Source: www.golfdigest.com/dental office

Of course, the facility was kept ready for emergency occupancy for thirty years. There were enough supplies and equipment to house the 1,000 people for 60 days. Over the years, a dozen plus retired military personnel with high security clearances were always stationed at the Greenbrier, where they posed as TV repairmen working for a shell company. About a fifth of their time, they actually did make TV repairs at the resort.

Someone, somewhere, kept track of who was in and out of Congress and made bed assignments. That’s right. For thirty years every bed (all 1,080 of them) had an assigned occupant. Only the people who were supposed to be there, were going to get in.

Storage of food supplies for 6 months    Electrical Control Room    Other Internal Workings
Photo source: www.npr.org/secret-bunker    Photo source: www.coldwarcomms.org/greenbrier Photo source: www.coldwarcomms.org/greenbrier

They rotated the magazines and books in the lounges to keep the reading material fresh, and they kept the pharmacy stocked with the prescription medications of all the members of the House and Senate. The facility had a six-month supply of food, periodically refreshed.”  I did learn the food wasn’t wasted. Food close to expiration dates was transported to military bases and used while still within code.
ttps://www.npr.org/2011/03/26/134379296/the-secret-bunker-Congress-never-used

No reference mentioned the cost of maintenance for thirty years. The price tag must have been a whopper and maybe a bigger secret than the existence of the facility.

WHO KNEW?
That question is probably unanswerable. I speculate it was more than a few dozen, but considering the size of the facility, the requirement to keep it ready to use for 30 years, and the relentlessness of the press, it was virtually unknown.

At different points in time, the number of Those-In-The-Know must have varied, but from the beginning there were always hints … things that didn’t seem quite right.
   ● Randy Wickline, who delivered concrete to the construction site, recalled “Nobody came out and said it was a bomb shelter, but…they weren’t building it to keep the rain off them. I mean a fool would have known.” After all, pouring 50,000 tons of concrete into an abyss is something workers notice.
   ● After installing 110 urinals in the exhibit hall of the new Convention Center, the contractor asked, Truman Wright, the manager of the Greenbrier resort from 1951-1974, “What in the hell are you going to exhibit?”
   ● Both Gerald Ford and Hubert Humphrey were frequent guests of the Greenbrier when they served in Congress. They were among the few people in the world who knew about the bunker.
● There was a mysterious crew of TV technicians who worked at the hotel but didn't work for the hotel but a company called Forsyth Associates.
   ● In 1980, when Ted Kleisner took over as general manager of the Greenbrier Resort. Within a week, he discovered hints of something being out of whack. 1) The resort was spending a fortune on “maintenance” of equipment that it didn’t own; 2) The hotel had ordered thousands of gallons of diesel fuel that it had no need for, and the fuel had disappeared without a trace; 3) Every payday, dozens of paychecks were being mailed out to people whose names did not appear on the employee roster.

His superiors were not concerned when he reported his findings … until he threatened to go to the police. That got action. After signing a pledge of secrecy, he was read into the program by a government official.
● The power room includes a “pathological waste incinerator” designed to cremate bodies.
   ● People questioned why the small community needed an airport with a 7,000-foot runway capable of handling a commercial jetliner.

Of course, the locals knew about the bunker, but believed mistakenly the facility was to house the President. They kept the secret and were proud to be playing their part in the Cold War.

WHO BLEW?
The bunker’s “cover” was blown in May of 1992 in a story written by Ted Gup and printed in the Washington Post which revealed its existence and location. Gup never revealed the name of the government official who tipped him off.

You can’t hide from the enemy if the enemy knows where you’re hiding. So the facility could no longer serve its purpose. The lease with the hotel was terminated in 1995, and the Greenbrier Resort took over the ownership.

At the time, this story was considered by many as an act of treason. Gup is still characterized on Bunker Tours as the man who “compromised" the Cold War fallout shelter.

Gup contended that by 1992, when the story was released, the facility was obsolete. At the time of its construction, it took hours for planes to reach the United States from Russia. There would have been hours of warning to escape Washington and get the members of Congress to the site before anything could happen. That was not the case in 1992. There might have been no more than fifteen minutes from missile launch to impact. Tip O’Neill is quoted as saying the evacuation plans were not well worked out.
Ted Gup - Photo Source: https://twitter.com/ted_gup

Gup felt the US was relying on a facility that could only fail in its purpose. He also countered arguments about its usefulness in relation to terrorism, pointing out that terrorists usually don’t give six hours notice either.

Whether or not the Greenbrier Bunker would have retained some usefulness to the government is a moot point. Instead, the bunker is now a tourist attraction where the public can take tours, while another part is used as a secure data storage facility. It is not longer the “secret” home of Congress.

WHAT’S NEW?
Doubtless, our government is off making other plans and building other types of facilities for such emergency situations.

The Washington Post, in 2010, revealed that 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area since September 2001. An emergency home for Congress, perhaps?

The dynamics and technology of war have changed since the 1950s – in case you hadn’t noticed, LOL – and the need and strategy for top secret emergency housing and work facilities is quite different. I speculate that such facilities as would meet current needs, do exist. They are secret and that is possibly a necessity. I only hope the planners of these facilities have better foresight than yesteryear.

I did get a kick out of the title of Garrett M. Graff’s book "Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die."

That attitude and policy persists in our government. I wish I’d thought of that title before Mr. Graff did.
□

Sources:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/03/dustbin-of-history-project-greek-island/
https:/www.npr.org/2011/03/26/134379296/the-secret-bunker-Congress-never-used
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/greenbrier-bunker
https://frustratedpaulrevere.com/?p=8744
https://maps.roadtrippers.com/trips/16910557
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island
https://www.npr.org/2011/03/26/134379296/the-secret-bunker-Congress-never-used
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/03/dustbin-of-history-project-greek-island/
https://www.pgatour.com/news/2010/07/28/bunker-greenbrier.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/july/25/brier1.htm
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/23/Congress-has-new-shelter-case-attack/\
https://wvtourism.com/today-show-greenbrier-resort-bunker/
https://www.cleveland.com/pdextra/2009/03/ted_gups_disclosure_of_the_gre.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greenbrier
https://allthatsinteresting.com/greenbrier-bunker
https://www.golfdigest.com/story/recalling-the-bunker-at-the-gr
https://vandaleer.com/the-bunker-at-the-greenbrier/
httpsonebeardedgolfer.com20151115why-is-it-so-difficult-to-print-your-ghin-handicap-cardgreenbrier-bunker
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/90423904988454559/?lp=true
https://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/inside-top-secret-greenbrier-bunker-43730832
http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/greenbriar/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3kAcJruEOs
https://www.history.com/news/inside-the-governments-top-secret-doomsday-hideouts
Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die.By Garrett M. Graff

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Marrying For Love

8/23/2019

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LOVE AND MARRIAGE GO TOGETHER LIKE A HORSE AND CARRIAGE
Even our popular songs perpetuate the ideal vision of a happy love-marriage, so it’s easy to forget, in today’s world, that marrying for love is a relatively new concept … and maybe not such a good one at that.

What? Hold on. Let’s take a look at history.
Photo source: www.justwinecountry.com/

For most of the history of civilization marrying for love has not been the modus operandi. It is not that love didn’t exist, for surely it did. We have too many myths, legends, songs, and cultural traditions to confirm humans have felt love in all its various forms, including romantic love and sexual attraction, way way back in our evolution. But love was not the primary reason for marrying someone anywhere in the world before the late 1700s.

Although the Roman poet, Virgil (70 bce – 19 bce) wrote in his pastoral poem the Eclogues, “Amor vincit omnia, et nos cedamus amori. - Love conquers all things, so we too shall yield to love,” he also wrote about other things, including work, conquering all [although not in the same poem], and he never suggested it was the best reason for marriage.There have even been times and cultures where love was viewed as a disadvantage to a marriage.

Stephanie Coontz tells us in her 2005 book [Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage], that the ancient Greeks considered love a form of insanity. In India falling in love before marriage was considered disruptive and a danger to society. In China too much love between a husband and wife was treated as a threat to the extended family. She writes,
   “Only rarely in history has love been seen as the main reason for getting married. When someone did advocate
   such a strange belief, it was no laughing matter. Instead it was considered a serious threat to social order.” …
“Through most of human history, love was not at all the point of marriage. Marriage was about getting families
   together, which was why there were so many controls.” https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/489/the-radical-idea-of-marrying-for-love

Despite of Virgil’s profound insight into love, the ancient attitudes regarding marriage continued through the middle ages. Up until the late 1700s, the concept of marrying for love would have been received by most people in the world as outrageous as the idea of same-sex marriage was perceived in the 20th century. Until that time, marriage was necessary for survival, reproduction, and social acceptance.

The radical idea of marriage for love sprang up and began to take hold in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in part because the Industrial Revolution allowed people to move away from farming – reducing the need for large families to work the land – and in part by the Enlightenment thinkers of the time, who challenged the monarchs and embraced the issues of human rights. The growth of capitalism led to growth in wealth and in the middle class, leading to more freedom of choice and the elevating the status of women [a little but certainly not to equality -- that, in my opinion, is yet to come].

The Enlightenment’s rhetoric about the “right to personal happiness” may have proved to be sophistry. In the 21st century marriage and love are often depicted, together or apart, as being a state other than personal happiness.

Coontz quotes George Bernard Shaw’s portrayal of marriage as an institution that brings together two people “under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions. They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/489/the-radical-idea-of-marrying-for-love

Good luck with that!

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
In most cultures throughout history and throughout the world, marriages have been arranged, usually by parents but not always. In places where the arranged marriage tradition dates back to ancient times, the pact resulted in the merger of the two families.

Such a fusion carried with it broad ramifications relating to money and/or politics, which include power, influence, political authority, security, allies, social prestige, progeny, inheritance, and privilege. Choices were carefully
Cartoon by Glasbergen calculated to advantage both families.
Photo source:https://funnytimes.com/19980624

Nonetheless, in most societies, including those with arranged marriages, the relationship with the greatest importance was that of the birth family. A person’s loyalty and emotional connection was owed to blood ties rather than to marriage. An individual could always find another spouse, but could never replace a member of the birth family. That belief alone made the choice of marriage partner for a son or daughter even more important.

Most of us are aware of the idea of marriage for other purposes than love in relation to the upper class elite, aristocracy, and nobility, but it was also true among the middle and lower classes as well. Every family tried to marry their daughters into a family with more money and more power, because that not only provided for the daughter but increased the value of, and often provided for, her birth family in a variety of different ways.

MARRYING FOR MONEY
Nowadays, society tends to look down on the practice of marrying for money [which is equivalent to marrying for power], but that was one of the primary reasons for marriage until a few hundred years ago.

The Dowry
The dowry is the transfer of property or money from the bride’s family to the groom or to his family. Its purpose was to help the newly-wed couple establish a new household and also a form of protection for the bride against ill treatment by the husband or his family. Where this is the tradition, it is actually a conditional gift which should be restored to the wife and her family if the Cartoon by Mark Lynch - Photo source: husband abuses or divorces her. The husband can profit by it during the
The Daily Toon www.humortimes.com/ marriage, but the dowry would have to be returned in the case of mistreatment
or divorce. My research found conflicting opinions regarding who controlled the
money or property during the marriage. cartoon by: Chris Wildt Source: Pinterest▼

This tradition most common in cultures that are strongly patrilineal and that expect women to reside with or near their husband's family.
“I can’t offer you a dowry, but I an get you on my health plan.”
The Dower
A dower means a wife’s rights to her husband’s real property or wealth after his death. Her inheritance.

The Bride Price
The bride price [also called bride service or bride wealth] is a payment from the groom or his family to the bride’s parents. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the bride price was less an economic gesture but served to consolidate the friendship between the two families. Whatever property belonging to the bride at the time of marriage remained her property under her control. The tradition of dowry and the expectations varied from one society and century to another.
Cartoon by George Jartos
Source: Pinterest

IF IT WEREN’T FOR MY SPOUSE, WE’D BE THE PERFECT COUPLE
Most people who aspire to marriage hope for the perfect match … hope to be the perfect couple. Soulmates.

American writer Richard Bach writes, “A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are."

Psychologist and relationship expert Dr. Carmen Harra writes, “Your soulmate makes you feel entirely whole, healed and intact, like no piece is missing from the puzzle. A life partner, on the other hand, can be a great supporter and long-time companion, but is limited in his or her capacity to enrich your spirit. Most of us remain in life-partner relationships because we "settle," for a multitude of reasons."

Personally, I don’t believe the perfect couple exists or that there is only one person in the world who could be your soulmate. No relationship is perfect and a good marriage [or a perfect couple] is something that doesn’t “just happen.” Both parties have to work at it on an ongoing basis. I do accept the notion that in a love marriage, particularly with a soulmate, it may be easier to learn to live with, and love, the imperfections of your mate.

I agree with Barsha Nag Bhowmick, editor for Indiatimes.com, that “perfect couples” couples are really “imperfect couples” who have learned to enjoy their differences … regardless of whether it started out as a love marriage or an arranged marriage.
Cartoon by Glasbergen - Photo source:https://funnytimes.com/1998062

SHOPPING ON THE INTERNET
Surveys show that the number one place that singles meet in America is online. How is that so different from an arranged marriage? In the 21st century, even in an arranged marriage, the parties in question have to agree and accept the arrangement [according to what I read and have been told]. So, as I see it, the major difference occurs in the first part of the process: i.e. the screening of
“I said I’m looking for a date who potential mates and introducing the best matches.
is soft, sweet, and a little bit nutty.
They matched me with a loaf of banana bread.”

Instead of trolling for a possible catch in bars or other singles venues, or the dreaded blind-date, and using the dating process as the screening, which can be tedious, disappointing, and sometimes even dangerous, both approaches let someone else narrow down the field for you. With that accomplished, it is then up to the couples to decide whether or not they are interested. In the case of arranged marriages, it is either the parents or a matchmaker doing the vetting. It can go as far as hiring a private detective to find out what the potential spouses have been up to, which is more intense than dating services matches.

The online companies use the information you give them to screen and match. In those questionnaires, most people don't list their traffic tickets, outstanding warrants or arrests, mountains of debt, having had 6 spouses already, etc.

Of the two, I definitely prefer the online route. Services don’t vet nearly as well as an eagle-eyed mother who wants the best for her son or daughter, but in these times of rapid change and more open communication, I trust people to know more about who they are and what they prefer than their parents do. Although parents often see things about their children that those individuals deny or are blind to, parents can be just as blind and have their own baggage, prejudices, experiences, and beliefs to deal with.

A spokesperson for "Relationships On Your Terms" says the main difference between matches made on this platform and in the real world is that “people are up front about their expectations."
Cartoon by: unsigned - Photo Source:https://www.pinterest.com/pin/501095896031944042/?lp=true

Surveys indicate that meeting online could be the reason for the increase in interracial partnerships and more connections with people considerably outside our usual social circles.www.technologyreview.com/online-dating-changing-society

That being said, other surveys show that more than a third of marriages start online. Couples meeting online statistically marry sooner (knowing each other for less time) and new research suggests that couples who meet online are also more likely to divorce.

Still, meeting online is the 21st century update to arranged marriages.

NO MATTER HOW YOU MET, MARRIAGE IS A CRAP SHOOT!
The issue is one of honesty, and that is a major factor no matter how the couple meets.

“I just realized this is the position I use for shooting dice.”

Cartoon by Ray Delgado - Photo source: Pinterest

Sources:
https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/41374_1.pdf
https://www.professorshouse.com/arranged-marriage-facts/
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/489/the-radical-idea-of-marrying-for-love
https://www.indiatoday.in/lifestyle/relationship/story/indians-swear-by-arranged-marriages-155274-2013-03-04
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/21/world/arranged-marriage-christiane-amanpour-sex-love-around-world-delhi/index.html
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/the-history-of-marriage-why-marrying-for-love-is-a-newer-idea-than-the-printing-press/
https://humans.media/is-marrying-for-love-a-modern-concept
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/contemplating-divorce/201311/3-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-marry-love-alone
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/love-marriage-history_n_4774740
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/
https://psychcentral.com/lib/5-reasons-not-to-marry-the-one-you-love/
https://www.cosmopolitanme.com/content/19014-marrying-wedding-love-advice
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/life-n-style/are-arranged-marriages-better-than-marrying-for-love/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-science-love/201208/arranged-vs-love-based-marriages-in-the-us-how-different-are-they
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/culture/features/11621/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_marriage
https://jamigold.com/2015/02/is-love-conquers-all-realistic/
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/
https://hunterbaker.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/opening-arguments-love-doesnt-conquer-all/
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/culture/features/11621/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arranged_marriage_in_the_Indian_subcontinent
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring07/Zuffoletti/theprocess.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2016/02/15/is-online-dating-the-same-as-arranged-marriage-ravi-patel-thinks-so/
https://www.twoque.com/would-you-choose-love-or-money/
https://aminoapps.com/c/my-hero-academia/page/blog/the-perfect-couple-doesnt-exis/P655_NlCmukWQRelRYGgpJKjGW5NKWgLQ
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elements-of-a-soulmate_b_3595992
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/style/match-shaadi-league-farmersonly-dating-apps.html
“History: How Love Conquered Marriage” by Stephanie Coontz

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HOW TURKISH WOMEN DRESS: It’s All About The Right To Choose

8/9/2019

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In 2012, I had the opportunity to travel in Turkey. I love traveling in countries with cultures other than my own. I love the rich diversity, and I believe it is something we should be celebrating, not criticizing.

Turkey proved a wonderful adventure for many reasons. It’s a beautiful country, the people are friendly and polite, and I felt safe and comfortable. But for me, one of the most fascinating aspects of traveling there was learning about Islam. In particular, observing how the Turkish women dress. After I got back I wrote a blog on the subject.

Recent events inspired me to take a look at the old article, and I found some things had changed.

THE HAT LAW OF 1925

According to statistic on the Internet, 99% of the people in Turkey are Muslim. Although Turkey was secularized at the official level under the first Turkish president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (in office 1923-1938), religion remains a strong force among the Turkish people.

Among other sweeping reforms, the founding father Ataturk made sure there was a separation of church and state. He adopted regulations for a dress code to keep religious symbolism out of civil service. The code was primarily for men, probably because there were not many women who worked in civil service, and a more western style became the norm. The Hat Law of 1925 banished the fez and imposed lengthy sentences of imprisonment at hard labor for those who continued to wear it. Women, however, were granted the freedom to decide whether or not they wanted to cover their heads.

“It was more or less assumed that they [women] would eventually give up the headscarf as the new, secular Turkish identity took hold. Many did … By the 1970s, discouraging headscarves had taken on the force of law. The headscarf was banned in government offices, hospitals, universities, and schools. By the 1980s, these lengths of cloth had taken on hot political connotations.” news.nationalgeographic.com/2013 by Roff Smith, National Geographic, October 12, 2013

In 2013 this law was rescinded, with mixed reaction among the Turkish. Veiling is optional and women can make the choice to wear Islamic dress because modern fashion allows women to express their Muslin identity and Islamic beliefs in fashionable form.

According to Elizabeth Bucar [www.theatlantic.com/uslim-women-fashion] Muslim women, “spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to counter the stereotype that modest dress is ugly by using the skills of beauty work. Beauty work thus helps to remove the stigma from modest dress by making this style of clothing more attractive to other Muslim women.”

As far as I can see, Muslim fashion in general, not just head coverings, has taken on the aspect of making a political statement which is about having a choice. Many Muslim women seek new ways to express themselves while remaining true to their religious and cultural values.

Also, what constitutes “modest” depends on the society. Not all Muslims are Arab, and there are differences in what is considered “modest” dressing in India, Indonesia, Africa, and other locations where Muslims live. Finally, in countries like Jordan, all Christians living there have, for hundreds of years, dressed in tribal clothing just like their neighbors, and many still do.

Bottom line: Muslin Fashion does not have to be dull, boring, shapeless, and dark.

Photo source: atdaa.com/turkish-women-s-love-fashion ▼ ▼Photo source: https://www.mindu.gq/en/info/32807549120

ISLAMIC DRESS
Without getting into a discussion of something about which I know very little, I will quote from the following article on Discoverislam.com/ regarding why Muslim women dress the way they do.
"Muslim women dress in a way that is modest and dignified. The purpose of clothing is not only to protect oneself from the physical elements, but also to protect from immorality and pride. The Islamic concept of dress applies to both women and men. It sets expectations of moral and respectful interactions between the genders. As a result, both men and women are liberated from their baser instincts and can focus on higher pursuits.”
http://fashionlinks4us.blogspot.com/2010/08/islamic-dresses-4-women.html

BASIC DRESS STYLES: Not Your Grandmother’s Kind of Style
Another site identified the various kinds of garments Muslim women wear. This article states that “This dress code applies to women and adolescent girls, but not to children.”

Abaya: It is a flowing outer garment worn over all other clothing. The traditional Abaya is black and may be either a large square of fabric draped from the shoulders or head or a long caftan. It covers the whole body except the face, feet and hands. Today they are more stylish than a large square of black fabric.

Basic Style ▼ PhotoSource: www.owame.com/arab-vestidos-2019 ▼ PhotoSource:www.owame.com/arab-vestidos-2019 ▼

▲Blazers and suits, popular corporate dress
PhotoSource:www.outfittrends.com/turkish-tutorial/

◄PhotoSource:https://www.shiddat.com/blue-colored-turkish-abaya

▲PhotoSource: www.shoppinghungama.com/2019 ▲PhotoSource: www.turkishfashion.net/nihan-textile

Jilbab: This is a garment that may be worn like a dress, usually with trousers or long skirt underneath. It also covers the body except the hands, face and head. The neck and head are then covered by a scarf.

Basic Style My Photo on the street▼ PhotoSource: https://www.neva-style.com/▼ PhotoSource:▼ www.turkishfashion.net/nihan ▼

   ▲Photo Source: aohuijie.en.made-in-china.com/Islamic-Coat

Salwar Kameez: A garment originating from the Indian subcontinent, which translates as “trouser suit” and is comprised of a long skirt, trousers, and dupatta. These garments are usually very colorful and bright, and are sometimes embroidered. In looking through the on-line shopping for Turkish Salwar Kameez, much of this style seemed to be wedding and party wear. I didn’t observe any on the streets in 2012 or in photos taken later by others. There were a lot of women in pants however.
Basic style    PhotoSource:▼www.indiamart.com    Source of 3 Photos: http://www.indiamart.com/salwar

▲ PhotoSource:eastessence.com/salwar-kameez
BASIC HEAD COVERINGS
The photo depicts the basic type of head coverings worn by Muslim women. Don’t forget, every country and culture has their own styles and standards.

Photo source:www.spiegel.de/international/germanydebatesban

Dupatta: The Dupatta is a long rectangular scarf usually worn over the shoulders in front of the neck or covering the woman’s head.

Hijab: This is a head covering worn by many women of faith in Islam. They come in all colors and have wonderful prints.

This is what I observed in Istanbul and Izmir, the only cities I visited in 2012. At that time, I would guess fifty percent of the women dressed in western styles and without covering their heads. Our tour guides, who were Muslin, dressed like any other tour guides I’ve had in other parts of the world. The other half of the women wore more traditional Muslin clothing, and about fifty percent of those dressed in western-looking clothing with a hijab. From the photographs I've seen, I would guess things haven't changed much.

Although some wear black or white scarves, most of them were colorful and beautiful, usually made of silk, and are worn over and pinned to a coordinating skull cap to keep them in place.

Many of the young women were very stylishly dressed, although blue jeans abounded among the younger women.
The Jilbab seemed very popular. Women wore them over pants or long skirts, usually in tan, dark blue or black, and, of course, with a head covering. Some are very high fashion, But I didn’t see many of those.
A smaller number were seen in black Abayas (generally older women), and I only saw one woman in a full Burga with her eyes totally covered. She was dressed in black, not a pretty colored Burga in the photo above.

Nearly all the women carried black purses and had wonderful leather shoes. But you would also see sports shoes and sandals.
□
Sources:
https://turkeytravelplanner.com/details/WomenTravelers/women_wear.html
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131011-hijab-ban-turkey-islamic-headscarf-ataturk/
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/muslim-women-fashion-political-influence/550256/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/08/17/what-westerners-get-wrong-about-the-hijab/?utm_term=.ee54428178df
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-23/why-do-muslim-women-wear-a-burka-niqab-or-hijab/5761510
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/wait-i-thought-was-muslim-thing
https://www.middleeasteye.net/features/fashion-revolution-middle-east’
http://boingboing.net/2012/05/11/modernizing-modesty-the-hijab.html
http://www.hijabstyle.co.uk/
photos
https://www.slideshare.net/modestpath/fall-winter-2019-latest-abaya-jilbab-collection-by-modestpath
https://www.owame.com/products/arab-vestidos-2019-long-uae-abaya-dubai-kaftan-kimono-linen-maxi-muslim-shawl-bodycon-hijab-dress-women-turkish-islamic-clothing
https://www.owame.com/products/arab-vestidos-2019-long-uae-abaya-dubai-kaftan-kimono-linen-maxi-muslim-shawl-bodycon-hijab-dress-women-turkish-islamic-clothing
http://www.turkishfashion.net/nihan-textile-Collection-Spring-Summer-2017/11170
http://www.turkishfashion.net/nihan-textile-Collection-Spring-Summer-2016/10802
https://aohuijie.en.made-in-china.com/product/mCxQjwsOwoVN/China-Exclusive-Design-Ethnic-Embroidery-Style-Blue-Color-Long-Dress-Muslim-Abaya-Elegant-Islamic-Coat.html
https://atdaa.com/turkish-women-s-love-for-fashion-how-to-dress-in-istanbul
http://www.indiamart.com/turkish-salwar-kameez
: https://www.mindu.gq/en/info/32807549120
https://eastessence.com/products/white-hajj-umrah-shalwar-kameez-1?variant=22523712995376 ▲
https://www.outfittrends.com/14-latest-turkish-hijab-styles-simple-turkish-hijab-tutorial/

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ARE YOU READY FOR THE “SINGULARITY”?

8/2/2019

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WHAT IS THE SINGULARITY?
Nobody really knows, but we [human beings] need to be thinking about what our universal, biological, and technological history of accelerating change could mean for the future and larger purpose of humanity.

If you’re a science fiction or fantasy writer and/or reader, you’re no doubt familiar with the general idea of The Singularity, a future world where machines are as intelligent or more intelligent than humans, with various outcomes. If not, Wikipedia defines The Singularity as: “A hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.”

Don’t hold your breath. You don’t need to worry about it personally. It won’t happen until many or all of you reading this are long gone. But it will happen.

Since it’s not only a theory, but a highly controversial one, there are numerous definitions put forth by extremely brilliant people who study the phenomenal rate of technological change in the world and think about the future it could mean for the world. But let’s start simple.

● Singular
We all know what plain old singular means: One.

● Singularity
The word Singularity comes from a mathematical term [which I won’t get into] and is defined in the dictionary as:“Something that is singular such as a separate unit or something unusual or distinctive.” If there is just one of something, it is unique and the word can apply to anything: looks, behavior, state of being, whatever.

● The Singularity
Unless you’re deep into heavy-duty mathematics or physics, The Singularity actually means The Technological Singularity, which is essentially a theory about the accelerating rate of technological growth … but one that will affect everyone in the world.

WHAT THE EXTREMELY BRILLIANT PEOPLE SAY
The Singularity isn’t a new concept, although this name is. It is a phenomenon noted by many of the extremely brilliant people and a few not so brilliant.

● R. Thorton, editor of the Primitive Expounder laid the groundwork for the theory in 1847 [170 years ago] when writing about the recently-invented four function mechanical calculator.
“Such machines when brought to greater perfection, may think of a plan to remedy all their own
      defects and then grind out ideas beyond the ken of mortal mind!”

● Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English poet, satirist, and author, wrote the following at about the same point mid-19th century:
   “There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines
possessing little consciousness now. Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during
    the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing.”

● John von Neumann (1903 – 1957), Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, and computer scientist, was the first to put the idea forward, although he didn’t refer to The Singularity.
The point at which the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, gives the
   appearance of approaching some essential point in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know
    them, could not continue"

● I.J. Good (1916 – 2009), British mathematician and cryptologist, calls the hypothesis the Intelligence Explosion and predicts a point in time where a computer or machine or something else made by man
   “...running software-based artificial general intelligence enters a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles,
   with each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an intelligence explosion
   and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human intelligence.”

● Alan Turing (1912 – 1954), English mathematician, computer scientist philosopher and theoretical biologist, wrote that machines will eventually surpass human intelligence:
   “Once the machine thinking method has started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. At some stage
   therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control…”

● Vernor Steffen Vinge (1944 - present), American science fiction author and retired professor of mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University) popularized the theory in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity, in which he wrote:
   “[The singularity] would signal the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence would continue to upgrade
   itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate.”

● Ray Kurzweil (1948 – present), computer scientist and inventor, is possibly the best known proponent of the singularity. He brought the theory into mainstream thinking with a slightly different twist.
   “A future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life
   will be irreversibly transformed. Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that
   we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself.”

   “It's a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence that is going to create something bigger than
   itself. It's the cutting edge of evolution on our planet. One can make a strong case that it's actually the cutting edge
   of the evolution of intelligence in general, because there's no indication that it's occurred anywhere else.”

Kurzweil is more than a futurist who sits around and thinks. He is a computer scientist and inventor who has been on the forefront of pushing technology into the artificial intelligence era. Among his many accomplishments, he developed the technology behind the first flatbed scanner, he is a leading expert in speech recognition, and was the inventor of the first print-to-speech synthesizer. When his “speech-to-reading machine for the blind” was launched in 1976, it was credited by scientists as being the first device to successfully use artificial intelligence. He has many other credits in the fields of music and medicine … and a thirty-year track record in accurate predictions regarding technology.

● Stephen Hawking (1942 - 2018), recognized as one of the most brilliant minds of the century, was a British theoretical physicist whose theory of exploding black holes drew upon both relativity theory and quantum mechanics. His groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology and his books helped to make science accessible to everyone.
   “It's clearly possible for a something to acquire higher intelligence than its ancestors: we evolved to be smarter than
   our ape-like ancestors, and Einstein was smarter than his parents.”

Hawking, among other top scientists, spoke out in 2014 about the possible dangers of artificial intelligence (including AGI), which he reiterated at a technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2017. Speaking on the topic of Artificial General Intelligence, he stated:
   "Success in creating AI (AGI) would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last,
   unless we learn how to avoid the risks." He warned about a time in the future which this technology would be
   "Outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing
   weapons we cannot even understand. We cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and
   sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it."

● Kevin Kelly (1952 – present), Editor, publisher, writer, conservationist and co-founder of Wired Magazine, defines the singularity as:
   “The Singularity is the point at which “all the change in the last million years will be superseded by the change
   in the next five minutes.”

● John Smart (1960 - to present), technology foresight consultant, scholar, educator, and systems theorist in global processes of evolution, writes that in 20 to 140 years, depending on which expert you agree with:
   "The ever-increasing rate of technological change in our local environment is expected to undergo a permanent
   and irreversible developmental phase change, or technological “singularity,” becoming either: 1) fully autonomous
   in its self-development, 2) human-surpassing in its mental complexity, or 3) effectively instantaneous in
   self-improvement (from our perspective).

● Sean Arnott
“The technological singularity is when our creations surpass us in our understanding of them vs their understanding of us, rendering us obsolete in the process.”

● James Martin (1933 – 2013), world-renowned futurist, computer scientist, author, lecturer and, among many other things, the largest donor in the history of Oxford University – the Oxford Martin School, defines the singularity as follows:
   "The Singularity is a break in human evolution that will be caused by the staggering speed of
   technological evolution.”
Photo Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_(lin-log_scale).png
Graph Credit: Waldir [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH
Most of us today realize that life is constantly changing due to the development of new technology … even the millennials, although they not only expect change, they demand it. It’s not cool to have last year’s Smart phone.

Unfortunately, many people, even very smart ones, don’t understand the pace … that change is not just happening but accelerating. I learned very quickly when I retired that being out of the profession of urban planning for four or five years rendered my thirty-five years of experience almost useless. WORLD POPULATION GROWTH

As Ray Kurzweil writes, “The last 20 years are not a good guide to the next 20 years. We're doubling the paradigm shift rate, the rate of progress, every decade. This will actually match the amount of progress we made in the whole 20th century, because we've been accelerating up to this point.

The 20th century was like 25 years of change at today's rate of change. In the next 25 years we'll make four times the progress you saw in the 20th century. And we'll make 20,000 years of progress in the 21st century, which is almost a thousand times more technical change than we saw in the 20th century.”
https://www.edge.org/conversation/ray_kurzweil-the-singularity

TECHNOLOGICAL GROWTH
Graph Credit: Bank of America, Merrill Lunch Global Investment Strategy, University of Chicago
Photo Source: https://hackernoon.com/are-you-ready-for-an-artificially-intelligent-future-b9df618d53b4

ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE (AGI)
The one thing that all of this requires is the development of Artificial General Intelligence. So far, the accelerating rate of technological advances has been limited by the human brain, which hasn’t changed much in recent millennia. However, human ability to imagine and reflect on different scenarios, human obsession with linking minds, and the ever-increasing power of computers portend a future with Artificial General Intelligence and machines that are more intelligent than human beings.

In other words, intelligent machines which have the capacity to understand and learn any intellectual task a human can. Some might refer to it as a machine capable of experiencing consciousness. Today we have what is called applied or weak Artificial Intelligence: machines which can do one or two highly contained tasks much faster and more accurately than humans, but is not able to perform the full range of cognitive abilities.

Don’t relax yet. According to Wikipedia, there are at least forty organizations actively researching in AGI. China has recently announced its intent to become the AI/AGI leader in the world. Some of the applications already using AI in China are scary enough without AGI.

LET’S RE-EXAMINE TODAY FOR HINTS OF TOMORROW
Whichever turns out to be the case – superintelligent machines, superintelligent humans, or a combination of machine and human superintelligence – something will happen to human society as a result of rapid technological growth.

Some of those changes are already occurring, and many of us don’t even realize the vast impact of those changes have made and will continue to make, on human affairs.

"The point at which the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, gives the appearance of approaching some essential point in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." Think about this definition as you read the following. Have human affairs continued in their previous modes or are they irrevocably changed?

● Industry Utilizes Artificial Intelligence In Machines For Manufacturing
In 1961,“Unimate", an industrial robot invented by George Devol in the 1950s, became the first to work on a General Motors assembly line in New Jersey. Its responsibilities included transporting die castings from the assembly line and welding the parts on to cars – a task deemed dangerous for humans.”
https://learn.g2.com/history-of-artificial-intelligence

Unimate on the Tonight Show Son of Unimate building automobiles
Source of Photos: https://www.robotics.org/joseph-engelberger/unimate.cfm

Since then, the use of machines in production of goods has increased at a rapid rate. This revolution in manufacturing has had severe impacts on jobs. Although there has been job growth, new jobs created are in different and more technical fields.

● The Internet Connects Everyone In The World
The history of the internet is long, not in time but in complexity. A lot happened leading up to the first communication with the Interface Message Processor [computer] going live in 1969. The use of the web grew slowly in the academic and research arenas until April 30, 1993, when the European Organization for Nuclear Research [CERN] put the web into the public domain. https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/a20104417/www-public-domain/

▼Photo Source: pursuitist.com/older-people-internet Photo Source: www.youthkiawaaz.com/rural-india ▼

▲Photo Source: www.cnn.com/2019/africa ▲Photo Source: avondhupress.ie/Ireland

● The first cell phone went on sale 35 years ago [1984] for $4,000
No one took it seriously. It was a toy or novelty for rich people. https://mashable.com/2014/03/13/first-cellphone-on-sale/

The Smart devices that didn’t exist or were hugely expensive twenty to thirty years ago have become essential to our life style. We can’t seem to survive without them. Out of the world’s estimated 7 billion people, 6 billion have access to mobile phones. Only 4.5 billion have access to working toilets.
▼Photo source: newsfeed.time.com/cellphone vs toliets

▲Photo source: https://findersfree.com/tech-internet/cell-phones-marketed-public ▲Photo source:www.phillymag.com/cellphones

● Today’s Hand Held Smart Phones Have More Computing Power Than ENIAC, The Computer That Sent Man To The Moon And Which Filled An 1,800 Sq. Ft. Room
▼ENIAC Computer that landed Apollo 11 - Photo Credit: US Army
Photo source: www.thevintagenews.com/computer-ENIAC

● People Around The World Already Allow Electronic Devices To Run Their Households.
These devices turn on and off lights and appliances, provide monitoring away from home, remind us of things to do and close garage doors, Some refrigerators do our grocery lists. Those devices are capable of learning to adapt to voices and accents, to determine the things we like and dislike, etc. None of these devices involve Artificial General Intelligence. Not yet, anyway. But consider what is happening in China.

By the way, Alexa can record what you are saying and has mistakenly misinterpreted conversation as commands.

Amazon Echo Image Credit: City of West Hollywood Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator
Photo source: beverlypress.com/west-hollywood

● China Is Positioning Itself To Be The World Leader In Artificial Intelligence And Artificial General Intelligence
“China is reversing the commonly held vision of technology as a great democratizer, bringing people more freedom and connecting them to the world. In China, it has brought control.” One of their current efforts is with face-recognition technology. Paul Mozur: 07-08-2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/china-surveillance-technology.html

In some cities, Chinese Police are using face-recognition eye glasses to identify perpetrators of traffic violations and posting their pictures publicly. Fortunately, the glasses limited capability and only work well if the target doesn’t move for a few seconds. But, no doubt, Chinese scientists will figure out how to fix that, and China wants to be the world leader in Artificial General Intelligence.

Chinese Police wearing Face-recognition glasses/ Smart Powered AI glasses
Photo credit: Reuters - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/china-surveillance-technology.html

● Paintings By Robot Artist Ai-Di Brought In Over $1 Million At Her First Art Show
Ai-Di [named after the mathematician and computer pioneer Ada Lovelace] is the first realistic Artificial Intelligence humanoid robot artist. Created by British inventor and gallery owner Adian Meller, in collaboration with robotics company Engineered Arts, Ai-Da can draw from sight thanks to cameras in her eyeballs and AI algorithms created by scientists at the University of Oxford that help produce co-ordinates for her arm to create art. She uses a pencil or pen for sketches, but the plan is for Ai-Da to paint and create pottery.

Image Credits: Nicky Johnston ONE OF HER PAINTINGS ▲ Photo source: www.asiaone.com/china-robot-news-anchor ▲
Sources of Photos: news.artnet.com/robot-artist-ai-da

Another AI Humanoid Robot named Xin Xiaomeng served a TV anchorwoman on China’s Xinhua state news agency in March 2019, delivering a one minute news story with a presentation that mimicked human facial expressions and mannerisms. https://www.asiaone.com/china/chinas-xinhua-presents-news-using-robot-news-anchor

● Medical Miracles Include Merging Machines with Man
Sounds incredible, doesn’t it. I envision draining one’s mind and consciousness into a mechanical brain or robot, sort of like siphoning gasoline out of a car. Maybe that’s what certain proponents of the singularity mean, but for now human and mechanical merging is a little less science-fiction-like.

Artificial Limbs ▲ Artificial Cornea implant for eye▲ Knee replacement hardware▲ PhotoSour:en.wikipedia.org/Intraocular_lens ▲
Photo Source: Wikipedia Photo source: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/cornea Photo Source: orthoinfo.aaos.org/knee-replacement

Still, it's amazing when you think about how many artificial parts can be implanted in human being. In the sense of replacing human parts with artificial ones, we’ve been merging artificial parts into humans for a while. The next big step is mind-controlled artificial limbs, which is the experiment om the photo to the left.

It may take a long time, but medicine is moving in the predicted direction.

Learning to mind-control an artificial hand
Photo source: uchicagomedicine.orgneurosciencesbrain-controlledlimbs

CONCLUSION
If or when this superintelligence comes into being, through enhancement of human intelligence or through artificial general intelligence, the event will change, for better or worse, the world we live in and life as we know it today. I also believe that although significant changings will be happening faster than ever, most human beings won't even be aware of it at the time.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
https://www.edge.org/conversation/ray_kurzweil-the-singularity
https://www.kurzweilai.net/
https://www.kurzweilai.net/digest-art-intelligence-meet-ai-da-the-humanoid-robot
https://futurism.com/singularity-explain-it-to-me-like-im-5-years-old
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/06/10/how-far-are-we-from-achieving-artificial-general-intelligence/#2ad740a36dc4
https://www.edge.org/conversation/ray_kurzweil-the-intelligent-universe
https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/definition/Singularity-the
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/science/artificial-intelligence-when-is-the-singularity.html
www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/science/artificial-intelligence
https://www.netopia.eu/the-singularity-is-delayed/
https://www.kurzweilai.net/digest-art-intelligence-meet-ai-da-the-humanoid-robot
https://futurism.com/singularity-explain-it-to-me-like-im-5-years-old
https://theorion.com/57796/opinion/artificial-intelligence-might-be-on-its-way
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/definition/Singularity-the
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/singularity
https://www.singularityweblog.com/17-definitions-of-the-technological-singularity/
https://www.universetoday.com/84147/singularity/
http://www.singularitysymposium.com/about-us.html
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/singularity
https://reason.com/2013/03/27/college-of-the-future/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/06/10/how-far-are-we-from-achieving-artificial-general-intelligence/#2ad740a36dc4
http://agi-conf.org/2019/
https://singularityhub.com/2019/06/02/less-like-us-an-alternate-theory-of-artificial-general-intelligence/
https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/the-possibility-and-risks-of-artificial-general-intelligence/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/china-surveillance-technology.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-ai-chinas-greatest-natural-resource-may-be-its-data-2019-07-14/
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a25655/nasa-computer-iphone-comparison/
https://andrewchen.co/photos-of-the-women-who-programmed-the-eniac-wrote-the-code-for-apollo-11-and-designed-the-mac/
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/01/04/singularity-skepticism-2-why-self-improvement-isnt-enough/
https://www.cio.com/article/3309058/5-ways-industrial-ai-is-revolutionizing-manufacturing.html
https://seekingalpha.com/article/453871-the-promise-of-accelerating-growth-in-technology
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/business/amazon-alexa-conversation-shared-echo.html
https://www.wired.com/2010/07/human-trials-ahead-for-darpas-mind-controlled-artificial-arm/
https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/neurosciences-articles/2018/october/neuroscience-researchers-receive-grant-to-develop-brain-controlled-prosthetic-limbs
https://singularityhub.com/2016/03/22/technology-feels-like-its-accelerating-because-it-actually-is/
https://www.famousinventors.org/ray-kurzweil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/a20104417/www-public-domain/
https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/a20104417/www-public-domain/
https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/artificial-intelligence-transforms-manufacturing
https://learn.g2.com/history-of-artificial-intelligence
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/25/more-people-have-cell-phones-than-toilets-u-n-study-shows/
https://www.phillymag.com/sponsor-content/kids-cellphones-young-young/
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/03/27/the-computer-which-landed-apollo-11-on-the-moon-was-about-as-powerful-as-a-contemporary-pocket-calculator/
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/10/03/business/tech/new-entrants-flock-tokyos-cutting-edge-technology-trade-show/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-robot-artist/ai-da-the-humanoid-robot-artist-gears-up-for-first-solo-exhibition-idUSKCN1T6215
https://news.artnet.com/opinion/artificial-intelligence-robot-artist-ai-da-1566580
https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/singularity
https://www.biography.com/scientist/stephen-hawking

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CREEPY PLACES: Poveglia Island

7/26/2019

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WHY PEOPLE LIKE CREEPY PLACES AS SETTINGS FOR NOVELS?
Sometimes a setting can inspire a novel, particularly in the suspense, mystery, or paranormal genres. For any of these, creepy can set the stage for the action and story line and can crank up the reader’s emotions.

Granted, creepy places may not be appropriate for a romance novel, unless it involves saving the hero or heroine from danger. I like a heroine whose mental strength and ingenuity enables her either save herself, the hero, or both. Of
Images by: Caters New Agency course, we don’t want to set up out hero as a wimp, but that's another discussion.
Photo source:www.mirror.co.uk/mental-asylum

Unlike most settings people are familiar with, an unusual creepy venue – particularly a dangerous one or one associated with death – has a greater impact on the reader. Depending on the type of book you are writing, perhaps that’s not what you want.

But if you do want that sort of setting, Poveglia Island, Italy, is a background venue to look into. Reading about it brought to my mind, several stories which could take place there. Already, it has been the setting of many novels and movies, but Americans seem to know little about the location, and it’s still a fresh setting.

Mystical, creepy, or horror stories – whatever you want to call them – take advantage of our inner fears, usually ones left over from childhood. Today, children’s cartoons, books. and movies prey on the little kid inside who is afraid of the bogeyman under his bed. Under the bed, means it is right there within reach.

It’s all about the experience, the rush of adrenalin, in an unrisky, unthreatening reality. This kind of “scare” allows the reader to feel all the emotions of fear, without actually being in any danger.

PROVEGLIA ISLAND
Poveglia Island is one of 166 islets in the Venetian Lagoon, located off the eastern coast of Northern Italy. Although the entire island is less than 19 acres in size, a canal separates the inland into two parts. You can see on the map, this bit of land resides between the City of Venice and the Lido [today a tourist area with a wonderful beach].

But you wouldn’t want to go to Poveglia on vacation.

In fact, you could not go there. Although uninhabited, the island is closed -- off limits to tourists and Italians alike. There is a process for gaining permission to visit, which is the way photographers have obtained access, but it’s a long and paperwork-laden endeavor. It is possible to go around the island by boat and see the exterior, and every now and then adventure-seekers have managed to land.

The island is known for its macabre past and, supposedly, locals call it an “island of ghosts” and believe it is haunted by unhealthy spirits. Poveglia's a dark reputation evolved from a history of death and drama. Venetians tend to be superstitious about the island and call it as a purgatory for evil. One local saying goes: "When an evil man dies, he wakes up in Poveglia" Location map: The Islands of Poveglia and others
Photo source: www.dailymail.co.uk/travel
Let’s find out why.

THE HAUNTED ISLAND OF GHOSTS
Isola Poveglia is believed to have been inhabited even before a group of pre-Italians called Euganei, came there as early as 2,000 BCE. The location was first mentioned in print in the early fifth century [421 AD] as a safe location during invasions by Alaric the Goth and Attila the Hun during the decline of the Roman Empire. The islands in the Venetian Lagoon are numerous and easy to defend, so the invaders’ military forces left them alone.

Photo source: www.businessinsider.com/haunted-island

It doesn't look very haunted. It looks like a fairly well kept property in the photo.

One source indicates it was as far back as the 6th century, the Romans sent victims of the Justinian plague to Poveglia to die in isolation.

Despite the established fact that hygiene was very important to the Romans, and it is very possible the Romans did exile diseased people into quarantine, I didn’t find any corroboration for the Romans being the first to quarantine diseased people on Poveglia. Most historians prescribe to the belief that the Venetians, not the Romans, developed the concept of facilities designed for the quarantine of ill and potentially ill people. Lazzaretto Vecchio, a small island in the lagoon, was home to the first of these institutions, but Poveglia is the best known.

Back to the Haunted Island. In the 9th century the Doge of Venice [the provincial governor] was killed, and an estimated two hundred of his slaves fled to Poveglia and settled there. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the island population began to grow until the location became important enough to be governed by the equivalent of a chief magistrate of a city state -- In other words, a mayor or local administrator -- under the Doge. Up to that point, it was a normal Venetian city.

When war with Genoa broke out in 1379, the residents of the island were moved to a different islet so the Doge could build a fort at this a strategic location in the lagoon and establish a military outpost.

THE BLACK PLAGUE
At about the same time in history, the crest of the Bubonic Plague arrived in Europe, one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. The disease, which takes on several forms of plague, resulted in the deaths of an estimated one to two million people, as much as 60 percent of the European population. Traveling with traders, the illness moved from Asia, primarily along the Silk Road, and peaked in Europe from 1347 to 1351. (See note at end)
The octagon served as a fort when a naval post Photo Source: factinteres.

With no cure for the highly contagious Black Plague, bacterial Yersinia pestis, the dead body count rose quickly. In an attempt to isolate the ill, Poveglia became a place to quarantine them and dispose of dead bodies. Thousands were dumped into Plague Pits and burned. Speculation leads historians to believe many people who didn’t have the deadly disease were shipped off to the island of rotting corpses just in case
“The sick lay three or four in a bed … Workers collected the dead and threw them in the graves all day without
a break. Often the dying ones and the ones too sick to move or talk were taken for dead and thrown on the
piled corpses.” __ Rocco Benedetti, 16th-century Venetian chronicler

Eventually, the wave of black death diminished. There were periods of time when the island was uninhabited, probably between several widespread bouts of pestilence which peaked again in the 1570s and 1630s. Each time, Poveglia and other islands served as quarantines and mass burial grounds. Dead and almost dead bodies were shipped there in barges. Speculation claims that around 160,000 bodies were disposed on this island alone since 1379.

In 1777, the Magistrate of Health took control of the island and turned it into a checkpoint. Any boat or ship heading into Venice needed to pass inspection. In the 1790s, two ships failed and again the island became a temporary quarantine colony. The hospital was closed in 1800, but in 1805, under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, it became a permanent quarantine facility. Some resources contend that Napoleon for storing weapons there. The location was discovered, and many small battles took place as the island claimed even more lives.

Today, rumor has it that human bones still wash up on the beaches from time to time, and fifty percent of the soil is made up of human remains. The remains of thousands of bubonic plague victims have been discovered by archaeologists, and they believe as many as 160,000 people died on the island over the centuries between the 1379 and now … but not all of them died from the plague.

PhotoSource:www.ranker.com/list/creepy-facts-poveglia Photo posted by: Byran White (Pinterest)    Photosource:www.thegypsythread.org/poveglia
   Photo source: ksscensorthis.com/haunted-island-of-poveglia

THE MAD DOCTOR
By 1922, the location had been converted to a mental hospital where at least one doctor is known to have experimented with lobotomies on patients, looking for a cure for insanity. He is believed to have used crude tools like hand drills, chisels, and hammers. It is also rumored he tortured patients in the bell tower.

TheGypsyThread.org says that “Believers of the story say that after many years of performing these unspeakable acts of human depravity, the doctor also began to see the ghosts his patients had so long reported. It is also said that those spirits led him to the top of the bell tower where he jumped or was thrown by a supernatural force to the ground below. Yet, the fall did not kill him. Instead, he remained alive but immobile and in immense pain until a sickly mist poured forth from the land and slowly choked the life from his injured body.” www.thegypsythread.org/poveglia

THE FINAL DAYS
In the mid-twentieth century, the hospital was converted to homes for the elderly, but that was closed somewhere between 1968 and 1975. Convalescent homes for seniors are unpopular enough even when they are nice and new. Imagine how you would feel if your kids sent you off to live in a converted mental hospital surrounded by burial pits from the Black Plague?

The next endeavor was to use the island for agriculture, but apparently that didn’t succeed either.

Because of the island’s reputation, it is hard to tell if the bits of recent urban lore are true, exaggerated, or speculative. Here are a few tales of the haunted island.

   “In recent years, Italian construction crews attempted to restore the former hospital building, but abruptly stopped
   without explanation, leaving locals to speculate that they were driven away by the island’s dark forces.”
   https://ksscensorthis.com/2250/uncategorized/the-haunted-island-of-poveglia-warning-this-is-scary-stuff/

   “In 2016, five people from Colorado were rescued by Italian firefighters after they decided to spend the night on
   the famous haunted island of Poveglia, the location of the upcoming movie The Plague Doctor. They reached the
   island through a water taxi and decided to stay for the night, but as soon the darkness took over a presence
   started to haunt them, making them scream for help. A sailboat in the area overheard them and called the Italian
   authorities that came to their rescue.” https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/poveglia-plague-island

   “The Italian government has tried several times to generate interest in the island. A family recently sought to buy
      the island and build a holiday home on it but they left the first night there and refused to comment on what
      happened. The only fact that we do know is that their daughters face was ripped open and required fourteen
stitches.” https://ksscensorthis.com/2250/uncategorized/the-haunted-island-of-poveglia-warning-this-is-scary-stuff/

In May of 2014 businessman and president of basketball team Reyer Venezia Mestre, Luigi Brugnaro, acquired at auction a 99 year leasehold for the island, outbidding a Venetian conservation group which immediately petitioned the government to overturn the lease. By June of the same year, the government had annulled the sale as a result of public and governmental intervention, indicating it would be a “waste of public resources” to sell it for that small amount in the face of Italy’s financial crises.

In 2019, the conservation organization, Poveglia Per Tutti, is alive and well, and still fighting to turn the island into a public resource. Architect Lorenzo Pesola, one of the spokesmen for the organization, says
   “…there’s little basis to the lurid supernatural tales that have trivialized much of the reporting of the Poveglia
   auction in the foreign media – a handful of plague victims lie here … not the ‘hundreds of thousands’ of popular
   myth; and the mad doctor who supposedly carried out experiments on elderly patients is a fiction.”
   https://www.privateislandnews.com/italy-worlds-most-haunted-island-sold-at-auction-questions-over-future-remain/

However, the fate of the island is still undetermined.

WHAT IS STILL THERE
The surviving buildings on the island consist of a shelter for boats, a church, a hospital, an asylum, a bell-tower and housing and administrative buildings for the staff. The bell-tower is the most visible structure on the island, and dates back to the 12th century. It belonged to the church of San Vitale, which was demolished in 1806. At one point the tower was re-used as a lighthouse.

Image by: Chris 73/CC By-AS - Photo source: Photo Source: www.atlasobscura.com/poveglia Image by: Angelo Meneghini
https://www.historicmysteries.com/poveglia-island-venice-italy/ Photo Source: www.atlasobscura.com/poveglia

MY QUESTION IS WHY?
For a locale supposedly forbidden to everyone, there are a lot of photographs available. Just sayin’.

When looking into the topic of scary places, abandoned mental hospitals tend to be at the top of this list. Perhaps that’s because most people have no experience with them or have a bad experience. At minimum, they’ve seen a movie or TV program which caste such hospitals in a less-than-appealing light. We associate them with evil and sinister happenings. No doubt, in the past some pretty awful things happened in them.

Some of these abandoned hospitals [and old prisons] have such reputations they’ve become tourist attractions. In those cases, I understand why the locations have been left in such derelict condition … maybe even staged to give the tourists some bang for their buck. The following are examples of other locations.

Images by: Caters New Agency Images by: Freaktography/Flickr Photo credit: True British Metal
Photo source:www.mirror.co.uk/mental-asylum Photo source: allthatsinteresting.com/Willard Source: www.historicmysteries.com/poveglia

Elsewhere in the lagoon, the remains of the Insane Asylum on San Servolo Island are preserved as a museum dedicated to the history of Venice’s plague islands and asylums. However, in the case of Proveglia Island, which is off limits to everyone, why would the powers-that-be leave the facility full of obsolete, decayed equipment and furniture inside?

That, more than anything, is the creepy part. The photographs above show how the Poveglia facilities looks in the 21st century.

Note: In this blog I use the terms Black Death, Bubonic Plague (Yersinia pestis), and Black Plague interchangeably. It had been the theory since the 19th century that they are the same, but since the 1980s scientists have questioned this. If I turn out to be wrong, I apologize, but either way, it has no bearing on the article.

Sources:
https://factinteres.ru/povelya-odno-iz-samyh-zhutkih-mest-na-planete
https://www.livescience.com/29498-plague-helped-destroy-roman-empire.html https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Poveglia-Island-off-limits
https://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2014/01/there-is-island-near-venice-called.html
https://www.thegypsythread.org/poveglia-island-worlds-evil-places/
https://ksscensorthis.com/2250/uncategorized/the-haunted-island-of-poveglia-warning-this-is-scary-stuff/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poveglia
https://www.historicmysteries.com/poveglia-island-venice-italy/
https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-facts-about-poveglia-the-italian-black-plague-island/cheryl-adams-richkoff
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/poveglia-plague-island
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/poveglia-island-like-hell
https://www.interrail.eu/en/trip-ideas/recommended-routes/classic-routes/dark-tourism-places-europe
https://www.privateislandnews.com/italy-worlds-most-haunted-island-sold-at-auction-questions-over-future-remain/
https://planetsave.com/2013/11/11/poveglia-island-asylum-ghosts-plague-history/
http://www.ancientpages.com/2016/01/21/mystery-of-the-bloody-island-poveglia-a-place-of-hell-in-ancient-and-modern-times/
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/black-death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
https://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/venice-poveglia/index.html
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/03/the-evil-island-of-italy/
https://www.scientificmystery.com/no-one-can-dare-to-visit-poveglia-island-it-is-really-haunted/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivI2kDu19Nc
Black Death / Bubonic Plague
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17223184-000-did-bubonic-plague-really-cause-the-black-death/ (2001)
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-04/ps-mbd041102.php (2002)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/020415073417.htm (2002)
https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/viruses101/could_the_black_death_actually (2013/Ebola-like virus)

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THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

7/19/2019

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A NATURAL WONDER OF THE WORLD
The Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Located off the coast of Queensland, Australia, the reef is the largest living thing in the world. That's right. It's alive. It is the only living thing visible from space.

Image Credit: NASA - Photo Source: Image Credit: NASA/Gsfc/Larc/Jpl, Misr Team    Image Credit: NASA - Photo source:
www.pinterest.de/539235755362862894/ Photo Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef www.impactlab.net/2009/Great Barrier Reef

This 1,800 mile long ecosystem was deemed a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981. It encompasses hundreds of tropical islands and three thousand reef systems and coral cays. It houses a multitude of species: 6oo types of soft and hard corals, 100 species of jelly fish, colorful fish, 20 types of reptiles, mollusks, crocodiles, turtles, 30 species of whales and dolphins, and sharks. Sizes range from microscopic to larger than you want to meet face to face, and the innumerable vivid colors boggle the mind.

Fish ▼ PhotoSource: Emperor angelfish ▼ PhotoSource: Irukandji ▼PhotoSource: ChristmasTreeWorm ▼ PhotoSource:
www.changesinlongitude.com/ www.australiantraveller.com/GBF www.thetimes.co.uk/killer-jellyfish    www.GBR.com.au/worms

Lion Fish ▲ PhotoSource:    Shark ▲ PhotoSource:    Green Sea Turtle ▲ ImageCredit:    Dugong ▲ PhotoSource:
news.co.cr/tournament/lion-fish    guardian.ng/shark-great-barrier-reef Photo by Poseidon Outer Reef Cruises    www.telegraph.co.uk/dugongs
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
   Sapsucking Sea Slug▼PhotoSource:    CrownOfThorns Starfish▼Image: SpottedEagleRay▼PhotoSource:
New species▼PhotoSource:    www.pinterest.com/30047522494940341    John Hanson/Wikimedia Commons    www.tripadvisor.com/barrierreef
PhotoSource: www.seychellesnewsagency.com/

The Great Barrier Reef is also unique as it extends over 14 degrees of latitude, from shallow estuarine areas to deep oceanic waters. The average depth is 35 meters in waters close to shore, but some areas extend down to 2,000 meters.

In 1975 The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act was passed, which extends into the airspace above to the earth beneath the seabed. In 1981 it was deemed a UNESCO heritage site.

HOW IS A CORAL REEF MADE?
Corals are marine invertebrates in the class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria [You really needed to know that, right? Sorry.] They live in compact colonies of many genetically identical individual polyps [nodules]. The polyps are small, only a few millimeters in diameter and a few centimeters in length. They are sac-like animals with a set to tentacles around a central mouth opening.
▼https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coral_polyp_en.svg

The group that make up the colony includes reef builders that secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton. This exoskeleton [the bony structure is outside the animal, rather than on the inside, like mammals] is excreted near the base of the polyp. It requires many generations for the colony to create a large exoskeleton which we call a coral reef.

Individual heads grow by asexual reproduction of polyps, but corals also breed sexually by spawning. Polyps of the same species release a specialized reproduction cell [male or female] with half the number of chromosomes. The cells unite to produce a cell which may develop into coral. About 75% of all corals reproduce sexually.

Corals catch fish and plankton using the stinging cells in their tentacles which carry venom, but the largest part of their diet and nutrition is obtained through photosynthetic cells [Symbiodinium]. These corals live in clear, shallow water, at about 200 feet.

Typically, each polyp harbors one species of algae. Via photosynthesis, these provide energy for the coral, and aid in calcification. As much as 30% of the tissue of a polyp may be algal material. Other corals that don't have a symbiotic relationship can live in deeper and colder water, surviving as deep as 9,800 feet, although the Great Barrier Reef does not have that depth.

CORAL IN A WELCOMING ENVIRONMENT
Photos of coral living in the Great Barrier Reef. Coral are incredible. They come in many types and colors. asiNo wonder the Great Barrier Reef and others have become such tourist attractions, attracting divers from all parts of the world.
Although most coral polyps have transparent [clear] bodies and their exoskeletons are white, their vibrant colors are derived from the zooxanthellae [algae] living inside their tissues. There are several million of these organisims producing pigments in one square inch of coral, and these pigments are seen through the clear body of the polyp. The zooxanthellae use photosynthesis to survive. The coral reef itself provides, in addition to safety, the carbon dioxide needed by the organisms for photosynthesis.

Montastrea cavemosa Brain Coral Soft Coral Goniopora Coral–PhotoSource: Mushroom Coral
https://kids.kiddle.co/Coral marinebio.org/coral-reefs/

THE ENDANGERED GREAT BARRIER REEF
There are a number of factors that threaten the continuation of a healthy Great Barrier Reef. Not only tourism, although essentially under control now, but also runoff from the mainland, climate changes, mass coral bleaching, and cyclical population outbreaks of the Crown-of-Thorns starfish. The combination has resulted in a loss of more than half the coral of the reef between 1985 and 2012.

● Tourism
Because The Great Barrier Reef is so beautiful and offers so many activity options, over two million visitors come to see the reef every year. As tourism grows, the concern over protecting the reef grows. The reef suffers from tourists walking on the reef, anchors dragged and dropped on the reef, pollution from boats and humans and, of course, the human propensity for breaking off parts of the reef to take home as a souvenirs.
PhotoSource: www.thetourspecialists.com.au/great-barrier-reef Photo Source: lostinaustralia.org/gallery

Nonetheless, a large part of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which controls on much of the reef. Because the activities are spread over a huge area, and are not concentrated, tourism is not the biggest threat so far. Local operators understand the potential problems and are sensitive to protecting the reef, since it is their livelihood.

A great deal of attention goes to managing the visitors and local activities in a way that doesn't threaten the long-term health of the reefs and the ecosystem. After all, tourism is an important economic activity for the region, generating over 3 billion Australian dollars per year.

● Coral Bleaching
Another major threat to the reef is coral bleaching. When corals are stressed from such things as heat, carbon pollution, or severe cold, they expel the zooxanthellae, their major source of food, leaving a transparent skeleton. Some coral are able to feed themselves, but most starve without the algae.
PhotoSource: www.pbs.org/newshour/global-warming
▼Normal ▼Bleached

The bleached coral is not necessarily dead, and if the abnormal conditions cease and stability is maintained, the coral may regain the algae and eventually recover, but it takes a long time. For example, the ocean temperature rising one degree Celsius for a period of four week will trigger coral bleaching. If the temperature remains for over eight weeks, the coral begins to die and will not recover.
PhotoSource: https://www.marineconservation.org.au/coral-bleaching/ ▼

ccording to biologist Dave Vaughn of the Elizabeth Moore International Center for Coral Reef Research and Restoration in Florida, according to studies, “even the fastest growing corals need 10 to 15 years to fully recover.” https://www.livescience.com/64647-coral-bleaching.html
Then it will look like the photo to the right.

Unfortunately, the biggest threats to coral are global warming and carbon pollution in the air caused by the mining and use of coal. Recent reports indicate that coral bleaching is more widespread than believed previously. This is a serious situation, since at least 25% of all marine life depends on coral reefs at one point or another.
Crown Of Thorns Starfish ▼ ImageCredit: . John Hanson/Wikimedia Commons
PhotoSource: www.seychellesnewsagency.com/crown-of-thorns+starfish

● Crown-of-Thorns Starfish Infestations
Coral has natural enemies as well as its man-made adversaries. Crown-of-thorns starfish are marine invertebrates that feed on coral. Although they are natural inhabitants of the reef, certain conditions cause the population to expand, and they can wipe out the hard coral communities. Healthy reefs can recover in ten to twenty years, but those reefs already under stress take much longer.
Cyclone damage to GBR ▼ April 2014 - Image: Catlin Seaview Survey
PhotoSource: https://mashable.com/2014/06/19/great-barrier-reef-cyclone/

● Tropical Cyclones
The coral reef’s natural resistance to the effects of weather events has not been able to adapt to the shifting weather patterns resulting from climate change. Harmful weather events [tropical cyclones, wind, and rain] are more intense and more frequent in the last twenty to thirty years and they affect different locations. Such storms do extensive physical damage to the reefs [as seen in the photo] and are considered a major threat.

Cyclones are low-pressure systems that derive their energy from warm tropical oceans — they form when sea-surface temperature is above 26.5°C.

PUT THIS ON YOUR BUCKET LIST TO VISIT

Sources:
http://www.oceanwideimages.com/Large-Image.asp?pID=14154&cID=635&rp=search%252Easp%253Fs%253DFish%2BGreat%2BBarrier%2BRee
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/8753630/Mass-starvation-of-dugongs-and-turtles-on-Great-Barrier-Reef.html
https://earthnworld.com/climate-change-turning-green-sea-turtles-female-great-barrier-reef/
https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/australia-s-great-barrier-reef-under-threat
http://www.greatbarrierreef.org/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/world/australia/newsletter-issue5-great-barrier-reef.html?_r=0
https://www.barrierreef.org/latest/news/coral-bleaching-update
http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/about-the-reef/facts-about-the-great-barrier-reef
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall11/clark_j/whatshappening.html
http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/03/amazing-close-up-video-of-great-barrier-reef-animals/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/photogalleries/marine-new-species-photos/photo6.html
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html
https://www.marineconservation.org.au/coral-bleaching/
https://www.livescience.com/64647-coral-bleaching.html
https://metro.co.uk/2017/11/07/mysterious-hole-found-in-great-barrier-reef-leads-to-incredible-discovery-7059490/
https://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/killer-starfish-eating-up-great-barrier-reef.html
https://coral.org/coral-reefs-101/coral-reef-ecology/coral-polyps/
https://sciencing.com/coral-reefs-come-many-colors-5434662.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-global-warming-is-permanently-reshaping-the-great-barrier-reef
https://www.marineconservation.org.au/coral-bleaching/
https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/research/biodiversity-ecology/threats/cots.html
http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/our-work/threats-to-the-reef/climate-change/storms-and-cyclones

Photo Sources only:
https://www.changesinlongitude.com/free-things-to-do-in-cairns-australia/
https://www.thetourspecialists.com.au/travel-tips/great-barrier-reef/travel-tips-great-barrier-reef-faqs.313.html
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/killer-irukandji-jellyfish-threaten-tourists-at-great-barrier-reef-s0q6ws8x5
https://guardian.ng/news/boy-bitten-by-shark-in-australias-great-barrier-reef/
https://tropicdays.com.au/great-barrier-reef-trip-coral-types/
https://www.tripadvisor.com/VacationRentalReview-g297910-d8831222-Great_Barrier_Reef_Taiwan_Snorkel_tour_at_reef-Taichung.html
https://news.co.cr/fishing-tournament-costa-ricas-south-caribbean-capture-lionfish/66233/lion-fish-2/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/8753630/Mass-starvation-of-dugongs-and-turtles-on-Great-Barrier-Reef.html
https://www.australia.com/en/places/cairns-and-surrounds/guide-to-the-great-barrier-reef.html
https://coral.org/coral-reefs-101/coral-reef-ecology/coral-polyps/
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/secret-coral-reefs-tiny-fish-excel-dying/590092/
http://www.impactlab.net/2009/07/25/legramazing-satellite-images-of-earths-natural-wonders-from-space/

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THE POWER OF THE FIRST LINE

7/12/2019

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Matthew 19:30 – “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

THE FIRST WILL BE LAST
The first line of your book may be the last you write to finalize your novel. The first line you write will be the place holder until something better comes to mind, but at the very end, after the book is finished, you’ll most likely end up writing a new first line.

My message here is “Don’t spend a lot of time writing the first line or first chapter over and over.” Move on. Finish the novel. Then rewrite the first line and paragraph.

'RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES
Common Wisdom in the writing world claims the opening line sells your book and the closing line sells your next book. Whether that wisdom is accurate or not, most writers seem to agree the first line of a novel is oh, so very important. Some believe it can make or break your novel.

Think of the first line as a headline in a newspaper. This is what attracts the reader’s attention. It has to be intriguing enough to make the reader want to read the second line, and then the one after that.
Think about it. A reader wanders through the bookstore (or in this electronically oriented world, wanders through a website), spots a catchy cover, and picks up the book. Or, perhaps, this reader goes directly to the shelves holding the desired genre and studies the titles and author’s names. Next, read the cover blurb. “Hmm. That sounds interesting.” And then the reader opens the book and skims the first paragraph.

That’s when you have to hit ’em between the eyes. Knock ’em dead. It’s the first thing they read of the story itself, the first impression. You’ve only got a few seconds to sink in your teeth. It better be good.

If an author doesn’t make the effort to sculpt the words of the first line into a masterpiece, what level of attention has he/she taken with the key moments in the novel when interpretative pressure is at its peak, when capturing a complete fictional world is at its most pressing? As one writer put it, “Screw up the opening, screw up the book.”

WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO
So, how does a writer come up with the perfect first line? I wish I knew. If there was a failsafe formula, someone would be out there selling it and making a bundle. Instead, there are a plethora of opinions and guidelines—things an author should and should not do—and those vary to some extent. They all agree it should be intriguing and capture the reader’s interest. It’s the how of it they disagree on. Well, maybe not even the how, but more what is interesting and compels the reader to go on.

The Opening Line Should:
● Be intriguing,
● Hint of things to come,
● Be compelling,
● Establish an intriguing question
Make the reader want to find out more,
● Set the tone and flavor of the book
Show what kind of book it is,
● Incorporate the mood or theme of the story.

Suzannah Windsor Freeman adds the following to the list:
(writeitsideways.com/6-ways-to-hook-your-readers)

“● Make your readers wonder.
Put a question in your readers’ minds. What do those first lines mean? What’s going to happen? Intrigue with unanswered questions and they’ll keep reading.
● Begin at a pivotal moment.
By starting at an important moment in the story, the reader is more likely to want to continue so he or she can discover what will happen next.
● Create an interesting picture.
Description is good when it encourages people to paint a picture in their minds. Often, simple is best so it’s the reader who imagines a scene, instead of simply being told by the author.
● Introduce an intriguing character.
   The promise of reading more about a character you find intriguing will, no doubt, draw you into a story’s narrative. Most often, this is one of the main characters in the book.
● Start with an unusual situation.
   Show us characters in unusual circumstances, and we’ll definitely be sticking around to see what it’s all about.
● Begin with a compelling narrative voice.
   Open your story with the voice of a narrator we can instantly identify with, or one that relates things in a fresh way.”

In her book Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction author Patricia Highsmith suggest putting motion or a moving element (like a train or car) into the first line.

● Include something which moves and gives action
Highsmith encourages action rather than a sentence like, ‘The moonlight lay still and liquid on the pale beach’.” Showing rather than telling. “The movement needn’t be as noticeable as the examples I listed earlier. It can be more subtle like a door that closes and the character leans against the wall…”

The Opening Line Should Not Be:
● Bland or trite … or just plain boring.
● An overused references to the weather or time of the year.
If you choose to write about the weather, be careful. You run the risk of inviting comparisons to “It was a dark and stormy night,” (Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s classic first line from his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford) and your book won’t stand a chance.
● Overwritten
   Too often the writing sounds like the author is trying to impress someone (an agent or editor) with the prose, rather giving a sense of the story or drama.
● Cliché
   Watch out for both choice of words and/or the concept.
● Prologue
   Jeff Vasishta, writing for the Institute of Writers, includes prologues in the do-not category. “Take this one with a grain of salt. Many agents hate them but I’ve read a few books recently that have great prologues. Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s The Nest springs to mind. The author received $1,000,000 advance for the novel, which went on to be a best seller. So, agents don’t always know what they’re talking about.” www.instituteforwriters.com/opening-lines
The pro and cons of prologues is another topic which should be addresses separately.

With the exception of the prologue issue, I’d venture to say that most authors, editors, and agents agree on the above don’ts. Beyond these, references include advice not everyone may agree with.
● Dialogue
   Suzannah feels dialogue is all right somewhere on the first or second page, but not in the first
   line. She feels the reader won’t know who’s speaking or care.
● Excessive description
   Some description is good, but not when it’s long winded. Skip the purple prose and opt for something more powerful.
● Irrelevant information
   The first few lines of your story are crucial, so give your reader only important information.
● Introduction of too many characters
   I’m not sure how you introduce too many characters in one line, but I suppose it is possible. Suzannah doesn’t like to be bombarded with the names of too many characters at once. How is the reader supposed to keep them straight?

WHAT FORM SHOULD IT TAKE?
The form of the first sentence is not the same as the opening should do or not do. Feel free to disagree with me, but I believe they are not the same thing … well, not exactly, anyway.

Jacob M. Appel, a Writer’s Digest contributor, provides the following direction by listing the seven things he believes are different approaches to writing the “Killer Opening Line.” (https://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/7-ways-to-create-a-killer-opening-line-for-your-novel)

● A statement of eternal principle
   ▪ “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of
   a wife." (Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice)
   ▪ “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina ).”

● A statement of simple fact
   Of course, these have to be telling facts. The examples listed do the job.
   ▪ “I had a farm in Africa.” (Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa)
   ▪ “It was a pleasure to burn.” (Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451)
   ▪ “I am an invisible man.” (Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man).

● A statement of paired facts
One fact may not be particularly interesting or compelling. Paired with another fact that makes the reader think, “That’s odd,” raises a question and makes the reader want to find out more. The example Appel uses is from Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter:
   ▪ “In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.”
Two mutes always together is unusual. So, what’s up?

● A statement of simple fact laced with significance
   The key to understanding the story, or solving the mystery, or discovering a character’s secret, etc. can be hidden in the first line. The reader usually forgets until the mystery is revealed.

● A statement to introduce voice
   A first line can be used primarily to introduce a distinctive voice, rather than character or plot. Appel writes, “Stories that begin with a highly unusual voice often withhold other craft elements for a few sentences—a reasonable choice, as the reader may need to adjust to a new form of language before being able to absorb much in the way of content.”

“● A statement to establish mood
   Contextual information not directly related to the story can often color our understanding of the coming narrative. Take Sylvia Plath’s opening to The Bell Jar: “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” While the Rosenberg execution has nothing to do with the content of the narrative, it sets an ominous tone for what follows.” Jacob M. Appel,

“● A statement that serves as a frame.
Sometimes, the best way to begin a story is to announce that you’re about to tell a story. English storytellers have been doing this since at least the first recorded use of the phrase Once upon a time.” Jacob M. Appel,

ASK YOURSELF “WHY?”
We all have our favorite first lines, .and it’s always interesting to compare advice with published books to assess whether or not the words of wisdom hold true. When you do that, however, don’t look at the same old first lines. Look at the contemporary best sellers.

Trends change. What editors and agents are looking for today may not be the same as ten years ago. At one point, advice was to begin with conflict but, in fact, it depends on the kind of novel. The field of fiction writing accommodates many approaches to writing, and they can all be good. If it works, it works!

Ask yourself why a particular opening or first line works for you? Literary agent, Rachelle Gardner, writes that when she considered her favorite first lines, and asked herself why she like them, “I found each one appealed to me for a different reason. It might have:
● been clever
● been thought-provoking
● brought an immediate smile (or stab) of recognition
● struck me as poignant
● painted a really cool word picture
● set up an intriguing mystery
● introduced a character I want to know better
● made me laugh
● drawn me into an unfamiliar world
● used words in a beautiful way

The one thing they all have in common is they make me want to read more. They immediately draw me into the universe of the novel by the unique voice that first line begins to establish.” (https://rachellegardner.com/that-all-important-first-line/)

A SHORT PARAGRAPH ABOUT PARAGRAPHS
The fiction writing industry usually talks about the impact of The killer First Line. It’s great to be able to hook a reader with a single line – they are very handy as tag lines -- but I believe what we should be talking about is first paragraphs.

Many of the great “first lines” are more than one sentence. My advice: as long as the reader will read the whole paragraph (or as many lines in the paragraph for the hook) don’t sweat it. Some books will require more than one or two lines to create the hook. Read the list of first lines below.

COMPARISONS
When I first wrote this article, I listed a sampling of the first lines I’ve collected over the years; some good, some not-so-good. There was quite a variety, and several were first paragraphs rather than first lines. Quite a few were penned by mystery writer Dick Francis who, in my opinion, is one of the Masters of the First Line.

For this edition, I took Jeff Vasishta’s advice and looked at books that have been on the best seller list in 2019. Some of them clearly need more than the first and second lines to create the impact the author wants. These are in no particular order.

● WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens
“Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water grows into the sky.”

● CRUCIBLE by James Rollins
June 23, 1611 AD
Zugarramurdi, Spain
“Behind the iron bars, the witch knelt on a filthy bed of straw and prayed to God.”

● LIAR LIAR by James Patterson and Candice Fox
“SOMETHING WAS NOT RIGHT.
Dr. Samantha Parish noticed an odor as she pulled the door of her Prius closed.”

● AN ANONYMOUS GIRL by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
“You’re Invited: Seek women aged 18 to 32 to participate in a study on ethics and morality conducted by a preeminent psychiatrist. Generous compensation. Anonymity guaranteed. Call for Details.”

It’s easy to judge other people’s choices.”

● THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ by Heather Morris
Prologue
Lale tries not to look up. H reaches out to take the paper being handed to him. He must transfer the five digits onto the girl that held it.

● THE RECKONING by John Grisham
Part I – The Killing
On a cold morning in early October of 1946, Peter Banning awoke before sunrise and had no thoughts of going back to sleep. For a long time he lay in the center of his bed, stared at the dark ceiling, and asked himself for the thousandth time if he had the courage. Finally as the first trace of dawn peeked through a window, he accepted the solemn reality it was time for the killing.

● PLAYING FOR KEEPS by Jill Shalvis
“Sadie Lane walked through the day spa, closing up for the night, alone as usual. Her coworkers had left, but even if they hadn’t, they’d just be milling around with their expensive teas, complaining about how hard this job was.”

● ANATOMY OF A DISAPPEARANCE by Hisham Matar
“There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest. Other times I can barely recall the exact features of his face and must bring out the photographs I keep in an old envelope in the drawer of my bedside table. There has not been a day since his sudden and mysterious vanishing that I have not been searching for him, looking in the most unlikely places.”

● BEHOLD THE DREAMERS by Imbolo Mbue’s
“He’d never been asked to wear a suit to a job interview. Never been told to bring along a copy of his resumé. He hadn’t even owned a resumé until the previous week when he’d gone to the library on Thirty-fourth and Madison and a volunteer career counselor had written one for him…”

● HARRY POTTER & THE SORCERER’S STONE by J.K. Rowling
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the l ast people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they didn’t hold with such nonsense.”

If you want to pursue this further, this is the link to the American Book Review List of the One Hundred Best First Lines in American literature (novels) http://americanbookreview.org/100BestLines.asp.

I can’t say that a lot of those 100 Best resonate with me. Quite a few break one or two of suggestions about what not to do when writing a first line. Others, while they are first lines from great works of literature, aren’t exactly catchy as stand-alone opening lines.

I believe the first lines considered good and great may vary depending both time and location. For example, in my opinion, British readers are generally much more tolerant of lengthy sentences and difficult words than American readers. Although I haven’t really studied this topic in detail or done extensive research, it seems there are differences in “best first lines” in books written in earlier centuries (such as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe written in 1719) and more recent works, as well as difference between literary fiction and popular fiction.
□
FIRST LINES BY DICK FRANCIS (my personal King of the First Line)

Flying Finish by Dick Francis
“You’re a spoiled, bad-tempered bastard,” my sister said, and jolted me into a course I nearly died of.

For Kicks by Dick Francis
“The Earl of October drove into my life in a pale-blue Holden which had seen better days.”

Risk by Dick Francis
“Thursday, March 17, I spent the morning in anxiety, the afternoon in ecstasy, and the evening unconscious.”

Hot Money by Dick Francis
“I intensely disliked my father’s fifth wife, but not to the point of murder.”

Straight by Dick Francis
“I inherited my brother’s life. Inherited his desk, his business, his gadgets, his enemies, his horses and his mistress. I inherited by brother’s life, and it nearly killed me.”

Twice Shy by Dick Francis
“I told the boys to stay quiet while I went to fetch my gun.”

Dead Heat by Dick Francis and Felix Francis (2008)
“I wondered if I was dying. I wasn’t afraid to die, but such was the pain in my gut, I wished it would happen soon.”

Wild Horses by Dick Francis
“Dying slowly of bone cancer, the old man, shriveled now, sat as ever in his great armchair, tears of lonely pain sliding down crepuscular cheeks.”

Banker by Dick Francis
“Gordon Michaels stood in the fountain with all his clothes on.”

FIRST LINES BY JANET EVANOVICH

Four To Score by Janet Evanovich
”Living in Trenton in July is like living inside a big pizza oven. Hot, airless, aromatic.”

High Five by Janet Evanovich
“When I was a little girl I used to dress Barbie up without underpants. On the outside, she’d look like the perfect lady. Tasteful plastic heels, tailored suit. But underneath, she was naked.”

Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
“The way I see it, life is a jelly doughnut. You don’t really know what it’s about until you bit into it. And then, just when you decide it’s good, you drop a big glob of jelly on your best T-shirt.”

FIRST LINES FROM OLDER MYSTERIES

The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie
“I have often recalled the morning when the first of the aonymous letters came.”

Unnatural Causes by P. D. James (1967)
“The corpse without hands lay in the bottom of a small sailing dinghy just within sight of the Suffolk coast.”

A Certain Justice by P. D. James (1997)
“Murderers do not usually give their victim notice.”

Devices and Desires by P. D. James (1989)
“The Whistler’s fourth victim was his youngest, Valerie Mitchell, aged fifteen years, eight months and four days, and she died because she missed the 9:40 from Easthaven to Cobb’s Marsh.”

“L” Is For Lawless by Sue Grafton (1995)
“I don’t mean to bitch, but in the future I intend to hesitate before I do a favor for a friend of a friend. Never have I taken on such a load of grief.”

“R” Is For Ricochet by Sue Grafton (2004)
“The basic question is this: given human nature, are any of us really capable of change? The mistakes other people make are usually patently obvious. Our own are tougher to recognize.”

The First Eagle by Tony Hillerman (1998)
“The body of Anderson Nez lay under a sheet on the gurney, waiting.“

Fear No Evil by Allison Brennan (2007)
“The sick and depraved had voted: Death by stabbing.
‘No.’
Kate Donovan’s whisper became a cry as she pocketed her cell phone, unable to respond to the text message her only remaining friend in the FBI had sent.”

Loves Music, Loves To Dance by Mary Higgins Clark (1991)
“The room was dark. He sat in the chair, his arms hugging his legs. It was happening again. Charley wouldn’t stay locked in the secret place. Charley insisted on thinking about Erin. Only two more, Charley whispered. Then I’ll stop.”

Visions In Death by J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts) (2004)
“She’d gotten through the entire evening without killing anyone. Lieutenant Eve Dallas, cop to the bone, figured the restraint showed enormous strength of character.”

FIRST LINES FROM OLDER NOVELS

Gone For Good by Harlan Coben
“Three days before her death, my mother told me—they weren’t her last words but they were pretty close—that my brother was still alive.”

Berg by Ann Quin
“A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father.”

Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (2001)
“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

A Frolic Of His Own by William Gaddis (1994)
“You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.”

Death In A Sunny Climate by Diane Shalet (1994)
“I sat at Michael’s desk, buried under a mountain of third-class mail. October 7, 1983. The second plea from Newsweek: YOU HAVE NOT RENEWED. PLEASE TELL US WHY. I answered for him: Because I died. Then I signed his name.”

Her Secret Agent Man by Cindy Dees (2005)
“Huge snowflakes drifted down around him in a winter-wonderland scene, and the boughs of the pine trees passing beneath his feet sagged under a heavy blanket of white. Neon-garbed skiers whooshed past, laughing, but up here on the ski lift, all was silent. Peaceful. Bucolic. And his palms positively arched with a need to kill the woman he was here to meet.”

The Medusa Game by Cindy Dees (2006)
“The bus the terrorists had demanded was just pulling up in front of the Olympic village apartment building. The casual observer wouldn’t see the dozen German army snipers lying in wait around the street, but Isabella Torres was no casual observer.”

The Reef by Nora Robers (1998)
“James Lassiter was forty years old, a well-built, ruggedly handsome man in the prime of his life, in the best of health. In an hour he’d be dead.”

Agnes And The Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (2007)
“One fine August evening in South Carolina, Agnes Crandall stirred raspberries and sugar in her heavy nonstick frying pan and defended her fiancé to the only man she’s ever trusted. It wasn’t easy.”

The Spiral Path by Mary Jo Putney (2002)
“The trouble with reality was that it was so dammed real.”

A Time To Kill by John Grisham (1996)
“Billy Ray Cobb was the younger and smaller of the two rednecks. At twenty-three he was already a three-year veteran of the state penitentiary at Parchman. Possession, with intent to sell. He was a lean, tough little punk who had survived prison by somehow maintaining a ready supply of drugs that he sold and sometimes gave to the blacks and guards for protection.”

All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
“The last time I saw Mason City I went up there in that big black Cadillac with the Boss and the gang, and we burned up that new concrete slab, and it was a long time ago—nearly three years ago, for is it now into 1939. But it seems like forever."

Evening In Byzantium by Irwin Shaw (1973)
“The plane bucked as it climbed through black pillars of cloud. To the west there were streaks of lightning. The seat-belt sign, in English and French, remained lit. The stewardesses served no drinks. The pitch of the engines changed. The passengers did not speak.”

I’ll Remember You by Barbara Ankrum (1999)
“Dusk seemed to hold its breath as the gunshot’s echo reverberated against the canyon’s rocky walls. Birds fell silent. Even the steady coastal breeze, which had only moments earlier relieved the thick summer evening, stilled as the two men stood at the top of the precipice, staring down into the well of darkness below.”

The Man From St. Petersburg by Ken Follet
“It was a slow Sunday afternoon, the kind Walden loved. He stood at an open window and looked across the park. The broad, level lawn was dotted with mature trees: a Scotch pine, a pair of mighty oaks, several chestnuts and a willow like a head of girlish curls.”

The Parasites by Daphne DuMaurier (1949)
“It was Charles who called us the parasites. The way he said it was surprising, and sudden. He was one of those quiet, reserved sort of men, not given to talking much or stating his opinions, unless upon the most ordinary facts of day by day, so that his outburst, coming as it did towards the end of the long wet Sunday afternoon, when we had none of us done anything but read the papers and yawn and stretch before the fire, had the force of an explosion.”

My Cousin Rachael by Daphne DuMaurier (1952)
“They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days. Not anymore, though.” [The novel also ends with this line.]

Baited by Crystal Green (2006)
“As another scream tore through the island forest, Katsu Espinoza stopped in her tracks, trying to get a lock on where the sound was coming from.”

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (2008)
“Since Maria had decided to die, her cat would have to fend for itself. She’d already cared for it far beyond the point where keeping a pet made any sense. Rats and mice had long since been trapped and eaten by the villagers.”

Key Witness by J. F. Freedman (1997)
“Early dark, time suspended between sunset and true night, the barest sliver of dying sunlight fading on the western horizon, flickering dull yellow-vermilion patches visible through the thick clusters of trees that bracket the narrow two-land road.”

Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan (1991)
“It seems there should have been some warning, but I felt none. Events were already in motion.”

A Western, unnamed (I think this may be from a movie, but I like it.)
“Quiet Town wasn’t.”

1984 by George Orwell
“It was a bright cold day and the clocks were striking thirteen.”□

Sources:
http://www.blog.ljboldyrev.com/2010/06/importance-of-first-line.html|http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/fiction/2006/04/that_allimporta.html
http://kaitnolan.com/2007/08/30/the-importance-of-opening-lines/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/may/10/openingsentencesblog
http://alternativereel.com/includes/top-ten/display_review.php?id=00117
http://www.bluecubiclepress.com/store.htm|
http://www.thefirstline.com/
https://www.thefirstline.com/https://www.thefirstline.com/
http://www.ehow.com/how_4679283_write-first-chapter-novel.html
http://murderby4.blogspot.com/2009/11/your-first-line-hook-that-gets-your.html
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art48800.asp
http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0934311.html
http://www.pantagraph.com/news/article_a125216a-649f-5414-88b5-76a688ea3b6a.html
2019 Sources
https://www.instituteforwriters.com/opening-lines-the-most-important-part-of-your-story.aspx
https://rachellegardner.com/that-all-important-first-line/
https://www.liternauts.com/how-to-write-the-first-paragraphs-of-your-novel/
https://writeitsideways.com/6-ways-to-hook-your-readers-from-the-very-first-line/
https://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/7-ways-to-create-a-killer-opening-line-for-your-novel
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by Patricia Highsmith
doc/writing/blogs/RochelleWeber-First Lines
07/25/2011 – updated May 29, 2019

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