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ENOUGH PENGUIN DUNG FOR A LIFETIME

4/25/2020

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WORLD PENGUIN DAY
April 25 is World Penguin Day.

Isn’t that nice? Penguins are adorable and loved by all. They deserve their own day of observance when the world recognizes and acknowledges their uniqueness.
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Unfortunately, this species is also in need of protection, as are many of the animals of the world, from their not-so-considerate and greedy neighbors, the human beings.

Taken on Cruise to Antarctica, Photo Credit & Source: Robert Loh
MISS PERSONALITY PENGUIN
The seventeen species of penguins are members of the Spheniscidae Family. You know, those aquatic flightless neighbors at the very south end of town. Maybe they can’t fly, but wow, can they swim!
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Olympic Swimmers
Penguins jump into the air before diving to swim faster. They can swim over 10 miles per hour and can dive down over 800 feet. They can even drink sea water, and their eyes are adapted to seeing underwater.
They do pretty much everything a bird cannot do.
Photo Credits: Getty Images
Photo Source: goodhousekeeping.com/penguins  

Mobility
Penguins, which have feathers like other birds but can’t fly, are still classified as “birds” even though they live on land about half their lives and in the ocean the other half. Their motion in the water more closely resembles flying than the swimming motion used by other animals, and they live on sea life. Their wings have become flippers in the water.

On land, these birds either waddle on their feet without much grace, or toboggan (slide) on their bellies across the snow, a movement which saves their energy and still moves them quickly. They also jump with both feet together if they want to move more quickly or cross steep or rocky terrain.

​Size
They range in size from the Little Blue Penguin which grows to an average of 14” in height, to the largest, the Emperor Penguin, which reaches from 3’6” to 4’3”.
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Photo Source: Pinterest; http://www.cadavies.com/penguins/html

Thirty-seven- million-year-old fossils recently discovered in Antarctica indicate that an ancient breed of penguins once stood taller than the average adult man today at 5-foot-10 (some sources say 6’8’’).
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Native Habitat
Penguins and polar bear cartoon are popular and cute, but it “ain’t ‘gonna happen!”.
The two species would never meet.

Although every species of penguins are native to the Southern Hemisphere, and some live in very cold climates like Antarctica, others thrive in temperate zones and the Galápagos penguin lives near the equator. A cold current from Antarctica keeps the water near the Galapagos cool enough for the penguins to survive. There are no native penguins in the Northern Hemisphere, and they don’t live at the North Pole, but are seen along coastlines throughout the Southern Hemisphere.            1998 Coca-Cola Ad-Photo credit: Gremlin Fine Art and Animation.
                                                                                                                                                                                             Photo source: amazon.com/Your-Coke-Sir 
Other Senses
Penguins have average hearing compared to other birds, but it is keen enough to be used to locate parents and babies in huge colonies. Their eyes are the primary sense for finding food and avoiding predators. They have no teeth. Nonetheless, some species can be quite aggressive.

​Feathers
Penguin feathers are short, dense, and packed so tightly together that they often look like smooth skin… and they are waterproof. Penguins spread an oil produced by the preen gland that insulates their bodies and improves their hydrodynamics. Chicks are covered in fuzzy down, which keeps them warm and may resemble fur.
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Often depicted as having only black and white feathers, some penguins have shades of black, white, grays, blues, yellows, and oranges. Species may have red eyes, brightly colored feathers, bright orange beaks, or pink feet. Macaroni penguins are named after the flamboyantly dressed group of 18th century aristocrats, the ‘Macaronis’. 
Marconi Penguin with styled feathers      Yellow-Eyed Penguin-photo source:         Northern Rockhopper Penguin            Chick with fur-like feathers
Photo source: abcbirds.org/macaroni      worldatlas.com/types-of-penguins         worldatlas.com/types-of-penguins      spacecoastdaily.com/SeaWorld

Some types of penguins do mate for life, including gentoos, rockhoppers, adelies, and chinstraps. They can find their old mater within minutes of arriving at the colony each season.

Personality Plus
Overall, penguins have mischievous, curious, and fun-loving personalities, as well as being photogenic. They seem to enjoy posing for photographs.   Photo credit: National Geographic; photo source: pinterest.com/pin/4696         
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A lot has been written about penguins and most writers attest to the bird’s playful and reckless nature. Specifics of their behavior were documented extensively by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (a survivor of Robert F. Scott’s final journey to the South Pole) in his book The Worst Journey in the World.
     “They [the penguins] are extraordinarily like children, these little people of the Antarctic world, either like children or like old men, full of their own importance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad%C3%A9lie_penguin

George Murray Levick, who also accompanied Scott on the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910, observed how the birds often put the explorers in dangerous situations.
     “The great trouble with [the dog teams] has been due to the fatuous conduct of the penguins. Groups of these have been constantly leaping onto our [ice] floe. From the moment of landing on their feet their whole attitude expressed devouring curiosity and a pig-headed disregard for their own safety. They waddle forward, poking their heads to and fro in their usually absurd way, in spite of a string of howling dogs straining to get at them. "Hulloa!" they seem to say, "here’s a game – what do all you ridiculous things want?" And they come a few steps nearer. The dogs make a rush as far as their harness or leashes allow. The penguins are not daunted in the least, but their ruffs go up and they squawk with semblance of anger.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad%C3%A9lie_penguin

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

"It's just a little kiss."                     "It was soo sad!"                "Thanks for coming over."           "I'm so ashamed." 
Photo Credit/source: Kathy Dancie             Photo source:Pinterest          Photo source: natgeokids.com/penguins/       Photo source: dailymail.co.uk/  
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"Look! I have 4 wings."           "Have you heard this one?"      "I don't care what Freddie's         "Just wait till your 
 Photo Credit: Diane Schimpf              Photo Credit: Andrea Ohagan              mother said. It's naptime."              father gets home!"
                                                                                                 natgeokids.com/uk/penguins/            worldatlas.com/types-of-penguins 
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"We're getting pretty at             "And I'm telling you,                     "When do I get off            "Hey! He's standing
   this Zumba thing."                     you're wrong!"                                this Time out?"               on my shoulders."  
​  Photo Credit: Diane Schimpf                     Photo Credit: William Smith                       Photo source: penguinsblog.com/         Photo Credit: Stephen Bedford
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UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: Enough poop to last a lifetime
Penguins are social animals and live in large colonies with hundreds and thousands of others. You rarely seen loner penguins (except, perhaps, one on time-out for bad behavior.)

On my trip to Antarctica and the Falkland Islands, we visited a colony of King penguins way out in the boomies. It took hours and many bumps to get there. There are many more penguins on the islands than people. It was overwhelming… in more way than one.
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Photo Credit: Liam Quinn 01-17-2011 – Salisberry Plain Colony, Falkland Islands                                            Adelie penguins covered in pink poop
Photo Source: https://penguinsblog.com/are-penguins-dangerous/                                                                                                             Photo Credit: Flicker    
                                                                                                                                                                                     Photo source: allthatsinteresting.com/penguin
There have been recent articles about Adelie penguins pooping so much, there feces can be seen in satellite images. The krill diet of the penguin on the coast of Antarctica turns their guano a “striking pink color” contrasting with the snow. Their colonies show up well on LandSat images which are being used by researchers to find remote colonies and reconstruct the diet and history of the colonies.
Who knew?
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Sources:
https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/animals/birds/emperor-penguins/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin
http://penguins.cl/macaroni-penguins.htm
http://penguins.cl/patagonia.htm
http://penguins.cl/macaroni-penguins.htm
http://www.seabirds.org/penguins.htm
http://www.penguins-world.com/king-penguin/
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/gentoo-penguin/
http://www.patagonia-argentina.com/en/habits-penguins
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/wildlife/antarctic_penguins.htm
http://www.erraticrock.com/information/information-articles-1/penguins-of-patagonia/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad%C3%A9lie_penguin
http://www.penguins-world.com
king-penguin/
https://www.discover-the-world.com/blog/29-things-you-might-not-have-known-about-penguins/
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-many-types-of-penguins-live-in-the-world-today.html
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2016/04/18/photos-4-most-dangerous-threats-to-penguins
https://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/5-fun-facts-about-penguins
https://penguinsblog.com/are-penguins-dangerous/
https://beyondpenguins.ehe.osu.edu/issue/arctic-and-anarctic-birds/common-misconceptions-about-birds
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/g19844807/penguin-facts/?slide=16
https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/giant-6-foot-8-penguin-discovered-in-antarctica
https://www.foxnews.com/science/penguin-poop-biodiversity-antarctica
https://www.wired.com/story/penguin-poop-antarctica-climate-change/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-watching-poo-space-revealing-history-antarcticas-penguins-180971031/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/pink-penguin-poop
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7661489/Emperor-penguins-wiped-climate-change-80-years-scientists-claim.html




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GEOMETRY PUT INTO HUMAN SERVICE: Ancient Great Walls

4/17/2020

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THE GREAT WALL OF … WHERE?
You thought I was going to say China, didn’t you?

As far as archeologists know, human beings have been building walls since Neolithic times when we transitioned from a hunting nomadic lifestyle to permanent agrarian settlements, somewhere around 10,000 BC.

Even as nomads, human beings gathered in small groups for protection, and we have evolved as social animals fundamentally wired with fear of the unknown. Behind a barrier with a place to look out and not be seen, is a safe place for humans. The development of permanent settlements resulted in the building of walls as defenses against any perceived danger that might threaten the community.

​THE GREAT CITY WALLS
The development of permanent settlements resulted cities and, as they grew in size, rulers built walls as defenses against any perceived danger that might threaten the community.

The oldest walls in existence are those of Gobekli Tepe, a temple in Urfa, southeast Turkey, constructed 11,500 years ago. Around 10,000 BC the first city walls, erected for defense, were built around Jericho and the Sumerian city of Uruk. All that can be seen today are the excavation sites.

THE GREAT BORDER WALLS
Border Walls extend along part of the jurisdictional borders of the state. country, kingdom, or whatever terminology applies to an area under one ruler. These barriers appear to be a later innovation in safety and defense strategy, although the world “later” is relative. As city states or domains expanded to include other cities and territories, often the fortifications around one city were extended to another, expanding until a much larger area comprised the state or kingdom. Contemporary border walls are referred to as barriers and are constructed for other purposes.
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● Great Wall of Ur
The Wall of Ur is one of the first known border walls, constructed around 2000 BC to keep out invading Amorites. It was built between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to allow the people “to dwell peacefully in green meadows.”

It marks the beginning of the period between the third century BC to the 11th century AD referred to as the Age of the Long Wall.
Photo source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ur-Nassiriyah.jpg  
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● Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is the longest fortification in the world, but not the earliest built. In fact, it is not one continuous wall, but a series of multiple walls, trenches, towers, and forts that string along the northern portion of China for 13,170 miles. These walls were built by different emperors over many centuries, primarily to protect territory from invasion but not necessarily invasion from the foreign invaders from the north but the enemies of the particularly dynasty at the time.
 
The sections built by different states were unconnected until the reign of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.
Great Wall of Qi was the first segment, started in 685 BC, to be built during the Zhou Dynasty. This barrier stretched for about 372 miles between the present-day cities of Jinan and Quingdao. The purpose was to fend off invasion from other Chinese states to the south. 
   Wikimedia Commons, free media repository►
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Photo Credit: Rolfmueller - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4388026
The first segment was extended through the centuries by different dynasties. Most of what is visible today was constructed during the Ming dynasty, the peak of Great Wall's history.

To address harassment from the northern tribes (Tartars and Jurchens) the rulers of the Ming dynasty [1368-1644 AD] continued extension and enlargement of the wall for over two centuries. The main line of the Ming Dynasty started from Hushan in the east to the Jiayuguan Pass in the west. It has a total length of about 5,500 miles, is twenty feet wide at the bottom and sixteen feet wide at the top, and has an estimated 10,000 watch towers.
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▼Photo Source: ancient-origins.net/archaeology/ancient-wall
Photo credit: aerial photography by the APAAME,
research project - settlement history in the Near East.
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●Khatt shebib Wall, Jordan [115 BC - 570 AD]
Remains of the Khatt shebib Wall, Jordan, was largely unknown, at least to outsiders, until 1948 when Sir Alec Kirkbride, a British diplomat in Jordan, spotted the ruins from an airplane. The structure extends nearly one hundred miles through the large southern desert of Jordan with nothing on either side except sand dunes.

The wall remained a mystery until recently, when the APAAME, a long-term research project, mapped it using aerial photography.

Unlike most ancient border walls, archaeologists believe this 93 mile long wall was not used for military or defense purposes. It was built by the Bedouin nomads and, based on pottery found in the ruins, certain studies have dated it to 312BC to 106 AD and reconstructions in 661-750 AD.

It was constructed with boulders piled on tops of each other with no solid foundation and nothing to hold the rocks in place. Scientists estimate its height from 31/2 feet to almost five feet, which supports the rationale that it was not a defensive wall, although they have identified over one hundred towers 61/2 by 13 feet which might serve as stations for watching for invaders.
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Some experts studying the area speculate that the border wall served to restrict nomads from wandering in farming regions.

●Hadrians Wall [128 AD]
A later and much better known border wall is Hadrian's Wall in Britain, built by the Romans at the direction of Emperor Hadrian (r. 117-138 AD), to fend off incursions into the Roman provinces from across the northern border. The Romans were expert wall-builders, but it took six years to construct eighty miles across the terrain. Height and width varied, but in places it was over twenty feet high and nine feet wide, with fortified towers. The wall is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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Source of Photos 1, 2: https://www.hillwalktours.com/hiking-england/hadrians-wall-path/         Photo source: www.historyextra.com/ancient-history/border-walls  ▲  
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​● Antonine Wall [142 AD]
Also built by the Romans, the Antonine Wall, begun in 142 AD, stretched 39 miles between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde, in what is now Scotland. Emperor Antoninus had this barrier built to protect the region from barbarians from the north, primarily the Picts of the Scottish highlands.

The type of barrier is less like the stone walls because it is built of turf on top of a stone foundation and fronted by a deep ditch like a mote. The height was about ten feet and the width about sixteen feet, and it is believed that was a wooden palisade on top of the wall. Along its length there were 16 forts connected by roads. The turf has weathered away, making the wall almost invisible in the rolling countryside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall\
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To the far  left, you can see a unique feature: a type of man-trap known as lilia. These large oval pits north of the ditch and the outer mound are the first line of defense for threats from the north. Photo sources: blog.historicenvironment.scot/antonine

The construction took twelve years. Eight years after completion, Roman troops were pulled back to Hadrian’s Wall, and this wall was abandoned. It was refortified in 208 AD and then abandoned a second time. The parts that remain are under the care of Historic Scotland and the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.

​Kerameikos (Outer) from west - the two main gates
The Dipylon and the Sacred Gate. Photo Source:
http://www.ancientathens3d.com/keramikos-tichi/
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● The Long Walls of Athens
The term Long Walls is used to describe the defensive wall that connected the city of Athens with its ports at Piraeus and Phalerum. The ports were crucial to Athens, and the Long Wall was a key element of the military strategy.
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The first walls, each nearly four miles in length, were constructed in phases before 431 BC, as a double wall to protect the ground access to the ports from both north and south, making Athens all but impregnable during the Peloponnesian War with Sparta and its allies.
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The Spartans ultimately prevailed by defeating the Athenian navy at sea. Afterward, the Spartans tore down the Long Walls as a victory celebration. The walls were later rebuilt and stood until 86 BC when they were destroyed by the Romans.

Photo source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Walls (Credit: Public Domain)
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​●The Great Wall of Gorgan, Iran [224 – 651 AD]
The Great Wall of Gorgan (also called the Red Snake Wall because of the color of its bricks) is a Sasanian-era (224 to 651 AD) defense system located in northeastern Iran, at the southeastern corner of the Caspian Sea. It was erected a century or two after the Roman Walls in Britain for the similar purpose of protecting the Sassanian Empire to the south from the northern peoples, probably the White Huns (the Hephthalites).
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Photo Source: ▲
◄www.iranreview.org/The_Red_Snake_Great_Wall    ◄
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Photo source: www.iranreview.org/The_Red_Snake_Great_Wall

● The Great Wall of Zimbabwe
Begun in the 11th century AD, the Great Wall of Zimbabwe was erected by a Bantu-speaking ancestors of the Shona. Over the next 300 years the 36 foot high wall was expanded, enclosing approximately 1,800 acres, and is the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara Desert.
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The Great Zimbabwe wall is constructed of local granite blocks split into slabs which are fitted without any mortar, one on top of the other. Each layer is a bit more recessed than those below, creating a slight inward slope for stability for the undulating walls.
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De Agostini/Getty Images / Getty Images ▲
Photo Source: https://www.tripsavvy.com/great-zimbabwe-ruins-1454657
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▲Photo credit: evenfh—iStock/Thinkstock
Photo source: https://www.britannica.com/place/Great-Zimbabwe
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Narrow pathway between walls at the Great Zimbabwe ruins, southeastern Zimbabwe▲.
Photo credit: Colin Hoskins/Imagestate  -- Photo source:https://sacredsites.com/africa/zimbabwe/great_zimbabwe_ruins.html
CONCLUSION
Building walls around cities and territories is a natural thing for people to do. It’s in our DNA, so to speak. A wall is physical, something we can touch, something to rely on for protection. But do they always protect the people inside the walls?

In reading the histories of these famous walls, it became clear to me that those mighty mounds of stone, sod, and other materials did protect the residents of cities and territories from invasion time and again, but sooner or later an enemy found a way to breech them. In some cases, the invaders merely walked to the end of the wall and came around.

Costica Bradatan nails it writes. “The walls erected at borders protect people not from barbarians, but from anxieties and fears. Walls, then, are built not for security, but for a sense of security. The distinction is important, as those who commission them know very well. What a wall satisfies is not so much a material need as a mental one … In this way, they are built not for those who live outside them, threatening as they may be, but for those who dwell within. In a certain sense, then, what is built is not a wall, but a state of mind.”
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/scaling-the-wall-in-the-head/

Another aspect of human nature that became clear was human curiosity. As soon as we are behind our walls, safe and secure, we want to go outside, cross the river, and get to the other side to find out what’s happening out there.
Is it possible we build walls, almost as a dare, so others will tear them down?
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Sources:
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/scaling-the-wall-in-the-head/
https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/3-border-walls-from-history-and-what-they-tell-us-about-trumps-proposal
https://ips-dc.org/the-psychology-of-the-wall/
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Great_Zimbabwe
http://www.greatzimbabweruins.com/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/188025353164802587/?lp=true
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/zimb/hd_zimb.htm
https://sacredsites.com/africa/zimbabwe/great_zimbabwe_ruins.html
https://www.ancient-code.com/the-great-ziggurat-of-ur-an-ancient-temple-honoring-the-anunnaki/
http://www.iranreview.org/content/Documents/The_Red_Snake_The_Great_Wall_of_Gorgan.htm
https://www.ancient.eu/Sacsayhuaman/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople
https://www.ancient.eu/image/9254/the-inner-walls-of-babylon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Ston
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overivew-of-the-western-wall
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Western-Wall
https://www.ancient.eu
https://www.inrap.fr/en/periods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon
http://www.theottomans.org/english/campaigns_army/1453-the-conquest.asp
https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2015/07/31/the-historical-city-gates-of-istanbul
http://www.tourmakerturkey.com/old-city-walls.html
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/babylon-walls.htm
https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/border-walls-history-mexico-trump-china-great-wall/
https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasanian_Empire
https://brewminate.com/the-long-walls-of-ancient-athens/
https://www.ancient-code.com/the-great-ziggurat-of-ur-an-ancient-temple-honoring-the-anunnaki/
https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/border-walls-history-mexico-trump-china-great-wall/
https://www.history.com/news/7-famous-border-walls
https://themysteriousworld.com/top-10-amazing-ancient-walls-around-world/
http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/athens_piraeus_431_bc.htm


 
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WILL THE REAL“OSTERHASE” PLEASE STAND UP? Origins of the Easter Bunny

4/10/2020

1 Comment

 
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​We Americans have done it again.

“Done what again?” you ask.

Many of our traditions were brought to what is now the United States by the immigrants who braved the unknown and came here hoping for a better life… our ancestors. Easter traditions are no different. And in absorbing those traditions into American culture, often we didn’t get it quite right… or else we were consciously attempting to be different, but I don’t believe that applies to religious traditions brought from Europe to North America.

So what happened?

RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION
Easter is the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but nowhere in scripture, in any version of the Bible, do we find a reference to a long-eared, short-tailed creature who delivers decorated eggs to well-behaved children.
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However, the association between Christianity and the Leporidae family [which includes the species of rabbit and hare] is not totally off the wall. First, because these animals are prolific procreators, hare and rabbits are ancient symbols of fertility and new life, and often associated with springtime.
In ancient times, the Greeks believed the hare was a hermaphrodite and able to reproduce without a male. The idea that hares could reproduce without loss of virginity led to an association with the Virgin Mary. The result was the hare appearing in paintings of the Virgin and Christ child.
The Madonna of the Rabbit by Tizian
 ▼Photo Source:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_of_the_Rabbit
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“The rabbit is a symbol of fertility and, due to its whiteness, of Mary’s purity and the mystery of the Incarnation, and is also a symbol of her Virginity.”

We now know female rabbits and hares can conceive a second litter of offspring while still pregnant with the first, resulting in them being able to give birth seemingly without having been impregnated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Madonna_of_the_Rabbit

Some believe it may have been related to the Holy Trinity because of the three hare motif found in works of art throughout the world as early
                                                                          as the 6th century.              Photo source: feelguide.com/meaning-of-the-three-hares ▼
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PAGAN ASSOCIATION
While Easter is a Christian holiday with its roots firmly embedded in religion, the symbols of this Holy Day, as with many holidays and celebrations, evolved from ancient pagan legends and rituals. Even the English word for Easter is derived from the Anglo Saxon name for Eostre or Eastre, the German goddess of Spring and the Dawn. Logically, her celebration was the spring solstice and her symbol – surprise, surprise – the hare.
 ▼Photo source: mysticalshores.com/goddess-Eostre
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  Legend has it that Eastre found an injured bird. In order to save its life, the goddess transformed it into a rabbit. The transformation was successful in that the rabbit survived, but it was not quite complete, as this rabbit could only lay eggs as if it were still a bird. In gratitude, the rabbit would decorate the eggs and leave them for the goddess.”  https://mysticalshores.com/2015/04/01/the-goddess-ostara-eostre/
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However, according to www.catholic.org/lent/ there is no evidence of any pagan correlation.
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Eventually, this legend morphed into a German tradition for the celebration of Christian Easter. Thus, the egg-laying hare called “Osterhass” [also “Oschter Haws”] traveled to North America in the 1700s with the German Lutheran immigrants who settled in Pennsylvannia, where Osterhass continued to play the role of evaluating whether children had been good or bad before the start of the season of Eastertide. The tradition spread to other parts of the country and is now international.                 Chinese Easter Card ▼
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HOW DID WE GET IT WRONG?
The way in which the tradition evolved into The Easter Bunny has nothing to do with religion or paganism. It has to do with Zoology and accuracy.

All of the ancient references and German customs refer to a hare, not a rabbit. The mistake is, apparently, a general assumption that rabbits and hares are the same animal. We seem to use the words interchangeably.

Rabbits and hares are not at all the same. They are both part of the same order of mammals, the same family – Leporidae – but they are a different species, just like sheep and goats are species of the family Bovidae [mammals with hoofs]. Chances are, if you referred to a sheep as being a goat, someone would correct you.
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The differences are not just in the way they look. Baby rabbits, called kittens or bunnies, are blind and have no hair at birth. Baby hares, called leverets, are born with fur and sight and can move within an hour of birth.

They live in different types of habitat, eat different kinds of food, have different mating habits and gestation periods. They are also different in how fast they can run and in many other ways which I won’t bother you with. Both are native to North and South America, Europe and Asia.

HOW DID THE MEDIEVAL EASTER “OSTERHASS” [HARE] BECOME A RABBIT?
It doesn’t matter. In reality, neither one can lay eggs, and the Easter Hare still delivers eggs in the Czech Republic.
   ▼ Photo source: http://philatelier.over-blog.com/2019/03/lapin-ou-lievre-de-paques.html
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  • HAPPY EASTER!


Sources:
https://mysticalshores.com/2015/04/01/the-goddess-ostara-eostre/
http://herald-zeitung.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_a92ef55e-67bc-11e0-99ac-001cc4c03286.html
https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/easter-symbols
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny
https://time.com/3767518/easter-bunny-origins-history/
https://www.catholic.org/lent/story.php?id=67999
https://www.catholic.org/news/hf/faith/story.php?id=67961
https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-the-difference-between-a-rabbit-and-a-hare
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141219-rabbits-hares-animals-science-mating-courtship/
https://www.feelguide.com/2020/01/06/new-book-explores-the-meaning-of-the-three-hares-one-of-human-historys-most-mysterious-symbols/
https://science.jrank.org/pages/3785/Lagomorphs-Rabbits-hares-North-America.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Madonna_of_the_Rabbit









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A COVEN OF CREATURES: Collective Nouns For Animal Groups

4/3/2020

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A NUISANCE OF NOUNS
Collective Nouns – families or teams that refer to a group of people or things -- are an important part of our language. A crowd of people. A mob of gangsters. A herd of cows. A batch of cookies. We use them all the time without thinking about it.

Every now and then in my writing career, I’ve run into situations where I’ve wanted to use a collective noun for a group of animals. Not that I was required to use a word other than flock, herd, swarm, school, or pack -- all of which suffice quite nicely -- but driven by a desire to employ something more dramatic to avoid using the same word multiple times on a page. And some of these words are not as common as one might think.
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Plus, I’m a fan of The Big Bang Theory, and Sheldon is always reminding us that a group of cats should be called a clowder. As perfect as Sheldon may be, he’s not quite accurate by omission. There are a variety of collective nouns are attributed to both domestic and feral cats. [Big and wild cats have their own individual group names.]
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Cats [domesticated] = Clowder, Clutter, Pounce, Dout, Nuisance, Glorying, and Glare
Kittens = Kindle, Litter, Intrigue
Cats [feral] = Destruction

In the process of looking up collective animal nouns when I wanted one, I ran onto several lengthy lists. After reading through a couple of them, I wondered who the heck makes up these amusing and often ridiculous terms. Some make sense; others, not so much.
Photo source: foxnews.com/science/cats
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Tigers = Ambush
An Ambush of Tigers might be appropriate if you stumbled unsuspectingly on several of them in the jungle, waiting for their dinner to some along. In the zoo, maybe not.

AN ORIGIN OF ORIGINALS: Etymology
Many of these collective nouns for animals were introduced in 1486 with the publication of the Book of St. Albans [or Boke of Seynt Albans] which addresses matters of interest to a gentleman of the times [hawking, hunting, and heraldry]. It also including lists of collective nouns for animals, called terms of venery [hunting].

​This treatise, also known by the title The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms, is the source of many collective nouns for groups of animals and people that are part of our everyday lexicon.
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​Others are among our fanciful favorites, well known but rarely used, and others are complete surprises.
A Gaggle of Geese                           A Murder of Crows
An Unkindness Of Ravens               A Clattering Of Choughs
A Murmuration Of Starlings              A Charm Of Goldfinches
​
The publication is attributed to Dame Juliana Berners (or Barnes), the prioress of an abbey near St. Albans, Hertfordshire. Writing an advice book about hunting seems an unlikely pastime for a prioress, but she was probably part of the medieval aristocracy before she took her orders.
Drawing of Dame Juliana Berneers
Photo source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliana_Berners
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A WHITTLING OF WORDSMITHS: Who Gets To Decide?
What I don’t believe is that a Brit in the 1400s bestowed collective nouns on North American animals they’d never heard of, like An Obstinacy of Buffalo. If Berners didn’t come up with that collective, who did? Who gets to decides on the right collective noun for something?
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According to medium.com/@Naturalish, “The short answer is no one.” That may be the reason groups have more than one collective noun.                                                     Photo source: hammakerzqmeriel.blogspot.com
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​                                                                          Fox = Leash, Skulk, Earth, Lead, or Troop.
​The English language is constantly changing and evolving. Dictionaries add new words and new definitions of old words or drop obsolete words usually twice a year.

ccording to the Merriam Webster, “A Drudge of Lexicographers” continuously review the written and spoken words in thousands of collected texts and transcriptions. When a word reaches a prescribed level of common usage, then it is considered for addition to the dictionary. Some words, particularly those related to a specific field of endeavor, may be used and generally known for a long time before there are enough references to merit inclusion in the dictionary.
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​That said, many of the collective nouns for animal groups are in the dictionary but are rarely used in writing or in speech. How does that happen? I can’t tell you how often I’ve read about A Stubbornness of Rhinoceroses.
Well, actually, I can. Never!
Photo source: smithsonianmag.com/rhinos
As Naturalish puts it, “In most cases, they’re far from an already-utilized standard in the English language. Linguists seem to operate in a bubble claiming that these random, encyclopedic words reflect real human speech, when in reality, they’re the creation of an elitist, in-group of wordsmiths conning the public into accepting ‘poetry’ as everyday vernacular.” ~ June 5, 2018, The Absurd Truth Behind Collective Animal Nouns, https://medium.com/@Naturalish/the-absurd-truth-behind-collective-animal-nouns-f4a4cde48b4f

Merriamwebster.com agrees. “In the end, there is no cut and dried rule for how to refer to a particular group of creatures. And this may be why we love the more fanciful collective nouns so much.”  ~ https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/a-drudge-of-lexicographers-presents-collective-nouns

A DELUGE OF DESCRIPTIONS and AN AMPLITUDE OF ALLITERATION
Below l have listed examples of some of the more creative collective nouns for critters, but left out most of the common terms everyone knows and the ones already cited.
​
Many of these describe fairly well the movements, looks, or habits of the creatures in question, and the imaginations of those who gave birth to these terms have good relationships with alliteration and rhymes.
P.S. I have made absolutely NO attempt to alphabetize either the terms or the animals. Not sorry.
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​A Cackle of Hyenas
Photo Credit:Jrlphotographer/Istock
PhotoSource:mentalfloss.com/collective
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A Shrewdness Of Apes
Photo Credit:Jrlphotographer/Istock
Source: businessinsider.com/odd-names
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A Parliament of Owls
Photo Credit: Tariq Sulemani/Istock
Source: businessinsider.com/groups-of-anim
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A Caldron of Bats
Photo Credit: Flickr / U.S. Fish and Wildlife 
 businessinsider.com/groups-of-animals
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Flamboyance of Flamingos
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Stringer 
 businessinsider.com/groups-of-animals
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Tower of giraffes
Photo Credit: Flickr/kimvanderwaal
Source: businessinsider.com/groups-of-anim
I have no clue which of these collective nouns are in the dictionaries with the definition intended by this list. I believe “A Pride of Lions” is there, but you can be sure that I did not look any of them up.
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Here’s the deal. If you know of a species out there in the world which doesn’t have a collective noun to its name, the door is open for you … let your fantasy soar. Just be aware that you can have a bunch of just about anything.
Not long ago I came across a species in Madagascar that I had never heard of. The animal was thought to be a type of lemur, but recently has been given its distinct family … the Aye-aye. After giving the problem a great deal of thought, here is my collective noun for these creatures.
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An Eyre of Aye-aye

I get the impression the Aye-aye doesn’t like it too much.
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Sources:
https://medium.com/@Naturalish/the-absurd-truth-behind-collective-animal-nouns-f4a4cde48b4f
http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Pointless/AnimalGroups.html
https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/word-lists/list-of-names-for-groups-of-animals.html
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/551081/collective-nouns-groups-animals
https://www.businessinsider.com/odd-names-for-groups-of-animals-2016-3
https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/us/grammar-pattern/collective-nouns_2
https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/animal_collectives.php
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_collective_nouns_by_subject
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/a-drudge-of-lexicographers-presents-collective-nouns
https://www.etymonline.com/
 
 

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Pandemnics

3/27/2020

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A pandemic [from Greek meaning "all" and "people"] is a disease epidemic that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents, or worldwide. A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of infected people is not a pandemic.
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The bacteria and viruses causing pandemic diseases are nothing new. They’ve been stalking human beings for at least 5,000 years. Scientists believe that finding bacteria in human skeletons bones 4,900 years old indicates that humans became sick and died because of virulent diseases for thousands of years before there was any historical or archaeological evidence of epidemics.
DNA from teeth in seven human skeletons 4,500-year-old shows that plague struck Bronze Age peoples in Europe and Asia. ​Photo Credit: Harri Moora - Photo Source: sciencenewsforstudents.org

When the press and medical professionals began referring to COVID-19 as a Pandemic, I thought of our current situation as unprecedented and believed this point in history to be unique. And it is, in a way, if only because the exact set of circumstances never occur twice. After I started researching this blog, I realized how often in history human beings have faced similar events.

And still, the human race survives. It’s hard, if not impossible, to put a current event into proper perspective. Just remember, all of the numbers being thrown around are estimates and not precise for a lot of reasons.

A PANDEMIC OF EPIDEMICS
While the details of what constitutes an epidemic vs. a pandemic may be a matter of interpretation or opinion, history began recording these mass infections from diseases before Christ. Which of the many pandemics are the “worst” is debatable, depending on the criteria used.

3,000 BC       Bronze Age Epidemics
                      Death toll: Unknown:
                      Causes: Unknown [Probably Bubonic Plague]
Scientists have found the plague strains [I assume the sources refer to Bubonic Plague] in the Bronze age were similar to the bacteria guilty of later pandemics, but believe they were less virulent and less transmissible in the ancient past. Still, this period in history experienced sudden mass migrations, and some theorize the movement resulted from epidemics of disease. Based on the map, it seems the Bronze Age migration was from the steppes of Russia to the west and south.             Map source: nature.com/news/bronze-age-skeletons
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430-427 BC        The Plague at Athens
                            Death Toll: 100,000
                            Cause: Smallpox [most likely], possibly by typhus or bubonic plague.
In the 2nd year of the Peloponnesian War, 430 BCE, an outbreak of plague erupted in Athens and spread throughout scattered parts of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean until finally dying out in 426 BCE. The origin of the epidemic occurred in sub-Saharan Africa just south of Ethiopia.

165 AD                 The Antonine Plague
                              Death Toll: 5 million
                              Cause: Unknown; thought to be either smallpox or measles
The Antonine Plague, brought by Roman soldiers returning from Mesopotamia, affected Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, and Italy.

165 AD                 Plague of Justinian
                             Death Toll: 25 million
                             Cause: Bubonic Plague
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The Plague of Justinian is the first documented outbreak of the bubonic plague, afflicting the Byzantine Empire and Mediterranean port cities and killing up to 25 million people [estimated at half the population of Europe]. At its worst, an estimated number of deaths reached 5,000 people per day, including forty percent of the population of Constantinople. It is said to have ended because there was no one left to die.
Photo source: wileyearthpages.wordpress.com/Justinian

1346-1353           The Black Death
                             Death Toll: 75 – 200 million
                             Cause: Bubonic Plague
The Bubonic Plague [often called The Black Death] ran rampant in Europe, Africa, and Asia from 1346 to 1353. Believed to have originated in Asia, the disease was spread by a bacillus called “Yersina pestis” [discovered at the end of the 19th century], which lived on the rat fleas and rats thriving on ships. Today scientists know the bacillus can travel from person to person through the air, as well as through the bit of infected fleas or rats. Both of these pests could be found almost anywhere in medieval Europe.  Flea infected with Yersinia pestis - Photo source: commons.wikimedia.org/Flea_yersinia
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Although the Bubonic plague never went away completely after the Justinian plague, it only existed on a local or regional scale. The plague arrived in Europe a second time in 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. Most of the sailors were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. By the time the situation was discovered, it was too late and the disease spread rampant throughout Europe, killing half the population.
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Without understanding the science, people soon learned that infection had to do with proximity, and port cities were worst hit. The Venetians, a sea-faring people, decided to keep the crews of newly arrived ships in quarantine until it was proved they were not sick. Initially, officials kept sailors on their ships for thirty days, then lengthened the time to forty days... a quarantino. This practice slowed the rapid progress of the illness and is the origin of the word and concept of quarantine in English.
Photo source: historic-uk.com/HistoryUK

1665 AD              The Great Plague of London
                             Death Toll: 100,000
                             Cause: Bubonic Plague
London never really squelched the Bubonic plague. Between 1346 and 1665 epidemics hit London about every twenty years – forty outbreaks in three hundred years – each episode killing off twenty percent of the population. Around 1500, England imposed laws to isolate the sick.
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According to History.com:
“Homes stricken by plague were marked with a bale of hay strung to a pole outside. If you had infected family members, you had to carry a white pole when you went out in public. Cats and dogs were believed to carry the disease, so there was a wholesale massacre of hundreds of thousands of animals.”
​London street scene, Great Plague of 1665 - Photo credit: The Print Collector/Getty Images
Photo source: history.com/news/plague and openhistorysociety.org
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​The worst was saved for last. The Great Plague in 1665 killed 100,000 in seven months. Victims were forcibly confined to their homes, and nearly everything else closed down. Bodies were buried in mass graves. Harsh, indeed, but the actions helped bring the plague to an end.
1500 to 1800        Smallpox in the New World
                              Death toll: 10 million plus                                                                  Podcast Episodes » #48: 
                              Cause: Smallpox                                                                            Photo source: historyonthenet.com/48
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​Smallpox is a disease which has been around a long time in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, no doubt causing ongoing epidemics, some of major proportions. When the Europeans carried the virus to the new world in the 15th century, the native people of North and South America had no natural immunity. Smallpox wiped out tens of millions, an estimated ninety-five percent of the native population in one hundred years.
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In the late 18th century, British Doctor Edward Jenner developed a treatment which resulted in smallpox being the first virus epidemic ended by a vaccine.

1852 to 1860      Third Cholera Pandemic
                            Death toll: One million
                            Cause: Cholera
The 1852-1860 pandemic of Cholera was the worst of seven outbreaks. The pandemic started in India and spread through Asia, Europe, North America, and Africa. In 1854, a British physician John Snow discovered that contaminated water was the manner in which the disease was transmitted.

1899-1923           Sixth Cholera Pandemic
                            Death toll: 1.5 million [800,000 in India, 11 in US]
                            Cause: Cholera
By the sixth world Cholera pandemic, medical science and public health had advanced enough in the US and Western Europe to keep outbreaks in those counties at a minimum. This episode began, as most others, in India [where it killed 800,000 people] and then spread to the Middle East, Eastern Europe, North Africa, and Russia.

​Only eleven people died in the US during this last outbreak, when the steamship Moltke brought infected people from Naples to New York City. The infected were quarantined on an island until they were cured or not infected. However, the quarantine reinforced the perception that all immigrants carried diseases and should be kept out.

1918-1920           Influenza Pandemic
                            Death toll: 20 to 50 million
                            Cause: Influenza
Between 1918 and 1920 a disturbingly deadly outbreak of influenza tore across the globe, infecting over a third of the world’s population and ending the lives of 20 to 50 million people. Of the 500 million people infected in the 1918 pandemic, the mortality rate was estimated at 10% to 20%, with up to 25 million deaths in the first 25 weeks alone. What separated the 1918 flu pandemic from other influenza outbreaks was the victims -- where influenza had always previously only killed juveniles, the elderly, or already weakened patients -- it had begun striking down hardy and completely healthy young adults, while leaving children and those with weaker immune systems still alive.

1918-1919           Spanish Flu Pandemic
                            Death toll: 50 million [675,000 in USA]
                            Cause: Influenza
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Spanish Flu was a virus, of bird origin, which infected 500 million people [a third of the world’s population], but the exact origin was never determined. Particularly virulent, the infection caused liquid-filled lungs, severe pneumonia, and lung tissue inflammation. In 2005, research showed it as “a uniquely deadly product of nature, evolution, and the intermingling of people and animals.”
Victims of Spanish flu at a barracks hospital, Fort Collins, CO 1918.
Photo credits: American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs/PhotoQuest/Getty Images
Photo source: history.com/news/spanish-flu

1956-1958           Asian Flu
                            Death toll: 1 to 2 Million [116,000 in US]
                            Cause: Influenza
A new flu virus [Avian] originating in Guizhou China, traveled to Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, and then the United States. This virus was a mixed species strain of the previous flu virus; a mutation of the avian virus in wild ducks combining with a pre-existing human strain of the virus. A vaccine was available in 1957. After ten years of evolution, the Asian flu virus disappeared and a new subtype appeared which led to the Hong Kong flu pandemic in 1968.
 
1968                     Hong Kong Flu Pandemic
                             Death toll: One million [100,000 in US - mostly elderly]
                             Cause: Influenza
From the first reported case on July 13, 1968 in Hong Kong. In slightly over two weeks, there were cases found in Singapore and Vietnam. In three months, the flu had spread to the Philippines, India, Australia, Europe, and the US. Even though the mortality rate was only 0.5%, the illness resulted in a death toll of one million.

2005-2012           Hiv/Aids Pandemic
Peak                    Death toll: 36 million
                            Cause: HIV/ AIDS
“First identified in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976, HIV/AIDS has truly proven itself as a global pandemic, killing more than 36 million people since 1981. Currently there are between 31 and 35 million people living with HIV, the vast majority of those are in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 5% of the population is infected, roughly 21 million people. As awareness has grown, new treatments have been developed that make HIV far more manageable, and many of those infected go on to lead productive lives. Between 2005 and 2012 the annual global deaths from HIV/AIDS dropped from 2.2 million to 1.6 million.” https://www.mphonline.org/worst-pandemics-in-history/

2013-2016           Ebola Virus Epidemic
                            Death toll: 11,323 (West Africa)
                            Cause: Viral Haemorrhagic Fever
Ebola is a virus disease known as haemorrhagic fever. The virus is spread through direct contact with body fluids, or items recently contaminated with body fluids. It was identified in 1976 when there were two simultaneous outbreaks in Africa. Symptoms show two days to three weeks after contacting and include fever, sore throat, muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhea and rash. Between the first outbreak in 1976 and the beginning of the epidemic of 2013-2016 there had been 2,387 cases and 1,590 deaths.The most recent epidemic in West Africa reported 28,646 cases and 11,323 deaths.

THE CORONAVIRUS
This is not a new disease. There are many viruses categorized as coronavirus. It was first discovered in 1930 in domestic poultry. Only seven of the coronaviruses cause disease in humans.

The good news: Four of the seven viruses only result in the symptoms of the common cold. On occasion, they cause respiratory tract infections, including pneumonia in infants and older people.

The bad news: Three of the seven can be severe and deadly.

​2002                     SARS
                             Death toll: 774
                             Cause: Coronavirus
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome is a virus which results in respiratory disease. It is a zoonotic illness which is caused by germs that spread between animals and humans, and originated in Guangdong Province of China. Scientists eventually discovered the virus carried through civets to cave-dwelling horseshoe bats.
   Civet - Photo source: en.wikipedia.org/Civet                  Horseshoe bat - Photo source: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9

2012                     MERS
                             Death toll: 858
                             Cause: Coronavirus
The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is also a strain of the Coronavirus which emerged in 2012. Studies implicate dromedary camels as the most likely origin. Physical contact with the saliva of infected camel and drinking milk from infected camels is the suspect transmission route for inflecting humans. Most of the cases, and deaths, were in Saudi Arabia, but the virus did spread to other middle eastern countries. There were only two cases in the US and no deaths.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Middle_East_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus_outbreakpr

2019-?                 COVID-19
                             Death toll: 108,312 worldwide / 515 US
                             Estimated cases: 417,663 worldwide / 42,000 US
                             Cause: Coronavirus

SHOULD WE PANIC YET?
As pandemics have gone on the planet earth, COVID-19 doesn’t sound like the most serious in history if you look at death tolls. Keep in mind that the COVID-19 numbers change hourly right now. 

Panic? No. Take it seriously? Absolutely.

Of course, the count isn’t in yet, but I’ll stick my neck out and guess that it will be less than a million worldwide. But wait! A million is still a lot of people. We don’t want that!

My Observations
World pandemics have become more frequent in the last hundred and fifty years or so. Contemporary travel and communications have changed the equation, and population, as well as population densities, have increased dramatically nearly everywhere, encroaching on the habitat of wild animals who originate the diseases.

The world is better prepared to face a super-virulent virus today than it was a century ago, but in general we are not well prepared to handle potential increases and severity of pandemics. I found several pre-2019 that predicted another outbreak of coronavirus. If health officials reacted at all, it wasn't enough.
​
So, yes, COVID-19 is a unique “first-time-in-history” event which I see moving along on two parallel [for the moment] tracks … the health/disease control track and the political track.

I trust the health/disease track to move forward with vaccines and treatments for this particular virus and take steps for handle the next mutation of bacterial and viral disease with better preparation. Fortunately, science comes through sooner or later. We just need to listen to the scientists.

However, the manner in which this pandemic is handled politically and the interaction of many countries in the world could well direct significant future events history.

I’m sorry I won’t be around to see what happens in the long term.
□ 
Sources:
http://news.discovery.com/human/health/10-worst-epidemics-130917.htm
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/cholera-s-seven-pandemics-1.758504
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867475/
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2027479,00.html
http://www.infoplease.com/cig/dangerous-diseases-epidemics/bubonic-plague.html
http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/surveillance/plague.pdf
http://healthvermont.gov/prevent/Plague.aspx
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/black_death_of_1348_to_1350.htm
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1996-7/Smith.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/health/01plague.html?_r=0
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4381924.stm
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1996-7/Smith.html
http://www.infoplease.com/cig/dangerous-diseases-epidemics/smallpox-12000-years-terror.html
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs360/en/index.html
http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/basics/
http://www.history.com/topics/1918-flu-pandemic
http://www.infoplease.com/cig/dangerous-diseases-epidemics/smallpox-12000-years-terror.html
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/
https://www.ancient.eu/article/939/the-plague-at-athens-430-427-bce/
https://www.openhistorysociety.org/members-articles/the-great-plague-of-london-1665/
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Great-Plague/
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/earliest-evidence-plague
https://www.who.int/cholera/the-forgotten-pandemic/en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1846%E2%80%931860_cholera_pandemic
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence
https://www.historyonthenet.com/48-native-americans-resistant-old-world-diseases-different-new-world
https://zidbits.com/2011/01/why-didnt-europeans-get-wiped-out-by-native-americans-diseases/
https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/infectious-diseases/respiratory-viruses/coronaviruses-and-acute-respiratory-syndromes-covid-19,-mers,-and-sars
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.htmlhttps://www.nature.com/news/bronze-age-skeletons-were-earliest-plague-victims-1.18633
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/pandemics-timeline
https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-mortality-rate-covid-19-fatalities-ebola-sars-mers-1489466
https://www.ft.com/content/8521d81e-1c0f-11ea-81f0-0c253907d3e0
 
 
 
 

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Women's History Month: Gwendolyn Brooks, Poet and Writer

3/22/2020

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Gwendolyn Brooks was the first black author to win a Pulitzer Prize, the first black woman to hold a position as a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, and was the poet laureate of the State of Illinois. She frequently wrote about the struggle for racial equality in the US, which received harsh criticism at the time.
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Brooks is recognized as “one of the most highly regarded, highly influential” poets of the 20th-century.

EARLY LIFE
Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1917. Her father was a janitor for a music company, but had hoped to pursue a career as a doctor. Her mother was a school teacher as well as a concert pianist trained in classical music. When Brooks was still a baby, her parents moved to Chicago, where she lived the rest of her life.
Brooks wrote from an early age and, encouraged by her mother, she began submitting poems to publications as a teen. At thirteen, her first published poem entitled “Eventide” appeared in American Childhood magazine. Over the next four years she wrote and published seventy-five poems.
▼Photo source: poeticous.com/gwendolyn-brooks
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By her graduation from high school in 1935, Brooks submitted to and was published by The Chicago Defender. During her education she suffered a great deal of racial discrimination, and drew on these experiences and the insight she gained in her writing. She never pursued a college degree because she felt it unnecessary to a career in writing.

"I am not a scholar," she later said. "I'm just a writer who loves to write and will always write."

Brooks did attend Wilson Junior College for a two-year program and found work as a typist to support herself while she pursued her writing. She did admit that she would have written differently had she remained in Kansas. While attending meetings of the Chicago’s NAACP, Brooks met Henry Lowington Blakely, Jr. They married in 1939, and subsequently had two children.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER
Pursing her writing career, Brooks attended poetry and writing workshops, one of which was visited by poet Langston Hughes who heard her read her work. In 1944 two of her poems were published in Poetry magazine. She was a hit, and a year later her first book of poetry, A street in Bronzeville, was published by Harper & Brothers. 
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nnie Allen, Brooks’ second book of poetry was published in 1949. Her work depicted the life of a young Black girl growing up in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago and won critical acclaim “for its authentic and textured portraits of life.” She won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize and Poetry magazine's Eunice Tietjens Prize for this book. She was the first African American author to win a Pulitzer Prize. Brooks’ first and only narrative novel, Maud Martha, as published in 1953. The novel follows the life of a black woman named Maud Martha Brown.                                                                                      Brooks holding copy of  her first book ►
                                                                                                                                        Photo source: pulitzer.org/article/brooks      During her lifetime, Brooks wrote a large body of work, but she was also acclaimed as a teacher. Author Frank London Brown asked her to teach a course in American literature at the University of Chicago. This was her first teaching experience and the beginning of an extensive, lifelong commitment to sharing poetry and teaching writing.

HONORS
  • 1946, Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry.
  • 1950, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
  • 1968, appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois, a position she held until her death in 2000
  • 1969, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
  • 1976, inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
  • 1976, the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America
  • 1985, selected as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, an honorary one-year term, known as the Poet Laureate of the United States
  • 1988, inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
  • 1989, awarded the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement by the Poetry Society of America
  • 1994, chosen to present the National Endowment for the Humanities' Jefferson Lecture.
  • 1994, received the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
  • 1995, presented with the National Medal of Arts
  • 1997, awarded the Order of Lincoln, the highest honor granted by the State of Illinois.
  • 1999, awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement.
Source of List of Honors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwendolyn_Brooks

FROST, WILLIAMS OUT; BROOKS, IN: THE PULITZER PRIZE STORY
According to pulitzer.org/article/frost-williams-no, the story behind the story of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry is worth commenting on.

The judges for 1950 Advisory Committee were Alfred Kreymborg [a poet, anthologist and chess master who had long been a figure in the New York literary scene], Louis Untermeyer, and Henry Seidel Canby [a noted English professor at Yale]. All had served on the jury previously.

“The jury that year faced some challenges. William Carlos Williams, long a friend and colleague of Kreymborg’s, had published both a Selected Poems and the first parts of Paterson in 1949. He was in his mid-60s and had never won a Pulitzer Prize. Robert Frost’s Complete Poems came out that year as well. He was 75 and had won the prize four times. His friend, Louis Untermeyer, was on the jury with Kreymborg.” https://www.pulitzer.org/article/frost-williams-no-gwendolyn-brooks
Alfred Kreymborg - Photo:             Henry Seidel Canby        Louis Untermeyer - Photo
​bolsteredbythoughts.weebly.com/    jnjreid.com/canby         dcwritershomes.wdchumanities.org

The jury of three had eleven books to review. Ultimately, they decided that although the best book of the year was Robert Frost’s Complete Poems, Frost had received the award four times for all but a few of the same poems. A fifth prize would be redundant and unfair.

William Carlos Williams had been growing in stature but was still “…frequently distinguished by an extreme of obscurity.” Later in 1950, Williams was due to publish a volume of poetry which the judges believed would be more representative of his talent, and felt that the next year would give the jury better material for form a judgment. The only other book worthy of consideration was Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks. After explaining the above in a letter to Dean Carl W. Ackerman, Graduate School of Journalism Columbia University, Henry S. Canby wrote:

“Fortunately, among the other books of poems submitted for an award is a volume of great originality, real distinction and high value as a book, as well as poetry. Some years ago, Gwendolyn Brooks, a Negro writer of unusual ability, published A Street in Bronzeville, which made a great impression on all its readers and had what is unusual for poetry today — a wide sale. In 1949 she published Annie Allen, a much better book, and indeed, in our opinion, the outstanding volume of the year, if you exclude Robert Frost. No other Negro poet has written such poetry of her own race, of her own experiences, subjective and objective, and with no grievance or racial criticism as the purpose of her poetry. It is highly skillful and strong poetry, out of the heart, but rich with racial experience. I quote from Mr. Alfred Kreymborg, with whose opinion I entirely agree.

I may say that we have seldom been more satisfied than with our choice of Annie Allen.
        Yours very truly,
        Henry S. Canby”
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Note: The other books considered for the 1950 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry include:
Orpheus, Muriel Rukeyser
Elegies, Muriel Rukeyser
An Acre in the Seed (posthumous), Theodore Spencer
Live Another Day, John Ciardi
Aspects of Proteus, Hyam Plutzik
Volume II, Jose Garcia Villa
Walk Through Two Landscapes, Dilys Bennett Laing
The Tears of the Blind Lions, Thomas Merton

The Pulizer Prize kicked off Brooks prolific career with a bang. 

Sources:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gwendolyn-brooks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwendolyn_Brooks
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brooks/life.htm
https://www.pulitzer.org/article/frost-williams-no-gwendolyn-brooks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwendolyn_Brooks#Career
https://poetryteatime.com/blog/learn-about-gwendolyn-brooks
https://blackbooksmatter.com/celebrating-gwendolyn-brooks/
https://www.poeticous.com/gwendolyn-brooks

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Women's History Month: Where is Henrietta When We Need Her?

3/14/2020

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​THE 20th CENTURY IMMORTAL WOMAN
With all the attention directed toward the corona virus and importance of medical research finding a vaccine and treatment options for the illness, you would think the public would have heard, at least in passing, about Henrietta Lacks, The Immortal Woman.

No, really. She is immortal, although not in the same sense as superheros in graphic novels. Not even like some of the women we write about during Women’s History Month whose names will live seemingly forever.
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Yet, because of Henrietta Lacks’ “immortality” she must have saved thousands of lives -- maybe millions – since she died in 1951. For some twenty years no one knew about her or her far reaching contribution to medical research.

EVERYONE HAS A BACK STORY
Henrietta Lacks, born Loretta Pleasant (August 1, 1920 – October 4, 1951) was an African-American tobacco farmer born in Roanoke, Virginia. I didn’t find out how her name got changed from Loretta to Henrietta, but everyone called her Hennie (or Henny).
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Her mother died when Loretta was four, and she and her nine brothers and sisters were parceled out to be raised by relatives. She grew up with her grandfather and a cousin, whom she later married. Like every human being, Lacks has a back story – her life growing up, maturing, starting her own family – and there is nothing remarkable about it.

Fast Forward.                                                                                                                          
▲Loretta Pleasant as a child                                                                                                                                ▼ Henrietta and David “Day” Lacks
Photo Source: sutori.com/item/1920-henrietta-Lacks                                                                 Photo Source: facebook.com/afrigeneas/
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A SIGNIFICANT BUT UNHERALDED CONTRIBUTION
January, 1951, Lacks went to the Johns Hopkins, the only hospital in the area that treated black patients, because she felt a "knot" in her womb. She was pregnant, but after the birth of her fifth child she suffered from severe hemorrhage due to a mass on her cervix.

Lacks’ doctor at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Howard W. Jones, took a biopsy of the mass for laboratory testing. She was diagnosed as having cancer of the cervix and was treated. During those treatments, doctors took tissue samples from the malignant carcinoma and from the healthy tissue without Lacks’ knowledge or permission, which was legal standard practice at that time.
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Henrietta Lacks died of uremic poisoning as a result of cancer on October 4, 1951. She was thirty-one years old.

Her cell samples made their way through the system and randomly ended up with George Otto Gey, a physician and cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins. The cells from the cancerous sample eventually became known as the HeLa immortal cell line, coded with the first two letters of the first and last names, a commonly used cell line in contemporary biomedical research. No one knew the name of the cell donor.

THE CELLS THAT WOULDN’T DIE
Human cells are essential to biological research but, in the fifties, culturing human cells took a long time and a lot of effort, plus most of those cells could only stay alive for one or two days or multiply only a few times once removed from the body. This limited the research scientists could do.

Instead, Gey discovered that the cells from Lacks’ tumor did not die and could be multiplied perpetually. Because of that, he was able to develop a cell line.
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These cells were the first human, lab-grown cells that were naturally “immortal”, meaning they do not die after a set number of cell divisions. They could be used for conducting a multitude of medical experiments—if the cells died, they could simply be discarded and the experiment attempted again on fresh cells from the culture. This was a gigantic step forward in medical research.
Photo source: npr.org/2010/henrietta-lacks

THE CONNECTION
Henrietta Lacks’ body produced cells so prolific that they still live and regenerate in laboratories nearly six decades after her death. Scientists have grown an estimated 50 million metric tons of HeLa cells, and there are almost 11,000 patents involving these cells.

Today, many different HeLa cell lines continue to mutate in cell cultures, “but all HeLa cells are descended from the same tumor cells removed from Henrietta Lacks.”
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HeLa cells enabled the growth of polio virus, allowing Jonas Salk to develop a vaccine for polio in 1952. In 1953, HeLa cells were the first human cells to be cloned successfully. In fact, Henrietta Lacks’ cell line has enabled development of vaccines, in vitro fertilization, cloning, AIDs research, and gene mapping, to mention only a few.
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Will Henrietta Lacks come to our rescue once again?

I found a number of current articles about Corona virus research that reference using HeLa cells in the search for a vaccine. A century after her death, perhaps the general public will learn about her invaluable contribution to medical and biochemical research.

A SECOND CONTRIBUTION
Lacks’ contribution goes beyond the medical successes. Her story eventually brought to the attention of the scientific world and the courts to the issue of balance between scientific research and the rights of individuals.

The Lacks family never knew anything about the cell line until 1975 when members were contacted by researchers asking for cell samples from other members of the family. Although Dr. Gey freely shared his research and the cell line with other scientists and researchers, and Johns Hopkins never filed for a patent or received any gain from the cells, eventually the cell line was commercialized and led to many discoveries. The Lacks family never shared in any of the proceeds.

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot (2010) turned the spotlight on the situation, and “organizations that have profited from HeLa have since publicly recognized Henrietta Lacks' contributions to research. The Lacks family has been honored at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Foundation for Cancer Research.” biography.com/scientist/henrietta-lacks

Author Skloot founded the Henrietta Lacks Foundation, which provides scholarship assistance to Lacks' descendents, paying the college tuition for five of Lacks' grandchildren and great-grandchildren, several of whom have gone into science. Last but not least, the Foundation helps the Lacks family with medical bills.

“One of the great ironies of the Lacks family's struggles is that, despite her being responsible for landmark medical discoveries, many of her descendents have no health insurance.”
roanoke.com/archive/the-story-of-hela
 
 Sources:
http://listverse.com/2018/09/08/10-incredible-women-forgotten-by-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
https://www.theatlantavoice.com/articles/celebrate-black-history-month-henrietta-Lacks-Lacks-stolen-cells-revolutionized-medical-research/
https://www.facebook.com/afrigeneas/posts/10154233920602975/
https://www.roanoke.com/archive/the-story-of-hela-roanoke-native-and-scientific-marvel-henrietta/article_a30affe0-25c7-54ad-8176-d64954408ae7.html
https://www.biography.com/scientist/henrietta-Lacks
https://www.sutori.com/item/1920-henrietta-Lacks-was-born-loretta-pleasant-on-august-1-1920-at-some-point
https://blacksthen.com/something-didnt-learn-school-true-story-henrietta-Lacks-video/
https://web.archive.org/web/20011201201650/http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/07.19/04-filmmaker.html
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2016/03/105351/womens-history-month-famous-females
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/index.html
http://henriettalacksfoundation.org/
http://rebeccaskloot.com/the-immortal-life/
https://www.npr.org/2010/12/13/132030076/henrietta-lacks-immortal-cells-live-on-in-labs
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3341241/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5165181/
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1004502
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WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH: ada Lovelace

3/6/2020

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WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH
March is here and it’s time to share stories about women who have made a difference in our world. On one hand, I’m grateful there is a month when we acknowledge women’s contributions; on the other, I would like to be in a world where everyone’s contributions are honored by everyone, and there is no need to distinguish those people by some artificial grouping. That world will come, but not in my lifetime.
Today I want to draw attention to a woman who thinking was a hundred years ahead of her time, and you may or may not have ever heard of.

ADA BYRON LOVELACE
Ada Lovelace -- born Augusta Ada Byron (1815); died Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1852) -- is considered by much of the computer science profession, as the world's first computer programmer and the first person to recognize the full potential of a computing machine.
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Lovelace wrote the world’s first machine algorithm for an early computing machine developed by Charles Babbage, that existed only on paper. Of course, someone had to be the first, but Lovelace was a woman, and this was in the 1840s.
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Ada Lovelace was a brilliant mathematician, thanks in part to opportunities that were denied most women of the time, but credit for her significant insights were played down, then forgotten, by the male-dominated world of mathematics and computing. Her contributions have been recognized only recently. Better late than never.
​Photo: Alfred Edward Chalon / Science Museum Group-Photo source:  https://inews.co.uk/ada-lovelace-day and https://www.biography.com/scholar/ada-lovelace
​A VERY INTERESTING WOMEN
Her achievements in computer programming are not the only interesting things about Ada Lovelace.

She was born Augusta Ada Byron, the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle (called Annabella) Noel Milbanke. Lord Byron expected a boy and was disappointed the child was of the female persuasion.
Ada was named after Byron's half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and he called her Ada … but not for very long. The marriage ended about two months after Ada was born. Lord Byron left England shortly after that, and Ada, his only legitimate offspring, had no contact with him during her lifetime.
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Ada was eight years old when he died, and never even saw a portrait of him until her 21st birthday.

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Ada Byron, age four–artist unknown     Age seven, by Alfred d'Orsay, 1822         Ada Byron, age seventeen, 1832      Poet Lord George Gordon Noel Byron
 commons.wikimedia.org/19076847         en.wikipedia.org/Ada_Lovelace 7         en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace       newworldencyclopedia.org/Byron

Lord Byron must have left Annabella with “a bad taste in her mouth” for romantic poets, because she did everything possible to make her daughter Ada as unlike her poetical father as she could. Lady Byron herself had mathematical training -- Byron had called his wife his Princess of Parallelograms – and she made sure Ada had extensive education in mathematics, logic, and music, the disciplines Annabella considered necessary to divert dangerous poetic tendencies … which Lady Byron considered “insane”.

Although Ada and Lady Byron shared a love of mathematics, she and her mother were never close, and she was raised primarily by her maternal grandmother, who doted on her.
Despite suffering poor health during her childhood and being bed-ridden for a year, Lovelace diligently pursued her study of mathematics. At twelve she designed a sophisticated flying machine powered by steam.
Her late teens were busy eventful years (1833-1835). Ada had an affair with her tutor and tried to elope, but was recognized and returned to her mother who hushed up the disgrace. The same year, her friend, Mary Somerville, introduced her to Charles Babbage, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge. He found her mind brilliant, and they formed a lifelong friendship during which they wrote long letters about mathematics, logic, and his plans to build a difference machine, a kind of calculator.
Having been raised in an elite London society, Ada was introduced to court, and by 1834 she had become a regular there. She charmed everyone, impressed them with her brilliant mind, and had an impressive circle of acquaintances including Charles Dickens, and Michael Faraday.
In 1835, Ada married William King-Noel, and had three children, born in 1836, 1837, and 1839. She suffered from illness after the second child. Three years later, King inherited a noble title, and the couple became the Earl and Countess of Lovelace. The family and its fortunes were very much directed by the domineering Lady Byron, to which William-King raised no opposition
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​A VISIONARY A HUNDRED YEARS AHEAD OF HER TIME
In the mean time, Lovelace’s friend Babbage abandoned the construction of his difference machine in favor of a more advanced idea for an Analytical Engine. He found financial support from Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea for his new project. In 1842, Menabrea published a paper in French on the subject of the engine. Babbage recruited his friend Ada to translate the document.                                                    Charles Babbage, Father of Computers
                                                                                                                  Photo source: britannica.com/biography/C-Babbage
She spent nine intense months during 1842-1843 translating the paper and appending a set of her own notes containing a detailed description of how the proposed Analytrical Engine could be programmed to compute Bernoulli numbers. Her addendum -- Ada’s claim to fame -- was three time longer than the paper itself.
 
Unfortunately, the men of mathematics and history have spent a lot of time trying to discredit her and minimize her contribution. As late as 1990, Allan G. Bromley, in his article Difference and Analytical Engines, states “
     “Not only is there no evidence that Ada ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine, but her correspondence with Babbage shows that she did not have the knowledge to do so”

According to the Doron Swade, museum curator and author, specializing in Babbage and the history of computing, writes,
     “In Babbage's world his engines were bound by number...What Lovelace saw—what Ada Byron saw—was that number could represent entities other than quantity. So once you had a machine for manipulating numbers, if those numbers represented other things, letters, musical notes, then the machine could manipulate symbols of which number was one instance, according to rules.
     It is this fundamental transition from a machine which is a number cruncher to a machine for manipulating symbols according to rules that is the fundamental transition from calculation to computation—to general-purpose computation—and looking back from the present high ground of modern computing, if we are looking and sifting history for that transition, then that transition was made explicitly by Ada in that 1843 paper.”

​Even critics of the “Ada Lovelace, world's-first-computer-programmer claim” seem to agree that she was the only person of the time to foresee the potential of the analytical engine as a machine capable of expressing entities other than quantities, the evolution from number crunching device (a calculator) to a general purpose computer.
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THE FATE OF THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE
Due to lack of funding, Babbage never completed the building of the Analytical Engine, but the design is considered by historians as the first general purpose computer. A portion of the machine was completed in 1910 by Babbage’s son Henry, and it was able to perform basic calculations as designed.

Trial model of a part of the Analytical Engine, built by Babbage, as displayed at the Science Museum (London)
Photo source:: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine
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​THE FATE OF ADA LOVELACE
Apparently, after that, Ada continued her life as a countess, a mother, and a student of mathematics, phrenology and mesmerism, along with a number of flirtations and a compulsive gambling habit. Some sources say she was addicted to drugs also.

n 1851, she formed a syndicate and attempted to create a mathematical model for successful large bets. The failure of this venture left her in debt to the syndicate, and she had to fess up to her husband. Presumably, he paid her debts, but no source I used commented on that. However, from the looks of their home, her husband probably had enough pocket money.      East Horsley, home of Ada, Countess of Lovelace
​                                                                                                                                                                            Photo source: https://zenpundit.com/?p=4375
In 1852, after a few months of illness, Ada Lovelace died at the age of thirty-six – the same age as her father when he died – from uterine cancer. She was buried next to her father, at her request, in Huckinall, Nottinghamshire at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene.

HOW SHE IS REMEMBERED
Despite the controversy about the mathematical ability of the Countess of Lovelace, her contributions and foresight have made a difference in the world. After all, Babbage himself referred to her as the "Enchantress of Numbers.”
She is remembered and honored in many ways, although the acknowledgement is late in coming. I believe that in the future she will still be a person of importance in the computing field.

● Ada Lovelace Award: Created in 1981 by the Association for Women in Computing.
● Lovelace Medal: Awarded by the British Computer Society (BCS) since.1998. This organization has also initiated an annual competition for women students.
● Lovelace Colloquium: BCS sponsored conference for women undergraduates.
● Ada College: A college in Tottenham Hale, London, focusing on computer skills.
● Ada Lovelace Day: Second Tuesday of October, begun in 2009 by the women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) "... raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering, and maths," and to "create new role models for girls and women" in these fields.
● National Ada Lovelace Day: On 27 July 2018, Senator Ron Wyden submitted, in the US Senate, the designation of 9 October 2018 as National Ada Lovelace Day: "To honor the life and contributions of Ada Lovelace as a leading woman in science and mathematics". The resolution (S.Res.592) was considered, and agreed to without amendment and with a preamble by unanimous consent
● Ada Developers Academy: A non-profit academy in Seattle, Washington, seeking to increase diversity in technology by training women, trans, and non-binary people to be software engineer.
● US Department of Defense Computer Language (ADA): The computer language was named after Ada Lovelace, and the reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980 and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language, MIL-STD-1815, was given the number of the year of her birth.
● The Ada Byron Building: The Engineering in Computer Science and Telecommunications College building in Zaragoza University.

NOW HERE’S THE THING
Without getting into all the details of why Ada Lovelace could or could not write the World’s first computer program, here are my points.

● Practically no one makes a significant advancement strictly on their own. Most of the time more than one person is involved, and the advancement is based on the work someone did before.

● Nowhere in my research did I find reference to what Charles Babbage thought about Ada Lovelace’s mathematical ability to take his idea a step further. Granted, it was probably not an issue with anyone at the time, but Babbage did respect her talent and ideas. He called her the Enchantress of Numbers. He must have had enough confidence in Lovelace to ask for her help to translate a complex mathematically-based, technical paper. Doesn’t that count for something in her favor?

I don’t like most TV commercials, but there is one I appreciate.
Question to a woman on a motorcycle: “Isn’t it hard to compete in a man’s world?”
Answer: “Maybe for the men.”

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
en.wikipedia.org/Ada_Lovelace 7
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/ada-lovelace-the-first-tech-visionary
https://www.biography.com/scholar/ada-lovelace
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ada-Lovelace
https://inews.co.uk/news/science/ada-lovelace-day-2018-facts-female-scientists-506562
https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/blog/computers-around-century-ago/
https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/how-ada-lovelaces-notes-on-the-analytical-engine-created-the-first-computer-program/
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/analyten.htm
https://www.cnn.com/ampstories/tech/meet-ada-lovelace-the-first-computer-programmer
https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/
https://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Babbage
http://mentalfloss.com/article/53131/ada-lovelace-first-computer-programmer
https://inews.co.uk/news/science/ada-lovelace-day-2018-facts-female-scientists-506562
https://www.1843magazine.com/intelligence/cracking-coder
https://www.uvu.edu/wsc/blog/blog_posts/whywomenshistorymatters.html
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LEAP YEAR

2/28/2020

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We all know that every four years February has an extra day for the purpose of keeping our calendar in alignment with the earth’s revolution around the sun. Our year has 365 days, but it takes an additional 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds for the earth of revolve around the sun. Without adding the extra day every four years, our western calendar would lose about 6 hours every year and within a hundred years, we’d be 24 days off.

Instead, we accumulate those hours for four years and add a day to February. A simple concept, and it works pretty well.
​
WHO FIGURED THIS OUT?
In ancient times, all cultures created ways to track the year, usually using the seasons, the sun, and the moon. Probably the oldest is the Chinese lunar calendar which doesn’t number years, but counts in 60-year cycles, divided into five 12-year cycles named after different animals.
Emperor Julius Caesar
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In 46 BC, named by the Romans as the Year of Confusion, Julius Caesar adjusted the Roman calendar to 445 days, beginning the year in January, changed the month Quintilis to what we call July, and divided the months into 30 and 31 days — except for February which had 29 days and 30 every fourth year. So the Father of Leap Year, so to speak, was Julius Caesar. The Romans spread this Julian calendar throughout the known world.
​
But, alas, the Julian calendar was still off by 11 minutes and 14 seconds. A small amount, but those minutes added up. In 1582, under Pope Gregory XIII, a correction was made and eleven days were dropped. And I believe the Gregorian calendar we use today is considered almost completely accurate with the additional day in February.
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LEAP DAY TRADITION OF WOMEN’S PRIVILEGE
Most of us associate Leap Day (February 29) with the tradition of women proposing marriage. According to Louis J. Boyle, a professor of medieval literature and Arthurian legend at Carlow University, Leap Day comes with a variety of medieval Urban Legends which are undocumented.
​Artist Donald McGill
Photo source: dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2107684

​One suggests the origin of Women’s Privilege comes from St. Brighid, a patron saint of Ireland who died around AD 525 and is known to have founded a convent in the Kildare region of the country. Named after the Celtic goddess Brigid (Brighid) she was born to a Druid king and his Christian wife in the exact moment the sun rose so that a beam of radiant light burst around her forehead like a flame. She is credited with a number of miracles.                     Goddess Brighid by Lisa Iris
                                                                                                                                        ▼Photo source: ​https://journeygoddess.wordpress.com/ 
Over time, stories of the patron saint intertwined with those of the Celtic goddess Brighid who was the goddess of fire (the forge and the hearth), poetry, healing, childbirth, and unity.
​
THE LEGEND OF ST. PATRICK AND ST. BRIDGET       Photo source: monasteryicons.com/st-brigid-icon  Saint  Brighid ▲  The legend dates to the 5th century, around the time St. Patrick supposedly drove the snakes out of Ireland. The tales says St. Patrick was approached by St. Bridget, who had come to protest on behalf of all women the unfairness of always have to wait for men to propose marriage. 
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After due consideration, St. Patrick offered St. Bridget and her gender the special privilege of being able to propose marriage to men one year out of every seven. St. Brighid disagreed, and they finally settled on one year out of four—leap years, specifically. It’s not clear to me why St. Patrick had the final say on this matter, but what do I know?

In one version of the tale, after the deal was cut, unexpectedly (because it was a leap year and St. Bridget was single), she got down on one knee and proposed to St. Patrick on the spot. He refused, of course, bestowing on her a kiss and a beautiful silk gown in consolation.

According to Boyle,
"The tradition was that if the man said 'no,' he had to provide a gift to the woman. Traditionally, [the gifts] were a garment or money.  Sometimes the tradition reads there was some penalty designated or the woman had the right to say, 'This is what you have to do for turning me down.' "

In another legend, Women’s Privilege resulted from a law passed by Scottish Parliament in 1288, of which one of the many quoted versions reads:
“It is statut and ordainit that during the reine of hir maist blissit Magestie, ilk maiden ladye of baith highe and lowe estair shale hae libertie to bespeak ye man she likes; albiet, gif he refuses to tak her till be his wif, he sall be mulcit in ye sume of ane hundredth poundis or less, as is estait mai be, except and alwais gif he can mak it appear that he is betrothit to ane other woman, then he shall be free.”

Because this text cannot be sourced (or read, for that matter – at least by me), it was considered suspect, even by the Victorian authors who quoted it. The only authority for the statement is the Illustrated Almanac' for 1853, and scholars believe the statue was “manufactured” as a kind of joke.

Queen Margaret of Scotland is also given credit for this 1288 law (even though in 1288 she was five years old and lived in Norway). In this version, the law required that fines be levied if a marriage proposal was refused by the man.
​
The earliest verified reference in the English language is a couplet from an Elizabethan-era stage play called The Maid’s Metamorphosis, first performed in 1600, a leap year.

TimeandDate.com indicates that Leap Day is known in some places as Bachelors’ Day”, an Irish tradition allowing women (on Leap Day) to initiate dances and propose marriage. If the proposal was refused the man was expected to buy the woman a silk gown or, by the mid-20th century, a fur coat. The tradition is supposed to originate from a deal that struck with Saint Patrick.

In the United Kingdom, a woman was allowed to propose marriage on Leap Day and if refused the man was obliged to buy her new gloves on Easter Day (some sources say 12 pairs of gloves). In some areas a woman could propose for the entire leap year.

SADIE HAWKINS DAY
The American version on Bachelor’s Day arrived on the scene as Sadie Hawkins Day, originating from Al Capp’s cartoon series “Lil Abner” in the 1930’s.
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Here is a holiday that originated from a cartoon. It all began in Al Capp's "Lil Abner” Cartoon in on November, 15, 1937. In the cartoon series, the mayor of fictional town of Dogpatch, Kentucky (also the wealthiest man in the community) was desperate to marry off his ugly 35-year-old daughter, so the artist helped him out and created the holiday.

​As the story went, the mayor Hezekiah, brought together all the bachelors around Dogpatch and declared “Sadie Hawkins Day” and ordered a race of eligible bachelors with Sadie chasing after them… when a man was caught, he would be legally bound to marry her. The other town spinsters loved this idea so much that they declared Sadie Hawkins Day a mandatory annual event which lasted as long as the cartoonist – 40 years.
​
If you grew up in that era, you probably experienced the traditional high school Sadie Hawkins Day dance when the girls invited the boys, or the many university events. The whole idea was wildly popular. While there is no specific day or month for Sadie Hawkins Day, Leap Day is as good as any, but it is celebrated usually in the fall.                                         Sources of Photo: mentalfloss.com/article/29084
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​womenyoushouldknow.net points out that “this was a very different time in history” which helps in understanding its popularity. “As for the man who dreamed up this idea, Al Capp was apparently a known womanizer and misogynist, as well as an accused rapist."
​
“His reputation for seducing and even sexually assaulting aspiring actresses, including a young Goldie Hawn and a distraught and disheveled Grace Kelly,” along with sleeping with the college girls he met on his Sadie Hawkins Day tours preceded him.”

LEAPING BABIES
Persons born on Leap Day used to be called “leapings” or “Leapers”. There’s actually a society “leapings” can join. https://www.leapyearday.com/honor-society-of-leap-year-day-babi

The chance of being born on February 29 is approximately 1 in 1,461. But if that’s your birthday, you can celebrate it on February 28. At one time it was once thought that leapling babies would inevitably prove sickly and "hard to raise," though no one remembers why. Today, there is still a problem with leap day babies and medical records.
□
Author R. Ann Siracusa
Converting Oxygen to Carbon Dioxide For Over Three Quarters of a Century
 
Resources
http://www.timesledger.com/stories/2012/8/hellman_all_2012_02_23_q.html
http://inventors.about.com/cs/inventionsalphabet/a/leap_year.htm
http://www.terracestandard.com/community/139765403.html
http://www.toledoblade.com/Mary-Alice-Powell/2012/02/19/Leap-Day-2012-is-nearly-upon-us.print
http://www.cleveland.com/lakewood/index.ssf/2012/02/lakewood_students_born_on_feb.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12054/1211860-55.stm#ixzz1nQB9feFv
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/historical/a/leap_year.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year
http://www.timeanddate.com/date/leap-day-february-29.html
http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/celtic-goddess-brigid.htm
http://www.annistonstar.com/view/full_story/17573876/article-A-leap-forward?instance=home_opinion
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/fashion/weddings/women-proposing-leap-year.html
https://reason.com/2013/02/26/the-wizard-of-dogpatch-2/
http://blog.bridgemanimages.com/leap-year-2016-if-she-likes-it-she-can-put-a-ring-on-it/
https://journeyingtothegoddess.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/goddess-brigit/
https://www.monasteryicons.com/product/st-brigid-icon-396/irish-gifts-and-decor
https://www.irelandbeforeyoudie.com/leap-day-proposals-the-story-behind-the-leap-year-tradition-in-ireland/
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/fashioan/weddings/women-proposing-leap-year.html
 

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I Approve This Message

2/21/2020

0 Comments

 
I AM A WOMAN
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If someone tells you that you
have enough shoes,
Stop talking to them.
You don’t need that kind of
negativity in your life.
AND I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE
I was just wondering how many of you out there are getting as tired of political ads as I am, and we still have months to go. Most of all, “I Approve This Message” is getting really irritating. When did this statement become such a thing? Why do all the candidates say this?

STAND BY YOUR AD
Believe it or not, this is a legal mandate! Of course it is! You knew that. I mean … after all … we’re talking about government here!
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The SBYA (Stand By Your Ad) Provision is part of the “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act” adopted in 2002 which amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require candidates for federal political office, as well as interest groups and political parties supporting or opposing a candidate, to include in radio and television advertising the statement that the candidate has approved the
                                     statement.                                            Photo source: cagle.com/jason-stanford/
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​The provision was intended to minimize the “Attack Ads” which began to proliferate in the 1960s, criticizing an opponent's political platform. and has since become a slandering contest. It is an attempt to force candidates to associate themselves with the attacks in such ads (rather than do it anonymously) and to discourage defamation of character as a campaign strategy.

Representative David Price of North Carolina, proposer of the amendment, state:
"The American people are sick of the relentlessly negative tone of campaigns, particularly in presidential races. ‘Stand By Your Ad’ isn't just about restoring civility to campaigns. It's also about restoring people's faith in our political process." wikipedia.org/Stand_by_Your_Ad_provision

In my opinion, that would be a good thing. Unfortunately, it hasn’t seemed to achieve its purpose, but at least the public knows who is saying what.
 
THE “BAD TIMING AWARD” GOES TO….
As Jon Levine says in mic.com/articles/, “Despite noble intentions, the major flaw of the Stand By Your Ad provision wasn't in the text but its timing.” Adoption preceded actions which rendered it somewhat ineffective.

The Legislation addresses only radio and television ads without anticipating the popularity of the internet and social media. Also, the Supreme Court allowed unlimited donations to super PACs, not named in the SBYA statute. “Now, rather than any single person, massive political ad campaigns are often bankrolled by groups with names like ‘Security is Strength’” not subject to the disclosure.

Violation of the “Stand By Your Ad” provision can result in penalties levied by the Federal Election Commission and the loss of lowest rates for campaign ads. Attempts have been made to broaden the text to include internet ads, but the original bipartisan support has fallen victim to the ever-expanding schism between political parties and platforms.
I predict a long and full life for the words “I’m X, and I approve this message.”

MUDSLINGING: AN AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION
I also predict the American Political System will not betray the long tradition of negative campaign rhetoric.

Most likely, the first presidential election in the United States of America (1788–89) is the only one not plagued by badmouthing the other candidates. That’s because no one else ran against George Washington. Washington had no political party and did no campaigning. He was our last and only non-partisan president.
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By the election of 1800, between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,  influential outsiders and journalists had taken up the torch. There is a long backstory to the election, which I won’t bother you with other than to give some of the quotes.

                       Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
               Photo source: https://www.bing.com/images/

The President of Yale publically suggested that if Jefferson were elected “we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.” A newspaper in Connecticut stated that “Jefferson would create a nation where ‘murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced.”

Others in the Adams camp called Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”

Not to be left out, an influential supporter of Jefferson, named Callender, wrote that Adams was “a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a ‘repulsive pedant’ and ‘gross hypocrite’ who ‘behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.”

An interesting side note to the above story: Callender expected to be named postmaster as a reward for his support. When Jefferson appointed someone else, Callender wrote a series of articles charging the new president with having fathered children with a slave named Sally Hemings.

In this election, no one was exempt and the candidates’ wives were also subjected to public name-calling. In the words of one historian, the election of 1828 boiled down to: “Do you want to vote for someone whose wife is a whore or do you want to vote for someone who pimped for the czar of Russia?”

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
Jefferson was elected, and later he and Adams mended fences and became close friends, but the tradition lived on.

Things seemed to reach the anonymous-ad-boiling-point in 1988 with the Willie Horton TV ad consisting of a mug shot of convicted murderer William Horton. This criminal was released as part of the weekend furlough program, escaped, and committed more crimes.

The ad was produced by supporters of a candidate without his authorization, and devastated the other candidate, setting the later stage for the bipartisan adoption of the as part of the SBYD in 2002.

But the relentless, undying ingenuity of the American Political System has found ways to continue the example set by our forefathers who, after all, were just human beings like everyone else.

That’s my message and I’m sticking with it.

I AM AUTHOR R. ANN SIRACUSA
AND I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE
​□
sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_by_Your_Ad_provision
https://www.mic.com/articles/126897/when-the-hell-did-i-approve-this-message-become-a-thing
https://www.marketplace.org/2016/10/17/where-did-i-approve-message-come/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-campaign-mud-slinging-history-flashback-perspec-1002-md-20160930-story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/04/facebook-and-google-asked-to-suspend-political-ads-before-general-election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_advertising
https://www.heraldcourier.com/news/the-presidential-election-had-plenty-of-mudslinging/article_309eebb2-efc5-5e70-a9e7-5225158b8101.html
https://westfieldfinancialplanning.com/mudslinging-political-tradition/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/10/ten-most-awesome-presidential-mudslinging-moves-ever/
https://www.cagle.com/jason-stanford/2012/10/confessions-of-a-political-junkie
​
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    Author R. Ann Siracusa

    Novelist, retired architect and urban planner, world traveler, quilter, owl collector, devoted wife-mother-grandmother, great-grandmother, and, according to some, wild-assed liberal.

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