Blog Posts

history rewritten: the Columbus Day Controversy

10/11/2019

IT IS WHAT IT IS
Throughout the history of the world, human beings have committed acts of war and perpetrated atrocities on other human beings for all manner of reasons. Political and military leaders and their armies have been responsible, over the millennia, for torturing, killing, and enslaving of millions.

The fact that many famous figures in history are deemed responsible for such acts of mayhem does not change history nor lessen the historical importance of other things these people may have accomplished or change their roles in the development of world history. Many of the acts are deemed atrocities by 21st century standards, but they happened. Right or wrong, good or evil, it is what it is.

Over the centuries human beings have become more civilized, educated, and empathetic to the rights and dignity of others. Standards of behavior and values have changed over time – for the better, I believe, although we still have a long way to go.

ORIGINS OF COLUMBUS DAY
Stories have it that Christopher Columbus died broke and in jail, but for the most part, the history books still give Christopher Columbus the credit for “discovering” the new world and opening up the Americas to European colonization.

October 12 is supposedly the day Columbus landed on what is now part of the Bahamas. [He never actually set foot on the North American mainland.] The day is celebrated in many countries in the Western hemisphere as well as Spain and Italy under various names, including "Día de la Raza" [Day of the Race], “Día de la Hispanidad” [Day of the Hispanic], Day of the Americas and Discovery Day. It was first celebrated in the US in 1792, the 300th anniversary of the discovery, by the Tammany Society.

Subsequently, there were celebrations of the day in various locations all over the US. In 1866, Italian Americans in New York began celebrating Columbus Day as recognition of their Italian heritage, with which this holiday has been connected ever since. As a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and New York City Italian leader Generoso Pope, October 12 was proclaimed by Congress as a federal holiday in April 1937. [Note: several references said 1934]. In 1971, the US Congress officially designated the date of the annual federal holiday as the second Monday in October.

According to a Senate report to Congress from the year Columbus Day was proclaimed [not clear this means 1934, 1937, or 1971], it is an "annual reaffirmation by the American people of their faith in the future, a declaration of willingness to face with confidence the imponderables of unknown tomorrows.” www.latimes.com/columbus-day

Based on that statement, it appears Congress intended to celebrate the event of the discovery and the introduction of the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern Hemisphere, not specifically Columbus himself.

THE COLUMBUS DAY CONTROVERSY
The earliest opposition to celebrating Columbus Day dates back to the 19th century, before the holiday had any kind of legal status, when anti-immigrant activists attempted to eliminate it because of its association with immigrants from the Catholic countries of Ireland and Italy. Notably, the holiday was opposed by the Ku-Klux-Klan because they believed it increased Catholic influence in the United States.

Photo Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/columbus-confusion-about-the-new-world-140132422/
By Edmund S. Morgan - The Gallery Collection / Corbis

More recently, there is a growing movement in the US to replace “Columbus Day” with “Indigenous Peoples Day” because the proponents consider Columbus’ “discovery” of the new world a tragedy. According to Nadra Kareen Nittle’s article in www.thoughtco.com, March, 2017, “Native American groups argue that the Italian explorer’s arrival in the New World ushered in genocide against indigenous peoples as well as the transatlantic slave trade. Much like Thanksgiving, it highlights Western imperialism and the conquest of people of color.”

They argue that Columbus Day and other memorializations of Columbus “whitewash the brutal history of of native enslavement and genocide that represent his true legacy … Millions of indigenous people were displaced by Columbus, and between his arrival and the Pilgrims’ arrival in 1620, 90% of the native population died, mostly from diseases brought over from Europe. The remaining natives saw their land and culture destroyed by the violence of white Western colonization.” www.theyucatantimes.com/2018/columbus-day/

It is true that as Governor of the Indies, subsequent to his voyages, Columbus enslaved and mistreated the native populace and even colonists who objected to his policies and methods.

Was he a racist and a rotten, brutal person? Evidence indicates he was. Although his beliefs were not much different than anyone else at the time, he was held accountable for his atrocities by his peers, the Spanish.

Did he introduce slavery and other European injustices to the Americas? No. Slavery and human sacrifice had existed among some of the indigenous peoples of the Americas for hundreds of years before the Europeans got there.
He did come uninvited, invade their territory and conquer the inhabitants? Yes, but isn’t that the pattern of history throughout the world?

Should Columbus bear the responsibility for the European beliefs of the time, including slavery, and for what happened centuries afterward? I supposed that’s what the debate is about.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY
In my opinion, it is futile to try to assign “blame” for the consequences of any historic event. Understand the motivations and consequences, yes, but not blame. Columbus Day does not have to commemorate the person nor does it celebrate the ultimate outcome of the voyages. It does mark an important event in world history.

Highlighting an event that changed the world, or much of it, is neither a positive or negative comment on the value of the event or what happened subsequently. Remember, nearly all events commemorated by any culture, have their positive and negative impacts.

While the United Nations declared August 9 as International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in late 1994, Berkeley, Calif., had already become the first city in the U.S. to replace Columbus Day itself.

It would take an act of Congress to do away with Columbus Day at the national level, but at least 6 states and 130 cities have officially renamed the holiday as Indigenous Peoples Day, and more are proposing legislation to do the same. Many cities, including Columbus, Ohio, have cancelled the traditional Columbus Day parade. These movement to rebrand Columbus Day and/or eliminate the parades are typically resisted by cities’ Italian-American communities, the original promoters of the holiday.

Italian flags Columbus Day parade Fifth Avenue NY Columbus Day Parade on 5th Avenue
Photo Credit: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Photo Credit: (Andrew Burton / Getty Images)
Photo Source: cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/no-apologies Photo Sourcewww.latimes.com/nation/columbus-day

It would take an act of Congress to do away with Columbus Day at the national level, but at least 6 states and 130 cities have officially renamed the holiday as Indigenous Peoples Day, and more are proposing legislation to do the same. Many cities, including Columbus, Ohio, have cancelled the traditional Columbus Day parade. These movement to rebrand Columbus Day and/or eliminate the parades are typically resisted by cities’ Italian-American communities, the original promoters of the holiday.

Idigenous Peoples' Day celebration in Berkeley, California in 2012 Idigenous Peoples' Day celebration in Berkeley, California in 2017
Photo source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Peoples%27_Day Photo source: berkeleyside.com/2017/dump-columbus-day

Perhaps we could should rename the holiday for October 12 as Italian-American Heritage Day, since that’s what it has become to many in the US, and add another holiday on August 9 to celebrate Indigenous Peoples.
I can’t imagine most Americans opposing another national holiday with a day off work.

Sources:
https://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/10/09/berkeley-became-1st-city-dump-columbus-day-indigenous-peoples-day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day
https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-columbus-day-why-do-we-still-celebrate-20151012-htmlstory.html
https://www.freetheslaves.net/about-slavery/slavery-in-history/
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ac41
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Christopher-Columbus-Trivia
https://badgerherald.com/opinion/2017/10/11/if-you-apply-a-21st-century-standard-to-columbus-then-you-should-to-the-natives-as-well/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/why-i-proudly-celebrate-columbus-day
https://www.thoughtco.com/columbus-day-104712
https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/columbus-day
https://www.thoughtco.com/case-against-celebrating-columbus-day-2834598
https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/at-parade-no-apologies-for-columbus/
https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2018/10/why-are-people-celebrating-indigenous-peoples-day-instead-of-columbus-day/
https://sokokisojourn.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/vermont-senate-house-bills-introduced-for-statewide-indigenous-peoples-day/
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/10/why-cities-turned-against-columbus-day/572338/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/us/columbus-day-indigenous-peoples.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/case-against-celebrating-columbus-day-2834598

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NO, YOU REALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND: Writing Characters With Backgrounds Other Than Your Own

10/4/2019

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All writers have their own methods of creating characters and generating ideas for novels. I use my foreign travels for plot ideas, and enjoy creating stories that take place all over the world. I also draw ideas from things I experience, read, see in movies or on TV, and from life itself. Yada-yada-yada.

My story idea and setting usually come before the main characters, who are then developed to fit the location and have the characteristics and personalities to move the plot forward. From there, I populate the novel with a lot of secondary and minor characters as the need for them comes along.

In real life, there are tens or maybe hundreds of people who move through our lives each day, but have no importance for us. Don’t take that the wrong way. I’m not saying some people are more worthy of our attention than others. Neither am I implying we should ignore or not see those people: quite the opposite. We should be kind, civil, respectful, sympathetic, caring, and interested in them. We should listen to what they have to say. That doesn’t mean they are integral part of our lives physically or emotionally.

I’m always nice to the cashiers at the grocery store [even the rude ones], and for the most part they are pleasant with me. Sometimes we talk briefly about what’s going on around us, in the news, or in our lives. We exchange a few sentences. I attempt to learn and remember their names … always a challenge for me. After five or ten minutes we part, and if we never see each other again, neither of us will be left with big holes in our lives.

But I digress. As far as my fictional characters go, when the need for a minor character comes up -- a baggage handler, a member of a tour group, a waitress, etc. – I usually don’t know what role the person will play. They may ends up:
Kicked out of the novel Murdered off in the novel Be given a role in the novel
▼ ▼ ▼

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW
Those words of wisdom are some of the first “rules” beginning authors learn. While the guidance is, without question, useful at the start of a writing career, after a while most writers amend the advice to “write about what you know about” and realize it doesn’t necessarily mean should only write about yourself, your family, the town or country you grew up in, or anything specific in your background. It does means, “Do your homework first.”

There are many ways of accumulating knowledge besides “living it.” Granted, personal experience is vivid -- even mundane incidents or incidental knowledge can remain with us for a lifetime -- but human beings can, and do, learn through other means.

Nevertheless, writing about the experiences, events and feelings of others and understanding them are not the same.
That’s when an author, even one who has done their homework, can stray off the path when creating characters who do not resemble the writer’s own background and experiences -- including experiences in and with other backgrounds.
Hold that thought!

LONG TERM MEMORY IS WHO WE ARE
Our collection of memories provide humans [and fictional characters] with a sense of past, present, and future. The long term memories garnered from just being alive makes a humans who they are.

The process of memory involves the way human brains encode sensory perceptions -- everything around that the human body can perceive in one way or another – as well as storing these conscious and subconscious memories and recalling information. The brain absorbs innumerable bits of information every second, but it can only register a limited number taken in by our senses of sight, touch, sound, smell, feel (tangible and intangible such as mood).

Then, quickly this data is moved to parts of the frontal cortex responsible for analyzing the various sensory inputs and deciding if they're worth remembering. If they are, they're shipped off to the various parts of long term memory. Much of it returns to the sensory cortex areas where the brain originally received it.

Thus, if our long term memories are essentially who we are, our values, and what we believe in, then everything we see and do is filtered through that lens.

Hold that thought also.

WRITE WHAT YOU UNDERSTAND?
Understanding is a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object -- such as a person, situation, place, message, idea -- whereby one is able to think about it, use concepts to deal adequately with that object or thought, and make inferences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding

Intellectual vs. Emotional Understanding
I spent a lot of effort trying to get my mind around the difference between intellectual and emotional understanding, although I’ve used those words myself on many occasions. The best articulation I found is from an article written by Elinor Greenbers, Faculty New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, describing the “practical differences between intellectual and emotional empathy”, which is not quite the same thing. Her example, slightly reworded, is below.
   "If we see someone fall down and spill their groceries on the ground, persons with emotional and intellectual empathy are almost equally likely to help.
   The intellectual will consider how the other person will react to the help, if other people are moving to help, and if helping the other person will inconvenience them. The intellectual might actively decide not to help at all, though they are also likely to ask the other person, “Are you all right?” or “Would you like a hand?”
   So, while the mechanics of the two kinds of empathy differ, they have few practical differences."

To me this means, intellectual understanding is listening to the words and what they mean, really hearing the story, realizing the kinds of impacts the incident had on the particular person telling the story, and being sympathetic to how the person is saying they felt about the situation.

Emotional understanding is all of the above plus the visceral feeling in your gut. Therein lies the rub. Even though being familiar with the details of experiences and feelings of others, understanding them are not the same. Is it possible to feel exactly as another person feels, both emotionally and physically?

The answer is, “No, you can’t completely understand.” No two people have exactly the same lens and process the information the same way. But people who have shared the same experiences or many of the same experiences can come very close to it, and having shared similar backgrounds and experiences gives a much better sense of what the other person thinks and feels.

Writer Eliza Andrews, in her article, quotes a friend of color who told her, “You can’t tell white people a story about white people and expect them to understand.”

She writes that no one can take their own experiences and then paste them over the top of race … or another person. I am white. I grew up at a certain time in a certain place and I’ve lived the life I have lived. I will never understand what it means to grown up being a person of color. I can only empathize and relate at some level.

We all “think” we understand, because anyone who is interested and/or even a little empathetic relates the topic of discussion to something that they are familiar with or have experienced personally which seems to replicate the other person’s point of view, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Everything we see, feel, learn, experience in any way, comes into our brains through unique filters.

That is a hell of a lot of words to say respect the fact that everyone is different.

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING CHARACTERS WITH BACKGROUND DIFFERENT THAN YOUR OWN
This blog was intended to list a few simple guidelines for writing characters who have different backgrounds [ethnic, cultural, national, sexual orientation, linguistic, interests – whatever the author didn’t experience directly]. Instead, my To-Do list morphed into a complicated research project. Apparently, I have no lens for pithy.

I believe that most writers want their works to be read, enjoyed, appreciated, and respected. I doubt most authors – at least not any that I know -- sit down at the computer to create characters and a story line for the purpose of spreading discriminatory practices and hate, or the intention of purposefully hurting, offending, disparaging, or damaging other people.

But authors are human. Not only do we see things through our own lens, we flat out make mistakes sometimes. We can be insensitive to something and be totally unaware of the results. What authors can do is be conscious of the problem and make an effort to lessen or eliminate those unintended offences from our writing. [If an author intends to be hurtful or offensive, there’s probably nothing anyone can say or do to make a difference.]

After running all this information through my own filter, I formulated these guidelines for writing about any characters and communities different from our own and those we are familiar with.
   ● Respect the people and their culture of the people you are writing about.
   ● Accept the fact that you may not “understand.”
You probably don’t, or at least not completely. Come to the task of writing your novel expecting to question and challenge your own filters on an ongoing basis to keep on course.

● Ask yourself why
If your major characters are of different background from your own, and you want to tell their story, ask yourself why. Why are you writing this book? Who is your audience? Why did you choose to this character whose background is different from yours?

● Do some serious research
Be ready to do as much research as your novel needs, which can consume much time and effort sometimes.

▪ Seek out one-on-one contacts, literature, research data, movies, etc. originated by the community you are writing about. Ask questions about things you don’t get.

▪ Listen! Pay attention! Set aside your own experience, beliefs, and filters. Try to suspend critical judgment in order to hear and understand, at least intellectually. How does this community see and represent itself? Be aware that in any community, the manner in which that community perceives and defines itself will vary from person to person, group to group, and may often seem contradictory. Don’t expect all members of any community to think alike or experience the same things. Don’t state or imply in your work that they do. Expect and represent a wide range of opinions.

▪ Research the speech characteristics and terminology used at the time and location of your novel. Language and dialogue are weak points in portraying accurately a community you are not familiar with, and certainly can be unintentionally incorrect or offensive. My research informed me, loud and clear, that black English is not English with bad grammar and slang. It is a dialect.

In dialogue, slang, pronunciation, and accents present potential pitfalls. More so if the setting is one which did or does not respect certain communities of people. The reality is that disparaging words are or were used to refer to others. Those words may be hurtful to readers.

Just sayin’. At times it is almost impossible to be true to history and at the same time be respectful of the feelings of the community in question. I don’t have the answer.

● Build and populate your world with sensitivity
Get your facts straight and keep them correct. This is not the time to “wing it.” Research your setting, history of the time, and language, and create, with sensitivity, the world your characters occupy or occupied. Numerous people of color pointed out that in many novels not one character, even a walk-on, is a person of color. Even though the main characters may not be a person of color, could the individual float through life without ever seeing one?
At the same time, be sensitive to stereotyping and dropping in "tokens."

● Avoid stereotyping
Stereotyping is making broad and often oversimplified assumptions about all members of a specific group or community.

Native American Stereotype John Herrington, Native American Astronaut African American Stereotype Serena Williams, Tennis Champ

▪ While some people within the group may embody the traits or characteristics of their stereotype, they are not necessarily representative of all people within that group.

▪ Although stereotypes are often seen as negative perceptions, they can also be positive. Either way, they can be harmful and hurtful.
▼ Spanish stereotype of American Tourist
www.countriesandcultures.com

▪ A characteristic associated with a group does not have to be inaccurate in order to be a stereotype.

There is always the chance that a character who seems well-rounded and deliberate to you might appear to someone else as a stereotype. To avoid stereotypes, you’ve have to know what they are from the perspective of the character you’re writing about. Time for more research.

Orson Scott Card writes, “The moment we see a stranger, we immediately start classifying her according to the groups we recognize she belongs to. We also, unconsciously, compare the stranger to ourselves. Is the stranger male or female? Old or young? Larger than me or smaller? My race or another? My nationality or another? Richer than me or poorer? Does he do the same kind of job as I do, or a job I respect, or a job I think little of? The moment we have identified the stranger with a certain group, we immediately assume that he has all the attributes we associate with that group. This is the process we call prejudice or stereotyping, and it can lead to embarrassing false assumptions, needless fears, even vicious unfairness.” writersdigest.com/characters-and-viewpoint-excerpt

● Take A Shot At Understanding What Being Privileged Means
Read White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh. There is a lot of food for thought, and it gave me a different perspective on the matter. https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf

● Base your character, closely or loosely, on a real person.
Author and illustrator Elisha Lim writes, “Consult with them as you write it. Let them edit it. Credit them generously. Repay them, at the very least with a copy of the book. If you can’t do this because you don’t have any friends of the particular background, then you probably don’t have the life experience to write that character convincingly. (Also a good moment to seriously reconsider your friend selection process.)” https://midnightbreakfast.com/writing-people-of-color

● Seek feedback from Sensitivity Beta readers
After completion of the first draft, you may want to ask certain members of the community in question to be Beta Readers for sensitivity. If you don’t know anyone, then you probably need to do more research. It’s good to have more than one. Listen carefully to what they tell you.

● Give your secondary and “minor” characters as much attention as your primaries
Secondary characters need to be fleshed out almost as much as primary characters. They deserve to be well-rounded individuals in their own right regardless of heritage or community. Minor characters and walk-ons get as much attention and description as warrants in the manuscript, but they should be accurate to the depth they are addressed.

● When in doubt, write from a place of shared understanding.
Authors must understand who they’re writing about, whether the character is a five-year-old child, a war hero with PTSD, or the worst antagonist ever.

● Remember Western culture has a predisposition to meaning of colors.
Do not always associate, in your writing, white with the definition of good and pure, and black with the definition of what is evil. We can’t escape the millennia of such references, but don’t put them in your writing. There are plenty of other words in the English language to make your meaning known.

● When introducing characters, do not point out non-white races or differences.

● Do not describe people in terms of edibles.
Describing people using food is not good in general, but it is particularly offensive to people of color and done so often that it warrants constant alertness. People of color have had a history of being used for slave labor involving food, especially coffee, chocolate, and so on, and the words have a historical context. Be aware of them. It is only a matter of selecting our words with care and sensitivity. Break the habit.

Writing With Color is an excellent website which provides alternate words for describing colors and tones of skin and many other things. Writing with Color: Description Guide – Words for Skin Ton

● Think twice about a plotline involving the whiteman saving the natives.
It’s not only the characters but often the overall premise of your story. Consider this in your plotting as well as creation of characters.

SHOULD AUTHORS WRITE ONLY CHARACTERS LIKE THEMSELVES?

Photo source: https://writersrelief.com/2018/02/15/characters-different-ethnicities-writers-relief/

No brainer. Hell, no! We live in the 21st century, in a world that is as diverse as it’s ever been. Not writing about other cultures and characters of other communities is being untrue to reality. Most important, it can only make us better writers, broaden our audiences, and give us more interesting things to write about.

Kristin Nelson puts it this way. “Make your characters realistic and grounded, and avoid falling back on stereotypes. Instead of merely describing your characters’ skin color, build a realistic and complex backstory for each character: What past experiences related to their heritage have shaped their identities and worldviews, and how will those things affect the ways in which they think, behave, and interact with others during the course of your story. Research extensively. Engage sensitivity readers of the same background(s) as your character(s). Expect and listen to criticism.” nelsonagency.com/can-white-authors-write-characters-of-color
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Sources and Resources:
https://indefeasible.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/writing-about-characters-of-a-different-race/
https://fromthemixedupfiles.com/2017/09/writing-white/
https://www.torforgeblog.com/2016/06/06/writing-poc-while-white/
https://sheerhubris.com/2016/09/18/writing-while-white-embracing-diversity-or-appropriating-culture/
https://erinbartels.com/tag/writing-while-white/
https://bookriot.com/2018/02/05/casually-racist-things-that-white-authors-do/
http://authorelizaandrews.com/on-writing-about-race-when-youre-white/
https://lithub.com/writing-while-black/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding
http://www.journal.kfionline.org/issue-6/this-matter-of-intellectual-understanding
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/why-do-we-read-and-write-novelshttps:/www.writersdigest.com/wd-books/characters-and-viewpoint-excerpt
https://nelsonagency.com/2017/01/can-white-authors-write-characters-of-color/
https://writingtheother.com/writing-characters-of-different-races/
https://intellectusspeculativus.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/guest-post-max-gladstone-on-bees-and-diversity/
https://fromthemixedupfiles.com/2017/09/writing-white/
https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf
https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/96830966357/writing-with-color-description-guide-words-for
https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/95955707903/skin-writing-with-color-has-received-several
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/19/9173457/hispanic-latino-comic [Good explanation of the difference between being Latino and Hispanic. They are not interchangeable.
https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/96830966357/writing-with-color-description-guide-words-for
https://thinkprogress.org/the-damaging-effects-of-the-model-minority-myth-5de48554c2d9/
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/10/16/the-effects-of-seeing-asian-americans-as-a-model-minority/model-minority-seems-like-a-compliment-but-it-does-great-harm
https://www.colorlines.com/articles/latino-stereotypes-thrive-media-negative-attitudes-dominate
cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2014/02/writing-tonto-wise-cracking-minority.html
gypsyappropriations.blogspot.com/2010/04/problem-with-word-gypsy.html
https://www.essence.com/news/5-code-words-media-needs-stop-using-describe-black-people/
https://clairelight.typepad.com/seelight/2006/09/almond_eyes.html
https://litreactor.com/columns/representation-matters
https://bookriot.com/2018/02/05/casually-racist-things-that-white-authors-do/
uncannymagazine.com/writing-the-margins-from-the-centre-and-other-moral-geometries-by-amal-el-mohtar/
https://intellectusspeculativus.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/guest-post-max-gladstone-on-bees-and-diversity/
https://twitter.com/DavidOBowles/status/959132384624103424
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/10/16/the-effects-of-seeing-asian-americans-as-a-model-minority/model-minority-seems-like-a-compliment-but-it-does-great-harm
https://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2016/06/20/how-to-write-protagonists-of-colour-when-youre-white/
https://writersrelief.com/2018/02/15/characters-different-ethnicities-writers-relief/
https://midnightbreakfast.com/writing-people-of-color
http://www.fantasy-writers.org/forum/writing-character-different-race
https://wendyallott.com/2018/02/07/what-should-you-consider-when-writing-characters-who-are-have-a-different-race-religion-gender-or-sexual-preference-to-you/
Ten Tips On Writing Race in Novels – AuthorMitaliPerkins

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HOMOPHONES and words that sound like homophones but probably aren’t

9/27/2019

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IS IT AN INSULT OR A NEW SMART PHONE?
Neither. A Homophone is a word that is pronounced the same (in varying degree) as another word but differs in meaning and often in spelling.

Homophones run in family herds with other similar relatives, the heteronyms [words with the same spelling but different pronunciation and meanings] and heterographs [words with the same pronunciation but a different spelling and meaning]. Whew!

The grammatical relationships in this family is more than this writer wants to deal with, but they stalk me and once and while break into my novels and cause problems for me.

Chart By Will Heltsley - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
Source: Wicki https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7146056

ANN'S DUCK TEST
The duck test is a form of abductive reasoning or inference, the sort of logic that employs a set of observations to find the most likely explanation of the observations. The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject's habitual characteristics.
   “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
I’ve applied that same test to some of my problem words. I can’t prove they are homophonic couples, but …. well, you’ll see.

Nauseous and Nauseated
I’m not sure what to call this situation. The words sound similar to a homophone, it's not a duck.
   ●nauseous = causing nausea, sickness
   ●nauseated = feeling sick
Even though both the words nauseous and nauseated are often used to mean “feeling unwell” “or “sick to the stomach”, grammar purists insist nauseous means “to cause nausea” (presumably in another person) while nauseated means “to feel sick”. Casually, it is probably OK to use both words to mean feeling ill. However, in more formal situations, use each word correctly. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/nauseated = vs = nauseous/

Radiate, Irradiate, Irradiated
This is a question of using the correct part of speech more than it is a homophone.
   ●irradiate = to throw rays of light upon; to illuminate; to brighten; to adorn with luster (Verb)
   ●radiate = to extend, send or spread out from a center like radii (Verb)

   ● irradiate = is illuminated; irradiated; made brilliant or splendid (Adjective)
   ● radiate= radiating from a center; having rays or parts diverging from a center; radiated (Adjective).
https://wikidiff.com/irradiate/radiate
   ● irradiated = past tense of irradiate
● Food irradiation = the process of exposing food and food packaging to ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays or x-rays, that can be transmitted without direct contact to the source of the energy (radiation) to free electrons from their atomic bonds (ionization) in the targeted food. Harmless to people and animals, it extends life of foods by destroying organisms responsible for spoilage, foodborne illnesses, and sprouting,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation

Nucleus, Nuclear, Nucular
This one is my pet peeve and drives me nuts when I watch the TV news.

● nucleus = 1) a central point, group, or mass about which gathering, concentration, or accretion takes place; the core. (noun) (Synonym: center, central part, most important part, heart nub, focus, kernel, etc.).

2) = in physics, the positively charged central core of an atom, consisting of protons and neutrons and containing nearly all its mass

3) = in astronomy, the small bright body in the head of a comet.

● nuclei = Plural of nucleus. More than one nucleus. (Noun)\

● nuclear = following definitions:
1) of, relating to, or constituting a nucleus or core of something, such as the nuclear family.
2) of, or relating to, a process by which the nucleus (central part) of an atom is divided or joined to another nucleus, resulting in the release of energy; i.e. relating to the power produced when the central part of an atom is divided or joined to another one.

● nuclear = to become wildly excited or upset; to go berserk or crazy wild. (verb).
● nucular is not a word. Despite the commonly used pronunciation -- in particular, by every TV news commentator who has ever spoken on the tube since it was invented -- nucular is actually the colloquial
mispronunciation of the word nuclear.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary receives so many questions about this mispronunciation (nuclear vs. nucular) that the dictionary calls it out for special mention in their FAQ section. It reports "widespread use among educated speakers, including scientists, at least two United States presidents and one vice president."

TRICKY HOMOPHONES
Most people, and particularly writers, use homophones all the time and have no trouble with them. Most of us know the difference between ate and eight or bare and bear. Nonetheless, all of us blithely breeze by some of the more tricky ones and don’t even realize we’ve made a mistake.

Discreet and Discrete
Here is one from my first book. It is not even a tricky one, but I didn’t pick up on it and neither did my editors. Some of my readers did and kindly pointed it out to me. Yuck!
● discreet = on the down low, under the radar, careful, attempting to be unnoticed.
● discrete = individual or detached.
Both words come from the same ultimate source, the Latin “discrētus”, for separated or distinct, but discreet has taken its own advice and quietly gone its separate way. https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/discreet = discrete/

Carat, Karat, Caret, and Carrot
I see this misused, often in commercials and advertisements. I believe that the confusion has to do with the fact in the Queen's English (in the United Kingdom) Carat and Karat mean the same thing.

● carat = a unit of weight for precious stones and pearls, especially diamonds; now equivalent to 200 milligrams. Carat is measured on a scale of 1-24; a carat is one-fifth of a gram or 200 mg. and is divided into 100 points. Denoted by “Ct.”

● karat = the measure of purity of a metal , especially gold, pure gold being 24 karats. Denoted by “K”
● caret = a proofreader's mark placed below the line to indicate a proposed insertion in a text.
● carrot = a vegetable

Afterward, Afterwards, and Afterword
For shame if you are an author and are not familiar with this one.
   ● afterward = interchangeable with the words "after" and "later."
   ● afterwards = at a subsequent or later time and usually relates to events that occur relatively close together, typically one right after the other.
   ● Afterword = an epilogue or concluding section of a text, typically written by the author of a book, play, or other significant work. In the past, was referred to as the "author's notes." (Noun)
https://www.thoughtco.com/afterwards = and = afterword = 1689292
Note: the words forward and foreword are similar, being a verb (motion) and a noun (part of a book or written document).

Complacent and Complaisant
   ● complacent = satisfied with the status quo while unaware of a danger ahead; self-satisfied or unconcerned.
   ● complaisant = eager to please; marked by an inclination to please or oblige.

Roo, Roux, Rue, and Roué
Foreign words absorbed into common English create problems, one being that the letters are usually pronounced differently in the foreign language than they would be in English. Another of the other difficulties is that the meaning in the original language may be modified or completely changed once it becomes an English word.

My husband is Italian. I lived in Italy for a number of years, and we spoke Italian at home when we returned to live in the United States. I’m familiar firsthand with how foreign words lose their original meaning. In Rome in the 1960s, the Italian word scampi did not refer to a particular type of shrimp or method of preparation. It meant shrimp. The Shrimp Scampi on the restaurant menu only means you are ordering shrimp shrimp fixed however the cook prepares it.

Similarly, gelato in Italian means ice cream, but Italian ice cream does taste differently. I haven’t been in Italy for six years, but based on Italian television, which we watch nightly, if you order gelato or ice cream, you will get the same thing.

● roo = a kangaroo.(Australian)
● roux = a mixture of a fat, such as butter, and flour, that is used to make a sauce or a gravy. The term roux is derived from the French culinary term beurre roux, which means browned butter.

● rue = (French) a street, road, avenue, boulevard.
● rue = to regret something, to wish one may undo something, carrying a connotation of bitterness; regret. (transitive verb, which is a verb that takes an object.)
● roué = a debauched man, usually an elderly debauched man.

Eminent, Imminent and Immanent
Most of the homophones that give me problems involve three words, and often one of them I am unfamiliar with.

● eminent = famous and respected (usually a person within a particular sphere or profession.) Most often used to emphasize the presence of a positive quality; significant, influential, esteemed.
● immanent = dwelling within; inherent to something else; spiritual presence
The less common word, immanent, often sneaks in where it doesn't belong. Immanent comes from the Latin immanens for "to remain in." or “dwell within.” Often used in reference to spiritual or nonmaterial
things.

● imminent = about to happen (adjective)

Meat, Meet, and Mete
● meat = edible flesh from an animal (noun).
● meet = an organized event at which a number of races or other sporting contests are held (noun).

● meet = come into the presence or company of someone; touch or join (verb).
● mete = dispense or allot justice, a punishment, or harsh treatment (verb).

MORE COMMON HOMOPHONES
Aural, Oral, and Verbal
● aural = related to hearing or the sense of hearing (adjective);

● oral = something spoken rather than written; something related to the mouth.
● verbal = verbal can be spoken or written.

Oral and verbal both relate to something expressed through words, but oral is spoken and verbal can be spoken or written. These words are often used interchangeably since both describe spoken words but, in fact, they are not always interchangeable. If your little sister sticks everything in her mouth, she has an oral fixation. If she can recite the Constitution by age two, she's quite verbal.

Capital and Capitol
   ● capital =
   1) of chief importance or influence, most serious (adjective);
   2) the seat of government of a particular jurisdiction(noun) Example: Sacramento is the capital of California.;
   3) letters conforming to the series A, B, C, D, etc. rather than a,b,c,d, etc. ▼

4) punishable by death;
5) relating to or being assets that add to long-term net worth; value of accumulated goods (noun);
◄ 6) the uppermost member of a column or pilaster crowning the shaft and taking the weight of the entablature (noun).

● Capitol (noun)
◄ 1) a building in which a state legislative body meets or a group of buildings in which the functions of state government are carried out;

2) capitalized, the building in which the U.S. Congress meets in Washington D.C. ►

Principal and Principle
● principal
1) first in order of importance(adjective); Synonyms: main, primary, chief, foremost, most important, leading, dominant;
2) the person with the highest authority or most important position in an organization, institution, or group; such as the principal such as the principal of a school (noun); Synonyms: chief, chief executive officer, chairperson, president, director, etc.
3) in money, denoting an original sum invested or lent (noun) such as the principal sum of an
   investment;
● principle = generally refers to a natural, moral, legal rule or standard (always a noun).
The word principle is used in a number of popular sayings, such as “In principle, I agree,” “As a matter of principle, I must take a stand.”

One dictionary give this tip for remembering the difference: Someone who is a “princi-P-A-L” should be looked at as your “pal.” Only people can be “pals” and principal refers to people, whereas “princi-P-L-E” refers to truths, rules, or standards. A truth or standard cannot be your “pal.”

Prophesy and Prophecy
Here it’s a matter of which is the correct part of speech to use.
● prophesy = say that a specified thing will happen in the future (verb) (Synonyms: foretell, foresee, divine, etc.)
      ● prophecy = a prediction (noun) (Synonyms: second sight, clairvoyance, prognostication divination, foretelling.)

Eye, I, Aye, and Aye-aye
Following up on my thought to add a list of Homophones to my website references, I ran onto a variation on this one that I had never heard of or seen. I had to add it.
   ● eye = the part or organ of a boy used to see (noun).
   ● I = A first person singular subject pronoun. (Always capitalized)
   ● aye = an old fashioned and nautical term for “yes”
   And here is the one I learned.
   ● Aye-aye = The Aye-aye is a rare species of lemur native to isolated regions of Madagascar and known as the world's largest nocturnal primate. They are also one of the most distinctive looking animals on the planet due to a number of unique adaptations, including coarse dark hair, long bushy tails, rodent-like teeth, piercing eyes and skeletal hands that feature extra-long middle fingers with hooked claws. Aye-ayes are born weighing just a few ounces and reach up to 5 lbs. as adults. They have been known to live up to about 20 years.

A person is never too old to learn something new.

There are zillions more homophones, but most of them we all know and love, and have mastered. It never hurts, though, to look up uses and pronunciations that sound a little off. English is constantly losing words and absorbing new ones, particularly foreign and technological words. I am planning to put a list of homophones on a reference page on my website … but it may take me a while.
□
Sources:
http://www.magickeys.com/books/riddles/words.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homograph#/media/File:Homograph_homophone_venn_diagram.png
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homograph
https://www.ragan.com/27 = tricky = homophones/
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/discreet = discrete/
https://www.thoughtco.com/afterwards = and = afterword = 1689292

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Elephant Appreciation Day and the Elephant Orphan Project

9/20/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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BAD THINGS HAPPEN: Friday the Thirteenth

9/13/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 13, 1974
Malta becomes an independent republic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9/6/2019

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

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

The World According to Student Bloopers
By Richard Lederer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8/30/2019

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

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

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

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

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

At least, that’s what everyone believed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Marrying For Love

8/23/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck with that!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cartoon by Ray Delgado - Photo source: Pinterest

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

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

8/9/2019

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

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

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

THE HAT LAW OF 1925

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ARE YOU READY FOR THE “SINGULARITY”?

8/2/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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