Ann Jones is a journalist and author whose works include Kabul in Winter (2006) and War Is Not Over When It’s Over (2010), both from Metropolitan Books. Her latest book is called They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America's Wars—The Untold Story. She lives in Norway.
Long advertised as a flaship program for American cultural diplomacy, the Fulbright Program is now facing devastating budget cuts.
Since 2002, veterans have been committing murder individually and in groups, killing family, friends, strangers and—in appalling numbers—themselves.
The Pentagon’s JROTC program canvasses public high schools for future soldiers.
How the war changed Charlie.
“War is absurd.”
Here’s the cost of American-style war.
Twelve years in Afghanistan down the memory hole.
Our political system has turned thoroughly masculine, paranoid, quarrelsome, secretive, greedy, aggressive and violent—not unlike a wife beater.
As the US withdrawal looms, women’s rights advocates plan to carry on their fierce, lonely fight.
The US has three lousy options with Afghanistan. Pick one.


We have reached the point where the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis are urgent threats to both nature and human society.
Rewilding Britain wants to see a mosaic of species-rich habitats restored and connected across at least 30% of Britain’s land and sea by 2030. Rewilding Britain’s vision for achieving 30% by 2030 is to expand the scale, quality and connectivity of our native habitats, including regenerative land management and farming.
There is a business case for rewilding but there are still many unknowns. While some farmers and institutional landowners have experience of making such changes, the practical evidence is patchy and the funding for innovation can be hard to find.
The Rewilding Innovation Fund was established as a result of the rapidly growing thirst for information, advice and funding for rewilding as an alternative approach to the management of the land and sea.
Launched in 2021 with seed funding from EET, the fund fills a gap by providing support for innovative and riskier rewilding projects with the potential for highest impact that find it difficult to access funding elsewhere.
Catalyst for innovation
The Innovation Fund aims to develop and grow the scale and ambition of projects within the Rewilding Network: a pioneering and collaborative hub of coastal initiatives, landowners, land managers, farmer clusters and community groups.
Successful applicants feed back key learnings and new ideas into the Rewilding Network community to build a resource of practical information for rewilders, including how to:
- develop and trial data collection for rewilding projects
- take an experimental approach that generates practical research, including monitoring frameworks and technology
- model carbon sequestration, improve carbon code for rewilding projects, and inject more carbon finance opportunities
- increase community engagement through engaging local communities and neighbouring landowners
- conduct feasibility studies, business and financial planning that sets the foundation for securing larger funding
Case studies from the winning projects are available on the Rewilding Britain blog here.
A blueprint for financing rewilding
The ecosystem of support for rewilding approaches is constantly changing. Research of different financing options (public, private, nature-based economies) has highlighted gaps in provision, hindering the pace and scale of rewilding that is needed.
The Innovation Fund is breathing life into opportunities: enabling projects and individuals to get started, giving confidence to embryonic projects, and helping them reach the point where they can access further funding.
“EET’s support has been critical in acting as a catalyst for early stage and innovative rewilding initiatives.”
Rebecca Wrigley, CEO, Rewilding Britain
Practical and scalable solutions
The funding and support from EET has enabled Rewilding Britain to strengthen relationships with its Rewilding Network members and increase membership.
The fund has also improved the diversity of the Rewilding Network, allowing the charity to support and promote community-led initiatives.
All learnings from the Innovation Fund are shared across the Rewilding Network. The Fund itself is evolving as Rewilding Britain learns from the process and its outcomes.
The team have ambitious plans for the Fund, including an annual award, enabling them to fund higher risk innovation projects that could have a big impact on catalysing rewilding in Britain.


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Postcommodity Spirit House Opens Its Doors
Internationally-renowned artist collective opens its doors again to offer a twin lecture featuring Candice Hopkins and the Product Division.
Rio Rancho Media Meetup at Knight Blue Design Studio
A chance for all creative types in the film and media community to meet and mingle.
Indigenous Fine Art Market Holiday Showcase at Hotel Andaluz
Quintessence Presents: Fifth Annual Messiah Sing at Immanuel Presbyterian ChurchMore Recommented Events ››

domain: artistic


text:
With shows like Madam Secretary, State of Affairs, House of Cards, and Scandal getting major airtime, the television realm of D.C. and politics has far more women on the Hill, and it’s all the better because of it. All of the Olivia Pope’s and Claire Underwood’s of TV politics have similar characteristics: gorgeous, powerful, influential, and competent. They’re cunning and when it comes down to it they can be ruthless and win in a male-dominated world. But this world of powerful and strong women is mostly dramatic and serious in tone. HBO’s political satire Veep serves as a comedic break to this trend with Julia Louis-Dreyfus starring as Vice President Selina Meyer and a supporting cast of hilarious Washingtonians. It’s a solid comedy starring a female politician in one of the most powerful places in the world, but Selina Meyer is definitely different from other fictional women in the White House.
Veep (currently airing its fourth season) began with Selina Meyer as the oft-ignored vice president. She gets snubbed by the president, has a job nobody really respects, and finds herself in ridiculous situations. The bumbling incompetence of Meyer and her staff is the comedic lynchpin of Veep. They find themselves in unfortunate PR disasters, usually ending up with Meyer yelling at all of them, yet they never seem to learn. These gaffes run the gamut from terrible tweets to accidental email leaks, all of which we occasionally see in real life, except exaggerated to extremes.
All the previously mentioned female politicians are fantastic at what they do and that’s why we love them, but Selina Meyer is terrible at her job and manages to get by from crisis to crisis eventually rising to the coveted position of president in a series of lucky mistakes. She curses like a sailor and is selfish and amoral. (She visits a factory after a hurricane in order to get a great photo op, but is disappointed and packs up cameras when she finds out the only damage done are to a few tiles on the roof.) Julia Louis-Dreyfus captures the unlikable and foul-mouthed Selina perfectly and her flaws and mistakes make for the best laughs.
Another comedic gem is Tony Hale; if you liked Arrested Development and found Buster Bluth hilarious, his character Gary will be a favorite. He plays the ever-faithful puppy who holds Selina’s purse, picks out her shoes, and provides all the Capital gossip. The duo has some of the best scenes together.
The best part of Veep is the way it tackles the sexist world of American politics, but it’s not in your face or constantly used. It satirizes the ridiculous antics Selina must deal with as a woman in the White House, but doesn’t constantly try to remind you she has a uterus. Selina deals with the insecurity of being a woman in the national spotlight like worrying about wardrobe malfunctions (one of her nicknames for VP stands for visible panty line) and her inability to call out inappropriate advances by state leaders. Like any great satire, it’s humorous on the surface but effective at pointing out how messed up things are.
It’s also great at mocking the “Old Boys’ Club” culture of D.C. or as Selina likes to call it, the “axis of dick” (a play on Bush’s famous ‘axis of evil’ line). It’s all of the ridiculous and gross things men in politics get away with because of their power and status and it’s bitingly sarcastic and on point. In one episode, there’s a senator who passes away and his legacy is praised on national news, but all the staff rejoice his departure and share stories of inappropriate advances and harassment they all suffered. That’s the other great quality about the show – it’s unapologetically irreverent.
Apart from gender and politics is the hilarious running theme of Meyer and her staff being bewildered and irritated by Millennials and their growing presence in their world. Their repeated attempts to connect with the youth culture while begrudging all its weird quirks is painfully accurate and something a lot of political organizations and people could learn from.
Watch Veep for its unconventional take on a female president, Selina Meyers’ colorful vocabulary, or the “wow I can’t believe I’m laughing at this” moments, because it delivers on all these fronts.
Cover image courtesy of Sky.


The issue of ‘transgender’ access to female-specific spaces continues to boil up. So let’s look again at what is being said and why it is a problem.
While women-only toilets and other similar spaces may have originally been invented out of misogyny and male entitlement (more intended to keep women out of male spaces than men out of women’s), the fact is that they have come to be seen as a place of refuge, safe havens for women who spend all their lives enduring the proprietorial gazes and more, of the men around them.
The United Sates of America, as we have noted here before, has an appalling track record of misogynistic as well as transphobic and homophobic violence. A woman’s rape, according to recent data, is reported once every six minutes there and the level of under-reporting may be as high as 80% or more. Women in patriarchal cultures are under constant threat of rape, and that is why the safe spaces issue has become important.
The regressive left, with typical stupidity, has seized on this as an issue of ‘transgender rights’ and nothing else. This is a lie. There are two issues here. One is whether women have a right to safe spaces where they can perform private functions without interacting with men, and the other is whether a person born male who ‘self-identifies’ as a woman, can simply overthrow any such right. In other words, does just saying he is a woman allow a person who is externally identifiable as a man to enter a space reserved for women who were born female? Continue reading Restroom rights again→
Almost all credible authorities, according to GIRES in the UK, now agree that the baseline minimum for gender non-conformity as ‘at least 1%’ and this has been borne out, again according to GIRES, by recent studies in New Zealand, The Netherlands and Belgium.
Now ‘gender non-conformity’ is a broad church and by no means all of these would identify as transgender. However, research carried out by Professor Lynn Conway and also by the Williams Institute for Law, part of the UCLA, suggests about half of these are, for a prevalence of around 1:200. This is supported by census results from Malaysia, which put the incidence there — a country that is officially very hostile towards transgender — at 1:170 of male-born individuals.
This should tell us two things: transgender is innate and appears in all populations at roughly the same rate; and that as such it is a part of normal human variation.
Of these transgender populations, the vast majority are what is called by science ‘Blanchard HSTS’, ‘Early Onset Androphile’ or ‘transkids.’ These are almost always, uniquely, attracted to men. They appear as transgender very young and frequently begin dressing as girls, wearing their hair long and, in recent decades, taking feminising hormones, in their early teens. They should not be confused with another, much less frequent type of MtF transgender, known as ‘autogynephiles’. These latter are fetishistic transvestite men, for whom dressing and pretending to be a woman is a sexual thrill: think Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner. (We will deal with these elsewhere; they are almost entirely restricted to white, middle-class Western men and globally are a tiny population.)
There is a difference between sex and gender; I am going to begin with sex (you’ll see why.) Sex refers to our physical, biological bodies. Usually, it’s how we are identified as babies, by the sex of our genitalia.
So are the sexes unequal? Yes, absolutely. Women are many many times more important than men. This is because the success, indeed the survival, of any population is dependent on the number, not of men, but of fertile mothers.
In China right now, a disaster is unfolding because of decades of legal restriction of family size to one, and a cultural misogyny which has seen female foetuses routinely aborted. This means that China simply doesn’t have enough women and it is facing financial — and possibly existential — collapse as its population ages. Doubtless the Chinese will soon be seeking net immigration on a huge scale; whether they’ll be able to persuade anyone is less sure.
One man can father hundreds or thousands of babies, but a woman can only carry perhaps 20 or so children in her lifetime and very few do that. Most women have far fewer children, which makes each individual mother more important. We explain how human society developed around core groups of women and children in Why Men Made God. Without children, humans cannot survive and the key to this is not men but women. This is why we developed a ‘two-group’ social structure, based around the mothers and children, with the men in a peripheral role. Continue reading Are the sexes unequal?→
When we did the research for Why Men Made God we spent a lot of time looking at how societies might have been structure before the development of agriculture. Clearly, we can’t directly study the human groups that existed outside Africa between 50,000 and 5,000 years ago, because they no longer exist. So also looked at relatives of humans, particularly our closest, bonobos, Pan paniscus.
Our ancestors left very little evidence. Although they did use stone and bone, a great deal of their artefacts were made of wood or leather and were perishable. The few that we do have are somewhat mysterious.
To try to shed light on this, we reviewed a wide range of anthropological literature. We especially concentrated on extant traditional societies, of which there are a surprising number, despite the attempts by the patriarchy, especially the Christian and Muslim ones, to eradicate them. (As a matter of fact, Islam has been less damaging to many traditional societies than Christianity, as we see from the number of traditional groups still living, and respected, in Indonesia.)
We reviewed the mythology that was recorded soon after the invention of writing, in Sumer in the 5th Millennium BCE. We then compared this to modern mythologies which form part of traditional cultures. We also looked at similar species, and that’s where bonobos came in.
The Goddess is a big deal in the Philippines and goddesses are out in strength there this week. The occasion is the closing rounds of the Universities Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) women’s volleyball tournament, held at Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City. Teams with names like De La Salle Lady Spikers and Ateneo de Manila Lady Eagles, the Tigresses, the Lady Warriors and the Lady Bulldogs battle it out in front of huge, enthusiastic and thoroughly partisan crowds. And these girls aren’t kidding; this is serious stuff.
The audience is mainly young – but everywhere in the Phils is mainly young. That’s only to be expected in a country where the population has increased by a factor of ten in fifty years. And there are as many men here as women. Filipinos are as passionate about volleyball as Scots are about football.
I’m sometimes asked if I don’t feel that I am missing out, by not believing in ‘something greater’. It’s a valid question and actually one that I think all atheists should ask themselves. But the answer, at least for me, might also be of interest to others.
Yes I am part of something greater, in a very real and immediate sense. It’s not so much a question of believing but of accepting the evidence in front of me. I am part of the Earth. The Earth is not just a core of molten iron covered in a crust of rock and water, with an outer gaseous atmosphere, though it is these things. It is a living system, an entity. And I am—we are all—part of that entity.
Ever wonder why French men watch the news? I did a piece a while ago about ‘Why Americans Go To Church’ which was stimulated by some or another piece of typical septic-tank arrogance but was really meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Kinda.
Anyway this is also meant to be a bit of fun. Did you ever wonder why it is that so many French men seem so very well versed in current affairs, news, and general what’s the buzz? It has nothing to do with the Bac de Philo or anything like that.
Apart from Manila itself, the conurbation of Metro Manila includes other cities that would themselves be enormous by any other measure: Makati, Pasig, Quezon, Cavite, and others. So transport is a major part of Manila life. But this is Asia, and unlike Europe, there is no organised public transport. There are no service buses, no trams or metro systems oganised by local government. Everything is run privately, and the sheer amount of private transport provision is staggering.
Given that I have not yet see anyone carrying a passenger on his shoulders, and horse-and-cart solutions are reserved for the tourist area of Intramuros, the old part of Manila, the most basic, though not always the cheapest, means of transport is the gloriously named ‘pedicab’. This is a bicycle with a side-car.
The main problem with this solution, leaving aside the thorny moral issue of whether it can be right for a 14-stone Scotsman and an admittedly much lighter Filipina to be push-biked around by a sweating 9-stone Pinoy, is the complete lack of suspension on these contraptions. Since the roads in Manila resemble the Somme after a barrage, this means a bone-jarring ride that risks lumbar impaction. Continue reading Manila: Skinny Cats, Transports of Delight and Beautiful Women→


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DURBAN – President Jacob Zuma will address a rally in Nquthu, KwaZulu-Natal as the ANC’s elective conference looms large.
Nquthu Local Municipality is due to hold by-elections on May 24, since the hotly contested region area has had no administration since August’s local government elections.
The municipality was placed under administration in October, after several failed bids to elect new office bearers.
The Inkatha Freedom Party and the National Freedom Party are also expected to hold rallies.
eNCA’s Sgu Shangase was at the event ahead of Zuma’s arrival:

domain: news


Hitting the reset button on Halloween is proving harder than expected. Some communities, in the wake of a snowed-out Halloween, have rescheduled the festivities for this weekend, like Little Falls, Montclair and Chatham, N.J., which are having them Friday night, and Brookfield and Naugatuck, Conn., which are planning to have trick-or-treating Saturday.
But if Halloween, the Remix, is popular with children, it has become one more irritation for frazzled parents, many of them still without power, unsure who else is participating or worried Halloween II will mean a second haul of sugar and chocolate for children who already went out Monday.
Many parents, for sure, are happy their children will experience a belated version of Halloween. But for others, the attempts to salvage the holiday are just adding to the seasonal sense of disorientation that began with Tropical Storm Irene and peaked with the area’s white Halloween.
Francie Cho, 47, a homemaker from Summit, N.J., spent the Sunday before Halloween giving the party she had scheduled — only it was in the dark, with no heat or electricity. She cooked food, she said, on the backyard barbecue for her four children and their friends. (“It was very spooky and lots of fun.”)
The town then decreed that Halloween had been moved to Friday, a prospect that left her as cold as that unheated house. “It’s just ridiculous,” she said. “All week they’ve been eating all the Halloween candy I bought. Do they need any more candy?”
And then she got a reprieve Thursday, when the makeup date was canceled because of too much road debris and too many homes still without power.
Kids, it is true, almost universally favored a second chance.
In Brookfield, Leah Sadler, 10, was shopping with her mother at T. J. Maxx for candy to hand out on “the new Halloween.”
“When I found out Halloween was canceled, I was so bummed; it was the worst day ever,” Leah said. “I went over to my grandparents’ house in New Milford because they were, like, the only people on the planet who had power. But we still didn’t get to go trick-or-treating. There were too many trees and wires all over the place. So I sat there on the couch and did nothing. I said, ‘I can’t believe it’s Halloween and I’m sitting on a couch!’ This is an outrage!”
She is thrilled it has been rescheduled so she can wear the devil costume she made.
In Sherman, Conn., Merry Arena and her daughter, Jennifer, 7, spent Halloween night and the next night at a makeshift shelter. But they got a little trick-or-treating in Monday and will attend Halloween events at schools Friday night and Saturday. “I know a lot of parents are like, ‘Enough is enough already,’ ” Ms. Arena said. “But in my opinion, the more candy and the more fun, the better, after all the stress we’ve been through with this storm.”
But for some parents, Halloween cannot be rescheduled any more than Christmas can. “Halloween is Halloween,” said Michael Marren, a screenwriter who lives in Bethlehem, Conn., with his wife, Dani Shapiro, a novelist.
On Monday the couple chain-sawed the trees that blocked their driveway, and drove to Woodbury with their son, Jacob, 12. “We gave him 20 bucks and let him run loose in La Bonne’s Epicure,” Mr. Marren said, adding: “We said, ‘There you go; happy Halloween.’ And he was happy.”
In several communities, safety issues trumped the desire for a second shot at Halloween or injected new restrictions. In Chatham, N.J., for instance, children were urged to go trick-or-treating only in daylight hours.
In Newtown, Conn., two big events each year are the Labor Day Parade and Halloween, where 3,500 children descend on Main Street to trick-or-treat.
But for the first time, the Labor Day Parade had to be called off because of Tropical Storm Irene. It was rescheduled for October, which was deemed a gallant but unsatisfying fix with only moderate attendance. Halloween was rescheduled for Saturday, but canceled again Thursday because of downed wires and power failures at two-thirds of the homes.
Many parents agreed with the decision. “Labor Day didn’t work very well; it just became this fizzle, like a seltzer bottle open for a week,” said Saba Quraishi, who has children aged 17, 14, 10 and 9. “My kids are fine with it. They’ll have Halloween next year.”
Pat Murphy, the mayor of New Milford, Conn., said she had heard murmurings in town about a possible “do-over” of Halloween, but she opposed the idea. “I don’t have control over the calendar, so Halloween is on Halloween, which is the 31st,” she said.
She said the town had a successful Halloween on the village green even with downed wires throughout its 69 square miles.
“Somehow the ghosts and goblins and fairies and witches managed to find us,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any way you would’ve had that kind of turnout, that kind of excitement, on any day but the real Halloween, which is Oct. 31.”


text: A significant challenge in chemistry research is to rationally control structure-property relationships in materials to achieve desired properties. The prevailing approach to this challenge involves the serendipitous discovery of materials or the incremental modification of solid-state reactions. Therefore, the search for new materials is often limited by phase equilibria or is inhibited by reactant diffusion and product nucleation. To circumvent these limitations, solid-state metathesis reactions have provided us with the opportunity to achieve kinetic control in solid-state chemistry. The pathways of these metathesis reactions can be altered in order to change how or what material is formed. For example, this has lead to the isolation of a metastable superconductor (high-pressure CuSe2) using a kinetically-controlled synthesis under mild conditions. Insights into these solid-state reactions, as provided by study of these reactions in situ, reveal great potential for the formulation of new reactions which selectively form metastable materials that are not accessible through standard solid state chemistry, and push the field towards a paradigm of prescriptive synthesis.

domain: literature


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There is a saying, “all things in moderation,” that applies to the question whether eating too many mints can be harmful. While enjoying mints can have some benefits, eating too much of any one food can be harmful. In fact, ever food has pros and cons to eating it. Mint has been consumed for a long time because of the medicinal value it provides. While this is a beneficial herb in many areas, eating too many mints may be problematic.
Even with the wide use of natural, organic mint, it is best used for short periods and in small doses. There can be some side effects if you overconsume mint.
Peppermint leaves are used in the creation of mint tea, one of the most popular teas around the world.It promotes digestion and can help relieve you of your headache. If you overconsume mint tea, you may see flushing or redness in your skin, skin irritations, irritated mucous membranes, headache and heartburn.
Menthol is an active ingredient in mint tea. This ingredient can cause restriction of the wind pipes in small kids as well as in adults. If you have asthma, your doctor may say to avoid mint products. It is also recommended to not overconsume tea if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Peppermint oil applied to children may cause breathing trouble. Those who are pregnant may be advised to not drink mint tea.
Can eating too many mints be harmful? Yes. In order to skip out on some side effects, avoid over consuming mint. You can find both spearmint and peppermint in tonic, capsule, oil and tea form. Experts recommend peppermint over spearmint. The doses are described as:
Can eating too many mints be harmful? Yes. What about peppermint candies? Peppermint candies are just that, candies without any real nutritional value and lots of sugar. There are no minerals or vitamins in the candies either. Ingredients and nutritional values vary between brands, but about three candies will give roughly 60 calories, all coming from corn syrup and sugar. You won’t find any fat, protein, sodium or fiber in the candy either.
With the large amounts of sugar and no nutrition, eating many of these candies adds more empty calories to your day, which can lead to weight gain. If you eat three servings, or nine candies, and don’t leave out calories someplace else, you’ll add 180 calories to your day. This will add another pound to your waist every three weeks. This weight can add up over time. Because there isn’t any fiber in the candy but the high amount of sugar, it will also raise your blood sugar.
It isn’t easy, but overdosing on peppermint oil, the common flavoring in these candies, can lead to unpleasant symptoms. With too much peppermint you can see rapid, shallow breathing, a slowed heartbeat, stomach pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, bloody urine, dizziness, depression, twitching or unconsciousness and convulsions. It is primarily sugar and not much oil, which means you will need to eat large amounts of the candy to overdose on it.
With the large amounts of sugar in these candies, you can cause cavities with over-consumption. Hard candy can be particularly bad for your teeth because they come in direct contact with the sugars which feed bacteria. This creates the perfect environment for decay and cavities. Chewing on hard candies can cause your teeth to break or chip.

domain: medical


text:
Rioter / Prisoner
Student (2008) (uncredited)
(Short) (boom operator) / (sound mixer) / (sound recordist)
(Short) (second assistant director)
(TV Series documentary) (production assistant - 1 episode)
(TV Series) (production assistant - 1 episode)
- St Albans
... (production assistant)
5' 10" (1.78 m)
Did You Know?
Studied for a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Film and Television Production from Westminster Film School in June 2010.
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text:
Fleur du Mal‘s Toronto-born designer, Jennifer Zuccarini is an expert in luxurious intimates and began her career designing for high-end lingerie brand, Kiki de Montparnasse in 2005.
As creative director for KM, she designed an entire collection of ready-to-wear, leather accessories and of course, lingerie. Her exclusive pieces are known for their sophistication, elegance and attention to detail as well as for their ability to communicate desire and provocation – which is ultimately what every woman wants.
After three years as KM’s creative director, Jennifer decided it was time to leave, but not before making Kiki de Montparnasse one of the world’s most recognized luxury lingerie brands. Zuccarini then joined the Victoria’s Secret team, where she gained knowledge on designing, manufacturing and sourcing for a multi-billion dollar company on a global scale. It was her experience in these two renowned (and very different) companies that led Jennifer to take a leap and launch her own lingerie and ready-to-wear brand, Fleur du Mal.
The now extremely successful luxury brand first got its name from Charles Baudelaire’s grand collection of poems “Les Fleurs de Mal,” a theme that is ever-present within Jennifer’s designs. A perfect intersection of elegance and provocation, Jennifer Z’s SS16 collection is the sensual gift every woman needs.
Feel beautiful in Fleur du Mal’s newest collection, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Lace Bondage Triangle BraOne of the most beautiful and delicate pieces in the collection, this floral bondage bra is the touch of pretty pink that your V-day needs.
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Lace Bondage Triangle BraDelicately feminine this soft lace and silk bra will make you feel like the angel that you are.
Rose Lace Unlined Demi Bra in RedIn vibrant reds and soft pinks, this bra is a must. You can’t go wrong with the colors of love!
Crochet Lace Longline Triangle Bra in BlackThe coolest of all bras, this triangle design in crochet lace is both modernly stylish and super comfy.
Everyone needs one of these in their closet. Practical, slimming and chic, the cross-strap design is a classic.
Crochet Lace Longline Triangle Bra in WhiteLingerie for angels is what this bra says to us.
Cage Lace Demi BraIn an intricate cage lace black and rose design, this haute bra will be your go-to for party nights in the city.
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The date bra is here just in time for your favorite holiday! Let your beauty shine with this flirty push-up.
Leavers Lace Peekaboo Demi BraA risqué choice, ideal for the modern woman – this Peekaboo bra is sensuality in lace.
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“I was always so intrigued by the relationship between the experiences of luxury and the environments of intimacy – how it relates to lingerie and the expressive ritual of dressing and undressing. Woven in the finest silks and the most delicate lace, a single piece of lingerie can manifest the intangible, personal connection shared between a woman and her sexuality.”
– Jennifer Zuccarini, Founder of Fleur du Mal

domain: design


text:
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It is generally understood that EU law as interpreted by the ECJ has not merely reconstituted the national legal matrix at the supranational level, but has also transformed Europe and shaken the well-established, often formalist, ways of thinking about law in the Member States. This innovative new study seeks to examine such a narrative through the lens of the American critical legal studies (CLS) perspective. The introduction explains how the editors understand CLS and why its methodology is relevant in the European context. Part II examines whether and how judges embed policy choices or even ideologies in their decisions, and how to detect them. Part III assesses how the ECJ acts to ensure the legitimacy of its decisions, whether it resists implementing political ideologies, what the ideology of European integration is, and how the selection of judges influences these issues. Part IV uses the critical perspective to examine some substantive parts of EU law, rules on internal and external movement, and the European arrest warrant. It seeks to determine whether the role of the ECJ has really been transformative and whether that transformation is reversible. Part V considers the role of academics in shaping the narratives of EU integration.
Tamara Perisin is Professor at the University of Z…
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domain: politics


New battery could power electric car from London to Edinburgh on single charge
Electric cars could drive from London to Edinburgh on a single charge using a new battery technology being developed at Cambridge University, scientists have said.
The lithium-air technology could be used to develop batteries that are a fifth of the cost and weight of current electric car batteries – enabling them to match the range of petrol and diesel cars.
Although real-world usage remains “at least a decade away”, scientists say they have overcome a number of obstacles to develop a working laboratory prototype of the battery.
Development of the lithium-air technology, which has a very high energy density, could also transform the energy system by allowing easy storage of power from renewable electricity sources such as wind and solar farms.
However, previous versions of the technology have been inefficient and unstable, tending to “die” after multiple charge and discharge cycles, or even develop faults that see them short-circuit and explode.
The new Cambridge University design, which uses a carbon electrode made from graphene, overcomes these problems and has so far been recharged successfully more than 2,000 times.
Professor Clare Grey, at Cambridge University’s Department of Chemistry, said: “While there are still plenty of fundamental studies that remain to be done, to iron out some of the mechanistic details, the current results are extremely exciting.
“We are still very much at the development stage, but we’ve shown that there are solutions to some of the tough problems associated with this technology.”
Ministers hope electric cars will one day become the norm, but the relatively low driving range of current models has held back the technology.
Current lithium-ion batteries, used in laptops and smartphones, are light but have to be recharged often because of their low energy densities. Their capacity also deteriorates with age.
Story: The Telegraph.co.uk


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Have you ever had those vacations where you never want to leave? The vacations where you could totally see yourself moving there? The ones that you literally start looking up real estate and quickly realize your dreams have been crushed because it’s way too expensive? Ya, me either. Totally kidding. That was 100% me on our dream vacation to the JW Marriott The Rosseau Muskoka in Canada over Christmas! I’ve been so excited to write this post and share where we stayed, all of the activities we did and best of all, I can’t wait to share the gorgeous photos! Plus, you’ll have your very own travel guide if you are planning to visit this particular JW Marriott!
Grayson and I had been browsing cold weather vacations back in September/October. We had initially planned on heading somewhere to see the fall foliage but we were obviously way behind on planning that. Nothing like waiting til the last minute! We then changed course and decided we should try and plan something where there’s snow so we could have a white Christmas. Y’all know it doesn’t snow down in Austin and this girl LOVES snow!
I’ve always wanted to visit Banff but every time we would start looking every single place would be sold out. I guess looking at super touristy destinations a couple weeks before you want to leave is a bad idea! Lesson learned 2 years in a row. As much as I hate to admit, I feel like Banff might be a little overrated at this point. We switched gears and started looking up different areas in Canada that were easier to get to from the Austin airport. I don’t know about y’all but I hate spending my entire day hopping on plane after plane.
We were pleasantly surprised to see that Austin flew direct into Toronto so we started our search looking for beautiful spots semi-close by. Of course, I’m all over Instagram searching fall foliage or snow in Canada near Toronto. And then there it was… All the stars had aligned and I knew I had found the most beautiful place for us to spend the holidays. JW Marriott The Rosseau Muskoka.
Right when I saw this place I knew it was the one. It’s like when people ask you what you’re looking for and you have absolutely no idea but you’ll know when you see it. This was that moment for me. I immediately sent Grayson the link and he was hooked. We started planning that night and voila! The trip was booked!
The Rosseau Muskoka:
How to get there –
I definitely suggest renting a car that is either 4×4 or all-wheel-drive. Depending on what time of the year will depend on the conditions of the roads. Since we were getting there mid-December they highly recommended us drive something that would handle well on slick and icy roads. Thankfully it wasn’t snowing when we got there but the day we left was another story!
The drive itself takes a couple of hours. For us, it took about 3.5-4 hours because of the Toronto traffic. Neither of us wanted to turn on our roaming to get map us there so we used some janky app that took us a really long way. OR, that could have been the usual way… We would have never known the difference. The main road was only one lane the entire way to the free way and we hit every single stop light imaginable. We had anticipated arriving midday but ended up getting there right as the sun was setting.
I want to add that the drive into Muskoka was absolutely beautiful. There are breathtaking lakes everywhere that have the most beautiful cottages lining the water. It was picture perfect.
When you arrive to the JW Marriott –
When we arrived we were in awe of how picture perfect the entire property was. It was as if we were transported right into a postcard. A layer of fresh, glistening snow was on the ground and we were greeted with hot apple cider. The staff was immediately so helpful and accommodating.
Check in was a breeze and we were handed our room keys and a packet of things to do around the property. First things first, let’s get settled in and check out our home for the next 5 days!
FYI – There is valet but we ended up self parking since we wouldn’t be leaving the resort often.
The Rooms –
We chose the One-Bedroom Suite for our 5 day stay because of the stunning view and best of all; the fireplace. Every single room on the property is filled with amazing amenities. Each room comes with a fireplace, a kitchen, the comfiest bed, TVs, WiFi, a beautiful marble bathroom, and the coziest bathrobes. Every room feels like a Muskoka cottage, painted in pale greens and yellows with white bead-board ceilings.
Keep in mind, if you visit after November each balcony is locked for guest safety. The icicles were pretty gnarly when we were there!
Things to do at the The Rosseau –
The best part about The Rosseau is that they are essentially a full resort. They are equipped with everything you need so you can plan on full relaxation.
During the holiday season they have a full schedule of activities. Literally from sunup to sundown there is always something going on. It was almost overwhelming because we wanted to experience practically everything on the itinerary but picked a few key activities to try out.
Fat Bikes – Ok, this was probably the most extreme and funnest excursion we did. The resort has a ton of the fat tire bikes and we were so excited to take them out and see what we could do on them. Little did we know they are a lot harder to ride in the snow than we had initially anticipated! Staying on the road was a breeze but I really wanted to see how they worked in the actual snow and ice. Grayson and I both struggled with this one but had an absolute blast. Helmets are provided.
The Spa – First word of advice. Do not schedule anything during the day you make your spa appointments. I decided to book our massages in the morning so we would have time to do out other scheduled activities for the day. Little did I know you can use the spa amenities the entire day as long as you have a service scheduled. We literally had to rush out of there to get ready for the rest of our daily plans.
We did have the best couple’s massages though. It was exactly what we needed after all of that travel and it was actually a great start to a busy day.
S’mores – The The Rosseau always has a camp fire going at the front of the property where you can either relax or make s’mores. Just ask the front desk for s’mores supplies and they give you the cutest bag filled with goodies!! Funny Story – A lot of people who visit have never made s’mores before!!
Nature Walks – The Rosseau is literally surrounded by nature so it’s not hard to find your self on a self-guided nature walk. Grayson and I got so lucky we had a guided tour from the amazing Robin Tapley. I learned so many tools and tricks about nature in a 45 minute period. It was honestly pretty amazing and I highly recommend attending one of his activities if you can.
One of the most amazing parts of this trip was the fact that we were visiting on the The Rosseau’s 10th Anniversary. We were invited to attend the most amazing gala in the most beautifully decorated ballroom. It gave Grayson and I an excuse to dress up and mingle with some fabulous Muskokans. Is that a word? It is now! They had the best surprise for us after all of the Gala festivities.
Fire Dancers – This was amazing. I was in awe the entire time I was watching the 2 girls flip and swing fire hula hoops around their bodies. I kept telling Grayson that I would have already burned all of my hair off by now. I’m not sure how often The Rosseau has these fire dancers perform but if they happen to be performing when you visit, it’s a must see.
It was also fun to just hang out around the resort. They have a full bar and multiple restaurants all within a short walking distance of each other inside the resort. We found ourselves playing pool and chess the first evening while drinking the tastiest hot chocolate. If you saw on my Instagram Stories The Rosseau had a full ice bar one of the days in celebration of their 10th anniversary!
We obviously shot a slew of photos while we were here too. That’s the best part of traveling for me. Well maybe not the best but one of the best. I absolutely love being in places that I can document with absolutely breathtaking photos.
The Restaurants –
We can’t forget about eating, now can we?! The Rosseau is packed full of amazing restaurants and room service.
Breakfast – Every morning we had the tastiest buffet breakfast in the hotel. If you aren’t a huge fan of buffets they also have a full menu as well.
Muskoka Room – This isn’t a restaurant but I had to add it in here. It is the most magnificent room in the entire hotel. I mean, it has to be if it has such a prestigious name! We enjoyed a peaceful dinner in this room the very first evening we were staying. The room is decorated so beautifully and there was even a stunning Christmas tree that filled the space with so much holiday cheer.
Sorry for the overload of photos from this room but the interior design was just out of this world! I wish this could be my house!
Teca – This was another beautiful restaurant with amazing food. Grayson and I started out with the cured Italian Meat and Cheese and bread. We then shared the Atlantic Lobster Ravioli. I probably could have eaten 10 of those dishes, they were so good! We had a Prosecco cheers for Christmas that night and it was absolutely perfect.
Muskoka Chophouse – This was one of our favorite dining experiences. Being from Texas we were anxious to see what the Chophouse was all about. It met and exceeded our expectations. We had scallops and pork belly, broccolini, crab cakes and the best bacon Mac n’ cheese you’ve ever tasted. To top off that amazing meal they brought us 2 yummy desserts. A fruit and sorbet topped cremé brûlée and s’mores in a jar. Y’all, it literally had campfire smoke in the jar when you opened it up! (Check out my Instagram Story highlight to see it in action.)
Exploring outside of the The Rosseau –
We decided to venture out of the resort on our second to last day in Muskoka.
Johnson’s Cranberry Marsh – Depending on the month they have wine tastings, the cutest cranberry shop and snowshoe trails on site.
Head into Bala – We really wanted to see the waterfall in Bala but it was under construction at the time. We were still able to drive over it and check it out but would love to take a closer look next time when the project is completed.
Cottage Cravings – This was my absolute favorite excursion! Cottage Cravings is known for their tasty hot chocolate. They have over 30 kinds and they all sounded amazing. I ended up trying the S’Mores Hot Chocolate and it was to die for.
There are also quite a few breweries in town as well. Clear Lake Brewery, Sawdust Brewery and Muskoka Lakes Brewery are all great for a craft beer experience.
If you are looking for a wilder, outdoorsy adventure be sure to check out Oxtongue Rapid Waterfalls and/or Algonquin Park. We weren’t able to make it to either of these places but are definitely adding it to the list when we come back during the summer!
The Weather –
The weather in Muskoka is absolutely beautiful. If you love the cold and snow then you will love it here. One of the things we noticed was how early the sun sets; around 4:30pm each day. The first couple of days had pretty light snow and drizzle. A couple of the other days we were there were completely sunny and clear. It really all depends on when you are coming. I feel like the dates we were there the weather was pretty mild.
The very last day we were leaving was a massive snow storm. I had woken up in the middle of the night and noticed it was just dumping snow. That worried me a little since we had to get up so early to make the trek back to Toronto. Would the roads be plowed or icy?? Would it take us hours to get back?
Thankfully, the drive back was even quicker than getting there, even though we were in a full blown snow storm driving back. Snow plows were out before the sun came up and had part of the highway cleared for drivers.
Overall, I would highly recommend The Rosseau to anyone looking to get away. Grayson and I are already planning a trip back next year during the summer months. If you were following our Canadian travels on Instagram Stories I have created a highlight called Canada if any of y’all want to revert back and see what we did.

domain: geography


text:
Defence contractor EADS will provide the Korean Helicopter Programme’s (KHP) self-protection system with its Missile Launch Detection System (MILDS) missile warning sensor.
The sensors will be integrated by Korean company LIGNex1 into the KHP self-protection system.
MILDS AN/AAR-60 is an advanced, passive imaging sensor which detects and tracks the ultraviolet emissions of approaching missiles.
EADS says it is particularly effective against infrared-guided shoulder launched missiles.
The system provides full coverage, a low false alarm rate and maximum warning time to enable the deployment of countermeasures such as chaffs/flares.
The Korean armed forces are planning to acquire around 250 helicopters equipped with the system.
By Elizabeth Clifford-Marsh


Harrison Ford visited Jimmy Kimmel this week and had some fun, pretending to be frustrated by questions surrounding an upcoming “Star Wars” film. The audience roared with laughter as Ford was confronted by some of his former “Star Wars” co-stars.
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Just finished a hummingbird painting in watercolor. At the moment, I have 14 paintings to take to the framer.
I recently finished a series of paintings of butterflies. I painted them with pins in them. My plan is to frame them in shadow boxes as if they were “real” collected butterflies. Here are a few from the series of 13 that I painted:
We all paint the same painting in order to learn from each other. I usually choose a different flower once a year. Painting the same thing over and over, in my case, means the paintings get better and better. At the end of a year I have to change to something else because I start getting bored with doing the same thing over and over. I think both women did a wonderful job!
I just finished this painting on Monday. Unfortunately, my camera doesn’t seem to be working so used my cell phone to take this picture. It’s not so great. Anyway, here is it. At the moment, it has a very simple name until I can think of something more clever. “Yellow Roses”, oil on canvas, 3′ x 4′ x 2″.
I just finished this painting on Friday. It is oil on canvas, 3′ x 4′. I definitely need to come up with a better title than “pink roses”! My problem with titles is that I don’t like literary titles (a rose is a rose is a rose) or obscure titles (The Belgian Encounter) or sexual (Velvet Embrace). I usually stick with the simple title. I will report back after I have decided…
This is Potter. What a cute dog! I sure hope the client liked it. I don’t know because I haven’t heard back, yet…
I just finished the background on my current painting. You can see the under painting (flat pink wash and more detailed wash on leaves and glass jar). I am currently working on the rose petals. It is fairly large at 3 feet by 4 feet.


This February, in Portland, OR, the New Partners for Smart Growth (NPSG) conference hosted a unique set of communal spaces that have become a tradition of the conference. Parklets 4.0 was the fourth annual initiative to bring the urban green space movement indoors.
Parklets are parking space-sized areas used for recreational, community gathering, or beautification purposes that assist in bringing awareness to the quantity of community space that is devoted to parking rather than vibrant urban green space. These small urban parks are created by replacing a parking spot with a variety of elements (planters, trees, benches, café tables and chairs, artwork, bicycle parking, and more!). Parklets evolved from an annual event where citizens, artists, and activists collaborated to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. Following the success of the first 2005 intervention, Park(ing) Day has grown into a global movement. Now Parklets are being permanently installed in cities throughout the U.S.
Led by ASLA and the Local Government Commission (LGC), the Parklets project at NPSG, once again, included interactive spaces showcasing how a parklet can transform an under-utilized parking space (or two) into exciting opportunities for creating more vibrant spaces in communities. This year, five parklet installations spanned the area outside conference session rooms. The parklets were sponsored by local organizations and design firms involved in designing and advocating for urban green space throughout the country. Plant materials were graciously donated by J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co.
Read the rest of this entry »


The Southern Quarterly recently published a special issue devoted to the work of Natasha Trethewey, US Poet Laureate and member of Southern Spaces's editorial board. As Southern Quarterly editor Philip C. Kolin notes, at forty-seven, Trethewey is "the youngest writer to have a special issue [of the journal] focused on her achievements."1 In an essay eulogizing the poet Seamus Heaney, Trethewey describes feeling a "calling to make sense of my South, with its terrible beauty, its violent and troubled past,"2 signaling how the southern and spatial contexts in which she grew up inform the themes she engages in her writing. Guest edited by Joan Wylie Hall, the Southern Quarterly special issue addresses themes of history, race, place, memory, and intertextuality through poems, an in-depth interview with Trethewey, and eight critical essays.
Southern Spaces is happy to have supported the Southern Quarterly by granting permission to include a number of images of Trethewey that have previously appeared in publications in our journal. This special issue complements scholarship published in Southern Spaces analyzing Trethewey's life and work, including Jake Adam York's 2010 interview with Trethewey, and Coleman Hutchison's presentation "Three Poems and a Critique of Postracialism," which charts how Trethewey and poets Elizabeth Alexander and C. S. Giscombe "conceive of, interrogate, and then steadfastly refuse the concept of the postracial in and for a post-emancipation society."3 Former Southern Spaces managing editor Katie Rawson compiled a bibliography of Trethewey's extensive contributions to our journal in a post congratulating Trethewey on her appointment as US Poet Laureate.
Copies of the special issue of the Southern Quarterly on Natasha Trethewey (volume 50, number 4) are available and may be ordered by following the instructions on the journal's "Order Back Issues" page. The journal has published the Natasha Trethewey issue's table of contents and introductions from the journal's editor and the special issue's guest editor on its website.
- 1. Philip C. Kolin, "Editor's Introduction: The Triple Crown," The Southern Quarterly 50, no. 4 (Summer 2013): 5, http://www.usm.edu/southern-quarterly-literary-magazine/intros/504edintro.pdf.
- 2. Natasha Trethewey, "How Seamus Heaney Influenced Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey," The Daily Beast, September 3, 2013, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/03/how-seamus-heaney-influenced-poet-laureate-natasha-trethewey.html, quoted in Joan Wylie Hall, "Guest Editor's Introduction: 'The Necessary Utterance'—Natasha Trethewey's Southern Poetics," The Southern Quarterly 50, no. 4 (Summer 2013): 7, http://www.usm.edu/southern-quarterly-literary-magazine/intros/504guestedintro.pdf.
- 3. Coleman Hutchison, "Three Poems and a Critique of Postracialism," Southern Spaces, December 25, 2012, http://southernspaces.org/2012/three-poems-and-critique-postracialism.
"I'm tired of these categories." —Patricia Yaeger1
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, who received a PhD in economics from Harvard University, asks, "How many American men are gay?" While this question is notoriously difficult to answer in any definitive way, and though he uses non-"ideal" sources such as "surveys, social networks, pornographic searches, and dating sites" to compile "evidence" on the "number of gay men" in this country, Stephens-Davidowitz still finds a "consistent story" that suggests at least 5 percent of American men are "predominately" attracted to other men. Millions of these "gay men," he goes on to say, still live in the closet, and many, the "evidence suggests," are married to women.2
The attempt to statistically classify and pinpoint the number of "gay" men "in our midst" is nothing new. Unveiling and unmasking our identities so that we can be categorized, numbered, and made intelligible forms part of what Michel Foucault, in his History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, called the "deployment of sexuality."3 The "truth" of sex for Foucault is not found in individual identity; instead he insists that we must develop an "analytics" that views power as diffuse and capillary, refusing the perhaps too-easy notion that a power over sex can be wielded via a conquering "liberation" or dominating "affirmation" of one's own knowable, classifiable sexuality.4
|Participants march in the 2009 Memphis, Tennessee gay pride parade. Photograph by Debbie Ramone. Courtesy of Debbie Ramone.|
Stephens-Davidowitz's Times opinion piece (and the larger work it suggests) explicitly places sexuality within this framework of exposure, intelligibility, and liberation that Foucault problematized. Stephens-Davidowitz returns us to the closet so that we may link hands with those who experience a "secret suffering" that "can be directly attributed to intolerance of [their] homosexuality" and walk with them into more tolerant climes and locales.5 The majority of these "secret" sufferers live in intolerant states, which according to Nate Silver, nearly all fall neatly below the Mason-Dixon line. The bottom six states, the "least tolerant," in descending order, are South Carolina, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Of the twenty-three states listed as above the national average of "tolerance," not one is in the South.6 In more tolerant states, "the openly gay population is dramatically higher." Yet, these "less tolerant states" or "intolerant areas" prevent what Stephens-Davidowitz finds implicitly possible: a "perfectly tolerant world" in which a neat 5 percent of men could say they are "interested in men," which of course is different from saying they openly identify as "gay." Stephens-Davidowitz finds no reason to believe there are fewer gay-inclined men in less tolerant states, but there are "far fewer openly gay men," and therefore, "there is a clear relationship between tolerance and openness" about one's sexuality.7
Stephens-Davidowitz buys into a narrative with a history. Mississippi has long been described with an array of debasing superlatives, consistently occupying the proverbial bottom rung of the ladder in our national obsession with rankings. Writing in 1931, H. L. Mencken and Charles Angoff labeled Mississippi the "worst" American state; in 2014, Politico writer Margaret Slattery echoed this line of thought, implicitly labeling Mississippi both the "worst" and the "weakest" state in her ranking of the fifty US states from weakest to strongest. (Slattery even gives us a formula: "1 = Best.").8 The strongest state, Massachusetts, is ironically the most "fabulous" state, while Mississippi, most intolerant, is far from fabulous; it is, Slattery writes, a "failed" state. According to both Silver and Stephens-Davidowitz, Mississippi has failed the tolerance test; it is the most intolerant, the least fabulous, and therefore the most "closed." Despite a recent Daily Show segment, in which an incognito gay couple elicited surprisingly tolerant and enthusiastic (some might even say fabulous) reactions from some Alabama and Mississippi residents, Deep South states like Mississippi continue to be figured as containing the most occupied closets with doors shut.9
|Screenshot from The Daily Show segment "Last Gay Standing," 2013.|
Nowhere is this association of Mississippi with intolerance more problematic than the final turn of Stephens-Davidowitz's piece, when he "get[s] tired of looking at aggregate data" and talks with a real person, an unnamed retired Mississippi professor in his sixties who "has always known he was attracted to men" but has remained in a sexless marriage to a woman for forty years. This professor, however, did at least once sleep with a male student of his in his late twenties.10 The assumption Stephens-Davidowitz makes here is that this sixty-year-old man cannot live his life openly because he is trapped in a place of intolerance. Place becomes the diagnosed pathology. In his attempt to classify and order gay men, he fails to analyze the fact that place is only one factor in the power grid that determines what is tolerated and what is not: in his neat map of the United States's tolerance, where is an analysis or mention of gender dynamics, age and generational differences, race, class, educational and healthcare disparities, and, perhaps most glaringly, religious beliefs? Where is a discussion of intersectionality? Stephens-Davidowitz's final scene leaves one very strong desire unexamined: what of the student in his late twenties in Mississippi who slept with his older professor? Does he feel trapped in his Mississippi-closet?
To open our eyes to the realities of Mississippi beyond "aggregate data" and shed some light on that twenty-year-old gay man's reality, let us return to the University. On October 1, 2013, a University of Mississippi performance of Moisés Kaufman's The Laramie Project 11 garnered national attention when unidentified audience members uttered homophobic comments. Originally exposed in the university's Daily Mississippian, national media outlets picked up the story as another example of Mississippi's intolerance. As an alumnus of the university, I can attest that Meek Auditorium, where the performance took place, is a small and intimate space—seating only 150—in which hate-speech would reverberate loudly. The actions of those audience members are inexcusable, but are they indicative of Mississippi's peculiar intolerance of homosexuality or a microcosmic snapshot of our national discomfort in directly facing the harsh realities of hate? Does such an example make Mississippi the most backward, the absolute worst?
|Stop the Hate. Bedsheet Angels march in the 2013 Atlanta Gay Pride Parade. Photograph by Nick Mickolas. Courtesy of Nick Mickolas.|
Here, the University of Mississippi once again comes to serve as the testing site for our national struggle to understand the complexities of hate, the different shapes of violence, and the challenges we face as a nation continuously confronted with difference. On October 1, 1962, James Meredith became the first African American student at the University of Mississippi. Chaos ensued. On October 1, 2013, the Ole Miss Theatre company performed The Laramie Project. Chaos ensued. Although the physical violence and loss of life associated with James Meredith's integration of the university during the height of the civil rights movement and the verbal violence associated with the recent Laramie performance are not to be equated, both events provoke reflective questions we must ask ourselves: in fifty one years, to the day, what has changed at the University of Mississippi? And more importantly, what has changed in how we, as a nation, think about difference and the ugly truths a hatred of difference can manifest?12 (The recent defilement and attack of a campus statue memorializing James Meredith's legacy at the university demands that such questions be discussed. Here again, the University of Mississippi serves, according to a recent New York Times article, as a testing site for "confronting a challenge with deep and difficult roots.")13
The Laramie Project and the wider story of Matthew Shepard's murder are often seen as convenient stories, neat narratives, in the teaching of prejudice and tolerance. However, Shepard's is but one of the many stories of gruesome homophobic violence in this country. All of these stories—even Matthew Shepard's—contain "raw and inchoate stuff that resists easy telling" and lack "clear beginnings and resonant endings."14 In the US South alone—those states defined as the least tolerant—a number of horrific murders attributed to LGBTQ-related hate have occurred in the last thirty years.15 Lost in attempts to locate and label sexuality, thereby freeing people from their uncomfortable closets, many are unaware of stories like these, in which LGBTQ people led open lives in the South and succumbed to hate-violence. Yet, such violence and "intolerance" are far from exclusively southern, despite what Stephens-Davidowitz's non-"ideal" sources revealed. Stephens-Davidowitz admits that intolerance is a national problem with a higher prevalence in southern states, yet his overarching narrative is another link in the chain of pathologizing southern space via flawed statistical aggregation. If we tolerate the received narrative of southern space, we neither think critically nor do justice to the stories of real people outside of often biased and imperfect data.
|Stage set for Lafayette College's 2011 Production of The Laramie Project. Photograph by Chuck Zovko and Lafayette College. Courtesy of Chuck Zovko and Lafayette College.|
In 2012, according to a report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), the most at risk LGBTQ populations remained transgendered persons, people of color, and gay men. Stephens-Davidowitz confines his study to "gay men," without any mention of race or gender-identification. Gay cisgender men remain the most likely to report acts of violence they have survived. As such, a 2011 FBI report indicates that of the 20.8 percent of hate crimes based on sexual orientation, 57.8 percent of those reported were classified as anti-male homosexual bias.16 The NCAVP report reiterates the 2012 UCLA Williams Institute findings that "gay men experienced higher rates of hate motivated physical violence than lesbians, bisexuals, or other federally protected groups including Black people and Jewish people."17 According to the NCAVP report, of the twenty-five reported hate violence homicides related to LGBTQ identity in 2012, only one occurred in the "deep" South: Marquita Jones was murdered near Memphis, Tennessee, the tenth most intolerant state in the country according to Silver and Stephens-Davidowitz.
Shifting the narrative requires an understanding that for every Duck Dynasty, there is a Southern Poverty Law Center, a Rethink Mississippi; for every Phil Robertson, a Jesse Peel. Hate and intolerance are neither tied to place, rooted in the soil, unyielding and unchanging, nor are they manifested solely via physical violence. We must remain aware of the complexities of prejudice's functionality: how it "works not just through the viciousness of physical violence but also through the daily erosion of selfhood by the friction of widespread, casually expressed hatred."18 The casually uttered "faggot" or "queen" or "queer" in response to a dramatic production has consequences that resonate beyond the walls of Meek Auditorium at the University of Mississippi. In isolating Mississippi, and the larger US South, as the least tolerant, we put the South on stage to be disciplined and punished. How easy it was for the Mississippi audience to isolate Matthew Shepard on a stage and re-victimize him with a slur.
|ATL, Love, graffiti in Atlanta, Georgia's Krog Street Tunnel, February 17, 2014. Photograph by Eric Solomon. From Eric Solomon.|
How easy it must seem for scholars and thinkers to look at data and isolate the South as the land of intolerance: how easy it is to label the worst, the weakest, the most backward. The harder but necessary challenge is to understand and help prevent the diffuse and far-reaching consequences of homophobic violence and intolerance. The harder work is to take the lessons learned from The Laramie Project inside Meek Auditorium into Oxford, Mississippi and the world at large. To paraphrase a great man, the harder work is to understand that people aren't born hating and can learn to love.
- 1. Patricia Yaeger, Dirt and Desire: Reconstructing Southern Women's Writing, 1930–1990 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), ix.
- 2. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, "How Many American Men are Gay?," The New York Times, December 7, 2013, accessed December 9, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/opinion/sunday/how-many-american-men-are-gay.html.
- 3. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume One: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 78. The book's title is often translated as "Volume One: An Introduction."
- 4. Ibid., 8, 82–83.
- 5. Stephens-Davidowitz, "How Many American Men Are Gay?"
- 6. Nate Silver, "How Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage Is Changing, and What It Means," The New York Times: FiveThirtyEight blog, March 26, 2013, accessed December 9, 2013, http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/how-opinion-on-same-sex-marriage-is-changing-and-what-it-means.
- 7. Stephens-Davidowitz, "How Many American Men Are Gay?"
- 8. Margaret Slattery, "The States of Our Union ... Are Not All Strong: We Ranked All 50 from Fabulous to Failed," Politico Magazine, January 24, 2014, accessed February 3, 2014, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/states-of-our-union-are-not-all-strong-102547.html.
- 9. Madison Underwood, "In Alabama-Mississippi 'Intolerance-off,' The Daily Show Tests Reactions to a Gay Couple, Gets Surprising Reaction (Video, Poll)," AL.com, October 30, 2013, accessed February 20, 2014, http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2013/10/in_alabama-mississippi_intoler.html.
- 10. Stephens-Davidowitz, "How Many American Men Are Gay?"
- 11. Kaufman's play, written in collaboration with the Tectonic Theater Project, details reaction to Matthew Shepard's 1998 brutal murder in Laramie, Wyoming. Combining personal interviews with town residents, journals of the theater company's members as they engaged in these interviews, and media coverage, Laramie creates a complicated portrait of how a town responds to violence, hatred, and loss.
- 12. Legislatively, some things have changed while some remain the same. As Christopher Lirette noted in an August 6 bulletin on the Southern Spaces Blog, since 2011 Baton Rouge police have unlawfully arrested at least a dozen men based upon a still-on-the-books state level sodomy law that was ruled federally unconstitutional with 2003's Lawrence v. Texas. In 2003, eight of the fourteen US states with anti-sodomy laws still on the books were in the South. Baton Rouge reveals the everyday slipperiness of archaic sodomy laws. Similarly, although the 2009 Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act became the first all-inclusive federal bill, most southern states still do not include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected identity categories in hate crime legislation.
- 13. Alan Blinder, "Racist Episodes Continue to Stir Ole Miss Campus," The New York Times, February 20, 2014, accessed February 22, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/us/racist-episodes-continue-to-stir-ole-miss-campus.html.
- 14. Beth Lofredda, Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), x.
- 15. Some of these deaths include the 1973 UpStairs Lounge attack; the bludgeoning of Billy Jack Gaither; Scotty Joe Weaver's partial decapitation; Sean W. Kennedy's beating; the murders of Marcel Tye, Duanna Johnson, Tiffany Berry, Ebony Whitaker, Brenting Dolliole, Githe Goines, and Marquita Jones; and lastly, the beating and burning of Marco McMillan in 2013. The stories of these murders, all occurring on southern soil, are indeed horrific, but they remain a few of the raw seams to a larger narrative of hate-based crimes in this country; they are painful examples, but far from representative of a particularly southern problem or the array of hate-based crimes that occur every year. For more information on hate crimes legislation, state by state, visit Lambda Legal, Human Rights Campaign, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. For information on LGBT rights in the US South and Hate and Extremism nationwide, visit the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition, visit Robert T. Gonzalez, "An Interactive Map of Racist, Homophobic and Ableist Tweets in America," io9, May 10, 2013, http://io9.com/an-interactive-map-of-racist-homophobic-and-ableist-tw-499908637 to view the 2013 "geography of hate" map, in which hate's spatiality seems divided along an East–West line rather than a North–South one.
- 16. "Hate Crimes Statistics 2011: Incidents and Offenses," FBI, 2011, http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2011/narratives/incidents-and-offenses.
- 17. Shelby Chestnut, Ejeris Dixon, and Chai Jindasurat, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and HIV-Affected Hate Violence in 2012 (New York: National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 2013), 51, http://www.avp.org/storage/documents/ncavp_2012_hvreport_final.pdf.
- 18. Lofredda, Losing Matt Shepard, x.
Southern Spaces is pairing with Emory University's Manuscript, Archives and Rare Books Library (MARBL) to publish short features on MARBL collections, events, and exhibits that tell the history of spaces and places in the US South. These posts investigate the geographical, historical, and cultural study of real and imagined southern spaces through the lens of archival sources and materials and are featured on both the Southern Spaces and MARBL blogs.
|Hope, Southern Voice, November 9, 1995. Sketch of the Hope monument. Jesse R. Peel Papers, LGBT Collections, MARBL, Emory University.|
"I fear it may be difficult to come up with another project which will be so full of meaning for me," gay rights activist Dr. Jesse Peel wrote in his journal The Camp Merton Chronicles in November 1995. Peel's project centered on the renovation of Atlanta's John Howell Park and a new statue to be installed in it. Titled Hope and designed by Felix de Weldon—the sculptor famous for designing the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington DC—the planned sculpture depicted a man, woman, and child reaching for a matrix representing a cure for AIDS. The sculpture intended to memorialize those affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic that led to 573,800 reported AIDS cases in the United States between 1981 and 1996. Regarding the park renovations and the statue, Peel continued, "I have devoted heart and soul to JHP [John Howell Park] this last year and a half. We will complete the infrastructure work next spring and JHP will be ready to receive the world during the Olympics. Then in October the entire HIV/AIDS and Gay communities will come together to celebrate the installation of Hope."
In spite of the passionate efforts of Peel and his Build the Monument Foundation, the memorial never materialized due to a lack of private funding. Yet, while Atlanta has no official memorial to commemorate the struggles of the LGBT population in the wake of the AIDS pandemic, the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library (MARBL) at Emory University has pledged to collect historical materials that will raise awareness of the AIDS crisis and the larger history of LGBT Atlantans. One of the first acquisitions in this endeavor is Peel's manuscript collection. Originally from North Carolina, Peel moved to Atlanta in 1976 where, as a person with HIV, he experienced first-hand both the devastating effects of AIDS and the struggle of LGBT carriers to overcome persistent social stigma.
|Jesse Peel, MARBL Woodruff Room, Atlanta, Georgia, October 2012. Photograph by Bryan Meltz of Emory University Photo Video.|
The Jesse R. Peel Papers chronicle his activism among the Atlanta LGBT population through personal correspondence, date books, and audiovisual materials. The backbone of the collection is Peel's personal diary, The Camp Merton Chronicles. A multi-volume work self-published locally and named for his Atlanta home, Camp Merton, it depicts Peel's experiences from the 1970s to the 2000s. The Camp Merton Chronicles is on display in Emory's Manuscript and Rare Books Library until May 16, 2014 as a part of the "Building a Movement in the Southeast: LGBT Collections in MARBL" multimedia exhibit that includes stories and displays artifacts from the LGBT movement, including the AIDS crisis, in Atlanta.
The New Orleans-based Amistad Research Center is the nation's oldest, largest, and most
comprehensive independent archive specializing in African American history and culture. For the first time in its history, Amistad announced on December 3 that they will be adding New Orleans hip-hop and bounce music to their historic collection. "Recent donations by the NOLA Hiphop Archive and the Where They At project," Amistad's Director of Library and Reference Services, Chris Harter, says, "have placed the Center at the forefront of efforts to document and preserve materials that chronicle the development of these genres in New Orleans."1 The importance of including hip-hop and bounce in this collection, in a city where these musics are so often segregated as something different––considered unworthy of preservation or protection and support as cultural heritage––cannot be overstated.
|NOLA Hip Hop Archive logo, 2012. Image courtesy of Holly Hobbs.|
The NOLA Hiphop Archive, which I founded in 2012, began as an effort to collect, document, and make publicly accessible oral histories of New Orleans' influential rappers, producers, and DJs who helped create and popularize hip-hop and bounce music traditions in the city and beyond. The collection currently consists of more than thirty videotaped interviews with the city's hip-hop and bounce artists and pioneers, including, among others, Mannie Fresh, Mystikal, Partners N Crime, Dee-1, Ricky B, DJ Raj Smoove, Keedy Black, Allie Baby, Nesby Phips, Sinista, DJ Quickie Mart, Nicky da B, DJ Rusty Lazer, and Queen Blackkold Madina, star of the Academy Award-winning Hurricane Katrina documentary, Trouble the Water.
The Amistad collection plans to be publically available and free of charge (either online or in person at Amistad) as a digital archive of oral histories in the spring of 2014. The NOLA Hiphop Archive just launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund these efforts, and if successful, will allow the NOLA Hiphop Archive team to conduct further interviews, thereby adding a broader range of voices, perspectives, histories, and experiences to the collection. If funded, the archive team plans to add another thirty interviews to the Amistad collection by the end of 2014.
|Partners N Crime, Eastover, New Orleans, June 15, 2012. Photograph by Holly Hobbs. Courtesy of Holly Hobbs.|
Countless members of New Orleans' creative communities lost their lives or were displaced by Hurricane Katrina, many of whom remain unable to return. Furthermore, while rap music is arguably Louisiana's most lucrative cultural export, in the most widespread images of "New Orleans music," the city's rappers, producers, and DJs that helped build the tradition remain largely invisible. These issues, coupled with the ongoing realities of corruption, marginalization, violence, police harassment, and discrimination, inspired a determination to help provide resources for and further acknowledgment of artists, adding to the growing body of documentation and public support of New Orleans community-based expressive art traditions. I am excited about the ways in which the archive may, in some small way, help to address these issues. There is also a wealth of potential for growth of the archive in the near future, which could include a brick-and-mortar museum space, a "hip-hop/bounce trail" (imagine a Mississippi Blues Trail-type project that begins as an interactive app but moves toward a physical reality), a community performance space, and a youth internship program.
Viewing hip-hop and bounce music in New Orleans as expressive art forms worthy of support should not be a radical orientation. Amistad is taking one big, progressive step in the right direction. The Kickstarter campaign can be found here. Please consider donating to this exciting project.
About the Author
Holly Hobbs is currently completing her PhD at Tulane University and is writing her dissertation on post-Katrina hiphop and recovery in New Orleans. She has also worked as a promoter, artist manager, and musician within the New Orleans hiphop community since 2008. She is a writer for the popular music website, The Smoking Section, and the Knowla Encyclopedia of Louisiana History, Culture, and Community.
- 1. Christopher Harter, "Help Support Amistad's Expansion of Music-related Holdings with Hiphop Collections," Amistad Research Center, December 3, 2013, http://amistadresearchcenter.blogspot.com/2013/12/help-support-amistads-expansion-of.html.
This month, Southern Spaces sent out our annual readership reports to authors who have published with the journal. These reports provide statistics on pageviews and unique readers over the past year. This year we also added cumulative totals for pageviews and unique readers since 2008, when we began tracking visits to our site with Google Analytics.
As a digital open access journal, Southern Spaces is committed to supporting our authors in communicating the value of their publications to tenure and promotion committees. Members of such committees may not have experience evaluating digital publications and may be inclined to undervalue them—even though, in our case, publications undergo the same rigorous standards of review as equally selective print journals. Southern Spaces pieces also have some advantages over print publications. Our site is well optimized for search engines, and we promote our publications to an interested audience through our Facebook and Twitter accounts. This ensures that many of our authors' pieces earn a wide readership.
We think that our readership reports attest to the benefits of open access publication and engagement with social media, and we hope they help convey such benefits to our authors and their tenure and promotion committees. In the hope of starting a conversation about how digital scholarly publications contribute to tenure and promotion, we are sharing details of Southern Spaces' readership reports process in this post.
|Southern Spaces visits, September 1, 2012–August 31, 2013. Screenshot from Google Analytics.|
The screenshot above illustrates daily unique visits to Southern Spaces over the past year. From September 1, 2012–August 31, 2013, we averaged about 11,250 visits per month, with a peak of 1,823 visits on February 4, 2013.1 Since 2008 our readership has increased every year. Our total this year of 135,192 unique readers represented a 15.6% increase over the previous year.
|Readership report email template, 2013. Courtesy of Southern Spaces.|
We extracted information on page views and visits from Google Analytics for each Southern Spaces publication. We sent each author an email to pass this information along. In past years we have drawn on Google Analytics to compile statistics on each piece's readers over the previous year. This year we decided that we would also send cumulative statistics demonstrating each publication's readership since we began tracking site visits in 2008. We are hopeful that this additional information will paint a more accurate picture of the wide readership and reach of many of our publications.
|Share bar for "North Carolina: A State of Shock" by Dan T. Carter, 2013. Courtesy of Southern Spaces.|
There are several ways in which we take advantage of the accessibility of our open access format to spread the word about our publications. We promote our pieces through social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook, an RSS feed, and an email listserv. We hope that these efforts help bring the scholarly work in the journal to a broad readership that extends beyond the limits of the academy. We have recently added a share menu to the upper right-hand corner of Southern Spaces publications as a first step toward providing robust altmetrics for our publications. We also use our blog to discuss contemporary issues concerning the US South and the digital humanities, highlighting relevant Southern Spaces publications. Finally, we regularly feature past publications that speak to contemporary concerns in the "featured" section of our homepage, another way our pieces continue to find readers long after they are published.
|Southern Spaces tenure and promotion survey, 2013. Screenshot courtesy of Southern Spaces.|
In addition to highlighting statistics, we asked each author for feedback on how we might better measure and communicate the benefits of publishing in a peer-reviewed, multimedia, open access platform such as ours. In a three-question survey, we asked our authors to share their experiences using Southern Spaces publications for tenure and promotion and solicited suggestions for information or services we could provide to assist with this.
We consider our readership reports to be an important part of our advocacy for open access publishing. As these reports demonstrate, publishing in open access venues helps scholarship reach a large and engaged audience and facilitates dissemination across the social web. We hope that these reports help our authors gain academic credit for their open access and digital publications.
- 1. During the same period, Southern Spaces attracted roughly 14,000 pageviews per month, 167,587 in total.
On Monday, November 11, residents of the city of Atlanta were surprised to learn that their baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, will move to a new suburban stadium in 2017. When the lease on the team's current home at Turner Field expires in 2016, the Braves will move to a new ballpark at the northwest intersection of I-75 and I-285 in Cobb County.
|Turner Field, April 6, 2013. Photograph by Zpb52. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.|
The Braves moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee in 1966 and have played in downtown Atlanta ever since their arrival. Before they began playing at Turner Field in 1997, the home of the Braves was Atlanta-Fulton Stadium; this ballpark was demolished and transformed into parking spaces when the team moved to Turner Field. The ballpark was named after team owner and CNN founder Ted Turner, who purchased the team in 1976.
The Associated Press reports that the Braves have long expressed dissatisfaction with Turner Field. As Maria Saporta wrote in the Saporta Report, an absence of neighborhood development, limited parking facilities, and the fact that the closest Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) station is a mile away contributed to the Braves' unhappiness with their current facility. Atlanta Braves vice president of operations Mike Plant stated, "We . . . recognize that what is insurmountable is we can't control traffic, which is the No. 1 reason why our fans don't come to more games. . . . We are underserved by about 5,000 parking spaces." Many Atlanta residents are concerned that the new stadium site will not be easily accessible via MARTA. As Edward A. Hatfield has noted, residents of Cobb County, an epicenter of suburbanization and white flight in the Metro-Atlanta region, have long opposed government spending on public transportation.
In a press conference and statement Mayor Kasim Reed explained the lack of an agreement to keep the Braves in downtown Atlanta, citing demands by the Braves for "hundreds of millions of dollars" in new infrastructure spending. Reed argued these would have left the city "absolutely cash-strapped" and exacerbated the current backlog of planned infrastructure projects. He also announced plans to redevelop the Turner Field site, promising "one of the largest developments for middle-class people that the city has ever had."
|Distribution of Atlanta Braves fanbase and location of Turner Field and proposed new stadium, November 2013. Map courtesy of the Atlanta Braves.|
|Percentage of metro Atlanta white residents by 2010 census block group, 2013. Data from Social Explorer.|
Forbes contributor Maury Brown claims that the new stadium will follow a current trend in stadium development in the United States. As teams build new ballparks with smaller capacities, ticket prices rise as demand increases. Furthermore, according to the Associated Press, census data reveals that the team is moving to a much wealthier area that is in the heart of the team's fan base. Median household income in the proposed area in Cobb County sits at approximately $61,000, with a poverty level of 8.6 percent. This contrasts dramatically with the median household income of $23,000 and nearly forty percent poverty level in the neighborhood around Turner Field.
|Centennial Olympic Stadium, 1996. Photograph by Edwin P. Ewing, Jr. From the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Public Health Image Library, 1485.|
Originally called Centennial Olympic Stadium—the site was constructed for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics—the stadium hosted athletics competitions and opening and closing ceremonies. S. Zebulon Baker and Kerry Soper noted in 2006, the tenth anniversary of the Atlanta Olympics, that its construction dramatically changed Atlanta, displacing the residents of Mechanicsville, Peoplestown, and Summerhill neighborhoods. An important piece of Atlanta's history, Turner Field has left an indelible mark on the city's cultural and economic landscape.
The Cobb County Braves»
Emory University's Center for Digital Scholarship and Georgia State University's Cities Initiative and the Department of Geosciences invite proposals for presentations at the Second Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium. The day-long symposium will be held April 4, 2014 at Georgia State University and will feature presentations by, among others, Clarence Stone, Research Professor at George Washington University and author of Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988, and LeeAnn Lands, Associate Professor of American Studies and History, Kennesaw State University and author of The Culture of Property: Race, Class, and Housing Landscapes in Atlanta, 1880–1950.
The symposium seeks to convene an interdisciplinary meeting of scholars and activists to learn from and act on research about Atlanta, including the central city and its metropolitan area.
Potential themes for presentation topics include (but are not limited to):
- Public Space and Private Property
- Downtown Atlanta as a Site of Political Struggle
- Urban Mobility and Access
- Urban Politics
- Identity and Place in a Global Southern City
Proposals for papers, talks, multi-media presentations, or round-table discussions should be no more than 400 words. We welcome proposals on any aspect of Atlanta, but priority will be given to those that relate to the themes listed above. Preference will also be given to proposals for fully constituted panels. Cover letters for panels should indicate the theme and identify panel participants. We hope to make this event as engaging as possible and encourage presentations that represent work-in-progress that will benefit from open conversation. Please include audio-video requirements in your proposal.