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Boston’s Book Eden
Letting Go of Kids, and Characters
Women Writers, Women[’s] Books
Black Tickets and Feminist Poets of Another Time
Ron Hogan’s Beatrice
A Woman Alone in China
China of My Mind
New York Times
A Zealot and a Poet
Writing is a Marathon Sport
The Quivering Pen
Boston’s Book Eden
Everyone knows that Boston is a book-loving city, but since moving back to the area after more than thirty years away, I’ve been amazed by the thriving literary life of my hometown. On a recent evening, I was torn between hearing Alexander Chee and Laura van den Berg at the Brookline Booksmith, Rebecca Makkai and Jennifer Haigh at Newtonville Books, or Amber Tamblyn and Aclyn Friedman at Harvard Bookstore. In the end, I opted to hear another bestselling author, Katherine Howe, at the Cambridge Historical Society, speak on a topic relevant to a novel I’m currently researching. The array of book events in this town can make a reader dizzy.
The largest of the indies—the Harvard Bookstore and Brookline Booksmith—host their biggest name authors off site at nearby churches and theaters where readers wait in lines that snake down the block. Advance purchased tickets can be bundled with the cost of the book being launched. For Michael Pollen, each and every ticket had to include the book. I first balked at this practice, but realized that the event itself was the enticement. A couple attending would end up with an extra book in exchange for taking part in a cultural happening.
Newtonville Books runs events practically every night of the week, including their popular Friday Night Book Club. They often create unexpected pairings of authors, creating lively conversations. In general, the level of questions at all these events has struck me as noticeably sophisticated. Though generally well past college age, the Boston audiences haven’t forgotten their Advanced Lit. classes, and some may still teach them.
The staff at Porter Square Books, which I’m happy to call my local store, is also deeply knowledgeable about books. If you don’t know a title or author but just the subject, there’s a good chance one of them won’t give up until they’ve tracked it down. And as model for other indie bookstores, PSB has devised a way of rewarding their dedicated senior staff with eventual ownership of the store. When the current husband and wife team retire, they’ll sell fifty percent equity to a group of nine management-level employees. Over the following ten years, the group will use their profits to pay back the loan and come to own the store outright.
PSB also cultivates its community by encouraging local writers. In the coming months, they’re launching a Writers-in-Residence Program. Two writers will serve a nine-month term, during which they’ll enjoy a staff discount, access to advance reader copies, and a key to the store’s offices on nights and weekends to provide a quiet place to work.
Over in Jamaica Plain, JP Papercuts has also created a strong following among readers and writers. The charming five hundred square foot shop is stacked high with perfectly curated books. In addition to hosting events, they’ve launched their own publishing imprint, Cutlass Press, which features New England authors. And everyone is relieved that Trident Booksellers on Newbury Street has just reopened after closing because of a fire, their café and reading series up and running again.
On the main street of the suburban town where I grew up, recently opened Belmont Books attracts children with a sunny, upstairs kid’s area, and for adults a great selection of books and the Black Bear Cafe on the first floor. Welcoming and beautiful, the store is already a hub of community activity.
There are other ways to explore literary Boston besides the indie bookstores. There’s the Boston Literary District—one of the only such dedicated historic districts in the country; the Boston By Foot Literary Tours—which takes you in the footsteps of Longfellow, Hawthorne, and Fuller; the impressive public libraries in Cambridge, Boston, Brookline and the other nearby towns; plus the innumerable universities, all of which offer book-related lectures open to the public; the literary journals, such as The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Agni, and the new Pangyrus, each hosting their own book happenings; and the close proximity to that great nexus of nineteenth century authors in Concord—home of Emerson, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and more.
But, ultimately, it’s the living writers who make a book-loving/bookish/well read town. Many local writers at all stages of their careers find one another through the GrubStreet writers organization, one of the largest literary non-profits in the country. Throughout the year, they run over six hundred workshops, intensive classes, consultations, and other programs for adults and teens on every aspect of writing and the business of writing. And every spring, they put on the impressive Muse and Marketplace Conference, which has been named best literary conference by The Writer magazine and is attended by aspiring writers from across the country and globe.
I feel fortunate to have met fellow writers not just in the bookstores or at Grub Street, but simply around Cambridge. Knowing that dozens of novelists are hunkering down at their desks nearby gives me comfort and encouragement. I’m convinced I’ve landed in a literary Eden and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way. Often I pass strangers on the sidewalks who hold a book in hand and read as they walk, unable to pull themselves away from the page. For this reader and writer, that’s my kind of town.
Letting Go of Kids, and Characters
Mothers and fathers of young children can think they’re dealing with the greatest parenting challenges they’ll ever face. I remember feeling that way. For close to a decade I wandered through my days in a fog because I’d been up at night nursing or tending a sick child. But even the exhaustion and numbness that comes from caring for young children can be emotionally less fraught than what parents feel as our kids enter adulthood.
Instead of sweaty, crying babies pressed against our chests at 3 am, parents of young adults are wide-awake with worry, and most noticeably, alone. During this stage, we have to change every bit as much as our children do. It takes every scrap of self-confidence, faith, and optimism to stop steering their lives—to let them be who they’re going to be.
Strangely enough, a similar process of letting go must happen when creating characters in fictional stories. In both life and in writing, our babies grow up and leave us. They become themselves, often in spite of us.
I’m frequently surprised by the motivations that propel my characters forward. But I’ve learned that even if I didn’t anticipate an action, it needs to be respected and explored. In my story White Dog, the elderly artist raises a rifle and before I could foresee what was going to happen next, he aimed directly at a target that would ruin him. As the gun goes off, I sensed he’s making a colossal mistake, one that will forever define him. I would have liked to change his course, and obviously I could, but his life story (some of which is known, but most of which isn’t, even to me) has led him to this. The guy is who he is, god help him, especially since that god, ostensibly, is me.
Many parents feel that way about their children when as young adults they become involved in relationships we sense aren’t right; they drop out of school, even though we think they shouldn’t; or they head off for the other coast, imagining things will be more exciting there, when we’re sure they won’t. At least, we think so. Because the truth is, we don’t know how things will turn out any better than they do. We don’t know for certain which is the path to happiness and fulfillment any better than I, as a writer, know all the implications of that cocked rifle. Will it make my character more loved, though flawed? Will it help him to find peace, though he’s created havoc? Will it set him free? I can sense the consequences of each choice but the nuances remain complex and mysterious and ultimately up to the reader to decide.
In other words, the old saw about fiction writers playing god with their characters only makes sense if we believe that god has a hazy idea of things. I can set my characters on a path and push them forward, but I rely on others to grasp the full meaning of their fates. Maybe some writers are more systematic. Writers post on Facebook the methods they use to chart character motivations and outcomes, employing index cards and spreadsheets. But for me, the process of understanding my characters is much the same as it is with my children: I get them through and through, but after a certain point, they mystify me.
As parents we can’t help trying to nudge our young adult children toward happiness. We follow their paths closely, elbowing them gently to the right or the left. In the same way, I set up my characters in situations where they can show themselves. I encourage them to take road trips to reveal their bravery. I send them spinning on the dance floor, shimmying ever closer toward love. And, because this is fiction, I even have them crash and burn, better to rise from the ashes. When a bruising accident takes place on the asphalt, my young skateboarder hobbles forward, straight into adulthood.
On a sunny, spring afternoon not long ago, the boy skateboarder in one of my stories and my real life child crossed paths and left me behind. I had asked my twenty-one year old son to read a story I wrote years before, back when he was a pre-teen and learning to skateboard. He had worked day after day in the driveway, trying to get his board to rise up off the ground. His young, short legs didn’t have the strength to make it happen, yet he stayed out there in the cold of winter and heat of summer. I think it took him two years to do his first kick flip and I often tried to save him from that frustration, but he wasn’t to be thrown off course.
At a certain point in those years, I realized that he was doing what I did each time I sat down at my desk: he was trying to perfect his art—even though he would have groaned at me for framing it that way. Admiring of his efforts, I wrote a story about a kid who is rude to his father, but who is as dedicated as any serious artist. The boy in my story isn’t my son, but he’s inspired by him.
So when I asked my twenty-one year old if he’d read that story and offer corrections to my skateboarding terms, I knew I was asking him to make the adult leap to understanding the complex relationship between fiction and life. As he sat with his head bent low over the manuscript, I couldn’t help noticing how he had grown into a handsome, competent, and good-hearted young man. He tossed off helpful edits and improved the boy’s dialogue by deleting outmoded slang.
But what touched me most was when he shook his head and snickered quietly, saying, “Oh, Mom, this is definitely me.” I laughed a little, too, embarrassed by the way I had stolen from him to make a new, fictional life. But before I had a chance to reiterate that the boy in the story really wasn’t him—my son had never been as obnoxious as my character—my now adult boy interrupted my thoughts by saying, “I know, I know, I get it. The kid is his own person.”
I know, I know, I get it. Maybe that’s as much as we can hope for from our readers—a confirmation that a story makes sense on a visceral level and exists without explanation from the writer. The characters and the choices they make have a certain, inalienable logic. The path they follow seems right. They are who they are.
And yet, it still remains hazy how to achieve that understanding, in much the same way that it’s never entirely clear how a parent can go from thinking we know what’s best for our children to understanding that they know what’s best for themselves. It’s a process of letting go, trusting them and the story that is now theirs to tell, because it’s their lives after all, not ours.
Black Tickets and Feminist Poets of Another Time
When I was twenty, Black Tickets, the story collection by Jayne Anne Phillips, with its hard-edged prose about hard-edged people, hit me hard. I’d read Hemingway’s short stories. Fitzgerald and Chekov, too. Isaac Babel and Isaac Bashevis Singer, and that one about the yellow wallpaper that everyone had to read. Unlike novels, short stories seemed the place to start for an aspiring young writer. Stories were like small sculptures, carefully shaped and refined, seemingly comprehensible with a single walk around.
But when I tried to write them, mine tended to sprawl into an unruly mess. My pages grew dense and overwritten as I attempted to say too much. Then I read Black Tickets and saw that when you used restraint, you created meaning in a more powerful way. If you kept it minimal, you could leave your reader aching for more, at least that was the hope. But it wasn’t just Phillips’ style of writing that I admired and wanted to emulate. Her stories hit home because they were about women and girls, not unlike me.
Even before Black Tickets became my anthem and guide, I had tucked poems by Anne Sexton, Denise Levertov, and Adrienne Rich into my backpack and carried them like talismans with me wherever I went. In high school, I memorized their lines and copied them out into notebooks for what reason I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I loved those poems, loved the many lines that revealed the secret, passionate inner lives of women.
From Anne Sexton’s “For My Lover, Returning to His Wife”:
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.
Denise Levertov”s “The Good Dream”:
because we had met again
we rolled laughing
over and over upon the big bed.
The joy was
not in a narrow sense
narrow in any sense….
It was the joy
Of two rivers
Meeting in the depths of the sea.
And Adrienne Rich’s “Natural Resources”:
“The phantom of the man-who-would-understand,
the lost brother, the twin—
for him did we leave our mothers,
deny our sisters, over and over?”
These women wrote about many subjects, often political, but what captured me most was the way they teased out the tangle of love that I both longed for and feared. Stoked by their fury and sorrow, and as importantly, by the precision of their words, I prepared myself for the battle for selfhood I sensed every woman had to endure.
Their feminist ideas resonated because they were expressed so potently through poetry. I was learning from them not just about life, but about the power of words and their careful doling out. I sensed that a killer line—one that resonated deeply, even though I might not fully understand it—was armor against a difficult world. The urgency of their language took my breath away and made me want to someday write something as forceful and real.
It was no wonder then that when Annie Dillard, my writing teacher in sophomore year at Wesleyan, praised a powerful collection by a young woman writer, I quickly tracked down a copy of Black Tickets. In Phillips’ pages I soon discovered the powerful combination of story telling and poetry that I had been searching for. Her sentences were as tough and clean as Raymond Carver’s, whose work Dillard had also recommended, but Phillips wrote about girls and young women in narratives that suggested lives far beyond the page. I felt a thrill of recognition in these tales that unmasked the struggle of ordinary female lives.
Phillips’ “Home” felt like one I’d been trying to write for years without knowing it. The story lacked sentimentality and yet was full of nostalgia for a stolen childhood. It showed a grappling with growing up and a recognizable tension between a mother and daughter. She said so much by saying so little. The short, declarative sentences left room for the reader to fill in the blanks with emotion, in a way familiar to me from the poetry I had long admired.
Soon Levertov, Sexton, and Rich were replaced in my backpack by Black Tickets, which I then carried with me everywhere. When I sat down to write a short story for that first-ever fiction writing class with Dillard, I had my copy splayed open on the desk, as if I could somehow will Phillips’ smarts and style over to my pages.
In looking back, I feel grateful to these women writers for exposing female lives with such fierceness and brilliance. I’ve spent the years ever since trying my best to follow their example.
A Woman Alone in China
THE STORY OF A MISSIONARY WHO STAYED
In the summer of 1937 in Shanxi Province in North China, my grandmother, an American widow and the mother of a teenage son, swept invading Japanese soldiers off her front porch with a broom. I’ve tried to picture it: the soldiers in their khaki uniforms, sabers and pistols tucked into their belts, and my grandmother with her weapon of choice, a broom. Nothing could be more fitting than her use of that tool of everyday domesticity, which in the end would be the death of her.
In 1909, at the young age of 25, Gertrude Chaney traveled to China where she met my grandfather, the Reverend Watts Orson Pye, and they married in 1915. On the inhospitable plains and in the mountain hamlets of North China, the Reverend founded churches, built a library, a hospital, and roads, and converted thousands of Chinese to Christianity before his untimely death in 1926. He left behind his young widow and a five-year-old son, my father, Lucian Pye.
Gertrude and her family had experienced another loss only a year before: her first surviving child had died at the age of seven. Little Mary Elizabeth and her father were both “sent home to Jesus” and buried out in the dusty, desolate countryside of North China. Her family back home in Ohio expected Gertrude to return to civilization post haste after these two tragic deaths, but instead, she decided to remain in China, not just for months, or years, but decades.
Gertrude raised my father in North China under the Japanese occupation. With the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when foreigners were strongly encouraged to leave, she stayed. When Lucian went off to college in America in 1939, she stayed. Only after Pearl Harbor was she forced to relent and finally return to the U.S. Why would a single American woman stay in a war zone, I have asked myself? Why would she remain long after her entire family had gone on to the other side or stateside?
In my novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix, I try to answer that question in the way I know best: through the imaginative lens of fiction. I believe she stayed because of moments like that one when she swept the Japanese off her front porch with a broom. I picture her standing firm, a stocky, sturdy, strong woman who pulled back her shoulders, tucked in her chin, and faced the foe. She had survived extreme famine and drought during the year my father was born in 1921. She had survived the loss of several babies to miscarriage and death in childbirth, as well as the loss of her beloved young daughter, whose golden locks she preserved, and which sit in a bowl on my desk as a reminder of our family’s history. And she survived the loss of her much-admired husband, the man whose long stride had led her and so many others forward for a time. Those Japanese soldiers must have seemed like so much flotsam and jetsam to her when they stood on her floorboards. Sweep them off, she must! Such is the imperative of the heroic woman I imagine my grandmother to have been in that faraway place and time.
She stayed because she had led a purposeful life there, teaching Chinese women to be schoolteachers and educating Chinese children with firmness and affection. She had a reason for being and felt a great sense of belonging. According to her writing, they came to her with every sort of question and problem. She oversaw not just daily lessons, but personal issues of the heart, and often hygiene and medical concerns as well. When she finally returned to America, my grandmother came to live with us, but she always longed to return to China.
I imagine that she longed to go back not just to that fascinating, though difficult, landscape, but also to a version of herself that was powerful and needed by others. Her life in China had meaning and significance, while her years in the US must have seemed dull and inconsequential by comparison.
As history would have it that return was not to be. When China closed its doors to outsiders in 1949, her heart must have seized up with sorrow and frustration. The country she had come to think of as home was forever outside her grasp. My father, meanwhile, went on to become a professor of political science for over 40 years and a renowned Sinologist, writing dozens of books on the subject of Asian politics. And yet, according to him, it was his mother, more than himself, whose “whole life was China.”
My recollections of her, while vague, are uniformly rosy, though my father, mother and older siblings necessarily had more complex feelings about her. By their accounts, Gertrude was domineering and meddled in our family’s business. As she aged, it became more apparent that she belonged to another time. As a former missionary, she remained a teetotaler, putting a damper on my parent’s cocktail hour. She felt they were too lenient with her grandchildren and too materialistic overall. The woman who had once managed by her wits and will power against dangerous odds in a foreign land was now reduced to sniping about the domestic habits of her son and his brood. She and my mother locked horns over the decorating of the house—the placement of the Chinese furniture and objects that had once belonged exclusively to her and now belonged to the family. She had been far too bold a younger woman to be relegated to such a superfluous life. The contrast must have been maddening to her.
When she died in 1966, I was only six years old, but I still have a clear impression of her. Leaning into the embroidered pillows on the antique Chinese sofa, she let her youngest grandchild crawl into her lap. I pulled on her ears and with a child’s innocence asked why they were so long. In an adult voice—for she never took on a babyish tone—she explained that Confucians believe that long earlobes are a sign of wisdom and sagacity. I was instantly awed by the idea and knew with certainty that it must be true, especially about her.
My grandmother had a wry sense of humor, but she was not a light-hearted person. I am told that she favored me and was at her warmest when she brought down her fine Chinese porcelain for us to use in tea parties. I suspect my love of Chinese objects dates back to those special moments when I could sense how precious they were to her. She had left the country behind, but still had these treasures to carry her back in her mind. And she was willing to share them with me. I felt she was offering me an unspoken gift that I have only now repaid with my novel.
Years later, when my father was an old man, he shared another astonishing anecdote of hubris and heroism by my grandmother. Out at the family’s country cottage in the Chinese foothills, bandits had swooped down in the middle of the night. They came to rob the mill nearby and break into the small cluster of missionary homes. My grandmother threw her shawl over her nightgown, stepped out onto the porch in the moonlight, and shouted at the bandits. She told them that their evil intentions were wrong and very bad. The masked men seemed astonished by this white woman who raised her voice and scolded them in their own language. They turned their horses around, shamed and perhaps even a bit frightened.
Like many women during WWII, my grandmother’s full self was only allowed to emerge under dangerous circumstances far from home. Now we take for granted the range allowed in women’s lives, but at that time the choices were stark and limiting. Her narrow, domestic later years took their toll on her, and robbed our family of a role model far more dynamic than others available to us at the time. I wonder what it would have taken for us to realize we had a hero in our midst, and not simply a cranky old woman, forgotten by time.
China of My Mind
When I tell people that I have recently published a novel set in China, one of the first questions they ask is whether I’ve been there. My response seems to be a letdown. The expectant look on their faces shifts as they wonder why I chose to write about a place I’ve never visited. Sometimes I sense incredulity. What makes me think I can write about China?
My grandfather, Watts O. Pye, was one of the early missionaries to return to China after the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. In Shanxi Province, he oversaw the building of a hospital, schools, a library and roads that brought famine relief. The Reverend Pye died young, but my father, Lucian W. Pye, remained in Shanxi with my grandmother, living in the mission compound under Japanese occupation. He finally left China for college, returned with the Marines at the end of World War II, and went on to become a renowned Sinologist and the author of over 20 books on Asia, and China in particular.
My grandfather and father’s accomplishments, though, don’t make me an expert by inheritance. And yet, I’ve always a felt strong tie to China. I grew up in a house crowded with Chinese paintings, ceramics and furniture. My best childhood friend and I invented rituals with a tiny white Ming cup that we thought possessed special powers. I spent countless hours lying on a deep blue Oriental carpet covered with cherry blossoms, staring up into a painted scroll along whose ribbons of clouds I imagined traveling into the distant, shrouded mountains.
When the time came for my parents to move to a retirement home, I sat on that same rug and went through boxes of onionskin pages with faded blue type on which my grandfather had recorded his impressions of the eerie beauty of Shanxi. His journals captured my imagination in the same way the Chinese objects had when I was a girl, but now there was the specificity and poetry of a Victorian-era gentleman’s language to further embellish my sense of that distant land. Although I had always felt pride about my grandfather’s humanitarian work in China, I was ashamed of his religious zealotry and colonial perspective. Now, the arabesques of his prose conveyed his love of those rugged plains and rolling foothills covered with loess, a yellow dust that blew in from the Gobi Desert, as well as his respect for the Chinese people — thus deepening my grasp of his contradictory position there.
But impressions from childhood confirmed years later as an adult still don’t make me an expert. My father, on the other hand, was a recognized one. His colleagues at M.I.T. and at the John K. Fairbank Center at Harvard were called “China watchers.” For decades, in fact, that’s all they could do since China was closed to American visitors.
When he did finally visit in 1972, he brought back trinkets and clothing — cheap red and gold Mao buttons, quilted jackets in workman’s blue, olive green caps and the most ubiquitous souvenir of the time, Mao’s Little Red Book. My father spread his loot in our living room amid the Chinese antiques, stark reminders of Communism’s rejection of the delicate, evocative artistry of the past. I sensed from him that these strange new items now served as reminders that China, while suddenly open to Westerners, remained beyond the grasp of our understanding. Being permitted finally to see it firsthand had not brought outsiders closer to true understanding.
My first writing mentor, Annie Dillard, once told our college class that if you ever have the choice between visiting a far-flung place or reading a book about it, choose the book. She had just returned from a trip to Alaska and said that the only thing she hadn’t known about already from her reading was the sunflowers. Apparently, in midsummer, as they work to follow the sun circling tightly overhead, their stalks twist until their bright, oversize heads break right off their slender necks. She offered a quirky, maniacal smile and said that a book containing that tidbit would be worth reading.
This is how I feel about the China in my mind. My favorite books have always been those of far-off lands. The Middle East shimmered in Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, and while I didn’t necessarily understand Egypt any more precisely after reading all four volumes, that exotic landscape imprinted itself upon my teenage mind. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Maugham’s Painted Veil and Naipaul’s A Bend in the River, each revealed colonialism’s inherent flaws through the trials of unforgettable characters. These books gave me a first glimpse that there were countries resistant to Western understanding and that any presumption otherwise was an act of supreme hubris inevitably ending in the white man’s deserved downfall.
The exoticism of those novels that I was taken in by turned out to reveal a complexity of culture that doesn’t easily yield to an outsider’s — and perhaps especially not to a Westerner’s — worldview. I believe those books helped me understand my family’s complicity in a corrupt and confusing past. The layers of meaning about oppression and injustice brought on by colonialist racism were like the dust that covered everything in my grandfather’s descriptions of Shanxi — layered, dense and impossible to sweep away.
My father once said to me, only half in jest, that “political scientists are all failed novelists.” I suspect he meant that academics shared with artists the impulse to tell a story, but that statistics, studies and even firsthand fact-finding alone made an incomplete picture. His deference to art was a kind gesture toward me, a young writer aspiring to create it, but also an acknowledgment that art provides the transformative vision that turns a place on a map into a deeply felt world. It offers the reader hope of redemption and a new path — a way out through human understanding.
Aleksandar Hemon says that “expertise is the enemy of imagination,” and I can’t help but add that imagination, in the end, is our most profound and surprising teacher. It reveals truths we couldn’t otherwise believe.
What I know of China I have inherited from my family who lived there, and also from a white Ming cup, cherry blossom rug and a Little Red Book. These talismans have spoken volumes to me over the years. They helped create a land that inhabited, and even haunted, my imagination. The China of my novel is a dusty, rugged and exotic place that is not exactly on any map. Travelers, scholars and the Chinese themselves must explain the real China. I have tried to create an altogether different country that I hope will provide another landscape for the truth.
Virginia Pye is the author of the novel River of Dust. She plans to go to China in 2014 for the Shanghai Book Festival and perhaps to visit her father’s hometown and her grandfather’s grave.
A Zealot and a Poet
A Mule, a Map, a Man and a Miracle: such is the quaint, alliterative and suspect title of an article written about my grandfather, a Congregational missionary in the nineteen teens in northwestern China. I have no quibble with the first three M-words: the Reverend Watts O. Pye was among the first white men ever to roam that desolate countryside, and he did it on mule back. He sketched a map of previously uncharted territory on linen fabric and kept a tally of his converts in a tattered leather notebook. These two talisman-like objects sat on my desk and haunted me as I wrote my novel, River of Dust, and tried to make sense of a legacy that prompts both pride and shame. It is the final M-word with which I disagree: what miracle and for whom?
Watts O. stood six foot four, had flaming red hair and wore round gold-rimmed glasses that John Lennon would have liked. He saw himself as a Renaissance man, raised on a farm in Minnesota and then educated at both Carleton and Oberlin Colleges. Later as he rode the rugged plains of China, he read aloud the Romantic poets to his trudging mule, shared the wisdom of Shakespeare with his probably baffled manservant, and waxed poetical about the purple hills in the distance.
By all accounts, he made friends easily with the Chinese and was wildly successful at spreading the Gospel. Under his watch the Congregational mission in Shansi Province grew many times over. He built a hospital, schools for the Chinese children, a library and roads that proved useful for decades. He enlisted Red Cross aid for Shansi and raised needed funds for famine relief from congregations back home. The Reverend Pye’s efforts were tireless, although his journals reveal an exhausted figure. At the age of forty-eight, he was thrown from a mule out on the trail, his chest stomped upon by the animal. Soon TB filled his weakened lungs and he died. He left his wife, Gertrude, and a five-year-old son, Lucian (my father), and a compound of missionaries in search of a leader. Most of all, he left behind those Chinese out on the plains and in the mountain hamlets who would no longer be visited by the surprising white giant of a man.
I like to imagine him out there on his beast of burden, vast grey country on all sides and a book of poetry open in his hand. It is a romantic image and, when I think only of it, I can almost forget why he was there. But then there is the fact of the small leather bound tally book. In cribbed penmanship he catalogued the Chinese names and numbers. On a “good day,” the totals reached the twenties or more; on a “bad day,” a mere one or two. He gave sermons to famine-starved citizens at windswept crossroads. He stayed up late into the night listening to potential congregants weep about their fallow fields. He ate paltry meals at their tables, and in return for his kind and attentive ear, they accepted his offer of salvation.
It was then that the miracle ostensibly occurred. And although he had offered relief to some hearts and minds, the fields remained withered and famine was widespread. The country he left behind in 1925 when he died was rife with turmoil caused by internal battles and external invasion. The presumption that Chinese souls needed saving and that an outsider’s religion could do so was soon held up as yet another example of colonial arrogance. The Communist Revolution began the process of eliminating Christian chapels in cities and distant enclaves as China headed in an altogether different direction.
During my childhood as the war raged in Vietnam and conflict tore apart campuses and cities, I did my best not to think about the missionary side of my family and certainly never boasted of the Reverend Pye’s successes. For me, he was a blatant example of American imperialism. I was ashamed to claim him.
That is, until our parents were moving out of the family home and several generations of possessions had to be dealt with. From a dark corner of the attic, I pulled boxes that held my grandfather’s journals and hunkered down to skim the faded onion skin pages. I unfolded the linen cloth and studied the intricate, carefully drawn map of a rural China from long ago. Out of my grandfather’s traveling Bible fell copious notes for sermons, and when I opened his tally book, the leather made an audible crackle.
And here is what I found that day: a writer. In his journals, the Reverend effectively described camel caravans climbing mountain trails, orchards laden with exotic fruit, foul-smelling village streets and the many voices and attitudes of the Chinese around him, as well as the remarkable beauty of a place unspoiled by industry. He also recorded in more clichéd language his Christian beliefs and assumptions, but it was in his descriptions of every day life that I found him not only genuinely appealing, but also not naïve about the complexities of his position there.
“If the Orient seems strange to us,” he writes, “we should remember that we are seen just as strange to the Orient. The Chinese think us dirty, lazy and superstitious in the west. Dirty, because although we bathe, they detect a very decided odor. Gertrude had a sewing woman last winter who had never been near foreigners before, and after three or four days gave up the job, as badly as she needed the money, and the reason was that she simply could not stand the foreigners’ odors. Mr. and Mrs. Gilles were asked one spring not to walk into a neighbor’s peach orchard where they had been accustomed to walk, for it was thought that the crop failure was due to the odor of their bodies. They think us dirty, too, for the way we use the handkerchief and replace it in our pockets. To a refined Chinese, the sight of a person blowing his nose in the handkerchief and then putting it back in his pocket is actually nauseating. The point in dispute is an excellent example of how the different races may regard the same matter differently and each consider themselves innocent and the other guilty of the same offense. We think the Chinese wanting in cleanliness because, though they do not expectorate into their handkerchief, they will dust their shoes with it and wipe out the tea cup before pouring your tea. Exactly the same distinctions are made to show that we are lazy and superstitious.”
Reverend Pye expresses his intent to be open-minded and unbigoted and seems amused when he senses the Chinese judging him based on his race. One late afternoon, he wrote in his journal as he sat outdoors at a rough-hewn table in a poor village: “A crowd of about thirty watchers is pressed about me as I write, discussing the typewriter, the mysteries of foreign letters, my filled tooth, and what it can ever be that makes me ‘white,’ instead of brown or yellow. They have come to the universal belief that since we drink milk or use it in our food that is the explanation. One man has with great satisfaction just informed the rest that anyone of them could very shortly become just as white as I am, were he to use milk for a few months. They think our color is only artificial. I have heard tell of the story of a Chinese school boy in class when asked the color of the Negro replied, ‘black.’ And the American Indian? Copper color, was the reply. And the Englishman? White was the reply. And what color is the Chinese? Man color, proudly answered the youth. And so it should be.”
In other journal entries, he used the ornate, poetic language of his time to capture the transporting qualities of the countryside: “We lay around, letting the old sound of the mourning doves and the sight of the hills sink in. They sound and look just as they did when we were youngsters back home. Man and his language change while nature and the birds remain. We do miss the dear home faces. But will rest and get new visions for the days to come. There are lots of visions you can’t see, but just feel them, and after all, feeling is perhaps only the soul’s way of seeing. Something that comes to us as light as melody and as color, thrilling us with the sentient harmony that we often hear ripple from the throat of the music-made bird: that same thing that came to us times without number in childhood, and that comes to us now on run-away days like this one, under blue skies and green woods, and despite all that has gone before, and all that may come afterward, and it makes you take off your hat to the joy of living.”
My grandfather’s words revealed him to be a more complicated and nuanced person than the single-minded zealot I had presumed him to be. Before I knew it, he was transposing himself into a fictional character in my mind, because fiction is the best way I know to explore the contradictions inherent in being human. Through odd twists of the imagination, the Reverend Watts O. Pye became The Reverend in River of Dust—a man who is both foolish and wise, witty and overly serious, all seeing and yet blind.
But because The Reverend in my novel is ultimately an invention, I have him experience a crisis of faith that my grandfather never had. The real Reverend Pye died believing in his own convictions. And yet, for me, it is his written words that suggest a more honest and startling miracle—one of a heart and mind revealed across both distance and time. His was never actually a simple story of a man, a mule and a map. And the miracle he promised remains dubious at best. But if one does exist for me, it is buried in the fascination of getting to know an ancestor so long dead and in coming to terms with the moral complexities of his mission.
Writing is a Marathon Sport
Today marks the official publication date of Virginia Pye’s second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix, and so I thought I’d share a few of her thoughts on the payoff of patience in a writing career. As a late-bloomer myself (Fobbit was published when I was 49 years old), I could relate to a lot of what Virginia had to say. Dreams of the Red Phoenix tells the story of Americans in China at the onset of WWII when the Japanese attack and Communism is on the rise. Kirkus says: “There’s a comparison to Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, but this unflinching look...shares truth in its own way.” Virginia’s highly acclaimed first published book, River of Dust, is also a historical novel set in China. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and has taught writing at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University. Her award-winning short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and her essays and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Rumpus and elsewhere.
At the age of twenty-seven, I sat in the impressive 57th Street office of one of New York’s top literary agents and listened as she described how Meryl Streep should play the mother and Judd Hirsch the father in the movie version of my first novel. As we stood to shake hands, I couldn’t quite grasp what was happening so I asked outright if she was going to represent me and oversee my book’s publication. She smiled, because how my future was intended to unfold looked apparent to her. As I left the shiny chrome and glass building and walked up Fifth Avenue towards Central Park, I let it sink in that my life’s dream was about to come true, right on schedule. I would soon be a young star on the literary scene. I felt elated and satisfied and it all seemed too good to be true.
And it was. Because neither that agent nor anybody else could have told me that I would be lucky enough to write books for the rest of my life, but I would have to wait until I was fifty-three years old—almost precisely twice the age I had been when the impressive agent took on that first manuscript—until my debut novel was finally published.
Writing is a marathon sport. It’s not for sprinters. Nor is it for the faint of heart. If the act of trying to get the words right on the page isn’t enough of a trial, then there’s the marketplace to take you down a notch or two. As it turns out, my trajectory as a writer isn’t uncommon. Many successful authors have first, second, third, and up to six, seven or even eight unpublished novels in their drawers. I know authors who had three or four agents before finding one who worked out well. The key strategy to achieving success in the face of such set backs and discouragement is to keep writing: to finish one book and start on the next. To write with the faith that someone will read and cherish the work someday, but probably not according to a timetable the writer has in mind.
When that New York agent tried a dozen publishing houses, but failed to place my first novel and returned it to me six weeks later, I was stunned. The narrative of myself as a successful author had quickly taken up a central place in my mind.
After a period of confusion and mourning, I started in on another novel, which I finished when I was pregnant with my first child. The agent who had represented my first novel was gun-shy about me and declined to see it. Although I worried my career would be tainted by that first failure, I found another agent who offered editorial comments on the second novel. I was to make revisions and then she would send it out to publishers.
But I had a baby on the way. After my daughter arrived, my writing desk became her changing table, replete with diapers, wet wipes and baby powder. As my computer accumulated dust, I remember thinking that was just fine with me. Worn out with the difficult business of trying to get published, I threw myself into mothering and three years later gave birth to another child, a son. The second novel became a distant memory. With a baby or toddler crawling on me, feeding off me, waking me in the night and generally taking over my every thought, I didn’t have the necessary distance on life required to write a novel and I even convinced myself I didn’t mind.
But finally, when my son went off to nursery school and the house was mercifully quiet in the mornings, I found myself returning to my desk. I wrote the next novel with great urgency, as if my life depended on it. A new agent tried to sell it, and came close, but the moment still wasn’t right. I tried to contain my disappointment but also realized that my battle with getting published was becoming secondary to my battle to simply write better.
In the new city where we had moved, I joined a writer’s organization and quickly became active, and then ended up leading it for seven years. It was easy for me to encourage other writers who were also struggling to improve our craft. I became less preoccupied with my own publication than with connecting to fellow writers as we shared the many ways we strive to gain wisdom from books—our own and others.
Despite my discouragement, I began to grasp that no matter whether my books were published or not, I was still living a writing life. I had my family, the students of writing who I helped with their manuscripts, the short stories I sent out with regularity, (though many of them were returned), my work with the writer’s organization, and always the larger projects evolving in my mind and on the page.
For me, it took a long apprenticeship to write a novel I ultimately feel proud to have published. In retrospect, I’m thankful that the high-powered agent didn’t place the first book that I wrote. It wasn’t nearly as good as my debut, River of Dust, which found itself between hard covers a quarter century later. And I think my new novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix, might even be stronger still, because we improve with practice as writers —at least that’s how it’s worked for me.
Once I put aside the worry about publication and focused instead on writing well and helping other writers to do so, too, I started to achieve greater success. And I see now that the greatest reward of all isn’t the way my novels feel in my hands—though that’s pretty terrific—but that I have continued to use writing to make sense of my life. I’m grateful that a writer’s way of seeing the world, more than being identified as a published author, defines who I’ve been all along.


Will Israel Defense Forces Resume Gaza War When Humanitarian Pause Ends?
16:22 GMT 30.11.2023 (Updated: 10:27 GMT 30.01.2024)
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced the extension of the humanitarian pause in the Gaza Strip for the seventh day on Thursday. What will happen next?
Ten Israeli hostages are reportedly set to be released on Thursday, as per a Hamas source quoted by AFP. The humanitarian pause took effect on November 24, envisaging the return of hostages by the Islamist group and the release of Palestinian prisoners by Israel. The initial four-day pause has repeatedly been extended, and yet it is unclear how the situation will evolve when the temporary truce ends.
"In my opinion, Israel will not start the operation. Israel has completed the operation and it will not be resumed," Dr. Simon Tsipis, expert on national security, political science, and international relations, told Sputnik.
Last Sunday, US President Joe Biden reportedly expressed concern
about the potential continuation of the IDF ground operation in southern Gaza in a phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, per Axios. Following Israel's evacuation of Gazans from the north, around two million Palestinians have concentrated in the southern part of the strip.
Biden and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin are said to have warned Tel Aviv against waging the war in the south
with the same intensity and scope as the IDF earlier demonstrated in the north. Per Gaza’s Health Ministry, 14,800 Palestinians, including 6,000 children, have been killed in the strip since the start of Israel's retaliation operation.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken lauded the recent extension of the humanitarian pause: "The pause in fighting has demonstrated success in securing the freedom of hostages and in delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza – we want to see it continue," he said.
Tsipis suggested that apart from external pressure on Israel from the United States, the European Union, and other states, including Turkiye, there are other obstacles in the way of the operation's resumption.
"First, Hamas still holds prisoners of war and the bodies of dead Israelis. This will delay the exchange," the expert believes. "And the negotiations will drag on for a very long time, more than a month, until everyone is returned. [Second,] Israel will not resume this operation because it is not in its interests to eliminate Hamas completely. Israel itself is not capable of supporting and ensuring the livelihoods of two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Until a solution is found on what will happen after the liquidation of Hamas, this group will not be liquidated. Moreover, now Hamas is doing everything to show that it is capable of these negotiations. And the speed with which it returns 10 people every day, including prisoners of war, softens Israel. And the critical moment has already been missed."
A military operation in the southern part of Gaza is "really risky, dangerous, and complicated because more than two-thirds of the Palestinians in Gaza now are located in this part," echoed Ayman Yousef, professor in political sciences and international relations at the Arab-American University in Palestine.
"Khan Yunis, which is situated in southern Gaza, is likely one of the biggest cities in the Middle East in terms of population," Yousef told Sputnik. "And according to many sources, a part of Hamas’ leadership, the military leadership affiliated with the Al-Qassam Brigade, is located there. The city is very much crowded, and it has a special geopolitical situation."
Per the academic, if the number of Palestinian civilian casualties multiplies, the conflict may go out of control
and spill over into "the West Bank and even Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Syria, and some other countries."
29 November 2023, 10:01 GMT
Potential Consequences of South Gaza Op
Yousef suggested that Israel cannot uproot Hamas and that the fight would only bring more destruction and suffering until the international community steps in and enforces a cessation of hostilities. "Gaza has become a kind of hell on earth. It is not suitable for human living anymore," he said.
Tsipis presumed that a continuation of the operation in the Gaza Strip would be costly for Tel Aviv, not in an economic, but in a diplomatic sense: "A large number of civilian casualties will bring down Israel's reputation on the world stage," he believes. "And a large number of anti-Israeli sanctions and anti-Israel UN resolutions will be applied."
"A humanitarian catastrophe is brewing in the south of the [Gaza] strip," he continued. "And Egypt opposes the continuation of the military operation in the south, since it would be on the border with Egypt. All indicators say that this operation will be stopped. It will not be resumed even after several months. The Israeli Army will withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip."
25 November 2023, 16:48 GMT
Israeli Civil and Military Officials Signal Readiness to Resume War
Meanwhile, the Israeli media is continuing to beat war drums: per the Jewish press, the IDF is using the humanitarian pause to enhance its readiness
and develop future operational plans.
Thus, on Monday, the IDF Southern Command carried out an operational forum focused on the Gaza war’s lessons, according to JNS. The gathering was convened by the commanding officer of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman. Israeli military officials, named by the Israeli press as "key to prosecuting the next stages of the war," also participated in the forum.
Furthermore, on Wednesday, PM Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Alternate PM Benny Gantz, and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi signaled readiness to immediately continue the operation once the humanitarian pause is over.
On the same day, Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, subjected UN Security Council meeting participants to criticism for calling for an immediate and protracted ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. "Every call for a ceasefire means Hamas gets to live to see another day, terrorizing Israelis and impoverishing Gazans," said Erdan, referring to Hamas' staunch anti-Israeli stance and non-recognition of the Jewish state.
1982 Beirut-Style Way Out
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported in November that some Israeli and American officials are discussing the idea of removing thousands of lower-level militants from the strip in order to wrap up the war. Per the publication, the idea evokes memories of the US-brokered deal that allowed the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters to leave Beirut during Israel's siege of the city.
The siege of the western part of the Lebanese capital lasted from June 13 to mid-August 1982. At the time, the IDF saw the siege as an alternative to urban warfare, which would have involved unacceptable levels of casualties. By August 18, 1982, Washington had brokered a deal between Israel, Lebanon, the PLO, and Arab states. Under the agreement, PLO fighters were removed from Beirut to Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria. The evacuation was supervised by the US, French, and Italian militaries.
The US media outlet quoted one of the proposals put forward by an Israeli military think tank. It envisions the creation of "Hamas-free security zones" after the possible expulsion of the Palestinian group from the strip. According to the plan, these zones would be administered by the new Gaza authorities with the support of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Still, so far the plan has faced opposition from the United States, which favors the participation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in a post-war government in the Gaza Strip.
The publication remarked that Israel, the United States, and Arab countries have yet to reach a compromise on who should govern the enclave in the future.


When shopping for a new vehicle, you’ll take a look at the specs and features of all the different vehicles. When shopping for a sports car you’ll notice that a lot of them will have engines with the words “turbocharged” or “twin-turbocharged.” If you aren’t sure what these words mean, you’re not alone. While we previously covered the meaning of twin-turbocharged, we’ll be covering the meaning of turbocharged today. Keep reading as we walk you through what it means for an engine to be turbocharged.
You might also like: Will McLaren be using a new lightweight vehicle architecture?
What makes an engine turbocharged?
When an engine is turbocharged, it means that it is using a turbine-driven forced induction method to power the vehicle. This induction method takes recycled car exhaust and moves it into the combustion chamber. Turbocharged engines are smaller than regular engines but can produce the same amount of power. They also have 50% more air flowing through them than regular engines. These factors combined mean that turbocharged engines can provide better acceleration.
What is the advantage of a turbocharged engine?
There are many advantages of having a turbocharged engine, but there are two that stick out. These advantages are greater power density and increased fuel efficiency. The smaller size allows manufacturers to downsize engine displacement. The process of utilizing the expelled air to spin a compressor wheel to draw in outside air helps to reduce waste as well.
If your vehicle has a turbocharged engine, you’ll get to enjoy great fuel economy and impressive acceleration. Looking to experience a turbocharged engine? Check out our inventory of luxury sports car at McLaren Chicago.


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Serena Williams entered the 2013 tennis season on a tear. In 2012 she won Wimbledon, cruised at the Olympics, and took the U.S. Open. So forgive us if we thought that this could finally be a year where a tennis player pulls
American teenage sensation Sloane Stephens fought back in her semifinal match against defending champion Victoria Azarenka, and was one game away from evening the second set at five games apiece. But just before
Threatening to shove a tennis ball down a line judge's throat can't be topped, but Serena Williams did have an outstanding meltdown during her Australian Open quarterfinal loss to Sloane Stephens last night. You Don't Want To Be Behind This Guy
Sloane Stephens stuns Serena Williams at the Australian Open then says, "I hope to have a lot more Twitter followers." Objective achieved — and then some.
Sloane Stephens, the tennis player who defeated Serena Williams and advanced to the Australian Open semifinals on Wednesday, has strong connections to Boston. Her mother, Sybil Smith, was a swimmer at Boston University and a member of the school's

domain: sports


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Celebrated Ghanaian actress and film producer, Yvonne Nelson has sparked outrage on social media with her recent post advising Ghanaians to not be deceived by politicians and that Ghana politicians do not care about citizens.
According to Yvonne Nelson in a tweet, she lamented,
“Politician: stay home, stay safe ~ people: ok ~ Politician: go out and register ~ people: ok ME: the politician doesn’t care about you, use your common sense this election won’t change anything in your life, joining crowded queues endangers your life”
As harmful as her tweet is social media users and some fans, as usual, rained harsh comments on her declaring that even though what she stated is true, Yvonne is a hypocrite and should be the last person to state that.
Others also questioned her if her decision to not register means she is not going vote to support her friend and colleague John Dumelo.
The actress and entrepreneur attested that the December polls will not change anything, because politicians will always be greedy and selfish hence the necessity for Ghanaians to use their common sense.
See some of the reactions below:
@babeldegeneral: “See who is talking do you remember 2016 election what you did…”
@osteenbimpong: “So you won’t register to vote for your blossom friend
@dosoocourage: “It will change a whole lot. Stop being a hypocrite”
@DonNobel: “you got it wrong.They said don’t go out if you don’t have anything needful doing outside and the voter ID is needful so we can go out and do it moreover we don’t do the voter ID purposefully for voting
@ JnrBonsu: “Yvonne it’s better to apprise the people to adhere to the protocols. Eg is when we were locked down,U and I witnessed some Ghanaians who went out just to see wats going on out there. So don’t always jostle the problems on the politicians.They’ve never forced anyone to register.”

domain: news


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As I go on my morning walks, it feels like nature is holding a collective breath. Long gone are the vibrant, color-filled days of early fall. Instead, the skeletons of trees pierce the blue skies. My favorite meadow looks like a plant graveyard; mullein stalks and yarrow seed heads are now only a reminder of summer’s abundance. Soon, snow will cover it all, creating a clean slate to write winter stories.
Our dinner table has also shifted these past few months. Raw salads and fruits have been replaced by slow-cooked and deeply nourishing roots and stews. Now is the time for comfort foods! Meals that evoke the cozy sense of a warm hearth, snuggled in, while outside the world becomes colder and harder.
Too often the foods of the winter season lack a variety of spice and flavor. For many a dash of salt and a sprinkle of ground pepper are the only additions to potatoes, carrots, and meats.
Why is that? Flavor is the spice of life!
Without it, foods and beverages are boring, unappealing, and dull.
Flavor is also an important part of herbal medicine.
The Umami Flavor
Depending on what system of herbal medicine you look to, herbalists recognize five to six flavors. Traditional Chinese Medicine has the five tastes of pungent, salty, sour, bitter, and sweet. Ayurveda has an additional flavor of astringent.
In Japan and now many other parts of the world, another flavor is recognized: umami.
The umami flavor is simply described as a pleasant and savory taste. I consider it a delicious comfort in these colder, cozy months. Yum, umami!
The term umami was first coined by Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese chemist, in 1908. Foods that have the umami flavor include broths, gravies, soups, fish and fish sauces, tomatoes, mushrooms, meats, yeast, cheeses, and soy sauce. Many traditional comfort foods are loaded with umami flavor (broths, stews, mac and cheese, you get the idea).
This article shows you how you can make your own umami seasoning to sprinkle on your favorite savory foods. Besides its delicious taste, this umami seasoning is filled with nutrient-dense medicinal herbs.
First, here’s a look at our ingredients…
Shiitake Mushrooms (Lentinula edodes)
Shiitake mushrooms have a delicious and subtle flavor. They have long been used as a building and nourishing tonic and have received a lot of attention for their ability to support the immune system and improve cardiovascular health.
A study in 2015 showed that eating five to ten grams of shiitake mushrooms per day improved people’s immunity levels and decreased their inflammatory levels.1 With poor immune system health and chronically high inflammation levels being major underlying causes to many illnesses today, shiitake is a great mushroom to add to your diet!
As with all mushrooms, it’s important to cook or dry them before eating.
Parsley (Petroselinum crispum)
Often dismissed as a garnish, parsley is an abundant source of phytochemicals and is a powerful antioxidant!2 One flavonoid, apigenin, has been frequently studied for its effects against cancer and as an antioxidant.
You commonly see two types of parsley being sold at the store. One is the curly-leaf parsley and one is the Italian or flat-leaf parsley. Flat-leaf parsley has a much more vibrant taste and is often preferred as a richer source of nutrients. You can, however, use either kind of parsley for this recipe.
Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)
Highly revered for its ability to quell a cough and as a strongly antimicrobial herb, thyme is also a beloved culinary herb. It’s my absolute favorite herb to add to soups and stews, especially chicken and dumplings! For this recipe oregano or rosemary could be substituted.
Garlic (Allium sativum)
Garlic can promote healthy digestion and protect your heart. I use it both fresh and dried in my cooking all day long. It enlivens savory dishes while offering many health benefits.
How to Get Powdered Herbs for This Recipe
The easiest way to get powdered herbs for this recipe is to buy them already powdered.
You can also buy these herbs as whole or cut and then powder them yourself. I recommend using a small spice grinder in order to powder them. Sometimes, if the grinder doesn’t make the herbs fine enough, I also sift them through a fine-mesh metal strainer to remove any larger bits.
If you’re up for more effort, then you can grow these herbs or buy them fresh, dry them, and then powder them. While this may be the most time consuming, preparing it from scratch will make it all the more special.
This umami seasoning is a delicious way to add a medicinal boost to your savory foods. Enjoy this on vegetables, meats, and even popcorn!
What you’ll need…
- 1/4 cup shiitake powder
- 2 tablespoons parsley powder
- 2 teaspoons thyme powder
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 2 teaspoons salt
- Combine the powders and salt together and mix well.
- Store them in a spice container.
Sprinkle on soups, meats, veggies, and even popcorn. This would make a fun gift for your foodie friends. For optimal flavor make this in small batches and use within 6 months.
Yield: Slightly less than 1 cup
Now I’d love to hear from you!
Are you familiar with the umami flavor? Do you use mushrooms as a seasoning? Are you craving comfort foods as the weather gets colder?
Please share in the comments below.

domain: food


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Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas
Lesley J. Gordon is an associate professor of history at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio. She is the author of General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend, coeditor of Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and Their Wives, and coauthor of This Terrible War: The Civil War and Its Aftermath. John C. Inscoe is the author, editor, or coeditor of eight books, including The Heart of Confederate Appalachia; Enemies of the Country: New Perspectives on Unionists in the Civil War South; and The New Georgia Encyclopedia. He is a professor of history at the University of Georgia.

domain: literature


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Square Enix announced that the People Can Fly-developed co-op shooter Outriders, will receive a free demo on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC-via Steam and GeForce Now.
The demo will include around 3 hours of gameplay allowing players to create multiple characters and try all four classes available: Devastator, Pyromancer, Technomancer, and Trickster. The demo will cover the entire opening chapter.
The demo will release on February 25 at 9 am PST and will be free across all platforms.
Outriders is an RPG shooter set in a sci-fi universe. Players will need to create their own character known as “Outrider” to embark on a journey across a hostile planet. The story takes players through a diverse world where they’ll find themselves exploring slums, forest areas, and mountain ranges in pursuit of a mysterious signal. However, during their travels, they will meet intense combat situations and powerful enemies.
Outriders will utilize the Nvidia DLSS, which is a deep learning super sampling that utilizes AI technology and learning to create an image that appears to be of a higher-resolution image, without the rendering overhead. Pretty, much, games running at 1440p can appear to run at 4K, and games running at 1080p could look like they are running at 1440p.
Outriders is coming to PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC on April 1, 2021.
You can watch the announcement stream below:

domain: entertainment


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Bristol's Aardman Studios make their return to the big screen this January with the release of Early ManPosted on: 09 Jan 2018
Beloved Bristol-based creators Aardman Studios, responsible for animated classics such as Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep and the Wallace and Gromit series, are making a triumphant return to cinemas in 2018 with the release of Early Man on Friday 26th January.
Set at the dawn of time, Early Man tells the tale of plucky caveman Dug in his quest to unite his Stone Age tribe against the might of the oncoming Bronze Age in a battle to beat them at their own game. Helped by his trusty sidekick Hognob, see Dug come up against the evil Lord Nooth in the fight to protect his tribe's way of life!
With veteran director Nick Park at the helm once more, Early Man features a cast full to the brim with British talent, including Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers, Kong: Skull Island), Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones), Timothy Spall (Harry Potter Series, The King's Speech) and many more.
Aardman Studios made a name for themselves in the late 1980s and early 90s with the first releases of the now-adored Wallace and Gromit series. Their use of stop-motion clay animation has earned the team four Academy Awards and five BAFTAs over the years, cementing Aardman as one of the most successful animation studios of all time, and earning them a rightful place among Britain's cultural icons.
With a great range of cinemas in and around Bristol, below is a compiled list of where you can watch Early Man from Friday 26th January. For advance bookings, follow the links below to find contact details for your local cinema:
Orpheus Cinema - 51 Northumbria Dr, Bristol BS9 4HN
Showcase Cinema De Lux - Cabot Circus, Glass House, Bristol BS1 3BX
Odeon Cinema - Union St, Avon, Bristol BS1 2DS
Vue Cribbs Causeway - The Venue, Cribbs Causeway, Merlin Road, Bristol BS10 7SR
Showcase Cinema Avonmeads - Avonmeads, St Philips Causeway, Bristol BS2 0SP
Aardman Studios' Early Man is due for UK-wide release on Friday 26th January 2018. For more information and to follow updates, visit the film's official website or check out the official Facebook page.
DID YOU KNOW? 365Bristol have been based at Aardman Animations since our launch in November 2013.
Having moved to Bristol from Cornwall in 2015, Matt recently completed a degree in Journalism at UWE. He is keen on a wide variety of musical genres, as well as taking an interest in art and illustration, producing his own work in his spare time. Matt makes the most of Bristol's diverse nightlife and attends live music and club nights regularly. Get in touch via email at email@example.com.

domain: artistic


The renowned Trio Sefardi brings Sephardic Jewish music to Metrowest. In addition to experiencing the beautiful words and sounds of music from the Balkans to Morocco, this is a chance to learn more of the history and culture of the region. The award-winning musicians of Trio Sefardi were mentored in Sephardic music and culture by the late composer and songwriter Flory Jagoda. Cantor Vera Broekhuysen of Congregation Beth El and Rabbi David Finkelstein of Congregation Or Atid will join the Trio on selected songs.
Co-sponsored by Congregation Beth El of Sudbury and Congregation Or Atid of Wayland. Advance registration is required for both in-person and Zoom attendance. A donation of $18 via the online registration form is suggested but not required.


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Glue Sticks, PVC-Free, 40g, Clear
Glue stick is the ideal clean, quick and accurate way of sticking paper, cardboard, felt and photos. Provides a solid adhesive in a twist up tube that lets you apply the glue while keeping your fingers clean. Glue goes on smoothly and allows sufficient time to reposition objects. Snap-lock cap keeps glue fresh and usable for several years. Glue is solvent-free and washable. Ideal for craft and design, office and school use. Suitable and safe for children.

domain: design


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domain: travel


Dredging and marine contractor Van Oord has completed the prestigious land reclamation project The World in the emirate of Dubai. The World is a group of 300 artificial islands four km off the coast of Dubai that have been shaped in the form of the continents. The project covers a surface area of 9 x 7 km and was completed in the record time of little more than four years. The islands can now provide the setting for hotels, apartments and villas. This is the next immense project, visible from space.
Project execution commenced in October 2003. Fifteen trailing suction hopper dredgers have reclaimed a total of 320 million m3 of sand from the sea to form the islands. For comparison purposes: that is the equivalent of a 2 m wide, 4 m high Chinese Wall that stretches around the world. In addition, 34 million tonnes of stone have been used to construct the longest breakwater in the world, a 27 km long structure protecting the islands from the sea. That is four times the amount of stone used to build the Oosterscheldt storm surge barrier.
For a number of years Van Oord will continue to be closely involved in the remainder of this project. According to Hamza Mustaffa, the managing director of Nakheel, Van Oord‘s client, ‘We intend to continue our successful collaboration in the years ahead.’ Van Oord’s work will include compacting the subsoil and building quay walls.
Van Oord is working on several marine construction projects in Dubai. Following the first palm island, the much-discussed Palm Jumeirah, The World was the next extraordinary land reclamation project that Van Oord completed in Dubai. Palm Deira, a colossal islands project ten times the size of Palm Jumeirah, is still under construction and will be completed in 2014-2015.
Van Oord is building tomorrow's infrastructure around the world. Its core activities are dredging, offshore services, coastal construction, and infrastructure (marine and land-based). The company has 4,000 employees worldwide working in more than 26 countries. Van Oord has a large, state-of-the-art fleet that is currently being expanded on a massive scale. The challenges associated with climate change, the global increase in goods transport, and the growing demand for oil and gas are giving Van Oord the opportunity to boost its leading position in dredging and marine construction.
Contact Media Relations
Robert de Bruin
31 88 8268234
31 6 53440890
Robert de Bruin deals with all media enquiries relating to Van Oord's corporate and international activities. For non press related questions we kindly redirect you to our contact form.
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We do not currently stock the book ourselves, but we have the next best thing – advice about the best places to get it!
If your local yarn store stocks books, please consider asking them if they can order it for you. Any bookstore should be able to order it for you, as well. Here’s the information anyone should need to get it:
Title: Sock Architecture
Author: Lara Neel
ISBN (print edition): 978-1-937513-63-4
Publisher: Cooperative Press
If you prefer shopping online, bookshop.org is a great way to do so while also supporting local bookstores.
If Ravelry works for you, you can purchase a digital copy of the book here.
More about Sock Architecture:
Jump right in to this ultimate guide to the world of sock knitting! Sock Architecture is perfect for both experienced and novice sock knitters. This thorough, imaginative collection of sock shapes and patterns gives you the tools to construct an astounding variety of custom socks. All heels and toes are carefully explained and clearly photographed, and you can plug in your own numbers to work at the exact size and gauge you want.
If you’d rather just pick up the needles and start knitting, Sock Architecture also includes 17 fully designed patterns. Most span five sizes, from women’s extra small through men’s large. And most of the patterns offer guidelines for an adjustable size you can choose your own gauge, size, or both. Make socks that are as unique as you are!
Lara demystifies popular sock-knitting techniques and gives you tips and tricks that could only have come from the mind behind the Math4Knitters blog and podcast. Terrified of grafting? Love afterthought heels but hate retrieving those tiny left-on-hold stitches? Adore the look and fit of your usual top-down heel, but hate picking up gusset stitches and dealing with that weird little hole at the top of the heel flap? Lara gives you all the tools and methods you need to address these issues and build your own great socks.
And here’s a little twin-life Easter egg:
This photo you see on the “About Lara Neel” page in Sock Architecture…
That’s not Lara. That’s Lisa, modeling Lara’s Tootsie socks in Knitty. Twin for the win!

domain: hobby


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MPs vote in favour of Palestinian statehood alongside Israel.
It’s been the most discussed motion in recent times and as you will all know by now many MPs have voted in favour of Palestinian recognition following a debate on the issue in the House of Commons on Monday.
The motion being debated was tabled by the Labour MP Grahame Morris, with an amendment by former Labour Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw MP.
The full motion stated: “That this House believes that the government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution.”
The motion was accepted in the House by 274 votes in favour to 12 against, and of those 274 votes in favour, 192 were from Labour MPs.
Leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband MP, was the only Leader of the three main parties to vote in favour of the motion. David Ward MP for Bradford East along with Gerry Sutcliffe was the only MP from Bradford District to vote in favour of the motion.
David Ward said “I’m very proud that I had the opportunity to join colleagues from across all political parties to vote to recognise the State of Palestine in the House of Commons.
“This is a powerful message to the Palestinian people that they are not alone and that the world does care about them. It will provide hope that non-violent paths can succeed in effecting positive change and will be the only way to finding a lasting peace.
“The tide has turned, this vote would not have happened 5 years ago which just shows that the world has been woken up by Israel’s recent atrocities in Gaza and has only demonstrated that finding a lasting and non-violent two state solution is an absolute priority.”
The motion however does not commit to immediate recognition of Palestine but it does reaffirm, support for the principle of recognising Palestinian statehood. Whilst symbolic, the vote will have international implications. Catch this Sunday’s edition to find out our exclusive report by Hebron based Rula Halaiqa on what Palestinians have to say about this motion.
- Previous District urged to improve their handwashing to fight flu
- Next KATRINA KAIF TO JOIN THE BOLLYWOOD LINE UP AT MADAME TUSSAUDS LONDON

domain: law


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On Tuesday, August 6, neighbors around Edina congregated outdoors to celebrate Edina's Night to Unite. The event, similar to those held around Minnesota provided an opportunity for residents to get to know the folks who live on their street and in their neighborhood. It also spotlights local law enforcement efforts at crime prevention by helping raise community awareness.
Mayor Hovland and his wife LaRae were invited to Teresa Hermes' block party and made a point to visit with Hermes and her neighbors for most of the evening. “It was really nice to have [Mayor Hovland and LaRae] there as they spent a lot of time visiting with the large crowd as we had a great turnout,” says Hermes. “They brought cupcakes so the kids were immediate fans and were pretty excited to meet the Mayor.”
Kudos to all Edina residents who made a point of enjoying such a lovely summer evening outside together with friends and neighbors – and cupcakes!
What did you do to celebrate Edina's Night to Unite?


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Last week, I started a new book—the second book of the Happily Inc series, which will debut next year. The first three Happily Inc heroes will be Nick, Mathias, and Ronan Mitchell of Fool’s Gold.
But, we’re not quite done with Fool’s Gold yet. A Kiss in the Snow will be out on October 1 as an ebook novella. For those of you who prefer print books, A Kiss in the Snow will be the bonus novella that comes with the paperback edition of Marry Me at Christmas on October 25. Nancee Smith, Gladys’s great-niece, moves to Fool’s Gold in disgrace, and reunites with the love of her life.
Introducing my first ever Reader of the Month, Lisa Murray! Lisa started reading romance in 1974 when she was in the 7th grade, and she still loves reading now, as the grandmother of eight. (Wow!) Lisa won the backlist book of her choice, plus the opportunity to ask me three questions.
Visit SusanMallery.com/reader-of-the-month to learn more about Lisa, find out what book she chose, watch the video in which I answer her questions, and sign up for a chance to be October’s Reader of the Month!
I'll have four brand new books out in 2017, starting with A Million Little Things (Mischief Bay book 3) in March. Fans of The Girls of Mischief Bay will be excited to hear that Pam is one of the main characters of A Million Little Things. I just love her, and it was a true pleasure to bring her the happiness she deserves.
In mid-July, I'll release The Secrets of the Tulip Sisters in hardcover, ebook, and audio. This book is a standalone romance-plus, with three intersecting romantic storylines. Kelly and Olivia Murphy were raised on a tulip farm in Washington State. Their mother's abandonment when they were young still has repercussions today. Now in their twenties, the sisters reunite this summer, and all of their secrets come out.
September is going to be a big month in Susan Mallery land, because that’s when I’m launching Happily Inc, which I just know all of my Fool's Gold fans are going to absolutely LOVE! I usually hedge my bets by saying something like, "I hope you love it as much as I do," but in this case, I’m confident you're going to go wild for Happily Inc, which is just as quirky as Fool's Gold, and just as close-knit, but in a whole new way. You Say It First and Second-Chance Girl will be out in September and October respectively, your chance to get in on my new long-running series right from the very start.
To celebrate the debut of Happily Inc, I’ll host a reader party in Fort Worth, Texas on September 30, 2017. It's going to be a blast! And yes, I started planning it more than a year early. (With as many books as I write, I have to be organized.) We have lots of fun activities planned and a terrific venue already booked. Every reader who attends will receive a signed copy of Second-Chance Girl, plus a great swag bag and lunch, and I'll be giving away a ton of prizes, too, including the opportunity to have dinner with me. I can't wait to spend the day with the best readers in the world! Keep an eye on future newsletters for more details on how to sign up. For now, just save the date.
read. laugh. love.


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An analysis of two settings in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
By using the heath and castles as contrasting settings in Macbeth, William Shakespeare reinforces and reflects various themes present throughout the play. Through the combined use of these settings, he contrasts notions of security and danger, fairness and foulness, and the natural and supernatural. Although the heath is a meeting place for evil and is represented as a grim location through a number of methods, the heath itself is safe. Contrarily, the castles that Macbeth inhabits, both Inverness and Dunsinane, are repeatedly described as safe, secure, and welcoming. These castles, however, are far more dangerous than the heath, acting more as traps than shelter. The notions of fairness and foulness are also reversed at the heath and the castles in the play. The witches at the heath are relatively benign and only deliver prophecies of truth to Macbeth, while conceptions of fairness are repeatedly distorted to the point of foulness at the castles he inhabits. Finally, while it is certainly true that the witches represent the supernatural world, the supernatural deeds which occur at the heath are far more subtle when compared to the unnatural events which take place in the castles. By examining the plot developments which transpire in their respective settings, one can conclude that Shakespeare intentionally contrasts the settings of the play with the deeds that happen there, creating a strong separation from appearance and reality throughout the play.
First, the concepts of security and danger are constantly in question when referring to the settings of the heath and the castle. As Hecate proclaims to the witches, “security / Is mortals’ chiefest enemy” (Mac. 3.5.32-33). This idea is repeated throughout the play, particularly in the context of the castles. Macbeth’s first castle at Inverness is described as being quite pleasant. Upon his arrival there, Duncan proclaims that, “the air / Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself / Unto our gentle senses” (Mac. 1.6.1-3). The castle is well lit and has servants, representing itself as a symbol of nobility, higher class, and safety. The appearance of the castle, however, acts as a trap for Duncan and his stay there results in his demise. The security of the castle is further called into question when, upon discovering their father’s death, Donalbain and Malcolm flee the castle, suspicious of the circumstances and fearing for their own safety. Additionally, Banquo notes that martlets are common at the castle at Inverness. Martlets, mythical birds said to have no feet, would never be able to land at the castle, and would therefore be unable to nest there. The fact that these birds are the only wildlife described outside the castle indicates that the castle lacks safety and security, even for animals. Later in the play, Caithness refers to Macbeth and his second castle when he states, “Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies” (Mac. 5.2.14). This castle is regarded as a safe place by many, including Macbeth, who believes in its impenetrability. Though strongly defended, this castle is identified as a dangerous and unnatural place by Lady Macbeth’s doctor, who states, “Were I from Dunsinane away and clear, Profit / again should hardly draw me here” (Mac. 5.3.70-71). Macbeth, however, becomes so overly confident in his castle’s defenses that, in the midst of a war, he tells his servants “Bring me no more reports; let them fly all!” (Mac. 5.3.1). Dunsinane is, ultimately, attacked and Macbeth, proclaiming “They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly” (Mac. 5.7.1), is eventually trapped and usurped there. In a noteworthy contrast, the heath is repeatedly represented through pathetic fallacy as a dark and turbulent place. Despite it’s dismal appearance, the witches are able to escape from the heath “Into the air, and what seem’d corporal melted / As breath into the wind” (Mac. 1.3.93-94). This is important because the castles, in their pleasing appearances, act only as traps, while the heath is easily escaped from despite its foreboding description.
Moreover, the concepts of fairness and foulness are repeatedly reversed at the heath and castle. After receiving their predictions from the witches, Banquo suggests that “The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / In deepest consequence” (Mac. 1.3.143-145) and while this is true, the witches never betray Macbeth. This line, it would seem, relates more to Macbeth and his wife as the instruments of darkness. Lady and Lord Macbeth win Duncan’s trust with small truths, only to betray him. Everything the witches report to Macbeth and Banquo is true, and it is Macbeth’s over-ambition that ruins him. At the heath, the witches are very benign in their magic, strictly reporting the true future to Macbeth and Banquo. When Macbeth returns to his castle at Inverness, however, he openly admits that his actions against Duncan are wrong in two ways: “First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, / Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, / Who should against his murderer shut the door” (Mac. 1.7.12-15). We see in this line that, though Macbeth still has a grasp on the idea of fairness, he neglects this knowledge, and performs the foul deed anyway. Macbeth even admits that Duncan is a great man and suggests that when he kills him, since he “Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been / So clear in his great office, that his virtues / Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against / The deep damnation of his taking-off” (Mac. 1.7.17-20). Again, one can infer that Macbeth is still completely in tune with his sense of fairness and continues into foulness anyway. Even the witches, who are represented through their appearance and actions as foul creatures, pass judgement on Macbeth, saying upon his coming that, “Something wicked this way comes” (Mac. 4.1.45). It becomes clear that Macbeth is converted to foulness not at the heath, but in his own castle.
Finally, although the heath is the meeting place of the witches, relatively few supernatural deeds occur there when compared to the unnatural occurrences at the castles. At the heath, the witches merely gather and prophesy, accurately, to Macbeth and Duncan. Certainly, these are supernatural characters and deeds but the heath is represented more as a meeting place than a site for ritualistic witchcraft. The rituals that the witches do eventually perform in the play do not take place at the heath, but in a cavern. At Macbeth’s castle in Inverness, however, there are repeated references to the supernatural. At Inverness before Duncan’s death, Lady Macbeth summons cruelty and darkness to her, appealing to the supernatural to aid in the murder. The night that Duncan dies is also significantly unnatural. On this night, the stars do not shine, Duncan’s horses eat each other, and the night, possibly summoned by Lady Macbeth, continues into the day. Before the murder, Macbeth sees the apparition of a dagger before him, and makes references to witchcraft in his soliloquy. After the murder, Macbeth is no longer able to appeal to heaven and is unable even to say the word ‘Amen.’ Even the porter who lets Macduff and Lennox into the castle after Duncan’s death, refers to himself as a “porter of / hell-gate” (Mac. 2.3.1-2). Macbeth’s other castle at Dunsinane is similarly the locale for scenes of supernatural events. At Dunsinane, Lady Macbeth orders that light be with her at all times, a striking contrast with her appeal to darkness at the beginning of the play. Lady Macbeth wanders the castle in her sleep at night, trying desperately to wash blood from her hands, eventually lamenting “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes / of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” (Mac. 5.1.45-46). Finally, it is at his palace, too, that Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo at his banquet. This is, perhaps, the most supernatural event in the entire play and because he is unable to control his reaction to this, Macbeth loses the faith of all the politicians he has welcomed to his table.
By examining the use of setting in Macbeth, one can infer that the castles in the play are the setting for much more horrid deeds than the heath. Although the heath is represented as a dark, scary place inhabited by creatures of the supernatural, no character is ever killed, or even injured there. The heath is safer than Macbeth’s castles, which are the scenes of multiple murders. Far more foulness evidently occurs at Macbeth’s homes, despite their pleasant appearance. This interesting contradiction resonates in the witches’ proclamation “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (Mac. 1.1.11), suggesting the duality of the settings in the play. The setting which appears most foul, the heath, is actually a relatively harmless place, while the castles, despite their fair appearance and inhabitants, are the scene of the supernatural, foulness and danger.


User agent 'confirms' LG V20 to have Android 7.0 pre-installed
User agent for the LG V20 confirms that Android 7.0 will be pre-installed
LG Korea recently told us to expect the LG V20 to come out of the box with Android 7.0 pre-installed. This was 'confirmed' by a user agent that not only showed that the handset will employ the newest Android build, it revealed that the device will have a model number of LG-H910. The model number of the predecessor model, the LG V10, is LG-H900 at AT&T and LG-H901 at T-Mobile. So the LG-H910 would certainly appear to be the LG V20.
The phone will be unveiled on September 6th at an event in San Francisco. The "Play More" title of the event hints at the multimedia focus of the phone. To that end, LG announced earlier today that the LG V20 will be the first smartphone to contain a 32-bit Quad DAC audio chip. LG says that this will reduce ambient noise by 50% over the typical mobile DAC chip found in other smartphones.
Despite sluggish sales of the LG G5, the manufacturer had a pretty good second quarter, selling 13.9 million smartphone units during the three months ended in June. Kantar Worldpanel's second quarter report has LG third in U.S. market share with 14% of the smartphone pie. That tops Motorola's 5%, and trails only Samsung (35%) and Apple (32%). If the LG V20 is released next month, it might be available in time to count toward LG's third quarter sales.
Thanks for the tip!


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Duly stamped signed and Executed document
By Notification issued in the Tamilnadu Government Gazette No.6 dated 14.2.2001, under Part II Section 2, the Registration Act, Amendment No.28/2000 has been notified:
It requires the claimant of the Sale Document also to sign in the sale deed and also appear before the registering officer for registration of the sale deed.
Copy of document in the registration copy form (In STAR Offices, this is not required)
NOC from local bodies concerned for the registration of document conveying Land converted as house site without the approved layout.
Patta Transfer application with court fee of Rs.5/- duly filled and signed
Form 60 Statement in case PAN/GIR Number not provided in the document , if the value of the property exceeds Rs.5/- lakhs.
Required registration fees, duplicate registration fees, sub-division fees etc.,
Receipts shall be given by the Registering officer for all amounts received
Patta Pass Book - for agricultural property in Notified 9 Districts.
For more information
Daniel & Boaz
Chennai Law Firm


text:
One of the things we affluent, supposedly happy Westerners suffer from, is that we like to make our lives far too complicated.
We take on far too much responsibility at work, we buy houses that are far too big for our families, we spend far too much money going out, fancy cars etc., we try to read far too many books, we buy far too many toys, the list goes on.
And then the bill comes… as it always does.
You’re much better off with a simple life.
The simple life begins not with stuff, but from the human heart.
The latter, by the way, doesn’t scale.
True happiness is an inward journey.
That’s where the real joy is.

domain: sociology