text:
Services on Demand
Related links
- Cited by Google
- Similars in Google
On-line version ISSN 2309-8392
Print version ISSN 0018-229X
Historia vol.56 n.1 Durban May. 2011
Grandmother-martyr-heroine: Placing Sara Baartman in South African post-apartheid foundational mythology
Ouma-martelaar-heldin: Die plasing van Sara Baartman in 'n Suid-Afrikaanse post-apartheid en mitologiese grondslag
Simone Kerseboom*
This article examines the many roles that the iconic figure of Sara Baartman has been assigned in South African post-apartheid nation-building politics. The mythologising of Baartman as grandmother, martyr, and heroine is indicative of the creation of a new foundational mythology for post-apartheid South Africa. This article shows that the return of Baartman's remains to South Africa initiated the creation of the myth of Baartman as a national grandmother, martyr, and heroine as government rhetoric and the media generated significant publicity around the repatriation process that began in 1994. New and invented meanings were inscribed on her remains and lived experiences that would allow for the re-invention of her story within the context of firstly, Nelson Mandela's Rainbow Nation, and later of Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance. This article contends that Baartman's return to and burial in her "home-soil" serves as a symbolic ending to colonialism, slavery and racism - the central signifiers of Baartman's life - and that this has made her a significant founding figure within the creation of a new foundational mythology in South Africa. The article demonstrates how Baartman's history was re-shaped, re-cast and re-invented into an ideal story for the South African transition thus separating and dis-remembering the real, lived personality from the myth created to serve the process of nation-building.
Keywords: Sara Baartman; martyr; heroine; mythology; myth-making; foundational mythology; Rainbow Nation; African Renaissance; founding figure; post-apartheid state; nationalism
Hierdie artikel maak 'n studie van van die vele rolle wat die ikoniese figuur, Sarah Baartman, toegedig word in die politiek van 'n post-apartheid nasie en met nasiebou. Die mitiese siening van Baartman as ouma, martelaar en heldin is aanduidend van die skepping van 'n nuwe grondslag mitologie van post-apartheid Suid-Afrika. Hierdie artikel dui aan dat met die terugkeer van Baartman se reste na Suid-Afrika dit gelei het tot die skepping van 'n mite van Baartman as 'n ouma, martelaar en heldin deur die regering se retoriek en media-gegenereerde en betekenisvolle publisiteit tydens en na die repatriasie proses se begin in 1994. Nuwe en versinde betekenisse is aan haar gebeendere en ervarings tydens haar leeftyd toegedig wat dit moontlik gemaak het om haar storie te herskep binne die konteks van, eerstens, Nelson Mandela se reënboog nasie en ook later as deel van Thabo Mbeki se Afrika Renaissance. Hierdie artikel voer aan dat Baartman se terugkeer en haar begrafnis in haar "tuisgrond" dien as 'n simboliese beeindiging van die kolonialisme, slawerny en rassisme - die sentrale aanduidings van Baartman se lewe - en haar daarvolgens as stigters-figuur 'n beduidende rol laat speel het in die grondleggende mitologie in Suid-Afrika. Hierdie artikel poog om te wys dat Baartman se geskiedenis herskep, hergiet en herontdek is as 'n ideale storie vir die oorgang na 'n nuwe Suid-Afrika. Hierdeur word vergeet en die lewende persoonlikheid geskei van die mite wat geskep is om die proses van nasiebou te ondersteun.
Sleutelwoorde: Sara Baartman; martelaar; heldin; mitologie; mitologiese grondslag; Reënboog Nasie; Afrika Rennaissance; stigters-figuur; post-apartheid staat; nasionalisme
Myths of redemption or suffering claim that the nation, by reason of its particularly sorrowful history, is undergoing or has undergone a process of expiating its sins and will be redeemed or, indeed, may itself redeem the world.1
In July 1810, a Gonaqua woman bearing the colonial name Sara Baartman,2 arrived in England after a journey that brought her to Europe from her native southern Africa. After spending five years on display on European stages in England and France as the "Hottentot Venus", Sara passed away at the end of 1815 in Paris. In January 1816, one of Europe's foremost scientists, Georges Cuvier, dissected the remains of Sara Baartman. Cuvier concluded in his study published in 1817 in the Histoire naturelle des mammiferes - a volume about the studies of mammals in which Baartman was the only human represented - that the "Hottentot" body was more closely related to the great apes than to the human species.3 A cast was made of Baartman's body; her skeleton, genitals and brain were removed and preserved and subsequently displayed at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris until the 1970s.4
In 1995, the Griqua National Conference, led by genealogist Mansell Upham, approached the newly elected post-apartheid South African government to have the remains of Sara Baartman returned to South Africa. Upham perceived in Baartman "the plight of indigenous people, and a story of dehumanisation and the tragedies befalling black women in colonial societies".5 For Upham, the call to return Baartman's remains "appealed to a shared aboriginal past amongst South Africans of all races in attempts to reclaim an almost forgotten Khoekhoe/San heritage".6 After five years of failed negotiations, former President Thabo Mbeki entered into direct negotiations with the French government in 2000, and on May 2002 Baartman's remains arrived in Cape Town. According to then Minister of Arts and Culture, Bridgette Mabandla, Baartman's return to South Africa symbolised the return of African cultural heritage from Europe and thus an end to colonialism as well as illustrating her importance to a large majority of South Africans.7 After a great deal of consideration, Baartman was buried in the small farming town Hankey in the Eastern Cape on 9 August 2002 - National Women's Day.
This is the epic, yet sorrowful tale of Sara Baartman's life and afterlife. However, Baartman's journey continues in post-apartheid South Africa because her remains have become physically contested and ideologically distorted. Baartman's story has been appropriated and adapted in order to serve as a narrative for nation-building in a nationalist agenda inherently constructed "from above". According to Samuelson, "it is, after all, precisely the deeply emotive nature of Bartmann's life and death experiences that has rendered them so appropriate to and appropriable by the forms of mythmaking".8 This article examines the many roles that the iconic figure of Sara Baartman has been assigned in South African post-apartheid nation-building politics. The mythologising of Baartman as grandmother, martyr, and heroine is indicative of the creation of a new foundational mythology for post-apartheid South Africa. This article will show that the return of Baartman's remains to South Africa initiated the creation of the myth of Baartman as a national grandmother, martyr, and heroine as government rhetoric and the media generated significant publicity around the repatriation process that began in 1995. New and invented meanings were inscribed on her remains and lived experiences that would allow for the re-invention of her story within the context of firstly, Nelson Mandela's Rainbow Nation, and later of Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance. This article contends that Baartman's return to and burial in her "home-soil" serves as a symbolic ending to colonialism, slavery and racism - the central signifiers of Baartman's life - and that this has made her a significant founding figure within the creation of a new foundational mythology in South Africa. This article will demonstrate how Baartman's history was re-shaped, re-cast and re-invented into an ideal story for the South African transition, thus separating and dis-remembering the real, lived personality from the myth created to serve the process of nation-building.
Creating an icon: Sara Baartman's historiography
On 27 November 1810, Sara Baartman was interviewed by a coroner of the court of England, accompanied by a notary, two merchants fluent in Dutch and possibly Alexander Dunlop, the man responsible for Baartman's presence and display in London, as well as his legal representative. Questions had arisen on whether Baartman was being kept as a slave in London by her "keeper", Hendrik Cesars, and a case was brought before the court by Zachary Macaulay, a leading abolitionist. The interview lasted for three hours and this is the first time that Baartman's voice enters the historical record. She denied that she was a slave; she stated that she was happy in her present situation and wished to remain in London. However, when Baartman spoke her voice cannot be removed from the context of power relations. Baartman, a black woman, spoke to four European men in Dutch, her second language and might even have been coached in her answers by Dunlop. For Crais and Scully "her words slip away; they mimic what might have been. They caution history, and those who believe in the power of the historical fact, that individuals rarely can speak truth to power".9 The case was dropped and the interview paraphrased and translated into English. Baartman's spoken words were compromised and viewed through a European lens.10 Sadiah Qureshi contends that "it is precisely the difficulty in recovering her agency that makes [Baartman] amenable to employment as a cipher ... unfortunately this only contributes further to her dispossession".11 The silencing of Baartman's voice has resulted in her remains becoming a site upon which political ideologies have been inscribed and this has permitted people, communities, and a nation to reconstruct her in an image of their own choosing.12
Sara Baartman, the human being, promptly disappeared from the historical record after her death and the publication of Cuvier's findings after her autopsy. However, during the twentieth century there has been a renewed interest in Baartman, or rather, the "Hottentot Venus". The images of Baartman, produced during her lifetime and shortly after her death, were reproduced incessantly after the 1930s, specifically as a representation in discussions of the body. It would be difficult to remove the mythography of Baartman in post-apartheid South Africa from her historiography. Crais and Scully argue that "from 1810, Sara stood for more than just herself, just as scientists, scholars, and the post-apartheid nation would again demand of her in different ways after her death".13 Most writings about Baartman employ her as a symbol in order to explicate the historical contexts of nineteenth-century discourses of scientific racism, colonialism and gender and this has come to define how Baartman is perceived and has been fashioned into an icon for nation-building in post-apartheid South Africa.
The "Hottentot Venus" made her reappearance in Italian fascist writings in 1938. A picture of Sara Baartman appeared in the fascist regimes' popular periodical, La Difesa della Razza (Defending the Race). This image served to discourage miscegenation in Italian East Africa after Mussolini's declaration of the Italian Empire in 1936.14 The side view image of Baartman, taken from her three day observation at the Jardin du Roi, was employed in order to illustrate the possibility of "monstrous" offspring resulting from miscegenation. Baartman's perceived "steatopygia", served to illustrate the purported deviancy of the bodies of the offspring of miscegenation and thus provided a visual image to discourage this in the Italian colonies. This despite her being Gonaqua, an ethnic group not present in Italian East Africa.
Historian Percival Kirby reintroduced South African scholars to Baartman in 1949 after viewing her remains on display at the Musée de l'Homme. He produced three articles and one short note, briefly trying to recreate a biography for Baartman and realising the interest her story could hold to scholars and students of Africana. However, it was not until the appearance of Sander Gilman's article entitled "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature",15 published in Critical Enquiry in 1985, that Baartman became a popular icon and a subject of academic interest.16 This article quickly became one of the most often quoted texts by scholars discussing gender, race, science, and colonialism in what Magubane has labelled a fetishisation of Baartman.17 Certainly, it has been cited in every central text on Baartman. In his article, Gilman uses Baartman as an exemplar for his argument that racial and sexual differences are constructed through scientific, literary, and medical discourses, and that scientific discourse of degeneracy was inscribed in the pathologising of black bodies. Baartman, as a "Hottentot" body became a perfect example through which to deconstruct the processes that created the "other" within the nineteenth-century colonial context. Despite many of the criticisms consequently laid against Gilman's paper,18 it shaped future discourse around Baartman and would inevitably influence her position in a post-apartheid South African pantheon of heroes and heroines as this country confronted its colonial and apartheid past. Indeed, it has come to define Baartman as little more than a body upon which meanings can be inscribed, and this will be shown in a discussion of Baartman's shifting meanings in post-1994 Rainbow nationalism and Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance.
The Grand/mother of the nation: Sara Baartman in Rainbow nationalism
The time for the healing of wounds has come.19
The year 1994 denoted a period of swift sociopolitical transformation for South Africa. The transition from a system of racially driven authoritarian rule to a democracy occurred relatively peacefully. The 1994 election saw Nelson Mandela become the country's first democratically elected president. This transitional period marked the beginning of a new era of nation-building under the ideology of Rainbow nationalism. The term "'Rainbow Nation" was first coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was quickly elaborated upon by Nelson Mandela, and came to indicate the concept of the peaceful co-existence of many cultures and ethnicities within the larger South African nation. Ozkirimli indicates that "[p]ost-independence movements based on a civic model of the nation will try to bring together often disparate ethnic populations and integrate them into a new political community replacing the old colonial state".20 This is a clear indication of what happened in South Africa after 1994 and which culminated in Rainbow nationalism.
Post-1994 and the Mandela presidency became a period where the truth of the apartheid past was confronted in order to promote national healing after the traumatic experiences and inherently divisive nature of apartheid. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established as a platform where both the victims and perpetrators of the apartheid past could confront the atrocities committed and suffered during apartheid. It was implied that national narratives of healing and reconciliation could be built on the personal narratives of healing that came out of the TRC process.21 Besides the theme of overcoming trauma as part of the nation-building process, a new foundational mythology had to be constructed to legitimise the new post-apartheid regime. The apartheid state had its foundational mythology firmly situated in the arrival and the diaspora of white settlers in South Africa and had created commemorative practices celebrating these events. The post-apartheid state had to create a more inclusive foundational mythology to legitimise the Rainbow Nation by critically re-examining its history to enable this transition. Overing argues that "the narratives of myths have the function of legitimating the social structure, and so myths come into play when the social or moral rule demands justification and sanctity".22 New national heroes and heroines were required to establish a new moral order in the Rainbow Nation after apartheid. Anthony Smith suggests that,
while definitions of grandeur and glory vary, every nationalism requires a touchstone of virtue and heroism, to guide and give meaning to the task of regeneration ... Heroes provide models of virtuous conduct, their deeds of valour inspire faith and courage in their oppressed and decadent descendants.23
These heroes and, indeed heroines, of the post-apartheid nation were mostly found within the struggle movement. However, Baartman's story, firmly placed in colonial history, would become a powerful symbolic narrative for transition in South Africa. Moudelino contends that it is precisely the end of apartheid in South Africa that allowed for the possibility of Baartman's return because "this geopolitical turning point allow[ed] Baartman's case to be re-opened, since until that point her symbolic value belonged to a tragic but remote colonial past whose connection with the present was nonexistent".24 For Moudelino, Baartman's body undergoes a metamorphosis from a site of colonial temporality to a haunting remain that is included in the post-apartheid pantheon of almost exclusively male icons.25 However, the Griqua National Conference's request to Nelson Mandela to take up the cause of the return of Baartman's remains to South Africa in 1995 meant that Baartman would become part of a national agenda rather than an exclusive Khoisan icon. Verdery argues that dead founding figures, being silent, are ambiguous and this allows their symbolic efficacy. What is shared by the nation is the recognition of these individuals as important and that the ambiguity - which can evoke a variety of understandings - is precisely what gives deceased individuals - whether symbolic or concrete - their effectiveness as a political tool.26 The return of Baartman's inherently colonised remains to the country (now colonised) of her birth, came to symbolise an end to a traumatic colonial past. Indeed, according to Samuelson, "the story that Baartman's body is called on to express is of a nation recovering from a traumatic past".27
The call for the return of Baartman's remains in 1995 erupted in media hype in South Africa. National newspapers quickly picked up on this important female icon and Zola Maseko directed a film, The Life and Times of Sara Baartman, produced by First Run/Icarus Films in 1998. In an interesting turn, the media reported on Baartman as being a prostitute in the final days of her life in Europe. The media and government spokespersons focused especially on attributing Baartman's death to syphilis that she contracted during sex work "in the face of strong historical evidence to the contrary".28 Several news reports indicate that Baartman died as a prostitute. The Mail & Guardian reported: "It appears Baartman worked as a prostitute in Paris ... She died in 1815 of an 'inflammatory and eruptive sickness', possibly syphilis."29 SABC News on several occasions referred to Baartman as a prostitute: "Baartman died a prostitute"30 and "Baartman drifted into prostitution ..."31 News 24 also indicated that Baartman was a prostitute: "Baartman apparently ended her life as a prostitute in 1816."32 In the Citizen it was stated that she "died a sick prostitute".33 Controversial artist Pippa Skotnes stated:
in the interests of [Baartman] becoming a symbol for all sorts of struggles, indigenous peoples' struggles, feminist struggles, the historical veracity was shoved out the window. There was very little accuracy in what was written at the time of her repatriation.34
Historical accuracy was disregarded in order to create an icon for post-apartheid South Africa. Baartman's case is not unusual. Post-apartheid icons such as Krotoa and Nongqawuse are women on whom nationalist meanings have been ascribed and their histories reconfigured. Samuelson expressively states:
In search of tractable symbols with which to express their ideals of homogenous unity, national and ethnic claims commandeer women's bodies and deny the more messy aspects of their legacies that cannot be neatly enfolded with the national script. Through acts of amnesia and foreclosure, or "disrememberings", women are shaped into the ideal forms that reflect the desired national body.35
Hence, the histories of women who carry symbolic meanings for the nation are deliberately reconfigured, created, and reconstructed to suit and serve a nationalist agenda at the expense of historical accuracy. Baartman was labelled the "grandmother of the nation", by Nealroy Swarts, a Khoisan historian when he said: "this is our grandmother. This is the nation's grandmother",36 and Thabo Mbeki affirmed this sentiment when he spoke of "our grandmother, Sarah Bartmann".37 This perceived sexual deviancy serves an incredibly specific agenda: As Baartman's body becomes symbolic of South Africa as a colonial subject, violated and dispossessed, the return of her remains to South African soil becomes a metaphor for the national dignity restored. For Samuelson, "the process of recovering and re-covering Bartmann's violated body with national soil will contribute to national recovery".38 Thus the restoration of Baartman to South Africa and the end of her traumatic journey becomes symbolic of the end of South Africa's colonial and apartheid past. For Schöpflin, in his study on the function of myths:
Every group, every political system, virtually every area of human endeavour has to make a start and seeks to mark that by some special act which is accorded mythic qualities. In this connection, one is dealing with a moment of novation which is not necessarily as drastic and radical as a revolution, but which, it is felt by the participants, deserves special note in order to point to the future. The implicit, sometimes explicit, message is that afterwards everything will be different ("better") and that the newly founded system has dispensed with whatever made the old reprehensible.39
This indicates that the Baartman myth has not only served as, but has become an inextricable component of the narrative of national healing in South Africa. She has become the fundamental icon for national healing. Simultaneously, by referring to Baartman as the 'grandmother of the nation', her body becomes desexualised and removed from her perceived past as a prostitute and is enfolded in the gendered politics of nationalism within the role of nurturer and caregiver to the nation.
The date for Baartman's internment was decided by the Department of Arts and Culture and fixed for 9 August 2002, which coincided with National Woman's Day. Khoisan groups, claiming Baartman as an ancestor, resisted this date as they felt that Baartman deserved "a day that belongs to her alone ... She deserves a day that we will remember as the day that our Great Foremother has been buried".40 Furthermore they insisted that Baartman was a "Khoisan ... icon, as she symbolised to us the abuse that our great foremothers were exposed to ... Ms Baartman deserves the peace that was never given to her spirit".41 Despite these protests, the South African government continued with its plans to stage the funeral as an international event; especially since it had spent about R10 350 000 repatriating the remains to South Africa and creating the reference group which would oversee the return, burial and memorialisation of Baartman.42 In addition, the government found in Baartman a figure that could become an important icon for nation-building and reconciliation. Crais and Scully, having gained access to an internal document of the reference group after a three-year process, show how Baartman became this icon. They quote:
It would be difficult ... to overrate both the national and international importance to South Africa of this event. It was a victory over colonialism, racism and sexism. It very visibly and publicly restored the dignity of a South African woman exploited and humiliated in her lifetime. It brought together and united South Africans of all backgrounds in seeing justice done.43
By linking Baartman's return directly to a unification of "South Africans of all backgrounds" her remains and, indeed, her legacy became part of a nationalist agenda rather than being moulded into an exclusive ethnic icon. Upham states that "before 1995 Saartjie Baartman was unknown to South Africans. Now ... she is virtually synonymous with Women's Day in South Africa".44 Baartman was returned to the South African nation, not just to the Khoisan descendants. The state had claimed and spoken for Sara Baartman. Once again, Baartman was a body to be possessed, a commodity for a new nationalist project.
Martyr/Heroine: Sara Baartman in the African Renaissance
The changing times tell us that she did not suffer and die in vain.45
With Mbeki replacing Mandela as the South African president in 1999, the prominent political ideology shifted toward an Africanist stance in the form of Mbeki's "African Renaissance".46 Yet, the focus never truly moved away from ex-president Nelson Mandela's principal policy of reconciliation as can clearly be deduced from an analysis of Mbeki's speeches. Mbeki's speech at the 51st National Congress of the African National Congress (ANC) clearly illustrates this coalescence of ideologies when he stated: "The fact that we have gathered here together as compatriots, in conditions of freedom and peace, the descendants of Sarah Bartmann and Simon van der Stel ... make[s] the statement that all South Africa has embarked on an unstoppable journey toward its rebirth."47 Mbeki, more than any other politician, has called upon Baartman when addressing the correction of South Africa's history of racial and gender inequality within the context of reconciliation. However, it is in Mbeki's speech at the funeral of Baartman that the shift between Rainbow nationalism and Mbeki's African Renaissance, as well as an emphasis on Baartman as heroine or martyr, can clearly be seen.
Sara Baartman was buried on Verganderingskop in Hankey in the Gamtoos River Valley - thought to be the place of her birth - on 9 August 2002. It was a highly publicised event with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) televising the day-long event live. The cost of the funeral was R1 132 000.48 The speeches throughout the day focused on Baartman's burial as restoring dignity to the South African people in general and specifically centred on women's rights. This slight shift towards Baartman as not only an icon for national healing in South Africa but also for women's rights, becomes indicative of the new meanings ascribed to Baartman's legacy at a time when violence against women was escalating in South Africa. The return of Baartman to South African soil indicated an end to the sexual exploitation that she had suffered during her life and after her death. However, it is important to note that as Meg Samuelson indicates: "these professions of closure in a time and place where (often sexual) violence against women has been on the upsurge are projections in the past tense that dangerously deflect women's lived experiences in the transitional present."49 Thus, by emphasising Baartman's "victory" over abuse and exploitation at a time where violence against women was on the increase, there was a consequential de-emphasis on the experiences of women in the present. Bertha Gxowa, an ANC member of parliament, at the debate of the state of the nation address in 2004 said that "the ANC led government was able to restore the dignity of South African women by bringing back the remains of Sarah Baartman".50 Yet this is but a single triumph which is largely insignificant to women subjected to violence in present South Africa. Despite this, Baartman's return and iconic status has led to a more positive result. A haven for abused women and children was erected in Baartman's honour. The developers named the centre after Baartman because they wanted to remember and honour "a woman who has become an icon ... to all women who know oppression and discrimination in their lives".51 The Saartjie Baartman Centre for women and children is situated in the Cape Flats; an area known for its high levels of violence, gangsterism, child abuse, substance abuse, unemployment, and domestic violence.52
Thus the mythography of Baartman's legacy in South Africa was altered in order to include broader meanings as the post-apartheid state faced new challenges. Leonard Thompson has significantly stated that "all myths serve a purpose. As the purposes change, the myth changes with them".53 Former President Mbeki, more than any other politician, has opportunistically employed the legacy of Baartman. He has altered and fashioned the mythology of her legacy to become part of his administration's socio-political ideology. Thompson argues that "political myths are much more than mere stories about the past. They are also indispensable, integral parts of a regime's ideology."54 Within this context, Baartman's mythology in post-apartheid South Africa became a site on which Mbeki could construct and reiterate the new ideologies that would denote his presidency.
Mbeki's presidency built on the narratives of national healing of the Mandela era. Mbeki popularised the concept of the African Renaissance whereby Africa would become a significant geo-political power on its own terms, free of neo-colonial interference. It would define its own identity rather than be influenced by Western ideals. This served as a progression from decolonisation in Africa and the subsequent spread of democracy. It is this ideology that is clearly expressed in Mbeki's speech at the funeral of Sara Baartman when he says:
We are South Africans. To understand the meaning of all these things, we do not have to refer to England, Germany, France, or elsewhere in Europe. We do not have to recall a European history that extends to the 19th, the 18th earlier and later centuries. To understand the meaning of all these things, we need only start here, on the banks of the Gamtoos River and advance to the rest of our country.55
Mbeki continues to criticise Western science when he refers to apartheid as based on the "criminal notion that some had been called upon to enlighten and tame the hordes of barbarians, as Sarah Bartmann was enlightened and tamed".56 While Baartman has been employed to criticise and denounce the Western racialised science of the nineteenth century, it is clear that Mbeki is issuing another message through this condemnation of this negated science. The criticism toward European nineteenth-century science in this speech was reflective of Mbeki's stance on the medical basis of the HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa. Mbeki had consistently questioned the medical link between HIV and AIDS and was sympathetic to a policy of HIV/AIDS denialism.57 Mbeki questioned the validity of modern science as the once accepted racialised science of the nineteenth century had been proven incorrect. This stance is echoed in the speech at Baartman's funeral when he condemned the prominent Western scientists:
Among the truly monstrous were the leading scientists of the day, who sought to feed a rabid racism such as the distinguished anatomist, Baron Georges Cuvier ... Sarah Bartmann was sucked into evil purposes pursued by those who defined themselves as a "man par excellence", with a manifest destiny to enlighten and to tame.58
He went on to say that Baartman's people became enlightened about the barbarism of these men 'par excellence' insisting that it was the Western scientists of the nineteenth century that were the barbarians rather than their intended "subjects". Crais and Scully indicate that these denunciations of Western science and one of its most distinguished scientists is also an attack on modern science. Crais and Scully state:
the Mbeki government has regularly issued scathing denunciations of Western science as part of its denying the medical basis of the HIV/AIDS crisis ... Now the president of South Africa deployed Baartman and her history as part of a harangue against science and the West.59
Thus, Baartman's legacy is deployed in aid of Mbeki's criticism of Western science in order to berate the dominant discourse of a definite link between HIV/AIDS.
Mbeki goes on in this speech to claim that "the changing times tell us that [Baartman] did not suffer and die in vain".60 Here, Baartman is significantly assigned the status of martyr. Her story becomes a lesson and rallying-point for post-apartheid South Africa that is confronting and attempting to comprehend its history and that is preoccupied with reconciliation through the production of "truth" about this history. In his address on the occasion of Heritage Day in Cape Town on 24 September 2006, Mbeki refers to Baartman as "our Khoi heroine". This statement reinforces the point made above in the context of a new South African nationalism. Thus, Baartman becomes part of a greater nationalist narrative through her identification as a shared national historical heroine. Journalist Lisa Jones, as early as 1995, saw the process of martyrdom taking place when she noted that Baartman was being "resurrected as a cause célèbre and bestowed with Frida Kahlo-like martyrdom"61 likening her to Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's increase in popularity during the rise of Mexican nationalism in the 1940s. Baartman's death and dissection, although not truly a martyr act as she did not sacrifice herself for a greater cause, has given testimony to the dehumanising effect of racism. Nicole Kelley contends that "the martyr acts functioned ... as vehicles for the inculcation of a particular set of values ... it is as her story is told and retold that it becomes effective for those who share the same values, the same commitment".62 The values and commitment of post-apartheid South Africa to put an end to racial discrimination and prioritise the need for a new independent African identity could be inculcated through the telling of Baartman's poignant story as a vehicle for the dissemination of these values. It is within this context that Baartman has been assigned the status as a martyr for the struggle against colonialism, neo-colonialism and apartheid in South Africa by former President Mbeki.
Baartman was obscured by her image as the "Hottentot Venus" in nineteenth-century popular culture and is once again eclipsed by her mythic role as "(grand)mother of the nation" and as "Martyr of all Black Female Martyrs".63 Upham asks: "Should Sarah Baartman, her story and legacy, be reduced to a woman's issue or to being a sex icon? Now that she is finally buried, do we merely symbolically exhume her annually as a feminist afterthought and victim of abuse?"64 As the South African state faced a new transitional period in 1994, it employed Baartman to negotiate this transition and create a new foundational mythology for which Baartman's life became a central signifier and, indeed, a sacral object of redemption as the country was confronted by narratives of trauma in the TRC process. Discourses of healing were inscribed on Baartman's remains as her personal history could be shaped to serve the processes of nation-building. As the case for the return of Baartman's remains from France to South Africa progressed in 2002, the Mbeki presidency formulated new political ideologies. Once again, the mythology of Baartman was overwritten with new meanings to support the ideologies of the new political dispensation. Qureshi maintains that South Africa runs the risk of "reestablishing [Baartman] as a curiosity merely renamed as cultural icon".65 For nearly eight years her gravesite in Hankey was largely neglected up until the recent unveiling of the model for the Sarah Bartmann Centre of Remembrance in Hankey during Women's Month in August 2010. The unveiling of the model is not only part of a Department of Arts and Culture legacy project to identify sites of women who have made a cultural contribution in different spheres of the liberation struggle,66 but is also a government effort to address the historical imbalances in the heritage sector of South Africa,67 particularly with regard to the under-representation of Khoisan heritage. According to then Minister of Arts and Culture, Lulu Xingwana, who unveiled the model for the centre: "Sarah Baartman is close to every South African's heart as she represents the slaves, as well as the abuse some South African women go through."68 Thus, Sara Baartman continues to be a representation for socio-political concerns in South Africa in the present. As the "memory" of Baartman traversed the twentieth century and the first sixteen years of post-apartheid South Africa, her legacy and, indeed, the mythology constructed around her, were continuously altered as old and new struggles required a silent, female icon. As these struggles have changed, and are changing, so do the meanings invented, re-invented, and re-emphasised on Baartman's legacy change. It is apparent that the mythology of Sara Baartman, like any other political myth, depends on propitious circumstances for its efficacy. The establishment of a Centre of Remembrance indicates that Baartman occupies a central place in the post-apartheid pantheon of heroes and heroines and subsequently has become a significant icon in a new foundational mythology.
* Simone Kerseboom is a PhD student and tutor in the History Department of Rhodes University. This article was presented at a conference entitled "Recycling Myths, Inventing Nations", organised by Aberystwyth University at Gregynog, Wales, 14-16 July 2010.
1. G. Schöpflin, "Functions of Myth", in G. Hosking and G. Schöpflin (eds), Myths and Nationhood (Hurst, London, 1997), p 29. [ Links ]
2. As Baartman's original Khoekhoe name is unknown, it is necessary to continue to use her Afrikaans name. Sara Baartman's name has been spelt in several different ways. The choice of spelling in this article is based on the Afrikaans spelling which was the language in which Baartman would have been named by her employers. I have chosen to defer from using the diminutive version "Sortie", which is finding new popularity as a term of endearment amongst the Khoisan descendants who view Baartman as an ancestor. The official spelling of her name, Sarah - chosen by the South African Heritage Association - appears on her baptismal certificate, and is the Anglicised version. Because this reflects the period of her life when she was exhibited, this has also been excluded. The choice of spelling by other authors has been maintained in direct quotes.
3. J. Hobson, Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (Routledge, New York, 2005), p 46. [ Links ]
4. C. Crais and P. Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography (Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2009). [ Links ] Baartman's personal history is extensive. To date, Crais' and Scully's biography is the most extensively researched work on Baartman's life.
5. Mansell Upham quoted in Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, p 152.
6. M. Upham, "From the Venus Sickness to the Hottentot Venus, Part Two", Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, 61, 2, 2007, p 78. [ Links ]
7. Brigitte Mabandla quoted in R. Holmes, The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman, Born 1789 - Buried 2002 (Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg and Cape Town, 2007), p 172. [ Links ]
8. M. Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, Dismembering Women? Stories of the South African Transition (University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, Scottsville, 2007), p 89. [ Links ]
9. Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, p 101.
10. Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, p 99.
11. S. Qureshi, "Displaying Sara Baartman, the 'Hottentot Venus'", History of Science, 42, 2004, p 249. [ Links ]
12. Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, p 173.
13. Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, p 80.
14. B. Sorgoni, "Defending the Race: The Italian Reinvention of the Hottentot Venus during Fascism", Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 8, 3, 2003, p 412. [ Links ]
15. S. Gilman, "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature", Critical Inquiry, 12, 1985. [ Links ]
16. Z.S. Strother, "Display of the Body Hottentot", in B. Lindfors (ed.), Africans on Stage (David Philip, Cape Town, 1999), p 1. [ Links ]
17. Z. Magubane, "Which Bodies Matter? Feminism, Postructuralism, Race and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the 'Hottentot Venus'", Gender & Society, 15, 6, 2001, p 816. [ Links ]
18. Both Zine Magubane and Yvette Abrahams have levelled extensive critique against Gilman's article. See Y. Abrahams, "The Great Long National Insult: 'Science', Sexuality, and the Khoisan in the 18th and Early 19th Century", Agenda, 32, 1997; [ Links ] Magubane, "Which Bodies Matter?.
19. N. Mandela, "Statement of the President of the African National Congress, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela at his Inauguration as President of the Democratic Republic of South Africa, Union Buildings, Pretoria, 10 May, 1994. [ Links ]
20. U. Ozkirimli, Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2000), p 182. [ Links ]
21. S. Young, "Narrative and Healing in the Hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission", Biography, 27, 1, 2004, pp 146, 152. [ Links ]
22. J. Overing, "The Role of Myth: An Anthropological Perspective", in Hosking and Schöpflin (eds), Myths and Nationhood, p 8. [ Links ]
23. A.D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford University Press, New York, 1999), p 65. [ Links ]
24. L. Moudelino, "Returning Remains: Saartjie Baartman, or the 'Hottentot Venus' as the Transnational Postcolonial Icon", Forum for Modern Language Studies, 45, 2, 2009, p 203. [ Links ]
25. Moudelino, "Returning Remains", p 203.
26. K. Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (Colombia University Press, New York, 1999). [ Links ]
27. Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, p 5.
28. Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, p 95.
29. "Bring Back the Hottentot Venus", Mail & Guardian, 15 June 1995.
30. "MP's Highlight Plight of Women on Women's Day", SABC News, 8 March 2002.
31. "Dignity at Last for Saartjie", SABC News, 29 April 2002.
32. "SA Impatient for Return of 'Hottentot Venus'", News 24 at http://www.news24.com/, accessed 5 September 2007. [ Links ]
33. E. Goddard, "Saartjie Baartman Back Home for Proper Burial", Citizen, 4 May 2002. [ Links ]
34. S.C. Dubin, Transforming Museums: Mounting Queen Victoria in a Democratic South Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006), p 92. [ Links ]
35. Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, p 2.
36. Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, p 177.
37. T. Mbeki, "Opening Address at the 51st National Conference of the ANC", Stellenbosch, 16 December 2002.
38. Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, p 88.
39. Schöpflin, "Functions of Myth", p 33.
40. Jean Burgess and Margaret Coetzee, quoted in Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, p 163.
41. Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, p 163.
42. Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus. This figure was gleaned by Crais and Scully from a budget document from the Department of Arts and Culture.
43. Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, p 164.
44. Upham, "From the Venus Sickness", p 77.
45. T. Mbeki, "Speech at the Funeral of Sarah Bartmann", Hankey, 9 August 2002.
46. P. Ahluwalia, "The Struggle for African Identity: Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance", African and Asian Studies, 1, 4, 2002; [ Links ] D. Herwitz, "Afro-Medici: Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance", in D. Herwitz, Race and Reconciliation: Essays from the New South Africa (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 2003); [ Links ] C. Marx, "Ubu and Ubuntu: On the Dialectics of Apartheid and Nation Building", Politikon, 29, 1, 2002; [ Links ] T. Lodge, Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki (David Philip, Cape Town, 2002); [ Links ] M. Mulemfo, Thabo Mbeki and the African Renaissance: The Emergence of a New African Leadership (Actua Press, Pretoria, 2000); [ Links ] R. Suresh Roberts, Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki (STE Publishers, Johannesburg, 2007). [ Links ]
47. T. Mbeki, "Address of the President, Thabo Mbeki, at the Opening of the 51st National Conference of the African National Congress", Stellenbosch, 16 December 2002.
48. Z. Pallo Jordan, "On the Wrong Reasons Why the Department of Arts and Culture is Called the 'Party Department' of Government", 6 November 2006, at www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/speeches/index.html (accessed 6 July 2007). [ Links ]
49. Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, p 100.
50. B. Gxowa, "Statement by Mrs Bertha Gxowa, ANC MP, Delivered at the Opening of the National Assembly during the Debate on the State of the Nation Address by President Thabo Mbeki", 2002.
51. Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children website, at http://www.saartjiebaartmancentre.org.za/about_us.php, accessed 5 September 2007. [ Links ]
52. Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children website, at http://www.saartjiebaartmancentre.org.za/about_us.php, accessed 5 September 2007. [ Links ]
53. N. Davies, "Polish National Mythologies", in Hosking and Schöpflin (eds), Myths and Nationhood, p 156. [ Links ]
54. L. Thompson, The Political Mythology of Apartheid (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1985), p 2. [ Links ]
55. Thabo Mbeki, "Speech at the Funeral of Sarah Bartmann".
56. Mbeki, "Speech at the Funeral".
57. Crais and Scully, and Holmes raise this interesting interpretation in their respective biographies of Sara Baartman. Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus; and Holmes, The Hottentot Venus.
58. Mbeki, "Speech at the Funeral".
59. Crais and Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, p 167.
60. Mbeki, "Speech at the Funeral".
61. L. Jones, Bulletproof Diva: Tales of Race, Sex, and Hair (Doubleday, New York, 1995), p 76. [ Links ]
62. N. Kelley, "Philosophy as Training for Death: Reading the Ancient Christian Martyr Acts as Spiritual Exercise", Church History, 75, 4, 2006. [ Links ]
63. Hobson, Venus in the Dark, p 56.
64. Upham, "From the Venus Sickness", p 78.
65. Qureshi, "Displaying Sara Baartman", p 251.
66. K. Ndabeni, "Model of Baartman Centre Unveiled", The Herald, 24 August 2010. [ Links ]
67. "Sarah Baartman to be Honoured at Cultural Celebration", University of Western Cape website at http://www.uwc.ac.za/index.php?module=cms&action=showfulltext&&id=gen11Srv7Nme54_9324_1236237783&&parent=gen11Srv7Nme54_5450_1210050423, accessed 8 August 2010.
68. Lulu Xingwana quoted in Ndabeni, "Model of Baartman Centre Unveiled", The Herald, 24 August 2010.


text:
Ft. Belvoir, VA Real Estate
History and Geography:
Fort Belvoir is primarily a United States Army installation in Fairfax County, Virginia. Originally, it was the site of the Belvoir plantation. Today, Fort Belvoir is home to a number of important United States military organizations including the Defense Logistics Agency, the Defense Acquisition University, the Defense Contract Audit Agency, the Defense Technical Information Center, the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, all agencies of the United States Department of Defense.
The Fort Belvoir site was originally the home of William Fairfax, the cousin and land agent of Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron the proprietor of the Northern Neck, which once stood on land now on the base. Today, it boasts a mix of both military installations as well as several housing communities and business districts.
Quality of Life:
As a result of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission, Fort Belvoir is expected to have a substantial increase in the number of people stationed or employed there. There are numerous families – both in the military and who serve the military – that enjoy this beautiful location and its proximity to the nation's capital.
Getting Around:
Fairfax Station is serviced by county roads including the Fairfax County Parkway and Route 1.
Ronald Reagan National Airport: < 15 miles.
Washington-Dulles International Airport: < 40 miles.
Baltimore-Washington International Airport: < 50 miles.
There are no newly listed properties in the last 21 days.VIEW ALL FT. BELVOIR LISTINGS
There are no recently reduced properties in the last 7 days.VIEW ALL FT. BELVOIR LISTINGS
There are no open houses.VIEW ALL FT. BELVOIR LISTINGS

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Teachers May Need to Deepen Assessment Practices for Common Core
For Olivia Lozano and Gabriela Cardenas, team teachers at the UCLA Lab School in Los Angeles, understanding what each of their students know and can do at any point in time is so integral to their practice that they call themselves "teacher researchers."
Over the 10 years they've worked together, the two have put formative assessment at the center of their instructional routines. Each day during workshop time, they pull students aside one-on-one or in small groups to ask open-ended questions about the lesson at hand and to gain insight into each 1st and 2nd graders' thinking.
"I have a conferencing binder where I'm taking copious notes on each individual student. I analyze their work and see where they're at," said Lozano. "I really feel it's grounded me and how I make decisions about what my next pedagogical move will be."
More than just a buzzword among savvy educators, formative assessment is the ongoing process of collecting data on what students know or don't know, and changing instruction accordingly. The idea is that with a clear vision of the progress each student is making, teachers can adjust their lesson plans and provide necessary interventions to improve individual achievement. As Nancy Gerzon, a researcher at the San Francisco-based WestEd who specializes in formative assessment, explained, "It's differentiation with more evidence as to why you're differentiating."
For many teachers, formative assessment has traditionally consisted of quick checks for understanding, Friday quizzes, or exit slips as students head out the door. But as the majority of teachers around the country transition to the Common Core State Standards—which are designed to emphasize complexity, critical thinking, and skills like collaboration and reasoning—some experts say more teachers need to deepen their assessment practices. In other words, they need to begin seeing themselves, like Lozano and Cardenas, as teacher researchers.
A Full Picture
"If you're asking students to think critically, you have to have formative-assessment practices that tap into that critical thinking," explained Nancy Frey, an education professor at San Diego State University and co-author of a book on formative assessment.
The common standards are asking students to do that and more. They are aimed at "building childrens' capacity to think, and analyze, and communicate, and reason," said Margaret Heritage, the assistant director for professional development at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at UCLA. "We need to know if [students are] grappling with complex ideas," said Heritage, who mentored Lozano and Cadenas. "Where are they? Is the idea beginning to consolidate? What do I need to do to go deeper and really help them get this?"
All of that may be tough to measure with quick-answer questions or exit slips. Instead, to get a full picture of student understanding, teachers need to ask open-ended questions and push students to explore ideas aloud, the UCLA educators say. "When [students are] solving problems mathematically, they say, 'I did it in my head,'" said Cardenas. "And you ask, 'Can you let me in to what's going on? Into your thinking?'"
With the common standards, "classrooms will look different," said Heritage. "We'll need a lot more talking, more focus, more discourse, more depth."
Cardenas and Lozano spend conference time asking guiding questions and posing strategies to help lead students toward an answer—and to get them talking about their thinking. "You're developing their metacognition skills, helping them think about 'What kind of a learner am I? What's going to help me learn better?'," Lozano explained. "It helps to give them a voice."
Listening Skills
Perhaps the most central aspect of being an effective teacher researcher, the team teachers say, is listening. In addition to paying attention to what students express during one-on-one sessions, teachers should be listening to what students say throughout class. "When children are working together, we can also listen in," said Lozano. "And when they're having a difficult time explaining [what we're working on] to each other, we can say, 'OK, this child needs more support.'"
Frey of San Diego State University tells teachers that, when listening closely to students, "The question you have to ask yourself is not whether the answer is correct or incorrect, but rather what is it likely that that student knows and doesn't know in this moment in time that would lead him to that response?"
"It takes a different kind of listening," Frey said, and rather than an innate talent, it is "a habit to be developed."
Another technique for potentially deepening assessment practices—and complying with the new standards' focus on collaboration and communication—is to have students assess each other.
Amanda Pecsi, director of curriculum at the Washington, D.C.-based Center City Public Charter Schools, pointed out that one of the mathematical practices required by the common standards is to "construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others." She said this may lead to teachers using more peer review during their lessons. "Ideally we want to be moving into a place where students are doing that heavy lifting and their formative assessment is how they evaluate someone else and how they talk about it."
Moving Toward Inquiry
Pecsi noted, however, that getting teachers to that point will be a process.
As of now, most of the K-8 math teachers in Center City school use an "I do, we do, you do" lesson format. After direct instruction, the students and teacher do a problem together, during which the teacher walks around to do a quick check for understanding, Pecsi explained. The lesson ends with a one- or two-question exit ticket, often made up of multiple-choice items pulled from an online assessment bank.
In light of the math common standards' emphasis on performance tasks and constructing arguments, however, Pecsi said teachers will need to begin using more inquiry-based problem-solving. That might entail "20 minutes of students digging deep into one problem and debating," she said. "Ideally that could be an entire lesson eventually. And that would drastically change what our formative assessment looks like."
Rather than asking multiple-choice questions or scanning quickly for right and wrong, teachers will need to be attuned to what students are saying during those discussion and debate sessions. "If you're walking around with a clipboard or notebook as kids are working through application, you're hearing, are they using mathematical thinking? Are they attending to precision? How well are they using the mathematical practices?" said Pecsi.
And while some teachers are already asking these questions, full-scale adoption of new assessment techniques will not happen overnight. "I see this as being a three-year process, even though we only have a year before PARCC [the common core-aligned assessment to be used in Washington] starts," Pecsi said. "It will take time to evolve to the point where we change to meet where the common core asks us to. In our urban environment, it's particularly difficult."
Assessment Tools
Meanwhile, the two main common-core assessment groups—the aforementioned Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium—are planning to support teachers with formative assessment.
Smarter Balanced is putting out a "digital library," which Chrys Mursky, the group's director of professional learning, emphasized is "not a test bank of items" but a group of digital resources aimed at helping teachers build their own formative assessments. The library will be available by the time the Smarter Balanced assessments are ready to use, but only for teachers in states that purchase the full suite of tests.
PARCC plans to have adaptive, online "non-summative" tests for students available to all teachers in PARCC states. However, Bob Bickerton, co-chair of the PARCC non-summative working group, said the consortium is still currently looking for a vendor for some of the formative tools, so those will not be available until the 2015-16 school year.
But it remains to be seen whether these formative-assessment tools can really offer the deep dive into student understanding that teachers are likely to be aiming for. And according to Frey, teachers are "shifting from understanding formative assessments as a noun—as a bunch of tools—to really thinking more closely about formative assessment as a practice," and seeing more opportunities for ongoing data collection.
The data teachers are looking for, Frey said, is "all around you. It's whether you choose to pay attention to it and act upon it. That's where the struggle is."
Web Only
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.


text:
When I saw this week's Shared Topic over at Blog Azeroth, I knew I had to join in. A food topic? Yes please!
Kallixta from Kallixta's Notes suggested the topic, possibly inspiring herself from Edenvale's The Gamer's Fridge and I scrambled to find a WoW recipe that Edenvale hadn't already tried.
I'd been wanting to try a beer-based dish for a long time, and I felt like ribs, so I picked the recipe that had been making my stomach rumble since my very first days playing WoW:
Before getting started, I did a bit of research on cooking with beer and checked out several beer-based ribs recipes. From what I could understand, you can cook with beer pretty much the way you'd cook with any liquid, but that the bitterness of the beer is highlighted when heated (due to the water evaporating and the beer concentrating). To keep the dish from getting too bitter, you want to counter it with something sweet like brown sugar or honey. Beyond that, you can add whatever you want to get the flavor you're looking for.
Here's what I used:
– Ribs (about 3kg… it was a lot! I don't recommend using that much.)
– Beer (I didn't notice that the original WoW recipe called for a malt, so I used a maple stout from Cannery Brewing, a BC beer from Penticton.)
– Honey
– Soy Sauce
– Dijon Mustard
– Onion (not shown in picture)
– Garlic (not shown in picture)
– Lemon Juice
– Worshestershire sauce (most of the beer ribs recipes I checked out called for it, so I tosses some in.)
– Cayenne Pepper
– Bay Leaves


text:
Watch/Listen to Past Services
Children's Christmas Program + Missing the PointSun, Dec 16, 2018
Twickenham sermons are available as podcasts from iTunes and Google Play Music. Just search either for "Twickenham Church of Christ", and subscribe!
Don't use iTunes or Google Play? We've got you covered too! You can subscribe on the device of your choice by using this URL: twickenham.org/sermons.xml.


text:
The idea of dreaming up a physical object and having a computer help you bring it to life — a.k.a. 3-D printing — is very cool today, but there's a long way to go. Some of the challenges include faster creation times, more accessible software, a greater variety of materials with which to print, better 3-D scanning, and better ways to help people dream up what's possible.
Now 3-D printing marketplace Shapeways has some more money to try to solve at least some of those issues. It has raised $30 million in a Series C round that's the first venture investment for new Andreessen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon, alongside previous investors Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures and Lux Capital.
The New York City-headquartered site allows product designers to upload 3-D designs and sell them to online customers, who can choose a plastic, ceramic or metal material and sometimes also customize or personalize the product. Then Shapeways prints the object in one of its factories in Long Island City, N.Y., or Eindhoven, Netherlands, and mails it to the customer.
Shapeways isn't the only company that does this, but it's the largest and most well-known. Some 10,000 people are selling 1,000,000 designs to 150,000 customers so far. Shapeways tells designers how much it will cost to make their products, and then they can mark them up as much as they want.
Dixon said he thought Shapeways was particularly interesting because it combines three traditionally separate businesses — manufacturing, e-commerce and community.
Dixon — who previously was an angel investor, founded SiteAdvisor and Hunch, and became well-known for his blogging — said he expected to make further investments in what he called "fringe technologies" that help bring the physical world online, including 3-D printing, robots, hardware and "the Internet of things."


text:
Customer Reviews
One of the most powerful ways to build your business is through good client reviews. Get testimonials from your customers and publish the ones you want to show off on your site.
Promote and grow your business with good reviews
Turn customers into your trusted brand ambassadors
Easily manage and sort through client reviews
Get feedback from real customers to improve your business
Increase your ranking on search engines with keywords from client reviews
Fully customize basic settings and design to suit the look and feel of your site


text: The impetus to create Earth-592 came when some local friends expressed an interest in a game. Having already devoted some time and energy into crafting a background world for the Suicide Squad I decided to use the same setting and just expand the world a bit. I opted to set this new game in Detroit and set about fleshing out the city a bit.


text:
Listed below are events on the County, State, and even National level.
For more information on specific events, either click on the title of the event itself or visit the "Events" page of the website.
To register or RSVP, please follow the Eventbrite link on the event page.
Please note that starting September 2017, all members will be required to bring their NJEA membership card and photo id to all MCCEA events. To print your membership card, log in to www.njea.org and click on "My Profile".
* In order to help protect members' dues, reservations that are not honored will be billed to the member.
*Non-perishable food items will be collected at all MCCEA events.
Events for Oct 2, 2019
Events Search and Views Navigation
4:30 pm
Executive Committee Meeting
Executive committee meeting at the MCCEA office at 430pm. Please send regrets only to Ginny.Find out more »


text:
Kate Sunglasses Black Acetate
Send a hint to share your dream gift.
Part of our first range of eyewear inspired by British style icons, the Kate Sunglasses have a distinctly retro cat-eye frame crafted from fine acetate. The tinted lenses are 100% UV protected, and the glasses are finished with a Mulberry logo on the sides.
A pair of Mulberry sunglasses from our Spring Summer '19 collection.
- Cat-eye frame
- Tinted lenses
- Hardware in gold tone brass finish
- Lens Category 3
- Mulberry logo on side
- Arm length
- 55mm
- Bridge length
- 8¼mm
- Lens width
- 20½mm
This product's code is RS5400-000A100
Acetate is a high-quality plastic material with hard-wearing characteristics.


text:
- "Grand Secession demonstration"
- Map of April 17, 1861, Vote on Secession
- The Ordinance Passed
- "Pass the Ordinance of Secession"
- "War is upon us."
- "Solemn protest"
- "We must fight"
- "Will you make a declaration of war?"
- Ordinance of Secession (Enrolled)
- "The most enthusiastic joy"
- First signed Ordinance of Secession
- Ordinance of Secession (Calligraphy)
- Roll Call of Vote on Secession
Virginia Convention Votes For Secession on April 17, 1861
By the second week of April 1861, advocates of secession in Virginia had grown so impatient with the refusal of the convention to vote on the question that they conspired to pressure the convention into action. Some members of the convention and other men in Richmond, including one of the editors of the Daily Richmond Enquirer, Obadiah Jennings Wise, a son of former governor and convention delegate Henry Alexander Wise, carefully planned what they called a spontaneous Southern rights convention for the purpose. The surrender of Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers so radically changed all of the political calculations of members of the convention that even without outside pressure on April 17, 1861, the Virginia Convention voted 88 to 55 to submit an ordinance of secession to the voters for ratification or rejection in a May referendum.
Some supporters of secession called for a Southern rights convention to meet in Richmond in hopes that it would pressure the state convention to secede.
Virginia Convention Votes for Secession
In the aftermath of President Abraham Lincoln's call for troops to put down the insurrection in South Carolina, many Virginians who had opposed secession on its merits quickly changed their minds about secession for practical reasons. The question was no longer whether secession was wise, legal, necessary, or in Virginia's interest; the question became which side to take.
The Ordinance of Secession that the convention adopted on April 17, 1861, and that voters in the state ratified in a referendum conducted on May 23, 1861, repealed Virginia's 1788 ratification of the Constitution of the United States and also repealed all of the General Assembly's votes to ratify amendments to the Constitution.
Before the end of the convention's first session, 92 delegates signed a parchment copy of the Ordinance of Secession. At the convention sessions that met in June and in November, 142 delegates signed a ceremonial parchment prepared by William Flegenheimer.


text:
- Inside Athletics
- Tickets
- Fan Zone
- Media Zone
- Social
- Shop
- Donate Now
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (Aug. 18, 2012) – After opening the season with a, 2-0, shutout of Tennessee Tech, the ETSU women's soccer team goes for the opening weekend sweep when it travels to Greenwood Field on Sunday to take on UNC Asheville at 1 p.m.
ETSU (1-0-0) secured its first win of the 2012 season on Friday as freshman Sarah Zadrazil (St. Gilgen, Austria) scored with time expiring in the first half, before sophomore Kristi Davis (Edmond, Okla.) sealed the win with her first goal in the 69th minute. Freshman goalkeeper Sierra Campbell (Thompson's Station, Tenn.) made two saves off 13 Tech shots, earning her first shutout in her first collegiate start.
UNC Asheville (0-1-0) kicked off its season on Friday as well, falling to Eastern Kentucky, 2-1, at EKU Soccer Field. EKU took the lead with a goal eight minutes in, only to see the Bulldogs equalize in the 27th minute as Kaitlyn Eckert found the back of the net for Asheville's first goal of the season. In the 40th minute, the Colonels took the lead for good to enter halftime up a goal and hold on through the second for the win.
Of last year's squad, Asheville returns its top two goal scorers in Eckert and Amanda Knapp. The duo scored six goals apiece in 2011, with Knapp adding four assists to Eckert's three. The Bulldogs also return Ferriss Roberts, who finished the year with five goals to tie for third on the team.
Sunday's meeting will be the 15th all-time between ETSU and Asheville, with the Bulldogs leading the series 8-6-0. The Lady Bucs have gotten the better of Asheville in recent years, winning the last two meetings and three of the last four. Last year, ETSU defeated Asheville, 3-0, at Summers-Taylor Stadium.
The last time the two sides met at Greenwood Field was Aug. 22, 2010, as ETSU walked away with a, 4-1, victory. In that meeting, then-ETSU freshmen Lindsay Bickel (Hampstead, Md.) and Ramey Kerns (Kings Mountain, N.C.) each scored their first career goals. Bickel knocked in a rebound off her own shot in the 35th minute, while Kerns sealed the win with the Lady Bucs' fourth goal of the game in the 88th minute.
Live stats for Sunday's game will be provided courtesy of UNCABulldogs.com.
For more information on ETSU women's soccer please visit ETSUBucs.com and click on the women's soccer links.


text:
Past, Present and Future Grace CD
The grace of God, past, present, and future is the believer's blessed hope. The grace of God has appeared in the person and work of Jesus Christ. That grace in the past provided salvation of sinners who will come to God by faith alone, in Christ alone. The grace of God for the present, "now age" teaches and enables saved sinners to live consistent with their new character. Being so taught the believer lives a life of worship and obedience anticipating the future grace of God to reappear in the person of Jesus Christ. When He does, He will complete the transformation of believer's lives into perfect conformity with His character. The world may be falling apart but our great God and Savior is coming again. With that great hope we, who have been saved by the grace of His first appearing, endure, persevere, and rejoice, as we await His glorious return.
Visit the OnePlace website to order a free copy of the Past, Present and Future Grace CD.


text: Megatron Posted July 2, 2013 With my '06 Dodge Ram 3500 4x4 and 48RE transmission (Cummins diesel power), I notice when pulling and away and accelerating from a dead stop, like a stop sign, I will get the slightest vibration in the transmission. I assume it to be the clutch plates on the torque converter but not sure if that is right. it only does it from a dead stop and only through a few 100 rpms. it acts like trying to take off with a heavy load on a standard transmission. I compare this to a solid flywheel conversion we did on an older powerstroke ford. to save a few bucks, we ordered the solid flywheel and clutch kit that didn't have the springs in it (like factory). well that was about the worst thing you could have done to that truck when hauling a heavy load. that thing would buck no matter how you feathered the clutch peddle lol. that action is what my truck feels like taking off, just not as violent and very subtle. no matter the tranny temp or load on the hitch. never less and never more. Any ideas? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites


text:
Only a few days after being hospitalized, Brooke Mueller is back in rehab for the 19th time, TMZ reports.
Charlie Sheen's ex-wife entered a facility Monday night seeking treatment for an addiction to Adderall, her lawyer, Yale Galanter, tells the site. On Friday, Mueller was rushed to the hospital for a suspected overdose, but the mother of two originally insisted she had simply been deep asleep after making jewelry nonstop for several days. Now, however, the website reports that Mueller admits that the incident was caused by taking too many Adderall pills.
Which TV shows should reunite?"Brooke was uncomfortable with the way Adderall was making her behave," Galanter says, insisting that his client had no illegal drugs in her system during Friday's incident. "Brooke continues her lifelong battle with drug addiction by taking these steps herself to prevent a further drug relapse."Mueller's 3-year-old twins children with Sheen, Bob and Max, are with a nanny.


text:
Piroshky Piroshky at Pike Place Market in Seattle
Piroshky (or pirozhok—but not to be confused with pierogi) are the Russian version of an empanada, calzone, or any other stuffed hand-held pie. Common fillings include poppy seeds, sausage, cabbage, or whatever else the babushkas over the years had lying around.
At Piroshky Piroshky in Seattle's Pike Place Market, they add a Pacific Northwest twist with a version that rolls up smoked salmon pate ($4.50). The dill-flecked dough pocket is filled with the soft fish paste. They also have plenty of sweet flavors, like the Apple Cinnamon Roll ($3.70) or Fresh Rhubarb Piroshky ($3).
There don't seem to be any rules on the piroshky shape. Some come in triangles, others in braids, and the most fun to watch through the window—the cinnamon roll-like spirals. Walk by at the right time and you'll see someone on rolling duty. There are also no rules on when to eat them. It's not meal-specific, so basically it's always piroshky time.
Piroshky Piroshky
1908 Pike Place, Seattle WA 98101 (map) 206-441-6068
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


text:
Unhappy New Year: Local Sperry HQ to shut down as layoffs loom
Northrop Grumman announced plans Friday to shut down its Charlottesville-based Sperry Marine U.S. headquarters, leaving its 37 employee with uncertain futures. While a spokesperson for the company says that a "small number" of employees will be allowed to transfer to the company's large Marine Systems unit on Route 29, the rest will be "laid off" at the end of January 2012.
"Every effort will be made to assist impacted individuals in finding new employment," says Northrop Grumman spokesperson Jack Martin in an email to the Hook. "Affected employees will receive all separation and other benefits to which they are entitled, and the company will also provide outplacement assistance to help those who will be seeking other employment including at other Northrop Grumman facilities."
Martin says that a United Kingdom-based Sperry Marine facility will take over the Charlottesville office's duties, though workers in Europe are not immune to Northrop Grumman cost-cutting efforts. Martin says that 60 to 70 positions through Europe could be eliminated as well.
The international marine industry has been hit hard by the global recession, explains Martin. As a result, orders for Sperry Marine products and services are down.
"It is imperative that we realign our facilities and staffing levels to better meet the requirements of our customers," he says.
Martin says the current announcement will not affect the facility on Route 29, which employs over 600 people.
However, as the Hook reported in October, Northrop Grumman plans to lay off as many as 800 people at its U.S. facilities in Maryland and elsewhere across the U.S. by the end of January, which could affect the Route 29 facility. Indeed, back in May, 60 local Sperry Marine employees were let go, and another 26 lost their jobs in June.
According to a company spokesperson at the time, a company-wide "voluntary separation program" began just days after that October 19 announcement.
"Should these voluntary efforts not fully address the staffing situation, we will initiate an involuntary reduction to ensure our headcount is consistent with our current and anticipated business base," said then-company spokesperson Alleace M. Gibbs. "We expect the involuntary reduction to be completed by the end of January 2012."
10 comments
This isn't the first or the last defense oriented company that will see layoffs. Bloated defense spending is coming to an end. However you feel about this, the loss of good jobs based in America does not bode well for the country.
There is a huge shift occurring in economic leadership across the globe with the Euro, once thought to be a return of European power faultering, and China and India on the rise.
Wars have been the economic engine that lifted America out of the doldrums, but this time will be different - wars will be fought not with American manufactured weapons but those made oversees, and not with a fighting force of thousands, but with smart weapons guided by technology, also manufactured oversees.
If America is to regain economic parity it will come by strengthening the European currency and forming a strong partnership to balance the might of China.
America must do more to keep good jobs in America and to repair it's crumbling infrastructure, innovate it's energy consumption, not with old fashioned gas and coal, but conservation through high tech solution, based on American soil.
On the local front developers were hoping the defense industry would lift the housing market --not happening, in fact we are seeing more foreclosures and lower prices now than in years past, and I predict this isn't over yet. NGIC employees are renting in large part, and the predicted expansion is very shaky and may not materialize as imagined.
Real estate investment is no longer the golden egg of the past .
The "Hope and Change (TM)" isn't working for them either! Maybe if they had donated more money to Obama like the directors at Solyndra, things would have turned out better for them.
but, Dope and Chains is..............
Amzing that the UK , supposedly a terrible socialized greedy labour location will take over the duties.Our jobs go to the UK. Hmmmm, could it be the failure for the US to accept that our bloated over priced healthcare system has anything to do with it, when it competes with the UK's far leaner, meaner, efficient NHS? With more than 20% of our dollars going to everything but actual healthcare, our workers are made far more expensive.
But nope, we won't learn until our emplire has come rashing down our ears. But the Tea Partiers and will be happy as long as their gummint benefits haven't run out.
Poorly written article where most people will think the Rt. 29 facility is closing unless they read carefully.
Caesonia I'm so in the universal health care camp, but NHS is a nightmare. It *is* meaner though.
Had we not been fighting 3 fronts at once, both the Navy and the Air Force could use their budgets towards the new fleets they have requested, but every time a troop draw down is presented in congress, the GOP cries "NO! NO! Leave them there to die!"
These folks being laid off should take some comfort in the fact that President Downgrade and Moochelle are living large, as are Pelosi and Reid. They can relax at home as Obama peddles more hope and change snake oil and fills everyone's ears with the poo he reads off his teleprompter. The MSM geniuses can then spin all the dismal stats on the economy so those 37 will forget they have no prospects and think Obama and the libs are doing a great job. We're all just too stupid to understand that and can't see the "big picture".
The jobs being cut per this article are in the commercial realm. Also, Sperry hasn't said the jobs are going to the UK, just that the functions will be moved there. They are probably just reassigning the work but not hiring there.


text:
After he mercilessly skewered Hollywood's best and brightest as host of the 2011 Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais was the most hated man in Tinseltown.
Well, not only is he rumored to be back in the mix to host the 2012 show, he is making Hollywood a bold offer: He'll stick around and host the Oscars, too.
"I'll do it," said Gervais, an in interview with Access Hollywood. "I'll do [the Oscars] as well. I'll be in town any way for the Globes."
U.S. & World
The Academy Awards, of course, are currently seeking a new host because original choice, Eddie Murphy, dropped out after his "Tower Heist" director Brett Ratner was pressured to resign after a series of inappropriate interviews and comments.
Gervais added that he'd give the producers "a two for one offer."
"I can knock off 20 percent. Two for one deal," joked Gervais. "I'll just stay up there."
When asked if there was truth to the rumors that the comedian was having meetings with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association regarding a possible return to the Globes, Gervais replied:
"They haven't asked me officially yet, and I don't know whether I'd say yes. It's very tempting. It's tempting [because] for three hours, I'm the most feared man in LA, so that's nice."
It was announced today that producer Brian Grazer has come on board to replace the departed Ratner.
Selected Reading: The Hollywood Reporter, Access Hollywood, Deadline


text:
Спасибо за интерес к нашим villas. С нетерпением ждем разговора!
A small, reasonably priced warung in the middle of Ubud's city center, Dayu's Warung is the optimal spot to take a break from window shopping and rejuvenate with a fresh juice and salad. Try their Coconut Gomasio salad for a Balinese rendition of a mixed green salad: cucumber, carrot, beet, avocado, roasted tofu, tempe with a lemon basil dressing. Yum. Also on the menu are classic Indonesian dishes, soups and lots of veggies of course. Want to learn how to cook like Chef Dayu herself? Try one of the cooking classes offered at the cafe or farm for some insider tips and a unique experience to bring back home with you. Hours: 8:00 am – 10:00 pm


text:
10 Mistakes to Avoid When Migrating Data Centers to the Cloud
10 Mistakes to Avoid When Migrating Data Centers to the Cloud
Moving an enterprise's data center assets to a cloud computing platform requires plenty of careful planning. Here are the top 10 mistakes to avoid when thinking about migrating to the cloud.
Lack of a Strong Business Case
When considering a migration to the cloud, initiatives stem from two compelling reasons: You have to go or you want to go. Each requires a different level of commitment across the organization, driven by timelines and senses of urgency. What will the cost benefit be? Will you gain greater skills? These are questions that contribute to an organization's cloud business case.
Failing to Get Buy-In from an Organization's Top Leaders
If there is a clear business case for migrating to the cloud, your CEO and board will find it easier to agree with your proposition, but if there is not, you likely will have to fight harder for their buy-in. So you need to be clear on why and how the company will make the migration and determine who are the "cloud champions"—the leaders in the organization who realize the benefits of operating in the cloud and will fight for the change.
Failing to Prepare the Organization's Culture for the Move
An organization's CIO is not the only person affected by a migration to the cloud. Failure to prepare the entire company can result in hesitations from various teams and departments. Operating in the cloud—whether with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure Cloud or others—requires some study and thoughtful preparation by employees across the entire organization.
Failure to Include App Owners at an Early Stage
App owners need to be prepared for a cloud migration project. Even if organizations are using tools for discovery, the picture isn't complete without a human touch. App owners need to be consulted during initial planning and discovery, and they need to be prepared for their part in the project, including user acceptance testing and downtime. App owners must provide the migration teams with other important data, such as Service Level Agreements and regular maintenance-window schedules.
Not Exploring All of Your Options
Whether you are rebuilding or rehosting your data during a cloud migration, both routes have their advantages, and there is no right or wrong answer. Once a thorough discovery is complete, some applications may require only a "lift and shift" while others will need to be rewritten entirely. Don't discount either path to the cloud and do your research.
Waiting to Move Individual Applications
While your team is coordinating a plan to move heavier applications to the cloud, there is no reason to delay moving smaller, less sensitive ones. Some applications require more planning and resources, so the time it takes to transition those is longer. But that shouldn't mean your entire cloud migration should be delayed. Don't hesitate on the applications you can move to the cloud first.
Failing to Include Security Precautions in Your Planning
With so many emerging threats facing enterprises, security has never been more important. It's necessary to take the proper precautions and not rush through the process. A successful cloud migration is done thoughtfully and without skipping steps, especially when it comes to security.
Not Training Your Staff Correctly to Do Their Job in the Cloud
Skills shortages are a major roadblock for many organizations that are deciding whether to move to the cloud. To properly train IT employees, start by giving them projects that show the business benefit of being in the cloud and giving them time to learn. There also are training programs offered through providers such as AWS. Providing hands-on experience will help in exciting employees about the migration.
Not Monitoring Costs Post Migration
The bill can surprise you if you're not aware of the costs associated with migrating enterprise applications. This type of migration is more detailed and time-consuming, so you have to account for continued maintenance and support—even after applications have moved to the cloud.
Making the Assumption That Cloud Will Be Cheaper
When debating a migration to the cloud, don't fool yourself into thinking you are going to save tons of money. Storing data on-premises can be less expensive, but when you factor in time to implementation, tax implications, overall flexibility, ongoing costs, reliability and security, cloud is a clear winner.


text:
30926 Harper Ave, St Clair Shores, MI 48082, USA
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Or connect with
Your personal data will be used to support your experience throughout this website, to manage access to your account, and for other purposes described in our privacy policy.
After clicking the "Sign Up" button, you can sign-in using the username and password emailed to the address entered.


text:
Removing mtl dependency
In Haskell, there are a variety of monad transformer libraries. The most popular is the original library, mtl, which is in the Haskell platform. Many people mutter complaints about mtl, including poor design, use of functional dependencies (which are somewhat out of favour these days) and inefficient implementation. Several replacements have been developed — direct replacements such as the transformers and mmtl libraries, and also packages like monadLib.
This issue arose again recently in a reddit discussion, with people wondering when mtl is going to be replaced. CHP used to make a lot of (internal) use of monad transformers from the mtl package. I've recently refactored the CHP monad, which removed a large part of that dependency: gone are ErrorT and ReaderT, in comes a continuation-passing style. If I want to, I'm now able to make the next version of CHP not depend on mtl (nor on any other monad transformer library). I'm not sure if this is worth doing — does it actually make anyone's life easier using CHP if it doesn't depend on mtl?
The only external change that would result from giving up mtl in the chp package is the MonadIO CHP instance. MonadIO is a useful type-class in mtl for any monad (like CHP) that sits on top of IO. I would stop having an instance of MonadIO CHP in the CHP library, and would instead provide a liftIO_CHP :: IO a -> CHP a function for the same purpose, which could then be used in a MonadIO instance for CHP in your own package (using MonadIO from mtl, or from transformers, or whatever your favourite monad transformer library is). There was a recent proposal to split MonadIO from mtl because it's so useful (and can be stand-alone) but that hasn't happened yet. The change from liftIO to the function liftIO_CHP would actually be slightly beneficial for me (due to some other work going on) but could be a pain to users who don't care about mtl/transformers and who don't want to have to alter their existing code.
If you are bothered either way — keeping mtl and the MonadIO instance in CHP versus removing them — speak up.
April 9, 2010 at 12:44 pm
I would keep MonadIO instance in CHP. However with package imports you can have best of both worlds:
import Control.Monad.IO.Class as Trans import Control.Monad.Trans from "mtl" as MTL instance MTL.MonadIO CHP where ... instance Trans.MonadIO CHP where ...
The drawback is that the CHP would depend on both mtl and transformers.
April 9, 2010 at 2:13 pm
I'm still pretty early in my "CHP-based web framework" work, but of the two libraries I tried to combine CHP with, both of them have caused me conflicts due to them using transformers and CHP using mtl.
If CHP switches then I can get a pure Haskell stack from webserver on; right now I'm having to use FastCGI.
April 9, 2010 at 4:22 pm
if you switch, use something better than transformers, it keeps all the really broken things that are in mtl.
April 9, 2010 at 5:06 pm
I support removing the dependency.
April 9, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Is there any value in separating the instancing off into other libs like chp-mtl, chp-transformers, chp-mmtl? These would depend on the general chp library where the existing code lives without the trans instances.
So if I wanted to use chp with mtl, I would install and import things from chp and chp-mtl
April 10, 2010 at 1:21 am
If you force everyone to define their own MonadIO instance for CHP, then any two libraries that define their own such instance cannot be used together. There has to be a better way.
April 10, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Re: "functional dependencies (which are somewhat out of favour these days)"
After a stint away from Haskell, programming in the tiny language Scheme, I don't go looking for trouble while programming in Haskell. One learns through bloody experience why many of the GHC extensions exist: There are holes in the standard language, like a toolbox missing a screwdriver. One hits the same obstacle so many times that its shape becomes clear even to a novice, and the "fix" in GHC then jumps out at you, standing apart from many extensions one hopes to never need to understand. Functional dependencies are such an extension.
So what's a good reference to a tutorial teaching people how to solve problems in practice that appear to require functional dependencies, without using them? It would be good form to have given such a reference, to support the dig at functional dependencies. I'm not defending them, but it's hard to single them out for scorn when Haskell as a whole is so much more ornately complex than Scheme. Haskell is nevertheless a better language, and one lives with what one needs to do.
April 22, 2010 at 11:31 am
May 3, 2010 at 5:22 pm


text:
"Back where I come from," the Wizard of Oz told the Tin Man, "there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called phila – eh, phil – um, yes, uh – good-deed-doers."
"Back where I come from," the Wizard of Oz told the Tin Man, "there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called phila – eh, phil – um, yes, uh – good-deed-doers."
The desire to do good deeds must hover within us, but a little outside influence certainly helps. As a member of the Rotary Club of Plymouth, I meet regularly with many good deed doers, and I admit an infectiousness of the spirit of that organization. Lord knows it carries across many fine organizations. And so it was at a recent meeting that I volunteered to spend a couple of hours ringing the little ting-a-ling bell on behalf of the Salvation Army.
How many times have I approached the market and felt the watchful eye of the bell ringer perched outside in the wintry chill of late fall. I walk toward the entrance knowing I can't hide from the friendly eyes. I pull a bill from my wallet; I tuck it into the iconic red kettle. I feel better. Another bell ringer mans the red kettle by the time I've finished my shopping. Where do they get all these bell ringers? They're volunteers, of course.
And so, when asked, I said OK. I didn't do so because I subscribe to the Salvation Army's mission or philosophy – I am not a soldier. For that matter, upon my review of what the Army stands for, I can say I agree with some of its positions, and I disagree with some. It's that I think the church is successful raising money to do good deeds, and every little bit of good deed doing helps. In fact, the church declares that "All Salvation Army social welfare services are provided on a non-discriminatory basis; such services shall be equally available to all persons on the basis of need and capacity to benefit from the service."
As a brief aside, I admit my fascination in the early history of the Salvation Army. A fellow by the name of William Booth sought a ministerial career in mid-19th century London. He spread the gospel of Jesus throughout the city's streets, appealing to the poor and the homeless. In fact, according to the Salvation Army, he held evangelistic meetings in a graveyard and drew Christian converts from the ranks of London's "thieves, prostitutes, gamblers and drunkards." His converts, known as the "Hallelujah Army," spread the good word for what was called The Christian Mission. Then Booth read a reference in the church's annual report for 1878: "The Christian Mission is a volunteer army." He crossed out "volunteer army" and replaced that term with "Salvation Army."How marvelously Dickensian! But that was then.
In addition to the many programs the Salvation Army operates and funds – including disaster relief, prisoner rehabilitation, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, fighting human trafficking, youth camps, elderly services, and much more, including many local charitable causes – the church is perhaps best known for its Christmas Charity. The red kettle has its roots in the late 18th century practice at the Liverpool docks of sailors and others tossing a few coins into a kettle to help the poor. A Salvation Army captain used the idea in the 1890s to raise money to feed the poor in San Francisco during the holidays. The practice quickly spread, and by the turn of the century it had become a successful means for funding holiday meals. The Army says it now helps about 4.5 million Americans during the holiday season.
And so Saturday I arrived at my assignment in Independence Mall, by Macy's entrance. I had presumed I'd be stationed outside and was dressed accordingly. I didn't mind being inside, though, and, I think, my bell ringing efforts were likely more successful because of the temperate environment. I was amazed at how many people graciously paused, poked through wallets and pocketbooks, and stuffed bills and coins into the red kettle. And everyone who did so did it with a smile. I thanked every donor and wished each a Merry Christmas – I felt grateful and honored that so many lovely people stopped and expressed their support of charity through their donations.
Three teenage girls stopped several feet away from me and began rummaging around in their pockets. They appeared to be searching for iPods or cell phones. Then they approached, and each smiled widely as she put money into the kettle. Several parents with little ones stopped and put a bill into their children's hands. They pointed and issued instructions, and the little tykes walked timidly forward, eyes staring at me until they reached the kettle, and then all their attention focused on trying to stuff that dollar through the slot. The parents patiently waited and encouraged. The warmth of each donation flowed through me, and my sense of community and holiday truly glowed.
I decided my best approach (I felt a certain responsibility to not just ring a bell but to successfully market the cause) was to make subtle eye contact with shoppers as they approached, and then avert my gaze as the tinkling of the bell made all the message that was necessary. I didn't want to lock eyes and force possible discomfort or guilt. A brief contact, and then each person would choose what to do. Everyone knew I was there; everyone knew that special tinkling sound and what it meant. There was no wrong response. The two hours flew by.
My successor arrived, we chatted, and I left. I ran a couple of errands, and at each location was a ringing bell and red kettle. I cheerfully reported to each ringer that I had just done my stint, and our brief conversations fueled the warmth that comforted me throughout the day. Those two hours magnified many times inwardly, for me and certainly for the many gracious donors, judging by the warm wishes, the happy looks, the Christmas smiles, the feelings of community. The holiday spirit was indeed in the air.Sign me up again next year. Merry Christmas!
Scott C. Smith is senior managing editor for GateHouse Media New England, based in the Plymouth newsroom. E-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.