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Debates of Nov. 25th, 2010
House of Commons Hansard #104 of the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was training.
- Question Period
- Government Response to Petitions
- Improving Trade Within Canada Act
- Committees of the House
- Excise Tax Act
- Business of Supply
- Petitions
- Questions Passed as Orders for Returns
- Business of Supply
- National Holodomor Awareness Week
- Boys and Girls Club of LaSalle
- Nataly Boulerice
- Windsor Goodfellows Club
- Saskatchewan Roughriders
- Pensions
- Meritorious Service Medal
- Micheline Groleau
- National Parks
- Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador
- Durban Conference
- David Lam
- Durban Conference
- International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
- Conservative Candidate for Vaughan
- Violence Against Women
- Taseko Mines Limited
- Infrastructure
- Afghanistan
- Ethics
- Conservative Candidate for Vaughan
- Contaminated Water in Shannon
- Quebec City Arena
- Arts and Culture
- Seniors
- Government Spending
- Taseko Mines Limited
- Poverty
- Pensions
- Poverty
- Seniors
- Public Safety
- The Environment
- Agri-food Industry
- The Environment
- International Aid
- The Environment
- International Aid
- Medical Isotopes
- Presence in Gallery
- Points of Order
- Business of the House
- Business of Supply
- First Nations Financial Transparency Act
Meritorious Service Medal
Statements by Members
2:05 p.m.
Ben Lobb Huron—Bruce, ON
Mr. Speaker, on November 2, 2010, Huron county native, Captain Jeffrey Middleton Powell, received the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General of Canada.
Captain Powell and the air crew of Rescue 903, a Cormorant search and rescue helicopter, rescued three stranded sailors from their rapidly sinking dredging barge off the coast of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Flying through hazardous, icy conditions, with winds of up to 40 knots and in six metre seas, the aircraft arrived on scene with minimal fuel to spare. Over the next hour, the crew proceeded to hoist the three sailors on board the aircraft one by one as darkness approached. Shortly after the successful rescue, while the aircraft was proceeding to shore, the barge reportedly sank.
Tremendous effort, focus on the mission and the utmost in air crew coordination resulted in three lives being saved.
Jeff is a true Canadian hero and all his family should be very proud.
Micheline Groleau
Statements by Members
2:05 p.m.
Luc Desnoyers Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Mr. Speaker, today, I want to pay tribute to Micheline Groleau, a woman who lives in my riding. On the occasion of the 2010 International Day of Older Persons, Ms. Groleau was named volunteer of the year for the Laurentians.
For 27 years, Ms. Groleau has been volunteering at the Centre d'action bénévole Les Artisans de l'Aide in Saint-Eustache as a receptionist and in other capacities as well. She arranges for and provides transportation for seniors going to medical appointments. Ms. Groleau is also involved in the para transit project in Saint-Eustache.
My Bloc Québécois colleagues join me in congratulating her and wishing her every success in her future endeavours.
National Parks
Statements by Members
November 25th, 2010 / 2:05 p.m.
Rob Anders Calgary West, AB
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House today to acknowledge the 125th anniversary of Canada's first national park. Exactly 125 years ago, thanks to Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, an order in council set aside 26 square kilometres near Banff, which began our system of national parks.
Banff has come a long way in 125 years. It began with the dream of a transcontinental railway and along that rail line is built a series of grand hotels, the grandest of all being the Banff Springs Hotel. It is the jewel of the line and comparable to any European castle. It was built in Scottish baronial style and the area was named after a location in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Banff today remains the only incorporated municipality within the Canadian national parks.
Our national parks system started 125 years ago with Banff. Today, she is still the majestic queen of our natural refuges. It is truly a remarkable legacy of heritage creation and preservation on behalf of all Canadians.
Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador
Statements by Members
2:05 p.m.
Siobhan Coady St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Mr. Speaker, Premier Danny Williams has well-represented the people of Newfoundland and Labrador with steadfast dedication and a political energy that will be long remembered.
Premier Williams promoted the people of Newfoundland and Labrador with tenacity unmatched in Canadian politics. A Rhodes scholar and a successful businessman, he was truly of and for the people.
Premier Williams sought and succeeded in turning around the provincial economy and now there is a new sense of optimism and confidence. The premier will be well-remembered for his contributions to developing the oil and gas and resource sectors, as well as for his accomplishment on the Lower Churchill. He was equally dedicated to social development and fought to reduce poverty. He supported the volunteer sector and championed education.
This morning, Premier Williams quoted John F. Kennedy who said, "Anyone can make a difference, and everyone should try". Premier Williams did more than try. He succeeded.
We thank Premier Williams for his dedication to the province, for his contributions and for his legacy.
Durban Conference
Statements by Members
2:05 p.m.
Greg Rickford Kenora, ON
Mr. Speaker, a Conservative government will not hesitate to combat racism in all its forms.
Last December, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to hold an event in September of next year to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the first Durban conference. This new event is being labelled in the media as Durban III.
Just as Canada was the first country in the world to withdraw from Durban II, so, too, will Canada lead in withdrawing from Durban III.
Our Conservative government has lost faith in the Durban process. We will not lend Canada's good name to this new Durban event, which observes an agenda that promotes racism rather than combats it.
As we have said all along, we are proud of our principled foreign policy positions. Our government makes foreign policy decisions based on what is right, not what is popular. We will continue to do so.
David Lam
Statements by Members
2:10 p.m.
Don Davies Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to the Hon. David Lam, former Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, who sadly lost his battle with cancer this week.
Dr. Lam was the first Chinese Canadian Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, serving from 1988 to 1995.
Born in Hong Kong, he moved to Vancouver in 1967 and dedicated four decades to public service.
Dr. Lam's contributions to Vancouver and British Columbia are breathtaking. His generosity as a philanthropist was without limit. He was a renowned supporter of our parks and public spaces. He was passionate about multiculturalism, funding many cultural projects and working tirelessly to promote a society that respects the contributions of new Canadians. He deeply valued education and was instrumental in funding programs that fostered understanding between different cultures and communities.
Dr. Lam's service to the public and our country is an exemplary reminder of the contributions made every day by Chinese Canadians and by all new Canadians to our nation.
Today we mourn the loss of a life well lived. We are a better country for it. Our deepest sympathy and thanks go out to the Lam family.
Durban Conference
Statements by Members
2:10 p.m.
Daniel Petit Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Mr. Speaker, today our government announced that Canada will not be attending the September 2011 conference commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action. Our government will not hesitate to combat all forms of racism.
Last December, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to hold an event in September 2011 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the first Durban conference, which was held in 2001. The media is dubbing this new event Durban III.
Canada was the first country to announce its withdrawal from Durban II and it will now be the first to announce that it will not be attending Durban III.
Our government no longer has any confidence in the Durban process. Canada's reputation would be compromised if it took part in this new Durban event, whose agenda promotes racism rather than combats it.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
Statements by Members
2:10 p.m.
Nicole Demers Laval, QC
Mr. Speaker, 2010 marks the 11th anniversary of the United Nations' proclamation of November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Violence can take many forms: forced marriage, repudiation, female genital mutilation, physical violence, trafficking, rape—especially during times of war—persecution of lesbians, and even stoning or murder. These actions are sometimes perpetrated with the blessing of governments, or even organized by them.
Worldwide, one woman in two is subjected to acts of violence, which put all women at risk and hinder efforts made by all societies to foster development, peace and gender equality. Let us put an end to it.
In closing, I deplore the absence of the Minister for Status of Women from the launch of the YWCA Rose Campaign this morning.
Conservative Candidate for Vaughan
Statements by Members
2:10 p.m.
Rob Oliphant Don Valley West, ON
Mr. Speaker, last year, a petition was circulated condemning the actions of Julian Fantino as OPP commissioner for his actions at Caledonia. The petition denounced flawed policing and demanded a public inquiry into the actions and decisions made by the commissioner of the OPP, Julian Fantino.
Thousands of Canadians signed a petition, along with the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development. It would appear that the Conservative government supports an inquiry into the actions of Julian Fantino.
As a member of cabinet, the Minister of Human Resources represents the views of the government. According to the petition, not only did she want an inquiry, she wanted him suspended without pay and, pending the inquiry, fired altogether.
If the minister did not have the confidence in the Prime Minister's hand-picked candidate then, how can she or the Prime Minister expect the voters of Vaughan to have confidence in him now?
Violence Against Women
Statements by Members
2:15 p.m.
Michael Chong Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Mr. Speaker, the United Nations has declared today the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
In too many places around the world, violence against women, whether physical, sexual or psychological, is impeding the equality of women.
Violence against women is an issue that affects far too many Canadian women. It is also a daily reality for women in communities worldwide. Ending violence against women requires an effort from governments, civil society and citizens.
For the last 30 years, the federal government's foreign aid program has been committed to integrating equality between men and women. The responsibility of men in this process is unequivocal. We need to have our voices heard by speaking out and we need to take action by getting involved.
It is a sign of strength to stand up for something as critical as ending violence against women. It is a sign of weakness to stand back and silently let it happen.
Taseko Mines Limited
Oral Questions
2:15 p.m.
Mark Holland Ajax—Pickering, ON
Mr. Speaker, two weeks before the government made public a decision to block Taseko's bid for a controversial mine, shares in the company mysteriously crashed. In a matter of hours, 30 million shares traded hands, 10 times the normal rate. At one point, investors dumped 2.7 million shares in 40 seconds, obliterating hundreds of millions of dollars in the blink of an eye.
Someone somewhere in the Conservative government leaked information. Insiders got wildly rich and investors got hammered.
The government has known this for six weeks. Has it launched an investigation, called in the RCMP or done anything at all?
Taseko Mines Limited
Oral Questions
2:15 p.m.
Ottawa West—Nepean
John Baird Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of the Environment
Mr. Speaker, here is what we do know. A publicly available environmental assessment on this project stated quite clearly that it would cause irreparable harm to the environment. That document has been public for quite some time. People can speculate what they want. In fact, there was significant speculation that the government would approve the project, but we did not. We did the right thing for our environment.
Taseko Mines Limited
Oral Questions
2:15 p.m.
Mark Holland Ajax—Pickering, ON
Mr. Speaker, in one day, out of nowhere, with no news, the stock dropped 40%. That is no accident. This was a decision of the Conservative government, of its cabinet. When did the share prices in Taseko plunge? Around the same time the minister secretly met in cabinet to block the mine. While normal investors got wiped out, insiders leaked the information, shorted the stock and made millions.
What assurances do we have that Conservative insiders did not make out like bandits, and why after six weeks has the RCMP not been called in?
Taseko Mines Limited
Oral Questions
2:15 p.m.
Ottawa West—Nepean
John Baird Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of the Environment
Mr. Speaker, the member opposite is engaging in pure speculation. The bottom line is that the government did the right thing for our environment.
The member is making some pretty serious allegations. If he has any facts he would like to put on the table, he should table them in this place after question period.
Taseko Mines Limited
Oral Questions
2:15 p.m.
Mark Holland Ajax—Pickering, ON
Mr. Speaker, I just did table the facts and here they are again.
Cabinet ministers met and share prices plunged two weeks before the public knew anything. That is no accident. It is a leak. Share prices dropped and then two weeks later when the news came out, they went back to exactly the same place. It is an illegal act benefiting connected insiders and leaving average shareholders devastated. It is a scandal not blown open by the government but by shareholders themselves.
Has the government called in the security unit of PCO to investigate its cabinet? Has it done anything in the last six weeks, except to try to bury it and get away with this leak?


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The best locationg would be in the general hudson valley area.
Looking for a team in up state New York
Started by PaintedIgloos, Dec 04 2012 08:35 PM
3 replies to this topic
Posted 04 December 2012 - 08:35 PM
Posted 24 December 2012 - 07:23 AM
You should swing by Poughkeepsie Paintball Park. Always guys looking for teams there
Posted 30 December 2012 - 06:54 AM
There is a new field that has opened up in Troy/Albany area. Capital Combat Zone. www.capitalcombatzone.com Very easy to get to. Their speedball will be opening in the spring. I am down there playing and selling on most weekend.
Posted 31 December 2012 - 11:14 AM
Thanks I will defiantly check out Poughkeepsie Paintball park in terms of the other place its kind of far but thank you
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subset: commoncrawl


text: Home Shows & Schedule Unwrapped Cable in the Classroom-Hot Stuff Unwrapped Hosted by Marc Summers Email MainEpisodesRecipesVideos (19) Cable in the Classroom-Hot Stuff Host Marc Summers reveals how spicy foods pack their punch. Find out the secrets of Mr. & Mrs. T's Bloody Mary mix, take a trip to see how scorching sauces are made. Finally, a chocolate cowgirl with a kick and a sugary ball of fire. Can you stand it? (Episode: CWCC04) Previous Episode Cable in the Classroom-Frozen Novelties Next Episode Cable in the Classroom-Movie Candy


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How Chicken of the Sea Engages Moms Through Gaming and Social Media
June 1, 2011
Erin Mrozek, consumer marketing manager, Chicken of the Sea, and Davin Myoshi, vice president, GSN Social Games, discussed how Chicken of the Sea worked with GSN.com to reach today's digital mom through gaming, social media, and online programs.
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The continued development of many low-lying coastal areas is foolhardy and irresponsible.committees have produced sea level rise predictions that include an examination of melting ice sheets. For example, sea level rise panels in Rhode Island and Miami-Dade County have concluded that a minimum of a three- to five-foot sea level rise should be anticipated by 2100. A California report assumes a possible 4.6-foot rise by 2100, while the Dutch assume a 2.5-foot rise by 2050 in the design of their tidal gates.
The most vulnerable of all coastal environments are deltas of major rivers, including the Mississippi.Mississippi. Here, land subsidence will combine with global sea level rise to create very high rates of what is known as "local, relative sea level rise." The rising seas will displace the vast majority of people in these delta regions. Adding insult to injury, in many parts of Asia the rice crop will be decimated by rising sea level — a three-foot sea level rise will eliminate half of the rice production in Vietnam — causing a food crisis coincident with the mass migration of people.
The next century of rising sea level need not be an economic disaster.Impacts in the United States, with a 3,500-mile long barrier island shoreline extending from Montauk Point on Long Island to the Mexican border, will be huge. The only way to preserve the barrier islands themselves will be to abandon them so that they may respond naturally to rising sea level. Yet, most coastal states continue to allow massive, irresponsible development of the low-lying coast.
More from Yale e360The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Sobering Update on Science


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Extended maintenance of Ruby 1.9.3 ended on February 23, 2015. Read more
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Did anyone else get a chuckle at the following posts where pythonic gently mocks the attention to detail some members have and then Norma hits him up for some additional observations? Very funny.Quote from: pythonic on March 21, 2013, 12:10:54 PM Lol u guys and your home run inn pizza hacks. You all crack me up. C'mon is it really that good? I live in Chicago and have had it fresh a couple times. It's ok but my wife absolutely hates it. NateNate,Lol, I don't know what a real HRI pizza tastes like. That is what I am trying to find out. Since you did have had a fresh HRI pizza did you see the layers in the bottom crust? If you ever stop at HRI again could you please take a picture close-up of what the crumb looks like. Norma
I took the second HRI frozen pizza out of the freezer today and will let it thaw overnight in the 'fridge. Plan on doing a 410 ° bake. The first pie done according to box instructions had a crust rim hard as a police baton.
Based on what you discovered I think I'll try a 450° bake.I'll post a pic if I can keep both wife and dog away long enough.
Ok Bob, that's enough frozen HRI. I'm gonna be trying some of your Chicago thin crust next time. My standards must be little higher now 'cause frozen just isn't doing it for me anymore.
Norma, those are very good photos of the layers. They look like the layers I had on my frozen HRI.
Norma, I did not notice, although I have to admit that I wasn't really looking as I've just recently learned what a gum line is! . When i get back to the states, I will have to pick up some more frozen HRI pizzas and see if I have a gum line.
I always like a small gum line.....is it not suppose to have one?
Norma,I am beginning to think that an HRI pizza is more prone to gum lines than other types of pizzas, and it may be more pronounced for the HRI pizzas made in its pizzerias than for the frozen HRI pizzas. I think part of the explanation has to do with the amount of "stuff" that is put on the HRI pizzas. For example, when I dissected one of the 12" HRI frozen pepperoni pizzas and weighed the pepperoni slices, the cheese and the sauce, the total weight was 14.64 ounces. Notably, the weight of the cheese alone was 10.33 ounces. Later, when I did the same thing with two 12" HRI sausage pizzas, which weigh about two ounces more than the pepperoni pizzas, the total weights of the cheese, sauce and sausage were 15.2 ounces and 15.52 ounces (see Reply 307 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6112.msg242492.html#msg242492). Remember, these weights were for pizzas that had already been partially baked and gave up some water content in the process. Also, it appears that some of the HRI frozen pizzas have more sauce than others. So, by my estimate, the above numbers may be a few percent on the low side. If we now assume that the dough ball weight for a 12" HRI pizza is 15 ounces, which I deem to be a plausible number from my analysis, it can easily be seen from the above numbers, especially when they are adjusted for water loss during the par-bake, are higher than the weight of the dough itself. Even though the HRI dough is a sturdy and fairly dense dough (with its high oil content, low hydration value, and an estimated thickness factor of a bit over 0.13) and capable of holding everything that is put on it, I think these weights impose a burden on the way that the end pizza is baked, in terms of the type of oven used, the oven positioning, the type of carrier used (e.g., disk, cutter pan or their equivalent), bake temperature, and bake time. The balance between these factors has to be just right to be able to bake the crust to the right final color and to melt the cheese to the desired degree, and especially so if there is an above average amount of cheese on the skin. If there are a lot of toppings, these factors become even more critical because more things have to be baked. Under the circumstances, I can see how it might be easy to end up with a gum line. I don't think that it happens very often where what is put on a skin or crust for a flat profile pizza weighs more than the skin or crust itself. Maybe when this happens, a gum line is more probable.As a cross check, I went to the Burke guide at Reply 4 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,14822.msg147190.html#msg147190 to check out typical amounts of cheese used on 12" pizzas. As can be seen there, a typical 12" pizza has a maximum Burke guide cheese quantity of 7.5 ounces. The HRI pepperoni pizza that I mentioned above had 10.33 ounces, and that weight was after some loss of water content. For sausage, the maximum Burke guide weight for a typical 12" pizza is 7.5 ounces for raw sausage and 5.75 ounces for cooked sausage. A typical, or generic, raw, fresh pork sausage contains about 56% water (http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/sausages-and-luncheon-meats/1375/2). On this basis, HRI appears to be above the Burke guide numbers, and in some cases perhaps considerably higher than the Burke guide numbers. In fact, HRI has said that it uses more sausage than what the USDA specifies as the minimum for pizza (see the article at Reply 9 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6009.msg51738.html#msg51738.As a further cross check, the other day while I was at my local supermarket, I examined the Nutrition Facts for several types and brands of frozen pizzas. I was looking for numbers other than pizza weights but it seemed to me that most 12" frozen cheese and pepperoni pizzas weighed less than the HRI frozen pizzas. I didn't do a rigorous analysis but that was my impression. Even a 12" Papa John's pizza, whose dough skin has a comparable thickness factor, weighs less than a typical frozen HRI cheese pizza. Peter


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This article is cross posted at Spurs Basketball.
DeJuan Blair kept the San Antonio Spurs in the game and finished with a team-high 23 points, Tim Duncan scored on two key baskets down the stretch as the Spurs rallied just in time to avoid an embarrassing loss to the short-handed New Orleans Hornets.
San Antonio trailed by a point twice in the final two minutes, but Duncan responded each time, atoning for a lackluster game by making two free throws and tipping in a missed shot with 1:19 left to give the Spurs the lead for good and won the game 89-86.
"New Orleans was more efficient than we were and executed better than we did," San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich said. "So we just had to hang in there and keep plugging. That is probably the best thing we did was keep on pushing, and at the end of the game it worked out. We were fortunate."


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By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published May 28, 2007
ST. PETERSBURG - Before Dr. Jeff Jacobs saved Alyssa Thomas with a new heart, he had come to a much different clinical conclusion.
The 19-month-old was not a candidate for a transplant. And she would not survive.
"It's difficult, " said Jacobs, a pediatric heart surgeon at St. Petersburg's All Children's Hospital. "I have a very high value on life. But I also have to be reasonable."
Reason tells him this:
There are not enough hearts to go around. Last year, 44 children in the United States, 10 years old and younger, died waiting for a heart transplant.
How Alyssa would eventually end up with a new heart and how she was kept alive until the transplant by using a rare and costly device were the life-and-death decisions made at her bedside.
In Alyssa's case, it was hard to tell exactly what choice led where. But Jacobs, one of 260 pediatric heart surgeons in the United States and Canada, always asked the same tough questions:
Would a new heart really save her? Or could another child live longer?
A bridge to transplant
Alyssa's parents rushed her to an Orlando hospital on Jan. 31 after she could not stop vomiting. At one point, her heart had stopped for 52 minutes.
Doctors diagnosed her with a rare and fatal heart disorder that was irreparable.
The revelation led to more questions that would continue over the next four months as Alyssa was transferred to All Children's, which has a team of pediatric surgeons.
Was her brain damaged during the time her heart had stopped?
Was there an infection?
Were her lungs and kidneys functioning?
Yes to any of them would have made Alyssa a risky candidate for a transplant, Jacobs said.
To buy time, he turned to an experimental mechanical device called a Berlin Heart. It would do the work of Alyssa's heart, pumping blood to the body.
Doctors call the machine a "bridge" to transplant.
But as doctors at All Children's Hospital waited for the device - not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and manufactured in Germany - Alyssa had a stroke.
A donor heart would stand a better chance with another child.
"Sometimes we build bridges, but we do not have any place to go, " said the Rev. David C. Gerber, the director of pastoral care at All Children's and the chairman of the hospital's ethics review committee.
On Feb. 8, Alyssa was removed from the transplant waiting list.
An experimental heart
Using the Berlin Heart is far from routine. The cost of the procedure is exorbitant.
All Childrens's chief executive Gary Carnes said Alyssa's medical bills already top more than a $1-million, and over her lifetime, will soar at least $1-million more.
Before the operation, Carnes called the head of the hospital where Alyssa's mother works as a nurse to check on insurance.
"The child is the priority, " Carnes said. "We treat every child." The hospital spent nearly $16-million on free care last year, officials said.
The Berlin Heart itself, which sits on the outside of a child, costs $100, 000. A team from Germany was flown in to assist with the procedure on Alyssa.
The device cannot be reused.
Since it was first introduced in 2000, the Berlin Heart has been used fewer than 100 times in the United States and just twice in Florida.
Nine-year-old Alexzander Wood received the first Berlin Heart in Florida at a Gainesville hospital last September.
It kept him alive for 145 days until he received a new heart three months ago, said his grandmother Margot Wood.
"It was a remarkable thing to see, " she said. "To see the blood running down this tube, knowing it was his heart. We knew we didn't have a chance any other way."
So who gets the device?
There are about 200 heart transplants on children 10 and younger in the U.S. each year, and another 40 to 60 children who die waiting for a donor heart, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, the group that tracks transplants.
But the Berlin Heart may be used just two dozen times a year across the country, doctors say.
Most children do not need the mechanical device to stay alive, said Dr. F. Jay Fricker, chief of the division of pediatric cardiology at the University of Florida's College of Medicine.
"It's the only thing available to small children, " Fricker said. "But it's not for everyone."
In St. Petersburg, Jacobs had been looking for candidates for the procedure since 2005.
But until Alyssa, there hadn't been a match. Unlike most other children in her situation, she couldn't be kept alive with medicine. And her organs were still functioning.
CAT scans also showed the damage to her brain from the stroke was minimal.
Alyssa received the Berlin Heart on Feb. 23 and it made her stronger. About a week later Alyssa was put back on the transplant waiting list.
Within days, there was a heart.
The news led to another tough choice.
The device had worked so well that Alyssa's own heart had showed signs of improvement.
Alyssa, doctors said, may not need a transplant after all.
"We had two doses of good news but needed to make a big decision for Alyssa, " her father, Alastair Thomas, wrote to family members in an online journal.
"We reviewed our options and decided to reject the heart."
The dreaded words
Days later came devastating news: Alyssa's heart would not repair on its own. Shortly after that, Jacobs made an even worse discovery. A second CAT scan showed brain damage.
"We can't put a heart in, " Jacobs recalled telling Alyssa's family.
"Unless things change dramatically, there's nothing we can do."
Jacobs, who has worked at All Children's for nine years and performed 2, 500 operations, talks about the point when a doctor has to relinquish hopes of saving a life. He wouldn't say if he was there in this case.
What happened next neared on a miracle, Jacobs said.
Alyssa's brain recovered. And after living 75 days with the Berlin Heart, she received a donor heart on April 28.
A week ago, Alyssa left All Children's. She's in rehab in Tampa.
On Friday, Jacobs stood at the bedside of another child in his care. He comforted 23-month-old James Lynn of Naples after performing open heart surgery on him to remove a blockage in the main artery of his heart.
"There's a limited number of these hearts, " Jacobs said. "Ninety-six percent of the patients I operate on go home alive. Once a month someone's not going to live."
The difference, he said, can be razor-thin.
Aaron Sharockman can be reached at email@example.com or (727) 892-2273.
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text:
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the force of the social and moral prohibitions against it, incest was a relatively common motif in early American literature, occurring most frequently in novels of the time. The fascination with incest was associated strongly with a call for a social order proper to the newly independent and still largely "uncivilized" nation. The frequent and diverse use of this theme suggests its symbolic power both in sentimental novels toward the beginning of the century and in gothic novels later on. The most common form of actual or potential incest occurs between siblings, whose sexual union typically is narrowly averted as the truth is revealed at the last possible moment. Early American novels assumed a stern tone with regard to incest: In works such as William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy (1789), neither party involved is granted forgiveness, even if the actions are a result of ignorance. Instead, both parties either succumb to tragic deaths from shock, suicide, or other violent means; they fall victim to such afflictions as madness; or they are punished by exile or ostracism. Toward the mid-nineteenth century, as the family unit stabilized within larger population centers and a greater proportion of society found themselves with both the time and the financial security to enjoy the luxury of reading, sensationalistic, or pulp, fiction rose in popularity. Plots revolving around internal family dynamics, particularly those about the "mentionable unmentionable"—incest—quickly became thrilling favorites.
A central preoccupation of many works of literature in nineteenth-century America was the stability of the social order. The incest theme illuminated the danger of fragmentation of the family, the basic unit of social order. In nineteenth-century literature, the incestuous family is often motherless, and includes a male member who violates a sister or daughter. Typically, the incestuous situation originates with the sexual indiscretions of the father, who begets an illegitimate daughter, casts her off, and thus unknowingly sets up his son's potential incestuous connection with his own half-sister. The experience is so catastrophic—usually concluding with the deaths of those involved—that it literally destroys the family. And often the destruction is blamed on the father. According to Anne Dalke (1988), the "early American father is not only prime sufferer in his children's misfortune, but prime cause of their suffering as well." At times, the father, too, is haunted by his sins, as he finds himself involved in an incestuous relationship with his own daughter.
In many gothic nineteenth-century works, including those of Edgar Allan Poe, this destruction of the family is often literal. In Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839), for example, the incestuous family is doomed by its geographic isolation; the house is literally "closed in" by the surrounding lake. Secluded in this way, according to James B. Twitchell (1987), the Usher siblings "are hermetically sealed in the cocoon of family. For them there can be no sexual excursions beyond the family border and so they must collapse in on themselves." This literal destruction is also found in Charles Brockden Brown's novel Wieland (1798), in which the father carries a mysterious curse out of Europe into the New World and then dies, leaving his son and daughter orphans. In time, Theodore, perhaps having inherited the curse, begins confusing his new wife with his sister. He ultimately murders his wife, placing the body in his sister's bed, then kills himself.
This concern with the destruction of the family—and more specifically, with paternal authority—was firmly tied to a deep anxiety over the instability of America's social hierarchy. Many early writers feared the ease with which Americans moved between social strata, and related these fears in sexual terms. In fiction, this usually took one of two forms: in one, a male character chooses to marry a poor woman from a lower class, and she invariably turns out to be his illegitimate half-sister; in another, an older man attempts to seduce a poor, young woman, and she eventually is revealed as his illegitimate daughter. Many critics see these scenarios as metaphoric pleas for a return to a time when the elder males of society—members of the established upper class—understood and maintained their roles as benevolent protectors of their inferiors, and thus ensured a stable and secure hierarchical social structure. At the same time, however, some writers viewed the past as corrupt and questioned whether or not inhabitants of America were doomed to pay throughout eternity for the sins of their fathers. Responding to their country's rejection of England and its attempts to establish an independent culture and society, many writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, treated incest as the inability to escape the wrongs of the past in order to forge an unsullied future. For instance, Hawthorne's story "Alice Doane's Appeal" (1835) treats the deep affection a brother feels for his sister. Some critics claim that by treating these possibly incestuous feelings, coupled with another plotline involving a long-lost brother and his sexual interest in the same sister, Hawthorne attempted to instill in his readers feelings of guilt and shame over the past and the need for a sense of moral responsibility for the future. In addition, critics claim, Hawthorne went one step further by bringing into the story his own family's involvement in the past: Hawthorne includes a scene in which a ghostly pageant features the founding fathers of Salem represented as demons and damned souls. As Frederick C. Crews (1966) states: The "idea of past generations here is in keeping with the story's theme; in some tentative, unformulated sense, ancestry is associated with incestry."
The uniquely nineteenth-century American treatment of incest thus most often concerns itself with social issues—whether personal, such as the desires within an individual family—or political, including the hierarchical structure of society. Few novels or short stories of the time feature female narrators relating the incident or danger of incest, and even fewer question the gender roles that dominated the century and that, to some extent, cultivated and idealized the incestuous relationship. Still, the use of incest as a particularly dangerous form of human relation illuminates the extent to which nineteenth-century authors focused on the interaction of authority and desire in relationships between men and women.
Representative Works
Charles Brockden Brown
Wieland; or, The Transformation (novel) 1798
William Hill Brown
The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature (novel) 1789
Ira and Isabella: or, The Natural Children (novel) 1807
James Fenimore Cooper
Home as Found (novel) 1838
Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Alice Doane's Appeal" (short story) 1835
Herman Melville
Pierre: or, the Ambiguities (novel) 1852
Edgar Allan Poe
"The Fall of the House of Usher" (short story) 1839
Susanna Haswell Rowson
"Marian and Lydia" (short story) 1791
Charlotte's Daughter (novel) 1828
Susan Warner
The Wide, Wide World (novel) 1892
Sarah Sayward Wood
Julia and the Illuminated Baron (novel) 1800
James B. Twitchell (essay date 1987)
SOURCE: "'The Disease of the Last of the Ushers': Incest in Nineteenth-Century American Culture," in Forbidden Partners: The Incest Taboo in Modern Culture, Columbia University Press, 1987, pp. 185-219.
[In the following essay, Twitchell examines the incest taboo in the context of a developing American social order, which chronologically coincided with the rise of the gothic novel.]
Thus the basic question becomes: Why, by and large, don't human beings like it [incest] much? Why, in the vast majority of societies, do they take some trouble, however vague, to discourage incestuous unions, even though most human beings are probably not going to indulge in such unions? … Unease and avoidance seem to be the common denominators—not fierce desire held in check by even fiercer sanctions or lust reined in by the power of taboo. The universal root phenomenon appears to be the ease with which it rouses our unease.—Robin Fox, The Red Lamp of Incest
If the unease we feel in contemplating incest is partially cultural, and if culture carries these feelings from generation to generation through the creation of a shared grammar, will different verbal texts from different cultures betray different methods of avoidance? If the taboo is ideological, will different political and economic systems generate different expressions? Will there even be observable variances within similar cultures as to how unease is communicated? Will stories of family romance be different, characteristic of their culture? More specifically, if we look at early modern American culture, will it differ from the English culture of the same period in how incest behavior is coded?
Toward the end of Chateaubriand's René, the eponymic protagonist sets out to the new world full of melancholy hope that he may find temporary palliative for his suicidal depression. He has fallen in love with his sister, Amelia, who has been locked away forever in a convent. René heads westward to the land of starting over, the land of dreams, the land where everything can be forgiven, and almost everything forgotten, the land where there is no personal, national, or racial past. He heads off into the American wilderness. And what does he find? He finds Chactas, an Indian chief, as natural a man as Rousseau could ever have imagined, living as pastoral a life as any poet could have desired, and Father Souel, a missionary who has come to the Mississippi lands to teach the Indians how to live the European way. René tells the old chief and the wise Father his story of woe. Instead of comforting the lad, these wise men scold him, tell him he has been a fool, and assure him he will find no comfort here. Father Souel makes it clear to his young countryman that this land of manifold opportunities is not the land of infinite alternatives. He tells René to pack his things and go home:
Nothing in your story deserves the pity you are now being shown. I see a young man infatuated with illusions, satisfied with nothing, withdrawn from the burdens of society, and wrapped up in idle dreams…. Your sister has atoned for her sin, but if I must speak frankly, I fear that through some terrible justice, that confession, emerging from the depths of the tomb, has in turn stirred up your own soul. What do you do all alone in the woods using up your days and neglecting all your duties? You will tell me that saints have retired to the wilderness. Yes, but they were there weeping and subduing their passions, while you seem to be wasting your time inflaming your own…. Whoever has been endowed with talent must devote it to serving his fellow men, for if he does not make use of it, he is first punished by an inner misery, and sooner or later Heaven visits on him a fearful retribution.
The wise chief tells the young European the mixed message of the new world: its tolerance is matched only by its abomination of aberration.
My son, he [Father Souel] speaks severely to both of us; he is reprimanding the old man and the young, and he is right. Yes, you must give up this strange life, which holds nothing but care. Happiness can be found only in the common paths. (pp. 112-113)
René returns home to France and to his wife and unhappiness. Thus, the literary work that introduced incest as a subject of romantic inquiry into Europe ends with the final American response, "You can't do that on our shores."
It may be ironic, but not unpredictable, that American culture, which for the better part of two hundred years has prided itself, even boasted, of its independence from oppressive ancestral traditions, has been in many instances the most supportive of the traditional forms it spurned. Nowhere is this better seen than in family matters. American concepts of domestic relations are often contradictory and short-lived. On the one hand we have stressed the importance of individual choice, of "breaking away," of each generation bettering the previous, of melting-pot diversity. On the other hand we have enforced role behavior, prolonged adolescence, partially abetted the generation gap, fueled xenophobia, and tolerated, at times encouraged, racial and religious barriers we professed to have abolished. The paradox of the last few decades in which beatniks, hippies, and now punks live side by side with "togetherness," the Jesus movement, and jingoism, characterized nineteenth-century culture as well. All Western heterogeneous societies have such diversities and contradictions. The degrees, however, are different.
American domestic boundaries may have occasioned such concern both to maintain and to violate because, with no past and with the clear and present danger of the wilderness before us, we were tempted to exaggerate what we had and did not have. At first this struggle took the form of the bizarre confrontation between Roger Williams and John Cotton over, among other things, family patterns and rights. It would later unfold in the movement west, in race relations, and now in our sense of the nuclear family. As long as there was plenty of room to go around, if you disapproved of your neighbor's conduct, or your own family's, you could move on. By the nineteenth century, however, new land east of the Appalachians had run out. The Renés were sent home, or far across the Mississippi.
For the most part, the struggle over social boundaries had less to do with inherited patterns or with ecclesiastical polity than with economic necessity. The financial panic of 1837 and the transformation from an agrarian to an industrial state had dislocated families, forcing them west or back into population centers. The political upheaval of Jacksonian democracy was extending the concept of nation over state over family and was having profound implications, as we see in the reactionary prose of Thoreau, Emerson, and even Cooper. The industrial revolution was having its impact on what held families together. Separation anxiety, parental love, habit, tradition, and mutual fears were now joined by the possibility of economic gain. American families were different. Those who were not born to wealth could become rich.
In a sense, the promise of organizing the family anew in order to achieve wealth continued the debate between Salem and Provincetown, except that economics replaced religion and the geography of conflict had moved. By the 1830s the literal confrontation was between the axis of Boston and southern New England on the one hand, and, on the other, familylike communities scattered on the near frontier of Pennsylvania and Ohio to the west, and upper New York and southern Vermont to the north. Not by happenstance did Coleridge and Robert Southey intend to head to the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to start their Pantisocracy based on the communal ownership of everything including each other, for they knew of the experiments in family living that were occurring on the near frontier. As the California coast has become to us today, so the rolling hills of the upper New England states and the eastern Midwest were to the early nineteenth century—a place sufficiently far away to be safe, yet close enough to be noticed.1 With the exception of the Mormons, experimental American communities rarely headed out into the real wilderness. What they did was best done almost in private. They did, after all, have a point to make, and that point almost always had to do with showing both their financial success and the corruption of their neighbors.2
A two-day trek north of Boston in the early nineteenth century would have taken you close to one of the most interesting attempts to deal with the domestic and economic problems of the disease of modern life—an attempt to literally establish the fictional family designs of English romanticism. Of all the Utopian communities that sprang up along the periphery, such as the Shakers, Amish, and Hutterites, none was more important in reconfiguring the modern family than the Putney, Vermont, commune of John Humphrey Noyes. Noyes had seen the problem of the fracturing family and he proposed the obvious return to pure forms. If God was the father of man, and if we were all his precious children, then our relationships should be those of siblings—all our relationships. Noyes was one of the few to confront the specific sexual ramifications of the argument, which has the elegance of the Elizabethan world picture, that our little human world reflects His larger and perfect one.
The Perfectionists, as Noyes humbly called his group, were not the first to learn that propagation à la the angels was difficult. His immediate predecessors in resolving this prickly matter, the Shakers, had already learned what reproductive problems were engendered by literally being in the family of God. Celibacy was their answer, not so much as the result of logic as of the sexual phobias and inhibitions of their founder, Ann Lee. Still, it was clear that for any "little family" to evolve it somehow would have to gain members. The conjugal bed might be "made of embers," as Mrs. Lee reported of her own, but in the frontier commune the alternative to embers was to be frozen forever in one nonreproducing family.
So, literally like the angels, the Shakers added to their family horizontally. They adopted family members, be they orphans or converts. As many modern communes have discovered, the family hierarchy is too strong to subvert, so it must be built upon. Mother was Mrs. Lee, still called "Mother Ann," and "Father" was her own brother William—a substitution that was in no literal way sexual, but nevertheless must have posed a psychological problem. For all the members were their "children." Mixed into this was the mythic older brother, temporarily missing in the flesh but alive in the spirit, Jesus Christ, whose relationship to Mother Ann must have given the family, as both followers and children, another moment of confusion.
It was just this kind of confusion that John Humphrey Noyes wanted to resolve. From the romantics he found inspiration, from Christianity he drew the outlines, and from the Shakers he observed an invaluable example. Noyes adopted many of their organizational practices. After all, he was going to apply the most modern methods of efficiency to communal life and would not make the Shaker mistake of planned anachronism. When it came to the problem of siblings breeding, he resolved the dilemma by fiat.3 He proposed "universal marriage"—all men henceforth would be married to all women, and, it should be stressed, all women married to all men, at least initially. Charmingly, he called the process "omnigamy." Noyes explains:
In a holy community there is no more reason why sexual intercourse should be restrained by love, than why eating and drinking should be, and there is as little occasion for shame in the one case as in the other…. The guests of the marriage supper may have each his favourite dish, each a dish of his own procuring, and that without the jealousy of exclusiveness. I call a certain woman my wife; she is yours; she is Christ's; and in Him she is the bride of all saints. She is dear in the hands of a stranger, and according to my promise to her I rejoice.4
Having Christ as the buffering agent intellectually detoxified any threat of forbidden encounters, but Noyes was sensitive enough to realize that intellectual explanations only satisfy intellectuals. What happens when thinking turns to doing? His method of deflecting the psychological inhibitions as well as the physical threat of inbreeding was accomplished by his self-touted system of "male continence." Males would be allowed to treat all women like sisters, and all sisters like women, only after they had proved themselves able to treat no woman as a wife. In other words, he proposed sex without orgasm. Although Noyes claimed his success was achieved by the conscious constriction of the seminal ducts, it seems more likely that coitus interruptus was simply given new emphasis.
Whether or not sibling incest occurred within the intrepid band that Noyes collected in the southern Vermont woods is now beside the point. At the time, however, this was the only point. One of the reasons the people around Putney were so eager to rid themselves of the Perfectionists was that they could not countenance such sexual deviance so close by. In the first small commune of some twenty people were Noyes's own brother and two sisters, and two brothers-in-law. The probabilities of inbreeding were too great to be overlooked. Noyes's explanation of "complex marriage," of "omnigamy," and of "male continence" may have satisfied commune members. They may have believed him when he said: "The only plausible objection to amative intercourse between near relations, founded on the supposed law of nature that 'breeding in and in' deteriorates offspring [thus had been] removed."5 But the neighbors needed convincing. The Noyes Bible Group was driven out—the proffered charge was adultery; the implied charge was incest.
The Perfectionists went deeper into the hinterlands, into upstate New York, where in relative peace they turned their prodigious energies away from explaining to others and to themselves, and started to behave like Americans. They first manufactured animal traps and then formed a joint stock company to produce flat silverware. How ironic that today we should remember them only by the trade name of the flatware (Oneida) we usually give to celebrate the one institution Noyes abhorred above all—marriage.
Whatever their differences, the romantic movement and fundamental Christianity were similar in almost demanding adult mimicry of childlike relationships. Both stressed the model of idealized childhood as the centerpiece of faith. The success, limited as it now seems, both of the Shakers and the Perfectionists testifies to the profound desire of people under stress to return to simpler states of familial interaction. Here in nineteenth-century America the spirit of Shelleyan romanticism was made flesh. Not only was the language of recognition full of "brothers" and "sisters," but the dress (bloomers, frocks, pantalets) as well as the diurnal habits of sleeping and eating separately, imitated the idealized family of childhood memories. To a psycho-historian these may seem regressionary methods of coping, but to an economist they can be remarkably efficient. If only sex had not become mixed up in family relationships Noyes's vision might have proved prophetic. Even now his words retain their peculiar logic:
Love between the children of God, is exalted and developed by a motive similar to that which produces ordinary family affection … the exciting cause is not sexuality … but the fact that the parties have one Father…. The sons and daughters of God, must have even a stronger sense of blood-relationship than ordinary brothers and sisters, because the Spirit of the Father… is always renewing their consciousness of unity with him and with each other. Marriage, in the world, requires a man to "leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife." But the sons and daughters of God can never leave their Father and Mother. Of course, the paramount sexual affection, required by the law of marriage, can have no place among them. They live as children with their Father forever, and the paramount affection of the household is … brotherly love, an affection that grows directly out of the common relationship to the Father, and of course is as universal as that relationship…. This affection as it exists between the different sexes is necessarily unlimited as to number. A brother may love ten sisters, or a sister ten brothers, according to the customs of the world. The exclusiveness of marriage does not enter the family circle. But heaven is a family circle; and … brotherly love … takes the place of supremacy which their matrimonial affection occupies in this world.6
But sex did become involved; incest was a threat, and, when confronted, Noyes had to admit its clear and present danger. Pressed, as he was in his Essay on Scientific Propagation, he attempted to transform this supposed weakness into a strength. Noyes argued, almost forgetting his vaunted prophylactic method of "male continence," that although
it must be conceded that, in the present state of human passions and institutions, there are many and great difficulties in the way of our going back to the natural simplicity of the Hebrew fathers or forward to the scientific simplicity of the cattlebreeders, yet it is important to know and remember that these difficulties are not physiological, but sentimental … in the pure races, such as the European aristocracies and the Jews … vital power and beauty have been the result of close interbreeding.7
Argue as he might, the threat still remained. And that threat, together with encroaching "civilization," forced these Utopians (numbering now about two hundred) to once again disband. If Noyes had followed his fellow Vermonter Joseph Smith out into the real wilderness of Utah, he might have been able to stabilize his community and perhaps to survive. However, the Latter Day Saints never restructured the family in such a way as to make sibling intercourse a possibility. Polygamy is tame compared to the "complex families" envisioned by Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Humphrey Noyes.
If Noyes had had to depend on the American intellectual community for support of his "errand into the wilderness," he would have been in still more desperate straits—quite possibly he never would have made it out of Vermont. Had his "city upon the hill," his American Eden, been outside Boston, he most probably would have been arrested. Note that Brook Farm was almost closed down by its neighbors, even though the Institute for Agriculture and Education had presented no sexual ambiguities; in fact, there was little sexual activity at all. Although the more intense battle of individual versus state freedoms was to be fought throughout the century, the battle over family organization was short-lived. The patriarchs clearly won.
As with their English counterparts, the radical spokesmen of American romanticism—Thoreau, Whitman, and Emerson—were men who had little or no family of their own. It is of more than passing interest that the American intellectuals who advocated the most sweeping rearrangement of the family were a self-advertised recluse, a homosexual, and a man who was an extremely passive parent and distant husband. In revolutionizing family matters often those with the least family were the most confident in deciding how others should live. They spoke with the confidence of inexperience.8
The American artists who did indeed concentrate on family interactions were not philosophers, not the transcendental stockholders of the "Brook Farm Institute for Agriculture and Culture," but were rather the emotional and intellectual descendants of John Cotton—modern Puritans. For them the family was the anchor of self and thus the center of their fiction. The introspective impulse was vitalized in the fiction of the first American novelist, William Hill Brown; it continued through the first important early gothicist, Charles Brockden Brown, and then unfolded in the central works of nineteenth-century American literature—works by Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. These Americans were all family men and they all took the family as a central subject of their fiction. In their make-believe families it is clear that they would tolerate little aberrant behavior. If experimentation did occur, it would be quickly suppressed. Fundamental codes would be enforced at the expense of individual freedom. In an economic sense, good business practices would prevail. The "new man," the corporate man, backed by a stable family, would make sure that the John Humphrey Noyeses of the world stay not just on the frontier, but far off in the deepest woods.
To see how this strain of American Puritanism energized, subverted, and finally repressed family romance, I will return to the central prohibition of family life, incest, and trace how it functions from the first native novel, William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, through the Schauerromans, to temporarily play itself out in the works of Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville. Although I will only briefly discuss the incest theme in modern American literature, I do not argue that this is the dominant theme of American letters, but it certainly is one of the most dynamic and, until recently, one of the most neglected. To a considerable extent the frisson of incest inspired many of the greatest works of American romanticism as well as some of the most awkward.
The transformation of the European romance tradition first into the gothic, and then into the hybrid of the American gothic, was of degree rather than kind. The story remained the same—young people under sexual stress. Viewpoints, participants, and conclusions were just shifted by crucial degrees. Although many critics have argued that "the American experience" led to a unique view of family life more informed by capitalism, or the frontier, or puritanism, or narcissism, than by biology, such singularity is not borne out.9 These are mitigating factors, to be sure, but the peculiar shade cast on the family romance by the "dark" introspective American romantics from Brown to O'Neill was not as much the result of their personal perceptions as it was the gradual evolution in Western culture toward greater concentration on intrafamilial dynamics. One need only read the works of Schiller, De Sade, Müllner, Tieck, Alfieri, and later Wagner, to realize that the situation on the Continent was in many respects like that in America. The industrial revolution that allowed a quick economic escape from family often produced just the opposite result. Families needed to stay close together to consolidate their gains, but not too close. Literature, both serious and popular, reflected this need. The sentimental tradition gave way to the budding gothic, which in turn carried the macabre. The family matrix, cemented for generations by the inability of members to get loose, now risked collapsing in upon itself.
Montague Summers, one of the first catalogers of the gothic, once slyly commented that to make a sentimental tale gothic, all an author need do was substitute a castle for a house, a snarling baron for a father, a knight for a boyfriend, a ghost for an attorney, a witch for a housekeeper, and a midnight murder for marriage. A slight exaggeration here, a minor change there, and tears could be changed into shivers. The only constant was the role of the central protagonist—the young female. The heroine remains forever the center of concentration, for it is always the violation of her privacy that charges our response.10 In the transformation of the sentimental into the "low" gothic, the violator need only be changed from boyfriend to baron to brother. However, for the macabre, the "high" gothic, the shift must be made from brother to father.
What the Americans did to this story line was to compress the nuclear family and excise all the satellite characters. The witch/housekeeper, ghost/attorney, and all the supernumeraries are removed to lesser, or nonexistent roles. The "home" or castle is isolated by surrounding wilderness, and the internal pressure is increased until matters, and occasionally even characters, spontaneously combust. Call it Mettingen, Saddle Meadows, Usher, Yoknapatawpha, the centrifugal forces placed on a usually motherless family as the male sexual violation of daughter/sister is no longer threatened, but often realized, caused a catastrophe so complete that finally nothing of the family remains. Let the English mythologize incest as did Byron, or metaphysicalize it as did Shelley, the nineteenth-century American experience is uniformly horrible, irrepressibly gothic, maybe even characteristically pragmatic.
But not always. Because the exception, while not always proving the rule, at least shows where the rule is supposed to apply, I should like to examine first an overlooked work by a central nineteenth-century American artist—a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Spectacles. Although ostensibly The Spectacles satirizes the sentimental tradition of "love at first sight," it shows as well those aspects of human behavior usually only exposed under the dark cloud of the gothic. The plot of The Spectacles was not original with Poe; it had a history as an American tall tale. Clearly, Poe was drawn to expanding its salty humor as a potboiler for the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. Just as clearly, judging from his lengthy revisions, once he became involved, he could not let it go until he had touched a nerve, a rather particular nerve.
The Spectacles is told to us by a foppish man-about-town who is attempting to enter fashionable society. First, he has changed his name in order to inherit a small fortune from a distant relative. Once "Napoleon Buonaparte Froissart," a respectable enough French name even in the Colonies, he has become simply Mr. "Simpson."11 Still, the exchange was certainly worth it, for what he might have sacrificed in presumptuous name, he more than made up for not just in his current bank account, but in future economic expectations as well. After all, in this country money makes money.
All Mr. Simpson now lacks is the proper lady friend to help him consolidate the gain via matrimony and, at the opera, he thinks he has found one. He spies the aristocratic Eugenie Lalande sitting off at a distance; it is love at first sight. She is the very essence of polite society, complete with sequined gown, a young female companion and opera glasses. Both Simpson and Mme. Lalande are terribly nearsighted. Mme. Lalande solves her problem by bringing her opera glasses; he is too proud to do so. As their myopic eyes meet, he is enraptured: "This was my first love—so I felt it to be. It was love supreme—indescribable. It was 'love at first sight'; and at first sight too, it had been appreciated and returned" (p. 895). What is returned, of course, is only her dim vision of him, but like a Platonic lover gone berserk, that is all the encouragement he needs. Simpson has become "possessed" and is as monomaniacal in his devotion to her vision as his brother narrators in Morella, Bernice, and Ligeia would be toward their inamoratas.
Unlike his other fictional incarnations, however, Simpson keeps his distance, first from diffidence and then from bashfulness. Finally when Eugenie takes a trip out of town he is convinced he must act. After loving her from afar, he approaches and gushes a proposal of marriage. She is literally aghast, asks him to please reconsider, to step back and have another look, but he will have none of it. He will not be restrained:
"My sweetest Eugenie," I cried, "what is all this about which you are discoursing? Your years surpass in some measure my own. But what then? The customs of the world are so many conventional follies. To those who love as ourselves, in what respect differs a year from an hour? I am twentytwo, you say; granted: indeed you may as well call me, at once twenty-three. Now you yourself, my dearest Eugenie, can have numbered no more than—can have numbered no more than—no more than—than—than—than—." (p. 903)
Simpson obviously hopes she will interrupt to tell him her age, but she doesn't. Instead, she only asks if he will please use her opera glasses, her "little ocular assistant," to be sure his vision is clear. But no, his vision is clear enough. Again, she entreats; he refuses. Rather like the narrator of The Cask of Amontillado leading dumb Fortunato down the stairs asking him at every landing if he wishes to continue, Mme. Lalande repeats her offer. In desperation she forces him to take the glasses. He puts them aside until too late.
Almost too late; after all, this is not a horror story but a tall tale. Simpson waits until his wedding day to use the glasses and only then when almost at the altar does he realize his fiancée is an elderly matron. The sight is, in his own words, "horrific": '"You wretch!' said I catching my breath—'you—you—you villainous old hag!'" To which she exclaims that she may be old (in fact, 82 years old), but "hag" she is not. She is the grand dame of a prestigious family, the Froissarts. Dumbfounded, Simpson, aka Froissart, screams hysterically, as he now realizes that he has married his great-great-grand-mother!
The marriage is mysteriously annulled. The materfamilias is understanding if not forgiving, and offers him instead the hand of her lovely young consort: "a distant and exceedingly lovely relative of her second husband's—a Madame Stephanie Lalande" (p. 914). This is the marriage to be consummated with the complete blessing of the family. Any possible horror has been dissipated and the sentimental resolution has carried the day. Or has it? Look again, for as Daniel Hoffman noted Foissart
doesn't have to marry his great, great, grandmother. He married his cousin. Even if we smile at Poe's impostor, aren't we struck by the consanguinity which afflicts his suitor? How curious that his faulty vision leads so precipitously toward incest! And the happy resolution only mitigates somewhat the closeness of the attachment of his heart for a member of his mother's blood.12
Even keeping in mind that Stephanie is not really consanguineous because she is from the great, great, grandmother's husband's family, the point is still well taken. For all the posturing and punning, for all the folderol and foppery, the focus of the story returns us again to the magnetic attraction, the blind attraction, of a young man and his love of/at first sight, his mother, or, in this case, his barely displaced mother. Yes, he will "marry" Stephanie, but his heart is elsewhere. Admittedly, he finally ends with his cousin, his "mother's" consort, in a sense, his sister. Little wonder that Poe should have revised and diluted the relationships, but for all the sublimation and effacement, certain family relationships cannot be erased. After all, it is just these currents that provide the frisson, that excite our interest. The Spectacles concludes when our Hero accepts both his proper Leander, as well as his proper economic and social place in the family—the Froissart family:
Nevertheless I am not the husband of my great, great, grandmother; and this is a reflection which affords me infinite relief;—but I am the husband of Madame Lalande—of Madame Stephanie Lalande—with whom my good old relative, besides making me her sole heir when she dies—if she ever does—has been at the trouble of concocting me a match. In conclusion: I am done forever with billets doux, and am never to be met without SPECTACLES. (p. 916)
When Poe wrote this jeu d'esprit in the 1840s, he was well aware of the melodrama that lurked within his subject especially when the tale was played out in the New World. The mistake of a newly minted American of distinct European background, who allows his ardor to settle on a member of his own family, would be told again and again. It would be told more than a century later in a work Poe himself would surely have been proud of—Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Although we usually think that this theme was only exploited after Poe, actually, other American writers had already pulled back the curtains of family life. What they saw was always shocking. In fact, in the first extended American novel, William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy; or the Triumph of Nature, published in 1789 just at the appearance of English gothicism, there is a sibling relationship that ushers in what, with Poe, will become the most famous family implosion.
At the commencement of American prose fiction, William Hill Brown inadvertently shows how much of the nascent American gothic was informed by Richardsonian romance. The central subplot of The Power of Sympathy traces the ill-fated love of a Lovelacean Harrington and his almost-Clarissa, Harriot. Harrington is a rogue whose plan is "to take this beautiful sprig [Harriot], and transplant it to a more favorable soil, where it shall flourish and blossom under my own auspices. In a word, I mean to remove this fine girl into an elegant apartment, of which she herself is to be the sole mistress" (1, letter #3, p. 17).13 However well laid his plans of sexual exploitation may have been, her beauty soon transforms his sexual lust into domestic desire. He proposes marriage—the conqueror has been conquered, the victimizer has become victim. Although she is an orphan and destitute, he will make her a place in the world, give her a name, father her a family.
But just as the happy couple are about to stroll altarward, they meet plot complication number three, which turns the sentimental into the gothic. They learn that, because of a paternal indiscretion, they are brother and sister. Drawn together by "the Power of Sympathy" they are now split asunder by "the Triumph of Nature." Although Harriot had earlier assured us that the "link of Nature " had drawn them together, they now learn that Nature will not tolerate this particular "link" (2, letter #50, p. 113). They should have known what they could not have known. Too late Harrington blurts: '"Had I known her to be my sister, my love would have been more regular—I should have loved her as a sister—I should have marked her beauty—I should have delighted in protecting it'" (2, letter #55, p. 127). And too late Harriot confesses, "'O! I sink, I die, when I reflect—when I find in my Harrington a brother—I am penetrated with inexpressible grief—I experience uncommon sensations—I start with horror at the idea of incest—of ruin—of perdition'" (2, letter #50, pp. 109-110). The curtain has fallen: Harriot dies from shock; Harrington by his own hand....
(The entire section is 14658 words.)
Further Reading
Barnett, Louise K. "American Novelists and the 'Portrait of Beatrice Cenci'." The New England Quarterly 53, No. 2 (June 1980): 168-83.
Traces the use of the portrait and narrative of Beatrice Cenci—"the embodiment of victimization and crime on the level of the most ancient and absolute taboos, those against incest and parricide"—in the work of Hawthorne, Melville and Edith Wharton.
Becker, Allienne R. "'Alice Doane's Appeal': A Literary Double of Hoffman's Die Elixieredes Teufels." Comparative Literature Studies 23, No. 1 (Spring 1986): 1-11.
Examines the similarities between Hawthorne's...
(The entire section is 532 words.)


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|Lost C3RV Cork 5'8 Surfboard - C3RV-0123 in Epoxy/Sand/Color
Style: C3RV-0123
"The latest in our quest for the ultimate Domesticated design. The RV is exactly as its name implies A Recreational Vehicle. Designed for extracting maximum fun with minimum effort and ease of exploitation of your precious free time If you want to cruise the coast in style and comfort, surf in a resplendent state of wave catching excess and bliss, then the R.V. is for you. The design stems from a blend of the Bottom Feeder/Couch Potato/LayZtoy genre. Noticeable updates include the double wing flyers added to the tail, to reduce surface area and increase bite and precision in turns. Tahe reduced surface area adds confidence of not sliding out in hard snaps, and carves. The novice outline has also been tweaked to reduce some are in the forward 12-18″ of the board, but without reducing drive down the line or paddle ability. The nose feels like it comes around quicker in turns and looks and feels, like more of a performance design. Get on an R.V. and enjoy your recreational time like you never knew you could!" - Lost.
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Mr. VersatilityFrom 10K to 50 miles, Max King ruled the trail running world, and more
Photo courtesy of XTERRA
2012 featured many jaw-dropping performances—Sage Canaday's White River 50-mile and Mount Washington (7.6 uphill miles) course records, Timothy Olson's Western States 100-miler course record and Kilian Jornet's numerous race wins and adventure runs, and on and on. However, our choice for the open male Trail Runner of the Year was unanimous—Max King.
A Montrail-Mountain Hardwear athlete, King, 32, had a banner 2011, including wins at the World Mountain Running Championships, XTERRA Trail Run National Championship and Lithia Loop Trail Marathon—but his 2012 was off the hook.
Especially impressive was King's September blitz, where he won USATF Trail National Championships with the Flagline 50K in Bend, Oregon, the 21K XTERRA Trail Run National Championships (fifth time) near Ogden, Utah, and the Ultra Race of Champions 100K in Charlottesville, Virginia, running away with the $5000 prize purse.
King's coup de grace, though, came on November 17, with his course-record victory at the 50th running of Maryland's venerable JFK 50-mile, blazing a course-record 5:24:58, a 6:42-per-mile pace.
Underlining his versatility and world-class talent are King's performances at the late-June U.S. Olympic Team Track and Field Trials, where he PRed in both the marathon (2:14:36, 19th place) and 3000-meter steeplechase (8:30:54), taking a very-strong sixth place.
To cap off his phenomenal season, King become the proud father of a new daughter, his second child. He lives in Bend, Oregon, with his wife, Dory, and their children, Hazel Grace and three-and-a-half year old son, Micah.
What are some of your personal 2012 highlights?
There are a lot of them this year but the ones that stand out are sixth at the Olympic Trials in Steeplechase, first at UROC, my first 100K, and first at the JFK 50-miler.
What is your typical training mileage through the year?
It varies quite a bit, from as little as 80 miles per week to 130. I try to get a good amount of hills in each week, though, along with a workout or two to work on speed and/or threshold.
How do you recover?
My body's always been pretty good at recovering on its own but I make sure I eat a good balanced diet, do quite a bit of stretching and strength after running, and, when I have a niggling injury creep up, I jump right on it and get it sorted out.
How do you split your training between roads, trails and track?
This varies, too, depending on my upcoming races. Generally it's going to be about 70-30 trails-road. During track season I'll try to hit the track once or twice a week. Most of my miles are on trail, though. If I'm doing a road race I'll jump on the road a bit more.
Why have you focused on trail running?
Because it's more fun. Plus it helps that I'm good at it. Generally you're going to focus on what you're good at because to some extent that's what makes it fun.
How did you train simultaneously for Olympic Trials and trail races?
With a good fitness base, it's all running so I don't think it makes much difference what event you're doing. With a little specificity you can jump into anything. Obviously it's more complicated than that. It takes years of training for these specific events and getting close to your potential. It seems like the muscle memory and fitness come back fairly quickly as long as the fundamentals are there. Then it takes a few workouts to get that really specific fitness back.


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Here's how RW members rated this race in the past (20 votes).
In short: Challenging race made tougher by the weather!In full: I had been warned to expect hills but this course was tougher than I had expected. The last second change in start direction was unfortunate and saw me start far too close to the front! Enjoyed this race despite the mud, water and hills. Great atmosphere, well organised and challenging course. Would definitely like to do it again on a dryer day!Date of review: November 4, 2012
In short: Good fun, challenging course!In full: Lovely atmosphere, great charity. I enjoyed the course. Enough downhill to make up for the uphills..... :)Date of review: November 8, 2011
In short: Hilly, loved the horses, let's keep away from the A3 next time. In full: Nice organisation at the start and excellent focus on the charIty. Course had some lovely sections with long slow hills and a nice cruise along the ridge at the top. Shame the best downhill was on open public road. Very friendly crowd Lovely raspberry granola bar at the finish!Date of review: November 7, 2011
In short: Tough course but great organistaionIn full: Having run a couple of tough courses described as undulating, the clues were there in a course described as hilly. Nonetheless great atmosphere at extremely well organised race. Despite the hills, only just outside my PB for 10k trail run. Hope the charity did really well - quite moved by the gentleman just prior to the start of the race.Date of review: November 7, 2011
In short: Tough, Up for the first half, down a bit, then up againIn full: A great race; slick organisation, brilliant marshalling and route signage. Tough, tough hills, and a good mix of road, trail, sand, and fields.Highly recommended!! :-) Will be backDate of review: November 7, 2011
In short: A great event for a good causeIn full: More challenging than your standard charity run, this course should keep even seasoned racers happy. Certainly hilly, and a good mix of terrain. Good marshaling and plenty of facilities.Date of review: November 6, 2011
In short: A great race for a great cause, I will be doing this one again. Date of review: November 6, 2011
In short: Challenging hills, very friendly, lovely scenery.Date of review: November 6, 2011
In short: Not my PB but had great time running this race. A couple of hills, (yes i did walk) but was able to run fast down hill so thats great.Date of review: November 6, 2011
In short: Road grass mud tracks sand farms up hill down hill water the lot!In full: My first time out for this and was told by my partner "Its quite flat". When i pressed her about this flat business after the race she then relented and admitted it was 30 something years ago..... when she was five! Hmm. A Charity race for a very special cause which attracted all types of runners. Generally a good atmosphere but then it was run by all about triathlons so that is the norm for them. Well done guys. The only sore point for me was the start where everyone cramed into the start area despite intent on walking it and being right on the line. Others also with no intention of running or having a go took up large swathes of the start area to stand with friends and family. Other than that, the flat fast course didnt appear. Instead it had everything you could think of with hills, roads, mud, sand tracks, real cross country stuff and was very enjoyable.Overall congratulations on a good event and see you next yearDate of review: November 6, 2011
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Sky. Image courtesy of the artists.
This event is expired.
Social Dream Lab
Contemporary culture is awash in the rhetoric of dreams and revolutionary longing. From attempts to revitalize America (the American Dream) and reinvigorate civil rights (the Dream Act) to recent global grassroots movements that imagine a future of social, economic, and environmental justice for all, collective aspirations are being creatively expressed and shared with unprecedented speed and reach. During the month of February 2013, the Kimball Education Gallery will be used as a laboratory for exploring the intersection of individual and shared states of (un)consciousness. Invited guests will include experts from diverse backgrounds who will facilitate dream experiments using both poetic and scientific methodologies. During the month, artists Wilson and Zimmerman will continue research and production for their experimental film Close the Eyes as they further examine both personal and collective dynamics of dreaming and its relationship to larger social and cultural issues of our time.
Throughout the month:
Oneiric Traces: Meditations on the Body in Flight in a State of Somnus led (remotely/online) by artist Holen Kahn.
Dream Exchanges: one-on-oneconversations and creative un/conscious explorations will happen throughout the month with the artists Wilson and Zimmerman
The artists invite you to participate in or observe a dream session. Dream sessions take place on February 9, 10, 14, and 17. To reserve your space, email email@example.com. Drop-ins welcome as long as space is available.
Dream sessions will take place upon Fabric Earth: A Textile Topography, handcrafted by Amber Bieg.


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Perhaps a more fitting subtitle would be "Nintendo Reduces Wii Price for Its Fourth Year".
Nintendo Corp. late on Wednesday confirmed intentions to reduce the price of its Wii game console, the most popular current-generation game system. Considering unprecedented sales of Wii all around the world, Nintendo only reduces price of its console only in its fourth season on the market.
Beginning Sunday, September 27, Nintendo's suggested retail price for its Wii drops by $50 to $199.99. The new $199.99 Wii price point delivers the full Wii gaming experience, including the motion-sensing Wii Remote controller, Nunchuk controller and Wii Sports software. At present Nintendo only cuts Wii price for the U.S. and yet has to confirm whether the company has plans to reduce the price for Asia or Europe.
"Wii has reached more video game players than any game system before because it attracts everyone—both men and women, and people of all ages. Our research shows there are 50 million Americans thinking about becoming gamers, and this more affordable price point and our vast array of new software mean many of them can now make the leap and find experiences that appeal to them, whatever their tastes or level of gaming experience," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing.
Koya Tabata, an analyst with Credit Suisse, production costs of Nintendo Wii have decreased by 45% since its release about two and half years ago. According to estimates published earlier, it cost Nintendo about $160 to make its Wii game console back in late 2006, which means that present fabrication cost of the most popular game machine in this generation can be as low as $88, a truly unbelievable price for a current-generation system that has years of lifespan left.
With such a low manufacturing cost and already reduced price for North America, Nintendo could offer Wii in emerging markets, such as Latin America, which could dramatically widen the addressable market for Nintendo Wii game developers. Some analysts estimate that emerging markets, such as Latin America, Eastern Europe and others represent a billion of potential game console buyers, a massive amount for companies like Microsoft Corp., Nintendo or Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Nintendo Wii features IBM's custom PowerPC architecture-based microprocessor named Broadway clocked at 729MHz and code-named Hollywood chip with built-in graphics core, DSP and I/O features from ATI that operates at 243MHz, earlier reports suggested. Nintendo Wii uses 91MB of memory in total: 23MB of "main" 1T-SRAM, 64MB of "external" 1T-SRAM and 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. Nintendo's Wii does not feature a hard disk drive, instead, it boasts with 512MB of flash memory, but the console also has a SDHC card reader, which allows installing up to 32GB of flash memory.