Silas Dwane House (born August 7, 1971) is an American writer best known for his novels. He is also a music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist. House's fiction is known for its attention to the natural world, working-class characters, and the plight of the rural place and rural people. House is known as a representative for LGBTQ Appalachians and Southerners and is certainly among the most visible LGBTQ people associated with rural America.

Early life and education
House was born in Corbin, Kentucky, and grew up in nearby rural Lily, Laurel County, Kentucky, but he also spent much of his childhood in nearby Leslie County, Kentucky, which he has cited as the basis for the fictional Crow County, which serves as the setting for his first three novels. He has degrees from Eastern Kentucky University (BA in English with emphasis on American literature), and from Spalding University (Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing).  In 2000, House was chosen, along with since-published authors Pamela Duncan, Jeanne Braselton, and Jack Riggs, as one of the ten emerging talents in the south by the Millennial Gathering of Writers at Vanderbilt University.  At the time he was a rural mail carrier.  He sold his first novel shortly thereafter.

Writing
House's first novel, Clay's Quilt, was published in 2001. It appeared briefly on the New York Times Best Seller list and became a word-of-mouth success throughout the Southern United States. It was a finalist for both the Southeast Booksellers' Association fiction award and the Appalachian Writers' Association Book of the Year Award.

He published his novel A Parchment of Leaves in 2003, which became a national bestseller and was nominated for several major awards. The book was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics' Circle Prize and won the Award for Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Chaffin Award for Literature, the Kentucky Novel of the Year Award, and others.

House's next book, The Coal Tattoo (2004), was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics' Circle Prize as well as won the Appalachian Writers' Association Book of the Year Award, the Kentucky Novel of the Year Award, and others. House's work has been championed by such acclaimed writers as Lee Smith, Brad Watson, and Larry Brown, all of whom were mentors for House. Barbara Kingsolver has said in print that House is one of her "favorite writers and favorite human beings" and environmental writer and activist Wendell Berry has expressed his appreciation of House many times, including during an interview with the New York Times

House published Something's Rising with creative nonfiction writer Jason Kyle Howard in March 2009.  The book is a series of profiles of various anti-mountaintop removal activists from the region, including musicians Jean Ritchie and Kathy Mattea, author Denise Giardina, and activist Judy Bonds.  The book was called "revelatory" by esteemed author and oral historian Studs Terkel, in his last blurb.  Writers Lee Smith and Hal Crowther co-authored the introduction.

House's fourth novel, Eli the Good, was published in September 2009 to great acclaim.  The book emerged as a number one bestseller on the Southern lists and received the first annual Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library system, an award given to a book for use in the ESL and literacy programs of New York City, as well as an E.B. White Award given by the American Booksellers Association.

His short story Recruiters, which has appeared in Anthology of Appalachian Writing, Vol. 2 now has a new Larkspur Press edition from Kentucky's Artisan Printer. This special edition is illustrated by Arwen Donahue and includes the original song Brennen's Ballad by Sue Massek, which was the inspiration for the story.

House's first book written for elementary aged children, Same Sun Here, was published in February 2012 and co-written with Neela Vaswani.  The book was the winner of the Parent's Choice Award and was the #1 Most Recommended Book by Independent Booksellers in the entire nation during the spring of 2012.  House and Vaswani recorded the highly successful audiobook version of the novel, which won an Earphones Award, and the Audie Award for Best Narration for Children's Title Ages 8–12, the highest honor given to audiobooks.  The novel won over a dozen awards, including the Nautilus Award and a South Asian Book Association Honor Book.

House's sixth novel, Southernmost was published in June 2018 and was long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. The book was a SIBA bestseller and received wide acclaim, especially among other writers, such as Dorothy Allison, Jennifer Haigh, Lee Smith, Garth Greenwell, and many others. It won the 2019 Judy Gaines Young Book Award, given by Transylvania University annually to recognize an excellent book from the Appalachian region. The book won the Weatherford Award for Fiction, was longlisted for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal and short-listed for the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. House compiled a music playlist on the literature and music blog Largehearted Boy to accompany Southernmost. The playlist includes music by Brandi Carlile, Celia Cruz, Patsy Cline, and others.

House's seventh novel, Lark Ascending, was released in the fall of 2022 and was an immediate indie bestseller and winner of the 2023 Southern Book Prize in the category of fiction. The book received praise from authors such as Barbara Kingsolver, Billy O'Callaghan, Wiley Cash, Margaret Renkl, Michelle Gallen, and others. The novel is considered a departure for House as it is set twenty years in the future, mostly in Ireland. House has said the book is his mediation on grief, the demise of democracy, and the climate crisis.

House's writing has appeared several times in The New York Times (including his hugely popular essay "The Art of Being Still") and The Atlantic. Recently his work has also appeared in Time, The Washington Post, The Bitter Southerner, and other publications. In 2022 one of his essays was chosen as notable by editor Alexander Chee for the book The Best American Essays 2022. House's work has been anthologized in such books as New Stories From the South: The Year's Best, 2004, and Best Food Writing: 2014. He has also written the introductions to Missing Mountains, a study of mountaintop removal; From Walton's Mountain to Tomorrow, a biography of Earl Hamner, Jr., and Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Moses, a new edition by HarperCollins.  House's essays and short stories have been featured on NPR's All Things Considered several times during his time there as a commentator.

House is also a playwright. In 2005, House wrote the play The Hurting Part, which was produced by the University of Kentucky. In 2009 his second play, Long Time Travelling, was produced by the Actor's Guild of Lexington (Kentucky). In 2012, Berea College Laboratory Theatre presented his controversial play, This Is My Heart For You, about a small town divided by a gay rights discrimination case and hate crime.  The latter two plays were both subsequently staged at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival held in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

Academic career

House served as a writer in residence at Eastern Kentucky University 2004-2005 and at Lincoln Memorial University 2005–2010.  At LMU he also created and directed the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival and the Appalachian Reading Series. In 2010 House became the NEH Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, where he teaches Appalachian Literature and a writing workshop.  He served for one year, 2011–2012, as interim director of the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center. He has served on the fiction faculty at Spalding University's MFA in Creative Writing since 2005.

In 2010 House was selected as the focus of the Silas House Literary Festival at Emory and Henry College in Emory, Virginia. The same year he was chosen as Appalachian Writer of the Year by Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

Music writing

House is also a music journalist and a contributing editor to No Depression magazine, for which he has written features on Lucinda Williams, Delbert McClinton, and many others. House is also an in-demand press kit writer for Nashville's music business, having written press kit biographies for such artists as Kris Kristofferson, Jason Isbell, Tyler Childers, Lucinda Williams, Buddy Miller, S.G. Goodman, Del McCoury, Lee Ann Womack, and many others. In 2001 and 2002, he was a regular contributor to NPR's All Things Considered.

Activism
Between 2005 and 2010 House was very visible in the fight against mountaintop removal mining, an environmentally devastating form of coal mining that blasts the entire top off a mountain and fills the valley below with debris. House says he got involved in the issue after being invited on a tour of devastated mountains by environmentalist, author, and public intellectual Wendell Berry. House wrote the original draft of the 2005 Kentucky authors' statement against the practice; since the draft, more than three dozen authors have signed it.

House has been joined in this fight by other Kentucky writers, such as Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Maurice Manning.

Personal life
House was born and raised in Southeastern Kentucky. He presently lives in Lexington, Kentucky. He has two children and is married to writer and editor Jason Kyle Howard. He is an Episcopalian.

Awards and honors

May 25 is Silas House Day in Lexington, Kentucky. This day is observed annually beginning in 2023 after a proclamation by the city council and Mayor Linda Gorton.

In 2018 House's novel Southernmost was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and short-listed for the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction as well as winning the Weatherford Award for Best Novel and the Judy Gaines Young Award in 2019. In 2017 he was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers.  House has been awarded three honorary doctorates. His other awards include the Nautilus, the Storylines Prize, the Hobson Medal for Literature, the Intellectual Freedom Award from the National Council of English Teachers, the Appalachian Book of the Year, the Lee Smith Award, the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Jesse Stuart Media Prize, two Kentucky Novel of the Year awards, and many others. In 2016 he was invited to speak at the Library of Congress.

In 2021 House was honored with the Artist Award from the Governors Award for the Arts, chosen by Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, recognizing House's contributions to the arts in his home state.

In 2022, House was given the largest monetary prize for an LGBTQ writer in the United States. Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize is awarded through Lambda Literary.

In 2023 House is one of five judges to select the National Book Award in the category Fiction.

He was named Kentucky Poet Laureate by Governor Beshear in 2023. Those honors are to lead the state in promotion of literary arts and activities. Nominees are collected by the Kentucky Arts Council, reviewed by an independent panel with recommendations sent to the governor. The Republican Governor's Association immediately used House in an attack ad against Beshear, calling House a "radical". The attack was criticized by the media  and by well-known personalities such as Jason Isbell, Charles Booker, and others.

In 2023 House's novel Lark Ascending was also given the Gold Medal designation by the Nautilus Book Awards, was chosen by Booklist as an "Editor's Choice", and won the Southern Book Prize.

Works
2001 Clay's Quilt (novel)
2003 A Parchment of Leaves (novel)
2004 The Coal Tattoo (novel)
2005 The Hurting Part (play)
2008 The Hurting Part (published playscript)
2009 Something's Rising (non-fiction, co-authored with Jason Howard)
2009 Long Time Travelling (play)
2009 Eli the Good (novel)
2009 Coal Country (edited by Silas House, Shirley Stewart Burns, and Mari Lyn Evans)
2011 Chinaberry (a novel by James Still edited by Silas House)
2012 This Is My Heart For You (play)
2012 Same Sun Here (novel, co-authored with Neela Vaswani)
2018 Southernmost (novel)
2022 Lark Ascending (novel)

References

External links

Silas House's website
Southern Hum Interview
Creative Loafing interview
Random House books discussion guide on Clay's Quilt
Random House books discussion guide on The Coal Tattoo
Random House Books discussion guide on A Parchment of Leaves
No Depression website
Lee Smith website
Audio recording: Silas House at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2008

1971 births
Living people
21st-century American novelists
American music critics
American columnists
American environmentalists
American music journalists
Novelists from Kentucky
People from Laurel County, Kentucky
People from Leslie County, Kentucky
Spalding University alumni
Berea College faculty
21st-century American dramatists and playwrights
American male novelists
American male dramatists and playwrights
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American male non-fiction writers
Appalachian writers
Activists from Kentucky
American gay writers
LGBT people from Kentucky

Silas House


Cat's Cradle is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's fourth novel, it was first published in 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of morbid humor.

Synopsis

Background
The first-person everyman narrator, a professional writer introducing himself as Jonah (but apparently named John and never named again), frames the plot as a flashback. Set in the mid-20th century, the plot revolves around a time when he was planning to write a book called The Day the World Ended about what people were doing on the day of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Throughout, he also intersperses meaningful as well as sarcastic passages and sentiments from an odd religious scripture known as The Books of Bokonon. Most of the events of the novel occur before the narrator was converted to his current religion, Bokononism.

Plot summary
While researching for his upcoming book, the narrator travels to Ilium, New York, the hometown of the late Felix Hoenikker, a co-creator of the atomic bomb and Nobel laureate physicist, to interview Hoenikker's children, coworkers, and other acquaintances. There, he learns of a substance called ice-nine, created for military use by Hoenikker and now likely in the possession of his three adult children. Ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature and acts as a seed crystal upon contact with ordinary liquid water, causing that liquid water to instantly freeze and transform into more ice-nine. Among several odd unfoldings in Ilium, the narrator meets Hoenniker's younger son, a dwarf named Newt, who recounts that his father was doing nothing more than playing the string game "cat's cradle" when the first bomb was dropped.

Eventually, a magazine assignment takes the narrator to the (fictional) Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, one of the poorest countries on Earth. On the plane ride, the narrator is surprised to see Newt and also meets the newly appointed US ambassador to San Lorenzo, who provides a comprehensive guidebook on San Lorenzo's unusual culture and history. The guidebook describes a locally influential semi-parody religious movement called Bokononism, which combines irreverent, nihilistic, and cynical observations about life and God's will; an emphasis on coincidences and serendipity; and both thoughtful and humorous sayings and rituals into a holy text called The Books of Bokonon. Bokonon, the religion's founder, was a former leader of the island who created Bokononism as part of a utopian project to give people purpose and community in the face of the island's unsolvable poverty and squalor. As a deliberate attempt to give Bokononism an alluring sense of forbidden glamor and hope, the religion is nominally outlawed, which forced Bokonon to live in "hiding" in the jungle. The current dictator, "Papa" Monzano, threatens all Bokononists with impalement on a large hook. Intrigued by Bokononism, the narrator later discovers the strange reality that nearly all residents of San Lorenzo, even including "Papa" Monzano himself, practice it in secret, and punishment by the hook is, in actuality, quite rare.

On San Lorenzo, the plane passengers are greeted by "Papa" Monzano, his beautiful adopted daughter Mona (whom the narrator intensely lusts after), and a crowd of some five thousand San Lorenzans. Monzano is ill from cancer and wants his successor to be Frank Hoenikker: Monzano's personal bodyguard and, coincidentally, Felix Hoenikker's other son. Frank achieved this position by giving "Papa" Monzano a piece of ice-nine. However, Frank, uncomfortable with leading, confronts the narrator in private and somewhat randomly offers him the presidency. Startled at first, the narrator grudgingly accepts after he is promised the beautiful Mona for his bride. Newt reiterates the idea of the cat's cradle, implying that the game, with its invisible cat, is an appropriate symbol for nonsense and the meaninglessness of life. Soon after, the bedridden "Papa" Monzano commits suicide by swallowing ice-nine, whereupon his corpse instantly turns into solid ice-nine. Frank Hoenikker admits to giving Monzano ice-nine, and the Hoenikkers explain that when they were young their father would give them hints about the existence of ice-nine while experimenting with it in the kitchen. After their father's death, they gathered chunks of the substance into thermos flasks and have kept them ever since.

Festivities for the narrator's presidential inauguration begin, but during an air show performed by San Lorenzo's fighter planes, one of the planes malfunctions and crashes into the seaside palace, causing Monzano's still-frozen body to fall into the sea. Instantly, all the water in the world's seas, rivers, and groundwater transforms into solid ice-nine. The freezing of the world's oceans immediately causes violent tornadoes to ravage the Earth, but the narrator manages to escape with Mona to a secret bunker beneath the palace. When the initial storms subside after several days, they emerge. Exploring the island for survivors, they discover a mass grave where all the surviving San Lorenzans committed suicide by touching ice-nine from the landscape to their mouths on the facetious advice of Bokonon, who has left a note of explanation. Displaying a mix of grief for her people and resigned amusement, Mona promptly follows suit and dies.

The horrified narrator is discovered by a few other survivors, including Newt and Frank Hoenikker, and he lives with them in a cave for several months, during which time he writes the contents of the book. Driving through the barren wasteland one day, he spots Bokonon himself, who is contemplating what the last words of The Books of Bokonon should be. Bokonon states that if he were younger, he would place a book about human stupidity on the peak of San Lorenzo's highest mountain, swallow ice-nine, and die while thumbing his nose at God.

Themes

Many of Vonnegut's recurring themes are prevalent in Cat's Cradle, most notably the issues of free will and man's relation to technology. The former is embodied in the creation of Bokononism, an artificial religion created to make life bearable to the beleaguered inhabitants of San Lorenzo through acceptance and delight in the inevitability of everything that happens. The latter is demonstrated by the development and exploitation of ice-nine, which is conceived with indifference but is misused to disastrous ends. In his 1969 address to the American Physical Society, Vonnegut describes the inspiration behind ice-nine and its creator as the type of "old-fashioned scientist who isn't interested in people", and draws connections to nuclear weapons.

More topically, Cat's Cradle takes the threat of nuclear destruction in the Cold War as a major theme. The Cuban Missile Crisis, in which world powers collided around a small Caribbean island, bringing the world to the brink of mutual assured destruction, occurred in 1962, and much of the novel can be seen as allegorical.

Style
Like most of Vonnegut's work, irony, morbid humor, and parody are used heavily throughout. Cat's Cradle, despite its relatively short length, contains 127 discrete chapters, some of which are verses from the Book of Bokonon. Vonnegut himself claimed that his books "are essentially mosaics made up of a whole bunch of tiny little chips... and each chip is a joke."

Background
After World War II, Kurt Vonnegut worked in the public relations department for General Electric research company. GE hired scientists and let them do pure research, and his job was to interview these scientists and find good stories about their research. Vonnegut felt that the older scientists were indifferent about the ways their discoveries might be used. When science fiction author H. G. Wells visited the labs in the 30s, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Irving Langmuir suggested for him the idea of a story about a form of ice stable at room temperature. Wells never took it any further, but Vonnegut's older brother Bernard, who was Langmuir's junior colleague at GE, remembered and told him about it. After both the author and the scientist had died, Vonnegut thought to himself "Finders, keepers – the idea is mine". Langmuir himself would become the model for Dr. Felix Hoenikker. Vonnegut said in an interview with The Nation that "Langmuir was absolutely indifferent to the uses that might be made of the truths he dug out of the rock and handed out to whoever was around, but any truth he found was beautiful in its own right, and he didn't give a damn who got it next." Dr. Felix Hoenikker's fictional invention of ice-nine was similar in name only to the real substance ice IX, one of a number of variant structures for ice. Langmuir had worked on seeding ice crystals to diminish or increase rain or storms.

Setting

The Republic of San Lorenzo is a fictional country where much of the book's second half takes place.

San Lorenzo is a tiny, rocky island nation located in the Caribbean Sea, positioned in the relative vicinity of Puerto Rico. San Lorenzo has only one city, its seaside capital of Bolivar. The country's form of government is a dictatorship, under the rule of ailing president "Papa" Monzano, who is a staunch ally of the United States and a fierce opponent of communism. No legislature exists. The infrastructure of San Lorenzo is described as being dilapidated, consisting of worn buildings, dirt roads, an impoverished populace, and having only one automobile taxi running in the entire country.

The language of San Lorenzo is a fictitious English-based creole language (for example "twinkle, twinkle, little star" is rendered "tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store") that is referred to as "the San Lorenzan dialect". The San Lorenzan national anthem is based on the tune of Home on the Range. Its flag consists of a U.S. Marine Corps corporal's chevrons on a blue field (presumably the flag was updated, since in the 1920s Marine Corps rank insignia did not include crossed rifles). Its currency is named corporals, at a rate of two corporals for every United States dollar; both the flag and the monetary unit are named after U.S. Marine Corporal Earl McCabe, who deserted his company while stationed at Port-au-Prince during the American occupation in 1922, and in transit to Miami, was shipwrecked on San Lorenzo. McCabe, along with accomplice Lionel Boyd Johnson from Tobago, together threw out the island's governing sugar company and, after a period of anarchy, proclaimed a republic.

San Lorenzo also has its own native religion, Bokononism, a religion based on enjoying life through believing "foma" (harmless lies), and taking encouragement where you can. Bokononism, founded by McCabe's accomplice Boyd Johnson (pronounced "Bokonon" in San Lorenzan dialect), however, is outlawed – an idea Bokonon himself conceived, because forbidding the religion would only make it spread quicker. Bokononists are liable to be punished by being impaled on a hook, but Bokononism privately remains the dominant religion of nearly everyone on the island, including the leaders who outlaw it. Officially, however, San Lorenzo is a Christian nation.

Characters
 The narrator is a writer who claims his parents named him John but begins the book by stating "Call me Jonah", alluding to the first line of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick ("Call me Ishmael"); beyond the first page, neither name is mentioned again. He describes the events in the book with humorous and sarcastic detail. While writing a book about the day of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he becomes involved with the Hoenikker children. Eventually, he is offered the presidency of San Lorenzo by Franklin Hoenikker.
 Felix Hoenikker is the "Father of the Atom Bomb" and an unseen character who died many years before the novel's plot begins. Felix Hoenikker was proclaimed one of the smartest scientists on Earth. An eccentric and emotionless man, he is depicted as amoral and apathetic towards anything other than his research. He needed only something to keep him busy, such as in his role as one of the "Fathers of the Atomic Bomb", and in his creation of "ice-nine", a potentially catastrophic substance with the capability to destroy all life on Earth, but which he saw merely as a mental puzzle (a Marine general suggested developing a substance that could solidify mud so that soldiers could run across it more easily). During experiments with "ice nine", Felix took a nap in his rocking chair and died. The narrator's quest for biographical details about Hoenikker provides both the background and the connecting thread between the various subsections of the story.
 Emily Hoenikker was the wife of Felix, and mother to Frank, Angela, and Newt. She died in childbirth with the latter. According to Dr. Asa Breed, a former lover of Emily's, the complications at Newt's birth were the result of a pelvic injury she sustained in a car accident some time before.
 Dr. Asa Breed is Felix Hoenikker's former supervisor. He takes the narrator around Illium and to the General Forge and Foundry Company where the late Felix worked. Later in the tour, Dr. Breed becomes upset with the narrator for misrepresenting scientists.
Marvin Breed is Asa Breed's brother. He owned and operated the tombstone shop in the city where Felix Hoenikker worked on the atomic bomb. Here, the narrator is shocked to find a tombstone with his own last name on it.
 Newton "Newt" Hoenikker: The dwarf ("midget") son of famed scientist Felix Hoenikker, and a painter. He is the brother of both Frank and Angela Hoenikker. His main hobby is painting minimalist abstract works. He briefly had an affair with a Ukrainian dwarf dancer named Zinka, who turned out to be a KGB agent sent to steal ice-nine for the Soviet Union.
 Franklin "Frank" Hoenikker is Felix Hoenikker's older son, and a Major General in San Lorenzo. He is the brother of Newt and Angela Hoenikker. He is an utterly technically minded person who is unable to make decisions except for giving technical advice. His main hobby is building models. Expected to take over for "Papa" Monzano after his death, he anxiously hands the presidency over to the narrator instead.
 Angela Hoenikker Conners is Felix Hoenikker's daughter and a clarinetist. She is the married sister of Frank and Newt Hoenikker. In contrast to her dwarf brother, Angela is unusually tall for a woman. She used to take care of her father after her mother's death and acts as a mother figure to Newt. She and her brothers all have samples of ice-nine, which they found along with their father's body, dead in his chair. It is implied that she used ice-nine to bargain a marriage with her husband. She dies when she blows on a clarinet contaminated with ice-nine after the apocalyptic event at the end of the novel.
 Bokonon (birth name Lionel Boyd Johnson) co-founded San Lorenzo as a republic, along with Earl McCabe (a now-dead US Marine deserter), and created the religion of Bokononism, which he asked McCabe to outlaw in order to give it an alluringly forbidden sense of mystery, giving some meaning to the miserable lives of San Lorenzo's extremely impoverished citizens. He therefore has lived for years in exile somewhere in San Lorenzo's jungles. He only appears once in the novel in person: in the very final chapter.
 "Papa" Monzano is the ailing dictator of San Lorenzo. He was once Earl McCabe's right-hand man and chosen successor. He appoints Frank Hoenikker as his own successor, and then commits suicide with a piece of ice-nine. He is the adopted father of Mona Monzano.
 Mona Aamons Monzano is the 18-year-old adopted daughter of "Papa" Monzano. A gorgeous black girl with blond hair due to her Finnish biological father, her adoption was a political ploy to integrate different races under Monzano's rule and provide a beloved poster child for his regime. The narrator describes her as "the only beautiful woman on San Lorenzo". She is expected to marry Monzano's successor, and she therefore agrees to marry the narrator before the disaster at the end of the novel.
 Julian Castle is the multi-millionaire ex-owner of Castle Sugar Cooperation, whom the narrator travels to San Lorenzo to interview for a magazine. He eventually changed his outlook in life, abandoning his business ventures to set up and operate a humanitarian hospital in the jungle of San Lorenzo.
 H. Lowe Crosby is a fervently pro-American bicycle manufacturer the narrator meets on his plane ride to San Lorenzo. His main goal is to move his American factory to San Lorenzo, so he can run it with cheap labor.
 Hazel Crosby is the wife of H. Lowe Crosby, a Hoosier who believes in some cosmic fraternity among Hoosiers and asks all Hoosiers she meets around the globe to call her "Mom".
 Philip Castle is the son of Julian Castle, and the operator of a hotel on San Lorenzo. He also wrote a history of San Lorenzo that the narrator reads on his flight to the island. Bokonon taught both him and Mona when they were young students. Through reading the index of Castle's book, Claire Minton deduces that he's a homosexual.
 Horlick Minton is the new American ambassador to San Lorenzo, whom the narrator meets on his plane ride. He was blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer during the McCarthy era.
 Claire Minton is the wife of the new American ambassador to San Lorenzo, and is a writer of book indexes. She is so well versed at indexing that she even claims to be able to deduce strange knowledge about writers based on reading their indexes. She and her husband are extremely close, forming what the narrator calls a duprass.

Bokononism
The semi-humorous religion secretly practiced by the people of San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, encompasses concepts unique to the novel. Many of these concepts use words from the San Lorenzan creole "dialect" of English. Assumed within the religion is the presence of God, who evidently works in mysterious ways. Many of its sacred texts, collectively called The Books of Bokonon, are written in the form of calypso songs. Bokononist rituals are equally strange or absurdist; for example, the supreme religious act consists of any two worshippers rubbing the bare soles of their feet together to inspire spiritual connection.

Here are some Bokononist terms:
 karass – A group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner, even when superficial linkages are not evident.
 duprass – a karass of only two people, who almost always die within a week of each other. The typical example is a loving couple who work together for a great purpose.
 granfalloon – a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is "Hoosiers." Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common. They really share little more than a name.
 wampeter – the central theme or purpose of a karass. Each karass has two wampeters at any given time, one waxing and one waning.
 foma – harmless untruths
 wrang-wrang – Someone who steers a Bokononist away from their line of perception. For example, the narrator of the book is steered away from Nihilism when his Nihilist house sitter kills his cat and leaves his apartment in disrepair.
 kan-kan – An object or item that brings a person into their karass. The narrator states in the book that his kan-kan was the book he wrote about the Hiroshima bombing.
 sinookas – The intertwining "tendrils" of peoples' lives.
 vin-dit – a sudden shove in the direction of Bokononism
 saroon – to acquiesce to a vin-dit
 stuppa – a fogbound child (i.e. an idiot)
 duffle – the destiny of thousands of people placed on one "stuppa"
 sin-wat – a person who wants all of somebody's love for themself
 pool-pah – shit storm, but in some contexts: wrath of God
 Busy, busy, busy – words Bokononists whisper when they think about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is
 Now I will destroy the whole world – last words of a Bokononist before taking their own life
 boko-maru – the supreme act of worship of the Bokononists, which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons
 zah-mah-ki-bo – Inevitable destiny
 Borasisi and Pabu, the Sun god and lunar goddess; the binary trans-Neptunian object 66652 Borasisi and its moon, 66652 Borasisi I Pabu, now bear their names.
 Borasisi, the Sun, held Pabu, the Moon, in his arms and hoped that Pabu would bear him a fiery child. But poor Pabu gave birth to children that were cold, that did not burn...Then poor Pabu herself was cast away, and she went to live with her favorite child, which was Earth.

Reception
After The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Mother Night (1962) received favorable reviews and sold well in paperback, large publisher Holt, Rinehart, and Winston issued Cat's Cradle as a hardcover original. Theodore Sturgeon praised Cat's Cradle, describing its storyline as "appalling, hilarious, shocking, and infuriating", and concluded that "this is an annoying book and you must read it. And you better take it lightly, because if you don't you'll go off weeping and shoot yourself".

Challenges
According to Indianapolis Monthly, "In 1972, the school board in Strongsville, Ohio, banned the book without stating an official reason. Notes from the meeting include references to the book as 'completely sick' and 'garbage.' The ban was overturned in 1976." Additionally, the book was also challenged in 1982 at New Hampshire's Merrimack High School.

Awards and nominations
Cat's Cradle was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1964.

Film, television, and theatrical adaptations
 Portions of Cat's Cradle were adapted in the television movie Between Time and Timbuktu (1972), which presented elements from various works by Vonnegut.
 A theatrical adaptation (1976) by Bruce Pribram and Ken Kuta was presented and toured by Theatre Express, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
 In 2005, the book was optioned by Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way Productions. James V. Hart, screenwriter for the film Contact (1997) and his son Jake Hart were linked to the developing script.
 A calypso musical adaptation was presented by the Untitled Theater Company #61 in New York in 2008.
 Vonnegut collaborated with American composer Dave Soldier for a CD titled Ice-9 Ballads, featuring nine songs with lyrics taken from Cat's Cradle. Vonnegut narrated his lyrics to Soldier's music.
 A straight theatrical adaptation of the book was presented in Washington, DC in August and September 2010 by Longacre Lea Productions.
 On November 18, 2015, it was announced that Fargo TV series-creator Noah Hawley was adapting Cat's Cradle as a limited series for the American TV channel FX. On August 13, 2021, it was announced that the project would not be moving forward.

References to Cat's Cradle

 From Tom Robbins' 1971 novel Another Roadside Attraction: "In Bokonon, it is written that 'peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.'"
 The 1963 Discordian text Principia Discordia presents Bokonon as an example of a "Brigadier Saint" in its Classification of Saints.
In "Truth and Seeing: Magic, Custom, and Fetish" in Africa and the Disciplines (ed. V. Y. Mudimbe et al), the Harvard art historian, Suzanne Preston Blier references The Book of Bokonon.
 Jack Lancaster fronted a band in the early 1970s named "Karass" which included Chick Web, Percy Jones, John Goodsall and Robin Lumley.
 A modified version of Bokonon's poem "Nice, Nice, Very Nice" ("53rd Calypso") from the novel was also set to music by the soft rock band Ambrosia, with Vonnegut receiving co-writing credit, and featured as the opening track on their 1975 debut album. Vonnegut wrote to the band after hearing the song on the radio: "I myself am crazy about our song, of course, but what do I know and why wouldn't I be?  This much I have always known, anyway: Music is the only art that's really worth a damn. I envy you guys."
 The Grateful Dead's publishing company, Ice Nine, was named after the fictional substance. Between 1983 and 1985, the band's leader Jerry Garcia worked with the scriptwriter and comedian Tom Davis on a screenplay based on the book. The film was never produced.
 The 2009 game Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has a material called ice-9, very similar to the ice-nine from this book. Also linked to the novel's title, the game includes a company called Cradle Pharmaceutical.
 In the 2003 American spy thriller film The Recruit, a threatening virus that can destroy any electrical system it touches is called Ice-9.
The metalcore band Ice Nine Kills took their name from the eponymous substance ice-9 and are fans of Vonnegut's work.
The Joe Satriani album "Surfing with the Alien" includes an instrumental track called "Ice 9".

References

Further reading
 OLTEAN, A. a. (2013). "An Application of the General Theory of Verbal Humor to Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle. Studii De Ştiintă Şi Cultură, 9(1), 143–149.

External links

 Vonnegut, Kurt Cat's Cradle Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963 at Internet Archive
 Bokononism All text from Cat's Cradle that refers to Bokononism (including the Books of Bokonon)
 The Books of Bokonon online
  All of the text from Cat's Cradle which refers to Bokononism (including the Books of Bokonon)
  All of the text from Cat's Cradle which refers to Bokononism (including the Books of Bokonon).

1963 American novels
1963 science fiction novels
American novels adapted into films
American novels adapted into plays
American novels adapted into television shows
American philosophical novels
Anthropology books
Anti-war novels
Apocalyptic novels
First-person narrative novels
Holt, Rinehart and Winston books
Novels by Kurt Vonnegut
Novels set during the Cold War
Novels set in fictional countries
Novels set in the Caribbean
Postmodern novels
Religion in science fiction

Cat's Cradle


A Caesar salad is a salad that is made with romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, and black pepper. Some of the most common variations to the salad include: grilled poultry (most often chicken), meat, shellfish, or fish, capers, Romano cheese, anchovies, and bacon.

Caesar dressing can be either creamy, like Ranch dressing, or more oily, like Italian dressing. Its main flavourings are garlic and anchovies.

History
The salad is said to have been made and called after Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who had restaurants in Mexico and the United States. Cardini was living in San Diego but also working in Tijuana.

The original Caesar salad did not have anchovy. Cardini's daughter said that the original recipe included whole lettuce leaves.

Health concerns
There are risks of infection by salmonella bacteria. Salmonella is sometimes in raw eggs. This is a concern with many similar dressings. They are emulsified with eggs. Later versions of the recipe call for briefly cooked coddled eggs or pasteurized eggs. There are many variations of this salad.

References

Salads
Dishes named after people

Caesar salad


The Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) is a research institute of the Max Planck Society located in Martinsried, a suburb of Munich. The institute was founded in 1973 by the merger of three formerly independent institutes: the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, the Max Planck Institute of Protein and Leather Research (founded 1954 in Regensburg), and the Max Planck Institute of Cell Chemistry (founded 1956 in Munich).

With 800 employees in currently seven research departments and about 26 research groups, the MPIB is one of the largest biologically medically oriented institutes of the Max Planck Society.

Departments

There are seven departments currently in the institute.

 Cellular Biochemistry (Franz-Ulrich Hartl)
 Cellular and Molecular Biophysics (Petra Schwille)
 Molecular Machines and Signaling (Brenda Schulman)
 Molecular Medicine (Reinhard Fässler)
 Molecular Structural Biology (Wolfgang Baumeister)
 Proteomics and Signal Transduction (Matthias Mann)
 Structural Cell Biology  (Elena Conti)

Research groups

There are 26 research groups currently based at the MPIB, including 3 emeritus research groups:

 Molecular Structural Biology (Wolfgang Baumeister / Cryo-Electron Tomography, Electron Microscopical Structure Research, Protein and Cell Structure, Protein Degradation)
Molecular Mechanisms of DNA Repair (Christian Biertümpfel / Structural Biology, DNA Repair, DNA Replication, DNA Recombination, Protein-DNA-Interactions)
Systems Biology of Membrane Trafficking (Georg Borner / Proteomic Microscope, Membrane Trafficking, AP-4 Mediated Protein Transport, Quantitative Mass Spectrometry, Dynamic Organellar Maps)
Structural Cell Biology (Elena Conti / Structural Studies, RNA Transport, RNA Surveillance, RNA Degradation)
Computational Systems Biochemistry (Jürgen Cox / Systems Biology, Proteomics, Mass Spectrometry, Bioinformatics)
Structure and Dynamics of Molecular Machines (Karl Duderstadt / DNA Replication Dynamics, Structural Biology, Single-Molecule Imaging, Biophysics)
Molecular Medicine (Reinhard Fässler / Integrin, Adhesion Signalling, Mouse Genetics)
Cell Dynamics (Günther Gerisch / Phagocytosis, Actin Dynamics, Cell Motility)
Cellular Biochemistry (Franz-Ulrich Hartl / Molecular Chaperones, Protein Folding, Protostasis, Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases)
Chaperonin-assisted Protein Folding (Manajit Hayer-Hartl / Protein Folding and Assembly, Rubisco, GroEL and GroES, Mass Spectrometry)
Molecular Mechanisms of Inflammation (Veit Hornung / Immunology, Inflammation, Innate Immunity)
Structure Research (Robert Huber / Structural Biology, Methods of Protein Crystallography, Protein Degradation, Medicinal Chemistry)
Molecular Imaging and Bionanotechnology (Ralf Jungmann / Super-Resolution Microscopy, DNA Nanotechnology, Biophysics, Single-Molecule Studies)
Neuroinflammation and Mucosal Immunology (Gurumoorthy Krishnamoorthy / Microbiome, Autoimmunity, Multiple Sclerosis, Immune Signaling)
Proteomics and Signal Transduction (Matthias Mann / Mass Spectrometry, Systems Biology, Bioinformatics, Cancer)
Experimental Systems Immunology (Felix Meissner / Immunology, Inflammation, Cellular Communication, Proteomics, Systems Biology)
Cellular and Membrane Trafficking (Naoko Mizuno / Structural Biology, Cryo Electron Microscopy, Biophysics, Membrane Trafficking, Membrane Curvature)
Chromatin Biology (Jürg Müller / Genetics and Biochemistry of Chromatin, Transcription, Histone Modifications, Drosophila Development)
Immunoregulation (Peter Murray / Immunity, Macrophage: T cell cross-talk, Self-Tolerance, Amino Acid metabolism)
Biomimetic Systems (Hannes Mutschler / Synthetic Biology, Replication, Evolution, RNA, Origin of Life)
Translational Medicine (Inaam Nakchbandi / Fibronectin, Integrin, Bone, Disease)
Mechanisms of Protein Biogenesis (Danny Nedialkova / RNA Biology; Translation Dynamics; Protein Folding; Systems Biology)
DNA Replication & Genome Integrity (Boris Pfander / DNA Replication, Checkpoints, DNA damage, Posttranslational Modifications, Yeast)
Molecular Machines and Signaling (Brenda Schulman / Structural Biology, Ubiquitin Proteasome System, Ubiquitin-like Proteins)
Cellular and Molecular Biophysics (Petra Schwille / Biophysics, Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy, Single Molecule, Synthetic Biology)
Chromosome Biology (Wolfgang Zachariae / Cell division, Meiosis)

Graduate Program
The International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences is a PhD program covering various aspects of life science ranging from biochemistry to molecular medicine. The school is run in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry,  Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and the Technical University of Munich.

References

External links
 Homepage of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry
 Homepage of the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences

Biochemistry research institutes
Genetics in Germany
Biochemistry
Research institutes in Munich

Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry


The Masked Marvel is a fictional superhero originally published by Centaur Publications. He debuted in July 1939, on the pages of Keen Detective Funnies #7. The character continued to appear as the feature in Keen Detective Funnies until the 24th issue, as well as in his own title, which lasted three issues.

When Centaur Comics went out of business in 1942, he became dormant, until he was revived by Malibu Comics, where he acted as director of the government-run superhero team known as Protectors. His son, who took up his father's identity, became part of the team. Fearing the lawsuit by Marvel Comics, the writers changed Masked Marvel's name to Nightmask (apparently unaware of the irony that Marvel had already created a superhero by that name, as part of their New Universe imprint, six years earlier). Both Nightmasks remained prominent parts of the cast until the title's cancellation. A short time later, Malibu Comics was acquired by Marvel. Since then, Masked Marvel has not appeared aside from occasional appearances in crowd scenes in AC Comics' Femforce.

Golden Age Masked Marvel
The original Masked Marvel is a non-powered scarlet-suited hero whose secret identity is never revealed. He fights crime with the help of a trio of assistants known as ZL, ZR, and ZY. He operates out of a glass-domed mountaintop headquarters. He has a number of gadgets and weapons, such as an amphibious airplane, a paralyzing ray gun and a televisor, a video device which lets him see anywhere in the world.

According to Jess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes, "he fights ordinary criminals like stamp counterfeiters and oil field saboteurs, and he fights extraordinary criminals like the Hawk, groups like a confederation of the four largest criminal syndicates in the country, and the Red Raider, an insane submarine captain turned pirate".

Nightmask
This version was essentially identical to the original, but his back story was fleshed out and expanded. He was revealed to be Philip Reinhart, a young prodigy who already had established a successful business at the age of 20. However, his success only left him longing for more. Inspired by The Clock, he became a crime-fighter known as Nightmask. Eventually, the two men met and formed a lasting friendship. When World War II broke out, they decided to give up crime-fighting and enlist, both out of the sense of duty and the feeling that the proliferation of super-powered heroes made them increasingly irrelevant. After the war, Phillip decided to focus on business endeavors. During this time, he was briefly married to Erika Blaine and fathered a son, Richard.

In 1988, the Clock became president in his civilian guise. At the former's request, Phillip became head of the project designed to track various super-powered beings, just in case the government should need their services. That proved to be a prudent measure, as the increasing supervillain activity made the need for a team of super-powered heroes starkly clear. In 1992, Phillip used the intelligence he gathered to form a super-powered team known as The Protectors. He acted as the team's director, charting the overall course of the team while delegating field decisions to Man of War.

Richard Reinhart

Richard Reinhart was the son of the original Nightmask. At the age of 3, he found himself in the midst of a bitter custody battle between his parents. He eventually wound up living with his mother. He went through his life without much direction, finishing college without earning a degree and spent several years drifting through Europe after leaving college. The relationship between him and his father was strained at best.

When Richard learned about the formation of the Protectors, he petitioned the President directly, asking him to let him be part of team. The request was accepted, much to Richard's father's chagrin.

Richard wore a slightly modified version of his father's costume. He lacked his father's gadgets and possessed no extraordinary skills, but was determined to prove himself in spite of it.

Marcia Beckworth

Marcia Beckworth is a granddaughter of one of the assistants of the original NightMask. She met Richard Reinhart at the grave of her grandfather, and made such a strong impression on him that he asked that she be made his assistant in aiding the Protectors. For a few weeks she was the behind-the-scenes glue that helped the Protectors stick together, acting as a motherly, and guiding figure. After Richard Reinhart died, she was visited at his tomb by the mysterious Eye, and either granted powers or had her latent powers brought forth.

References

External links
Masked Marvel at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on February 15, 2016.

Fictional aviators
1939 comics debuts
1940 comics endings
Protectors characters
Golden Age superheroes
Comics characters introduced in 1939
Male characters in comics

Masked Marvel (Centaur Publications)


"An Unbelievable Story of Rape" is a 2015 article about a series of rapes in the American states of Washington and Colorado that occurred between 2008 and 2011, and the subsequent police investigations. It was a collaboration between two American, non-profit news organizations, The Marshall Project and ProPublica. The article was written by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and the 2015 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting.

The article alternates between two true stories of events occurring between August 2008 and June 2012. The first narrative is about a woman in Lynnwood, Washington, known pseudonymously as "Marie", who reports being raped to the police. After repeated interrogation by the police, who do not believe her, she says that her report was false. She is subsequently charged with a gross misdemeanor for false reporting. The second narrative details the police investigations into a serial rapist in Colorado, who is known to have raped four women and made a fifth attempt. The man is arrested in February 2011, and subsequent evidence on his hard drive reveals that Marie, not previously known to the local investigative team, was raped by him.

T. Christian Miller of ProPublica had been reporting on law enforcement failures in identifying rapists throughout 2015. In August, he learned of the case of Marie and contacted her lawyer, discovering that Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project was already working on a similar story. They began to collaborate, with Armstrong writing about Marie's story in Washington and Miller writing about the police investigation in Colorado. Marie agreed to speak to Armstrong after six months of communication. The article was further informed by other interviews and thousands of pages of public records material.

The article was later adapted into the Netflix series Unbelievable (2019), which has received critical acclaim. The article also provided the basis of Miller and Armstrong's full-length book A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America (2018).

Background

History
"An Unbelievable Story of Rape" was written by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. A collaboration between The Marshall Project and ProPublica, it was published on both websites on December 16, 2015. Colorado publication Westword reprinted the article as their cover story on May 19, 2016. The Marshall Project and ProPublica are American non-profit online news organizations. The Marshall Project specializes in criminal justice.

T. Christian Miller was a senior reporter at ProPublica. Throughout 2015, he had been reporting on the failure of law enforcement to trace rapists, including the case of Darren Sharper, a football player who raped nine women. Miller had discovered that a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) database to identify serial murderers and rapists was mostly unused in the cases of rape, as most police departments fail to upload sexual assault reports. His article "The FBI Built a Database That Can Catch Rapists — Almost Nobody Uses It" was published in July 2015.

By August 2015, Miller was working on a report about the Washington and Colorado serial rape cases, with focus on the woman who recanted a report of rape after intense police interrogation, proven true years later by the rapist's conviction—known in the article by her middle name "Marie". Miller called the woman's lawyer and discovered she was in contact with Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project, who had been working on an article about the case for several months. The teams decided to collaborate.

Research and writing
Armstrong's editor Joe Sexton and Miller's editor Bill Keller had worked together at The New York Times. Numerous other editors contributed to the article, including managing editor Kirsten Danis of The Marshall Project. As the two reporters and two primary editors were all male, the team ensured that they consulted various women, some with knowledge of the case and some without, particularly in regards to how graphic or detailed to make the description of Marie's rape.

Miller wrote the sections about the woman in Colorado, while Armstrong wrote the sections about the investigation in Washington. The sections are ordered alternately, with an opening paragraph about the woman in Washington being charged with false reporting. The structure was proposed by Sexton. The first draft was 15,000 words in length, shortened to 12,000 in the final version. Keller and other editors recommended cutting down on the ending of the article, yielding a short epilogue.

For the article, Armstrong and Miller made public records requests to police departments and prosecuting attorney's offices in Washington and Colorado. They received thousands of pages of documents, including investigative reports, case reviews, crime scene photographs and footage of surveillance and O'Leary after his arrest. News coverage, criminal justice guidelines and court transcripts were also consulted. Extracts of an external report made of the police department that investigated Marie's case were made public for the first time in the article.

After seven months of email and phone communication with Marie's lawyer, Marie agreed to speak to Armstrong. It was the first time she had agreed to be interviewed by a journalist. Armstrong and Miller also interviewed two of Marie's foster parents and her friend, her public defender and civil suit attorney. The pair spoke to various police officers, including Detectives Stacy Galbraith and Edna Hendershot who investigated the Colorado cases. Three officers in the Lynnwood Police Department were interviewed, including Mason, one of the officers who handled Marie's request. The interviews were made late in the process, the department having refused earlier requests for comment. The other officer, Rittgarn, declined to be interviewed. The perpetrator of the serial rapes, Marc O'Leary, was also interviewed. A brief audio recording of Marie describing her rape is included in the article.

Summary
In Lynnwood, Washington, an 18-year-old woman, referred to as "Marie," reported being bound, gagged and raped at knifepoint to police. Following police confrontation about inconsistencies in her story, she said that she made the incident up. In March 2009, she was charged with a gross misdemeanor, fined $500 and put on probation. Marie had been sexually and physically abused in early life and was in foster care for most of her childhood. She joined Project Ladder at age 18, a program designed for people transitioning from foster care to living alone.

In Golden, Colorado, during January 2011, Detective Stacy Galbraith interviewed a woman who was raped at gunpoint for four hours. When Galbraith talked to her husband, also a police officer, he observed similarity with an incident reported to his police department in Westminster. Galbraith began collaboration with Westminster Detective Edna Hendershot, who had investigated two cases in which women aged 59 and 65 were raped in similar ways. They also discovered a burglary where a masked man had attempted to tie up a 46-year-old woman, who jumped out of her window and was badly injured. The four known cases took place in different suburbs of Denver. The man had gone to extreme lengths to avoid leaving DNA evidence, but touch DNA from the same paternal family line was found at three of the four crime scenes.

Marie had made her report in August 2008 to Sergeant Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn. Police guidelines advised that rape victims should not be interrogated, as they may be uncertain of details or report conflicting information. Investigating Marie's report, police found evidence of an assailant and abrasions to Marie's vagina and wrist. However, two of Marie's former foster parents began to disbelieve her due to her seemingly calm demeanour, one reporting doubts to the police. Following this, and Marie's conflicting account of when she phoned a friend, Mason and Rittgarn made Marie repeat her story, Rittgarn saying that he disbelieved her. He asked if the rapist was real and she said "no." Without reading the Miranda warning, they asked her to write that she had made a false report. She wrote instead that she had dreamed the incident, now unsure of what happened. After hours of further questioning, Marie wrote that she had been lying.

Project Ladder staff made Marie return to police when she said she made the report under duress. She asked to take a polygraph test—though such tests do not provide reliable evidence—but declined when Rittgarn threatened jail and loss of housing if she failed it. Mason filed a false reporting charge; such charges in similar circumstances were rare. Marie became the subject of media reports and an attack website. She quit her Costco job and considered suicide. In October 2008, one of Marie's foster parents saw a report of a woman in Kirkland, Washington, raped in the same way as Marie. Kirkland police abandoned this lead after Lynnwood police told them at least twice that Marie's account was a lie.

In February 2011, a report was unearthed of a suspicious vehicle registered to army veteran Marc Patrick O'Leary, who lived in Lakewood, Colorado, and whose description matched the attacker. FBI agents collected DNA evidence from his brother which showed one of them was the rapist. A search warrant led to the arrest of O'Leary. He possessed a mask, gun, women's underwear and other identifying evidence. Photographs of Marie were found on O'Leary's hard drive. O'Leary had watched women for hundreds of hours, breaking into their houses multiple times before each rape. In December 2011, O'Leary was sentenced to 327.5 years in prison for four incidents in Colorado. In June 2012, he was sentenced to an additional 38.5 years for two incidents in Washington.

An external report by Sergeant Gregg Rinta, who worked for the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office as a sex crimes supervisor, condemned the handling of Marie's case. It described the officers' behaviour as "bullying" and highlighted threats of jail and housing assistance removal as "coercive, cruel, and unbelievably unprofessional." An internal review also concluded that Mason and Rittgarn's behaviour was "designed to elicit a confession of false reporting." In 2015, the commander of Lynnwood's Criminal Investigations Division said that practices had since changed. Neither Mason nor Rittgarn were disciplined. After Marie approached Mason, he offered an apology. Marie sued the city, winning $150,000. By the time of the article, Marie was married with two children.

Response
The article won the 2015 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting, presented by Long Island University, and the 2016 Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting, awarded by the University of Colorado Boulder and Denver Press Club. It also won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, the article being described as "a startling examination and exposé of law enforcement's enduring failures to investigate reports of rape properly and to comprehend the traumatic effects on its victims". It was a finalist in the 2016 National Magazine Awards in the Feature Writing category.

Nora Caplan-Bricker of Slate reflected that "Marie's story helps remind us that false reports of rape are the exception, not the rule", believing that the article shows the "ruinous consequences" and "ubiquity" of rape victims being disbelieved. Writing for the alternative Wisconsin newspaper Isthmus, Bill Lueders praised the article and compared it to his own reporting about a similar case from 1997 to 2001, where a woman was charged by police after ostensibly making a false report of rape, but was later proven truthful by DNA evidence leading to her rapist's conviction.

The University of Colorado Boulder reported in 2016 that law enforcement officials had requested to use the article in training. Jennifer Gentile Long, CEO of AEquitas: The Prosecutors' Resource on Violence Against Women, commented that the article presented an "extraordinary learning opportunity for both criminal justice professionals and ordinary citizens alike". Journalist Pamela Colloff referenced the article as an example of good reporting on criminal justice, as it is told from the perspective of a survivor.

Related media
"An Unbelievable Story of Rape" was published on December 16, 2015. In the days following, Miller and Armstrong published two subsequent articles: "A Brutal Crime, Often Terribly Investigated" enumerated five recommendations for police institutions to improve their handling of rape cases, while "Rape is Rape, Isn't It?" commented on the changing definition of rape used by the FBI.

In December 2015, ProPublica published a podcast episode where Miller and Armstrong discussed the article. At the Investigative Reporters and Editors' 2016 conference, the pair gave a talk about their experience writing the article. In July 2016, they appeared on the Longform podcast to discuss the article. Armstrong appeared on Utah Public Radio in November 2016, discussing the article on Access Utah.

"An Anatomy of Doubt"
"An Anatomy of Doubt" is the 581st episode of the American radio program and podcast This American Life. It adapts "An Unbelievable Story of Rape". Credited as a collaboration with The Marshall Project and ProPublica, it debuted on February 26, 2016. The hour-long episode features Ira Glass, Ken Armstrong and Robyn Semien and includes interviews with Marie, Mason and two of Marie's foster parents.

A False Report

Armstrong and Miller adapted their article and additional research into a 304-page book, A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America. It was published on February 6, 2018 by the Crown Publishing Group. The book expands upon details of the case like O'Leary's perspective and subjects such as victim blaming and social media harassment. Mason was interviewed for the book, but Rittgarn refused to speak to the authors without being paid.

The book received mostly positive critical reviews, with Hamilton Cain of Star Tribune calling it an "instant true-crime classic". Emily Bazelon of The New York Times praised that the authors "tell their story plainly, expertly and well", and the style of alternating between Marie's story and the other Denver sexual assaults was praised by Claudie Rowe of The Seattle Times and Cain. However, though Rosita Boland of The Irish Times enjoyed the early sections of the book, she found it to have a "curiously flat style overall, without any distinctive voice".

Unbelievable

The Netflix miniseries Unbelievable is an eight-part adaptation of "An Unbelievable Story of Rape", also drawing from "An Anatomy of Doubt" and A False Report. It premiered on September 13, 2019. The main characters are based on Marie (Kaitlyn Dever), known in the series as Marie Adler, and Detectives Edna Hendershot and Stacy Galbraith, who were renamed as Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette) and Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever). Marie, Armstrong and Miller were consulted during the production.

Netflix reported that Unbelievable had garnered 32 million views by the end of September, where a "view" entailed watching at least 70% of an episode. This made it the seventh-most viewed television series on the platform from August 2018 to September 2019. The program was nominated for numerous awards, including four nominations each at the Golden Globe Awards and the Critics' Choice Television Awards, with one win at the latter. On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has a rating of 98%, based on 82 reviews, with the summary: "Heartbreaking and powerful, Unbelievable transcends familiar true-crime beats by shifting its gaze to survivors of abuse, telling their stories with grace and gravity." On Metacritic, the program has a rating of 83 out of 100 based on 25 reviews, indicating universal acclaim.

References

External links

 The article on Propublica

2015 works
George Polk Award recipients
Investigative journalism
Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting winners
Works about rape
Works about police officers
Works about American law enforcement agencies
History of women in Washington (state)
History of women in Colorado
2008 in Washington (state)
2011 in Colorado

An Unbelievable Story of Rape


The siege of Athlone was part of the Williamite War in Ireland between the supporters of King James II, who were known as Jacobites, and the supporters of King William of Orange. The siege began on 17 July 1690, when Williamite Lieutenant-General James Douglas arrived outside the Jacobite held city of Athlone with ten regiments of foot and five regiments of horse for a total force of 12,000. The Governor of Athlone, Colonel Richard Grace decided to defend the western part of the city. The Jacobite troops destroyed the bridge over the Shannon River that connected the eastern and western parts of the city, before the Williamite Army arrived. The city's garrison consisted of three regiments of foot and eleven troops of horse for a total force of about 4,500.

General Douglas sent a messenger to Colonel Grace demanding he surrender the city. Colonel Grace responded by firing a pistol shot over the head of the messenger and stating "These are my terms; these only, I will give or receive, and when my provisions are consumed, I will defend till I eat my old boots." General Douglas commenced a bombardment of the city with twelve cannon and two mortars, the city of Athlone's guns returned fire. After two days the Williamite Army attempted to ford the Shannon River but were repelled with considerable loss. The artillery fire continued between the two sides until 24 July when General Douglas was forced to retire having suffered about 400 casualties, and having been informed that Patrick Sarsfield and the Jacobite Cavalry were en route to relieve the city of Athlone's garrison.

Although the Jacobites withstood the week long siege, a year later the Williamite Army returned and took the city. Governor Richard Grace died defending the city during the 2nd siege of Athlone in 1691.

References

 O'Callaghan, John, History of The Irish Brigades in the Service of France, Cameron & Ferguson, 1870
 Blake-Forster, Charles, The Irish Chieftains; or, A Struggle for the Crown, McGlashan & Gill, 1872
 "The Siege of Limerick (1690)" from A Concise History of Ireland by P. W. Joyce. LibraryIreland.com

External links
 Colonel Richard Grace at LibraryIreland.com

Battles of the Williamite War in Ireland
Conflicts in 1690
Sieges involving Ireland
1690 in Ireland

Siege of Athlone (1690)


Dwarf, dwarfs or dwarves may refer to:

Common uses
Dwarf (folklore), a being from Germanic mythology and folklore
 Dwarf, a person or animal with dwarfism

Arts, entertainment, and media

Fictional entities
Dwarf (Dungeons & Dragons), a short humanoid race
Dwarf (Middle-earth), a humanoid race in J. R. R. Tolkien's literature
Dwarf (Warhammer), a humanoid race
Dwarfs (Discworld), a race of characters
Dwarves (Warcraft), a short, strong race
Dwarves (Marvel Comics)

Literature
The Dwarf (Cho novel), a 1978 novel by Cho Se-hui
The Dwarf (Lagerkvist novel), a 1944 novel by Pär Lagerkvist

Other arts, entertainment, and media
Dwarfs?! (video game)
Dwarves (band), American punk band
Killer Dwarfs, Canadian heavy metal band
Wrocław's dwarfs, small sculptures in Wrocław, Poland

Biology
Phyletic dwarfism, an average decrease in size of animals
Insular dwarfism, a evolutionary condition caused by genetic and environmental factors (e.g. no / little predators and smaller geography)

Cosmology
Dwarf galaxy, in cosmology
Dwarf planet, in cosmology

Other uses
Dwarf, Kentucky
DWARF, a debugging data format
PYGMIES + DWARFS arguments

See also
Dwarf star
Dwarven language (disambiguation)
 (including many cross-references from common names of plants or animals)

Dwarf


Nemyriv (, , ) is a historic town in Vinnytsia Oblast (province) in Ukraine, located in the historical region of Podolia. It was the administrative center of former Nemyriv Raion (district). Population:

Nemyriv is one of the oldest cities in Vinnytska oblast, Ukraine. It was founded by Prince Nemyr in 1390. It is a minor industrial center.

The distiller company that produces Ukrainian Nemiroff (Russian spelling) vodka is located in Nemyriv.

The town's tourist attractions include a late 19th-century palace (which belonged to the House of Potocki) and a park complex.

History

Nemyriv was built on the site of ancient Scythian settlement Myriv, destroyed during the Mongol invasion of Rus'. It was first mentioned under its modern name in 1506, which ultimately derives from the Slavic given name Niemir. It was a private town of Poland, owned by the families of Zbaraski and Potocki. Polish King Stanisław August Poniatowski visited the Potocki Palace.

Notable events of Cossack wars took place in the town through 17th century and the city was captured by Andrii Abazyn between 1702 and 1704.

In 1737, an abortive congress was held in Nemyriv, aimed at the conclusion of peace between the emperors of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey, and bringing an end to the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–39.

Jewish history of the city
Before World War II, Nemyriv had a large Jewish community. During the Khmelnytsky Uprising a massacre of Jews took place in Nemyriv. The town fell to the Cossacks on 10 June 1648, and the non-Jewish townspeople betrayed the Jews to the Cossacks. The massacre was significant enough to Polish-Lithuanian Jewry that the Council of Four Lands marked the Jewish date of the massacre, 20 Sivan, as a day of remembrance for all the dead from the Khmelnytsky Uprising. The Hasidic Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polonne was appointed as rabbi in Nemyriv after he left Rashkov, during the 3rd quarter of the 18th century. By the 19th century it had become one of the centers of Breslov Hasidism, being the birthplace and home of Nathan of Breslov ("Reb Noson"), the foremost disciple and scribe of rebbe Nachman of Breslov. After Nachman's death in 1810, Reb Noson moved to Bratslav to disseminate and publish his teachings from there. The city acted as a center of Jewish studies and linked with several Rabbi.Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller and Jehiel Michel ben Eliezer. Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller once chief Rabbi of Vienna and Prague was the Chief Rabbi of Nemyriv from 1631 to 1634.

By September 1941, the German kept the Jews of the city prisoners in a ghetto, where they were put to work, constructing the road from Nemyriv to Gaysin. On November 24, 1941, an Einsatzgruppen massacred 2,680 Jews in pits in the Polish cemetery. On June 26, 1942, the ghetto was liquidated. The Jews were driven into the synagogue, where 200 to 300 young and strong men and women were selected and sent to a labor camp. The rest, perhaps as many as 500, were shot behind the Polish cemetery in pits that had been dug in advance.

Gallery

Notable people
 Nathan of Breslov, rabbi
 Nikolay Nekrasov, poet
 Marko Vovchok, writer
 Theodosius Dobzhansky, geneticist
 Mordechai Namir, Israeli politician
 Ida Rhodes (birth name Hadassah Itzkowitz) was born in a Jewish village between Nemyriv and Tulchyn.
 Yosyf Semashko, Uniate and Orthodox hierarch
 Liubov Hakkebush, stage actress, teacher and translator.

References

External links
 The murder of the Jews of Nemyriv during World War II, at Yad Vashem website.

Cities of district significance in Ukraine
Cities in Vinnytsia Oblast
Bratslav Voivodeship
Bratslavsky Uyezd
Historic Jewish communities in Ukraine
Holocaust locations in Ukraine

Nemyriv


Eleni Marie Petinos is an Australian state politician in New South Wales. She served as the Minister for Small Business and the Minister for Fair Trading in the Perrottet ministry from December 2021 until her service was ceased on 31 July 2022 by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet after allegations of her mistreatment and bullying of staff came to light. Petinos was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as the member for Miranda for the Liberal Party at the 2015 New South Wales state election.

Petinos graduated from the University of New South Wales with a bachelor of jurisprudence, bachelor of laws and a graduate diploma of legal practice. Before her election to parliament, Petinos was a tax lawyer, a member of the Liberal Party state executive and an adviser to Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells. She was a member of the Liberal right faction when pre-selected, but switched to the moderates faction after the 2015 election, encouraged by her mentor, Sutherland Shire councillor Kent Johns. As a result, ahead of the next state election, she initially faced a preselection challenge supported by the right faction, which was not successful.

Petinos was the chair of the Legislative Assembly Committee on Transport and Infrastructure between April 2017 and March 2019. She was a parliamentary secretary for transport and roads from April 2019 until December 2021. In December 2021, Petinos was sworn in as the Minister for Small Business and as the Minister for Fair Trading in the Perrottet ministry, serving as a minister for seven months prior to her dismissal. She denied engaging in bullying but apologised if her behaviour caused offence or discomfort, and indicated her intention to stay on in politics as a state member of parliament despite the controversy that led to her sacking.

The claims made against her included that she had "relentlessly bullied" ministerial staff, calling some "retarded" and "stupid" and hyperbolically threatened to "kill" them. Media reports suggested the premier's decision was prompted by similar bullying complaints levelled against the then minister from within the public service.

After Petinos' ousting, media reports suggested some government MP's thought the premier had acted too hastily in removing her, given the allegations against her were unproven and that she denied the claims. They suggested Petinos was a victim of the fact the government was under pressure over unrelated scandals and that she would ordinarily have been given greater protection. The Labor opposition contrasted the haste involved in Petinos' removal with the Premier's initial reluctance to take action against Stuart Ayres.

After her dismissal from the Ministry, claims emerged that the NSW Building Commissioner had resigned because of a "problematic" relationship with Petinos. The New South Wales Legislative Council or upper house is investigating the circumstances of then Minister Petinos meeting with a construction company which was employing former deputy premier John Barilaro and had been the subject of stop-work orders made by the Building Commissioner.  Petinos has denied suggestions she interfered with the issuing of the orders. It is anticipated the Commissioner's secret letter would be released as part of the upper house examination of the issue.

Petinos had earlier been involved in other controversies relating to personal conduct, including claims she had an affair with a Liberal parliamentary colleague Matt Kean and had vomited in the back of then deputy premier John Barilaro's chauffeured government car after a rugby league state of origin match. She subsequently paid for the costs of cleaning the ministerial car.

References

Living people
Liberal Party of Australia members of the Parliament of New South Wales
Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly
Australian people of Greek descent
Year of birth missing (living people)
Place of birth missing (living people)
21st-century Australian politicians
Women members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly
21st-century Australian women politicians

Eleni Petinos


A reverse blog is a type of blog that is characterized by the lack of a single, specific blogger. In a traditional blog a blogger will write their comments about a given topic and other users may view and sometimes comment on the bloggers work. A reverse blog is written entirely by the users, who are given a topic.  The blog posts are usually screened and chosen for publication by a core group or the publisher of the blog.

Overview
A reverse blog is characterized primarily by the lack of a blogger on a site providing blog-style content. The number of comments must be limited in order to differentiate a reverse blog from a forum. This number of comments must be fixed as well. These are the primary and necessary characteristics of a reverse blog. The reverse blog is also commonly called an inverse blog.

Common features
These features are common or popular among reverse blogs, but not necessary:
 An approval system to rate comments
 A login form to track user actions
 Moderators and user hierarchy to enforce content

Purposes
The Reverse Blog has gained popularity over the years as users have developed a disdain for traditional blogging. In general, users are not willing to monitor the comments of one blogger. Instead, they would prefer to make a blog themselves. In order to deal with the increasing number of unread blogs, reverse blogs were created. These focus users into a common area to represent various topics and (optionally) rate each other's content.

Notes

Blogging

Reverse blog


Gaidinliu Pamei (26 January 1915 – 17 February 1993)  popularly known as Rani Gaidinliu was a Naga spiritual and political leader who led a revolt against British rule in India. At the age of 13, she joined the Heraka religious movement of her cousin Haipou Jadonang. The movement later turned into a political movement seeking to drive out the British from Manipur and the surrounding Naga areas. Within the Heraka faith, she came to be considered an incarnation of the Goddess Cherachamdinliu. Gaidinliu was arrested in 1932 at the age of 16, and was sentenced to life imprisonment by the British rulers. Jawaharlal Nehru met her at Shillong Jail in 1937, and promised to pursue her release. Nehru gave her the title of "Rani" ("Queen"), and she gained local popularity as Rani Gaidinliu.

She was released in 1947 after India's independence, and continued to work for the upliftment of her  people. An advocate of the ancestral Naga religious practices, she staunchly resisted the conversion of Nagas to Christianity. She was honoured as a freedom fighter and was awarded a Padma Bhushan by the Government of India.

Early life

Gaidinliu was born on 26 January 1915 at Nungkao (or Longkao) village in the present-day Tousem sub-division of Tamenglong District, Manipur. She was from the Rongmei Naga tribe (also known as Kabui). She was the fifth of eight children, including six sisters and a younger brother, born to Lothonang Pamei and Kachaklenliu. The family belonged to the ruling clan of the village. She did not have a formal education due to the lack of schools in the area.

As Haipou Jadonang's disciple

In 1927, when she was just 13, Gaidinliu joined the Heraka movement of her cousin Haipou Jadonang, who had emerged as a prominent local leader. Jadonang's movement was a revival of a tribal religion. It attracted a number of followers from the Zeliangrong tribes (the Zeme, Liangmai and Rongmei). Jadonang was convicted and hanged by the British for killing few Manipur merchants.
Persuaded by Jadonang's ideology and principles, Gaidinliu became his disciple and a part of the movement against the British. In three years, by the age of 16, she was also accused of creating communal unrest against Kukis and the British wanted to arrest her. So she was mobilizing people against the British  and their rule, finally arrested by the British for her calamity against the Kukis.

Rebellion and incarceration

After Jadonang was arrested and hanged by the British in 1931, Gaidinliu emerged as his spiritual and political heir.

She openly rebelled against the British rule, exhorting the Zeliangrong people not to pay taxes. She received donations from the local Nagas, many of whom also joined her as volunteers. The British authorities launched a manhunt for her. She evaded arrest by the police, moving across villages in what are now Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. The Governor of Assam dispatched the 3rd and 4th battalions of the Assam Rifles against her, under the supervision of the Naga Hills Deputy Commissioner JP Mills. Monetary rewards were declared for information leading to her arrest: this included a declaration that any village providing information on her whereabouts will get a 10-year tax break. Her forces engaged the Assam Rifles in armed conflicts in the North Cachar Hills (16 February 1932) and the Hangrum village (18 March 1932).

In October 1932, Gaidinliu moved to the Pulomi village, where her followers started building a wooden fortress. While the fortress was under construction, an Assam Rifles contingent headed by Captain MacDonald launched a surprise attack on the village on 17 October 1932. Gaidinliu, along with her followers, was arrested without any resistance near the Kenoma village. Gaidinliu denied that she had any role in the attack on the Hangrum post of the Assam Rifles or the construction of the fort. In December 1932, her followers from the Leng and the Bopungwemi villages murdered the Kuki chowkidar (watchman) of the Lakema Inspection Bungalow in the Naga Hills, suspecting him to be the informer who led to her arrest. Gaidinliu was taken to Imphal, where she was convicted on the charges of murder and abetment of murder after a 10-month trial. She was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Political Agent's Court for abetment of murder. Most of her associates were either executed or jailed.

She established tribal organization like Kabni Samiti in 1934.

From 1933 to 1947 she served time at the Guwahati, Shillong, Aizawl and Tura jails. Many rebels proclaimed her and Jadonang to be their inspiration in refusing to pay taxes to the British. However, her movement declined after the last of her followers, Dikeo and Ramjo, were arrested in 1933. Jawaharlal Nehru met her at the Shillong Jail in 1937 and he promised to pursue her release. His statement, published in the Hindustan Times, described Gaidinliu as a "daughter of the hills" and he gave her the title 'Rani' or Queen of her people. Nehru wrote to the British MP Lady Astor to do something for the release of Rani Gaidinliu but the Secretary of State for India rejected her request stating that trouble may rise again if Rani was released.

Life in independent India

After the Interim Government of India was set up in 1946, Rani Gaidinliu was released on Prime Minister Nehru's orders from Tura jail, having spent 14 years in various prisons. She continued to work for the upliftment of her people after her release. She stayed at Vimrap village of Tuensang with her younger brother Marang till 1952. In 1952, she was finally allowed to move back to her native village of Longkao. In 1953, Prime Minister Nehru visited Imphal where Rani Gaidinliu met and conveyed to him the gratitude and goodwill of her people. Later she met Nehru in Delhi to discuss the development and welfare of Zeliangrong people.

Gaidinliu was opposed to the Naga National Council (NNC) insurgents, who advocated secessionism from India. Instead, she campaigned for a separate Zeliangrong territory within the Union of India. The rebel Naga leaders criticized Gaidinliu's movement for the integration of Zeliangrong tribes under one administrative unit. They were also opposed to her working for the revival of the traditional Naga religion of animism or Heraka. The NNC leaders considered her actions an obstacle to their own movement. The Baptist leaders deemed the Heraka revival movement anti-Christian and she was warned of serious consequences if she were not to change her stand. In order to defend the Heraka culture and to strengthen her position, she went underground in 1960.

In 1966, after six years of hard underground life in old age, under an agreement with the Government of India, Rani Gaidinliu came out from her jungle hideout to work for the betterment of her people through peaceful, democratic and non-violent means. She went to Kohima on 20 January 1966, and met the Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Delhi on 21 February 1966, demanding the creation of a separate Zeliangrong administrative unit. On 24 September 320 of her followers surrendered at Henima. Some of them were absorbed into the Nagaland Armed Police.

During her stay at Kohima, she was conferred "Tamrapatra Freedom Fighter Award" in 1972, the Padma Bhushan (1982) and the Vivekananda Seva Award (1983).

Awards

 Tamrapatra Freedom Fighter Award-1972
 Padma Bhushan-1982
 Vivekananda Seva Award-1983
 Birsa Munda Award-posthumously

Death
In 1991, Gaidinliu returned to her birthplace Longkao, where she died on 17 February 1993 at the age of 78.

The Governor of Manipur, Chintamani Panigrahi, the Home Secretary of Nagaland, officials from Manipur and many people from all parts of the North Eastern region attended her funeral at her native village. In Imphal, the Chief Minister of Manipur R.K. Dorendra Singh, Deputy Chief Minister, Rishang Keishing and others paid floral tributes and a general holiday was declared by the State Government.

Rani Gaidinliu was also conferred the Birsa Munda Award posthumously. The Government of India issued a postal stamp in her honour in 1996.  The Government of India issued a commemorative coin in her honour in 2015.

Legacy

Because of the Heraka movement's hostility towards Christianity, Gaidinliu's heroics were not acknowledged highly among the Nagas, most of whom had converted to Christianity by the 1960s. The Naga nationalist groups don't recognize her either, because she was considered close to the Government of India. When the Hindu nationalist Sangh Parivar aligned with the Heraka movement in the 1970s, the perception that she was a promoter of Hinduism grew stronger among the Christian Nagas.

In 2015, when the Central government and T. R. Zeliang's state government decided to construct a Gaidinliu memorial hall, several civil society organizations in the Nagaland state opposed the move.

References

1915 births
1993 deaths
Naga people
Indian animists
Indian independence activists from Manipur
Indian critics of Christianity
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in social work
Indian prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
Prisoners and detainees of British India
People from Tamenglong district
20th-century Indian educators
20th-century Indian women educators
Women in Manipur politics
Women Indian independence activists
Indigenous activists of Asia
Women educators from Manipur
Educators from Manipur
Social workers from Manipur
Anti-Christian sentiment in India

Rani Gaidinliu


Abdur Rahman Chughtai (21 September 1894 – 17 January 1975) was a painter artist and intellectual from Pakistan, who created his own unique, distinctive painting style influenced by Mughal art, miniature painting, Art Nouveau and Islamic art traditions. He is considered to be
'the first significant modern Muslim artist from Pakistan', and the national artist of Pakistan.

He was given the title of Khan Bahadur by the British Empire in India in 1934, awarded Pakistan's Hilal-i-Imtiaz (Crescent of Excellence) Award in 1960, and the Pride of Performance Award in 1958 by the President of Pakistan.

Early life and career
Chughtai was born on 21 Sep 1897 in Lahore, now in Pakistan. He was the second son of Karim Bukhsh, who belonged to a prominent Punjabi Muslim family of artists descending from generations of craftsmen, architects, and decorators. Chughtai briefly learned naqqashi from his uncle Baba Miran Shah Naqqash at a local mosque. After completing his education at the Railway Technical School, Lahore, in 1911, Chughtai joined the Mayo School of Arts, Lahore (now called National College of Arts, Lahore), where Samarendranath Gupta, a pupil of Abanindranath Tagore was Vice-Principal. After leaving the school, he made a living for a while as a photographer and drawing teacher. He eventually became the head instructor in chromo-lithography at the Mayo School.

In 1916, Chughtai's first painting in a revivalist 'oriental' style appeared in the Modern Review magazine. He had his first exhibition in 1920 at the Punjab Fine Art Society. He also exhibited with the Indian School of Oriental Art during the 1920s, by which time he had become quite renowned. His work contributed greatly to Lahore's burgeoning modern art scene. While he predominantly worked with watercolors, Chughtai was also a print-maker, perfecting his etching skills in London during visits in the mid-1930s. His sketches were used in many books in Punjabi poetry by Bhai Vir Singh for illustrating his famous poems like "Kambadi Kalai" and including his famous epic "Rana Surat Singh" . Chughtai offered his gratitude to Bhai Vir Singh for becoming part of these illustrations as a young artist in his letter to him on 11.04.1929

In his sixty years of artistic creation, Chughtai produced nearly 2000 watercolours, thousands of pencil sketches, and nearly 300 etchings and aquatints. He also wrote short stories, and articles on art. He designed stamps, coins, insignia and book covers. He was also an avid collector of miniatures and other art. He published three books of his own work: the Muraqqai-i-Chughtai (1927), Naqsh-i-Chughtai (c. 1935) and CFqueenhughtai's Paintings (1940). The Muraqqa-i-Chughtai was a sumptuously illustrated edition of Mirza Ghalib's Urdu poetry, with a foreword by Sir Muhammad Iqbal. It is regarded as the most significant work of Chughtai's career and in its time, was considered the finest achievement in book production in the country.

After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Chughtai came to be regarded as one of the most famous representatives of Pakistan. Chughtai's paintings were given to visiting heads of state Allama Iqbal, Pablo Picasso, Elizabeth II was amongst his admirers.

Chughtai's closest associate was his younger brother Abdullah Chughtai, a scholar and researcher of Islamic art. Chughtai married twice, and had two children, a son and daughter. He died in Lahore on 17 January 1975.

Art
Chughtai's early watercolours take off from the revivalism of the Bengal School of Art – his Jahanara and the Taj, for instance, shows the influence of Abanindranath's The Last Moments of Shah Jahan. By the 1940s, he had created his own style, strongly influenced by Islamic art traditions, but retaining a feel of Art Nouveau. His subject matter was drawn from the legends, folklore and history of the Indo-Islamic world, as well as Punjab, Persia and the world of the Mughals.

Abdur Rahman Chughtai also designed the logo for the Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) at the behest of its first general manager, Ubaidur Rahman. The logo has been tweaked and modified over the years since its inception but remains fundamentally the same. On Pakistan's independence day in 1951, he produced a set of 9 stamps, better known as 'Chughtai Art set'. At that time, this set was considered as the most beautiful stamps of the world.

Artist and gallery owner Salima Hashmi deems Chughtai one of South Asia's foremost painters.  "He was part of the movement that started in the early part of the 20th century to establish an identity indigenous to the subcontinent", she said. "He rejected the hegemony of the British Colonial aesthetic".

Painting exhibits
Chughtai's works are owned by the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi), the Peace Palace (in The Hague), United Nations Headquarters, New York, the Kennedy Memorial in Boston, the US State Department (in Washington, D.C.), President's House Bonn, AP State Archaeology Museum,

Queen Juliana's Palace in the Netherlands, Emperor's Palace Bangkok, President House Islamabad, Governors' Houses in Lahore and Karachi, and the National Art Gallery, Islamabad.. Many of his works are at the Chughtai Museum Trust in Lahore, Pakistan.

Works
Maqalat-i Chughtaʾi. 2 vols. Islamabad: Idarah-yi Saqafat-i Pakistan, 1987.
Lahaur ka dabistan-i musavviri. Lahore: Chughtai Museum Trust, 1979.
Chughtai's Paintings. 2nd ed. Lahore: Print Printo Press, 1970.
Amal-i Chughtaʾi: Poet of the East Lahore: Self-published, 1968.
Naqsh-i Chughtaʾi: Divan-i Ghalib Musavvir. Lahore: Ahsan Bradarz, 1962.
Chughtai's Indian Paintings. New Delhi: Dhoomi Mal, 1951.
Muraqqaʿ-i Chughtaʾi. Lahore: Jahangir Book Club, 1927.

Other works
Among Chughtai's popularly known works are Hashim Shahbaz and Radio Pakistan and his painting of Anarkali for the cover of a 1992 drama. Additionally, one of the most successful UNICEF cards features a Chughtai piece. He was also known for his designs of postage stamps. United Nations Organization art correspondent Jacob-Baal Teshuva wrote that Chughtai's paintings are the largest set released in 1948.

Awards and recognition
 Awarded the title of 'Khan Bahadur' in 1934 by the British Empire
 Hilal-i-Imtiaz (Crescent of Excellence) Award in 1960 by the President of Pakistan
Pride of Performance Award in 1958 by the President of Pakistan

Gallery

See also
 Anarkali

References

External links
 Chughtai Museum
 Chughtai Discounted Books

1894 births
1975 deaths
Pakistani illustrators
Pakistani stamp designers
Recipients of the Pride of Performance
Recipients of Hilal-i-Imtiaz
Artists from Lahore
20th-century Pakistani painters
Muslim artists
Pakistani painters
Pakistani artists

Abdur Rahman Chughtai


Trehafod is a village in the Rhondda Valley between Porth and Pontypridd in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. A former coal mining area, the village is now best known as the site of the Rhondda Heritage Park, visiting site for everyone showing the life of coal mining in Rhondda. Trehafod has many buildings such as the Bed and breakfast and Hafod Primary School. Trehafod primary school is a school for ages 3 to 11 with 8 year groups.

History
About 1850 a map of the area shows a number of farms in the place that was to become Trehafod, these were named, Hafod Uchaf, Hafod Ganol and Hafod Fawr. Trehafod took its name from these farms. Hafod is a Welsh word that can mean "hill farm".

Trehafod is well known for the Rhondda Heritage Park which was once the Lewis Merthyr mine. At the height for coal mining, the Lewis Merthyr mine was one of the highest rated mines in the South Wales Coalfield.

Due to the River Rhondda  flowing very close to a lot of houses within the village there have been a number of floods. The biggest floods were in 1960 which killed one man.

Transport
Trehafod train station is on the Rhondda Line which follows the River Rhondda; the train line and river go through the village. The train leaves to different locations such as Cardiff central , Treherbert, Pontypridd, Porth Cardiff queen street, Treforest and Bridgend and arrives from Hengoed and Treorchy. There are many roads in Trehafod but the main road is the A4058 that leads from Treorchy  and leads to the river Taff. There are also many bus stops.

Notes

Villages in Wales
1850s establishments in the United Kingdom

Trehafod