Coenraad Johannes van Houten (15 March 1801 – 27 May 1887) was a Dutch chemist and chocolate maker known for the treatment of cocoa mass with alkaline salts to remove the bitter taste and make cocoa solids more water-soluble; the resulting product is still called "Dutch process chocolate". He is also credited with introducing a method for pressing the fat (cocoa butter) from roasted cocoa beans, though this was in fact his father, Casparus van Houten's invention.

Father and son van Houten

Coenraad Johannes van Houten was the son of Casparus van Houten (1770–1858) and Arnoldina Koster. His father opened a chocolate factory in Amsterdam in 1815, with a mill turned by laborers. At that time, cocoa beans were ground into a fine mass, which could then be mixed with milk to create a chocolate drink or, with addition of sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla, made into cookies.

Cocoa press
In 1828, Casparus van Houten Sr. (and not his son, who is usually credited) patented an inexpensive method for pressing the fat from roasted cocoa beans. The center of the bean, known as the "nib", contains an average of 54% of cocoa butter, which is a natural fat. Van Houten's machine – a hydraulic press – reduced the cocoa butter content by nearly half. This created a "cake" that could be pulverized into cocoa powder, which was to become the basis of all chocolate products.

The introduction of cocoa powder is not only made creating chocolate drinks much easier, but also made it possible to combine the powder with sugar and then remix it with cocoa butter to create a solid, already closely resembling today's eating chocolate.

In 1838, the patent expired, enabling others to produce cocoa powder and build on Van Houten's success, experimenting to make new chocolate products. In 1847, English chocolate maker J. S. Fry & Sons produced arguably the first chocolate bar. Later developments were in Switzerland, where Daniel Peter introduced milk chocolate in 1875 and Rodolphe Lindt made chocolate more blendable by the process of conching in 1879.

Dutch process chocolate

Coenraad Van Houten introduced a further improvement by treating the powder with alkaline salts (potassium or sodium carbonates) so that the powder would mix more easily with water. Today, this process is known as "Dutching". The final product, Dutch chocolate, has a dark color and a mild taste.

Later career
In 1835, Coenraad Johannes van Houten married Hermina van Houten (unrelated) from Groningen. In 1850, he moved his production from a windmill in Leiden to a steam factory in Weesp. By that time he was exporting chocolate to England, France, and Germany. In 1866, John Cadbury traveled to Weesp to buy a Van Houten press, but did not use it in his manufacturing until 1875.

Coenraad's son Casparus Johannes (1844–1901), employed since 1865, had a gift for marketing and contributed greatly to the growth of the company. Advertisements for Van Houten could be found on trams throughout Europe and the United States. As early as 1899, Van Houten produced a commercial film that depicted a sleepy clerk who recovers miraculously after eating some chocolate. The factory was a boost for the town of Weesp, whose population doubled in the second half of the 19th century. Casparus Jr. had himself built a 99-room Jugendstil villa in Weesp, by the renowned architect Abraham Salm (1857–1915). Work was started in 1897 but not completed until 1901, the year he died.

The Van Houten company was sold in 1962 to W.R. Grace, and the factories in Weesp closed in 1971. The Van Houten brand name, still in use, has been transferred several times since, in 1990 from the German chocolate manufacturer Jacobs Suchard to Philip Morris. It subsequently was owned by the Stollwerck chocolate manufacturing company and since 2002 by Barry Callebaut.

The legacy of Dutch process cocoa
Dutch process cocoa is generally acknowledged as superior to cocoa not processed in this way. The combination of the inventions by father and son van Houten led to the nineteenth-century mass production and consumption of chocolate, or, as some call it, the "democratization" of chocolate.

Popular culture
"Drink Van Houten's Cocoa!" wrote Vladimir Mayakovsky in his poem, A Cloud in Trousers, referencing an urban legend about a publicity trick by Van Houten company: paying a condemned man to shout their slogan directly before being hanged. This infamous citation is the title of Ornela Vorpsi's book from 2010.

A Van Houten's Cocoa shop can be seen during the opening battle sequence of Neil Jordan's
1996 film Michael Collins.

References

External links

 Van Houten Drinks
 Van Houten's Cocoa

1801 births
1887 deaths
19th-century Dutch businesspeople
Businesspeople from Amsterdam
Businesspeople in confectionery
Chocolatiers
19th-century Dutch chemists
19th-century Dutch inventors
People from Weesp

Coenraad Johannes van Houten


River surfing is the sport of surfing either standing waves, tidal bores or upstream waves in rivers. Claims for its origins include a 1955 ride of  along the tidal bore of the River Severn.

River surfing on standing waves has been documented as far back as the early-1970s in Munich, Germany, today offering the world's largest urban surfing spot.

Standing waves
In this type of river surfing, the wave is stationary on the river, caused by a high volume of water constricted by flowing over a rock and creating a wave behind. A requirement for this is a flowing water with shallow depth in which the inertia of the water overcomes its gravity due to the supercritical flow speed (Froude number: 1.7 - 4.5, surpassing 4.5 results in direct standing wave) and is therefore neither significantly slowed down by the obstacle nor pushed to the side. It is a form of hydraulic jump. A river surfer can face up-stream and catch this wave and have the feeling of traveling fast over water while not actually moving.

River surfing conditions are created by a combination of underlying rock formations and specific water levels, i.e. not too much or too little water. Water flow is usually measured in the SI-unit cubic meters per second (m³/s) (alternatively in liters per second or cubic feet per second).

Europe

Germany
Despite being many hundreds of kilometres from the nearest ocean, Munich has a reputation as a surfing hotspot, offering one of Europe's best waves.  The Bavarian capital is the birthplace of river surfing. The city has been the center of surfboard riding on a stationary wave since the early 1970s. Up to 100 surfers daily hit the waves in the city's Englischer Garten, the largest urban park in the world. There, in the river Eisbach, the world's best known river surf spot, the Eisbach wave — literally "ice brook" — the flow velocity of the icy water is about 5 meters per second, at a flow rate of 20 m³/s (equivalent to a mass of 20 tons per second), and the temperature never gets above 15 degrees Celsius. An annual surfing competition is held on the standing wave. Additionally, there are further stationary waves that form on the river Isar just downstream of the Wittelsbacherbrücke bridge in Isarvorstadt, as well as on the canal that joins the Isar channel with the Floßlände.

Munich has produced the best river surfers and was the first location that created a true surfing community around an inland river wave. The scene has around 1,000 active surfers, while 10,000 in Munich will have tried it at some point.

Austria
On Austria's river Mur in Graz (Styria), river surfing is a regular on two waves built for surfing in 2001 and rebuilt in 2004 by KanuClub Graz.
Near Salzburg in the Alm Canal there is a custom built surf wave, the Almwelle.

Norway
Norway has several river waves, amongst the most famous are:
 Bulken Wave (Bulkenbølgen) at Voss.
 Sluppen Wave (Sluppenbølgen) in Trondheim.
 Sarp Wave (Sarpebølgen) in Sarpsborg.
 Rand Wave (Randsbølgen) in Hønefoss.

Several artificial river waves are either under planning or have been considered:
 In Oslo a potential, artificial river wave has been planned in their main city river Akerselva.
 In Stavanger, an artificial river wave for surfboards and kayaks was planned in Figgjoelva, but was opposed by the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate and the Stavanger and Rogaland Hunting and Fishing Association.
 In Evje a river wave project called the Evje Wave (Evjebølgen) is being planned at the river mouth of Otra, the largest river in the Southern Norway region. The Otra river is already popular for rafting and other extreme sports. Concept drawings have been published, and the project is advertised as having a low environmental impact.

Switzerland
The Limmat in Zürich does not have any standing waves but is fast-flowing. Local surfers have developed a pulley system known as upstream surfing which allows surfers to surf the river.

North America

Canada

The Habitat 67 standing wave in the Lachine Rapids in Montreal, named for its location adjacent to the Habitat 67 housing complex, has become a popular destination for river surfing. Corran Addison, an Olympic kayaker and three-time world freestyle kayak champion, was the first to surf the Habitat wave in 2002. His river-surfing school, Imagine Surfboards, has taught 3,500 students since 2005. A second Montreal river-surfing school, KSF, has hosted 1,500 students a year since 2003. From fewer than 10 original surfers, it is estimated that the current of participants numbers around 500.

The Ottawa River in Ottawa has long been a river surfing destination for both locals and travellers. Local surf shops specialize in river surfing gear and boards. Average wave height varies between one and two meters. The waves are most accessible in the spring with some remaining rideable year-round.

In the 2000s, transplanted ocean surfers began riding standing waves in a number of rivers in Alberta, Canada. Several shops in Calgary now stock boards specifically designed for river surfing. The standing wave under the 10th Street bridge in Calgary, has been a popular place for river surfing since its formation after the 2013 Alberta floods Since the mid-2010s, the Alberta River Surfing Association is spearheading transformative river wave projects in Southern Alberta, including a river park in downtown Calgary and Cochrane. The most popular area to river surf around Southern Alberta is in Kananaskis district (45 min from Calgary) at a spot called Mountain Wave. As of the early 2020s, projects of building two additional adjustable man-made river waves are well under way.

United States
Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is known as the most famous river surfing community in the US. The first documented cases of surfing on the Snake River occurred in the late 1970s. The wave known as Lunch Counter is a standing wave that churns during times of snow runoff in the months between May and August each year. This wave is highly active during these months and the area continues to grow as a surf destination.

Pueblo, Colorado, has also become a river surfing city. A kayak park was in built 2005 near downtown Pueblo and locals have been surfing features 3, 4, and 7 ever since.

Missoula, Montana, has surfing on Brennan's Wave, a man-made wave on the Clark Fork River.

Boise, Idaho, has surfing at the Boise Whitewater Park near downtown Boise. The Boise River Park features an adjustable man-made wave on the Boise River. Because the waveshaper is adjustable, river surfing is available nearly year around. The Surfer's Journal article "The Surf God's of Idaho" says surfing Boise's river is like "pausing the ocean with a remote control and pressing rewind, but then surfing that backward-flowing wave in forward motion".'

Bend, Oregon, has an adjustable man-made river wave in Bend White Water Rapid Park for all season surfing.

Salida, Colorado has a whitewater park with six different features and a thriving river surfing scene. In fall of 2022, hydrologists from Recreation Engineering and Planning (REP) based in Salida engineered a wave specifically for surfing. The wave, called the Scout Wave 2.0, is meant to perform at even moderate water levels, opening up the season. River surfing is happening in Salida all year long on the Scout 2.0.

New Zealand
The world's first commercial river surfing operation was started by Jon Imhoof in 1989 . Trips are run on the Kawarau River near Queenstown. Bodyboards are used to run rapids and ride standing waves on the river.

Tidal bores
Tidal bores occur in relatively few locations worldwide, usually in areas with a large tidal range (typically more than  between high and low water), and where incoming tides are funnelled into a shallow, narrowing river via a broad bay.  Large bores can be particularly dangerous for shipping, but also present opportunities for river surfing. The funnel-like shape not only increases the tidal range, but it can also decrease the duration of the flood tide, down to a point where the flood appears as a sudden increase in the water level. The tidal bore occurs only during the flood tide, never the ebb tide.

A tidal bore can create a powerful roar that combines the sounds caused by the turbulence in the bore front and whelps, entrained air bubbles in the bore roller, sediment erosion beneath the bore front and of the banks, scouring of shoals and bars, and impacts on obstacles.

Tidal bores are being surfed along coastal rivers such as the pororoca on the Amazon River or England's River Severn.

Severn bore

Surfing the Severn bore has become a competitive sport with dozens of surfers vying to record the longest ride. The tidal surge also attracts canoeists and windsurfers. The present champion surfer is Dave Lawson from Hempsted, Gloucestershire, who has covered 5.7 miles on a surfboard. His record-breaking surf took more than 35 minutes and was logged by an official adjudicator from the British Surfing Association.

Pororoca bore

The pororoca is a tidal bore, with waves up to 4 metres high that travel as much as 13 km inland upstream the Amazon River.

Petitcodiac bore
Tidal bores are backwards-moving waves that travel upstream over forward-moving downstream waves. They occur twice a day on the Petitcodiac River in the Bay of Fundy, driven up the river by the world's highest tides. The North American record for surfing a single river wave was set by J.J. Wessels and Colin Whitbread of California, who rode the Petitcodiac River bore for 29 kilometres on 24 July 2013.

Upstream river waves
An upstream river wave is a phenomenon that looks similar to tidal bores, but is—just like a coastal wave—caused by ocean swells instead of tides. Similar to tidal bores, they form in the ocean and travel up the river.

Building river surf waves
River surfing is gaining popularity around the world. Boise Whitewater Park's Wave Technician, Paul Primus, shares the dual benefit of installing recreational river features to replace dangerous low head dams everywhere. Building river surf waves can also help save lives.

Safety
Dangers associated with river surfing is hypothermia, drowning and blunt trauma. If the water is cool, the surfer may dress in a wetsuit, neoprene boots and gloves. Even if the temperature is high, it is recommended to use footwear in order to avoid cuts from rocks in the river. Care should also be taken not to stand on the river floor where the water is moving. Some choose not to use a leg rope ("leash") since there is a potential for the rope to get hung up in rocks, which can cause drowning if the surfer is unable to reach the hook-and-loop fastener due to strong currents. Depending on the river, it may also be appropriate to use a personal flotation device and helmet. To reduce danger, the surfer should also train specifically on swimming technique for rivers. When falling, one should try to fall as "flat" as possible so as not to hit rocks lying on the bottom of the river. If the surfing is done with the help of water ski rope or other type of rope fixed to shore, there should be at least one person on shore with a knife, scissors or other cutting tools available in case the rope needs to be cut for safety reasons, for example if the surfer gets tangled in the rope. River surfing is not risk free, and there have been deaths.

See also
 Lake surfing
 Riverboarding

References

External links
Riverbreak - The River Surf Magazine
RiverSurfing.ca - A global organization for River Surfers by River Surfers
Standings wave in the Eisbach in Munich, Germany
 Red Cedar River Surfing on YouTube
Eisbach NEWS and interviews with the Munich river surfing community
 http://www.idahosurfcompany.com
 Alberta River Surfing Association - https://albertariversurfing.com/

Whitewater sports

River surfing


Balmoral () is a Northern Village of the Southern Highlands area of New South Wales, Australia. It is the northernmost village in Wingecarribee Shire.

Balmoral Village lies mostly on the eastern side of Wilson Drive. The main street is Railway Parade. The village does not have a Post Office or shops. It has a well-maintained Village Hall, including a children's play area, and a tennis court. The village also has a NSW Rural Fire Service brigade. There is also an active Balmoral Village Association to run events and raise money for the little community.

Balmoral is formerly a station on the alignment of the Main Southern railway line, and is known variously as 'Big Hill Lower Siding' (1878), 'Bargo' (1881), and 'Balmoral' (1888). On the New South Wales Government Railways Secretariat map, the locality is identified as Balmoral Private Village. In 1919, the Picton–Mittagong Deviation opened. The Loop Line continued to operate until 1978, and is now disused. The Balmoral station building was re-erected adjacent to the old school house (built in 1893) and the Loopline Pottery is on the same property.

The town is served on weekdays by the Bowral to Picton NSW TrainLink bus service that runs to the towns served by the old Main South railway alignment, between Mittagong and Picton.

In December 2019, Balmoral was affected by the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season when it was struck twice by fires. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian claimed in a press conference that there was "not much left" of the town, which was disputed by the firefighters involved in efforts to save Balmoral. An early estimate of the damage was that 18 houses, which made up more than 10% of the town, had been destroyed in the fires.

Population
At the 2021 census, 469 people were living in Balmoral.

In the , there were 426 people in Balmoral. 82.6% of people were born in Australia and 93.9% of people spoke only English at home. The most common responses for religion in Balmoral were Anglican 30.9% and No Religion 25.8%.

Gallery

References

Towns of the Southern Highlands (New South Wales)
Natural disaster ghost towns

Balmoral, New South Wales (Southern Highlands)


Onboarding or organizational socialization is the American term for the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective organizational members and insiders. In standard English, this is referred to as "induction". In the United States, up to 25% of workers are organizational newcomers engaged in onboarding process.

Tactics used in this process include formal meetings, lectures, videos, printed materials, or computer-based orientations that outline the operations and culture of the organization that the employee is entering into. This process is known in other parts of the world as an 'induction' or training.

Studies have documented that socialization techniques such as onboarding lead to positive outcomes for new employees. These include higher job satisfaction, better job performance, greater organizational commitment, and reduction in occupational stress and intent to quit.

The term "onboarding" is management jargon coined in the 1970s.

Antecedents of success
Researchers separate the process of onboarding into three parts: new employee characteristics, new employee behaviors, and organizational efforts.

New employee characteristics
New employee characteristics attempt to identify key personality traits in onboarding employees that the business views as beneficial:

 Proactive personality is the tendency to take charge of situations and achieve control over one's environment. This type of personality is considered beneficial for employees in helping them to better adapt to the organization and become high-functioning organizational members, as well as increasing satisfaction and performance.

 Curiosity is believed to play a substantial role in the newcomer adaptation process and is defined as the "desire to acquire knowledge" that energizes individual exploration of an organization's culture and norms.

Finally, employees are segmented based on Employee experience levels as it has a material effect on understanding and ability to assimilate into a new role.

New employee behaviors
New employee behaviors refer to the process of encouraging and identifying behaviors that are viewed as beneficial to company culture and the onboarding process.

Two examples of these behaviors are building relationships and seeking information and feedback.

Information seeking occurs when new employees ask questions of their co-workers and superiors in an effort to learn about their new job and the company's norms, expectations, procedures, and policies. This is viewed as beneficial throughout the onboarding process and beyond into the characteristics of a functional employee more generally.

Feedback seeking is similar to information seeking but refers to new employee efforts to gauge how to behave in their new organization. A new employee may ask co-workers or superiors for feedback on how well he or she is performing certain job tasks or whether certain behaviors are appropriate in the social and political context of the organization. In seeking constructive criticism about their actions, new employees learn what kinds of behaviors are expected, accepted, or frowned upon within the company or work group. Instances of feedback inquiry vary across cultural contexts such that individuals high in self-assertiveness and cultures low in power distance report more feedback seeking than newcomers in cultures where self-assertiveness is low and power distance is high.

Also called networking, relationship building involves an employee's efforts to develop camaraderie with co-workers and even supervisors. This can be achieved informally through simply talking to their new peers during a coffee break or through more formal means such as taking part in pre-arranged company events.

Employee and supervisor relationships
Positive communication and relationships between employees and supervisors is important for worker morale. The way in which a message is delivered affects how supervisors develop relationships and feelings about employees. When developing a relationship evaluating personal reputation, delivery style, and message content all played important factors in the perceptions between supervisors and employees. Yet, when supervisors were assessing work competence, they primarily focused on the content of what they were discussing or the message. Creating interpersonal, professional relationships between employees and supervisors in organizations helps foster productive working relationships.

Tactics
Organizations invest a great amount of time and resources into the training and orientation of new company hires. Organizations differ in the variety of socialization activities they offer in order to integrate productive new workers. Possible activities include socialization tactics, formal orientation programs, recruitment strategies, and mentorship opportunities. Socialization tactics, or orientation tactics, are designed based on an organization's needs, values, and structural policies. Organizations either favor a systematic approach to socialization, or a "sink or swim" approach – in which new employees are challenged to figure out existing norms and company expectations without guidance.

Van Maanen and Schein model (1979)
John Van Maanen and Edgar H. Schein have identified six major tactical dimensions that characterize and represent all of the ways in which organizations may differ in their approaches to socialization.

Collective and individual socialization
Collective socialization is the process of taking a group of new hires and giving them the same training. Examples of this include basic training/boot camp for a military organization, pledging for fraternities/sororities, and education in graduate schools. Individual socialization allows newcomers to experience unique training, separate from others. Examples of this process include but are not limited to apprenticeship programs, specific internships, and "on-the-job" training.

Formal and informal socialization
Formal socialization refers to when newcomers are trained separately from current employees within the organization. These practices single out newcomers, or completely segregate them from the other employees. Formal socialization is witnessed in programs such as police academies, internships, and apprenticeships. Informal socialization processes involve little to no effort to distinguish the two groups. Informal tactics provide a less intimidating environment for recruits to learn their new roles via trial and error. Examples of informal socialization include on-the-job training assignments, apprenticeship programs with no clearly defined role, and using a situational approach in which a newcomer is placed into a work group with no recruit role.

Sequential and random socialization
Sequential socialization refers to the degree to which an organization provides identifiable steps for newcomers to follow during the onboarding process. Random socialization occurs when the sequence of steps leading to the targeted role are unknown, and the progression of socialization is ambiguous; for example, while there are numerous steps or stages leading to specific organizational roles, there is no specific order in which the steps should be taken.

Fixed and variable socialization
This dimension refers to whether or not the organization provides a timetable to complete socialization. Fixed socialization provides a new hire with the exact knowledge of the time it will take to complete a given passage. For instance, some management trainees can be put on "fast tracks", where they are required to accept assignments on an annual basis, despite their own preferences. Variable techniques allow newcomers to complete the onboarding process when they feel comfortable in their position. This type of socialization is commonly associated with up-and-coming careers in business organizations; this is due to several uncontrollable factors such as the state of the economy or turnover rates which determine whether a given newcomer will be promoted to a higher level or not.

Serial and disjunctive socialization
A serial socialization process refers to experienced members of the organization mentoring newcomers. One example of serial socialization would be a first-year police officer being assigned patrol duties with an officer who has been in law enforcement for a lengthy period of time. Disjunctive socialization, in contrast, refers to when newcomers do not follow the guidelines of their predecessors; no mentors are assigned to inform new recruits on how to fulfill their duties.

Investiture and divestiture socialization
This tactic refers to the degree to which a socialization process either confirms or denies the personal identities of the new employees. Investiture socialization processes document what positive characteristics newcomers bring to the organization. When using this socialization process, the organization makes use of their preexisting skills, values, and attitudes. Divestiture socialization is a process that organizations use to reject and remove the importance of personal characteristics a new hire has; this is meant to assimilate them with the values of the workplace. Many organizations require newcomers to sever previous ties and forget old habits in order to create a new self-image based upon new assumptions.

Thus, tactics influence the socialization process by defining the type of information newcomers receive, the source of this information, and the ease of obtaining it.

Jones' model (1986)
Building on the work of Van Maanen and Schein, Jones (1986) proposed that the previous six dimensions could be reduced to two categories: institutionalized and individualized socialization. Companies that use institutionalized socialization tactics implement step-by-step programs, have group orientations, and implement mentor programs. One example of an organization using institutionalized tactics include incoming freshmen at universities, who may attend orientation weekends before beginning classes. Other organizations use individualized socialization tactics, in which the new employee immediately starts working on his or her new position and figures out company norms, values, and expectations along the way. In this orientation system, individuals must play a more proactive role in seeking out information and initiating work relationships.

Formal orientations
Regardless of the socialization tactics used, formal orientation programs can facilitate understanding of company culture and introduces new employees to their work roles and the organizational social environment. Formal orientation programs consist of lectures, videotapes, and written material. More recent approaches, such as computer-based orientations and Internets, have been used by organizations to standardize training programs across branch locations. A review of the literature indicates that orientation programs are successful in communicating the company's goals, history, and power structure.

Recruitment events
Recruitment events play a key role in identifying which potential employees are a good fit for an organization. Recruiting events allow employees to gather initial information about an organization's expectations and company culture. By providing a realistic job preview of what life inside the organization is like, companies can weed out potential employees who are clearly a misfit to an organization; individuals can identify which employment agencies are the most suitable match for their own personal values, goals, and expectations. Research has shown that new employees who receive a great amount of information about the job prior to being socialized tend to adjust better. Organizations can also provide realistic job previews by offering internship opportunities.

Mentorship
Mentorship has demonstrated importance in the socialization of new employees. Ostroff and Kozlowski (1993) discovered that newcomers with mentors become more knowledgeable about the organization than did newcomers without. Mentors can help newcomers better manage their expectations and feel comfortable with their new environment through advice-giving and social support. Chatman (1991) found that newcomers are more likely to have internalized the key values of their organization's culture if they had spent time with an assigned mentor and attended company social events. Literature has also suggested the importance of demographic matching between organizational mentors and mentees. Enscher & Murphy (1997) examined the effects of similarity (race and gender) on the amount of contact and quality of mentor relationships. What often separates rapid onboarding programs from their slower counterparts is not the availability of a mentor, but the presence of a "buddy", someone the newcomer can comfortably ask questions that are either trivial ("How do I order office supplies?") or politically sensitive ("Whose opinion really matters here?"). Buddies can help establish relationships with co-workers in ways that can't always be facilitated by a newcomer's manager.

Online onboarding
Online onboarding, i.e., digital onboarding, means onboarding training that is carried out partially or fully online. Onboarding a new employee is a process where a new hire gets to know the company and its culture and receives the means and knowledge needed to become a productive team member.  By onboarding online organizations can use technology to follow the onboarding process, automatize basic forms, follow new employees' progress and see when they may need additional help during the online onboarding training.

Advantages of online onboarding
Traditional face-to-face onboarding is often a one-way conversation, but online onboarding can make the onboarding process a more worthwhile experience for new hires. The main advantages of online onboarding compared to traditional face-to-face onboarding are considered to be:

 The management team no longer needs to go through the same parts with everyone personally.
 Online onboarding makes sure that all mandatory topics are covered and understood.
 Training is conducted equally for all employees.
 The employee can flexibly go through parts of the online onboarding process individually.
 Materials can be accessed later if needed.

Disadvantages of online onboarding
Online onboarding requires more thought and structured processes to be adequate and functional compared to the traditional onboarding process. Online onboarding does not offer face-to-face interaction between the onboarding trainer and the new employee in comparison to on-site onboarding. Traditional onboarding also allows better communication, and the development of personal connections and keeps new hires invested in the process compared to online onboarding.

Employee adjustment

Role clarity
Role clarity describes a new employee's understanding of their job responsibilities and organizational role. One of the goals of an onboarding process is to aid newcomers in reducing uncertainty, making it easier for them to get their jobs done correctly and efficiently. Because there often is a disconnect between the main responsibilities listed in job descriptions and the specific, repeatable tasks that employees must complete to be successful in their roles, it's vital that managers are trained to discuss exactly what they expect from their employees.  A poor onboarding program may produce employees who exhibit sub-par productivity because they are unsure of their exact roles and responsibilities. A strong onboarding program produces employees who are especially productive; they have a better understanding of what is expected of them. Organizations benefit from increasing role clarity for a new employee. Not only does role clarity imply greater productivity, but it has also been linked to both job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is the degree to which new employees feel capable of successfully completing and fulfilling their responsibilities. Employees who feel they can get the job done fare better than those who feel overwhelmed in their new positions; research has found that job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover are all correlated with feelings of self-efficacy. Research suggests social environments that encourage teamwork and employee autonomy help increase feelings of competence; this is also a result of support from co-workers, and managerial support having less impact on feelings of self-efficacy.

Management can work to increase self-efficacy in several ways. One includes having clear expectations of employees, with consequences for failing to meet the requirements. Management can also offer programs to enhance self-efficacy by emphasizing the ability of employees to use their existing tools and skills to solve problems and complete tasks.

Social acceptance
Social acceptance gives new employees the support needed to be successful. While role clarity and self-efficacy are important to a newcomer's ability to meet the requirements of a job, the feeling of "fitting in" can do a lot for one's view of the work environment and has been shown to increase commitment to an organization and decrease turnover. In order for onboarding to be effective employees must help in their own onboarding process by interacting with other coworkers and supervisors socially, and involving themselves in functions involving other employees. The length of hire also determines social acceptance, often by influencing how much an employee is willing to change to maintain group closeness. Individuals who are hired with an expected long-term position are more likely to work toward fitting in with the main group, avoiding major conflicts. Employees who are expected to work in the short-term often are less invested in maintaining harmony with peers. This impacts the level of acceptance from existing employee groups, depending on the future job prospects of the new hire and their willingness to fit in.

Identity impacts social acceptance as well. If an individual with a marginalized identity feels as if they are not accepted, they will suffer negative consequences. It has been shown that when LGBT employees conceal their identities at work they are a higher risk for mental health problems, as well as physical illness. They are also more likely to experience low satisfaction and commitment at their job. Employees possessing disabilities may struggle to be accepted in the workplace due to coworkers' beliefs about the capability of the individual to complete their tasks. Black employees who are not accepted in the workplace and face discrimination experience decreased job satisfaction, which can cause them to perform poorly in the workplace resulting in monetary and personnel costs to organizations.

Knowledge of organizational culture
Knowledge of organizational culture refers to how well a new employee understands a company's values, goals, roles, norms, and overall organizational environment. For example, some organizations may have very strict, yet unspoken, rules of how interactions with superiors should be conducted or whether overtime hours are the norm and an expectation. Knowledge of one's organizational culture is important for the newcomer looking to adapt to a new company, as it allows for social acceptance and aids in completing work tasks in a way that meets company standards. Overall, knowledge of organizational culture has been linked to increased satisfaction and commitment, as well as decreased turnover.

Outcomes
Historically, organizations have overlooked the influence of business practices in shaping enduring work attitudes and have underestimated its impact on financial success. Employees' job attitudes are particularly important from an organization's perspective because of their link to employee engagement, productivity and performance on the job. Employee engagement attitudes, such as organizational commitment or satisfaction, are important factors in an employee's work performance. This translates into strong monetary gains for organizations. As research has demonstrated, individuals who are satisfied with their jobs and show organizational commitment are likely to perform better and have lower turnover rates. Unengaged employees are very costly to organizations in terms of slowed performance and potential rehiring expenses. With the onboarding process, there can be short term and long-term outcomes. Short term outcomes include self-efficacy, role clarity, and social integration. Self-efficacy is the confidence a new employee has when going into a new job. Role clarity is the expectation and knowledge they have about the position. Social integration is the new relationships they form, and how comfortable they are in those relationships, once they have secured that position. Long term outcomes consist of organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. How satisfied the employee is after onboarding, can either help the company, or prevent it from succeeding.

Limits and criticisms of onboarding theory
The outcomes of organizational socialization have been positively associated with the process of uncertainty reduction, but are not desirable to all organizations. Jones (1986) and Allen and Meyer (1990) found that socialization tactics were related to commitment, but negatively correlated to role clarity. Because formal socialization tactics protect the newcomer from their full responsibilities while "learning the ropes," there is a potential for role confusion once the new hire fully enters the organization.  In some cases, organizations desire a certain level of person-organizational misfit in order to achieve outcomes via innovative behaviors. Depending on the culture of the organization, it may be more desirable to increase ambiguity, despite the potentially negative connection with organizational commitment.

Additionally, socialization researchers have had major concerns over the length of time that it takes newcomers to adjust. There has been great difficulty determining the role that time plays, but once the length of the adjustment is determined, organizations can make appropriate recommendations regarding what matters most in various stages of the adjustment process.

Further criticisms include the use of special orientation sessions to educate newcomers about the organization and strengthen their organizational commitment. While these sessions have been found to be formal and ritualistic, studies have found them unpleasant or traumatic. Orientation sessions are a frequently used socialization tactic, however, employees have not found them to be helpful, nor has any research provided any evidence for their benefits.

Executive onboarding
Executive onboarding is the application of general onboarding principles to helping new executives become productive members of an organization. It involves acquiring, accommodating, assimilating and accelerating new executives.  Hiring teams emphasize the importance of making the most of the new hire's "honeymoon" stage in the organization, a period which described as either the first 90 to 100 days, or the first full year.

Effective onboarding of new executives is an important contribution hiring managers, direct supervisors or human resource professionals make to long-term organizational success; executive onboarding done right can improve productivity and executive retention, and build corporate culture. 40 percent of executives hired at the senior level are pushed out, fail, or quit within 18 months without effective socialization.

Onboarding is valuable for externally recruited, or those recruited from outside the organization, executives. It may be difficult for those individuals to uncover personal, organizational, and role risks in complicated situations when they lack formal onboarding assistance.  Onboarding is also an essential tool for executives promoted into new roles and/or transferred from one business unit to another.

Socialization in online organizations
The effectiveness of socialization varies depending on the structure and communication within the organization, and the ease of joining or leaving the organization. These are dimensions that online organizations differ from conventional ones. This type of communication makes the development and maintenance of social relationships with other group members difficult to accomplish and weaken organizational commitment. Joining and leaving online communities typically involves less cost than a conventional employment organization, which results in lower level of commitment.

Socialization processes in most online communities are informal and individualistic, as compared with socialization in conventional organizations. For example, lurkers in online communities typically have no opportunities for formal mentorship, because they are less likely to be known to existing members of the community. Another example is Wiki Projects, the task-oriented group in Wikipedia, rarely use institutional socialization tactics to socialize new members who join them, as they rarely assign the new member a mentor or provide clear guidelines.  A third example is the socialization of newcomers to the Python open-source software development community. Even though there exists clear workflows and distinct social roles, socialization process is still informal.

Recommendations for practitioners
Scholars at MIT Sloan, suggest that practitioners should seek to design an onboarding strategy that takes individual newcomer characteristics into consideration and encourages proactive behaviors, such as information seeking, that help facilitate the development of role clarity, self-efficacy, social acceptance, and knowledge of organizational culture. Research has consistently shown that doing so produces valuable outcomes such as high job satisfaction (the extent to which one enjoys the nature of his or her work), organizational commitment (the connection one feels to an organization), and job performance in employees, as well as lower turnover rates and decreased intent to quit.

In terms of structure, evidence shows that formal institutionalized socialization is the most effective onboarding method. New employees who complete these kinds of programs tend to experience more positive job attitudes and lower levels of turnover in comparison to those who undergo individualized tactics. Evidence suggests that in-person onboarding techniques are more effective than virtual ones. Though it initially appears to be less expensive for a company to use a standard computer-based orientation programs, some previous research has demonstrated that employees learn more about their roles and company culture through face-to-face orientation.

See also

 Employment
 Employee offboarding
 Employee engagement
 Employee motivation
 Industrial and organizational psychology
 Induction programme
 Job Shadowing
 Job performance
 Job satisfaction
 Mentoring
 Business networking
 Organizational commitment
 Organizational culture
 Personnel psychology
 Realistic job preview
 Recruitment
 Socialization
 Personality–job fit theory
 Person–environment fit
 Induction training

References

Further reading

Administrative theory
Human resource management
Industrial and organizational psychology
Recruitment

Onboarding


The ebm-papst Group is a manufacturer of electric motors and fans. It came into existence in 2003 when the companies Elektrobau Mulfingen GmbH & Co. KG (ebm), Papst Motoren GmbH in St. Georgen and Motoren Ventilatoren Landshut GmbH (mvl) merged. The company employs around 13,000 employees at 25 production facilities (including those in Germany, China, and the USA) and 49 sales offices worldwide. The headquarters is located in Mulfingen in the Hohenlohe district of Germany.

History
In 1963 Gerhard Sturm founded Elektrobau Mulfingen GmbH & Co. KG. along with Günther Ziehl and Heinz Ziehl. The company then had 35 employees and concentrated on developing and producing small external rotor motors. In 1965, the first compact fans with EC technology were developed, which at this time was still known as non-commutator DC motors. Papst Motoren GmbH, founded by Hermann Papst in St. Georgen in the Black Forest in 1942, was acquired in 1992, the plant in Landshut was purchased from Alcatel in 1997 and was simultaneously renamed Motoren Ventilatoren Landshut GmbH (mvl). In the following year the first energy-saving centrifugal and axial fans with integrated electronics were developed; among other products, the ebm-papst EC fans brought to market maturity in the following years were based on these. In 2003 the three companies were renamed ebm-papst Mulfingen, ebm-papst St. Georgen and ebm-papst Landshut. In 2007, construction of the energy-independent factory for energy-saving fans began in Mulfingen-Hollenbach, which was put into operation in 2008.

For the first time, ebm-papst surpassed the turnover threshold of a billion EUR in 2007. Gerhard Sturm became the Chairman of the Advisory Board. Since 2008, only managers from outside the family have been employed as managing directors.

Products

Motors and fans of the ebm-papst group are used in a variety of application areas, some of which are in Dresden's Semper Opera, on the roofs of Australian supermarkets, in computers and refrigerators. With nearly 20,000 products, the company has the largest product range in the world by its own account and supplies products for a variety of applications including HVAC, household appliances, IT/telecommunications, and automotive and commercial vehicles.

The fans are mostly based on external rotor motors, since these enable implementation of particularly compact axial, centrifugal and diagonal fans. Motors for drive technology are, in part, also designed as internal rotor motors.

In recent years, quiet, electronically commutated motors with increased energy efficiency have been finding use. These are available in versions for 1 or 3-phase alternating current and for direct current between 12 and 48 volts. By means of the already integrated electronics, EC motors have very good control characteristics, including integrated pressure, temperature or air flow control. The integrated electronics also reduce the wiring effort as opposed to a comparable conventional solution. The option of a bus connection makes it possible to network these units and control them centrally. Many new and innovative options can be adjusted in a user-friendly way via the bus system (ebmBUS or MODBUS). This is why various computer programs are offered, ranging to wireless configuration of a fan or motor by mobile phone.

Classic AC motors for 1 or 3-phase alternating current are still available as alternatives. The fans produced have axial or centrifugal impellers with a diameter between approximately 30 mm and 1250 mm and are likewise developed in-house. Cross-flow blowers, as they are used in façade ventilation, are also in the product range. The impellers are made of either plastic, metal or more recently also a metal-plastic material combination. This combination enables high strength as with metal impellers while retaining their conventional variable moldability.

In 2009, the "green" fan series, HyBlade, came to market. The product group, consisting of plastic blades with inserted aluminium reinforcement, enables low power consumption and is quiet. The newest product to be introduced in Spring of 2011 is a motor with housing sections made of a wood-plastic composite material.

GreenTech

ebm-papst summarises its environmental protection efforts and energy-saving measures with the term "GreenTech". Measures include a CO₂-oriented conversion of the fleet, heat insulation on buildings, energy savings with compressor stations and production equipment. Selection of awards in the area of GreenTech:

 Nomination for the Hermes Award 2010 (Hannover Messe) for invention of a fan that reduces energy consumption and noise by 50% (the savings potential of 1 large-scale power plant in Europe)
 Environmental technology award 2009 (Baden-Wuerttemberg) for a hybrid axial fan (topic: energy-efficient use of materials)
 Dena Energy Efficiency Award 2009 for a new plant in Germany (20 million EUR investment). The plant requires no energy for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning
 Environmental prize 2008 (Baden-Wuerttemberg) for environmentally oriented actions of an industrial company: including operating its own bus lines for Mulfingen (for 1,200 employees → less traffic volume and less parking space necessary)
 Strategy for new developments "Each new product has to be better than its predecessor"; CO₂ reduction in production (including a new plant; green roof) and processes (including an enamelling line; heating and compressor systems).

References

External links

Electrical equipment manufacturers
Manufacturing companies of Germany
Manufacturing companies established in 1963
1963 establishments in West Germany

Ebm-papst


The Yarra Valley is an area in Victoria, Australia that is near the north-east of Melbourne. The start of the Yarra River is in it. Some towns in the Yarra Valley are Healesville, Yarra Glen, Warburton and Coldstream. It is known for having many wineries. Many tourists from Melbourne go there because it is close to the city.

Gallery

Wine regions of Australia
Victoria, Australia

Yarra Valley


Injury is physiological damage to the living tissue of any organism, whether in humans, in other animals, or in plants. Injuries can be caused in many ways, such as mechanically with penetration by sharp objects such as teeth or with blunt objects, by heat or cold, or by venoms and biotoxins. Injury prompts an inflammatory response in many taxa of animals; this prompts wound healing. In both plants and animals, substances are often released to help to occlude the wound, limiting loss of fluids and the entry of pathogens such as bacteria. Many organisms secrete antimicrobial chemicals which limit wound infection; in addition, animals have a variety of immune responses for the same purpose. Both plants and animals have regrowth mechanisms which may result in complete or partial healing over the injury.

Taxonomic range

Animals

Injury in animals is sometimes defined as mechanical damage to anatomical structure, but it has a wider connotation of physical damage with any cause, including drowning, burns, and poisoning. Such damage may result from attempted predation, territorial fights, falls, and abiotic factors.

Injury prompts an inflammatory response in animals of many different phyla; this prompts coagulation of the blood or body fluid, followed by wound healing, which may be rapid, as in the cnidaria. Arthropods are able to repair injuries to the cuticle that forms their exoskeleton to some extent.

Animals in several phyla, including annelids, arthropods, cnidaria, molluscs, nematodes, and vertebrates are able to produce antimicrobial peptides to fight off infection following an injury.

Humans

Injury in humans has been studied extensively for its importance in medicine. Much of medical practice including emergency medicine and pain management is dedicated to the treatment of injuries. The World Health Organization has developed a classification of injuries in humans by categories including mechanism, objects/substances producing injury, place of occurrence, activity when injured and the role of human intent. Injuries often cause psychological harm including post-traumatic stress disorder in addition to physical harm.

Plants

In plants, injuries result from the eating of plant parts by herbivorous animals including insects and mammals, from damage to tissues by plant pathogens such as bacteria and fungi, which may gain entry after herbivore damage or in other ways, and from abiotic factors such as heat, freezing, flooding, lightning, and pollutants such as ozone. Plants respond to injury by signalling that damage has occurred, by secreting materials to seal off the damaged area,  by producing antimicrobial chemicals, and in woody plants by regrowing over wounds.

Cell injury

Cell injury is a variety of changes of stress that a cell suffers due to external as well as internal environmental changes. Amongst other causes, this can be due to physical, chemical, infectious, biological, nutritional or immunological factors. Cell damage can be reversible or irreversible. Depending on the extent of injury, the cellular response may be adaptive and where possible, homeostasis is restored. Cell death occurs when the severity of the injury exceeds the cell's ability to repair itself. Cell death is relative to both the length of exposure to a harmful stimulus and the severity of the damage caused.

References

Biological concepts

Injury


Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to "create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth". Adult volunteers are matched with children from age 5 to young adulthood. It was founded by Irvin Ferdinand Westheimer.

Big Brothers Big Sisters is one of the oldest and largest youth mentoring organizations in the United States. Big Brothers Big Sisters mentors children, ages 5 through young adulthood in communities across the country. The ages of children and youth served varies by affiliate.

Congressional charter
The group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code.

Impact
Public/Private Ventures, an independent Philadelphia-based national research organization, conducted a study from 1994 to 1995, monitoring 950 boys and girls nationwide to study the effects of Big Brothers Big Sisters. CEO Karen J. Mathis reported that the study found favorable outcomes to the organization.

Public/Private Ventures conducted another study in 2011 that evaluated the school-based Big Brothers Big Sisters Program. This program also found favorable outcomes.

History
In 1904, a young New York City court clerk named Ernest Kent Coulter was seeing many boys come through his courtroom. He recognized that caring adults could help many of these boys stay out of trouble, and he set out to find volunteers. That marked the beginning of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City and the Big Brothers movement. By 1916, Big Brothers had spread to 96 cities across the country.

At around the same time, the members of a group called Ladies of Charity were befriending girls who had come through the New York Children's Court. That group would later become Catholic Big Sisters, an independent organization.

In 1958, the Big Brothers Association was granted a Congressional charter. Big Sisters International was founded in 1970. Both groups continued to work independently until 1977, when Big Brothers of America and Big Sisters International joined forces and became Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Big Brothers Big Sisters received the American Institute of Philanthropy's highest rating, an A+. In 2011, Philanthropedia listed BBBS as the #1 Nonprofit for At-Risk Youth.

In 2013 Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) found itself at the center of a scandal involving grant funding, which led to sweeping changes at the organization. On June 24, 2013, the United States Department of Justice issued an Audit Report stating it was freezing the disbursement of all grant funds to BBBSA, noting that the organization was "in material non-compliance with the majority of the grant requirements" that were tested by the audit. "As a result of these weaknesses," the audit noted, the agency "questioned $19,462,448 in funding that the grantee has received and recommended the $3,714,838 in funds not yet disbursed be put to better use".  The audit further stated that "most significantly", it "found that BBBSA's practices for recording and supporting grant-related expenditures were inadequate to safeguard grant funds and ensure compliance with the terms and conditions of the grants".

In the wake of the 2013 audit, Big Brothers replaced its management team and implemented policies governing the use of federal grant funds to bring the organization back into compliance. As part of a settlement with the Justice Department, BBBSA paid $1.6 million and agreed to institute a strict compliance program that requires the organization to engage in regular audits, establish a compliance team, an employee code of conduct, whistleblower policies and a disciplinary policy for employees who engage in or fail to disclose abuses of federal grant funds. The organization also provides regular employee training on these policies and employs risk assessment tools to detect abuses that might otherwise go undetected.

The claims resolved by this settlement are allegations only; there has been no determination of liability. BBBSA and many of its affiliates remain partnered with OJJDP today.

References

External links

 BBBS International
 BBBS Partnership with African American Fraternities – mentoringbrothers.org
 Charity Navigator
 Foundation Guide
 Exchange program with Spain

Mentorships
AmeriCorps organizations
Child-related organizations in the United States
Charities based in Florida
Organizations established in 1904
Educational charities based in the United States
Patriotic and national organizations chartered by the United States Congress
1904 establishments in New York City
Youth organizations established in 1904

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America


Abhishiktananda (; 30 August 1910, in Saint Briac, Brittany – 7 December 1973, in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India), born Henri Le Saux, was a French-born Indian monk. He moved to India in 1948 in search of a more radical form of spiritual life, adopted sannyasa in accordance with Indian tradition and became one of the pioneers of Hindu-Christian dialogue. Multiple contacts with prominent saints such as Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Gnanananda Giri and Sri H.W.L. Poonja, led him to profound advaitic experience as well as to final recognition of the truth of advaita during the last years of his life.

Biography

Early years and Benedictine monastic life (1910–1948)
Le Saux was born on 30 August 1910 in St Briac, a small town on the north coast of Brittany. He was the first child of Alfred Le Saux and Louise Sonnerfaud, who gave him the names Henri Briac Marie. In 1921 his parents sent him to the minor seminary at Châteaugiron, from which in 1925 he went to the major seminary at Rennes. From his boyhood he had felt a monastic vocation: "What has drawn me from the beginning and what still leads me on, is the hope of finding there the presence of God more immediately than anywhere else..." At the age of 19 he was admitted as a postulant to the Benedictine monastery at Sainte-Anne de Kergonan where he spent another nineteen years (with a short break between the years 1939 and 1941 when he was required to participate in the World War II as a sergeant of the French Army).

The call to India was heard by Le Saux at Kergonan as early as 1934, within five years of entering the monastery. It was closely related to his vocation to a more radical contemplative life that he lacked within the existing framework of western monasticism. He expressed this feeling in his characteristic phrase that became his motto: "Beyond, always beyond." In May 1947 he wrote to the Bishop of Tiruchirappalli, asking his help in "settling somewhere in the neighborhood of Tiruchi so that, living in some hermitage, he might there lead the contemplative life ... in the closest possible conformity with the traditions of Indian sannyasa." The letter was eventually replied by a French priest, Jules Monchanin, who had left for India in 1939 at the age of 44. The latter did his best to help Le Saux in arranging his arrival to India. In his correspondence of 7 August 1947, Monchanin advised his future partner: "Learn as much English as you can. You will have no objection to a purely vegetarian diet (essential for the life of a sannyasi). You will need unshakable courage ... complete detachment from the things of the West, and a profound love for India..."

Sannyasa life (1948–1968)
Le Saux arrived to Colombo on 15 August 1948 and a few days later joined Jules Monchanin in Kulittalai (Tamil Nadu). In January 1949 the two seekers visited the ashram of one of the greatest sages of modern India, Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879 – 1950), at the foot of Arunachala mountain in Tiruvannamalai (Tamil Nadu). Le Saux's meeting with the sage had a profound effect on his life as he recounted it in his diary: "I consider this stay at Tiruvannamalai as a real retreat and at the same time as an initiation into Hindu monastic life. I want to ... enter into the great silence and peace which, as I have read and also been told, is to be found at the ashram..." The darshana of Sri Ramana Maharshi became for him the first introduction into the wisdom of advaita: "In the contemporary Sage of Arunachala it was the unique Sage of eternal India that appeared to me... it was a call which pierced through everything, rent it in pieces and opened a mighty abyss."

In 1950 Le Saux and Monchanin following their monastic vocation and emerging spiritual ideal, established the Saccidananda Ashram (Shantivanam) on the banks of the holy river Kaveri (Cauvery), with the aim of allowing monks of different traditions to live together in contemplation, sharing the "silent communion in the quest of the Unique". In accordance with Indian tradition they adopted new names for themselves: Le Saux became Abhishikteshvarananda ("Bliss of the Anointed Lord"), later shortened to Abhishiktananda, and Monchanin as Parama Arubi Ananda ("Bliss of the Supreme Formless One"). The daily routine in the ashram was based on the three sandhyavandanam-s (prayers at the meeting points of day and night and at midday), enriched with Sanskrit and Tamil texts and hymns. Much time was given to spiritual and indological study, although the two monks remained in silence for the greater part of the day.

From 1952 to 1955, Abhishiktananda made several visits to the sacred mountain of Arunachala, of which this account can be found in his book The Secret of Arunachala (published posthumously in 1975). During these visits he experienced lengthy stays in the mountain's caves, dedicating most of his time to contemplation. In 1953 he met a well known teacher of advaita, Sri H.W.L. Poonja (also known later as "Papaji"), who had a deep impact on his spiritual quest. In 1955 in Tirukoilur, his first meeting with the contemporary sage Swami Sri Gnanananda Giri took place: "I could not resist making the great prostration of our Hindu tradition, and to whom I believe I might give myself over completely ... I now know what India means by the term guru...". Further on Sri Gnanananda became Swamiji's guru and his teachings are eloquently described in Swami Abhishiktananda's publication Guru and Disciple (1970). Sri Gnanananda's message was focused on the practice of dhyana (meditation):

Abhishiktananda's deep devotion to the guru is clearly seen in his letters of that period: "Here for a fortnight with my Guru. I have been totally "caught" ... If that man were to ask me tomorrow to set out on the roads naked and silent like Sadasiva Brahmendra, I would be unable to refuse ... In him I have felt the truth of advaita..."

Later in the 1960s, Abhishiktananda commenced regular pilgrimages to Northern India and in 1968 he left Shantivanam forever having passed it to Bede Griffiths OSB Cam (1906–1993) for the ongoing development of the ashram.

In 1950 Henri Le Saux visited Srirangam temple. Despite the temple barring non-Hindus from entry, he ventured into it. James Stuart, who accompanied him at the time noted that he diverted his eyes from the sign stating such, and continued into the temple premises. Once inside the temple he refused to take part in Hindu rituals, as he stated in a letter:

Final years and awakening (1968–1973)

In October 1968, Abhishiktananda settled in a small kutiya at Gyansu (a kilometre away from Uttarkashi), where he would spend six to eight months in solitude during the years 1969 to 1971. His main purpose was to lead a contemplative life, of which he wrote to a close friend, Odette Baumer-Despeigne: "...To be living here as a rule is going to be a new experience. I can scarcely hope to be that acosmic being of whom I wrote in Gangotri, but at least I might be able to be something of that sort..." During this period he was also participating in a series of interreligious meetings, conferences and study sessions, including participation in the All-India Seminar in Bangalore (15 May–20 June 1969), etc.

However, one of the main events of his final years was the meeting with a young Frenchman who later became his one true and prominent disciple, Marc Chaduc. Their correspondence commenced in the late 1960s. In one of his first letters Abhishiktananda, replying to Marc's questions regarding the possibility of a permanent stay in India, states: "...The essential thing is to penetrate the interior mystery to which India bears witness so intensely.... Without a contemplative sense, to come to India is absolutely useless..." Chaduc arrived in India on 29 September 1971 at the age of twenty-seven and met Abhishiktananda a few weeks later in Delhi on 21 October. The first ten days spent together in Delhi led to an unparalleled guru-disciple relationship between the two which brought about a revolutionary change in Abhishiktananda's life: "I have found in him (Chaduc) a truly total disciple. With him and two young Hindus I experience from the other end what the guru is. It is really the chela (disciple) who makes the guru, and you have to have lived it, in order to grasp this relationship "beyond words..." Abhishiktananda subsequently sent Chaduc on a pilgrimage, including to Sri Ramana's Ashram and Arunachala, where Abhishiktananda had previously encountered a profound spiritual experience: "There is no question that Arunachala is a powerful magnet. How I should like to lead you round from cave to cave..." During the last twenty months of his life Abhishiktananda's advaitic experience deepened and he realizes the truth of the Upanishads with utter clarity: "The mantra Om Tat Sat sings all day long ... That madhu (honey) which everything is to everything else, that constant take-off into the Beyond, the golden Purusha full of glory – you know it so well..."

On 30 June 1973, Abhishiktananda, along with the then President of the Divine Life Society, Swami Chidananda Saraswati, arranged on the banks of the Ganga in Rishikesh, a very simple rite of sannyasa-diksha (initiation into sannyasa) for Chaduc, after which he became known as Swami Ajatananda Saraswati. Abhishiktananda was deeply moved by this experience which he considered to be the very culmination of his own life. He had a clearer vision of the fact that the truth is not conditioned by any concepts, myths or symbols and lies beyond them all: "We have to descend into the ultimate depths to recognize that there is no common denominator at the level of namarupa (name and form). So we should accept namarupa of the most varied kinds ... We should penetrate the depth of each other's mystery ... Take off from each of them as from a springboard, towards the bottomless ocean..."

His posthumous book, The Further Shore, which he wrote several months before his mahasamadhi, reflects his last experiences and his disciple Swami Ajatananda  draws attention in the book's foreword to the fact that "...nothing that Swamiji wrote had not been lived by him, realized in himself. This is the beauty of his written work, which was the fruit of his silence."

On 14 July 1973, Abhishiktananda was struck by a heart attack that he himself described as a "spiritual awakening". The remaining several months of his life were spent in a state of bliss and realization, expressed by himself in his writings: "O I have found the Grail ... The quest for the Grail is basically nothing else than the quest for the Self ... It is yourself that you are seeking through everything. And in this quest you are running about everywhere, whereas the Grail is here, close at hand, you only have to open your eyes ... There is only the Awakening."

In the evening of 7 December 1973 in Indore, Abhishiktananda underwent another brief heart attack and at about 11 pm he died. His last words were "God's will be done."

Legacy

In order to foster the message and the writings of Abhishiktananda through the publication of his books and unpublished manuscripts, Raimon Panikkar, Patrick D'Souza, Jacques Dupuis, Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swarup, N. Shanta and James Stuart, founded the Abhishiktananda Society (Delhi) in 1978. The society was dissolved in 2008 after thirty years of contribution to Hindu-Christian dialogue   and the publishing rights for his books in English and various Indian languages, were transferred to the Delhi Brotherhood Society (DBS). As a result, a new section named the Abhishiktananda Centre for Interreligious Dialogue, was formed to carry on the task of promoting  Abhishiktananda's writings in India and abroad in English. This work is also being continued in the West by the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (DIMMID), which holds the world rights in all languages with the exception of the English and Indian languages. This centre also stores the Abhishiktananda Archives, where handwritten or typed manuscripts written by Abhishiktananda date between approximately forty to sixty-three years of age. It is planned to digitally scan the archives and make them available under specific conditions for scholars and researchers in India and abroad.

Selected bibliography

Primary

In English
Ascent to the Depth of the Heart. The Spiritual Diary (1948-1973) of Swami Abhishiktananda, Delhi (ISPCK), 1998.
The Further Shore, Delhi (ISPCK), 1975; reprinted with addition of "The Upanishads and Advaitic Experience" and poems, 1984.
Guru and Disciple: an Encounter with Sri Gnanananda, a Contemporary Spiritual Master, London (SPCK), 1974; revised edition, Delhi (ISPCK), 1990; reprinted in 2000; new and enlarged edit.by Swami Atmananda Udasin, pref. by Swami Nityananda Giri, Chennai (Samata Books), 2012.
Prayer, Delhi (ISPCK), 1967; new and enlarged edition, 1989; reprinted, Philadelphia (Westminster Press), 1973; reprinted, London (Canterbury Press Norwich), 2006; Revised and enlarged edition: Prayer: Exploring Contemplative Prayer through Eastern and Western Spirituality, edit.by Swami Atmananda Udasin, foreword by Rev. Dr. James D.M. Stuart, Delhi (ISPCK), 2015.
"Saccidananda: A  Christian Approach to Advaitic Experience", Delhi, ISPCK, 1974.
The Secret of Arunachala, Delhi (ISPCK), 1979; reprinted 1988; revised edition, 1997.

In French
Eveil à soi – éveil à Dieu. Essai sur la prière,Paris (Centurion), 1971, Paris (OEIL), 1986.
Gnânânanda. Un maître spirituel du pays tamoul, Chambéry (Présence), 1970.
Initiation à la spiritualité des Upanishads. "Vers l'autre rive", Sisteron (Présence), 1979.
Intériorité et révélation. Essais théologiques, Sisteron (Présence), 1982.
La montée au fond du cœur. Le journal intime du moine chrétien – sannyasi hindou, introduction et notes de R. Panikkar, Paris (OEIL), 1986.

In Italian
Risveglio a sé, risveglio a Dio (Quaderni di Ricerca, 51), Troina (Servitium), 2011.
Gnanananda. Un maestro spirituale della terra Tamil. Raconti di Vanya,ed. Stefano Rossi, Troina (Servitium), 2009.
Alle sorgenti del Gange. Pellegrinaggio spirituale (Quaderni di Ricerca, 46), new edition by Milena Carrara and Espedito D'Agostini, Troina (Servitium), 2005.
Ricordi d'Arunachala. Racconto di un eremita cristiano in terra hindu, ed. Stefano Rossi, Padova (Ed. Messaggero), 2004.
Diario spirituale di un monaco cristiano-samnyasin hindu (1948-1973), ed. Milena Carrara, Milano (Mondadori), 2002.

In German
Das Feuer der Weisheit, Bern/München/Wien (O.W. Barth Verlag), 1979; new edition, Grafing (Aquamarin Verlag), 2009.
Innere Erfahrung und Offenbarung. Theologische Ausätze zur Begegnung von Hinduismus und Christentum. (Salzburger Theologische Studien, 23), ed. Bettina Bäumer, Christian Hackbarth-Johnson and Ulrich Winkler, Innsbruck/Vienna (Tyrolia-Verlag), 2005.
Wege der Glückseligkeit: Begegnung indischer und christlicher Mystik, Kösel Verlag, München 1995
Das Geheimnis des heiligen Berges. Als christlicher Mönch unter den Weisen Indiens, Freiburg/Basel/Wien (Herder), 1989.
Der Weg zum anderen Ufer, Köln (E.Diederichs), 1980.
Die Gegenwart Gottes erfahren,Mainz (Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag), 1980.

In Spanish

 Gurú y discípulo. Un encuentro con Sri Gnanananda Giri, maestro espiritual contemporáneo. Pequeña Tierra 2017
 Oración. Una mirada a la oración contemplativa en la espiritualidad oriental y occidental. Pequeña Tierra 2020

In Russian
Гуру и ученик, перевод Максима Демченко, введение Свами Атмананды Удасина, предисловие Свами Нитьянанды Гири, Москва (Ганга), 2013.

Secondary

In English
 Du Boulay, Shirley, The Cave of the Heart: The Life of Swami Abhishiktananda, Maryknoll (Orbis Books), 2005.
 Kalliath, Antony, The Word in the Cave: The Experiential Journey of Swami Abhishiktananda to the Point of Hindu-Christian Meeting, New Delhi (Intercultural Publications), 1996.
 Oldmeadow, Harry, A Christian Pilgrim in India: The Spiritual Journey of Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux), Bloomington (World Wisdom), 2008.
 Skudlarek, William (ed.), God's Harp String: The Life and Legacy of the Benedictine Monk Swami Abhishiktananda, Brooklyn (Lantern Books), 2010.
 Skudlarek, William and Bäumer, Bettina (ed.), Witness to the Fullness of Light: The Vision and Relevance of the Benedictine Monk Swami Abhishiktananda, Brooklyn (Lantern Books), 2011.
 Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, Delhi (ISPCK), 2000.
 Vandana Mataji (ed.), Swami Abhishiktananda: The Man and His Message, Delhi (ISPCK), 1993.

In French
Davy, M-M., Henri Le Saux – Swami Abhishiktananda. Le passeur entre deux rives,Paris (Le Cerf), 1981.
Davy, M-M., Henri Le Saux – Swami Abhishiktananda. Ecrits choisis et présentés par Marie-Madeleine Davy, Paris (Albin Michel), 1991.
Du Boulay, Shirley, La grotte du cœur. La vie de Swami Abhishiktananda, Henri Le Saux, préf. par Raimon Panikkar, Paris (Le Cerf), 2007.
Mandala, Patrick,  Plénitude de l'Etre. Vie et enseignement de Sri Gnanananda. Témoignage d'Henri le Saux, préf. par Swami Atmananda Udasin, Paris (Accarias l'Originel), 2015.
Stuart, James, Le bénédictin et le grand éveil, Paris (Jean Maisonneuve), 1999.

In Italian
Conio, Caterina, Abhishiktananda sulle frontiere dell'incontro cristiano-hindu,Assisi (Citadella), 1994.

In Russian
Демченко, Максим, Путь Сатчитананды, Москва (Ганга), 2008.

References

External links
 Abhishiktananda Centre for Interreligious Dialogue
 Official Website of Dialogue Interreligieux Monastique/Monastic Interreligious Dialogue

 Ajatananda Ashram, Rishikesh

1910 births
1973 deaths
People from Saint-Malo
French Christian monks
French religious leaders
French emigrants to India
Naturalised citizens of India
Indian people of French descent
People who lost French citizenship
Indian religious leaders
Indian Hindu monks
Christian and Hindu interfaith dialogue
Advaitin philosophers
People in interfaith dialogue
20th-century Indian monks
Christian ashram movement

Abhishiktananda


Dowdeswell is a civil parish in the ward of Chedworth, Cotswold, in the ceremonial county of Gloucestershire, England. It is separated into Upper and Lower Dowdeswell, the former being south of the latter. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 134.

About 7.1 km (4.4 mi) to the northwest is Cheltenham, and 19 km (12 mi) to the west is Gloucester. In 2001, it had a population of 185.

The Church of Saint Michael and All Saints is a Grade I listed building.

Environment
Northwest of Lower Dowdeswell, there is Dowdeswell Woods. Immediately south of these woods is Dowdeswell Reservoir.
Both Dowdeswell Reservoir and Dowdeswell Woods have been managed historically as nature reserves through the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust (formerly named Gloucestershire Trust for Nature Conservation).  On the opposite hillside to Dowdeswell Woods lies Lineover Wood which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and is on the steep face of the Cotswold scarp.  The Cotswold Way runs at the edge of Dowdeswell Woods, crosses the A40 and runs through Lineover Wood.  The nature reserve of Arle Grove lies in the parish of Dowdeswell.

Railways
In 1891, Dowdeswell was the name given to a station in the nearby village of Andoversford on the Midland and South Western Junction Railway; the name was to avoid confusion with Andoversford station on the Great Western Railway's Cheltenham to Banbury line. The name of Dowdeswell station was changed to Andoversford and Dowdeswell in 1892. The station closed to passengers in 1927 after the GWR had taken over the M&SWJR; however, it remained open for goods traffic until 1962.

References

External links

Cotswold District Council.
 Gloucestershire Railway Stations, Mike Oakley, Dovecote Press, 2003, .
 Gloucestershire: the Cotswolds, David Verey, Pevsner Architectural Guides: The Buildings of England, Penguin, 1970, .  pp. 216–219.

Civil parishes in Gloucestershire
Cotswold District

Dowdeswell


Lincoln Mayorga (March 28, 1937 – July 3, 2023) was an American pianist, arranger, conductor and composer who worked in rock and roll, pop, jazz and classical music.

Life and career

Pop music in the 1950s and 1960s
Mayorga was born in Los Angeles, California, attended Hollywood High School, and trained as a classical pianist. He began working as arranger and accompanist to his high-school friends in the Four Preps, contributing one of the two piano parts on their 1958 hit "Big Man" and being known as "the fifth Prep". The group's producer, Lou Busch, helped Mayorga get a ragtime album issued in 1958, which was released under the pseudonym "Brooke Pemberton".

With Ed Cobb of the Four Preps, Mayorga also branched out into instrumental rock and roll, forming the Piltdown Men, a studio group whose "Brontosaurus Stomp" made the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960, and whose other records had greater success in the UK Singles Chart. At the same time, he and Cobb formed the Link Eddy Combo (the name taken from their names Lincoln and Ed), with musicians Al Garcia, Fred Mendoza, Vince Bumatay and Art Rodriguez. Their instrumental, "Big Mr. C", was the first single released on Frank Sinatra's Reprise label in 1961, and reached number 28 on the US Billboard R&B chart.

Mayorga and Cobb also arranged and produced the first recordings by singer Ketty Lester, including the 1962 international hit "Love Letters" which featured Mayorga's sparse piano arrangement, copied note-for-note 25 years later by Alison Moyet on her 1987 UK hit version. He was also credited with arranging Gloria Jones' original 1965 recording of "Tainted Love", and the Standells' 1966 hit single, "Dirty Water", both of which were written by Cobb.

Sessions and film work in the 1960s and 1970s
As Ketty Lester's success dwindled, Mayorga increasingly worked as a session musician in Los Angeles. He worked particularly closely with singer Phil Ochs on his albums Pleasures of the Harbor, Rehearsals for Retirement, Tape from California and others, and toured with Ochs' "gold lamé suit" tour, culminating in a legendary pair of concerts at Carnegie Hall. In 1966, he became the staff pianist for Walt Disney Studios, and contributed to the soundtracks of such movies as Chinatown, Pete's Dragon, The Rose, and Ragtime.<ref name="amg">[ Biography by Greg Prato], AllMusic. Accessed January 26, 2010.</ref>  He also worked on TV series including Bonanza, Dallas, Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven.

As a session musician and arranger, he worked with Frank Zappa (on the album Lumpy Gravy), Gloria Jones on her original version of Tainted Love, Sam Cooke, Dory Previn, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand, Mel Torme, Andy Williams and many others.  In addition, he recorded a series of ragtime albums under the name Al "Spider" Dugan.

Classical and ragtime concerts and recordings since the 1970s
In the 1970s, he helped establish the audiophile record company Sheffield Lab, and set up his own label, TownHall Records, which specializes in historical reissues and comprehensive collections of jazz and classical music and is "dedicated to the concept that recordings should preserve permanently the important musical art of our time". In the late 1970s he recorded an album with Lou Busch (aka Joe "Fingers" Carr) on the Sheffield label, The Brinkerhoff Piano Company Salutes the Sentimental Sixties. Singer/songwriter Amanda McBroom teamed up with Mayorga to record two well-received albums on Sheffield, Growing Up in Hollywood Town and West of Oz. In addition he recorded the Irving Berlin Century with vocalist Margie Gibson under the Sheffield banner.

Mayorga also recorded a classical album with trumpeter Jimmy Valves. The album, The Virtuoso Trumpet , was recorded at Gold Star Studio in Hollywood.  It is rare but was very well received.

Mayorga relocated to Columbia County in New York in the mid-1980s,  and has increasingly worked as a concert pianist. He has also continued to perform in concert in recent years with Bruce Belland, lead singer of the Four Preps, and has released a series of classical and heritage albums on the TownHall label.

The Moscow Philharmonic invited him to perform George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue and "I Got Rhythm" Variations, on their first concert devoted to American music. Biography, Lincolnmayorga.org, Accessed January 26, 2010. He has toured extensively in North America and Europe, and has collaborated with such musicians as Itzhak Perlman, Richard Stoltzman, Michael Tilson Thomas, Gerard Schwarz, and others. Mayorga has written a piano concerto, Angels' Flight, a tribute to the city of Los Angeles and the music of the cinema, which he has performed with the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra.

Death
Mayorga died on July 3, 2023, at the age of 86.

Discography

As sideman
With Gábor Szabó and Bob ThieleLight My Fire (Impulse!, 1967)

As leadmanThe Missing Linc (Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Colleagues) (Sheffield S10, 1974)Brahms: Variations and Fuge on a Theme by Handel. Handel: Air with Variations. Chopin: Mazurka in A Minor (Opus 17, No. 4) (Sheffield Lab, LAB-4, 1976)The Virtuoso Trumpet as played by Jimmy Valves Pianist: Victor Mayorga

References

External links
 Official website
 Sheffield Lab, co-founder
 TownHall Records, founder

1937 births
2023 deaths
Musicians from Los Angeles
Hollywood High School alumni
American classical pianists
American male pianists
American pop pianists
American music arrangers
American session musicians
Classical musicians from California
Ragtime pianists
White Whale Records artists
20th-century American pianists
21st-century classical pianists
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians
21st-century American pianists

Lincoln Mayorga


Lewis Bevens Schenck (1898–1985) was an American theologian. He is best known for his 1940 work, The Presbyterian Doctrine of Children in the Covenant: An Historical Study of the Significance of Infant Baptism in the Presbyterian Church in America, in which he examined the doctrine of covenant succession. Robert S. Rayburn notes that Schenck "accounts for the modern eclipse of the Reformed doctrine of covenant succession by the dramatic impact of the Great Awakening and the resultant revivalism." However, according to Thomas Trouwborst, Schenck's book has led to a revival of the "historic Presbyterian and Reformed view concerning covenant children."

Schenck studied at Union Seminary and served for a time as a pastor. He then earned a ThM degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD from Yale University. The Presbyterian Doctrine of Children in the Covenant was a reworking of his doctoral dissertation. He became the J. W. Cannon Professor of Bible and Religion at Davidson College, where he taught from 1927 to 1966.

References

1898 births
1985 deaths
Union Presbyterian Seminary alumni
Princeton Theological Seminary alumni
Yale University alumni
Davidson College faculty
American Calvinist and Reformed theologians
American Presbyterian ministers
20th-century Calvinist and Reformed theologians
20th-century American clergy

Lewis Bevens Schenck


Pro-slavery was an ideology that promoted the practice of slavery and defended against any interference with the system. By the 1830s, slavery was practiced mainly in the Southern United States. African American slaves were considered property. Slave owners justified them being property because slaves were black—in other words not people. Slaves were used on large plantations and small farms as the primary form of labor.

Largely in response to the abolitionist arguments against slavery, pro-slavery advocates developed arguments to justify slavery as being a good thing. While anti-slavery groups pushed for a gradual end to slavery, and free-soilers sought to stop its expansion, abolitionists demanded an immediate end to the practice. Pro-slavery became as much anti-abolitionism as it was a defense of slavery.

Background

Slave culture
It is sometimes hard to understand why southerners who did not own slaves would defend the practice of slavery. In the south at that time, slaves did not just work on plantations. There were over 4 million blacks were enslaved in the south and they far outnumbered white people. In cities like Charleston, South Carolina, slaves worked at various jobs such as carpenters, blacksmiths, bricklayers and street sweeper. They performed every kind of manual labor. They raised the family's children, cooked, cleaned and served the food to their masters. A visitor to Charleston commented "Charleston looks more like a Negro country than a country settled by white people".

Southerners feared a slave rebellion like the one on Haiti only a few decades earlier. They also feared that without slaves their economy would collapse completely. Slavery had become a subject of vital interest to everyone in the United States. In 1859, the raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia by the abolitionist John Brown shocked the south. Had Brown succeeded, he intended to arm slaves in the south with weapons to revolt against their masters. Each new state admitted to the United States became a battle over whether it would be a free state or would allow slavery. Extremists from all sides flocked to territories to promote their own cause. Bleeding Kansas became a worst case example where the competing views broke down into outright guerrilla warfare. Political compromises were tried, such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850.

Slave conditions
Slaves were generally poorly fed and had minimal clothing and places to sleep. Household servants usually did better as they got the old clothes of their master's family and had access to better quality food. Slaves suffered from poor health in the heat and humidity of the south. Because of their poor diet and unsanitary living conditions, they frequently suffered from diseases. The rice plantations were the most deadly for slaves. They stood in water for most of the day under the hot sun. Malaria was a common disease. The mortality rate was highest among slave children. It averaged about 66 % generally and was as high as 90 % on rice plantations.

Slave women were frequently used for sex by their masters. If any refused they were physically beaten. Their racially mixed or mulatto children were considered slaves because their status followed that of the mother. All women in the south, black or white, were considered chattel or property, they belonged to the master. In 1808, the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves took effect. After this time slave breeding by their masters became a common way to produce slaves. There was also a demand for light-skinned, good looking young female slaves. These "fancy maids", slave women sold at auction as concubines or prostitutes, brought the highest prices.

Pro-slavery arguments
The arguments for slavery by Southern spokesmen said that chattel slavery (slaves as property), as practiced in the South, was more humane than the system of "wage slavery" practiced in the industrialized Northern United States. George Fitzhugh, in his book published in 1857, Cannibals All!, maintained that pro-slavery held the moral high ground in the national debate over slavery. Fitzhugh maintained that because slaveholders owned their slaves they took better care of them than the northern capitalists who only "rented" their workers. In his earlier Sociology for the South he proposed that many white people should also be slaves.

Some pointed out that slave owners provided food and clothes for their slaves, something that northern employers did not do. Other arguments pointed out that in addition to the benefits slaves enjoyed under slavery that by keeping them separate, they did not mix with the white race. While this was a fear of many southerners, the argument played on the fears of northerners. The basis for this was the commonly held belief at the time that blacks were inferior to whites.

Others pointed out that a sudden end to slavery would cause economic collapse in the south. There would be no cotton, tobacco or rice industries. Also, that if all the slaves were freed it would lead to unemployment and chaos all over the United States. They claimed it would lead to uprisings much like the "Reign of Terror" during the French Revolution.

These arguments and others were widely published in books, newspapers and pamphlets. They were carefully designed to promote and defend slavery.

References

Other websites
 George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, Google Books
 From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909

Slavery in the United States
1830s in the United States
1840s in the United States
1850s in the United States
1860s in the United States
Origins of the American Civil War

Pro-slavery (United States)


Malcolm III of Scotland (also called Malcolm Canmore), King of Scots was the first of a dynasty of kings who ruled Scotland for over two centuries.

Career

Malcolm was born in 1031, the son of king Duncan I of Scotland and his wife; a cousin of Siward, Earl of Northumberland. When his father was killed in 1040 Malcolm did not succeed to the throne. At the time the system alternated between different lines of the same royal family. So the king chosen from a different royal line was Macbeth, who had killed Duncan I in battle. Malcolm killed Macbeth in battle in 1057, but Lulach, Macbeth's stepson was selected as king.  This broke the pattern of alternate selection. Lulach ruled only ruled a few months until he was killed. Malcolm finally succeeded Lulach and changed the succession to his own sons and their descendants. This made Scotland like other European countries in keeping the same dynasty on the throne.

King of Scots

Malcolm was in his late twenties when he finally became king. Malcolm would lead a total of five raids into England starting in 1061. The Norman Conquest of England caused many to leave England. Malcolm welcomed several into Scotland. These included Edgar Atheling, his sisters Margaret and Christina as well as their mother. Raised at the court of St. Stephen of Hungary she was beautiful, wise, and very religious. Malcolm was at once taken with her and asked her to marry him. She said no because she and her sister were going to be nuns. But after a time she finally accepted. By his marriage to Margaret he gained an interest in the English throne.

Edgar Atheling joined the uprising in the North of England in 1069 but it failed. William the Conqueror sacked York as punishment. Malcolm joined in but too late as Edgar left England on a Danish ship. Malcolm had long claimed Cumbria and Northumberland and made another raid on Bamburgh. He took so many captives that it was said there was an English slave in every house in Scotland. In 1071 William came north with a large army. He came as far as Abernethy but Malcolm wanted peace. William agreed to give him twelve English manors and pay a yearly fee. Malcolm had to give his son Malcolm as a hostage but this made him a vassal of the English king.

Edgar Atheling returned to Scotland the next year. He had been offered land on the border near Normandy by the French king. Malcolm told him to take it and settle down. He then gave Edgar gold and silver and sent him off to live in France. But Edgar soon returned having been shipwrecked on his journey. This time Malcolm advised him to make peace with king William of England. Edgar did and received a castle as a residence in England. In 1079 William and his son Robert were fighting in Normandy. Malcolm raided into England again being welcomed in Northumberland. But William sent his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux north to punish Northumberland and Robert to raid into Scotland. Once more Robert and Malcolm settled their differences and were at peace again. In 1092, during the reign of William Rufus Malcolm raided England yet again. Peace was again renewed with William Rufus. But William failed in one of his promises to Malcolm, so in 1093 the Scots invaded England again. This time Malcolm III died while fighting at Alnwick Castle. His son Edward died there also. Margaret, his queen died of grief after hearing the news of the death of her husband and their son.

Family

About 1059 he married Ingibjorg, the widow of Thorfinn Sigurdson, Earl of Orkney. She was the daughter of Earl Finn Arnason. Together they had:

 Duncan, eventually succeeded his father as king Duncan II.
 Donald, (died 1085).

He married secondly Margaret of Wessex . They had eight children; six sons and two daughters, including:

 Edward (died 1093).
 Edmund, Prince of Cumbria and later a monk.
 Ethelred, Earl of Fife and abbot of Dunkeld.
 Edgar of Scotland, afterwards king.
 Alexander, later king of Scots as Alexander I.
 David, later king of Scots as David I.
 Matilda, married Henry I of England.
 Mary, married (1102) to Eustace, Count of Boulogne. Their daughter, Matilda, was the wife of Stephen, king of England.

Notes

References

1031 births
1093 deaths
Kings and Queens of Scotland
11th century in Scotland

Malcolm III of Scotland