|I. They who sow at night||09:03|
|II. Eagle! Eagle over your mountains||06:19|
|III. Will there yet come days of forgiveness||07:28|
Harold Shapero’s Three Hebrew Songs began as two—a pair of settings of modern Hebrew poetry for tenor voice and piano, which was commissioned by the composer’s graduate student at Brandeis University, Cantor Jack Kessler. After Kessler introduced Shapero to an array of modern Hebrew verse by some of the most prominent modern Hebrew poets, Shapero selected Hazor’im baleilot (They Who Sow at Night) by Sh. [shin] Shalom and Ha’omnam od yavo’u (Will There Yet Come Days of Forgiveness) by Leah Goldberg. A number of years later, Shapero received a commission from conductor Gerard Schwarz and the Y Chamber Orchestra for a work to be performed in its concert series at the 92nd Street YMHA (Young Men’s Hebrew Association), under whose auspices that orchestra (known as the New York Chamber Orchestra when its concerts were moved to Lincoln Center after becoming independent of the Y) had been founded. For that occasion the composer created and interpolated a third piece, or movement—a setting of Saul Tchernikhovsky’s poem Ayit! ayit al harayikh (Eagle! Eagle Over Your Mountains)—and revised and orchestrated the original two settings to frame the new one. In its final form, the work was dedicated to the forty-fifth anniversary of the State of Israel.
Sh. [shin] Shalom [Shalom Joseph Shapira] (1904–1990) was born to a prominent Hassidic family in Parczew, Poland. At the onset of the First World War his family relocated to Vienna, and they resettled in Palestine in 1922. There, after graduating from the Teachers College (Mizrahi) in Jerusalem, he joined a settlement community known as Kfar Hassidim, where he became one of its first teachers. He subsequently taught at Rosh Pina, in the Upper Galilee, and then went back to Europe temporarily for studies at the University of Erlangen (1929–1931). He returned to Jerusalem and remained there until 1939, when he moved to Haifa and eventually became chairman of the Hebrew Writers Association.
In 1941 Sh. Shalom was awarded the Tchernikhovsky Prize for his translation into Hebrew of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Among his important poetry and poetic collections are Balev ha’olam, Sefer hashirim, V’hasonnetot, Panim el panim, Shabbat ha’olan, and Shirim. He also wrote many short stories, which appear in his volumes Yoman bagalil, Aliyat haḥassidim, and B’metaḥ hagavo’a.
In the poem Hazor’im baleilot, Shalom focuses on the image of young Zionist pioneers sowing the fields of a kibbutz in the Galilee by moonlight—as if in secret—to avoid the frequent attacks by marauding Arabs (“the surrounding mountains do not understand us”). The idealism of the era is transparent in their plea for protection and success, not so much for their own sake, but for the future generations for whom they are committed to rebuilding the land: “May our children eat and be satisfied. . . . Only for them do we sow at night, for their sake our steps are alarmed.”
The religious mysticism of the Hassidic environment of the poet’s youth translates here to a form of secular humanistic mysticism or spirituality—though not necessarily or explicitly shorn of religious association or fervor—in the reference to their souls (i.e., not their bodies alone) longing for grain. The seed they scatter (which may have biblical overtones in God’s promise to Abraham to multiply his seed) is “precious and holy.” But if the plea is actually to the Almighty, it is couched in the form of a plea to the moon to give of its light for their work, to guide them with its light, and to give them sufficient time for their task. For it is “the moon”—or God? or nature? or posterity? or the inner spirit of mankind?—that understands their mission and their task. There are faint but firm echoes of phrases and sentiments from the Book of Psalms and from Hebrew liturgy (“Guard us from . . .”; “May they … remember us for good”). But the poet speaks of himself and his fellow sowers not simply as Israelites, nor even solely as Jews, but now as anashim ivrim—Hebrew men, or people—in the spirit of the modern Zionist enterprise of that time. In the poem’s optimistic tone, the spirit of commitment will prevail, refusing to be thwarted or repulsed by the threat of terror; and the inner creative spark, which informs so much of Shalom’s poetry, negates both practical and spiritual defeat. They are sowing seeds of grain for sustenance and for a future thriving land, but they are also sowing spiritual seeds in the context of a redeemed people.
Saul Tchernikhovsky (1875–1943) was, together with Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik, one of the two leading poets of the Jewish cultural-national school during the pivotal European period in the development of modern Hebrew poetry (centered in imperial Russia and eastern Europe). That period—which emerged in part as a function of the late Romantic-nationalist stages of the Haskala among middle- and upper-middle-class Jewish literary circles in the Russian Empire—is approximately dated from the early 1880s to the beginning of the third decade of the 20th century and the early days of the British Mandate of Palestine. It overlaps the succeeding modern Palestinian period of Hebrew poetry (1920–1947) in the sense that poets such as Bialik and Tchernikhovsky—and many others of their generation—eventually emigrated to Mandatory Palestine and continued to develop their art there. But they had carved out the foundations of their work within the Russian and Russian-Jewish sphere of influence and in the contexts of its social, cultural, political, and religious forces.
Modern Hebrew poetry was not without precedents by the 1880s, nor did it begin de novo with the generation of Bialik and Tchernikhovsky. Their work followed previous, albeit short-lived, Haskala-driven Hebrew poetry from earlier phases of that Jewish Enlightenment movement in German and German-speaking cultural orbits, which included didactic forms that attempted to propagate the new Haskala ideals; artificially affected and often encumbered styles known collectively as m’litza, which aimed to shed traditional religious- and rabbinic-based language, flavor, and phraseology; and a large quantity of poetry so directly under German literary influence that many such poems were actually labeled nach Schiller (“after the manner of Schiller”). And later, during the first decades of the second half of the 19th century, there arose a more artistically developed and mature Hebrew poetry in the eastern European/Russian sphere by such such writers as Micah Joseph Lebensohn (1828–1852), whose lyric poetry was tinged with individualism and personal experience, and Yehuda Leib Gordon (1830–1892), who departed from linguistic features of biblical Hebrew in realistic images of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement—and whom, among others, Bialik acknowledged for his contributions in paving the way for his own work.
Nonetheless, Bialik and Tchernikhovsky’s names are traditionally and, on many levels, appropriately linked as the twin progenitors and towering figures of the first enduring school of modern secular Hebrew poetry, even though their orientations, literary agendas, styles, and certainly their backgrounds differed in a number of respects. (Zalman Shneur [1887–1959] was sometimes included as a third member of a triumvirate of founders, but literary critics have largely rejected that assessment.) It is generally accepted by literary historians that despite the earlier groundwork, it remained to Bialik and his contemporaries—Tchernikhovsky the most prominent among them—to establish a truly viable and manifestly modern Hebrew poetry that would stand the test of time.
It is undeniable that Bialik (only two years Tchernikhovsky’s senior) has overshadowed Tchernikhovsky in some substantive ways, as he has virtually all modern Hebrew poets—not least owing to Bialik’s unofficial but permanent standing as Israel’s “poet laureate” and as the national poet of the Jewish people. Nonetheless, Tchernikhovsky is certainly considered the foremost Hebrew national poet of Bialik’s circle and of what came indeed to be called the Age of Bialik.
Unlike Bialik and most of the emerging Hebrew poets of that circle, Tchernikhovsky did not grow up in the Pale of Settlement, and thus did not experience firsthand in his youth its typically exilic effects on the various aspects and modes of Jewish life. He was born in a village in the Crimea, in an area that had been annexed from the Ottoman Empire and was sometimes dubbed the New Russia, where Czarist policies toward Jews were more liberal than in the Pale, a factor that was to find reflection in some of his poetry. He first learned Hebrew from his father and then from Haskala-oriented tutors. But he also learned Russian (which was spoken routinely by the Jews in the region)—first at the local village school and then at the Western-style Gymnasium in Odessa. By then he had evinced an interest in writing poetry as well as in translating classic works into Hebrew. His first volume of poetry was published in 1899 (Ḥezyonot umanginot, Warsaw), and this attracted Bialik’s attention and friendship. Thereafter Joseph Klausner, considered the trailblazer in the historical study of modern Hebrew literature, became his great supporter and advocate. Three years later he published additional poems under the same title.
Between 1899 and 1906 Tchernikhovsky benefited from a formal European education at the universities of Heidelberg and Lausanne, acquiring proficiency in Latin, Greek, German, French, and English. While at Heidelberg, profoundly affected by the study of Goethe’s idyls, he commenced his decades-long project of writing his own Hebrew Idyls . Meanwhile, he studied medicine and became a physician—practicing in Kharkov and St. Petersburg as well as in Finland. During the First World War he served as a military surgeon. Along with his literary devotion, he continued to practice medicine throughout his life.
Tchernikhovsky left Russia in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and lived for a time in Berlin, beginning in 1922. He first visited Palestine in 1925 and settled there permanently in 1931. In his first few years there he edited a Hebrew medical dictionary and wrote a critical study of the Italian Hebrew poet Immanuel (Ben Solomon) of Rome (ca. 1261–1335), in whom he retained a lifelong interest.
Tchernikhovsky’s Hebrew translations of Western and world literature include Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh, Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Molière’s Le Malade imaginaire, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Twelfth Night, Goethe’s Reineke Fuchs, Longfellow’s Hiawatha, Anacreon’s poems, and many other works. His own volumes of poetry include Maḥberet hasonitot (1922); Sefer ha’idilyot (1922); Shirim ḥadashim (1924); Kitvei sha’ul tchernikhovsky, in ten volumes (1929–1934); Kol shirei tchernikhovsky (1937); and Shirim (1943; 1951). His poetry has been translated into many languages, including English, French, Russian, German, and Italian.
In Mandatory Palestine, Tchernikhovsky was a member of the Hebrew Language Committee (the Teachers Organization of Palestine), which undertook the official responsibility for establishing uniform pronunciation and spelling of modern Hebrew as well as the adoption of new words; and he served on the Executive Council of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After his death, the city of Tel Aviv established a prize in his honor for excellence in translation into Hebrew.
Literary critics and historians observe in much of Tchernikhovsky’s work an overall sense of freedom from the confines of Judaic orthodoxy, including from some of its moral (though not necessarily sociologically related or ethical) strictures, as well as its ritual requirements, in favor of a type of prebiblical pantheism with nature-oriented concerns. The Hebrew literary scholar Ezra Spicehandler, in his overview of modern Hebrew poetry, has suggested that earlier critics may have confused this pantheistic worldview with paganism. But Spicehandler also noted that Tchernikhovsky was probably “more lyricist than thinker,” responding positively to those elements of Jewish tradition he deemed positive and portraying “the less rigid aspects of Jewish folk life in his native Crimea.”
Tchernikhovsky has also been credited with introducing to Hebrew poetry, as a function of his worldly outlook, the European traditions of epic as well as lyric verse. He framed many of his images of traditional Jewish life—common folk habits, life-cycle events, and even religious holydays and celebrations—in classic hexameters, which, in the view of the 20th-century poet Ruth Finer Mintz, lent them an implied epic dynamic. His ballads and sonnets are also among his important poetry, and his two cycles of sonnets have been cited as the first of that genre in Hebrew. In her comparative evaluation of modern Hebrew poets of the European period, Mintz sees Tchernikhovsky as a classicist, in contradistinction to Bialik’s realism, but she views both as Romantics as well. And she has posited that Tchernikhovsky’s approach was born not only of Hellenistic ideals and the Italian Renaissance but also, more personally, of a special mystic-spiritual concept that informed his abiding faith in Jewish spiritual and national continuity: “The humanization of mankind was for him, as it had been for the Hebrew prophets,” she wrote in her anthology of modern Hebrew poetry, “not an abstract religious ideal but an active social principle.”
“For me poetry is always an act of love,” Tchernikhovsky once wrote to his champion Joseph Klausner, “an act of triumph.”
The “eagle” in Tchernikhovsky’s poem Ayit! ayit al harayikh refers to the “bird(s) of prey” that swooped down upon the carcasses of Abraham’s sacrifice in the scene of God’s covenant with him—symbolically, in the view of rabbinic commentary, illustrating the future obstacles that would stand in the way of taking possession of the promised land—which Abraham drove off, signifying (again, according to commentary) that attempts to negate that promise and plan would ultimately be unsuccessful. In the introduction to his translation of the poem, Hebrew scholar Robert Alter (now celebrated for his monumental new translations of the Pentateuch and the Book of Psalms) suggests that the opening repetition of ayit recalls the opening line of William Blake’s famous poem “The Tiger,” which Alter is certain was known by Tchernikhovsky. And he points out that the speaker is addressing “the Land,” and that the mountains over which the bird circles are the Judean hills.
Particularly impressive in Alter’s analysis is the opening line and its repetition “as a musical theme” at the beginning of each stanza. It is, in his view, “one of the most impressive lines of modern Hebrew poetry for its fusion of image and sonality:
The impact of the stress pattern, the skillful variation of masculine and feminine arrest of the breath groups, the many monosyllabic verbs and adjectives propel the poem with force and grace.
The repetitions of lines, words, vowels, and consonants produce, for Alter, the effect of incantation—with chantlike, repetitive, rhythmic regularity alternating with repeated harshness to echo the speaker’s dual (“contradictory”) sense of the bird’s nature and essence:
In the first stanza, the eagle appears as a thing of breathtaking beauty, the beauty of pure effortless power, beyond all limit or restraint. But the last word of the stanza, “searing,” introduces the idea of pain and possible destructiveness. . . . Yet the speaker’s admiration in no way diminishes.
In the penultimate stanza, the eagle soars, glides, descends, tentatively freezes—as the tense changes momentarily from present to past—and then, soaring again, returns upward to what Alter interprets as its “timeless world.” In the final stanza he sees in the eagle’s “massing of shadow” an ominous image and a “cry of warning to the Land,” which he finds nonetheless “curiously attractive”:
The speaker has been confronted with a vision of primal power in (or above) nature: his feelings toward it are ambivalent.
Alter cites the final two lines of the poem as transparently suggestive of its overall mythic dimension:
Ḥashrat [line 15], a word which occurs only once in the Bible (2 Samuel XXII: 12), describes the clouds “thick” with water that the Creator massed around himself in darkness. The “gathering of shadow,” then, together with the substitution of “giant” for “eagle,” indicates that “mountains of God” is not just an epithet for the hills of Judea, but that it retains the cosmic force of its original biblical usage in which it is paired with “the great abyss” (Psalms 36:6): “Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are the great abyss. . . .”
Leah Goldberg (1911–1970) belongs to the Mandatory Palestinian period in modern Hebrew poetry (1920–47) and is identified by Spicehandler as the least ideological of the poets of that time—generally ignoring or downplaying nationalist or specifically Jewish matters and focusing instead on universal concerns.
Goldberg was born in Lithuania and graduated from the Hebrew Gymnasium in Kovno. She studied philosophy and Semitic languages at the universities of Berlin and Bonn and, after earning her doctoral degree, emigrated to Palestine in 1935. There she joined a literary group (Yakhdav) that included the poets Avraham Shlonsky (1900–73) and Natan Alterman (1910–70). She became a literary and dramatic critic for various periodicals as well as a lecturer at the Habima Theater school, and she wrote plays as well as verse. In 1954 she was appointed to the faculty of the Hebrew University, where she taught comparative literature.
Goldberg made Hebrew translations of such major works of Western literature as Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, among many others. Together with Shlonsky she edited and produced an anthology of Russian poetry. Her own poetry from her mature phase is characterized by its overwhelming devotion to beauty and art and its intense lyricism—“wisdom that sings,” in the assessment of the poet Yaakov Fichman. Her major works include Taba’ot ashaa (1935), Shibbdet y’rokat ha’ayin (1940), Al hapriha (1948), and Barak baboker (1955).
Goldberg’s poem Ha’amnam od yavo’u is in many respects typical of her exquisite brand of simplicity and unaffectedness, which nonetheless belies the multiple layers of meaning to be interpreted and the richness of her imagery. Above all, there is the yearning for the sheer beauty of inner peace and humble introspection.
Shapero’s settings are entirely tonal. The first contains alternations between expressionistic qualities and recititative-like passages that recall liturgical intonation. The second maintains a quasi-folksong character until its final climax, which the composer intended as a religious statement. The final movement is the composer’s interpretation of a prayer for peace, with the aura of a chorale throughout. “A final indeterminate cadence,” Shapero has explained, “seems to indicate that that peace is not yet achieved.”
HAZOR'IM BALEILOT (They Who [That] Sow at Night)
Poem: Sh. Shalom (Shalom Joseph Shapira, 1904-1990)
Sung in Hebrew
Go slowly, go slowly, oh moon, upon your way. We are sowing by your light,
Sowing the fields of Galilee.
Enemies rise against us from all sides, the roaring human desires close upon us-
And we go out to sow at night,
For we want only to sow, and our soul longs for grain.
Go slowly, go slowly, oh moon, upon your way.
Divided and cleft are the fields of Galilee, precious and holy is the seed we scatter ...
We need your light, we need your light.
Let us see our way and let them not see us.
Let our seed sprout, let not the cruel uproot it.
Make our night-sown grain grow, for the sun has surely betrayed us,
And the days are given to annihilation.
Go slowly, go slowly, oh moon, on your way. Do not be alarmed by our moving shadows,
We are Hebrew men sowing their fields at night.
We have no voice and no sound.
There is no sound in our horses' hooves and our wagon wheels are muffled.
Secretly, secretly we walk; the surrounding mountains do not understand us.
You, understand our deed. Let them not plunder us.
Guard us from the wandering bullet, from the knife out of the ambush.
Guard us from war's baltle cry, from blood spilled on the furrows.
Guard the seed we have sown, guard ij from theft and from scorching wind.
May our children eat and be satisfied. May they rise lofty and remember us for good.
Only for them do we sow at night, for their sake are our steps alarmed.
For we are Hebrew men, sowing our fields at night.
Go slowly, go slowly, oh moon, upon your way.
Translation: Ruther Finer Mintz
AYIT AYIT AL HARAYIKH (Eagle! Eagle Over Your Mountains)
Poem: Saul Tchernichowsky (1875-1943)
Sung in Hebrew
Eagle! eagle over your mountains, an eagle is flying over your mountains!
Slow and light—it seems as it for a moment—it is merely floating,
Floating, sailing in a sea of blue, alert to the song of delight in the heart
Of the heavens—of the sky, circling mutely in searing light.
Eagle! eagle over your mountains, an eagle is flying over your mountains!
Straight of body, heavy-pinioned, black of feather, and broad of wing;
Soaring taut—arrow from a bow—an eagle makes the rings of its [sweeping] circles;
Tracking from above the signs of its prey in meadow and in rock crevice.
Eagle! eagle over your mountains, an eagle flies over your mountains!
Soaring, gliding, gliding, and with wondrous touch did not move a wing.
For an instant—it froze, then—the barest movement in its wings,
The slightest tremble suddenly—and it rises toward the cloud.
Eagle! eagle over your mountains, an eagle is flying over your mountains!
Slow and light—it seems as if—for a moment it is merely floating...
[O] Land [earth], [an] eagle [is] over your mountains—over your face, a massing of shadow
From the giant wings passes, caresses the mountains of God.
Translation: B / C / S 1965
HA'AMNAM OD YAVO'U (Will There Yet Come Days of Forgiveness)
Poem: Lea Goldberg (1911-1970)
Will there yet come days of forgiveness and grace,
When you walk in the field as the innocent wayfarer walks,
And the soles of your feet the clover leaves caress
Though stubble will sting you, sweet will be their stalks.
Or rain will overtake you, its thronging drops tapping
On your shoulder, your chest, your throat, your gentle head bowed.
And you will walk in the wet field, the quiet in you expanding
Like light in the hem of a cloud.
And you will breathe the odor of the furrow, breathing and quiet,
And you will see mirrored in the gold puddle the sun above,
And simple will be these things, and life, pennitted to touch,
Pennitted, permitted to love.
Slowly you will walk in the field. Alone. Unscorched by flame
Of conflagrations on roads that bristled with horror and blood. Again
You will be peaceful in heart, humble and bending
Like one of the grasses, like one of man.
Translation: Mintz 1966
Performers: Barcelona Symphony-National Orchestra of Catalonia; Christopher Merritt, Tenor; Karl Anton Rickenbacher, Conductor; Osias Wilensky, Piano
Publisher: Harold Samuel Shapero
Don't miss our latest releases, podcasts, announcements and giveaways throughout the year! Stay up to date with our newsletter.


This instructables will teach you all of the important steps to making a frame out of perler beads. These steps can also be followed to make any larger perler project.
Step 1: Gather Supplies and Setting Up Perler Station
The first step to making any larger perler piece is to gather your supplies. What you will need: parchment paper, pegboards, perler beads (specific colors to your project), tweezers for the more advanced projects, an iron, masking take and any sharp tool that can be used to poke holes (this will be explained later in the project). After gather supplies, it is important to set up your station. I put together however many pegboards I need for each project, in this case four did the trick. I use an additional board to place beads on so they are easier to reach while perlering and you can move the board around as you go around the project.
Step 2: Sizing, Outlining and Filling In.
For step two, following your decided pattern, create the outline with the correct color. Here I used a 5 by 7 picture to work around so I knew the size of my frame. Of course you can play around with sizes to suit your needs. I had to go back and take away a few rows after the outline was completed to accommodate the design on the bottom of this particular frame. Things like that are going to happen, don't get discouraged when the beads don't match up perfectly. Just play with the pattern a little until it fits your liking.
Step 3: Straightening and Taping
Once the frame is complete, gently push the edges of your beads so they are all even and in straight rows. Carefully place the masking tape in rows over the beads, leaving about 1/2 an inch of extra tape so you can easily peel away the frame after.
Step 4: Evening and Poking
Once the frame is taped completely, take a blunt object ( I use the back of a screwdriver) and rub it over the frame so everything is even. Once that is done, take a sharp object (such as a pen tip or sharpened pencil) and poke holes in the tape for every individual bead. This may seem tedious but it is important because the tape can bubble during ironing if this step is done incorrectly or skipped.
Step 5: Removing Frame and Trimming Tape
Once the holes are all poked, carefully peel back the tape (this is where the extra tape comes in handy). Once the entire frame is removed, cut the excess tape so it doesn't stick to other surfaces while ironing.
Step 6: Ironing Side One
On a clean surface, place the frame with the tape side down and place parchment paper on side facing upward. With an already heated iron (on a medium to hot temperature), run the iron over the entirety of the frame until the beads have fused together. Some people like to iron their pieces until the beads melt together completely but I like the more pixelated look so I iron until they are simply fused together. Once the frame is cool to the touch, flip it and and very slowly peel back the masking tape, making sure all of the beads are fused as you go.
Step 7: Iron Second Side and Cool
Once the masking tape is removed, flip the frame so the un-ironed side is facing up and place the parchment paper on top. Repeat the ironing for this side and remove the parchment paper. Make sure to turn your iron off at this point. Place a head object on top of the frame (like a heavy book) so that it remains flat while it cools. If left alone, it will curve. Once cooled, your frame is done! Congratulations.


Give it a twist: The Role of Torsional Mechanics in the Fight Against Heart Failure
Ventricular torsion is an important part of normal cardiac function that is significantly impaired following MI and in heart failure. Studies show that the torsional mechanics of the healthy heart serve two main functions.
- One is to provide a "wringing" motion that helps the ventricles empty more completely, and thus supports pump function.
- The other is to reduce ventricular wall stress during systolic shortening, which lowers oxygen demand and improves contractile efficiency.
When torsion is impaired, a resulting imbalance in transmural strains is observed. Such imbalance has been shown to be an important driver of remodeling as the ventricular wall is triggered to dilate due to unphysiological stress concentrations and increased oxygen demand.
Several studies have shown that current therapeutic interventions (such as cardiac resynchronization therapy or reconstructive surgeries) do not improve compromised LV torsional mechanics, suggesting that LV torsional mechanics may be difficult to restore once they are compromised. This motivates an approach targeted at intervening early after MI in order to preserve LV torsional mechanics before they are irreversibly compromised.
Research Rationale: Preserving LV Torsion as a Means of Improving Heart Function
In the mammalian heart, torsion results from the structural architecture of myocardial fibers: epicardial fibers (external layer) are oriented in a left-handed helix, midwall fibers are oriented circumferentially, and endocardial fibers (internal layer) are orientated in a right-handed helix (Fig. 2A). Contraction of the left-handed epicardial fibers adds to positive (left-handed) torsion, while contraction of the endocardial fibers adds to a negative (right-handed) torsion. The force balance is typically in favor of the epicardial fibers due to their increased lever arm, resulting in a “wringing motion” (Fig. 2B).
During systole, the ventricle twists to generate a net counterclockwise rotation of up to 12-15 degrees, aiding the heart to properly empty and eject blood. During diastole, the torsion is rapidly lost to generate a pressure gradient resulting in a suction effect, allowing the heart to expand and fill. Thus, twist during ejection predominantly deforms the subendocardial fiber matrix, resulting in storage of potential energy. Subsequent recoil of twist deformation occurs during diastolic relaxation and filling, and is associated with the release of restoring forces.
Studies have shown that when the balance of moments between endocardial and epicardial fibers is altered with changing loads and contractility, there is significant change in LV twist metrics. This explains altered LV twist dynamics observed in disease states. The majority of progressive myocardial diseases, including ischemia and early stages of myocardial infarction, tend to predominantly affect the endocardial layer. Thus, endocardial dysfunction has been shown to dominate and precede epicardial dysfunction. As a result, a transmural imbalance of torsional moments is incurred, affecting both the amplitude and the dynamics of twist. There are two metrics of interest when characterizing torsion: (1) LV twist angle, the degree of net twisting accomplished in contraction when comparing the heart’s base and apex, and (2) the untwisting rate, the velocity of elastic recoil during relaxation.
In early MI patients, initial depressed endocardial layer function leads to preserved or even increased LV twist angle as a result of the unopposed contraction of epicardial fibers. Ventricular relaxation, on the other hand, becomes abnormally slow (decrease in untwisting rate) as a direct result of endocardial dysfunction. This is because relaxation is affected by the “elastic spring” that is actively loaded during systole with the deformation of the endocardial layer. When this function is compromised, the storage and release of potential energy during systole, and commensurate elastic recoil during diastole, are immediately affected. In other words, if regional force generation is reduced in ischemia, the elastic “spring” is not fully loaded during systole, which decreases elastic recoil during relaxation. Eventually, with the onset of remodeling and compensatory mechanisms and deterioration of epicardial function, LV twist angle also becomes impaired, resulting in heart failure.
Metrics of interest are summarized in the table below (where “--" indicates baseline value):
Torsional mechanics are clearly essential in optimizing cardiac energetics and promoting pump function. Given the evidence that LV twist mechanics are difficult to restore once permanently impaired with the progression of heart failure, this proposal focuses on early intervention, motivating the following hypothesis:
It is hypothesized that preservation of LV torsional mechanics by means of external torsional support will shift cardiac energetics towards physiological ranges and assist in preventing the degeneration of ischemic heart disease to congestive heart failure
Overall, this work aims to lay the foundation for future research in the area of early, torsional support in prevention of heart failure. It does so proposing realistic means to implement such support mechanics and reporting results from computational simulations, prototyping, and preliminary bench tests.


When the early Zionists looked for historical precedents of Jewish political independence, they found a natural point of reference in the Hanukkah story. The Hasmonean uprising was a turning point in Jewish history: for the first time since the Babylonian exile, the Jews fought a regional power and won. That victory led to the re-establishment of a politically independent Jewish commonwealth under a Jewish monarch for the first time since the destruction of the First Temple.
And yet, the Talmud doesn’t even mention it! The question “What is Hanukkah?” gets an answer, all right, but it isn’t the answer that we expect. Instead of a history lesson, we get a colorful story of how the sole remaining jar of ritual olive oil for the menorah sufficed for eight days, until more could be brought—a nice story, but not particularly satisfying. What about the military victory over vastly superior forces? What about the resurrection of an independent Jewish state? Tell us about the real miracles—the ones that changed the course of history!
But it wasn’t only the Talmud that was mysteriously reticent about the Hasmonean victory. The earlier Sages went to great lengths to obscure the underlying political and military basis of the holiday, along with the ensuing civil war. The books of the Maccabees were left out of the Jewish canon altogether.
Why this seeming censorship? The answer may have something to teach us about the clash of civilizations.
The dangers of failing states
The culture against which the Hasmoneans fought was one whose values were at odds with those of the Jewish culture on a number of levels. It was an empire built solely on conquest, on picking up the pieces left by the ruin of earlier empires. Moreover, it was a failing culture. The Hellenism of the day was dying; the center of gravity of Greek political power had shifted to western Asia, leaving its original homeland increasingly depopulated and economically bankrupt. While the outer trappings of Hellenism were enthusiastically adopted by the Seleucid elites, its cultural institutions were missing or enfeebled.
Around 150 BC, the Greek historian Polybius wrote of catastrophic demographic decline throughout the Greek homeland:
In our time the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth rate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit, although there have neither been continuous wars nor epidemics…. As men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or, if they married, to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensibly grew. (Polybius 36:17)
David Goldman, the author of Why Civilizations Die, highlights demographic decline as a factor in—or a symptom of—societal decline. As literacy and affluence rise, birth rates decline, such that civilizations can die of their own success!
This is the fate that befell the Hellenistic society at the time of the Seleucid Empire.
But it wasn’t only the Hellenistic culture that was in turmoil. Judea had never really recovered from the Babylonian exile some 400 years previously. The period between the return from Babylon and the Hasmonean kingdom is the Jewish equivalent of “the Dark Ages”. We have very little written or even oral history from this period: few names of sages or leaders. And when scholarship finally reemerges out of the murk of history, the leading Jewish sages have Greek names!
The parts of this story that the Talmud left out make for sordid reading: a prolonged and ugly civil war, corruption, economic breakdown…. all the ills of a failed state. Schisms and enmities within the society were rife, and easily exploited by the Seleucid authorities:
In 171 BCE the king [Antiochus] dismissed Jason [the corrupt High Priest], crowning the treasurer of the Temple, Menelaus, in his stead. The book of Maccabees even relates the price that Menelaus paid for his new job – three hundred coins more than Jason had offered. (R’ Benyamin Lau, The Sages, Vol. I)
Thus we have a clash of two fragmented cultures, each struggling for identity. While the Seleucid Empire shone in the reflected light of a brilliant but dying Hellenistic culture, Jewish society was struggling to relight the fires of its own cultural identity after the Babylonian exile.
The victory of defeat
But if there are historical lessons to be learned from this sordid story, why did the sages of the Talmud not spell them out?
It’s been suggested that the silence of the Talmud and Mishna about Jewish victories is primarily due to fear of the non-Jewish authorities. During the days of the Roman occupation, it wouldn’t do to recite past Jewish victories. Nor would it be a good idea to give voice to aspirations of independence later, while living under Babylonian and Persian rule.
And yet, that’s not the whole story; this “queitism” appears to be part of a deliberate pedagogical program which started with the Tanakh itself. Biblical scholar Jacob Wright notes that the Biblical text consistently downplays—or omits altogether—tributes to military victories and state-centric monuments. He makes a good case for the notion that this was a conscious policy—an attempt to shift the nation’s values away from statehood and toward peoplehood.
The classic biblical hero isn’t the warrior who valiantly dies in battle, but rather the man who fights only out of necessity and then returns home to care for his family. The biblical “draft exemptions” set out in Deuteronomy 20:5-7 are not for conscientious objectors; they exempt those who have something more important to do than going to war. Raising families and harvesting crops win out over fighting the king’s battles.
But it may be that there’s a still deeper lesson in the way the Hanukkah story was handed down. The failing empire of Antiochus provided valuable practice for the far more serious threat of Rome—both politically and religiously.
Unfortunately, the lessons weren’t learned in time. The national unity whose lack led to a disastrous civil war was still missing two centuries later. It may be that this is exactly what the sages of the Talmud were trying to put right. Even in the midst of a crisis of existential proportions, they could see that the political and military fight, though important, was not the heart of the matter. What mattered was that Jewish values themselves should be so well internalized that no wedge could be driven between the disparate parts of society.
Had Jewish society been stronger in its identity and national ethos, its clash with Hellenism would have been far less divisive; Jewish cultural elites would have taken from the foreign culture what could easily be woven into the fabric of Jewish tradition, and calmly rejected the rest.
A light on the threshold
This lesson is subtly woven into the observance of Hanukkah. The hanukkiah is not lit in the private space of the home, nor is it traditionally lit in purely public spaces; rather, it is set out on the threshold of the home, marking the dividing line between private and public space, between the light streaming outward from the home and the light coming in from outside.
And really, this is what the holiday is all about: defining distinctions between what is inside and what is outside—what values we assimilate from other cultures and what is best left outside, what customs and world-views uniquely define us, and what traditions and practices we can let go of in light of new circumstances. In the end, our light meets the lights of other cultures, and yet remains itself.
And so we come to the secret of the answer given by the Sages. Pressed to explain what Hanukkah was all about, the Sages said nothing about the military and political victories, but instead brought forward a beautiful midrash that sums up the true miracle of that time: For all that we were dragged into a brutal war of brother against brother, of the settling of scores and the collapse of government; for all that we had so forgotten our own traditions that much had to be later recreated by Sages whose very names were no longer Jewish—still, our light did not go out. We came through one of the darkest periods of Jewish history with our inner fires still burning, ready to rebuild.


With confirmation that Titanic sank with great loss of life, the next task was to collect bodies floating in the Atlantic. The cable ship Mackay Bennett was the first ship hired by White Star (others would be employed as well)to retrieve bodies. The ship emptied itself of its normal stores in Halifax, Nova Scotia and brought aboard supplies for its new mission:
- Embalming supplies and coffins (100)
- Chief embalmer of John Snow & Co.,John R. Snow Jr.
- 100 tons of ice to store the bodies
- Canon Kenneth Hind of All Saints Cathedral, Halifax
Mackay Bennett left Halifax at 12:28 pm on 17 April 1912. Due to heavy fog and rough sears it would take four days to reach where Titanic sank. They began recovery at 0600 on 20 April. Bodies were manually recovered by skiffs and brought back to the ship. They recovered 51 bodies but realized they did not have enough embalming supplies on hand. Since the laws at the time required bodies to be embalmed before unloading from ships docking in a Canadian port, they followed a general procedure:
- First class passengers were embalmed and placed in coffins
- Second class passengers were embalmed but wrapped in canvas
- Third class passengers were buried at sea
Bodies that were brought back were either transported by relatives to their final resting place or interred in Halifax, Nova Scotia.


Writing a synthesis essay can be a challenging task. In order to attempt any particular type of writing we must have some knowledge about its background. Hence in this case, it is important to decipher the meaning of the term “synthesis”. And how it works in context of essay writing. By synthesizing a text, we refer to developing a new outlook about a subject. This is done by putting together information taken from different sources.
Now that we have an idea of what is expected from us while writing a synthesis essay, we will move on to its process.
What is a synthesis essay?
We came to know what synthesizing means, but there must still be some confusion about the essay itself. Basically, you have to combine several pieces of information to form an opinion about a subject. The sources of this paper can include videos, speeches, advertisements and even radio acts. The writing part might still be not clarified so we will talk about that now.
Formatting a Synthesis Essay
There are various ways for formatting a synthesis essay. The correct format is the one that is required by your teacher. In case you haven’t been told, then just use MLA, APA or any format your teacher usually asks for.
The MEAL Approach
There are several different aspects that sets apart a synthesis essay from other essays. The most prominent of those, is the MEAL approach. It is used in the body paragraphs of a synthesis essay The MEAL approach consists of the following elements:
Main idea: Here you need to present the opinion you have on the subject matter. The main idea can be expressed in any form. However, it must display your personal point of view.
Evidence: To support the ideas you have expressed above, provide some strong evidence. It is mostly presented as a quote. You must provide proper references to prove its authenticity.
Analysis: However, your job does not end with providing persuasive evidence. The evidence needs to be analyzed and you must state in what way it supports your main idea.
Link back: Be focused on the main argument throughout the writing process. In this part you merely have to restate your main ideas. Then express how you have proven it correct.
How to write an argumentative synthesis essay?
An argumentative version of a synthetic essay might seem similar but there are some major differences involved. When you are assigned an argumentative essay, you will be provided a list of sources that you must include. It is up to you thereon, to find a suitable topic for the argumentative synthesis essay. Then proceed on to defining the main ideas and the rest of the paper.
Do not worry too much about when it comes to a synthesis outline. It has the same structure that any other essay is based upon.
The introductory section of the paper can take up a whole page and is vital for the rest of the writing. You need it create the right impression on the audience.
An introduction that is bound to catch the interest of the readers, always contains a hook. It can be a relevant fact, statistics or quote. Choose it wisely so it can serve two basic purposes. Persuading the audience to read more and displaying the main idea to its utmost potential.
Once the hook is placed, insert a brief yet comprehensive background for the topic. The introduction will be concluded on a thesis statement. This is the main idea that you will be developing later on in the body paragraphs.
The body paragraphs are the most detailed and informative part of any essay. In a synthesis essay also, they will be displaying all your analysis and research on the subject. We have already mentioned that the best way to do it is the MEAL approach. However, there are some other alternatives too that can make it successful:
• Ethos, Pathos, Logos
• DIDLS (Diction, Imagery, Details, Language, Structure)
• SOAPS (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject)
After setting out all your ideas and evidences in a favorable light, it is time to turn to the conclusion. What can be the impressive way to end a synthesis essay? The most important thing to keep in mind, is not to introduce any new ideas her.
Round back to the point demonstrated by the thesis statement. Then give a brief summary of the evidences you have put forth in the body. Sum it all up with a strong call to action, which urges the readers to dig more in the subject. And further think about the perspective you have shown them about the topic.
Topics for Synthesis Essays
Sometimes your professor will give you the prompts for synthesis essay writing. Other times you will be free to choose the topic for yourself. For those occasions, we have compiled here a list of some great topics to help students of any field and interest:
1. Should higher education be free for all?
2. Can war be justified at times?
3. Is native marketing immoral?
4. Does the media have diversity issues?
5. Impact of fossil fuel usage on global warming
A few more tips
• Study the source material and start only after fully understanding it.
• Take up a clear and uncompromising stance, otherwise your arguments will sound weak.
• Analysis is key. Examine and lay bare each fact that you come across for the most convincing synthesis essay.


Presentation on theme: "Introduction & History of Squash n Squash also known as Squash Racquets may have originated in ancient Greece. n Version of squash was played in the prisons."— Presentation transcript:
Introduction & History of Squash n Squash also known as Squash Racquets may have originated in ancient Greece. n Version of squash was played in the prisons of England during the late 18th century. n Popular in English schools of the nobility during the nineteenth century.
Ease of Learning Squash n A booklet titled Basic Squash for Beginners published by the Canadian Squash Racquets Association states that "squash is easy to learn". n Squash hand ball & tennis are probably most difficult hand racquet sports to play. n More difficult to introduce than racquetball and is not as popular as racquetball.
Factors Contributing to Squash Difficulty n Racquet length n Distance between and and racquet face. n Racquet face size n Ball size n Court dimension restrictions
Squash Racquet n Racquets (about 8 ounces) are in a variety of shapes, and grips and tensions. n Cost is from 20 to 30 dollars and up. n Racquets come in different weights, balances and materials. n Metal head racquets are not permitted because of potential wall damage.
Squash Racquet Handle n Racquet handles vary in circumference and shape. n Handles are covered with leather synthetic or towel grips. n Strings come in a variety of materials.
Squash Ball n The size and properties of the squash ball make it less lively than racquetball. n The ball can come in four different types of varying speeds - black, green, blue, yellow dot. n The yellow dot ball is the slowest speed. n Non marking squash balls should be purchased.
Squash Safety n Racquet length increases risk for trauma n Stress racquet control n Lets like hinders in racquetball and handball are called to avoid injury. n Eye goggles & mouth guards recommended. n High follow-through on strokes avoids potential for contact. n Racquet should not move over 180 degrees.
Squash Serve n One foot must remain in service box during serve. n Service is from either box and alternates from box to box. One serve rule in effect. n Serve must land in opposite back quarter on first bounce. n Ball is tossed up and not bounced. n On serve ball cannot touch walls or floor prior to hitting front wall n Ball must contact wall above cut line n Ball can hit any wall after front wall
Squash Scoring n Game is 9 points. If an 8 - 8 tie, the first to 9 chooses to set the games at 2 points or "no-set". n Points can only be made on serve. n Match is the best of three or five games. n Spin of the racquet determines serve. n Return may be volleyed and returned before bounce (Shovel or carry is illegal). n All lines, other than the continuous boundary line and tell-tale are ignored after a legal serve.
Squash Let Shots n A let is an undecided stroke and is re- served. n If the ball hits an opponent after hitting the side wall and is going to the front it is a let. n However a ball hits your opponent on way to front wall it is your point or serve. n Rally ends if ball touches either player. n Unnecessary physical contact is discouraged.
Squash Service Faults n Foot fault n No/double strike n Ball 1st hits floor/side n Served below cut-line n Served on tell-tale n Hits server on return n Lands before short line n Lands in same half court n However if the ball is played the fault is ignored.
Squash Strategy n Watch the ball! n Watch opponent! n On serve foot-foe-wall-ball-T n Footwork is used to cut down the angles. n Keep the ball low and close to the side walls (tight shot) n This can be costly on racquets. n Play short at the front of the court. n Squash is not all a power game; vary speed and place the shots.
Squash T Strategy n The "T" is a good spot to attempt to gain control of the court. Dominate the T n Be in the ready position n Think of the court having a stripe in the middle to take your shots from. n Hedge to the ball and good position. n Note server to see ball location. n Pace ball differently, with different force. n Try to delay shots.
Squash Grip n Similar to all racquet sports n Racquet face perpendicular to the floor. n "V" shake hands grip is popular. n The "V" position on the inside edge of grip opens the racquet face slightly and aids in control. n One difference between the squash and badminton grip is there is about * 1/2 inch at the butt of the handle. n Trigger finger spread give good control
Common Squash Strokes n Serve n Forehand n Backhand n Drive n Volley n Lob n Drop n Cross Court n Boast
Squash Serves n Lob serve n The lob serve is preferred because it requires little energy. n backswing racquet with cocked wrist (Keep cocked) n hold ball ahead of body n Toss ball up ahead of left foot n aim for a target high on front wall n loft ball to back court n lob off centre near out-of-court-line n follow through high in serve direction
Hard Squash Serve n ball is served hard onto front wall just above the cut line to go directly at opponent or to side wall nick (corner) n racquet is held high in ready position n toss ahead of body n step forward n contact ball at shoulder height n Squash Volley Stroke n hit ball before bounce to go deep into backcourt. n sideways stance to side wall n quick backswing n step forward with lead foot n contact ball at shoulder height n punch through ball n follow through
Squash Drive Shot n A drive shot is one that is hit straight to the front wall near side wall to land in back court. n Drive is the most common squash stroke. n face sidewall with shoulders n high finish
Squash Forehand Drive n racquet head back over right shoulder n cocked wrist n bent elbow n step forward and face side wall as ball approaches n shift weight from back right to front left foot n drop elbow down and away from body as stroke is made n strike ball at left knee level n follow through in direction n maintain cocked wrist
Squash Strokes Actions n The swing of a squash stroke is more vertical than horizontal (tennis) with the racquet staying closer to the body. n A squash stroke unlike racquetball and badminton does not require a good deal of wrist action. n Wrist remains cocked like in tennis. n Squash is fundamentally a sideways game since the stroke position is sideways stance.
Squash Backhand Drive n step toward side wall with weight shifting front left to right foot. n swing racquet head in a flat arc n strike ball ahead of right knee n follow through so that racquet head points to front wall
Squash Lob Shot n like lob serve n not a power shot n low racquet position n low body position n contact ball ahead of front foot n high follow through
Squash Drop Shot n attacking shot moves opponent forward n played short to front corners of court n lower follow through than drive n position feet so that the line drawn between toes is in the direction of shot n watch ball n hit ball opposite front foot n hit through ball with a slower swing n guide ball to corner & follow through
Squash Boast Shot n Boast is a defensive shot from the back corners when ball is too close to back wall. n Play a boast by hitting ball upward into side wall at a 45 degree angle. n angle boast from forecourt n offensive boast from mid court n defensive boast from back court


The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) English-language mouthpiece, the China Daily, announced in an Aug. 30 article that China would be celebrating the “65th anniversary of China’s victory in the anti-Japanese war and the world’s anti-fascist war.”
The article (“China makes great contributions to world’s anti-fascist struggle”) mentions nothing of US or Allied participation in the “anti-fascist war” — also known as World War II — and mentions nothing about US contributions to China’s own war effort. It says nothing about the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) struggle in leading the Chinese war effort. It portrays China’s role in the war as key to Allied victory, even though the amount of actual fighting the communists and the KMT did against the Japanese — and not each other — has been subjected to a great deal of scrutiny.
Indeed, reading the article would lead the uninformed to believe that China itself won the war, asserting that Chinese forces caused over 70 percent of Japanese casualties, a clear downplay of US involvement and distortion of the facts. China’s war with Japan was far longer than the US war in the Pacific, and the US also provided the Chinese with hundreds of millions of dollars of financial and military aid.
A later article by Xinhua news agency quotes former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and former British prime minister Winston Churchill as praising the Chinese war effort (they were of course praising the KMT, not the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]) as indispensible, although neither article recognizes any contribution from foreign powers or debates whether the CCP and KMT, either individually or collectively, could have beaten the Japanese without this help.
In fact, most experts agree that former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and the CCP were even more willing than Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and the KMT to bide their time and hold back their best military units from fighting the Japanese in order to use those forces in the future Chinese Civil War. Mao himself is known to have thanked the Japanese for weakening Chiang and the KMT during the war.
While China celebrates its victory over fascism, perhaps it would be helpful to discuss exactly what sort of benefits China has gained from victory over the “fascists.” This requires us to take a look at what “fascism” actually is.
Key characteristics of fascism include strong, often belligerent, nationalism; corporate organization of state, economy and society; and either state-sponsored socialism or heavy state investment in the economy.
A look at these key characteristics of fascism and comparing them to China’s current political, economic and social systems, one would have to ask which conquered which: Did China conquer fascism, or did fascism conquer China?
China has certainly not been lacking in nationalist bellicosity since 1945. And as China’s military capabilities and economic clout have grown, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, experts and politicians alike have expressed concern over China’s increasingly vocal discontent with the international system in general and US policies in particular. China’s continuing claims to Taiwan, as well as its growing adventurism in the South China Sea and the waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula, further demonstrate China’s growing assertiveness.


Looking at spates of violence against women in various forms happening continuously in the past two years, Stree Bal Shakti & PUKAR, in collaboration, launched a timely new project “Journey Towards Dignity” in September 2015 in a Municipal School at Sewri Cross Road. This project aims to empower adolescent girl students enrolled in class 7-8 with knowledge related to their coming of age, including physical and emotional changes, onset of menstrual cycle, importance of menstrual hygiene and its impact on their future health, gendered identity, sexuality and gender based violence.
A team of professionally trained facilitators would conduct 22 activity-based workshops designed by them specifically to incorporate all these issues. These workshops cover subject from self-identity, body literacy, and menstrual cycle to relationships and gender violence. Workshops are conducted every Saturday at the school premises for 2 hours followed by a dialogue and include many creative instruments like theatre and poster making to make it easy on the girls to talk about these difficult and taboo subjects. Each workshop consists of a pre- and post- evaluation of the contents of the workshop and students’ knowledge gained. Parental meetings also form a part of this empowerment strategy. There is strong support from school teachers to this program. The eight sessions completed so far revealed that the girls have learnt some critical issues and they look forward to this activity-based alternative pedagogy.


Click on the images for a
** Nothing is predetermined in the human world.
Events occur by the movements in the mind
that determine the flow of history.
The American Revolution had three major node points in its history.
At the opening node circumstances forced an intention in society to seriously consider independence.
The second node is the formal declaration of a fundamental constitution of the basic universal rights of man that served as a high-level recognition for the founding of a New Nation.
At the third node the established nation gave itself a legal face and a platform of understandings for its operation in the form of a Federal Constitution.
We deal with three different types of constitution here: an unwritten constitution, a fundamental universal constitution, and a detailed operational constitution.
Its opening node exploded as a revolt against the tax looting of the American colonies by the British Empire who claimed the colonies as property, instead of as a society of human beings. To the colonists, the resulting attitude and despotism by the masters of empire became increasingly intolerable.
In the flow of the high-handed humanist regression, the famous Boston Tea Party revolt happened, where a large amount of British Tea, for which taxes were due on arrival, was dumped into the brink in 1773. A movement had begun that changed the world, that not even the King could turn back.
The colonists had demanded that a fleet of British tea ships turn back home without unloading and without collecting taxes. In a number of cases the ships did turn back, from places where the colonists had inspired the appointed consignees to resign. But not so in Boston, where the ships were actually prevented from turning back.
At this point the colonists drew a line and built a gate on it, and said to the masters of empire and all its men, 'you will not pass - the portal of our tolerance is closed.
The colonists, in disguise as native Americans, simply boarded the tea ships and dumped the to-be-taxed tea into the ocean so that the line they had drawn would not be crossed.
An iron gate had been lowered against the empire a d its adherents from this day onward. The people in the colonies had a vision of the common dignity of man that was worthy to be protected. Thus, they simply erected a gate against empire and its stooges, that should never be violated. The line for the gate was drawn officially on the line of the basic democratic principle of "no taxation without representation." The gate, in the form of this basic principle, was set up against the invasive force of the system of empire.
No constitution was written up at the time as a basis for self-protection. But the idea for it was in the heart.
The masters of empire, of course, were enraged. "Crash the gate, reverse history, and punish the keepers of the gate," was the imperial response to America. Intolerable acts followed.
The empire answered with abuses upon abuses to break the rebellious spirit. In modern time it would be called, "teaching them a lesson." It would be delivered in a manner that it would be understood by the colonists, namely that resistance to empire is futile. The colonists, however, learned this lesson differently, which changed the course of history.
The Boston Tea Party was evidently but the culmination of a long string of abuses of the power of the empire that claimed the right to subject society to its will. The lesson that the colonists learned was, that empire will never willingly yield to any line drawn by the people, but is fully committed to crash every gate that should every be erected against its will. Thus, the lesson that the colonists had learned, essentially defeated the empire's own cause.
The harsh reaction of the empire against the colonies inspired a debate in society. The politically docile population suddenly awoke and became active and self-inspired with discoveries of what a human being is, what a society is, what a civilization is, and so on.
The colonists formed a militia to protect themselves against the British punishment. The British Parliament in turn declared in February 1775 that Massachusetts is in a state of rebellion. It answered with war - war to disarm the militia, which is cited in history as the start of the American Revolutionary war.
The tea party, by then, served as a mobilizing identifying symbol for the revolution movement. The posters shown here, of a 1774 etching from The London Magazine, which was copied by Paul Revere of Boston for his rallying call, depicts an American woman having British tea forced down her throat. We see the British Prime Minister Lord North, author of the "Boston Port Act" that closed the Port of Boston for any form of commerce, forcing the British Parliament's punitive 'Intolerable Acts' down the throat of America, whose arms are shown restrained by Lord Chief Justice, Mansfield, while Lord Sandwich pins down her feet and peers up her robes. Behind them, Mother Britannia weeps helplessly.
Quite early in the tumultuous flow of imperial madness, at the time when the great public discussions occurred as to what to do, as a step in this direction a Continental Congress of all American colonies was convened. The congress formulated a petition to the king, to stop the madness and reprisals. A second Continental Congress was required to convene in 1775 if the king failed to comply. Of course, instead of relenting, the King gave America the finger. In response to the finger the revolutionary war had already begun when the second Continental Congress convened.
As its first major act, the Second Congress created the Continental Army out of the ad-hoc militia units around Boston, and appointed Congressman George Washington of Virginia as the commanding general of it. It also extended the Olive Branch Petition to the British Crown as a final attempt at reconciliation. However, it also reopened all American ports in defiance of the British Navigation Acts.
While the Continental Congress had no explicit legal authority to govern, the Congress quickly assumed all the essential functions of a national government on the basis of the unwritten fundamental constitution in the mind of society of the recognition of the fundamental universal rights and freedoms of man that had established a line in the mind, in society, with the Boston Tea Party, that the people had demonstrated, no one may cross.
In the course of the continued continental discussion, a notion was put forward for the colonies to unite and form a single nation that is dependent on no one but itself, as the recognition dawned that a human being is greater than a king. A draft text for a resolution was prepared by a committee of five of the delegates to the Congress.
The drafted concept in principle, was voted up as a resolution, which became known as the Independence Resolution. More than 30 months had passed at this point since the Boston Tea Party patriots had proclaimed its understanding in an unwritten constitution. This was about to change. In two days of discussion in Congress the draft was revised item by item into the final document that stands today as the new nation's guiding star. The final version was voted up on the 4th of July 1776.
The result of the two days of discussion before the affirming vote, established a fundamental constitution that declared in writing the principles that the new nation recognized itself to be founded on.
The Declaration of Independence no longer petitioned the king for concessions. The nation declared itself to be free, complete in itself, and sovereign above the claims of any king and prince and empire. The voted up document states an established fact, and serves to the present day as a fundamental constitution on which the nation stands founded.
Of course, a copy of the finished document was also forwarded to the British king, informing the king that the colonial status in America existed no more. It was saying to the king, the world has changed, there is nothing you can do about it, so let it be.
The finished document was also saying to the whole of humanity that a fundamental constitution for civilization has been established after years of deep-reaching struggles and fundamental recognitions, which stands established as the light upon a hill from this day forward.
The document became known in history as the American Declaration of Independence. In its spirit, however, it is an American document only in as much as it was pioneered in America, while it stands in principle for all humanity and civilization, similar in nature and purpose to the great Principle of Westphalia that was established in 1648, which laid the foundation for a higher-level civilization from this time to the present. The Declaration of Independence and the Principle of Westphalia are both revolutionary for the simple reason that they finally acknowledged in writing formal agreement what had already been known and established in the heart. The revolution was, that they invoked a long recognized invariable truth.
Thus, the Declaration spoke the language that was already in the heart, and not foreign to a human being. There is nothing revolutionary in the statement,
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The revolution is in the spirit that states that the People of Humanity have fundamental rights that no one may violate for any cause or any reason; that the full recognition of it establishes a line that no one may cross; that it sets up an iron gate on this line that no man, king, or government may compromise.
The Declaration also defines the nature of the ruler of the gate, a government that establishes in law the recognized fundamental principles. It states, that "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The declaration states that the high-level fundamental recognition has no effect if it is not implemented in deeds, or allows contrary deeds as in the case of empire. In 1776, the king of the empire became enraged by the declaration of the fundamental principle of humanity. He called it a rebellion.
The document that declares the independence of humanity also establishes in principle the office of the keeper of the gate. It acknowledges that humanity, as a civil society of human beings, must consciously serve as the keeper of the gate behind which civilization and the common welfare of humanity stands protected and the internal development of a nation, or nations, becomes possible. It declares in essence that without this ongoing commitment, the revolution in thinking becomes meaningless.
Its document states: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
The document acknowledges too, that "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
All three elements of the fundamental constitution are required:
The recognition of the fundamental universal rights of man must be rooted in the heart and never fade.
The implementation of the recognition must flow from the heart as an enduring imperative.
And the intention must never diminish to protect the universal rights of man against anyone who is, or would be, a gatecrasher who would usher in a new dark age of fascism in the world.
The document declares that the highest recognition of humanist principles has erected a gate that no one may cross who does not subscribe with honest heart to the spirit of its high-level principles that were discovered in years of great struggle, which establish the fundamental rights and duties of a human society for all times to come, which constitute the fundamental right of man as a precious achievement that must be kept precious by constant vigilance and care so that it may not be marred or fall to the ground and be lost.
The final formulating of the Declaration of Independence was performed by the Continental Congress over the span of two days in intense discussion before it was voted up to be adopted as the guiding star for the future of the nation.
With this action, the Continental Congress took on the role of the first gatekeeper, and in this role as gatekeeper it affirmed that the people of America had done their home work to qualify for their stepping to higher ground that would make tall demands in thinking for the people's requested freedom to become possible, and to be maintained, because, as the Congress may have realized, which evidence suggests, that a lot of trash and heavy baggage had been removed from the mental landscape across the nation in the preceding 30 months of public discussion. Congress had recognized that the nation, from this moment on, was qualified for the higher-level national existence that it was seeking, where the measures of the Old World did no longer apply.
"But can the nation keep itself' rooted at this higher level;" Bejamin Franklin may have asked during the discussion. "Is the nation qualified to keep the republic in the heart and maintained and protected for all times to come?"
He may have implied that a people having passed the test once does not mean that the people after them will keep up the work?
Benjamin Franklin might ask us today in our world of crisis, "Will you dedicate yourself again to become able gatekeepers?"
The last question is critical, because to answer well, rules out the gatecrashers such as those in history who have inflicted enormous damage in our world.
The gate crashers still are many, who have bullied their way across the gate without their intentions and actions being qualified for any position of power in a human society.
The Nazi machine engineered its rise to universal acclaim by the failure in society to keep the fundamental constitution of man in the heart and protect it as able gatekeepers. The gate crashers had caused en entire society to crash that evidently no longer knew what a human civilization is, and what a human being is, though they claimed the right to rule them.
Adolf Hitler was a glaring example of a gatecrasher. He destroyed what he touched and then killed himself. He was one of many of this breed that includes some of the most famous names in history, like the Roman Emperor Nero, and includes in the modern world a wide assortment of traitor presidents and kings, and financiers and oligarchs, who champion the Hitler moustache by their deeds.
Some, in their small-minded blindness toy with visions of insanity that inevitably bring the house down over the heads of humanity, such as with a nuclear war that entails absolute mass-destruction by which all life, potentially, becomes extinct. No leader, no matter how great in power, has the right to incinerate the Earth, which is the collective home of all human beings, nor gives the fundamental constitution the right by design to any man to harm a single person for any cause, profit, or ideology. The line has been drawn. The gate has been erected that no one should crash.
Of course, not all the gatecrashers are as radical in their insanity. Some advocate that only 6 billion people be killed, and that this be done by silent means such as burning their food and depriving the world of its energy resources, and other means to exist. Their policy is to depopulate the world to the low levels that have historically enabled feudal systems to operate as a stable platform of universal poverty.
Other gatecrashers are more specific. Their stated objective is to destroy all sovereign nations from within by inspiring society to decimate its own industries, health care, and the banning of all vital energy resources, as evil demons, including its food that society now burns in cars in volumes that would normally nourish upwards to 400 million people. Thus, instead of honouring the fundamental rights of a human society, society has become gatecrashers itself against its own most basic constitution.
The gate-crashers are many now. Most stand without a face, hidden behind the facade of institutions, oligarchies, and monarchies. Nevertheless, while most have no recognizable face in the jungle, each one by itself is far too dangerous not to be vacated from the land of civilization, for civilization to survive.
As one might expect, the little man on the throne of Great Britain in 1776, when the fundamental constitution was voted up in the USA, chose to be a fool and dedicate himself to the role of a gatecrasher. The pathetic little man was totally unqualified to be king under the established constitution that set a new and higher-level standard for a human society, which the king's little mind excluded himself from. As the little man that he was, he chose to act as a gatecrasher and forced many thousands to die in his futile war to protect a corrupt system that was even then already essentially dead.
As a gatecrasher the king activated his entire circus of little men that termed itself an empire, which collectively spit on the hard-won fundamental constitution of the New American Nation, by declaring the constitution to be a rebellion that must be crushed.
The War of the Gatecrasher thus begun. It was the war that the circus of the gatecrashers had brought against America. This war should have been avoided. It should not be called a revolutionary war, because the revolution had happened before the war began. In the ensuing war of the circus of little minds, the achieved revolution was defended, often against nearly impossible odds.
The War of the Gatecrasher was rebuffed in a America in the course of a long armed struggle. The rebuff was not easy, but it was won in the spirit of the new constitution that upheld the dignity of the human being and its profound right to life, liberty, and happiness.
This core recognition now documented as a constitution was the nation's line of defence. On this line the new nation stood at the gate it had erected and grabbed the lion's beard, looked into his eyes and said emphatically, you will not pass, turn back. In this war, the nation became its gatekeeper, and it succeeded.
The subsequent formal establishment of a Federal Constitution for the USA, after the war of the gatecrashers had been defeated, did not replace the fundamental constitution that the nation was founded on. The Federal Constitution became in essence, a supplement of it. It did not overturn the fundamental constitution of the Declaration of Independence that founded the USA and defended it. It merely gave it a wider expression in specific articles of law and gave it a legal name and established a formal federal government. The Federal Constitution, did however, replace the Articles of Federation that established a platform in 1777 for the nation's Congress to mount an effective defence in the war of the gatecrashers against America's inner revolution.
With the Federal Constitution the nation declared itself to be rooted in the fundamental constitution that put the focus on the rights and dignity of universal humanity, that the Federal Constitution stands subsumed to with the phase, "We the people."
The phrase, 'We the People' points back to the Declaration of Independence as a fundamental constitution that the nation had been founded on, which had documented the principles for its existence.
This means that the fundamental constitution still stands. It means that anyone crashing its gate, from without or from within, violates the most basic constitution of the land, and of humanity as a whole. It also means that it is still society's task to evict any gatecrasher from the fabric of its civilization.
Under the Federal Constitution the task to evict the gatecrashers from within, is specified to be carried out in the House of Congress by a process of impeachment by trial. However, above the Federal Constitution and its models stands the fundamental constitution that affirms society's role as the keeper of the gate, which thus shoulders the duty to act as the ultimate protector of its life, liberty, and happiness, by whatever means may be required depending on the severity of individual situations.
The fundamental constitutional principle comes into play only in practice, when the Federal Constitution has been fouled up with corruption to the point that it no longer functions under the repeated assaults of gatecrashers upon it who pursue their own agendas. Under the Federal Constitution all elected officials, from congressmen to the president, are employees of the people, and are on this basis subject to dismissal from the job for non-performance, incompetence, incapacity, betrayal, or serious offenses.
In the case of Adolf Hitler, much of the world was destroyed, because society failed itself by neglecting its duty as the gatekeeper.
The same is presently unfolding, to be happening again, and for the same reason, and this time with vastly more-devastating consequences that no one will likely survive.
Knowing this type of potentially deadly exposure, one of the founding architects of the USA, Benjamin Franklin, a man known for his exceptional insight, is reported to have said, 'I give you a republic if you can keep it.' He should have added: If you cannot master the challenge, you will end up with fascism, even extreme fascism.
Every mental landscape that is full of what is not true, that is full of what is not intrinsically human, collapses into fascism that often affects the entire front of civilization. That is where we are today, still.
Benjamin Franklin should have further stated: The republic and the keeper of the gate are One, and this One is civilization. The two exist together, or they don't really exist at all, because the alternative is hell. When the heart is dead, the republic dies, civilization vanishes. That's the definition for hell. The path for redemption is obvious then, isn't it? It begins with the healing of the heart.
The healing of the heart unfolds when society finds enough value in itself that hasn't been smothered with trash, so that society will man the gate and become the keeper of it, actively. This is the principle of the gatekeeper. This principle was understood in American history. It was heeded in times of great crisis. It was also honoured for a long time therafter.
A giant statue was built in honour of the freedom inherent in the fundamental constitution. It was built 110 years after the freedom constitution was established. America's fundamental constitution, as a memory has withstood the test of time and may be so honoured for evermore. But will it be honoured in life and in truth?
When society honours itself as the diamond in the sky of life, it becomes possible on this basis to build a great nation, and impossible for any gate crasher to succeed and soil the fabric of that nation.
The insanity of nuclear war, which means universal annihilation, will not be possible then when the fundamental constitution is rooted in the heart, so that the gatecrashers who threaten the world today won't be allowed to stand and pursue their terror.
In this case when the fundamental constitution comes to mean more than just words on paper, we will find that the door to the Old World of mass genocide is finally closed, which in the present world is still dangerously open.
Depopulation genocide is presently implemented with the mass burning of food in automobiles that is starving 100 million people to death each year with society willingly participating in the process. The green lies that are evermore deployed towards the shutting down of the world's energy resources, has the same deadly effect as a strike with the sword. The gate crashers demand the murdering of six billion people under the depopulation doctrine that defines humanity as but a herd of animals that the masters of empire aim to cull back to what they regard a manageable size for a feudal system. The gatecrashers are having a field day in the present world, because the fundamental constitution has been displaced from the heart. Who then speaks for humanity?
** Europe was unfamiliar with the fundamental constitution that had been pioneered in America as the Declaration of Independence.
In the resulting void, when the gate crashers are allowed to stand, and stand in great numbers, civilization dies.
It dies of the most deadly disease at the deepest level that violates daily the most fundamental constitution in civilization that the American Declaration of Independence was designed to be for the world a living principle - a principle for living.
However, the question also needs to be asked, especially in our time, whether or not the symbol that once stood for something tall and profound, lost its meaning.
I would like to suggest that the principle of the fundamental constitution has not lost its power to shape the movements in society. In the real world the mind is the source of all movement, and this mind is still rooted in what is absolutely true.
While it is true that when the heart dies, civilization dies of indifference unfolding into inhumanity, and that history is full of such examples, it is also true that in those parts of the world where the fundamental principles stand tall, the huge fascist tragedies tend to become prevented.
While, when civilization dies of inhumanity unfolding into the hardest hard-core fascism, all hope becomes lost, it is also a fact of history that a nuclear Armageddon has been blocked on a number of occasions, often in the final moments, often by American patriots, and in a few cases at the cost of the patriots' life. It is no secret that annihilation will likely result when the gatecrashers unleash Armageddon, so that defensive actions must occur before the deed is done, because nothing remains intact for reactive reactions to stop it. History tells us that a number of pre-active interventions have occurred. Nevertheless the threat keeps getting more intense and more difficult to block.
This means that emergency healing of the heart is required. We need action fast. The clock is ticking.
When the declaration that is symbolized here is more intensely heeded in society, it inspires its respective healing of the heart with which society rebuilds its sense of humanity from within. When this happens more fully, and only then, will all the gates be manned as never before. All the would-be gatecrashers would be blocked, including those who dared to plough through the gate, from the most boisterous bullies to their compliant slaves. Each one would be vacated from the landscape in an efficient manner that would assure that their intended great harm would never come true.
But can we get to this point in our time?
Yes we can, because humanity has healed itself before, at least in some degree, when it created the Golden Renaissance, and the Islamic Renaissance before it, and more recently the Jidish Renaissance. We are the diamonds in the universe. We are human beings. We have the power for self-healing.
But how do we know that a healing is in progress? How do we know that we have made strides ahead?
We know that we have gained a more profound sense of the vast dimension of the human being, when our science becomes liberated from the hands of the gatecrashers. The liberty of humanity must extend into the sciences too, especially astrophysics. The light of reality is overlaid there with monumental trash that smothers scientific recognition, chokes the intellect, and keeps the hart confined with mythological dreams. The liberation of the truth on this front would change the thinking of the world. It wouldn't change reality, but it would bring it closer to universal recognition. It would bring to light that a new Ice Age stands before us, potentially in the 2050s, in which the territory of many nations, from Canada, to Europe, to Russia, and parts of Asia and the USA, become quickly uninhabitable, so that the nations need to relate themselves into the tropics, with vast infrastructures being built that will make all this possible. The challenge will open the heart and humanity will give itself a new renaissance along the way to meet its needs. Once the gatecrashers are blocked that smother science with what is not, all of this becomes possible.
I would like to suggest that this will happen, because the heart has a fundamental constitution to stand on and create itself a future with it.
Yes, we as human beings, the people of the world, have the power to be what we truly are, a precious gem in the Universe. We, humanity, are after all, the creator of that great fundamental constitution that has not stopped to change the world from the day it was declared, which we still build on and move forward with.
We are the diamonds in the sky, and we are this truly.
Just look at the sky and search the vast realms of space, and ask yourself how many quadrillions of miles or millions of light years one would have to travel to discover life in distant places that is as grand as what we have right here in our human world, a world rich in beauty, sublimity, poetry, art, theatre, science, music, literature, love, creativity, productivity, culture.
That's what the office of the gatekeeper is designed to protect from being drowned with trash, with the trash that is neither human nor intrinsically real in terms of what humanity is as the diamond of the Universe, or of God in the synonymous sense.


The following is excerpted and adapted from You Can Write for Children: A Guide to Writing Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers.
Beginning writers often focus on trying to publish picture books or novels. However, many career writers – those who make their living from writing – do at least some nonfiction work for magazines. For example, in the tax year before this writing, I sold over a dozen articles, earning over $3000. That's more than I made from novel advances and royalties combined.
Nancy I. Sanders, author of Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career, describes the advantages of magazine writing. “There’s an unending opportunity to get published and build your writing credentials, especially in the smaller magazines. There are countless topics to write about for each different magazine’s focus, so it’s easy to find one that matches your personal passion. And finally, there are a significant number of magazines that pay and pay well.”
Author, instructor, and free-lance editor Bobi Martin says, “If I come across a topic that intrigues me, I study Magazine Markets for Children’s Writers to find magazines that my idea might be a good fit with. Next, I check to see if the age range and word limits of the magazines I’ve targeted fit with what I had in mind for the article. When I don’t have a topic in mind, I study the listings to see what magazine editors are looking for. When I have two or three magazines in mind, I visit their websites for their most current information. This is a great way to generate new topics to write about!”
Follow the Guidelines
Checking writer’s guidelines is important, because magazines often have strict rules for article lengths and the topics they cover. Some even use theme lists, with each issue covering a specific topic, such as a particular aspect of history or science.
Marcia E. Lusted is an Assistant Editor and Staff Writer for e-Pals Publishing, working with the Cobblestone group of children’s nonfiction magazines. “My advice would be to really pay attention to what magazines’ needs are, particularly if they are themed,” she says. “We get so many good queries that just don’t fit any of our upcoming themes and we can tell that the writer hasn’t bothered to notice that we are themed! The marketing aspect of writing – figuring out what a magazine needs and matching ideas – take time and effort.”
One advantage to writing magazine nonfiction is that you can sometimes pitch an idea instead of submitting a completed article. Even if a magazine only accepts finished articles, you can suggest other ideas in your query letter.
“When you submit a manuscript or query a magazine with your idea, it also helps to add a list of three to five ideas that might fit well into their particular magazine if your main topic doesn’t fit their current needs,” Nancy Sanders says. “I’ve landed more magazine writing assignments over the years by including a short list of other ideas in my query or cover letter for the editor to consider. Giving them the chance to choose another topic if they find merit in your writing helps avoid the constant stream of ambiguous rejections from editors saying, ‘Doesn’t suit our current needs.’”
Stop by next Wednesday for advice on researching the magazine market – or subscribe to get posts automatically and never miss a post. You can use the Subscribe or Follow by E-Mail buttons to the right, or add http://chriseboch.blogspot.com/ to Feedly or another reader.
You can get the extended version of this essay, and a lot more, in You Can Write for Children: A Guide to Writing Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers. Order for Kindle, in paperback, or in Large Print paperback.
Sign up for Chris’s Workshop Newsletter for classes and critique offers