The Cambridge History of American Literature/Book II/Chapter XI
§ 1. Hawthorne and Puritanism.
THE romances of Hawthorne can hardly be understood apart from the current of Transcendentalism in which his genius was formed. Most foreigners and many of his countrymen have thought of him as an affectionate student of the New England past, in a small way comparable to Scott with his love of Border history, and especially they have thought of him as a kind of portrait painter, who magically resharpened for us the already fading lineaments of Puritanism. Reflection might suggest, however, that the portrait he restored bears an unlucky resemblance in its sombreness and its unloveliness to the portrait of Edward Randolph in the Twice Told Tales, and a little further thought would perhaps convince us that Hawthorne usually treats Puritanism, not as the central theme in his canvas, but as a dark background for the ideas and for the experiences which more deeply concern him. Those ideas and experiences have little to do with Puritanism except by contrast; they were partly furnished to his imagination by the enthusiastic but uncritical thinkers among his acquaintance who kindled rapturously at Alcott’s conversations or basked in the indefiniteness of Emerson’s lectures, and partly they were furnished by his own contact with Alcott and Emerson and with their writings. Like them, he was less a Puritan than a lover of the present, and if he seemed often to deal with things long past, it was only because he had the faculty, more than other men, of recognizing in the present whatever had served its purpose or was worn out or dead.
§ 2. His Relations with the Transcendentalists.
But if as a Transcendentalist he stood aloof from Puritanism, his temperament forced him to stand aloof also from the other Transcendentalists. Although their philosophy, as they liked to say, was a “questioning” of life, he differed from them all in being a true skeptic. To be quite precise, let us say that he drew the inspiration of his romances not so much from their ideas as from the neglected but inevitable conclusions of their ideas. Alcott and Emerson uttered between them a set of doctrines so full of apparent contradictions as to seem almost double-faced. They preached the sacredness of fact as against the authority of tradition; they made much of physical heredity, of evolution, of fate; they pointed out the inadequacy of any moral scheme to comprehend all the surprises of nature; yet being inveterate optimists, both of them, and both at certain moments curiously mystical, and both enjoying an outward orthodoxy of manners and culture, they soothed their hearers and seemed less dangerous than they were. Their sincerity, of course, was unquestionable, but they obscured even to themselves the startling conclusions of their own surmises, and having shaken their moral world to its foundation, they allowed the structure to settle again, and all this in such a glamour of temperamental cheerfulness that those who felt only the eloquence of their mood could depart conscious of spiritual uplift, and none but the few who attended to the implications of their specific ideas went away troubled. How few these critics were is attested by the lonely position in which their spokesman, Hawthorne, seems to stand. He was no mystic; what attracted him in Transcendentalism was its free inquiry, its radicalism, its contact with actual life. In his stories, therefore, he was a philosophical experimenter, in whose method was no room for optimism nor for prepossessions of any kind; he had recourse to life in order to try out the efficacy or the consequences of Transcendental ideas, and if the result was hardly what he expected, he still pursued the hypothesis to the bitter end. He was really the questioner, the detached observer, that other Transcendentalists thought they were. The soul, Emerson had said, “accepts whatever befalls, as part of its lesson. It is a watcher more than a doer, and it is a doer only that it may the better watch.” The description is truer of Hawthorne’s soul than of Emerson’s. In accepting whatever befalls, Emerson was convinced, as he says in the essay on Circles, that there is a saccharine principle in all things; small wonder that Hawthorne seems an alien among such cheerful sages. When Emerson says that either love or crime leads all souls to the good, that there is no straight line in nature, that evil in the end will bless, Hawthorne examines the doctrine somewhat dubiously in Hepzibah and Clifford Pyncheon and in Donatello; and when the cheerful philosopher tells us to trust ourselves, to follow our own nature, to live from the Devil if we are the Devil’s children, Hawthorne projects the advice experimentally in The Scarlet Letter and in The Blithedale Romance.
Those who classify Hawthorne in a loose way as the romancer of Puritanism sometimes speak of him also as a psychologist. The term needs defining. To him, as to other Transcendentalists, the fortune of a human soul was the most critical of experiences; comparatively negligible were the doings of society as a whole or the outward panorama of events and scenes. If to be thus interested in the soul is to be a psychologist, then Hawthorne was one, as to some extent are all who write of human nature. But if the term denotes attention to motives and to fine mental processes, to the anatomy, as it were, of character, then Hawthorne was no such psychologist as, let us say, Henry James or George Meredith. It is important to realize how broad and general his ideas and his art were, how completely he avoided the special and the minute. He studied no subtle character, nor any character subtly. He was a moralist rather than a psychologist. Were it not sufficiently evident in the stories themselves, the notes preserved in his journals would show that his imagination was engaged first by a moral idea, which he afterwards incorporated in plot and in persons. When he is most successful the plot seems actually to occur, and the persons really live; when his imagination fails him, the incidents seem allegorical and the figures become shadowy; but in either case the abstract idea from which he started is likely to be clear enough, and his own personality will probably be felt as standing outside the story, looking on. Since he is neither novelist nor preacher, but only an investigator of moral ideas, it is equally beside the mark to expect of him Balzac’s sense of the social panorama, or Bunyan’s certitude of faith.
§ 3. The Facts of his Life.
A writer who pictures life chiefly in order to project abstract ideas is not likely to reveal in his art more of himself than his general disposition. Hawthorne’s biography makes rich and human reading, for he was an admirable man in all ways and his private life was in the best sense fortunate; if at first he endured poverty, he earned success later, and even in the obscure years he had the admiration of loyal friends. But only in a few instances does his biography aid directly in the understanding of his works, and then for the most part by explaining his contact with Transcendental ideas. Of the nonliterary events in his life it is enough to say that he was born in Salem, Massachusetts, 4 July, 1804, of an old New England family; that after his father’s death he was educated by his mother’s brothers, and in 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College; that among his classmates he made three lifelong friends—Longfellow, the poet, Franklin Pierce, later President of the United States, and Horatio Bridge, who first appreciated his genius; that chiefly through Bridge’s thoughtfulness he was made weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House, 1839–1841, and surveyor at the Salem Custom House, 1846–1850; that President Pierce appointed him to the consulship of Liverpool, 1853–1857; that he lived in Italy for two years, 1857–1859, and that while travelling for his health, attended by Pierce, he died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, 18 May, 1864.
§ 4. Early Stories.
The facts of his literary record are hardly more numerous, but they invite more comment. His college letters to his mother and his sisters show how early he mastered his superb style. Indeed, they are much better written than his first published story, Fanshawe (1828), which was probably composed, in part at least, during his college days. From 1825 to 1837 he lived at home in Salem, laboriously perfecting his short stories and sketches, and publishing them anonymously or under assumed names, chiefly in Goodrich’s annual, The Token, and in The New England Magazine. He gives an idealized account of this period in his sketches The Devil in Manuscript and The Journal of a Solitary Man. In 1837, again through Bridge’s good offices, a publisher was found for the Twice Told Tales (enlarged edition in two volumes, 1842). With this practical beginning of his reputation coincided his first acquaintance with the Peabody family. In all the biographies his love for Sophia Peabody has naturally filled a large place, but no sufficient estimate has perhaps been made of the intellectual enrichment his love brought him. It was through the Peabodys that he became really alive to the philosophical currents of his time. Transcendentalism had, of course, enfolded him, as it had the average New Englander, in its general atmosphere, and its temper is felt in some of his earliest writings, but it can hardly be said to have possessed his thought as it did later, and he had been in personal contact with none of the leaders. The Peabodys, however, were on intimate terms with Emerson, the young rhapsodist of Nature, whose recent triumph in The American Scholar had more recently been rendered equivocal by his Divinity School Address; and Alcott, Emerson’s inspirer, they knew still better, for Elizabeth and to some extent Sophia had assisted at his Temple school in Boston, and Elizabeth had published in her Records of a School (1835) verbatim reports of Alcott’s conversations with his pupils. When The Dial was founded in 1840, Elizabeth Peabody, who by that time had organized a remarkable book store, became its publisher. It was not extraordinary, therefore, that Hawthorne was drawn, though with some mental qualms, into the full tide of Transcendentalism, nor that upon the termination of his service in the Boston Custom House, in 1841, he joined the Brook Farm venture, in the hope of establishing a home there. His note-books tell us the most interesting aspects of this passage in his life. At the end of a year and a half, completely disillusioned with the community experiment, he married and settled at Concord, in the Old Manse, where for neighbours he had Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau, all busy with The Dial, and where Thoreau was shortly to undertake his Walden solitude. In Concord most of the stories were written which Hawthorne published in 1846 as Mosses from an Old Manse. A still later collection, The Snow Image (1852), gathered up practically all of the remaining sketches which he cared to preserve.
§ 5. Later Romances.
His longer romances show a tendency to rework or develop this earlier material, or to draw upon actual scenes and events for their narrative fabric; the controlling problems, however, which the romances deal with are more obviously than in the shorter stories suggested by Transcendental ideas. The Scarlet Letter (1850) is developed from a brief description in Endicott and the Red Cross, one of the Twice Told Tales. In The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Hawthorne makes use of such a curse as was pronounced on his own ancestor, John Hawthorne, or Hathorne, a severe magistrate in witchcraft times. In The Blithedale Romance (1852) it is hard not to identify Hawthorne’s Brook Farm experience, though he warned us against the temptation. The outward details of The Marble Faun (1860) are clearly the observations of his two years in Italy.
Besides the short stories and the romances, Hawthorne wrote several important books for children—the series called Grandfather’s Chair (1841–1842) and the two Wonderbooks (1852–1853). He also edited his friend Bridge’s Journal of an African Cruiser (1845), wrote a campaign life of his friend Pierce (1852), and published some of his notes on England under the title of Our Old Home (1863).
§ 6. His Close Observation of Life.
If it is just to see in the early writings a picture of his native temper before he was consciously engaged with Transcendental doctrines, it is also true that from the first his mind was of another order than Alcott’s or Emerson’s, and that though he might be interested in the same ideas, he would treat them very differently. Most philosophers can be classed roughly among those who conceive of the ideal ends of life as already existing in heaven, in some order or pattern which may be imitated on earth, or among those who think of the ideal as of something which does not yet exist, but which is implicit in the universe, and toward which the universe evolves. A philosopher of the first or Platonic type, if he notices facts at all, is likely to be disconcerted by them, since they rarely conform to his ideal or serve to authorize it; his comfort is in rising superior to actual life—that is, in ignoring it. Alcott was an almost pure example of this type. The other kind of philosopher is likely to entertain a respect amounting almost to reverence for any concrete existing condition, because as two points determine a straight line, so a recent moment observed against the past gives indication of the order to come. Emerson was partly, like Alcott, a Platonist, but he had also a profound and inconsistent disposition toward this other way of thought; having two points of view at once, therefore, he is not only perplexing at times, but really contradictory, and it is not strange that he should have proved in one aspect of his genius inspiring to Maeterlinck and in the other aspect acceptable to Nietzsche. Hawthorne belonged altogether to the second type of thinker. Concerned primarily with the actual world before him, he found a natural use for the past in the explanation it might give of the present, but the present was to him just as naturally the more important moment, and most interesting of all was the occasional hint or prophecy of that to which time through its past and present changes might be tending. He was a radical, therefore, but he saw clearly that this particular present will soon be no more sacred than any other moment of the past, and that to devote oneself to any cause as though it were a final remedy of circumstances, promising rest thereafter, is merely to postpone stagnation for a while. With this insight he could not readily give his faith to any reform or reformer; even the crusade for abolition and the war for the Union left him cold, for he wisely doubted whether measures conceived in the root-and-branch spirit might not raise more evils in the state than they were intended to cure. True reform, the only kind that could enlist his sympathy, must work hand in hand with nature’s slowly evolving but inevitable order, and so long as that order can be but partially or infrequently discerned, it is best to do nothing violent, nothing headlong. Even when we discern the order, from time to time, we should become humble, observing how little it resembles our own morality, our own dreams of perfection.
It needs no fine perception to discover these principles or attitudes in Hawthorne, for they are displayed quite simply on the surface of his early stories. The significance he attached to the present world, whatever it might be, can be seen in the important group of essay sketches such as A Rill from the Town Pump, David Swan, Sights from a Steeple, and Main Street. Some resemblance has been found between this department of his work and the essays of Addison and of Irving, and certainly Addison’s cheerfulness is here, and often something more than Irving’s fancy. But neither The Spectator nor The Sketch Book would suggest that Addison or Irving was in the habit of keeping a diary; whereas Hawthorne’s simple studies, of the group just referred to, are in form nothing more than episodes in a journal. The fact is of some consequence in understanding his genius. When the American and European notebooks were finally included in the complete editions of his writings, they took their place, not as an appendix or illustration of more perfect things, but on equal terms with his other works; for the journal manner was suited to his realistic, unprejudiced search into the world about him, and his lifelong preoccupation with his diary was not, as with most novelists, for the sake of books to be written later, but was itself the satisfaction of a primary literary interest. Like the journals, the essay sketches take the scene as they find it, extract from it all that observation can, and then discard it, having proved no point and exhibited no characters in continuous interplay, but having uncovered possibilities, hints, causes, coincidences. In the simpler essays Hawthorne observed these possibilities and coincidences in a kind of stationary cross-section, and left them undeveloped; but in more elaborate stories he played with the ironic contrasts between the order which we foresee in life and the order which time brings to pass. Emerson often came out of his mysticism and contemplated the “beautiful necessity,” the inevitable consequence of things, to which man must submit himself before he has either happiness or power. Hawthorne was inclined to stress rather man’s inability to submit himself to this necessity, since he seldom guesses correctly what it would be. Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe is a lighter treatment of this theme of consequences; Edward Fane's Rosebud and The Wives of the Dead are in a darker tone. Or sometimes Hawthorne would turn the irony in another direction, by emphasizing the incredible swiftness with which the present becomes the past, and the insidiousness with which antiquity begins to show its symptoms even in what seems youthful and emancipated. The May-pole of Merry Mount brings this idea home, less in the overthrow of the maskers at Merry Mount than in the expressed faith of the stern Puritan leader that the troubles of life come soon and unexpectedly—a confession which somehow brings a chill over his own righteous success. A still better illustration is Endicott and the Red Cross, which shows the Puritans, who crossed the ocean for freedom of conscience and who in the moment of the story proclaim themselves champions of religious liberty, as having nevertheless instituted already the pillory and the stocks for those who disagree with them.
§ 7. Transcendental Doctrines in Hawthorne: Self-Reliance; Compensation; Circles.
The Transcendental ideas which chiefly occupied Hawthorne’s thought in the long romances were the doctrines of self-reliance, of compensation, and of what Emerson expressed in his essay on Circles. The ideal of self-reliance was that a man should live according to his own nature, by listening to the dictates of the over-soul as revealed in his impulses; to this end he should keep himself free of the imprisoning past, and of conventional society, which embodies the past. To Alcott or to Emerson this doctrine was so obviously sound that they stated it with every emphasis of rhetoric and with no qualifications. “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” Hawthorne doubtless felt the truth of the doctrine as keenly as any one, but he was alive also to the unsocial results which might follow a narrow practice of it. A man consciously and entirely free of the past and on his guard against it might indeed possess his soul, but he might also miss the essence of culture, and having renounced the finer instruments of the art of life, he might so isolate himself from his fellows as to become ineffective in his noblest virtues. Since nature is unfolding a necessary order in and around us, an order which we apprehend with difficulty, the great danger of asserting ourselves is that we may thereby place ourselves outside of our true development, and never return to it. This danger of stepping out of the order, of doing violence to our proper destiny, gave Hawthorne the theme of such stories as Wakefield, The Prophetic Pictures, and Rappaccini's Daughter. The doctrine of compensation, in one form or another, was peculiarly dear to Transcendental optimism. Every action carries its reward or punishment with it. The thief is punished, though the police never find him, for the price of theft is loss of innocence, fear of arrest, suspicion of other men. What compensation is destined for the victim of the thief, optimistic Transcendentalism preferred not to investigate, but it was into just such a neglected area of morals that Hawthorne liked to push his inquiry. His observations brought him into a certain agreement with the doctrine; because a natural order constantly unfolds in the world, he believed in the efficacy of mere time to break down conventions and to reveal a nobler law, and in his historical scenes—Howe's Masquerade, for example, or The Gray Champion—he liked to show a fossilized past at the moment when it is shattered. He could believe that life does so far make restitution, but in daily life he could find no compensation for the injuries suffered by the innocent, nor could he persuade himself that a noble bearing of wrongs will necessarily lead to spiritual profit. Indeed, though Emerson’s sunny temperament had spread its glamour over his discussion of this theory, to Hawthorne the theory seemed, so far as it was true, one of the darkest and most perplexing. Still less could he agree with Emerson’s exaggeration of the same doctrine in Circles. Optimism here, taking the bit in its teeth, contended that as there is in experience no such thing as a straight line, so there is practically no such thing as evil—a prophetic application, it would seem, of Riemannian geometry to morals; that what seems hopelessly bad will in the end be found to contain the good principle; and, quite illogically, that what seems to be good will actually prove to be so.
- In vain produced, all rays return;
- Evil will bless and ice will burn.
In a famous passage in Circles, Emerson acknowledges the awkwardness of this position, and explains that his temperament dictates it. Hawthorne could not undertake any such cheerfulness, but he was profoundly concerned with the moral phenomena by which Emerson may have justified his faith. Here springs that paradox of experience, that mystery of sin, the question as to what sin is, which threw its shadow over three at least of the four romances. Since we rarely discern our true destiny, the human being who steps out of what seems the moral order may really have chanced upon a sounder morality; through what appears to be sin, therefore, may sometimes come the regeneration of a soul—not through repentance, be it observed, but through sincere adherence to the sin. Conversely, though a man should devote himself to the highest ideal he is aware of, if that ideal does not lie in the true order of nature, his devotion may bring him to an evil end. These possibilities, together with the implications of self-reliance and compensation, furnish the moral problems of Hawthorne’s romances.
Hester Prynne, for example, in The Scarlet Letter, illustrates self-reliance in a way that some Emersonians may have found not altogether comfortable. Since her love for Dimmesdale was the one sincere passion of her life, she obeyed it utterly, though a conventional judgment would have said that she was stepping out of the moral order. There is nothing in the story to suggest condemnation of her or of the minister in their sin; the only blame attaches to Dimmesdale’s cowardice, his lack of self-reliance, his unreadiness to make public acknowledgment of his love. The passion itself, as the two lovers still agree at the close of their hard experience, was sacred, and never caused them repentance. The doctrine of compensation is illustrated in Chillingworth, who, having determined on a fiendish revenge, becomes himself a fiend. There is a kind of comment on Emerson’s cheerful doctrine in the fact that this gloomy soul, marked for perdition, is a firm believer in compensation; he wronged Hester’s youth by marrying her, and therefore he bears her no ill will for wronging him, but he argues that since the minister had never received a justifying harm at his hands, the secret lover should therefore be punished by the injured husband. As Chillingworth discusses the matter with Hester, compensation seems to be at one moment sheer fatalism, at another moment a primitive exacting of an eye for an eye, but never does it come to a happy issue. The optimistic turn in the doctrine is illustrated by Hester—or perhaps it is better to say that she illustrates the optimism of Circles. She has sinned, but the sin leads her straightway to a larger life. Like Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, she finds she has a career at last. Social ostracism first gives her leisure for meditation and a just angle from which to attack social problems, and then it permits her to enter upon a life of mercy and good works which would have been closed to a conventional woman. Hawthorne had described the original wearer of the scarlet letter in Endicott and the Red Cross as a woman who braved her shame by embroidering the guilty “A” into an elaborate and beautiful emblem; so in the romance he lets the sin elaborate itself, so far as Hester’s nature is concerned, into nothing but beauty. She becomes more loving, more sympathetic, more tender; and intellectually she becomes emancipated from the narrowness of her age, so that even now she seems prophetic of what the noblest women may be. Thoughts were her companions which, says Hawthorne, would have been held more dangerous than the sin of the scarlet letter, had they been seen knocking at her door. She saw how completely the social scheme must be altered before woman can enjoy a true equality with man, and she suspected the losses in the best of manhood and womanhood which might be the incidental or temporary price of the belated justice.
The greatness of The Scarlet Letter, on repeated readings, seems to lie in this social interest, this inexorable study of the world as it is, which distinguishes Hawthorne from other Transcendentalists. The Puritan environment is represented as already dying, young as it was in the new world; at the outset of the story Hawthorne shows us that these courageous founders of religious liberty in the wilderness felt the necessity at once of building a prison and of setting up a pillory. The ideals which a little while before were an inner light for the community, carrying inevitable conviction, were now stiffened into convention and leaned upon force. In making the point that Hawthorne was no special admirer of Puritanism, we must add that neither was he a special critic of it; he used the Puritan moment in our history merely to illustrate the truth of all moments, that society conventionalizes its ideals and becomes cruel, and that time, which annihilates one set of conventions, substitutes another. But some specific criticism of Puritan New England, of New England in his own day, may be discerned in the fortunes of Hester, and may be still more clearly felt in Zenobia and in Miriam, the later heroines; these are all represented as physically beautiful, and as in some way estranged from life, and we wonder whether it was not their beauty rather than their conduct that alienated them from their environment. What career has a beautiful woman in New England?—Hawthorne seems to ask, and he seems to imply that if she is conventional she may live down the handicap of beauty, but meantime she is dangerous to others and to herself. The danger to herself is indicated by the fact that Hester, Zenobia, and probably Miriam, were all married for their beauty, when they were very young, to men who could not appreciate their greatness of soul, and whom therefore they were forced to divorce or to desert.
The House of the Seven Gables is so quiet a story that Hawthorne’s characteristic criticism of self-reliance or of compensation is not at first disturbing, but in none of his books does he take more essential issue with Alcott and Emerson. On the surface of the romance lies the theme of long-delayed retribution—the curse of old Maule falling on each generation of the usurping Pyncheons. But what punishment does after all overtake the thoroughly bad man who allows his innocent cousin to rest in jail for years? He dies of apoplexy, as he would have died had he been the innocent cousin. And what happens to his victims? It is easy to guess how Emerson might have treated Clifford and Hepzibah; the innocence of the imprisoned brother would somehow have been its own reward, and the loyalty of the devoted sister, waiting for his release, would have ennobled her character. But confinement in prison is not likely to sweeten even innocence; Hawthorne shows Clifford on his return to the old house a broken man, irritable and unappreciative. Hepzibah’s long waiting proved for her a solitude almost as complete as prison confinement; Hawthorne shows her as a shrivelled old maid, angular and grim, with hardly a grace remaining. He had no more wish than Emerson would have had to decry the ethical beauty of her patient loyalty, but he could not help seeing that she, like Clifford, was the victim of gross wrong, and that it is disastrous to be even an innocent victim. Similarly he insists on a precise account of self-reliance in Holgrave, the descendant of old Maule. Emerson himself could not have portrayed a more thorough-going critic of the past.
“Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?” asks Holgrave. “It lies upon the Present like a giant’s dead body. In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried…. A dead man, if he happen to have made a will, disposes of wealth no longer his own; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed in accordance with the notions of men much longer dead than he. A dead man sits on all our judgment-seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men’s books! We laugh at dead men’s jokes, and cry at dead men’s pathos! We are sick of dead men’s diseases, physical and moral, and die of the same remedies with which dead doctors killed their patients! We worship the living Deity according to dead men’s forms and creeds. Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a dead man’s icy hand obstructs us! Turn our eyes to what point we may, a dead man’s white, immitigable face encounters them, and freezes our very heart! And we must be dead ourselves before we can begin to have our proper influence on our own world, which will then be no longer our world, but the world of another generation, with which we shall have no shadow of a right to interfere.”
How far Hawthorne agrees with Holgrave we cannot tell, but there is no doubt what sort of character he thought would result from a sincere practice of such philosophy. Holgrave is free of the past, and thereby he is practically free of the present too; his honesty and his emancipation attract the reader, yet he has little or no influence. Few men really wish to detach themselves so far. Even Phœbe, the young girl whom he marries, who has the natural freshness of innocence, seems curiously social in comparison with this conscientious rover whose one dread is that he may take root somewhere.
Hawthorne showed an increasing disposition to discuss these philosophical questions in frank comment outside the plot of his romances. Hollingsworth, in The Blithedale Romance, illustrates his fear of tampering with the natural order of things, especially by organized reform; and Zenobia illustrates his reflections on self-reliance, especially where woman is concerned. Hollingsworth was a determined social reformer; he wished to reform criminals through an appeal to their higher instincts. Hawthorne observed that such philanthropy, admirable in its intention, often proceeded on slight knowledge of the facts. “He ought to have commenced his investigation of the subject by perpetrating some huge sin in his proper person, and examining the condition of his higher instincts afterwards.” As a matter of fact, Hollingsworth does ruin two lives, Zenobia’s and Priscilla’s, in the selfish pursuit of his philanthropic ideal, and, if he had chosen, might well have furnished the state of his own heart for examination. Hawthorne comments again, making his familiar point that a good ideal brings a man to a good end only if it does not lead him out of the natural sympathies of life:
The moral which presents itself to my reflections, as drawn from Hollingsworth’s character and errors, is simply this—that, admitting what is called philanthropy, when adopted as a profession, to be often useful by its energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the individual whose ruling passion, in one exclusive channel, it thus becomes. It ruins, or is fearfully apt to ruin, the heart, the rich juices of which God never meant should be pressed violently out and distilled into alcoholic liquor by an unnatural process, but should render life sweet, bland, and gently beneficent, and insensibly influence other hearts and other lives to the same blessed end.
Zenobia is a modern and conscious Hester—or rather, her experience is the reverse of Hester’s, for she is a woman naturally emancipated who is ruined by disappointed love. It is this difference in their problems that makes her seem less noble than Hester, less tragic than pitiful. But in portraying her, Hawthorne raises more especially the question he had suggested in The Scarlet Letter: is not such a woman, so beautiful and so intellectual, an exotic creature in our society? Here is the modern woman whom Hester dreamed of, but the old misfortune still overtakes her; like Hester, she has married one who could not appreciate her, but she has never found the lover who should have been her mate, and she has no true companionship with other women. She seems to be a foreigner, and in the New England thought of Hawthorne’s time foreigners had the right to be, like Zenobia, physically beautiful.
The Marble Faun repeats in Miriam the problem of Hester and of Zenobia, and in Hilda, the simple Puritan girl who finds peace in the Roman Catholic confessional, the story illustrates beautifully Hawthorne’s faith that some of our most unconventional impulses lead us to a practical morality. But the philosophy of the book centres in Donatello, that wonderful creature who begins life with the animal-like innocence which radical thought seems often to desire for man, and who develops an immortal soul by committing an impulsive murder. The doctrine of Circles has its most elaborate illustration here; here is the evolution of good out of sin—not out of repentance for sin. But if the doctrine is sound, our theology needs thorough revision, and Hawthorne suggests the logical change in our conception of sin:
- Is sin then—which we deem such a dreadful blackness in the universe—is it, like sorrow, merely an element of human education, through which we struggle to a higher and purer state than we could otherwise have attained? Did Adam fall that we might ultimately rise to a far higher Paradise than his?
These problems, suggested by the Transcendental philosophy, occupied Hawthorne to the last. It was not in his disposition to suggest answers to them. His distinction in American literature is the extent to which he projected them experimentally into life, and the sincerity with which he modified them to conform to stubborn and perplexing facts.


How similar are fruit fly and human cancers?
New evidence for genome instability in fly tumors suggests key similarities—and differences—from human disease processes.
Human cancers display a variety of abnormal genomic features, including increased numbers of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and copy number variants (CNVs). However, a 2014 study on a fruit fly tumor detected no elevation of SNVs or CNVs compared to non-tumor tissues, raising questions about how well the fly tumors, which are sometimes used in cancer research, represent cancer in humans. Rossi et al. investigated whether this was generally the case in malignant neoplasms in flies by sequencing the genomes of 17 such tumors caused by mutations in four different genes.
To address this question, the researchers used a process called allografting: they dissected tumors from fly larvae, then implanted them into the abdomens of adult flies. Each time the tumors filled up the abdomens of their hosts, the tumors were removed, and some of the tumor cells were allografted again into new fly hosts. This approach allowed them to monitor which types of mutations accumulate over many rounds of cell division. Without these successive iterations of allografting, they would have been limited to studying mutations that occur over the comparatively short lifespan of the hosts.
In all of the allografted tumors, the researchers found increases in SNVs and CNVs similar in number to those seen in human cancers, and in the case of CNVs, with a similar size distribution. Also as in humans, the increases in the number of mutations varied from one tumor type to the next. However, they also found that the CNVs weren’t distributed in any discernable pattern, no two allografts had SNVs affecting the same genes, and the CNVs and SNVs often weren’t retained from one allograft to later allografts. This implies that these mutations may merely be byproducts of genome instability in the tumors and thus don’t contribute to malignancy, whereas in humans, it’s thought that the accumulation of such mutations as tumors age is a driver of malignancy.
One important consideration, though, is that studies looking for genetic variants correlated with cancer in humans often have much larger sample sizes, which might reveal associations this fly study could not identify. Still, because flies are important model organisms for cancer research, furthering our understanding of the similarities and differences between human and fly tumors, as Rossi et al. have done, is essential.
Drosophila Larval Brain Neoplasms Present Tumour-Type Dependent Genome Instability
Fabrizio Rossi, Camille Stephan-Otto Attolini, Jose Luis Mosquera, Cayetano Gonzalez
G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics 2018 8: 1205-1214; https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.117.300489


The author has used state machines in several CircuitPython guides, most recently for the New Years Eve dropping ball.
So what is a state machine?
Accoding to Wikipedia:
A finite-state machine (FSM) or finite-state automaton (FSA, plural: automata), finite automaton, or simply a state machine, is a mathematical model of computation. It is an abstract machine that can be in exactly one of a finite number of states at any given time. The FSM can change from one state to another in response to some external inputs; the change from one state to another is called a transition. An FSM is defined by a list of its states, its initial state, and the conditions for each transition.
So what's all that mean? Simply put, there's some number of states and a way to move between them.
What's a state? Let's use the example of the states of matter: solid. liquid, and gas (we'll ignore plasma to keep this simple). There are well defined transitions to move between these states:
- melting transitions from solid to liquid,
- freezing transitions from liquid to solid,
- evaporating transitions from liquid to gas,
- condensing transitions from gas to liquid, and
- sublimating transitions from solid to gas.
Each of these have conditions in terms of material, temperature, and pressure that control whether or not the transition can happen. A simplified example of this is that when its temperature is less than 0C (32F), water will freeze transitioning it from a liquid state to a solid state.
The state machine in the diagram at the top of this page processes a stream of 1s and 0s (as label the transitions). When the machine is in S1 it has processed an even number of 0s, and an odd number when in S2.
A huge advantage of working with a modern, capable MCU like the SAMD51 with it's ARM Cortex-M4 core and spacious memory is that we can make use of more advanced programming techniques that require overhead that smaller, simpler, slower MCUs simply can't handle.


Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research.
1. Create a Zotero account using your email at https://www.zotero.org/user/register
2. Download the desktop version of Zotero for Mac or Windows here: https://www.zotero.org/download/
3. Download the Zotero Plug-in Connector for your browser here: https://www.zotero.org/download/connectors
4. Sync your Zotero desktop version to your account
Zotero Worksheet + Video Instruction
Practice how to use Zotero. The video covers Part 1-3 only. (Part 4 is optional)
Note: The above directions are written for students who use Microsoft Word. If you don't have MS Word on your personal computer, please go to the LMU ITS website to download and install Microsoft Office 365.


You probably don’t expect your blow dryer to use as much electricity as your washing machine or dishwasher, and you’d be correct in that assumption. Different types of appliances have their own kinds of electrical needs, and they may use different kinds of electrical outlets in San Jose as a result. Dedicated circuits are used for your heavy-duty appliances that need more electricity to get the job done. Mixing and matching electrical circuits is dangerous—the wrong setup could harm your appliances and your electrical system as well as present the threat of a fire or shock. Keep reading to learn what you need to know about dedicated circuits.
What They Are
A dedicated circuit is one that provides the appropriate amount of electricity to larger appliances that can’t get enough from a standard electrical outlet. It’s called a dedicated circuit because a single circuit is used with just one appliance, so it’s dedicated to that appliance. It will have a circuit breaker inside your electrical panel, and it will make sure appliances that have high energy demands get the electricity they need. If one of your appliances hasn’t been working properly, have your electrician see if you need a new circuit.
Appliances That Need Them
The more electricity an appliance uses, the more likely it is that you need a dedicated circuit for it. Common examples include refrigerators, air conditioners, electric stoves and ovens, and sump pumps.
Why They Matter
Without dedicated circuits, we wouldn’t be able to regulate the amount of electricity that’s allotted to individual appliances. You can’t expect a phone charger and an air conditioning system both to operate at maximum efficiency using the same amount of energy. We need to be able to control the way we use our electricity in our homes and places of business, so we can extend the lifespans of our appliances, avoid short circuits and power outages, and keep our systems safe and efficient. Dedicated circuits matter so much that they’re now required by the National Electric Code, so have your electrician inspect yours.


In only the second time a sample has been collected from inside a rock on Mars, Curiosity used the drill on its robotic arm to collect a sample from the interior of a rock dubbed "Cumberland," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported Monday.
The hole Curiosity drilled into the rock Sunday is about a half inch in diameter and about 2.6 inches deep, scientists at JPL said.
The science team said it would analyze the material from Cumberland to double check findings from an earlier rock sample.
Preliminary findings from analysis of that sample by Curiosity's on-board laboratory instruments indicate the location where it was gathered had, at least long ago, environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.
The new sample was gathered about 9 feet to the west of where the first was taken, both in a shallow depression in the Gale Crater dubbed "Yellowknife Bay," JPL researchers said.


What was it like in Bergen-Belsen?
"Wednesday, April 26, 12:30 p.m. Our treatment improved visibly. The greatest advantage was that we did not have to work. For the first time in a long while we were able to rest, which did us all a lot of good. The tone of the "Greens" (German criminals on the camp staff who wore green badges and helped the SS) towards us had become manifestly more accommodating. To our surprise we noticed that some of the SS men who had only bellowed at us so far were also capable of speaking to us in a normal tone of voice. Small mistakes were no longer punished, and the daily roll-calls became a brief formality. However, the quality and quantity of the food remained the same. In our seclusion we felt the hunger even more strongly, since we had time all day long to think of our empty stomachs." Simon Heinrich Herrmann (one of the 222 Jews who were sent from Bergen-Belsen to Palestine in June 1944), excerpt from his book, "Austauschlager Bergen-Belsen," published in Tel-Aviv in 1944
In 1943, Bergen-Belsen was set up as an exchange camp for the purpose of trading Jews for German citizens being held by the Allies. Two days before Germany declared war on America, a group of German-Americans who were Nazi supporters and a number of German citizens living in America had been rounded up and sent to an internment camp at Ellis Island in New York. Later a number of German citizens were apprehended in South America and brought to the American internment camp. After the war started, these prisoners were available for exchange with the Germans for prisoners being held in their camps, although America did not have much interest in bringing German Jews to America. Immigration laws had been passed in 1920 and 1921 that were designed to keep Jews out of the USA; throughout the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany, Congress would not amend those laws to allow more Jews to come here as refugees.
Very few exchanges were made, but there was one group of 222 Jews who finally made it to Palestine, arriving on July 10, 1944. They had been released by the Germans in an agreement with the British whereby German citizens held as prisoners were allowed to come back to Germany. The group that ultimately went to Palestine was first scheduled to begin preparations on May 31st for the trip, but the deal was canceled by the British on June 5th, the day before the Allied landing at Normandy. The Palestine Jews, who had been in a special barracks awaiting departure, were sent back to the general camp. All their new privileges were taken away and they were forced to work again, just like the other prisoners in the camp.
Simon Heinrich Herrmann, whose book is quoted above, was one of the lucky 222 who finally made it to Palestine. Here is another excerpt from his book:
Several weeks passed by, and slowly we got used to the daily grind of camp life again...Thursday, June 29th, 6 in the morning. We were about to go to work when a "Green" appeared in our hut shouting, "No one to work!" We were struck as if by lighting. So, after all! Without preparation the message hit us: we were being freed. The answer was a wild outbreak of joy. The children became uncontrollable. Suddenly our innermost feelings were switched over into another world. In a minute a revolution had taken place. [...]
After the luggage check followed by a body search, which was performed no less painstakingly, the contents of all pockets being emptied on the table, and all our clothing felt over from top to bottom. In doing so, the Germans gave a last demonstration of their ingenuity in verbal abuse, once again drumming into our heads that we belonged to the class of swindlers and thieves. Immediately afterwards we received our provisions for the first stage of our journey, which considerably exceeded our camp rations. The worst had passed. At the German border we were supposed to be handed over in a condition more or less worthy of human beings. Our treatment improved with every meter that we came closer to this border.
In the evening our camp balance, precise to the last penny, was also handed over to us in Reichsmarks (German money). On the floor of the garage we then spent our last night in the Bergen-Belsen camp.
Another prisoner at Bergen-Belsen was 25-year-old Renata Laqueur, who was born November 3, 1919, the daughter of a Professor of Pharmacology in Amsterdam. She was arrested in 1943 and taken, along with her husband, to the Dutch transit camp at Westerbork. From there, she was sent to Bergen-Belsen on March 15, 1944 in a transport of Dutch "exchange Jews." She kept a diary in the camp and after the war, it was published in Amsterdam in 1965 under the title, "Dagboek uit Bergen-Belsen maart 1944 - April 1945". The German translation was published in Hannover in 1983 under the title, "Bergen-Belsen-Tagebuch 1944/1945."
Quoted here are two excerpts from Renata Laqueur's Diary:
Sunday May 28, 1944 (Whit Sunday) It is about half past five in the evening, and I am sitting outside in the open air, between the barracks, with my back towards the barbed wire. It has been terribly hot since yesterday. In the evenings and at night the hut is an oven. A hundred and eighty people, one single toilet - without a door on top of that - open chamber pots and buckets under the beds, laundry, clothes and other items hang in the narrow space between the three-layered bunk beds and from the ceiling. Dust, dirt, heat and stench.
I am now enjoying the first quiet moments in months. The work squads have already marched into the camp. But most of them are too exhausted to take a breath of fresh air for a moment, since we have to get up again tomorrow at half past four.
Here it smells of forest, summer, freedom. On the left hand, behind the barbed wire fence, there are pine trees, slender and motionless. There must be a dark, safe, cozy little place, between the small bushes on soft moss and pine needles. And it is so quiet there, so quiet...But in front of it there is a barbed wire, and the skull grins at me, bars the way to liberty. I hear the sentry walk up and down on his watch tower whistling a ditty. He must be almost dying of boredom. Why, why is all this happening?
Soon now I will be able to sleep until half past four. No more thinking. The day must come again when there are no more barbed wire fences, when we can go where we want, go to bed when we please, lead a life without coercion and oppression.
I still have a fever and am weak because of the diarrhea. Tomorrow another eleven hours of sitting. We are now sorting buttons for "army underwear". Brain work! I must now get back into my hut. It is as if one was getting into a car which has been standing in the scorching sun for a whole day.
June 15, 1944. I think a lot about what the time after the war
will look like. Will we be at all able to tell anything to somebody
who has not gone through the same experience as we have? Can
we put into words what this camp experience means to us? What
it means to watch from behind barbed wire how slender pines grow
and how fresh foliage and green leaves sprout alongside the camp
street. What the perpetual coercion and harassment of the SS
guards and their incessant regime and surveillance mean. How
you are always making an effort to imagine: this does not concern
you yourself, all of this screaming scolding, din. How you feel
that you are growing older, that your youth runs through your
fingers in these years of waiting for the end to oppression.
Dr. Abel J. Herzberg was a lawyer in Amsterdam when he was arrested in 1943, along with his wife, and taken to the Dutch transit camp at Westerbork. He was sent to Bergen-Belsen in January 1944 and, as a Zionist, he was put on the list of 1300 Jews who were available to be sent to Palestine in exchange for German citizens held as prisoners by the Allies. He was on the list of 272 Jews who were selected in April 1944 to go to Palestine, but at the last minute, 50 names were crossed off the list and Dr. Herzberg had to go back into the Star Camp with the other Dutch Jews. Dr. Herzberg survived and after the war, he went back to being a lawyer in Amsterdam. He published the diary that he kept in Bergen-Belsen under the title of "Tweestromenland" in Amsterdam in 1950. Jack Santcross was a 9-year-old prisoner at Bergen-Belsen who survived; he translated Dr. Herzberg's diary from the original Dutch into English.
In Dr. Herzberg's diary, he mentions the tent camp which was put up in August 1944. The tent camp is where Anne and Margot Frank had to live for several weeks after they were brought to Bergen-Belsen from Auschwitz-Birkenau in October 1944.
The following excerpt from the Dairy of Dr. Abel J. Herzberg, written on August 15, 1944, is quoted from the English edition of a book entitled "Bergen-Belsen from 1943 - 1945." The German edition of this book was translated into English by Gregory Claeys and Christine Lattek.
15.8.1944 [....] The prisoners have erected the tent camp. Our men have carried straw. And last night and this morning a transport of women and children moved into these ten to twelve tents. Who are they? All this takes place right next to our camp section. We can see them. And nonetheless nobody knows anything - we are isolated from one another that strictly. All sorts of rumours are circulating, and most of them boil down to: fugitives from Poland and East Prussia. So we know at least one thing for certain: it is a sign of dissolution. And further: we are not going to get out of here anymore. We have to wait for the chaos. Will we one day have to swap places with these women and be housed in the tents? Those who love indulging in gloomy prophecies believe that. But it strengthens our power of resistance. And he who wants to know what that consists in must go into block 12 on a Sunday evening, when the French, Albanian and Serbian Jews are guests of the Greeks and they sing. Yes, then tempo and life come into the group. A song of liberty - and the rhythm is accompanied by clapping hands and stomping feet. Finally the SS leave us alone. They are nowhere to be seen. Only the sentry on the watchtower can hear us and is probably annoyed, perhaps even going to report us. But the song rises up, and the whole vitality, the unyielding strength of the Jewish people breaks through. French and Greek, Serb and Russian songs are sung, most of them are incomprehensible but everyone knows what they mean: Il faut se tenir - they are not going to get the better of us. At the end then a Greek folk song resounds and then - Hebrew: Hatikvah (Zionist National Anthem, now the National Anthem of Israel).
Nobody has announced it, and of course they are no Zionists. Perhaps they barely know what that is. But nonetheless all of them sing along - in the only language they all have learned (have they?) - in the knowledge that no matter what may have separated them from one another a common fate has brought them together, and that - whether they want it or not - a common power to change this fate lives in them. They are no Zionists but the song sounds too genuine and too spontaneous to miss seeing the great and deep respect they hold for the notion of their own nation and the aim of a Jewish state.
The women in the new camp do not own any mess-kits. They eat from old tins. Thus the Third Reich ends.
Loden Vogel (Louis Tas) was the son of an Amsterdam doctor and psychiatrist; he was arrested in Amsterdam on September 29, 1943, along with his parents, and taken to the transit camp at Westerbork. He was born on December 25, 1920, so he was 23 years old at the time. Everyone in his family had South American passports, so they were sent to Bergen-Belsen as "exchange Jews" on April 15, 1944. Loden was one of the survivors; he had spent exactly one year in the Star Camp. His father worked as a doctor in the camp and because of this, Loden was given a job as a nurse. In 1946, he published the diary that he kept in Bergen Belsen under the title "Dagboek uit een kamp".
The following excerpt from his diary, translated by Eberhard Kolb, was written on February 12, 1945 just as the typhus epidemic was gaining momentum. Typhus is a deadly disease which is transmitted by lice. There were epidemics of both typhus and typhoid at Bergen Belsen.
From the diary of Loden Vogel:
12 February 1945 As a hospital nurse I now have an official claim to a bed for myself in the doctor's room, but this place is permanently threatened. In return for it I lose the additional food which my former colleagues earn by a little work in the camp...
There is no alternative for us left. Every day I see what is still in store for us. There is nothing wrong with all the patients in hospital - except for lack of food. All rations are only 3/4 of what they still were a few days ago. One loaf of army bread must now last a whole week, up to now it was six days, even earlier only five. Moreover it has gotten smaller. Thus we all feel the lack of bread. In the sick-bay are dirty skeletons, full of vermin, clad in rags which do not even warm them any more. What shall I do with the filthy underwear full of lice that I take off a patient? No luggage is allowed under the beds, so I carefully pick up the stuff and throw it away. This person is going to die anyway. I could kill them all with a calm consciousness, if I was not inhibited by the fact that a) my parents are almost in the same state, b) theoretically the war could end quickly and c) completely exhausted people do get exchanged even at the very last moment. If there is no transport soon I do not know how many can be saved.
15 February 1945 [...] The huts are full of candidates for the crematorium, skeletons who only get out of bed to collect their food. There is no more tar paper on the roofs. When it rains everything gets wet, beds, blankets, luggage. In my own hut (where I don't sleep at present) there isn't even any light. Excreta lies everywhere on the camp street.
I slept in this hut one night, sharing my bed with an ill person. All day long he had been lying on his and my blanket brooding. When I as usual wrapped myself up naked into the blanket I felt lice attack me in great numbers. I had to catch and kill them with my teeth constantly, as there was no other way to get rid of them. The following morning I went into the doctors' room because it was lit, and systematically searched every inch of the blanket. Then I cleared a bed off which was used as a luggage rack, installed myself there and waited for my father to wake up to tell him that I would stay there. I have been rid of lice since. What I catch during the day I find in the evenings in the favorite spots: neck, arm-pits. I have shaved off all body hair.
Renee H. was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1933. When the Nazis began rounding up the Jews there, her parents placed her and her younger sister with a Christian family, but the family claimed that the parents did not pay the money they had promised, and the two children were thrown out into the street. They went to the local police and asked to join their parents, who had been sent to Auschwitz. They were put on a transport to Auschwitz in 1944, but the train was rerouted to Bergen-Belsen after the tracks were bombed. Both of Renee's parents and her sister, who was one and a half years younger, were deaf. Renee and her sister stayed in Bergen-Belsen for a year and both survived, although Renee was sick with typhus when the British troops arrived. She was among the 6,000 survivors who were sent to Sweden after the war to recover from her illness. She remained in Sweden for 3 years and then, in 1948, emigrated to Brooklyn, NY.
In a book called "Witness, Voices from the Holocaust" edited by Joshua M. Greene and Shiva Kumar, Renee told the following story about an encounter she had with the camp doctor at Bergen-Belsen when she was 11 years old.
My sister was being watched by the camp doctor. He would come by the children's barracks all the time, come to my sister, pinch her cheeks, pull her ears, and try to be very friendly with her. And then one day he said to me that he would be able to give us oranges and chocolate if I allowed my sister to go into the hospital for a few days. And my sister was perfectly well, so I couldn't understand why he wanted her in the hospital and I was just very sassy. And I said, "No you are not, because if you are I am going to kick you." And I went up and sort of said, "I'm serious! I'm really going to. I mean it! " And so he laughed and then forgot about it. Later on the Blockälteste (German-appointed prisoner in charge of barrack) told me that he (the camp doctor) had hoped to be able to use my sister for scientific research. At that time I had no idea what it meant, but later on I realized that he was very interested in the fact of her deafness.
Renee also told the following story to the editors of "Witness, Voices from the Holocaust":
It was the beginning of the typhus epidemic. One thing I did receive from the woman in Sered was a small bag of tea which I was able, during the time of the typhus epidemic, to exchange for a vaccine for my sister. I was told it was a typhus vaccine. Whether it was one or not, I'm not sure, but the fact is my sister never did get the typhus. I did.
The most famous diary of all, during the years of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, was written by another inmate of Bergen-Belsen: Anne Frank. She wrote her diary, published by her father after the war, while she was in hiding in an annex behind her father's place of business in Amsterdam, from July 1942 to August 1944. Whether she kept a diary while she was at Bergen-Belsen, from October 1944 to March 1945, no one knows. Since there were many survivors who published the journals that they wrote while imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen, we know that it was possible for the inmates to keep a diary. Maybe Anne recorded her thoughts also, but they were lost after she died only a few weeks before the camp was liberated.


Mercy Otis Warren was a gifted playwright, poet, and historian, as well as a revolutionary woman who symbolized and promoted the ideas and principles upon which the United States was established during the American Revolution. Warren was important to the ideological development of the Patriot movement in the era of the American Revolution as well as to the documentation of the nation’s early history. Her most seminal work, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, a three-volume set that she published in 1805 at the age of seventy-seven, was one of the first comprehensive histories of the American Revolution.1
Mercy Otis was born September 25, 1728 in Barnstable, Massachusetts. Born to the prosperous James and Mary Allyne Otis, Mercy was the third of thirteen children and the family's oldest daughter. Her outspokenness as an adult was the product of her family and her up-bringing. The support she received from her father and from her older brother James Otis Jr., allowed her intellectual curiosities to flourish from a young age. Her brother James was a brilliant idealist and an early fervent supporter of the revolutionary movement who encouraged his sister to follow her academic interests. Although she did not get a Harvard education like her brother, she did receive some important tutelage from her Yale-educated uncle, the Reverend Johnathan Russel, with whom she studied classical literature, which would heavily influence her own political and historical writing.2
Warren’s self-assurance was also fostered throughout her life by her husband James Warren, a prominent Massachusetts politician whom she married in 1754. The Warrens enjoyed a prosperous and happy marriage, although their relationship was somewhat unconventional because of Mercy's political interests and activism. Warren was a proud mother to her five sons and a frequent hostess for political meetings at her home in Plymouth. But she differed from even the most politicized women of her era in writing and publishing her own thoughts on the imperial crisis that led to the revolution in America.3
The Coming of the Revolution
Warren’s faith and values informed her strong sense of principle, and this ideology also contributed to her involvement in the fight for liberty prior to and during the Revolution. Like most American colonists, Warren did not initially object to British rule. Over time however, her attitude changed with the passing of the Sugar Act (1764), Stamp Act (1765), Townshend Duties Act (1767), and especially with the arrival of British troops in Boston in October 1768, which Warren believed marked the end of any prospects for reconciliation between Britain and its American colonies. The involvement of so many family members in provincial politics, as well as the long-standing rivalry between her family and Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts, also led to Warren's emergence as a strong advocate for the patriot cause.4
Warren published political satires and pamphlets during the imperial crisis, serving as a key propagandist for patriot leaders in Massachusetts. Her plays and pamphlets were published in local Massachusetts newspapers, such as the Massachusetts Spy and the Boston Gazette, which appealed to Patriot readers. Her early plays were political satires that attacked British colonial injustices, often skewering crown officials, especially Governor Thomas Hutchinson, who was frequently the target of Warren’s attacks. In The Adulateur (1772), the transgressions of Hutchinson and other crown officials are personified by the character Rapatio—a play on the word "rape"—and condemned by the words and actions of characters such as Brutus, who represent the colonists who suffer as a result of Rapatio’s tyrannical leadership. In one particular scene, which foreshadows the American Revolution, Brutus states, “Of Servia’s virtuous sons, whose latest breath, Shall execrate a wretch, who dare enslave, A generous free and independent people. If ye pow’rs divine, Ye mark the movements of this nether world, and bring them to account- crush, crush these vipers.”5
Warren also published two other satirical plays, The Defeat (1773) and The Group (1775), as well as prose dramas called The Blockheads (1776) and The Motley Assembly (1779) in which she criticized Bostonians still loyal to the Crown after the colonies had declared independence. Although these plays are believed to have been written by Warren, she did not originally publish them under own name, instead initially releasing them anonymously.6
Warren wrote throughout her life, and while she published poems, histories, and plays, she also corresponded with an impressive array of people, including Abigail Adams and her husband John, a close political associate of both her brother and her husband. Warren had a long and frequent correspondence with both of the Adamses, and it is apparent from his letters that John Adams esteemed Warren’s writing and intelligence.7 In a letter to James written soon after the Boston Tea Party, Adams declared that he wanted "a poetical Genius," such as Warren, to describe the recent events in Boston harbor.8 Warren also corresponded with Catherine Macaulay, an English Radical Whig writer and historian. Warren's biographer argues that Macaulay's correspondence, and her own very public literary career, helped inspired Warren to use her own writing as a way to make her mark beyond the normal confines of women's lives.9
Warren and the Politics of the Early Republic
After the war was over, Warren continued to write and publish, sometimes making public pronouncements on controversial subjects. In her most famous work, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, Warren stated that she was decidedly against the institution of slavery for it went against the principles upon which America was founded and could “banish a sense of general liberty.”10 Warren also alluded to the mistreatment of Native Americans in her history and detailed the harm they suffered throughout the revolutionary period.11 Preceding the publication of her history, Warren was critical of the Constitution drafted by the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, which she evaluated in Observations on the New Constitution, a work originally attributed to the Massachusetts Anti-Federalist Elbridge Gerry, although historians now believe that Warren wrote it.12 In this pamphlet, Warren condemned the creation of the strong central government outlined in the Constitution, as well as the lack of explicit protections of the people's liberties or rights.13
Prior to the publication of Warren’s history, she published Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, a copy of which she sent to President George Washington, hoping to get his approval so that he would promote her literary her work.14 Washington wrote back several months later saying that while his duties as president had prevented him from reading everything in the publication, “from the reputation of its Author—from the parts I have read—and from a general idea of the pieces, I am persuaded of its gracious and distinguished reception by the friends of virtue and science.”15 Washington died in 1799, six years before Warren’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution was published in 1805.
Warren’s book was one of the first and most comprehensive publications to document the history of the American Revolution, and Washington was a central figure. In her history, Warren inserted her respectful, but candid, opinion on the Founding Fathers, including Washington. Warren was complimentary of Washington’s values and accomplishments overall and deemed him the right choice to be president because of the great leadership he demonstrated while leading the Continental Army.16 Warren also criticized President Washington’s handling of certain political matters, such as the Jay Treaty, which in her view were not conducive to the prosperity of the nation.17 Warren was most critical of Washington’s actions as president when he appointed John Jay “to act in the double capacity of a negociator abroad and the first officer of justice [i.e. the Supreme Court's chief justice] at home.”18
Previously an Anti-Federalist, Warren became a staunch Democratic-Republican, and she was unafraid to censure the Federalist-leaning Washington and many of his cohorts, along with aspects of the new Constitutional government.19 Her boldness in being somewhat critical of a man of Washington's heroic stature just a few years after his death demonstrates her courage to speak her mind publicly at a time when women typically did not. Warren left the final verdict on the Washington presidency up to future historians. “The operations and the consequences of the civil administration of the first president of the United States, notwithstanding the many excellent qualities of his heart, and the virtues which adorned his life," she wrote, "have since been viewed at such opposite points, that further structures on his character and conduct shall be left to future historians.”20
Warren’s history of the Revolution was both lauded and panned by politicians of the era. Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican leader who was president at the time the work was published, praised Warren’s history and even helped with promotion and subscription efforts.21 Warren’s old friend, Federalist and former president John Adams, on the other hand, was not fond of his portrayal in her history. The two had a falling out due to what Adams perceived as Warren's slight of his influence on the events of the revolutionary era.22
Warren’s letters to presidents George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson are widely available today, as are most of her other writings. Warren died on October 19, 1814 at the age of eighty-seven in her home state of Massachusetts.23 Ultimately, Warren left an important legacy and established a precedent for female freethinking and forthright writing in the United States through her writings and publications.
George Mason University
1. Martha King, “pen of the Historian,” The Princeton University Library Chronicle 72, no. 2 (2011): 517. doi: www.jstor.org/stable/10.25290/prinunivlibrchro.72.2.0513.
2. Rosemarie Zagarri, A Woman's Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1995), 1-13.
3. Ibid., esp. 16, 17, 43.
4. Ibid., 14-26, 29-31, 40-44.
5. King, “pen of the Historian,” 515-19; Mercy Otis Warren, THE ADULATEUR. A Tragedy, as it is Now Acted in UPPER SERVIA (Boston: 1773).
6. King, “pen of the Historian,” 514; Zagarri, A Women’s Dilemma, 70-71.
7. Mercy Otis Warren to John Adams, 11 October 1773, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-01-02-0106.
8. John Adams to James Warren, 22 December 1773, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0002.
9. Zagarri, A Women’s Dilemma, 55-56.
10. Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution: Interspersed with Biographical, Political, and Moral Observations, 2 vols. (1805; Indianapolis: 1989), 1:14.
11. Warren, History, 2:635; King, “Pen of the Historian,” 530.
12. Zagarri, A Women’s Dilemma, 169-170.
13. [Mercy Otis Warren],Observations on the New Constitution and on the Federal and State Conventions (Boston: n.p., 1788).
14. Warren to George Washington, 18 May 1790, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-05-02-0256.
15. Washington to Warren, 18 May 1790, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-05-02-0256.
16. Warren, History, 663.
17. Ibid., 663-76.
18. Warren, History, 667-68.
19. Ibid., 620-63.
20. Ibid., 673-74.
21. King, “pen of the Historian,” 520-24.
22. Ibid., 514-35.
23. Zagarri, A Women’s Dilemma, 160.
King, Martha J. "The “pen of the Historian”: Mercy Otis Warren's History of the American Revolution." The Princeton University Library Chronicle 72, no. 2 (2011): 513-32. Accessed May 11, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/10.25290/prinunivlibrchro.72.2.0513.
Zagarri, Rosemarie. A Woman's Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution. Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1995.


For Atlantic Flyway waterfowlers, there’s no better barometer for the fall flight than the eastern survey area. Conducted jointly by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service since 1990, the eastern survey provides estimates for the six most abundant breeding ducks across the eastern United States and Canada.
In 2016, all surveyed species increased, but this year’s results are mixed. The mallard index of 445,000 is a 7 percent increase and 11 percent above the long-term average. Green-winged teal rose 8 percent to an estimate of 239,000 ducks, but remain 6 percent below the long-term average. Goldeneyes jumped 10 percent to 401,000 birds, 7 percent below the long-term average, while mergansers increased 15 percent.
However, the black duck breeding population dipped to 541,000, which represents an 11 percent decrease from 2016 and puts the species at 12 percent below its long-term average. U.S. hunters will have a two-bird daily limit of black ducks this season for the first time in decades. This year’s breeding population estimate will help determine black duck regulations for the 2018-2019 season.
Ring-necked ducks declined 19 percent to 463,000, which is 11 percent below the long-term average. Just three years ago, ringnecks were the most common breeding duck in the East, but they now trail black ducks and mergansers.
“Water conditions were great in the eastern survey area, and mallards responded accordingly,” Rohwer said. “It’s surprising that black duck and ring-necked duck numbers are down, which will affect hunters in the Atlantic Flyway.”


Most of us have been using standard toothpaste our entire lives, along with a wide assortment of other chemical-filled personal care products.
According to the Environmental Working Group, industrial chemicals are basic ingredients in personal care products like toothpaste, with 12,500 unique chemical compounds in these items equating to approximately one of every seven of the 82,000 chemicals registered for use in the United States. They may contain carcinogens, pesticides, reproductive toxins, endocrine disruptors, plasticizers, degreasers, and surfactants. And, the FDA doesn’t regulate or limit the use of chemicals in personal care products or require that all of the ingredients be listed on the label.
The Dangers of Fluoride
More than 95 percent of toothpaste sold in the U.S. contain fluoride today, with many supermarkets and drugstores carrying only a few, if any, non-fluoridated brands. There is a reason the FDA requires a poison warning on these fluoridated toothpastes – they come with a number of health risks, particularly for young children.
The risk that comes with ingesting fluoride toothpaste, which is bound to happen when you brush your teeth, if only in a small amount, including everything from skin rashes and tooth discoloration to digestive problems, impairment of glucose metabolisms and acute toxicity. Yet most traditional dentists still promote them, and clever marketers use cartoon-like packaging and sweet candy-like flavors to encourage kids to want to use these adult-strength toothpaste filled with fluoride.
The Harvard Public School of Health even states that “perhaps the most worrisome is preliminary research in lab animals suggesting that high levels of fluoride may be toxic to brain and nerve cells. And human epidemiological studies have identified possible links to learning, memory, and cognition deficits, though most of these studies have focused on populations with fluoride exposures higher than those typically provided by U.S. water supplies.”
Over the course of a lifetime, the average American uses about 20 gallons of toothpaste. Even if you spit most of it out, some of those chemicals are going to make their way into your bloodstream as the mouth is one of the most absorbent places in your entire body. This is why some medications are administered sublingually, or under your tongue.
Other Potentially Harmful Chemicals in Toothpaste
Fluoride isn’t the only concern with toothpaste by far, there are multiple other potentially harmful chemicals, including:
Artificial Sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners come with a long list of potentially hazardous effects. For example, aspartame has been linked to headaches, blurred vision, memory loss, personality changes, seizures, insomnia, skin rashes, muscle and joint pain and blindness, according to scientific studies.
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. Many toothpastes contain SLS, a surfactant which is a chemical that creates the foaming action. It’s been linked to canker sores and interferes with the functioning of taste buds in addition to being potentially contaminated with 1,4 dioxane, a carcinogenic byproduct, as renowned holistic physician Dr. Mercola reports.
Triclosan. Some toothpastes, including Colgate Total, contain the chemical triclosan, an antibacterial ingredient that has been associated with endocrine disruption and concerns over antibiotic resistance. Chemicals that cause endocrine disruption can trigger all sorts of health issues, including certain types of cancer and is known to raise the risk of heart disease and heart failure, harm muscle function, alters levels of thyroid hormones and reproductive hormones such as testosterone and estrogen, increase infertility risk and contribute to the early onset of puberty.
Propylene glycol. This ingredient is used in antifreeze, paints, enamels, and airplane de-icers. The pharmaceutical-grade form also utilized in personal care products like toothpaste as a surfactant. If used every day, it’s been known to lead to damage to the central nervous system, heart, and liver. It can also cause skin irritation, especially in those with sensitive skin.
And that’s just the short list – there are many other potentially harmful chemicals in your typical store-bought toothpaste, but that should be more than enough to convince you to make your own.
You’ve got lots of options – here are seven ways to make a homemade toothpaste to help support your oral health without those nasty harmful side effects.
Coconut Oil, Baking Soda, and Tea Tree Oil Toothpaste
Coconut oil and tea tree oil both provide powerful antibacterial properties. The baking soda helps to neutralize the acid, whiten your teeth, and remove plaque and stains. To make it, all you need is the following ingredients:
- 2 tbsp coconut oil
- 2 tbsp baking soda
- 5 drops tea tree oil
Combine the baking soda and coconut oil together first, until it forms a paste-like consistency, then add the tea tree oil. Dab it onto your toothbrush and brush as usual.
Using baking soda is also effective for keeping your teeth whiter and shinier. To make your own whitening toothpaste, all you need to do is mix the coconut oil and a little baking soda into a paste as per the previous recipe, and then add one drop of peppermint essential oil. Up the effectiveness and get them extra white by adding a fresh, mashed strawberry. With this recipe, allow the mixture to remain on your teeth as long as you can before rinsing.
Bentonite Clay Toothpaste
Bentonite clay is great for keeping teeth polished and it also offers antibacterial properties to help eliminate plaque and other common issues. Simply combine coconut oil, a bit of sea salt and bentonite clay with filtered water to create your desired texture. You can add a drop of peppermint essential oil for flavor too.
Most kids are picky about what they put in their mouth, so try this effective recipe for your little ones:
- 1/3 cup coconut oil soft but not melted
- 1 tbsp baking soda
- 1 tbsp bentonite clay
- 1/4 tsp liquid stevia
- 7 drops sweet orange essential oil
Combine the coconut oil, baking soda, and clay together in a bowl and mix well. Then add remaining ingredients and mix again.
Cinnamon DIY Toothpaste
Most DIY toothpastes contain similar ingredients with various essential oils so you have a choice of flavor, like this one. Simply combine about a half cup of softened coconut oil with two to three tablespoons baking soda depending on the desired texture. Then mix in two small packets of stevia powder and 15 drops of cinnamon essential oil.
Spearmint provides a refreshing minty taste and aroma and makes toothpaste more effective due to its outstanding antiseptic and antibacterial qualities. Combine 3 parts baking soda to 1 part coconut oil to achieve a creamy texture, then add 5 drops of spearmint essential oil.
Activated Charcoal Toothpaste
At first, activated charcoal will make your teeth and mouth very black. It will help pull toxins from the mouth and removes stains, yet it will rinse away quickly, leaving your teeth clean and smooth as if you’ve just had a professional cleaning. After doing this a few times, they’ll be noticeably whiter too.
Mix a la small amount of activated charcoal powder with enough water to achieve a consistency that’s thick enough so that it will stay on your toothbrush. Dip your toothbrush into this mixture and then brush your teeth as normal, rinsing thoroughly afterward.


The Green Residence, is located in northeastern Pennsylvania, was designed by Paul Rudolph in 1969. The residence’s design concept comes from Rudolph’s interlock modular design concept. When examined the generic form of structure, it is generated by one rectangular module. He inspired from the ‘twentieth century brick’ in its complex configuration. The structure is occurred adding of modules to each other. The residence consists of three main module that have same scale, greenhouse and other small modules (same scale) added to the structure. After construction of two main modules, built a bridge that connects two units each other and then, the greenhouse, has the largest space in the house, is poisoned to heart of the residence. Then, the third main module is added to the whole composition. The basement is separated from other modules configuration. Its rectangular form is placed to slope and it contains greenhouse and car parking and it has direct access to first floor. To understand the scale of each module, used the grid diagrams. These grids gives us the spatial configuration of the structure. While a unit in west of the greenhouse contains living space and kitchen, second unit in east of greenhouse contains bedroom, wet area and working space. The third module above it, includes bedroom, wet floor and music room. Because of the concept of interlocking space, these areas flow each other horizontally and vertically.
When Green Residence building which is designed by Paul Rudolph is analyzed, it is examined that there are three axles that are dominating the building and formalizes the structure. Grids are functioned while working with south and north fronts of the structure and specializes forms according to certain needs. Two axles of those three axles are parallel to the north and the south grounds’ slopes. After analyzing Green Residence building, it is examined that the building is positioned at the angle break of the ground. Since the north facade is deprived of daylight: Rudolph used geometry to maximize daylight from the north facade: the grid which is making 60 degrees with north fronts’ slope, cuts rectangular forms to maximize daylight to interior. Green Residence is oriented to its periphery, it has connections with the built site and angles have connection with suns’ position intraday. Since the southern front will take direct light all day long, Rudolph preferred breaking the suns’ rays with narrower angle than the northern facade: the grid which is making 45 degrees to south slope is cutting rectangular forms with emerged grid. The operation of cutting rectangular forms with angles also provides daylight to interior however with the permitted amount. The third grid is perpendicular to gravity force: that grid is cutting modular geometries horizontally. Grids that are occurred through making angle to south fronts’ and north fronts’ ground angles are working separately while formalizing rectangular forms.
Rudolph is defining regionalism largely by its response to climate and the recognition and application of the most appropriate materials and technology. Controlling to the extreme temperature fluctuations of the building by reducing sun gain with high-performance glass and internal shades, as well as allowing for daylight to reduce the use of electric lights is one of aim of the Paul Rudolph in Green House. He designed a conservation with the glass and the façade. Using largest glass panels are creating problem for heat gain and energy consumption. That’s why the controlling windows and position of the house very important. Rudolph designed his structure under the control on these knowledge. He designed a Green Core in the middle of the house. He used glass panel to gain more sun light for plants. The glass panels and the geometry of that part creating least effect to the other part of the house. Daylighting requires precise geometries of envelope, overhangs, window openings, shading devices, and impacting features that affect the sun’s light/shadow projection on the building such as adjacent building geometries or landscape features. In the Green house, structure’s geometry and spatial organization in relation to its orientation is used to demonstrate how interior spaces maximize natural lighting how the eastern shading construction controls insolation impacts and the effect of the shading construction on energy loads. The roof opening’s angle is also used as unit for dividing space inside and also defining spatial differences. Where the angle of the roof intersects, it creates a wall or transition points. The green part of the structure is also another proportion of the roof opening (a, 4a). It is also creating a transition space between different living and sleeping areas.


Every smell, from a rose to a smoky fire to a pungent fish, is composed of a mixture of odorant molecules that bind to protein receptors inside your nose. But scientists have struggled to understand exactly what makes each combination of odorant molecules smell the way it does or predict from its structure whether a molecule is pleasant, noxious or has no smell at all.
Now, scientists from the Salk Institute and Arizona State University have discovered a new way to organize odor molecules based on how often they occur together in nature, which is the setting in which our sense of smell evolved. They were then able to map this data to discover regions of odor combinations humans find most pleasurable. The findings, published on August 29 in the journal Science Advances, open new avenues for engineering smells and tastes.
“We can arrange sound by high frequency and low frequency; vision by a spectrum of wavelengths and colors,” says Tatyana Sharpee, an associate professor in Salk’s Computational Neurobiology Laboratory and lead author of the new work. “But when it comes to olfaction, it’s been an unsolved problem whether there is a way to organize odors.”
Previously, scientists had tried to classify odorant molecules strictly based on their chemical structures. “But it turns out molecules with structures that look very similar can smell very different,” says Sharpee.
Using existing data on the odorant molecules found in different samples of strawberries, tomatoes, blueberries and mouse urine, they used statistical methods to put odorant molecules on a map based on how frequently they occurred together in the four sets of samples.
Those molecules that occurred together more frequently were placed closer to each other.
“It’s akin to me telling you that Chicago is x number of miles from New York, Los Angeles and Melbourne. And if you mapped the cities, you’d find out is that the Earth’s surface is curved, not flat — otherwise the distance from, say, Melbourne to Los Angeles wouldn’t add up. We did the same thing for odor,” explains Sharpee.
Using this strategy, the scientists found that odor molecules could similarly be mapped onto a curved surface in three dimensions. But instead of a sphere, like Earth, it turned out to be the shape of a Pringles potato chip — a shape mathematicians call a hyperboloid.
When the team looked at how the molecules clustered on this surface, they found there were pleasant and unpleasant directions, as well as directions that correlated with acidity or how easily odors evaporate from surfaces. These observations now make it easier to construct pleasant odor mixtures to use, for example, in artificial environments (such as a space station).
“By revealing more about how odorant molecules and the brain interact, this work may also have implications for understanding why people with some diseases — like Parkinson’s — lose their sense of smell,” adds behavioral neuroscientist Brian Smith of Arizona State University, a coauthor of the paper.
In addition to Sharpee and Smith, Yuansheng Zhou, of the Salk Institute, was also an author of the new paper.
The work and the researchers involved were supported by grants from the Aileen Andrew Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Two collaborative grants to Sharpee and Smith originated as part of the new IDEAS Lab project at the National Science Foundation called “Cracking the Olfactory Code.”
Source: Read Full Article


The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to study how long you spend in the shower when you stay at a hotel. This study will cost $15,000 to create a wireless system which tracks the water usage of a hotel guest to get them to “modify their behavior.”
According to FreeBeacon.com:
“Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.”
“The proposed work aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers,” it said. “This device will be designed to fit most new and existing hotel shower fixtures and will wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.”
The funding is going toward creating a prototype and market analysis for the device. The goal of the project is to change the behavior of Americans when they stay at hotels.
The government has no business monitoring your activities in a hotel room, whether it’s sleeping, showering or anything else.


Photo: Teachers Grace, Caterina, and Trish at Phobjikha Valley, taken by Grace Miranda.
For many teachers, volunteering in the Reading Program marks their first time visiting Bhutan. For some, it is also their first time teaching internationally. As experienced teachers, they get the opportunity to work closely with Bhutanese schools to support the capacity of both local teachers and students. Four weeks in Bhutan also gives these teachers time to take in the serene views of the Himalayas, observe cultural practices, and form deep bonds with many locals. Each teacher has a unique and immersive experience shaped by the locals in the community they work in. Below are a few highlights from the Reading Program.
Photo: School waste segregation site, part of Green Schools for Green Bhutan
Education through a different context
Teachers enter the school grounds taking in the local architecture of multi-coloured wooden frontages, arched windows, and sloped roofs. Students rush by wearing kiras and ghos, bowing and greeting their teachers. Following the morning assembly, teachers begin classes instructed in English, with the exception of Dzongkha class. Throughout the day the Educating for Gross National Happiness initiative fosters a GNH-infused learning environment for students, teachers, and principals from mediation to adaption of Green Schools for Green Bhutan. Traveling very far from home, teachers gain an enriching experience observing and taking part in a vastly different model for education. Returning back home teachers bring back memories, newly acquired Bhutanese storybooks for their classrooms, and different perspectives that they carry with them throughout their career.
Photo: Teachers in a classroom
Working alongside Bhutanese teachers
Sharing the same occupation in different parts of the world, volunteer and local teachers get to know each other fairly quickly. Volunteer teachers get many opportunities to support the capacity of Bhutanese teachers. They work one-on-one with teachers mentoring them and shadowing lessons. They share resources from their home countries and even develop audio tools to help students practice their reading skills. Finally, volunteers lead professional development workshops in the school or Education District on topics such as phonetics and special education. Volunteer and local teachers work together to help students succeed in achieving quality in education, highlighted as one of the education aspirations in the Bhutan Education Blueprint 2014-2024.
Photo: Smiling students huddled by the classroom window
Interactions with students make some of the most rewarding experiences for teachers. Students bring excitement and enthusiasm to the classrooms that the volunteer teachers match with stories and activities from their home countries. Over the course of the program, students get more comfortable with their volunteer teacher. Students get support from the volunteer teachers to develop their reading and speaking skills. Outside of school, students take initiative helping their teacher get acquainted with the local lifestyle, for example by giving a lesson on how to make the national dish in Bhutan, ema datshi. There is a deep appreciation for the work volunteer teachers take part in during their placement, perhaps most noticeable when engaging with students.
The Reading Program provides a unique and rewarding experience to volunteer teachers to experience Bhutan through the lens of an educator. If you are interested in learning more about spending four weeks teaching in Bhutan, visit www.bhutancanada.org/readingprogram.


What is the volume of a large block if it is made up of 144 cubes of side 1 m?
Since the side of each cube is 1 m , it's volume is 1 m3
Volume of 144 cubes = Volume of 1 cube × number of cubes= 1 × 144=144 m3
Hence, volume of the large block = volume of 144 cubes =144 m3
What is the volume of a large block if it is made up of 34 cubes, each of side 1 cm ?
What is the volume of a large block made up of 174 cubes of side 1 cm?
A cuboid is formed by stacking 328 cubes of side 1 m.what is the volume of the cuboid?