Stories By Alexandra Kiely
Female Painters of the Hudson River School, Part TwoAugust 7, 2017
Earlier this year, I introduced six female artists of the Hudson River School, an important landscape painting movement in nineteenth-century America. There were so many talented ladies to choose from, that I couldn’t possibly feature all...
Henry Ossawa Tanner – African-American Artistic PioneerApril 11, 2017
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), the first African-American to become an internationally successful artist, was known for his beautiful religious paintings and scenes of African-American life. He is often compared to Old Masters such as Rembrandt and...
Six Female Artists of the Hudson River SchoolMarch 4, 2017
The Hudson River School, a movement in American landscape painting, was America’s first independent artistic tradition. It was very popular in the middle half of the nineteenth century due to its focus on American scenery and nationalism. Notable Hudson River School artists include...
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The story behind the success of the Petra Nova carbon capture project
Innovation. It’s the one word that effectively summarizes the Petra Nova project — the first commercial-sized post-combustion carbon capture system in the U.S.
Led by NRG Energy, Inc., and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation, Petra Nova is a major milestone in the quest for a more sustainable energy future, leveraging the operations of an existing coal-fired power facility and a maturing oil field to collectively reduce carbon emissions. As part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative Program, the project was designed and constructed through a consortium that includes TIC – The Industrial Company (TIC), a subsidiary of Kiewit, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, Inc. (MHIA).
A new era for sustainable energy
Coal continues to be a major source of energy in the U.S. Compared to other energy sources, coal-fired plants are the largest producers of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are restricted in some areas due to environmental concerns.
As part of the Petra Nova project, an existing power generation station was retrofitted to capture more than 90 percent of CO2 from a 240-megawatt equivalent slipstream of flue gas. The captured carbon is transported to the West Ranch Oil Field where it is used for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) that has the potential to significantly increase oil production from 300 to as much as 15,000 barrels per day. On a daily basis, this process also prevents more than 5,000 tons of carbon emissions — the equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road.
Taking on the engineering, procurement and construction of an industry-first project is exciting and daunting. However, the expertise, teamwork and tenacity of TIC and MHIA led to a quality, on-time and on-budget project completion.
“We came into this project with a can-do attitude and quickly established open, trusting relationships,” said Bob Wolosyn, project director for TIC. “We focused heavily on making sure we had the right plan and people in place.”
Scoping it out
The scope of work entrusted to TIC required a wide range of capabilities, including engineering, procurement, site work, civil work, piping, electrical and instrumentation. TIC was also required to meticulously coordinate the integration of MHIA’s proprietary carbon capture technology into the facility.
The key structural components of the new facility included a 120-foot-tall flue gas cooler, a 320-foot-tall absorber, a regeneration system, a CO2 compression unit, and utility facilities, as depicted in the figure below.
Getting the right team in place was a top priority. TIC, along with its parent company Kiewit, held a “draft” — very similar to that of professional sports — to assemble the best-of-the-best team. Prior to setting foot on the construction site, each of the more than 1,000 workers who contributed to the project were required to attend a 10-hour orientation session. With this strong bench of skills and experience, TIC was able to self-perform nearly all of the work, allowing for better control and flexibility of the construction schedule.
Once the core team was in place, TIC set its sights on developing an ironclad plan, which relied heavily on a unified approach with MHIA, transparency with the client, and open candor throughout. Very early in the process, TIC led a line-by-line, open-book review of the project estimate to identify and assign ownership of project-related risks. The plan also called for a high level of calibration of engineering and constructability.
“We included the client in all of our communications with the engineering groups on the project. We spent countless hours in in-person meetings and conference calls with team members in Japan, where key technology components were fabricated,” added Wolosyn. “We were also able to align all engineering work into one 4D model, which helped determine any potential issues or logistical conflicts well before we put shovels in the ground.”
Additionally, project partners agreed to work off of the same playbook, offering a systematic approach and standard operating procedures in developing detailed work plans, allocating man-hours, finalizing roles and responsibilities, and monitoring progress.
“Anytime you were in the field, you saw well-planned tasks being carried out,” said Justin Mannina, TIC project manager. “From warehousing to foremen and general foreman to operators and laborers, you could always see progress in the field moving forward.”
While effective planning calls for structure and discipline, ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking also added to the success of the project. For example, a considerable volume of on-site welding was needed — a practice that is generally time-intensive — to meet quality standards. Workers were challenged to explore new welding techniques, ultimately conducting research on and using a semi-automatic welding process. With a modest amount of training, welding productivity increased by about 50 percent.
New mobile technology was also introduced on the construction site, bringing back-office operations, such as payroll and inventory, out into the field. Specifically, construction foremen were equipped with mobile devices that allowed them to monitor daily costs, approve time cards, report quantities, process payroll and assign work orders.
Increased productivity was achieved by constructing sections of the cooling tower in a nearby laydown yard and then using a platform trailer and crane to set in place.
Access to an in-house fleet of cranes and other equipment maximized costs and streamlined the construction schedule.
The successful completion of Petra Nova provides the groundwork for other systems that might use carbon in their operations, beyond EOR. As new processes emerge, TIC and MHIA are well-positioned to design and construct these projects, due in large part to early contractor involvement and cross-discipline training that eliminated silos within the organization.
“Well before we mobilized to the construction site, I worked in the office with the engineering team to fully understand the project and facilitate constructability reviews,” said Omar Chavez, construction superintendent at TIC. “From there, I was entrusted to handle key operations in estimating, hydro, pipe and managing subcontractors. It has been a huge opportunity to advance my career in the construction industry.”
Overall, through teamwork and a unified approach, the Petra Nova project was completed on time and on budget. More than 1.78 million man-hours were safely completed without a single lost-time incident. The construction scope of work had less than one percent of budget in change orders, and TIC was recognized as the 2016 Engineering & Construction (E&C) Supplier of the Year by NRG.
“The transparency, open dialogue and positive attitude permeated throughout the project teams, resulting in an atmosphere of cooperation at all levels,” said Jim Tharp, NRG project manager. “This is one of the best — if not the best — projects I have worked on in my career and I believe this is largely due to the working relationship between all of the project partners and vendors and the mutual respect that we have for each other as we strive to deliver a quality project safely.”


Watch the trailer for the PBS documentary The Jazz Ambassadors (available for streaming as of May 4, 2018), inspired by Satchmo Blows Up the World—and on which Penny Von Eschen consulted:
At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the U.S. State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism.
Penny Von Eschen escorts us across the globe, backstage and onstage, as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other jazz luminaries spread their music and their ideas further than the State Department anticipated. Both in concert and after hours, through political statements and romantic liaisons, these musicians broke through the government’s official narrative and gave their audiences an unprecedented vision of the black American experience. In the process, new collaborations developed between Americans and the formerly colonized peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East—collaborations that fostered greater racial pride and solidarity.
Though intended as a color-blind promotion of democracy, this unique Cold War strategy unintentionally demonstrated the essential role of African Americans in U.S. national culture. Through the tales of these tours, Von Eschen captures the fascinating interplay between the efforts of the State Department and the progressive agendas of the artists themselves, as all struggled to redefine a more inclusive and integrated American nation on the world stage.


Discover Drugs and Delivery Systems that Minimize the Likelihood of Drug Resistant Micro-organisms
The evolution and spread of drug resistant pathogens presents a growing problem worldwide. The fact that virtually all anti-microbials lose efficacy over time because of the development and spread of resistance in the target organism could be greatly reduced by creating novel and affordable approaches to optimal drug delivery tools, by developing drugs that target critical host components essential to infection and disease, as well as drugs that target components of the pathogen that are implicated in disease rather than infection, or that are so highly constrained that resistant variants cannot be easily selected.
We lack an understanding of the key determinants of the evolution and spread of resistance, and we lack the ability to slow the emergence of resistant variants.
To develop novel technologies and approaches to slow the evolution and spread of drug resistance. These include novel drug delivery technologies; the identification of drug targets less susceptible to selection under drug pressure, including targets that control disease not infection; targets in the host; and targets involved in the transfer of genetic materials within pathogen population.
- Enhanced useful life span of anti-microbial agents
- Effective treatments for common bacterial and other prevalent infections in resource poor settings
- Simpler treatment regimens arising from novel delivery technologies
- Reduced frequency of treatment failures
- Other bacterial infections


Some look at condemned buildings and see only disrepair and decay. German photojournalist Meike Fischer, on the other hand, sees a cultural tragedy—a lost chapter in her city’s history. Her photoseries Panta Rhei/Frankfurt is an effort in visual conservation: started in 2009 in reaction to the European Central Bank’s decision to relocate to the east end of Frankfurt, and anticipating the grave changes that would soon follow, Fischer intiated her own „photographic documentary“ to chronicle the steady demise of some of the city’s oldest establishments.
Within a few years, Fischer was presented with an unanticipated continuation of her series when another development, inserting itself into the city’s skyline, brought about a second phase of infrastructural destruction. Walking through her transitioning city, the photographer says she often felt like she was „wandering through ruins“: „So, at a point, I started to take close-ups of the demolision to depict the rigidity and vehemence of the interventions,“ Fischer tells The Creators Project. „This was the point when the work started to be not only a documantary but also a poetic work.“
(Text: Sami Emory/The creators project)


Sometimes we get so distracted by all those new anti-wrinkle creams that it's easy to forget that people have been using hope in a jar for centuries. Starting today, The Biblical Botanical Garden at Rodef Shalom Congregation in Pittsburgh will feature an exhibit, "Lookin' Good Then and Now," that shows the role plants and other ingredients have played in beauty. For instance, the ancient Egyptians used a combination of powdered oxen hooves, myrrh, burned eggshells, and pumice as toothpaste—and lead malachite for makeup. Lipstick can be traced back to 1,295 B.C.E., when henna and crushed beetles stood in for Chanel Vamp. And while you'd be hard-pressed to find an eye shadow made out of lead these days, there are plenty of modern-day beauty product ingredients, like aloe, cucumber, rosemary, and cinnamon (hello lip plumpers!), still used today. Green beauty never looked this fascinating.
PHOTO: DAVID COOK


Exploring the Wonders of Shilajit Herb
Shilajit herb is considered to be among the most popular traditional Indian medicines as listed in the Ayurveda system. It rightfully gained a lot of attention since it is regarded to be a cure for almost all sorts of illnesses. For 3000 years India has recognized its curing nature and it is about time for the world to also learn about the many benefits of shilajit herbal medicine.
Shilajit Herb and its Ancient Roots
Thousands of years ago, the native Himalayan dwellers started to mention about shilajit in Vedic text and ancient scientists appeared to have records about shilajit minerals as well. Its healing properties were first observed on white monkeys who had a long life span and are their strength, energy, and good health was very noticeable. The Himalayan villagers noted about how the animals often have a black gummy substance which seemed to be their energy source. So they followed the monkeys to see where the substance was from. They saw that the monkeys peeled off the black substance from the rocks so they brought some of it home. From then on, the shilajit herb benefits to human health were instantly recognized.
Upon closer study of it, they found out that the tar-like substance is at its most abundance during the summer where the heat from the sun makes it ooze out from the mountain crevasses. The shilajit minerals, were found out to be full of medicinal humic and fulvic acids. Its existence was formed after millions of years when the tropical forests were crushed, compacted, and wedged in between boulders as the Himalayan Mountains were formed. The minerals in shilajit were proven to be effective in cell energy production and then known to be the best carrier of both energy and nutrition for the body.
The Many Benefits of Shilajit
In Sanskrit, shilajit means “rock- invincible”. Because of the healing properties of the shilajit herb, the Ayurvedic traditions believed for it to be a sacred rock. The list of shilajit herb benefits is quite long. In fact, it is widely known in India as an effective Destroyer of Weakness. Modern medicine has identified DBPs or dibenzo alpha pyrones as the main component that makes the shilajit herb an energizer bunny. With the DBPs, the body is able to rejuvenate and produce energy when a shilajit herbal medicine is consumed. But the minerals in shilajit are more than just about producing a lot of energy. There are other shilajit herb benefits worth knowing for anyone to be convinced about its wonders.
Primary benefit of a shilajit herbal medicine is its effects on the memory. Small molecules of memory enhancers called dibezno-alpha-pyrones were found in shilajit herb and they serve as protectors for the brain chemicals for memory. The high fulvic acid content also proved to be effective in protecting the brain against developing Alzheimer’s disease. Another attributing factor is its effect on increasing testosterone levels. This hormone has a direct effect on the ability of a person to think so a higher testosterone means better thinking skills.
Another one for the shilajit herb benefits that most people rave about is its anti- aging properties. Minerals in shilajit contribute in fighting against cellular damage. This antioxidant property shields the skin, lungs, liver, and heart from aging prematurely. This results to having not only a healthy but a youthful body inside and out too.
Perhaps the most controversial benefit of shilajit minerals is its effect on fertility. In the studies made for men who are struggling with infertility, those who were given with shilajit supplement had a significantly higher sperm count compared to those who were not given supplement. It is also noted that sperm activity was higher. This made many Ayurvedic doctors consider the herb as a natural and safe alternative medicine to treat infertility. This gives hopes to those who really want to conceive but were stricken with infertility problems. In addition, this herb is great to improve libido. Sexual impotency is a common problem among men but taking a shilajit supplement can easily reverse this. It strengthens the male reproductive system plus it prevents premature ejaculation so men can last longer in bed.
From the reasons stated earlier, men really do need to consider taking shilajit herbal medicine for its “manly” effects to the body. It is a natural testosterone booster and this is important to men. Testosterone naturally occurs in the body but some men have problems in keeping the levels up. Higher testosterone levels in the blood could help in protecting the muscle tissues as well as ward off fat from storing in the body. Look at weightlifters, some of them take testosterone boosters to bulk up. The same can be achieved when shilajit is supplemented in the body. A boost in testosterone also helps with keeping a good mood and enhances thinking skills. Overall, shilajit makes a man healthier both in his mind and body.
Nowadays, a lot of people are suffering from cardiovascular disorders. Thankfully, the shilajit herb extends its protective properties to heart health. Since it is a potent antioxidant, shilajit keeps the heart healthy and strong. A strong heart functions at its best so there is better blood circulation. This, in return, will keep the whole body strong because of an efficient delivery of nutrients to all parts. If the heart is healthy, then the whole body benefits from it too.
Other than the shilajit herb benefits mentioned above, there are far more uses that are being studied. Many people who had taken shilajit herbal medicine reported various effects on their bodies like enhancement of the immune system, maintained blood sugar levels, stronger bones, and reduction of joint pains among others. This interesting fact keeps everyone, not only those who believe in Ayurvedic medicine, excited about what more benefits can be derived from shilajit herb. The sure thing is that this ancient wonder survived thousands of years and it is only proper for it to be recognized among those who are yet to discover its healing properties.
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Initially spots of limited size, slightly concave, appear at the peduncular scar of some fruits, or near growth cracks or various wounds. They gradually spread with a fairly typical dark brown to black colour. The lesions decay further while their perimeter is clearly identified. They eventually cover a large proportion of ripe or unripe fruits if the environmental conditions are favourable. Whatever their development stage, the fruits undergo internal rot extending to the seeds. Brown to black globular structures, pycnidia, can be observed in the damaged tissues. They are spherical and irregularly shaped, ostiolate, and contain many hyaline and unicellular conidia, containing two lipid droplets.


An essay on college career objectives does more than focus your mind on the future. If well written, your essay could help you secure college scholarships and admission to your preferred college or graduate school. A career essay describes your goals, reveals your personality and projects a sense of purpose. It shares how a career has evolved into a passion and what steps you have taken to prepare for it. Your essay should connect your career goals with the opportunities offered by an institution or scholarship. It should memorably charm and convince your readers of your potential.
Brainstorm your career aspirations and goals. Jot down your short-term and long-term goals, the people or events that kindled and confirmed your interest in a field and the reasons you want to make it your career. Note personal skills and traits that not only make the career a good fit, but also ensure your success going forward. List other qualities, activities and accomplishments that could help your readers appreciate your interest, sincerity and potential.
Research the institution or organization that will receive your essay. Note what differentiates it from competing organizations, and the distinct programs or resources that it provides to students with your same interests. You can find this information readily on most college and scholarship websites. If you personally know any past graduates or recipients, consult them as well.
Review what you have been asked to address in your essay. Some organizations want to know more than just your career goals or how they can help you achieve them. For example, they may ask for your thoughts on the significance of your chosen career. Create an essay outline that assigns a section to each question to ensure that you address each one, preferably in the order asked,
Compose a strong, memorable introduction that makes your readers want more. Begin with a personal story, humor or an inspiring quote that relates relevantly and flows naturally into your essay’s body. You may write the introduction after you have written everything else to ensure that it frames the rest of your essay properly.
Develop your essay’s body to answer all questions using the information that you gathered in Steps 1 and 2. Organize your thoughts logically. For example, recount when you first contemplated the field, what happened later to confirm it and how you have prepared for your career since. Let your personality show through in your writing and back up all claims of character, performance and passion with facts and evidence. For example, instead of simply saying that you are passionate about writing, describe your blog and various editorial positions you have held in school, at work or in the community.
Conclude your essay confidently and passionately. Summarize the points you made in your essay. Suggest a win-win situation between you and the organization should you gain admission or a scholarship.


Here are some videos that you might like to use to help your child learn the short sound for the letter ‘a’
You can find the Jolly Phonics rhyme for the letter ‘a’ on our main Jolly Phonics page.
1. A Selection of Sesame Street videos based on the letter ‘a’
2. A video containing words that start with the ‘a’ for apple sound
3. Cookie Monsters Letter of the Day ‘Aa’
4. Grover fixes up the letter ‘A’


Theres no doubt humans top the evolutionary food chain. But people are, by no means, the most genetically hefty beings on Earth.
Recent research from a North Carolina site of a global plant-development company revealed the tomato has at least 7,000 more genes than humans. And, decoding that genome could make picture-perfect, grocery-store tomatoes taste as good as deformed, homegrown ones.
Since 2008, researchers at Syngentas biotechnology hub in Research Triangle Park, along with other scientists worldwide, have analyzed the genetic sequence for two tomato varieties Heinz 1706, the tomato used in ketchup production, and its closest wild relative, Solanum pimpinellifolium, found in Peru. These investigations revealed tomatoes boast 31,760 genes, many of which scientists are analyzing to determine how they control the fruits growth.
Tomatoes are a model crop that, in many ways, is well understood, said Bob Dietrich, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Syngenta. Our main reason for conducting this research is so we have enough information to develop the tomatoes we want.
Why the tomato?
Although the genetic structures are different, tomatoes are closely related to potatoes, tobacco plants, peppers, eggplant and nightshade a toxic member of the potato family. According to Rebecca Cade, a Syngenta research scientist, studying the tomato genome can increase the knowledge base around these and many other plants.
The tomato is an excellent archetype for fruiting plants, she said. Theres been lots of research on how it grows, and scientists and breeders will be able to apply the knowledge gained from studying its DNA to other fruiting crops.
Syngentas team has a multifocused goal with this research, looking for genetic answers to the tomatos shelf-life, size and firmness. However, the companys chief concern is helping farmers bring a better-tasting product to market.
Once we have the finished genome sequence, well be able to tell the differences between a beefsteak tomato and a cherry tomato, Dietrich said. With that information, well be able to make a beefsteak with a cherry flavor or vice versa.
Ultimately, Cade said, the goal is to allow breeders to do predictive breeding.
In this scenario, someone would say, I need a tomato with this maturity date, this sugar content, and resistant to this pathogen, she said. By looking at our tomato genomes, you can take various seed lines, cross them, and get this type of desired outcome.
Sequencing the code
According to Dietrich, efforts to decode the tomato genome began in 2009. The work was initially geared toward creating a rough draft of the genetic map that would eventually help breeders create more marketable versions of the fruit. In 2010, Syngenta and its partners teamed up to use different technologies that build upon each others strengths and weaknesses, he said.
Syngentas global collaborators sequenced 70 percent to 80 percent of the tomatos DNA using technology that focused on longer reads segments of DNA long enough to identify when gene components (the bases adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine) begin to repeat. Scientists were able to identify significant differences among cultivated tomato lines with this amount of data.
But the gaps in the genome still left unanswered questions about which genes could control a plethora of tomato characteristics, he said. Using technology from the genetic-analysis company Illumina, Syngenta analyzed the final one-third of tomato genes using a technique that looks at smaller segments of DNA. In this case, Cade said, this short-read sequencing examined DNA strips with up to 800 bases.
DNA sequencing is really like a puzzle it takes a lot of work to make sense of it, she said. If you have short reads, you can have billions of pieces and maybe 1,000 of them look exactly the same. With longer-read technologies, you can have bigger pieces that show repeat and unique sequences. So, you need long reads to complement the short reads to get a full picture.
This long/short sequencing technique is beneficial, Dietrich said, because it opens the door for other tomato varieties to be sequenced more easily. Researchers will now be able to analyze the DNA many other types of tomatoes in far less time and for less money.
While knowing which genes could improve the taste and appearance of tomatoes in the grocery store, understanding the fruits DNA and how to manipulate it could impact the global food supply, said Jim Giovannoni, Ph.D., plant geneticist at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research associated with Cornell University. The majority of Giovannonis work is also focused on decoding what part of the tomato genome is responsible for ripening.
Toward a ripe future
Understanding and potentially controlling the ripening process genetically could increase food security for people in other countries who, at certain times, have a lot of food available but cant eat it due to rot, he said. They dont have the infrastructure and money to store food like we do, so a genetic solution could have a real effect on food security in the developing world. It would also make our First World issue of shipping food around a less expensive process.
Specifically choosing certain traits that alter taste, color, texture, and ripening does present trade-offs, however, he said. For instance, a tomato bred to last longer on the shelves might not taste as good. Or one bred for a more home-grown flavor might not have a uniformly-colored skin.
The reality is that, with this research, we understand more about what genes are responsible for what characteristics, and we can give breeders the tools for selecting certain traits, Giovannoni said. There can still be negative outcomes, no matter how small, but breeders can now take the selection of characteristics in their traditional breeding programs to a different level.


GSRE-art - 11/18/96
"Great Scholars of Renaissance Europe" by Lady Isabelle de Foix.
This article was submitted to me by the author for inclusion in this set
of files, called StefanŐs Florilegium.
These files are available on the Internet at:
Copyright to the contents of this file remains with the author.
While the author will likely give permission for this work to be
reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first
or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file.
Mark S. Harris
AKA: Stefan li Rous
stefan at florilegium.org
GREAT SCHOLARS OF RENAISSANCE EUROPE
by Lady Isabelle de Foix
I. A PAGEANT OF SCHOLARS
In the early fourteenth century, a major change in European thought began to take place. It originated in Italy, which was the most prosperous country in Europe during this period. Prosperity meant plenty of surplus wealth to finance the endeavors of scholars, artists, poets, and other intelligent and creative Italians. The banking houses of the Medici joined with the hereditary aristocracy to patronize these people We call this change in European thought the Renaissance (French, "rebirth"). The Renaissance was an urban phenomenon in Italy, since the aristocracy and the wealthy bankers lived in the cities. Feudalism, a product of the Germanic tribes who overran the western part of the
Roman Empire in the fifth century, did not develop in Italy to the extent it did in lands north of the Alps due to the tenacity of traditions from antiquity. Feudalism was a rural, land-based economic system in which the aristocracy dwelt in manors far from any towns. The Italian aristocracy, by contrast, lived in the cities, which had survived the Germanic invasions. Italy was divided into city-states, each of which had its own government.
The philosophical basis of the Renaissance was a philosophy called humanism There are two definitions of this philosophy. One was civic humanism, which was the outlook of families new to wealth and power, such as the Medici. They glorified the autonomy of their city-states and the individuals of these city-states, and it was this brand of humanism that motivated the Medici to glorify their city-state, Florence, by supporting learning and the arts. Another form of humanism was intellectual humanism, which emphasized the study of the individual as opposed to the dense and otherworldly Scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Scholars of the Renaissance came to be known as "humanists" because they studied and taught on matters pertaining to the importance of individuals, and their studies were known as the "humanities." These scholars operated outside of the universities, which had a narrow focus on training individuals in the professions--theology, medicine, and law.
The instigator of Renaissance scholarship was Francesco Petracco (1304--1374), commonly called Petrarch in English-speaking lands. He was born in Arezzo, the son of an exiled Florentine notary. A few years later the family moved to Avignon, then the home of the papacy. Francesco started his schooling at nearby Carpentras. At an early age, he was exposed to the writings of Cicero. Cicero's writings were commonly used as Latin textbooks during this period. This began Petrarch's lifelong obsession with classical literature. He was sent to the University of Bologna to study law, but he abandoned these studies at the age of twenty. He loved Bologna; he was indifferent to a career in law. He did develop a keen interest in the history of Roman law, and this inspired him to start looking for lost Roman classics. He became a member of a Cardinal's retinue in 1330, and traveled with the cardinal all over Italy. At every stop he had a chance to examine yet another cathedral's library. One day he was examining documents in the cathedral library in Verona and discovered the first volume of Cicero's long-lost correspondence, dating from the first century B.C.E. Petrarch also made a major innovation in the standardization of the style in which script was written on the pages of books. His books had wide margins and spaced text, in contrast to the cramped style of earlier books
Petrarch is often referred to as the "Father or the Renaissance," and rightfully so. Because of his influence on the intellectual life of fourteenth century, Renaissance scholarship was based on the classics, an understanding of the past, the importance of original texts, and character development. Medieval scholars had studied the classics, but they had looked upon them as products of an alien, "pagan," world, different from their Christian environment. The scholars of the Renaissance, on the other hand, felt a sense of community with the authors of these classics. History was important, Petrarch felt, because of the role it played in teaching values and character. It praised the deeds of the virtuous, and condemned the deeds of the wicked. This philosophy of history had been held by great Roman historians like Titus livius, known as Livy in English-speaking lands. Livy had been mainly motivated by ethics. Livy discussed the virtues of the Roman aristocracy, and had nothing to say about the masses. This was a theme that the Renaissance followed as well; education was for the aristocracy, not the masses.. Petrarch's historical methodology was crude; he never understood that all past events are part of history. To Petrarch, history was comprised of several great periods of times past. Nonetheless, he illustrated the value of knowledge of the past, and paved the way for later historians. Petrarch believed that along with history a good education consisted of philosophy and poetry. Petrarch proclaimed himself a follower of the Platonic traditional in philosophy, although his own knowledge of Platonism was limited. After all, Plato was Greek, and Petrarch thought of the classical revival as a revival of Latin literature. The study of the Greek classics would have to wait.
The Florentine republic voted to establish a university in 1321, the Studio Florentino, but had great difficulty attracting students due to competition from established schools. In 1387 a prominent Florentine statesman, Coluccio Salutari, (1331--1406) issued standards for the school in an attempt to make it more attractive to students. In 1396 he persuaded a distinguished Byzantine scholar, Manuel Chrysoloras, to accept a position at the school as a professor of Greek. He attracted many students, and helped make the Studio Florentino one of the greatest institutions of higher learning in Italy. Chrysoloras left Florence in 1400; it is believed that he moved to Pavia to teach at its university. Thus the seeds of Greek scholarship in Renaissance Italy were sown; many picked the harvest.
Character development was very important to the upper classes in Italy during this period. For a young man of high birth, the proper social values and means of expression were the important things in life. This was in the sphere of civic humanism. He needed the social skills and passionate devotion to his city-state This increased the importance of ethics. Ethics was the most important branch of philosophy in Renaissance education. They were the proper preparation for a career in statesmanship. Not surprisingly, many of the upper classes were also patrons of humanist scholars. One such was Cosimo de Medici. Born in Florence in 1389, Cosimo acquired a thoroughly humanistic education. In 1428 he inherited the largest fortune in Florence. In his own way, Cosimo was a genius. He was a shrewd, farseeing politician, and an intellectual in his own right. He acquired many classical texts, and hired scribes to copy the books he was unable to purchase. He then commissioned an architect to design a building to house the books. This was finished in 1444 and became Europe's first public library. It was in this library that he met the son of his personal physician, Marsilio Ficino. Marsilio was eagerly seeking knowledge of Greek. Cosimo recognized the boy's potential and financed his studies in Greek and medicine. Ficino lived up to Cosimo's expectations. He spent twenty years translating Plato's works from Greek to Latin. This translation of Plato, first printed in 1484, was used in European educational institutions until the eighteenth century.
At the Medici villa at Carregi, people interested in Plato gathered to form the Platonic Academy of Florence. Academies in the Renaissance were simply groups of people sharing a common interest; they had no corporate structure. The members simply met on November 7 of each year because it was believed that November 7 was Plato's birthday. Not all members of the Academy were scholars; in fact, the majority were painters and poets. They carefully preserved Greek manuscripts and made Florence a center of learning.
Ficino tried to synthesize Christianity and Platonism, as had Augustine. The main difference between Ficino's approach and Augustine's approach to this synthesis was that while Augustine had only accepted teachings of Plato that did not conflict with Christian doctrine, Ficino rejected any doctrines of Christianity that conflicted with Platonism. He was deeply impressed with the many virtuous non-Christians he had read about in history books, and came to the conclusion that Plato, too, was divinely inspired. The Academy used an old philosophical tool, that of taking quotes from classical sources and proving that they anticipated Christian teachings. For example, they traced the doctrine of the Trinity back to Plotinus, a Platonist of the second century C.E, Zoroastrianism, the state religion of ancient Persia, and the book of Jewish mysticism, the Cabala.
Plato had taught that the universe is perfectly ordered by a perfect being, God. Ficino argued that the mind is constantly in motion, seeking its place in the order of the universe By universe Ficino meant infinity. Furthermore, the mind is constantly seeking knowledge of all truths. It is moving toward the light of God; when it reaches its destination, the soul breaks free of the bonds of the flesh which imprisoned it. At this point the soul has gained immortality. This philosophy became quite popular in learned circles in Italy, who appreciated the notion of security they found in it. The Academy's most famous member, Pico della Mirandola, (1463--1494) was in large part responsible for the spread of Ficino's interpretation of Platonism.
Books were prohibitively expensive in the days before the introduction of the printing press into Europe. This was because book--making was very labor-intensive. It took a scribe a year to transcribe a single volume of the Bible Someone purchased one of these Bibles for $10,000 in modern currency. By the early fourteenth century, block-printing had spread to Europe from China, Paper gradually took the place of parchment in the manufacturing of books. Toward the middle of the fifteenth century, movable type began to be used in Europe. The first book to be printed by movable type in Italy appeared in 1470.This accomplishment was overshadowed by the greatest publisher in Renaissance Italy, Aldus Manutius (1450--1515). Aldus received education in both Latin and Greek, and he met several members of the Florentine Academy. For awhile he lectured at Ferrarra on the classics. He moved to Venice to undertake the venture that would make him famous. He opened a printing and publishing firm with the ambition of publishing every Greek and Latin classic ever written, and make them available to the public at low prices. It was a risky undertaking as many of the classical manuscripts were in poor condition. The scholars who worked with Manutius had to become textual critics, comparing the manuscripts with each other to get the most possible accuracy. He gathered Greek scholars in his home, where they edited Greek manuscripts for publication; he also invented a Greek font for this purpose. He published every Greek and Latin classical text that he could obtain texts of. Manutius also invented the pocket-sized book, the vade mecum.(Latin, "take me with you"). Up until this time, books had been quite large and were often read on tables and lecterns. The pocket-book made it possible for people to take their books with them on their travels. This helped spread study of the classics into lands as far away as Poland and Sweden. Manutius' focus on his work was so intense that he neglected everything else in his life and died impoverished. However, he was immensely successful in his campaign to make the classics more accessible, and he thoroughly enjoyed his life in the service of the educational ideas of the Renaissance.
Italian humanism began to spread north of the Alps during the fifteenth century. One scholar who attempted to introduce humanism into Germany was Peter Luder (c. 1415--c.1474). Luder was educated in Padua and Rome, and returned to Germany to teach the classics at Heidelberg. He was disappointed that he was not able to attract a following and he returned to Italy. A scholar who was much more successful in his attempt to introduce humanism into Germany was Rudolph Agricola (c.1442--c. 1485). After ten years of studying Greek in Italy, he introduced the study of Greek and the Greek classics into Germany. But by far Germany's greatest humanist was Johannes Reuchlin.(1455--1522) He started his schooling in Germany, and then studied at Paris, Orleans, and Basle. He mastered Greek, and became a professor of Greek at the newly-founded University of Tubington. He journeyed to Italy as a member of the retinue of the Count of Wurttemberg, who was his patron. He met Pico della Mirandola while in Italy and became an enthusiastic humanist. Reuchlin developed an intense interest in the original texts of the classics and of the Bible. He learned Hebrew for the purposes of examining the original Hebrew text of the Hebrew Scriptures. Reuchlin's career illustrates the difference between Italian humanism and the humanism of northern Europe. The northern humanists took Christianity much more seriously than the Italian ones did; we have seen Ficino forcing Christianity to accommodate Platonism. The northern humanists learned Hebrew to support biblical accuracy for the Church; the Italian humanists learned Hebrew for secular reasons Reuchlin wrote a Hebrew grammar book which was published by Aldus Manutius.
Another noteworthy German humanist was Conrad Celtes (1459--1508). Celtes spent much of his life on the road, stopping at various libraries to look for lost classical manuscripts. He made his way to Italy, where he met members of the Florentine Platonic Academy; he also met Aldus Manutius. He was horrified at Germany's reputation in Italy. Germans had a negative stereotype in Italy; they were widely regarded as drunken, ignorant, lazy boors. In 1492 he made an impassioned speech at the University of Ingolstadt, urging his fellow Germans to start an intellectual revolution with humanism as its basis:
...do away with that old disrepute of the Germans in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew writers who ascribe to us drunkenness, cruelty, savagery and every other vice bordering on bestiality and excess
Celtes pointed out that this stereotype was 1500 years old; it dated from books that had been written about Germanic tribes by Greek and Roman authors, especially Tacitus. The Germans had accomplished much since, he pointed out. To show the rest of Europe that they were not all drunken barbarians, Celtes called for both educational reform and the creation of a national literature. He founded a group modeled on the Italian academies, the Danubian Sodality (from the Latin "sodalis", comrade) to promote humanistic studies, mostly Latin versification. Celtes promoted patriotic literature by forming a concept of a massive historical and geographical volume about his country, which he planned to call "Germanis illustrata." This dream was never realized, but it gave German humanists had a new interest, that of national topography. This consisted of a complete description of a country: its physical features, landscape, and relationships with other countries.
II. PORTRAIT OF A HUMANIST: ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM
Desiderius Erasmus (c.1466--1536) was born in Rotterdam, the son of unwed parents, a priest and the daughter of a local physician. He started his schooling at Gouda at the age of four Five years later he was sent to a school at Deventer, which was run by the Brethren of the Common Life, a loosely-knit group of devout people who practiced what was called the "devotio modern." This was an increased emphasis on individual devotion and Biblical study and a lack of real interest in sacraments and monasticism. The "devotio moderna" had a lasting influence on Erasmus. So did the patron saint of the Brethren, St. Jerome, author of the Vulgate. In 1484 Deventer was ravaged by the plague, which claimed both of his parents, as well as twenty of Erasmus' schoolmates. He went to Steyn, where he entered an Augustinian monastery, where he took vows in 1487. He found life in the monastery stifling and uncongenial. He had inherited some books from his father, Latin classics and works by earlier humanists. His fellow monks were hostile to humanism. Nevertheless Erasmus wrote his first works in this monastery; they showed much of the brilliantly chatty, idiomatic Latin that he was to become famous for. In 1492 he was ordained a priest, and obtained permission to leave the monastery to enter the service of Henrick van Bergen as his Latin secretary. Van Bergen, an aristocratic bishop from Flanders, aspired to become a cardinal. In anticipation of his elevation to the cardinalate, Van Bergen had plans to go to Italy, which Erasmus wished to visit. The monastic vows he had taken were still in force; he was expected to return to the monastery after his service. Van Bergen never become a cardinal; this ruined any possibility of Erasmus accompanying him to Italy. At this point Erasmus, with the permission of his Order, went to Paris to study theology at the Sorbonne, the University pf Paris' prestigious theology school.
In the late fifteenth century the University of Paris was rife with various kinds of academic disputes and student rowdiness, which often resulted in ugly confrontations between the students and the citizens of Paris. The universities' narrow focus on the teaching of professions--theology, law, and medicine--excluded humanism. The University stubbornly held onto Scholastic teaching methods and philosophy, which had seen their heyday in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Scholastics imparted all of their knowledge in the framework of a system of logic called dialectic, which had been originated by Aristotle. Following this system of logic, first a philosophical concept is stated. Then an argument against this very concept is stated. Ultimately, a compromise is reached between these two conflicting viewpoints. This rigid system made no room for the classical literature the scholars of the Renaissance promoted; they thought of it as dated cobweb--spinning. Erasmus gave up his dream of becoming a member of the theology faculty at Paris as soon as he realized how antagonistic the University was toward humanism. His destiny was intertwined with the destiny of northern European humanism, which can be rightfully called "Christian humanism." The northern European humanists took Petrarch's notion of finding and examining original manuscripts and applied this to a quest for Christian truth in the original texts of their religion's scriptures. It was precisely this brand of humanism that became the heart and soul of Erasmus' plan for educational reform in Europe.
. At the University of Paris, Erasmus first lodged in a college. Colleges were basically hospices for poor scholars, and the college Erasmus lived in was called La College de Montaigu. Life in these colleges was strictly regimented, and the College de Montaigu was under the supervision of an ascetic cleric, Jan Standock, who expected the residents of the college to adopt to his lifestyle of extreme abstinence and austerity. He enforced the rules by chastising any student for minute infraction of these rules The rooms were dirty, and the food was bad. Even worse, Standock imposed a Scholastic orthodoxy among the students. After only six months at the College, Erasmus took ill and went back to the Netherlands. He returned in 1496 to pursue his literary endeavors, attempting to support himself by teaching young aristocrats. No one in this period could make a living as an author. Only well-known authors were paid for their work, and there were no copyright laws. The author lucky enough to get his works published usually received several copies of his book and nothing more. Scholars were obliged to either find rich patrons or to get a benefice. Most, if not all, of Erasmus' students in Paris were also foreigners One of Erasmus' students in Paris was a young English aristocrat, William Blount, fourth Baron Mountjoy. In 1499 Mountjoy invited him to visit England. In England, Erasmus met two other men who would greatly influence his life and work. One of these was Sir Thomas More, who would become his best friend. The other was John Colet, a very learned theologian. Colet and Erasmus carried on many a friendly debate that facilitated Erasmus' growth as a scholar. Colet wished Erasmus to lecture on the Bible at Oxford; Erasmus did not think he could do this, so he refused. Colet was content to lecture on the Bible without studying it in its original Greek and Hebrew texts; Erasmus was not. His goal in life at this point had become to edit Jerome's Vulgate, using the original Hebrew and Greek texts Like other humanists, he wanted to go to the textural core of the documents he was studying. He developed a feeling of scholarly and personal kinsmanship with Jerome. Both were adept at ancient languages; both dedicated themselves to work on the Bible; and neither one of them could stand criticism, no matter how much they themselves criticized others.
Erasmus returned to France in the summer of 1500. His English friends had given him twenty pounds, which was about $2,000 in modern currency This was to give him some financial security amidst the uncertainty of life as a scholar. Unfortunately, a fourteenth-century statute forbade anyone to take either silver or gold out of England. More and Mountjoy had told him that he could get around this law by exchanging English money for foreign currency; they had been mistaken. The customs officials at Dover confiscated nearly all of the money, leaving Erasmus nearly penniless.
Erasmus was devastated and embittered by this trauma. He was left to suffer the lot of many a scholar, destitution. ." The wound received in England begins to smart only now that it has become inveterate, and that the more as I cannot have my revenge in any way", he wrote to his old schoolmaster and friend, James Batt. He had to be careful about the way he controlled his emotions following the disaster; he could not afford to alienate any of his patrons in England. Ironically, this incident was the indirect cause of Erasmus' first major work. He wished to show the English people that he had no hard feelings toward them over the incident, since news of the disaster had spread around the country. He therefore resolved to write a book and dedicate it to Mountjoy.
The book, the Adagiorum Collectanea, was a collection of about 800 quotes from classical authors, which Erasmus rewrote for stylistic purposes Aside from the dedication to Mountjoy, the book was meant as a tool for the teaching of Latin. Erasmus' greatness was in his incomparable mastery of the Latin language and extraordinary knowledge of the classics, the Church Fathers, and the Bible. No other humanist wrote in Latin in such a natural, spontaneous style; it was almost as if Latin was his first, rather than his second, language. Had he not been such a brilliant Latinist, he would have never become a successful writer. No other humanist reached as many people as did Erasmus. The book became very popular and made Erasmus famous as a scholar and educator. Needless to say, he benefited enormously by the printing press; in fact, he was the first European author to write strictly for the printing press. He later expanded the book to over three thousand entries, and this was published by Aldus Manutius in 1508.. Many of the expressions in modern speech are derived from this book. They include
A necessary evil, to leave no stone unturned, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, putting the cart before the horse, to have one foot in the grave, to call a spade a spade, to break the ice, to look a gift horse in the mouth, like father, like son...
In 1504 Erasmus left Paris, dodging an outbreak of the plague in the city. He went to Louvain, in what is now Belgium, where there was a prestigious university. One day in the summer in 1504, he discovered a manuscript that had been written by an Italian scholar, Lorenzo Valla (1406--1457). This work, "Adnotationes ad novum testamentum" ("Notes of the New Testament") had pointed out many linguistic errors in the text of the Vulgate and recommended that scholars submit the Vulgate to rigorous philological examination. He went to Switzerland to get Valla's work published, and then, in 1505, he returned to England to write his own copy of the New Testament in Greek from documents he was able to borrow. While there he and Colet made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Their guide was offended when Colet commented that some of the money used to maintain the shrine could be better used in helping the poor in Canterbury. The guide then showed the two humanists some milk which had allegedly come from the Virgin Mary's breasts, as well as bones which had been Becket's. These were to be kissed reverently. Colet refused to kiss an ancient shoe that had belonged to Becket. The guide then produced a cloth that Becket had supposedly used as a handkerchief. The humanists winced and promptly left.
In London Erasmus met with good fortune. Henry VII's Italian physician was sending his sons to study in northern Italian universities, and he offered Erasmus the job of being their chaperone. Erasmus grabbed the opportunity, and he and his charges set off for Bologna. While in Bologna Erasmus saw Pope Julius II enter the city in an ornate chariot after conquering it, a revival of an ancien Roman ceremony in which the conquering general rode through the streets followed by his captives. Erasmus was horrified. Was this Pope Julius, he asked, or Julius Caesar? He complained that the pope's continued bellicose policies were damaging Italian scholarship, and that the taxes imposed on the conquered cities were particularly burdensome to the poor. In Rome he was offered a Curial appointment but turned it down for fear that it would impede his freedom. He was also disappointed in the state of the Roman Curia because it had taken on the appearance of "pagan" Rome rather than the capital of the Roman Catholic Church, which was what he had expected to see. The cardinals lived in palaces reminescent of those of the Roman magnates of antiquity , not like the Apostles. In 1508 he went to Venice to work with Aldus Manutius. Then in 1509 he received two letters from England. One was from Mountjoy, who was excited by the accession of Henry VIII. England's new King had received a thoroughly humanist education, and he himself wrote to Erasmus inviting him to England. Erasmus envisioned this humanist ruler as a patron, so he accepted the King's invitation. While he traveled, he reflected upon his experiences of contact with other human beings. He had seen strife, greed, cruelty, hypocrisy, and a myriad of other human failings. These reflections led to the spark of inspiration to write his best-known book, the deceptively light-hearted "Praise of Folly"
Arriving in England, he stayed with More. He later claimed that he had only needed seven days to write "Praise of Folly". Its Greek name, "Morias enkomion", was a pun on More's name; it meant both "Praise of Folly" and "Praise of More"." In his introduction, or "prefatory letter, which was directly addressed to More, Erasmus wrote "...it was your own family name of More, which is as near to the Greek word for folly, moria, as you are far from it" . The book was a paradox; while it was presented as a light-hearted satire, it was, in fact, both serious social commentary and an advocacy of Erasmus' educational ideas, which were a real threat to the prevalent Scholasticism taught by schoolmasters. More specifically, "Praise of Folly" exhibited Erasmus' desire to base Christianity on the Bible, which, of course, he believed was divine revelation, rather than human authorities like popes and councils. In the allegorical tradition of the Middle Ages, folly was represented as a goddess, Stultitia.. To Erasmus, the word "morias" not only meant folly and stupidity, but also emotion and impulse as opposed to reason and deliberation. To illustrate this, Stultitia introduces her attendants, Flattery, Forgetfulness, Madness, Sensuality, Idleness, Pleasure, Revelry, and Sound Sleep. We owe our lives to her, Stultitia tells us, owes its existence to her; what man using his rational thinking faculty would enter upon the constraints of the married life? What woman would take a husband if she thought about the pain and risks of childbirth? They were motivated by her attendant, Madness. Isn't childhood, the most ignorant part of our lives, also the happiest? No relationship is possible without folly. And what about self-respect? "Remove me," says Stultitia, "and no one could put up with his neighbor, indeed, he'd stink in his own nostrils and find everything about himself loathsome and disgusting". The narrative gets more intense when Erasmus considers the schoolmaster, whom he considers the biggest fools of all. He refers to their schools as "torture chambers" They pride themselves on knowledge of useless nonsense. Stultitia claims that the man whose philosophy of education was very popular in the Middle Ages, the Roman educator Quintilian, wrote "a chapter on laughter that is longer than the Iliad" Likewise he attacks corruption in the Church. With Stultitia's help, a man can stop worrying about his "perjury, lust, drunkenness, quarrels, killings, frauds, perfidy, and treachery" by giving up a coin for an indulgence or a particular favor from a saint. Deceit gives this fool peace of mind. The cardinals, supposedly the successors of the apostles, live and act like kings. They think their red hats and purple cloaks entitle them to this. They do not use their reason and therefore don't comprehend that they bear very little resemblance to Jesus' apostles, who were poor and never wore extravagant purple robes. The book ends with an affirmation of Platonism which was derived from that of Marsilio Ficino, . Like Ficino, Erasmus believed that souls were always moving toward God. Like Ficino's greatest student, Pico della Mirandola, he believed that man had moral self-determination. Pico had written
Confined within no bounds, you shall fix the limits of your own nature according to the free choice in whose power I have placed you. We have made you neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom and honor you should be your own sculptor and maker, to fashion your form as you choose. You can fall away into the lower natures which are the animals. You can be reborn by the decision of your soul into the higher natures which are divine.
The use of "pagan" philosophers in Christian theology sparked a dispute over the possibility of salvation of non-Christians. The dispute had started with the Scholastics, who realized many of the pre-Christian philosophers had possessed very moral characters, but denied that they could be saved because of their lack of "grace" because grace was based on faith. To them, morality had to take the back seat in a Christian life; faith was too important for it to be otherwise. On the other hand, the northern Europen humanists seriously pondered the possibility of the salvation of the wise, moral writers of the Greek and Roman classics.. Erasmus himself admitted that he could not resist praying to "Saint Socrates" after reading a letter Ficino had written on the "sanctity" of Socrates. . This view of Erasmus' was in large part due to his emphasis on the importance of morality. After reading a work of Cicero's in 1523, he claimed that reading Cicero had improved his own moral character. He went so far as to charge that many of the Church fathers had weaker moral characters than did Cicero.
In 1514 Erasmus went again to Basel, in Switzerland, with his manuscript of his new translation of the New Testament. The Greek text of the Gospels he used was a poor translation which had been done by a fourteenth-century scholar unknown to history. The rest of the texts also dated from the fourteenth century, with the exception of the Apocalypse, which dated from the eighth century C.E. Erasmus mistakenly believed that this text was apostolic. Furthermore, Erasmus' knowledge of Greek was incomplete. Alongside the Greek text in Erasmus' edition of the Bible there was a Latin translation as well as commentary. This translation was not the improvement on the Vulgate that Erasmus had hoped for, but he did open the door to later scholars who did textual analysis of the Vulgate.
By 1516 Erasmus was regarded as the greatest scholar in Europe. He was hailed as the "ornament of Europe." In 1516 Uldrich Zwingli, the future Reformer of Switzerland, after visiting Erasmus in 1515, called him the "greatest philosopher and theologian". Another scholar wrote that " Praise of Folly' is embraced as the highest wisdom". When rumor spread that one of his works was about to be banned by the Sorbonne, a Parisian printer quickly ran off 24,000 copies that sold like hotcakes. In that year the university at Louvain made him a member of their faculty. Erasmus had high hopes for the future of his plan for educational and Church reform.
Erasmus believed that corruption in the Church could be ended with his program of educational reform. First and foremost, harmony in the Church was necessary. As a neo-Platonist, Erasmus viewed the universe as a well-ordered, harmonious entity; nothing must be allowed to disturb this order. Without concord, he believed, the Holy Spirit could not communicate with the Church. The function of theology was that of a tool that helped people develop morally. The study of the classics enables scholars to teach using that familiar tool of medieval writers, allegory, which was part of the study of grammar in the late Middle Ages. Wisdom and knowledge, Erasmus believed, would improve from generation to generation through increasing knowledge of the original texts of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. To obtain this knowledge and wisdom, a knowledge of Greek, the language of the New Testament, was necessary. Needless to say, this reform program was conceived to evolve slowly over time. Just when he believed he was planting the seeds of this reform program, a development of monumental proportions buried it along with the rest of the Renaissance. This development was the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation is outside of the scope of this article, but its relationship to the Renaissance calls for an explanation. It ended the Renaissance because the Reformers stopped the exaltation of mankind and returned to the early medieval emphasis on man's sinfulness. Where the humanists had emphasized man's ability to choose between right and wrong actions, the Reformers held that man had no control over his destiny. The Reformers scorned reason as much as the humanists had respected it. Although many humanists supported the Reformation in its embryonic phase because they too were disgusted with corruption in the Church, many of them, including Erasmus, also became disgusted with the confrontationist, dogmatic nature of the Reformation. In truth, Erasmus did not understand the social, religious, or political nature of sixteenth-century Europe; he was the archetypical "ivory-tower academic". Martin Luther, a miner's son from the eastern German territories, did understand the society in which he lived. He did only what he needed to do to take on the most powerful institution in Europe and win his campaign for Church reform. This required a will of steel, the courage of a warrior, and convictions set in stone, and Luther had these character traits. The sixteenth century was to belong to the Reformers and their Catholic opponents, the Counter-Reformers.
Erasmus was blamed by many Catholics as the instigator of the dispute, because he had criticized corruption in the Church so relentlessly. In 1521 he was dismissed from his post at Louvain as an alleged heretic. Other condemnations came from Paris, Milan, and Spain. Meanwhile he infuriated the Reformers for refusing to join them. He continued to hold to his "middle ground" of gradual Church reform, which irritated both Catholic authorities and the Reformers. Officially, he never left the Catholic Church, in part because of his neo-Platonic conviction that discord in the Church harmed its relationship to God, and because he never ceased to hold the medieval view of the Church as one corporate structure requiring unity to exist. This cost him the respect he had had from European scholars, most of whom took sides in the dispute. Nevertheless, he never strayed from his "middle way" of advocating gradual rather than revolutionary reform in the Church. His motto was "Cado nulli"--"I yield to no one" He continued to blast corruption in the Church as well as Luther's intense and often bellicose methods of reform until his death in 1536.
Erasmus' educational ideas shaped education for four hundred years The concept of being able to use knowledge and wisdom as a moral force and the necessity of much study to acquire this knowledge was part of his legacy. However, his most important educational accomplishment was to elevate academic standards to a new level. He was the greatest of the humanists.
Erasmus, "Praise of Folly", translation, Betty Radice, 1971, Penguin Books
Limited, reprinted with introduction by A.H.T. Levi, 1993, Penguin Books
Cantor, Norman, Civilation of the Middle Ages, HarperCollins, 1993.
Bowen, James, A History of Western Education, volume II, St. Martin's Press,
Chadwick, Owen, The Reformation, Penguin Books, 1964.
McConica, James, (chapter on Erasmus) Renaissance Thinkers, Oxford University
Levi, A. H. T. Levi, introduction to "Praise of Folly", Penguin Books Limited,
Huizanga, Johan, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, translated from the Dutch
by F. Hopman, First Harper Torchbook edition, 1957; translation first published
under the title "Erasmus of Rotterdam" by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924
Le Goff, Jaques, Medieval Civilization 400--1500, translated by Julia Barrow,
Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1988
Durant, Will, Age of Faith, Simon & Schuster, 1950
Durant, Will, The Reformation, Simon & Schuster, 1957
Encyclopedia Brittanica, Fifteenth Edition, 1990
Various Authors, The Age of Discovery, Time-Frame, Time-life Books
Various Authors, The Renaissance: Maker of Modern Man, National Geographic
Copyright 1996, Patricia M. Hefner. Permission is given to use these articles in any educational publication as long as you credit me for the authorship of the article and send me a copy of the publication.
If this article is reprinted in a publication, I would appreciate a notice in
the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also
appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being
reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.


About 1760 most men begin wearing breeches, a tight garment worn from the waist to the knee with stockings covering the rest of the leg, “Britches” was an informal word for breeches.
Trousers were worn by some men. Trousers were looser than the tight pantaloon worn by the fashionable Hessians who came to England and America at this time. Trousers were favored for daytime wear while pantaloons were more evening attire.
Sailors had been wearing the looser fit work trousers since the 1580s since they were practical for barefoot ship work. These pant-like garments were strictly for the lower class males however.
The French revolution of 1789 was also a revolt against breeches as being too upper class. The country peasant trouser look was in. Breeches became formal wear.
Likewise, by about 1800 the three cornered cocked hat became formal court wear, while top hats or other round hats came into fashion for men.
Gentlemen’s shirts from 1650 through 1850 were generally always white and with a lace or other fancy cravat in the front.
A coat was the uppermost layer of the 18th century man’s suit, worn over waistcoat and breeches. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries a coat was what we would recognize as today as being called a “frock coat”, a relatively straight loose garment, with a defined color, and with the slight fullness in the knee-length skirts falling into folds over the backside of the hips.
The frock coat evolved form the earlier gentlemen’s coat, large and weighty, set into regular pleats.This new fashioned coat, with narrow skirts set in pleats and including a collar, was termed a Frock. By 1750, both the coat and the frock were worn, coats being for fashionable full dress, frocks for fashionable undress. By 1770 the frock had entered into fashionable full dress, and was by many simply referred to as a “coat” and the distinctions in purpose were lost. None but the most conservative older man would be seen in a full-skirted coat. In 1790 the “frock coat” dominated fashionable dress.
Men’s waistcoats and coats were brightly colored until about after the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin wore dark colors, grey, black, and brown, to show his industry and frugality, and that look spread as industrial production produced the gentleman of an age of industry.
The 18th century man was almost never seen without his waistcoat. Not to have it on was considered “undressed.” The waistcoat, or vest, of the 1770s was fashionably worn to the upper part of the thigh, opening in a “V” beneath the stomach. Waistcoats were made in all qualities of silk, cotton, wool, and linens. It could be plain or it could be printed, brocaded, quilted, silver or gold laced, and was generally the most elaborate article of men’s dress. When worn for utilitarian purposes it could have sleeves, be called a jacket, and worn outermost instead of a longer skirted fashionable coat.
In the 18th century there were many sorts of folded or cocked hats – cocked on one, two, or three sides. It was the hat with three sides cocked that dominated fashion and was seen in innumerable variations of adornment and proportion. While beaver felt was the preferred material others, including wool and camel’s down, were available.
See www.history.org/history/clothing/men/mglossary.cfm for a best short description of a colonial man’s clothing.


The Business 2.0
The Business 2.0 Upper Intermediate Student's Book + eWorkbook
- English Type:
- British English
- Upper Intermediate
The Student's Book contains 48 modules in eight units. Each unit deals with a key sector of activity in the business world. There are six different types of module:
About Business: These modules contain information and language for the topic area of each unit.
Vocabulary: These modules build on the important words and phrases associated with the topic and provide thorough practice.
Grammar: These modules help students practise the grammar in a communicative and meaningful way, in business situations relating to the unit topic.
Speaking: These modules develop understanding and speaking skills in typical business situations. In these modules, students build up a checklist of useful expressions to use in the speaking activities.
Writing: These modules provide practice for the most important types of document student will need to write at work. They analyse a model text, focus on key language and use both as a basis for doing a writing output activity.
Case Study: The case studies provide an opportunity to apply all the language, skills and ideas students have worked on in the unit. They present authentic problem-solving situations similar to those students will meet in business.
The Business eWorkbook provides everything you would find in a printed workbook, as well as extra multimedia resources. It is mainly intended for self-study or home study and contains material to support and enhance the activities in the Student's Book. There are activities to consolidate the language presented in the Student's Book. Students can practise grammar, vocabulary, listening, pronunciation, reading and writing. The Print and work area offers a pen-and-paper version of the activities in the Language practice section.
The video section contains a video clip and worksheet to accompany each unit in the Student's Book. The video clips are episodes of a mini-drama that illustrate the communication and people skills in each unit, along with key unit language. The exercises allow students to practise the functional language in the video. Students can test themselves at any point in the course using the eWorkbook, by setting either the time or the number of questions. All scores from the language practice and the tests feed directly into the markbook. This markbook can be exported as a pdf.
For more information on the eworkbook and a digital walkthrough please visit the dedicated resource site at www.macmillanenglish.com/TheBusiness2.0


Pattern Area measurement: Synthetic
RSM process for material consumption calculation: For calculating pattern area we have to arrange the patterns in a sequence to get better interlocking. The objective is to get a parallelogram with the patterns including interlocking waste.
Patterns can be arranged in two ways to make the parallelogram. They are.
- 00 method
The degree i.e. 0o or 180o tells, whether the patterns while making parallelogram are placed in the same direction as the first one i.e. at 0o or rotated by 180o. The assessor must make a judgment as to which is the most economical interlock.
a) Draw a straight line on the pattern.
b) Mark one or two location points for references on the circumference of the pattern
c) Always use the same side when tracing i.e. the pattern should not be turned over.
Pattern Scaling For 00 Method.
Steps are as follows:
1. Keep the pattern to be traced on the graph paper in such a way that the line on the pattern is aligned with the line on the paper
2. Trace the pattern and mark the location points.
3. The 2nd tracing is drawn in the same way as first pattern in the same direction (i.e. without rotating). Second pattern should touch the first pattern at least at two possible points.
4. To trace the 3rd pattern, the pattern is rotated by 180 and it must touch 1st & 2nd patterns at least at one point, in either direction, aligning the centerline. The location points and number is marked.
5. The 4th tracing will be same as no.3 and it must touch 1 & 3 or 2 & 3 at least at two points and mark the location points.
6. The 5th pattern is again rotated by 180 i.e. in the same direction as no.1. It should touch 3 & 4 at least two points.
7. The 6th tracing must face the same direction as No.5 and touch 4 & 5 or 3 & 5 at least at two points.
The sequence is repeated until a nest of interlocking patterns is produced that has four patterns facing in the same way. A parallelogram is drawn with similar points on the four patterns. The area of the parallelogram will give the area of the pattern area with unavoidable interlocking waste. This is the smallest area from which the pattern can be cut. Each pattern item in the shoe set is measured in this way.
1. Up to 2nd step will be same as 0o
2. The pattern is then rotated through exactly 180oand interlocked with the first pattern. Mark the location points on the tracing and mark the trace as no.2.
3.It is again rotated through 180oand a third pattern is drawn so that it touches both 1 & 2 at least at two points in either direction.
4.Interlock the fourth tracing. This should be interlocked with either 1 & 3 or 2 & 3, but should touch any of them at least at two points. Trace round and mark the location point and number this trace as no.4
5.The fifth trace must face in the same direction as no.1 and should touch 2 & 4 at least at one point each. It must face the two tracing in opposite direction. Mark the location point and no. as 5.
6. The sixth trace faces the same way no.5 and should touch 2 & 5 or 4 & 5,location point is marked and it is numbered as 6. Thus we have ended up with 4 tracings in the same way and two in the opposite direction.
A parallelogram is drawn using the points on four patterns as corners of the parallelogram.
Pattern Scaling For Symmetrical Synthetic & Textiles.
1. Draw a centerline on the pattern. This will be the reference line and the two end points are as location points.
2. Lay the pattern to be traced down on the graph paper in such a way that the line on the pattern is aligned with the line on the paper.
3. Trace round the pattern and mark as no.1. Location points are also marked.
4. Rotate the pattern by 1800 and placed with 2 mm gap with the 1st patter.
5. Again the pattern is rotated by 180o and following the same rule 3rd pattern is traced and location points are marked.
Then parallelogram is made with the 1st and 3rd patterns considering the location points of these patterns as four corners of the parallelogram. The area of the parallelogram is calculated which gives “ scale pattern area” of that particular pattern.


Traditional methods no longer workMany of the most common methods of working used today were developed in a time when the technology was unable to update information directly at the time of the transaction. The models are often based on forecasts and on theories which are exact in themselves, but whose results are wrong. The reason is that they require great quantities of data that are hard to gather and have to be estimated, and that calculations often have to be carried out for entire batches. One example is the Wilson formula.
Even though both the world and the technology have changed, the old ways of thinking have been cemented. To achieve greater flexibility and efficiency in handling fast material flows, you need dynamic real time systems.
Fast change requires flexible systemsIn modern corporate culture "constant improvement" has become a leading concept, and the technology has to keep up. Therefore the systems need to be flexible and adaptive, i.e. they need to be able to adapt ti changes in the flow.
The limits of this flexibility are set at an early stage, by your choice of system and provider/supplier.
Real time makes daily tasks easierA system that works in real time means that you can trust the figures to be correct and to show the situation as it is at this moment. Thanks to this, the system can be used for hands-on, everyday tasks such as guidance in moving resources between work areas to even out the work load and make sure the work gets done in time.
Search at www.masystem.com


Flashcards in L14. Problems with the Innate Response in Health and Disease Deck (20):
What happens upon injection of Interleukin 1?
Evoke the cardinal signs of acute inflammation
What does the term interleukin mean? What do the interleukins do?
It is a protein produced by leucocytes
It mediates cross talk between different types of leucocytes
What are some of the responses to IL-1?
Pyrogenic (induces fever)
Neutrophilia (increased neutrophil production and activation)
Fibroblast proliferation and increased collagen production
Activation of T cells and B cells
What is the inactive pre-cursor form of IL-1?
IL-1b - a large portion: extension of the N terminus
How is inactive IL-1b activated into IL-1?
By the action of an enzyme called Interleukin-1 converting enzyme (ICE) otherwise known as caspase 1.
It cleaves the precursor
What is the NOD-like receptor family?
A group of molecules that are closely associated with the activation of caspase 1 (ICE)
What is Familial cold Urticaria?
A disease where people suffer the acute inflammatory response after exposure to the cold.
It was caused by a single mutation in Cryopyrin, which was found to be a NOD-like receptor. This mutation led to the unregulated and over activation of the caspase 1 leading to over activation of IL-1 and hence increased inflammatory activation.
Describe the activation of caspase 1
It is a very complex pathway.
Activation of a NOD-like receptor leads to a series of complex protein activations and interactions. These proteins then AGGREGATE into a large protein complex.
This complex is then able to autocatylase and activate caspase 1
What is the large protein complex aggregate that activates caspase 1 called?
The inflammasome (because it activates inflammation)
What is gout?
Consumption of purine rich food produces proteins normally excreted by the kidneys.
However over consumption or disturbed excretion leads to accumulation of proteins which precipitate in the joints.
These crystals cause destruction and heavy inflammation.
They bind to NOD3 receptors leading to the cascade and inflammasome production and caspase 1 activation.
What is Anakinra and how does it work?
It is an IL-1 receptor antagonist
It is successful in preventing gout attack
What is an absolute contraindications to using Anakinra? Why is this so?
Neutropenia: because lack of neutrophils and lack of IL-1 leads to high susceptibility to bacterial infections.
What are some factors that are able to activate the inflammasome?
Bacterial and viral genomes
Because of the very potent effects of IL-1 on multiple systems, its activation requires very high regulation. How does the body achieve this?
Activation of the inflammasome requires TWO SIGNALS
What are the 2 signals required to activate the inflammasome?
1. The activators mentioned in a previous question: toxins, pathogenic genomes
2. Transcription of the inactive form of IL-1 (priming)
How is the priming step of inflammasome activation achieved?
Not all cells have inactive IL-1b present. This needs to be induced. This can be achieved by:
TLR recognition and pro-inflammatory mediators and NOD like receptors
These signals converge onto the NFkB and increase gene transcription of the IL-1b
How many times can this second signal of induced pre-IL1 be activated?
Only ONCE because once this begins to be expressed, it is a signal for the cell death. Inflammasome production leads to PYROPTOSIS (inflammatory cell death)
Why is pyroptosis a step in this process?
Because once IL-1 produced and activated, it has to get out of the cell, and there is no mechanism for this except for cell suicide (pyroptosis) to let it out.
Describe the pathogenesis of Salmonella infection
1. Salmonella enters via ingestion
2. Enters epithelial cells into an intracellular vacuole and hides from the immune system
3. Recognition of flagellin (TLR5) leads to inflammasome activation and caspase 1
4. The release of IL-1 from this cell causes cell death and release of bacteria at the same time
5. Neutrophils are able to clear the bacteria


Variants/Expansions: Many, many variants. The most relevant variants for the interests of a speech therapist include Apples to Apples Junior (designed for upper elementary to middle school students), Apple To Apples Kids 7 Plus (designed for lower elementary students), Apples to Apples Sour Edition (focuses on negative correlation rather than positive correlation and adds a kinesthetic component), and Apples to Apples Dice Game (allows the student to generate own nouns within certain parameters rather than giving the students the words).
General Overview: Apples to Apples is a item-comparing party game designed for 4-10 players of ages 12+ (although variants for younger ages do exist). Players take turns acting as the “judge”, who reads an adjective off a “green apple card” to the other players. The other players then give the judge one of their five “red apple cards”, each containing a noun, which the player thinks best fits the adjective – or what the judge is most likely to pick as the best-fitting answer. The judge then determines the best-fitting answer, awards that player the green apple card, and the player to his or her left serves as the judge for the next round.
- Category Naming/Identification/Comparison – The game, at its core, requires players to place items in categories and determine which items fit best in a given category.
- Item Description – By placing items into categories like “heavy”, “dirty”, or “wonderful”, the player’s schema of adjectives that apply to particular nouns is expanded.
- Literacy – This game features a significant amount of reading at the word level.
- Word Definition/Synonyms – The green apple cards feature three synonyms for the prompt word, supporting understanding of synonyms as well as helping generate definitions for the prompt word. Likewise, the red apple cards contain some flavor text addressing the term’s definition, role in history, or a small bit of humor about the word.
- The game is simple: This is a game that can be played out of the box with less than five minutes of setup and rules explanation. Modeling game play is easy.
- The SLP can participate at the students’ level: Where many games have a knowledge gap – where it’s clear that a clinician who plays the game with his or her students is “dumbing down answers” to let the students compete and be successful – Apples to Apples doesn’t provide a clear advantage to more intelligent players, and some clinicians may even be at a disadvantage, as students in the same class may be able to better anticipate their peers’ preferred answers.
- The content is entertaining: Given the variety of answers that can emerge in the game and students’ justifications of answers, the game lends itself to generating mental imagery, which can keep the interest of many students.
- Literacy is required: All the cards have words, and none of the cards (even in the younger versions of the game) have pictures. If your students have problems with decoding, they’re going to have problems with the game as printed.
- Some of the cards require knowledge that is not common knowledge for some of the populations we serve: Even in the Kids 7+ version of the game (my preferred version in schools), the red apple cards contain terms that are outside the experience of many children. The ones that seem to come up frequently in my school, an urban K-8 school with a significant low-income population, are Hanukkah (knowledge of Judaism as a whole in poor urban schools is lacking and not an educational priority), Raggedy Ann (I haven’t seen or heard from Raggedy Ann or Andy in a decade, and not one of my students has ever heard of her), historical figures, and abstract nouns (ideas rather than people, places, or things).
- Narrow scope: Apples to Apples, as published, doesn’t address many of Gardner’s multiple intelligences. It engages linguistic intelligence well, and addresses logical-mathematical and interpersonal to a small extent. Students who learn best through other methods – and not many speech and language students learn best using linguistic intelligence – may need some reinforcement to enjoy the game.
- Visual representations of nouns: With my youngest students and the ones with the most literacy issues, I keep all the red apple cards in the box and instead give the students cards from another game that contains only nouns and provides pictures of the card’s objects. Kaufman cards also work as a substitute for red apple cards.
- Kinesthetic engagement: For students who aren’t visual learners, providing some form of kinesthetic reinforcement – such as integrating a spinner, using the “punishment” apple spinner from Sour Apples to Apples or the die from the Apples to Apples Dice Game, or providing some other manipulative to generate possible answers – can get these students more interested in the game.
- Therapist as only judge: For students who aren’t quite at the level of making comparisons themselves, but are at the level of putting nouns into categories, the therapist can serve as the sole judge. This also works in cases where students are clearly playing favorites with whose nouns they are picking when they’re the judge. I prefer this method of play with my younger students – I read off each green apple card, they select a picture card that they think fits, and I have each student justify his or her answer.
- I’ve used both the red apple cards and green apple cards as prompts when working with the Expanding Expression Tool – red cards as replacement prompts to address the descriptive areas without visual reinforcement (because I can be evil like that), and green cards to detail examples of descriptive areas for activity (because many of my students just don’t understand the term “group”).
- Similarly, the green apple cards are good prompts for divergent naming tasks. If nothing else, you now have categories that you don’t need to think of yourself.
- While I typically have other activities that I use for story generation, if I’m trying to get students to generate a story without a visual prompt, I’ll use the red apple cards. The variety of nouns in the red apple cards also adds difficulty to a storytelling task if the students are required to have the story make sense in some way (so, Batman found a Raggedy Ann doll Under Your Bed. Next, add Albert Einstein to the story…)
Overall, this is a really strong franchise for speech therapy. It comes out of my bag at least once a week, and most of my students love it. Even my middle school students, who hate all things speech therapy, at least tolerate this game (and I challenge you to find any green card that an 8th-grade boy won’t pick Batman as the best fit for…)
Has anyone else had experience using this game in therapy? How useful has it been? What other uses and modifications have you used?