Gavin Douglas

Gavin Douglas (c. 1474 – September 1522) was a Scottish bishop, makar and translator. Although he had an important political career, he is chiefly remembered for his poetry. His main pioneering achievement was the "Eneados", a full and faithful vernacular translation of the "Aeneid" of Virgil into Scots, and the first successful example of its kind in any Anglic language. Other extant poetry of his includes "Palice of Honour", and possibly "King Hart".
Life and career.
Early life.
Gavin (or Gawin, Gawane, Gawain) Douglas was born c. 1474–76, at Tantallon Castle, East Lothian, the third son of Archibald, 5th Earl of Angus by his second wife Elizabeth Boyd. A Vatican register records that Gavin Douglas was 13 in 1489, suggesting he was born in 1476. An application had been lodged to award Gavin the right to hold a Church canonry or prebend and enjoy its income. Another appeal to Rome concerning church appointments made in February 1495 states his age as 20.
He was a student at St Andrews University in 1489–94, and thereafter, it is supposed, at Paris. He chiefly studied Aristotle, but also studied other areas including Logic, Physics, Natural Philosophy, and Metaphysics. in 1492 he received his Bachelors, and in 1496 was named among the "Licentiati", or Masters of Arts, which was regarded at the time as an advanced academic degree. In 1496 he obtained the living of Monymusk, Aberdeenshire, and later he became parson of Lynton (modern East Linton) and rector of Hauch (modern Prestonkirk), in East Lothian. About 1501 he was preferred to the deanery or provostship of the collegiate church of St Giles, Edinburgh, which he held with his parochial charges.
Early career.
Until the Battle of Flodden in September 1513, Gavin Douglas appears to have been occupied with his ecclesiastical duties and literary work. Indeed, all the extant writings by which he has earned his place as a poet and translator belong to this period. After the disaster at Flodden he was completely absorbed in public business.
Before the crisis of 1513, Douglas was a friend and correspondent of many of the internationally renowned men of his age, including Polydore Vergil, John Major, Cardinal Wolsey and Henry, 3rd Lord Sinclair. Because of his powerful family connections and role in high public life, he is the best-documented of the early Scottish makars. Indeed, of poets in the British Isles before him, only the biography of Chaucer is as well documented or understood. All his literary work was composed before his 40th year while he was Provost of St Giles in Edinburgh. Douglas's literary work was composed in a highly polished Middle Scots, often aureate in style. After the "Eneados" he is not known to have produced any further poetry, despite being at the height of his artistic powers when it was completed in 1513, six weeks before the Battle of Flodden. No more than four of works by him are known to exist; "The Palice of Honour", "Conscience", his major translation the "Eneados", and possibly "King Hart".
While Provost of St Giles, in 1510 Gavin applied to the Pope for permission to celebrate the marriages of couples who were related within the limits and degrees proscribed by the Church. Gavin argued that these marriages helped to make peace in Scotland, and the long delay in receiving a dispensation from Rome in each case, which was a formality, was inconvenient and unnecessary. Gavin asked to be allowed to conduct ten such marriages over four years.
Career during the minority of James V.
After the Battle of Flodden, during the minority of James V of Scotland, the Douglas family assumed a pivotal role in public affairs. Three weeks after the Battle of Flodden Gavin Douglas, still Provost of St Giles, was admitted a burgess of Edinburgh. His father, the "Great Earl", was then the civil provost of the capital. The Earl died soon afterwards in January 1514 in Wigtownshire, where he had gone as justiciar. As his son had been killed at Flodden, the succession fell to Gavin's nephew, Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus.
The marriage of the young Earl of Angus to James IV's widow, Margaret Tudor, on 6 August 1514 did much to identify the Douglases with the English party in Scotland, as against the French party led by the Duke of Albany, and incidentally to determine the political career of his uncle Gavin. During the first weeks of the Queen's sorrow after the battle, Gavin, with one or two colleagues of the council, acted as personal adviser, and it may be taken for granted that he supported the pretensions of the young earl. His own hopes of preferment had been strengthened by the death of many of the higher clergy at Flodden.
The first outcome for Gavin from the new family connection was his appointment to the Abbacy of Aberbrothwick by the Queen Regent, as Margaret Tudor was before her marriage, probably in June 1514. Soon after the marriage of Angus to Margaret she nominated him Archbishop of St Andrews, in succession to William Elphinstone, archbishop-designate. But John Hepburn, prior of St Andrews, having obtained the vote of the chapter, expelled him, and was himself in turn expelled by Andrew Forman, Bishop of Moray, who had been nominated by the Pope. In the interval, Douglas's rights in Aberbrothwick had been transferred to James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, and he was now without title or temporality. The breach between the Queen's party and Albany's had widened, and the Queen's advisers had begun an intrigue with England, to the end that the royal widow and her young son should be removed to Henry's court. In those deliberations Gavin Douglas took an active part, and for this reason stimulated the opposition which successfully thwarted his preferment.
Gavin Douglas became heavily involved in affairs of state, seeking a dominant role as one of the Lords of Council and bidding to attain one or more of the many sees, including the archbishopric of St Andrews, left vacant in the destructive aftermath of the Scottish defeat. He finally obtained the bishopric of Dunkeld in 1516, but only after a bitter struggle.
In 1517, in his more settled public position, Douglas was one of the leading members of the embassy to Francis I which negotiated the Treaty of Rouen, but his role in the volatile politics of the period, mainly centring on control over the minority of James V, was deeply contentious. By late 1517 he had managed to earn the enduring hostility of the Queen Mother, a former ally, and in subsequent years became manifestly involved in political manœuvring against the Regent Albany. At the same time he remained ambitious for the St Andrews archbishopric, which fell vacant once again in 1521. His career was cut short when he died suddenly during a brief period in exile in London.
Bishop of Dunkeld.
In January 1515 on the death of George Brown, Bishop of Dunkeld, Douglas's hopes revived. The queen nominated him to the now vacant seat, which he ultimately obtained, though not without trouble. For John Stewart, 2nd Earl of Atholl had forced his brother, Andrew Stewart, prebendary of Craig, upon the chapter, and had put him in possession of the bishop's palace. The queen appealed to the pope and was seconded by her brother of England, with the result that the Pope's sanction was obtained on 18 February 1515. Some of the correspondence of Douglas and his friends incident to this transaction was intercepted. When Albany came from France and assumed the regency, these documents and the "purchase" of the bishopric from Rome contrary to statute were made the basis of an attack on Douglas, who was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, thereafter in St Andrews Castle (under the charge of his old opponent, Prior Hepburn), and later in Dunbar Castle, and again in Edinburgh. Papal intervention procured his release after nearly a year's imprisonment. The Queen, meanwhile, had retired to England. After July 1516 Douglas appears to have been in possession of his see and to have patched up a diplomatic peace with Albany.
On 17 May 1517 the Bishop of Dunkeld proceeded with Albany to France to conduct the negotiations which ended in the Treaty of Rouen. He was back in Scotland towards the end of June. Albany's longer absence in France permitted the party faction of the nobles to come to a head in a plot by James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Arran to seize the Earl of Angus, the Queen's husband. The issue of this plot was the well-known fight of "Cleanse the Causeway", in which Gavin Douglas's part stands out in picturesque relief. The triumph over the Hamiltons had an unsettling effect upon the Earl of Angus. He made free with the Queen's rents and abducted Lord Traquair's daughter. The Queen set about obtaining a divorce and used her influence for the return of Albany as a means of undoing her husband's power. Albany's arrival in November 1521, with a large body of French men-at-arms, compelled Angus, with the bishop and others, to flee to the Borders. From this retreat Gavin Douglas was sent by the earl to the English court, to ask for aid against the French party and against the Queen, who was reported to be the mistress of the Regent. Meanwhile, Douglas was deprived of his bishopric and forced, for safety, to remain in England, where he effected nothing in the interests of his nephew. The declaration of war by England against Scotland, in answer to the recent Franco-Scottish negotiations, prevented his return. His case was further complicated by the libellous animosity of James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow (whose life he had saved in the "Cleanse the Causeway" incident), who was anxious to put himself forward and thwart Douglas in the election to the archbishopric of St Andrews, left vacant by the death of Forman.
Death.
In 1522 Douglas was stricken by the plague which raged in London, and died at the house of his friend Lord Dacre. During the closing years of exile he was on intimate terms with the historian Polydore Vergil, and one of his last acts was to arrange to give Polydore a corrected version of Major's account of Scottish affairs. Douglas was buried in the church of the Savoy, where a monumental brass (removed from its proper site after the fire in 1864) still records his death and interment.
For Douglas's career see, in addition to the public records and general histories, John Sage's "Life" in Thomas Ruddiman's edition, and that by John Small in the first volume of his edition "The Poetical Works of Gavin Douglas" (1874).
Works.
"Palice of Honour".
"The Palice of Honour", dated 1501, is a dream-allegory extending to over 2000 lines, composed in nine-line stanzas. It is his earliest work. In its descriptions of the various courts on their way to the palace, and of the poet's adventures – first, when he incautiously slanders the court of Venus, and later when after his pardon he joins in the procession and passes to see the glories of the palace – the poem carries on the literary traditions of the courts of love, as shown especially in the "Romaunt of the Rose" and "The Hous of Fame". The poem is dedicated to James IV, not without some lesson in commendation of virtue and honour.
No manuscript of the poem is extant. The earliest surviving edition (c. 1553) was printed at London by William Copland (died 1569). An Edinburgh edition, from the press of Henry Charteris (died 1599), followed in 1579. From certain indications in the latter and the evidence of some odd leaves discovered by David Laing, it has been concluded that there was an earlier Edinburgh edition, which has been ascribed to Thomas Davidson, printer, and dated c. 1540.
"Eneados".
Douglas's major literary achievement is the "Eneados", a Scots translation of Virgil's "Aeneid", completed in 1513, and the first full translation of a major poem from classical antiquity into any modern Germanic language. His translation, which is faithful throughout, includes the 13th book by Mapheus Vegius. Each of the 13 books is introduced additionally by an original verse prologue. These deal with various matters, sometimes semi-autobiographical, in a variety of styles.
Other accredited works.
Two other poems are accredited to Gavin Douglas, "King Hart" and "Conscience".
"Conscience" is a short four-stanza poem. Its subject is the "conceit" that men first clipped away the "con" from "conscience" to leave "science" and "na mair"; then they lost "sci" and had nothing but "ens": "that schrew, Riches and geir."
"King Hart" is a poem of doubtful accreditation. Like "The Palice of Honor", it is a later allegory, and as such, of high literary merit. Its subject is human life told in the allegory of King Hart ("Heart") in his castle, surrounded by his five servitors (the senses), Queen, Plesance, Foresight and other courtiers. The poem runs to over 900 lines and is written in eight-line stanzas. The text is preserved in the Maitland folio manuscript in the Pepysian library, Cambridge. It is not known to have been printed before 1786, when it appeared in Pinkerton's "Ancient Scottish Poems".
Memorial.
There is a bin commemorating Gavin Douglas in Queen's Park, Glasgow.


Lena Svedberg

Aina-Lena (Lena) Bernice Svedberg (26 April 1946 – 2 July 1972) was a Swedish artist. She was born in Gothenburg, Sweden. She grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where her father worked as an economical advisor for the government.
She went to the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in the 60's. She worked and collaborated with artists in such as Carl Johan De Geer and Lars Hillersberg for the underground, anarchistic art magazine "Puss".
Her drawings and paintings are described as mysterious and a bit bizarre. She would often portrait African children with large, begging eyes. Also politicians in a satirical and critical way. She had very negative views on the society of consumption and power.
During her short lifespan she used drugs, and suffered from several illnesses. She committed suicide through jumping from a window of her Stockholm apartment on the fifth floor the summer of 1972.


West 47th Street

West 47th Street is a documentary film produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media.
"West 47th Street" is an intimate cinéma vérité portrait of four people with serious mental illness as their lives naturally unfold over a three-year period beginning in spring 2001. The characters are all members of Fountain House, a psychiatric rehabilitation programme located on West 47th Street in a part of New York City once known as Hell's Kitchen.
At times hilarious and at other times tragic, West 47th Street provided an unprecedented window on the lives of people who are often feared and ignored, seldom understood. The film features Fitzroy Fredericks; Zeinab Wali; Nathanial "Tex" Gordon; and Frances Olivero. The film highlights the faith and courage with which these four people fight to regain control of their lives. Viewers see them on and off the streets, in and out of the hospital, on and off medication, at home and at work.
The film was the “Editors’ Choice – Pick of the Night," by "TV Guide". The Cleveland Film Festival hailed the film as: “The most wrenching moments in the Cleveland International Film Festival belonged not to any scripted plot, but to a special preview of this vérité documentary masterpiece." Dennis King at Tulsa World wrote, "A life-altering cinema experience. Watch it and you'll no longer be able to pass those troubled souls on the street without noticing, without caring, without understanding that attention must be paid."
"West 47th Street" was winner of "Best Documentary" at the Atlanta Film Festival, the "Audience Award" at the DC Independent Film Festival, an "Honorable Mention" at the Woodstock Film Festival, sold out theatres across the U.S., and internationally from Vancouver to Dublin to South Korea, and aired on the PBS series "P.O.V." "Newsweek" called the documentary “must see” and the "Washington Post" termed it “remarkable."
The production team included producers Bill Lichtenstein and June Peoples; editor Spiro "Spike" Lampros, winner of a 2009 Emmy Award as editor of "Project Runway"; Director of Photography Mark Petersson, who shot Barbara Kopple's Academy Award-winning "American Dreams"; and Eddie Marritz, who shot the Academy Award-winning "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision".
"West 47th Street" was the last project of cinema verite pioneer, and Maysles brothers collaborator, Charlotte Zwerin, who served as story editor. Then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani appears in the documentary.
"West 47th Street" was accompanied by a major 12-month educational outreach campaign, which involved over 100 screenings across the country. The film’s rigorous national outreach campaign included the distribution of $40,000 in mini-grants made available by LCM to local organizations to utilize screenings of the film to focus on issues of concern in their communities. These included screenings at Grand Rounds at Yale Medical School, on Native American reservations in New Mexico, and use of the film as a training tool for outreach staff at homelessness programs in California. There are over 300 clubhouses based on the clubhouse model around the world coordinated by the International Center for Clubhouse Development.
Lichtenstein Creative Media also produced the national weekly public radio program "The Infinite Mind".


Erica Ollmann Saphire

Erica Ollmann Saphire is an American structural biologist and immunologist and a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. Her research investigates the structural biology of viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever such as Ebola, Sudan, Marburg, Bundibugyo, and Lassa. She was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2008.
Early life and education.
Saphire earned a Bachelor of Arts in biochemistry and cell biology from Rice University in 1993. She then moved to Scripps Research, where she earned a PhD in molecular biology in 2000. Her doctoral research focused on the crystal structure of a neutralizing antibody against HIV-1. She was an avid rugby player throughout college and graduate school, and toured twice with the United States women's national rugby union team.
Career and research.
After an immunology postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Research, Saphire joined the faculty in the department of immunology as an assistant professor in 2003. She was promoted to associate professor in 2008 and full professor in 2012. In 2019, joined the faculty at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
Saphire is best known for her research on Ebola virus and other causes of viral hemorrhagic fever. She was the first to discover the structure of the Ebola virus surface glycoprotein and predicted that the Ebola virus receptor was located in the endosome rather than on the cell surface. Later, she showed that the Ebola virus VP40 matrix protein can fold into multiple distinct structures. Her laboratory has also discovered the structure of the glycoproteins of Sudan virus, Marburg virus, Bundibugyo virus, Lassa virus and LCMV. On field work in West Africa, she followed rodents to study how they spread viruses such as Ebola and Lassa. Saphire attracted national media attention in 2014 when she launched a crowdfunding appeal to raise funds for equipment to assist in research to fight Ebola virus. She directs the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Immunotherapeutic Consortium (VIC).
In 2020, Saphire was named director of the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC), an international effort to evaluate human antibodies against the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Her lab also co-led research into COVID-19 mutations with scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Awards.
Saphire received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the Global Virus Network's Gallo Award for Scientific Excellence and Leadership. She received the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology's Young Investigator Award in 2015.


Organoid nevus


TV Junkie

TV Junkie is a documentary that chronicles Rick Kirkham's drug addiction. Its filmmakers, Michael Cain and Matt Radecki, sifted through the video-diary footage to piece together the story of Kirkham's life, focusing on the seven years in which he and his family struggled with his addiction to crack cocaine. It was shown at Sundance in 2006. The film was the subject of a lawsuit by his ex-wife Tammie.
"Variety" gave the film a middling review, finding the central figure unpleasant and unsympathetic and the production values inevitably low. Film Threat found it "an unbelievably candid glimpse into the contradictions of cocaine addiction", and praised Kirkham's articulate and authentic self-portrait. OutNow.CH found it had a certain fascination beyond what would be expected.
Rick Kirkham.
Rick Kirkham was a reporter for "Inside Edition" who appeared on a segment called "Inside Adventure". From the age of 14, he filmed more than 3,000 hours of a video diary; this included footage during his tenure on "Inside Edition" during which he was addicted to crack cocaine.
He appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2007 to talk about his addiction, and clips of his video diary were shown. On "Oprah", Kirkham said he was a functional addict, and that he would smoke crack at night instead of sleeping, remaining high for about six hours, and report for work at "Inside Edition" two hours later. Kirkham went days without sleep during this time. He said he once interviewed President George H. W. Bush while high on crack; the subject was drug abuse.
In 2020, he starred in the Netflix documentary Tiger King, where he discussed a documentary he attempted to make about Joe Exotic's tiger park in Oklahoma.
On June 2, 2020, Discovery ID channel released a one-hour show called "The Truth Behind Joe Exotic: The Rick Kirkham Story", a "tell-all special".


Pharmaceutical Development and Technology

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Pharmaceutical Development and Technology is a peer reviewed medical journal that is published by Taylor & Francis. It covers research on the design, development, manufacture, and evaluation of drug delivery systems. The editor-in-chief is Raid Alany of (Kingston University), who succeeded Michael A. Akers (Baxter BioPharma Solutions, Bloomington, Indiana, United States).


Kidung Abadi

"Kidung Abadi" (Indonesian for "Eternal Ballad") is a song written by father and daughter team Erwin and Gita Gutawa for the Kidung Abadi Chrisye concert; the concert was held on 5 April 2012 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Chrisye's death. The song was created over a period of three months by splicing syllables from previously recorded vocals by Chrisye. At the concert, spliced black-and-white footage of Chrisye was shown lip synching to the song while Erwin's orchestra performed the music. The song was well received: the audience gave it a rowdy ovation, while critics praised its lyrics and described it as one of the best parts of the concert.
Background.
Chrisye had a forty-year career in Indonesia's music industry, starting as a bassist with Sabda Nada before his first stint as a vocalist on the indie album "Guruh Gipsy" (1976). After the success of the song "Lilin-Lilin Kecil" ("Small Candles"; 1977) and album "Badai Pasti Berlalu" ("The Storm Shall Surely Pass"; 1977), he began a solo career with Musica Studios. Before his death of lung cancer on 30 March 2007, he released nineteen albums with Musica. In 2011 "Rolling Stone Indonesia" listed Chrisye as the third-greatest Indonesian musician of all time.
Towards the fifth anniversary of Chrisye's death, Chrisye's widow Yanti Noor, director Jay Subiyakto, and composer Erwin Gutawa began collaborating for a concert; the concert was announced on 29 February 2012 and marketed as Chrisye's fourth concert. It was held on 5 April 2012 at Plenary Hall in the Jakarta Convention Centre and featured a hologram of Chrisye singing with Once Mekel, Vina Panduwinata, Sophia Latjuba, and the band Gigi. Another feature of the concert was "Kidung Abadi" ("Eternal Ballad").
Composition and performance.
The song was composed by Erwin Gutawa, who had previously collaborated with Chrisye on five albums. In an interview with "The Jakarta Post", he said that he felt guilty as he had never written anything for Chrisye in the time they had worked together; he had intended to make a new song with Chrisye's voice since soon after the latter's death. The lyrics were written by Gutawa's daughter, Gita, who was asked by her father to write as if Chrisye were singing about having died, but his songs living on. Gita, who also sang at the concert, felt she owed something to Chrisye as her first stage performance was at his 2003 Dekade concert.
To record the vocals, the elder Gutawa and a ten-member team of researchers compiled thousands of syllables from Chrisye's older songs, obtained from the masters, in a database. Some syllables were kept unaltered, while others were amalgamated to form a single sound or more than one; according to "Kompas", the "ku" syllables in "Kidung Abadi" were an amalgamation of 1,056 "ku" syllables in Chrisye's previous songs. Ultimately, a total of 246 syllables were combined in Pro Tools to form the new song; the program was also used to change the pitch of numerous syllables. Gutawa inserted pauses where he assumed Chrisye would have paused if singing the song in real life; he based his choices on his previous experience with Chrisye. The entire process, from writing to recording, took three months.
The song was initially performed at the Kidung Abadi concert on as the penultimate song. It was overlaid on a black-and-white video of Chrisye singing projected on an screen. The video was created by Jay Subiyakto, who spliced together archived footage of Chrisye performing. Chrisye's lips were synchronised to move in time with the vocals. Subiyakto stated that he did not base the work on foreign shows, choosing instead to start from scratch. The music was provided by a live orchestra.
Reception.
Eko Sutriyanto, writing for "Tribun", called the song one of the best parts of the concert, although he considered the synchronisation off. Frans Sartono wrote in "Kompas" that the song was "touching", quoting the lyrics "See the times pass, I'm here and you're there... Though now I'm far from you, I'll keep singing. Hear my melody flow; this is for you" as reflecting Chrisye's unique style. The thousands-strong crowd gave the song a rowdy ovation after the performance.


Erasmo di Bartolo

Erasmo Bartoli Filippino or Erasmo di Bartolo, called padre Raimo (1606–1656), was an Italian priest, composer, and teacher at the conservatories in Naples.
Bartolo was born in Gaeta. His students included Giovanni Salvatore. He died in the Naples plague of 1656.


The Journal of Psychology

The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied is a bimonthly double-blind, peer-review psychology journal published by Taylor & Francis. "The Journal of Psychology" was founded in 1935 by Carl Murchison, an American psychologist, organizer, publisher, and editor. He co-founded "The Journal of Genetic Psychology", "The Journal of Social Psychology", and "The Journal of General Psychology", among others. In 2009, Heldref sold the ownership of the titles to Taylor & Francis.
"The Journal of Psychology" is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes empirical research and theoretical articles in applied areas of psychology including clinical, counseling, measurement/assessment, school, educational, industrial, and personnel psychology. In addition, the journal publishes interdisciplinary research that integrates psychology and other fields (e.g., psychology and law, psychology and consumer behavior, psychology and religion).
With the transfer of ownership, "The Journal of Psychology" is headquartered in Philadelphia.
Abstracting and indexing.
"The Journal of Psychology" is abstracted and indexed in PsycINFO, Scopus, and FRANCIS.


Jan K. S. Jansen

Jan Kristian Schøning Jansen (16 January 1931 – 8 January 2011) was a Norwegian physiologist.
He was born in Oslo as a son of professor of medicine Jan Birger Jansen (1898–1984) and Helene Sofie Schøning (1902–1976). He was married to Lisbeth Bjørneby from 1954 to 1974 and to Helen Troye from 1981.
He finished his secondary education at Berg Upper Secondary School in 1949 and studied at the University of Oslo under his father and Birger Kaada. He specialized in neurophysiology. He took the cand.med. degree in 1955, and in 1957 he took the dr.med. degree with the thesis "Afferent impulses to the cerebellar hemispheres from the cerebral cortex and certain subcortical nuclei. An electro-anatomical study in the cat". In 1959 he started studies at the University Laboratory of Physiology in Oxford. He won the Andres Jahre Prize for Young Researchers together with Per Andersen in 1967. He was hired as a docent at the University of Oslo in 1968, worked under Stephen Kuffler and John Nicholls at Harvard University from 1969 to 1970, and was a professor at the University of Oslo from 1979 to 1995. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1977, and chairman of the Nansen Fund.


Thomas David Lister

Thomas David Lister CBE FRCS (30 January 1869 – 30 July 1924) was a British physician, surgeon, paediatrician, and expert on tuberculosis and the medical aspects of life assurance.
Lister was born in London, the son of Francis Wilson Lister and his wife Elizabeth (née Wishart). He was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and trained as a doctor at Guy's Hospital, graduating Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1894. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) the same year and a Member of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) in 1900. He worked as house surgeon at Guy's from 1893 to 1894 and pathologist at the East London Hospital for Children from 1897 to 1900. He later became physician to the Mount Vernon Hospital for Consumption and the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Children. He was consulting physician for chest cases to the Prince of Wales’ Hospital for Officers from 1917 to 1919 and as a member of and honorary advisory physician to the council of the National Association for Establishment and Maintenance of Sanatoria for Workers suffering from Tuberculosis was responsible for drawing up the plans for Benenden Sanatorium.
Lister was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in January 1920 for his work in the First World War. He married Louise Edna Bertha Ritter.


Thomas Laycock (physiologist)

Prof Thomas Laycock FRSE FRCPE (10 August 1812 – 21 September 1876) was an English physician and neurophysiologist who was a native of Bedale near York. Among medical historians, he is best known for his influence on John Hughlings Jackson and the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne. Laycock's interests were the nervous system and psychology; he is known as one of the founders of physiological psychology. He was the first to formulate the concept of reflex action within the brain, and is also known for his classification of mental illnesses.
Life.
Laycock was born on 10 August 1812 in Wetherby, Yorkshire, and was the son of Wesleyan minister Rev Thomas Laycock. He attended the Wesleyan Academy on Woodhouse Grove in West Yorkshire. At the age of fifteen, Laycock trained as an apprentice surgeon-apothecary under a Mr. Spence. He went on to study at the University College in London and furthered his training in Paris in 1834 for two more years, where his instructors included Alfred Armand Velpeau (1795–1867) and Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis (1787–1872), renowned as an initiator of statistics. While in Paris, Laycock studied anatomy and physiology under Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin and Velpeau at la Pitié.
In the spring of 1837, Laycock began to learn German to further his readings beyond English and French literature. In 1839, he went to Germany and received his doctorate degree under Professor Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx at University of Göttingen in Lower Saxony, Germany. Throughout 1839 to 1840, Laycock published many papers on hysteria and other mental illnesses.
In his final paper on hysteria, Laycock wrote about the effects of hysteria on consciousness seen in comas, delirium, hallucinations, and somnambulism. This final paper introduced the revolutionary concept that stimuli to the brain could invoke actions in the subject without the subject being aware of them. This concept steered away from the notion of man as a unique spiritual human being, and saw man as more automated and animalistic.
After receiving his doctorate degree in 1839, Laycock returned to York working as a physician at the York Dispensary and lecturer of medicine at York Medical School. During his time at the York Dispensary, he earned himself a reputation as a skilled physician, as well as a profound thinker, medical scientist, and prolific writer.
In 1852, Laycock first encountered Hughlings Jackson, a new student; he also taught Jonathan Hutchinson whom Jackson was to meet in 1859 and share a house with at 14 Finsbury Circus, London for three years.
In 1855, the position of chair of medicine at the University of Edinburgh became open. The position was highly desired and candidates would canvas for the spot. Of eight potential contestants, Laycock was selected by the Edinburgh Town Council; however, he was not generally accepted by the public or by the people of the profession. Despite the antagonism, Laycock maintained his reputation as a prolific writer in medical, philosophical, and psychological writings up until his death in 1876.
Laycock set up a course for medical psychology and mental diseases as a professor of medicine at Edinburgh. His course was not well received by the medical students at Edinburgh. The medical students preferred being taught straightforward principles to help prepare for examinations. On the other hand, Laycock preferred to present an abstract, broad view of medicine in the hopes that his students would learn through independent reading without someone forcing them to learn.
In Edinburgh, Laycock was friendly with the asylum reformer William A.F. Browne (1805-1885) and was a major influence on his son, the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne (1840-1938)
During his mid-forties, Laycock suffered from phthisis (tuberculosis). His physicians told him that he did not have long to live, however, he went on to live for another twenty years. Due to tuberculosis of the knee, his left knee had to be amputated. He insisted on having the operation done without anesthetics, and he spent the last decade of his life as an amputee.
His wife Ann died in 1869 and is buried in York.
Laycock died at home, 13 Walker Street, in Edinburgh's West End.
He is buried a short distance from his home, in one of the upper terraces of St Johns Episcopal Church at the west end of Princes Street.
Teachings.
Reflex function of the brain.
Following the work of Robert Whytt and Marshall Hall, Laycock studied the reflex arc in relation to the nervous system. While Hall believed that the reflex arc was mediated by the spinal cord, separate from the cerebrum, Laycock argued that the brain underwent the same reflex patterns as the rest of the nervous system. After learning the German language, he translated books by Johann August Unzer, who studied afferent and efferent reflexes. Unzer centralised the nervous system in the spinal cord, such that reflexes could occur even without a functional brain, which only controls conscious activity. Laycock disagreed with Unzer's centralisation in the spinal root ganglia; Laycock stated: "The brain, although the organ of consciousness, was subject to the laws of reflex action and in this respect it did not differ from other ganglia of the nervous system."
Nature and methodology.
Laycock was a teleologist. He also held a fundamental belief in the "unity of nature", and saw nature as working through an unconsciously acting principle of organisation. Through his teleological approach, he argued that the origins of the nervous system were based on a natural force which he named the "Unconsciously Acting Principle for Intelligence." This force provided a plan for organism construction, regulated organisms based on survival instinct, and acted on the brain to provoke the phenomena of thought. Laycock saw nature as purposeful in creating this force, which ultimately results in a self-conscious mind, and an unconscious intelligence where reflexes were seeded. Because of his teleological approach to seeing nature through a lens of purpose, Laycock used observation as his principal method of scientific inquiry. He did not advocate for microscopic experimentation, which he saw as unnecessary in studying nature's biological forces. Rather, he preferred passive observation of purposeful phenomena in nature, from which theories could be inducted.
Classification of psychiatric disorders.
In 1863, Laycock published a paper on the classification of psychiatric disorders. On the classification, he said: "If we further analyse the standard as applied to the naming and classification of mental diseases in general, we find it includes attributes or qualities in common with others of the same age, sex, or social position". Laycock recognised that many factors were included in classification, and therefore absolute standards were not feasible.
Laycock was also aware of the different possible approaches in classification, but he used a biological and neurological approach to classification. He classified insanity into three types: orectic insanity, thymic insanity, and phrenic insanity. Each type of insanity was associated with a disorder in encephalic centers that controlled instincts, feelings, or reason.
The biological approach to classifying mental disorders was due to Laycock's belief that the mind was a result of the brain. On insanity, his definition was: "a chronic disorder of the brain by which the mental condition of the individual is so modified that he is deprived wholly or in part of common sense." He explained moral insanity and mania through the concept of "reversed evolution," a concept that was later furthered by John Hughlings Jackson.
Laycock became president of the Medico Psychological Association in 1869. He thought that people who were mentally handicapped could also be mentally ill, which was not yet a generally accepted idea during his time.
Legacy.
Historians have a hard time crediting Laycock for his findings in the existence of the cerebral reflex and the continuity of the nervous system throughout the animal species because of his non-scientific methodology. Laycock's writing style was also very dense, and difficult to understand due to the lack of brevity. In his writings, he would include many philosophical ideas and expressions, which would hinder the understanding of his concepts.
Laycock's ideas reached modern day acceptance through his student John Hughlings Jackson, who recast the concept of the continuity of nervous systems in animals through evolutionary proof. Jackson's scientific approach gained much more acceptance than Laycock's philosophical, observational approach. Laycock generalised the reflex patterns of the entire nervous system and the synthesis of nervous function. Ivan Pavlov, Charles Scott Sherrington, and Sigmund Freud later expanded upon Laycock's philosophical observations of nervous function synthesis.
The honors received by Laycock include: fellowship in the Royal Society, Edinburgh, fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and Physician in Ordinary to the Queen of Scotland.


Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology

Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association on behalf of APA Division 54. It covers all aspects of pediatric psychology. The inaugural editors-in-chief were Jennifer Shroff Pendley (Nemours Foundation/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children) and W. Douglas Tynan (Nemours Health and Prevention Services). The current editor-in-chief is Jennifer Verrill Schurman (Children's Mercy Hospital). The journal was established in 2013 and is abstracted and indexed in PsycINFO and Scopus.


Physiurgy

Physiurgy is an obsolete term, mainly used in Scandinavia, for a medical specialty that deals with musculoskeletal physiology and diseases. The definition includes many rheumatic diseases, sports injuries and rehabilitation of orthopedic and neurological diseases. Physiurgic therapy include training and exercise therapy, massage, joint manipulation, diathermia and ultrasound treatment. In Denmark, the term was officially abandoned in 1983 and is largely replaced with e.g. rheumatology.


Alexandre Hardy

Alexandre Hardy (c. 1570/1572 – 1632) was a French dramatist, one of the most prolific of all time. He claimed to have written some six hundred plays, but only thirty-four are extant.
He was born in Paris, and seems to have been connected most his life with a troupe of actors (the "Comédiens du Roi") headed by the actor named Valleran Lecomte, whom he provided with plays; Hardy may have toured the provinces and even acted with this company (his participation with this troupe is attested from 1611, but may have begun far earlier). Valleran Lecomte's troupe gave performances in Paris in 1598-1600 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and again from 1606-1612. At the death of Valleran, the troupe was headed by the actor Bellerose (Pierre Le Messier), and the troupe would gain exclusive rights to the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1629. Because of his difficult relations with Bellerose, in 1627 Hardy started writing for a rival troupe of actors (the "Vieux Comédiens du Roi") around Claude Deschamps which performed at the Théâtre du Marais.
Hardy's numerous dedications never seem to have brought him riches or even patrons. His most powerful friend was Isaac de Laffemas (d. 1657), one of Cardinal Richelieu's most unscrupulous agents, and he was on friendly terms with the poet Théophile de Viau, who addressed him in some verses placed at the head of his "Théâtre" (1632), and Tristan l'Hermite had a similar admiration for him. Hardy's plays were written for the stage, not to be read; and it was in the interest of the company that they should not be printed and thus fall into the common stock. Hardy wrote quickly, often adapting plays from French, foreign and classical sources (Ovid, Lucian, Plutarch, Xenophon, Quintus Curtius Rufus, Josephus, Miguel de Cervantes, Jorge de Montemayor, Boccaccio, François de Rosset).
In 1623 Hardy published "les Chastes et Loyales Amours de Théagène et Chariclée", a tragicomedy in eight "days" or "dramatic poems", and in 1624 he began a collected edition of his works, "Le Théâtre d'Alexandre Hardy, parisien", of which five volumes (1624–1628) were published, one at Rouen and the rest in Paris.
Hardy's extant plays are as follows:
Twelve tragedies:
Four plays variously listed as tragedies or tragicomedies:
Ten tragicomedies::
Three "dramatic poems":
Five pastorals:
The titles of twelve more of Hardy's plays are also known.
Hardy's importance in the history of the French theatre has been frequently overlooked. Up to the end of the sixteenth century medieval farce and spectacle dominated the popular stage in Paris. The French Renaissance tragedy of Étienne Jodelle and his followers had been written for the learned, and in 1628 when Hardy's work was nearly over and Jean Rotrou and Jean Mairet were on the threshold of their careers, very few literary dramas by any other author other than Robert Garnier and Antoine de Montchrestien are known to have been produced.
Hardy educated the popular taste, and made possible the dramatic activity of the seventeenth century. He had abundant practical experience of the stage, and modified tragedy accordingly, maintaining five acts in verse, but suppressing the chorus (except in his earliest plays), limiting monologues (although monologues reappear in his later plays), and providing the action and variety which was denied to the lyrical drama of the Renaissance. He was a popularizer of the tragicomedy. His tragedies are close to the Senecan model (although at times they echo medieval morality plays), but Hardy was unconcerned with Renaissance or classical dramatic theory (Aristotle, Horace), the three unities (Hardy's plays feature many locations and extend past 24 hours) or the rules of "bienséance" (his plays openly portray rape and murder and often feature non-noble characters). Hardy's verse style is sometimes convoluted and awkward and he shows a certain love of rare or erudite words (both of these stylistic habits would be condemned by François de Malherbe in the same period); for these reasons later critics have called Hardy unreadable. It is impossible to know how much the dramatists of the seventeenth century were indebted to him in detail, since only a fraction of his work is preserved, but generally Hardy may be credited with developing a French theater of action. He died in 1632 of the plague.


Bad (XXXTentacion song)

"Bad" (stylized as "BAD!") is a song by American rapper XXXTentacion, released as a single on November 8, 2018. It is XXXTentacion's fifth posthumous single, and his third posthumous single to go platinum.
Background.
"Bad" was previously teased along with three album projects XXXTentacion was set to release in 2018 before his death in June. Publications reported that "Bad" would appear on "Skins" after a clip of XXXTentacion was posted to his Instagram timeline of him talking about the album after singing a line from it. DJ Scheme also said that the next of XXXTentacion's projects to be released would be "Skins"; this was confirmed in November after the pre-order for the album became available.
Promotion.
The song was previewed in footage posted to XXXTentacion's Instagram timeline, with the rapper singing a line of the song and talking about "Skins".
Music video.
In November 2018, the XXXTentacion estate, along with Bad Vibes Forever and Empire Records, launched an animated video contest for the new single. Several artists created 15-second animated snippets from which fans of the late rapper voted for their favorite via XXXTentacion's official website.
The official music video for "BAD!" was released via XXXTentacion's YouTube page on December 15, 2018. It was animated and directed by Tristan Zammit. It features anime-style depictions of X with his various signature hairstyles as he is planting, cultivating, and then becoming one with the tree of life. As of January 13, 2020, the music video has been viewed over 80 million times.
Covers.
In January 2019, Dutch DJ R3hab released a cover of "Bad" as a tribute to XXXTentacion.
Personnel.
Credits adapted from YouTube.


Martha Ballard

Martha Moore Ballard (1735 – May 1812) was an American midwife and healer. Unusually for the time, Ballard kept a diary with thousands of entries over nearly three decades, which has provided historians with invaluable insight into frontier-women's lives. Ballard was made famous by the publication of "A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812" by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in 1990.
Life.
Martha Moore was born in Oxford, Province of Massachusetts, on February 9, 1735, to the family of Elijah Moore and Dorothy Learned Moore. Nothing is known about her childhood and education, but it is known that her family had medical links; her uncle Abijah Moore and brother-in-law Stephen Barton were physicians. She married Ephraim Ballard in 1754. The couple had nine children between 1756 and 1779, but lost three of them to a diphtheria epidemic in Oxford between June 17 and July 5, 1769.
Ballard delivered 816 babies over the 27 years that she wrote her diary and was present at more than 1,000 births; the mortality rates of infants and mothers that she visited were ordinary for the United States before the 1940s. Her diary also recorded her administering medicines and remedies, which she made herself mostly from local plants and occasionally from ingredients bought from a local physician. Ballard was sometimes called to observe autopsies and recorded 85 instances of what she called "desections" in her diary. She also took testimonies from unwed mothers that was used in paternity suits. She testified in 1789 in a high-profile case of a judge accused of raping a minister's wife. In addition to her medical and judicial responsibilities, Ballard frequently carried out tasks such as trading, weaving, and social visits. She and her family experienced difficult times during 1803–1804, when her husband was imprisoned for debt and her son was indicted for fraud. Ballard's obituary was published on June 9, 1812 in the "American Advocate" and simply stated:
Ballard was related to Clara Barton, known for her American Civil War work and for founding the American Red Cross. Clara was the granddaughter of Ballard's sister, Dorothy Barton.
Diary.
From when she was 50 (1785) until her death in 1812, Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her work and domestic life in Hallowell on the Kennebec River, District of Maine. The log of daily events, written with a quill pen and homemade ink, records numerous babies delivered and illnesses treated as she travelled by horse or canoe around the Massachusetts frontier in what is today the state of Maine. For 27 years, she wrote in the diary daily, often by candlelight when her family had gone to bed.
The diary consists of more than 1,400 pages, with entries that start with the weather and the time. Many of her early records are short and choppy, but her later entries are longer and detailed. Her writing illustrates struggles and tragedies within her own family and local crimes and scandals. One includes the comment that children in New England are allowed to choose their romantic interest if they were in the same economic class, rare for the time. Many of the people mentioned in the diary do not appear on official records, such as censuses or deeds and probate, and so the diary helps to provide insight into the lives of ordinary people who might otherwise have remained invisible. Because of the scale of the diary, scholars have been able to use digital tools to mine it for information. Such studies have revealed, for instance, that because Ballard's deliveries spike significantly between February and April, her neighbours are most likely to be having sex between May and July.
The last birth that Ballard attended was on April 26, 1812. Ballard's final diary entry, from 1812, states: "made a prayer adapted to my case." After Ballard's death, the diary was kept by Dolly Lambard. The diary was then passed on to Dolly's daughters, Sarah Lambard and Hannah Lambard Walcott after Dolly's death in 1861. Sarah Lambard and Hannah Lambard gifted the diary to Ballard's great-great-granddaughter, Mary Hobart, one of the first female US physicians to graduate from the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1884, the same year that she received the diary.
In 1930, Hobart donated the diary to the Maine State Library in Augusta. Maine State Library promised Hobart a transcript of the diary, but the promise was never fulfilled. Charles Elventon Nash included parts of the diary in a proposed two-volume history of Augusta, which was kept in a descendant's home for almost 60 years before the descendant offered it to the Maine State Library. Edith Hary took the papers and published "The History of Augusta: First Settlements and Early Days As A Town Including The Diary of Mrs. Martha Moore Ballard" in 1961.In July 1982, E. Wheaton of the Maine State Archive created a microfilm copy of the diary. Robert R. McCausland and Cynthia MacAlman McCausland later spent ten years producing a verbatim transcription on the diary, which they made freely available online as well as for purchase in hard-copy.
"A Midwife's Tale".
For many years, Martha Ballard's diary was not considered to be of scholarly interest since it was generally dismissed as repetitive and ordinary. However, historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich saw potential in the diary, realising how rare Ballard's first-hand account was after having researched a previous book on women in early New England. After eight years of research, Ulrich produced "A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812". Each chapter in "A Midwife's Tale" represents one aspect of the life of a woman in the late 18th century. The overriding theme is the nature of women's work in the context and community. Ulrich stated that:
Supporting documents construct Ulrich's interpretation of terse and circumspect diary entries, dealing with medical practice and the prevalence of violence and crime. In "A Midwife’s Tale", Ulrich highlights ten key entries from Martha's diary. Ulrich places these entries in a historical context, elevating a seemingly-ordinary woman's life into a key figure of Kennebec. Listed below are summaries of each key entry of the diary and its historical significance.
The first entry in "A Midwife’s Tale" puts midwifery in a broader medical context within the Kennebec region. This chapter establishes the relationship between doctors and midwives during this time period. Doctors were called only to perform extreme medical practices such as bloodletting and typically had 8-10 cases per year. Martha recorded 816 births over 27 years, and midwives were the first called when a woman went into labor. Ulrich also introduces the concept of “social medicine” in this chapter, referring to the sharing of information among midwives and doctors. This is evident in midwife manuals and communities of midwives that gathered and interacted during births.
This chapter shows the separate economy among women in Hallowell. The economy is facilitated by the "social webs" of production and consumption. Martha's diary separates roles of men and women. Men were involved in the politics of the town whereas women had a separate community where they exchanged textiles. Martha's daughters were able to take over the work of spinning and weaving and helping with harvests when they became older, which allowed Martha to have the time to devote to midwifery. Without Martha's detailed records of her exchanges, historians would lack the knowledge of the economy that existed among women.
This entry follows an important rape trial in Hallowell. Mrs. Foster accused Judge North of raping her while her husband was away. Historians are able to contrast Martha's account of the trial with Henry Sewall's account. Henry Sewall opposes the Fosters' religious beliefs, but Martha feels sympathetic toward the Fosters because others judged them for their religious beliefs.
This section is concerned with the three Ballard family marriages that occurred in 1792. Martha describes all three weddings, but it is noteworthy that while two are fairly domestic, one is quite dramatic. The mid-18th century is seen as a turning point in history since children began to choose their own partners, which is supported by Ballard's diary entries. It seems as if all of the Ballard marriages in 1792 were courtships chosen by the children, as opposed to arrangements proposed for economic benefits. Additionally, pre-marital sex is mentioned.
This chapter details the 53 deliveries that Ballard performed in 1793, an important year for her. She delivers babies from celebrity wives like those of Captain Molloy and Esquire Hayward but also babies of servants. Ballard travels far and wide to deliver babies, which she discusses in her diary entries as well. Ulrich emphasizes that an average of one baby a week seems easy, but Martha often sits for weeks doing nothing and, for others, facing multiple births in a short time during poor weather. Additionally, women have contractions that do not result in labor, forcing them to decide between risking it and not calling for Martha or having her come without actually needing her. That happened at the Parker house, to where she traveled four times before actually delivering the baby, number 51.
The focus is 1796, a physically taxing year for her and her husband. She is traveling to deliver babies in flea-infested cabins while her husband works in swamps swarming with mosquitos. Their children also have some health issues that year. In November, her husband, Ephraim, is at muskie-point, and all of his instruments were stolen at the outset of a planned extended surveying journey, canceling the trip, but he returns five days later. On the same day or around the same time, Martha delivered her 600th baby, a milestone. Ephraim’s work continues to be difficult. Martha prays for strength to continue faring through her difficult and laborious life.
This section follows the death and autopsy of John Davis, the son of John Vassall Davis in Kennebec. This is an important death in the diary because John Davis is legally a bastard with a prominent father in Kennebec. Ulrich fleshes out the significance of Martha's presence at the autopsy. Her presence was a common practice for midwives in her time. Ulrich discusses the change in 1820, when a Harvard Medical School professor publishes a treatise stating that women should no longer be midwives as they are too uneducated to practice medicine.
This chapter tracks Martha's entries while her husband, Ephraim Ballard, is in jail for debt. During this time, Martha's son, Jonathan, takes over Matha and Ephraim's house. Entries highlight Martha and Jonathan's rocky relationship. Additionally, Martha experiences a pseudo-widowhood during this time, acknowledging Ephraim's role in the household that now must be filled by her son. This entry gives important information regarding jail time in Kennebec, as Ephraim is allowed to continue working during the day and must sleep at the jail only at night. There is flexibility regarding cases of debt.
This chapter is centered around a mass murder that occurred in Hallowell. James Purrinton, one of Martha's neighbors, murdered his wife and all of his children but one, who escaped. Martha's entry adds another viewpoint on this historic event. Ulrich writes, "The economy of Martha's telling contrasts with the more self-conscious narrative published (and probably composed) by Peter Edes, editor of Augusta’s Kennebec Gazette."
The final chapter focuses on Martha's perspective on the Malta War between settlers and proprietors over land ownership. The insurgents were led by Elijah Barton, Martha's nephew. Additionally, Ulrich discusses the importance of women in field agriculture, as characterized by Martha’s garden and her records of the flowers and vegetables she planted in her time. As Martha grows older, her diary recounts fewer births. Ulrich hypothesizes that the decrease in births is caused by another midwife taking over her work. The midwife is likely Ann Mosier since after Martha records Ann's death, Martha's workload increases. The chapter concludes with Martha's last entry on May 7 and her death approximately three weeks later.
Reviews.
The book received a positive critical response and was praised for its insight into the lives of 18th-century women and life in early New England. In 1991, "A Midwife's Tale" received the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, the John H. Dunning Prize, the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize, the Society for Historians of the Early Republic Book Prize, the William Henry Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine, and the New England Historical Association Award.
In 1997, the PBS series "The American Experience" aired "A Midwife's Tale". This documentary film was based upon Ulrich’s book, and Ulrich served as a consultant, script collaborator, and narrator for the film. It was directed by Richard P. Rogers, and produced by Laurie Kahn-Leavitt. Actress Kaiulani Lee played Martha Ballard. It was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. When filming the series, details were given close attention. The production crew chose King's Landing Historical Settlement in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and Historic Richmond Town on Staten Island to capture Maine's three seasons: "black flies, snow and mud." The actors wore mud-soaked shoes below historically-accurate costumes, and replicas were made of the hand sewn booklets that formed the diary, so that Lee could write in them. The music in the film, played by the ensemble Orison, included shape note singing by the Word of Mouth Chorus.


Quantum Care Limited

Quantum Care Limited is a company based in Welwyn Garden City, England, that runs both residential and nursing care homes (see residential care home and nursing care home). The company's head office is 4 Silver Court, Watchmead, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England AL7 1TS. Quantum Care runs twenty-six care homes, all but two in Hertfordshire.
History.
Quantum Care Limited was formed 1 July 1992 to operate care homes for the elderly in Hertfordshire. Originally, Quantum Care took over homes that were previously operated by Hertfordshire County Council. In October 2005 Quantum Care began to branch out of Hertfordshire, opening a home, Tye Green Lodge, in Essex, England. In 2010 Trefoil House was opened in Luton, England.
Quantum Care Ltd is a not-for-profit organisation which means it does not have any shareholders and therefore does not have to pay dividends. Its work is overseen by a voluntary board of directors.
Services.
Quantum Care homes serve residents who have a wide range of needs. All homes have dementia units that provide specialised care for residents living with dementia. Other services are offered by Quantum Care homes including day care with thirteen homes offering the service.
Some homes have a Best Friends Cafe. The Cafe is an area in the home that allows residents "to sit and chat with friends and family over tea, coffee and cakes." This setting allows the residents to "bring more of the outside world into their daily lives."
Each home has at least one short stay room. These rooms can be occupied by elderly guests from one night to a few weeks. The rooms allow potential residents to see what the home is like.
Accreditations.
At least seven websites provide information about Quantum Care to help potential care home residents and those helping them. One site, HousingCare.org, provides the latest set of ratings on individual homes from the Care Quality Commission. When the ratings were done twenty-seven Quantum Care homes were rated. Twenty-one were given a two-star (good) rating and six were given a three-star (excellent) rating. Ratings were based on three stars. A new rating system will be implemented in the future.


Dvija

Dvija (Sanskrit: द्विज) means "twice-born" in ancient Indian Sanskrit. The concept is premised on the belief that a person is first born physically and at a later date is born for a second time spiritually, usually when he undergoes the ritual of passage that initiates him into a school for Vedic studies. The term also refers to members of the three varnas in the traditional Hindu social system, or social classes — the Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (warriors), and Vaishyas (merchants) — whose Sanskara of Upanayana initiation was regarded as a second or spiritual birth.
The word "Dvija" is neither found in any Vedas and Upanishads, nor is it found in any Vedanga literature such as the Shrauta-sutras or Grihya-sutras. The word scarcely appears in Dharmasutras literature. Increasing mentions of it appear in Dharmasastras text of mid to late 1st-millennium CE texts. The presence of the word "Dvija" is a marker that the text is likely a medieval era Indian text, however the Mahabharata, which dates back to at least 400 BCE mentions the word "Dvijottama", thus contradicting the claim.
The meaning of the two births.
"Dvija" means "twice-born": the first birth is physical, while the second birth is a 'spiritual' one. The second 'birth' occurs when one takes up fulfilling a role in society, at the time of Upanayana initiation ceremony. For example, a Brahmin is initiated into school to study and pursue Brahmopadesha (preach, counsel) in the matter of the nature of Brahman, the ultimate reality. Traditionally, a Kshatraiya would start learning the use of arms, while a Vaishya would start a trade apprenticeship.
The premise of the "Dvija" concept was that a person is born physically through his parents at home, spiritually through his teacher at school (gurukul) who helps the student form the mind and realize the self.
Literature.
The word "Dvija", and its equivalent such as "Dvijati", is neither found in any Vedas, any Upanishad, nor in any Vedanga literature such as the Vyakarana, Shiksha, Nirukta, Chandas, Shrauta-sutras or Grihya-sutras. Words such as "Dvijanman" appear in chapter 1.60 of Rigveda, but the context is not human beings, but "fire" once born in the heaven and then brought and born again on the earth.
The term is missing in all theological and rituals-related text preceding the 2nd-century BCE, as well as the earliest Dharmasutras texts. It makes the first appearance in Gautama Dharmasutra but not in the context later understood.
The first significant appearance of the word "Dvija" occurs in the Manu Smriti (166 mentions) composed between 2nd to 3rd century CE. The Yajnavalkya Smriti, composed in 4th or 5th-century CE mentions the word less often (40 times). The massive Hindu epics, the Valmiki Ramayana and the Mahabharata mention the word "Dvija" 214 and 1535 times respectively. This, states Patrick Olivelle, suggest that "Dvija" is not a Vedic or ancient tradition of Hinduism, but an innovation that appeared sometime in the 1st millennium CE. This word is a significant scholarly marker to identify a text as likely from medieval India.
Implications.
Dvija, in medieval Indian texts, refers to a member of the first three varnas – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas. The "Asvalayana" sutra indicates that a non-dvija child may also be inducted into the Dvija category, if he wishes to pursue the duties associated with these varnas.
The initiation ceremony (upanayana) invests the male initiates with a sacred thread, a loop worn next to the skin over the left shoulder and across the right hip. This Dvija-ceremony was recommended in medieval era texts for the Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (warriors), and Vaishyas (merchants) before they began their schools. In contrast, the Shudras were considered ineligible for Dvija-ceremony and formal schooling in these texts.
Some Sanskrit texts present a different view. The Mahabharata, for example, states that a Shudra who is self-restrained and pure conduct is like a "Dvija", and suggests that Shudras can possess Vedic knowledge. Since the 19th century, the concept of Dvija has been increasingly questioned. Women have become students of Sanskrit and Vedic subjects, notably in India’s public institutions of higher learning, have chanted Vedic verses, and have even offered their services as specialists in Brahmanical rituals.
The Hindu texts offer a conflicting view of whether access to "guru" and education was limited to men and to certain "varna" (social classes or castes). The Vedas and the Upanishads never mention any restrictions based either on gender or on "varna". The Upanishads assert that one's birth does not determine one's eligibility for spiritual knowledge, only one's effort and sincerity matters. Dharmasutras and Dharmasastras, such as Paraskara Grhyasutra, Gautama Smriti and Yajnavalkya Smriti, state all four varnas are eligible to all fields of knowledge; while verses of Manusmriti state that Vedic study is available only to men of three varnas, unavailable to Shudra and women.
The Brahmanical centres of learning were open to all the Dvija castes, states Romila Thapar, and they "appear to have attracted mainly the Brahmin students". The Dvija restrictions may be theoretical, because most students learnt their economically useful skills through apprenticeship within their family or at guilds. Other scholars also treat the Dvija concept as theory, because in reality ancient and medieval India had artisan schools where all social classes including Shudras learnt skills, and these artisans and workers built sophisticated artwork, products and large temples.
In practice, state Stella Kramrisch and others, the guru tradition and availability of education extended to all segments of ancient and medieval society. Lise McKean states the "guru" concept has been prevalent over the range of class and caste backgrounds, and the disciples a guru attracts come from both genders and a range of classes and castes. During the bhakti movement of Hinduism, which started in about mid 1st millennium CE, the "gurus" included women and members of all "varna".


Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology

The Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of pharmacy and pharmacology. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. It is an official journal of the British Pharmaceutical Conference. It was established in 1870 and acquired its current title in 1949. The editor-in-chief is D. Jones (Queen's University Belfast).
Abstracting and indexing.
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
According to the "Journal Citation Reports", the journal has a 2014 impact factor of 2.264, and in 2016 its ranking was 130/256 (Pharmacology & Pharmacy).


Blue Gangsta

"Blue Gangsta" is a song by American recording artist Michael Jackson. The song is the 7th track of Jackson's second posthumous album "Xscape". The song was originally written, composed and produced by Jackson with music by Dr. Freeze during the "Invincible" album recording session in 1998. The song was re-tooled by Timbaland and Jerome "J-Roc" Harmon during the recording session in 2013–14 of the "Xscape" album.
Background and leak.
The song was originally recorded in 1998 for the "Invincible" album but failed to make the final cut.
The song was first leaked in 2006 in remixed form. Rapper Tempamental remixed the song without Jackson's permission and made it available on his MySpace web page in late 2006. The remix titled "Gangsta (No Friend of Mine)" featured Pras of the Fugees. After Jackson's death in 2009, the song was planned to be included on the album "Michael" but did not make the final track list. However, a more updated version leaked prior to the release of the "Michael" album, in late 2010. This version has slightly different percussion and is longer than the original version found on the deluxe edition of "Xscape", on which is in fact an earlier version that was used.
Dr. Freeze re-tooled the song without changing the original music to fit night clubs but this version was not featured on the "Xscape" album.
Opening with a movie score-like wash of strings and the urgent refrain, “What cha gonna do/You ain’t no friend of mine/Look what you put me through/Now that I’m the blue gangsta,” the Timbaland-produced tune features a spare, skittering beat and Jackson singing over the multi-tracked chorus.
The cover Rodrigo Teaser said in a podcast that Lavelle Smith (Michael choreographer) said to him that the song would be the last part of a gangster trilogy to be presented in the Dangerous Live Performance.
Remix.
Rapper Tempamental remixed the song without Jackson's permission and made it available on his MySpace web page in late 2006. The remix titled "Gangsta (No Friend of Mine)" featured Pras of the Fugees.
Release.
The song was released on MTV on May 8, 2014
Music video.
Published on 14 May 2014 to Michael Jackson's VEVO. Inspired by the short film for Jackson's short video for Smooth Criminal, dancers from celebrated the release of "Xscape" with a music video choreographed to this single. A shortened edit of the 2010 leaked version was used to celebrate the original version of this song.
Critical reception.
Jon Blistein from Rolling Stone Said that "The harrowing, hard-hitting 'Blue Gangsta' features a fiery vocal performance from Jackson, as well as updated production from Timbaland, who gives the track his signature futuristic spin, complete with snap-back snares, eerie low-end synths, blaring horns and striking strings."
Gil Kaufman from MTV Said that "If 'Thriller' gave you the chills, wait til you get a shot of Michael Jackson's 'Blue Gangsta.' The song, which is available exclusively now at michaeljackson.mtv.com will appear on the upcoming posthumous King of Pop album, Xscape, and it is a classic slice of cinematic MJ pop magic."


Lady Flora Hastings

Lady Flora Elizabeth Rawdon-Hastings (11 February 1806 – 5 July 1839) was a British aristocrat and lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent. Her death in 1839 was the subject of a court scandal that gave the Queen a negative image.
Family.
Lady Flora was one of the daughters of Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings (1754–1826) and his wife Flora Mure-Campbell (1780–1840). Her siblings were George, Sophia, Selina, and Adelaide.
Scandal.
The unmarried Lady Flora was alleged to have had an affair with John Conroy, comptroller, "favourite" and also suspected lover of Queen Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent.
Background.
The Duchess's daughter, Alexandrina Victoria (later Queen Victoria), detested Conroy, while Flora disliked the queen's adored friend and mentor, Baroness Lehzen, as well as the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.
As the Duchess of Kent's lady-in-waiting, Lady Flora was party to Conroy's infamous Kensington System by which he colluded with the Duchess to keep Victoria isolated from her Hanoverian uncles. For these reasons, the young Victoria hated and suspected Lady Flora, and was open to any accusation that could be laid at the feet of Conroy or his aides. Once she ascended the throne in June 1837, Victoria made every attempt to keep her mother's household, including Lady Flora and Conroy, away from her in distant parts of Buckingham Palace. Her mother unsuccessfully insisted that Conroy and his family be allowed at court; Victoria disagreed, saying: "I thought you would not expect me to invite Sir John Conroy after his conduct towards me for some years past."
1839.
Sometime in 1839, Lady Flora began to experience pain and swelling in her lower abdomen. She visited the queen's physician, Sir James Clark, who could not diagnose her condition without an examination, which she refused. Clark assumed the abdominal growth was pregnancy, and met with Lady Flora twice a week from 10 January to 16 February. As she was unmarried, his suspicions were hushed up. However, her enemies, Baroness Lehzen and the Marchioness of Tavistock (better known as the inventor of afternoon tea) spread the rumour that she was "with child", and eventually Lehzen told Melbourne about her fears. On 2 February, the queen wrote in her journal that she suspected Conroy, a man whom she loathed intensely, to be the father. Lady Flora felt that she had to defend herself in public, publishing her version of events in the form of a letter which appeared in "The Examiner", and blaming "a certain foreign lady" (Lehzen) for spreading the rumours.
The accusations were proven false when Lady Flora finally consented to a physical examination by the royal doctors, who confirmed that she was not pregnant. She did, however, have an advanced cancerous liver tumour, and had only months left to live. With only two months to live, Lady Flora wrote in 1839 to her mother on the subject of the upcoming Eglinton Tournament, expressing her concern that one of the knights might be killed in the violent sport. Queen Victoria visited the now emaciated and clearly dying Lady Flora on 27 June.
Death.
Lady Flora died in London on 5 July 1839, aged 33. She was buried at Loudoun Castle, her family home. Conroy and Lord Hastings, her brother, stirred up a press campaign against both the Queen and Doctor Clark which attacked them for insulting and disgracing Lady Flora with false rumours and for plotting against her and the entire Hastings family.
Published in "The Morning Post", their campaign also condemned the queen's "fellow conspirators", Baroness Lehzen and Lady Tavistock, as the guilty parties who had originated the false rumour of pregnancy. These attempts fell far short of their goals of discrediting the queen and forcing her to appoint Conroy to some post close to her person. Victoria remained adamant that Conroy should never be close to the throne in any fashion. The next year, her marriage and subsequent pregnancy restored her to popular favour. Victoria remained haunted by guilty memories of Lady Flora, having nightmares about her for years afterwards.
Poetry.
Hastings was also a poet; a collection of her work, "Poems by the Lady Flora Hastings", was edited by her sister Sophia (later the Marchioness of Bute), and published posthumously. The publication received an enthusiastic review in "The Literary Gazette", which commented:
A second edition of the poems was published in 1842.


Whitney Way Thore

Whitney Way Thore (born April 14, 1984) is an American television personality best known for her appearances on the television show "My Big Fat Fabulous Life", which airs on TLC.
Early life and education.
Whitney Way Thore was born on April 14, 1984, in Greensboro, North Carolina, to Glenn and Barbara Thore.
In 2000, Thore was accepted into the Theatre Summer Enrichment Program at the Governor's School of North Carolina of Meredith College. After graduating from Page High School (2002), Thore enrolled at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, majoring in Theatre. After she graduated from college, Thore relocated to South Korea to teach English to school children.
Career.
After Thore returned to the U.S. from Korea, she became the on-air producer of the Greensboro, North Carolina, radio show "Jared & Katie in the Morning" on 107.5 KZL.
On February 27, 2014, the show created a dance video called "A Fat Girl Dancing" on 107.5 KZL's YouTube channel. Soon, the video went viral, allowing Thore to promote her message of body acceptance and positive body image. As a direct result, Thore was featured on numerous media outlets such as "ABC News", NBC's "Today Show", and "The Huffington Post". In early January 2015, TLC aired "My Big Fat Fabulous Life," which chronicled Thore's life and her mission to lose weight. The first season aired with ten episodes, and TLC premiered the second season in September 2015.
To keep her message of "no body shaming" growing, Thore has her own website and blog where she connects with other fat acceptance activists.
In May 2016, Thore released her memoir, "I Do It with the Lights On: And 10 More Discoveries on the Road to a Blissfully Shame-Free Life".


Ray Johnson

Raymond Edward "Ray" Johnson (October 16, 1927 – January 13, 1995) was an American artist. Known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, he was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art and was described as "New York's most famous unknown artist". Johnson also staged and participated in early performance art events as the founder of a far-ranging mail art network – the New York Correspondence School – which picked up momentum in the 1960s and is still active today. He is occasionally associated with members of the Fluxus movement but was never a member. He lived in New York City from 1949 to 1968, when he moved to a small town in Long Island and remained there until his suicide.
Early years and education.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, on October 16, 1927, Ray Johnson grew up in a working-class neighborhood and attended Cass Technical High School where he was enrolled in the advertising art program. He took weekly classes at the Detroit Art Institute and spent a summer drawing at Ox-Bow School in Saugatuck, Michigan, affiliated with the Art Institute of Chicago.
Johnson left Detroit after high school in the summer of 1945 to attend the progressive Black Mountain College (BMC) in North Carolina, where he stayed for the next three years (spending the spring 1946 semester at the Art Students League in New York but returning the following summer). Josef Albers, before and after his notable sabbatical in Mexico, was in residence at Black Mountain College for six of the ten semesters that Johnson studied there. Anni Albers, Walter Gropius, Lyonel Feininger, Robert Motherwell, Ossip Zadkine, Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig, Ilya Bolotowski, Jacob Lawrence, Beaumont Newhall, M. C. Richards, and Jean Varda also taught at BMC during Johnson's time there. Johnson decided on Albers' advice to stay at BMC for a final term in summer 1948, when the visiting faculty included John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, and Richard Lippold. Johnson took part in "The Ruse of Medusa" – the culmination of Cunningham's Satie Festival - with Cage, Cunningham, Fuller, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Lippold, Ruth Asawa, Arthur Penn, and others among the cast and crew. "Because of those who participated, the event has taken on the reputation of a watershed event in 'mixed media' " wrote Martin Duberman in his history of BMC.
In the documentary "How to Draw a Bunny", Richard Lippold delicately but candidly confesses to carrying on a love affair with Johnson for many years which began at Black Mountain College.
I risk to say, [that at Black Mountain College] 'anything went'—between the students and the faculty ... As I said to my wife the other day, 'I think I'm a good old man now, but I was a very bad boy.' ... She agreed. We had a little house, my family and me, and he would arrive every morning with a little bouquet of wild flowers, and singing. Eventually our relationship became very intimate, so I brought him back to New York ... and obviously, we didn't live together, steadily, because I had my family. We were quite close together until 1974, so that's a long period of time. From '48 to '74, twenty some years. Because it was a very intimate relationship, a loving relationship. And it would be very hard for me to separate him as a person from his work. I don't think I could do that.
New York years.
Johnson moved with Richard Lippold to New York City by early 1949, rejoining Cage and Cunningham and befriending, within the next couple of years, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Ad Reinhardt, Stan Vanderbeek, Norman Solomon, Lucy Lippard, Sonia Sekula, Carolyn Brown and Earle Brown, Judith Malina, Diane di Prima, Julian Beck, Remy Charlip, James Waring, and innumerable others. With the American Abstract Artists group, Johnson painted geometric abstractions that, in part, reflected the influence of Albers. But by 1953 he turned to collage and left the American Abstract Artists, rejecting his early paintings, which it is rumored that he later burned in Cy Twombly's fireplace. Johnson began to create small, irregularly shaped works incorporating fragments from popular culture, most notably the Lucky Strikes logo and images from fan magazines of such movie stars as Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and Shirley Temple. In the summer of 1955, he coined a term for these small collages: "moticos". He carried boxes of moticos around New York, showing them on sidewalks, at cafes, in Grand Central Station and other public places; he asked passersby what they thought of them, and recorded some of their responses. He began mailing collages to friends and strangers, along with a series of manifestos, mimeographed for distribution, including "What is a Moticos?", excerpts of which were published in an article by John Wilcock in the inaugural issue of "The Village Voice".
A friend of Johnson's, art critic Suzi Gablik, brought photographer Elisabeth Novick to document an installation of dozens of Johnson's moticos in autumn of 1955. (Most of these were destroyed or recycled by the artist.) "The random arrangement ,, on a dilapidated cellar door in Lower Manhattan may even have been the first informal Happening," she recalled later. According to Henry Geldzahler, "[Ray's] collages "Elvis Presley No. 1" and "James Dean" stand as the Plymouth Rock of the Pop movement." Johnson's friend Lucy Lippard would later write that "The Elvis ... and Marilyn Monroe [collages] ,, heralded Warholian Pop." Johnson was quickly recognized as part of the nascent Pop generation. A note about the cover image in January 1958's "Art News" pointed out that "[Jasper] Johns' first one-man show ... places him with such better-known colleagues as Rauschenberg, Twombly, Kaprow and Ray Johnson".
Johnson worked part-time at the Orientalia Bookstore in the Lower East Side as he began to deepen his understanding of Zen philosophy and to employ "chance" in his work. Both of these interests increasingly informed his collages, performances, and mail art. Johnson also found occasional work as a graphic designer. He had met Andy Warhol by 1956; both designed several book covers for New Directions and other publishers. Johnson had a series of whimsical flyers advertising his design services printed via offset lithography, and began mailing these out. These were in joined in 1956-7 by two small promotional artists' books, "BOO/K/OF/THE/MO/NTH"(sic) and "P/EEK/A/BOO/K/OFTHE/WEE/K"(sic), self-published in editions of 500.
Johnson participated in about a dozen performance art events between 1957 and 1963 – in his own short pieces ("Funeral Music for Elvis Presley" and "Lecture on Modern Music"), in those of others (by James Waring and Susan Kaufman), and via his own compositions performed by his colleagues at The Living Theatre and during the Fluxus Yam Festival of 1963. From 1961 on, Johnson periodically staged events he called "Nothings", described to his friend William Wilson as "an attitude as opposed to a happening", which would parallel the "Happenings" of Allan Kaprow and later Fluxus events. The first of these, "Nothing by Ray Johnson", was part of a weekly series of events in July 1961 at the AG Gallery, a venue in New York operated by George Maciunas and Almus Salcius; Yoko Ono's first solo show was on view in the gallery at the time. Ed Plunkett later recalled entering an empty room. "Visitors began to enter the premises. Most of them looked quite dismayed that nothing was going on ... Well, finally Ray arrived ... and he brought with him a large corrugated cardboard box of wooden spools. Soon after arriving Ray emptied this box of spools down the staircase ... with these ... one had to step cautiously to avoid slipping ... I was delighted with this gesture." Johnson's Second Nothing took place at Maidman Playhouse, New York, in 1962. It was part of a variety show that was organized by Nicholas Cernovich and Alan Marlow of New York Poet's Theatre, had lighting design by Billy Name (aka Billy Linich), and featured artists such as Fred Herko, George Brecht, Simone Morris, La Monte Young, Stan Vanderbeek, and others. In 1964/65, Ray Johnson circulated publicity for an imaginary gallery called the Robin Gallery, which was a pun on the Rueben Gallery where some of the earliest happenings took place and was said by one critic to “put the happenings out on the street in a series of irresponsible exploits and escapades."
Johnson's first known piece of mail directing a recipient to "please send to..." someone else dates from 1958; the phrases "please add to and return", "please add and send to", and even "please do not send to" followed. Johnson's mail art activities became more systematic with the help of several friends, particularly Bill Wilson and his mother, assemblage artist May Wilson, along with Marie Tavroges Stilkind and later Toby Spiselman. In 1962, Ed Plunkett named Johnson's endeavors 'the New York Correspondence School' (NYCS). In early 1962, Joseph Byrd responded to several mailings with a red rubber stamp, "THIS IS NOT ART," which Johnson then used in his mailings for several months. On April 1, 1968, the first of the meeting of the NYCS was held at the Society of Friends Meeting House on Rutherford Place in New York City. Two more meetings were called by Johnson in the following weeks, including the Seating-Meeting at New York's Finch College, about which John Gruen reported: "It was ... attended by many artists and 'members' ... all of whom sat around wondering when the meeting would start. It never did ... people wrote things on bits of paper, on a blackboard, or simply talked. It was all strangely meaningless – and strangely meaningful." Johnson staged such events regularly, often following them up with witty typed reports, photocopied for wide distribution via the post. Such gatherings continued to be held in various guises into the mid-1980s.
Johnson produced the 12 known unbound pages of his enigmatic "Book About Death" in 1963 to 1965. Consisting of cryptic texts and drawings (mostly) by Johnson, they were mailed a few at a time, randomly, and offered for sale via a classified ad in "The Village Voice"., thus very few people ever received all the pages. Something Else Press published Johnson's "The Paper Snake" for a wider audience in 1965. Remarking about himself and the book, Johnson said:
I'm an artist and a, well, I shouldn't call myself a poet but other people have. What I do is classify the words as poetry. ... "The Paper Snake" ... is all my writings, rubbings, plays, things that I had given to the publisher, Dick Higgins, editor and publisher, which I mailed to him or brought to him in cardboard boxes or shoved under his door, or left in his sink, or whatever, over a period of years. He saved all these things, designed and published a book, and I simply as an artist did what I did without classification. So when the book appeared the book stated, "Ray Johnson is a poet", but I never said, "this is a poem", I simply wrote what I wrote and it later became classified.
Long out of print, "The Paper Snake" was re-printed by Siglio Press in 2014.
On June 3, 1968 – the same day that Andy Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas with a gun she'd stored under May Wilson's bed – Johnson was mugged at knifepoint. Two days later, Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Severely shaken, Johnson moved to Glen Cove, Long Island, and the next year bought a house in nearby Locust Valley, where Richard Lippold and his family resided. He began to live in a state of increasing reclusion in what he called a "small white farmhouse with a Joseph Cornell attic."
Johnson appeared twice in the "Art in Process" series, described by Greg Allen as "a series of topical, process-oriented, teaching exhibitions organized by Finch College Museum director Elayne Varian. They included sketches, models and studies to show how the artist did what he was doing."
Locust Valley years.
From 1966 into the mid-1970s, Johnson's work was shown at the Willard Gallery (New York) and Feigen Gallery (Chicago and New York), as well as by Angela Flowers in London and Arturo Schwarz in Milan. In 1970, mail from 107 participants to curator Marcia Tucker was exhibited in a Ray Johnson – New York Correspondence School exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York – a significant moment of cultural validation for Johnson. Another notable exhibition followed – Correspondence: An Exhibition of the Letters of Ray Johnson at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, 1976, organized by Richard Craven: 81 lenders' works, 35 years of Johnson's outgoing mail. Around that time, Johnson began his silhouette project, creating approximately 200 profiles of personal friends, artists, and celebrities which became the basis for many of his later collages. His subjects included Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, William S. Burroughs, Edward Albee, Louise Nevelson, Larry Rivers, Lynda Benglis, Nam Jume Paik, David Hockney, David Bowie, Christo, Peter Hujar, Roy Lichtenstein, Paloma Picasso, James Rosenquist, Richard Feigen, among others – a who's who of the New York arts and letters scene.
During the 1980s Johnson purposefully receded from view, cultivating his role as outsider, maintaining personal connections via mail art and telephone largely in place of physical interaction. In 1981, he began a longstanding correspondence with librarian and artists' book specialist, Clive Phillpot. Only a handful of people were ever allowed into his house in Locust Valley. Eventually, Johnson ceased to exhibit or sell his work commercially altogether. His underground reputation bubbled beneath the surface into the 1980s and 90s despite his general absence from the flourishing New York art scene. Johnson feverishly continued to work on richer and more complex collages, such as "Untitled (Seven Black Feet with Eyelashes)", in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art. It demonstrates the artist's incorporation of text into collage, which is his preferred medium. In contrast to his physical seclusion, Johnson's pre-digital network of correspondents increased in size exponentially.
Death.
On January 13, 1995, Johnson was seen diving off a bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island, and backstroking out to sea. His body washed up on the beach the following day. Many aspects of his death involved the number "13": the date; his age, 67 (6+7=13); the room number of a motel he had checked into earlier that day, 247 (2+4+7=13), etc. Some continue to speculate about a 'last performance' aspect of Johnson's drowning. Hundreds of collages were found carefully arranged in his home. He left no will and his estate is now administered by Adler Beatty.
Film, television and music.
Following his suicide, filmmakers Andrew Moore and John Walter (in conjunction with Frances Beatty of Richard L. Feigen & Co.) spent six years probing the mysteries of Johnson's life and art. Their collaboration yielded the award-winning documentary "How to Draw a Bunny", released in 2002. The film includes interviews with artists Chuck Close, James Rosenquist, Billy Name, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Judith Malina, and many others.
The Manic Street Preachers wrote and recorded a song about Johnson, titled "Locust Valley." Released as a B-side on the "Found That Soul" single (2001), "Locust Valley" describes Johnson as "famously unknown/elusive and dismantled".
John Cale's song "Hey Ray" from the "Extra Playful" EP (2011) is about Cale's encounters with Johnson in New York during the 1960s.
Canadian art rock band Women's 2010 album "Public Strain" includes two songs that directly reference Ray Johnson. Locust Valley is the town where Johnson lived in New York State. Venice Lockjaw is a phrase Johnson incorporated in pins that he made to be given away at the Ubi Fluxus ibi Motus exhibit in 1990 at the Venice Biennale. Their 2008 album "Women" also featured a song called Sag Harbor Bridge, referencing the place of Johnson's death.


Catherine Kaidyee Blaikley

Catherine Kaidyee Blaikley (c. 1695 – 1771) was an 18th-century American landowner and midwife, best known for claims that she had delivered over 3,000 children.
Biography.
Catherine Blaikley was born around 1695 to William and Martha Kaidyee, in York County, Virginia. She was the couple's only daughter and had two brothers. Catherine married her husband William Blaikley, a merchant and watchmaker, on September 11, 1718. The Blaikleys' had at least five children together, two of which were boys who died at a young age. The family resided in what is now known as the Catherine Blaikley House on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg, Virginia. Later, an inventory of the estate would reveal that the family enjoyed a comfortable living with luxuries such as silver spoons and slaves. William Blaikley died in May 1736, leaving Catherine a widow for 35 years.
Upon her husband's death, Catherine Blaikley inherited all of his property which included 50 acres of land in Henrico County, a mill in Brunswick, and the family homestead. Economic opportunities for women were limited during this time period, but midwifery was considered to be an appropriate occupation, as was offering lodging, which Blaikley also did. Financial records indicate that Blaikley was able to maintain her standard of living. An advertisement she placed looking for her red Moracco pocketbook, suggested she had possession of paper money and access to drugs.
Blaikley died in October 1771 and was buried in the cemetery at Bruton Parish Church. An obituary ran in one of the newspapers of the day and described her as an "eminent midwife." In the 1950s Colonial Williamsburg restored Blaikley's home and it is now a historical tourist site.
Career.
It is unknown exactly when Blaikley began working as a midwife but historian Linda Sturz has stated that it was likely around three years after the death of her husband. Midwifery, or the care of women before, during, and after birth, was a common and respectable occupation during this time and was often a full-time job. This was one of the few medically related careers that was not discriminatory against women worldwide. However, women were expected to call upon a physician should severe complications arise. In America, before the revolution and medical schools were in place, there were no restrictions on women to practice medicine, so it is likely Blaikley dealt with these issues on her own. Blaikley was reported to have delivered upwards of three thousand children, presumably both free and enslaved. Blaikley supplemented her income by lodging politicians, businessmen, and other important figures traveling through Virginia's capital.