Here is a list of the Best Televisions under ₹ 27000 in India. Check out their specifications & compare their prices across the leading online stores to take advantage of the amazing deals happening at the moment.
The Videocon (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (IVE40F21A) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Videocon (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (IVE40F21A) features 2 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Videocon (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (IVE40F21A) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Videocon (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (IVE40F21A) in is Rs. 26990.
The TCL (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43S4) has a 43 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The TCL (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43S4) features 3 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The TCL (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43S4) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for TCL (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43S4) in is Rs. 26900.
The Mitashi (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (MiDE040v11) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Mitashi (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (MiDE040v11) features 3 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Mitashi (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (MiDE040v11) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Mitashi (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (MiDE040v11) in is Rs. 26890.
The VU (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (H40D321) has a 39 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The VU (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (H40D321) features 2(Rear) HDMI Ports, 2(Rear) USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The VU (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (H40D321) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for VU (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (H40D321) in is Rs. 26500.
The Sharp (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LC-40LE380X) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Sharp (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LC-40LE380X) features 2 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Sharp (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LC-40LE380X) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Sharp (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LC-40LE380X) in is Rs. 26420.
The Lloyd (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L43FYK) has a 43 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Lloyd (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L43FYK) features 2 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Lloyd (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L43FYK) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Lloyd (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L43FYK) in is Rs. 26290.
The lowest price for Kodak (50 Inch) Full HD LED TV (50FHDXSMART) in is Rs. 25999.
The Panasonic (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-40F201DX) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Panasonic (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-40F201DX) features 3 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Panasonic (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-40F201DX) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Panasonic (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-40F201DX) in is Rs. 25999.
The Panasonic (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-39E200DX) has a 39 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Panasonic (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-39E200DX) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Panasonic (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-39E200DX) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Panasonic (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-39E200DX) in is Rs. 25999.
The Philips (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43PFL4451) has a 43 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Philips (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43PFL4451) features 3 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Philips (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43PFL4451) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Philips (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43PFL4451) in is Rs. 25990.
The Sanyo (49 Inch) Full HD LED TV (XT-49S7200F) has a 49 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Sanyo (49 Inch) Full HD LED TV (XT-49S7200F) features 2(Rear), 1(Bottom) HDMI Ports, 2(Rear) USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Sanyo (49 Inch) Full HD LED TV (XT-49S7200F) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Sanyo (49 Inch) Full HD LED TV (XT-49S7200F) in is Rs. 24999.
The INTEX (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LED-4016 FHD) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The INTEX (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LED-4016 FHD) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The INTEX (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LED-4016 FHD) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for INTEX (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LED-4016 FHD) in is Rs. 24999.
The Blaupunkt (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (BLA43AS570) has a 43 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Blaupunkt (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (BLA43AS570) features 3 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Blaupunkt (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (BLA43AS570) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Blaupunkt (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (BLA43AS570) in is Rs. 24999.
The BlackOx (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (42YX4001) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The BlackOx (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (42YX4001) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The BlackOx (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (42YX4001) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for BlackOx (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (42YX4001) in is Rs. 24999.
The SHINCO (48 Inch) Full HD LED TV (S050AS) has a 48 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The SHINCO (48 Inch) Full HD LED TV (S050AS) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The SHINCO (48 Inch) Full HD LED TV (S050AS) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for SHINCO (48 Inch) Full HD LED TV (S050AS) in is Rs. 24990.
The AOC (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE40V50M6) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The AOC (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE40V50M6) features 1 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The AOC (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE40V50M6) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for AOC (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE40V50M6) in is Rs. 24990.
The Haier (42 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE42B9000) has a 42 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Haier (42 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE42B9000) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Haier (42 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE42B9000) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Haier (42 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE42B9000) in is Rs. 24817.
The Haier (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE40K6000B) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Haier (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE40K6000B) features 3 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Haier (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE40K6000B) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Haier (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE40K6000B) in is Rs. 24500.
The AOC (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE43F60M6) has a 43 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The AOC (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE43F60M6) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The AOC (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE43F60M6) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for AOC (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE43F60M6) in is Rs. 23990.
The VU (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (4043F) has a 43 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The VU (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (4043F) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The VU (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (4043F) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for VU (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (4043F) in is Rs. 23980.
The Panasonic (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-40F200DX) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Panasonic (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-40F200DX) features 3 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Panasonic (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-40F200DX) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Panasonic (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (VIERA TH-40F200DX) in is Rs. 23648.
The VU (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43D6575) has a 43 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The VU (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43D6575) features 2 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The VU (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43D6575) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for VU (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (43D6575) in is Rs. 23599.
The Haier (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE43B7000) has a 43 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Haier (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE43B7000) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Haier (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE43B7000) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Haier (43 Inch) Full HD LED TV (LE43B7000) in is Rs. 23490.
The Sanyo (49 Inch) Full HD LED TV (XT-49S7100F) has a 49 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Sanyo (49 Inch) Full HD LED TV (XT-49S7100F) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Sanyo (49 Inch) Full HD LED TV (XT-49S7100F) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Sanyo (49 Inch) Full HD LED TV (XT-49S7100F) in is Rs. 23490.
The Lloyd (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L40FIK) has a 40 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Lloyd (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L40FIK) features 2 HDMI Ports, 1 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Lloyd (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L40FIK) comes with a warranty period of 3 Years.
The lowest price for Lloyd (40 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L40FIK) in is Rs. 23100.
The Lloyd (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L39FN2) has a 39 Inch Full HD LED Display Panel, with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 Pixels. The Lloyd (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L39FN2) features 2 HDMI Ports, 2 USB Ports, 1 Headphone jacks, 2 Speakers among many of its other features. The Lloyd (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L39FN2) comes with a warranty period of 1 Year.
The lowest price for Lloyd (39 Inch) Full HD LED TV (L39FN2) in is Rs. 23050.


Cardio Before Or After Weights?
Should you do cardio before or after weights? I see the question very often. The answer depends on what activity is more important to you and a little enzyme called AMP kinase.
What Do You Want To Be Better At?
If your main goal is getting better at endurance activities like cycling, running etc., then that should come first.
If you set your eyes on building muscle mass through lifting weights, then cardio should come afterwards.
So what is that little enzyme? Er, what are enzymes actually? Time for a really, really short adventure into the world of biochemistry.
Let's start with what enzymes are: they are molecules that cause chemical reactions in the cells of the human body. Everyone of us has around 75,000 of them and each fulfills a specific task. You may, for example, have heard of "digestive enzymes", whose role is to break the food you eat down into its components, so your body can build something new out of them.
AMP kinase then is an enzyme that has the role of a "master switch" that helps regulate what kind of proteins muscles produce after exercise. Once this switch is set to "endurance", your muscles will go and adapt to better endurance. On the other hand, if it's set to "strength", the muscles are more willing to build the kind of proteins that make them bigger and stronger.
As said in the video, once AMP kinase thinks it figured out what you want during a session, that is where your best results for the day will be.
Good question! If you totally exhausted yourself with either cardio or weightlifting, then naturally whatever comes last will suffer. However, even a moderate half hour session of one or the other gets the AMP kinase into action.
Sometimes, if I do cardio at the gym, I'll do half of it, then lift weights for twenty minutes, then the other half. I read that the twenty minute break gives the best overall calorie burn.
I have just found your site. It's awesome.
3 weeks ago i started going to the gym to build some muscles and lose the abdominal fat – i want a six pack:)- i want to lose all body fat.
Normally I start with my weights and after that cardio, about 60-70 min/week. Is that good ? Should i start with cardio, do it like i do now or half/half ?
I'm worried that if a do it after weights i'll lose some muscles too.
One more question: How much should i run/week to start burning fats ?
Heah Mike, thanks for the praise!
In my opinion you are doing it right, because your main focus is building muscle. If you wanted to get really good at running, you should do it the other way around.
I do cardio first, but that's probably because I have to "force" myself to do weights. I wish I liked them more because I do want to be more toned. I must work harder!
What makes you dislike weights so much?
Evil: I run one mile to the gym, lift, then run one mile home. I know there are a lot of other variables, but do you think this would really hinder my ability to gain muscle, because I'm technically doing cardio first? My guess is no, as it's only a mile before weights.
Heah Corey, no, one mile is next to nothing.
Well jeez, now you got me thinking that my cardio is insufficient! 😉 Two mile run, while not a lot, is still decent cardio, or so I thought!
Hahaha, no worries. I meant "next to nothing" as in "it's unlikely that 1 mile before the workout will trigger that little kinase sucker".
I want to get really good at parkour , and therefor I need strength and stamina. I know cardio bumps up my stamina (probably) , but in order to get strength i should train with weights. But when i train with weights i get much heavier. And it is bad if I´m to heavy because of my muscles.
So my question :): How can I get more strength with weights but still gain stamina without being very heavy?
A bit of size can't be avoided when getting stronger, but you can try going for low rep sets (5-8). While allowing for more strength, this often takes the focus away from hypertrophy (the growth of muscle tissue).


You will have a thorough eye examination to determine if you are a candidate.
For several weeks prior to your surgery, you cannot wear your contact lenses. By doing so it would affect the shape of your cornea and ultimately affect your surgery.
Make sure you read and understand your consent form before your surgery. If there is something you don't understand or are not sure of, don't be afraid to ask any questions. We want you to be fully informed.
You cannot wear makeup 24-36 hours before surgery as well as a few weeks after.
You will not be able to drive on the day of your procedure. Prepare arrangements for someone to drive you home.
Although your vision will dramatically improve after your procedure, you may experience a slight haze or glow for a few days.
If you have any questions regarding the LASIK technology, then talk to us! We will gladly answer any and all of the questions you may have.
You will have to follow a strict regimen of eye drops to aid the healing process in order to achieve the most effective results.
A protective shield will be given to you as a precaution to prevent injury while you sleep.
Although you will be awake during the laser vision correction procedure, you will be given medication to help you relax and feel comfortable.


text:
The Soil Pollution Crisis in China: A Cleanup Presents Daunting Challenge
Chinese officials are only starting to come to grips with the severity and extent of the soil pollution that has contaminated vast areas of the nation's farm fields — by one estimate more than 8 percent of China's arable land. But one thing is already clear: The cost and complexity of any remediation efforts will be enormous.
By He Guangwei • July 14, 2014
Tainted Harvest: An e360 Special Report/Part III
A chemical factory beside a rice paddy in Yixing in Jiangsu Province, where industrial pollution has contaminated soil and food crops. MARK RALSTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Luo Jinzhi is 52 and lives in the village of Shuangqiao, in China's Hunan Province. For the last several years, Luo has been a petitioner, one of millions of Chinese people who find themselves appealing directly to higher authorities in the hope of resolving a problem. Some petition to rectify a legal injustice or to expose local corruption. Luo is petitioning on behalf of her fellow villagers for a remedy for the catastrophic pollution that has afflicted her home village.
Petitioning is a demanding and difficult process in which success is not guaranteed: It involves a long and expensive journey to the nation's capital, where petitioners are frequently sent on fruitless journeys from one unresponsive official to another. Luo Jinzhi made the thousand-mile journey,
Tainted Harvest:
An e360 Special Report
This is the last of a series on soil pollution in China. The first article examines China's overall soil crisis, and the second looks at threats to the food supply. It is a joint project of Yale e360 and Chinadialogue, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
most recently this April, to plead for action with the Bureau for Letters and Calls, the first stop for petitioners in the capital, and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, only to be told to go home and wait for the local government to take care of her complaints. She has yet to hear from any of them.
For Luo and her neighbors, the first sign of a serious problem in Shuangqiao was on June 28, 2009, when Luo Bolin, a worker at the Xianghe Chemical Factory, died of cadmium poisoning. When he died, his left leg was marked by large purple contusions; he was only 44. The list of cadmium-related deaths in Shuangqiao has since grown longer, and evidence is mounting of a national pollution crisis that has contaminated China's soil and food crops and threatens to overwhelm efforts to put it right.
The Xianghe Chemical Factory, where Luo had worked, opened in 2004, on a site just 50 meters from the Liuyang River. The Liuyang flows directly into the Xiang River and is celebrated in Chinese Communist mythology as the symbol of an historic milestone in the party's long struggle for power. It was here, in September 1927, that Mao Zedong led the first armed Communist revolt, the brief Autumn Harvest Uprising, and set up the short-lived Hunan Soviet, an episode still commemorated in songs in praise of the river.
The factory employed 50 Shuangqiao villagers and produced an annual total of 3,000 tons of powdered and pellet zinc sulphate, an animal fodder additive. In 2006, apparently without government approval, it began to produce indium, a rare metal more valuable than gold, but the processing of which produces cadmium as a by-product. Starting in April 2008, the villagers of Shuangqiao began to notice small, but troubling changes: The local well water began to taste oddly of rust, Mrs. Luo recalls, and saucepans used to boil water changed color.
This steel rolling mill in Hengyang in Hunan Province discharges its wastewater into the Xiang River. LI FENG/YALE ENVIRONMENT 360
On June 27, 2009, the day before Luo Bolin's death, the government of Liuyang municipality suddenly closed the factory and arranged health checks for more than 3,000 villagers who lived within 1.2 kilometers of the plant. Five hundred were found to have high levels of cadmium in their bodies, and another four were to die during the government investigation. Shuangqiao became known nationwide as a "cadmium village."
Luo Jinzhi has collected what she believes to be a still-incomplete list of the names of the dead in Shuangqiao and the neighboring villages of Dongkou and Puhua, starting with Luo Bolin. In all, she says, she has identified 26 deaths from cadmium-related illnesses between 2009 and 2013.
Although the government paid compensation of between $1,600 and $9,000 to the victims' families, it has never admitted a link with cadmium or other metals that have affected the villagers. In December 2008, for example, Luo Jinzhi's five-year-old nephew began to have breathing difficulties and became listless. He was found to be suffering from lead poisoning, and 14 more cases in children had been identified by March 2009.
When the deaths began, the villagers began to protest. On July 29, 2009, hundreds of them went to the township government to complain that the factory's cadmium pollution still threatened their lives. The next day, thousands surrounded the government building, and Chen Run'er, the party secretary from the provincial capital, Changsha, had to be called in to address them. He promised the villagers that their complaints would be investigated, but on August 5, the Liuyang authorities ordered in hundreds of police with dogs. The confrontation finally ended when the head of the plant, Luo Xiangping, was arrested, the factory was permanently shut down, and the director and a deputy director of the Liuyang Environmental Protection Bureau were fired.
Although the factory has now been shut for good, the pollution is still affecting the village. The nearly 10-acre site that the shuttered business occupied is surrounded by a six-foot wall. Behind it lies a large pile of toxic sludge. When it rains, contaminated water seeps from the sludge into the Liuyang River, just 50 meters away. Around the plant, 659 acres of land have been polluted with cadmium, and any crops grown there are contaminated. The villagers believe that moving elsewhere offers their only guarantee of safety, and they have asked Luo Jinzhi to negotiate their relocation with the township government.
With 659 acres of their land no longer fit to grow food, the villagers are struggling to make a living.
Liu Bo — who is coordinator of the liaison office of the EU-Asia Environmental Support Chengde Project, a European Union-funded group focusing on urban river pollution — investigated the factory site in January this year. He, too, concluded that "the pollution is continuing to do harm," damaging the local land and soil and threatening the Liuyang River basin. The basin includes Changsha, as well as the Xiang River, the source of drinking water for some 20 million people.
Hunan Province is an important center for heavy metal production. In 2011 the province's 1,003 non-ferrous metal companies produced 2.66 million tons of ten different metals — the third highest production in China and worth $60 billion. Several years ago, the government said it hoped to turn Hunan's Xiang River into the "Rhine of the East": beautiful, clean and prosperous.
But in a report to an NGO conference in January this year, Chen Chao, an official with the Hunan Non-Ferrous Metals Management Bureau, admitted that the Xiang basin also had nearly 1,000 sludge sites or tailings stores, which contained 440 million tons of solid waste that is contaminated with lead, mercury, and cadmium. Chen Chao's report revealed that Hunan accounts for 32.1 percent of China's emissions of cadmium, 20.6 percent of arsenic emissions, 58.7 percent of mercury emissions, and 24.6 percent of the lead in its wastewater, tailings, and waste gases.
Pollution has contaminated the soil of Shuangqiao and affected the drinking water for 20 million people. AARON REISS/YALE ENVIRONMENT 360
The scale of this ecological disaster is daunting, and the potential scale and cost of any remediation or cleanup effort is mind-boggling. According to a geochemical survey conducted by the Ministry of Land and Resources between 2002 and 2008, 794 square miles in the area is polluted by heavy metals, an area that stretches from Zhuzhou, on the Xiang River, to Chengjingji. The survey report revealed that the area's rice and vegetables — as well as reeds and mussels in its waterways — all contained elevated levels, mostly of cadmium.
Liu Shu — who is chair of the Shuguang Environmental Protection Organization, an NGO founded in 2013 in Changsha that works on soil pollution — has investigated soil pollution in Zhuzhou, Changsha, and Xiangtan. Her group found cadmium levels 49.5 times the limit in soil samples taken from the vicinity of a smelting plant in the municipality of Changning. At another site, an industrial park by the Xiang River in Henghan County, they found levels 331 times the limit.
Liu is concerned, too, about the deep-rooted social conflict between local people and government that soil pollution has caused — conflict that she predicts will worsen if not resolved. In the case of the Xianghe factory, Liu and her team noted, the villagers continue to hold out for compensation and relocation.
The township government has offered the Xianghe victims a share of the $1.37 million that they raised in an auction of the chemical company's assets, but only on condition that the villagers seek no further compensation from the company or the government. With 659 acres of village land no longer fit to grow food, the villagers are struggling to make a living. When the government offered to pay them the market price for the rice that could have been grown on their land, some accepted the offer.
For Luo Jinzhi and many other villagers, however, this is not a long-term solution. The share of the compensation for villagers who live close to the factory is only $600, and it is $250 for those living further away. It is not enough to finance a new life, and the villagers remain determined that the government should also relocate them.
One official says soil remediation in China 'will be on a far bigger scale than either air or water cleanup.'
The government, meanwhile, has put its faith in soil remediation. Yonkers Environmental Protection company is one of China's few listed soil remediation companies that is approved by the Ministry of Environmental Protection for remediation work. The company won the contract to clean up the Xianghe Chemical Factory site and, as early as August 2012, it announced that the site had been cleaned to standard.
The villagers are skeptical, however. In September 2012, they sent a soil sample to Nanjing University's Centre of Modern Analysis. Concentrations of 6.89 milligrams (mg) of cadmium per kilogram (kg) were found in a sample taken from the sludge pile, and 93.8 mg per kg in a sample taken from a nearby field. According to China's Soil Environment Quality Standards, cadmium levels in Liuyang should be no higher than 0.3 mg per kg. One sample was found to breach that by a factor of 300.
Although the government has not officially recognized these results, villagers question the effectiveness of the remediation. The 300-fold difference between the two samples, they say, is because Yonkers treated the land within the factory site, but not the surrounding land, where their polluted rice fields lie. Relations between the villagers, the government, and the company are now so strained that remediation work has stalled.
Wastewater from the a chemical plant poured into the Xiang River in September 2011. LI FENG/YALE ENVIRONMENT 360
In January 2014, Liu Bo, the coordinator of the EU project, wrote to Xu Shousheng, the provincial party secretary, supporting the villagers' complaints that "pollution has not been effectively controlled." Liu found the limited range of techniques that Yonkers had applied had failed to address the range of pollutants — including cadmium, zinc, and arsenic — on the site. He also recommended that remediation should include the surrounding fields and the entire river basin.
Hunan is only one of many provinces in China that have suffered heavy metal pollution. Incomplete figures from the Ministry of Environmental Protection revealed that in 2006, 24.7 million acres of arable land was polluted, 8.3 percent of China's total. But the government has been slow to understand the seriousness of the problem. It was not until this February that the Ministry of Agriculture ordered a series of remediation trials that aim to give priority to safe management of farmland and to experiment with crop adjustment, as well as possible compensation mechanisms in cases where land or produce have been badly contaminated.
Many officials admit, however, that China's heavy metal soil contamination is an enormous challenge. Last year, Zhuang Guotai, the head of the Ministry of Environmental Protection's Department of Nature and Ecology Conservation, told a conference of market-listed environmental protection companies, "In comparison with efforts to clean up air and water pollution, we've hardly got started with soil. But once the market is opened up, soil remediation will be on a far bigger scale than either air or water cleanup."
If the scale of China's soil pollution is unprecedented, remediation, too, must be large-scale. Zhuang admitted however, that, as well as legislative and technological difficulties, funding for soil remediation was the biggest challenge, as total cleanup costs could eventually reach $1.6 trillion. A private industry body, the Jiangsu Institute of the Environmental Industry, has predicted that between 2014 and 2020 China's soil remediation market could be worth nearly $110 billon.
Some developers hope polluted farmland will be reclassified and earmarked for development.
For now, however, financing for these projects is tight. In 2013 the Chinese government launched 42 soil remediation trials, but only two involved funding of more than $16 million. Funding for the 16 projects unveiled so far totals about $96 million, almost entirely from government subsidies.
Chen Nengchang, a soil remediation expert with the Guangdong Institute of Eco-Environment and Soil Sciences, does not believe these numbers mean much, beyond that fact that money is being spent. China's soil problem, he said, is not only one of pollution but also soil quality and erosion, and improving soil quality with increased organic matter and better pH levels is particularly urgent. On moderately polluted land, he argues, planting non-food crops would eventually clean the soil.
Other experts, however, continue to grapple with the combination of the scale and severity of soil pollution. Liu Yangsheng, the secretary of the China Association of the Environmental Protection Industry's Heavy Metals and Environmental Remediation Committee, has said that immature technology, lack of funding, and unclear evaluation standards mean that restoration of heavy metal-polluted soil will be an ongoing struggle. Because of the severity and extent of heavy metal pollution in China, he said, expensive techniques are unlikely to be widely applied, while techniques from overseas that may be effective for small plots of land are of limited use in China.
Recent research findings have brought some rays of hope to China's beleaguered soil. The Foshan Jinkuizi Plant Nutrition Company claims to have developed a soil remediation technology specifically designed for China's heavy metal-polluted soil: a microorganism that can change the ionic state of heavy metals in the soil, deactivating the pollutants so they do not harm crops. The company claims that the method is cheap, convenient, easy to use, does not produce any secondary pollution, and is already in commercial production and use.
In another possible breakthrough, in April, the Guangdong Geoanalysis Research Center announced a new product, Mont-SH6, which it says is a powerful absorber of toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, mercury, copper, and zinc. Liu Wenhua, chief engineer at the center, claims that the product can reduce soil cadmium levels by over 90 percent, and that materials and manufacturing costs are low: remediation of 1.48 acres of cadmium-contaminated rice fields with this technique costs about $4,800. Mass production, according to Liu Wenhua, could bring this down to between $320 and $480.
These claims remain to be tested. For now, the government faces more immediate decisions. Many property developers are hoping that polluted land will be reclassified as non-agricultural, so it can be earmarked for development. And, according to Vice Minister for Agriculture Niu Dun, business interests are pushing the government to classify even more land as polluted by heavy metals so that they can build on it.
This is a clear battle of interests, says Niu, and the choice will be hard. Turning polluted farmland into commercial or residential land is a policy that carries its own risks. When houses are built on contaminated land, construction workers and residents can be exposed to health risks. In one notorious case from 2007 in Wuhan, the capital of Hebei Province, a construction site that had previously been occupied by a pesticide factory was reclassified for residential development. The project was halted when a construction worker was hospitalized with chemical poisoning and the government was obliged to return the purchase price of the land, pay $19 million in compensation to the developer, and spend an additional $44 million to clean up the site. How many other residential districts in China have been built on contaminated land, nobody knows.
This article is the third and final in a three-part series on soil pollution in China. The series is a joint project between Yale Environment 360 and Chinadialogue, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. A Chinese language version of this article is available at Chinadialogue.
Other articles in this series:
China's Dirty Pollution Secret: The Boom Poisoned Its Soil and Crops
In China's Heartland, A Toxic Trail Leads from Factories to Fields to Food
He Guangwei is a staff writer and investigative reporter with The Times Weekly, a national Chinese newspaper based in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. He was one of the winners of Chinadialogue-Guardian Environmental Press Awards in 2012. Since 2006, He has worked for various media outlets in mainland China and Hong Kong covering current affairs. Now he focuses on in-depth investigative reporting. He is also an active user of weibo, China's Twitter. More about He Guangwei →
Join the conversation: The Soil Pollution Crisis in China: A Cleanup Presents Daunting Challenge Show comments →

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Weak Teeth, "So You've Ruined Your Life" LP
A more appropriate record for holiday release, I can't possibly imagine. Weak Teeth's sophomore full-length, So You've Ruined Your Life (out not from Tor Johnson Records) continues the anger and frustration the group started with on their debut single, and refines and focuses it even further than they did on What A Plague You Are. The stark imagery of the cover gives a clue as to what you'll find on the 12 inches of vinyl within the jacket. Weak Teeth rage against world destroyed by political infighting, but what really seems to come through is the yearning for something with meaning. "I'm Better Than OKay" sums it up best, with "a constant burden that you can't know or understand" being the throughline of So You've Ruined Your Life. The rage and frustration which comes through in everything -- the agonized vocals, the tense rhythms, and terse guitars -- actually find their greatest release in an instrumental, "Providence Music Scene Soccer Camp Trophy," which begins with FDR's Flag Day fireside chat, and then launches into a minor epic of stop-start blasts paired with wide-open stretches of grandiosity. When it ends, you feel exhausted and refreshed, like you've just been through a boxing match in a sweat lodge. Maybe it's come too late to make your best-of list for 2014, but Weak Teeth's So You've Ruined Your Life might be the first great album for 2015. From the moment the album blasts alive with "If You Can't Beat 'Em, Kill Yourself," to the fading moments of "Nothing Is Cool," you realize that you might've waited over three years for this record, but it's been totally worth it. [embed]https://soundcloud.com/dog-knights-productions/weak-teeth-life-is-bullshit[/embed] Weak Teeth's So You've Ruined Your Life is available on silver vinyl from the the Tor Johnson webstore, on mixed green vinyl from Riotous Outburst Records, or on clear with black smoke vinyl from the FITA Records store in the UK.
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RT @nuthousepunks: Weak Teeth, "So You've Ruined Your Life" LP http://t.co/SQsW6PdSXX #hardcore #vinyl @torjohnsonrec @weakteeth


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< Back to all Press
The American Lawyer: Uncertainty Follows G20 Talks
Access Partnership's Senior Policy Analyst Logan Finucan spoke to The American Lawyer on the latest developments on the US-China trade front, following G20 talks. Read the full article here.
Access Partnership's Senior Policy Analyst Logan Finucan spoke to The American Lawyer on the latest developments on the US-China trade front, following G20 talks.
The latest developments on the U.S.-China trade front "advances the process and sets a new timer on the outcome, but it doesn't give us more clarity on what that outcome could be. Everything is still up in the air."
Competition in Digital Markets – Part II
Would service-specific regulation help or harm business and innovation in Australia? On 13 December, Access Partnership convened a second online...


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Mehndi Henna Free Designs for Feet Colorful Bride Look
Select a category Women (2) Holy Items (74) ZulJinah (1) Jhoola (8) Imam Zamin (36) Alam Panja (18) Mashaq (2) Patka (4) Tajj (1) Necklace (6) Eid (12) Eidi Envelopes (9) Bags (2) Jewellery (2) PSL (6) Footwear (18) Khussa (18) Mehndi (151) Mehndi Accessories (63) Thaal – Trays (24) Free Designs (44) Rasam (Customs) (72) Baskets (4) Candles (2) Soaps (2) Chaba (4) Sportswear (7) Women Sportswear (7) T-Shirt (4) Track Suit (1) Trouser (2) Jewelry (37) Rings (3) Bracelets (2) Bindiya (1) Earings (5) Kangan Gajra (4) Necklaces (24) Women (11) Sweaters (1) Jackets (3) Modern Clothing (3) Top (3) T-shirts (4) Men (11) TShirts (8) Dress Shirt (1)
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The Pakistan Super League is a professional Twenty20 cricket league contested during February and March of every year by six teams representing six different cities in Pakistan. The league was founded on 9 September 2015 with five teams and now comprises six teams. Instead of operating as an association of independently owned teams, the league is a single entity in which each franchise is owned and controlled by investors. From 2021, The PSL will have an exclusive window in ICC Future Tours Program.
Each team playing matches in double round robin format; the top four teams with the best record qualify for the playoffs and culminates in the championship game, the PSL Cup Final. The league is based in the Pakistan Cricket Board office in Lahore.
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Événements
 Le gouvernement français masse des troupes à la frontière helvétique pour forcer la Suisse à expulser Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte.
 Portugal : les Cortès élaborent, sur un fond de tentatives de coups d'État, une constitution libérale. C'est un texte de compromis, imposé aux Cortès par Sà da Bandeira (1795-1876), qui maintient la séparation des pouvoirs, supprime le pouvoir « modérateur » du roi, établit le bicaméralisme et le droit de veto absolu du roi.

 20 septembre :
 Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, qui séjourne en Suisse après avoir passé deux mois en Amérique, accepte de gagner l'Angleterre;
 mort d'Albertine de Broglie, fille de Madame de Staël.

 22 septembre, France : article de Joseph Arthur de Gobineau dans la Gazette de France sur la littérature persane. Le même journal en publiera deux autres, le 14 octobre et le 23 novembre.

Naissances
 2 septembre : Lydia Liliuokalani, dernière reine hawaiienne, renversée par des planteurs américains en 1893 († ).
 12 septembre : Arthur Auwers (mort en 1915), astronome allemand.
 13 septembre : Otto Benndorf (mort en 1907), archéologue classique allemand.
 18 septembre : Anton Mauve, peintre néerlandais († ).

Décès
  : William Clark, explorateur américain (° 1770).
 5 septembre : Charles Percier, architecte français (° ).
 27 septembre : Bernard Courtois (né en 1777), salpêtrier et chimiste français.
 29 septembre : Pierre-Dominique Bazaine (né en 1786), scientifique et officier ingénieur du génie français.

Notes et références

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Tag Archives: Domestic Violence
As A Former Hebrew-Israelite…
Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth
Abuse, Bigotry, Black Israelites, Covington Catholic High School (Kentucky), Domestic Violence, Edomites, Hebrew-Israelite Years, Hebrew-Israelites, Henry VIII, Hyper-Masculinity, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Kufi, Lepers, Misogynoir, Misogyny, Natalie Dormer, Patriarchy, Polygamy, The Tudors (2007-10)
The Kufi, cute on some, a symbol of a curse for people like me, April 3, 2010.
I'm a month late with this post about the Covington Catholic High School White boys and their -isms-filled excursion across DC, including their well-filmed smirk and Native American-stereotyping confrontation with Nathan Phillips. The part of the confrontation that produced the most hype but little substance was the nearly two-hour period around the Lincoln Memorial, in which some of the privileged White-privileged-males made taunting runs the handful of people the media called "Black Hebrew-Israelites." Clearly this was a misnomer, as if there were such a thing as White Hebrew-Israelites!
That these Black Israelites or Hebrew-Israelites could call these White boys "Edomites," the descendants of Jacob's suckered and inferior pink-skinned twin brother Esau, was apparently shocking for many Whites. But within a day or two, the "Black Hebrew Israelites" narrative went away, as the focus shifted to White boys shouldn't have their lives ruined over a little bit of March for Life misogyny, racism, and intimidation.
The media dropped this line of inquiry, likely because it didn't play to any of their typical tropes and other two-sided themes. As someone who spent three years of my life wearing kufis and yarmulke, eating kosherized meats, and understanding the meaning behind "unclean issues of blood," I can tell you that the Hebrew-Israelites likely didn't start the confrontation, but once taunted, were going to give as much as they got from the privileged White males from Kentucky. I can tell you that Black hyper-masculinity, misogyny, and a sort of anti-Whiteness was all part of my experience with the Shalom Aleichem crowd. White folks were either Edomites — the descendants of the less-favored Esau from Genesis, the first book of the Torah — or were "healed lepers." Either way, Hebrew-Israelites saw Whites as a somewhere between a curse of God or God's not-quite-as-chosen people.
To call Hebrew-Israelites a "hate group" — putting them on the same plane as the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups — is astoundingly ridiculous and a waste of time. As a rule, Hebrew-Israelites may preach the fiery end times, but they're not working particularly hard to make them happen. They especially want as little to do with White folk of any stripe as they can get away with. Now, at least for the sect of Hebrew-Israelites my family belonged to in the 1980s, there was support for Israel, and many certainly saw a certain degree of commonality with our Levite and Judahite brothers in Palestine, many also saw these European Jews as Edomites. To be both pro-Israel while also harboring some anti-European-Jews-as-Whites-in-disguise -isms, well, it all made sense to me sometime between October 1981 and March 1983 (no, not really).
What made more sense to me, though, was the connection between the ancient Israelites of the land of Canaan and the Ten Lost Tribes living in the US and reclaiming their birthright. Not just a homeland in Palestine, though. They claimed the practices of the ancient Israelites as well, including especially polygamy. Never mind that this practice could only work "in practice" if the man involved had the material means to provide for all of his women and for his progeny. That so many of the men didn't possess the means but attempted this practice anyway speaks to the fact that being a Hebrew-Israelite for them merely meant easy access to women, sex, and reproduction via their sperm in a way that justified their misogynoiristic view of the world.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII and Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn, circa 2008. (http://www.famousbirthdays.com).
My stepfather Maurice, er, "Judah ben Israel," gleefully used the temple teachings of proper polygamy as permission to act like he was living in the time of Saul, David, and Solomon. Maurice's was some of the worst misogyny I have ever witnessed this side of Henry the Eighth as Jonathan Rhys Meyers portrayed the portly king in Showtime's The Tudors. He was with at least two other women in the months between January 1982 and June 1984, all while having knocked my Mom up with my two youngest siblings. All while also knocking my Mom around their master bedroom like she was a six-foot piñata. Keep in mind, for a three-year period between May 1979 and August 1982, my idiot stepfather didn't work at all, and held down a part-time security job guarding an abandoned Vicks factory between August 1982 and October 1986.
I pretty much thought that the man was a piece of shit by the time I learned that my younger siblings has siblings of their own around the same age, sometime in 1984 or 1985. But that was the thing about a religion like this one. It attracted and still attracts a sector of Black men who otherwise feel emasculated, like strangers among strangers in a strange land, and hands them hyper-masculinity in return. It draws in Black women in search of a Yahweh, a stern and often unforgiving god who sees them as they see themselves, as unworthy of anything other than what can be drawn from family, from the men and the children and kindred sistahs in their lives.
So it's not hard for me to believe the folks on my Twitter timeline who live in New York and in Philly feeling like they were on display at a butcher's shop in the middle of Grand Central or Reading Terminal Market when encountering the kufi-wearing, Shalom-Aleichem set. But it's also hard for me to believe that these privileged White boys fully comfortable with their White supremacy didn't stoke and anger a group of Hebrew-Israelites as part of their -isms-laden tour of DC. There was enough White patriarchy and testosterone involved in these confrontations to make a lea full of sheep bald and barren.
Still, I thank God for every day I've had since surviving those Hebrew-Israelite years, those years of doubt, and all of that self-loathing and misogynoir. I can only hope that there are others who've made their way out of that malignancy.
28 Sunday Oct 2018
Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth
Birthday Cards, Child Abuse, Damsel-in-Distress Syndrome, Denial, Domestic Violence, Grinding Poverty, Limited Choices, Mama's Boy, Maurice Eugene Washington, Misogynoir, Mom, Mother-as-Best Friend, Mother-Son Relationship, Systemic Racism
Mom with my son Noah at 616, August 4, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).
This has been a month of months, teaching three classes at two different universities with two very different models for their everyday operations. Not to mention, another Al Jazeera article taking up my time, working on my latest "book" idea, and so many familial and parental events to attend and issues to address. Where did I have the time for all this when I worked full-time in the nonprofit world? Oh yeah, that's right — I didn't have the time for all this back then!
But this October's also been a historic month. Forty years ago, my Mom married my one-time stepfather Maurice Washington. Thirty years ago, I broke free from my Mom's mantra of practicality and from being first-born son/mama's boy/younger brother/friend/husband substitute when I changed majors from computer science to history at the University of Pittsburgh. I still feel that becoming a historian has been a mixed blessing over the years. My retirement account and bank account think so as well.
And of course, there's today, my Mom's 71st birthday (Happy Birthday, Mom!). I've written plenty about Mom on this blog over the years. Lots of what I've written has been in the negative, and even eye-opening to me at times. My relationship with Mom has always been complicated, because our respective lives together were hard and horrible, with few moments of joy in between. There were so many moments of boredom, of wishing for a prosperity that never came, along with stacks of violence and threats of violence. Mom was abusive and vain, could be caring and defiant, and was prayerful and profane, all while I was growing up.
So when I say I love Mom, but I don't like her, I hope it's something folks can understand, even relate to. Mind you, this isn't an expectation, because I write often for two people: myself, and that random person one of my posts might help. But in the past few months, on this issue, my friends and Twitter folk have let me down a bit. At least two people I've gotten to know pretty well have told me that to discuss my Mom warts and all is a no-go zone. "You can't be talmabout yo' mama like that! Hell wrong witchu, boy? That yo' mama, fool!" Or, the more sophisticated approach: "Your mother is a victim of systemic racism and misgynoir, Donald, so cut her some slack!"
Hmm. It's funny having folks who otherwise don't believe in any sacred idols (cows or otherwise) tell me how I should view Mom, as if they were in the same room with me when she beat me with an extension cord at eight years old. Or as if I haven't spent most of my adult life as a historian and writer involved in understanding human behavior and systems that exploit race, class, gender, sexual orientation in favor of cisgender heterosexual rich White males who feign Christianity as capitalism. Hello! I absolute do get it.
Two things, three things, heck, an infinity of things can be true at the same time, even and especially if they contradict each other. Quantum theory dictates that an electron or some other subatomic particle can be in two places at once and spin in sync with each other at opposite ends of the multiverse. So too it can be true that Mom is a victim of systemic racism, misogynoir, and domestic violence. And it can be equally true that she made some of the most messed up decisions (out of a limited set of choices) a young Black woman with two kids could make in 1978. Including marrying my idiot stepfather, partly in order to "make" me and my older brother Darren "men."
Folks, if we are to truly understand the people in our lives, we have to grant them the fulness of their humanity. That means acknowledging that the people we love are imperfect, flawed, cracked and broken, maybe even fucked up human beings. That certainly describes me in full, then and now. I think it's fair to say much of this about Mom as well.
As for whether I love Mom or not, whether I should ever discuss Mom in terms of my growing-up and adulthood times with her or not, it's really not for anyone to approve or disapprove. After all, so many of you flaunt your wonderful and great relationships with your moms. It's so sweet and syrupy and sugary and sticky that it's almost disgusting. How your mama's your best friend. How folks best be keepin' your mama's name outta their mouths before you get ready to throw down. About the oceans of support and love your mamas deluged you with from the moment of conception to this very nanosecond. It's a truly wonderful thing. I don't question it, I nearly always applaud it. I also lament it, because even when I thought I had that kind of relationship with Mom, it was in my head, not in reality. That truth hit me harder than a bullet train on its way to Kyoto running at full speed on my PhD graduation day.
And I do love Mom. I do. At times, she did the absolute best she could. Early on, she did tell me she loved me, ever so often. She never wanted the world of racism and evil to hurt me or leave me dead. I've long forgiven her for her vanity, her imperfections, and her many, many tragic mistakes as a parent. (Trust me, as a father, I've made my own mistakes, but I've made a point of always owning up to them.) But I am not God, and with this long memory of mine — usually but not always a blessing — I cannot forget everything that happened on Mom's watch. Nor can I forget the denials of such from her throughout most of my adult life.
So where am I now? In a state of constant awkwardness on the subject of Mom, especially around her birthday. It's really difficult to find a birthday card that says "I love you" but doesn't go into "You're the greatest, Mom!" or "You're the reason for every good thing that's happened in my life" mode. So folks, please just grant me my truth. Just listen without denial, deflection, defense, justification, or excuse. And I'll promise to keep my envy of your love-enveloping relationship with yo' moms to a minimum.
Moving On, Thirty Years Later
Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth
616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Darren, Domestic Violence, Eri, Family Responsibilities, Leaving Home, Maurice, Mother-Son Relationship, Pitt, Poverty, Sarai, Siblings, Survivor's Guilt, Westchester Business Institute, Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health, Yiscoc
A Boeing 767 Delta flight at takeoff, JFK Airport, Jamaica, Queens, NY, circa 2011. (http://panynj.gov).
I am now three full decades removed from Moving Day 1987, the final Wednesday in August, when I moved for my freshman year of college to Pittsburgh. I was leaving Mount Vernon and 616, but neither would begin to leave me, at least for another year or so.
It was a day of days. But really, it wasn't the hardest leaving day I faced. In the summers I'd come home to work and watch after my younger siblings, the end of those Augusts were tearful ones. I played music for me and my siblings to sing to before I left at the end of the summer of '88. I added an extra week to my stay in 1990, just so I could spend extra time with Maurice, Yiscoc, Sarai, and Eri, teaching them how to ride a bike and how to tie their shoes, and missed a week's worth of classes at Pitt to start the fall. Even in '92, when I came back to 616 to work for two months that summer at Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health because I couldn't find a teaching gig at Pitt, I stayed an extra week. That was my life outside of college, grad school, and Pittsburgh for a good decade after my first trip to Pittsburgh. It got easier to leave as my life became about working, teaching, dating, and writing, but leaving was always hard.
My hardest leaving day was in late-August 1989. After a full summer of work, between two jobs, the end of my Mom's marriage (finally!), my older brother Darren moving out, and my schedule of activities with the younger Gang of Four, I saw going back to the University of Pittsburgh for my third year as a vacation. But it wasn't going to be one for Mom. She would be completely on her own with my younger siblings for the first time once I left. And I knew the thought of being with them without any help, or least, without any enemies at 616 to war against (like my idiot ex-stepfather Maurice) terrified her.
Screen shot of 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Mount Vernon, NY, June 2016. (http://maps.google.com)
I stayed an extra five days before leaving on August 30, because Mom still had two weekends of summer courses left to finish at Westchester Business institute. Mom made the decision to not finish up her business law and accounting classes that session the Saturday before I left. She said to me, "Go on to Pittsburgh, Donald. I'll be all right." It didn't make sense to me. She had an A in the business law class, and likely could've talked with her instructor about taking an incomplete and then the final exam once my siblings started school after Labor Day. I said as much, but Mom, per usual, didn't listen to me. She ended up with a D in the business law course, and an F, of course, in the accounting class. Mom wouldn't return to Westchester Business Institute to finish up her associate's degree until January 1996.
I felt guilty at the time that I put my own education over my Mom's. I felt guilty that I couldn't help out more. Mostly, I felt guilty that despite what I saw back then as "my responsibilities to the family," I wanted to leave, and part of me wanted to stay gone. I didn't want to come home for Christmas, my birthday, and New Year's every single holiday season. I didn't want to spend my summers living at 616 while working in Mount Vernon or White Plains. And though I wanted to help the Gang of Four out as much as I could, I would've preferred bringing them to Pittsburgh, and not going back to Mount Vernon over and over again.
Looking back, though, I realized the truth. Mom really didn't enjoy school. Mom decided to go to Westchester Business Institute because I was in college. And as a professor who has taught hundreds of adult learners (students twenty-five and sometimes much older), I know that earning a degree with your kids can be a great motivator for enrolling in higher ed. It just can't be the only motivator. At some point, it has to be about more than a friendly familial competition or even about using the degree to earn a few extra dollars. It has to be about improving yourself and the people around you. Mom wasn't ready to juggle that burden, and likely had gone through too much that summer to spend another fifteen months in school while also watching after my younger siblings.
Boy, it was hard to leave that last Wednesday in August '89. I was nervous for Mom, sad for my siblings, and maybe even a little angry with Mom and God about the impossible choice I thought I had made at the time. But I reminded myself that I wouldn't be any good to anyone if I couldn't finish my degree and use it to help others. I reminded myself that I was still only nineteen years old, that, my outward maturity and 616 aside, I still had a lot to learn about life.
When Enough Isn't Close to Enough
Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Marriage, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth
616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Addictions, Death, Domestic Violence, Happy Birthday, Homelessness, Mother-Son Relationship, Parenting, Parenting Lessons, Poverty, Running Away, Self-Reflection, Soul-Searching, Vanity, Welfare Poverty, Yiscoc Washington
Yiscoc Washington, July 5, 2017. (http://facebook.com).
"I took care of my kids! I put food on the table, put a roof over y'all's heads, put clothes on yo' back! I did the best that I could, and none of y'all can tell me different…" That's what my Mom yelled at us the day before Sarai's funeral seven Julys ago. It was an excited utterance, after she had spent five days in a trance, unable to do as much as eat a piece of toast. We were in the living room of Mom's flat at 616, me, Mom, Maurice, Yiscoc and Eri, being yelled at over a lifetime of disappointment and frustration. Ours and hers.
Today is my brother Yiscoc's thirty-sixth birthday. That he's here at all is a bit of a miracle. Especially with the number of times he ran away from 616 between 1989 (when he was eight years old) and 1994, with his one-time video game addiction, and with muggers and pedophiles out there and all too willing to take advantage of a vulnerable preteen.
I started with Mom, though, for a reason. Her yelling at us was probably meant for me, but it was in response to Yiscoc, who shared a personal secret with her for the first time. Mom's response was to defend her record as a parent, to tell us that we had no right to judge, critique, or assess her record. That she added, "That's what you get for…" in response to Yiscoc's tearful sharing session was shameful and disgusting.
"You're So Vain" (1972), by Carly Simon, 45 cover, cropped, July 23, 2017. (http://avclub.com).
"But you don't understand, your Mom was mourning the loss of her only daughter," would be the response of Mom-defenders everywhere. To which I say, really? Your Mom's response is to push four of your five living children away with a tirade? One where she says, "this fucked up, piece of shit life I helped set up for all of you was the best I could do, and if you don't like it, that's on you, and you can kiss my Black ass!" Would that really be acceptable under any circumstances, much less during a week of mourning?
Yiscoc ran away from home, hung out with several wrong crowds, and dropped out of Mount Vernon High School a year and a half before he could have completed his coursework. Seventeen years later, and Yiscoc still doesn't have his GED (the last two times, he failed the social studies portion of the exam — ain't that a kicker!). I'm not laying all of this at my Mom's feet. But Yiscoc's adult life wasn't exactly set up for success by his growing up years. The normative permanence of systemic racism on the one hand, and domestic violence, welfare poverty, and the 616 fire of 1995 that left Yiscoc and my other younger siblings temporarily homeless on the other, would make any kid itching to run away.
A second younger brother has now reached the second half of his thirties. Yiscoc's the same age I was eleven and a half years ago, when I began working on Boy @ The Window in earnest. One of the things I figured out in writing such a torturous book was that I blamed myself for so many of my parents'/legal guardian's failures and sins. I had blamed myself for not putting an end to the domestic violence at 616 since I was twelve, for not doing enough to support Mom and my younger siblings since I went away to college at Pitt in 1987. I also came to understand how much Mom deflected, defended, and denied when it came to her parenting, especially when we called on her to do more than find temporary shelter, meager food options, and threadbare clothing. Mom was and remains one of the vainest and unaffectionate people I have ever known — vain, insecure, and likely clinically depressed.
"Flash Memory #2" (an unmasking), in stainless steel, by Liu Zhan, Kuang Jun, and Tan Tianwei, 2009. (http://elhurgador.blogspot.com/2012/05/unmask-group-escultura.html; H.T. Gallery, Beijing, China).
I also know that Mom has passed these traits down to each of us. I've been dealing directly with them for three decades. I'm not sure Yiscoc has ever peered behind his mask long enough to see Mom lurking in the shadows, warts and all. If he has or ever will, it has been or will be an ugly sight. But if we are truly attempting to rebuild and remake ourselves, it is a sight we must endure. A painful process of honesty, soul-searching, revelation, and admitting that on some level, we've fucked up, and been fucked up, by life, oppression, and parenting.
Happy Birthday, Yiscoc. Know that despite everything, I do love you. I hope that this next year brings you closer to the person you want and need to be.
My Mom's Migration Story, 50 Years Later
Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, race, Religion, Work, Youth
Black Migrants, Black Migration, Bradley Arkansas, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Education, Highs and Lows, Insecurities, Intervention, Mary Louise Gill, Mother-Son Relationship, Mount Vernon Hospital, Self-Defense, Self-Reflection, Southern Stigmas, Welfare Poverty
I would be a pretty terrible son and historian to not discuss the fact that this July and August marks fifty years since my mother moved to New York from little ol' Bradley, Arkansas. For those who think fifty years on anything revolving around race and class is "a long time ago" or "ancient history," consider the following. At the time Mom moved across the country to Gotham, the Civil Rights Movement had entered its northern, splintered phase, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was barely a year old, and the very first episode of Star Trek with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy would air that September.
Bus route my mother took from Bradley, Arkansas to New York City in late-July 1966 (highlighted in blue with yellow dots), August 23, 2016. (http://maps.google.com).
On balance, with any neutral but fair eye at all, I'd have to say that Mom's transition has been more failure than success. Five decades of crisis after crisis, of having a handful of fleeting moments of peace and progress followed by years of abuse, misery, poverty, and sorrow. That could be the summary I'd write about Mom's fifty years of post-migration experiences in New York and in Mount Vernon.
But, let's start from the top, through Boy @ The Window:
After drifting a bit after her high school graduation, one of Mom's first cousins came for a visit to Arkansas in the summer of '66 and told her that there was good-paying work in New York City. Her cousin lived in the [170s, the Tremont section of the] Bronx, a hotbed of Black migration and West Indian immigration in those years. Without much thought, Mom took a four-day bus trip from Texarkana to New York to what she hoped would be a new life. Given the alternative of tenant farming and generational poverty, New York must've seemed like going to heaven.
Mom had it rough long before my father and my older brother Darren and I had come along to be a burden. She lived with her cousin for nearly a year in the Bronx, paying $15 a week for a one-bedroom flat, before good luck turned to bad and then back to wonderful. They had both lost jobs at some factory, but had heard through the other late Black arrivals in the Bronx and Mount Vernon about good paying jobs at Mount Vernon Hospital. When Mount Vernon Hospital hired Mom to be a cook in their dietary department, she and her first cousin went their separate ways living-together-wise. They'd stay in touch until '78, when Mom's first cousin moved to Virginia, presumably for work with the Navy.
In the interim, Mom met my father at a juke joint on Mount Vernon's South Side. It was a place where only Southern Black migrants would be comfortable. They didn't have to pretend to like the grime, the hustle, the noise, and the taunts that New York and New Yawkers threw at them every day. They could be themselves. They could be shy, apprehensive, even, about their time in a place where everyone joked about their Southern accents and their slow ways. I think that's what made my father attractive to Mom. Here was someone who made Mom sound much less Southern by comparison. At the same time, my father worked in the city, had a job as a janitor with the Federal Reserve Bank, and knew the Subway better than she knew the route from her one-room flat on Adams Street to Mount Vernon Hospital.
My Mom at 48 years old, Yonkers, NY, December 23, 1995. (Donald Earl Collins).
Within a year of meeting, Mom gave birth to my older brother Darren. Mom often said that she "wasn't a teenager" when Darren was born in December '67, as she had turned twenty six weeks earlier. Yet as I finally pointed out during the intervention fourteen years ago, "But you got pregnant when you were nineteen," all to let Mom know that the stigma of teenage pregnancy was more about her and her insecurities than it was about what White folks thought, especially back then.
I came along two years later, Mom married my father in '70, and things started falling apart soon after. Mom never gave herself a chance to live the city, and not just work in it. Mom never gave herself time to grow beyond her insecurities and her vanity about her looks. She never really tried to make her aspirations for joining the Navy or going to college happen. The latter, at least until after I went off to the University of Pittsburgh in '87.
As I wrote about Mom's/our family's fall into welfare poverty by '83 in Boy @ The Window,
Sixteen years, a dead-end job and two abusive husbands later, Mom must've been thinking that Mount Vernon was a hellish pit that got hotter every time she tried to make her and our lives better. With a fourteen-year-old kid in a school for the retarded, a twelve-year-old getting beat up by the second husband, a three-year-old who all but refused to speak because of his abuse, a one-year-old and another one on its way, it was little wonder that she showed about as much affection as an NYPD police officer. The 'I love you, Donald' faucet, which was an occasional drip prior to the summer of '82, was pretty much turned off after that.
Yes, this is all truly sad. There was way too much too soon for Mom. Family, marriage, abuse, poverty, and internalized issues around race, sexism, misogyny, Black masculinity, evangelical Christianity (and the whole Hebrew-Israelite debacle), and all in New York. It would've been overwhelming for anyone whose income never saw $20,000 in any year prior to temp work in '99, and $30,000 until working for Westchester County Medical Center in 2003.
There are so many mistakes Mom made, with me, my siblings older and younger, in choosing mates, and with work. I've written about roughly half of them. But, awful or awesome, without Mom's momentary hope and courage — often the very definition of Black migration, especially to New York — I wouldn't be here to tell the tale.
How I Met My Son
Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth
616 East Lincoln Avenue, 9/11, Abuse, Amadou Diallo, Baggage, Black Masculinity, Burden of Success, Child Abuse, Darren Gill, Domestic Violence, Eri, Family Intervention, Father-Son Relationship, Humanities, Maurice, Maurice Eugene Washington, Misogyny, Mother-Son Relationship, Noah, Parenting, Penguins, Poverty, Self-Reflection, Siblings, Teenager, Yiscoc
Noah's birthday cake, Cheesecake Factory Original Cheesecake, adorned with candles, July 30, 2016. (Donald Earl Collins).
My son turned thirteen yesterday. That sentence by itself speaks volumes. That I have a son, that he's reached an age where he's in the midst of puberty, with a discernible personality, with a set of abilities and potential for developing more talents. Wow! Noah loves art, anime, and apples. He's a classic contrarian who's just beginning to realize that he has academic and athletic talents. He's mostly observant, thoughtful, and independent thinking enough to deal with this crazy world outside our home. That he's managed to get to this point without me messing him up with my own baggage as his father. To me, that's not just amazing. That's a miracle.
As late as the early spring of '02, a half-year before me and my wife conceived our one and only egg, I had some doubts about ever being a dad. But those small doubts mattered little compared to where I'd been the summer and fall of '01. I wasn't dead set against becoming a parent. I just felt that in this dangerous, chaotic, racist, oppressive world, how could I be so selfish as to bring a child into this life?
Daddy Emperor Penguin with baby penguin, accessed July 31, 2016. (National Geographic via http://pinterest.com).
I wasn't just thinking of Amadou Diallo or the aftermath of 9/11. This wasn't just about the expense of raising a kid. Mostly, it had to do with growing up as the second of six, but with ALL of the responsibilities of a first-born Gen-Xer watching over four siblings ten to fourteen years younger than me, not to mention my wayward older brother. It was the trauma of living through eight years of abject, unrelenting poverty with an abusive asshole of a bully who frequently threatened my and my Mom's existence. It was having to swallow shit from all of my legal guardians about my lack of observable Black testosterone coursing through my brain cells. Add going through a magnet program from middle school to high school and going to the University of Pittsburgh to this baggage. What I was by twenty was a hopeful but yet emotionally exhausted human being.
So, I was never someone who had this American evangelical desire to get married or have kids (which is also a passion connected to Whiteness, by the way, to propagate their numbers, but not just). Even when it was obvious that me and my wife were heading toward marriage by 1998, I was more against having kids than in favor of the idea. I was still occasionally sending money to my Mom and my siblings to help them out, and taking trips to 616 to put out figurative fires. I had changed enough diapers, made enough bottles, dressed, lunched, dinnered, and laundered enough for my siblings to say "I'm good" when it came to having my own child.
But when my youngest brother Eri beat me to the punch by siring his own kid with his high school girlfriend at seventeen in the spring of '01, I lost it. I couldn't sleep soundly for months. I listened to my Mom complain week after week about him and his post-high school dropout future. My brothers Maurice and Yiscoc weren't doing much better. My family was a cyclone of a disaster, and nothing I had done to blaze a trail for them since 1982 had done much good.
This was when I decided to do my intervention, to go after both my Mom and my siblings. Not so much out of anger, and yes, I had enough anger to keep my current iPhone powered for three days. No, this was a combination of righteous indignation and, well, love. I did my due diligence to dig into my Mom's life with a few questions that I already knew the answers to, about when and how it all went so wrong for us all. And then I did the intervention, in January '02, right after the birth of my only nephew.
Only later did I realize the intervention I did was really for me. Only later did I figure out that the 616 intervention had freed me from my self-imposed burden to help lift my family out of poverty. The constant anguish and exhaustion I felt when dealing with my family went away in the weeks after the intervention, and I was able to get a good night's sleep for the first time in months, maybe years.
Noah in portrait, May 16, 2016. (Donald Earl Collins)
That's when I was ready to do my part in the miracle of conception, childbirth, and parenting. Giving myself that permission and then having the recognition of the baggage I carried going in has made fatherhood and parenting much easier (not easy, just much easier) than it would've been if I had done like Eri or followed Phil Knight's "Just Do It" advice.
It's hard to really be passionate about having a child when nearly all your free time with family between the ages of twelve and thirty-one has been to participate in raising kids. Since my little egg arrived thirteen years ago, though, I've reserved my parenting for him. I'm the father penguin in -100°F temps, braving blizzards in eighty-mile-an-hour winds to see my son through. I think it's paid off so far.
Fife and Shalom
Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon New York, music, New York City, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth
A.B. Davis Middle School, Black Male Identity, Black Masculinity, Chorus, Domestic Violence, Fife, Judah ben Israel, Manhood, Maurice Eugene Washington, Mentoring, Music Lessons, Oppression, Poverty, Pulaski Day Parade, Summer of Abuse, Tamrin, Trombone, Type 2 Diabetes, William H. Holmes Elementary
Civil War-era wooden fife, May 19, 2004. (Kevin Saff/National Parks Service via Wikipedia). In public domain.
One thing I never discussed here or in Boy @ The Window were the handful of "leisure" activities I had during the Hebrew-Israelite years. The world in which we lived back in the '81-to-'84 period had precious few resources and even less room for things like summer camps, overseas travel, baseball games, amusement parks, or even a free impromptu rap battle at Van Cortlandt or Hartley Park. Heck, the Kool cigarettes' music series that sponsored "Teddy Pendergast" or "Rufus and Chaka Khan" in those days might as well have been a trip to see the World Cup in France compared to our pitiful roach-and-belt circumstances.
One of my idiot stepfather Maurice's Hebrew-Israelite friends, though, did provide a free service for us males in '81 and '82. His name was Tamrin. He was a heavy-set dude, probably about five-foot-eight, maybe 120 or 125 kilos (between 245-260 pounds), and likely in his late-thirties. Unlike so many of the Hebrew-Israelite men I had the curse to meet in those naiveté-shattering years, Tamrin had a lighter touch. His idea was to put together a boy's band of fifes, drums, bugles, and other marching instruments to lead us Hebrew-Israelites in marches through the street of Mount Vernon, as well as temple sites in the Bronx, in Harlem, and in Brooklyn (specifically, Bed-Stuy and Flatbush, if memory serves). Even at twelve, I knew how ridiculously uncool that idea sounded.
That was his plan, anyway. So off and on, between August '81 through the second week in July '82, Tamrin gave me and other kids music lessons to play overly bombastic marching band music. These were the kind of joyless songs which one was mostly likely to hear at Moscow's May Day parade of soldiers and nuclear missiles than hear anywhere in ancient Israel. I was picked out because I had musical training in my immediate pass. I played the trombone in fifth grade. Or rather, I had six months of trombone-playing lessons at William H. Holmes ES before my music teacher had a heart attack and died in March '80. I sang in chorus all through sixth, seven, and eventually, eighth grade. I could read music, though I struggled in transition between half-notes and quarter-notes.
Pulaski Day Parade on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, October 6, 2013. (http://www.posteaglenewspaper.com).
So Tamrin would come over about twice a month, usually on Saturday afternoons, and spend a couple of hours with me playing the fife. (Can you imagine that? A twelve-year-old, kufi-wearing Donald playing such a small and delicate reed instrument? Really? Really!) Tamrin took us to the Pulaski Day Parade down in Manhattan the first Sunday in October '81 to see how the pros do the fife-and-drum thing. The costumes I found fascinating, but I dreamed of food, not of marching around with fife.
Once Mom's already pitiful funds got down to a disposal income of $5 per day — that was in December '81 — Tamrin didn't come around as much. Though he wasn't getting paid much, I think he still expected $10 per lesson. Still, he came around even when he wasn't getting paid, though it was only once a month during the '81-'82 winter. That's when I noticed, though just barely, that Tamrin had diabetes. His fingers had swelled during the winter, and he moved slower, too.
From mid-April to the beginning of July, Tamrin was around nearly every Saturday for an hour at a time, working with me on marching while playing fife, polishing up fife-ful flourishes, and getting me to learn more bombastic music. There were a couple of times I played with the other preteen and teenage Hebrew-Israelite kids. They seemed about as cool with this fife-and-drum band as I was with having an abusive stepfather.
And that's who stopped my participation in Tamrin's pet project. After my summer of abuse began in earnest on July 6, '82, Tamrin came around that Saturday, July 10. I played my fife to some music, but the knot on my head, the bruises to my left cheek and jaw, and my busted lip would've been obvious to any observer in the week after Maurice tried to beat me into submission. I kept playing my music, but I knew that Tamrin and Maurice were jawing at each other about something or other, hopefully not me. All I know was, that was Tamrin's last time working with me to play the fife. I'd continue to see Tamrin at temple. But that second Saturday in July '82 would be the last he'd come over to 616 to teach me terrible music for the fife.
Oppression graffiti, January 15, 2013. (Students for Liberty via http://genderlitutopiadystopia.wikia.com).
Did I play a good fife? Tamrin thought so. Compared to my Hebrew-Israelite comrades, I'm pretty sure I did. But like with so many things Hebrew-Israelite during those years, it was a bitter march to nowhere. The fife was part of a Hebrew-Israelite physical and spiritual gulag that put me into more chains, rather than freeing me to be me. Despite Tamrin's intentions, the idea of molding me and others into men in conditions that would make most "men" contemplate homelessness or running away was a ridiculous pipe-dream.
That Tamrin was likely the only adult male in the Hebrew-Israelite camp who saw Maurice for the lying, abusive, womanizing asshole he was made me realize not everyone in this world was against me. But in a religion that when practiced helped oppress me and others more than the outside world, what was any Tamrin to do?


Stretch and Breath using RHYTHM – Hello. I am interested in joining your classes in 2013 for body movement and rhythm. Can you please inform me how I can join and pay for the course. I live in Kiama and can attend classes in wollongong. alternatively, if you wish to run classes in the kiama region i can organise a group of about 10 people that would also be interested.


text:
Q: Snowflake json flatten from varchar data type Need to flatten json data, from varchar/string data type column in snowflake
create table testjson1 (name varchar(200))

select name:batchNumber from testjson1, lateral flatten( input => name )

insert into testjson1 select parse_json('{"batchNumber" : "B12345", "productCode" : "P1234"}')

insert into testjson1 select  ('2020-09-13T14:00:00.0000000')

select name:batchNumber from testjson1

A: Key point here is to cast/parse varchar column, here by using TRY_PARSE_JSON:
Option 1:
select t.*, f.PATH, f.VALUE
from testjson1 t, lateral flatten(input => TRY_PARSE_JSON(name), OUTER=>true) f;
/*
NAME                                            PATH        VALUE
{"batchNumber":"G35H9","productCode":"AHF7124"} batchNumber "G35H9"
{"batchNumber":"G35H9","productCode":"AHF7124"} productCode "AHF7124"
2020-09-13T14:00:00.0000000                     NULL        NULL
*/

Option 2:
select *, TRY_PARSE_JSON(name):batchNumber::string AS result from testjson1
/*
NAME                                            RESULT
{"batchNumber":"G35H9","productCode":"AHF7124"} G35H9
2020-09-13T14:00:00.0000000                     NULL
*/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Dompierre-en-Morvan is een gemeente in het Franse departement Côte-d'Or (regio Bourgogne-Franche-Comté) en telt 209 inwoners (2004). De plaats maakt deel uit van het arrondissement Montbard.

Geografie
De oppervlakte van Dompierre-en-Morvan bedraagt 14,8 km², de bevolkingsdichtheid is 14,1 inwoners per km².

Demografie
Onderstaande figuur toont het verloop van het inwonertal (bron: INSEE-tellingen).

Externe links

Gemeente in Côte-d'Or


Do strength training to build muscles beneath the layer of fat. Eat more citrus fruits and leafy greens for vitamin C which helps build collagen. Eat lean protein, dairy, eggs, whole grain, nuts, seeds and drink plenty of water to help keep the skin taut and supple. Take fish oil supplements and/or try Ayurvedic remedies like gotu kula to improve your skin's elasticity.
If you've managed to lose a lot of weight, then congratulations are in order! But like many others who've experienced significant weight loss, are you feeling weighed down by sagging skin? That extra stretched-out skin where there once was a lot of fat can take away from the joy of lost weight. Here are some ways to clear this final hurdle to your new streamlined look.
1. ↑ Resistance training – health benefits, Victoria State Government Better Health Channel.
2. ↑ Schagen, Silke K., Vasiliki A. Zampeli, Evgenia Makrantonaki, and Christos C. Zouboulis. "Discovering the link between nutrition and skin aging." Dermato-endocrinology 4, no. 3 (2012): 298-307.
3. ↑ Micronutrients and Skin. Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University.
4. ↑ Bylka, Wiesława, Paulina Znajdek-Awizen, Elzbieta Studzinska-Sroka, and Malgorzata Brzezinska. "Centella asiatica in cosmetology." Postepy Dermatol Alergol 30 (2013): 46-49.
5. ↑ Segger, Dörte, Andreas Matthies, and Tom Saldeen. "Supplementation with Eskimo® Skin Care improves skin elasticity in women. A pilot study." Journal of Dermatological Treatment 19, no. 5 (2008): 279-283.
6, 7. ↑ The Benefits of Drinking Water for Your Skin. School of Medicine and Public Health University of Wisconsin, Madison.
8. ↑ Stretch marks. NHS.