text:
Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights is an American play about a young Jewish man who insists on becoming a slave to an African-American law student as a personal penance for the years of wrongs whites have done to blacks.

The 1968 Broadway production was directed by Sidney Poitier and featured Louis Gossett Jr., Diane Ladd and Cicely Tyson. It ran for seven performances.

The play was profiled in the William Goldman book The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway.

References

External links

1968 plays
Broadway plays
Plays about race and ethnicity
Comedy plays


PRICE:	This is a free event.
Industry professionals' talks on energy efficient technologies to include battery storage for renewable technologies, industrial energy efficiency and electric vehicles.
A visit to the Energy Technologies Marketplace to learn more around innovation and cutting edge technologies.
A complimentary networking lunch with other SMEs and the area's leading environmental technology suppliers.


EVERYONE KNOWS that hummingbirds, at least in the East, are creatures of summer—those dazzling, iridescent flashes of color that sum up the warmth and richness of the season. So who but a fool would be looking for a hummingbird on a frigid day in late December, a skiff of fresh snow on the hills of central Pennsylvania and the air nose-nipping cold? Yet as a volunteer for the nonprofit Hummer/Bird Study Group, that was my quarry, and I soon spotted it: a female rufous hummingbird glittering green in the morning sun, probing with her long bill some wrinkled, mushy apples that still clung to one gnarled, snow-dusted tree.
Like that rufous, a growing number of hummingbirds ordinarily found in the West are turning up in eastern states during the winter. Rufous hummers from the Pacific Northwest are the most common, but birders are also seeing calliope hummingbirds from the northern Rockies, black-chinned hummingbirds from throughout the West and buff-bellied hummingbirds from south Texas and Mexico. Along the Gulf Coast, they are reporting thousands of these western hummers each winter, and birders even in states as far north as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are finding dozens.
Once, these rarities were dismissed as oddball vagrants, hopelessly lost and (everyone agreed) certainly doomed. But in recent years, thanks to pioneering researchers who have ignored conventional wisdom, we're learning that these "lost" hummingbirds are actually surviving the winters easily, returning year after year. The birds may even represent the leading edge in the evolution of entirely new migratory paths.
"It's clear that we have already witnessed an historic change in the winter range of rufous, black-chinned, calliope and buff-bellied hummingbirds," says ornithologist Van Remsen of Louisiana State University, who has been studying the phenomenon for several years. Once rare in the Southeast, it's not unusual now to find all four species in a single, flower-rich neighborhood along the Gulf Coast in Baton Rouge, Remsen says. He adds that broad-tailed and broad-billed hummingbirds are beginning to show similar winter range expansions.
To detect such changes, ornithologists first need to catch some of the birds. As one of about 200 federally licensed hummingbird banders in the United States and Canada, I am among those who are tracking the western hummers' movements in the East. Most of my attention focuses on the rufous hummingbird, the most common winter-fall species in the Mid-Atlantic where my colleagues and I work.
It was a report of a rufous that had drawn me to a backyard just south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I had set up a cage trap baited with a sugar-water feeder on the owner's porch. Right on cue, the hummer showed up, bright green with a touch of orange on her sides and tail. At first she ignored the feeder, concentrating instead on the old apples—probing them repeatedly for the juice inside, or perhaps for cold-numbed insect larvae—but she finally zipped into the trap. Ten minutes later—weighed, measured and outfitted with a tiny numbered band around her right leg—she was free again, one of a half dozen hummingbirds I'd banded that season.
The first person to pay serious attention to western hummers in the East was Nancy Newfield of Metairie, Louisiana, a one-time zoology student who dropped out of college in 1966 to get married and start a family. She became fascinated by the birds in the mid-1970s when she realized how little was known about the rufous and black-chinned hummers visiting her feeders. Some ornithologists, like Remsen, were very supportive, while others dismissed Newfield's work. But through banding, color-marking and the observations of other hummingbird enthusiasts across the Gulf region, Newfield was soon able to show that hundreds of rufous, Allen's, black-chinned, buff-bellied and other western hummers were wintering successfully along the coast, many returning each year.
With training and inspiration from Newfield, other eastern birders joined the hunt for western hummers. Like me, many are affiliated with the Alabama-based Hummer/Bird Study Group, directed by hummingbird researchers Bob and Martha Sargent. Retired fighter pilot Fred Bassett, for example, spends most of the winter chasing hummingbirds across southern Alabama and northern Florida. Last winter, he banded 173 hummers of 8 species, including 90 rufous hummingbirds and the first Costa's hummingbird (a species of the desert Southwest) ever documented in the East.
Thanks to banding, we now know that at least some of these hummingbirds are making immense annual migrations to return to the same backyards every year. Some of the birds Bassett catches in Florida and Alabama are back for their fifth or sixth winter. In November 2001, Mary Gustafson, then a biologist at the federal Bird Banding Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, banded a female rufous hummer in a yard near Richmond, Virginia. In August 2002, Ned and Gigi Batchelder caught the same bird at their banding station in southern Montana; four months later, it was back in the same Virginia yard, having completed a round-trip migration of 2,400 miles.
Discovering the routes these birds take is one of our biggest challenges. Once, ornithologists assumed that hummingbirds discovered along the Gulf Coast in winter had simply migrated too far east of their normal route and then ended up on the Gulf Coast instead of Mexico. Remsen, however, has proposed that most of the wintering hummingbirds in the East first complete part of their fall migration, from the western United States into northeastern Mexico, but for unexplained reasons then move northeast instead of southwest. Another possibility is that the birds may be drifting east in late summer, then migrating south through the Northeast and Midwest as cold weather arrives. Some recaptures of banded birds support this hypothesis, "but the major problem is numbers," Remsen says. "A single hummer haven in south Louisiana may record more individual western hummers in a good year than all of the eastern states north of the Gulf Coast combined." Banders chasing the birds across the Northeast are hoping to fill that data gap.
Whatever the hummers are doing, it is not a conscious decision, because migration is largely a matter of genetics. A bird is, in effect, "programmed" by its genes to travel in a certain direction at a certain time of the year, and some birds—born with a hiccup in their software—head the wrong way. In the past this might have been fatal, but those heading east now find a land of milk and honey, where the ancient forests have been replaced by fields and homes (many with feeders) and where the climate is milder than it was just a generation ago. These birds, in turn, head back to the breeding grounds in spring and spread their "faulty" genes among the population.
That's exactly what appears to be happening in Europe with the blackcap warbler. Traditionally, blackcaps breeding in central Europe wintered on the Iberian Peninsula, although a few vagrants apparently hatched with the wrong orientation and wound up in the United Kingdom. But as backyard feeders multiplied, and more and more homeowners planted berry-rich shrubs for birds, conditions in the UK improved dramatically for those once-lost blackcaps. Today so many blackcaps winter in Great Britain that observers report the species at a third of all feeders. Such discoveries suggest that at least some migratory birds may be more flexible than scientists once believed—a comforting idea in this day of habitat loss and climate change.
As for our own winter hummers, I am always amazed by how tough they are—but I shouldn't be surprised. These birds are not delicate hothouse flowers, but resilient, cold-hardy survivors, capable of handling temperatures that may drop below zero for a few nights in a row. Rufous hummingbirds, after all, nest as far north as the Kenai Peninsula in south-central Alaska (they are the most northerly hummingbird in the world) and in the nesting season and during migration, they may be found in meadows above timberline in the Cascades or Northern Rockies, where nighttime lows can be bone-chilling even in summer.
There are several reasons why the birds, even with a ferocious demand for calories to fuel their metabolic rates, can withstand such harsh conditions. One is their unsurpassed talent for finding food—not just nectar or tree sap, but tiny insects and other arthropods (many of them dormant, plucked from between spruce needles or from within the cracks of tree bark), which make up much of a hummer's diet year-round. Another key factor is the birds' ability to easily drop into a profound torpor at night, conserving energy through the foodless hours, then rousing again come daylight.
Although winter hummingbirds are sometimes "rescued" by well-meaning people, they do not need to be saved any more than do the chickadees at your sunflower feeder. If you're an Easterner lucky enough to host a western hummingbird at your feeder, just enjoy the show, knowing that you may be watching migratory evolution at work.
Naturalist Scott Weidensaul is the author of more than two dozen books on natural history, including Return to Wild America.
Just like a big-brained elephant, a hummingbird, apparently, never forgets.
To test the memory skills of rufous hummingbirds in the Canadian Rockies, biologist T. Andrew Hurly of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta set up arrays of eight artificial flowers filled with a sugar-water solution. Each time a bird visited a flower patch to drink nectar, Hurly and his colleagues refilled half the flowers 10 minutes later and the other half 20 minutes later. Following an initial experience with this pattern, a hummingbird returned to each flower at the appropriate time, either 10 or 20 minutes after the previous visit. "The hummingbirds behave as if they have eight separate stopwatches in their brain," says Hurly.
That ability may be key to the birds' survival. Given their tiny size and hyperactivity—about 1,000 heart beats per minute—hummingbirds need a constant source of energy, drawing nectar from hundreds of flowers a day. Flowers recharge nectar supplies at varying rates, however, and if a bird revisits a flower that's still dry, it will waste precious energy.
The research, published in Current Biology, supports the idea that animals have a sense of what scientists call "interval timing"—the capacity to remember "when" as well as "where." Although several laboratory studies have supported the hypothesis, Hurly's work is among of handful of studies of wild animals. A different group of researchers has found that scrub jays also can remember where and when they hide food that will go bad if not eaten by a certain date.


text:
US Campaign & ACLU on the Israel Anti-Boycott Act
US Campaign for Palestinian Rights
Hot off the press: The ACLU is raising red flags about the unconstitutionality of the latest, most draconian attempt to date to deny activists the right to boycott. For Congress to heed its call to oppose this bill, they need to hear from BDS supporters like you!
On March 23, Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rob Portman (R-OH), and Reps. Peter Roskam (R-IL) and Juan Vargas (D-CA), introduced the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S.720 and H.R.1697).
This bill seeks to impose fines and criminal penalties and deny government loans to corporations refusing to do business with corporations in illegal Israeli settlements. It infringes on our First Amendment right to promote boycott, divestment and sanctions and seeks to legitimize Israel's settlements.
Click here to learn if your Members of Congress support the Israel Anti-Boycott Act and then contact them by phone and email to state your opposition to penalizing boycotting Israel and its illegal settlements.
When confronted by a reporter inquiring why he is seeking to penalize BDS supporters, the bill's lead sponsor, Senator Ben Cardin, claimed: "We are very sensitive to freedom of speech."
The ACLU, and we at the US Campaign, beg to differ. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act would punish business owners that boycott Israel or Israeli settlement products with "a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison," according to a letter by the ACLU. It even goes so far as to penalize people for just requesting information about a boycott.
The ACLU explained its opposition to the bill:
"The bill would punish businesses and individuals based solely on their point of view. Such a penalty is in direct violation of the First Amendment."
An expose out yesterday from The Intercept called foul on Members of Congress who have claimed to stand up for civil rights and civil liberties, but cosponsored this bill denying our right to boycott for justice:
"Among the co-sponsors of the bill are several of the politicians who have become political celebrities by positioning themselves as media leaders of the anti-Trump #Resistance… These politicians, who have built a wide public following by posturing as opponents of authoritarianism, are sponsoring one of the most oppressive and authoritarian bills that has pended before Congress in quite some time."
Please contact your Members of Congress right now to let them know you support BDS and oppose unconstitutional attempts to restrict our First Amendment right to advocate for it.
The LA Times recently called BDS a "classic tool of peaceful political expression," and Members of Congress may soon start singing the same tune if they keep hearing from their BDS-supporting constituents.
We need you to take action against the Israel Anti-Boycott Act now!
LEAH MUSKIN-PIERRET
Government Affairs Associate
This entry was posted in MRSCP and tagged Boycott, Free Speech, Israel Lobby by admin. Bookmark the permalink.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
«Ма́ленькие траге́дии» — цикл коротких драматических пьес для чтения А. С. Пушкина, написанный им в 1830—1832 годах в Болдине. Он состоит из четырёх произведений: «Скупой рыцарь», «Моцарт и Сальери», «Каменный гость» и «Пир во время чумы».

Анна Ахматова писала, что «быть может, ни в одном из созданий мировой поэзии грозные вопросы морали не поставлены так резко, как в "Маленьких трагедиях" Пушкина».

Структура цикла

Скупой рыцарь

Композиционно две первые сцены пьесы служат представлением, экспозицией конфликта двух главных героев и непримиримых противников — барона Филиппа и его сына Альбера. В третьей сцене, в которой противники обратились к внешней силе, их феодальному сеньору — герцогу, конфликт стремительно вырывается наружу и заканчивается трагически — смертью старого барона.

В первой сцене молодой рыцарь Альбер в башне замка сетует, что в последнем поединке противник повредил его шлем и у него нет возможности выступить вечером в турнире. Его отец скуп и отказывает ему в содержании. Слуга рыцаря Иван сообщает, что еврей Соломон отказывается дать в долг без залога. Прибывший Соломон намекает отчаявшемуся Альберу, что смерть отца можно ускорить с помощью некоего средства. Взбешённый Альбер прогоняет ростовщика и восклицает, что лишь из-за скупости отца вынужден выслушивать такие намёки. Альбер решает отправиться к герцогу, чтобы тот заставил своего вассала дать сыну достойное содержание.

Вторая сцена полностью посвящена отцу Альбера — барону Филиппу. В подвале замка он прячет в сундуки очередную горсть золотых монет, вспоминая, как они ему достались — какие-то отняты у бедной вдовы с тремя детьми, ради других его вассал, возможно, отправился ночью на большую дорогу:
Да! если бы все слезы, кровь и пот,
Пролитые за все, что здесь хранится,
Из недр земных все выступили вдруг,
То был бы вновь потоп — я захлебнулся б
В моих подвалах верных…

Все свои прежние страсти барон отбросил ради одной оставшейся и поглотившей его целиком — страсти к золоту. Мысль о том, что после смерти его сын растратит все скопленное им богатство, сводит барона с ума.

Тем временем, герцог в своём замке обещает Альберу переговорить с его отцом и просит во время разговора укрыться в соседней комнате. Прибывший барон принят герцогом с лаской, в благодарность о прежних временах и услугах герцог предлагает барону отправить сына ко двору, где тот получит достойный приём. Барон, не желая тратить на это деньги, приводит вымышленные причины, по которым сын недостоин быть при дворе и в финале обвиняет Альбера в умышлении отцеубийства. Взбешённый Альбер вбегает и обвиняет отца во лжи. Барон вызывает сына на поединок, бросив перчатку, и сын готов сразиться с ним. Герцог отнимает перчатку и гонит Альбера прочь. Старый барон, тем временем, не выдерживает потрясения и умирает. Ошеломлённый герцог сетует:
Ужасный век, ужасные сердца!

Моцарт и Сальери

В мае 1825 года скончался знаменитый итальянский композитор Антонио Сальери и по Европе пронеслись слухи, что на смертном одре он признался в отравлении Моцарта. Эти слухи произвели на Пушкина большое впечатление и он решил взять за фабулу пьесы событие из жизни реально существовавших и всемирно известных людей под их собственными именами. Знакомые Пушкина позднее упрекали поэта за то, что он осмелился вынести приговор Сальери, не имея для этого достоверных оснований. В ответ в небольшой заметке Пушкин привёл анекдот о том, как Сальери освистал музыку Моцарта на премьере «Дон Жуана»: «Завистник, который мог освистать "Дон Жуана", мог отравить его творца».

Пьеса начинается представлением Сальери. В своём монологе он вспоминает о долгом пути постижения музыки, его любовь и служение искусству безмерны и он принёс большие жертвы в попытке овладеть высшими тайнами мастерства. В прежние годы зависть была ему чужда и при появлении новых талантов он легко был готов отринуть достигнутое трудами признание и вновь поступить в ученики, вместе с товарищами искренне порадоваться их успехам. Всё изменилось с появлением Моцарта. Всё, чего Сальери постигал и добивался великими трудами, юному Моцарту достаётся «даром». Это незаслуженное, невыстраданное обладание оскорбляет Сальери, разрушает выстроенную в его душе картину справедливого устройства мира. Внутренний монолог-рассуждение Сальери завершается криком о несправедливости — людей, не способных оценить верное многолетнее служение искусству, и неба, не ценящего многочисленные принесённые жертвы:
…О небо!
Где ж правота, когда священный дар,
Когда бессмертный гений — не в награду
Любви горящей, самоотверженья,
Трудов, усердия, молений послан —
А озаряет голову безумца,
Гуляки праздного?.. О Моцарт, Моцарт!

Входит Моцарт, он слышал своё имя в финале размышлений Сальери. Встревоженный Сальери испуган, что Моцарт мог слышать его монолог, но Моцарт весел и беспечен и лишь ещё более убеждает Сальери в справедливости его обвинений шуткой с представлением уличного музыканта. Моцарт легкомыслен, он легко отдаёт на поругание свою музыку, даром доставшуюся ему божественным провидением. Знак широкой народной любви и известности Моцарта в воспалённом от зависти мозге Сальери предстаёт актом поругания высокого искусства, которому он служит. Моцарт делится с Сальери своим новым шедевром, но в ответ на восторженное признание: «Ты, Моцарт, бог…», — лишь отшучивается — «…право? может быть… Но божество мое проголодалось». Всё убеждает Сальери в верности его рассуждений — провидение ошиблось, талант достался недостойному и он владеет им не по праву. Приговор вынесен и Сальери лишь беспокоится, чтобы Моцарт не позабыл прийти к месту своей казни.

Каменный гость

Одним из главных отличий «Каменного гостя» от предыдущих двух маленьких трагедий пушкиновед Благой отмечал разницу в характере исследуемой страсти. Для барона Филиппа и Сальери их страсти носили центростремительный характер, замыкали их вглубь себя и уводили их от жизни и людей. Иначе с Дон Гуаном — его жажда любви влекла его к людям, к жизни. С этим связано и изменение характера пьесы, вместо камерных сцен с ограниченным числом участников, четыре сцены «Каменного гостя» содержат большое количество действующих лиц.

Дон Гуан, отправленный в ссылку за убийство на дуэли командора, самовольно возвращается в Мадрид. Ожидая ночи, чтобы проникнуть в город незамеченным, Дон Гуан, тем не менее, уверен, что даже будучи схвачен, он не будет серьёзно наказан, ведь король отправил в ссылку «меня ж любя; чтобы меня оставила в покое семья убитого…» Он вспоминает об одной из своих любимых женщин, Инезе, с которой встречался когда-то здесь, за городскими стенами, и которую страстно любил, но Лепорелло напоминает, что после Инезы Дон Гуан любил ещё многих. Вот и сейчас он стремится к своей возлюбленной — Лауре. Внимание Дон Гуана и Лепорелло привлекает таинственная посетительница монастыря, и это вдова убитого на дуэли командора, дона Анна. Чёрное покрывало, закрывавшее вдову от любопытных взоров, возбуждает воображение Дон Гуана, он хочет непременно познакомиться со вдовой, чем вызывает упрёки Лепорелло: «Мужа повалил Да хочет поглядеть на вдовьи слезы. Бессовестный».

В отличие от угрюмого монастырского кладбища за стенами города в первой сцене, вторая полна жизни, молодости и праздника. Возлюбленная Дон Гуана Лаура наслаждается жизнью, она окружена поклонниками, восхищёнными её красотой и музыкальными талантами. Среди её поклонников Дон Карлос, «угрюмый гость», брат убитого командора, пугающий Лауру грядущей неизбежной старостью, как расплатой за грехи беспечной молодости. Несмотря на это, именно его Лаура просит остаться с ней на ночь, потому что своим бешеным нравом он напомнил ей любимого Дон Гуана. Всё меняется с приходом Дон Гуана. Дон Карлосу нанесена двойная обида — им открыто пренебрегли ради убийцы брата. Он требует немедленного поединка и после короткого поединка падает сражённым. Наличие мёртвого в доме не мешает любовникам насладиться своей страстью до утра.

Кратким монологом в начале третьей сцены Дон Гуан сообщает, что несмотря на убийство Дон Карлоса и возросшую опасность, он не оставил свой замысел ближе познакомиться с Доной Анной. Под видом монаха несколько дней он безмолвно провожал её к могиле супруга, но теперь попытается вызвать Донну Анну на разговор. Юной вдове, не испытавшей в своей жизни любовной страсти, не устоять перед расчётом опытного повесы:
С чего начну? «Осмелюсь»… или нет:
«Сеньора»… ба! что в голову придет,
То и скажу, без предуготовленья,
Импровизатором любовной песни…

Добившись разрешения молиться вместе с вдовой, Дон Жуан, вместо молитвы к небу, обращается с молитвой любви и восхищения перед Доной Анной. Вдова смущена и взволнована, дерзкий монах позволил себе нарушить её вдовий покой, но женское сердце уже готово найти этой дерзости оправдание. Почувствовав душевное потрясение, Дон Гуан бросается на решительный штурм, робкие попытки Доны Анны противостоять его напору слабее с каждой минутой:
…Подите — здесь не место
Таким речам, таким безумствам. Завтра
Ко мне придите. Если вы клянетесь
Хранить ко мне такое ж уваженье,
Я вас приму; но вечером, позднее…

Пир во время чумы

Знакомство Пушкина с драматической поэмой Уилсона «Город чумы» скорее всего состоялось Болдинской осенью, во время эпидемии холеры. Взяв за основу лишь малый эпизод безумного пира из серии картин в охваченном чумой Лондоне середины 17 века, Пушкин сумел творчески переосмыслить и написать цельное произведение, в центре внимания которого столкновение человеческих натур и характеров. Пушкин намеренно сократил количество действующих лиц в сравнении с оригиналом, придав им при этом более обобщённый характер. Две пары главных героев контрастно подчёркивают различие характеров. Зрелому мужскому характеру Председателя, обладателю трагического жизненного опыта, противостоит юношеское легкомыслие Молодого человека. Завистливой и злобной Луизе противопоставлен женственный образ прелестной Мери. При переводе Пушкин сжал и уравновесил песни Мэри и председателя, сделав их равновеликими (в оригинале песня Вальсингама значительно больше по объёму). Уравновесив их, Пушкин противопоставил песни Мери и Председателя по содержанию и пафосу. Горестная песня Мери полна печали о гибели родной шотландской деревни, ныне опустошённой чумой. Песнь Председателя полна упоением опасностью и стремлением человеческого духа противостоять всему, «что гибелью грозит».

История замысла и создания
Заглавие «Маленькие трагедии» было выбрано издателями из множества предоставленных автором вариантов. На черновике обложки присутствуют заголовки «Драматические очерки», «Драматические изучения» и «Опыты драматических изучений». Впервые в пушкинских черновиках список сюжетов, среди которых узнаются будущие «Маленькие трагедии», появился в 1826 году: «Скупой. Ромул и Рем. Моцарт и Сальери. Д. Жуан. Иисус. Беральд Савойский. Павел I. Влюбленный бес. Димитрий и Марина. Курбский». Перечень из десяти сюжетов находится на обороте листа с дневниковыми записями 1826 года о казни декабристов, смерти Амалии Ризнич и автографом элегии «Под небом голубым страны своей родной», написанной на её кончину. Если это соседство не случайно, вскоре после окончания «Бориса Годунова» Пушкин запланировал ряд драматических проектов, сюжеты которых взяты из истории самых разных стран и эпох, героями которых должны стать сильные, «демонические» личности на фоне исторических катаклизмов. Отбор тем для «драматических изучений» говорит о том, что Пушкина интересует уже не столько романтическое живописание страсти, возведённой в абсолют, сколько её анализ, постановка своего рода литературного эксперимента.

Существование уже тогда замыслов и, возможно, даже черновых набросков «Маленьких трагедий» подтверждает и дневниковая запись Погодина, сделанная 11 сентября 1826 года, которая гласит: «Борис Годунов — чудо! У него есть еще Самозванец, Моцарт и Сальери». Впрочем, никаких черновиков или набросков этих пьес не сохранилось. Второй раз перечень будущих «маленьких трагедий» появился в бумагах поэта не ранее конца 1829 года и состоял из трёх наименований: «Скуп<ой> [<из англ.>]. Моц. и Саль.<ери>. С не<мецкого>. Пир чумы. С анг<лийского>». Третий перечень датируется 1830 годом, в нём пять наименований: «I. Окт<авы>. II. Скупой. III. Сальери. IV. Д. Гуан. V. Plaque (чума)». Пушкиноведы отмечают, что сюжеты будущих «Маленьких трагедий» во всех перечнях следуют в неизменном порядке.

Судя по дневниковым записям поэта весь цикл был написан в 1830 году, в период знаменитой Болдинской осени, чуть больше, чем за две недели:
 20 октября завершена работа над «Метелью», последней из «Повестей Белкина».
 23 октября переписан начисто «Скупой рыцарь».
 26 октября окончен «Моцарт и Сальери».
 1 ноября писалась «История села Горюхина».
 4 ноября окончен «Каменный гость».
 6 ноября — «Пир во время чумы».

Известный пушкиновед Д. Д. Благой так объяснял столь стремительную работу:
«Возможность такой поистине чудодейственной стремительности объясняется в известной степени тем, что замыслы трех первых маленьких трагедий издавна возникли и в течение почти целых пяти лет вынашивались и вызревали в творческом сознании поэта».

Не случайна и неизменная последовательность сцен в черновых списках и в окончательной редакции, многие пушкиноведы отмечают построение Пушкиным драматургического цикла, где представленные человеческие страсти выстраиваются от порицаемых и менее ценных, и далее к более ценным: страсть к деньгам в «Скупом рыцаре» — наслаждение искусством в «Моцарте и Сальери» — наслаждение любовью в «Каменном госте» — наслаждение самой жизнью в «Пире во время чумы». Возможно, что возникший позднее остальных замысел «Пира…» оказался той концовкой цикла, которую так долго искал поэт, дабы придать ему достойную завершённость.

Название цикла «Маленькие трагедии» упоминается в бумагах поэта лишь однажды, но оно было подхвачено подавляющим большинством пушкинистов. Как сформулировал один из директоров Пушкинского дома Н. Н. Скатов:
«Пушкин всего один (и то в варианте) раз оговорился: "маленькие трагедии". Но воспринимающее сознание — читателей, издателей — отвергло все возможные, пушкинские же, названия: "драматические сцены", "драматические очерки", "драматические изучения" и т. д. — и избрало: "маленькие трагедии". Я уверен, что здесь не было ни произвольности, ни случайности».

На окончательный замысел «Маленьких трагедий» судя по всему оказало увлечение Пушкина (помимо Шекспира и Расина) творчеством Барри Корнуолла — автора коротких «Драматических сцен», герои которых — яркие личности (порой на грани или за гранью патологии), сталкивающиеся в непримиримых конфликтах, кончающихся гибелью одного из них. В «Драматических сценах» Корнуолла — минимум действующих лиц, чаще всего их всего двое, действие пьес раскрывается в основном в монологах, в которых объясняются и подготавливаются действия главных героев в кульминационный момент их решительного столкновения. К похожему решению приходит и Пушкин в своём драматическом цикле. Между «Маленькими трагедиями» Пушкина и «Драматическими сценами» прослеживаются многочисленные реминисценции. Степень влияния Корнуолла на Пушкина, сходство и различие их подходов к драматургии была предметом изучения и обсуждения многих литературоведов, к примеру, Дмитрий Благой пишет, что при всём сходстве внешней формы, трагедии Пушкина заметно глубже «сцен» Корнуолла в философско-психологическом плане, а Д. Л. Устюжанин обратил внимание, что герои Пушкина, в отличие от персонажей Корнуолла, это не существующие вне времени «персонифицированные страсти» — жадность, зависть и прочие, но живые люди своих исторических эпох. Пушкин старался избежать упрощения и прямолинейного осуждения человеческих пороков, но дать «истину страстей, правдоподобие чувствований в предполагаемых обстоятельствах…», по словам Бонди — стремился «к раскрытию не широты человеческой психики, а ее глубины». Одновременно, он избегает прямолинейного деления человеческих страстей на «высокие» и «низкие», и в этом он предпочитал следовать Шекспиру, нежели Мольеру.

В отличие от «Бориса Годунова», отличающегося «открытым» сюжетом и массовыми сценами, для «Маленьких трагедий» характерна камерность, притчевость, внутренняя замкнутость сюжета каждой из пьес, в финале которых зрителя ждёт вполне определённая развязка сюжета.

Цикловое единство «Маленьких трагедий»
Каждой из составляющих отдельных сцен «Маленьких трагедий» посвящено множество критических статей и исследований, начало традиции которых положено ещё современниками поэта, в частности — статьями В. Г. Белинского. Но не менее важны работы, исследовавшие «Маленькие трагедии» в качестве единого неразрывного цикла. Пушкиноведы в своих работах подчёркивают единство сцен — композиционное, жанровое и идейно-философское.

Театральные постановки

История театральных постановок пушкинских «Маленьких трагедий» началась ещё при жизни поэта — 27 января 1832 года на сцене Петербургского Большого театра состоялась премьера «Моцарта и Сальери». Известны постановки «Каменного гостя» 1847 года в Петербурге, «Скупого рыцаря» — 1852 и 1853 годов в Петербурге и Москве. В спектаклях были заняты актёры, гордившиеся личным знакомством с поэтом — Брянский, Сосницкий, Каратыгин, Щепкин.

Несмотря на призывы футуристов «сбросить Пушкина с парохода современности», советская традиция постановок «Маленьких трагедий» берёт отсчёт с первых лет после октябрьского переворота. МХТ в 1919 году возобновил свою дореволюционную постановку «Пира во время чумы» (с участием Михаила Чехова), а в 1924 году выходит премьера «Каменного гостя». В октябре 1921 года основатели Петроградского театра новой драмы В. Н. Соловьев, К. Н. Державин в качестве первой постановки нового театра выбрали «Каменного гостя». «Скупой рыцарь» и «Каменный гость» были поставлены на сцене открывшегося Казахского академического театра драмы, в период пушкинского юбилея 1937 года к «Маленьким трагедиям» обратилось множество ведущих театров союзных республик, так в Тбилиси пушкинские пьесы были поставлены сразу в девяти театрах, а в Ташкенте — в семи.

Впрочем, не всегда деятели нового советского театра избегали соблазна «осовременить» пушкинский текст, внести «лобовые» сатирические фарсовые ноты. В постановке Харьковского театра имени Шевченко в финале «Каменного гостя» тень командора сменялась силуэтом Николая «Палкина», попытались «взять классика на слом» и В. Люце и В. Софронов, ставившие «Скупого рыцаря» и «Каменного гостя» в Ленинградском БДТ. Множество споров вызывали постановки сцен из «Маленьких трагедий» Сергея Радлова в ленинградском Театре Драмы, Серафимы Бирман и Всеволода Мейерхольда в московском театре МОСПС. Большим событием стала постановка «Маленьких трагедий» Евгения Симонова на сцене Театра имени Вахтангова в 1959 году, где в «Скупом рыцаре» неожиданно на первый план выдвинулся молодой Альбер в исполнении Вячеслава Дугина, а в роли Моцарта блистательно выступил Юрий Любимов.

Эксперименты и попытки нового прочтения пушкинских сцен не прекращаются со временем. Постановщики не всегда следуют пушкинскому порядку расположения отдельных трагедий в ходе спектаклей, в попытке донести идеи Пушкина и режиссёра включают в постановку, наряду с игрой артистов, игру света и тени, эксперименты с декорациями, музыку. Так музыка стала одним из главных элементов в постановке 2018 года «Маленьких трагедий» на сцене Малого театра, где постановщиком и исполнителем сразу трёх главных ролей стал Вячеслав Езепов. Традиции революционного прочтения пушкинского текста, в духе театральных экспериментов 20-х годов 20-го столетия, подхвачены постановщиками «Маленьких трагедий» в театре «Сатирикон» и Гоголь-центре. В постановке 2011 года Виктора Рыжакова, которой предпослан эпиграф: «В настоящей трагедии гибнет не герой — гибнет хор», хору в исполнении молодых артистов театра противостоит сразу в нескольких ролях Константин Райкин, критики особо выделяли дуэт его Моцарта с Сальери Одина Байрона. Кирилл Серебренников выбрал в качестве пролога к спектаклю своё прочтение пушкинского «Пророка», в котором серафим в точном следовании тексту натуралистично вырвал язык пророку, рассёк ему грудь мечом «и сердце трепетное вынул». Стрит-рейсер Артур приходит просить управу на отца у герцога, облачённого в «адидасы» лихих 90-х. Сальери откачивает упившегося вусмерть Моцарта, предварительно спасая из унитаза клочки его новой гениальной партитуры. А в «Каменном госте» не преданный земле командор в горской папахе прекрасно сохранился в усыпанном цветами гробу.

«Маленькие трагедии» в музыке
Первым композитором, взявшимся за адаптацию одного из сюжетов «Маленьких трагедий» на оперной сцене, стал Александр Сергеевич Даргомыжский. Работа над оперой «Каменный гость» велась в 1866—1869 годах, в одном из писем он писал: «Пробую дело небывалое: пишу музыку на сцены "Каменного гостя" — так, как оно есть, не изменяя ни одного слова». Это была новаторская работа, Даргомыжский задумал использовать полный текст трагедии, а не адаптированное либретто. Работу осложняла болезнь композитора, он называл оперу своей лебединой песней. В январе 1869 года композитор умер и его близкие сподвижники и друзья Цезарь Кюи и Николай Римский-Корсаков завершили написание оперы и её оркестровку.

В 1897—1898 годах Римский-Корсаков написал более камерный вариант трагедии «Моцарт и Сальери», по его оригинальному замыслу оркестровать оперу вовсе не следовало, аккомпанировать исполнителям должна была только партия для фортепиано. Но при постановке оперы в 1898 году на сцене Мамонтовского оперного театра опера всё же была оркестрована, заведующий репертуарной частью театра С. Н. Кругликов писал композитору: «Вы глубоко не правы, думая, что не надо было "Моцарта" оркестровать и приноравливать к сценическому воспроизведению… Напротив, именно на сцене…, под звуки скромного, старомодного оркестра… Ваша пьеса при внимательном слушании… просто потрясает… Это большое произведение». Первым исполнителем оперы в первых приватных постановках стал Фёдор Шаляпин, он же исполнил партию Сальери на сцене Оперы Мамонтова и долго оставался её единственным исполнителем.

В 1900 году Цезарем Кюи написана опера по «Пиру во время чумы». За десятилетие до написания оперы композитор уже опубликовал две песни, позднее вошедшие в оперу — «Песнь Мери», в духе народной шотландской песни, и «Гимн Вальсингама» — настоящий гимн чуме. Образ чумы передан в опере при помощи величественного траурного марша.

При сочинении оперы «Скупой рыцарь» Сергей Васильевич Рахманинов следовал идее небольшой декламационной оперы, заложенной «Каменным гостем» Даргомыжского, но при этом центр тяжести сделан в оркестровом развитии. После премьеры оперы в 1906 году были критики, упрекавшие композитора: «Музыка от начала до конца интересна и красива, но скорее музыка симфоническая, нежели оперная…» В процессе работы над оперой Рахманинов рассчитывал на то, что исполнителями главных партий станут Шаляпин и Нежданова, но Шаляпин отказался от участия из-за разногласий по поводу изменений в оригинальном пушкинском тексте.

Экранизации
В 1979 году, к 150-летнему юбилею создания «Маленьких трагедий» и Болдинской осени Пушкина в целом, вышла трёхсерийная экранизация цикла в постановке Михаила Швейцера. В звёздный актёрский состав фильма вошли Иннокентий Смоктуновский, Сергей Юрский, Наталия Белохвостикова, Владимир Высоцкий, Валерий Золотухин, Лидия Федосеева-Шукшина, Николай Бурляев, Ивар Калныньш, Георгий Тараторкин, Лариса Удовиченко, Александр Трофимов и многие другие. Ещё одним главным действующим лицом фильма стала музыка Альфреда Шнитке, по мнению критиков режиссёр и композитор должны считаться не только убедительными интерпретаторами пушкинского шедевра, но и его достойными соавторами. Сюжет построен на истории выступления итальянского поэта-импровизатора в Петербурге, его выступления в течение нескольких вечеров перед светской публикой позволили включить в сценарий помимо четырёх сцен заглавного произведения также «Сцену из Фауста», «Мы проводили вечер на даче…», «На углу маленькой площади…», «Гробовщик», «Гости съезжались на дачу…» в виде обрамляющих сюжетов.

В 2009 году вышла анимационная экранизация «Маленьких трагедий» режиссёра Ирины Евтеевой. В первую очередь критики отмечали уникальную технику постановщика, успешно совместившего традиционный кинематограф и анимацию. В фильм Ирины Евтеевой вошли три из четырёх пушкинских сцен — «Скупой рыцарь», «Моцарт и Сальери» и «Каменный гость». Автором музыкального оформления фильма выступил Андрей Сигле, принявший нелёгкий вызов «переиграть» самого Шнитке.

Примечания

Источники

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Пьесы Александра Пушкина
Пьесы 1830 года

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Transfer Car - LEWCO Inc.
Non-Powered Transfer Cars provide a manual method of moving loads between parallel conveyor lanes. Transfer cars can either be confined to a track with definitive end stops to locate position, or be fitted with swivel and rigid casters for a free moving method of transporting unit loads. Powered Transfer Cars fulfill the same process, but they are provided with a powered conveying system.


Covenant Direct Insurance Services provides insurance to technology service businesses in Lake Forest, Newport Beach, Mission Viejo, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Coto De Caza, and surrounding areas.
With such a wide range of potential protection plans, it's important that you contact an insurance specialist at Covenant Direct Insurance Services to go over all of your options. We will help you find a plan that's right for your business.


The various legislations, particularly the European and the North-American ones, rate or don't rate the sendings of commercial newsletter as "spam" depending on the respect of a certain number compulsory elements closely linked to the right to privacy. These provisions involve the addressees of the newsletter, who have to be recruited in "opt-in" mode, and also the very content of the message, which will have to mention the methods of management of the Internet users' personal data.
Newsletter sending requires the specific recruitment of a subscriber group in opt-in mode to avoid a quick reporting of the sender as "spammer". ».
This collection is based on the collection of the prior, free and completely enlightened consent of the Internet user during registration at the newsletter. This stage will have to particularly detail the use of the various requested data and also the way they might be transferred to a third party. The legislation will often demand the declaration of this contact file to organisations who ensure the respect of privacy, like the CNIL in France.
Most legislations consider that the email address is a personal data item and endeavour to make sure that the addressee of a sending benefits from the basic rights of access, modification or unsubscription.
Consequently, it is important for the sender to insert a clear, explicit unsubscription link in his messages and also clarifications on the methods of management of the collected information. These elements must be set in a visible place at the beginning or at the end of the content to make action easy and they must have real effect.


WikiLeaks founder Assange says NSA leaker Snowden is "safe"
June 24 - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he knows where Edward Snowden is but cannot reveal that information because of ''bellicose threats'' from the U.S. government. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).
ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION STORY: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Monday (June 24) that Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who is wanted by the U.S. government for his role in revealing details of a secret American surveillance program, is "healthy and safe" after departing Hong Kong for a destination that, to the dismay of American authorities, is still not entirely clear. Snowden had filed an application for political asylum in Ecuador and Assange said that application was under consideration by the government of Ecuador President Rafael Correa. Assange said WikiLeaks was aiding Snowden with legal advice. Assange was speaking on a telephone conference call from inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has taken asylum from an arrest warrant issued by Sweden on sexual assault charges. He would not reveal details of Snowden's travel itinerary nor his intended destination. "Due to the bellicose threats coming from the U.S. administration, we cannot go into further details at this time," Assange said.


My name is Frank Paradiso and I am your new RP chair for the 2017-2018 year for the Long Island ASHRAE chapter. I returned from the RP training held in July with a newfound understanding and appreciation of what the campaign does in supporting numerous research projects.
I returned from the RP training held in July at the Region I CRC with a newfound understanding and appreciation of what the campaign does in supporting numerous research projects.
ASHRAE has a $2.5 million dollar funding raising goal. This supports 140 research projects with a combined value of more than $15 million. The bar has been set pretty high by our former RP Chairs for our chapter's goals. This year we have a goal of $19,000. Every year we try to exceed our goal and reach towards challenge goal. With your help I believe we can achieve it.
Last year's overall resource promotion goal was exceeded and reached $2,700,099 with many research projects on board. Our chapter raised approximately $28,025 towards this goal and the overall goal was met. I am hoping I can count on the continued support of all of our past contributors who have generously supported us over the years.
The Product Directory has been prepared as a service to all its members and as a service to the local HVAC industry. It will be will be made available to all ASHRAE and nonASHRAE members at no-cost and can be obtained from our monthly meetings or directly from our web-site.
You can bring your check to any of the meetings and give it to me. I will mail it into headquarters.
You can contribute via PayPal from the ASHRAE LONG ISLAND web site, just click on the donate button.


Moody's Investors Service said on Monday that the Egyptian parliament's recent approval of the value-added tax (VAT) is a credit positive despite it being approved at 13 percent instead of the government's recommended 14 percent.
Moody's said that the VAT would gradually increase Egypt's low tax receipts and support its fiscal consolidation efforts, as well as unlock external funding from multilateral sources such as the World Bank and African Development Bank.
The is part of the government's fiscal reform programme, implemented in July 2014, through which energy subsidies are cut and new taxes are introduced to reduce the country's ballooning budget deficit – estimated at 11.5 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2015/16.
The VAT, which will take effect starting 1 October, replacing Egypt's current 10 percent goods and services tax, includes list of 57 exempted goods and services, as opposed to the 52 proposed by the government.
The tax will start at a 13 percent rate in the 2016/2017 fiscal year with a high number of exempted goods and services, resulting in a shortfall of EGP 12 billion according to Moody's estimations.
This shortfall will be made up in the 2017/2018 fiscal year when the VAT rate increases to 14 percent.
However, Moody's fiscal deficit forecast for fiscal year 2016/2017 is 12 percent, compared to the government's target of 9.9 percent.
The international investors service says that its forecast took into account potential slippages in revenue targets, reflecting both the difficult implementation of revenue-raising measures and GDP growth projection of 3.5 percent in fiscal year 2016/2017, which is lower than the official growth projection of 4.0 percent.
"In addition, along with widely discussed currency devaluation, introducing the VAT will exacerbate already high inflation," Moody's statement read, adding that Egypt's inflation rate increased to 14.8 percent year on year in June.


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Asia selected
India selected
Gujarat introduces death penalty for toxic alcohol
Image caption Illicit liquor has killed many people in Gujarat over the years
The illegal manufacture and sale of toxic alcohol in the western Indian state of Gujarat will now be punishable by death.
The governor of the state, Kamala Beniwal, has given her assent to the new law after keeping it on hold for more than two years.
Gujarat has witnessed many incidents of people dying after consuming poison alcohol.
The government says the law will deter those involved in the illegal trade.
Gujarat is the only state in India where alcohol is totally prohibited by law.
The state legislative assembly passed the new stringent bill after scores of people died in one incident in 2009. But the governor refused to sign it into law.
Correspondents say she wanted the provision of the death penalty to be dropped from the bill, but the state government did not agree.
It was then referred to the central government for "legal opinion", and the governor gave her approval only after getting the nod from Delhi.
The law will also allow the authorities to impound and auction vehicles used for transporting contraband.
Poor victims
Illegal alcohol - commonly called desi daroo or country-made liquor in Gujarat - is usually sold in 200ml plastic pouches for 10 rupees (20 cents) each. The majority of the consumers are poor, daily wage workers.
The pouches are transported into the state's main city, Ahmedabad, by couriers on motorcycles and scooters. Sometimes they slip into the state capital carrying jerry cans containing the alcohol.
The alcohol is then sold from shantytown shacks which dot the city.
Local residents and journalists allege that the police are on the take and collect "protection money" from the dealers.
Gujarat's toxic liquor is usually spiked with methyl alcohol and industrial spirits which can lead to fits, vomiting and death.
India's toxic liquor tragedy
Tainted Indian alcohol kills 10
Illegal alcohol kills 30 in India
India toxic alcohol toll tops 100
Gujarat government
Asia Sections


Heidi thanks so much for getting in touch. I do love cooking, that and photography have always been my favourite things. I do love a deconstructed dessert. They always seem so elegant and yet they are more like cheating. Hope the recipe worked a dream for you lovely.


Get inspired by these bright, colorful designs.
Planning a Día de los Muertos party? The holiday is a happy one of celebration, so take a cue from some of these vibrant, colorful nail designs we spotted on Instagram, and get inspired to emulate them yourself.
I had so much doing these nails. For the web I used a vinyl from @whatsupnails my sis @lexis724 bought me for my bday. The day of dead decal came from eBay.
Here's another Dia De Los Muertos design. I'm digging this look  I wonder if this would look better mattified....u think?
Can't get enough of the sugar skulls!!!


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Q: Cheapest way of getting multiple items from dynamodb I see "BatchGetItem" API from AWS, that can be used to retrieve multiple items from dynamodb. But the capacity consumed is n units for n items even if they are just 10 bytes long. Is there a cheaper way of retrieving those items? I see the "Query" API but it probably doesn't support ORing of the keys and even the IN operator.

A: The cheapest way to get a large number of small items out of DynamoDB is a Query.
BatchGetItems costs the same the equivalent number of GetItem calls. Only the latency is lower, but if you have a large number of items to get in different partitions, and you have a language that works well with parallelism, you'll actually get better performance doing a large number of parallel GetItem calls.
One way to re-organize your data would be to store all the small items under the same partition key, and use a Query to just get all the items inside that partition. You'll have to note the writes per second limitations, but if you're adding more items infrequently and you're more worried about the reads this should work great.
In a Query, DynamoDB charges based on the size of data returned, irrespective of the number of items returned. But this seems to be the only place where these economics apply.
Based on what I know of DynamoDB, this makes sense. In a BatchGetItems call, the items can easily be from different partitions (and even different tables), so there's not much efficiency — each item must be individually looked up and fetched from its partition on the DynamoDB network. If all the keys in the batch are from the same partition and sequential on the range key, that's a lucky coincidence, but DynamoDB can't exploit it.
In a Query on the other hand, DynamoDB has perfect knowledge that it's only going to be talking directly to one single partition, and doing a sequential read inside that partition, so that call is much simpler and cheaper with savings passed on to customers.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


2 - I know this is a little past due, but here's pictures from L's first day of school.
When she grows up she wants to be the Queen of the Butterflies. No one better get in her way!
Shortly after I took this picture she looked up at me, waved, and said, "Bye-bye." I was dismissed.
3 - JF also had his first day of school. He's in the Early Childhood Education classroom... which is sort of like special ed preschool... it's because of his apraxia.
As you can see, he likes suckers, coloring, and ice.
Sometimes he cries when I drop him off and sometimes he doesn't but the tears don't last. He has a blast every day, which is easy to see when I pick him up and he's obviously enjoying himself and oblivious to my presence.
4 - When we're in the car I usually just want to listen to the radio. The kids often want to talk to me. Today I missed out on awesome songs like Royals and Roar and Monkey Man. I tried to explain that its not every day that The Specials are on the radio so I really wanted them to be quiet for Monkey Man but no dice. I guess they just can't appreciate ska music.
5 - Two special prayer requests. First: We're having an open house on Sunday from 2-4. We've lowered the price of our home again and we're really, really, really hoping someone will buy our house very soon. Please pray that people will come and we'll end up with a good offer.
Second: My cousin's son is very sick with c-diff. He's been really sick for a long time and is currently in the hospital for his second stay this month. Please pray that little Noah will get well soon - or how about right now?! - and please pray for his parents as they navigate all this.
On the other side of those curtains are French doors that lead to a sunroom that has a view of our huge, green, tree-lined backyard. As far as I'm concerned there's no need for those drapes and I intend to take them down asap. A new light fixture for sure. I think I'd like to paint those built-ins white but paint the backs of them a rich, pretty blue. The paneling, well I don't know what I'll do with the paneling. I'd love to get rid of it but that might be too big of a project for right now.
Ben has requested a slide to get off the top bunks and I think it's a great idea.
This way we can have family movie nights and the kids can just fall asleep in the bunks. If there's a tornado warning at night we can all just go to sleep in the basement. If people come to visit there will be open beds. When the kids get older and have slumber parties we'll be all set up. I love it.
7 - We harvested a bunch of tomatoes recently.
Look at all those beauties.
The Little Tykes wagon came in very handy for the harvest. Thanks, kiddos!
I washed them off, blended them up, boiled them down, and added some yummy seasoning. They made a delicious marinara sauce. We used it on homemade pizza last night and Italian nachos tonight. Delicious.
Many thanks to Jen for hosting!
I LOVE that bunk bed wall! If I ever have a basement I am totally doing that.
"The Queen of all butterflies." I love it! :) Little girls just crack me up!
I recently saw bunks like that in a magazine at the Dr. and fell in love. I'm dreaming of them for our 2nd-story addition if/when that ever happens. With 3 girls, those bunks provide a tiny bit of privacy without additional rooms. Space-effecient *and* amazing cute! I love the idea for a basement though for every reason you listed. Brilliant!
I love every song you've ever directed me to. We should probably be real friends.
Those tomatoes are beautiful. My mom used to grow them and store bought just doesn't compare.
Lydia and James are so cute!
Oooo I just love corner built ins! That room is going to look dynamite when you are done with it:) Is the paneling real wood? It would probably look awesome if you painted it. Prayers to St Joseph that you sell your house!
You are amazing. Prayers for the real estate! St. Joseph is my man - He knows how much I need good men watching out for me (God the Father, Jesus, my own Dad, my husband, and a host of many Saints!), and he always comes through. :) Peace & blessings to you guys!
My daughter was hospitalized for C. Diff about a week before her first birthday. it was so scary. Lots of probiotics are in order.....I had to figure that out on my own.
Prayers for selling of your house and hope the open house went well! Oh Italian nacho's, those sound yummy!
You can paint paneling and it usually turns out pretty nice. Way easier than taking it down!


UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester was one of two Central Massachusetts hospitals to make a top-100 list for patient outcomes.
UMass Memorial Medical Center and MetroWest Medical Center have made a new list of the best seven hospitals in Massachusetts and 100 best in the country.
The new 2019 ratings from the website Healthgrades focus on clinical quality outcomes for 32 conditions and procedures.
Healthgrades didn't break down individual scores for UMass Memorial or for MetroWest, which includes its hospitals in both Framingham and Natick. But UMass Memorial was also listed by Healthgrades as a top-50 hospital for cardiac surgery in each of the last three years and top-100 for coronary intervention procedures in each of the last three years.
The two Central Massachusetts hospitals were joined by Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Medford, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton. Each made the top 250 hospitals nationally, or the top 5 percent in the country, Healthgrades said.
Baystate, Lahey and Newton-Wellesley made Healthgrades' top-50 list.


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Kallar Syedan (Punjabi/) is a city located in Punjab, Pakistan, and is the headquarters of the Kallar Syedan Tehsil.

History

Kallar Syedan's existence dates back approximately 1,200 years. The town rose to prominence during Sikh rule, evident today from the havelis (townhouses), gurdwaras (temples) and small fortresses that can be found around the Rawalpindi district. Krishna Temple is an example of a Hindu temple built during Sikh rule.

The Bedi Mahal palace was built by Baba Khem Singh Bedi in the latter half of the 19th century. According to records, Baba Khem Singh assisted the British Raj in suppressing a rebellion in Gugera, a town near the Okara district during the 1857 Indian mutiny. In recognition of his services, he was appointed magistrate in 1877 and was later nominated to the Viceroy's Legislative Council in 1893. After the division of India and Pakistan, the palace was transformed into a boy's high school named Kallar Syedan.

Transport

Road
Kallar Syedan is located on the N-38 Kallar Suedan Road from Rawalpindi to Azad Kashmir. Kallar Sayyidan Road links the east of the city to Choha Khalsa and Dadyal Tehsil of Azad Kashmir. Kallar SyedanBypass is a newly built road south of the city.

Bus and minibus
Local services also provide extensive bus and van routes around the local towns, and smaller shuttles travel around the villages in the surrounding area. There are also services to Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Palala syedan
 Dhamali
 Bedi Mahal
Sangni Fort
Pharwala Fort
 Dhan Gali

Notable people

 Tikka Khan
 Abdul Aziz Mirza
 Khem Singh Bedi

References

 Populated places in Kallar Syedan Tehsil
 Populated places in Rawalpindi District
 Cities in Rawalpindi District


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On the 23rd March 1921, Hugh Steeper Limited became an operating company
By delivering world-leading technologies and products, alongside responsive clinical services across the fields of prosthetics, orthotics and assistive technology, Steeper's mission is to create turning points that empower patients and fundamentally, enhance people's lives.
Click below to keep up-to-date with our latest updates within the industry on our insights page, along with the inspiring case studies of those whom we've helped to turn their lives around and lead the life they were meant to. You can also explore our various locations and services which make up the foundations of Steeper Group, or take a look at our latest career opportunities and how we pride ourselves on assisting all of our people to realise their potential.
Aiming to improve people's lives
Insights & Case Studies View More
Our People View More
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We are in the healthcare business, so we conduct ourselves with care and sensitivity in all of our dealings - commercial and clinical - in order to deliver a supportive service that creates positive turning points.
Honesty, transparency, ethical decision making. We stand for all of these, with our people at all levels guided by the desire to do the right thing to enhance the lives of our customers and patients.
Patient Focus
We never lose sight of the purpose behind our products and services - empowering and improving patients' lives. Uniquely in our sector, this is what drives us and keeps us focused.
12:08 Tuesday 23rd January
Was the moment when Stuart became part of the British Talent Squad.
Stuart's story
08:17 Tuesday 3rd June
Was the moment when Isaac decided to pursue his professional football dreams.
Isaac's story
10:07 Friday 12th August
Was the moment Charlotte regained a piece of her old reflection thanks to the Steeper Silicone Clinic.
Charlotte's story
09:15 Friday 28th June
Was the moment when Jon was able to gain full independence and pursue his passion for art.
Jon's story
Steeper Group - Our Insights
Insight Highlights of 2021
Insight Turning Points - Autumn Edition
Case Study Celebrating Professionals in Prosthetics and Orthotics!
Insight Innovation and Evolution: A New Myoelectric Upper Limb System
Insight Turning Points - Summer Edition


Archstone Meadowbrook Crossing in Westbury, NY hosted its first art show: New York Artist, Sandy Frazier, a Mixed Media Expressionist, invited all Archstone residents and friends to a showing of 30 paintings, plus digital photography and more throughout the day on Sunday, July 24, 2011. A reception followed from 6:00 to 9:00pm. See slideshow here.
Celebrated American painter Cy Twombly, whose large-scale paintings featuring scribbles, graffiti and references to ancient empires fetched millions at auction, died Tuesday. He was 83.


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Andrew N. Cole
Andrew Cole is a Collins & Lacy shareholder and certified circuit court mediator focusing in construction law, as well as defense litigation, and appellate advocacy. He represents general contractors, subcontractors, developers, architects, engineers, and product manufacturers. Andrew assists clients in every step of the process including taking part in property inspections associated with liability cases. Additionally, he defends designers, manufacturers, and sellers of construction products in class action litigation involving damages and lost-use claims. In his appellate advocacy practice, Andrew works on the draft of appeals, case preparation, and serves as an internal advisor.
South Carolina Super Lawyers has named Andrew a Super Lawyer in the area of Construction/Surety. He received his undergraduate degree from Davidson College and his Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law. Prior to joining Collins & Lacy in 2002, Andrew served as a staff attorney for the South Carolina Court of Appeals and as a law clerk for the Honorable Jasper M. Cureton.
Bar & Court Admissions
U.S. District Court, District of South Carolina
U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
Best Lawyers© (2018-2019)
Legal Elite of the Midlands (2016)
South Carolina Super Lawyer® (2014-2018)
South Carolina Super Lawyers Rising Star® (2012-2013)
Professional, Civic, & Community Involvement
South Carolina Bar
Practice & Procedure Committee (2009-2014)
Chair (2014-present)
Law-Related Education Division (2000-2014)
Mock Trial Co-Chair (2005-present)
Professional Liability Committee (2013-present)
Insurance Committee (2009- April 2014)
President (2009-2012)
Professional Liability Task Force (2012-2013)
House of Delegates for the Fifth Judicial Circuit (2006-2012)
Construction Law Section (2003-present)
Richland County Bar Association
South Carolina Defense Trial Attorneys' Association
Co-Chair, Construction Law Committee (2011-2016)
Greater Columbia Home Builders' Association
Chairman, Remodelers' Council Executive Committee (2016-2017)
Vice Chairman, Remodelers' Council Executive Committee (2015-2016)
Member-At-Large, Remodelers' Council Executive Committee (2013-2015)
International Society of Primerus Law Firms
Alston Wilkes Society Board of Directors
"The New Amalgamation in South Carolina - A Shortcut to Corporate Liability?" SCDTAA'S For the Defense, June 2012
General South Carolina Liability Law and Recent Changes in the Law, Abacus Planning Group, Columbia, SC, 2006
Collins & Lacy attorney Andy Cole to lead the 2014 Construction Law Seminar for SCDTAA member attorneys, March 2014
Attorney Andrew Cole to Speak to U.S. Green Building Council South Carolina Chapter, January 2012
Collins & Lacy Attorney Andrew Cole to Speak to Remodelers' Council of Greater Columbia Home Builders Association, August 2011
Collins & Lacy Attorneys to Speak at 47th Annual South Carolina Home Builders Association, July 2011
Collins & Lacy Attorney Andrew N. Cole to Present on Construction Law, November 2010
Free Seminar Series: How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Litigation: Tips to Keep Your Company out of Court, July 2010
Attorneys Adams and Cole to Speak at SCDTAA Construction Law CLE, The Square Peg in the Round Hole: Contribution and Setoff Claims in Construction Litigation, December 2009
Overall Construction Law – Protecting Your Company, 2007 Building Industry Expo and Conference, presented by Horry-Georgetown Home Builders' Association
We're Under Construction, 2007 Home Builders' Association of South Carolina Convention, Myrtle Beach, SC
The Truth About Opinions: What CPA's and Attorneys Need to Know About Expert Witnesses, Program sponsored by South Carolina Bar CLE Division, Co-Sponsored by The South Carolina Association of Certified Public Accountants, 2006
Class Action Update: Today's Trends & Strategies for Success, National Business Institute, Columbia, SC, 2006
Columbia Office 803.255.0433Email Address Download vCard	Print Biography
Commercial & Residential Construction
University of South Carolina School of Law, Juris Doctor
Davidson College, B.A., English
News, Alerts & Events
Collins & Lacy Attorney Tabbed for Construction Industry Trade Group Board
Collins & Lacy Attorneys Recognized by Peers
Eight Collins & Lacy Attorneys Selected as 2019 South Carolina Super Lawyers® and Rising Stars®


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Something Mysterious Is Killing Captive Gorillas
5 March 2018	News
The Atlantic | Krista Langlois | March 2018
Just before 8 o'clock on a snowy Wednesday morning, deep in a Kmaze of doors and steel fencing in the basement of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, a 30-year-old gorilla named Mokolo is getting a heart exam. He's voluntarily shambled up to a stainless-steel fence, squatted on his stout legs, and pressed his belly to the mesh. Now he looks at the ceiling with thinly veiled exasperation, like a kid who wants to play outside but knows he has to stand still long enough to get slathered with sunscreen first. His expression is so recognizably human that it's disconcerting.
An animal keeper, Brian Price, crouches on the other side of the mesh. "There you go, Moki," he murmurs, passing a green bean into Mokolo's mouth as a treat. The 400-pound animal gently accepts it with his lips.
Through a small opening in the fence, Price rubs ultrasound gel on Mokolo's thrust-out belly. Mokolo bats at Price's hand. He wipes off some of the goo and examines it with a suspicious expression, frowning as he rubs it between thumb and forefinger. Then, as though satisfied it's the same substance Price used last week, he raises his arm above his head and looks back at the ceiling. His fingers, with black nails and creased knuckles, curl around the steel fencing.
"Hold," says Price softly, rolling an ultrasound probe over Mokolo's ribs. Mokolo holds still.
A few feet away, a pulsating gray-and-white image of Mokolo's heart appears on a portable ultrasound machine. Mike Selig, a staff veterinarian, watches the right ventricle flutter open to let in blood, and the left ventricle pump it out. Rhythmic and regular: good. Selig records Mokolo's heart rate, then pushes a button to capture a photo. Later, he'll measure the fluid that's collected around Mokolo's heart cavity to make sure it hasn't increased, and add the information to a national database.
Like many captive male gorillas, Mokolo suffers from heart disease—specifically, fibrosing cardiomyopathy, a condition that turns red, healthy heart muscle into bands of white scar tissue too rigid to pump blood. Although heart disease is nearly absent in wild populations, it's the leading killer of captive male gorillas around the world. Roughly 70 percent of adult male gorillas in North America have heart disease, and many die prematurely as a result. Other great apes, such as orangutans and chimpanzees, suffer at similar rates.
For more than a decade, zookeepers, veterinarians, epidemiologists and others have struggled to figure out why heart disease is so prevalent among captive apes, and how to prevent the animals from developing it. Now they may be closing in on answer—one that lies not in the 20-ounce time bombs housed in gorillas' chests, but in the microscopic bacteria that flourish in their guts.
During the Miocene epoch, 23 million to 5.3 million years ago, at least 100 species of apes lived in the tropical forests of the Old World. Some were as small and light-footed as house cats; others weighed as much as modern gorillas. As the climate got cooler and drier, Miocene forests gave way to grasslands, and most ape species went extinct. Gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, and chimpanzees were among the survivors.
But the animals we now call the great apes weren't alone. Another type of hominid held on, too, and its brain eventually grew complex enough to use tools, cultivate fire, and invent the bulldozers and chain saws that are today tearing down great apes' last ecological strongholds. Largely because of logging, agriculture, and poaching by humans, the International Union for Conservation of Nature considers all six species of great apes endangered, with four of the six—the eastern gorilla, western gorilla, Bornean orangutan, and Sumatran orangutan—critically endangered.
While humans have pushed wild apes to the edge of a second mass extinction, we have an abiding zeal for keeping our closest evolutionary kin in captivity. Some of the earliest captive apes were held in menageries owned by European royals in the 17th and 18th centuries, an era when intellectuals debated whether apes were exotic beasts or some distant, savage race of humans. Without a clear answer, the creatures were treated as both—shackled with iron chains but given linens for their bed and meals of bread, strawberries, and fine Spanish wine.
By the early 20th century, scientists had managed to classify great apes into distinct species, but still had little idea how to care for them. The first gorilla to cross the Atlantic Ocean into North America, a female western lowland gorilla named Madame Ningo, arrived at New York's Bronx Zoo from the French Congo in 1911. Perhaps because she so closely resembled a human—or because her oversized canines suggested the mandible of a vicious carnivore—zookeepers tried feeding her cooked meat and other hot dinners from the nearby Rocking Stone Restaurant. They were perplexed when she refused to eat.
Within two weeks, Madame Ningo died. The zoo director, William Temple Hornaday, wrote bitterly that the animal "deserved to be [dead], for its obstinacy." Perhaps he didn't realize that gorillas are herbivores—their sharp canines are for stripping bark off fibrous African plants or baring at opponents in mating displays, not tearing through steaks. Madame Ningo's successor, Dinah, suffered a similar fate, dying after 11 months from a lack of appetite despite no apparent pathological symptoms.
Yet zoos continued their quest to bring gorillas to North American audiences. "Undoubtedly, the highest desire of every zoological garden and park ... is to own and exhibit a real, live gorilla of a size sufficiently large to compel both admiration and awe," Hornaday wrote in 1915. As the 20th century progressed, care of gorillas improved—especially after the passage of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, which banned the import of endangered wild apes and gave zoos even greater impetus to maintain self-sustaining captive populations.
By the early 1990s, the roughly 230 zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums had begun to shift their purpose from purveyors of "admiration and awe" to serious partners in conservation and education. They adopted mandates to contribute money and man power to field conservation, and to educate visitors on the threats faced by endangered species. Zoos created "species survival plans" to ensure that captive populations of gorillas and other endangered species were robust enough to act as insurance in case wild populations edged too close to extinction. But early misconceptions about gorillas proved hard to shake. Well into the '90s, some zoos still fed the animals milk, yogurt, boiled eggs, meat, bread, popcorn, and apples baked with cinnamon.
The invention of processed, calorically dense "biscuits" packed with vitamins and nutrients and supplemented with a few fruits and vegetables eventually helped standardize gorilla diets. Animals on the biscuit diet began living longer, seemingly healthier lives, sometimes surviving into their 50s. Infant mortality rates dropped. One female gorilla, Jo Ray K, gave birth to five fuzz-headed infants, including a rambunctious baby boy born on July 10, 1987. Zookeepers named him Mokolo.
When mokolo arrived at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in 1994, he helped establish a bachelor group with three other young males. Wild gorillas often live in bachelor groups when they're young, and Mokolo settled easily into his new social role. From the start, says the zoo's executive director and animal behaviorist Chris Kuhar, Mokolo stood out for his big personality. "He was the punky kid who caused trouble," Kuhar recalls. "But he was also the peacemaker. He was the one who wanted to play, or who wanted to fight, or cuddle."
Like the 350 or so other gorillas living in AZA zoos, Mokolo appeared relatively content and healthy. Nearly a century after Madame Ningo arrived in the New World, it seemed zoos had finally figured out great-ape husbandry.
Then the silverbacks started dying.
In 2006 alone, three beloved male gorillas from 21 to 34 years old died in quick succession. The culprit turned out to be heart disease. Largely unbeknownst to zookeepers and veterinarians, the disease had been creeping into the hearts of great apes much as it had crept into human hearts in the 20th century. But unlike humans, gorillas with heart problems didn't show evidence of coronary-artery blockage or high cholesterol. And unlike human hearts, gorilla hearts were almost unknown territory to scientists.
"We didn't even have a definition of heart disease in gorillas," says Pam Dennis, a veterinary epidemiologist with Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and assistant professor at the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine. Once an animal was dead, it was easy enough to identify heart failure through a necropsy, but since there were no parameters for healthy gorilla hearts, diagnosis and treatment in living animals was tricky. And because heart disease increases the risk of death during anesthesia, veterinarians were reluctant to anesthetize gorillas to perform ultrasounds, install pacemakers, or draw blood to study the disease. Even after the Great Ape Heart Project was created in 2010 to synthesize heart-health information from apes around the country, data arrived in a trickle rather than a flood.
"No vet would anesthetize an adult male gorilla unless they absolutely needed to," Dennis recalls. "Routine health exams just sort of stopped."
The first breakthrough came as veterinarians and zookeepers realized they could use apples and green beans as treats to train apes to voluntarily give blood and stand still for cardiac ultrasounds. More institutions began contributing to the Great Ape Heart Project, and Mokolo and other gorillas around the country began shambling up to their keepers and presenting their chests or arms through barriers so the keepers could poke them with a needle or run an ultrasound probe over their abdomens. Before long, veterinarians established what a healthy heart in an awake gorilla looks like, making it possible to diagnose animals without anesthetizing them.
But with new information came new fears. Both Mokolo and Bebac—the only other remaining member of the Cleveland Zoo bachelor group, as well as Mokolo's closest friend—were found to have fibrosing cardiomyopathy. Veterinarians did their best to halt the disease's progress by prescribing human heart medications snuck into the gorillas' food. But in January 2017, Bebac passed away. He was 32 years old.
After Bebac died, two female gorillas named Fredrika and Kebi were brought to Cleveland so Mokolo could fulfill his next role in the arc of a gorilla's life, that of a dominant silverback with a harem. Although they each weigh some 200 pounds, the females look diminutive next to him. He frequently watches them out of the corner of his eye, keeping them safe.
Zoo staff, meanwhile, are scrambling to keep Mokolo and the other males of his generation alive. Among those staff members is Elena Less, an associate animal curator at the Cleveland Zoo who began studying gorilla diets when she was a Ph.D student at Case Western Reserve University. Given the connection between human diet and heart health, she says, gorillas' diets seemed like "an obvious place to look" in the quest to understand heart disease.
Less found that the biscuit diet left plenty to be desired. While gorillas are genetically similar to humans, they have very different digestive systems—more akin to those in horses. Like horses, gorillas are "hind-gut digesters" who process food primarily in their extra-long large intestines rather than their stomachs. That means they're great at breaking down fiber, but not so good with sugars or grains. "If you feed them a sweet potato or commercially grown fruit, they'll eat it," explains Less. "But it's not really giving them a lot of energy."
Claire Merchlinsky
Plus, wild gorillas spend up to 70 percent of their time foraging for high-fiber plants, while gorillas on the biscuit diet can scarf down their food in just 30 minutes. Kristen Lukas, director of conservation and science at the Cleveland Zoo and chair of the Gorilla Species Survival Plan, thinks this might contribute to a behavior called regurgitation and re-ingestion, in which animals intentionally bring up their food and eat it a second time. The behavior has never been recorded in wild gorillas, but it's well documented in humans with developmental disorders—and in some two-thirds of captive gorillas.
Lukas has found that gorillas that regurgitate are actually better adjusted than other captive gorillas in terms of behavior and stress; the behavior may be an adaptation that gives them a sense of control, or allows them to better mimic the amount of time they'd spend eating in the wild.
When Less switched the Cleveland gorillas to a new diet—one that cuts out biscuits and simple starches and replaces them with leafy greens, alfalfa, and branches from willow and other trees—she realized gorillas needed to eat about four times as much by weight as they had previously been fed. Not only did gorillas on the "Cleveland diet" get a huge increase in fiber, they spent nearly as much time eating as they would in the wild. Almost immediately, the Cleveland gorillas stopped regurgitating their food. "We thought the diet change might have an impact on regurgitation and re-ingestion," Less says. "But to see it eliminated completely was shocking."
The new diet measurably decreases body fat and lowers cholesterol. But perhaps more importantly, it seems to affect the bacteria living in gorillas' stomachs and intestines. And those microbes may be the key difference between gorillas with heart disease and those without it.
'I started studying the brain because I thought it was in control," says Mary Ann Raghanti, a biological anthropologist at Kent State University who studies both brain evolution and great-ape heart health. "But really it's the gut. The gut dictates everything. "
In the last decade or so, scientists have begun to explore how the trillions of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms living in people's stomachs and intestinal tracts influence our health. What we eat determines which of these microbes thrive, and the composition of our gut flora has wide-ranging implications for other parts of our bodies. Certain gut bacteria, for example, trigger inflammations in our immune systems, while other bacteria secrete substances that infiltrate our blood or clog arteries, which may help explain why humans with heart disease host very different microbial communities than those with healthy hearts.
Katherine Krynak, an assistant professor of biology at Ohio Northern University, wanted to understand if bacteria played a similar role in gorilla guts: Do gorillas with heart disease host different bacteria than healthy gorillas? And if so, is it possible to manipulate the bacteria in gorillas' guts to impact their hearts?
Although the work to answer these questions is still in its early stages, the answers appear to be yes.
Krynak's work starts with gorilla poop, which contains hundreds of thousands of strands of DNA from the bacteria in gorillas' guts. I expected gorilla poop to look something like bear poop—an ominous, steaming pile that clearly belongs to a very large, very wild animal. But gorilla poop is more like the feces of a miniature horse—compact and dryish, with a smell redolent of hay. Zookeepers and graduate students collect samples, freeze-dry them, and put them in vials, then send the vials to Krynak's lab. Krynak, in turn, extracts the DNA and sequences it to figure out which bacteria are present in gorillas' guts. By analyzing the poop of eight captive gorillas, Krynak, Dennis, and other researchers found that animals with cardiac disease do indeed have different microbiomes than those without it.
Krynak compares the bacteria to guests at a party. "If you're at a holiday party, you might behave a certain way. But if close friends come or maybe the host changes the environment by bringing out alcohol, it might change your behavior," she explains. In her team's study of gorilla guts, "the first step is to know who's at the party. Then our next steps are to see, okay, well if you change the environment—if the gorilla eats something different—do you change who's at the party? Who there are more of and who there are less of? And if you change that proportion, do the functions of those bacteria change?"
Researchers are just beginning to understand the mechanics of how, exactly, changing the gut-microbe party affects other organs. In mice, a diet that's lacking in fiber seems to wipe out fiber-digesting bacteria and throw off finely tuned proportions of gut microbes, which in turn triggers an immune response. The mice develop chronic inflammation and gain weight, conditions that can increase the risk of heart disease.
In gorillas, such detailed understanding is still years away. But the connections between animals' microbiomes and their success in captivity is too promising to ignore. Krynak is now analyzing posthumous fecal samples from Bebac, as well as samples from Mokolo, Kebi, and Fredrika to determine whether the biscuit-free diet creates a microbial "party" similar to that in healthy gorillas. Researchers studying doucs—another endangered primate that struggles to survive in captivity—have found that zoo doucs' gut bacteria differ significantly from those of their wild cousins but bear an uncanny resemblance to human microbiomes, perhaps because humans and zoo doucs both tend to eat low-fiber diets.
Of course, as in any real-world scientific application, there are hiccups. For one thing, you can't reverse heart disease, so even if Mokolo's condition doesn't worsen, it's hard to know whether it's attributable to his medications, his diet, or both. Determining whether the Cleveland diet can actually prevent heart disease from taking hold requires an entire generation of young male gorillas to be raised on it, but so far only three zoos besides Cleveland have adopted it—mostly because it's about four times as expensive as a biscuit-based diet. Of the four zoos, only the North Carolina Zoo has males who have been biscuit-free since they were weaned. Even if those two males grow up without heart disease, they comprise such a small sample that it'll be difficult to determine whether their health is due to their diet and microbiomes or simply good genes.
But in time, the work of Less, Krynak, Kristen Lukas, Pam Dennis, and others may take captive gorillas one step closer to living like their wild cousins—one step in a century-long series of steps and missteps. It's fitting, Dennis thinks, that our understanding of human medicine and physiology is finally contributing to the health and well-being of primates, instead of the other way around.
"My feeling," she says, "is that we learned so much about human health by doing research on primates that now it's sort of like giving back."
At 6:30 in the morning, when the streetlights are still on and the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is closed to the public, Brian Price, the gorilla keeper, shows up for work in faded Carhartts and a hooded sweatshirt. A ring of keys, a handheld radio, and a canister of heavy-duty pepper spray hang from his belt.
Outside, snow sifts from the sky and the city stirs to life. Inside a florescent-lit back room at the zoo's Primate, Cat, and Aquatics building, Price measures out syringes of vitamins and medicine—birth control for the female gorillas, a diuretic and a blood-pressure med for Mokolo. Then he mixes up a substance that smells like oatmeal and has the consistency of wet cement.
"Want to try it?" he asks. It tastes like cardboard, and I say as much.
Elena Less, who's standing nearby, laughs. "It's called resistance starch. It mimics fiber in gorillas' hind gut. Gorillas normally eat bark, so they're cool with it."
It takes me a very long time to make enough saliva to swallow.
Price adds the medicine to the resistance starch and brings it to the gorillas in the basement holding area—the same behind-the-scenes enclosure where Mokolo gets his heart exams and blood draws. Then he heads upstairs to the main gorilla exhibit that visitors can see through a large glass wall. He stuffs endive and romaine lettuce into cardboard containers designed to increase the time gorillas spend "foraging" for food, scatters the containers around the enclosure, and raises the door that lets the gorillas move freely from the basement holding area into the main exhibit.
On the other side of the glass, I wait.
The two females knuckle-walk into the enclosure first, snatching the first greens they see and stashing them under their arms. Then Mokolo bursts in: 5'7", 400 pounds, loose-jointed and long-limbed, the shaggy fur on his forearms swinging as he walks. He surveys the enclosure with all the confidence of a dominant male, then leisurely picks up a piece of romaine. A bit of hay is stuck to it, and Mokolo flicks it off with a forefinger—a startlingly human movement. In that moment, I understand why humans have been enthralled with gorillas for so long; why we've put them in zoos and menageries to study and observe them and perhaps learn something about ourselves along the way. And why, today, we're driven to save them.
For the rest of the morning, I watch the gorillas eat, urinate, scratch themselves, and rest. A few gibbons chatter from another enclosure, but otherwise the Primate, Cat, and Aquatics building is silent. Gray winter light filters through the windows. My only other memory of seeing a gorilla is in nature documentaries, but this is different. There's no cameraman to control what I see, no producer to edit my experience.
Zoos remain controversial among animal-rights advocates, but proponents believe firmly in their purpose. Occasionally, captive animals have been released to bolster nearly extinct wild populations, and zoo animals can act as "ambassadors" to get people to care about wild animals. Millions of people who may never travel to Africa visit AZA zoos each year, and a percentage of their ticket sales, along with donations from zoo patrons, is funneled directly to field conservation. Between 2012 and 2016, AZA zoos contributed $6.6 million to such projects, including a collaboration with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund that trains Rwandan university students in scientific research and outreach.
Yet when I asked researchers and zoo staff in Cleveland why they cared about solving heart disease in great apes, they didn't talk about species-level conservation, or whether captive gorillas will ever need to replenish wild populations. Instead, they talked about improving the lives of individual animals like Mokolo. A hundred years ago, humans took gorillas out of Africa and across the Atlantic Ocean. And like so many choices made generations ago, we're the ones forced to grapple with the consequences.
"We brought these animals into zoos," says Pam Dennis. "We build their habitats, we give them their food, and if how we manage them is the cause of heart disease, then I think we're responsible to figure it out and fix it."
After Mokolo eats his fill of greens, he sits on a tree root with an elbow resting on one knee. He picks up a piece of cardboard, takes an experimental bite, and lets the uneaten pieces flutter back to the floor. He glances at me through the glass. Then, without warning, he leaps up and gallops around the enclosure, making a ruckus that echoes through the quiet building. The gibbons are briefly silenced.
Smiling slightly as though satisfied with himself, he turns his back and disappears down the stairs, back into the place of cement floors and bright lights and steel fences.
Link to full article here
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A number of factors can influence the actual cost of wedding flowers, including the time of year and location of the event, the size of the event, the number of different types of flowers (and the flower types themselves), the size of arrangements and how elaborate they are, how far in advance you place your order, etc. Here are some options to keep your flower budget under control.
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Home > DISSERTATIONS > ALL_DISSERTATIONS > 5
A new approach for Turkish ports to reduce ship emissions case study : application of cold ironing system for Marport container terminal
Nurullah H. Peksen, World Maritime University
Shipping & Port Management
Maritime transport is the most environmentally friendly type of transport mode. However, air pollution and greenhouse gases from ship emissions are increasing because of the growing maritime traffic. These exhaust emissions cause global warming, acid rain and a reduction in air quality which has serious adverse effects on human health. Particularly as a specialized agency of the United Nations with responsibility for the safety and security of shipping and the prevention of marine pollution by ships, International Maritime Organization has dealt with reducing ship emissions on a global basis by adapting "The Regulations for the Prevention of Air Pollution from Ships" as Annex VI of Marpol Convention in 1997. Turkey has also ratified Annex VI on 26th February 2013, and in accordance with Annex VI, the Turkish Maritime Authority is planning to establish an Emission Control Area (ECA), which will cover probably the Sea of Marmara and Turkish Straits. These areas are placed in the centre of the global trade routes between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea and have coasts with very crowded cities which have growing economies. Nearly 50,000 ships are passing through the Turkish Straits every year. These straits are surrounded by inhabited areas with almost 20 million people. On the other hand, according to the latest revision of the Turkish Regulation on Reduction of Sulphur Rate in Some Types of Fuel Oils, inland vessels and all the vessels at berth, regardless of their flag, are obliged to use marine fuels with sulphur content not more than 0.1% by mass, by 1st of January 2012. So vessels are not allowed to consume any fuel oil containing more than 0.1% sulphur during port activities in the Marmara Sea. During the last two decades, different technologies have been tested in ports in order to reduce ship emissions. One of them is known as the cold ironing system which provides ships to use shore-side electricity as onshore electric power supply instead of working auxiliary engines while ships are lifting at berth. In this system, emission from ships during berthing are completely eliminated by using electrical power from national grid as alternative energy source rather than fuel oils which are necessary for combustion process in auxiliary engines to generate electricity. To sum up, this study will discuss the cold ironing system as the most economically and environmentally friendly solution on the reduction of ship emissions from the aspect of Turkish port operators while ships are at berth based on a case study for Marport Container Terminal, which is the biggest private container port in the Sea of Marmara. In the case study, by using data of ships calling Marport within 2012, the total emission from ships, environment impact of the emissions on air quality and climate change, and externalities on health costs and others have been discussed. From the financial side, investment costs of cold ironing systems for container ports have been analysed with the investment return period by using the Net Present Value method.
Environmental Studies Commons


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