Already hate working out? Then you might want to skip this video.
In a recent hit by Fail Army, the FAIL pros of the Internet put together a CrossFit compilation that is cringe-worthy in more ways than one.
To see how not to work out, check out the video above.
“Fathers are entitled to the same information about their kids as mothers.”
This is a nice idea. We have heard it many times from school administrators, teachers, PTA members, etc. I believe every single one of them means what they say. But the reality is, while divorced dads may be theoretically entitled, they are practically left out. I have witnessed it with my husband. I have witnessed it with friends. It is more common than I realized, and I have begun to see a system that excludes divorced fathers by design and by virtue of the assumption that most of the time, dads are at fault in the divorce.
Let’s get the second issue out of the way first. Like it or not, in a divorce situation, most people assume the man is at fault. Most people assume that the man will be absent or will be involved minimally at best. Most people assume that there is a good possibility that the man has exhibited some objectionable behavior and must be kept at bay. I am not saying that every person feels this way, but it is common, and it is exclusionary. This mindset must change. This mindset is demeaning and judgmental by way of making it difficult or impossible for men to show up at their children’s events thereby perpetuating the belief that divorced fathers are not involved.
In my view, any party, father or mother, who would have a derogatory conversation with anyone at their children’s school, doctor or extracurricular activity about the other parent should be considered more suspect than the parent who says nothing. After all, subjecting children to negative views of either parent by those who teach them is detrimental to those children.
Moving on, let’s get to the institutionalized part of the problem. My husband has been divorced for almost five years. Two of those years, he has been remarried… to me. This is why I use the term “divorced dads” rather than “single dads.” In those two years, I have watched an involved, dedicated and reliable father struggle to get information that he is entitled to have about his daughters despite making every effort to participate. In his case, he has shared custody which entitles him to equal involvement, access and decision making with regard to his girls. He does not have primary physical custody, however, and so the mother does most of the registration for school, doctors and extracurricular activities. This is a very common situation.
When the mother does registration for the children, she can choose to include the father’s information or not. Some years my husband is included, others he is not. So he must go to each school and find out if he is listed on school call-out logs, emergency contact forms or even listed as the father at all. This year, we found out he was not even in the system at one of the schools. We added him, but then realized he was not receiving emails regarding schools events such as honors day. He corrected that (after we missed honors day), or so we thought. He then found out he still was not getting emails, and the staff at the front office, while attempting to be helpful, could not figure out why only the mother was getting the emails. There is still no answer. When these emails go undelivered to fathers, it makes it difficult or impossible for men to show up at their children’s events thereby perpetuating the belief that divorced fathers are not involved.
When he goes to Open House at school and signs up for email lists for the teachers and for the PTA, he may be added to that list, and he may not. Whether other mothers (room mothers) realize it or not, they tend to assume that only the mothers will participate in school parties or on field trips or in bringing in snacks for the classroom. They will sometimes email the mother exclusively. This system causes fathers to scramble around trying to find out when classroom events are, when class parties are and what is going on in their child’s classroom. Being excluded from these lists makes it difficult or impossible for men to show up at their children’s events thereby perpetuating the belief that divorced fathers are not involved.
There are also administrative issues that exclude fathers. Report cards are not mailed to fathers. Disciplinary letters are not mailed to fathers. Calls regarding sick children or to ask why a child was not picked up from school on time, are not made to fathers. This exclusion makes it difficult or impossible to be present and communicative with their children thereby perpetuating the belief that divorced fathers are not involved.
When school software is not designed in such a way as to allow information to flow easily to both divorced parents, when administrators do not institute practical policy that allows both parents to receive information equally, when teachers do not have sign-up forms that accommodate both parents to receive the same classroom information, when PTA moms assume that only the mothers will participate, it is difficult or impossible for men to show up at their children’s events thereby perpetuating the belief that divorced fathers are not involved.
One question that needs to be asked, is to whom is the belief that divorced fathers are not involved being perpetuated? Anyone who has missed their children’s events at school, doctors or extracurricular activities and has seen a look of disappointment on their faces knows that it is the children who suffer. For a father who is making every effort, it is heartbreaking. And it is even more heartbreaking when it is the system and culture of focusing on the mothers as primary caregivers rather than a lack in the father that is the reason for this heartbreak. For the sake of the children, it is not just a father’s problem. It is an institutional problem and it is up to the fathers, the mothers and the schools to begin a conversation about how to improve this problem.
I recognize putting responsibility on the school districts adds a burden, however, with a 50 percent divorce rate, this subject must be addressed. I know that the attitude of schools used to be that it was up to the parents to work these things out, not the school. I do believe that attitude is changing, but the culture of viewing mothers as the primary caregivers and responsible parent has got to change. I know that many parents co-parent well and communicate effectively. There are many who do not. There are men who fight for every minute to spend time with their children and to be involved in their lives. Institutions should not be an impediment.
Let’s begin a conversation. In coming weeks I will publish more on how I think this issue can be addressed and how we can begin to change the culture of divorced parenting. Please contact me at thesingledadsplaybook@gmail.com if you have experiences to share.
A Portland-based couple won this year’s National Small Business People of the Year Award for their vegan and cruelty-free beauty line. The couple joined HuffPost Live to talk about their win and their journey so far.
Brooke Harvey-Taylor and her husband Billy started Pacifica over 15 years ago with just a line of scented candles. Brooke had prior training in aromatherapy and felt that candles were the best place to put the perfumes she had developed.
“…I always had a vision for having this big beauty line but back then boutique perfumes didn’t exist and what was happening in the market were candles and so we thought, ‘Let’s just try to put them in candles and see what happens,'” Brooke told HuffPost Live’s Ricky Camilleri. “And that’s what we did, and it was really successful and then we were able to put the fragrances into perfumes shortly after.”
Since the company’s inception, it has grown into a multi-million dollar beauty line. Brooke said that her company was really one of the first brands to take a vegan and cruelty-free approach to beauty products.
“We were really one of the first brands to take such a strong stance on being vegan and cruelty-free in the marketplace,” Brooke said. “It wasn’t happening at that point and we’re certified by PETA, which means a lot to us. We were both vegan when we started Pacifica and it’s a big part of our brand ethos for sure.”
Watch the full HuffPost Live segment on Pacifica below:
Sixty years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision officially ended racially segregated schooling and set off a wave school bussing in an effort to diversify U.S. education systems, studies show that schools in the South are on their way to returning to pre-Brown segregation levels, and that schools in the Northeast are more segregated than they were in the years immediately following Brown.
Nowhere is this school segregation as pronounced as it is in New York state, which “had the highest concentration in intensely-segregated public schools” in 2009, according to a recent report from UCLA’s Civil Rights Project. The report notes that intense segregation in New York City schools heavily influences this ranking, as the city is “home to the largest and one of the most segregated public school systems in the nation.” Unfortunately, this fact means that the city’s minority students often attend some of the city’s lowest-performing schools.
Two maps put together by research engine FindTheBest display some of the implications of New York City’s school segregation. As shown in the maps, the areas with the highest concentration of black and Latino students, often have the lowest-rated public schools.
In the Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall, an estranged couple is seen in separate visits to their therapists answering the question; “How often do the two of you have sex?”
“Aways,” the woman says, “three times a week.”
“Never,” the man says, “three times a week.”
When it comes to the way the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board see the question of the “safety” of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner the same flexibility in perception is on display. How well-contained are the risks on the world’s newest wide body airliner?
“Very” says the FAA.
“Not so much,” says the NTSB.
In March, while the world was preoccupied with the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370, the FAA released, with little fanfare, the report capping its year-long review of the design, certification and manufacturing of the Boeing 787. The plane was “fundamentally sound” the paper’s writers determined. “Deficiencies” were typical of any new airplane and “are being addressed or have been addressed” by Boeing and the FAA.
That’s not the way the NTSB sees it, though, as Thursday’s safety recommendations and the accompanying letter make clear.
The folks investigating the two thermal events on Japanese airliners that grounded the entire 50 plane Dreamliner fleet for nearly four months last year take a more circumspect approach. “Boeing underestimated the more serious effects” of problems inside and outside of the novel new batteries it decided to use on the Boeing 787.
The safety board is talking about the cobalt oxide lithium ion used for the two large batteries on the plane, that is the same recipe used in those laptops and cell phones that spontaneously ignited in the mid 2000s. The fires occurred in public places like airports and videos were posted on YouTube.
The batteries were the subject of the world’s largest industrial recall.
Despite that, Boeing and its subcontractors went ahead with a plan to use lithium ion batteries in the air, requesting a special condition from the FAA. As the NTSB describes the process, Boeing tested the cells it planned to use on the Dreamliner by poking them with nails then sitting back and recording the resulting fireworks.
There was no requirement that the plane maker conduct a holistic examination of what would happen to the entire contraption; not just the cells but the external wiring and battery case. When the safety board staffers conducted their own tests of how everything worked together, it wasn’t pretty.
Which is why in its recommendation letter the board says that lithium ion battery tests “should replicate the battery installation on the aircraft (emphasis mine) and be conducted under conditions that produce the most severe outcome.” Well, yeah, aren’t they doing that already?
Apparently not. You may find that shocking. I know I do. But in the case of variable perspectives that got me thinking about Woody Allen’s sexually mismatched characters, the FAA doesn’t have a problem with it.
Its 71 page report wraps up the whole Dreamliner review promised by then-Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood in January 2013, with a series of do-better-next-time fixes that are all about keeping more of an eye on the sub contractors.
During my coverage of MH370, I criticized that government for allowing Hishammuddin Hussein to oversee the handling of the investigation considering that Hishammuddin is the chief of the Malaysian Defence and Transportation departments. I asked how he could supervise a probe in which his own departments played a role.
We have a similar scenario with the FAA and Boeing conducting an examination of their own actions in the design, building and certification of the Dreamliner. The committee was composed of committee of 13, six from the FAA and seven from Boeing who together and not surprisingly found “no flaws in the verification of the airplane.”
The NTSB on the other hand criticizes the FAA for failing to reach out to independent experts years ago, to get another view of the wisdom of installing such persnickety chemistry as lithium ion batteries on a commercial aircraft. Even before concluding what caused the two Dreamliner battery events, the NTSB has made an important statement by acknowledging the way
insularity distorts perspective and hinders safety.
When it comes to the Dreamliner design, the FAA and the NTSB do have very different perspectives. But unlike the couple in Annie Hall, both sides cannot be right.
War Art Peace: II
Ronald L. Haeberle, 1970, Museum of Modern Art, New York
People have written recently that the standoff between Vladimir Putin and Barrack Obama over Ukraine has placed the world in greater danger of nuclear war than at any moment since Jack Kennedy went warhead to warhead with Nikita Khrushchev over the delivery of missiles to Cuba. For Syrians and Africans, the violence is ongoing, yielding the more displaced families than at anytime in the last half century.
Travelers who dare to look directly into the terrible beauty of collective death might want to take a one hour day trip this to Lens, the former coal mining town an hour north of Paris where the dazzling satellite of the Louvre Museum has collected 450 pieces of painting, sculpture, prints, film and photography under the title, “The Disasters of War: 1800-2014.”
Two hundred artists — from Goya’s famous gravures of the Spanish War in 1808 to Pei Ming’s revisiting of Goya almost 200 years later — bore deeply into the primal statement articulated in 1819 by the trans-Europeanist Benjamin Constant after the unprecedented bloodbath launched across Europe by Napoleon: “even a successful war costs infallibly more than it is worth.”
20 conflicts from the Napoleonic Wars that set the template for modern Europe through Vietnam and into Iraq and Syria track the psychosis, the duplicities, and the industrialization of mass death. Individuals become body parts. Inventive technology transforms itself into killing machines. Dreams and passions sprout hate and resentment. Male muscle, women’s breasts and children’s eyes dissolve into sanitary, coded algorithms. Civilians disappear into collateral terror. News gives birth to propaganda.
The Louvre being French, the show begins with the heroic painting by Jean-Louis David of Napoleon on horseback leading his men triumphantly across the Alps. It is the only heroic piece of propaganda on display. Immediately we turn to Goya’s ghastly etchings of slaughter — which return again and again in ever-shifting visual translations by successive artists across the two centuries. Pei Ming returns later with his own take on one of the most ghastly images of the Vietnam War.
But first we visit the first struggle over the fate of Crimea — waged for much the same stakes as the current NATO Russian standoff over control of access to the Black Sea and the minerals of Central Asia. But it wouldn’t be until 1860 that military censors permitted photographers to show the flesh and bone of death with Felice Beato’s images of Britain’s Opium Wars in China.
These dead, of course, were Chinese; the dead faces of Europeans would have to wait for The Great War of 1914-1918, whose one hundredth anniversary is being marked not only at Louvre Lens but all across Europe. World War I claimed more than 16 million lives — just among soldiers It is a war largely forgotten by Americans now, but it marked a watershed, a “new kind of war” controlled by industrial killing machines whose mechanical great grandchildren today we call smart bombs and aerial drones.
By the Spanish Civil War we find Picasso creating a new way of witnessing terror.
And that would soon be followed by the post-modern mega death that millions of today’s Americans and Europeans do recall, a war that not only pitted soldier against solder but the war that ended when the earth’s only superpower unleashed the mysteries of physics and fission over Nagasaki (recorded by the U.S. military) against the last Japanese holdout.
The beginning of the end of the idea of the Cold War came back to earth as America the Good came face to face with what our soldiers dismissed as “the little gooks” in the jungle who in less than a decade brought the super power to its knees with the loss of 58,000 thousand Yanks and a million Vietnamese, many of them blown away in famous images like Eddie Adam’s capture of the death of a Viet Cong prisoner re-rendered by Pei Ming.
If Vietnam marked one watershed in the art imagery of war, unleashing a set of images that would forever erase the boundaries between document and art, the dark dance continues, caught in this photo of the last moments of a young Syrian man’s life made last year by Luc Delahaye and which in its own way takes us back to Goya’s documentation of the Napoleonic campaigns.
“The Disasters of War” is an original, unprecedented exhibition. Partisans of one camp or another in each of the conflicts will likely leave the museum enraged — as was one partisan at a press visit who argued for a different set of historical interpretations than what he took to be the “pacifist” line of the exhibit. No, “the mission was not pacifist” answered curator Lawrence Bertrand Dorléac who explained that she had spent two years sifting through thousands of images from the Louvre and elsewhere — and 30 years in meditation about the effects of war. Her object, she said, was not to present a history of war but instead to create a history of the meditations that these artists inspire in our reading of war from Napoleon’s defeat into our present time.
A 1940s Juvenile Fiction heroine was a “disruptor” – who lowered temperatures, raised spirits, and healed WW II wounded.
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“The Army has a responsibility to cure its wounded men and make them fit to earn their living again…. Our job is to rebuild broken men, physically and mentally…. See that you treat these men properly!”
That stern admonition was delivered, with extra gruffness, by white-haired Colonel Winifred Brown, “an old crosspatch” whose x-ray eyes radiated a grim no-nonsense glare, which even unnerved generals. Col. Brown’s greeting to newly-arrived Lieutenant Cherry Ames, R.N. (U. S. Army Nursing Corps) should probably be emblazoned on signs in every corridor of every VA hospital.
Cherry Ames – Veterans’ Nurse
The admonition comes early on in this 1946 Juvenile novel. To that point in the series authored by Helen Wells, Cherry Ames has nursed in the Pacific and European “theaters of war.” In this sequel, she is assigned to an orthopedic hospital where nurses are “to mend spirits as well as bodies,” in a wholly 1940s non-sensual way, to be sure. The nurses are to see that patients recover to the point where, with on-site rehabilitation and vocational guidance, they will secure “useful and self-sufficient futures.” Helen Wells surely had a mission that went beyond diverting pre-teen and teenage girls.
Decades before the death matches in a dystopian future served up in the Hunger Games trilogy, decades before the sci-fi factional warfare in the Divergent trilogy, and decades before the fantasy teen romances of the Twilight quadrilogy (with its junior vampire and werewolf hunks), there was Nancy Drew, and there was Cherry Ames.
The Cherry Ames books (which typically run to 200 pages of reader-friendly type) are not great literature, nor are they to be read as documented military or medical history. Not surprisingly, the “romance” components – such as they are – are of the un-urban “porch swing” variety. As to dialog, the conversations are chock full of quaint expressions and exclamations: gosh, aw shucks, gee whiz, golly, danged, by George, humdinger, flapdoodle, jiminy, jumpin’ jehosophat, harrumph, over yonder….
Still, in an un-academic unpretentious way, the stories published in the 1940s provide a sense of what medical care was like, how it was delivered: in Pacific island jungles; in European evacuation hospitals; and on air transport cargo planes (“aerial ambulances”) under attack from Nazi artillery fired at evacuation airstrips; under fire from anti-aircraft batteries at landing and takeoff near the front; and under assault by Messerschmitts as the wounded were being transported back to England and Scotland. The lumbering C-47 Air Transports could not climb because higher altitudes would exacerbate the pain and complications of those needing major surgeries.
While not history or memoir, Wells’ observations of and conversations with Army nurses allowed her to pass on to young readers (presumably all female) a very patriotic sense of how young women made serious and essential contributions to the war effort, through their skills, dedication, and courage.
Wells graduated from New York University in 1934, having become the first female editor of NYU’s literary quarterly. She majored in philosophy, but one might surmise that her sociology and psychology studies, along with her volunteer work for the State Department during WWII, had her attuned to, and made her a champion of, women who worked.
Cherry Ames – Army Nurse (1944)
Fresh from nursing school, Cherry Ames rejoices at her acceptance as a probationer in the Army Nurse Corps. With maturity, composure, and tenacity beyond her years, she survives basic-training rigors imposed by a stereo-typical gruff drill-sergeant who is not female-friendly. She also endures an uptight, petty, spiteful captain, who specializes in recrimination. He’s a martinet (stock footage, if you will), who is meddlesome, malicious, and vindictive. Cherry “defeats” his efforts to discipline her and have her discharged. She wins the day by resolutely seeking and astutely finding the source of malaria, blackwater fever, and yellow fever that threatens servicemen and civilians in Panama. She’s a medical detective who is ultimately commended and promoted for her “courage, alertness, and initiative.”
Cherry Ames – Chief Nurse (1944)
The heroine of the Army’s Panama Canal encampments is whisked to the Pacific, where she is to take charge of a forward nursing contingent. Understaffed and re-supplied only intermittently and precariously, they are to supervise the construction of a hospital on a remote island, which is designated only by a number – but which is “home” to dug-in units of infantry and artillery. The commanding officer (another stock-footage martinet, and a sourpuss) is not a fan: to him she is “too young and too pretty” for the job. His inspections interfere with the responsiveness, sensitivity, and humanity of Cherry and her nurses. There is too much informality, cheerfulness, warm-hearted encouragement, and levity for his taste; not enough formality and dignity. And, no surprise, Cherry is too popular for the CO’s notions of good discipline.
It is Cherry – only Cherry – who remembers a directive from the War Department to be on the lookout for “strange wounds that would indicate strange new weapons.” In addition to her healthcare skills, she is instrumental in a ballistics and forensics investigation that allows for effective diagnosis and treatment of mysterious wounds.
When the enemy launches a full-scale attack, she accompanies surgeons on a perilous Higgins boat run to besieged troops. With lipstick, she marks the foreheads of the wounded to indicate what she has administered: sulfa and antitoxins to prevent infections; morphine to ease pain; pre-op prep for those needing emergency surgery while the island is still under enemy fire.
And, presciently, Wells has Cherry counsel a plus-size anaesthetist, who has become increasing self-conscious and distraught about her size, shape, and weight. There’s body-image sensitivity and self-esteem encouragement, in addition to Cherry’s advanced sense of work-flow logistics and supply-chain management.
Cherry Ames – Flight Nurse (1945)
As a reward for her heroism under fire in the Pacific, Cherry joins the Army Air Force contingents in England that “sweat in” the bombers and the C-47 “aerial ambulances” returning from the front. She will join a flight crew that will brave enemy fire to pick up the wounded and race them back to base hospitals.
For the most part, the Cherry Ames books I’ve read have predictable drama and outcomes. Still, to my mind’s eye, Flight Nurse has scenes that are taut and cinematic. Cherry’s black curls are always being whipped against her rosy-red cheeks, when they are not being tamed by a tug on her jaunty AAF lieutenant’s cap. Book-jacket depictions of the 22-year-old from semi-rural Illinois suggest (to me) a young Donna Reed, a fledgling non-vivacious Loretta Young, a non-sultry Natalie Wood – who might be played by Natalie Portman, Keira Knightley, Rooney Mara, Anna Kendrick, or Emma Watson; in a “look-back” similar to what the BBC has done with Call the Midwife.
Disclosure, a personal “mission”
What prompted this 67-year-old (who’s spent 40 years focused on media law and ethics) to embark on a study of 1940s Juvenile lit geared to teen and pre-teen girls?
I have been teaching literature-and-film courses to undergraduate nursing and health-science students, and wondered if any of the Cherry Ames vignettes might provide a perspective that would engage my students. That’s the academic explanation.
The personal explanation: my father was in an Army Air Force base unit in Europe in WW II. He managed to put in (and survive) 4 years, 4 months, and 26 days of “Honest and Faithful Service.” I have the original of the one-page official service record that denotes his “decorations and citations” along with his “battles and campaigns,” which accompanied his most honorable discharge. He never talked about what he saw, heard, and felt in England, Northern France, and in the Rhineland. He never talked about his June 1944 day at Normandy.
I have been told that a vast cache of service records were destroyed by fire. So I am put to sleuthing – not for a crime but for the endurance, and perhaps some bravery, that was summoned in circumstances that my father chose not to recount.
So it was in Cherry Ames – Flight Nurse that I got what might turn out to be clues:
In the European Theatre of Operations, did my father (a 39-year-old staff sergeant at the time of his discharge) make sure that AAF nurses and medical-evacuation teams had the litters, plasma, sulfa, morphine, tourniquets, burn ointments, hypodermics, oxygen canisters, sterilizers, splints, air-sickness capsules, blankets, dressings and bandages that were needed?
He was meticulous. So I wonder, had he been assigned to go over flight manifests; check take-off and landing clearances; check cargo, weight, and flight plans; oversee the loading and securing of the right kinds of fuel and ammunition?
He was mature and reliable: Was he among those who responded to the SOS calls from returning bombers and C-47s that required P-47, American Mustang, and British Spitfire escorts to deal with Nazi artillery, anti-aircraft, or Messerschmitts?
Why did he never talk about the war? Had he seen what Cherry Ames saw as a flight nurse: embedded shrapnel; burns; incipient peritonitis; torn-open chests and abdomens; hemorrhages; shattered jaws and skulls; compound fractures; amputations….
He was not given to outrage. But I would bet that he would be outraged by what we are learning about the neglect and deceit at VA hospitals.
Given the insensitivity, inattention, and disregard that seem to have infected several VA hospitals, the Cherry Ames stories can, in their way, serve as a benchmark for the concern and dedication that was the hallmark of veterans’ care. There was, at least in that Juvenile fiction, a genuine commitment to attend to complacency and despair; to mend, repair, refurbish, and rebuild bodies and spirits.
In Cherry Ames – Veterans’ Nurse, a soldier who had despaired of his loss of capacities, along with the loss of a leg, is revived physiologically – vocationally and psychologically. Though still needing crutches, he explains, that at his VA, “It’s not only good care, but having someone around when we need to talk, or could use a laugh.”
Late this morning, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment, offered by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., to the 2015 agriculture spending bill, to bar U.S. Department of Agriculture funding of horse slaughter plants in the United States, by a bipartisan vote of 28-22. The Senate approved an identical amendment, offered by Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., just last week.
The House and Senate versions of the spending bills will now go to a conference committee, with the anti-horse slaughter provision included in both bills. It is likely to be retained in the final measure sent to President Obama for his signature. The policy of defunding horse slaughter operations is now law, so the recent actions by the House and Senate appropriators are designed to extend the current policy they helped put in place last year. The practical effect of the action is to prevent the opening of horse slaughter plants in Iowa, Missouri and New Mexico, or in any other state that develops such a misguided plan.
Horses helped settle the country, and we owe them more than to turn them into chopped patties. Horses are not raised for food here, and they are typically dosed with a variety of drugs not appropriate for human consumption. And since there’s no market for horse meat in the United States, it’s entirely an export market, to the dwindling number of countries that tolerate horse-eating.
Obviously, we as a nation have many horses without homes. It’s best to get those horses to potential adopters or to rescues or sanctuaries. When that’s not possible, horses can be euthanized, a more humane option than random-source collection, long-distance transport, and inhumane slaughter at plants where they can see or hear other horses being killed right in front of them. When faced with this brutalization of their fellow victims, their eyes open wide like saucers and they experience fear and even terror, based on our undercover investigations of these plants in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
“Horse slaughter has no place in American society and this amendment affirms that Congress does not condone this inhumane practice. These iconic creatures are a proud symbol of the American West that should be treasured for their beauty and treated humanely, not killed for export,” said Rep. Moran. “The American public has made clear they oppose horse slaughter and today’s vote reflects the will of the people.”
Now our job is to get the Safeguard American Food Exports (SAFE) Act passed, which would not only permanently bar horse slaughter in the United States, but also prevent the live export of horses to our North American neighbors for the purpose of slaughter. We call on the House and Senate leaders to bring up those bills for a fair vote before the end of the year.
We don’t set up dog and cat slaughterhouses because we have some homeless companion animals, and then ship the meat to some outlier foreign country. We shouldn’t adopt that practice for horses, either. Our economic decisions must always be guided by our values, including our opposition to cruelty and our recognition of the special place that some animals have in our culture.
Here’s the roll-call vote (Yes is the pro-animal vote, No is the anti-animal vote, Not Voting are the members who did not vote or were not present):
Yes votes: Sanford Bishop (D-GA), Ken Calvert (R-CA), Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Sam Farr (D-CA), Chakah Fattah (D-PA), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Andy Harris (R-MD), Michael Honda (D-CA), David Joyce (R-OH), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Jim Moran (D-VA), Bill Owens (D-NY), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), David Price (D-NC), Mike Quigley (D-IL), Tom Rooney (R-FL), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Tim Ryan (D-OH), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Jose Serrano (D-NY), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Frank Wolf (R-VA)
No votes: Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Mark Amodei (R-NV), John Carter (R-TX), Tom Cole (R-OK), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), John Culberson (R-TX), Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN), Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), Kay Granger (R-TX), Sam Graves (R-MO), Jaime Herrera Buetler (R-WA), Jack Kingston (R-GA), Tom Latham (R-IA), Alan Nunnelee (R-MS), Ed Pastor (D-AZ), Martha Roby (R-AL), Hal Rogers (R-KY), Mike Simpson (R-ID), Chris Stewart (R-UT), David Valadao (R-CA), Steve Womack (R-AR), Kevin Yoder (R-KS)
Not voting: Peter Visclosky (D-IN)
This post originally appeared on Wayne Pacelle’s blog, A Humane Nation.
At the time of its release in 1940, one critic called Fantasia, the animated Disney film, “an ambitious orgy of color, sound, and imagination.” More than just a motion picture masterpiece, it is a groundbreaking cinematic tone poem.
This weekend, the San Francisco Symphony presents a special cinema concert mixing passages from the original Fantasia with the more recent Fantasia 2000, with each featuring live musical accompaniment.
Here’s a little background. In 1936, Walt Disney felt Mickey Mouse needed to try something new. He decided to feature his popular cartoon character in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a deluxe cartoon short set to an orchestral piece by the French composer Paul Dukas. Wishing to go beyond the slapstick of his earlier Silly Symphonies, Disney hoped to produce short films where the action was controlled by a musical pattern, and where “sheer fantasy unfolds.”
It’s something that really hadn’t been tried before, at least not in mainstream Hollywood, and not in the longer form that Fantasia developed into. For added prestige, Disney enlisted a well-known conductor to record the music. That conductor turned out to be Leopold Stokowski, then leading the Philadelphia Orchestra.
When it was first released, Fantasia consisted of eight animated segments set to pieces of well-known classical music, including works by Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, and Ponchielli. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, from a few years earlier, was folded into the longer work.
Disney wanted Fantasia to be an open ended project, with a new edition of the film being released every few years. His plan was to substitute original segments with new ones as they were completed, so viewers would always see a new version of what was essentially a non-narrative film. That vision of Fantasia never came to be.
Skip ahead nearly sixty years and the release of Fantasia 2000. Like its predecessor, its eight musical passages consist of animated segments set to pieces of classical music, with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice being the only segment featured in both films. The soundtrack to Fantasia 2000, which includes work by Beethoven, Respighi, Gershwin, Shostakovich, Saint-Saëns, Elgar, and Stravinsky, was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with conductor James Levine.
On Saturday, May 31 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, June 1 at 4 p.m. Sarah Hicks conducts the San Francisco Symphony in a program mixing elements from the original Fantasia and its contemporary sequel. Excerpts from both films will be shown in restored high definition clips.
The nearly two-and-one-half hour program will feature an excerpt from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 [2000] and Symphony No. 6, Pastorale (movements 3-5) [1940], Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite [1940], Debussy’s Claire de lune [2000], Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite (1919 Version) [2000], Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours [1940], Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice [1940], Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 [2000], and Respighi’s Pines of Rome [2000].
It is an ambitious program which promises to be an orgy of color, sound, and imagination.
Thomas Gladysz is a Bay Area arts journalist, and a film and music enthusiast. In 2002, he launched RadioLulu, a silent film-themed website streaming music of the Teens, Twenties, Thirties and today.
If there is one thing we know about colleges in Illinois, it’s that attending them is quite costly. Perhaps a lesser known figure is which university in the state is the most sought after by prospective undergraduate students?
Using the National Center for Education Statistics database, eCollegeFinder created a map of the “most desirable” college in each state based on the number of undergrad applications received last fall for the 2014-15 academic year.
Since many Illinois high school graduates apply to in-state colleges or to those in our five bordering neighbors — Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky and Iowa — in case you needed quick geography refresher, here is a breakdown of universities that received the most applications.
*The number of applications received presumably does not include ones received earlier this year. Additionally, some university websites include estimated costs for 2014-15, whereas others only had 2013-14 tuition expenses available.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:
Indiana University:
Marquette University:
Washington University in St. Louis:
University of Kentucky:
University of Iowa:
While tuition alone for non-residents is daunting — as is cost of attending the “most desirable” school in Illinois — there are plenty of other higher education options that won’t be as strenuous on your bank account. Either way, applying for college should not be based on a popularity contest, but what institutions can offer prospective students to be successful in the real world.
Shifting to a nationwide overview, here are the top five universities with the most and fewest applications received.
Top 5 Most:
Top 5 Fewest:
Also, eCollegeFinder created this map below that shows each state’s most applied-to college by undergrads.
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