Life Extension Multivitamins & Supplements | Life …

AU$8.34 AU$7.51 (exc. GST)

AU$8.34 AU$7.51 (exc. GST)

AU$40.66 AU$36.59 (exc. GST)

AU$64.64 AU$58.18 (exc. GST)

AU$31.28 AU$28.15 (exc. GST)

AU$33.36 AU$30.02 (exc. GST)

AU$12.51 AU$11.26 (exc. GST)

AU$41.70 AU$37.53 (exc. GST)

AU$33.36 AU$30.02 (exc. GST)

Our new bottles reveal an evolutionary new look for our always innovative products. You will see our bottles and packaging transition into sleek, dark blue bottles and lids.

During this transition period, products may arrive in either branded packaging. We would never distribute outdated products, so youll always get fresh products. Regardless of package design, youll be getting the products you rely on to live your healthiest life.

Popular Product Categories

Our CoQ10 supplements offer potent antioxidative support for heart health and create internal combustion, turning fuel into real energy. The traditional form of CoQ10, ubiquinone, is difficult for your body to absorb, but our ubiquinol form absorbs up to eight times better.

Why Life Extension?

100% Satisfaction Guarantee

3 Months, no-hassle returns, money-back guarantee.

Highly Recommended

98% of our customers recommend us to family and friends. Life Extension is proud to be recognised as the #1 Catalogue/Internet Brand 3 years running.

Complimentary, Personalised Guidance

Medical doctors, nutritionists & other health professionals are passionate about providing personalised solutions to help you achieve optimal health.

Efficacious Formulas

40 years of research dedicated to bringing you premium, scientifically - validated formulations.

Product Transparency

99% of our products are manufactured in the U.S. Our facility is NSF GMP registered, and a Certificate of Analysis is available for every product we produce.

February 2021

Fisetin has demonstrated robust systemic health benefits. Lifespan increases occur even when fisetin is initiated in old age. A novel formulation increases fisetin bioavailability.

Read the rest here:

Life Extension Multivitamins & Supplements | Life ...

Ask a Firefighter: Keep your family warm and safe this winter with these tips – The Westerly Sun

With winters coldest months upon us, we are all looking for ways to beat the frigid temperatures. Local residents want to know how to stay warm and safe this winter. Electrical fires in our homes claim the lives of 280 Americans each year. Your local fire department wants you to know that winter electrical fires can be prevented. By understanding the risks involved with electrical wiring and appliances and recognizing the signs of electrical hazards, you can stay warm and safe with your family this winter season.

According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), there are nearly 47,800 home electrical fires each year, and about half of these involve lighting equipment or home electrical wiring. Sadly, home electrical fire deaths accounted for the highest share of civilian deaths (60%). These fires peak between midnight and 8 a.m., when families are likely unaware of any problems. Nearly 50% of electrical fire deaths in homes occur during the winter season.

The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) reports that heating fires in homes are to blame for nearly 20% of structure fires each year. That percentage jumps to nearly 30% during the coldest months. The USFA points out that many of these fires are caused by incorrectly installed wiring, overloaded circuits, and misused extension cords. The following electrical fire safety tips can help you maintain a fire-safe home this winter season.

Developing an awareness of the electrical hazards in your home can save your life. You may hear, see, or even smell electrical dangers at home. Lights that flicker for no apparent reason are an indication that something is not right. If a light switch does not turn the lights on, or even worse, it does not turn them off, this is not safe. Appliances, outlets, or switches that are warm to the touch, spark, or make sizzling sounds may be an indication of something burning behind the walls.

Be on the lookout for outlets and switches that appear discolored, as well as outlets, extension cords, or surge protectors that are overloaded. These devices are intended for use with a very specific number of appliances. Overloading them is extremely unsafe. Finally, circuit breakers are designed to cut off the electricity in order to prevent electrical fires. This means if a breaker trips, something is wrong. Be especially concerned if a breaker will not reset.

If you think you have an electrical problem, call an electrician, however if there are any signs or indications of a possible fire, call 911 immediately. These indications could include a light smoke condition, the smell of plastic burning, the smell of an acrid odor, or sizzling sounds.

While knowing the signs of a potential electrical hazard can be life-saving, understanding how to prevent electrical fires may provide peace of mind. The NFPA suggests that you plug only one heat-producing appliance directly into a wall outlet at a time. For example, your coffee-maker and your microwave should be plugged into different outlets. Experts suggest that extension cords should never be used with a heat-producing appliance and should never be placed under a rug. If an appliance has a three-prong plug, only use it in a three-slot outlet. Never force it to fit into a two-slot outlet, and never use an adapter that defeats the purpose of a grounded plug. Routinely check your electrical appliances and wiring, and replace the wires and cords if they are frayed, worn, or damaged. Since water and electricity do not mix, you should pay special attention to electrical appliances that are used on the wet kitchen counter and in the bathroom.

Winter storms in New England can cause additional hazards. The use of alternative heating devices, such as space heaters, increase during winter storms. If you need to use a space heater to stay warm, be sure to keep all flammable items at least 3 feet away, and plug the heater directly into an outlet. Adverse weather events can damage utility lines and frozen water pipes can burst and cause additional safety hazards.

An awareness of the electrical hazards that exist in every home, along with the knowledge of how to prevent these hazards, are the best way to keep stay warm and safe this winter. In the event that you do have an electrical issue in your home, working smoke alarms are essential for alerting your family of the danger. Working smoke alarms are particularly important to survival in the overnight hours when electrical fires can go unnoticed. In addition to smoke alarms, have a fire extinguisher readily available to help you contain a fire before it gets too big. If there is a fire in your home, your family should quickly implement your exit plan to get all family members outside to safety. Once safe, call 911 immediately. For more information on home electrical fires, visit http://www.nfpa.org.

This column was written by Jane Perkins, Fire Safety Specialist for the Rhode Island Southern Firefighters League and Captain of the Watch Hill Fire Department. If you would like to see a question answered in this column, please e-mail her at askafirefighter@yahoo.com.

Read the rest here:

Ask a Firefighter: Keep your family warm and safe this winter with these tips - The Westerly Sun

History | discipline | Britannica

History, the discipline that studies the chronological record of events (as affecting a nation or people), based on a critical examination of source materials and usually presenting an explanation of their causes.

Britannica Quiz

41 Questions from Britannicas Most Popular World History Quizzes

This quiz collects 41 of the toughest questions from Britannicas most popular quizzes on world history. If you want to ace it, youll need to know the history of the United States, some of the most famous people in history, what happened during World War II, and much more.

History is treated in a number of articles. For the principal treatment of the subject of historiography and the scholarly research necessary for the discipline, see historiography. Information on any specific historical topic, such as the history of specific peoples, cultures, countries, and regions, will be found under the relevant title. For information on the historical aspects of military affairs, economics, law, literature, sciences, art, philosophy, religion, and other fields of human endeavour, the reader should also first consult the relevant title and review the subtopics in the Table of Contents. The general articles contain many cross-references to specific historical movements and events and to biographies of significant figures.

Go here to see the original:

History | discipline | Britannica

History – Wikipedia

The study of the past as it is described in written documents

History (from Greek , historia, meaning "inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation")[2] is the study of the past.[3][4] Events occurring before the invention of writing systems are considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Historians place the past in context using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, ecological markers, and material objects including art and artifacts.[5]

History also includes the academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze a sequence of past events, and investigate the patterns of cause and effect that are related to them.[6][7] Historians seek to understand and represent the past through narratives. They often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history and its usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present.[6][8][9][10]

Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends.[11][12] History differs from myth in that it is supported by evidence. However, ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. History is often taught as part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in university studies.

Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian is often considered (within the Western tradition) to be the "father of history",[13] or, the "father of lies".[14][15] Along with his contemporary Thucydides, he helped form the foundations for the modern study of human history. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In East Asia, a state chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, was known to be compiled from as early as 722BC although only 2nd-centuryBC texts have survived.

The word history comes from the Ancient Greek [16] (histora), meaning "inquiry", "knowledge from inquiry", or "judge". It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his History of Animals.[17] The ancestor word is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes' oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness", or similar). The Greek word was borrowed into Classical Latin as historia, meaning "investigation, inquiry, research, account, description, written account of past events, writing of history, historical narrative, recorded knowledge of past events, story, narrative". History was borrowed from Latin (possibly via Old Irish or Old Welsh) into Old English as str ("history, narrative, story"), but this word fell out of use in the late Old English period.[18] Meanwhile, as Latin became Old French (and Anglo-Norman), historia developed into forms such as istorie, estoire, and historie, with new developments in the meaning: "account of the events of a person's life (beginning of the 12th century), chronicle, account of events as relevant to a group of people or people in general (1155), dramatic or pictorial representation of historical events (c.1240), body of knowledge relative to human evolution, science (c.1265), narrative of real or imaginary events, story (c.1462)".[18]

It was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time the loan stuck. It appears in the 13th-century Ancrene Wisse, but seems to have become a common word in the late 14th century, with an early attestation appearing in John Gower's Confessio Amantis of the 1390s (VI.1383): "I finde in a bok compiled | To this matiere an old histoire, | The which comth nou to mi memoire". In Middle English, the meaning of history was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning "the branch of knowledge that deals with past events; the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs" arose in the mid-15th century.[18] With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the late 16th century, when he wrote about natural history. For him, historia was "the knowledge of objects determined by space and time", that sort of knowledge provided by memory (while science was provided by reason, and poetry was provided by fantasy).[19]

In an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese ( vs. ) now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are solidly synthetic and highly inflected, the same word is still used to mean both "history" and "story". Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" is attested from 1531. In all European languages, the substantive history is still used to mean both "what happened with men", and "the scholarly study of the happened", the latter sense sometimes distinguished with a capital letter, or the word historiography.[17] The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669.[20]

Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, and sometimes write to provide lessons for their own society. In the words of Benedetto Croce, "All history is contemporary history". History is facilitated by the formation of a "true discourse of past" through the production of narrative and analysis of past events relating to the human race.[21] The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the institutional production of this discourse.

All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record.[22] The task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the historian's archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents (by falsifying their claims to represent the "true past"). Part of the historian's role is to skillfully and objectively utilize the vast amount of sources from the past, most often found in the archives. The process of creating a narrative inevitably generates a silence as historians remember or emphasize different events of the past.[23][clarification needed]

The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of the humanities and at other times as part of the social sciences.[24] It can also be seen as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating methodologies from both. Some individual historians strongly support one or the other classification.[25] In the 20th century, French historian Fernand Braudel revolutionized the study of history, by using such outside disciplines as economics, anthropology, and geography in the study of global history.

Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either in writing or by passing on an oral tradition, and have attempted to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. From the beginning, historians have also used such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures. In general, the sources of historical knowledge can be separated into three categories: what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved, and historians often consult all three.[26] But writing is the marker that separates history from what comes before.

Archaeology is especially helpful in unearthing buried sites and objects, which contribute to the study of history. Archaeological finds rarely stand alone, with narrative sources complementing its discoveries. Archaeology's methodologies and approaches are independent from the field of history. "Historical archaeology" is a specific branch of archaeology which often contrasts its conclusions against those of contemporary textual sources. For example, Mark Leone, the excavator and interpreter of historical Annapolis, Maryland, USA, has sought to understand the contradiction between textual documents idealizing "liberty" and the material record, demonstrating the possession of slaves and the inequalities of wealth made apparent by the study of the total historical environment.

There are varieties of ways in which history can be organized, including chronologically, culturally, territorially, and thematically. These divisions are not mutually exclusive, and significant intersections are often present. It is possible for historians to concern themselves with both the very specific and the very general, although the modern trend has been toward specialization. The area called Big History resists this specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. History has often been studied with some practical or theoretical aim, but also may be studied out of simple intellectual curiosity.[27]

The history of the world is the memory of the past experience of Homo sapiens sapiens around the world, as that experience has been preserved, largely in written records. By "prehistory", historians mean the recovery of knowledge of the past in an area where no written records exist, or where the writing of a culture is not understood. By studying painting, drawings, carvings, and other artifacts, some information can be recovered even in the absence of a written record. Since the 20th century, the study of prehistory is considered essential to avoid history's implicit exclusion of certain civilizations, such as those of Sub-Saharan Africa and pre-Columbian America. Historians in the West have been criticized for focusing disproportionately on the Western world.[28] In 1961, British historian E. H. Carr wrote:

The line of demarcation between prehistoric and historical times is crossed when people cease to live only in the present, and become consciously interested both in their past and in their future. History begins with the handing down of tradition; and tradition means the carrying of the habits and lessons of the past into the future. Records of the past begin to be kept for the benefit of future generations.[29]

This definition includes within the scope of history the strong interests of peoples, such as Indigenous Australians and New Zealand Mori in the past, and the oral records maintained and transmitted to succeeding generations, even before their contact with European civilization.

Historiography has a number of related meanings.[30] Firstly, it can refer to how history has been produced: the story of the development of methodology and practices (for example, the move from short-term biographical narrative towards long-term thematic analysis). Secondly, it can refer to what has been produced: a specific body of historical writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "Works of medieval history written during the 1960s").[31] Thirdly, it may refer to why history is produced: the philosophy of history. As a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past, this third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis usually focuses on the narratives, interpretations, world view, use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians. Professional historians also debate the question of whether history can be taught as a single coherent narrative or a series of competing narratives.[32][33]

Historical method basics

The following questions are used by historians in modern work.

The first four are known as historical criticism; the fifth, textual criticism; and, together, external criticism. The sixth and final inquiry about a source is called internal criticism.

The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 BCc.425 BC)[34] has generally been acclaimed as the "father of history". However, his contemporary Thucydides (c.460 BCc.400 BC) is credited with having first approached history with a well-developed historical method in his work the History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, unlike Herodotus, regarded history as being the product of the choices and actions of human beings, and looked at cause and effect, rather than as the result of divine intervention (though Herodotus was not wholly committed to this idea himself).[34] In his historical method, Thucydides emphasized chronology, a nominally neutral point of view, and that the human world was the result of the actions of human beings. Greek historians also viewed history as cyclical, with events regularly recurring.[35]

There were historical traditions and sophisticated use of historical method in ancient and medieval China. The groundwork for professional historiography in East Asia was established by the Han dynasty court historian known as Sima Qian (14590 BC), author of the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji). For the quality of his written work, Sima Qian is posthumously known as the Father of Chinese historiography. Chinese historians of subsequent dynastic periods in China used his Shiji as the official format for historical texts, as well as for biographical literature.[citation needed]

Saint Augustine was influential in Christian and Western thought at the beginning of the medieval period. Through the Medieval and Renaissance periods, history was often studied through a sacred or religious perspective. Around 1800, German philosopher and historian Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel brought philosophy and a more secular approach in historical study.[27]

In the preface to his book, the Muqaddimah (1377), the Arab historian and early sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, warned of seven mistakes that he thought that historians regularly committed. In this criticism, he approached the past as strange and in need of interpretation. The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural difference of another age must govern the evaluation of relevant historical material, to distinguish the principles according to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly, to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun often criticized "idle superstition and uncritical acceptance of historical data." As a result, he introduced a scientific method to the study of history, and he often referred to it as his "new science".[36] His historical method also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history,[37] and he is thus considered to be the "father of historiography"[38][39] or the "father of the philosophy of history".[40]

In the West, historians developed modern methods of historiography in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and Germany. In 1851, Herbert Spencer summarized these methods:

From the successive strata of our historical deposits, they [Historians] diligently gather all the highly colored fragments, pounce upon everything that is curious and sparkling and chuckle like children over their glittering acquisitions; meanwhile the rich veins of wisdom that ramify amidst this worthless debris, lie utterly neglected. Cumbrous volumes of rubbish are greedily accumulated, while those masses of rich ore, that should have been dug out, and from which golden truths might have been smelted, are left untaught and unsought[41]

By the "rich ore" Spencer meant scientific theory of history. Meanwhile, Henry Thomas Buckle expressed a dream of history becoming one day science:

In regard to nature, events apparently the most irregular and capricious have been explained and have been shown to be in accordance with certain fixed and universal laws. This have been done because men of ability and, above all, men of patient, untiring thought have studied events with the view of discovering their regularity, and if human events were subject to a similar treatment, we have every right to expect similar results[42]

Contrary to Buckle's dream, the 19th-century historian with greatest influence on methods became Leopold von Ranke in Germany. He limited history to what really happened and by this directed the field further away from science. For Ranke, historical data should be collected carefully, examined objectively and put together with critical rigor. But these procedures are merely the prerequisites and preliminaries of science. The heart of science is searching out order and regularity in the data being examined and in formulating generalizations or laws about them.[43]

As Historians like Ranke and many who followed him have pursued it, no, history is not a science. Thus if Historians tell us that, given the manner in which he practices his craft, it cannot be considered a science, we must take him at his word. If he is not doing science, then, whatever else he is doing, he is not doing science. The traditional Historian is thus no scientist and history, as conventionally practiced, is not a science.[44]

In the 20th century, academic historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the nation or great men, to more objective and complex analyses of social and intellectual forces. A major trend of historical methodology in the 20th century was a tendency to treat history more as a social science rather than as an art, which traditionally had been the case. Some of the leading advocates of history as a social science were a diverse collection of scholars which included Fernand Braudel, E. H. Carr, Fritz Fischer, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Bruce Trigger, Marc Bloch, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Peter Gay, Robert Fogel, Lucien Febvre and Lawrence Stone. Many of the advocates of history as a social science were or are noted for their multi-disciplinary approach. Braudel combined history with geography, Bracher history with political science, Fogel history with economics, Gay history with psychology, Trigger history with archaeology while Wehler, Bloch, Fischer, Stone, Febvre and Le Roy Ladurie have in varying and differing ways amalgamated history with sociology, geography, anthropology, and economics. Nevertheless, these multidisciplinary approaches failed to produce a theory of history. So far only one theory of history came from the pen of a professional Historian.[45] Whatever other theories of history we have, they were written by experts from other fields (for example, Marxian theory of history). More recently, the field of digital history has begun to address ways of using computer technology to pose new questions to historical data and generate digital scholarship.

In sincere opposition to the claims of history as a social science, historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, John Lukacs, Donald Creighton, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Gerhard Ritter argued that the key to the historians' work was the power of the imagination, and hence contended that history should be understood as an art. French historians associated with the Annales School introduced quantitative history, using raw data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of cultural history (cf. histoire des mentalits). Intellectual historians such as Herbert Butterfield, Ernst Nolte and George Mosse have argued for the significance of ideas in history. American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups. Another genre of social history to emerge in the post-WWII era was Alltagsgeschichte (History of Everyday Life). Scholars such as Martin Broszat, Ian Kershaw and Detlev Peukert sought to examine what everyday life was like for ordinary people in 20th-century Germany, especially in the Nazi period.

Marxist historians such as Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, Rodney Hilton, Georges Lefebvre, Eugene Genovese, Isaac Deutscher, C. L. R. James, Timothy Mason, Herbert Aptheker, Arno J. Mayer and Christopher Hill have sought to validate Karl Marx's theories by analyzing history from a Marxist perspective. In response to the Marxist interpretation of history, historians such as Franois Furet, Richard Pipes, J. C. D. Clark, Roland Mousnier, Henry Ashby Turner and Robert Conquest have offered anti-Marxist interpretations of history. Feminist historians such as Joan Wallach Scott, Claudia Koonz, Natalie Zemon Davis, Sheila Rowbotham, Gisela Bock, Gerda Lerner, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Lynn Hunt have argued for the importance of studying the experience of women in the past. In recent years, postmodernists have challenged the validity and need for the study of history on the basis that all history is based on the personal interpretation of sources. In his 1997 book In Defence of History, Richard J. Evans defended the worth of history. Another defence of history from post-modernist criticism was the Australian historian Keith Windschuttle's 1994 book, The Killing of History.

Today, most historians begin their research process in the archives, on either a physical or digital platform. They often propose an argument and use their research to support it. John H. Arnold proposed that history is an argument, which creates the possibility of creating change.[5] Digital information companies, such as Google, have sparked controversy over the role of internet censorship in information access.[46]

The Marxist theory of historical materialism theorises that society is fundamentally determined by the material conditions at any given time in other words, the relationships which people have with each other in order to fulfill basic needs such as feeding, clothing and housing themselves and their families.[47] Overall, Marx and Engels claimed to have identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe.[48] Marxist historiography was once orthodoxy in the Soviet Union, but since the collapse of communism there in 1991, Mikhail Krom says it has been reduced to the margins of scholarship.[49]

Many historians believe that theproduction of history is embedded with bias because events and known facts in history can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Constantin Fasolt suggested that history is linked to politics by the practice of silence itself.[50] A second common view of the link between history and politics rests on the elementary observation that historians are often influenced by politics.[50] According to Michel-Rolph Trouillot, the historical process is rooted in the archives, therefore silences, or parts of history that are forgotten, may bean intentional part of a narrative strategy that dictates how areas of history are remembered.[23] Historical omissions can occur in many ways and can have a profound effect on historical records. Information can also purposely be excluded or left out accidentally. Historians have coined multiple terms that describe the act of omitting historical information, including: silencing,[23] selective memory,[51] and erasures.[52]Gerda Lerner, a twentieth century historian who focused much of her work on historical omissions involving women and their accomplishments, explained the negative impact that these omissions had on minority groups.[51]

Environmental historian William Cronon proposed three ways to combat bias and ensure authentic and accurate narratives: narratives must not contradict known fact, they must make ecological sense (specifically for environmental history), and published work must be reviewed by scholarly community and other historians to ensure accountability.[52]

Historical study often focuses on events and developments that occur in particular blocks of time. Historians give these periods of time names in order to allow "organising ideas and classificatory generalisations" to be used by historians.[53] The names given to a period can vary with geographical location, as can the dates of the beginning and end of a particular period. Centuries and decades are commonly used periods and the time they represent depends on the dating system used. Most periods are constructed retrospectively and so reflect value judgments made about the past. The way periods are constructed and the names given to them can affect the way they are viewed and studied.[54]

The field of history generally leaves prehistory to the archaeologists, who have entirely different sets of tools and theories. The usual method for periodisation of the distant prehistoric past, in archaeology is to rely on changes in material culture and technology, such as the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age and their sub-divisions also based on different styles of material remains. Here prehistory is divided into a series of "chapters" so that periods in history could unfold not only in a relative chronology but also narrative chronology.[55] This narrative content could be in the form of functional-economic interpretation. There are periodisation, however, that do not have this narrative aspect, relying largely on relative chronology and, thus, devoid of any specific meaning.

Despite the development over recent decades of the ability through radiocarbon dating and other scientific methods to give actual dates for many sites or artefacts, these long-established schemes seem likely to remain in use. In many cases neighbouring cultures with writing have left some history of cultures without it, which may be used. Periodisation, however, is not viewed as a perfect framework with one account explaining that "cultural changes do not conveniently start and stop (combinedly) at periodisation boundaries" and that different trajectories of change are also needed to be studied in their own right before they get intertwined with cultural phenomena.[56]

Particular geographical locations can form the basis of historical study, for example, continents, countries, and cities. Understanding why historic events took place is important. To do this, historians often turn to geography. According to Jules Michelet in his book Histoire de France (1833), "without geographical basis, the people, the makers of history, seem to be walking on air."[57] Weather patterns, the water supply, and the landscape of a place all affect the lives of the people who live there. For example, to explain why the ancient Egyptians developed a successful civilization, studying the geography of Egypt is essential. Egyptian civilization was built on the banks of the Nile River, which flooded each year, depositing soil on its banks. The rich soil could help farmers grow enough crops to feed the people in the cities. That meant everyone did not have to farm, so some people could perform other jobs that helped develop the civilization. There is also the case of climate, which historians like Ellsworth Huntington and Allen Semple, cited as a crucial influence on the course of history and racial temperament.[58]

Military history concerns warfare, strategies, battles, weapons, and the psychology of combat.[59] The "new military history" since the 1970s has been concerned with soldiers more than generals, with psychology more than tactics, and with the broader impact of warfare on society and culture.[60]

The history of religion has been a main theme for both secular and religious historians for centuries, and continues to be taught in seminaries and academe. Leading journals include Church History, The Catholic Historical Review, and History of Religions. Topics range widely from political and cultural and artistic dimensions, to theology and liturgy.[61] This subject studies religions from all regions and areas of the world where humans have lived.[62]

Social history, sometimes called the new social history, is the field that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies and institutions for coping with life.[63] In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments. In two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in American universities identifying with social history rose from 31% to 41%, while the proportion of political historians fell from 40% to 30%.[64] In the history departments of British universities in 2007, of the 5723 faculty members, 1644 (29%) identified themselves with social history while political history came next with 1425 (25%).[65]The "old" social history before the 1960s was a hodgepodge of topics without a central theme, and it often included political movements, like Populism, that were "social" in the sense of being outside the elite system. Social history was contrasted with political history, intellectual history and the history of great men. English historian G. M. Trevelyan saw it as the bridging point between economic and political history, reflecting that, "Without social history, economic history is barren and political history unintelligible."[66] While the field has often been viewed negatively as history with the politics left out, it has also been defended as "history with the people put back in."[67]

The chief subfields of social history include:

Cultural history replaced social history as the dominant form in the 1980s and 1990s. It typically combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at language, popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past knowledge, customs, and arts of a group of people. How peoples constructed their memory of the past is a major topic.Cultural history includes the study of art in society as well is the study of images and human visual production (iconography).[68]

Diplomatic history focuses on the relationships between nations, primarily regarding diplomacy and the causes of wars.[69] More recently it looks at the causes of peace and human rights. It typically presents the viewpoints of the foreign office, and long-term strategic values, as the driving force of continuity and change in history. This type of political history is the study of the conduct of international relations between states or across state boundaries over time. Historian Muriel Chamberlain notes that after the First World War, "diplomatic history replaced constitutional history as the flagship of historical investigation, at once the most important, most exact and most sophisticated of historical studies."[70] She adds that after 1945, the trend reversed, allowing social history to replace it.

Although economic history has been well established since the late 19th century, in recent years academic studies have shifted more and more toward economics departments and away from traditional history departments.[71] Business history deals with the history of individual business organizations, business methods, government regulation, labour relations, and impact on society. It also includes biographies of individual companies, executives, and entrepreneurs. It is related to economic history; Business history is most often taught in business schools.[72]

Environmental history is a new field that emerged in the 1980s to look at the history of the environment, especially in the long run, and the impact of human activities upon it.[73] It is an offshoot of the environmental movement, which was kickstarted by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in the 1960s.

World history is the study of major civilizations over the last 3000 years or so. World history is primarily a teaching field, rather than a research field. It gained popularity in the United States,[74] Japan[75] and other countries after the 1980s with the realization that students need a broader exposure to the world as globalization proceeds.

It has led to highly controversial interpretations by Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee, among others.

The World History Association publishes the Journal of World History every quarter since 1990.[76] The H-World discussion list[77] serves as a network of communication among practitioners of world history, with discussions among scholars, announcements, syllabi, bibliographies and book reviews.

A people's history is a type of historical work which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people. A people's history is the history of the world that is the story of mass movements and of the outsiders. Individuals or groups not included in the past in other type of writing about history are the primary focus, which includes the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the poor, the nonconformists, and the otherwise forgotten people. The authors are typically on the left and have a socialist model in mind, as in the approach of the History Workshop movement in Britain in the 1960s.[78]

Intellectual history and the history of ideas emerged in the mid-20th century, with the focus on the intellectuals and their books on the one hand, and on the other the study of ideas as disembodied objects with a career of their own.[79][80]

Gender history is a subfield of History and Gender studies, which looks at the past from the perspective of gender. The outgrowth of gender history from women's history stemmed from many non-feminist historians dismissing the importance of women in history. According to Joan W. Scott, Gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relations of power,[81] meaning that gender historians study the social effects of perceived differences between the sexes and how all genders utilize allotted power in societal and political structures. Despite being a relatively new field, gender history has had a significant effect on the general study of history. Gender history traditionally differs from women's history in its inclusion of all aspects of gender such as masculinity and femininity, and today's gender history extends to include people who identify outside of that binary.

Public history describes the broad range of activities undertaken by people with some training in the discipline of history who are generally working outside of specialized academic settings. Public history practice has quite deep roots in the areas of historic preservation, archival science, oral history, museum curatorship, and other related fields. The term itself began to be used in the U.S. and Canada in the late 1970s, and the field has become increasingly professionalized since that time. Some of the most common settings for public history are museums, historic homes and historic sites, parks, battlefields, archives, film and television companies, and all levels of government.[82]

LGBT history deals with the first recorded instances of same-sex love and sexuality of ancient civilizations, involves the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) peoples and cultures around the world.[83] A common feature of LGBTQ+ history is the focus on oral history and individual perspectives, in addition to traditional documents within the archives.

Professional and amateur historians discover, collect, organize, and present information about past events. They discover this information through archaeological evidence, written primary sources, verbal stories or oral histories, and other archival material. In lists of historians, historians can be grouped by order of the historical period in which they were writing, which is not necessarily the same as the period in which they specialized. Chroniclers and annalists, though they are not historians in the true sense, are also frequently included.

Since the 20th century, Western historians have disavowed the aspiration to provide the "judgement of history."[84] The goals of historical judgements or interpretations are separate to those of legal judgements, that need to be formulated quickly after the events and be final.[85] A related issue to that of the judgement of history is that of collective memory.

Pseudohistory is a term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions.It is closely related to deceptive historical revisionism. Works which draw controversial conclusions from new, speculative, or disputed historical evidence, particularly in the fields of national, political, military, and religious affairs, are often rejected as pseudohistory.

A major intellectual battle took place in Britain in the early twentieth century regarding the place of history teaching in the universities. At Oxford and Cambridge, scholarship was downplayed. Professor Charles Harding Firth, Oxford's Regius Professor of history in 1904 ridiculed the system as best suited to produce superficial journalists. The Oxford tutors, who had more votes than the professors, fought back in defence of their system saying that it successfully produced Britain's outstanding statesmen, administrators, prelates, and diplomats, and that mission was as valuable as training scholars. The tutors dominated the debate until after the Second World War. It forced aspiring young scholars to teach at outlying schools, such as Manchester University, where Thomas Frederick Tout was professionalizing the History undergraduate programme by introducing the study of original sources and requiring the writing of a thesis.[86][87]

In the United States, scholarship was concentrated at the major PhD-producing universities, while the large number of other colleges and universities focused on undergraduate teaching. A tendency in the 21st century was for the latter schools to increasingly demand scholarly productivity of their younger tenure-track faculty. Furthermore, universities have increasingly relied on inexpensive part-time adjuncts to do most of the classroom teaching.[88]

From the origins of national school systems in the 19th century, the teaching of history to promote national sentiment has been a high priority. In the United States after World War I, a strong movement emerged at the university level to teach courses in Western Civilization, so as to give students a common heritage with Europe. In the U.S. after 1980, attention increasingly moved toward teaching world history or requiring students to take courses in non-western cultures, to prepare students for life in a globalized economy.[89]

At the university level, historians debate the question of whether history belongs more to social science or to the humanities. Many view the field from both perspectives.

The teaching of history in French schools was influenced by the Nouvelle histoire as disseminated after the 1960s by Cahiers pdagogiques and Enseignement and other journals for teachers. Also influential was the Institut national de recherche et de documentation pdagogique, (INRDP). Joseph Leif, the Inspector-general of teacher training, said pupils children should learn about historians' approaches as well as facts and dates. Louis Franois, Dean of the History/Geography group in the Inspectorate of National Education advised that teachers should provide historic documents and promote "active methods" which would give pupils "the immense happiness of discovery." Proponents said it was a reaction against the memorization of names and dates that characterized teaching and left the students bored. Traditionalists protested loudly it was a postmodern innovation that threatened to leave the youth ignorant of French patriotism and national identity.[90]

In several countries history textbooks are tools to foster nationalism and patriotism, and give students the official narrative about national enemies.[91]

In many countries, history textbooks are sponsored by the national government and are written to put the national heritage in the most favourable light. For example, in Japan, mention of the Nanking Massacre has been removed from textbooks and the entire Second World War is given cursory treatment. Other countries have complained.[92] It was standard policy in communist countries to present only a rigid Marxist historiography.[93][94]

In the United States, textbooks published by the same company often differ in content from state to state.[95] An example of content that is represented different in different regions of the country is the history of the Southern states, where slavery and the American Civil War are treated as controversial topics. McGraw-Hill Education for example, was criticised for describing Africans brought to American plantations as "workers" instead of slaves in a textbook.[96]

Academic historians have often fought against the politicization of the textbooks, sometimes with success.[97][98]

In 21st-century Germany, the history curriculum is controlled by the 16 states, and is characterized not by superpatriotism but rather by an "almost pacifistic and deliberately unpatriotic undertone" and reflects "principles formulated by international organizations such as UNESCO or the Council of Europe, thus oriented towards human rights, democracy and peace." The result is that "German textbooks usually downplay national pride and ambitions and aim to develop an understanding of citizenship centered on democracy, progress, human rights, peace, tolerance and Europeanness."[99]

Go here to read the rest:

History - Wikipedia

What is the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in NFL history? – Sporting News

Human beings like points. It doesn't really matter the sport a game with more scoring can frequently be viewed as more entertaining. Who cares that "defense wins championships," because points attract viewership.

The NFL is likely happy overall, then, with scoring trends in the Super Bowl. Over time, scoring has trended upward in the big game. That hasn't stopped there from being some mightily low-scoring outcomes in the final game of the NFL season.

While most of the lowest-scoring Super Bowls took place in the early days of the event, the lowest-scoring of them all was much more recent. Below, we've got more details about that game and all the combined point totals from the Super Bowl.

MOST SUPER BOWL WINS: By team| By player| MVPs

We're only a couple years removed from the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in NFL history. That would be Super Bowl 53 (LIII), played on Feb. 3, 2019 between the Patriots and Rams. New England won that night, 13-3, a combined total of 16 points easily taking the record for Super Bowl scoring futility.

That night's scoring was made up of three field goals and one Sony Michel rushing touchdown. Tom Brady claimed his sixth ring but didn't do much to earn it, throwing for 262 yards, no touchdowns and one interception. Jared Goff was even worse, throwing for 229 yards with a pick.

Emphasizing just how poor the offense was in Super Bowl 53 are the names below it in the ranking below. The next six lowest-scoring Super Bowls all came within the first nine iterations of the big game, before the NFL had changed many of its rules to benefit offenses. Maybe that means we can call the Patriots' 2019 win over the Rams old-school? It's a more flattering, but maybe less accurate, term than boring.

MORE:Four memories from the Patriots' historically boring win over Rams

These are all 54 Super Bowls prior to the 2021 edition, ranked in reverse order of combined points scored.

Read the rest here:

What is the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in NFL history? - Sporting News

8 ways to get involved during Black History Month and beyond – CNET

Becoming more involved in your local community is one way to show support.

2021'sBlack History Monthmarks seven months sinceprotests againstthe killings ofGeorge Floyd,Breonna Taylor,Ahmaud Arbery,Rayshard Brooksand other victims of police brutality shook the US and the globe.

America's reckoning with systemic racism included local and global pledges to review police funding,ban chokehold maneuvers on civilians and remove Confederate figures and others involved in the enslavement of Black people. Addressing racial inequality in the US, particularly a racialized wealth gap, has been a top priority for President Joe Biden.

Learn smart gadget and internet tips and tricks with CNET's How To newsletter.

If you're looking for ways to support Black social organizations, we've gathered suggestions from the Black Lives Matter movement, NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union, among others, to help get you started.

If you'd like to financially support one or more of the organizations whose message resonates with you, consider a recurring monthly donation to help with ongoing expenses.

Donating money to a charity is an important way to support a movement or group, and your monetary contribution can help fund programs, legal battles and salaries that keep the organization afloat. Many companies agree to match employee donations, which doubles the size of your contribution.

Consider this, too. Programs -- especially nonprofits -- require reliable, year-round income to do their work. Instead of pledging a lump sum, think about giving a monthly donation. Even if it's "small," your donation joined with others can help provide a steady stream of funds that let programs run smoothly.

In addition to your local food bank, literacy groups and youth programs, you can donate to:

Black Lives Matter

NAACP

ACLU

The Bail Project

YMCA

Here's a list of 135 organizations that benefit Black communities, including victim memorial funds, policy change advocates, Black LGBTQIA groups and youth-oriented groups.

Becoming a customer of local and small businesses helps protect the livelihood of individuals within a community. If you aren't sure which businesses in your area are owned and operated by your Black neighbors, there are several resources that can help.

Here's how tofind Black-owned restaurants where you live. Etsy ishighlighting Black-owned vendors on its website for boutique and custom goods. Many of these shop owners are women selling jewelry and unique art pieces.

We Buy Black and Official Black Wall Street are two other platforms that aggregate businesses owned by members of the Black community.

Black Lives Matter sells t-shirts and other apparel to help raise money and promote the organization's message.

What you wear speaks volumes, especially if the message supports racial equality and denounces hate.

For example, the Black Lives Matter organization sells apparel ranging from hats and shirts to stickers and hoodies, and showcases artists. Buying this type of clothing provides another avenue to provide financial support.

Becoming more involved in political action is a step anyone can take, and the options range from a 20-second commitment to click on a prewritten petition to attending local events.

For example, the ACLU website offers a handful of quick, fairly low-key ways to participate on its site as well as some more involved options, like making phone calls or texts on behalf of the organization's causes, and signing up to learn about local events like town hall meetings.

BLM has chapters across the US that you can join -- there's also information about starting a new chapter. Current petitions revolve around the coronavirus' disproportionate impact on the Black community versus other ethnic groups. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also shared supporting data.

National and global organizations have the ability to marshal resources and disseminate information. In addition, many find they can make a difference in their towns, cities and states.

Your local school PTA, religious organization, child's extracurricular social group, your workplace and city hall are excellent places to listen to the challenges facing your broader community and help make changes where you live.

For example, discussions might center around disbanding offensive and racist traditions, requiring sensitivity training, or improving outreach efforts to make a greater cross-section of the community feel welcome and valued.

Voting is among the most fundamental rights in a democracy, and the first step is to register.

Voter education and registration happens year-round, and voting in local elections can have a direct impact on the community where you and others live. Outreach often targets groups that are less likely to vote, like young voters, those who may have more trouble finding the time and resources to vote, and people who live in neighborhoods where they're worried about their physical safety.

Voter suppression is the practice of blocking or discouraging groups of people, usually racialized or ethnic minorities, from exercising their right to vote through a variety of means. Organizations combat the practice by helping register voters, educate them about their legal rights and safely reach a polling location or arrange for a mail-in ballot.

Rock the Vote, which focuses on young voters, seeks volunteers to help with registration and voter turnout.

The YWCA, an organization centered on racial justice, support from violence against women and empowerment, emphasizes practical ways to get involved with voter registration and polling.

Do you know how to identify forms of covert racism? Were you aware of historical housing practices that restricted ethnic and racialized groups from buying property in specific neighborhoods? Pursuing an education about the many forms of systematic oppression in the history of the modern world can help you identify bias and discrimination within yourself and in institutions around you.

You can join or start a book club focused on topics of contemporary and historical racism. If you prefer individual learning, create your own education program or follow one of the many suggested programs, such as this framework from Autumn Gupta, entitled Justice in June.

CNET also collected this list of books, movies and TV shows to educate people of all ages about systematic racism.

Organizations are always seeking new members who are interested in receiving newsletters on events, civil involvement and petitions they can participate in. In addition to becoming active in a local social or religious group, you can join these nationally recognized organizations.

If you plan to protest through these or any other organizations, be sure to know your rights before hitting the streets.

Visit link:

8 ways to get involved during Black History Month and beyond - CNET

Black History and Heritage – The San Diego Union-Tribune

1886

The Colored Voters Political Club is established

The Colored Voters Political Club was the first Black political club in San Diego. Between 1885 and 1990, San Diegos Black population rose dramatically, though it was still less than 1 percent of the population. With this increase in numbers, Black San Diegans came together to form groups in which they could share and express themselves in ways which were not permitted in a predominately White setting.

For more information on Black history in San Diego and to participate in Celebrate San Diego: Black History & Heritage at the San Diego History Center, go to sandiegohistory.org/exhibition/celebratesd_blackhistoryheritage.

In honor of Black History Month, the Union-Tribune has partnered with the San Diego History Center to present items each day in February on local Black history.

1926 - Negro History Week originated by Carter G. Woodson is observed for the first time.

Source: Alice Tyler Milton, Lawson State Comunity College; for more information: blackhistorysalute.com

See more here:

Black History and Heritage - The San Diego Union-Tribune

The Forgotten History of Black Prohibitionism – POLITICO

So F.E.W. Harper was already a well-known temperance/womens rights/Black rights activist in her own right when Frances Willardpresident of the influential Womans Christian Temperance Unionapproached Harper to become national superintendent of the WCTUs division for Work Among the Colored People. Harper enthusiastically agreed. Rooted in the nonviolent picketing of saloons across the upper Midwest in 1873-74, the WCTU introduced an entire generation of American women to political activism, first in the North, but soon spreading nationwide. Temperance organizations of all stripes had a difficult time establishing chapters in the former Confederacy in the generation after the Civil War, so deep were the North/South political wounds, animosity and mutual suspicions. But between Willards annual tours through the Southern states, and Harpers grassroots activism, the WCTU helped begin to heal those wounds.

Harper was hardly alone in joining the WCTU. Black women saw in the WCTU a chance to build a Christian community that could serve as a model of interracial cooperation on other fronts, claims historian Glenda Gilmore in Gender and Jim Crow. With its Do Everything focus, the WCTU advanced interracial cooperation on anti-lynching laws, educational uplift and anti-illiteracy programs that benefited both Black and white communities. The WCTU represented a place where women might see past skin color to recognize each others humanity. It also gave many women, Black and white, their first taste of political activism. In the words of one Mississippi activist, the WCTU was the generous liberator, the joyous iconoclast, the discoverer, the developer of Southern women.

The Reconstruction South was a hotbed of intersectional activism, long before that term was coined.

Still, the battle for racial equality took place even within the organization. When Black women complained of discrimination from the predominantly white Georgia WCTU, they petitioned Harper for their own, separate chapter, where African American women were free to organize themselves. Harper and Willard agreed. Soon, Black WCTU chapters were organized in states across the South.

Despite such organizational tensions, the WCTUand the temperance movement more generallywere engines of progressive reform, reconciliation and civil liberties: demanding liberation from unjust political and economic subordination. In the 1880s, even as violence and lynchings ended Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era began, prohibitionist rallies made the point of announcing that all were welcome to attend, regardless of color. Black and white temperance speakers shared the same stage and applauded each others accomplishments despite organizational segregation, as Black voters were courted by white politicians. Such interracial bridges were reinforced by religious and class sympathies. Those who took all of Christs teachings seriously recognized both the fundamental precepts of human equality, and the need to uplift downtrodden communities. In all these ways, concludes historian Edward L. Ayers in his Promise of the New South (2007), the prohibitionists forged relatively open and democraticif temporaryracial coalitions.

For most of the American South, prohibition did not come with the ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919, nor the enactment of the Volstead Act in 1920. It actually came a decade earlier, as from 1907 to 1910, a dry wave of prohibitionism swept from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi to Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina. Nor was prohibition imposed from abovefrom the federal government or whites in the Jim Crow Southbut rather emerged from genuine biracial grassroots cooperation.

If Black temperance is a largely ignored chapter in American history, explaining Southern prohibitionism presents a double conundrum for historians. After all, shouldnt we expect prohibitions triumph in the North, where every city and town could boast of multiple temperance chapters, rather than the South, where activistsincluding the WCTUadmitted difficulty establishing an organizational foothold?

Historians usual answer is to fall back on the same, discredited colonizers discourse about alcohol: chalking-up Southern prohibition to the Ku Klux Klan and white racists, fearful of Black drunkenness, intent on disciplining African Americans.

The Ku Klux Klan marches down Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington D.C. in 1925. | AP Photo

While it makes sense that the KKK and white supremacists would hold fast to a white-supremacist alcohol discourse, that doesnt mean modern historians should, too; especially since it doesnt hold water. For one, the modern KKK emerged in 1915, making it unlikely to have caused prohibition in 1908. Second, the whole point of prohibitionism was to oppose the predatory liquor traffic, which was overwhelmingly in affluent white hands, while its victims were poor whites and poor Blacks alike. If the goal was really to keep African Americans down and ensure white dominance, no better system couldve been devised than the unregulated saloon business that already existed.

Third, by simply blaming the Klan, historians fall into the same trap of disempowering Black activism: portraying African Americans as passive objects, subject to the whims of white actors, rather than legitimate actors in their own right. From the Reconstruction era in the Southand even generations before that in the antebellum NorthBlack churches and temperance activists had clearly, consistently and loudly articulated that liquor was subjugation, and that the route to freedom and community uplift meant reining in the predatory liquor traffic through prohibition.

A better explanation for the dry wave that swept the South from 1907 to 1910 would be to point out that Southern wet forces were far weaker, more dispersed geographically, and far less organized than the well-entrenched brewing and distilling trusts of the North, and were therefore less able to defend against united community activism. Also, in the Democrats one-party South, liquor interests had less opportunity to flex their political muscle by throwing their financial weight behind rival political parties or candidates more willing to defend their interests. At the very least, incorporating political and economic factors rather than just cultural ones gives us a far better sense of those prohibition dynamics across the South, which were quite obvious to the political players of the day.

After Georgia voted itself dry in 1908, journalist Frank Foxcroft of the Atlantic Monthly explained for his predominantly Northern readership that racial dynamics furnishes only a partial explanation of the prohibition movement of the south. It is a noticeable fact that, during the debate in the Georgia legislature upon the pending prohibitory bill, the negro was not once mentioned as a reason for the enactment of prohibition. Instead, he noted that liquor-traffic predations were suffered both by white communities and Black, and were opposed by white communities and Black, and were being roused by the ablest and most far-sighted leaders of Southern opinion, both white and Black.

Read more:

The Forgotten History of Black Prohibitionism - POLITICO

View and delete browser history in Microsoft Edge

With your permission, the new Microsoft Edgecan remember information for you, making it easier to return to a favorite site or fill in forms. Microsoft Edge stores your browsing data, such as your passwords, info you've entered in forms, sites you've visited, and other information. Other browsing modes such as InPrivate browsing and Guest mode function differently and store less data than normal browsing.

Your browsing data is stored on your device. If you've turned on sync, those data types can also be stored in the Microsoft cloud to be synced across your signed in versions of Microsoft Edge.

You can see and clear your browsing history by selecting Settings and more > History > Manage history. You may choose to clear your browsing history at any time.

To clear browsing data on your computer, make sure sync is turned off. Items that are synced will be cleared across all synced devices.

Here's how to clear your browsing data in Microsoft Edge:

Select Settings and more >Settings> Privacy, search, and services .

Under Clear browsing data, select Choose what to clear.

Choose a time range from the Time range drop-down menu.

Choose the types of data you want to clear (see the table below for descriptions). For example, you may want to remove browsing history and cookies but keep passwords and form fill data.

Select Clear now.

To manage and delete data saved in the Microsoft cloud, see the privacy dashboard. On the privacy dashboard you can view or delete your data. Data that you delete on the privacy dashboard wont be deleted from your device.

To learn more about how to stop sharing your data with Microsoft, see Microsoft Edge browsing data and privacy.

Types of info

What gets deleted

Where it's stored

Browsing history

The URLs of sites you've visited, and the dates and times of each visit.

On your device (or if sync is turned on, across your synced devices)

Download history

The list of files you've downloaded from the web. This only deletes the list, not the actual files that you've downloaded.

On your device

Cookies and other site data

Info that sites store on your device to remember your preferences, such as sign-in info or your location and media licenses.

On your device

Cached images and files

Copies of pages, images, and other media content stored on your device. The browser uses these copies to load content faster the next time you visit those sites.

On your device

Passwords

Site passwords that you've saved.

On your device (or if sync is turned on, across your synced devices)

Autofill form data (includes forms and cards)

Info that you've entered into forms, such as your email, credit card, or a shipping address.

On your device (or if sync is turned on, across your synced devices)

Site permissions

Go to Settings and more> Settings > Site permissions to see a list for each website, including location, cookies, pop-ups, and media autoplay.

On your device

Hosted app data

Info web apps store on your device. This includes data from the Microsoft Store. To see the apps saved to Microsoft Edge, go to Settings and more> Apps > Manage apps.

On your device

Using Microsoft Edge, you can clear all browsing data from Internet Explorer. Clearing Internet Explorer browsing data wont affect your browsing data in another browser.

Note:This is only available if your organization has turned on Internet Explorer mode.

In Microsoft Edge, select Settings and more > Settings > Privacy, search, and services .

Under Clear browsing data for Internet Explorer, select Choose what to clear.

Choose the types of data you want to clear.

Select Delete.

Block pop-ups in Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge, browsing data, and privacy

Recover your Microsoft account

Link:

View and delete browser history in Microsoft Edge

The True History Behind Netflix’s ‘The Dig’ and Sutton Hoo – Smithsonian Magazine

In the summer of 1937, as the specter of World War II loomed over Europe, Edith Pretty, a wealthy widow living near Woodbridge, a small town in Suffolk, England, met with the curator of a local museum to discuss excavating three mounds of land on the far side of her estate, Sutton Hoo. (The name is derived from Old English: Sut combined with tun means settlement, and hoh translates to shaped like a heel spur.) After Pretty hired self-taught amateur archaeologist Basil Brown, the dig began the following spring.

Over the next year or so, Brown, who was later joined by archaeologists from the British Museum, struck gold, unearthing the richest medieval burial ever found in Europe. Dating back to the sixth or seventh century A.D., the 1,400-year-old gravebelieved to belong to an Anglo-Saxon kingcontained fragments of an 88-foot-long ship (the original wood structure had deteriorated) and a burial chamber filled with hundreds of opulent treasures. The British Museum, which houses the trove today, deemed the find a spectacular funerary monument on epic scale.

The importance of the Sutton Hoo burial cannot be understated. Not only did the site shed light on life during the early medieval Anglo-Saxon period (roughly 410 to 1066) but it also prompted historians to revise their thinking about the Dark Ages, the era that followed the Roman Empires departure from the British Isles in the early fifth century. Contrary to long-held beliefs that the period was devoid of the arts or cultural richness, the Sutton Hoo artifacts reflected a vibrant, worldly society.

The discovery in 1939 changed our understanding of some of the first chapters of English history, says Sue Brunning, a curator of early medieval European collections who oversees the British Museums Sutton Hoo artifacts. A time that had been seen as being backward was illuminated as cultured and sophisticated. The quality and quantity of the artifacts found inside the burial chamber were of such technical artistry that it changed our understanding of this period.

Given the inherent drama of the excavations at Sutton Hoo, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood offered its own take on the events. The Dig, the new Netflix film starring Carey Mulligan as Pretty and Ralph Fiennes as Brown, is adapted from a 2016 novel of the same name by John Preston, nephew of Peggy Piggott, a junior archaeologist on the Sutton Hoo team. The film follows the excavation, including the stories of the main characters, tensions between them, and romantic involvements. Pretty, who had a young son, has always been fascinated by archaeology and recruits Brown to begin excavating the mounds which they both believe to be Viking burial grounds. When Brown unearths the first fragments of a ship, the excavation proceeds full steam ahead.

Minus a few plot points inserted for the sake of dramatic storytelling (Browns relationship with British Museum archaeologist Charles Phillips wasnt nearly as contentious as portrayed, for instance), the movie mostly adheres to the real story, according to screenwriter Moira Buffini. But Buffini professes that in the script, she did omit Prettys obsession with spiritualism and penchant for speaking to the dead.

Even with its historical discrepancies, the Netflix film does a public service in that it introduces the extraordinary Sutton Hoo story to a new generation of viewers. At the same time, The Dig illuminates the role archaeology plays in unearthing previously unknown narratives.

Buffini, who adapted Jane Eyre for the screen in 2011, conducted extensive research on Sutton Hoo, poring over Browns notebooks, inquest reports and photos and drawing inspiration from each bit of treasure recorded, measured and drawn for posterity.

One is struck by the tenderness Brown felt for all of the artifacts, Buffini says. He spoke of the respect and almost familial love hidden in the artifacts, and how there was incredible culture and craftsmanship outside and beyond the Roman Empire.

Over the course of several excavations in 1938 and 1939, Brown and the archaeological team found 263 objects buried in the central chamber of the enormous Anglo-Saxon ship. Iron rivets, identified as being part of the seafaring vessel, was the first clue that alerted the archaeologist of the huge ship buried on the site, according to Brunning.

As the archaeologists dug deeper, they found themselves stunned by the scale, quality and sheer diversity of the trove. Among the artifacts unearthed were fine feasting vessels, deluxe hanging bowls, silverware from Byzantium, luxurious textiles and gold dress accessories set with Sri Lankan garnets.

The graves burial chamber was laden with weapons and high-quality military equipment. A shield found inside is believed to have been a diplomatic gift from Scandinavia; shoulder clasps appear to be modeled on those worn by Roman emperors, suggesting the armors owner drew from different cultures and power bases to assert his own authority.

The artifacts also included a belt buckle with a triple-lock mechanism, its surface adorned with semi-abstract imagery featuring snakes slithering beneath each other. Brown found gold coins that had been minted in the Aquitaine region of France with an ornate lid adorned in reddish garnet. The purses cover is now considered one of the finest examples of cloisonn, a style in which stones are held by gold strips.

Though metal items survived in Suffolks acidic soil better than organic objects like fabric and wood, the team did find a number of unexpected artifacts, including a well-preserved yellow ladybug.

Every part of the burial site is an important piece of the puzzle, even something as simple as small wooden cups, says Brunning. Most people (who see the collection) tend to walk past them because theyre not shiny. But when we analyze these objects and look at how they are laid out and the type of labor that went into them, they would have taken time to make. So even the smallest, most shriveled objects are important.

Elaborate ship burials filled with treasures were rare in Anglo-Saxon England, particularly toward the latter end of the early medieval period. The wealth of grave goods found at Sutton Hooas well as the positioning of the ship and its contents, which wouldve required a considerable amount of manpower to transportsuggest its onetime inhabitant was of a very high social status, perhaps even royalty, but the individuals identity remains a mystery. (An oft-cited candidate is King Raedwald of East Anglia, who died around 625.) By 1939, notes the British Museum, all that was left of the deceased was a human-shaped gap among the treasures within.

According to Brunning, Raedwald ruled around that time and may have had power over neighboring kingdoms, which would have earned him a good send-off.

The most iconic item to come out of Sutton Hoo is a helmet decorated with images of fighting and dancing warriors and fierce creatures, including a dragon whose wings form the headgears eyebrows and tail its body and mouth. Garnets line the eyebrows, one of which is backed with gold foil reflectors. Found highly corroded and broken into hundreds of fragments, the armor was painstakingly restored by conservators at the British Museum in the early 1970s.

On July 25, 1939, Pretty hosted a reception at the Sutton Hoo site to celebrate the conclusion of the dig. The land next to the excavation site was fashioned into a viewing platform. The British Museums Phillips delivered a short speech about the ship, but was drowned out by the roar of the engine of a Spitfire flying overhead as England prepared for war. Shortly after that, news of the excavations findings started to appear in the press, in part from information leaked by a member of the excavating team. A few days later, the Sutton Hoo artifacts were transported to the British Museum, and after some legal wrangling, they officially became part of the collection as a gift from Pretty.

The public first got a look at the artifacts in a 1940 exhibit, but that opportunity would be short-lived as they were secreted away in the tunnels of the London Underground for safekeeping during the war. After the Allies victory in 1945, the trove was returned to the British Museum where conservation and reconstruction work began.

But analysis of the artifacts generated more questions, and the Sutton Hoo burial ground was re-excavated using advances in science to improve analysis. In 1983, a third excavation of the site led to the discovery of another mound, which contained a warrior and his horse.

Today, the Sutton Hoo artifacts remain on exhibition at the British Museum, where each year, in non-pandemic times, visitors view the extraordinary treasures of an Anglo-Saxon king buried in grandeur 1,400 years ago. More than 80 years after Brown started sifting through the sandy soil of Sutton Hoo, the treasures he unearthed are undiminished. As he wrote in his diary in 1939, Its the find of a lifetime.

Read more here:

The True History Behind Netflix's 'The Dig' and Sutton Hoo - Smithsonian Magazine

Lift Every Voice and Sing: History of the Hymn – TrentonDaily News

Throughout the month of February, you may hear the tune, Lift Every Voice and Sing more often than not. Known as the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing has been covered my a number of iconic artists such as Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker and The Clark Sisters. The song has become a bit of a staple during Black History Month. How well do you really know this important hymn?

The song Lift Every Voice and Sing originally stems from a poem written by civil rights activist, lawyer and school principal James Weldon Johnson in the 1900s. According to theGrio, the poem was first recited by 500 school children at the all Black Staton School in Jacksonville, Florida as a tribute to President Abraham Lincolns birthday. At the time, Johnson introduced the famed educator Booker T. Washington on his visit to the school with this poem.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, Lift Every Voice and Sing was adapted to a hymn with help of James Weldon Johnsons brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, a classically trained composer. Later, in 1920, Lift Every Voice and Sing was adopted by The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as the Black National Anthem.

Both Johnson brothers then relocated to New York to test their skills as writers for Broadway show-tunes. Among their travels, Washington began endorsing the tune Lift Every Voice and Sing, causing it to rise in popularity.

According to the NAACP, James Weldon Johnson wrote about the rise in popularity of his tune in 1935. Johnson said, The school children of Jacksonville kept singing it, they went off to other schools and sang it, they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years, it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country.

He continued, Today the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used. The lines of this song repay me in elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children.

To this day, the song Lift Every Voice and Sing holds up to its legacy. It continues to be sung across the nation as a celebratory anthem during Black History Month and other cultural celebrations.

Read more from the original source:

Lift Every Voice and Sing: History of the Hymn - TrentonDaily News

New book focus on history of Patos Island… – Journal of the San Juan Islands

Submitted by Arcadia Publishing

Since 1893, a light has been shining from Patos Island, the northernmost island in Puget Sound. Built to guide ships through treacherous waters, the lighthouse was also a happy home for many, including Edward Durgan and his family in the early 1900s.

Boundary waters smugglers and rumrunners once visited the island to stash their contraband, and it was a front-line guard for the nation during World War II. Manned for 81 years by the U.S. government, the light was automated in 1974 and is now maintained by the Coast Guard. Join authors Edrie Vinson and Terri Vinson, members of the Keepers of the Patos Light, as they explore the history of this unique Washington landmark in their new book, Patos Island Lighthouse, available on March 29.

Edrie Lee Vinson holds a Bachelor of Arts in history and English from Carroll College and a Masters in history and archaeology from Montana State University. She has worked in historic preservation and environmental sciences. Since retirement, she has volunteered at the Orcas Island Historical Museum as the first vice-president of the board of directors and museum archivist. Currently, she serves as president of the Keepers of the Patos Light, an all-volunteer organization.

Terri Vinson holds a degree in Asian studies from The Evergreen State College. She attended graduate studies at the University of Hawaii. Her interest in local history was inspired by her grandmother, Edrie Vinson. She began volunteering at the Orcas Island Historical Museum doing archival organization and research, and she eventually became the program director for the oral history program. Terri Vinson now serves as the secretary for the Keepers of the Patos Light.

Read more:

New book focus on history of Patos Island... - Journal of the San Juan Islands

Buffalo River’s 50th anniversary commemorated with oral history project – ktlo.com

Buffalo River's 50th anniversary commemorated with oral history project | KTLO

Rain: 7am to 7am: 0.18 Month: 0.23 Year: 3.72 | Recorded temps: High: 41 Low: 25

Photo: Two environmental history students from the University of Central Arkansas conduct an oral history interview with Brenda Brown and her mother, Wanda. (NPS, Feb. 2020)

To commemorate the Buffalo National Rivers 50th anniversary as a national park, stories and memories are being collected about the area. The information about the Buffalo River and its gateway communities will be archived on a publicity accessible online portal.

If you know someone who loves to share stories about the Buffalo River, you can help preserve those stories for generations to come by participating in the oral history crowdsourcing project through StoryCorps.

Learn how to get started at nps.gov/articles/000/oral-history-at-buffalo-national-river.

Previously recorded interviews in the Buffalo National River StoryCorps Community may be accessed and listened to at archive.storycorps.org/communities/buffalo-national-river-oral-history/.

WebReadyTM Powered by WireReadyNSI

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1

f3cf58f627021ceeeecd8bc5f0e3c2bbc2335867

1

Read the original post:

Buffalo River's 50th anniversary commemorated with oral history project - ktlo.com

Black History Month: Were in a troubling direction, but theres hope for healing – Deseret News

From the filthy, narrow confines of a Birmingham jail in 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

As we celebrate Black History Month, I encourage each of you to read the text of Rev. Kings Letter from the Birmingham Jail. The letter contains as many powerful and relevant messages today as in 1963.

While much progress has been made, the expanse of shocking events witnessed throughout 2020 and January 2021 sends a clear message that much work remains to be done. In fact, I will take it a step further. We are kidding ourselves if we dont come to terms with the fact we are headed in a troubling direction.

By the measure of years, we have moved past the memory of historic and horrific events such as the lynching of more than 3,446 Black and 1,297 white Americans between 1882 and 1968, the 1955 murder of 14-year old Emmett Till and the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that took the lives of four little Black girls and injured more than 20 other people. Current events suggest we should invest resources toward a better understanding of our past to avoid the senseless deaths and acts of brutality that has resulted in lost lives, stolen treasure and the hopeful promise of people like Trayvon Martin, Botham Jean, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

Like many, I watched in shock and disbelief at the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. I cannot pray away my belief that had I been introduced to any number of these people on Jan. 5, I would have thought it impossible for any of them to carry a rage that burns so hot it would lead them to participate in a destructive assault on our nation.

It is shattering to the spirit of America to believe the America that President Reagan once described as The Shining City on a Hill is now Exhibit No. 1 in the arrests and indictments of those who came to destroy the democracy they helped to create. The once peaceful protests led by Rev. King have in a few short years been replaced by the raging fires of anger, distrust and violence, and social media has shown us the most dangerous thing we now do is talk to each other. Still, we have within our reach the power and ability to at least start a healing.

Chief Justice Earl Warren once said he would begin each day by first reading the sports pages. The sports page records mans accomplishments, the front page speaks only of mans failures.

I can speak to the healing power of witnessing the accomplishments of those who served as the inspiration for my own athletic achievements.

To a Black kid born in a poor rural community in Oklahoma, I was able to see inspiration and hope in my own backyard watching the Selmon brothers move with grace and brilliance on both the Eufaula High School football field and the gridiron of the University of Oklahoma. Their undeniable talent gave me hope I might one day be able to forge my own future to play on Saturday for the Oklahoma Sooners.

No one can deny the hope and pride African Americans carry in their soul as they watch one of their own break a color barrier. Althea Gibson, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Hank Aaron, Serena Williams and Tiger Woods are several who have given rise to hope and healing. As barrier after barrier fall, all aspects of American life and liberty seem possible.

The elixir of healing and progress can be witnessed in the heavens when the scientific and mathematical genius of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson shine so brightly that it makes a way for Mae C. Jemison and Jeanette Epps as both rise to the top of NASAs astronaut program.

In spite of 2020 and Jan. 6, America is still a special place. I remain hopeful my grandkids will walk into a future where the road has been widened to accommodate Americans of all creeds and colors to join as one body in the journey of America.

J.C. Watts is a Republican politician from Oklahoma and a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was a University of Oklahoma football star and became Oklahomas first African American to hold statewide office. He currently is the co-founder and chairman of the Black News Channel, the nations only provider of 24/7 cable news programming dedicated to covering the unique perspective of African American communities.

Link:

Black History Month: Were in a troubling direction, but theres hope for healing - Deseret News

The Strange Philly History of the Monopoly Board Game – Philadelphia magazine

What started as a socialist parable turned into a capitalist dream, thanks to a little light theft, repackaging, and some brisk sales at Wanamaker's.

In the wake of the Great GameStop Rebellion, which pitted the proletariat against their hedge-fund oppressors, its worth hitting pause to reflect on the peculiar origins of what may be the worlds favorite board game: Monopoly, brainchild of an unemployed Germantown native, Charles Darrow, who would become the first game inventor ever to become a millionaire. Shades of Rich Uncle Pennybags!

Except oh shucks, not. The history of the ultimate capitalist pastime is a lot more complicated than that rags-to-riches tale. Heres a quick breakdown, in honor of February 7th, the date on which the first game was sold more than 85 years ago.

1. Darrows game is generally considered a successor to one invented by Elizabeth Magie, a typist at the Dead Letter Office in Washington, D.C., and patented in 1903 when less than one percent of all patent applicants were female. Hers, known as The Landlord Game, came with two sets of rules, intended to instruct players in the theories of anti-monopolist Henry George, who advocated for the wealthy to pay more taxes (sound familiar?). Played by one rule set, the game rewarded all the players when wealth was created; played by the other, one winner crushed all other comers. Naturally, the second set proved more fun.

2. The Landlord Game became popular among certain progressive groups, including college students (at the Wharton School, professor Scott Nearing used it to indoctrinate his students into socialism) and a group of Quakers living in Atlantic City. Players would create homemade versions based on their own surroundings; the Jersey Quaker board featured Atlantic City sights like the Boardwalk and Park Place. And Atlantic City was where Charles Darrow first played The Landlord Game, at the home of friends. The unemployed engineer asked for a copy of the rules, took them home, and set about tinkering with the layout of the board, though he did retain the A.C. street names including a misspelling of Marven Gardens.

3. With the help of a son and his wife, Darrow hand-drew and hand-painted the oilcloth boards and drawing cards for his game, then hired a graphic artist to design some of the famous elements, like the Go arrow and the Water Works faucet. He packaged these games in flat white boxes and offered them for sale at John Wanamakers department store, where they did well enough that other emporia took notice.

4. Darrow dangled the game in front of Parker Brothers in 1933, but the company famously rejected it, declaring that it was too complicated, too technical and took too long to play, which you know, whos gonna argue with that? Armed with bang-up Christmas-season sales, though, he offered it again in 1935, and this time, the game maker bit. Darrows capitalist version of The Landlord Game sold 278,000 copies in its first year and almost two million the next. (Increased leisure time and newfangled electric lighting had spurred the popularity of board games nationwide.) Parker Brothers bought out the rights to several similar games, including that of Elizabeth Magie, who was paid $500, with no royalties. She hoped the new game would disseminate Georges theories more widely. Oops.

5. Marvin Gardens and all, the game has become a worldwide best-seller, with versions marketed in Russian, Cantonese, Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish and many more languages, with boards tailored to foreign locales. (Parker Brothers was bought in 1991 by Hasbro.) Neiman Marcus sold a chocolate version of the game for $600 in 1978; an iPhone version debuted in 2008. Interesting note: During World War II, the British intelligence service secreted money, maps, and metal escape instruments inside Monopoly games sent to prisoners of war.

6. In the 1990s, Jerome P. Jacobson, chief security officer for the company that made game pieces for McDonalds promotions, engineered a scam in which he sneaked into airport mens rooms to avoid a woman auditor assigned to guard him, switched out winning pieces for regular ones, passed the winners on to friends and acquaintances (and, in one case, Judes Childrens Research Hospital), and netted a cool $24 million before the FBI finally caught up with him. His story was made into the HBO documentary McMillion$, which premiered last year. Karmas a bitch.

See the article here:

The Strange Philly History of the Monopoly Board Game - Philadelphia magazine

A look at the top rotations in Dodgers history – Los Angeles Times

With the signing of Trevor Bauer on Friday, plus the expected return of David Price, the 2021 Dodgers rotation that includes Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler will, on paper, be one of the franchises best ever. How will it compare with great Dodgers rotations of the past?

A good way to compare rotations from different periods in baseball history is to use the ERA+ stat. What that does is compare an ERA to the league average ERA that season and convert it into a number. If a pitcher or team has an ERA+ of 100, then they are exactly the league average. If it is 110, then they are 10% better than average, 90 is 10% worse, and so on.

If you added Trevor Bauer to last seasons Dodgers rotation, their top four starters of Bauer (276), Kershaw (196), Buehler (124) and Dustin May (165) would have an approximate ERA+ of 180. Last season was only 60 games, so that number is more than likely deceptively high. Heres a look at some other top Dodgers rotations, using the ERA+ for the top four starters:

1916 Brooklyn Robins: Jeff Pfeffer (141), Larry Cheney (140), Sherry Smith (115), Rube Marquard (171). The first Dodgers team to advance to the World Series, where they lost to the Boston Red Sox and their star pitcher, Babe Ruth.

1930 Brooklyn Robins: Dazzy Vance (189), Watty Clark (118), Jumbo Elliott (125), Ray Phelps (120). Vance is the most overlooked great pitcher in team history. This team led the National League until August, when it faded to a fourth-place finish.

1955 Brooklyn Dodgers: Don Newcombe (128), Billy Loes (114), Carl Erskine (108), Johnny Podres (103). Won the first World Series title in team history.

1965: Sandy Koufax (160), Don Drysdale (118), Claude Osteen (117), Johnny Podres (95). The last World Series title for the Koufax-Drysdale duo.

1977: Burt Hooton (147), Tommy John (138), Don Sutton (121), Doug Rau (112). You could also go with the 1976 team, which had the same four. The 1977 team advanced to the World Series, where they lost to the New York Yankees.

1985: Orel Hershiser (171), Fernando Valenzuela (141), Bob Welch (150), Jerry Reuss (119). Valenzuela was near the end of his prime, and Hershiser was at the start of his. It resulted in a loss in the NLCS to Jack Clark and the St. Louis Cardinals.

1996: Hideo Nomo (122), Ismael Valdez (117), Ramon Martinez (114), Pedro Astacio (113). Wild-card team lost to Atlanta in the NLDS.

2015: Zack Greinke (222), Clayton Kershaw (173), Mike Bolsinger (102), Brett Anderson (100). Granted, Bolsinger and Anderson arent standouts, but its hard to leave out a rotation featuring two Cy Young candidates.

2019: Hyun-Jin Ryu (179), Rich Hill (169), Clayton Kershaw (137), Walker Buehler (127). Just two seasons ago, and this team lost to Washington in the NLDS.

Read more:

A look at the top rotations in Dodgers history - Los Angeles Times

History and Hope: A conversation with Seaside’s John Nash – KSBW Monterey

History and Hope: A conversation with Seaside's John Nash

Nash grew up in the segregated south and has lived in Seaside for 66 years

Updated: 4:52 PM PST Feb 5, 2021

John Nash grew up in the segregated south before he moved to Seaside, California, where he's lived for more than six decades. KSBW 8's Alani Letang sat down with Nash to talk about his history and his hope for Black equality in the future. In addition, Nash talked about finding hope in the new Biden-Harris administration, while also putting importance on Black History education and Black equality for the future. The conversation also touched on points of strong Black leadership, Nash specifically highlighting Stacey Abrams in the work she's done with elections in Georgia.John Nash is an 88-year-old man who has lived in Seaside for 66 years."So, Mr. Nash, you are from North Carolina," asked KSBW's Alani Letang. "It's Pelham, North Carolina, it's a farm town. And what we did back there, my parents was a sharecropper, you know what a sharecropper is?" asked Nash. "We raised tobacco. What happened, we didn't own the land, somebody else on the land. And we supplied labor to, you know, to do the tobacco farming. So most of us, all of us really, when we got old enough, we moved away and I went to go into the army. They drafted me. I was drafted in 1952, November the fifth. I'll never forget it. 1952." "It really wasn't that bad because it was a lot of soldiers here and the school wasn't segregated here," Nash said. Letang said, "You look back into history, you've grown up in the 30s, 40s and 50s up until you moved here. And you take a look at segregation, you take a look at the racism that I feel still like this here. I know the history back then, but you lived it. And to me, it doesn't seem that things are very far off from what they are. I still feel that the systemic racism is deeply rooted in that. As a black man, as black people. What do you think we stand now?""Well, we just had a vice president elected for the highest office in the country," Nash started off saying. "We can't sit back and wait. Somebody do it for us. We've got to do it like Abrams did that in Georgia. We got to get out and push. And I think we wouldn't be pushing hard enough because we get little. We got too comfortable. We get a little ways and we get comfortable. OK," Nash said. "And I see that a lot, too, when I see all the protests across the country. I see them right here in our Seaside backyard," Letang added. "And just knowing that we haven't arrived yet. Right. I mean, I don't think we've arrived yet to the point where we can say we are the majority and we're listened to or even the minority and we listen."Nash said, "You just don't suppose to just let it happen, you supposed to fight about it. You got to fight for it. It shouldn't have to, you know, it's America. You supposed everybody's supposed to be, you know, the creed that everybody should be treated alike. But it's not happening. Martin Luther King did a wonderful job. You know, that was in the 60s. For it to come, fifty years later, come back like that, it's awful." "You're taking a step back, not a step forward," Letang noted. Speaking from experience, "There's not a week, or even a month, can pass when I'm not getting an email about my hair, about something else that's discriminating against me," Letang said. "And so I think that when you know, when I still look at from the past and look at now again, I just don't feel that way or that far off. And I always question myself, where do we get to the point where we can scrub that prejudice thought and get to the point where we can understand people, we can love people.""I think we've got to be educated," Nash answered. "It's really going to take time. And just like I said, we need to be educated. And, you know, I was in the army. I retired from the Army. And I learned stuff that I didn't know was happening. They had black soldiers training the people at West Point, how to ride and shoot. I didn't know that until, I don't know when," Nash said. The veteran added, "That wasn't in the history book that I read. That's another thing. A lot of stuff was left out when I was going to school too. It was left out the history books." "It's still left out," Letang responded. Nash said, "Well, yeah, I think I'll think about Biden and Kamala are going to do a lot, a good job." "We need hope and hope in this country," Letang said. "Well, they need help, too, you know, they can't do it alone," Nash said.Alani profiled Mr. Nash's Seaside community back in September, click here.And you can read more about it here: blackpast.org/african-american-history/race-and-color-california-coastal-community-seaside-story/

John Nash grew up in the segregated south before he moved to Seaside, California, where he's lived for more than six decades.

KSBW 8's Alani Letang sat down with Nash to talk about his history and his hope for Black equality in the future. In addition, Nash talked about finding hope in the new Biden-Harris administration, while also putting importance on Black History education and Black equality for the future. The conversation also touched on points of strong Black leadership, Nash specifically highlighting Stacey Abrams in the work she's done with elections in Georgia.

John Nash is an 88-year-old man who has lived in Seaside for 66 years.

"So, Mr. Nash, you are from North Carolina," asked KSBW's Alani Letang.

"It's Pelham, North Carolina, it's a farm town. And what we did back there, my parents was a sharecropper, you know what a sharecropper is?" asked Nash. "We raised tobacco. What happened, we didn't own the land, somebody else on the land. And we supplied labor to, you know, to do the tobacco farming. So most of us, all of us really, when we got old enough, we moved away and I went to go into the army. They drafted me. I was drafted in 1952, November the fifth. I'll never forget it. 1952."

"It really wasn't that bad [in Seaside] because it was a lot of soldiers here and the school wasn't segregated here," Nash said.

Letang said, "You look back into history, you've grown up in the 30s, 40s and 50s up until you moved here. And you take a look at segregation, you take a look at the racism that I feel still like this here. I know the history back then, but you lived it. And to me, it doesn't seem that things are very far off from what they are. I still feel that the systemic racism is deeply rooted in that. As a black man, as black people. What do you think we stand now?"

"Well, we just had a vice president elected for the highest office in the country," Nash started off saying. "We can't sit back and wait. Somebody do it for us. We've got to do it like Abrams did that in Georgia. We got to get out and push. And I think we wouldn't be pushing hard enough because we get little. We got too comfortable. We get a little ways and we get comfortable. OK," Nash said.

"And I see that a lot, too, when I see all the protests across the country. I see them right here in our Seaside backyard," Letang added. "And just knowing that we haven't arrived yet. Right. I mean, I don't think we've arrived yet to the point where we can say we are the majority and we're listened to or even the minority and we listen."

Nash said, "You just don't suppose to just let it happen, you supposed to fight about it. You got to fight for it. It shouldn't have to, you know, it's America. You supposed everybody's supposed to be, you know, the creed that everybody should be treated alike. But it's not happening. Martin Luther King did a wonderful job. You know, that was in the 60s. For it to come, fifty years later, come back like that, it's awful."

"You're taking a step back, not a step forward," Letang noted. Speaking from experience, "There's not a week, or even a month, can pass when I'm not getting an email about my hair, about something else that's discriminating against me," Letang said. "And so I think that when you know, when I still look at from the past and look at now again, I just don't feel that way or that far off. And I always question myself, where do we get to the point where we can scrub that prejudice thought and get to the point where we can understand people, we can love people."

"I think we've got to be educated," Nash answered. "It's really going to take time. And just like I said, we need to be educated. And, you know, I was in the army. I retired from the Army. And I learned stuff that I didn't know was happening. They had black soldiers training the people at West Point, how to ride and shoot. I didn't know that until, I don't know when," Nash said.

The veteran added, "That wasn't in the history book that I read. That's another thing. A lot of stuff was left out when I was going to school too. It was left out the history books."

"It's still left out," Letang responded.

Nash said, "Well, yeah, I think I'll think about Biden and Kamala are going to do a lot, a good job."

"We need hope and hope in this country," Letang said.

"Well, they need help, too, you know, they can't do it alone," Nash said.

Alani profiled Mr. Nash's Seaside community back in September, click here.

And you can read more about it here: blackpast.org/african-american-history/race-and-color-california-coastal-community-seaside-story/

See the rest here:

History and Hope: A conversation with Seaside's John Nash - KSBW Monterey

This Week in History: Famous explorer of Africa visits Utica – Utica Observer Dispatch

By Frank Tomaino| Special to the Observer-Dispatch

1891, 130 years ago

Popular lecture

Henry Morton Stanleys lecture in Jacobs Opera House in Utica attracts more than a thousand people from Utica and vicinity. Stanley, a journalist and explorer of Central Africa, is best known for supposedly uttering the words, Doctor Livingstone, I presume.

Utica Mayor Alexander T. Goodwin introduces Stanley to the crowd in the opera house, on the northeast corner of Lafayette and Washington streets. Stanleys long-awaited lecture details his thrilling adventures in Africa, including the discovery of the course of the Congo River in interior Africa. He is liberally applauded throughout his talk.

David Livingston (1813-1873) was a Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa. In the early 1870s, many thought he was dead, but James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, was convinced that Livingstone was alive. He commissioned Stanley to go in search of him. He found him in the town of Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika and when he did, supposedly said his now famous words.

1916, 105 years ago

Valley View

Maria and Thomas Proctor once again give tangible evidence of their great love for Utica. They give seven acres in the heart of Roscoe Conkling Park to the city to be used as a public golf course. They had planned to build a summer home on the land the highest point in the park at about 800 feet above sea level but after meeting with Mayor James D. Smith decided to make it possible for all Uticans to enjoy playing golf, a game fast growing in popularity. (In August 1916, a nine-hole course was laid out by well-known golfer Walter Travis and became known as Valley View. Years later, Robert Trent Jones, famous golf course architect, improved the course, now an 18-hole course.)

1946, 75 years ago

Police, fire bureaus

Three World War II veterans are appointed to Uticas police and fire bureaus Patrolman Joseph A. Cittadino, to succeed Henry Looft who has retired; Firefighter Hugh W. Evans, to succeed William Spatuzzi who has been promoted to lieutenant, and Firefighter Raymond J. Curley, to succeed Howard E. Rice who has resigned.

1971, 50 years ago

Winter festival

Uticapades begins its three-day winter festival with fireworks and torchlight skiing at the Val Bialas Ski Center on the Parkway and by selecting a prince and a princess -- six-year-old Frank Broccoli and five-year-old Lucinda Baldof. There also is ice skating at the Parkways outdoor McBride Rink.

In area bowling, Roy Marley fires a 686 series on games of 206, 233 and 247 in the Suburban League on the Riverside lanes. Peg McMahan has a 612 series on games of 241, 167 and 204 in the Rainbow Girls League at the Aurora Bowlaway.

The Mohawk Valley Electrical League begins to plan its annual dinner-dance, Raymond Kulow is entertainment chairman and Leo Rahn is ticket chairman. Richard Dunn is league president and John Hennessey is secretary-treasurer.

1996, 25 years ago

Appointments, promotions

Utica and Rome fill positions and promote others in their police and fire departments. Uticas new police officers are: David L. Kuhn, George V. De Angelo, Jeffrey A. Foley, Laurie Garner and Camlee M. Gianotti. New Utica firefighters are: Francis P. Giglio, Jeffrey R. DeSarro, Philip DeSimone and John Nole. Promotions in Rome Fire Department: Joseph Gualtieri to deputy chief; captains Glenn Hand, Paul C. Matwijec and James Zielinski; lieutenants Patsy DiNardo, Allen J. Johnson, Gary W. Millington, Mark Kohlbrenner and Brad Warren. New Rome firefighters are: Mathew J. Reilly and David P. Zakala.

In high school basketball, West Canada Valley defeats Dolgeville, 71 to 48. The winners are led by Will Davidsons 22 points and 13 each by Dan Petkovsek and Jay Colburn. Chris Swartz has 20 points for Dolgeville. Meanwhile, Clinton defeats Vernon-Verona-Sherrill, 81 to 69, and is led by Colin Hubbells 27 points, Edwin Irizarrys 18, Steve Crawfords 14 and Ryan Finns 10. VVS is led by Scott Knapps 30 points.

The Holland Patent Teachers Association presents The Sunshine Boys in the high school auditorium. The cast includes Brian Ure, Doug Churcher and Lisa Mlynarski.

2011, 10 years ago

Hospital officers

The medical staff at the St. Elizabeth Medical Center has new officers, including President Timothy E. Page, medical director of the Emergency Department; Vice President Dr. Fred L. Talarico, a cardiologist, and Secretary-Treasurer Dr. Sudershan Dang, an internist.

The New Hartford Volunteer Fire Department elects its 110thslate of officers. They include: Thomas A. Bolanowski, chief; Scott L. Nicotera Jr., first assistant chief; David P. Mazzetti, second assistant chief, and James H. Monahan, third assistant chief.

Trivia quiz

This is a tough one. Who was the first U.S. president whose parents were both alive when he was sworn in on Inauguration Day? (a) Franklin Pierce, (b) Ulysses S. Grant, (c) Theodore Roosevelt or (d) John F. Kennedy. (Answer will appear here next week.)

Answer to last weeks question: Four retiring presidents did not attend the swearing-in ceremonies of the new president. John Adams did not attend Thomas Jeffersons inauguration on March 4, 1801. John Quincy Adams was not at Andrew Jacksons inauguration on March 4, 1829. Andrew Johnson was not at Ulysses S. Grants ceremonies on March 4, 1869. Richard Nixon, who had resigned, was not there when Gerald Ford was sworn in on August 9, 1974.

This Week in History is researched and written by Frank Tomaino. E-mail him atftomaino221@gmail.com.

Read the original:

This Week in History: Famous explorer of Africa visits Utica - Utica Observer Dispatch

The long history of Larry King’s women and the money he left them – New York Post

Shawn Southwick, Larry Kings widow and the only one of his seven wives to stay married to him, isnt bitter but could have been.

Southwick married the legendary broadcaster in 1997, 43 years after Kings first marriage, at age 20, to Frada Miller, a girlfriend from his native Brooklyn when he was still Larry Zeiger. Miller and King lasted less than a year; their marriage was annulled and King once said he wouldnt know Miller if he ran into her on the street.

Southwick, in contrast, had staying power, and, her friends say, the steeliness needed when going up against the iconic interviewer whose genial on-air persona belied an often difficult, verbally abusive and unfaithful side.

Throughout their 23-year marriage, the 61-year-old former singer and actress who was 26 years Kings junior was often painted as a trophy wife who cheated on King, Southwick told The Post.

My son went to school once and one of his classmates said his mother was a gold digger, Southwick told The Post. If only. Ive spent 23 years looking for those nuggets.

Instead, say friends of Southwick, it was King who cheated on her, uncontrollably and for years. One of those other women was reportedly Southwicks own younger sister, Shannon. Rumors of the affair were published by TMZ and Huffington Post in 2010. (Shannon denied that she was ever more than friends with King, who she called a father figure.)

In the latter years of their marriage they filed for divorce twice in 2010 and 2019 but neither was ever finalized Southwick had to contend with smear campaigns.

His people tried to polish Larry up and dirty me down, Southwick said. There were so many lies about me. I do admit to one affair and Im ashamed of it, but there was only one and it was after many years.

That Larry King was unfaithful and ethically challenged is not a revelation. A devastating 1997 Vanity Fair profile detailed Kings compulsive womanizing, as well as his bankruptcies, larceny arrest, and how he scammed loans from banks.

Shawn was a saint, Southwicks longtime friend told The Post. Shawn just wanted to keep the family together but shes been dragged through the mud. And deep down I know Larry loved Shawn.

The feeling was mutual, at least some of the time.

We had some spectacular, otherworldly experiences but they were juxtaposed with very painful moments, Southwick told The Post. Even so, I still loved him. I could have left him but I felt like a woman warrior battling for my family, for my boys. Larry was a good father and my boys loved him. But I knew if I left Larry, hed probably marry again right away and have more babies. And my sons would be pushed to the back of the line.

Unlike Frada Miller, who probably got nothing when her marriage to King ended, Southwick is the executrix of Kings estate. Though its been reported he had a $150 million fortune, insiders say King was notoriously bad with money and left well under $50 million. Southwick will probably walk away with about $10 million. Her two sons with King, Chance, 21, and Cannon, 20, as well as Kings son Larry Jr., 59, by his third wife Alene Akins, are well provided for according to the trust, sources told The Post.

Southwick, a longtime TV entertainer and the daughter of a record executive, met King when they bumped into each other at Tiffanys in LA. He asked her out after a few minutes of conversation. Southwick said yes, but added she was not looking for a relationship.

That was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, she recalled.

From that point on, Larry was relentless. He would not stop calling. He had Colin Powell call me when he was interviewing him. During our first date he arranged to have his friend Al Pacino stop by our table. When Larry wanted you, he brought out the big guns.

Longtime Washington reporter Sandra McElwaine gave an idea of some of Kings moves when she told Vanity Fair about visiting his apartment to interview him.

And hes sitting at one end of this big glass coffee table, and Im sitting at the other end, and were doing this interview, she recounted. At the end, I said, Is there something you want to do with your life that you havent done? At which point, he says Yes! and the next thing I know this creature in a jumpsuit has flung himself across a glass coffee table filled with sort of spiky objects. And I hear in my ear, I want to kiss you.'

I have dined out on it for years, she said. But it wasnt funny when it was happening.

Kings antics with women were watercooler fodder in Washington DC during the heyday of his CNN show in the 1990s.

There are women in Washington who can bring each other to weeping laughter by reciting their favorite Larry King pickup lines, Vanity Fair reported. I think theres real chemistry here,' he is apt to say on a first date. Do you feel the chemistry? Or Do you believe in love at first sight?'

But once he had you, said Southwick and others, he was less attentive.

We had such amazing times in the beginning, Southwick said. I remember standing in his apartment in Arlington, Virginia, with its view of the Capitol and feeling like the luckiest woman in the world. But that feeling didnt last. It was hard to be Larrys priority.

His many wives and friends said work always came first. King himself liked to say that if he got an urgent call from his wife and CNN at the same time, hed take the CNN call.

Work truly is his only life, the only thing that matters to him, Chuck Conconi, a Washington journalist who was once a close friend of King, told Vanity Fair. Once, I said to [fourth wife] Sharon Lepore that I didnt know what to get Larry for his birthday. And Sharon said, Get him an ON THE AIR sign for his bedroom.'

Herb Cohen, the author and famed professional negotiator who called King his best friend, first met Larry when they were 10-year-olds at elementary school in Bensonhurst. He said he talked to him every day almost up to the moment he died.

In spite of the fact that he got married so much, Larry had a lot of respect for women, Cohen told The Post. Back in those days, if you wanted to sleep with a woman, you married her. It was way before the pill and also people were very worried about getting a venereal disease. You didnt just shack up with people.

Cohen is one of the few people alive who can say they knew Kings first wife. King wrote in his 2009 book, My Remarkable Journey, that he and Frada got an apartment in Queens with a white couch. But it never amounted to anything. We were together for maybe six months.

Frada was a nice person but Larry was adventurous, lets just say, so it didnt work out, Cohen said. She was not his high school sweetheart. He married her when I was in the Army. She was conservative and stable. The last I knew of her she was working in a Brooklyn bakery.

King married Annette Kaye in 1961, but divorced her after just one year. He did not meet their son, Larry Jr., now 59, until he was in his 30s.

Next came former Playboy Bunny Alene Akins, who King married in 1961, divorced in 1963, remarried in 1967, and divorced again in 1972. They had a daughter, Chaia, and King adopted her son, Andy.

Cohen said never met Mickey Sutphin, an environmental biologist who was married to King briefly in the narrow gap between his marriages to Akins. They met when King and Sutphin worked together at a Miami radio station.

Larry started getting into a lot of difficulty during that time with these wives, Cohen recalled.

Sutphin, who married King in April 1963 and divorced him in December 1966, does not remember King fondly. The couple had a daughter, Elyssa Kelly, who was born in 1964.

I was not pregnant when we married despite what has been reported, Sutphin, 82, told The Post. At divorce, Larry was supposed to provide child support and health insurance. He did not. [Our daughter] needed two operations. When she was 9, she was adopted by my husband. Larry didnt deserve her.He sent lots of dolls and giant pandas. After filing for adoption, investigations showed he was living the high life in Miami.

Next up was Lepore, a math teacher and former TV production assistant, who married King in 1976.

Larry had two loves, Cohen told the Post. One was Sharon Lepore and one was Shawn Southwick. Sharon was very intelligent, attractive and ambitious and Larry was very much in love with her. And he really loved Shawn. Shawn is not only nice, she is exceptionally stunning. She and Larry had a very close relationship and they really loved their boys.

Great love or not, Lepore only got $160,000 in alimony when their divorce finalized in 1984, court papers obtained by The Post show.

Her successor was Julie Alexander, a businesswoman King met at a charity event and married in 1989. They separated just a year later and divorced in 1992. Alexander told Inside Edition in 2010 that she suspected King cheated on her.

Its just been a story with Larry that the hardest thing for him to do was remain constant in a relationship, Rama Fox, who was briefly engaged to King, told The Post. He always had that need to prove that he was wanted.

Fox, now 80 and living in Santa Barbara, Calif., met Larry in 1968 and they stayed friends for decades. They were romantically linked in the 1990s. She also became close to Julie Alexander.

Fox said King and Alexander never really moved in together, and that King would often seek out flings with a former wife. At one point both Fox and King were involved in bitter litigation and King showed his angry side in the deposition when he described Fox as a greedy, money-grabbing hooker.

Shes bullst, King said during the deposition in reference to Fox. Shes bullst when she smiles to you.

The marriage to Alexander, 73, ended bitterly. After Kings death on Jan. 23, Alexander told The Post that King gave her a sexually transmitted disease.

I then couldnt have children, she said by phone from Florida. That led to our separation.

Southwick said Alexander is lying about the STD. She said she made King get tests prior to their 1997 wedding and he was clean as a whistle.

Details of the allegations remain sealed at the Arlington, Va., Circuit Court where the divorce was finalized, but the STD story leaked out at the time in a 1994 Washingtonian Magazine story. Kings lawyer at the time called the claim outrageous, false.

Alexander came out better in the financial settlement than Lepore. Reports at the time suggest she took home at least $1.1 million in alimony.

King stayed close to many of his exes. Both Alexander and Fox claimed they spoke with him in the weeks before his death.

King filed to divorce Southwick in 2019, three months after having a stroke, and it was apparently pending at the time of his death. King was vague as to why he decided to divorce her, citing only their age difference and how they had eventually become ships passing in the night. The move totally blindsided Southwick, she said.

Even so, the pair remained close up until he died, she said. King often FaceTimed her from Cedars Sinai Medical Center where he was being treated for Covid since early January. She said Larry had a great fear of death because he was agnostic, but gave Southwick instructions for his remains once he was gone.

He wanted me to put an urn with his ashes over our bed, she said. With his voice broadcasting from them all night so Id never forget him or sleep with anyone else.

View original post here:

The long history of Larry King's women and the money he left them - New York Post

End the failed war on drugs – Gainesville Sun

Nathan Crabbe| Opinion editor

Americas longest war needs to finally come to an end.

No, not the war in Afghanistan, although U.S. military involvement there has thankfully been winding down after nearly two decades.

Im referring to another massively expensive and ultimately futile effort by the federal government. Nearly 50 years ago, President Richard Nixon declared an all-out offensive on drug abuse that would come to be called the "war on drugs."

The declaration ushered in an era of mass incarceration that failed to prevent drug abuse, instead devastating communities that it was supposed to help. In recent years reformers have thankfully moved to decriminalize drug possession and properly treat addiction like a public health issue.

Reforms have been made to marijuana laws across the country, with marijuana fully legal for adults in 11 states and legal for medical purposes in 34 states. Now Oregon is going further with a drug decriminalization measure that voters passed in November and took effect Feb. 1.

The measure reclassifies the possession of small amounts of drugs including cocaine and heroin as a civil violation punishable by a $100 fine, which offenders can avoid by agreeing to a health assessment. It also directs more funding to drug treatment.

At the same time, the federal government appears poised to change its approach as well. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in December to decriminalize marijuana on the federal level, which leaders of the newly Democratic Senate recently indicated they support.

Here in Florida, similar changes are unlikely (unless voters force the issue, like they did in legalizing medical marijuana by passing a 2016 ballot measure). The state Legislature did legalize industrial hemp in 2019, which had the unintended consequences of causing prosecutors to drop marijuana cases because labs and drug-sniffing dogs couldnt tell the difference.

Alachua County and Gainesville commissioners have long advocated for local reforms, with mixed success. Former State Attorney Bill Cervone pushed back against their attempts to decriminalize pot possession and instead created his own pre-arrest deflection program, which allows his office to keep certain low-level offenses out of the criminal justice system.

But Cervone and the city of Gainesville were unable to agree on a memorandum of understanding on the program, leaving the task to his successor, Brian Kramer. After city commissioners expressed frustration about the situation at a recent meeting, Kramer wrote a letter questioning why the agreement has been held up and saying that he was open to expanding the program.

No one should be jailed or face other criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of drugs. Expanding the local pre-arrest program is a good step, as long as determining who is eligible is being done equitably.

But local, state and federal officials need to go even further and ensure that addiction is treated as a public health matter rather than a criminal justice issue. The war on drugs has wasted enough money and lives.

Nathan Crabbe is The Suns opinion and engagement editor.

See the original post:

End the failed war on drugs - Gainesville Sun