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The story of how the United States lost its place in manufacturing dominance and why jobs were shipped offshore is highly relevant for business executives, government leaders and anyone interested in understanding their true impact on the country and what it will take to reestablish America's prominence as a manufacturing leader.
Fall of U.S. Manufacturing Dominance
There are some Americans, mostly young, who do not know that the U.S. was once the manufacturing capital of the world, and "Made in America" was the most prevalent label on almost every product Americans bought. But the days of U.S. manufacturing dominance are gone. Most consumer goods purchased in the U.S. are now labeled "Made in China," "Made in Vietnam" or "Made in Indonesia." How you feel about this depends on your situation and point of view.
As a consumer, you probably welcome the low prices of products found in Wal-Mart and other big box stores. As a U.S. business leader, you surely welcome the prospect of lower production costs. The Chinese government welcomes the business growth that is helping to achieve a major strategic goal — to become the next manufacturing capital of the world. And if you are a U.S. worker, displaced by the jobs exodus to foreign off-shored countries, you undoubtedly are struggling to make ends meet. Regardless of perspective, everyone feels the impact of offshoring.
Historical Perspectives: Outsourcing and Offshoring Outsourcing — A Common Practice
It has long been a common practice for companies that do not have specific manufacturing expertise or capability to have other firms make some components, or the entire product, for them — a process called outsourcing. Unless a company is completely vertically integrated (i.e., controls every part of the manufacturing process from mining the ore to wrapping the final part), it has probably outsourced some operations.
The original Ford Motor Company is a good example of a vertically integrated company that literally made the steel and then fashioned it into Model T automobiles. But the current Fords have many outsourced parts, which are assembled into the final product.
Most modern manufacturers have an area of expertise which they apply and then outsource the remaining processes. For many years, companies outsourced work to other companies within the U.S., where an abundance of specialty shops existed. These shops not only made product components, but also made the patterns, molds and equipment needed to manufacture those components. The U.S. was teeming with skilled tradespeople, engineers and support personnel who managed the supply chain of component manufacturers.
In the latter part of the 20th century that began to change. The perfect storm was brewing, and it derailed America's manufacturing dominance, consequently putting thousands of manufacturing companies out of business and millions of skilled workers on the street.
Problems with Making it in America
U.S. manufacturers were being stretched a number of different ways that hampered productivity and profitability. For example, escalating state and federal tax rates, in conjunction with increasingly restrictive and burdensome regulations by agencies, have affected the cost equations for many manufacturers. More companies found themselves with organized labor contracts with restrictive, expensive labor practices, and rulings by the National Labor Relations Board tilted towards labor that penalized companies. Little could be done to increase selling prices to offset increasing costs because highly competitive, cheaper products were pouring in from countries offshore. Profits of companies that were making their products in the U.S. plummeted.
Although reshoring efforts are just beginning, the list of companies that have already reshored or are in the process of reshoring is growing. Here are a few:
- General Electric – Water heaters
- Master Lock – Locker room locks
- Wham-O – Frisbies
- Windstream Technologies – Windmills
- Tacony Corporation – Vacuum cleaners
- Element Electronics – Flat screen TVs
- Lincolnton Furniture Company – Furniture
- Outdoor GreatRoom Company – Outdoor furniture
- Sleek Audio – Audio equipment
- Peerless Industries – TV mounting systems
- Taphandles – Beer tap handles
- NCR – ATM machines
- Coleman - Coolers
- Horton Archery – Bows
- ECI Biotech – Diagnostic medical instruments
- Jarden – First Alert safety devices
- Whirlpool – Hand mixers
- ET Water Systems – Irrigation systems
- Chesapeake Bay Candle – Candles
- Michigan Ladder – Ladders
China's Manufacturing Dominance Strategy
Deng Xiaoping, China's Communist Party leader in the latter part of the 20th century, was a practical man compared to the idealist Mao Zedong, whom Deng succeeded. Deng saw the need for China, with 20 percent of the world's population, to be socialist on one hand, yet capitalistic on the other. Deng recognized the need for China to be able to support itself, and with his policies and commitment, China began its emergence into manufacturing.
Labor in China was both abundant and cheap, and the Chinese government either subsidized or incentivized state-run and private companies to manufacture products to compete with those made in the U.S. To further enhance the appeal of Chinese products, the Party refused to allow the yuan to float on the open market keeping it and Chinese products artificially cheap. The playing field was not level, but there were no good, obvious solutions for the U.S.
For example, in 1998, the Huffy Bicycle Company could not compete with the flood of Huffy look-alikes coming from Asia, which sold at a fraction of the bikes made in Celina, OH. The result? Huffy began to manufacture its bicycles inAsia.
Offshoring — Outsourcing Outside America
Many other U.S. companies had similar experiences and the offshoring rage was on. Product names that were once stamped "Made in America" began to be made offshore. You might remember a few: Radio Flyer's little red wagons; all Mattel toys, including Barbie dolls; Converse athletic shoes; Ohio Art's Etch A Sketch; General Time's Seth Thomas clocks; Levi's Jeans; and even Hershey's chocolate bars and candy kisses. The list of products made offshore would not surprise anyone today, and the list is a very long one indeed.
However, offshoring brings with it a mixed bag. At first, there was the good news. For the U.S. consumer, products became more affordable and the family budget was allowed to stretch — we bought more stuff with the same dollars. For the U.S. company offshoring, manufacturing costs were lower, the impact of government agencies and organized labor was reduced and profits were higher.
But after a few years of buying foreign made products, consumers learned that cheaper prices also meant cheaper quality products that did not last as long or did not perform as advertised. It was easier and cheaper to throw away the offshored products than it was to try to repair them or make them work properly. Offshoring contributed to our becoming a "throw away" society.
The Consequences of Offshoring
The companies that sent their manufacturing to foreign countries soon discovered there were frustrations and costs they never anticipated. They found that differences in language made communicating product specifications and manufacturing instructions to their offshored sources difficult. They learned that cultural differences made it difficult to motivate the foreign companies to respond quickly to their needs. Graft — or payment under the table — was often necessary to break logjams such as finding lost parts, getting a higher priority in a production schedule, or releasing shipments. Conference calls to deal with these issues would have to be scheduled across different time zones, further frustrating the offshoring company.
When issues could not be solved over the phone, visits abroad became necessary, incurring more costs and tying up valuable human resources. Some companies decided to make periodic overseas visits to keep things under control or to put a full-time company representative on site. The costs were just beginning to expose themselves. When production or quality assurance steps were not followed, products could end up at the parent company requiring rework. Being compensated for the reworking of defective products was unlikely.
The list of offshoring problems and resulting costs continued. Purchasing offshored goods usually began with a prepayment. Order quantities were not what was needed, but rather based on what a shipping container would hold. Add a production lead-time of four weeks and a shipping time of another four weeks — all in addition to the massive order quantities — and the result was products, which would not sell for many more weeks, that required storage and inventorying. There was a constant threat of obsolescence and spoilage.
Cash flow slowed to a snail's pace, especially with 30-day net terms to customers. Costs escalated and profits shrunk. But there's more! Offshored countries are notorious for pirating the intellectual property U.S. companies give them to make their products. Suing the foreign source typically is ineffective because of weak or nonexistent judicial support in the foreign country.
Offshoring has consequences for the U.S. as well. The flight of manufacturing jobs offshore has meant record unemployment, reduced gross national product and a dwindling tax base, with less than half of Americans paying federal income taxes. In some cases, whole towns have struggled because of offshoring, such as Hershey, PA, where all Hershey chocolate used to be made.
Locally-owned "mom and pop" stores have disappeared because their customer base has moved on, or is standing in the unemployment line. Skilled trades have become extinct because their demand has moved to foreign countries. Toolmaking, machine operating, machining and welding have been especially hard hit. Youth have little or no interest in manufacturing, as all their role models (parents, uncles, aunts and neighbors) who used to work in the factories no longer do so. The demand for manufacturing jobs is almost nonexistent.
The True Cost of Offshoring
These issues add up to the true cost of offshoring, which is known as the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). For the consumer, the TCO includes how often the product does not work properly, and must be taken back to the store, or repurchased. For the U.S. company, the TCO due to offshoring includes the multitude of issues necessary to do business thousands of miles away with people of immeasurable differences in motives, language and culture. For the U.S., the TCO is the loss of a way of life, economic risks and prestige in the world.
Perhaps the best way for businesses to think about the TCO, or the True Cost of Offshoring, is the speed at which their cash moves out of their accounts to pay for everything it takes to bring the product to market, sell the product, and take cash in through invoiced payments. We call this the Velocity of Cash.
Consider the huge outlay of cash that businesses must pay up front to manufacture products made in China— and in order quantities that will take months to sell and that must travel thousands of miles to reach the U.S. In the case of a "Made in China" offshoring scenario, the Velocity of Cash moves at a snail's pace. Made in America products can have light speed Velocity of Cash, especially when Lean techniques are applied.
Rethinking Offshore Manufacturing
The pace of reshoring operations has accelerated in recent months with more companies analyzing, deciding and moving selected manufacturing process back to the U.S. While the "Made inAmerica" desire for U.S. produced goods may have gotten the ball rolling for reshoring, the Chinese economy has now created an economic advantage for U.S. manufacturers to produce goods stateside.
There are many indicators, particularly in China, predicting the return of U.S. jobs through reshoring:
- China's economic boom has its workers demanding higher wages, and even a minimum wage is in the works.
- The Chinese government is relaxing its support and subsidies to Chinese factories making foreign goods — more production is being saved for Chinese consumers.
- The Chinese government is allowing its currency to find its value in the world, which will make the yuan more expensive compared to the U.S. dollar.
- Shipping costs are escalating as the price of oil increases.
In the U.S., consumers are becoming disillusioned with the "Made in China" label.U.S.companies are beginning to understand their Total Cost of Ownership for offshoring and are taking steps to bring their work home, reshoring jobs toAmericaand rebranding their products with "Made in America."
Businesses that do not recognize the liabilities of offshoring may be left in the dust of those acting now to reshore. Reshoring, like establishing world peace, is easier said than done. Therefore, a carefully thought-out plan that is based on a true understanding of the total cost of ownership is essential for project success.
Tim Hutzel, Managing Director and Researcher at MainStream Management, LLC, has more than 35 years of experience in transforming organizations into highly efficient operations through process improvement and organization development. His work engagements span the industrial, manufacturing, aviation, aerospace and defense, consumer products and government services sectors. www.mainstreammanagement.com. Dave Lippert serves as President of Hamilton Caster & Mfg. Co., a small manufacturer located in Hamilton, Ohio. The 105-year-old family managed business has embraced its own Lean journey to preserve its slice of U.S.manufacturing. Hamilton Caster provides material handling products to primarily U.S.based manufacturers. www.hamiltoncaster.com


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Ezoosmic membrane
EZOOSMIC MEMBRANE ‒ a unique non-material structure. It represents the "sides" of spatial cube of the ezoosmic cell. The main action which gives live to all the material system - the process of EZOOSMOS – happens through the ezoosmic membrane (its centre). It is characterized by so-called "paradox of dimensions": in three-dimensional world the ezoosmic membrane has practically no thickness, but at the same time it really exists and its inside space is infinite. Between nearby ezoosmic membranes which are on one straight line there is always absolute distance (by size).
In ancient texts and legends there was different information about the unexplainable (from the perspective of a man with materialistic worldview) inner space of the ezoosmic membrane which, on the one hand, has no thickness in the three-dimensional world, but at the same time its real space is infinite. That limitless, eternal space, from which the creative force (energy: in the book "AllatRa" the ancient term "the force of Allat" is used) and the initial plan come (information: in the book "AllatRa the ancient term "The Initial Lotus Plan" is used") were called "the spiritual world", "the world where gods are born", "primordial", "eternal", "what was always before the creation of the world". Moreover, the spiritual world name was initially plural (for example, the world of gods), as something that unites many ("one in many") and the material system was used as single, allegorically compared with "cosmic body", "mortal I" (Ego, from latin word "ego" – "I"). (Later on, with the development of religious and political institutions in the society and the rise of patriarchate, the spiritual world name became single (the world of God), while the material world name turned plural, the creative female divine nature was designated as evil, and the aggressive male nature was called good. It means that the signs were deliberately changed by priests and those in power from "+" to "-" and everything was changed completely to the opposite, to the benefit of the material mind system. Let's take one clear example.
Mentions about gods named "Po" (or with the initial prefix Po in their names) who participated in the creation of the world were common among the peoples of Hawaii, Haiti, Easter Island, New Zealand, though they were at a significant distance away from each other. For example, according to the ancient cosmological views of the indigenous people of various islands of Polynesia (subregion of the Oceania, consisting of many small islands in central and the south-western part of the Pacific), in the result of the cosmological process there were "Kore" (emptiness) and "Po" (which is translated as "night", "darkness", i.e. the invisible). It is mentioned that such gods as Che (Sound), Ao (Light), Kune (Progress) and others took part in the creation of the world, including the gods-roots. In other Polynesian teo-cosmogonia the role of ancestors which were connected with the beginning of the cosmic process were taken by Atea (space) or Te-tumu (source).
More ancient variant of the myth about the origin of the world of Maori – the indigenous people of New Zealand – tells about the couple Rangi(Sky) and Papa(Earth). According to the legend Rangi and Papa had children (seventy sons and daughters) – future gods of Maori. For a long time they stayed in darkness in cramped space between the bodies of their parents who were in a tight embrace. In the end five of them tried to push Rangi and Papa apart though their efforts were in vain. Then the sixth child (Tane) straightened his mighty back and bumped his hands into Rangi (Sky) and pushed off Papa (Earth). The sky was casted away up and fixed on four poles (toko). In New Zealand it was described as the riot of the gods-brothers against their parents Rangi and Papa and the following quarrel between brothers. (Note: in the described cosmological conception associative images were given: of emptiness, the invisible Po particle, the creation of 72 dimensions was mentioned too(70 children and 2 parents), the separation of 6 dimensions, which form the material world, from 66 dimensions; the sixth dimension – the ruling part of the material world system, where every event in the visible world forms).
In Polynesian cosmology the Earth opposes both the Sky consisting of many layers and the underground world associated with the darkness of Po. Moreover, the functions of the upper and the lower worlds are often mixed together. It is the most typical division in many cosmological conceptions of different nations of the world, where the Earth denoted all the material world on the whole, the Sky – the invisible macrocosm, divided in dimensions (layers) and the underground world – the world of the invisible processes going at the level of microcosm (that what could be divided into the smallest parts, the state of "spirits").
But the past knowledge, saved in myths, has been significantly changed according to the fashion of "new era". This can be proved by the following facts: "The belief in one God who created the world appeared among the residents of Oceania islands much later: as a result of the creation of classes and the introduction of Christianity ancient myths and legends of Polynesia were transformed and changed in accordance with new views".
References: Мифы, предания и легенды острова Пасхи. Перевод с рапануйского и западноевро- пейских языков. И.К.Федорова. [Myths and legends of Easter Island. Translated from Rapa Nui and western European languages. I.K. Fedorova] Moscow, Nauka, 1978. - p.12 [In Russian]; Мифы народов мира. 2-х т. Гл. редактор С.А. Токарев. [Myths of Nations of the World in Two Volumes. Head editor – S.A.Tokarev] Vol. II, p 319, 320, Мoscow, 1988 [In Russian]; Те Ранги Хироа (П. Бак), Морепла- ватели солнечного восхода [Te Rangi Hiroa (P.Buck), The Vikings of the Sunrise] Moscow, 1959 [In Russian]; Best, Elsdon. The Maori as he was: a brief account of Maori life as it was in pre-European days. Wellington Dominion Museum, 1924; Monberg, Torben. Ta'aroa in the Creation Myths. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 1956.
If you study ancient Greek literature (which is more popular and available to the public) about the creation of the world, then you can find the following. The personification of the initial state of the world, before the structured Universe(cosmos) appeared, was "chaos". Though the initial world "chaos" had quite another meaning, different from the modern one. The word "chaos" derives from the ancient Greek word «χάος» (from «χαίνω»)– "to open out, to gape, to open out mouth; to eject" (Greek "chainein" – ''to gape") and had the meaning of yawning of a gaping space, the primordial void.
Under the name chaos ancient Greeks meant unmeasurable infinite world space, the initial source of the Universe, the initial source of all life in the world from which everything originated, "without what there is nothing other and what exists without the other". That is that initial "precosmic state" from which God created the world as ordered, harmonized cosmos. What is more, there are some mentions, that entering into that "gaping space" from which everything originates was allegorically connected with going through fog and darkness. (note: the analogy of the ezoosmic membrane). Moreover, stoics mentioned that unlike Chaos-gape, chaos-substance was not empty. The chaos-substance, according to the stoics, is a very defused substance which thickens under the influence of vortex and creates the Universe. (Note: for more information please refer to the phantom Po particles and their spiral movement).
The initial information about all these phenomena and processes, which ancient Greeks refer to, can be found in the sacred knowledge of the ancient East which was borrowed by ancient Greeks and transformed according to their own understanding of these processes. One can find mentions about the Great Emptiness (translated by modern translators, unfortunately, as "unordered chaos") for example, in ancient Egyptian, Japanese, Chinese, Polynesian mythologies about the creation of the world. This information can also be found in Scandinavian, American (Pre-Columbian) and other mythologies of nations of the world.
In many ancient manuscripts there are mentions about such concept as Zero (Null). This concept exists in many languages of nations of the world from ancient times. For example in Sanskrit ‒ शून्य(śūnya), Greek ‒ μηδεν ([miːðɛn]), which means «nothing, zero», Latin ‒ nullis, that means «not a one». In the Yoruba language, wide-spread in the western part of Africa, zero sounds as òdo or òfo and means «emptiness, nothing» and so on. The English word "zero" as well as the French word "zéro", Spanish "cero" and similar names of zero in other languages derives from Arabic root «sifr» (صفر ), meaning «emptiness, nothing, absence of anything». In Arabic the word "zero" still has the same root.
In Sanskrit there were two words for "zero" – shunia (शून्य) and bindu (बिंदु). The word shunia is still used in Hindi and denotes "zero". It is interesting that the concept shunia itself is an important philosophical category of Indian thought which has a deep meaning of emptiness, vacuum. In Mahayana Buddhism, namely in the "Prajñāpāramitā Sutras", (Sutras on highest wisdom) the word "shunia" means psychological state of feeling emptiness, which is the main feature of the beginning of the state of "liberation" or nirvana. Also shunia may denote emptiness and freedom.
Zero was interpreted as the cause, which leads to a change: that what forms substance and what can be made in continuous transformation (Note: in the process of ezoosmos). It was associated with the primordial emptiness, which has in it the principle of creating all things. Null was explained as an absolute mystery, inapprehensible Absolute, "initial drive", the sum of all the possibilities, "nothing", "the state of absence of all the material: size, effect, mass, volume etc. For example, in Hinduism zero means something unmanifested, endlessness, eternal, non-existence. In ancient times in the East understanding of "existence" was associated with the temporality of being and the short-time sojourn of human body in it, and the understanding of "the real life" was connected with the spiritual world, with the fusion of the Personality with the Soul and passing into the spiritual world. It is not accidentally that zero was depicted as an empty circle, thus indicating that there is no death but absolute life inside the circle. Although this is not the only one depiction of zero.
For example, in Mesoamerica the people of the Mayan civilization more often drew zero as an empty shell (although there are also 25 more hieroglyphs which denote the concept of zero, one of which - two spirals similar to the Russian letter З (or the number 3)). The Maya called zero «tulakal», and the Aztec - «sintli»(all). In Asia the most popular image of zero(apart from circle) was a dot. For example, in Arabic proto-script one can find the diacritic mark sukūn (سكون "silence", "calmness"), which looks like a small zero. In religious and philosophical teaching of Ancient India ‒ Tantrism (from Sanskrit «tantra» ‒ system, braid, yarn, spinning wheel, cloth, text, etc.) there is the bindu sign (literally «dot», this concept is interpreted as «spot», «grain», «source», «basis»). In Sufism dot (in Arabic نقطة «нуск») «nusk») plays an important role in handing down the teaching, as "the inner knowledge".
References: Этимологический словарь русского языка/ред. Крылов Г. А.[Etymological Dictionary of Russian Language/editor- G.A. Krylov] St.Petersburg: Viktoria plus, 2004 [In Russian]; Философский энциклопедический словарь / глав. ред. Ильичёв Л. Ф., Федосеев П. Н., Ковалёв С. М., Панов В. Г. [Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary/ editors - L.F. Ilichev, P.N. Fedoseev, S.M. Kovalev, V.G. Panov] Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1983 [In Russian]; Философия: Энциклопедический словарь/ глав. ред. Ивин А.А. [Philosophy: Encyclopedic Dictionary/ head editor – A.A. Ivin] Moscow, Gardariki, 2004 [In Russian]; Новая философская энциклопедия: в 4 т./глав.ред. Степин В.С.[New Philosophical Encyclopedia in 4 volumes/head editor – V.S. Stepin] Moscow:Mysl, 2000-2001 [In Russian]; Grammotological dictionary [Electronic source]: www. rbardalzo. narod. ru/text_gram_slovar1. html; Παναγιώτης Ε. Γιαννακόπουλος. Λεξικό Ρημάτων της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας. Athens: Pelekanos Books, 2014; 1980, مكتبة غريب, دراسات فى علم الكتابة العربية Maḥmūd ʻAbbās Ḥammūdah.
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Table of contents
- History
- About the report
- Atoms
- About the ether
- Elementary particles
- Human perception
- About non-material nature
- PRIMORDIAL ALLATRA PHYSICS definitions
- Ezoosmic grid
- Ezoosmic cell
- Ezoosmic membrane
- Septon field
- Real (stationary) Po particle
- Phantom Po particle
- Main differences between real and phantom Po particles
- Ezoosmos
- Process of Ezoosmos
- Transmission and distribution of energy and information
- Free energy
- Associative examples of process of ezoosmos, transmission and distribution energy and information
- The structure of the elementary particles
- Allat
- Photon
- Neutrino
- Electron
- Verification of known formulas and reactions
- The composition of the nucleus of the atom. A calculation of protons and neutrons
- Formats of nuclear reactions recording
- Here are the formulas of the reactions which are In the basis of a controlled thermonuclear fusion
- Formulas of proton–proton chain reactions (pp-cycle)
- The formulas of reaction of the carbon cycle (cn-cycle)
- Formulas of photonuclear reactions
- The formulas of nuclear reactions involving neutrons
- Reactions involving α-particles

subset: commoncrawl


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Occupy Wall Street demonstrators participating in a street-theater production wear signs around their neck representing their student debt during a protest against the rising national student debt in Union Square, in New York, April 25, 2012. Reuters/Andrew Burton
The idea of the "99 percent" managed to do something that no one has done in the United States since the Great Depression: revive the concept of social class as a political issue. What made this possible was a subtle change in the very nature of class power in this country, which, I have come to realize, has everything to do with debt.
As a member of the team that came up with the slogan "We Are the 99 Percent," I can attest that we weren't thinking of inequality or even simply class but specifically of class power. It's now clear that the 1 percent are the creditors: those who are able to turn their wealth into political influence and their political influence back into wealth again. The overriding imperative of government policy is to do whatever it takes, using all available tools—fiscal, monetary, political, even military—to keep stock prices from falling. The most powerful empire on earth seems to exist first and foremost to guarantee the stream of wealth flowing into the hands of that tiny proportion of its population who hold financial assets. This allows an ever-increasing amount of wealth to flow back into the system of legalized bribery that American politics has effectively become.
When we were organizing the Wall Street occupation in August of 2011, we really didn't have any clear idea who, if anyone, would actually show up. But almost immediately we noticed a pattern. The overwhelming majority of Occupiers were, in one way or another, refugees of the American debt system. At first, that meant student debt: the typical complaint was "I worked hard and played by the rules, and now I can't find a job to pay my student loans—while the financial criminals who trashed the economy got themselves bailed out."
What was remarkable wasn't so much the fact that the camp began to fill with so many debt refugees, but how much their plea resonated across the political spectrum. In the 1960s or early '80s, the plight of a college graduate juggling loans wasn't the sort of thing most likely to wring the hearts of transit or sanitation workers. But Occupy received warmth and solidarity from organized labor. Something clearly had changed. We had come to see ourselves as members of the same indebted class.
This was possible only because of a number of changes in the very nature of American capitalism. For decades now, we've been hearing about the "financialization of capitalism." But this is always framed as an abstract process, almost akin to magic, whereby Wall Street no longer needs to extract most of its profits from the fruits of commerce or industry because it has figured out a way to produce wealth from sheer speculation. Meanwhile, the financial industry actively discourages us from scrutinizing the actual social relations on which its wealth is based. What happens on Wall Street is supposed to be too complicated and advanced for regular people
to comprehend.
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The rise of OWS allowed us to start seeing the system for what it is: an enormous engine of debt extraction. Debt is how the rich extract wealth from the rest of us, at home and abroad. Internally, it has become a matter of manipulating the country's legal structure to ensure that more and more people fall deeper and deeper into debt. As I write, roughly three out of four Americans are in some form of debt, and a whopping one in seven is being pursued by debt collectors. There's no way to know just what percentage of the average household's income is now directly expropriated by the financial services industry in the form of interest payments, fees and penalties. What statistical information is available suggests it is somewhere between 15 and 20 percent—and, of course, if you factor out the quarter of the population who are either too rich or too poor to owe anything, it becomes considerably more. "Financialization," then, is not just the manipulation of money. Ultimately, it's the ability to manipulate state power to extract a portion of other people's incomes. Wall Street and Washington, in other words, have become one. Financialization, securitization and militarization are all different aspects of the same process. And the endless multiplication, in cities across America, of gleaming bank offices— spotless stores selling nothing while armed security guards stand by—is just the most immediate and visceral symbol for what we, as a nation, have become.
* * *
Most revolutions, revolts and insurrections in world history have revolved, at least to some degree, around debt, from the uprisings that created the Greek democracies to the American Revolution—or pretty much any other anticolonial revolt. We may be standing on the brink of a similar juncture. Yet history shows it's notoriously difficult to assemble debtors into a coherent movement; indebtedness is isolating by nature, and the very feelings of anxiety and humiliation it sparks have made it a potent ideological tool. But history also reveals that when such movements do form, the results tend to be explosive.
What are the prospects for Occupy if it evolves into an explicit movement of debt resistance? If that happens, the battle will not be won by proposing policy changes. The power of Occupy was always that of delegitimation: an appeal to the profound feeling, shared by so many Americans, that our political class is so corrupted that it's no longer capable of addressing the problems faced by ordinary citizens, let alone the world. To create a genuinely democratic system could only mean starting over entirely.
The financial system isn't really any different. The first step is to state the problem clearly: our current economic arrangements can barely even be called "capitalism," unless it's some form of Mafia capitalism based on loan-sharking, extortion and fixed casino games. The second is to hammer home just how much the system's illegitimacy undermines the moral force that debt still holds over so many Americans, thus fostering a gradual withdrawal of consent from the system. Increasing numbers of us are already doing this by refusing to pay our debts, whether out of necessity or by choice.
Even those at the top are increasingly willing to admit in private that the current situation is untenable. Debt cancel-lation of some sort is going to take place (as we've already seen with the bailout of the big banks). The real struggle will be over the form it takes—above all, whether it's a last-ditch attempt to salvage the system of Mafia capitalism or an effort to move us sharply in the direction of something else (perhaps taking a cue from Iceland's forgiveness of loans held by more than a quarter of its population). A debt jubilee, after all, affords the possibility not just of economic renewal, but of intellectual and spiritual renewal as well. Even imagining such a possibility opens the door to an understanding that debts are simply a kind of promise we make to one another, and that a true democracy is one in which everyone weighs in on the broader questions. What kind of promises do we want to make as a society? Seen in this light, the problem economists like to call "debt overhang" (when debt levels are too high to permit access to credit even for smart investments) is far more profound. The debt we collectively hold obligates us to make promises we cannot keep. We continue to increase the rate of production, the level of exploitation and hence, as an inevitable consequence, the pace of ecological devastation at just the point where even present levels are clearly unsustainable—all to pay interest to the creditor class. At this moment, what could be more obviously insane?
This is why organizing a movement of mass resistance is so important. Our leaders have long since demonstrated that they are no longer capable of thinking big. Technocratic tinkering will get us nowhere. Only a social movement can change our moral and political horizons of possibility—and those horizons desperately need to change.
Occupy was right to resist the temptation to issue concrete demands. But if I were to frame a demand today, it would be for as broad a cancellation of debt as possible, followed by a mass reduction of working hours—say to a five-hour workday or a guaranteed five-month vacation. If such a suggestion seems outrageous, even inconceivable, it's just a measure of the degree to which our horizons have shrunk. After all, only fifty years ago many people assumed we would have gotten to such a point by now. It is only by breaking the power of the engines of extraction that we can once again begin to think on a scale and grandeur appropriate to the times.
Join The Nation's live video chat on the one-year anniversary of Occupy, with Astra Taylor, Allison Kilkenny, and Nathan Schneider, on Tuesday, September 18th, at 12noon EST!


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Rose Chernin
Named in a landmark Supreme Court case that almost resulted in her deportation, Rose Chernin spoke out against injustice wherever she found it. During the Depression, Chernin organized protests against price gouging, supported rent strikes, and tenant negotiations. In 1932, she joined the Communist Party and briefly moved to Russia. In 1950, she founded the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. The following year, she was arrested on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government. In 1952, after her conviction, she was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee but refused to name other communists. The government threatened to denaturalize her under the Smith Act, but in 1957 the Supreme Court ruled that the Smith Act required violent rebellion, not just membership in a political group, freeing Chernin to continue her activism.
Family and Early Life
Ambivalent about Judaism, passionately Marxist, charismatic, courageous, Rose Chernin devoted a great deal of her life to securing the rights of disenfranchised citizens: the unemployed of the Depression, farm workers without a union, Black home buyers thwarted by redlining, and other foreign-born leftists, like herself, who faced deportation in the 1950s.
Rochele Chernin was born in 1901 in Chasnik, Russia. She was renamed Rose when she and her three younger siblings, renamed Celia, Gertrude, and Milton, and their mother, Perle, landed at Ellis Island in 1913. They were met by Chernin's father, Max, after five years of separation. The family moved to Waterbury, Connecticut, where Chernin's father opened a dry-goods store. Her mother stayed home, suffering from her isolation in an unfamiliar world. Upon finishing grade school in Waterbury, Connecticut, fourteen-year-old Rose Chernin worked on a munitions assembly line. Chernin, a foreign-born, unskilled laborer, boldly requested admission to Crosby, the local preparatory school, over the local trade school. It was at Crosby that Chernin first met Paul Kusnitz, also from a Russian Jewish family. He introduced Chernin to socialist ideas through the newspaper the New York Call.
Chernin's education was jeopardized when her father deserted the family and moved to Canonsville, Pennsylvania, where he opened another store. Resolutely, young Rose Chernin threatened him with jail if he did not send for his wife and their four younger children, who now included baby Lillian. Chernin herself wanted to stay in Waterbury to complete high school. In 1921, after her mother and siblings left for Pennsylvania, Chernin graduated and went to New York City. She entered Hunter College and found work in a perfume factory. All around her, Chernin saw New Yorkers organizing against unfair labor practices and dismal living conditions. Drawn to join them, she became active in a political group called the Russian Club, a commitment that precluded her continuing to study at Hunter. She left college, regretting that decision always.
Activism and Communist History
At age twenty-two, Rose Chernin heard from Paul Kusnitz, who had since received a degree in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On June 20, 1925, they married. Their happy marriage was based on the couple's common socialist interests and mutual respect. They moved to the Bronx, and Paul began working on the subway. Shortly thereafter, her mother was placed, involuntarily, by her father, into a state psychiatric hospital in Binghamton, New York. Aghast at the conditions there, Rose Chernin successfully arranged for her mother's release, the first of many such battles she would fight on behalf of those weakened by unjust treatment and unable to defend themselves.
In 1929, at the beginning of the Great Depression, Chernin and Kusnitz had their first child, Nina. As a young mother, Chernin organized pickets to protest price gouging in poor neighborhoods, led tenant negotiations, and supported rent strikes. She also helped form unemployed councils, petitioning congressional representatives to provide either more jobs or unemployment insurance. In 1932, Rose Chernin joined the Communist Party, campaigning for election as alderwoman in the Bronx. Then Kusnitz lost his job. The family moved to the Soviet Union, where Kusnitz worked on the Moscow subway, while Chernin worked in a publishing house.
On a visit to Los Angeles in 1934, Chernin saw fourteen communist activists like herself arrested and tried under the Criminal Syndicalist Laws, which outlawed organizing. Hearing the prisoners' call for her help, Chernin decided to stay in California and form a defense committee. Within the year, the prisoners were released. By this time, Rose Chernin had decided that she could not give up her work in America. Kusnitz returned from Moscow, and once again the family lived together in the Bronx.
Their second daughter, Kim Chernin, was born in 1940. Soon Chernin was asked to become the organizational secretary for the Communist Party of the Bronx. But in 1944, tragedy struck when Nina died of Hodgkin's disease. Rose Chernin retreated from political work, and the family moved to California, determined to leave the place associated with their profoundest sorrow.
Two years later, when African-American neighbors in Los Angeles had a cross burned on their property, Chernin began organizing to protect housing rights. Renewed in her work, Chernin spearheaded a campaign to support Henry Carlisle, a British-born movie writer targeted for deportation as a communist. Once again visible in the people's struggle, Chernin became executive secretary of the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, which she founded in 1950. Rose Chernin's known success as an organizer led to her arrest in July 1951, when she was charged with forming a conspiracy to overthrow the government. With her bail set at $100,000, Chernin remained in jail until February 1952 when the trial began. Six months later, she was convicted, sentenced to five years in prison, jailed again, but released on bail five weeks later.
Not long after, Chernin was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, but she refused to give the names of other communists. Another denaturalization proceeding followed, this time with the Immigration and Naturalization Service attempting to deport Chernin by arguing that when she applied for United States citizenship in 1928, she intended to join the Communist Party, thus violating the Smith Act of 1940. However, the judge refused to denaturalize her, reprimanding the government for having presented no evidence of her guilt. By 1957, the Supreme Court heard Yates v. United States, in which Rose Chernin was named. In a landmark decision, Chernin's earlier conviction was overturned, ruling the Smith Act unconstitutional.
In 1967, Paul Kusnitz died in a car accident. In 1983, she saw the publication of In My Mother's House, Kim Chernin's deeply touching memoir that captures Rose Chernin's Yiddish-inflected voice telling her sister's heroic story. Appropriately, her last years were spent in a Los Angeles retirement home that resembled a collective. Among the residents were aged leftist friends, delighted to see their old comrade among them.
Rose Chernin died of Alzheimer's disease on September 8, 1995, in Los Angeles, at almost ninety-four years of age.
Chernin, Kim. In My Mother's House (1983).
Obituary. NYTimes, September 16, 1995, and San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 1995.


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Arrow Season 4 Episode 16 : Broken Hearts
A heartbroken Cupid returns to Star City with one goal - to destroy anyone in love. The team learns she's killing couples on their wedding day so Oliver and Felicity decide to pose as bait.
Episode Guide
Season 01
Season 02
Season 03
Season 04
Season 05
Season 06
Season 07
Season 08


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Cactus League asks MLB to delay spring training due to COVID
The Cactus League and Arizona community leaders have asked Major League Baseball to delay the start of spring training due to coronavirus concerns just over three weeks before pitchers and catchers are supposed to report.
The Cactus League made the request in a letter to Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred obtained by The Associated Press on Monday. The letter was co-signed by the mayors of Mesa, Scottsdale, Surprise, Glendale, Goodyear and Peoria, as well as representatives from Phoenix and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.
MLB said in a statement that it "will continue to consult with public health authorities, medical experts, and the Players Association whether any schedule modifications to the announced start of Spring Training and the Championship Season should be made in light of the current COVID-19 environment to ensure the safety of the players, coaches, umpires, MLB employees and other game day personnel in a sport that plays every day."
Arizona is averaging just over 7,000 new coronavirus cases per day, but the Cactus League cited data in its letter from the University of Washington's Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation projecting a sharp decline in infections by mid-March, down to as few as 3,072 daily. Spring camps are set to open the week of Feb. 15, with the regular season set to start on April 1.
Despite the roiling case numbers, the NHL's Arizona Coyotes are hosting 3,450 fans for home games in Glendale, while the NBA's Phoenix Suns are playing without fans. High school sports are also still operating. The Cactus League hosts 15 MLB clubs.
Any changes to the major league schedule are subject to agreement with the players' association per terms of their collective bargaining agreement. A person familiar with talks between the sides said MLB asked the union in November about moving back opening day a month to create a safer playing environment, possibly spurred by the availability of the vaccine.
The union asked if the postseason could be moved back to make up the 30 or so missed games, or if the league would pay players for the missed games if they weren't made up. The league declined, saying it wouldn't push the postseason deep into November over broadcast concerns and wouldn't pay players for missed games.
Talks stalled there, and no formal proposals about altering opening day have been exchanged.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity Monday because the discussions were considered private.
While the league was able to impose a shortened 60-game regular season in 2020 per the terms of an agreement with the union signed in March, it doesn't have the authority to unilaterally adjust the 2021 season under the current collective bargaining agreement.
The person also confirmed that the union turned down a December offer from the league that included a permanent adoption of an expanded postseason and the universal designated hitter — changes instituted temporarily in 2020.
In the negotiations — first reported by The Athletic on Monday — the league also asked for a variety of on-field changes, including use of a pitch clock and an automated strike zone in spring training. In exchanged, it offered to resolve two service-time grievances from last season in the union's favor and boost the players' guaranteed postseason share from $50 million last season to more than $80 million, roughly what the players got in 2019.
The union declined the proposal because it is opposed to expanding the postseason, fearing it will disincentive teams from pursuing free agents.
Follow Jake Seiner: https://twitter.com/Jake_Seiner
More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports


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Available for:
iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac, and Windows.
How does a visit to heaven change your life?
Todd and Sonja Burpo's almost-four-year-old son Colton made an unforgettable trip to heaven and back during the darkest, most stressed-out days of their lives. Times were tough, money was scarce, and the bills, frustrations, and fears were piled high.
How did Colton's visit to heaven change things for them individually and as a family? And what does any of this mean for you and your life?
Todd, and for the first time ever Sonja and Colton, from their perspectives, share what has happened since the release of their New York Times bestseller, Heaven Is for Real. Through their own experiences, and after hearing from thousands of the more than eight million readers who have shared how the story has affected them, they show you how believing heaven is for real will help you survive hardships here on earth, including the death of a loved one or the loss of a child through tragedy, miscarriage, or even abortion.
Todd, Sonja, and Colton answer questions such as:
· Is it really okay to struggle with and question God? Really?
· What hope is there for me if I've lost a child or a loved one to death? Will I ever see them again?
· What does heaven feel like?
· Can I know for sure that I'm going to heaven?
· Does God really hear me when I pray?
They also explain how their story can help you keep thoughts of eternity in mind in the midst of your own overly busy, stressed-out lives.
Heaven truly is for real, and believing it changes everything!


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"The Greek God" Papadon recently participated in an interview with PWMania.com. Papadon covered topics including WWE, meeting Vince McMahon, the creation of his persona, his experience on the independents, Extreme Rising and his goals for the future. Here are some highlights from the interview:
Working In WWE: WWE is a well oiled machine. They're very well organized. They have the pyrotechnics in one place, catering in another, the writers in some other area. Everyone knows what they have to do without stepping on each other's toes. Way different from independent shows. I've been to indy shows where I show up and the ring's not there yet. Or the shows start a half hour late.
Meeting Vince McMahon: I have met Vince once. I shook his hand, said hello and that was basically it. But if I were to see him again, I would definitely try to strike up a conversation with the guy. I know some guys in my position that go to WWE and they walk around on eggshells. They are afraid to piss off the wrong people or shake peoples' hands. You need to have confidence in this business. Just like picking up ladies at a bar or a job interview, you have to be confident. If you want to be in WWE and you don't believe in yourself, how are you going to entertain millions of fans?
Plans To Be In WWE: But I plan to be in WWE one day. And I know it's going to happen, because I will make it happen no matter how long it takes. I want to be in the main event of Wrestlemania. I want the Papadon action figures. I want the world to know the name Dimitrios Papadon.
You can read the interview in its entirety at this link.


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SECAUCUS – Officials from Secaucus gathered at the Office of Emergency Management Sunday morning to discuss preparations for Hurricane Sandy.
"The more we can do ahead, the better off," said Mayor Michael Gonnelli during the meeting. Gonnelli said that the call for any evacuations would be made later if needed as warnings progress. Officials discussed preparations underway and what resources are available should there be power outages and major flooding throughout the town.
Watch the city website for updates.
"Please take this as a serious threat," said Gonnelli on a televised message that was broadcast to residents on Cable Channel 36 and www.secaucusnj.org. He advised all residents to prepare. The municipality distributed information to residents with a hurricane safety checklist that can be found here: http://www.redcross.org/prepare/disaster/hurricane
School has been cancelled for Monday. Huber Street Elementary School is being set-up as a shelter where Meadowlands Hospital will have a triage unit with doctors and nurses available for any resident that needs medical attention.
As of 2 p.m. Harmon Cove residents began moving their cars to higher ground including upper levels of parking decks. For other low-lying areas, residents can move their cars to the Clarendon Elementary school parking lot.
Each firehouse has back-up generators. Buses have been situated throughout the town in case residents have to be moved. Light towers have been placed at Harmon Cove, Millridge Road, Huber Street, and 10th Street. The municipality has five emergency boats available.
Meadowlands Hospital and Medical Center (MHMC) has five ambulances and three command vehicles stationed throughout the town. MHMC issued the following statement Saturday from Acting President and CEO Lynn McVey regarding the hospitals plans regarding Hurricane Sandy:
"Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center is initiating a comprehensive plan in advance of Hurricane Sandy touching down in our area. The hospital has mobilized all employees into their disaster role and has been working with municipal and county emergency management officials to implement a contingency plan in case of severe weather related issues including flooding. During Hurricane Irene, MHMC was the only Hudson County hospital that had continuous operation. MHMC is planning a mobile medical center on high ground in both Secaucus and West New York, an expanded version to our response during Hurricane Irene. As the storm evolves, MHMC will continue to work toward making the residents in its area safe and have access to quality medical care. We certainly are ready."
To stay updated, people can listen to emergency broadcasts on the radio as well as the local cable channel 36, or visit the town website www.secaucusnj.org. ;Below is a list of important numbers to call if a Secaucus resident needs assistance during or after the storm:
-Office of Emergency Management: (201) 864-1061
-Non-emergency Police: (201) 330-2060
-Dial 911 from a landline in the case of an emergency –Adriana Rambay Fernandez


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WORCESTER — Let's begin with two disclaimers.
For most people back then, the 1960s weren't "the Sixties." Yes, there were riots and demonstrations and sex and rock 'n' roll and general upheaval. But a considerable number of Americans experienced all the uproar only secondhand, either as headlines or on television screens. Among the many virtues of "Kennedy to Kent State: Images of a Generation" is its emphasis on the then-unprecedented role of mass media in both shaping and extending the impact of events in that decade. The show runs through Feb. 3 at the Worcester Art Museum.
Put another way, Ed Sullivan mattered more to many people than John, Paul, George, or Ringo did. It's true that no one under 40 has any idea who Sullivan was, nor should they. But back then, trust me, anybody over 10 knew — and if they didn't watch his show, they knew people who did.
As it happens, "Kennedy to Kent State" includes a photograph of the Beatles appearing on Sullivan's show — though with a twist (if not shout). A video monitor in the foreground with John's face on it dominates the band, which plays in the background. It's among the 85 images in the show, some of them very well known, some less so, offering a visual chronicle of the Sixties. They all come from the museum's permanent collection, part of a donation from collector David Davis of 120 photographs, posters, and other items related to the decade.
Note that phrase "related to the decade." That's the other disclaimer. Chronology doesn't define the Sixties. Psychology and sociology do. The Sixties were a state of mind — that's still true — which is why they continue to inspire such devotion from some and revulsion from others. The Beatles, for example, were Sixties back in the '50s, as Patty Hearst was Sixties in the '70s.
Quite sensibly, "Kennedy to Kent State" ignores its title. The first photograph in the show, by date, is from 1957 (Sophia Loren gives Jayne Mansfield the once over). The last is from 1975 (Hubert van Es's still-shocking image of the evacuation from Saigon). So it predates the Kennedy administration and extends beyond Kent State.
That said, whoever gave the show its title wasn't kidding about the Kennedy part. There are six photos of JFK before or during his presidency, eight from his assassination, another eight from his funeral, and Robert Kennedy has a few photos of his own, too.
Some famous photographers have work here: Gordon Parks, W. Eugene Smith, Yousuf Karsh, Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold. Others are famous for a single image, such as Eddie Adams's photo of a young Viet Cong about to be executed and Nick Ut's of a Vietnamese girl running naked down a road after a napalm attack. (It was Adams who took that "Ed Sullivan Show" shot of the Beatles.)
"Kennedy to Kent State" is even more history lesson than art show. Underscoring that is the presence of five video kiosks, one each devoted to the Kennedy assassination, the space program, the draft, '60s fashion, and the civil rights movement.
David Davis, writing in the show's catalog, describes his collection as "a kind of storyboard of the years from 1962 to 1974." The storyboard features a lot of stars: Twiggy, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe (twice — even if she really was '50s rather than '60s), Bob Dylan (also twice). There are extras, too, of course: hippies, the crowd at Woodstock, demonstrators, police, soldiers, terrorists.
As a rule, the news photos — the images taken on the fly, without rehearsal or forethought — hold up better than those striving for an artistic effect. Gene Anthony's "Timothy Leary in Candlelight" is so visually self-aware it looks silly. Conversely, what could be more dramatic, or better composed, than Robert H. Jackson's picture of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald or Joseph Louw's image of King's aides pointing in unison in the direction James Earl Ray fired from? And while NASA astronauts weren't exactly professional photographers, the images by them in the show retain more than just keen historical interest. Several are startlingly beautiful.
There's a fundamental tension in "Kennedy to Kent State" between two kinds of images: those purely emblematic of their time and those that transcend it. The former predominate in the show, as they should. Many are highly recognizable. The excitement that comes of seeing them reminds us that familiarity can breed more than just contempt.
It's the other photographs, though, that stand out. When only scholars know anything about the geopolitics that lay behind the Saigon evacuation, anyone seeing van Es's photograph will still be riveted by its grim interplay of geometry and urgency. A woman wearing a black veil and dress sits in a church pew with a little girl in her lap staring off into space. Moneta J. Sleet's photograph is of Coretta Scott King holding her daughter at her husband's funeral. But the universality of the image is as old as the Greeks and Trojans — and as ongoing as grief. As for Buzz Aldrin's image of his fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong's bootprint on the surface of the moon, it's a reminder that at least one artifact of the the Sixties will endure as long as the solar system does.
Mark Feeney can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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ITEM: engraving from Rees' Cyclopedia, 1814. "Table of the Compass of Voices and Instruments, Shewing the Place Each Occupies in the Scale". 11x8 inches. Good condition. $75
This engraved plate from Abraham Rees' Cyclopedia... is the wonderful invention of Alexandre Choron (1771-1834), and appeared (perhaps for the first time in an English press) in London in 1814. It is a concise and interesting display of the comparisons of the reach of instruments along the eight octaves, and is a very strong example of clear and useful graphical display of quantitative data.
The full subtitle: "Table of the Compass of Voices and Instruments, Shewing the Place Each Occupies in the Scale".
From Grove Music Online:
Choron, Alexandre(-Etienne)
(b Caen, 21 Oct 1771: d Paris, 29 June 1834). French writer on music, instructor, publisher and composer. While still a boy, he taught himself Hebrew and German and acquired a permanent interest in scientific experiment and a fascination for music theory and the techniques of composition. Although he reached the age of 16 before taking music lessons, he had already attained elementary skill on keyboard and other instruments. He greatly valued a friendship with Grétry which began in his 20th year and which suggests that he moved to Paris after his father's death.
Choron's earliest publications, the three-volume Principes d'accompagnement des écoles d'Italie (1804) and Principes de composition des écoles d'Italie (whose publication was announced for 1806 even though it did not appear until the end of 1808 or early 1809 - the preface is dated 9 December 1808), include courses in thoroughbass together with instruction in counterpoint and fugue, implemented by exercises from Sala, Martini, Marpurg and Fux. In February 1806 he undertook the editing for August Leduc of the scores of Haydn's symphonies. He began his activities as a music publisher in partnership with Leduc in November of that year, in order to exploit a licence for lithographic printing bought from Frédéric André in 1807. His partnership with Leduc ended in late 1811. Choron published works by Josquin, Goudimel, Palestrina and Carissimi, as well as Italian and German music up to the time of Bach. In 1827 his daughter Alexandrine (d 1835) took over the running of her business, which after her marriage in 1832 to the composer and teacher Stéphano Nicou took the company name of the Société Nicou-Choron. There followed the two-volume Dictionnaire des musiciens (1810–11) in which Fayolle was his collaborator. Choron was too idealistic to be financially successful, and his attention to business was limited by his scholarly and scientific pursuits. What might have been his magnum opus, Introduction à l'étude générale et raisonnée de la musique, remained unfinished. He was forced to teach music and accept public appointments.
In 1811 he was appointed a corresponding member of the Beaux-Arts class of the Institut de France in succession to Framery. From 1812 until Napoleon's downfall he was Directeur de la Musique des Fêtes Publiques. His essays on plainsong and church music led to his nomination for the task of reorganizing music in French cathedrals and in the royal chapel after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. In January 1816 Louis XVIII made him régisseur général of the Académie Royale de Musique. According to Fétis he turned the Opéra 'into a trial theatre', and his dismissal after little more than a year enabled him to devote his energy to the founding of his Institution Royale de Musique Classique et Religieuse. He secured public grants for it between 1826 and the Revolution of 1830, but Charles X's attempt to revive absolutism led the new government under Louis Philippe to discontinue expenditure associated with royal privilege.
The reduced budget not only proved disastrous for Choron but incurred disappointment for music lovers in general, as Choron's students associated with other schools to give choral festivals in Notre Dame, St Sulpice and provincial cathedrals. The programmes included unaccompanied works of the Renaissance, together with Baroque oratorios with orchestra and music of later periods. After years of decline his school was revived by Niedermeyer and renamed Ecole de Musique Religieuse Classique. It remains the most substantial testimony to the work of an influential idealist during a time when French musical life badly needed ideals.
Although a few Conservatoire pupils sought Choron's instruction, his school produced no outstanding composers until the Niedermeyer régime after 1836; yet Choron had a widespread influence on teachers, organists, choralists and those who were awakening to the importance of music history. His inexpensive editions of polyphonic and choral music were invaluable, despite the later issue of most of the works in better format by Proske and the Regensburg scholars and by English and German publishers; nor were his labours towards the revival of plainsong in vain, though the work of the Benedictine monks of Solesmes superseded them. His interest in the Baroque masters was more a revival than a novelty, and contributed indirectly to the demand for scholarly editions. The Manuel complet de musique vocale et instrumentale, published after his death by his collaborator, La Fage, was uniquely valuable in its day. In a country whose musical tradition was almost entirely unscholarly, and focussed on the capital, Choron stimulated interest that made his own publications impermanent.
He composed chiefly sacred music, including a Messe brève, a Magnificat, a Stabat mater and numerous motets, both a cappella and with organ accompaniment. His opera, Nadir et Salyha, was produced in Kassel in 1811. He also wrote a number of songs, of which La sentinelle (1810) was popular in his lifetime.


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Massive cargo ships ferry in and out of the many ports lining the shores from Tokyo to Kawasaki to Yokohama. Surprisingly, these same waters boast a healthy marine ecosystem offering easily accessible sport fishing for inshore and bay area saltwater anglers.
The low tide shoreline at the north side of Tokyo Bay sometimes has a musky smell that reminds you of the immense size and urban density of the city surrounding you. As the boat winds its way through a series of canals and rivers lined with tall apartment complexes, factories and office buildings, first timers can't believe how close they are to the open ocean.
After reaching the river mouth, it only takes about 30 seconds for those buildings to suddenly get absorbed into the distance. You're left with a view of the Tokyo skyline complete with all its ubiquitous landmarks, as well the feeling you're headed for a day of fishing in one of the most unlikely places in the world.
On this day I'm out in a custom built 10-meter center console bay boat with a powerful Yamaha 225-hp. outboard. Four other fishermen and I are starting a five-hour hunt for sea bass – widely considered Tokyo Bay's most popular game fish.
Our trip will take us to a variety of points near man-made structures such as surf breakers, bridges and docks, as well as natural flats covered by sandy bottom, grass and shell beds. The fish are everywhere, so we could end up casting anywhere.
The Japanese sea bass (lateo-labrax japonicus) is the most prolific sea bass species living in Japan's coastal waters. Called suzuki in Japanese, these particular sea bass are similar to North American striped bass, snook, European sea bass and other well known sea perches of the world.
Japan's sea bass fishery is actually one of the most robust in the world for a number of reasons; not the least of which is because it isn't over pressured by commercial fishermen's long lines or nets.
Bay area fishing for sea bass using artificial lures has a cadre of avid anglers, many of whom cross over from the ranks of other types of fishing because of the sport's consistency and tempo.
In other words, the sea bass are always biting somewhere in the bay. The challenge is in knowing how and where to target them–a task anyone can master through experience and the support of good sea bass guides.
The first point where our guide, Capt. Shuzo Kawawa, takes us is a shallow flat just south of Rinkai Park. There are several dozen gulls and cormorants hovering in the distance, occasionally diving at the surface of the water and trying to catch tiny shad minnows.
We can see them splashing here and there, but the sea bass aren't coming up and striking at the surface. Our guide tells us he sees shad all over his fish-finder, so he reckons the sea bass aren't active because there's not a lot of current.
I begin casting my seven-cm. sinking minnow to the shallow side of the point and retrieving it quickly while gently twitching my rod tip. This kind of retrieval often causes what are called "reaction bites" in situations where the bass are not actively feeding.
The idea is a game fish will instantaneously pounce on an erratically darting lure suddenly streaking in front of it. Sea bass will also commonly chase a lure a few meters before striking once they are excited and feeding actively.
After about 10 casts, while not paying attention, I get my first bite right at the edge of the boat as I'm about to lift my minnow out of the water. Slightly shocked, I mistakenly jerk the rod upward; I'm doubly shocked as the 60-cm. sea bass immediately runs towards the surface. In an attempt to compensate for my error, I plunge my rod tip into the water to keep him from jumping and possibly throwing my lure.
Capt. Kawawa yells, "What the hell are you doing, Abdel-san? Don't let him jump!" He's scared of the fish busting off, swimming away and spooking the other sea bass that might have chased the lure and which are now excited and in feeding mode. He darts over to me and, inside of two seconds, he's got a net in the water and is maneuvering in the fish.
Often, when one or two bass switch on and start striking, the entire schools' predatory instincts will activate, causing them to go into a frenzy. This is what Japanese call iregui (入れ食い) – a situation where an angler can get a bite on almost every cast.
As I'm getting ready to release my sea bass, everyone else on the boat nearly simultaneously hooks up. From then on, we scramble to get our lures back in the water after boating each fish, because we know they'll calm down and skate out of town if we don't keep casting.
Next we head to a point east of Odaiba which I've passed more times than I can remember, but it looks different every time due to constant construction. This time there are some massive concrete bridge supports where there had been none six months ago.
As an outdoor lover, I have a love-hate feeling about places such as these becausem although unattractive, the temporary piers, platforms and barges surrounding these construction sites are prime real estate for sea bass. Today there are patrol boats and buoys marking the area off-limits, so to our disappointment we have to fish out in the open.
Just north of the construction site, we cast some heavier vibration lures which swim deeper to target bass holding closer to the bottom. Capt. Kawawa sees a lot of them on his fish-finder, but we're only getting intermittent bites.
The setting sun, quickly dropping temperature, lack of current and bait fish could mean the sea bass are going to be inactive for a bit. After casting for about 30 minutes, we give up and head for the mouths of the Ara and Edo rivers where there will at least be some current keeping the fish excited. For our last melee with the sea bass, we stop under a few bridges to cast near and between pilings where the fish gather for safety and easy pickings of any baitfish passing by. Casting on these points requires accuracy and coordination, because the spaces where the sea bass will strike are pretty narrow.
After dark, the most effective way to fish is to slowly retrieve the lure along the border between shadows cast by the bridges and the areas illuminated by the street lights above. Sea bass line up just inside the shaded areas waiting for prey to swim by.
Although I've only recently begun fishing bridges in Japan this way, I'm getting a lot of bites and nabbed one or two fish longer than 50 cm.
"Hey, Abdel-san, you're getting better at this aren't you?" Capt. Kawawa shouts. For all my years in Japan, I still don't know how to take compliments humbly, so I shoot back, "Damn right!" He beams at me with a "sasuga, gaijin da-ne" type of smile. At about 6:30 p.m. it's lines in and back to the dock.
I'm hoping to break my personal sea bass record of 87 cm. by the end of the year, but I'll be satisfied with any lunkers I catch along the way. On any given trip, it's possible to pull up several fish bigger than 70 cm., but most anglers dream of the day they can enter the "90 Over Club."
I'm sure I'll get there with a little patience and have a great time while I'm at it.
Fishing Tips
Readers interested in Tokyo Bay sea bass angling can get their feet wet any time of year with one of several dozen guides operating from points all around Tokyo Bay.
Capt. Kawawa's outfit, which I highly recommend, is called Kaido (海道) and operates three boats launching from the Naka River in Edogawa Ward. He has rods for those without tackle and a wealth of knowledge for novice and experienced anglers alike.
You can also check out my site for info on sea bass and other types of sport fishing in Japan.


text:
Click to enlarge
My first thought -- "Dr. Wes, you grew out your hair!"
My second thought -- I'm impressed that she's schlepping that stuff by herself in one trip!
My third thought -- wow, I thought it took a lot of equipment to do direct digital radiography on horses in the field.
Nice advert for Medtronic :0
More supplies; more to bill! And the more dazzled the patient is.
Must have been bi-ventricular pacing, eh?
Medtronic=Amateur hour
They need a bag for the fidelis extraction kit!


text:
illustration for brazilian newspaper.
illustration for brazilian newspaper.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
kidnapped by the workload.
Posted by Fábio Moon at 4:19 PM 0 comments
Monday, September 25, 2006
Rod Reis.
Rod Reis is a brazilian colorist, currently coloring Supergirl for DC. I did this sketch friday while listening to him talk at a comics school here in Sao Paulo.
Posted by Fábio Moon at 3:58 PM 0 comments
Friday, September 22, 2006
illustration for a brazilian newspaper.
I had an hour to do this illustration and five others for a piece about the latest corruption news in Brazil for a brazilian newspaper. This kind of work is good because it makes you learn how to think fast, it sure makes you draw faster and it puts into perspective how much detail is necessary to convey what you want with your art.
Back to making comics look better.
Posted by Fábio Moon at 12:50 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Two from 1997
Old cover images from our fanzine in 1997. This is what it was like in 1997 and the entire reason we started telling our own stories.
We were lost on the road, no entirely sure what we would do.
Things didn't look good.
But they sure looked pretty.
Posted by Fábio Moon at 8:07 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
fragile things.
Jen Wang's Home Portrait was the beautiful find of the day.
Also, I've been drooling over Bengal's work. Such a delicate line work, specially on his girls.
here, an old sketch:
Posted by Fábio Moon at 11:26 PM 2 comments
this week's numbers.
According to this site, Casanova 2 held the 196th spot at the top 300 comics of July. Now, according to this other site, we can see Casanova 3 at the 200th spot.
If steady wins the race, until when we get to issue 4 and 5 and the numbers start increasing (because they are increasing).
A monthly book is a completely different beast from all our previous work on graphic novels. The good side is the constant feedback, and the downside is this uncertainty about the numbers.
So far, the numbers have been good, but should we really be that obsessed by them? we should know they're there and hope for the best, but sometimes I think knowing all that about "who sold what" and "that's selling more than this" is not good for the creative mind.
The ideas should come to tell the story, and sometimes they don't come if you're just thinking about something else, like numbers and money.
I'm on page 12 of the Graphic Novel. If all goes well, I should hit page 20 before next week.
Ba's on page 10 of the current issue of Casanova he's doing.
I did 2 submission pages.
Those are the numbers I rather talk about.
Posted by Fábio Moon at 3:37 PM 1 comments
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Friday, September 15, 2006
One of the several illustrations I'm doing for a book this month.
Posted by Fábio Moon at 10:43 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Nobody shoots my shoes.
It was around this time of year in 2004 when I started drawing Smoke and Guns. At the same time, I was doing some work at Lobo, and this job, which was an animation for an tv show, was done together with another motion design company called MK12. The guy at MK12 who was creating the scripts used in the animations was a guy we had just heard of when we read his comic book two months before: Matt Fraction.
I guess everything happens for a reason.
Posted by Fábio Moon at 10:59 AM 0 comments
the AiT way of life.
I guess this ad comes to remind people there's always time to catch up with the good stuff we've done (and other good stuff in general).
Click HERE for Smoke and Guns.
Click HERE for Ursula.
Click HERE if you want to buy it online.
Posted by Fábio Moon at 12:50 AM 0 comments
Monday, September 11, 2006
"I wonder what is he doing", she said. "Do you think he's safe?"
The old man stood quiet, just holding his bell. The sound that came out of it sounded like the answer she was afraid to get.
"You know him better than anyone else."
"Is he ever safe?"
"Is he ever not in trouble?"
Posted by Fábio Moon at 1:02 PM 2 comments
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Has the world gone mad, or is it just me?
Something happened while I was doing these pages in the forest. I wanted to know what those characters were saying.
That's always a good sign.
I have 20 pages thumbnailed. Today I start drawing. If all goes well, I'll be able to keep doing one or two pages a day. If all goes more than well, this new technique I'm using will look nice and will actually be faster than the way I'm currently doing comics.
And, after a month's work, I'll have a lot of pages of nineteenth century people discussing if the world has gone mad.
(They won't look like the ones Becky's doing, but I'll try to entertain you just as well.)
Posted by Fábio Moon at 12:51 PM 2 comments
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
New ones. One from each.
Not too much to say about this image, aside the fact that I'm pretty happy with it. Best forest I've ever done.
These are studies for characters for a book Ba's illustrating.
We have been working so much that, instead of getting tired of it, we're getting more and more excited.
"This", we think, "is really what's like to wake up and draw comics until you finish your day."
"This is our life now."
"This is good."
Posted by Fábio Moon at 1:15 PM 1 comments
Monday, September 04, 2006
More pictures and less words.
We're just drawing too much. Working too much.
We are creating some amazing cool stuff, but it takes a lot of our time. Because of that, we have been far from the computer. If this can be a bad thing, I'm not really sure, but the pay-up is coming, and it's awesome.
I might try to update with more pictures and less words, just to keep thing rolling.
This is the cover for Casanova 7.
Posted by Fábio Moon at 2:59 PM 2 comments


text:
Distance students go the extra mile from the comfort of home
Document Type
Publication Date
Distance students go the extra mile from the comfort of home
Raelee Bishop isn't your typical college student.
She has managed to maintain a teaching career in western North Dakota and Montana all while pursuing a master's degree at the University of North Dakota in K-12 Counseling.
This was done with the help of UND's distance learning program.
Bishop was a Family Consumer Science instructor in Stanley, N.D., when she heard about the distance counseling program at UND through fellow Stanley teacher Sarah Sorenson, who was a veteran of the program already.
Bishop liked the idea of being able to pursue her master's degree without having to uproot her life.
"Even though the program is online, I feel as though I still learn as much as I would from being in a regular program," said Bishop, who is now working for a school district in her native Montana.
Dorlene Walker, coordinator of the UND master's school counseling distance program, firmly believes the program provides great benefits not only for its students but for local communities as well.
"It serves a population that wouldn't otherwise get served and brings highly qualified counselors to rural communities, Walker said.
Bishop recently left her job in Stanley to pursue an internship opportunity in Simms, Mont., where she takes care of the counseling duties for grades 7-12.
"It was a great opportunity for me to get paid and fulfill my internship requirement at the same time while gaining valuable experience in my chosen field," she said.
This internship is an important requirement for her counseling master's degree. She needs to fulfill 100 practicum hours and 400 internship hours to obtain her degree from UND. That's in addition to her other distance course work and the requirement to attend about a week of classes with her cohort on UND's Grand Forks campus a couple times a year.
For Bishop's former colleague in Stanley, Sarah Sorenson, the decision to pursue a counseling degree was hastened by a desire to improve the way students personal-social issues were being addressed at her school.
Sorenson is doing just that now as the elementary counselor in Stanley, a growing school district in the heart of the North Dakota oil patch.
"There are so many people who just need someone to listen to them, to believe in them or just notice them," Sorenson said. "I'm lucky, because as a school counselor, I get to be that person."
In her third year of the distance counseling program at UND, Sorenson recommended the program to Bishop because of her positive experiences.
"My professors and TAs (teaching assistants) have been encouraging and supportive while at the same time pushing me to work hard and teaching me the tools to be the best school counselor I can be," she said.
No matter the distance, Bishop and Sorenson agree that the UND's distance program provided them the right education for their passion to work with kids and become counselors.
Kate Menzies
University and Public Affairs student writer
Recommended Citation
Kate Menzies. "Distance students go the extra mile from the comfort of home" (2013). UND News Features. 327.


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