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South African Journal of Education
versão On-line ISSN 2076-3433
versão impressa ISSN 0256-0100
S. Afr. j. educ. vol.28 no.1 Pretoria Fev. 2008
The perceptions of teachers and school principals of each other's disposition towards teacher involvement in school reform
Cassie Swanepoel
Cassie Swanepoel is Professor in the Department of Further Teacher Education at the University of South Africa and provides tuition in research methodology and mathematics education. He has 28 years teaching and research management experience and his focus is on educational change and environmental education.
Worldwide teachers are faced with the task of continuously facilitating and implementing educational reform that has been designed without their participation. This exclusion of the key agents, who must mediate between the change agenda and actual change in the classroom, from the planning and decision-making processes, is detrimental to educational reform. Although school-based management has recently emerged as the instrument to accomplish the decentralisation of decision-making powers to school level, the success thereof depends largely on school principals' disposition regarding teacher involvement. It is argued that the expectation of principals regarding their own leadership role, as well as the professional role teachers should fulfil, is a primary determinant of principals' willingness to involve teachers in responsibility-taking processes outside the classroom. The results from an empirical investigation revealed that principals' perception, of the wishes of teachers regarding involvement, significantly underestimated teachers' actual involvement wishes. Likewise, the expectation of teachers regarding the willingness of principals to involve them was a significant underestimation of the involvement level principals are actually in favour of. These misperceptions probably discourage actual school-based management and could jeopardize the implementation of educational reform in general.
Keywords: decentralised decision-making; educational change; principals' perceptions; school-based management; school reform; teacher involvement; teachers' perceptions;
For an individual, institution or business organisation to cope in a world, where the tempo of change is escalating at an alarming rate, it is of cardinal importance to be able to adjust to and manage change. Radical change impacting on all aspects of life has been the order of the day during the past decade or two in South Africa and will probably continue for years to come. The entire education system, in particular, which is often seen by politicians and governments as an instrument for social engineering and the creation of economic growth, is affected in this regard. Consequently, not only in South Africa but in many countries, teachers have been faced with the task of continuously facilitating and implementing education reform that was designed without involving them (Hargreaves & Bascia, 2000).
It is debatable whether imposed educational change can successfully be implemented and sustained without the agents (teachers), who mediate between the change agenda and the actual change in the classroom, buying into the change agenda. The necessity of involving teachers not only as implementers but also as shared decision-makers during the initiating, planning and management phases is reported in numerous research publications such as Hargreaves, Lieberman, Fullan and Hopkins (1998), Kirk and Macdonald (2001), Singh and Lokotsch (2005) and Frederics, Blumenfeld and Paris (2004). The following two quotes are examples of pronouncements regarding the need for teacher involvement. Carl (2005:228) states that teachers do not wish to be viewed as mere recipients who are to implement and that "... they expect to be included in the initial process of meaningful decision-making where their voices will be heard". According to Poppleton and Williamson (2004:289),
the more teachers participated in responsible and initiating roles in school change, the more positive they felt about the change, and the more willing they were to seriously engage in future change.
From the previous paragraph it is evident that the crux of teacher involvement is shared decision-making. In this regard Bradshaw and Buckner (Botha, 2004:239) argue that the significant changes and reforms demanded of schools can only be attained through devolution of power and through shared decision-making that encourages people to change and address educational problems. Thereunto, it seems that the decentralisation of decision-making powers to the local and school level is currently an international trend (Kruger, 2003:206). Concerning the South African state of affairs, a new education system has been developed in compliance with the constitutional dispensation that was introduced from 1994. A bold and imaginative set of policies has consequently been developed and implemented. In fact, some of these are still in the process of being implemented or refined. An example of the latter, related to this study, is the South African Minister of Education's announcement towards the end of 2005 that she intends introducing legislation that will increase the powers and authority of school principals and thereby curb the role of school governing bodies (Naidoo, 2005). The reason given for this intended policy adjustment is that there is a need to re-assert the professional responsibility of principals. In general, the South African Schools Act of 1996 authorises the establishment of democratic structures of school governance in all schools (Republic of South Africa, 1996). The rationale is that all stakeholders (educators, parents, learners and non-teaching staff) will actively participate in the governance of schools (Van Wyk, 2004:49).
The challenge of shared decision-making at school level
It is evident that the role of the school principal has changed dramatically lately. In order to implement educational reform, school-based management has apparently emerged as the instrument to accomplish the decentralisation of decision-making powers to school level (Squelch, 2000:128; Mosoge & Van der Westhuizen, 1998). This implies an increase in the responsibilities of school management teams and especially the school principal. The central role that a principal plays in all programmes of a school entails that he/she has a considerable effect on the tone and ethos of the school (Kruger, 2003: 206). Linking up with this view Botha (2004:239) claimed that "... the role of the school principal becomes even more pivotal and important as these new changes come into effect". The intended adjustment to legislation concerning the professional responsibility of principals, mentioned in the previous paragraph, will probably enhance the leadership role of the principal and will ensure that he/she will become even more influential regarding a variety of school related matters, including educational reform.
An increase in the responsibilities of the school principal naturally results in an increase in workload. It therefore appears that the workload of principals has become more and more unmanageable, and especially secondary school principals lack the time for, and an understanding of, their leadership task (Botha, 2004:239; Edwards, 2002:4; Steyn, 2002:251). This state of affairs could surely impact on principals' view of teacher involvement in shared decision-making, since the latter management style could be regarded as a lot more time-consuming than the more familiar autocratic style of management. Support for this notion is found in, inter alia, a recent collection of writings on dilemmas that principals encounter in engaging teachers in the sharing of leadership in schools (Chrispeels, 2004).
Principals in South Africa have been prescribed, to a large extent, by education authorities on how to fulfil their management task. However, until recently they could accomplish their task with relative sole authority within the prescribed parameters, without being compelled to seriously involve other stakeholders. Heystek and Paquette (1999:191) mention in this regard that neither educators nor parents have had much experience of participatory decision-making since, in the past, principals were generally considered to be the only people with the knowledge and authority to make decisions. The shift that has occurred, from the old authoritarian paradigm and accompanying view of power, is however not a straightforward matter for all school principals, if one keeps in mind that the majority of principals were teachers who advanced into administrative posts with little or no management training.
As mentioned earlier, previously teachers were not really part of the education decision-making processes, despite the fact that research results have reiterated this necessity over and over. Teachers' desire to be involved has also been reported in numerous research publications. Poppleton and Williamson (2004:289), for example, mention that they found that the active involvement of teachers in school change was more powerful than any of the study's other variables for promoting positive work life outcomes for teachers as well as generating teachers' receptiveness and positive feelings towards change itself. It appears, though, that teachers have a perception that they are excluded from decision and management processes. Carl (2005:223), for instance, found that teachers' perception was that, although they were the subject and/or learning area specialists, little attention, if any, was given to their voice.
Although teacher involvement in initiating and responsibility-sharing processes seems to be imperative, it is important to keep in mind that whether change amounts to reform, restructuring, or innovation, teacher participation in these processes implies a new layer of responsibilities and an additional workload (Poppleton & Williamson, 2004:310). This aspect could be a significant factor, taking into account that previous studies have revealed that South African teachers have to cope with a workload that has increased quite significantly over the last couple of years (Swanepoel & Booyse, 2003: 97). In a recent research project, conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council, confirmation was found for this trend when it was revealed that more than 80% of teachers believed that their workload had increased a lot since 2000 (Rademeyer, 2005:2). Unfortunately, this reality creates some doubt whether teachers want to be involved unconditionally in more responsibilities, even if they are change initiatives that could have a positive influence on their work environment.
Complicating the scenario of teacher involvement even more is the fact that a considerable proportion of teachers are not sufficiently qualified or trained and they lack the competences to either implement the new policies capably or take part in the decision-making processes in the school. It is doubted whether substantial progress has been made since 1995, when only 64% of the full-time equivalent teachers were considered to be fully qualified (Booyse & Swanepoel, 2004:174). To embrace transformation when one is not properly qualified and probably overworked is demanding a lot.
Research problem and aim of investigation
In the previous paragraph some of the issues that could probably hamper the involvement of teachers in shared decision-making in schools were highlighted. An aspect that has received scant attention in research, in this regard, deals with the perceptions of teachers and principals regarding each others' disposition towards teacher involvement in decision-making and responsibility-taking processes. It is argued that what happens towards the implementation of shared decision-making depends to a large extent on principals' assumption of the position of teachers' desire to be involved, on the continuum apathetic-pushy. The same applies to how supportive teachers think principals are about including them totally committed to including them on one pole of the continuum to extremely hesitant on the other pole.
It is foreseen that role expectations are closely related to the above perceptions. The way a principal interprets his/her own professional role, and the role teachers should fulfil, is expected to be a primary determiner of the willingness of principals to involve teachers in particular tasks or responsibilities as well as their perception of what teachers wish for in this regard. The same applies to what teachers think and anticipate.
In previous research it was found that in South Africa, as well as in each of nine other countries, there is fairly strong support from principals for the involvement of teachers in most school change activities. Moreover, it appears that opportunities for teacher involvement in school change responsibilities may be more readily available than teachers actively seek (Swanepoel & Booyse, 2006). Empowerment of teachers, however, entails not only giving permission but also creating opportunities. Therefore, the question arises whether it is possible that misplaced perceptions could hamper the creation of opportunities for teacher involvement and/or for taking up the opportunities that are available.
In order to address the above question this research aimed at determining whether teachers' perceptions of principals' support, and conversely principals' perceptions of teachers' desires to be involved in responsibility-taking, hampered the active involvement of teachers in school-based management regarding school change initiatives.
Methodology matters
Research design
Initially, a review of the literature was undertaken to establish the nature and limitations of teacher involvement in school change. This was followed by a cross-country empirical investigation, which consisted of two quantitative investigations that can be described as exploratory. Two structured questionnaires, which were interrelated, were developed in order to obtain the views and perceptions of secondary school principals and of teachers, respectively, on the involvement of teachers in responsibility-taking for school change initiatives. Samples of principals and teachers were drawn in 10 countries. Although the research project was designed to enable cross-country comparisons, in this article I focus mainly on the results obtained from the South African samples with only reference to 10-country trends where applicable.
Data gathering
In order to obtain comparable data from the 10 countries, which participated in the research project, it was necessary to apply the same questionnaire to secondary school principals in each of the countries and likewise a questionnaire to secondary school teachers. This implied that the two instruments should have been of such a nature that, to a large extent, they suited each country's unique educational setting. Besides the native language alterations, no other alterations or deviations from the questionnaire were possible since this would have jeopardized cross-country comparisons.
A research team from the University of Michigan took the lead in the development of the two questionnaires. Each consisted of the same 20, tightly focused items that represented aspects of school change in which teachers could possibly be involved in sharing responsibility. These aspects were identified from existing literature as well as own experience. Role expectation theory played an important role in this process. The primary role expectation for a teacher was defined to encompass any action that had a direct impact on day-to-day classroom activities. In the same manner the primary role expectation for principals was defined as administration of the school, which implies planning, organising, supervising, and co-ordinating the activities of teachers, other staff, and learners in order to meet the safety concerns and educational expectations of parents and the community. Back-translation procedures were employed in the precise construction of the items and native language alterations were done where required. Country-specific field-testing was also conducted.
For each of the 20 items, school principals were requested to answer the following two questions:
How much do you think teachers want to take part in this responsibility?
How much do you feel teachers should take part in this responsibility?
The two questions teachers were requested to respond to were:
How much do you wish to take part in this responsibility?
How much does your principal think teachers should take part in this responsibility?
All four questions were answered according to a five-point Likert-type scale, namely: none/little/some/much/very much.
Both the questionnaire for teachers and the questionnaire for school principals were disseminated by research teams from 10 countries. The research teams were from Australia, Canada, China, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, and the USA. In accordance with the collective cross-country design the South African sample of principals consisted of 50 secondary school principals drawn from urban-suburban areas in Gauteng province. The South African sample of teachers comprised 176 secondary school teachers, drawn from similar areas as the principals.
Data analysis
With a view to simplifying the complexity of cross-country comparisons as well as teacher-principal comparisons, the items were clustered into four indexes (clusters) according to similarity of theme or function. The four clusters were considered to be conceptual units and formed four new variables for data analysis. It was argued that this process would lead to a reasonable amount of data reduction and clusters would be obtained, each consisting of enough items to yield a reasonable reliability coefficient.
The four clusters were labelled Administration and co-ordination, Human relations, Teacher support and Classroom activities, respectively. The Administration and co-ordination cluster, which related to the primary role of the principal as administrator, consisted of items that dealt with staffing, budgeting, assigning learners to classes and staff meetings. Items that dealt with relations with external groups or teacher-staff-administration relations were assigned to the Human relations cluster. The Teacher support cluster comprised items that dealt with assistance or support of teachers. Items grouped in the Classroom activities cluster related to curriculum matters, student behaviour and class schedules. Also included in the last cluster were the issues of implementing and evaluating change, since it was assumed that most changes affected the classroom environment and classroom activities.
It was, furthermore, hypothesised that the cluster means would increase in the order in which the clusters were listed in Table 1. In this regard the previously mentioned role expectations for principals and teachers were used to determine the ascending order of clusters. It was argued that, theoretically, it was expected that the positioning of the clusters would correspond to the following four involvement levels along a continuum of role responsibility:
Primarily a principal's function
Mostly a principal's function with some teacher responsibility
A principal's function with major teacher responsibility
Mostly a teacher's function with some principal responsibility
The statistical analysis of the single-country data consisted of obtaining response percentages, distributional percentages, means for each item and each cluster as well as grand questionnaire means. Reliability coefficients (Cronbach alpha) were calculated for the cluster averages and grand questionnaire means. To identify systematic similarities and differences in result-patterns, t tests of pairs of ordered means and one-way ANOVAS followed by the application of a Newman-Keuls test of differences among ordered means (Pagano, 1990:361) were utilised. Subsequently, the data for all countries were combined so that both univariate and multivariate analyses could be used for cross-country comparisons.
Discussion of results
A synopsis of the results obtained from the questionnaires, completed by the South African samples of teachers and principals, respectively, is presented in Table 1. In order to simplify the description of the results, responses obtained from principals, on the question of how much they thought teachers wanted to be involved, are referred to as principals' perceptions. Likewise their views, on how much teachers should be involved, were labelled principals' support. Responses obtained from teachers, on how much they wished to be involved, are similarly referred to as teachers' desire and their perceptions on how much their principals thought teachers should be involved as teachers' perceptions. The means of the responses to each of the four questions with respect to each of the 20 items are given in Table 1. Also included are means for the item clusters as well as grand questionnaire means. All the means are means of responses on the five-point scale given at the bottom of Table 1.
In the section on 'Data analysis' it was mentioned that the 20 questionnaire items were grouped into four clusters according to their conceptual similarity. It was argued that indices consisting of items with common themes tend to be much more reliable than individual items. The international team also decided that a cluster score would be considered to have sufficient reliability to provide useful results if it obtained a Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of at least 0.70. This expectation was fulfilled in the sense that reliability coefficients higher than this criterion were obtained for all the clusters (see bottom of Table 1). Likewise, the reliability coefficients of 0.90 and higher, which were obtained for the questionnaire totals, were acceptable.
It was mentioned earlier (see section on Data analysis) that the four clusters were listed, in ascending order, according to the theoretical expectation of their expected score levels. In this manner the theoretical premise allowed us to predict the relative magnitude of principals' ratings for various groups of responsibilities. The results included in Table 1 indicated that, for both principals and teachers, the ascending order of the cluster means concurred with the theoretical expectation and listing. Parenthetically, this tendency was confirmed in every country without a single exception. (The data are not provided for all the other countries because they are too space consuming.) The confirmation of the theoretical expectation by the statistical analysis suggested that both the underlying theory and the questionnaires used complied with the prerequisites of construct validity.
A closer look at Table 1 reveals that with the exception of one item, the item means, cluster means and grand means obtained were higher regarding the teachers' desire to be involved column than the principals' perception of teachers' desire to be involved column. Similarly, the item means, cluster means, and grand means with respect to the principals' support of teacher involvement responses were higher than the corresponding means with respect to the teachers' perception of principals' support for teacher involvement responses, except for three item means. In order to determine how much value could be attached to these tendencies, it had to be established to what extent the differences between the various means were significant. A t test of pairs of ordered means was consequently applied to the data to ascertain whether the grand means and cluster means differed significantly when teachers' desire was compared with principals' perception and principals' support with teachers' perception. A synopsis of the results of the additional analyses appears in Table 2. Although in this article I focus mainly on the South African context, the corresponding results of the 10-country sample are included, in this instance, in order to interpret the earlier results against the broader context. The results from a Newman-Keuls test, that were applied to obtain statistical clarity on the significance of the differences between the cluster means of the principals' responses mutually and for the teachers' responses, likewise, are also indicated in the table.
From Table 2 it is evident that with regard to the South African samples the TD minus PP values of all the clusters as well as the grand mean were higher than the criterion for significance of 0.20. This implied that these values could be considered as significant differences. We could, therefore, conclude, with the necessary confidence, that the South African teachers who were included in the sample wished to be more involved in school change initiatives and related responsibilities than the amount principals anticipated they wanted to be involved. It was also illuminating that exactly the same tendency was found for the combined 10-country sample. The TD minus PP values for the latter were all above the 0.10 criterion for significance.
To determine how principals' views on the amount that teachers should be involved in school change activities compared with teachers' perceptions of principals' views in this regard, the PS minus TP values (Table 2) must be scrutinised. As far as the South African situation is concerned the values mentioned were all equal or higher than the criterion of 0.20, except the one obtained for the Administration and co-ordination cluster. With the exception of this cluster of items, it could, similarly, be stated that the amount of teacher involvement in school change that principals deemed desirable exceeded the amount of involvement teachers believed principals were in favour of. The corresponding values for the combined 10-country data showed a similar picture except that the cluster value, which did not meet the criterion for significance in the case of South Africa's data, also complied with the requirement for significance in the case of the 10-country data.
Another interesting observation that emerges from Table 2 is how the magnitude of the teacher-principal differences fluctuated from cluster to cluster. The difference between the teachers' desire to be involved and the principals' perception of the teachers' desire was considerably higher for the Administration and co-ordination and Human relations clusters than the other two clusters (DT minus PP column). This is of significance when one bears in mind that the two clusters mentioned were, more than the other two, linked to the domain that could be considered as primarily a principal's function. On the other hand, when one considers the magnitude of the differences between principals' support and teachers' perception of principals' support a reverse tendency was found. The magnitude of differences increased along with the ascending order that was theoretically determined and statistically verified. In the latter the difference value increased from basically no significant difference in the case of the Administration and co-ordination cluster to the biggest difference in the case of the Classroom activities cluster.
In addition to what was previously concluded about the gap between how much principals think teachers want to be involved in school change activities and what teachers really desire, it was also clear from the results mentioned in the previous paragraph that teachers wanted to be involved more holistically regarding the scope of responsibilities than the role principals anticipated teachers wished to fulfill. A further confirmation of this inference is found in the significance of cluster mean differences as indicated in the last row of Table 2. According to these tabulations principals assumed that teachers wanted to be significantly more involved in Teacher support and Classroom activities than the rest of school change activities. Concerning the gap between principals' support and teachers' perception thereof, it is notable that the amount of support principals were in favour of increased along the order that we had predicted (PS column) while teachers' perception of such support remained more or less the same along the spectrum Human relations, Teacher support, Classroom activities (HTC is underlined in the last row, column TP). It appeared, therefore, that teachers did not believe that principals would more likely support teacher involvement in aspects directly linked to the classroom than aspects more distant from their day-to-day teaching.
Concluding remarks
Worldwide educational change has been a topical point of discussion in recent years. A survey of publications on this topic, whether newspaper reports or published research, reveals that the successful implementation thereof has frequently failed. A consideration of published research on the ins and outs of this issue shows that education systems worldwide apparently do not make full use of teachers as a professional resource in initiating, planning, and implementing school change. It appears that the role of teachers as key agents in the facilitation of such change is, for the most part, overlooked or plainly ignored. However, can it be taken for granted that the majority of teachers want to be involved in change initiatives?
While it is common knowledge that the workload of South African teachers has increased considerably in recent years, it can be expected that not all teachers would be keen to be involved in additional responsibilities. In this regard Swanepoel and Booyse (2006) mention that it appears that opportunities for teacher involvement in school change responsibilities may be more readily available than teachers actively seek.
Arising from the opposing perspectives mentioned above, this study was undertaken to obtain more clarity on how school principals and teachers perceive each other when teacher involvement in school change is at stake. The two questionnaires, which were developed to obtain the views of school principals and teachers, respectively, in ten countries, proved to be suitable instruments for this purpose. Notwithstanding the risk that instruments, developed for use in various countries, are often not perfectly suited for each country, these results indicated that in this case the questionnaires demonstrated the required validity and reliability. The pattern of results supported the theoretical framework used to classify school change activities into clusters as well as the particular listing of clusters.
From the responses of principals and teachers it was evident that the mean scores of both principals' perception and teachers' perception were not only above average but also higher than the 10-country means. Consequently, it could be inferred that, judged on its own merits, neither of these perceptions could be described as negative. On the other hand the results revealed that the amount principals thought teachers should be involved in school change was significantly higher than what teachers anticipated in this regard, especially when it came to responsibilities closely related to classroom activities. Likewise, the amount teachers wished to be involved was significantly more and the range of responsibilities significantly larger than what principals expected to be the case. From these results one concludes that principals and teachers have negative perceptions of each other when it concerns teacher involvement in responsibility-sharing regarding school change.
These misperceptions may contribute to a situation where principals do not promote teacher involvement but rather restrict it, while teachers feel excluded and estranged from the decision-making processes with the accompanying negative influence on their professional life and professional growth. This not only discourages shared principal-teacher vision and planning of school change but jeopardizes the implementation of educational change in general. While it is obvious that there is still a way to go towards school principals as well as teachers attaining mindset changes regarding educational change governance, follow-up research is needed on how to effect this.
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H. G. Wells eBooks
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books.
Together with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".Wells was an outspoken socialist and sympathetic to pacifist views, although he supported the First World War once it was under way, and his later works became increasingly political and didactic.
His middle-period novels (1900–1920) were less science-fictional; they covered lower-middle class life (The History of Mr Polly) and the "New Woman" and the Suffragettes (Ann Veronica).

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Bring a world of innovation right to your classroom walls with this free map that highlights inventions and breakthroughs in countries around the globe.
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UPDATE: Scott Merkin says Chris Sale will have an MRI on his elbow tomorrow when the Sox return to Chicago:
… [Chris] Sale will have an MRI on his elbow Thursday afternoon when he returns to Chicago.
After the results are read from a move that is considered purely precautionary at this point, a decision will be made as to where Sale fits on the pitching staff. Sale still was in the bullpen for Wednesday, but probably not available for the series finale against the Indians, and manager Robin Ventura indicated the bullpen is where he presently envisions Sale staying put.
"That's something we'll go over when we get back home," Ventura said. "This all happened pretty fast. Getting everybody in the room and expressing it face to face is probably the best thing to do. That's when you get the most information and make the right decision.
"We'll see when we get everybody in the room. Personally, I'm probably not making that decision. [Sale's return to the rotation] could happen. I'm not saying it can't but I would be surprised if it did."
… During this down time, Sale came to Cooper and told him that his tender elbow felt great. So, Cooper wanted to revisit starting.
"Nothing is out of the possibility," Cooper said. "He missed a start, we gave him time and we quieted down the elbow that was barking a little bit. We backed off and took care of that situation. Now he's back to pitching."
"It's not for me to make the call on," said an upbeat Sale, when asked about the relieving/starting conundrum. "Those guys obviously, they run the team and they know what they're doing with the team and if they have a decision, it's not like I can say, 'No.' I've obviously talked with them and it's one of those things that you go with what's said and grind it out another day."
… "Everything is swirling around him having pictures taken tomorrow," Ventura said. "He's not hurt. It's more monitoring what's going on and seeing where it's at. It's kind of precautionary stuff that happens all the time."
"Chris Sale is going to be pitching in prime-time spots, whether it's closing, eighth-inning big moments or if we decided, you know what, he's good enough right now and we are going to send him back out starting," Cooper said. "I don't think anything is out of the question, but no matter what he's doing, we are going to be watching him and taking care of him."
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Dark LycanBook - 2013
From the critics
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Really, really enjoyed this book and all of the Dark Lycons books I hope she writes more books about them
Loved this series and this book was a must in the story line. Love the concept of the Carpathians. Christine Feehan is an awesome author. I have read most of her series book and keep coming back for more!!!
All series have some repetition but good fantasy is hard to find so I love this series. I like the intro to a new set of problems, new characters, and loved the newest one "The Wolf" continuing this story.
This series is somewhat predictable but I always enjoy them. And there are dragons!
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WACO, Texas (April 8, 2015) – A lot of people believe the most common reason for power surges is when lightning strikes. And although lightning strikes do account for power surges in the home, and electrical equipment should be protected when storms pass through, lightning strikes are not the main reason for home power surges. Mr. Electric has the main reasons for power surges homeowners should know about.
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Faulty wiring
Old or faulty wiring can cause electrical equipment to short out or create a power surge. If the running of electrical devices is causing breakers to trip, consult an electrician about inspecting the wiring in the home.
Sometimes the reason for power surges may have nothing to do with a homes electrical work. Transformers can malfunction causing surges of electricity to be brought into the home. Power companies will have to fix the transformers before normal power is restored to the home.
The storm season brings lots of lightning, which can be damaging to all electrical equipment in a home. Lightning strikes near power lines cause a spike in electrical pressure by millions of volts. These volts cause the power surge that travels into the home.
For more information about power surges visit mrelectric.com. To learn more about surge protection, click here.
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So basically for my assignment, I need to generate a random integer number between 20 and 90. My textbook leaves a lot to be desired in the explanation of using nextInt(). I want to assign the random integer value to an int that I have already declared called randomAngle. Can anyone explain to me the correct syntax to get this?
I hope I've made myself clear, many thanks


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Livo wrote:I'd like to get a mouse pad for my desk at work, but I work in the printing industry. Something white would turn nasty looking really fast I think.
Is there any way to get darker colors for the background on them?
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The Tambopata Macaw Project: 2012 Update
Donald J. Brightsmith, Janice Boyd, Gabriela Vigo and George Olah
Schubot Exotic Bird Health Center at Texas A&M University Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University
November 2012
The end of the year is rapidly approaching and the macaws are gearing up for another nesting season. This year in the life of the Tambopata Macaw Project was marked by a variety of unforgettable milestones. The most memorable of these was the birth on 23 July of Don and Gaby's daughter, Ms. Amanda Lucile Brightsmith. "Mandy Lu" as she is affectionately known spent her first summer in her rainforest-theme bedroom surrounded by macaw and parrot artwork watching the antics of Samantha our captive bred Yellow-headed Amazon. So once she makes it to the field, she will take the parrots and rainforests of Peru right in stride. Starting in December, Gaby and Mandy Lu will stay in Lima with grandma while Don heads back to Tambopata Research Center (TRC) for the breeding season.
The Chicos: 20 years old and showing their age!
In 1991 – 1993, then project director Eduardo Nycander and his team hand-raised a group of some 30 macaws and released them at TRC. These birds known as "the Chicos" have provided an endless source of distraction and enjoyment as they fly in and out of the lodge at meal times ready to rob from any unguarded plate. However, they have also proven to be an incredibly valuable scientific resource. They have provided important information on macaw health, survival and reproduction. Over the last year, it has become clear that the Chicos are getting old. In April of this year, a staff member at TRC found one of the females, Chuchuy, very sick and sitting on the ground in the middle of the forest. She and her mate, Innocencio, still had one chick in the nest. When Chuchuy dropped out of sight, Innocencio apparently had given her up for dead and immediately began to hang around with a new unknown female. This female helped him defend the nest from a marauding pair of Green-winged Macaws who were looking to take the nest over so they could use it. Within a few days the antibiotics and round the clock TLC given by the macaw project crew started to pay off and Chuchuy began to recover. Once she was strong enough to call, Innocencio heard her and immediately began to make daily visits to her in the lodge. Fortunately after about a week Chuchuy was strong enough to return to the nest and help Innocencio raise the chick to fledging. However, once the chick fledged, the pair lost the nest to the Green-winged Macaws who look to be gearing up to breed there this season.
Another Chico, Tabasco and his wild mate have raised three chicks each year for the last 3 years making him not only the most reproductively successful chico, but the only pair at TRC ever known to fledge three chicks. However, as this new nesting season began last month, Tabasco's nest was occupied by another pair of macaws. When Tabasco finally showed up he was limping, suggesting that he put up a fight before losing his nest. But it looks like he has not given up completely, in mid-November he arrived at the lodge looking terrible. His limp was worse and he had a new cut over his right eye. We are not sure what nest he is fighting for, but it is beginning to look like the most productive macaw we know may not be able to breed this year. When you add this to the disappearance and presumed death of the two Green-winged Macaw Chicos (Matias in 2009, and Asencio in 2011), the loss of one eye by Avecita in 2010, and the quiet disappearance of other Chicos, it becomes clear that these birds are showing their age. In fact by age 20 the birds may already be past their prime. However, we will continue to monitor them closely and see what new lessons we can learn from this incredible group of birds.
Bot flies and macaws: more than just getting under your skin?
Bot flies (genus Philornis) are flies whose larvae are parasites on a wide variety of tropical birds, including parrots. When the flies' eggs touch the skin of a bird, like a baby macaw, the eggs hatch and the larvae burrow in. Here the larvae develop over a period of 1 – 2 weeks before emerging from the skin and flying off to lay eggs on other birds. Since Nov 2000, the researchers of the Tambopata Macaw Project have been collecting data on the bot flies in the macaw chicks and killing or removing the larvae whenever possible. But removing them either required a toxic insecticide or special veterinary procedures. However, in 2010 we had a Eureka! moment, we realized that we could use our trusty snake bite venom extractor. With it, we could suck the bot fly larvae right out of the bird! And the best part is that it required no chemicals, no cuts and the birds didn't mind at all. We also analyzed our 12 nesting seasons of data on the bot flies. Overall we found that almost 30% of all Scarlet Macaw chicks had at least one bot fly, and those that had bot flies got an average of 5 bot flies before they fledged. In three cases the infestations were so bad or the larvae damaged critical organs and the chick was actually killed by the bot flies. But now with our easy method of removing the larvae, we hope that our project and others which are threatened by these parasites can help prevent chick death from these nasty little larvae.
Satellite telemetry: Macaws movements remain a puzzle
In order to better understand how macaws use their rainforest homes, we have been using satellite telemetry collars to track birds since 2008. During this time we have been helping to develop and test the hardware, determining the error of the locations, and creating a mechanism to allow the collars to fall off after the batteries die. It has been lots of work, but we have made great strides and discoveries during this process, and now we are ready to focus on the biology of the birds!
In January of 2012 we were able to collar three Scarlet Macaws: the males at the nests Angeles, Ceiba and Franz. With this we now have 6 years' worth of data on Scarlet Macaws and 4 years' worth of data on Blue-and-gold Macaws. Each year we have made exciting new discoveries, showing with each insight that we have much more to learn. In 2011 the male from Angeles worked his way off to the north east of TRC through April and May. By late May he had crossed over in to Bolivia and was over 150 km from TRC. In 2012, the same bird moved up to the northeast again, but this time he stopped just on the edge of Puerto Maldonado and never traveled more than about 50 km from TRC.
Our three Scarlet Macaw males in 2012 all moved to the north east after breeding ended at TRC. This confirmed the pattern from previous years and revealed an interesting larger pattern: after breeding the Blue-and-gold Macaws from TRC moved to the southeast, while the Scarlet Macaws all move to the northeast. The big question now becomes what is driving these movements? We are not sure, but this winter we are initiating a detailed habitat based analysis of these data and hopefully this will provide more insight in to these dramatic movements.
Nest monitoring: our fears assuaged
For quite some time we have been worried that climbing up to the nests was having a negative impact on the hatching and survival of the Scarlet Macaws we study. However, this year we conducted detailed statistical analyses on nearly 150 nesting attempts over 12 years to determine how different factors like nest type, tree type, nest history and climbing affect the nesting success of the Scarlet Macaws we study. Fortunately, this analysis has shown that the number of times we climb up to the nest has no significant effect on the number of eggs that hatch and the number of chicks that fledge. What we did find is that there were no major differences between the success of birds in natural nests, PVC nest boxes and wooden nest boxes. We also found that birds preferred to use larger diameter nests which were successful the year before.
Cement nests: a new take on the old nest box
This past year we made our first artificial nests out of cement based on ideas graciously shared by Maikel Cañizares a parrot researcher in Cuba. However, these were not heavy poured concrete structures, but more like a cement-based "paper mâché" which used burlap cloth soaked in cement. We were a bit worried, as the cement was not as sturdy as hoped. In addition it looks like the cement may have a fair amount of sodium in it. As a result we worry that the macaws might actually eat the nests as a substitute for the clay lick! However we hung our first two cement nests in the forests around TRC and took our chances. As of mid-November 2012, the field crew reports that both nests are holding up well with no signs of damage by macaws or other rainforest creatures. More importantly, both have been explored by Scarlet Macaws and we are hoping that the birds will use them soon.
On the home front: Research at the Schubot Exotic Bird Health Center
Back in Texas, research on captive birds and avian diseases has continued in earnest. In November we published a new scientific article entitled "Nutritional Levels of Diets Fed to Captive Amazon Parrots: Does Mixing Seed, Produce, and Pellets Provide a Healthy Diet?" In this we show that a diet made up of approximately equal parts seed, Zupreem Pellets and vegetables still contained too much seed, too much fat and an incorrect nutrient balance. Once the seeds were reduced or eliminated, the diets became much more appropriate for captive parrots. This paper along with all our other publications is available on our web page.
In order to improve the welfare of the captive birds at the Schubot Aviary, our collaborators Dr. Sharman Hoppes and Kelsey Daugette with a little help from Don conducted a program of Positive Reinforcement Training. Over eight weeks we trained nine birds twice a day for 10 minutes each. During this time most learned to touch a target (a stick), stay in one spot for 30 seconds, accept liquid from a syringe, and step up on to a T-perch. After the eight weeks, we were able to bring in a new trainer and get all birds to work with the new trainer in only a few days. We were very impressed with the progress of the birds, but even more than that, we were impressed by how the rates of alarm calling, pacing in the cage, biting the cage bars, and wing flashing has dropped dramatically when researchers and veterinarians enter the aviary. As a result we feel that the overall level of stress caused by human presence has been reduced through this program. A paper on this project has been accepetd and will be published soon. Watch for the announcement on Facebook.
New work at the Chuncho Clay lick
This December the project staff with help from Dr. Bruce Nixon will launch our first major data collection trip to the Chuncho clay lick. Located only 18 km from the lick at TRC, we have seen this lick many times as we travel up and down the river. Each year there are more and more large macaws here and as a result, there are more and more tourists as well. As the number of tourists increases, so does the possibility of negative impacts on the birds. This first trip will be to get basic data on how many macaws are using the area and what the tourism numbers and tourist behavior are like in the "low season" with the plan of using this preliminary info to launch a larger project next summer.
Volunteer opportunities
Over the past year we have instituted a new volunteer policy, and it has been a wonderful success. We can now take volunteers for visits as short as 2 weeks up to trips as long as 3 months. Students and young biologists, veterinarians, and wildlife managers have always made up the back bone of our data collection teams, and we continue to work closely with such volunteers. However, we can now accept a much wider range of volunteers, so the more mature parrot lovers and even physically fit retirees can now help us do the research that has allowed us to learn so much about the biology and conservation of macaws and other parrots. The fees paid by the short term volunteers help fund our research and the food and lodging for the Peruvian volunteers and staff. Opportunities are available year round, so if you would like to join us as a volunteer please contact Gaby at firstname.lastname@example.com
Thanks to the Schubot Exotic Bird Health Center, Texas A&M University, the Wildlife Protection Foundation, The Parrot Conservation Fund, Kaytee Avian Foundation, Zupreem, the Morris Animal Foundation, PEAC, PhoenixLanding and all the private donors who have supported us in the past year. Thanks also to Gustavo Martinez and all the other employees and volunteers who worked so hard to collect this year's crop of valuable data.


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When water from sprinklers, a hose or rain flows down the street toward the storm drain, it picks up pollutants: fertilizer, motor oil, brake pad dust, trash, dog poop. This, says the Surfrider Foundation, is the No. 1 cause of ocean pollution.
But the nonprofit organization, dedicated to protecting the world's oceans, believes it can be stopped.
Several years ago, Surfrider launched an Ocean Friendly Gardens program aimed at promoting water conservation and soil absorption at home, which would prevent pollution from entering the ocean through urban runoff. With so much of the region paved over, TreePeople estimates that for every inch of rain that falls on Los Angeles, 3.8 billion gallons of water pour into the Pacific. That's close to half of the more than 8.5 billion gallons of water used outdoors by households in the U.S. every day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
"It's like a giant pipeline to the ocean," says Paul Herzog, who coordinates the Ocean Friendly Gardens program. "If we can use that water for our plants, then we won't have to rely on imported water or ground water and we'll eliminate pollution from urban runoff. It's a great two for one."
Part of the program focuses on hands-on workshops led by Los Angeles-based G3 Green Gardens Group. Do-it-yourselfers learn how to transform a garden into a sustainable, urban wildlife habitat with California native and climate-appropriate plants.
"By planting plants that are from our area, it connects us to where we are instead of just having palm trees and grass everywhere," Herzog says. "You get the birds and the bees and the butterflies dependent on those native plants. The monarch butterfly's young depend on milkweed, so that would be a great plant for everyone to have."
The three-hour class walks participants through every step, including turf removal and soil preparation through sheet mulching (also known as the lasagna method, with its alternate layers of paper and mulch). Installing irrigation and adding dry stream beds and other permeable hardscapes, such as decomposed granite, capture water so it can soak into the ground, providing hydration for plants and replenishing the aquifers.
"If you have these little 'sponges' everywhere, you're so much more likely to not only prevent runoff and pollution, but you don't need a big solution anywhere," Herzog says. "It's difficult to clean up water at the end of a storm drain — it's high volume, it's moving fast and you need a lot of room or you need some expensive technological device."
But to have small solutions all over the region?
"It creates multiple benefits," he says. "You get plants and healthy soil, you get habitat and food for native wildlife. If you plant a tree, you get shade for your car or house. These are things you don't get by putting a filter at the end of a pipe."


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[via Geek.com]
Joel is back this week to complete the dynamic duo!
For podcast 23 we focused on Microsoft and everything that has been going on with the company lately. Incredibly, we were able to do this without even getting into Windows 7… that's how much they have going on at the moment. We covered a lot of ground in this fast-moving, slightly abbreviated podcast.
(Note: We had some very minor audio issues, but they only last for a few seconds and occur just a few times in the podcast. They should not be significant enough to affect your listening experience.)
- Clickfree Transformer for iPod backups up your computer to your iPod or iPhone
- Jawbone Prime Bluetooth headset (review arriving shortly)
- Sharktank – a TV show about inventors and VCs – featured an implantable Bluetooth headset
- Jabra's SP200 Bluetooth speaker (which Joel really likes)
- the upcoming Microsoft Zune HD
- MS can no longer sell Word
- Boxee gets another $6 million in funding. We talk about how we use Boxee.
- Microsoft stores on the way to a mall near you
- Microsoft Office lands on Nokia mobile phones through Mobile Communicator
- Chrome 3 browser review
- Moblin 2.0 OS review
You can download the podcast MP3, or you can subscribe using iTunes.


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In the world of stock trading there is no one method for finding good stocks to buy with great returns. There is simply to find what works for you and to realize that your trading knowledge can always be improved upon as you gain more wisdom about the markets. Trading stocks is one area of your life where there is always something new to learn.
In this article I will explain one way that works well for me and I will describe step-by-step how to arrive at some really good stock picks for your portfolio. If you have ever followed the financial news you have no doubt heard some of the financial analysts talk about some of those high-flying stocks that cause you to think, "If I only knew about these stocks before they got popular I would finally make some real money." Well, finding those stocks before the analysts mention them is not only possible, but the more you practice what I am going to show you, it will be very likely that you will notice and trade many stocks before they get the widespread attention given to them by the analysts.
Ever think about what happens to all that money when the stock market goes down or up? If you thought about the fact that when a stock goes down – value simply evaporates, you are onto something important but there is also something far simpler going on here. As stock prices fluctuate an observant person realizes that the money does not evaporate along with value, rather it moves, it changes hands. Think of money like the ebb and flow of the tides. People all over the world commit lots of energy to chasing value and that does not just exist in the stock market. It is everywhere, it is in the currency exchanges, bond markets, you name it. Money is moving all around the globe and when it moves in concert, when many people share the belief that something has value that is where we see the money going. This is a key consideration traders around the globe must consider constantly as they seek to invest their money where they can find the most value appreciation happening.
On a much smaller scale yet no less profitable, this is happening in the stock market every minute of every day and what you will see in a moment is that there are easy ways to see where the money is moving, where some condition exists which is causing an increasing number of traders and investors to accumulate their money in an increasingly favored area of the market.
Every company in a market can be categorized by what industry or sector they are in. Retail, Basic Materials and Energy are a few examples of some widely understood industry sectors. Each of these sectors contain many component stocks assigned to it. More interesting however is that each sector is tracked as to the aggregate performance as if it were an individual stock itself. This is very useful because as a trader you can see how each sector is performing. More importantly – for us as traders, we can compare each sector to one-another as if we are simply comparing two stocks. Taking this simple concept and applying it across many sectors and applying some simple trend analysis, we can easily begin to see which sector is currently in favor.
It is not enough to simply compare any two sectors on a day-to-day basis. While one sector may be outperforming all others today we can not be sure of any underlying performance trend. It is important to look at the performance trend over time to determine whether one sector is gaining in support and overall if it is performing better than other sectors. The goal is to find the best performing sector or the sector that is about to experience great performance according to our trend analysis.
Once we identify the sector with the best potential over all others and we can be relatively certain that the money is flowing into our chosen sector, the next step is to find the component stock within that sector which is contributing to the most to the performance of that sector. This is simply an iterative process where we compare all of the component stocks within that sector until we find the one with the best potential.
The result of applying this simple sector analysis then finding the most promising component stock is that we have identified the strongest stock within the strongest market sector, overall increasing our chances of making a profit from identifying and trading the best of the best.
I have found this method to work consistently enough that I find nearly all of my trades this way and reap fantastic profits from the market. The greatest side-benefit being that the analysts from the financial news often identify and speak about the stocks that I am already trading and I can reap huge rewards as I am consistently one step ahead of the news.


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A historiography by Jeffrey S. Williams
The Northern States were celebrating the end of the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. shortly after 10 p.m. on April 14, 1865. When the president passed away at 7:22 a.m. the next morning, the celebration abruptly stopped and the nation mourned the passing of its wartime leader.
Conflicting eyewitness accounts of nearly every major news story happen frequently and the Lincoln assassination is no exception. Historians still differ on several points surrounding the events of April 1865. Did Laura Keene enter the Presidential Box and cradle Lincoln's head in her lap (Harbin, 1966)? What was Mary Surratt's role in the conspiracy (Larson, 2008)? Yet the one thing that all historians seem to agree on is that the man who pulled the trigger at Ford's Theater on that fateful night was actor John Wilkes Booth.
President Lincoln wasn't even buried when the first myths about his assassination began to surface.
The first myth was perpetuated by John Wilkes Booth himself. When his effects were brought to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, following the assassin's death on April 26, 1865, Booth's personal diary was among the artifacts. He wrote, "I shouted Sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night, with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump" (Kauffman, 2004, p. 399). Eyewitnesses immediately corrected the record about when Booth yelled "Sic Semper Tyrannus," noting that it happened after the shooter landed on the stage. Yet nobody made a reference to Booth breaking his leg at that time (Kauffman, 2004).
Michael W. Kauffman has studied the Lincoln assassination for three decades and believes that Booth's broken leg didn't occur at Ford's Theater. In American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (2004), he writes:
Flying through the door to Baptist Alley, Booth thrust his left foot into a stirrup and almost leaped into the saddle. His movement startled the mare, and she pulled out from under him, leaving him twisting with the full weight of his body on that (supposedly broken) left leg. Peanuts Borrows and Major Joseph Stewart both saw Booth's struggle to throw himself onto the horse, and neither reported anything that suggests he was in pain. Nor did Sergeant Cobb notice any discomfort when Booth approached him to cross the Navy Yard Bridge. Not until Booth reached the tavern in Surrattsville was he clearly suffering from a painful injury. He told John Lloyd that his horse had fallen on him, and he boasted of killing the president. Booth and Herold had switched horses by then. Sergeant Cobb and others were positive that Booth had ridden away on a bright bay mare, and everyone agreed that Herold was on a roan. But outside the city, everyone who encountered them remembered it the other way around. In light of Booth's broken leg, the switch made perfect sense. An injured man would certainly have preferred the gentle steady gait of a horse like the one Herold had rented. From Lloyd's to Mudd's, Booth stayed on that horse, and Herold rode the mare, who was now noticeably lame, with a bad cut on her left front leg. Clearly, she had been involved in an accident. (pp. 273-274).
When the film The Conspirator was released in April 2011, after shooting President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth falls on the stage and clutches his leg. Even though Kauffman's book has been on the market for seven years before the film's release, the myth of Booth's broken leg is still being perpetuated.
Early Writings
The earliest writings of the Lincoln Assassination were newspaper headlines and official dispatches from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Because of the rapidly moving news cycle and the slow telegraph technology, the early facts about the simultaneous assassination attempt of Secretary of State William H. Seward were incorrect, as the preliminary reports suggested John H. Surratt Jr., was the Seward assailant, instead of Lewis Thornton Powell. It took days before the War Department and the newspapers got the basic facts correct (Kauffman, 2004).
The real story of the assassination and the conspiracy didn't start coming out until the trial of the conspirators – Mary Surratt, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Michael O'Laughlin, Samuel Arnold and Edman Spangler, commenced a month later.
In The Trial of the Assassins and Conspirators at Washington City, D.C., May and June 1865, for the murder of President Lincoln (1865), the complete and unredacted transcript of the trial's proceedings were published by T.B. Peterson & Brothers, shortly after the execution of Surratt, Atzerodt, Powell and Herold on July 7, 1865. This coincided with the release of the U.S. Army's heavily edited transcript, The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators (1865), edited by Benn Pitman, the trial's court reporter.
George Alfred Townsend, a veteran journalist during the Civil War, published the daily reports that he wrote for the New York Herald between April 17 and May 17, 1865, into one volume titled, The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth (1865). All three books are source documents for historians today.
Townsend wasn't satisfied with his coverage. He continued to hunt down leads and acquire information about the assassination throughout the remainder of his life. In 1883, he tracked down his biggest lead when he identified the person responsible for hiding Booth and David Herold for one full week they were on the run. Until then, nobody knew what happened to the pair of fugitives except that anonymous person. After repeated attempts at communication, Thomas A. Jones finally came clean and told his story to Townsend after keeping it a secret for 18 years (Swanson, 2006).
Osborn H.I. Oldroyd, a captain in the 20th Ohio Volunteer Infantry who began collecting Lincoln memorabilia in 1860, opened a small museum at the Abraham Lincoln House in Springfield, Illinois, in 1884. A decade later, he moved the museum to the Petersen House in Washington, D.C., where Lincoln died. Oldroyd ran the Petersen House Museum for three decades before selling his collection to the United States Government, which made it the backbone of their current artifact collection at Ford's Theater (McAndrew, 2008).
Eleven years after Jones told his story to Townsend, the 74-year old Jones visited the Petersen House, viewed the museum's artifacts, and examined the room where the late President breathed his last. He then introduced himself to Oldroyd and said, "My name is Thomas A. Jones, and I am the man who cared for and fed Booth and Herold while they were in hiding, after committing the awful deed" (Swanson, 2006, p. 245). Jones died the next year.
Another source document surfaced with the publication of Benjamin Perley Poore's, Perley's Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (1886), in which the newspaperman vividly recreated the scene in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War, including the Lincoln assassination; Lincoln's state funeral; and trial of the conspirators; though he didn't describe the actual hanging of the four conspirators – Surratt, Herold, Atzerodt and Powell. Nonetheless, his descriptions of the events continue to help modern historians paint an accurate picture of the people and places that existed at that time.
The Lincoln Centennial
After the turn of the century, Finis L. Bates wrote, The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth (1907), a largely fabricated story about Booth escaping from the Garrett Farm and fleeing to Enid, Oklahoma. Bates was so convinced that his subject, John St. Helen, was indeed the fugitive assassin that when St. Helen died in 1903, the author took possession of the mummified remains and put them in a traveling display (Bates, 1907). This was the first propagated myth suggesting that Booth might have escaped. The book's source was an alleged granddaughter of John Wilkes Booth, with no proof of her actual relation to the assassin.
The attention to Bates's book caught the attention of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation. In a redacted January 10, 1923 letter, BOI Director William J. Burns wrote:
I have gone over with considerable interest the volume entitled "The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth" by Finis L. Bates of Memphis, Tennessee, submitted by you. The work contains very strong evidence in support of the old belief that Booth did escape and live many years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. This Department has no means of verification other than historic works, as the original case was handled by the military authorities. Thank you for bringing this to my attention (BOI, 1923).
This work led to a lawsuit filed by descendents of John Wilkes Booth's brother, Edwin, to exhume the assassin's body from Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery for identification purposes hoping to put the myth to rest. After a four-day trial in May 1995, Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan denied the family's petition (Wilner, 1996).
The Booth escape myth was propagated as recently as December 23, 2010, when the History Channel ran an hour-long special on Brad Meltzer's Decoded. Despite numerous attempts by historians to rebut the story with evidence that existed in 1865, this is a story that won't go away (Kauffman, 2004).
In February 1909, as the nation observed the 100th birthday of President Lincoln, an address was given to the New York Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. It was titled, Lincoln's Last Hours, written and delivered by Dr. Charles A. Leale, the Army surgeon who attended to Lincoln at Ford's Theater and the Petersen House. Leale claims that he was the one who, "pronounced my diagnosis and prognosis: 'His wound is mortal; it is impossible for him to recover.' This message was telegraphed all over the country" (Leale,, 1909, p. 6). Why did Leale wait for 44 years before recording his memories of that fateful night?
On April 17, 1865, a New York newspaper reporter called at my army tent. I invited him in, and expressed my desire to forget all the recent sad events, and to occupy my mind with the exacting present and plans for the future…Recently, several of our Companions expressed the conviction, that history now demands, and that it is my duty to give the detailed facts of President Lincoln's death as I know them, and in compliance with their request, I this evening for the first time will read a paper on the subject (Leale, 1909, p. 1).
The Leale document is important because it gives historians a first-hand look at the medical care that the president received from the time he was shot until his death the following morning. It also gives historians and surgeons an opportunity to compare older brain trauma techniques with modern medicine.
Dr. Thomas M. Scalea, director of the University of Maryland's Shock Trauma Center, believes that Lincoln could have survived the shooting if today's technology had been available. Through Leale's description of Lincoln's condition, Scalea and other brain surgeons have determined that the round tore a path through the left side of the brain but did not hit the brainsteam or cross the midline, and stopped before entering the frontal lobes. They concluded that it was a survivable wound by modern standards (Brown, 2007).
After her brother was killed by Sgt. Boston Corbett, Asia Booth Clarke began to write her memoirs of growing up with John Wilkes Booth. Because of the public outrage over the assassination, Asia kept it to herself. Her work was not published until 1938. She solicited memories from her other brothers, Junius Jr., Edwin and Joseph. Edwin replied, "Think no more of him as your brother; he is dead to us now, as he soon must be to all the world, but imagine the boy you loved to be in that better part of his spirit, in another world" (Clarke, 1938, p. 92).
Modern Writings
Samuel J. Seymour was a five-year boy when his godmother took him to the theater that night. When he died on April 13, 1956, one day before the 91st anniversary of the assassination, the last witness to the assassination was gone (McClarey, 2011).
Since the passing of Seymour and other witnesses, historians have taken a more objective look at the events of April 1865. The U.S. Government has opened its files to researchers, documents have been located in private collections and more attention has been given to deciphering the accuracy of information.
Michael W. Kauffman's research has been instrumental in bringing new evidence to light. He has examined eyewitness testimony, government reports, transcripts of the conspirator trials, traced the route of Booth and Herold, including rowing a boat across the Potomac from the same location and in the same manner that the fugitives did. He purchased the rolls of microfilm from the National Archives that contain the 11,000 pages of the Lincoln Assassination Suspects file, and then built a custom database to sort and analyze all of his collected information.
The event-based system I designed was far different from the statistical models used by most historians, and it may actually be unique in the way it applies technology to the study of historical developments. Most important, it works. It brought to the fore new relationships among the plotters, unnoticed patterns in Booth's behavior, and a fresh significance to events I once considered unimportant. All this has given me a clearer picture of the Booth conspiracy – including incidents no writer had previously noticed…By sorting events over time, I could see how one conspirator fades from the scene while another is shoved into his place. I got a sense of how much work and money went into the plot. I noticed how carefully choreographed the scheme really was. But most surprising of all, I learned how Booth managed to organize and run a dangerous plot – undetected – in the face of unprecedented government paranoia (Kauffman, 2004, pp. xiii-xiv).
It was this event-based system that allowed Kauffman to discover that Booth broke his leg in a riding accident after he crossed the Washington Navy Yard Bridge and before his arrival at the Surratt Tavern (Kauffman, 2004).
In American Brutus (2004), Kauffman spells out Booth's conspiracy plot in great detail. With dates of meetings and performances, Booths' travel schedule, money transfers and conversations with people, Kauffman succeeds in outlining the conspiracy with great suspense. However, he gives us only a brief glimpse about the reasoning behind Booth's plot, and does not fully follow the investigators who were on the trail of the assassin.
James L. Swanson spent nearly his whole life examining the life and death of Abraham Lincoln. Like Kauffman, his research is thorough and conclusions are concrete. While Swanson didn't put together a significant database of information, he examined many of the same sources as Kauffman, plus looked closer at the newspaper articles from that time period. Swanson published, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer (2006), and picks up where Kauffman left off.
Swanson doesn't spend much time on Booth's background or his planning of the conspiracy plot. Swanson focuses on what happened April 14-26, 1865. He shows us what was going on with Booth and Herold during that time, along with the investigators who were examining leads, which eventually led to their apprehension. He also tells of the extreme difficulties that both the fugitives and the investigators faced during that time, and the overall result of Booth's actions on American history.
John Wilkes Booth did not get what he wanted. Yes, he did enjoy a singular success: he killed Abraham Lincoln. But in every other way, Booth was a failure. He did not prolong the Civil War, inspire the South to fight on, or overturn the verdict of the battlefield, or of free elections. Nor did he confound emancipation, resuscitate slavery, or save the dying antebellum civilization of the Old South. Booth failed to overthrow the federal government by assassinating its highest officials. Indeed, he failed to murder two of the three men he had marked for death on that "moody, tearful night." He did not become an American hero, but he elevated Lincoln to the American pantheon. And, in his greatest failure, Booth did not survive the manhunt. His was not a suicide mission. He wanted desperately to live, to escape, to bask in the fame and glory he was sure would be his. He got his fame, but at the price of his life (Swanson, 2006, pp. 385-387).
While the bulk of the historical attention has been on John Wilkes Booth since 1865, two other conspirators had their biographies recently published. Alias Paine: Lewis Thornton Powell, the Mystery Man of the Lincoln Conspiracy (1993), was published by B.J. Ownsbey; and The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln (2008) was published by Dr. Kate Clifford Larson.
The first part of Larson's work was a disappointment. A careful reading of Kauffman's and Swanson's works, both of which were source documents for The Assassin's Accomplice, would have corrected some of basic historical inaccuracies, including the Booth claim of breaking his leg at Ford's Theater. However, she spends more than half of the book discussing the trial of the conspirators, the rules of evidence, brief profiles of the attorneys involved, the sentencing, plea for the writ of habeas corpus, and the hanging of the guilty, which more than makes up for the inadequacies in the beginning.
As a testament to Larson's professionalism, she admits that she went into the project with preconceived notions of Mary Surratt's innocence but was swayed by the evidence she uncovered during the trial and in her further research.
Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the evidence cannot be ignored. Mary Surratt did indeed keep "the nest that hatched the egg." She could have chosen not to help Booth, but she decided to assist him in whatever way she could. In providing a warm home, private encouragement, and material support to Abraham Lincoln's murderer, she offered more than most of Booth's other supporters. For that, Mary Surratt lost her life and must forever be remembered as the assassin's accomplice (Larson, 2008, p. 230).
What influenced John Wilkes Booth enough to commit his heinous act? Nora Titone believes that it was a bitter rivalry between John Wilkes and his brother, Edwin, following the death of their father, the famed actor Junius Brutus Booth, that led to the assassination.
In My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth that Led to an American Tragedy (2010), Titone examines the relationship between the two brothers and draws some astonishing conclusions. She compares the careers of the two brothers and discovers that John Wilkes was always jealous of the success and accolades that Edwin received during his career, while Edwin dismissed his younger brother as undisciplined.
Since the assassination, historians have wondered why Secretary of State William H. Seward was a target for assassination while other cabinet members were not. She points out that Secretary Seward invited Edwin Booth to a private dinner on March 11, 1864, which was the beginning of a long friendship between the two men (Titone, 2010).
She also discusses Edwin's plan for the three acting brothers to have separate territories in the country before the war. Junius Jr., who was already acting in the western United States, would continue to act west of the Mississippi River; Edwin would hold on to the lucrative Northeast; while John Wilkes was relegated to the southern and Midwestern states that were not as profitable. With John Wilkes touring in the south, he sympathized with them (Titone, 2010).
The history I tell is, in large measure, a theatrical history. For three generations, the Booths lived their lives on, and in the shadow of, the stage. To re-create their particular world, it was necessary to gather thousands of pages of primary sources from archives of nineteenth-century American theater history. Reminiscences of the famous clan abound, penned by fellow actors, by legions of journalists, by multitudes of contemporaries and friends. Most important, however, this narrative draws from over one hundred years' worth of private letters, diaries, memoirs, account books, documents, and journals written by the Booths themselves, as well as from the family's huge collection of playbills, paintings, statues, photographs, theatrical costumes, dramatic reviews, and stage props. My first debt is to librarians, curators, and archivists who guided me on a five-year search through this rich voluminous record (Titone, 2010, p. 457).
Titone gives us a fresh look at an event that has been well documented and heavily researched. Further investigation into some of the events, like the Seward dinner and the 1863 Draft Riots in New York City that had the entire Booth family, including Edwin and John Wilkes, hiding in fear for their lives, would, perhaps, give us a better indication of the reasons behind the assassination (Titone, 2010).
The Future
Even though nearly a century and a half has passed since the assassination of President Lincoln, historians like Kauffman, Swanson, Larson and Titone are only now scratching the surface in telling the story objectively.
However, little has been written about the involvement of other conspirators like John H. Surratt Jr., who was in Elmira, New York, when Lincoln was killed; George Atzerodt, who failed in his attempt to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson; and David Herold, who spent 12 days in hiding with John Wilkes Booth. Other than Dr. Samuel Mudd, little has been written about the lives of Edman Spangler, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlin (Kauffman, 2004).
With the release of The Conspirator, questions have been raised about the life of Frederick A. Aiken, Mary Surratt's attorney. Other minor characters, like Thomas A. Jones, who hid Booth and Herold for seven days while they were fugitives from justice, along with certain myths that continue to be propagated today, are also worthy of further research.
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