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Dear Reader:
Fifty-seven years ago, in Paris, a handful of young expatriates started a little magazine devoted to fiction and poetry. This was not an obvious thing to do in 1953. The smart journals were dominated by criticism. Although they might include the occasional short story or some verse, out of politeness, poetry was treated as an object of specialized study, not as a going concern. Critics had been lamenting the Death of the Novel, and fiction in general, since the end of World War Two.
The Paris Review set out to prove the critics wrong—not by argument, but by example. In its first five years, the Review ran work by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Adrienne Rich, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Jean Genet, and Robert Bly. Let the critics say what they liked (what serious critic could stomach Kerouac and Naipaul?), the writing was alive. The Review never espoused a school. The editors were against schools on principle. They didn't do themes, either, or special issues. Their job, as they saw it, was to find and publish, not things they considered competent, or merely worthy, but things they actually loved.
What the editors lacked in consistency they made up for in breadth of appreciation. As Americans in Paris—and soon, as Americans back in New York—they paid cheerful attention to the artists in their midst. They ran a portfolio of visual art in every issue, often with commentary explaining why they'd chosen it. They also published essays more personal (and peculiar) than could be found in the regular journals. Kenneth Tynan described the death of the bullfighter Manolete. Giacometti gave his impressions of an auto show. Pati Hill wrote about cats.
This was all distinctly retro. It was belletristic. Not for nothing did Tom Wolfe tag George Plimpton, William Styron, Peter Matthiessen & Co. the Imitation Generation. They were living the dream of their youths, a dream shaped by the heroes they interviewed in the Review—Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, T. S. Eliot. They asked each for practical guidance on how the writing got done; they had simply rejected the memo informing them that the stuff they cared about—fiction and poetry—didn't matter anymore, that it wasn't grown-up.
"Perhaps the critics are right," Styron wrote in his preface to the first issue. "This generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation—who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him—but he must go on writing." Roberto Bolaño couldn't have put it better.
Our generation grew up with the Review as a fact of life. It was America's literary magazine. To our minds, it still is. It has launched our favorite writers. It has made a special claim for the quarterly as such, being both timely and lasting, free of the news of the day or the pressure to please a crowd. Most of all, the Review has shown, repeatedly, that works of imagination can be as stylish and urgent as the flashiest feature reporting, and can do more to refocus our picture of the world.
Today we are reminded of 1953. For all the valiant efforts of little magazines, in print and on the Web, literature has again become an afterthought. The smart talk, the smart critical writing, is taken up with politics, the recession, environmental disaster, the wars, the new media, etc., etc., etc. With the rare exception of a book like Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, the big magazines tend to deal with literature in one of two ways, either as entertainment (do people really get dumber at the beach?) or as a duty (eat your vegetables: they're "deeply moving"). Many serious readers have given up on poems and short stories altogether—though, as the contents of this issue prove, both forms are in fighting condition.
Often we hear the question asked, in panels and symposia, "Can the literary journal in print thrive in the age of the Internet?" The real question is not whether journals can survive in some imagined future, but what we ourselves want and need. And when have we needed a great print journal more? Most of us spend our days in an enforced state of distraction, with nothing allowed to sink in. This Review is designed to sink in. It can't be surfed. It won't deliver your e-mail. It is, we submit to you, pleasing to the eye. The works here will demand that you read them from start to finish, or not at all.
Reader, we are constantly told that there aren't enough of you anymore. Experience teaches us otherwise. Even "difficult" writing will find readers, if it is good, and if it comes from a trusted source. Growing up, our generation trusted The Paris Review because the editors knew contemporary writing in a cosmopolitan way. They followed their taste wherever it led and never lost the thrill of discovery. Our hope, as new editors of the Review, is that we will live up to their legacy and rival it, that being the best imitation there is.


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Dusty can't hide his obsession with Josie.
Margo is suspicious of Henry and Vienna.
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Days of our Lives' Brendan Michael Coughlin enjoys playing Tad and being a new dad |
When asked what it is like to play Tad on Days of our Lives, Brendan Michael Coughlin shouts exuberantly, "I love him!" Coughlin has been playing the so-called behind the scenes instigator for the last two years. He has no family that is ever mentioned on the show, but he is there. He came on as Will's (Guy Wilson) best friend, but when it became clear that Will was gay, Tad did everything but bash and degrade and mock him. The irony? At the recent wedding of Will and Sonny (Freddie Smith), he was best man. Go figure! "I know. It has been a wild ride. I did a whole turn around, and I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed doing the wedding. I really enjoy playing this guy. He is a total goof-off. He means well, but is always on the wrong side of the rope." Coughlin said. "I have grown to love him. He is comic relief. I always had dramatic roles, so this is fun." |

subset: commoncrawl


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Country singer K.T. Oslin, who hit it big with the 1987 hit "80′s Ladies" and won three Grammy awards, has died. She was 78.
Oslin's friend Robert K. Oermann said she died in suburban Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday morning. He learned of Oslin's death from her aunt.
The actual cause of death has not been released.
Oermann said Oslin had been suffering from Parkinson's disease and lived in an assisted-living facility since 2016. She had triple bypass surgery in 1995. He said Oslin tested positive for COVID-19 last week.
Oslin became one of Nashville's most intriguing personalities, launching a country music career in her mid-40s and writing songs from a strong woman's perspective.
Her albums "80′s Ladies" and "This Woman" both sold more than 1 million copies.
"K.T. Oslin had one of the most soulful voices in Country Music and was a strong influence for women with her hit '80's Ladies,'" said Sarah Trahern, CEO of the Country Music Association. "I was fortunate to work with K.T. on a number of television shows in the late 90s. She was always gracious to the crews and up-and-coming talent performing alongside her. She truly had one of the best voices in the history of our format. Our thoughts go out to her loved ones at this difficult time."
Entertainment News
In 1988, Oslin unseated Reba McEntire as the Country Music Association's female vocalist of the year. McEntire had won it four straight times.
Her hit singles included "I'll Always Come Back," "Hold Me," "Do Ya," "Two Hearts," "Hey Bobby," "Didn't Expect It to Go Down This Way" and "This Woman." She also wrote many of her songs and played keyboard on several of them.
In her memorable music video for her 1990 No. 1 hit "Come Next Monday," Oslin portrayed the bride of Frankenstein.
Always outspoken, she said in a 1990 Associated Press interview that country music was not necessarily her favorite genre.
"Some of it I like today, some of it I don't," she said. "I don't like the real twangy, hard core, straight ahead old style country music. I like some of it, but on a steady diet, no."
The singer won two Grammy Awards in 1988 for her song "Hold Me." In the previous year, she took home a Grammy for her song "80's Ladies."
Kay Toinette Oslin was born in Crossett, Arkansas, but spent most of her childhood in Mobile, Alabama. As a teenager, she settled in Houston.
Ending up in New York City, she was a chorus girl in theatrical productions and then worked as a studio backup vocalist and ad jingle singer.
Her aunt loaned her $7,000 to finance a Nashville showcase performance, which caught the attention of RCA Records. She signed an RCA recording contract in 1986 at a time when most record companies were looking for singers almost half her age.


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Released by Special Arrangement with Turner Classic Movies Music
FSM is proud to present one of the most important soundtracks ever composed—a landmark in style and form never before available. Many labels have released historically significant scores in recent years, but it is safe to say not one of them matches this one for its artistic achievement and cultural impact. Yes, it's CHiPs, the popular 1977-1983 NBC TV series about Southern California motorcycle cops "Ponch and Jon."
Alan Silvestri is best known today as the composer of stirring symphonic scores such as Back to the Future, Predator, Forrest Gump, and more, but in 1978 he was a struggling musician looking for any reliable employment. CHiPs was a police adventure/drama about to be retooled for its second season, and producer Cy Chermak hired Silvestri to be the show's weekly composer—for which the assignment was to write everything in an upbeat disco style.
Consequently, Silvestri's music for CHiPs bears little resemblance to his latter-day symphonic works (save for a stylistic consistency to his melodies), but for fans of the show, Silvestri's music was an integral part of the show's presentation. Silvestri updated John Parker's theme for the main and end titles, and wrote his own theme (or two) for each weekly episode—all in the catchy disco style of the Saturday Night Fever-era, utilizing a 19-piece orchestra. For fans of the show and the period in general, the energy, fun and "cheese" factor of the music is irresistible.
This premiere release of the soundtrack to CHiPs features music from the show's second season (1978-1979) which was Silvestri's first. In addition to the season's main and end titles, the CD is jam-packed with suites from 16 of Silvestri's episode scores, plus a guest appearance by Bruce Broughton, who scored the year's Halloween episode ("Trick or Trick") in a similar disco vein.
The stereo sound is remixed from the original 1/2" master tapes for terrific quality. Liner notes are by Lukas Kendall featuring new interview material (by FSM's Jeff Bond) with Silvestri and producer Chermak, telling the full story of the music behind CHiPs.
Bruce Broughton (b. 1945) is one of the finest symphonic composers of his generation, with fan-favorite scores such as Silverado and Young Sherlock Holmes headlining many distinguished works for film and television. FSM has released some of his earlier, little-known TV work in episode scores from late 1970s series CHiPs and Logan's Run, as well as his eclectic comedy-sci-fi score for The Ice Pirates. IMDB
Alan Silvestri (b. 1950) is one of the most successful composers in modern-day Hollywood, enjoying a long collaboration with Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) and scoring box-office hits like Predator, The Mummy Returns and Night at the Museum. While he is best-known today for his symphonic scores, he began his career as pop/R&B guitarist and many of his early scores for film and television are in pop styles—including his fan-favorite disco scores to the 1977-1983 CHiPs. IMDB
Click on track TIME for MP3 sound clip. Click on track title (selected tracks only) for Real Audio.
CHiPs: Volume One
Season Two: 1978–1979
Music Composed and Conducted by Alan Silvestri
"Theme From CHiPs" Composed by John Parker
Total Time: 79:16
Leader (Conductor):Bruce Broughton, Alan Silvestri
Violin:Arnold Belnick, Charles Blackman, Josef Brooks (Schoenbrun), Bobby Bruce (aka Robt. Berg), Isabelle Daskoff, Assa Drori, Robert Dubow, David Frisina, Irving Geller, Jack M. Gootkin, Endre G. Granat, Reginald Hill, Karen Jones, Richard Kaufman, Ezra Kliger, Bernard Kundell, Norma Leonard, David Montagu, Irma W. Neumann, David L. Newman, Wilbert Nuttycombe, Stanley Plummer, Jerome Joseph Reisler, Christopher Reutinger, Linda Rose, Nathan Ross, Sheldon Sanov, Haim Shtrum, Marshall Sosson, Spiro Stamos, Robert "Bob" Sushel, Gerald Vinci, John Wittenberg, Harold Wolf, Tibor Zelig
Bass:Charles C. Berghofer, Abe Laboriel, Stephens LaFever, Fred Tackett, Ken Wild
Woodwinds:Peter Christlieb, Donald Menza
Trumpet:Marion "Buddy" Childers, Gary Grant, Nelson Hatt, William B. Peterson, Dalton Smith, Anthony "Tony" Terran
Trombone:Vincent Fanuele, Alan Kaplan, Richard "Dick" Nash, Richard Noel, George M. Roberts, Thomas Shepard, Ernie Tack, William Tole, Lloyd E. Ulyate, Donald G. Waldrop, Chauncey Welsch
Keyboards:Douglas Clare Fischer, Tom Garvin, Tom Garvin, Craig Huxley (Hundley), Pete Jolly (Ceragloli), Michael A. Lang, Ed Lojeski, Jr., J. Peter "Pete" Robinson, Ian R. Underwood, Lawrence Williams
Guitar:Mitchell L. "Mitch" Holder, Daniel Sawyer
Banjo:Larry McNeely
Harmonica:Bernie Fields
Drums:Ed Greene, Steve Schaeffer, Tommy Vig
Percussion:Alan C. Estes, Tommy Vig, Robert J. Zimmitti
Orchestrator:Bruce Broughton, Alan Silvestri
Orchestra Manager:Harry W. Lojewski
Supervising Copyist:Harry W. Lojewski
Copyist:Robert G. Hartley, Willard W. Jones, Ray Mace, Donald J. Midgley, Priscilla Nemoy


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A new study finds a correlation between defending racist language and expression as "free speech" and racially prejudicial attitudes and beliefs.
"The correlation between using the free speech defense and people's own racial prejudice is pretty high."
"When people make appeals to democratic principles—like "freedom of speech"—they don't always represent a genuine interest in that principle," says Mark H. White, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Kansas and coauthor of the study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"We think of principles as ideas we use to guide behavior in our everyday lives. Our data show something different—that we tend to make up our mind on something based on our attitudes—in this case, racial attitudes—and then decide that the principle is relevant or irrelevant. People do whatever best fits their pre-existing attitudes," White adds.
Positive correlation
"We look at people who defend another's racist speech—for example, defending someone who got fired for going into a racist rant at work—with a 'free speech' argument," says Christian Crandall, professor of psychology and study coauthor. "What do we know about people making this argument? The correlation between using the free speech defense and people's own racial prejudice is pretty high. It's racists defending racists."
Indeed, the new study reveals a positive correlation (Pearson r = .43) between having racial prejudice and defending racist speech using the "free speech argument"—a stronger correlation than the researchers expected.
White and Crandall recruited hundreds of participants via the Amazon Mechanical Turk service, conducting several interrelated studies where participants responded to descriptions of recent news events or readings involving someone being punished for racist speech. The racial attitudes of the respondents themselves were gauged using the Henry and Sears Symbolic Racism 2000 scale, a standard measure of racial prejudice in social psychology and political science.
One finding suggests many who defend racist speech using the "free speech argument" might not extend the same principle of free speech to negative comments aimed at authority figures or the public in general.
Kids 'catch' bias through non-verbal cues
"You might think that, 'Maybe people who defend this racist speech are just big fans of free speech, that they're principled supporters of freedom,'" Crandall says. "Well, no. We give them a 'news' article with the same speech aimed at police—and prejudice scores are completely uncorrelated with defending speech aimed at police—and also uncorrelated with snarky speech aimed at customers at a coffee shop, but with no racial content."
Defending prejudice
White and Crandall wondered whether prejudiced people felt personally threatened when they hear about someone getting fired for expressing their attitudes; maybe they felt they'd be punished for their own beliefs.
"We wondered why people would go out on a limb to defend someone else's misbehavior," Crandall says. "We thought, maybe they felt personally implicated—they're defending an extension of themselves. We did three studies and found no evidence for this idea at all."
"We thought that people would rush to the defense of people fired for saying prejudiced things because, firstly, people know they're prejudiced and, secondly, watching someone getting punished for that same prejudice makes them feel like bad people," White says. "Across three experiments, we found exactly no support for this idea.
"It isn't so much that these controversies make prejudiced people feel bad about themselves; instead, it seems to be driven partially by prejudiced people feeling like they are not free to live how they want to live and say what they want to say—they feel as if their freedom is under attack," he says.
Indeed, people with high levels of prejudice were very sensitive to their own freedom of expression.
Prejudice sparks anger in men, fear in women
"They weren't defending their own attitudes, as much as 'defending to the death their right to say it,'" Crandall says. "Just so long as the 'it' is the prejudiced speech they share."
Ultimately, the researchers conclude the value of free speech appears "for the prejudiced person when it suits their needs but is absent when it does not. Freedom of speech defenses are unprincipled; it only appears for prejudiced people when it is needed. Values may be used as guiding principles to live by, but they are also strategically deployed to justify prejudices."
"It would be irresponsible to say that everyone who makes this 'free speech' argument is prejudiced," White says. "However, our data do show that racial prejudice is one of the many attitudes that go into people deciding to make this argument. We should not ignore the 'free speech' defense, but we shouldn't assume that the motives are purely based on an abstract democratic principle, either."
A Clara Mayo Grant from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and a University of Kansas Jack Brehm Award for Basic Research in Social Psychology funded the work.
Source: University of Kansas


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See also: Lawn
According to lexicographer Noah Webster (1828), meadow referred "to the low ground on the banks of rivers. . . whether grassland, pasture, tillage, or wood land," or low-lying lands that were particularly "appropriated to the culture of grass." Both definitions of the term "meadow" were used in the American context.
Maps of 18th-century New York and Boston show "salt meadows" along rivers. Like kitchen gardens or orchards, meadows played a key role in early American husbandry, and descriptive accounts of productive farms and estates often mention meadows, particularly when they gave the landscape a rich or well-cultivated appearance. Meadows ranged in size from the 12-acre meadow noted in a 1747 newspaper advertisement to the estimated 50 acres of meadow attached to an estate in Pennsylvania. In an 1807 plan of South Union, Ohio, a meadow was located in close proximity to the residences and between areas designated as woods and a cornfield [Fig. 1]. Since meadows were largely covered with grass, they could provide sustenance for cattle. Indeed, A. J. Downing, in describing the benefits of parks, frequently instructed homeowners to regard them as meadows where their cattle could graze. The cultivation of grass rendered "meadow" synonymous with "pasture," which Webster defined as grounds covered with grass appropriated for the food of cattle, and hence these terms frequently were used interchangeably.
Although meadows were primarily associated with agricultural production, they were often part of a consciously designed landscape, as at "Newington," Pennsylvania [Fig. 2]. They were also included in plans for plantations and ornamental farms (see Ferme ornée). 18th-century British gardening treatises, for example, endorsed the incorporation of agricultural features into ornamental contexts: Batty Langley (1728) recommended "Little Walks by purling streams in Meadows" as "delightful Entertainments."
In many instances, meadows accomplished the same aesthetic results as lawns, including framing desired objects or views. At the 18th-century estate of Westover on the James River in Virginia, for example, meadows watered by canals lined the road leading to the mansion and signaled one's arrival to the "improved grounds" surrounding the house. According to François-Alexandre-Frédéric duc de la Rochefoucauld Liancourt (1799), Dr. Baron of Charleston, South Carolina, wanted to buy an area of flat land between his garden and the river to convert it to a meadow that could frame views of the distant prospect. Pierre Pharoux, in his plan for Baron von Steuben's estate in Mohawk Valley, New York, likewise used meadows carved out of woods to ensure visual access to the prospect [Fig. 3].
Meadows were closely related to parks and lawns; Downing on occasion referred to "meadow parks" and "meadow-lawns". Nevertheless, in at least one article in the Horticulturist, he distinguished between lawns and meadows, arguing that lawns were composed of firm, close, and short grass, while coarser (and presumably taller) grasses with meadow flowers made up meadows. Moreover, lawns were often trimmed and rolled to maintain their appearance, while the primary method of maintaining meadows was to allow animals to graze.
Like lawns and bowling greens, the open grassy areas of meadows also provided space for sports and other leisure entertainments, as mentioned by a teacher in Salem, North Carolina, in 1817, who observed children playing round ball in the meadow of a tavern.
—Anne L. Helmreich
- Anonymous, August 17, 1747, describing property for sale in Somerset County, NJ (New York Gazette)
- "TO BE SOLD, A pleasant Country Seat, fitting for a Gentleman or Store-keeper. . . containing about 90 Acres, including a piece of English Meadow about 12 Acres, and more may be made, about 40 Acres being clear, the remainder Wood-Land."
- Kalm, Pehr, October 4, 1748, describing his journey from Philadelphia to Wilmington, DE (1937: 1:81–82)[1]
- "I rode now through woods of several sorts of trees and now over pieces of land which had been cleared of the wood and which at present were grain fields, meadows and pastures. The farmhouses stood single, sometimes near the roads, and sometimes at a little distance from them, so that the space between the road and the houses was taken up with small cultivated tracts and meadows. . . The fields bore partly buckwheat, which was cut, partly corn, and partly wheat."
- Brook, Elizabeth, 1756, describing Doughoregan Manor, seat of Charles Carroll (of Annapolis), Howard County, MD (Maryland Historical Society, A. E. Carroll Papers)
- "This place. . . is greatly improved, a fine, flourishing orchard with a variety of choice fruit, the garden inlarged and a stone wall built around it, 2 fine meadows."
- Alexiowitz, Iwan, 1769, describing Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery, vicinity of Philadelphia, PA (quoted in Darlington 1849: 50)
- "The whole store of nature's kind luxuriance seemed to have been exhausted on these beautiful meadows; he made me count the amazing number of cattle and horses now feeding on solid bottoms, which but a few years before had been covered with water."
- Shippen, Thomas Lee, December 31, 1783, describing Westover, seat of William Byrd III, on the James River, VA (1952: n.p.)[2]
- "You pass thro' two gates, and from the second, which leads you into the improved grounds, may be seen a village of quarters as they are called for negroes. The road you get into upon opening this gate is spacious and very level bounded on either side by a handsome ditch & fence which divide the road from fine meadows whose extent is greater than the eye can reach; and on one side you see the river through trees of different sorts. These meadows well watered with canals, which communicate with each other across the road give occasion every 50 yards for a bridge; and between every two bridges are two gates one on each side the road."
- La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, François Alexandre-Frédéric, duc de, May 6, 1795, describing Pottsgrove, PA (1800: 1:35)[3]
- "The landscape is beautiful along this road, abounding with a great variety of fine views, wonderfully enlivened by the verdure of the cornfields and meadows. . . If agriculture were better understood in these parts; if the fields were well mowed and well fenced; and if some trees had been left standing in the middle or on the borders of the meadows, the most beautiful parts of Europe could not be more pleasing."
- La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, François Alexandre-Frédéric, duc de, 1795–97, describing an estate in Pennsylvania (1800: 1:101)[3]
- "The cultivated ground amounts in the whole to one hundred and twenty acres, fifty of which are laid out in artificial meadows, and thirty-six in orchards for apple and peach-trees. The meadows are beautiful, and the fields in good order."
- Dwight, Timothy, 1796, describing New England (1821: 1:18, 2:335)[4]
- "[vol. 1]. . . A succession of New-England villages, composed of neat houses, surrounding neat school-houses and churches, adorned with gardens, meadows and orchards, and exhibiting the universally easy circumstances of the inhabitants, is, at least in my own opinon, one of the most delightful prospects, which this world can afford. . .
- "[vol. 2] New England villages. . . are built in the following manner. . .
- "The lot, on which the house stands, universally styled the home lot, is almost of course a meadow, richly cultivated, covered during the pleasant season with verdure, and containing generally a thrifty orchard. It is hardly necessary to observe, that these appendages spread a singular cheerfulness, and beauty, over a New-England village; or that they contribute largely to render the house a delightful residence."
- Parkinson, Richard, 1798–1800, describing Orange Hill, near Baltimore, MD (1805: 1:163–64)[5]
- "My first work on the farm was to dress the meadows; which were called fine; though the greater part of them in England would not have been thought worthy of being called meadows at all, being overrun with briars and weeds of different description. Their state indeed was such, that when I mowed them, I sometimes in making hay did not know whether it was worth putting together, or not."
- La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, François Alexandre-Frédéric, duc de, 1799, describing Fitterasso, estate of Dr. Baron, Charleston, SC (1800: 2:435–36)[3]
- "This small plantation, named Fitterasso, consists of four hundred acres, and cost him four thousand two hundred and eighty dollars; it is situated on a small eminence near the river. The site for the house, for none has hitherto been built, is the most pleasant spot which could be chosen in this flat, level country, where the tedious sameness of the woods is scarcely variegated by some houses, thinly scattered, and where it is hardly possible to meet with a pleasant landscape. His garden is separated from the river by a morass, nearly drained; the whole extent of the northern bank of the river is nearly of the same description. Dr. Baron intends to purchase this intervening space, and to convert it into meadow-ground. This alteration will improve the prospect, without rendering it a charming vista."
- Ogden, John Cosens, 1800, describing Bethlehem, PA (1800: 13)[6]
- "The variety of walks, rows of trees, and the plenty with which the gardens and meadows were stored, displayed taste, industry and economy."
- Martin, William Dickinson, 1809, describing the pleasure grounds at Salem Academy, Salem, NC (quoted in Bynum 1979: 29)[7]
- "'Next, I visited a flower garden belonging to the female department. . . But it is situated on a hill, the East end of which is high & abrupt. . .
- "'From the extremity of this place descended in different directions, two rows of steps, & joined again at the bottom, of the hill, where was a beautiful spring, from which issued a brisk current, winding in a serpentine course through a handsome meadow, 'til it reached a brook about a quarter of a mile distant. This place was designed for literary repast, & evening amusement—is certainly well adapted for either or both.'"
- Peale, Charles Willson, 1810, in a letter to his son, Rembrandt Peale, describing Belfield, estate of Charles Willson Peale, Germantown, PA (quoted in Rudnytzky 1986: 42)[8]
- "I am often pleased with the solemn groves skirting my meadows in mahestic [sic] silence and cool appearance."
- Peale, Charles Willson, 1810, describing Belfield, estate of Charles Willson Peale, Germantown, PA (quoted in Miller and Ward 1991: fig. 87)[9]
- "In this view imagine that you see a beautiful Meadow on the right. . . The Common water course is on the edge of the Meadow on the right and the doted [sic] line is a ditch to which I have a flood-gate to let water on the Meadow at Pleasure." [Fig. 4]
- Pursh, Frederick, 1814, describing the plants of North America (1814: 1:v)[10]
- "Her [America] forests produce an endless variety of useful and stately timber trees; her woods and hedges the most ornamental flowering shrubs, so much admired in our pleasure grounds; and her fields and meadows a number of exceedingly handsome and singular flowers (many of them possessing valuable medicinal virtues), different from those of other countries."
- Teacher at Moravian Boys School, 1817, describing Salem, NC (quoted in Bynum 1979: 52)[7]
- "This afternoon I went with the children. . . I took them to the tavern meadow, where they played a little round ball."
- du Pont, Sophie Madeleine, July 21, 1837, describing her visit to a meadow (quoted in Low and Hinsley 1987: 178)[11]
- "They were making hay in the undulating meadow, which added to the picturesque effect of the scenery [sic] There is here a very convenient chaise a porteur in which I am carried, or the blackies here express it, toted, from one place to another—"
- Lyell, Sir Charles, September 22, 1845, describing Boston, MA (1849: 1:30)[12]
- "The extreme heat of summer does not allow of the green meadows and verdant lawns of England, but there are some well-kept gardens here—a costly luxury where the wages of labor are so high."
- Downing, Andrew Jackson, October 1848, describing Geneseo, seat of James S. Wadsworth, Genesee River Valley, NY (Horticulturist 3: 163–65)[13]
- "The great agricultural estate of the WADSWORTH family, is the pride and centre of this precious family. That magnificent tract, of thousands of acres of the finest land, which surpasses in extent and value many principalities of the old world; those broad meadows, where herds of the finest cattle crop the richest herbage, or rest under the deep shade of giant trees. . .
- "And what a prospect! The whole of that part of the valley embraced by the eye-say a thousand acres—is a park, full of the finest oaks,—and such oaks as you may have dreamed of, (if you love trees,) or, perhaps, have seen in pictures by CLAUDE LORRAINE, or our own DURAND; but not in the least like those which you meet every day in your woodland walks through the country at large. Or rather, there are thousands of such as you may have seen half a dozen examples of in your own country. . .
- "No underwood, no bushes, no thickets; nothing but single specimens or groups of giant old oaks, (mingled with, here and there, an elm,) with level glades of broad meadow beneath them! An Englishman will hardly be convinced that it is not a park, planted by the skilful hand of man hundreds of years ago.
- "This great meadow park is filled with herds of the finest cattle—the pride of the home—farm." [Fig. 5]
- Downing, Andrew Jackson, August 1851, "The Annual Cattle Sale at Mount Fordham," describing Mount Fordham, seat of Lewis G. Morris, New York, NY (Horticulturist 6: 372)[14]
- "Around the house at Mount Fordham, extends on all sides a kind of meadow-lawn, enclosed and divided by pretty wire fences of various patterns. This lawn is kept short by the grazing of improved dairy stock, and we were glad to see successfully practiced what we have been commending so strongly of late to our readers, as the most available point of English country places, that we saw on the other side of the Atlantic—that is the maintenance of a neat and handsome lawn about a country house, not only without the expense of mowing, but with united profit and beauty—the profit of grazing the grass and the beauty—the real pastoral beauty—of fine cattle, soft turf, and pleasant groups of trees, as the home landscape of our country places generally. By adopting this course, the hay-field aspect of many so-called gentlemen's country-seats, would disappear, and a more complete and satisfactory lawn or park be acquired, with no loss of money, and the attainment of a higher species of keeping to one's country home." [Fig. 6]
- Langley, Batty, 1728, New Principles of Gardening (1728; repr., 1982: 195–201)[15]
- "General DIRECTIONS, &c. . .
- "XIX. That in those serpentine Meanders, be placed at proper Distances, large Openings, which you surprizingly come to; and in the first are entertain'd with a pretty Fruit-Garden, or Paradice-Stocks. . . from which you are insensibly led through the pleasant Meanders of a shady delightful Plantation; first, into an oven [sic] Plain environ'd with lofty Pines. . . secondly, into a Flower-Garden. . . and from thence through small Inclosures of Corn, open Plains, or small Meadows. . .
- "XXVIII. Distant Hills in Parks, &c. are beautiful Objects, when planted with little Woods; as also are Valleys, when intermix'd with Water, and large Plains; and a rude Coppice in the Middle of a fine Meadow, is a delightful Object.
- "XXIX. Little Walks by purling streams in Meadows, and through Corn-Fields, Thickets, &c. are delightful Entertainments."
- Johnson, Samuel, 1755, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755: 2:n.p.)[16]
- "MEAD. n.s. [meade, Sax.] Ground somewhat watery, not plowed, but covered with grass and flowers.
- Ware, Isaac, 1756, A Complete Body of Architecture (1756: 645, 651)[17]
- "A meadow and its hedge excelled all the beauty of our former gardens; because the parterre there afforded only the ill fruits of labour, and the hedge lost the very vegetable character. . .
- "Let us lead such as still prefer it [[[geometric style|geometric]] flower beds] to more free dispositions, into a May meadow, full of the common weedy flowers of that healthy season, and terminated by a hawthorn hedge in bloom. . ."
- Miller, Philip, 1759, The Gardeners Dictionary (1759: n.p.)[18]
- "Under the general title of Meadow, is commonly comprehended all Pasture land, or at least all Grass Land, which is mown for Hay; but I choose rather to distinguish such land only by this Apellation, which is so low, as to be too moist for Cattle to graze upon them in winter, being too wet to admit heavy cattle, without poaching & spoiling the Sward, and those grass lands which I shall distinguish by the title of pasture."
- Sheridan, Thomas, 1789, A Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1789: n.p.)[19]
- "MEADOW, med'-do. s. A rich pasture ground, from which hay is made."
- Webster, Noah, 1828, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828: 2:n.p.)[20]
- "MEAD, MEADOW, n. meed, med'o. [Sax. moede, moedewe; G. matte, a mat, and a meadow; Ir. madh. The sense is extended or flat depressed land. It is supposed that this word enters into the name Mediolanum, now Milan, in Italy; that is, mead-land.]
- "A tract of low land. In America, the word is applied particularly to the low ground on the banks of rivers, consisting of a rich mold or an alluvial soil, whether grass land, pasture, tillage, or wood land; as the meadows on the banks of the Connecticut. The word with us does not necessarily imply wet land. This species of land is called, in the western states, bottoms, or bottom land. The word is also used for other low or flat lands, particularly lands appropriated to the culture of grass.
- "The word is said to be applied in Great Britain to land somewhat watery, but covered with grass. Johnson.
- "Meadow means pasture or grass land, annually mown for hay; but more particularly, land too moist for cattle to graze on in winter, without spoiling the sward. Encyc. Cyc.
- "[Mead is used chiefly in poetry.]"
- Downing, Andrew Jackson, November 1846, "A Chapter on Lawns" (Horticulturist 1: 204)[21]
- "After your lawn is once fairly established, there are but two secrets in keeping it perfect— frequent mowing and rolling. Without the first, it will soon degenerate into a coarse meadow; the latter will render it firmer, closer, shorter, and finer every time it is repeated."
- Downing, Andrew Jackson, March 1851, "The Management of Large Country Places" (Horticulturist 6: 106)[22]
- "Considerable familiarity with the country-seats on the Hudson, enables us to state that for the most part, few persons keep up a fine country place. . .
- "The remedy for this unsatisfactory condition of the large country places is, we think, a very simple one—that of turning a large part of their areas into park meadow, and feeding it, instead of mowing and cultivating it.
- "The great and distinguishing beauty of England, as every one knows, is its parks. And yet the English parks are only very large meadows, studded with great oaks and elms—and grazed—profitably grazed, by deer, cattle and sheep."
Pierre Pharoux, "General Map of the honorable Wm. frederic Baron of Steuben's Mannor", c. 1793. The "60 acres of Meadow" is indicated at "j" in the four squares below the hemicycle.
Anonymous, A plan of the section of land on which the Believers live in the state of Ohio, Nov. 7, 1807. "Meadow" is noted in the center between the woods and cornfield.
Charles Willson Peale, Sketches of Belfield [detail], 1810.
Charles Willson Peale, Sketches of Belfield, 1810.
Joshua Barney, Map of Hampton, 1843. Courtesy: Hampton National Historic Site, National Park Service.
Anonymous, "View in the Meadow Park at Geneseo," in A. J. Downing, ed., Horticulturist 3, no. 4 (October 1848): pl. opp. 153.
Charles Willson Peale, Ground plot of Belfield, 1810.
Anonymous, "Mount Fordham—the Country Seat of Lewis G. Morris, Esq.," in A. J. Downing, ed., Horticulturist 6, no. 8 (August 1851): pl. opp. 345.
Nicholas Garrison, A View of Bethlehem, one of the Brethren's Principal Settlements, in Pennsylvania, North America, 1757.
Francis Guy, Perry Hall, Slave Quarters with Field Hands at Work, c. 1805.
Anonymous, "Beaverwyck, the Seat of Wm. P. Van Rensselaer, Esq.," in A. J. Downing, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, 4th ed. (1849), pl. opp. 51, fig. 7.
- ↑ Pehr Kalm, The America of 1750: Peter Kalm's Travels in North America. The English Version of 1770, 2 vols. (New York: Wilson-Erickson, 1937), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Thomas Lee Shippen, Westover Described in 1783: A Letter and Drawing Sent by Thomas Lee Shippen, Student of Law in Williamsburg, to His Parents in Philadelphia (Richmond, VA: William Byrd Press, 1952), view on Zotero.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 François-Alexandre-Frédéric duc de La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, Travels through the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, ed. Brisson Dupont and Charles Ponges, trans. H. Newman, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (London: R. Philips, 1800), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, 4 vols. (New Haven, CT: Timothy Dwight, 1821), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Richard Parkinson, A Tour in America, 1798, 1799, and 1800: Exhibiting Sketches of Society and Manners, and a Particular Account of the American System of Agriculture, with Its Recent Improvements, 2 vols. (London: J. Harding, 1805), view on Zotero.
- ↑ John C. Ogden, An Excursion into Bethlehem & Nazareth, in Pennsylvania, in the Year 1799 (Philadelphia: Charles Cist, 1800), view on Zotero.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Flora Ann L. Bynum, Old Salem Garden Guide (Winston-Salem, NC: Old Salem, 1979), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Kateryna A. Rudnytzky, "The Union of Landscape and Art: Peale's Garden at Belfield" (Honors thesis, LaSalle University, 1986), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Lillian B. Miller et al., eds., The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family, vol. 3, The Belfield Farm Years, 1810–1820 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Frederick Pursh, Flora Americae Septentrionalis; Or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America, 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Betty-Bright Low and Jacqueline Hinsley, Sophie Du Pont, A Young Lady in America: Sketches, Diaries, & Letters, 1823–1833 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Sir Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States of North America, 2 vols. (New York: Harper, 1849), view on Zotero.
- ↑ A. J. Downing, "The Meadow Park in Geneseo," Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste 3, no. 4 (October 1848): 163–66, view on Zotero.
- ↑ A. J. Downing, "The Annual Cattle Sale at Mount Fordham," Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste 6, no. 8 (August 1851): 372–73, view on Zotero.
- ↑ Batty Langley, New Principles of Gardening, or The Laying out and Planting Parterres, Groves, Wildernesses, Labyrinths, Avenues, Parks, &c. (London: A. Bettesworth and J. Batley, etc., 1728; repr., New York: Garland, 1982), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words Are Deduced from the Originals and Illustrated in the Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers, 2 vols. (London: W. Strahan for J. and P. Knapton, 1755), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Isaac Ware, A Complete Body of Architecture (London: T. Osborne and J. Shipton, 1756), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Philip Miller, The Gardeners Dictionary: Containing the Methods of Cultivation and Improving the Kitchen, Fruit, and Flower Garden, 7th ed. (London: Philip Miller, 1759), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Thomas A. Sheridan, A Complete Dictionary of the English Language, Carefully Revised and Corrected by John Andrews. . . , 5th ed. (Philadelphia: William Young, 1789), view on Zotero.
- ↑ Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols. (New York: S. Converse, 1828), view on Zotero.
- ↑ A. J. Downing, "A Chapter on Lawns," Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste 1, no 5. (November 1846): 202–4, view on Zotero.
- ↑ A. J. Downing, "The Management of Large Country Places," Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste 6, no. 3 (March 1851): 105–8, view on Zotero.


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(ROBERT TRIVERS:) Why do I talk about, or wish to talk about, deception and self-deception in the same breath? Because I think you miss the truth about each if you are not conscious of the other and the relationship between the two. If by deception you only think of conscious deception, where you're planning to lie or aware of the fact that you're lying, you will miss all the lying that goes on that the individual is unaware of, and this may be the larger portion of lies and deception that is going on.
Conversely, if you think about self-deception without comprehending its connection with deception, then I think you'll miss the major function of self-deception. In particular, you'll be tempted to go the route that psychology went a hundred years ago or so and think of self-deception as defensive: I'm defending my tender ego, I'm defending my weak psyche. And you will not see the offensive characteristic of self-deception.
What do I mean by that? I mean that I believe that self-deception evolves in the service of deceit. That is, that the major function of self-deception is to better deceive others. Both make it harder for others to detect your deception, and also allow you to deceive with less immediate cognitive cost. So if I'm lying to you now about something you actually care about, you might pay attention to my shifty eyes if I'm consciously lying, or the quality of my voice, or some other behavioral cue that's associated with conscious knowledge of deception and nervousness about being detected. But if I'm unaware of the fact that I'm lying to you, those avenues of detection will be unavailable to you.
Regarding the second argument, it is intrinsically difficult, and mentally demanding, to lie and be conscious about it. The more complex in detail the lie—the longer you have to keep it up—the more costly cognitively. I believe that selection favors rendering a portion of the lie unconscious, or much of the knowledge of it unconscious, so as to reduce the immediate cognitive cost. That is, with self-deception you'll perform better cognitively on unrelated tasks that you might have to do moments later than if you had just undergone a lot of consciously mediated deception.
Let me step back and say a word or two about the underlying logic. First of all, we understand that if we are making an evolutionary argument in terms of natural selection, we are talking about benefits to individuals in terms of the propagation of their own genes, and there are innumerable opportunities in nature to gain a benefit by deceiving another.
However, the reverse is true for the deceived.
The deceived is typically losing knowledge or resources or whatever, resulting in a decrease in the propagation of their genes. So you have what we call a co-evolutionary struggle: with natural selection improving deception on the one hand, and improving the ability to spot deception on the other.
Now let me just say that deception is a very deep feature of nature. At all levels, all interactions, e.g. viruses and bacteria often use deception to get inside you. They may mimic your own cell surface proteins. They may have other tricks to deceive your system into not recognizing them as alien and worthy of attack. Even genes inside yourself, which propagate themselves selfishly during meiosis may do so by mimicking particular sub-sections of other genes so as to get copied an extra time, even though the rest of the genome, if you asked their opinion, would be against this extra copying.
When you turn to insects and larger creatures like those, we know that in relations between species, again there's a huge and rich world of deception. Considering insects alone: they will mimic harmless objects so as to avoid detection by their predators. Or they will mimic poisonous or distasteful objects to avoid being eaten. Or they will mimic a predator of their predator, so as to frighten away their predator. Or, in one case, they will mimic the predator that's trying to eat them, so that the predator misinterprets them as a member of their own species and gives them territorial display instead of eating them.
They will even, I have to tell you, mimic the feces, or droppings, of their predators. That's so common it has a technical term in the literature, forgive me, "shit mimics". And they come in all varieties and sizes. There are moths that look like the splash variety of a bird dropping. And you can understand from the bird's standpoint, you might have a strong supposition that this is a butterfly or a moth, but you'd be unwilling to put it to the test—especially if you have to use your beak to put it to a test.
Now when you turn to relations within species, you find a rich world that we're uncovering now of deception also. To give you two quick examples. Warning cries have evolved in many contexts to warn others of danger. But they can be used in new and deceitful contexts. For example you can give a warning cry in order to grab an item of food from another individual. The individual's startled and runs for cover, you grab the food. You can give a warning cry when your offspring are at each other's throats—they run to cover and then you separate them and protect them from each other. It has even been described that you can give a warning call when you see your mate near a prospective lover—get them dashing to safety, and then you intervene.
In this continually co-evolving struggle regarding truth and falsehood, if you will, there are situations in other creatures as well as ourselves where we have to make tight evaluations of each others' motive in an aggressive encounter. I'm lining up against Marc Hauser; how confident is he of himself? I'm courting someone; the woman is looking at me; how confident am I of myself? And so on. That allows misrepresentation of these kinds of psychological variables and you can see how self-deception can start coming in. Be more confident than you have grounds to be confident and be unconscious of that bias, the better to manipulate others.
Once you have language, that greatly increases the opportunity for both deception and self-deception. We spend a lot of time with each other pushing various theories of reality, which are often biased towards our own interests but sold as being generally useful and true.
Let me just mention a little bit of evidence—and of course there's a huge amount of evidence regarding self-deception, from everyday life, from study of politics and history, autobiography, et cetera. But I just want to talk about some of the scientific evidence in psychology. There's a whole branch of social psychology that's devoted to our tendencies for self-inflation. If you ask students how many of them think they're in the top half of the class in terms of leadership ability, 80 percent say they are. But if you turn to their professors and ask them how many think they're in the top half of their profession, 94 percent say they are.
And people are often unconscious of some of the mechanisms that naturally occur in them in a biased way. For example, if I do something that is beneficial to you or to others, I will use the active voice: I did this, I did that, then benefits rained down on you. But if I did something that harmed others, I unconsciously switch to a passive voice: this happened, then that happened, then unfortunately you suffered these costs. One example I always loved was a man in San Francisco who ran into a telephone pole with his car, and he described it to the police as, "the pole was approaching my car, I attempted to swerve out of the way, when it struck me".
Let me give you another, the way in which group membership can entrain language-usages that are self-deceptive. You can divide people into in-groups or out-groups, or use naturally occurring in-groups and out-groups, and if someone's a member of your in-group and they do something nice, you give a general description of it—"he's a generous person". If they do something negative, you state a particular fact: "in this case he misled me", or something like that. But it's exactly the other way around for an out-group member. If an out-group member does something nice, you give a specific description of it: "she gave me directions to where I wanted to go". But if she does something negative, you say, "she's a selfish person". So these kinds of manipulations of reality are occurring largely unconsciously, in a way that's perhaps similar to what Marc Hauser in his talk was saying about morality.
A new world of the neurophysiology of deceit and self-deception is emerging. For example, it has been shown that consciously directed forgetting can produce results a month later and they are achieved by a particular area of the prefrontal cortex (normally associated with initiating motor responses or overcoming cognitive obstacles) suppressing activity in the hippocomapus, the brain region in which memories are stored. So there is clear evidence that one part of the brain has been co-opted in evolution to serve the function of personal information suppression within self.
What I want to turn to very briefly is the relationship between self-deception and war. Now war, in the sense of battles between large numbers of soldiers, is an evolutionarily very recent phenomenon. A raid, where you run over to another group, kill off a number of individuals, and run back, is something we share with chimpanzees. And that has a long history and is much more likely to be constrained by rational considerations.
But warfare as we experience it now is a ten thousand, (plus or minus a few thousand) year old phenomenon. Not an awful lot of time for selection. And not much selection necessarily on those who start the wars. There may be a lot of selection in the civilian population or the soldiers, but it's not necessarily true that those who start stupid wars end up with as as great a decrease in surviving offspring (and other kin) as one would have wished.
Wars also tempt us easily to self-deception for other reasons. There is often very little overlap in self-interest between your group and another group, in contrast to activities within the group. There is also low feedback from members of an outside group. There's greater ignorance.
And so war is a particular situation where self-deception is expected to be both especially prominent and especially harmful in its general effects.
Let us use the most recent war—the current war launched by my own country, the United States in 2003 against the country of Iraq—to see one simple illustration of how deceit and self-deception is a useful concept in thinking about war. It has been said that the first casualty of war is the truth, but we know regarding the Iraq war that the truth was dead long before this war started. We know the thing was conceived and promulgated based on a lie. The predator, the U.S., saw an opportunity to leap on a prey, and decided almost immediately, within days of 9/11, and certainly within a couple of months, to prepare and launch this war.
Now what's the significance of that fact? Well, one significance of it is, psychologists have shown, very nicely I think, for 20 years now, that when we are considering an option—whether to marry Susan, or to go to the University of Bologna instead of Barcelona, or whatnot—we are much more rational, we weigh options, and we are even, if anything, slightly depressed. But once we decide which way to go, we act as if we want all the cells in our body rowing in the same direction. If it's Susan we're going to marry, we don't want to hear about Maria or some of Susan's less desirable side. If it's Barcelona we're going to, that's the best university to go to and to hell with Bologna.
Now the point about this war is that there was no period of rational discussion of the pluses and minuses. The United States decided—at least a small cabal within it, including the President, decided—to go to war almost instantaneously. They immediately went into the implementation stage—your mood goes up, you downplay the negatives—after all, you have made your decision—and you do not wish to hear contrary opinions. Especially you do not wish to hear contrary opinions if the real reasons for going to war can not be revealed and the whole public pretense is a lie.
Thus, all planning for the aftermath was dismissed because it greatly increased the apparent expense and difficulty and suggested greatly diminished gains from the endeavor. This, of course, implicitly called into question the entire enterprise, so rational planning was dismissed. And witness the dread effects, a continuing bloodbath unleashed on an innocent population.
One other comment: self-deception can not only get you into disastrous situations, but then it gives you a second reward and that is, it deprives you of the ability to deal with the disaster once it's in front of you. And what could be more dramatic than what happened in the first month after the U.S. arrived in Baghdad—the complete looting of the country, 20 billion dollars of resources destroyed, priceless cultural heritage destroyed—all of that and the U.S. sat around and sucked its thumb. Did nothing to deal with it. And has been dealing with an escalating disaster ever since. A blood-letting of dreadful proportions, and still blind about what to do.
Well, I'll just summarize these thoughts by saying that there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is, we do have it in our grasp at last to develop a scientific theory of deceit and self-deception, integrating all kinds of information, but at least sticking this phenomenon out in front of ourselves and studying it objectively. The bad new is that the forces we're dealing with—that is, of deceit and self-deception—are very powerful.
ROBERT TRIVERS' scientific work has concentrated on two areas, social theory based on natural selection and the biology of selfish genetic elements. He is the author of Social Evolution, Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers; and coauthor (with Austin Burt) of Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements. He was cited in a special Time issue as one of the 100 greatest thinkers and scientists of the 20th Century.


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Tiffany Cloud is the hostess of Storm Politics on WYLN in Hazelton which has become one of my favorite public affairs programs on TV. She also wrote the great book Sleeping with Dog Tags . The thing about Tiffany is that she welcomes all comers and has a great discussion with people she disagrees with that doesn't turn into a talking head shouting match like you see on the cable news channels.
In the latest episode she handed out the Lightening Bolt Awards. Cloud, Storm, Lightening the weather metaphors are endless. May I suggest the Snow Job Awards for next year.
The winner is Yasue Bengali, a Japanese immigrant to the US who recently became a citizen and explains how great this county is as only an immigrant could.
The honorable mentions of other people who have appeared on her show is a mix of Democratic and Republican office holders plus those that will be elected in the future or never at all.
Some Bolts went out to Aaron Kaufer, Matt Cartwright, Tarah Toohil, Stefanie Salavantis and Lou Barletta.Young Republicans Bob Zaruta and Jen Rinehamer and Young Dem Thom Shibula along with the happiest man I know, Casey Evans.
In December of last year I was her guest on Storm Politics and David Yonki has also been on the program and we came in 9th. I think she gives us too much credit for the election results but I'll take it. To answer her question of why anyone would push the liberal agenda in these economic times is simple. Austerity doesn't work. You don't cut spending when the economy is down and if anything the government's goal should be to get the unemployment rate down to 4%. The US government is borrowing money right now at a negative interest rate when you factor in inflation. Borrow more and put people to work! She said the conservatives are being outsmarted by these 2 lovers of the left. Hah!
The highlight of this clip is at the 2 minute mark.


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Cut down on moving day stress with these helpful pointers for packing, unpacking and all the little things in between.
Knowing how to pack is the first step to a smooth move. Take a few extra moments to do things right and thank yourself when it's time to unpack.
Get rid of anything you don't need. Now is the perfect time to sell or donate items you don't need. Pay close attention to storage areas and be brutally honest about whether you will use an item or if it warrants a place in your new home.
Lock down help. Before you get started with packing, you'll need to decide whether you'll be hiring professional movers, enlisting the help of friends and family or both. Take the time to choose a day, call around for quotes and make sure your helpers are available.
Set some realistic goals. Maintaining a "one thing at a time" mindset is the best way to tackle a big project. Grab a calendar and write three to five realistic goals per day for the duration of your packing time. Laying out a visual schedule will also help you be strategic with what to pack first and any budget expenses you may have.
Change your address early. Changing your address on any open accounts at least a week before moving will help save the hassle when you're busy unpacking.
Plan meals according to your schedule. To avoid having to toss food, plan on scheduling your last grocery shopping trip between one and two weeks prior to moving day.
Create a moving day playlist. There's nothing quite like the power of music to get everyone motivated. Creating an upbeat, energetic playlist that the whole family can enjoy will keep spirits high and stress levels as low as possible for when it counts the most.
Make use of the storage you have. To save space and money on packing materials, make use of baskets, hampers, suitcases and other boxes or containers around the house.
Pack plates vertically. Rather than stacking plates in boxes, try to pack them vertically (like you might vinyl records) with paper or other packing materials between. This can help you fit more in each box and it also helps prevent chipping and shattering.
Prevent a huge mess. Cover the top of open toiletries with saran wrap or Zip-lock bags. There's nothing worse than opening a box only to discover that its contents are covered in shampoo. Open the bottle, place plastic wrap or a sandwich bag over the opening and then replace the cap tightly to prevent leaking.
Keep clothes on hangers. Keep your clothes on their hangers and then tie a trash bag around them, leaving the hangers sticking out of the top. This frees up boxes, saves time later and keeps your clothes safe from tears and stains.
Label, label, label. There's no such thing as too thorough when it comes to placing a clear label on each box. At minimum, it's a good idea to label all boxes by room and category. But depending on how many things you're moving and how many family members you have, you may want to create a document or spreadsheet with a list of the items contained in each box. Other ideas include numbering boxes or using a color code system.
Pack an overnight bag. Once you're close to completely packed, be sure to set aside a bag with a few changes of clothes and any toiletries you use on a daily basis. This will ensure that you have easy access to necessary personal items, even if the rest of your wardrobe isn't easily accessible in a sea of boxes.
Make sure everything is completely packed before your helpers arrive. You'll likely be pressed for time on the big day. It's best to make sure that all boxes are completely packed before friends and family arrive to help.
With its loud noises, constant movement and unfamiliar houseguests, moving can be scary for our furry friends. With heavy items being moved and so many people coming and going, there may even be opportunities for pets to get hurt or lost. Keep your pets happy and free of harm with these important safety tips.
Update your pet's id tags. Before moving day, make sure your pets are up-to-date on vaccinations and that their collars have current id tags. If they are not already microchipped, you may want to schedule an appointment.
Keep dangerous substances out of reach. While harmful foods, cleaners and medications are normally locked up tight, it's easy to accidentally leave them out in the open on moving day. When packing poisonous substances, choose a plastic storage container that can't be chewed into, tape it tightly and label it clearly.
Designate a safe room for pets. A pet can slip out an open door, undetected in the hustle and bustle of moving day. Designate a specific room with a latching door where you can house pets safely, and be sure everyone involved with your move knows where they are being kept.
Give your kids easy tasks to complete. Giving your children a simple, repetitive task to complete helps them feel included in the moving decision. Plus, it keeps bored hands calm and busy. Older kids can help label boxes and wrap breakables, while younger children can sort toys or clothes by type.
Use naptimes to get things done. If you have young children, naptime is a great opportunity to get moving tasks done. Just be sure that you're only completing tasks that involve other areas of the home so they don't wake up to a favorite toy or blanket getting packed away.
Say a formal goodbye to your home and surrounding landmarks. Walk your old home's grounds and help your children say a formal goodbye to the familiar sights they'll miss. Walk around the neighborhood and visit best-loved parks and restaurants one last time as a family. Help them make plans for their new rooms. Making plans for a brand new bedroom is fun for everyone, even if moving isn't. Get them excited about their new home by helping them map out plans for their new room and any kid-friendly common areas like playrooms, basements and dens. If your budget allows, letting them choose a new bedspread or a few new decorative items will help them feel included and excited.
Host a get-together for close friends and family. A goodbye-for-now party is a great way to get family and friends together one last time before you move. Make sure to involve your children in the planning process, especially when it comes to the guest list and activities. Be sure to take lots of photos and exchange contact information so they can keep in touch with friends. Get them excited about their new home and community. Involve your children in researching all the interesting landmarks and fun things to do in and around your new town or neighborhood. If they're switching schools, try to schedule a tour in advance and tell them about all the activities they'll have the chance to try, as well as the new friends they'll make.
Pack a bag with must-have toys and belongings. To prevent meltdowns once you've reached your new home, set aside a bag with cherished toys, clothing and other items you know your children will want. If they're old enough, set a limit and include them in the process of putting aside items they can't live without. You might have them decorate a special box of belongings to be kept with them in the car or placed last in the truck for easy access. Keep snacks and drinks on hand at all times. For moving day and the days of unpacking ahead, have plenty of favorite snacks and drinks available. Keeping your kids nourished and hydrated will cut back on irritability and keep the moving process streamlined.
Keep bedtime and morning routines the same. As you unpack and get settled into your new home, the more consistent you can be, the better. This means keeping bedtime and morning routines largely the same as they've always been to help establish good habits and a sense of "normalcy" for your children.
Be prepared to hear them out. Moving stirs up complicated feelings for everyone, adults and children alike. Talk to your children. Explain why you're moving and prepare them for what to expect during the process. Be ready to listen when


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Britney Spears -- In-N-Out Already?!
Being locked up in the psych ward won't keep Britney from getting her fast food fix! Her manservant, Sam Lutfi, dropped by with some In-N-Out for the popwreck.
On the long walk to and from his car at UCLA Medical Center, Sam was bombarded with questions by TMZ. He said Britney is doing "good" and that he doesn't speak to Lynne Spears at all -- and denies that he argued with Brit's father, Jamie.
As TMZ first reported, an all-out war over Britney erupted early Thursday morning when she was committed -- with Sam reportedly fighting with Brit's family over who would control her treatment. As of now, her parents are in the driver's seat.


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A tax or taxpayer identification number, also known as a TIN for short, is a number issued to individuals and organizations to track tax obligations and payments they make to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It is issued by the federal government. A TIN can be assigned by the Social Security Administration for individuals, or by the IRS for businesses and other organizations.
Types of tax ID numbers
A TIN is a generic term and refers to several different kinds of identifying numbers, which include:
- A social security number issued to an individual
- An Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), issued to non-U.S. citizens currently residing, and often working, in the U.S.
- An Employer Identification Number (EIN) issued to businesses and non-profit organizations
- An Adoption Taxpayer Identification Number (ATIN), for children in the process of being adopted from outside the U.S.
- A Preparer Taxpayer Identification Number, to identify accountants and firms involved with tax document preparation
Small businesses require a TIN, in the form of an Employer Identification Number, in order to issue payroll and make tax payments. To apply for an EIN, the IRS requires you to complete a Form SS-4.
A TIN is required on all tax documents, such as quarterly or estimated payments and annual filings.
State tax ID numbers
Some states also issue their own business identification numbers, in addition to the IRS identifier. Currently, those states are:
In those states, business need a state tax ID number and a federal tax ID number. Learn more about state TINs here.


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After experiencing some deeply unsatisfying years of trying to be successful according to the yardstick offered by others and society in general, I settled and realised a most important truth. Once I understood that my purpose, my reason for being, should drive my feelings, thoughts and actions then I became more comfortable that being the best you can be was indeed the best I could be. That striving for my personal best in congruence with my purpose was and is the most satisfying currency of success.
One of the 4 pillars of the MTQ48 mental toughness framework is Challenge which is about stretching oneself and learning from everything and in the process being the best you can be, which in turn reinforces one's self belief whether the initial outcome is successful or not.
With that approach as a backdrop, I'm always interested to read books and posts, listen to podcasts and watch videos on becoming better at what you do.
One of my favourite influencers is Benjamin P Hardy, a writer and practitioner on self improvement from South Carolina, USA and I really enjoyed one of his recent posts on how to become the best in the world at what you do. I have reproduced it below from the excellent thriveglobal.com resource and in it he identifies the necessary steps to achieve the success you want on your terms.
It's a great read – take it away Benjamin.
It can feel impossible to move toward your dreams. You know exactly what you want to do, but there are endless obstacles in your way.
There is so much competition — thousands or millions of people competing to do exactly what you want to do.
How do you get out of the rat race?
How do you advance quick enough to not have your dreams smashed into submission by society and imploded by "reality"?
How do you make the needed leaps to move beyond the masses vying for a similar position?
After all, you have bills to pay and tons of other responsibilities. You only have a limited amount of time each day. After work and everything else you've got going on, it's easy to justify waiting until tomorrow. Even if you have the raw energy to do your work, you may feel guilty breaking from your relational obligations.
It truly can feel hopeless and overwhelming. There's so much to learn. It can be easy to doubt our own abilities. Maybe we should just give up and accept reality for what it is?
The truth is that most of the competition are not hard to surpass. They're dealing with the same existential and practical challenges you are. Their life isn't structured for optimal creative expression. They are the primary obstacle in the path. Most will quit long before they ever really begin — always remaining mediocre at what they do.
With a few tweaks, you'll quickly drop through a wormhole placing you in the top 5–10 percent in your field. The challenge then becomes to move from there to the top — which movement is the real contest. Getting to the top 5–10 percent merely requires a change in lifestyle. Getting to the top 1 percent requires a fundamental change in your being.
This post is a framework to quickly get you into the top 5–10 percent of your field so you can begin the real quest of becoming the best at what you do.
Phase One will get you to the top 5–10 percent of your field. Once you're at this level, you are getting paid enough for your art to live on. This is key, as Paul Graham has said, "Once you cross the threshold of profitability, however low, your runway becomes infinite." He calls the lowest tier of profitability, "Ramen Profitable," which means a startup (or business of any sort) makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses.
Infinite runway means you can now dedicate all your "work" time to your work. You are no longer moonlighting or squeezing time in the margins of your life. You can pay your bills and eat Ramen.
This is where Phase Two begins, and is really the beginning of your artistic journey — becoming the best in the world at what you do.
Let's begin:
Phase One: Getting To Ramen Profitable (Or Sustainable)
Kenzie and Harris were recently married. They had both dropped out of Brigham Young University and were working at the Apple store in downtown Salt Lake City. On the side, they were recording music covers and posting them on YouTube and Vine.
They had enough money in savings to live on a year, so they quit at Apple to make a run at becoming professional musicians. Every day, they would post Vines. For several months, their work went mostly unnoticed. They had a few thousand followers tops.
Then, everything changed. They posted a Vine that immediately went viral. The next day, they were contacted by some of the top Viners as well as agents who gave them contracts. They were now Ramen Profitable, had amazing connections, and on their way to making an amazing career as musicians.
Kenzie and Harris wouldn't have had their breakthrough if they didn't start as amateurs. They had some raw talent. But more than anything, they were willing to put themselves out there over and over and over. Quantity became quality. And then they put something out that people loved.
Very few people have the humility to start as amateurs. They procrastinate doing the work they want in the name of perfectionism. You know these people. The one's who have been saying for years that they're going to do something but never do. Yet inwardly, they're terrified of what other people will think of them.
They're caught in a state of paralysis by analysis — too busy calculating and never reaching a state of flow. Rather than doing work their own way, they do what they think will be well-received — being merely imitators of what is already popular.
Take your dreams seriously. Most people don't. Take them serious enough to become amazing and move beyond mediocre. Get education and coaching.
"When the student is ready the teacher will appear." — Buddha
Ever since returning from a two-year mission trip, I've always known I wanted to be a writer. However, my dream remained a figment of my imagination until I became serious enough to get a mentor.
I've had two mentors that have changed how I write. One of my mentors was a young professorwho taught me more in three months than I had learned in the previous four years.
Actually, he taught me more about academic writing and research in three months than most people learn through an entire PhD. With his help, I was easily able to get into the graduate school of my choice.
I started blogging about 21 months ago. Knowing this is something I'm serious about, I decided to get coaching. However, this time, I did it in the form of a virtual online course.
Within a month of taking the course, I wrote a blog post that was read over five million times across multiple outlets and in several languages. This online course was not the reason for my success; but it was an important part of the progression I would inevitably get one way or another.
You'll know when you're ready for the next level, because you'll make the proper investments in the teachers to help you get there. You're level of commitment can directly be measured to how invested you are. Once, committed, you'll be willing to make whatever changes are needed to upgrade into the person you desire to become.
If it's popular it's wrong. Most people are mediocre at what they do for a reason. They're playing by rules that halt optimal performance. They are climbing traditional ladders intended to slow them down and keep them average.
When everyone else is zigging, that's when you zag. Darren Hardy says you should run "toward the thing everyone else is running from" in order to stand out from the crowd.
As Peter Diamandis says, "The day before something is a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea." If what you're doing doesn't seem slightly crazy to you, and very crazy to other people, you're probably following the safe path.
Instead of following the rules set by society, create your own rules. Restructure the game to automate your success. Dismiss the haters, convention, and conformity. Follow your heart and the voice inside you encouraging faith and forward movement. In order to be happy, you must build a lifestyle around being true to yourself. If you're true to yourself, good things will follow.
If you haven't had your big break yet, keep going. Consistency is the most fundamental virtue to becoming the person you want to be. Almost everyone can sprint for a while. But most burn-out and quit. Everything meaningful in life is a marathon — meant to test your commitment and will.
If this is what you love doing, you'll do it regardless of the outcome. In fact, obsession with a particular outcome will keep you from attaining your desired results. Your work will be forced rather than organically lived.
There is a natural law known as the compound effect. If you invest a small amount of money consistently, eventually compound interest takes over and growth becomes exponential. The same holds true for any habit, whether good or bad. If you do something long enough, compounding will take effect, momentum will surge, and you'll begin to experience exponential results.
If you want it bad enough, you will do whatever it takes to make it happen. If you don't, you won't. You'll be willing to reduce time with friends and hobbies, make big asks, take risks, find a mentor, get educated, and look foolish. You'll be surprised how quickly you become Ramen Profitable when you take your work seriously.
Phase Two: Becoming The Best In The World At What You Do
The person who succumbs to temptation knows far less about its power than the person who resists it. Experience is key. Knowledge only becomes wisdom when it's properly and consistently applied. Thus, the importance of learning from people who have actually been there, as opposed to sideline spectators. Never take advice from someone you wouldn't want to switch places with.
Getting to the top 5–10 percent in your field can be done by following principles taught by other people. However, in order to become the best at what you do, at some point you leave it all behind. You become an innovator.A pioneer. An artist.
In order to get to the top 1 percent of performers, you must come up to the razor's edge — the brink of disaster — where probability of failure is high. At this point, everything you've been taught is opposed by what you feel you should do. But your intuition is operating at a higher level.
Entering the realm of the best in the world requires becoming holistic about your art. Everything you do matters. Every moment of your life either contributes to or takes away from what you're trying to accomplish — the food you eat — activities you do — people you spend time with — and how you spend your mornings and evenings.
Most people's lives are structured in a reactive way. The first thing they do in the morning is check their email or social media. They may even read a good book. But all of these things are highly addictive inputs.
In order to become a creative master, you must focus your efforts on outputs by leveraging your subconscious mind. While you're away from your work, like sleeping, spending time with friends, or other activities, your subconscious is working through and mulling over the problems you're trying to solve.
The first thing to do when you wake up is output. This may be in the form of writing in a journal to capture all the work your subconscious has been doing while you were sleeping.
Or immediately getting to the project you're working on. When you get out of a meeting or finish any form of activity, rather than going directly to your email or other input, maximize your subconscious by going directly to output — your work. Creative and insightful eruptions of intellectual inspiration will flow.
Being healthy and free from physical pain is also crucial for enhanced performance. In his book, The Great Pain Deception, Stephen Ozanich wrote:
"Pain and other chronic symptoms are physical manifestations of unresolved internal conflict. Symptoms surface as the instinctual mechanism for self-survival. They are messages from the inner self wanting to be heard, but ego takes center-stage, and hides the truth within the shadows of the unconscious mind: which is the body."
In the 1990's neuroscientist Candice Pert, Ph.D., shared her discovery that the body, not the brain, is the subconscious mind which communicates via neuropeptides. Indeed, human beings are holistic. Our body and mind work in unison.
When we have unresolved tension in our lives, this tension is generally manifest in physical illness. When we clear ourselves of this tension, we allow our body to naturally and organically heal. When our bodies are healthy, we're far more prone to inspiration.
Less is more. When you focus on results, rather than being busy, you're 100 percent ON when you're working and 100 percent OFF when you're not. This not only allows you to be present in the moment, but allows you the needed time to rest and recover.
The science is very compelling. Psychological-detachment from work is essential for being engaged while you're working! Here are other benefits of psychological detachment from work:
- If you don't detach from work, you're more likely to procrastinate and get fatigued on the job.
- Although this is obvious, if you don't detach from work, you're less likely to have marital satisfaction.
Your ability to work at a high level is like fitness. If you never took a break between sets, you wouldn't be able to build strength, stamina, and endurance. However, not all "rest" produces recovery. Certain things are more soothing than others.
Recovering from my work generally consists of writing in my journal, listening to music, spending time with my wife and kids, preparing and eating delicious food, or serving other people. These things rejuvenate me. They make my work possible, but also meaningful.
How do you recover?
Do you have a regular environment optimized for resetting and recovery?
Josh Waitzkin is a genius when it comes to learning and optimal human performance. He was a Chess prodigy as a child — he won five National Championship titles in Tai Chi Chuan — and is now focusing on becoming world-class at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He takes the fundamental principles of learning from the ground up and applies them laterally to different disciplines.
In order to "get in the zone," Josh recommends a Pre-Performance routine. The goal is to reduce stress and anxiety so you can be present. These routines often take 20–60 minutes to put you in the zone. However, Josh recommends incrementally reducing the routine time to the point where simply thinking about it clicks you into the zone.
The purpose of the pre-performance routine is to alter your emotional state. Most people experience emotional resistance before engaging in a task, like say, writing.
That resistance could be a number of negative and suppressed emotions such as fear, uncertainty, and feelings of inadequacy. You don't want these emotions to influence you while you work. They will negatively influence how you perform.
The pre-performance routine is intended to alter your emotional state to one of courage, peace, acceptance, and love. From these emotional states, your work will be far superior. Without question, how you feel in the moment you do you work determines how well you do.
"The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters." — Cus D'Amato
The idea of fearlessness is a false concept that is imposed by spectators. True performers feel fear and experience suffering. However, they learned to settle-into it like a yoga stretch.
Cycling is a sport notorious for the amount of suffering required. As Tyler Hamilton has said, "I discovered when I went all out, when I put 100 percent of my energy into some intense,impossible task — when my heart was jack-hammering, when lactic acid was sizzling through my muscles — that's when I felt good, normal, balanced."
Cyclists often refer to "the pain cave," which is a mental place they go deeper and deeper into as they're competing. "I went deeper than I thought I would." "I was at the limit." "I was totally pinned." You often hear phrases like these in interviews after a cycling race.
"Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously. Left to my own devices, I am always looking for ways to become more and more psychologically impregnable. When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it. My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them." — Josh Waitzkin
When you begin feeling uncomfortable, that's when you start feeling good. That's when you're growing. No pain no gain. That's your happy place. That's where most people stop. But not you.
In the end, there's nothing more important than deep connection with humanity. The love you feel for other people is an experience that eclipses all others in life.
Your level of success is based on your level of contribution. It's not about what you can get, it's about what you can give. The world gives to the givers and takes from the takers. You don't need to worry about what you'll get, because you know your contribution is huge.
So much of training and personal progress is introspective — focused on the self. However, moving outward and focusing on the needs of others provides new meaning for your work. Become the best at what you do, not because of the legacy you'll leave, but because of the lives you'll bless.
There is a four stage hierarchy of motivations in psychology.
At stage one, you are motivated by fear. Everything you do is to avoid punishment or negative outcomes. You only do what you think others want you to do, being completely dependent on them. According to decision theory, this form of motivation is prevention focused.
At stage two, you are motivated by reward. Everything you do is to get what you want. If you are in business, you do only that which you believe will get you ahead. Thus, you are promotion focused and although highly independent, you can't see outside of your own limited worldview. You're too fixated on what you want, so much so that you're unable to truly collaborate or get genuine feedback.
Both stage one and stage two demonstrate extrinsic motivation, which is far less powerful than intrinsic motivation.
At stage three, you are motivated by duty. You're going to do what you believe you should whether you receive a reward or not. You have no fear of punishment. You are intrinsically motivated. You're willing to do whatever it takes to get the result, even if that means changing your initial mindset, ideas, or strategies. Even still, there's a lack of something truly magical when you do something only out of duty.
At stage four, you are motivated by love. You have moved beyond worry for your own needs. Your aim is to bring as much joy to each individual as you possibly can. Your love transcends human reasoning. It drives you to do things most would consider crazy. You no longer live by conventional rules or wisdom. You have a plan, yet that plan is continually upgraded through connecting new dots via collaborations and inspiration. You're no longer tied to a specific outcome but you have conviction and faith that the best outcome will occur.
You can quickly get to the point where you do what you love for a living. This will require hard work, sacrifice, and consistency. However, what got you here won't get you there. Becoming the best involves transcending guidelines and following your instinct.
You get to decide the level of impact or quality of the work you do. You can become the best in the world. It begins with elevated thinking.
Are YOU going to get to the top 1 percent?