text:
I am so grateful to the Universe for allowing me to meet these two beautiful women (inside and out), while shopping at my nearby Sprouts. An instant spark happened when we met, because next thing you know, we were all talking about holistic health, self-care, and Indigenous wisdom right there in the pasta aisle like we had known each other for years. Noelle Pleshette Williams and Aeimee Gloria Diaz offer individualized and unique forms of holistic healing with their private practice here in Phoenix. They were so kind to meet me at their home where they shared tea, stories on their journeys, and some of their favorite little things - from one of Noelle's favorite books to a pyramid replica from the former health food store in East L.A. owned by Aeimee's mother.
They talked about the importance of ritual as it relates to self-care, so be sure to read the "recipe" for their Hygiene Ritual HERE.
Who wants to go first introducing themselves?
Aeimee: I will. My name is Aeimee Diaz, and I am a co-owner of Natural Passion 4 Wellness, and I also have my own private practice in holistic medicine. I work with energy, electromagnetic frequency (EMF), I work with acupuncture, herbs, and nutrition. But not the Western nutrition, I work with TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) Nutrition. I do bodywork, I work with crystals. And I also work with the mind and I facilitate workshops for the youth.
You work with youth here in Phoenix?
Aeimee: Predominantly in Phoenix but we're looking at also facilitating workshops nationwide.
What age are the youth?
Aeimee: Junior high and high school.
Where do you hold the workshops?
Aeimee: In the past they've been held in jails and juvie, but also in inner-city school districts and charter schools. What I bring to them is the power of SELF. The power of mind, our thoughts, our words. How they all interconnect with each other. Also the energy. Energy that drives everything, and how we can manifest whatever it is we want to manifest.
I manifested you two at our Sprouts bump in…and here we are! Ok Noelle, you go next.
Noelle: So I am Noelle, I am an introvert, so speaking about myself is different. It's something I am working on because I am finding myself in situations where people are asking me to speak.
Do you mean like public speaking?
Noelle: Yes, I was recently approached to share information with a group of young girls with a workshop. I was asked to speak at one of the workshops to teach the girls about self-care and other types of things under that umbrella. So it is something I am working on this year - all of these experiences are helping me grow in that area. So yes, I am an introvert (laughter). I am very artistic, I love to work with my hands. I have always loved working with my hands since I was a little girl, and that is how I've always been able to thrive. My hands hold a lot of energy that I have learned on my journey and what my hands can do. A little bit about my background…I am understanding more and more why I am on the path that I am on at this time. In this life, in this dimension, at this time. I believe I've been doing this for many lives, but in this life I was born into one part of my family, my great-great-great-grandfather was a chief, and my other grandfather, or other bloodline, they're Creole. So I have Native, Creole, and then my grandmother is French, so there's a lot of strong energy in my bloodline. I have been learning more and more how to harness this energy that I have, that naturally is innate.
I formulate the the portion of the care products. And just a quick little story on how the business came about…it's called Natural Passion 4 Wellness. So it's NPW which is a play on my initials. So the business came about because of my own personal story. I was having a lot of issues with my skin. When I was an infant I had very severe eczema. It affected me for a number of years and throughout my journey I learned how eczema can be triggered through things like food and stress.
I had terrible eczema as a child. My older brother and I would get awful rashes on our arms, and it wasn't until years later did we figure out we were lactose intolerant. When I took dairy out, my eczema cleared up.
Noelle: Mine was over my entire body, and then over the years in big patches. As I was growing, I didn't know much about eczema, there was not a lot of information.
Where did you grow up?
Noelle: I was born in L.A., but I grew up in Germany. My step-father was in the military. So I was there for pretty much the majority of my elementary and junior high years, and then we moved back to the States ever since.
Was there not a lot of literature on eczema because you were in Germany? I know there was not a lot written about it as there is now. Maybe it was limited even more because you were on the base?
Noelle: That's quite possible. What I do know from my birth mother, I remember her telling me that when I was an infant, she would take me to the doctor because she did not know what to do. And what the doctor told her was , and we were in the States at the time, that it was not very common for them to see it in "Brown" children. They said they mainly saw it more in White or Caucasian people, but I have Caucasian blood as well. Later on, I was like that's kind of weird they would say something like that, because from what I remember, throughout my life there's so many people of all races that have eczema. It's not just a Caucasian thing. But that was what she was told. She had tried different things to removIng fragrances to bathing me in Cetaphil. So in my journey I learned things about food, and learned about stress too. Just tapping into my own body and learning that when I would get really stressed out my eczema would pop up again. I would not have it for awhile, and then it would pop up again. But what I learned on an energetic level is that when you're stressed, the mind is inflamed. So therefore it will inflame your skin too, as well as other areas like the gut. So that is how it came about, the beginning of the story. I started to create my own products because there weren't any types of products back then that would help my skin. I would try different types of things, and then when there were "cleaner" products that said "natural" and I would still break out. I may not get eczema, but my skin would burn. So I started doing some research and reading a lot of books and getting into herbs and things like that - educating myself. I worked at a place where I was able to learn about a whole lot of that as well. So I started experimenting on myself.
That's how I started too, working on myself. I would rather work on myself before trying it on someone else. We know ourselves best.
Noelle: Yes. So I would experiment on different things and then started changing the way that I was eating. Just strengthening my spiritual practice too because that helps with my stress as well and how I manage that. So over time, just me using the products, people would first smell me and ask, "what are you wearing?". I would say this or that, and at the time I also had little business where I was making custom blends of oils and selling them. So it's always been like this thing, that I am creating something. Just like when I was a kid having a lemonade stand and so on. I started telling people about what I was wearing and why, and the word just got around.
That was here in Phoenix?
Noelle: Yes. I worked at a place called Chakra 4 Herbs.
Ahh I probably saw you then! I used to purchase herbs there.
Noelle: So yes! From that point on that really gave me a crash course on learning about herbs. Because the owner (Kita), compared to many other places, would have us take classes. She had that knowledge, she went to SWIHA (Southwest Institute of Healing Arts) so she would teach us. So I became more well-versed in that area and started working with other things too and adding on to what I was already doing. As I learned, I was sharing with other people and it was helping them in certain areas with their skin too. I decided that this is something I am very passionate about. Throughout my research on types of ingredients, I was floored by all of the junk that was in products. Even when things said "natural" there were a lot of really bad things in them - so I became very passionate about it and wanted to educate people and learn more. I decided to invest in my vision because I wanted to create a business doing this, so I went to SWINA, Southwest Institute of Natural Aesthetics which is the sister school of SWIHA. I went to that school, graduated, and it helped me learn the fundamentals of skin better. It really helped me improve my formulations. Over the years, with lots of trial and error, I ended up meeting Aeimee, and long story short with that one, when we were together, we were so similar in a lot of ways. She knew about what I was doing before we had gotten together and she believed in my vision. And with her knowledge, wonderful knowledge, I was learning from her. She was learning from me…and then she asked if she could work with me. I said ABSOLUTELY because we were two people that have all of this knowledge, and we could help each other, so then she became my business partner.
I love it!
Aeimee: I work with people who have skin conditions, but I don't LIKE to work with people with skin conditions necessarily. I've seen some really nasty things, and it's not my favorite. So when Noelle said, "I love all of this, pus, this and that", I was like GREAT, go at it because I needed product medicine for my patients as well. So, synergistically it worked beautifully.
My husband and I were married by Taoist monk from Trinidad, and he shared something with us that I think about all of the time. He said that we (my husband and I) were one another's "Divine Compliments" and that's why we have a certain energy between us. I loved that description of us and now I understand even better because I think that's what you two are as well.
Noelle: I love that, we're going to have to start using that!
So Aeimee, tell me more about you, since I now know skin is not your favorite.
Aeimee: It's not my favorite stuff to work with, but I definitely DO work with patients who have skin conditions, but it's not something that I absolutely love versus Noelle. We had a couple of case studies dealing with severe eczema, one in a woman who had it on the soles of her hands and feet for a couple of years. Which is really interesting because it's not usually like that. Her sister asked us to help out so we took her on as a case study and the products helped tremendously. The way we work is in a method where I take care of the internal aspect of it and do the treatments and help to change the mind so they can start realizing things about themselves and then Noelle will assist by implementing a "new" hygiene. Many people don't understand how important hygiene really is. And I feel people really just rush through it.
Do you mean people don't understand the importance of "natural" products in hygiene or do you mean hygiene in general?
Aeimee: Well that's a whole different conversation!
Noelle: Physical hygiene and spiritual hygiene.
Aeimee: Yes, spiritual AND physical.
Care of the Self
Aeimee: Yes, care of SELF. People rush through it and take shower in five minutes and it's not a ritual. They don't take that care. There has to be a sense of ritual. That is where the love, the self-care, and self-appreciation is - and then healing starts taking place and that really starts changing your concept of YOU. We have so many demands. We want instant gratification, we're constantly on the go, and we're being pulled in so many different directions that by the end of the day it's like what have you done for yourself?
We have to nurture ourselves, or we are going to feel empty. We need to fill the tank up!
Aeimee: And when you're empty you begin to be susceptible to disease. You are no longer yourself, you're no longer living your true potential, you're just on "automatic". And that's not living life, because that is not what it is supposed to be. My roots are very deep in traditional Indigenous ways - I come from a line of healers. I was brought up in holistic medicine. I didn't know anything else. All I know is my mom said, "don't talk about enemas!". (LAUGHTER) I remember traveling with my mom to Mexico and visiting the Casa de Salud down there, the House of Health, and it was no big deal what we were doing - what you would call now, holistic medicine, but back then it was simply naturismo. The way it's been, and that how I grew up. So the Indigenous way is really important, we have removed ourselves. Society has removed themselves from the traditions, from the Indigenous way of living, from being connected to Mother Earth.
In my own work, I feel like I'm helping my community reconnect because a lot of my own family is disconnected to these natural methods, but not by choice. Many relatives think what I do is so strange, because they were in a household where their parents HAD to forget these natural ways to fit in, to assimilate. So sometimes I feel a sense of responsibly, like reeling us back in and helping people to remember.
Aeimee: Exactly - and when you say remember that is so perfect because all of these ingredients that Mother Earth has given to us actually helps us to remember and connect. But connect in a certain way that brings us back into that energetic frequency of health. Back into the genetic information to help us bring in that wisdom - that understanding, that compassion. All of these things that Western civilization has peeled us away from and that is what is creating disease. So people are asking, what else is out there? Well we've always been here, you just brought those blinders out. People are starting to be more open to it because they are sick and tired of it.
I believe we are at a very important time right now where our medicines are being valued once again. We're almost at the end of our meeting, what is your intention for this conversation, what would you like readers to really know?
Noelle: It is my responsibly to share this Indigenous way of healing, and as I have been able to heal myself, I am supposed to help others. It would make no sense for me to keep it to myself. I have to do this. I was chosen to do this and I have to help other people, so that is my intention. While I heal myself, I have been blessed to be able to assist others in their healing journey.
Aeimee: What Natural Passion 4 Wellness brings is a healing modality that is very different. It is not a DIY. It is created by licensed professionals and our formulas have been created in a certain way unlike anything out there. Our oral care line is amazing and I've seen some incredible things happen with that along with our skincare line. If people are really tired, or not finding certain results, they should definitely contact us, because this is on the medicinal end. It is not just regular skin, oral, or hair products. These are medicinal and very different than what people may have experienced.
And lastly, because you are just both glowing right now…what brings you joy?
Noelle: Working with my hands. Creating with my hands. I am very artistic on all levels - even picking out my clothing each day, that is part of my art.
Aeimee: I feel so blessed and so grateful, and I tell you, it has not been easy to get here. It has definitely taken a lot of spiritual work, mental work, physical work, and every day I am so grateful to be here. To be the dream that may ancestors have provided for me, and I appreciate that, and that fires me up. That brings me joy.
You can find Noelle's formulations, where she lovingly handcrafts all of her creations in a meditative state, and read more about Aeimee's holistic practice on: NaturalPassion4Wellness.com


text:
Original knitting patterns by Ellen Coy
About the designer
Ellen Coy is a Saint Louis MO transplant who considers it home. She lives a car free lifestyle with her husband, Caleb, and yorkie poo, Penelope. Together they take the time to walk through out the city discovering all it has to offer.
The incredible architecture of the red brick city finds a way of inspiring Ellen's designs, whether its literal or creating the space to develop an idea. She works to design knitting patterns that enjoyable to knit and push the knitter to learn a new technique with helpful tutorials.
Ellen firmly believes that all races, genders, sexualities, ablitiies, body types, and economic means belong in the fiber community and deserve to be treated with respect. She does not tolerate hate in any form.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Events for 11th February 2019
Events Search and Views Navigation
9:30 am
Legal Advice Surgery – Nottingham Family Law Group
Nottingham Family Law Group is offering a series of Free Legal Advice Surgery sessions to users of Nottingham Women's Centre. They will be able to offer advice on: • Divorce and separation • Matrimonial finance and property • Child arrangements • Domestic violence injunctions • Legal Aid available Family Law Group Ltd is a firm...
2:00 pm
Reiki is a gentle healing technique, a 'hands off' process aimed at relaxation and balancing energy, working on different levels: the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. It is also said to induce deep relaxation, help people cope with difficulties, relieve emotional stress, and improve overall wellbeing. Delivered on a 1:1 basis by a level 2...
5:30 pm
Creative Braiding
This free 10-week programme aims to engage women who are at risk of being not in education, employment or training (NEETs). The aim of the programme is to engage, impact and empower young women through a relatable tool such as creative hairstyling to get them feeling confident to pursue a purposeful focused life. Some of...
6:00 pm
auROARa Drama Group
Run by a trained theatre practitioner with invited artists from the community we will work together to develop stories, explore text and learn new ways to express ourselves in a safe environment. Please register in advance by email: firstname.lastname@example.com Can I just turn up on the first day? No, you will need to register in advance....


text: Do you do "this?" This opens doors and solves problems. This inspires others to do this, too—it's the good kind of contagious. When they tell our life stories, we want them to put this at the top. We are hardwired for this. This is who we are, and This Is What We Do. "This" is all about the joy of giving—it's a complete paradigm shift in talking about giving. In part two of this series, Pastor Pete explains how to move from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset.


text:
Watching Zoe Ball's documentary on Wednesday evening - 'Hardest Road Home' - was a very moving experience. She was raising money for Sport Relief and was doing a bike ride from Blackpool to Brighton in memory of her partner Billy who took his own life.
It was a strong reminder that we can never really know what people are going through. She was aware of his depression and the struggles he had.
The programme specifically focussed on men's mental health and how men can find it difficult to talk, to reach out for help and support.
Zoe's openness and the openness of those she spoke to was moving and heartfelt.
Suicide is unbearable for those left behind, often asking 'Why?' - a question which is so hard to answer. There is so much confusion, frustration and despair.
I've found the most important thing is to listen, without judgement and be available to hear the 'Why?' over and over again.
For those struggling with mental health issues or those coping after suicide - don't suffer alone... reach out and let someone be there - who could that be for you?
For information on our services, please get in touch. Oonagh


text:
Buy the most advanced teacher's smocks on the market!
Line of teacher smocks that break the monotony of gray and subdued colors with cheerful prints, fun and entertaining.
In this section you will find different offers of teacher smocks where we distinguish teachers smocks with long sleeves and teacher smocks without sleeves.
The characteristic that defines particularly the teachers smocks is its composition and its measurements. A robe reaches the top of the thigh of the leg and is mostly equipped in pockets, covering the entire torso of the body giving it a more professional character.
On the other hand, in its composition cotton is more abundant, providing greater transpiration of the garment and more maneuvering to make a great variety of prints. Focusing them exclusively to be the preferred work clothes to wear as a professional school wardrobe.
If we talk about properties, we would highlight the rubber cuffs and the round neck finishes in most models of children's gowns. You can always choose different fastening systems, either button or zipper.


text:
Archive for humor
Yes…cats are brilliant…Posted in Cats in Art with tags cat, cat cartoons, cats are brilliant, cats funny, funny, humor, Illustration on March 10, 2016 by Mj Rains
Style is the answer to everything…Posted in Poetry at large with tags Art, Bukowski, Charles Bukowski, humor, lit, literature, loving, madness, poems, poetry, style, Writers, Writing on September 7, 2015 by Mj Rains
Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing.
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without style.
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.
Bullfighting can be an art.
Boxing can be an art.
Loving can be an art.
Opening a can of sardines can be an art.
Not many have style.
Not many can keep style.
I have seen dogs with more style than men,
although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.
When Hemingway put his brain to the wall with a shotgun, that was style.
Or sometimes people give you style.
Joan of Arc had style.
John the Baptist.
Garcia Lorca.
I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is the difference, a way of dong, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in the pool of water,
or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.
~Charles Bukowski, Tale of Ordinary Madness
The malapropisms of Yogi Berra…Posted in "Wit"icisms" with tags alphabet juice, baseball, funny, humor, humorous, laugh, malapropisms, quote, witicisms, words, yogi berra on September 6, 2015 by Mj Rains
Baseball fan I don't claim to be…I won't even try, though I've enjoyed a game or two in my time…
In need of a laugh (and while perusing Alphabet Juice by Roy Blount Jr.) I open to the word "malapropism" which isn't really defined but can be rendered as a "wit-icism" quite naturally…or not… It is essentially an incorrect word used in place of a word, resulting in an utterance that makes no sense (yet does) in a humorous way. Thanks Wikipedia…
Yogi Berra, of baseball fame, is listed in Blount's book as a classic candidate for having perfected the art of creating malapropisms…
"If you come to a fork in the road, take it."


text:
AMEX DIGITAL unveiled the new SP-7 Digital Photo Frame with integrated photo printer.
Soon you will have a complete computer inside a photo frame completely perverting the category.
The Amex SP-7 has a 7 inch TFT display with 800x480px resolution.
Other features of the Amex SP-7 include card reader, USB, speakers, video and music payer, and remote control.
The Amex SP-7 photo frame with integrated printer is rather affordable with $199 suggested retail price. It would have been nice if they would have stuck Wi-Fi in it too.
Via the Amex site.


text:
By delivering our expert care on a one-to-one basis at home, we can make all the difference to an individual with an advanced, progressive illness and can help to improve and enhance their quality of life as the end approaches.
To ensure the best possible end of life care service, we provide a personalised end of life care plan that is tailored to suit the needs and circumstances of the individual. We will tell you what to expect from the service as well as any personal care we offer.
Our rapid response team are always on hand to set up your entire end of life care services within a few hours of you contacting us. Our friendly staff are always on hand to help discuss any worries you or your family have as well as answer any questions.
By being able to choose their own care, a client's dignity and self-respect can be maintained, as well as providing peace of mind for their loved ones.
Arranging end of life care?
Call us on:
We can also provide you with information about your rights and choices, including refusing treatment, setting down your wishes for your future treatment, and how to give someone the legal right to make decisions for you if you are no longer capable. For more information please contact us today.


text:
(Click image to enlarge)
The rainforests and sheltered gullies of Great Otway National Park have a dense
canopy of non-eucalypt tree species, climbers, broad-leafed shrubs and tree
ferns. These provide umbrellas of shade for a variety of ferns, shrubs, mosses
and myriad of other life-forms.
Home |
Thumbnails |
Portfolios |
Copyright 2017 Dean M. Chriss


text:
Each summer Blythefield Country Club in Belmont, Michigan hosts nearly 150 of the world's best female golfers for the Meijer LPGA Classic. It's 4 days, 72 holes with a $2 million purse! This is our third time attending the event this year and we figured it's overdue that we share the insiders scoop.
Us Kladders are big golfers which makes this event right up our alley. Both Jeff and I golf in our own prospective leagues as well as together for couples golf. Meanwhile, we are secretly hoping that our kids will take up the game someday. This was our first time visiting as a family this year and it was a great success. We recently got the advice that the first step towards our dream of the Kladder Kids becoming Club Champions is to simply get them interested in being at the golf course which, at the Meijer Classic, isn't difficult with the Discovery Land tent included with general ticket entry.
DISCOVERY LAND is the 'kids zone' tent which is where we spent a good amount of our time. For this reason, we recommend you make this the last stop on your tour with kids because once you get them in there, it's going to be difficult to get them out! Some of the highlights for our kids included the putting green, the Meijer Shipt Grocery Store, the Play-Doh station and the outdoor patio where the kids went bonkers over the giant toy selection. There was even a snack counter inside and they allowed each kid to pick two take-home items for free. They were in heaven!
And this year for the first time, adjacent to the Discovery Land, they offered a 'mothers tent' that families could use for diaper changes and breast feeding. We are well beyond the breast feeding stage of life (Amen!) but diapers are still very much part of our world so the tent was very much appreciated. Way to go Meijer Classic!
Alternatively, what we recommend doing first upon your arrival at the Meijer Classic is THE GRAND TASTE which opens at 10am. Instead of waiting until the Noon hour when the crowds hit, we suggest opting for more of the brunch hour for The Taste. Not only will you avoid the lines but if you're there as a family and have kids on foot you'll be way less worried about losing them in the crowds; Not to mention, not having to hold onto them constantly resulting in having both hands for eating! Also, if you have a stroller, good luck rolling through there during the busier hours. On that note, for our 2-year-old, Jeff had our kid carrying back pack which was extremely helpful. He's quite heavy though and I could see next year bringing our jogging stroller instead - the Jeep one with bike tires; I'm not sure any other kind would do well through the course.
The food is plentiful and the tastings are unlimited making the extra cost of the Grand Taste ticket well worth the price tag. Vendors in past years have included Reserve GR, San Chez Bistro, Six.One.Six and my favorite… the culinary team from Meijer who always pump out prime rib and jumbo shrimp samplers! I won't even mention their bakery stations, except for I just did! Helloooo cupcakes! You all know I have a mega sweet tooth!
Blythefield Country Club is a beautiful course and extremely easy to get to from multiple directions. This year we parked at a local high school and bused into the course - an option the event offers every year due to onsite parking parameters. Also worth mentioning, our kids actually had a great time riding the giant charter bus and it became a point of conversation when Natalie talked about our day later with her Grandparents. It was at that moment I realized she (and Thomas) had never ridden a bus before! Bonus!
With the event being in the middle of June it's the perfect week to get outside and enjoy a Michigan summer day and watch some golf. Specifically with Natalie, I was eager to follow along the course and watch some of the best female players in the game. At our house, the golf channel is on nearly always if there is a tournament that day so needless to say, we've got plenty of exposure to mens golf; watching the women was pretty special and I could tell Natalie was certainly more interested than usual.
The course traffic/crowd coordination is excellent. There are multiple ways to walk and watch around the course and if you've got kids with you, again, a jogging stroller or a kiddo back pack might be the way to go. With Thomas on Jeff's back I was never worried about him dashing off into the crowds or onto the fairway. While watching golf, I was sure to bring a pacifier for Thomas in the case he got chatty and also came armed with Dum-Dum suckers. Neither ended up being necessary but I was armed and ready had there been the need!
In terms of professional golf outings, the Meijer LPGA Classic has to be one of, if not THEE best event for young families to attend together. We are lucky to have such a great event in our own backyard and look forward to the event again next year!


text:
Fishers Freedom Festival's
in United States at Roy Holland Park
Stars and Stripes 5K and 2M
5K Run (chip-timed)
Online registration is closed for this category.
2-Mile Family Fun Walk (un-timed)
Online registration is closed for this category.
|Event Information
"The Best Big Town 5K Event with the Small Town Feel". Come participate as a runner, jogger or walker in the 29th annual Fishers Freedom Festival's 5K Event sponsored by Allisonville Meadows on Saturday, June 24th. There will also be a non-competitive family two-mile fun walk.
Last year's event attracted a near record crowd of over 1,200 participants. The 5K event will begin promptly at 8:00AM The two-mile walk will begin at 8:05AM. Participants will take a scenic route through Fishers' neighborhoods, accompanied with water stations sponsored by Aqua Systems. No pets, bikes or roller blades in the 5K event, please. Awards will be presented following the race at 8:55AM near the baseball field behind the main registration tent. This event is co-sponsored by: Runners Forum, Meyer Najem Construction LLC, Salin Bank and T & T Promotions.
All proceeds benefit the Roy Holland Backpacks for Kids Program and the Fishers Freedom Festival.
5K Run Awards will be given to:
There will be no duplication of awards; first overall finishers are not eligible for age group awards.
Participants must have an electronic timing chip and record an official finish time to be eligible for awards! No exceptions!
5K participants will have their race time officially recorded by the IPICO timing system.
The 2-Mile Family Fun Walk is truly just for fun and will not be timed.
|Late Registration & Packet Pick-Up
Late Registration and Packet Pick Up - Thursday, June 22, and Friday, June 23, 2017
4:00PM-8:00PM at the Runners Forum (14033 Mundy Dr, Fishers)
Race Day Registration
Saturday June 24, 2017, 6:15AM- 7:45AM
(west side of the park at Ellipse Parkway and Sunblest Blvd.)
|Race Beneficiary
All proceeds benefit the Roy G. Holland Memorial Scholarship, the Roy Holland Backpacks for Kids and the Fishers Freedom Festival.
|5K Course Map
|2 Mile Course Map
For event-related questions, please click on the *Contact the Organizers* button on the left-hand side of this page.
- When this page loaded, the official time was 4:18:22 PM EDT.


text:
My Kitchen Renovation Must
If you're starting a kitchen renovation, now is a great time to create exactly what you want. We have the set of two round black drawer hardware on most of the drawers, a different shape of black pulls on the top four smaller drawers near the stove, two long black pulls which double as towel rods on the dishwasher and trash drawers), square glass knobs with black brackets on the cabinet doors, and two slim brass edge pulls on the pantry cabinets.
And for a bathroom with an old-fashioned white porcelain pedestal sink, a claw-foot tub, and a black and white toilet, consider using Elemental Glass Gold Nugget on the floor to pick up the gleam of a gold toilet paper holder, faucets, and exposed plumbing.
If you don't think you are able to handle the messy and oftentimes confusing facets of remodeling, you might want to hire a contractor and professional interior designers that will help you know what you would like your brand-new kitchen to appear as with the finish.
Because smallish" kitchen inspiration is helpful to people, by labeling it as small" people know they'll find practical and functional ideas that don't require installing double islands or huge walk-in pantries that are bigger than most people's entire kitchens or even houses.
To find out more about how you can make your upcoming remodel in Cincinnati or Dayton fit the styles of 2017, work carefully with your contractor from Craftsmen Home Improvements Your contractor can talk with you about the latest trends and the most recent innovations to make your kitchen remodel a success.


text:
Hear Taking part in… Paused You're listening to a pattern of the Audible audio version. As one fashion writer put it, 1957 was the 12 months in which Gabrielle Coco" Chanel (at age seventy four) grew to become an adjective in her own time." Form of like Googling," Chanelisms had been creeping back into vogue ever for the reason that lady emerged from retirement several years before, but in 1957 they were ubiquitous.
This clothier's creations have been so refined; it helped to define the Nineteen Sixties refined type of the stylish and complicated dressing of film stars. Saxony Dudbridge was one of many first contributors to the Catwalk Your self challenge, Saxony research Worldwide Fashion Advertising and marketing and she or he is accountable for our great Historical past and Designers Biographies sections. Full skirts in bright colours turn out to be widespread for dancing and skirts and pants had been pinched in at the waist to emphasize the waist and bust. The 1950s is normally that considered to obtain a useful era as many famous fashion places corporations and well-known clothes manufacturers such as Ralph Lauren started doing their innovations and businesses for decade. Television reworked entertainment and the information, influencing traits and depicting vogue.
Girls's trend design had taken a turn toward cleaner, simpler traces that reflected the brand new austerity of a bad financial system. Many designers used double layers of chiffon or print coated with organza to form a gown or a costume. Nevertheless it was Brigitte who worked it first, securing the bikini's standing as vital trend merchandise and her personal future career in the process. Not only were the 1950's essential in history, but they also significantly reworked the face of fashion in America. Saddle shoes are still a darling footwear possibility at the moment and provides any outfit a definite Fifties appeal!
The British vogue trade began to develop shifting away from the U.S Types and materials have been being influenced by British designers who were celebrating the female hourglass figure. By the end of the 1950s they have been still seen, though not required for a business uniform; by 1970, they had vanished almost totally. FASHION HISTORICAL PAST: Christian Dior redefined ladies's style when he launched a line of dresses in 1947 which modified woman's type from lengthy and lean to suit and flared.
The most effective information concerning the new style for a lot of males who bemoaned the disappearance of the female waistline was that it meant increased hemline. Swing skirts were a common sight on USO dance flooring as young girls danced with uniformed men to the jazzy horns that characterized the Massive Band Era. Fashion durign this time was influenced by the People, movie stars and music particularly rock & roll. It wasn't until the mid-Nineteen Fifties that the concept of youth trend for youngsters actually got here into existence. Actually unveiled in 1947, however doubtless the defining silhouette of the last decade ahead, Dior's New Look redefined women's wardrobes within the 1950s. A preferred campus outfit might encompass an extended, cumbersome sweater over top of a skinny skirt or pants.


text:
Next Mercedes-Benz GLS to share S-Class autonomous tech
Range-topping SUV will be the most luxurious and spacious model in Mercedes' line-up
Mercedes-Benz has been caught testing its next-generation GLS on public roads around 18 months before the SUV hits the market.
The successor to Mercedes' current range-topping SUV can be seen sporting a design similar to that of the smaller and also recently spotted new GLE, which is due next year.
The GLS's significantly larger scale is emphasised by its boxier rear section, although part of this is due to cladding applied to the development car to hide its design.
Like the current GLS, the next-gen car will share many parts with the S-Class, including its powertrains. The S-Class gets six and eight-cylinder turbocharged petrol engines, a six-cylinder turbo diesel and a petrol-electric hybrid, so expect a similar line-up with the GLS.
Key to the engine line-up's latest improvements is a 48V electric system that uses an electric booster compressor and integrated starter generator to enable mild hybrid running.
At the top of the range will be a GLS 63 with AMG's twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 powerplant, likely with the same 612bhp on offer as in the S63.
Much of the SUV's in-car tech will also be carried across from the S-Class, including its autonomous features. The 2017 S-Class introduced Mercedes' latest Distronic Active Proximity Control and Active Steer Assist systems, which can automatically accelerate and brake the car within posted speed limits while providing autonomous steering for periods of up to 30sec.
More content:
Source: Autocar Online


text:
Man in custody after allegedly stabbing woman, setting fire to vehicle
NORMAN, Okla. – A suspect is in custody after he allegedly stabbed a woman and set a car on fire.
"I'm assuming it was a neighborly dispute," said Ted Wilson with the Norman Police Department.
Officials say it's not the first time they've been called to the duplex near Rock Creek and Porter.
When crews arrived, they found a car on fire and woman stabbed in the arm.
The fight reportedly started with two damaged cars and windshields smashed, with a tree truck to blame on one of them. Then, the male suspect reportedly set the female neighbor's car on fire.
"Upon our arrival, the car was involved heavily with fire, so we extinguished the fire," said Patrick Holden with the Norman Fire Department.
As that car burned, the female neighbor chased down the suspect.
"A neighbor had chased the suspect to the apartment and subsequently got stabbed. I believe it was mentioned scissors," said Wilson.
EMSA crews took the stabbed female to the hospital where she is reportedly doing OK.
As for the suspect, he went back into his house, closed the door and didn't answer it when police knocked.
"We made phone contact, talked him to come out, got him to come out and talk to officers, took him into custody from there," said Wilson.
Neighbors and police confirm to News 4 that fights between these neighbors happened frequently, but now, the male suspect could be facing charges of arson and assault with a deadly weapon.


text:
Posted on January 24, 2018
Poker tables
If you experience "bad beats" on several tables at once, the risk on going on "tilt" is greater Occasionally you might hit the raise button when you were supposed to fold and vice versa.
Mistakes like the ones mentioned here will decrease your hourly winning rate. Therefore it's very important that you're focused and mentally prepared when you play at multiple tables.
If you decide to play many tables at once you should be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of doing so. Playing multiple tables concurrently increases your likelihood of making mistakes. This is because you will not know your opponents as well and will have less time to make your decisions. Also, there is a greater risk of hitting the wrong button because you are switching back and forth between. tables. Sometimes you might hit the raise button when you were supposed to fold and vice versa. Such mistakes will decrease your earning rate.
Playing in this manner also requires a greater level of concentration, so you should only do it when you feel focused and refreshed. It is quite common to become less focused when playing this way because it is markedly more difficult to follow the play and evaluate the players. Consequently, you may develop a mechanical style of play, where you fail to adjust your strategy in accordance with the game. This can take away some elements that make the game fun and interesting and may contribute to a decreased level of focus.
It is possible that playing at multiple tables might make your game more solid. This is because you will be playing more hands, so the risk of growing impatient will be reduced. On the other hand, if you experience "bad beats" on many tables at once, the risk on going on "tilt" is greater.
The greatest advantage to playing multiple tables is the possibility of increasing your overall hourly earning rate. If you are a player who normally makes one big bet an hour at one table, you could expect to win three big bets an hour by playing at three tables. This is true even if you were to only make one half of a big bet an hour because of the aforementioned disadvantages: Your hourly win rate would still have increased to 1.5 big bets an hour compared to 1 big bet an hour when playing a single table.


text:
Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
Macmillan, Sep 4, 2007 - Medical - 389 pages
A long life in a healthy, vigorous, youthful body has always been one of humanity's greatest dreams. Recent progress in genetic manipulations and calorie-restricted diets in laboratory animals hold forth the promise that someday science will enable us to exert total control over our own biological aging.
Nearly all scientists who study the biology of aging agree that we will someday be able to substantially slow down the aging process, extending our productive, youthful lives. Dr. Aubrey de Grey is perhaps the most bullish of all such researchers. As has been reported in media outlets ranging from 60 Minutes to The New York Times, Dr. de Grey believes that the key biomedical technology required to eliminate aging-derived debilitation and death entirely--technology that would not only slow but periodically reverse age-related physiological decay, leaving us biologically young into an indefinite future--is now within reach.
In Ending Aging, Dr. de Grey and his research assistant Michael Rae describe the details of this biotechnology. They explain that the aging of the human body, just like the aging of man-made machines, results from an accumulation of various types of damage. As with man-made machines, this damage can periodically be repaired, leading to indefinite extension of the machine's fully functional lifetime, just as is routinely done with classic cars. We already know what types of damage accumulate in the human body, and we are moving rapidly toward the comprehensive development of technologies to remove that damage. By demystifying aging and its postponement for the nonspecialist reader, de Grey and Rae systematically dismantle the fatalist presumption that aging will forever defeat the efforts of medical science.
What people are saying - Write a review
User ratings
|5 stars
|4 stars
|3 stars
|2 stars
|1 star
LibraryThing ReviewUser Review - bodhisattva - LibraryThing
This book has two main goals: to describe the primary biologic bases of human aging, and to present de Grey's proposals to "engineer" solutions to these processes which would provide human's with a ... Read full review
LibraryThing ReviewUser Review - lonepalm - LibraryThing
Endless Ageing: to what end?: If worn-out human parts can be replaced and a person can live to be 300 to 400 years, won't only the very rich be able to afford this technology? What economic chaos ... Read full review
Selected pages
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
accumulation acids activity actually aging damage alagebrium allotopic expression already Alzheimer's disease Amadori product aminoguanidine amyloid amyloidosis anergic animals anti-aging antibodies arteries beta-amyloid biogerontology biological biomedical blood sugar body body's brain calorie restriction cancer cells catalase cause CD8 cells cell's cellular Chapter chemical clinical clones death defeat dendrimer diabetes drug electron embryonic stem cells enzymes ESCs fact function funding gamma-secretase gene expression gene therapy genetic glycation healthy heart human immune system infection inteins junk kidney levels lipofuscin lysosomal macrophages membranes metabolic mice mitochondrial DNA mitochondrial free radical mitochondrial mutations molecular molecules mutant mitochondria mutations neurons normal nuclear mutations nucleus organisms oxidative stress patients people's percent plaques potential prevent problem produce proteins rejuvenation response result scientific scientists SCNT senescent cells SENS side effects signal specific structure studies suffer target telomerase telomeres there's tion tissue toxic treatment trials turn vaccine waste


text:
Minimizing ID Theft
September 24, 2008
How do you minimize your risk?
Nothing you do can guarantee that you won't become a identity theft victim, but you can minimize your risk with a few simple steps
- Protect your social security number. Don't carry it in your wallet; give it out only when absolutely necessary; and, verify in advance the source before sharing.
- Be careful where and with whom you share your social security number and private, identifying financial information, such as mother's maiden name.
- Treat your trash with care. Thieves pick through trash and recycling bins to capture personal information. Shred credit card bills and receipts, credit card offers, credit applications, insurance forms, hospital and physician statements and expired credit cards.
- Consider freezing your credit.
Consumers in many states can "freeze" or restrict access to their credit reports. Once the freeze is in place, no one – potential creditors or other third parties – will be able to get access to your credit report until the you lift the freeze.
What credit information can be frozen varies by state. So does the cost. The Consumers Union offers a guide spelling out the ins and outs of state security freeze laws by state that includes information from the three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
- Student Loan Identity Theft
- Medicare and Social Security Numbers
- New Credit Cards in 2015 to Provide Identity Theft Protection
- Advantages of a Long and Healthy Life
- Credit Monitoring – Paying for it & Doing it on your own
- Protect Your Credit Card & Bank Account on Vacation
- Nothing's Certain, Even Death
- 5 Warning Signs of a Scam


text:
Sachin Tendulkar, the name is just enough! There is no exaggeration; even half of the name speaks a lot!! The God of Cricket! None would have even had a dream that a school dropout kid reaching great heights that nobody can achieve so easily. It might be a miracle, honestly it is not! He surrendered himself to cricket, which he was so passionate about!
Sachin Tendulkar is the prime role model for the cricket aspirants. Not just his strokes are famed, but his determination, sincerity, dedication and love for cricket is eminent.
Surviving almost 25 years in sports, celebrated as a religion in India is something extremely tough in the world. He successfully went through all these years (of course with ups and downs in his career profile) with physical as well as mental fitness.
What is the secret behind Sachin's fitness? – Simple Gym Routines and practicing his work followed by meditation
The secret is nothing. Surprisingly, his hobby became the profession and passion! He just did what he loved, what he was so passionate about it. He practiced for hours and hours every day. Yes. Sachin Tendulkar's most favorite way to stay fit is nothing but the net practice, playing cricket! However, he did follow very specific fitness routine that just suits his needs.
He was so disciplined in every aspect! He understood the bio-dynamics of every exercise and followed it meticulously. He recovered very quickly after every single injury he experienced in the playground! Playing cricket incessantly kept him fit for years.
Sachin scheduled for gym workouts only when he had spare time other than his cricket practice.
Any cricketer, rather a sportsman goes through immense emotional turmoil. To burst out the stress he developed in the playground, he practiced breathing exercises. Breathing exercises for a few minutes after a cricket match or net practice is a part and parcel of his daily life.
Sachin is a foodie! He never skipped any nutrient!
Yes, this might be surprising to a few, but it is the truth! He loves to eat a variety of delicacies and he has sweet tooth. He declared that he is so fond of cheesecakes and cannot resist himself from eating alphonsa mangoes. His dieting mantra is simple!
You can eat as much as little you want, but what you eat should be right and appropriate. Whether you eat less or more, when the food is bad for you, it will harm you.
Unlike typical sportsmen who avoid /cut the intake of carbs and fats, Sachin is unique. His diet is composed of 40 percent carbohydrate, 60 % on an equal mix of proteins, and fats.
His diet included mixed grains porridge, full fat milk, fresh juices, whey protein powder, grilled fish /meat, rotis, yogurt, fresh fruits, protein shake, etc. He included nuts and dry fruits as well as fresh fruits / freshly prepared salad in every meal. In the mornings and the evenings he consumed proteins through protein shakes. He is so aware about different cuisines and enjoys the delicacies of different countries.
All the calories he earned are melted away during his practice.
He ignored all those negative comments and never carried to his head. However, he set a goal and laid down the expectations that he can achieve before can meet the expectations of others. This was his major secret behind the mental fitness. Besides, he loved his family and loved spending time with the family. It is also a part of his mental fitness, which kept himself so energetic and refreshing.
In order to stay physically fit like Sachin, find your ultimate fitness regimen and never skip it! Similarly, eat healthy food choices and get some leisure to spend with your loved ones. You will stay fit, energetic and refreshing like Sachin!


text:
About Greg
Greg Polumbo is the technical lead for the Harvard Catalyst Web Portal, part of Harvard Catalyst's Biomedical Informatics Program. He and his team are responsible for maintaining the Web Portal and array of small to medium sized projects that were developed at CBMI and Harvard Catalyst. Greg has many years of development experience in Ruby on Rails, Java, PHP, and HTML/CSS/JS. Greg drinks lots of coffee and will gladly consume any cookies that may find their way into the office.


text:
Our Partners
Supporting education and innovation long after the school day ends.
Elementary Programs
Mentoring, swim lessons, soccer, science, tutoring and much, much more!
Middle School
These are the coolest kds you wil ever meet. Our city has so much to offer these in-betweeners.
High School
College Prep, Art, Carreer explorations, first job opportunties, volunteering, and job readiness - we've got something for any high schooler!
LAN Partner Events
Today's students.
Tomorrow's leaders.
Join us to help insure that the children and teens of Lewiston have the greatest opportunities to learn and prepare for the future of our city.


text:
Kriech-Higdon Photography
Jessie Kriech-Higdon & Chris Higdon
**Recently we have be alerted that our emails are ending up in SPAM folders. If you don't hear from us within a day please check your folder OR call us or contact us through Facebook- thanks! We are working on getting the problem fixed.
+1 (502) 548-5926
Wedding Packages start at $2950
Contact us for a price list for wedding, portrait, commercial and corporate photography.


text:
Drazen Pavlovic is a master painter and pioneer and co-founder of a new art movement (see below).He Lives and works in Varazdin, where he has an art studio called "Atelier ...READ MORE +
CHRISTINE DAS, a Penang born artist who started in graphic design at the Sain Academy of Arts Penang. Her artistic journey traversed book illustrations, displays, mural painting, ...READ MORE +
Born on February 29, 1988. in Kragujevac, Serbia, Graduated in 2013 at Faculty of Philology and Arts.She is an emerging young artists from Balkan Europe and her works has been ...READ MORE +
THOMAS W. SCHALLER : Los Angeles, USA Thomas has long been considered one of the foremost architectural artists in the world. In the field, he has won every major award for his ...READ MORE +
KEITH DILLON : Artist / Photographer : USA Brief Information: I was born in New Jersey, USA, growing in the northern part of the state. Started out wanting to be a artist, ...READ MORE +


text:
The Dark Arts: A Post-Truth Progymnasmata
Joshua Wood
Joshua Wood earned his Ph.D. in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design at Clemson University. His work examines the intersections between race, affect, and games. He is currently at work on a dissertation and an accompanying video game to illustrate how games might be used to communicate affective experiences of race. Other research interests include game-based pedagogies, how role-playing games can be adapted to the classroom, along with the rhetorics of propaganda and other post-truth rhetorics.
*To navigate, please click on the "Click to read" button for full-screen viewing. Also, you may download larger and complete PDF files of each document here:
A Post-Truth Progymnasmata: A Manual by Joshua Wood
I. P.T. Barnum: Hero of the Post-Truth Era
Early in his career, the consummate American showman P. T. Barnum purchased the rights to a slave woman displayed under the name Joice Heth. The woman, her owner claimed, was a nurse to George Washington upon his birth, and as proof the owner offered Barnum the bill of sale for one Joice Heth to the Washington family. The year was 1835. Barnum took Heth on a tour, posted advertisements that took advantage of the growing cult of Washington, and generally claimed that this woman was actually 161 years old. In truth, the woman Barnum and others identified as Heth (which was not her real name) was only 80 years old. The public, whether they believed it to be true or not, bought into the fraud. Attendance would soar when Barnum brought Heth to town. If it slacked off, Barnum was able to manipulate the press in order to drive up attendance once again. In one such occasion, Barnum wrote a pseudonymous letter to a local newspaper, charging that "Heth was a fake, that she was a 'curiously constructed automaton, made up of whalebone, India-rubber, and numberless springs,' and that the exhibitor was 'a ventriloquist.' Crowds thronged again to see if this could possibly be true. It all led to a breakthrough discovery for Barnum—that the public actually enjoyed being deceived, as long as they were, at the same time, being amused" (Kunhardt et al 22). Barnum had made his first, but far from his last, outing as a showman.
Barnum was, in some way, a product of his time. The nineteenth century in America was so riddled with such hoaxes, frauds, and humbugs that "someone at the time called it 'the age of imposture'" (Young 6). Barnum's move, both in the press and outside of it, took the false nature of his own "humbugs" into account. It wasn't that he wanted to draw attention away from some falsity, but rather to make the viewer complicit, to make "the audience part of the hoax, saying effectively, you're smart, or better yet, you think you're so smart: come see and decide for yourself" (10). The humbug, as Barnum would describe his exhibitions (a word with the general connotation of a deceptive act), included this interactive component, drawing attendees in by challenging them to spot the very deceptiveness, the very falsity of the act itself. In this way, the audience becomes complicit in the deception merely by being a part of it. The exhibit itself was, seemingly, neutral in this interplay—the hoax was perpetrated by someone, for someone, and while the structure of the hoax was called into question, its true purpose, to draw in a profit, was concealed in the interplay between hoaxer and public. This kind of complicity can best be compared to a rhetorical move, the syllogism, and more specifically the enthymeme, wherein one premise of the argument is omitted and filled in, knowingly or unknowingly, by the audience. Nor is this kind of complicity dead within the modern public sphere—one thinks of Donald Trump's rallies, wherein attendees chant in response to Trump's question, "Who's gonna pay for [the wall]?" with a chorus of "Mexico."
If we are to truly tackle the premises of post-truth rhetoric, then we must do so with this fact in mind: that it is impossible to separate the audience from the orator from the audience. They are all part of the same network, caught in a feedback loop with one another. All of this in concert with the concealed element—the structure of the post-truth object itself. The aim of post-truth communication, even in its earlier forms as propaganda, is typically an obfuscation or distrust of the truth. Further, what we have to understand is that these networks do not work in isolation—they arise from a certain world, just as Barnum and his audiences did. Barnum entered the world of show business in a nation that had entered a state of obsession with elaborate hoaxes. "The relatively young nation saw a number of heavy-duty hoaxes and part-time pranks, many of them committed by some of our most beloved writers...who questioned truth rather than questing after it" (Young 11). Barnum would not have been able to garner the reputation that he did were it not for people's love of his humbugs. The two fed each other.
But there is also something structural in the way that people were, and still are, wont to turn willingly toward these "humbugs." The chief factor seems to be that they confirm some kind of bias within the audience. Perhaps it is a symbol of our age par excellence that we can find the most succinct description of this from comedian Stephen Colbert, who during his time on The Colbert Report coined the word "truthiness" to describe something that feels true even if it is not necessarily true, and acting as if that were the truth. It is this feeling of "truthiness" to which the flim-flams and hoaxes of the nineteenth century appealed. Barnum's display of Heth, as a means by which audience members could physically touch what was purported to be a connection to their history, was steeped in the culture's racial hierarchy. Heth was, after all, a slave, and her worth was measured only in her usefulness as an object, both for Barnum's profits and as "an advertisement for the white self" (32). The earlier Moon Hoax of the era, when a New York newspaper claimed to have found evidence of a society on the moon, featured both a feral, subjugated race, and a paler race of overlords who naturally subjugated the lower classes. In that way, the hoaxes of the age were tied to the same questions of racial hierarchy plaguing the United States before the Civil War.
In all of this, the work of the post-truth object, a term which I will apply even to these "fake news" articles or hoaxes, obscures its true function. In the case of Barnum or of the Moon Hoax, to engage with the invitation of the hoaxer to attempt to see through the hoax is already buying into the premise of the object. Here, the objects are designed to invite inquiry to garner a profit. Barnum, as evidenced by his letters to editors decrying his own falsities, did not care why someone bought a ticket to his Museum, only that they did. If they arrived, and discovered the hoax unconvincing, then it didn't matter; the exhibit had already done its job. To engage with the Moon Hoax was to purchase the newspaper in which it was printed, driving up their sales. True or false, the goal was achieved as soon as one bought the paper.
There is a parallel to the modern era. Here, too, the world is dealing with a sudden shift in apparatus. In the early nineteenth century, the penny press revolutionized the way the world engaged with the news. So too has the internet changed the way that the world interacts with the news and with facts themselves in the early twenty-first century. The promised democratization of publishing accompanying the penny press and the internet have both arrived, but in the former case carried with it a brand of fake news similar to what the American public sphere is now seeing, and in the latter case has sped the world toward the democratic accident—that collapse of democracy into populism and authoritarianism that is made possible through the structures of democracy.
In the case of the penny press (cheap, mass-produced tabloid newspapers), the collapse of one grand narrative was healed by the creation of a new one: shortly after the advent of the penny press, the American Civil War would break out, reigniting patriotic narratives. The collapse of the grand narrative did not matter because the underlying narratives remained the same; the metanarrative of the march toward freedom, in the end of civil war, continued, while, seemingly at odds, the metanarrative of white supremacy remained firmly rooted in the American public sphere. The society that emerged postwar would look remarkably similar to the prewar society, with only a few cosmetic shifts—white supremacy would survive, embedded in the very fabric of American society, despite attempts to "reconstruct" the South after the war. The penny press represented a shift in the kinds of information now available to the public, a dramatic change to the way that people engaged with the world. New technologies democratized the dissemination of knowledge. This kind of democratization, similar to the shift from literate to electrate apparatus now adding to the return of this kind of post-truth communication, would help fuel the obsession with hoaxes. Similarly, the rise of the internet has only helped to advance communities of conspiracy theorists, giving those theories validation by placing them on equal footing with the most rigorously researched journalistic endeavor.
Like Gregory Ulmer describes in Avatar Emergency, what is needed at this moment is an avatar, one that we can use as guide for not just surviving in a post-truth public sphere but thriving. If rhetoric is to thrive, this is what it needs. And if there is an avatar for this age, if there is a historical forerunner to the age of "Post-Truth," then it is P.T. Barnum. Despite his obvious problems—his career as a showman began with the purchase of a slave—there is something he can teach us about rhetoric and communication in a world less concerned with facts than entertainment, and that includes the nuance that allows a man who profited from the exhibition of a slave to champion the abolition of slavery later in life.
II. The (Re)Assertion of Narratives
We can draw a line between the penny press and our current historical moment. The chief among these was the prevalence of fake news. I should make clear that here I use the term fake news to represent actually false reporting, made to purposely misdirect readers or viewers. I do not mean fake news as defined by President Donald Trump and his supporters, which can best be summed up as a weaponized use of the term that encompasses any negative reporting or information that doesn't fit with one's worldview. Real fake news presents a much clearer threat the public sphere, and its roots have made the slip of democracy into populism much more likely.
The prevalence of fake news in the period before the Civil War tells us that this is not a new phenomenon. What we must understand is that the hoaxes of the early nineteenth century—Barnum's hoaxes in particular—shared an underlying structure: they all reified the same metanarrative of white supremacy. There was something comforting in this for the audience, even entertaining. The metanarrative was a known quantity (even if its full extent was unconscious), something that, as the Union came into its own, could be relied upon as a guiding star for those (whites) who had nothing else by which to plot their course through life. Joice Heth was a slave physically linked and subservient to a Founding Father. Barnum's later exhibition of the "Feejee Mermaid" (Image 1 and Image 2) would tap into the American public's love for the Oriental, itself a troublingly racialized distinction.
We find a parallel in the Trump era. Donald Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again," gives us ample material to work with. It too ties in with metanarratives in the American public sphere. First, there are the echoes of Ronald Reagan's campaign, which first used the phrase; by harkening back to Reagan, Trump links himself to the legacy of the president/ precedent cited by many as a model of the modern Republican. Secondly, because the slogan coincided with multiple attacks on President Barack Obama, the undertone is that the previous president (or even every president since Reagan) had managed to take America in a negative direction. And because Obama's reputation was linked with his status as America's first Black president, the "Make America Great Again" line was bound up in racial undertones. The metanarrative of white supremacy becomes visible again, as it is only a white president—a white male president, to draw a distinction between Trump and his opponent—who could properly "make America great again."
The point here is that, in terms of the available means of persuasion, we have not left behind the metanarratives that have shaped the public sphere for centuries. We are, in other words, not "postmodern" as defined by Jean-François Lyotard. The public sphere still relies on metanarratives to make sense of the world. They have only been reified by the fracturing of that public sphere into its smaller constituent networks.
I use here the term postmodern to mean the same thing that Lyotard did: an "incredulity toward metanarratives" (xxiv). We have not achieved a society that "falls less within the province of a Newtonian anthropology . . . than a pragmatics of language particles...local determinism" (xxiv). In fact, the idea that we have been driving toward such a thing, itself a metanarrative, was shattered when the United States elected Donald Trump. One could make the argument that, rather than merely the defeat of Hillary Clinton, Election Night 2016 was the shattering of a metanarrative that society was moving away from the metanarrative of white supremacy as a means of organization. Metanarratives won that evening.
What's more, the months since that night have seen pundits hang Trump's win on Democrats' forsaking working class whites in favor of a more diverse or elite coalition. But here again the metanarrative of white supremacy is allowed to remain intact beneath the larger narrative of the American public sphere. "This transfiguration is not novel. It is a return to form. The tightly intertwined stories of the white working class and black Americans go back to the prehistory of the United States—and the use of one as a cudgel to silence the claims of the other goes back nearly as far" (Coates). We can learn something about the force of propaganda from American history: the early black and white laborers were separated by race, and this division was reinforced through the myth of whiteness. The creation of the concept of "white slavery" further widened this division, as it created a boogeyman to differentiate even the poorest whites from black slaves. "Invokers of 'white slavery' held that there was nothing unique in the enslavement of blacks when measured against the enslavement of all workers. What evil there was in enslavement resulted from its status as a subsidiary of the broader exploitation better seen among the country's noble laboring whites...its operating premises—white labor as noble archetype, and black labor as something else—lived on. This was a matter of rhetoric, not fact." And it is a form of rhetoric that we are still dealing with today; one popular meme that has been making the rounds on social media invokes this myth by insisting that the Irish were treated even worse than black slaves (Image 3), prompting the New York Times to run a story debunking the myth.
The facts of this case ultimately don't matter. By the time the media (already a distrusted institution) has debunked the claim, it has already been legitimized and is treated as fact by the people with whose worldview it fits. Those whose worldview this does not support go on to reject the claim made in the image. These conflicting networks fit inside the larger network that forms the American public sphere. And while Habermas would see the ideal public sphere as being based in rational discussion, reality is far different. Our present moment reenacts Barnum's own historical milieu: people actually want to be deceived so long as the deception backs up their worldview. This is a world in which social media has made the hoaxing much more powerful not because new media has changed the way that rhetoric works, but because it has made it more interactive. People are ready to be deceived if they themselves can become part of the con by fitting themselves into the narrative. One need only think of "Pizzagate," of the man who read all of the evidence online that Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager were running a child sex ring in the (non-existent) basement of a Washington pizza restaurant and decided to take up arms and do something about it. He saw himself as a hero in this narrative the same way others passing along this conspiracy theory could see themselves as truth-tellers; the lie is easier to believe when it fits an idealized narrative. This is the truth that Barnum can tell us: people engage more willingly with narratives, especially with narratives that fit into their worldview, than they do with cold facts.
While salon culture saw legitimation of governance (and the legitimization of knowledge along with it) arising in conversational public spaces such as the coffee shop or the salon itself, the new public sphere finds its arguments legitimated on the internet. And while this has democratized the public sphere, that democratization also brings with it the tendency of networks to fracture into smaller, more sustainable parts, as Lyotard suggests. Writing of social relations, Lyotard discusses language games, and the "'atomization' of the social into flexible networks of language games" (17). Related to this, the grand narrative "has lost its credibility, regardless of what mode of unification it uses," beginning with the end of World War II, and the start of what Lyotard views as the Postmodern era (37). In this era, Lyotard tells us, science is unable to legitimize facts in other language games. On this, I agree: we have indeed entered an era in which science is incapable of legitimizing knowledge in networks outside of its own language game. That would also explain why the language game occupied by conspiracy theorists (a la Pizzagate) is impervious to facts (the basement where this is supposed to have happened does not exist); facts play no role in legitimizing knowledge in this game. Legitimization of knowledge herein is entirely narrative-based. "Narration is no longer an involuntary lapse in the legitimation process...Narrative knowledge makes a resurgence in the West as a way of solving the problem of legitimating the new authorities" (30). This reliance on narrative, though, is not a bug; Lyotard views it as a feature of the Postmodern Condition.
What we must take away from this, then, is that first, Lyotard is correct in claiming that the metanarrative is no longer influential— grand narratives no longer shape views on the world. But no one has told people this, by and large. This has resulted in the atomized networks that Lyotard describes as making up the social clinging to some different view of the real, unaware that their own metanarrative is an image, just as every other metanarrative. Each network therefore carries on, confident in the belief that it alone has the real view of history. Social media has exacerbated the problem, as users can choose to filter out those other language games which throw into question the legitimation of language within one's own sphere. And thus, where there might have been interplay between these networks, there are now only walls.
As critical theory has focused on logic as the means by which consensus is reached, it has by and large ignored another means that underwrites logic: emotion. It is emotion, the feeling that something is true, that now guides much of the function of the public sphere. When users on facebook first see the image of the Irish slaves, superimposed with the claim that they were worse off than black slaves, they either accept or reject this first. Even this might be too much of a stretch. It is far more likely that the claim is somewhat provisionally accepted, based on Daniel T. Gilbert's model of how mental systems deal with such claims. He argues that the mind must accept a claim before it can analyze it and decide to believe or disbelieve. "[F]or models of persuasion to make sense," he writes, "they must implicitly assume that acceptance occurs prior to or more easily than rejection...and that as a result, this initial acceptance remains" (111). This holds a dark undertone for the use and function of propaganda. It also brings us back around to Barnum's business model: people must accept before they reject, engage before they disengage. People must buy tickets to the exhibition before they can say for sure it is a fake. In the same way, people must accept propaganda first, hold its arguments in their hands, before they can analyze it. If legitimation is entirely emotional or narrative-based, then the next step to the logical analysis doesn't happen, unless the viewer is trained to force an analysis through the emotion.
This, then, leads us to one of the purposes of the post-truth progymnasmata. It is not enough to teach people to avoid propaganda or other forms of "post-factual" communication. These communiques are already out there, doing their work in the public sphere. Instead, we have to dive deep into an understanding of how these forms of rhetoric work, practice them, and be prepared to dismantle them and render them ineffective. If propaganda cannot be stopped, then we must instead learn how to deal with it. Rhetoric is, after all, the "art of the deal," dealing with what is available to us. If we follow Aristotle's definition of rhetoric as the art of discovering the available means of persuasion then the use of propaganda within the public sphere has expanded the scope of what can be considered an available means. And if we can identify those means in their natural environment, they can be taught. If they can be taught, they can be overcome. What's more, if we conceive of rhetoric beyond the transactional, beyond merely persuasion or trying to gain something over on an opponent, and begin to conceive of rhetoric as something that is always present, then we can see that even propaganda, whether effective or not, is a form of rhetoric, and should be considered as such.
III. The Image
Two strands of thought converge in the functioning of post-truth/post-factual rhetoric. The first is Guy Debord's work on the spectacle, the idea that society has moved from having to appearing, that lived experience has retreated in the advent of the image. Debord predicts a world wherein the image, rather than lived experienced, is the anchor of reality, which is detached from experience. This makes it so that the "unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world" (7). We can also expand the image from a literal concept to a more abstract one. The image is anything that is to be believed, detached from reality. The image is anything that we are invited to experience for itself, to view for itself, rather than firsthand experience of the world itself.
But this privileging of viewing over experiencing sets the new world at odds with classical notions of ethos. If ethos, or one's character, impacts the way that one's message is received, what do we make of the way that Barnum made his claims? What allows the claims of a con man to gain traction? Even as far back as Isocrates, rhetoric's notion of ethos included something intrinsic to the speaker. Here, we find the willingness of an audience who has not fully "lived" an experience to believe the claims of a con man who professes experiences of those very gaps in the audience's knowledge. If someone views rhetoric as the art of the deal, transactionalism purely focused on what one can gain from a situation, then even the dark side of rhetoric becomes an available means of persuasion. Nothing is off limits so long as the ends justify the means. This is far from the "just deal" that Isocrates discusses in "Against the Sophists" and veers into the same territory as P.T. Barnum's apocryphal maxim, that there's a sucker born every minute and "I just want his dime." (Barnum never said it; he arguably had more respect for his audience than this phase would suggest.) This means that the work of propaganda enters the realm of rhetoric, and the creation of a false reality or an image of the world becomes justifiable if the deal pays off for the rhetor. The con man succeeds because of this false world; the claim of a con man doesn't gain traction because of his performed character (though this helps) but because of the world he creates around his mark. This extended world creates not a new ethos for the con man, but a new grounding for the performative ethos of the con man. The grounding for this new ethos covers a multitude of sins from the performer's past; indeed, even those less savory aspects can be used to the con man's favor. We can look no further than the history of President Donald Trump, whose checkered past and history with women feed into the narrative of his being a different type of presidential candidate, and the world that forms around that narrative.
There is perhaps no better explanation for the world of conspiracy theories that has supplanted the public sphere than Debord's analogy of the spectacle. There are several examples of the power of these separate worlds. First, we can consider the role of "birtherism" in undermining the presidency of Barack Obama, and subsequently fueling the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency. This conspiracy theory, propelled to popularity by Donald Trump, insisted that Barack Obama was not an American citizen, but was instead a Kenyan, like his father. It should go without saying that this is untrue, but the theory and its widespread repetition, even if media outlets only covered it to debunk the myth (indeed, the fact that news outlets thought this important enough to debunk was only turned into further proof of the theory's legitimacy). Though not a traditional image, this spectacle would invite people to engage with it rather than the real world, to deny what they saw themselves. It also put Barack Obama and Donald Trump's words on the same level: Obama's claim that he was a legitimate citizen was no more true than Trump's claim that the president was a Kenyan. Both could be seen as equally valid because the bottom, the real, had fallen away. The only thing left was the transactional: whose word you believed was based on which story had the most value for your worldview. Birtherism would separate the American public along party and racial lines. The theory only gained traction, indeed only arose, because Obama was America's first black president. The result is an ungrounding of rhetoric in the worst way; if argumentation can only occur when two people engage in the same terms—stasis literally says that we must be standing on the same ground—then effective communication cannot happen.
Separation, endemic to Debord's spectacle, such as what is on display in the disconnection between audiences (those who believe and those who do not) in birtherism is the hallmark of propaganda. If objects of propaganda, themselves post-truth communiques, can separate people and have them fighting over images rather than recognizing reality, it is successful. The existence of the spectacle is a result of reality; the real world is "invaded by contemplation of the spectacle, and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it" (8). Nowhere has the post-factual taken root more strongly than when someone is presented with facts and remains steadfastly committed to not only believing the image but defending the worldview that those images allow. In the birtherism example, Barack Obama was eventually forced to release his birth certificate, a move which was met on the Right with the common refrain that it might not be real, that it looked too new. The image and its worldview had already taken hold.
For Debord, the Spectacle is not merely images, but rather "a social relation between people that is mediated by images" (7), reminiscent of the world mediated by new media that we now occupy. But as Debord's project is caught up in the Marxist tradition, concerned largely with the relations between people being replaced with relations between people and objects, we must go elsewhere to build a theory of how people relate to one another in the public sphere in the post-factual world.
This second strand of thought, complementing Debord, is in the work of Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard too is concerned with the role of the image in society. Here, just as in Debord, the image has already replaced real lived experience as the thing with which we engage. The real is no longer accessible. "It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication . . . It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real" (2). This process of replacing real with representation produces a hyperreality where the mind can no longer tell the difference between truth and fiction, the real and its representation. "[T]here is no longer any difference: the duplication suffices to render both [replica and its original] artificial" (9).
We should note here that this process does not render the artificial as truth, but rather brings the truth down to the level of the artificial. A crucial distinction we will continue to see at play in post-truth communication. The project of a post-truth progymnasmata—indeed a post-truth pedagogy in general—takes Baudrillard at his word when he says that "it is now impossible to isolate the process of the real, or to prove the real" (21).
This is the question now facing rhetoric: how to approach persuasion and communication when even the facts themselves are either suspect or disregarded entirely because of pre-standing emotions? The ground for public rhetoric seems to have shifted and now rests upon a shaky ground of emotion. Debord does not say that the spectacle is entirely inescapable. Rather, as a Marxist, Debord situates the possibility of escape in the promise of revolution—the unification of the working class against their masters. And in some ways, what we see is the result of capitalism—Barnum seeks profit by driving up desire for narratives via hoaxes, the white ruling class in America stokes racial divisions to remain in power (via a narrative no less). This paper does not situate itself in that debate—whether revolution remains possible or effective in the way that Marx or Debord envision is outside the scope of this project—but rather with how post-truth communication can be combatted, defused, or repurposed.
Let us assume for a moment that we are in a moment when facts are not the most persuasive form of rhetorical appeal. We must turn to another, more impactful means of communication, one that characterizes a society highly attuned to images. We must adapt to the new apparatus. It is not enough any longer to simply present a logic argument—such a thing will fall on deaf ears. Instead, we are tasked with adapting critical thought to an internet environment.
The aesthetic image is to electracy what the analytical word is to literacy. The commodity form, separating exchange value from use value, desire from product, expression from object, allowed the pedagogy of aesthetic judgement to operate autonomously. Advertisers realized they were selling not the steak but the sizzle. Electrate intelligence, not just commerce but civics and ethics (practical reason), functions in the dimension of the sizzle (Ulmer 37).
If we can posit a rhetoric after the electrate shift, then it begins to look like a rhetoric which encompasses even the emotional spectrum. It includes the same tenets on which post-truth communication is based. It operates as showmanship, foregrounding the aesthetic judgement, a foregrounding "important to flash reason, to establish in the larger context of the conflicts working in deliberative rhetoric the specific dimension of aesthetic pleasure-pain and the values associated with it" (24). Flash reason so conceived operates as a bridge between lived experience and the experience of the image.
We are in a moment when the controlling metaphor for communication is no longer the written word (alone) but the image. Ulmer explains that the world has transitioned into "a new ontology of experience . . . [E]xperience ontology is relative to the apparatus (social machine) that makes it possible or functional (digital imaging). The quality of experience made accessible to ontology in electracy is that of affective memory in the individual body. Affective memory is the deepest order of memory, existing only as somatic markers informing kinesthetic intelligence" (51-52). When we encounter the image, we do not engage with it logically, we engage with the aesthetic. Ulmer calls on the idea that "experience ontology is inherently supported in audiovisual media . . . Digital simulations . . . bring into awareness and articulation this dimension [enactive memory] that until now has remained 'unconscious'" (53). I would add to this that, to the untrained eye, these replace any inherent judgement or sense that would otherwise fall in line with Kant's aesthetic judgement (a crucial support for Ulmer's theorization of flash reason). This would mean that the affective dimension of medium transfers the emotions of the crowd, the judgment of the crowd, onto the viewer.
There is something similar here to the functioning of the sublime in Kant's aesthetics, read through Ulmer as "conditions that exceed the capacities of both the outer and inner eye, the glimpse in a moment that takes the measure of a situation. Within the conditions of decorum, (beauty), the faculties are in harmony" (29). The encounter with the sublime destroys this harmony. "The interest of the judgment of the sublime in conditions that expose the empirical impotence of a subject, however, is the paradoxical transformation of this displeasure into the bittersweet revelation of moral freedom" (29). It is in this moment of moral freedom that an ethical and political notion of connectivity can collapse. Ulmer relies on Lyotard's reading of Kant to structure "an outline for deliberative rhetoric in electracy . . . [recommended by] the support for thought provided by affect as a sublime feeling, and the rhetorical powers revealed in this experience of negative presentation" (30). It is in his moment, the flash of the sublime and its negation of empirical categories, that the kind of rhetoric that falls into them of post-truth rhetoric can take hold. Post-truth rhetoric, by placing emotion at the heart of its theses, is a form of affective rhetoric, a conception of rhetoric that attempts to prompt emotion as its chief focus.
The crucial moment may be in the realization that the sublime does not only entail positive but also negative emotions, a reminder that "the aesthetic axis is not just attraction, but attraction-repulsion" (Ulmer 207). The encounter with the sublime poses a question to the subject, a question of how to respond to this moment where the efficacy of traditional models of knowing falls apart. Ulmer further identities this logical reasoning with prudence: "The tradition of prudence as practical reason and particular intellect from Plato through Kant relied upon common sense (in the richer sense covered by sensus communis) as the basis for judgment in the public sphere. Common sense grounded the innate capacity for judgment on the human ability to recognize beauty in the human and natural world . . . The tradition proposed a direct continuum between beauty (aesthetics) and ethical and political judgment (decorum)" (160). Flash reason as Ulmer theorizes it is an attempt to address the way that these systems break down in the face of affective forms of rhetoric, the appeals based on image and emotion that litter the modern public sphere.
Affective rhetoric is no longer a part of the rhetorical landscape that can be ignored. The advance of digital media has made its necessary, and Ulmer's work is crucial to understanding how it operates in the public sphere. What is at stake is a choice of how one dwells in a world where one is constantly called to react to more and more instances of the sublime. One can choose to react by over-relying on facts, the old methods of legitimizing knowledge and proving arguments. One can choose to rely more on the meta narratives that once shaped the world. We can even go so far as embracing the functioning of this affective rhetoric, to embrace the emotional and narrative tenor of rhetoricking and just being in this new rhetorical landscape.
IV. Building a Post-Truth Progymnasmata
The moment in The Matrix when Morpheus offers Neo a choice between a red pill and a blue pill, as a metaphor for waking up the reality of the world beneath the images that make up the Matrix, has been coopted by right-wing extremists and white nationalists in online spaces, but it is instructive.
What's also important to note here is that white supremacists miss the point of the matrix movies entirely. They are not a story of victory over conflict through force, but rather a tale of overcoming those oppositions which characterize the spectacle. Neo, the messiah figure, is in fact a Hegelian synthesis of man and machine. Hegel's synthesis is the end result of a dialectic of thesis and antithesis, in opposition to one another. The synthesis becomes a third term which reconciles the previously opposed terms.
That is where we must now go. It is time for us to take a trip into another language game.
The post-truth progymnasmata is an effort to conceive of a more affective politics [1], a post-truth public sphere which encompasses appeals to emotion. This project brings the rhetorical tools that are most often used in populist and more emotionally charged discourses into light, to shed light on how they are structured and to act as an inoculation against the use of such rhetoric. It brings the operation of a propagandistic language game into another game, that of education.
The "Post-Truth Progymnasmata" is therefore structured as if it were an instruction manual for students of rhetoric in a post-truth world. It is presented as an excerpt of a larger manual which may include the traditional fourteen exercises of the progymnasmata. It is also presented in such a fashion that the work of compiling an actual manual for post-truth rhetoric is never completed. It is reminiscent of Ulmer's post-critical object, in that it is unfinished and can be added to and updated, but also in that it functions on the logic of collage—elements include the educational voice and examples from new media.
The keen reader might notice that the rhetoric of post-truth is always oppositional. The rhetoric of the post-truth era is based on earlier transactional approaches to rhetoric, simply because so much of the modern era has been defined by the machinations of late-stage capitalism. It should be noted that I am not condoning the use of these rhetorical tricks. But it is only in understanding the ways that they're constructed that we can begin to find ways to defend against them.
This is also complemented by the presence of the "post-truth professor," modeled after P.T. Barnum, to act as guide through the world of post-truth rhetoric. This choice is not coincidental. In using P.T. Barnum as a model for the "Post-Truth Professor" of the manual, I am invoking him as an avatar for the teacher of post-truth rhetoric. I invoke Avatar as Gregory Ulmer envisions it, but also in a manner reminiscent of the secularization of its religious role, as "the personification in human form of abstract principles or intangible qualities" (75). By modeling the Post-Truth Professor after Barnum, I intentionally bring into the question all of the nuance that the public sphere in the twenty-first century necessitates. Barnum is a man of contradictions, being both an abolitionist and a slave owner. This is an age that is beginning to ask us to reckon with our national history of racism and slavery, to grapple with the wounds of that institution. Perhaps no one is better guide for this than Barnum, whose own views on slavery evolved throughout his life. And though Barnum was a peddler of hoaxes, it is the credulity with which he viewed suffering that we can and should adapt to our interactions of the public sphere; when Barnum toured the South, and saw firsthand the horrors of slavery, his defenses of the institution ended and his abolitionism began (Kunhardt et al. 151). Barnum's uneasy forays into propaganda during the Civil War were themselves a hybrid of his own brand of showmanship and the showmanship of nationalism. [2] So too must our post-truth rhetoric be a hybrid of traditional and "new" rhetorical techniques. Despite having made his fortune playing off of American racism, when he was elected to the Connecticut legislature and later ratified the 13th Amendment, Barnum would wax poetically about the value of a human soul in any body, no matter its race. [3]
Just as separation is endemic to Debord's treatment of the spectacle, so too does post-truth rhetoric thrive on separation. When it is used for negative purposes, when rhetoric is engaged in populist means—and here I refer to specifically the kind of populism that asserts only one kind of people are actual people—then it requires separation to survive. This comes in many forms: separation from others, from diverse ideas, from our own history. P.T. Barnum as avatar allows us to begin to deal with the problematic nature of United States history. Barnum himself was a husk of contradictions. The showman never left him, has never left the American public sphere, and so we can turn it to our purposes all the same.
While we might debate the quality of Barnum's legacy, he remains a solid avatar. Indeed, the use as avatar of a man whose early fortunes were made possible by slavery, and whose views toward the institution completely turned around later in life, whose own role in upholding white supremacy went without question during his abolitionist days, seems particularly fruitful. Who better to represent the American public sphere's participants than a man whose history so perfectly mirrors our own history as a nation?
[1] See Joshua Wood, "Affective Politics: Against the Democratic Accident." Textshop Experiments 3 (Summer 2017).
[2] Via Kunhardt: upon Lincoln's death, Barnum did not engage in exhibitions on the assassination, but rather on his upbringing and his ordinariness. In particular, Barnum displayed "an exact replica of one of Lincoln's own log cabins" (187). This paper does not begin to grapple with the impact that Barnum had on American mythology, though this is one intersection that seems particularly striking, glorifying as we still do Lincoln's roots in the frontier.
[3] Not to say that Barnum's turn toward abolitionism and black suffrage was free even of the racialized undertones of the age. The same speech contained references to the ignorance and barbarism of the African continent, and the need to train newly freed slaves toward manhood.
Works Cited
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. "The First White President." The Atlantic, Oct. 2017. Web.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Ken Knabb, Rebel Press, 2014. Print.
Gilbert, Daniel. "How Mental Systems Believe." American Psychologist, vol. 46, no. 2, Feb. 1991, pp. 107–19. Print.
Kunhardt Jr, Philip B., et al. P. T. Barnum: America's Greatest Showman. Knopf, 1995. Print.
Stack, Liam. "Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too." The New York Times, 17 Mar. 2017. Web.
Ulmer, Gregory L. Avatar Emergency. Parlor Press, 2012.
Young, Kevin. Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. Graywolf Press, 2017. Print.