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Conquest and the Treason of Images
America: Bride of the Sun (Ver America)
America: Bride of the Sun – 500 years, Latin America and the Low Countries was a 'blockbuster' exhibition held at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, in May 1992. It was a curatorial collaboration between the Museum's antiquities scholar, Paul Vandenbroeck, and Catherine de Zegher, then director of Kanaal, a small not-for-profit art centre in Kortrijk, South Belgium. At the time it received only modest press coverage, and yet it presented a unique model of intercultural and cross-temporal curatorial practice.
1992 was the quincentenary of the so-called 'discovery' or the 'conquest' of the Americas by Columbus under the Spanish crown.(2) As we know, Columbus landed on the Caribbean island he named Hispaniola, now the Dominican Republic and Haiti, thinking he was in India. His obsession for renaming the geography, starting with the names of Spanish royalty, is significant because, as Tzvetan Todorov points out (in The Conquest of America), naming is an act of possession. The first 'modern' European to set foot on the South American mainland at what is now Venezuela and Brazil was the Florentine cartographer Amerigo Vespucci, under the flag of Portugal, 1499-1502, and he named the continent after himself – 'America'. As Charles Merewether notes in the exhibition catalogue, 'Defined by being named in the words of the Other makes Latin America other than itself.'(3) Naming is the first act of violence, and it inaugurates the most protracted genocide and ethnocide in modern history.
From the outset, indigenous peoples were pawns in a propaganda war between European Catholics and Protestants for political control of both religion and commerce. The extent to which this conflict was waged through images was the point of departure of Bride of the Sun. The aim of the exhibition was, firstly, to demonstrate that, how Europeans represented the indigenous peoples in both Europe and the Americas had less to do with native realities than with a Byzantine labyrinth of European fantasy and religious bigotry, woven with political and economic competition for land, gold and other profitable natural resources. The exhibition's extended aim was to suggest correspondences with the 20th century.
The exhibition title 'Bride of the Sun' had the unfortunate connotation of feminising the colonised, a typical European colonial strategy, as Edward Said remarked (in Orientalism) in reference to the Middle East. But it was the museum authorities that insisted upon this title. The curators' preferred title was 'Ver America', where 'ver' in Flemish means 'distant' and in Spanish and Portuguese means 'to see', and was intended to suggest something that eluded both focus and translation. 'Ver America' survives in the catalogue as the title of the exchange between Catherine de Zegher and Benjamin Buchloh, and is the title I shall henceforth use here
The exhibition was extremely complex and therefore difficult to summarise. So this presentation begins with a few notes on its context before attempting to weave together some of its themes.
Exhibition Context
The discourses that framed Ver America included the influence on postmodernism of continental philosophy – particularly writings by Michel Foucault on the institution and by Roland Barthes on the image; feminist theory; and an emergent postcolonial theory, all of which challenged the Enlightenment premises upon which a privileged white male western civilisation and modernism had been constructed. By 1992, the elitism of the western art system was already faltering in the face of political activism, internally from women and ethnic minorities, and externally from nations struggling to emerge from the legacies of colonialism, in particular Latin America. By the 1990s New York had lost its hegemony; non-Euro-American 'others' were insisting on inclusion into the art system, although one could interpret their modest 'success' as the status quo revitalising itself without, however, surrendering control. Over the course of the decade, 'inclusion' resulted in a parade of exhibitions staged in western public institutions entitled 'New Art from Cuba, …from India, …from China', and so on.
To contextualise Ver America in terms of exhibition history one needs to look briefly at prior blockbusters that included artistic practices by non-Euro-American 'others'. The first exhibition to note is 'Primitivism' in Twentieth Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, at MoMA, New York, 1984. It was severely criticised in a notable exchange between the curators and Thomas McEvilley, published in Artforum,(4) for its outdated Euro-American-centrism and fallacious categorisation. Problems included:
- 1.The assumption that so-called 'tribal' arts were primitive, culturally stagnant, or of little intrinsic value except to ethnographers, and made by anonymous makers.
- 2*. The assumption that 'true art' was western, the rest was ritual artefact and therefore categorised as 'ethnographic' – as if Western religious painting were not…
- 3.The notion of 'affinity' between the tribal and the modern suggested a coincidental correspondence between modernist and tribal arts, or at best, 'inspiration', rather than outright appropriation of the others' aesthetic forms by Europeans. It was a failure to understand that contact between diverse cultures produces mutual exchange and creative transformation.
The second exhibition of note is Magiciens de la Terre, 1989, at the Georges Pompidou Centre and La Villette, Paris. The curator Jean-Hubert Martin had originally planned an exhibition of Australian Aboriginal art. But following the criticism of Primitivism, he rethought Magiciens as an exhibition of 50 western artists and 50 'others'. One might be suspicious that the curator employed anthropologists and ethnographers as advisers. However, Magiciens sought to avoid the errors of Primitivism through postmodern relativism: all contributors were named and placed equally. However, this was not a level playing field either.(5)The western artists selected were mostly established gallery artists, whilst the majority of 'others' were folkloric or popular artists, thereby ignoring modernist artists in those geographies. The (suspect) rationale was that authentic 'other' art could not be modernist as this was the exclusive property of the European. This seriously damaged the reception of African modernism for a further ten years. Finally, giving all artists equivalence elided the economic and political inequalities in the relative local conditions of artists and in the relations between the West and the Rest.
The third exhibition of note is Mexico: Splendors of 30 Centuries, at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990. It was officially sanctioned by the Mexican government and cannot be divorced from its political context. Since 1986 Mexico, Canada and the US had been negotiating the NAFTA agreement, finally signing in 1992; from this perspective the exhibition was a PR exercise. About the exhibition the Museum's director, Philippe de Montebello, wrote: 'Few societies can boast such an unbroken cultural life marked by such a high level of creativity and achievement.' The revealing word is 'unbroken': it exposes the tendency of dominant settler cultures to appropriate indigenous cultures into a seamless national narrative, ignoring the catastrophic 'break' suffered by Native peoples, and ongoing neo/colonial violence against them. As Jimmie Durham once said: 'at some point, during the night, the Lone Ranger ate Tonto'; meaning, that the settler selectively absorbed into its own identity that of the colonised indigenous American – exactly the cannibalism that the first European 'explorers' had attributed to American Indians.
Splendors was preceded in 1989 by an exhibition in the Hayward Gallery, London, entitled Art in Latin America, curated by Dawn Ades. It attempted to define 'a Latin American aesthetic', dating from 1850 – the modern, decolonising era – to the present. It is unclear who wrote the catalogue; but it lacked political consciousness, especially regarding indigenous peoples, except for references to the indigenism movement by privileged Mexican artists like Diego Rivera.
By 1992, however, a new generation of Latin American critics had emerged, who sought to redefine their cultures beyond the 'identity neurosis' of the early 20th century reflected in Art in Latin America, when European models dominated artistic practice. A paradigmatic breakthrough came in 1992 with Ante América, a counter-North dominated exhibition on the discourses of interethnic relations. It was curated 'from the South' by a group of Latin American critics – Gerardo Mosquera, Rachel Weiss and Carolina Ponce de León. One-third of the artists were women; at least three of the twenty-seven participants were indigenous Americans; the catalogue writers were Latin American; and it was first staged in Colombia before being shown in the North.
We now come to Ver America, with the question: did it present an alternative curatorial paradigm? It was, again, curated 'from the North', with a more substantial budget than Ante América. Aside from Ante América, during 1992, most mainstream events and exhibitions celebrated the so-called 'discovery'. However, Bride intended a more nuanced approach. If the former blockbusters were primarily descriptive or stylistic surveys, Ver America aimed to present an ambitious argument about the propaganda power of images in the historical process of conquest and religious conversion, by which it hoped to draw an analogy with the role of images in contemporary socio-political life. Hence, the exploration of intercultural relations was pivotal.
The exhibition took over Antwerp's Royal Museum lower galleries, drawing from its collection of old masters on the upper floor. Although a 'northern' project, Bride commissioned catalogue entries from both European and Latin American scholars. In brief, its strategy was to centre the argument in the historical relations between Flanders and the Spanish colonies in Central and South America. The exhibits were not organised chronologically, but according to a set of themes. These looked at the Americas from Europe's point of view in terms of conquest – religious, intellectual, economic, and sensory; and from a de/colonised Latin American perspective, reflecting on power and the role of images. Historical art and artefacts from both sides of the Atlantic were curated by Vandenbroeck; these were juxtaposed with a selection of 20th century Latin American artists working with the consequences of colonialism, curated by de Zegher.
The first two works encountered by the visitor introduced a major exhibition subtext. David Lamelas's When the sky low and heavy, 1987-91, sited in the museum forecourt, presented a stand of young trees burdened by a metal plate, which over time would stunt growth. It alluded to the crippling exploitation of natural resources (plus the equally crippling effects of World Bank and IMF demands on the national budgets of Latin American governments). The next work encountered was Roberto Evangelista's Resgate, 1990-92, a cluster of gourd-bowls containing water, candles and messages scattered across the foyer floor, a work I shall return to later.
The significance of Antwerp and the Low Countries
Antwerp and the Low Countries were central to the theme of the exhibition for three reasons: finance, trade and iconography. By the 16th century, Antwerp was already a major European centre for banking and commerce, illustrated by Marinus van Reymerswael's painting, Banker and His Wife, dated early 16th century. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Catholic Flanders was under the rule of the Habsburg Spanish Crown, and religious persecution meant that Protestants mostly fled north to Holland or Germany. In addition, Antwerp became one of Spain's principle trading ports with the Americas and the focus of Bride of the Sun.
Export of Catholicism from Antwerp
Amongst the goods shipped out of Antwerp were Catholic prints, icons and missionaries peddling religious propaganda to convert the 'natives' (illustrated by Antonio Astudillo's painting Joos de Rycke Baptises an Indian, 1785). These images were often dominated by the concept of a vengeful god, which had less to do with Indian resistance than with Catholicism's Counter-Reformation dispute with Protestantism. In Peru particularly this was brutally represented iconographically by Saint James the Moor-slayer (Santiago matamoros) – symbol of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain – now transformed into Saint James the Indian-Slayer (Santiago mataindios). Native artists were instructed to copy European models; but over time they introduced a mix of native and Catholic iconography, which was well represented in the exhibition, notably with the painting Virgen de Cerro/Mount Potosí, Bolivia, anon., 16th C, since Potosí was the centre of Spain's silver minting.
In Mexico, religious iconography condensed onto the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an Indianised Virgin who 'miraculously' appeared to a converted Native priest. This claim was undoubtedly a propagandist strategy to entice indigenous Mexicans into Catholicism, but it worked – Guadalupe is central to national ex-voto iconography, alongside the 'bleeding heart of Mary' motif. These ex-voto motifs were presented together in a vitrine alongside Frida Kahlo's Apuntes y recuerdos and Gabriel Orozco's clay sculpture Mis manos son mi corazón. The Virgin of Guadalupe, however, is the inverse image of Malinche, the Aztecan woman who was Cortés's lover and translator, a complex relation explored in Jimmie Durham's installation Ama, which consisted of two figures: Cortés the conquistador and Malinche the vulnerable Native woman. But this liaison between native woman and European aggressor was a recurrent trope in colonial mythography from diverse geographies. It justified colonialism by displacing the responsibility onto the body of the native woman: she becomes both native whore/betrayer and mother of the new colonial or national identity. The native woman emerges again in a painting of Latin America's liberator from colonialism, Simón Bolívar, where he is represented as her protector (in Bolívar and Indian woman, Colombia, 1819.) The female body, as an allegory of the land and as a site of pain, loss or aggression, emerged as a recurrent motif in the work of women artists in the exhibition: Ana Mendieta's, Silueta series, 1976-77 Frida Kahlo,s Roots, or Self-portrait on Rocky Ground, 1943, and Débora Arango's Justicia.
Import of goods to Antwerp
There were three major categories of goods shipped into Antwerp. The primary import of value was, of course, silver and gold bullion from the mines of Peru and Mexico. In Mexico, so much gold was extracted that vast interior surfaces of some churches, like Santo Domingo in Oaxaca, were covered in gold leaf. This surplus was eventually to over-inflate the economy and cause the collapse of, first, the Flemish provinces and then Spain itself. Apparently, however, Indians valued textiles more than metals. Llama wool was the main textile from the Andes; but the Europeans all but destroyed the llama herds when they introduced European cattle. This also destroyed the vegetation: llamas cut grass, whereas cattle rip it out, which was the subject of Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña's installation Document in Wool, 1992.
Exotic hard woods were the next most precious commodity extracted from the Americas, alluded to in Cildo Meireles' miniature installation Cruzeiro del sul, 1969-70, consisting of a 1cm cube of pine and oak wood. Both woods were sacred to Tupi Indians as a means of producing fire; but Portuguese colonisers and Jesuit missionaries devalued their sacred meaning by converting them into primary commercial exports along with other exotic hard woods.
Last but by no means least was the import of Indian cultivated food crops, most of which have become indispensible dietary staples in Europe: potatoes, tomatoes, maize, beans, squash, cacao, peanuts, avocado, chilli peppers, cocoa for chocolate, to name a few. This Central and South American cornucopia had been the subject of many colonial era paintings (for example, Anon, follower of Zurbarán, Still Life with Chocolate Set, 17thC; Jan van Kessel, Allegory of America, 1626-79; and Dirk van Falkenburg, Still Life with Tropical Fruit, ca. 1707). Contemporary artists unsurprisingly took a more political view of this plunder (for example, Regina Vater's, installation Green; Victor Grippo's, Tiempo, 1991, a live sculptural expression of the energy generated from potatoes, alongside his installation Vida-Muerte-Resurrección, 1980.) The religious, political and economic exploitation of the Americas was summed up in Cildo Meireles's installation of bones, Catholic wafers and gold coins entitled Missao, Missoes (How to Build Cathedrals), 1987.
The propaganda power of images
Flanders had a pivotal role in the production and dissemination of images. Flemish art had been central to the counter-Reformation iconographic war with Protestantism, largely through the school of Rubens – a Baroque sensibility of spectacle, illusionism and excess that dominated Latin American aesthetics until the 20th century, perhaps ironically expressed in Juan Davila's Mexicanismo, 1990. Possibly more influential, however, was the fact that artists in the Low Countries were pioneers of observational studies in several crucial areas: cartography, natural history and trompe l'oeil still life. Map-making was vital to European exploration, a field in pre-colonial times dominated by Arab cartographers, but by the 15th century had been superseded by Flemish and Portuguese cartographers, employed by Spain, Portugal and England with clearly military objectives. Indeed, the first exhibition room of Ver America displayed maps as well as references to nautical instruments; whilst catalogue entries emphasised the importance of maps as well as navigational instruments to the colonising process. One 20th century map, however, became an icon of Latin American attempts to disengage from Northern dominance: América invertida, 1943, by Uruguayan artist Joaquin Torres García.
Illustrating and cataloguing the continent's natural history were also a vital part of the colonial economy, especially regarding commercially valuable plants, which was demonstrated by Lobelius's Kruydtboeck/The Herb Book, 1576. However, from the beginning of the Encounter, the most important illustrations were of the previously unknown indigenous peoples made by the first 'explorers', and they constitute a mix of ideology, fantasy and ignorance, which severely obfuscated the truth of American cultural sophistication. Central to the dissemination of these images was the de Bry family of Protestant engravers, who had fled from Liège to Germany during the religious persecutions in Flanders. They collated and redrew reports from every American exploration into a set of volumes, The Grand Voyages, 1590-1634. These images both confirmed existing prejudices of non-European 'others' and established the European perception of Indians. That is, they reflect both the fantasies of Europeans about exotic 'others', and the economic and political struggles between Catholics and Protestants. For example, it was widely assumed that amongst the indigenous peoples were Plinian or 'monstrous' races –imaginary beings already embedded in European fantasies about geographically distant 'others' at least since Roman times. Among the Plinian races were the Anthropophagi (cannibals). In other words, a pre-existing iconography was imposed on the Americas, and the reality was distorted to fit these preconceptions. In addition, the religious conflict compelled the De Bry's to engage in propaganda that represented Catholic Spain as far more brutal than Protestant colonisers. The reality is, however, that the devastation of the Indian population by European genocide, slavery and diseases meant that African slaves were brought into the Americas as replacement labour.(6)
Amongst the most revealing images are, however, the title pages of the first and last editions of the De Bry volumes. The title page of 1590 shows a youthful Indian couple, reflecting the initial idea that 'America' was a Paradise populated by innocent natives. By 1634, however, two things had changed. Firstly, the natives had become more aggressively resistant as their life-worlds came under threat. And secondly, the competition for American resources among European colonising nations meant that to protect their acquired turf, it was expedient to represent the natives as dangerously savage. Hence, in the later title page, the indigenous couple are represented as ugly and monstrous. This becomes consistent with the depiction of Brazilian Indians such as the Tupinamba as cannibals. Because of this combination of fantasy and the distortion of truth for economic and political ends, it is impossible to credit accusations of Indian cannibalism. However, it becomes a leitmotif in the Americas, and was subsequently used by Oswald de Andrade in his 1928 Manifesto Antropófago, to outline how Brazilian aesthetics could both use and differentiate itself from the hegemonic aesthetics of the North. The Cannibalism theme resurfaced most recently in the 2007 São Paulo biennale.
Latin America: images of itself
As a document, the Ver America exhibition reflected the delirium and disorientation that infected every coloniser faced with the unknownness of the Americas. This was replicated in the catalogue: it is rich in essays, information and illustrations, but unlike the exhibition itself it is difficult to negotiate, and lacks an index to the contemporary artists – you literally have to leaf through the catalogue to find them. It is, however, through the contemporary art that a sense of how the continent sees itself emerges.
What makes Southern aesthetics distinct from the North is that it had to confront brutal socio-political realities, and the complexity of shifting, multi-ethnic identities. The early virreino obsession with interethnic relationships was always expressed through the socially discriminatory and hence violent images of 'castes' – minute descriptions of percentage ethnic mixes among Europeans, Indians and Africans. Sometimes, on a popular, if not always elitist, level one finds acceptance that the continent consists of what the popular print from Venezuela and Colombia calls Las Tres potencias. At other times, one encounters severe prejudice against indigenous peoples and a reluctance to admit a mixed genealogy. This is true of Mexico City; and the Mexican government categorises its native peoples as 'peasants', one suspects, to circumvent United Nations rulings on the Protection of Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Likewise, Cecilia Vicuña has said in Chile indigenous peoples are reluctant to name themselves as such to avoid discrimination.
What was significant about the exhibition was that, despite the absence of chronological order, it was apparent that, as time passed, images by, of, or for Indians gradually gave way to representations of mestizaje – mixed ethnic or cultural identity – and a parallel politicised desire for artistic practices based on collective collaboration. With the rise of repressive juntas in the 1970s and 80s, this was undoubtedly linked to socio-political insecurity. As an example, and despite its apparent formalism, the work of the Brazilian rtist Lygia Clark opened onto inter-subjective relations.
An important dimension of Ver America was its acceptance of cultural plurality linked to collective collaboration that included the continent's absorption of fine and popular arts, avoiding both Magiciens' false assumption of 'cultural authenticity' and enabling a window on the South's divorce from Northern aesthetics. But, as ever, the notion of mestizaje was problematic from the point of view of the indigenous subject, who becomes represented as a trace cultural memory. In the case of Frida Kahlo's My Nurse and I, 1937, the indigenous woman is a culturally nurturing, but nonetheless subordinate figure. The Native is spoken for, but has no voice of her own. This effaces indigenous realities: their ongoing political struggles against ethnocide and discrimination. In other words – as Jimmie Durham had astutely suggested – indigenous peoples had become cannibalised, or absorbed into subsequent criollo struggles, firstly in decolonisation from European imperial control and secondly against the repressive national dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s. The pattern of violence first enacted against Amerindians was repeated in the brutality of repressive nationalist governments against their own dissenting citizens
In Ver America, this displacement of violence was amply represented by contemporary artists. For instance, Oscar Muñoz's (Colombia), Cortinas de baño, 1987-88, presented a trace figure that recalls the disappeared (los desaparecidos) during Colombia's violent struggle with drug cartels. Eugenio Dittborn remained in Chile during Pinochet's junta, but the Airmail Paintings that the artist packaged and posted to colleagues abroad made explicit the exploitation and violence in the Americas,. Other artists of this generation were forced into exile, like the Uruguayan Luis Camnitzer, who relocated to New York, but who carried the scars of state violence, as expressed in his series of photo-etchings, From the Uruguayan Torture, 1983-84. However, the displacement of the Indian is a primary disjunction in Latin American cultural representations, which the exhibition, to its credit, did not attempt to conceal. It was, in fact, through violent inscriptions of the Indian 'other' body, often feminine, that this conflict was made visible.
Violence against the exhibition
After the exhibition opening, the director of the museum sabotaged some of the contemporary work on the grounds that its natural materials encouraged bugs that would infect and destroy the permanent collection. Three works in particular were targeted. As noted, Roberto Evangelista's (Brazil) installation Resgate, 1990-92, was displayed on the floor of the museum's foyer and initially consisted of a 'field' of gourds containing water, candles and drawings. It referred to both the devastation wrought by transnational corporations on the ecosystem and native populations of the Amazon, and to a native custom: when someone drowns and the body cannot be found, gourds containing lighted candles are floated onto the river to watch for signs so that the body is not lost. The director had both the water and the candles removed, leaving empty gourds:
Regina Vater's (Brazil), Green, 1991, presented a Perspex pyramid, referring to the religious-civic architecture of pre-conquest Latin America, adding what she called the 'god of communications', the TV. The popcorn, a maize product, that filled the inside of the pyramid is a primary staple and sacred food in indigenous America, but maize has been commercialised and debased as a GM crop, scandalously grown to produce not food but a petrol-substitute fuel. Vater's video monitor catalogued, among other colonial references, the foods that traditional Indian farming have given to the western world. The director objected to the popcorn and had Vater's work crudely wrapped in polythene. The curators had commissioned a reconstruction of one of Mendieta's Silueta (silhouettes): the body form cut out from a circle of grass turf. The work is a votive piece, about the unity of woman and land but also about sacrifice, loss, and death. The museum director had the work photographed before destroying it, then crudely stuck a small photograph of it on the wall in its place.
The exhibition was designed to reflect what unites the early centuries of colonisation to the present in terms of 1. the economic and ecological exploitation of the Americas by corporate influence at the expense of the integrity of the land and its indigenous peoples; 2. the propagandist and persuasive power of images, irrespective of truth, which was equated with the war of images that we experience everyday through the TV news media, and by which powerful elites attempt to condition our understanding of the world according to their own interests; and 3. the extent to which both the above points articulate violence against both the experiential body and truth.
This presentation is entitled the 'treason of images' because the image as propaganda has historically distorted the European North's understanding of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, resulting in the political and economic exploitation of land and destruction of cultures that scientists have only recently begun to see had developed sophisticated sustainable agricultural technologies. The issue of who controls the dissemination of images and for what purpose demands that we are aware of the history of the ideological use of imagery in order to recognise the insidious internal colonisation of ourselves by political and corporate interests. Ver America thus demonstrated the extent to which images are manipulated by hegemonic power..
Presentation for the programme 'Historias de las exposiciones: América – Novia del sol' for La Sede Santa María de la Rábida de la Universidad internacional de Andalucía, 2012.
(1) A review article by me appeared in Artforum International, Nov. 1992, only because I volunteered it – the exhibition hadn't registered on the editor's radar. This was also true of Magiciens de la Terre, 1989 – which I also reviewed on my initiative. Meaning, that the mainstream New York art world was by then 'behind the curve' on developments towards the globalisation of art.
(2) New 'evidence' suggests that 'Europeans' migrated into the American landmass 26000 years ago and Siberians 15000 years ago (The Independent, 28.02.2012). Unfortunately, such research is too often used to discredit American Indians' entitlement to their ancestral homelands and to justify dispossession.
(3) America Bride of the Sun catalogue, p 197.
(4) Thomas McEvilley, 'Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief: "Primitivism" in Twentieth Century Art', Artforum, November, 1984; Further exchanges between McEvilley and the curators in Artforum February and May, 1985.
(5) I was contacted by assistant curator Mark Francis well into the preparation because they realised they had no artists from Native North America. He ignored my suggestions and instead chose works that demonstrated apolitical signs of 'ethnicity', thereby failing to understand that cultural specificity may lie in a relational worldview in which enfolding new forms and technologies was precisely the tradition.
(6) Atrocities against the indigenous peoples were noted by Bartolomé de las Casas; In Valladolid in 1550 he conducted a famous debate with Sepúlveda. Las Casas argued that the Indians were free men; whilst Sepúlveda insisted that, as the Indians offended Catholic theology and natural law, it was right that they should be reduced to slavery. The debate did not resolve the issue.


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- Ability to stand for up to 8 hours per day
- You must be 18 years of age or older
About CLEAR:
Have you ever had that green-light feeling? When you hit every green light and the day just feels like magic. CLEAR's mission is to create frictionless experiences where every day has that feeling. With more than 15+ million passionate members and hundreds of partners around the world, CLEAR s identity platform is transforming the way people live, work, and travel. Whether it s at the airport, stadium, or right on your phone, CLEAR connects you to the things that make you, you – unlocking easier, more secure, and more seamless experiences – making them all feel like magic.
CLEAR is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.
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Jason Scott Lee
American Movie Actor
56 years old
Full Name
|Jason Scott Lee
Birth date
|November 19, 1966
Birth Place
|Huntington Beach, CA
|Movie Actor
Net Worth
|$6 million
Martial Status
|5′ 10″
|N/A lbs (N/A kg)
Hair Color
Eye Color
Ahead, we take a look at who is Jason Scott Lee dating now, who has he dated, Jason Scott Lee's wife, past relationships and dating history. We will also look at Jason's biography, facts, net worth, and much more.
Who is Jason Scott Lee dating?
Jason Scott Lee is currently married to Diane Hsu. The couple started dating in 2008 and have been together for around 15 years, 8 months, and 19 days.
The American Movie Actor was born in Huntington Beach, CA on November 19, 1966. Portrayed the titular legendary martial arts star in the 1993 film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. He also became known for playing Mowgli in the 1994 rendition of The Jungle Book. He provided the voice of David Kawena in the Disney film Lilo & Stitch.
About the relationship
As of 2023, Jason Scott Lee's wife is Diane Hsu. They began dating sometime in 2008. He is a Virgo and she is a N/A. The most compatible signs with Scorpio are considered to be Cancer, Virgo, Capricorn, and Pisces, while the least compatible signs with Scorpio are generally considered to be Leo and Aquarius. Diane Hsu is N/A years old, while Jason is 56 years old. According to CelebsCouples, Jason Scott Lee had at least 2 relationship before this one. He has not been previously engaged.
Jason Scott Lee and Diane Hsu have been dating for approximately 15 years, 8 months, and 19 days.
Fact: Jason Scott Lee is turning 57 years old in . Be sure to check out top 10 facts about Jason Scott Lee at FamousDetails.
About Jason Scott Lee's wife
Jason Scott Lee's wife, Diane Hsu was born on N/A in . She is currently N/A years old and her birth sign is N/A. Diane Hsu is best known for being a Model. She was also born in the Year of the N/A.
All dating histories are fact-checked and confirmed by our users. We use publicly available data and resources to ensure that our dating stats and biographies are accurate.
Who has Jason Scott Lee dated?
Like most celebrities, Jason Scott Lee tries to keep his personal and love life private, so check back often as we will continue to update this page with new dating news and rumors.
Jason Scott Lee wifes: He had at least 2 relationship before Diane Hsu. Jason Scott Lee has not been previously engaged. Jason Scott Lee has been in a relationship with Carrie Ann Inaba (1994). We are currently in process of looking up information on the previous dates and hookups.
Online rumors of Jason Scott Lees's dating past may vary. While it's relatively simple to find out who's dating Jason Scott Lee, it's harder to keep track of all his flings, hookups and breakups. It's even harder to keep every celebrity dating page and relationship timeline up to date. If you see any information about Jason Scott Lee is dated, please let us know.
Relationship Statistics of Jason Scott Lee
What is Jason Scott Lee marital status?
Jason Scott Lee is married to Diane Hsu.
How many relationships did Jason Scott Lee have?
Jason Scott Lee had at least 2 relationships in the past.
How many children does Jason Scott Lee have?
He has no children.
Is Jason Scott Lee having any relationship affair?
This information is currently not available.
Jason Scott Lee Biography
Jason Scott Lee was born on a Saturday, November 19, 1966 in Huntington Beach, CA. His birth name is Jason Scott Lee and she is currently 56 years old. People born on November 19 fall under the zodiac sign of Scorpio. His zodiac animal is Horse.
Jason Scott Lee is an American actor and martial artist. Lee is well known for portraying Bruce Lee in the 1993 martial arts film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and for portraying Mowgli in Disney's 1994 live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book.
He appeared in Born In East L.A. and Back to the Future Part II in the late '80s before landing his breakthrough role in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.
Continue to the next page to see Jason Scott Lee net worth, popularity trend, new videos and more.
Last update: September 2023


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The use of dynamical networks to detect the hierarchical organization of financial market sectors
Applied Mathematics, Research School of Physical Sciences, The Australian National University,
0200 Canberra, Australia
2 Department of Mathematics, King's College, The Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK
3 School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NH, UK
Corresponding author: firstname.lastname@example.com
Revised: 22 May 2009
Published online: 18 August 2009
Two kinds of filtered networks: minimum spanning trees (MSTs) and planar maximally filtered graphs (PMFGs) are constructed from dynamical correlations computed over a moving window. We study the evolution over time of both hierarchical and topological properties of these graphs in relation to market fluctuations. We verify that the dynamical PMFG preserves the same hierarchical structure as the dynamical MST, providing in addition a more significant and richer structure, a stronger robustness and dynamical stability. Central and peripheral stocks are differentiated by using a combination of different topological measures. We find stocks well connected and central; stocks well connected but peripheral; stocks poorly connected but central; stocks poorly connected and peripheral. It results that the Financial sector plays a central role in the entire system. The robustness, stability and persistence of these findings are verified by changing the time window and by performing the computations on different time periods. We discuss these results and the economic meaning of this hierarchical positioning.
PACS: 89.65.Gh – Economics; econophysics, financial markets, business and management / 89.75.Fb – Structures and organization in complex systems / 95.75.Wx – Time series analysis, time variability
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2009


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Ófeigur Icelandic design
Skólavörðustígur 5, Reykjavík 101, 5511161
Opening Hours:
Mon - Fri: 10.00am - 6.00pm
Sat: 11.00am - 4.00pm
Website: https://nammi.is/collections/ofeigur-jewelry-hats
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Jewelry made of silver, gold, titanium, copper and fish skin. Women's clothes, hats & leather bags all handmade & designed by the artists themselves. This is a unique shop - almost everything is made in the house. This is a family business and is run by Ófeigur Björnsson master gold & silversmith/sculptor and his wife Hildur Bolladóttir master dressmaker/designer and their son Bolli Ófeigsson master gold & silversmith.


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State Partnership Programs add an additional advantage to traditional plans by rewarding those who have long-term care insurance.
This works by allowing a person to protect assets from Medicaid spend-down requirements should they need care beyond what their policy will pay.
For every dollar the insurance company pays for care on your behalf, you are allowed to protect an extra dollar and qualify for Medicaid assistance. This may be the difference between being broke on Medicaid and still having some savings left.
Traditional long-term care policies paired with state partnership programs still have a place and can be a very effective way to protect your nest egg and family from the high costs of long-term care. We'll be glad to show you how these plans stack up in today's environment.
(Not a cost – it's an additional feature that can be built into traditional plans.)
Here's How It Works
A 64-year-old Female
A 64-year old female is worried about running out of money if she ends up in a long-term care situation. She purchased a Traditional long-term care insurance plan that is State Partnership Qualified. Should her health become compromised she will now have a pool of insurance money that provides $150,000 to pay for care. If she uses all of this money and still needs care, she can now apply for Medicaid. Without the insurance plan she would have to spend down her savings to $2,000 to qualify for Medicaid. However, since she had a partnership long-term care insurance plan, she is able to keep $152,000 of savings. Partnership Plans allow you qualify for Medicaid and keep an additional dollar of your savings for every dollar the long-term care insurance company paid for care on your behalf.
A Husband and Wife — Both 65
A husband and wife, both 65, have $285,000 in retirement savings. They each purchase a State Partnership qualified long-term care plan that gives them each $150,000 of long-term care benefit ($300,000 combined). The husband gets diagnosed with Alzheimer's' disease and needs long-term care. Since they have a shared care plan, he is able to use $200,000 of the $300,000 that they have available between them for long-term care. After he spends through this money, he still needs care so he now applies for help from Medicaid. Without insurance, the wife would only be able to keep $119,000 of their savings and the rest would have to be spend down on care costs for her husband. However, because they had a partnership long-term care policy, she can keep an additional $200,000 (amount paid out by insurance company for care) which means she can keep their entire savings and still have her husband qualify for Medicaid.


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New York has done a fair job of getting the state's residents vaccinated. To date, 22% of New Yorkers have received a last one dose of a vaccine and 11% have completed their vaccine series.
Despite that, things could be better.
We've heard far too many reports of navigation, access, equity, and trust issues that have prevented people from getting vaccinated without struggle or at all.
Consider technologically-disadvantaged seniors who've had difficulty navigating the online registration process. It's so bad of experience that groups of volunteers have popped up across the state who go to seniors' homes or hold registration clinics at town halls to help walk them through the process.
Or, what of those souls with preexisting conditions that are deadly when combined with Covid? Many of them have had to obsess about standing in line at a public clinic with dozens of complete strangers who could get them sick, a concern also shared by seniors.
Then, there are the rural residents. The local press has covered extensively the low vaccination rate in Allegany County and similar numbers in the GLOW counties. So, the state ramped up efforts to bring more shots to those people and, by not mandating residency, permitted those clinics to be overrun by shot-seekers from cities and suburbs, negating the very purpose of those clinics.
That takeover also speaks to the desperation had by many. Consider how many of your family and friends have traveled hours across the state to get a shot at the state fairgrounds or wherever else they might be available -- some Western New Yorkers have traveled as far as Potsdam.
Then, there's the inability to get minorities vaccinated at an acceptable rate. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans have all received shots at a clip far below that of Whites. Chalk that up to specific communities being underserved and also the hesitancy some populations are said to have in the shot and any government-run process.
All of the above are significant obstacles.
How do we overcome them?
Two words: Access and trust.
New Yorkers of all ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds deserve access to a vaccine and to have trust in it and the system. That can be furthered by more access and trust: New York government has to grant vaccine access to primary care and family physicians and trust them to get the job done.
Maybe it's a sense of control in time of crisis, perhaps it's a hunger for glory in the same, the state has been stingy when it comes who gets to the vaccine inventory. New York's state-run and county-run clinics, hospitals, and select pharmacies have gotten almost all of the shots. As it stands, hardly any vaccines have made it to doctors' offices.
In this case, the success of vaccination deployment could improve dramatically if government realized it's not the solution…it's just part of it. Many hands make light work, especially when they are experienced hands. We'd all be better served if primary care was allowed to do its thing.
I reached out to my friend Dr. Jason Matuszak, a primary care and sports medicine physician who is also President of the 7,000-member New York State Academy of Family Physicians (NYSAFP) to verify that I wasn't thinking wrongly about this.
Dr. Matuszak affirmed that physicians are committed to partnering with the State and administering vaccines. The NYSAFP has been in contact with the Governor's office and the Department of Health to offer their services as a supplement to the state's and counties' efforts.
He assured me that receiving, storing, and administering vaccines is old hat to physicians. In a normal year, they are the largest reporters of vaccinations given to either the New York State or New York City vaccine registries. Most primary care offices already run flu vaccine clinics, efficiently administering thousands of doses in short order. They also have the advantage of being able to administer vaccines during every routine office visit.
By being that traditional outlet for vaccines, they can help calm fears and overcome struggles had by their patients.
Take seniors, for example. Dr. Matuszak referenced a Kaiser Foundation study that indicated 96% of Medicare beneficiaries (seniors) say they have a usual and preferred source of care (their "own" doctor). It is so much safer and convenient and far less stressful for a senior just to call up Jason, say they'd like a shot, and visit his office.
Or, what of people of color, whom Governor Cuomo rightfully notes die from Covid at higher rates than their white counterparts? The NYSAFP believes distribution of vaccines through community based primary care practices is the best way to equalize access. Those medical practices have established relationships and trust with their patients and, in most cases, those physicians and other providers live in and look like their communities (this columnist would say that the same can't be said for government-run clinics that pop-up in those places, which is detrimental to public health goals).
As for rural residents, family physicians are their health network. They don't live near hospitals or sprawling multi-faceted clinics. They don't have large community centers where the state could one day appear. What they do have is their country doctor. In many locales – like the Southern Tier or the Adirondacks -- this is the only way to administer vaccines. It doesn't make sense to drive hours for the shot when it can be given in their community.
I encourage state officials to take up the NYSAFP on their offer to be a trusted partner in this process. They can remove barriers, improve access, add efficiencies, and bring trust to the termination of this pandemic. They've been wanted, they've been needed by their patients. And, with President Biden's recent announcement that there will be sufficient vaccine supply for all adult Americans to have access by the end of May, the state, too, will want and need their services. Empower that network of care…now.
From the 15 March 2021 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News


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We've all heard the saying "It takes a village to raise a child." What does that mean? According to Wikipedia, "the origin comes from a proverb that leverages the cultural context and belief that it takes an entire community to raise a child. A child has the best ability to become a healthy adult if the entire community takes an active role in contributing to the rearing of the child."
As an inbound marketer, this saying holds a truth I can relate to in my everyday business life. Let's begin with what I mean by the statement, "as an inbound marketer." Inbound marketing is the sales strategy of attracting folks to you (pulling) instead of interrupting them with advertising messaging (pushing). That's not to say traditional marketing like television commercials, print ads, and billboards no longer work — they're just not as effective as they once were.
We're bombarded with more than 3,000 marketing messages a day between traditional advertising, emails, Web banners, cold calls, and meetings. We can't possibly take all of those in, so we filter through most of it to the things that are relevant to us. Tools and technology expand advertisers' reach, and the consumer is left to filter through all of these messages. So how do you cut through this clutter and reach your prospect?
What Is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is the act of creating and delivering content specifically designed to appeal to your ideal customers, the ones you wish you could duplicate in order to have an army of amazing customers who you love working with. Inbound attracts qualified, ideal prospects to your website with content that answers the questions they're asking search engines, then keeps them coming back for more. Over time, these visitors convert and become leads. These leads then become customers once your sales team engages with them. In order to achieve this, you need an informative, educational website and a marketing automation tool — Hubspot, Pardot, or Marketo for example — for lead nurturing.
Think about the last purchase you made that was a significant investment. How did you start to decide what you were going to buy? If it was a new accounting software program, you likely began searching on Google. You wanted to read up on the capabilities, API integrations available, whether it could tie into your ERP system … the list goes on. Only once you felt you had a grasp on the top choices to best fit your business did you reach out and request a demo or more information. This is the power of the Internet. This is the power of buyer 2.0 — the research-focused, savvy buyer who begins his journey online.
Back to the village proverb: it takes a village to create a highly functional and effective inbound marketing program. Having multiple specialists will give your inbound marketing strategy the best ability to become a healthy lead-generation machine. There's a science to the methodology of attracting, converting, and closing net new customers. Once you gain a new customer, there's also the science of cross-selling services to these accounts.
What does the population of this village look like?
It takes a skilled team (the village)
Let's say your dealership is getting ready to build up your managed IT services team. You need certain core people to serve different roles. You wouldn't dream of bringing in just one person to sell, build, and execute an IT services contract, right? Same goes for inbound marketing and lead generation. A skilled marketing team is needed, as well as support from most, if not all, of your internal departments.
Why your internal departments? For anyone who has been through our inbound workshop and attended our session on "The Value of Each Department in the Inbound Sales Process," you know that each department plays a vital role in the lead generation process. Marketing is not the sole voice of the company; it's the collective unit, the essence of the company culture. No one person is the voice of the village — it's made up of the voice of the entire tribe. The same is true of your organization; there's a lot of institutional knowledge inside the minds of each employee, such as:
• What different types of questions do customers ask?
• Face-to-face experiences in the field with customers
• Answers to customer questions found in each individual's inbox
All of this information is important to the message that should be on your website for prospects and customers to find. Nothing that's an inside trade secret, of course, but common questions your employees answer every day for your buyers should be on your website. But in order for these answers to be found on your website, you need a team of highly skilled marketers with various skill sets to strategize and execute on the inbound methodology. Let's explore what a basic inbound marketing team should look like.
Inbound Marketing Strategist/Team Leader
Your strategist is your Sherpa on this inbound journey. This is where the inbound marketing strategy is envisioned and built. She is the one who should be identifying each different type of buyer (referred to as Buyer Personas), then segmenting them in your database. You wouldn't send your golf buddy a dozen roses, right? That's appropriate for your wife, not your buddy. Same goes for content for your different buyer personas. Your strategist breaks up your buyers into segments and targets each one with appropriate messaging that speaks to them. She also comes up with the plan for the path these folks take on your website and with your content. She leads the entire team through her vision of the buyer's path on your site from first-time visitor through to the close of the sale.
Content Writer
A quality content writer who is able to capture the digital voice of the company is vital to the process. Buyers want to find answers. Clear, concise writing helps them find those answers quickly – plus poor writing reflects poorly on your business. An experienced copywriter with the ability to speak the buyer's language converts leads. The content writer creates different messages for each of your buyer personas to speak to them in a unique way, making them understand how your solution solves their challenges. He creates downloadable eBooks, guides, checklists, blogs, and website copy that engages the readers and moves them through your sales funnel.
Social Media Strategist
We live our lives online. Think about how often you look at LinkedIn and Facebook throughout your day. While you may, as a dealership principal, not use it frequently, you do use it. We use social media for a plethora of reasons: to find an answer, surf what others are sharing, or just to check Facebook for the day's birthdays and photos. The more we use social, the more we condition ourselves to use social channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and new ones that seem to spring into existence weekly) for research and relaxation. Having a strong social presence expands your reach and builds up credibility with both your prospects who are visiting your social channels as well as Google, which seeks out qualified links to serve up as results (yes! Your social shares can show up as results on Google.)
Tactical Execution Coordinator
Once all of your content is created, you need someone to actually get in on your website or into your marketing automation platform (HubSpot, Pardot, or whatever tool you use). Don't underestimate the time it takes to do the manual work required to automate a process for your customers and potential customers.
These are your villagers. As you grow your marketing effort into a town and then a city, you'll need more "villagers."
Roles and responsibilities of the villagers
In order to keep a village functioning, each villager has tasks to perform. It's no different with inbound lead generation.
• SEO: Google moves fast. Google has one primary goal – to give the user the best possible answer. This is what keeps them on top of the search engine game. They're the 800-pound gorilla because they are consistently making the user's experience better. As we all grow impatient with our searches because we're conditioned to get exactly what we want when we type our query into the magic search bar, Google follows our behaviors and creates algorithms to improve the search experience. Your inbound marketing team should be keeping up with these complexities and incorporating them into your website experience, ultimately enhancing your lead generation program for the reps.
• Content: This might seem to tie back to the content writer, and it does. However, content in the eyes of a search engine can be a blog, a podcast, a video, a social message, or a PowerPoint on Slideshare. With so many options for the user to digest, it simply depends on which of these things your buyer persona wishes to click on. So why not have similar information living on all of these channels to appease all of your potential buyers?
• Social Media: Social is a conduit to reaching your audience in a place where they spend time. For some, that's LinkedIn, for others it's Facebook or Pinterest. Search engines love to see social shares and the engagement its users have with these platforms. It helps Google know what's interesting based on likes, shares, follows, and retweets (to name a few). Having the right voice and messaging is key to maintaining your brand's consistency and sharing your content, as well as that of others who are relevant to your industry, is a great strategy. What it is not for is hard selling. Share educational information so that you can build an audience that trusts you and is willing to share your messages.
• Email: Blanket emails are a thing of the past. What used to be an "email blast" is now a tool used to segment messages to different audiences so you can attract new folks and grow your email list. Again, your buddy doesn't want roses, your wife does. Same premise here — send the right message to the right person and they'll keep coming back to your site for the information and educational content you're sharing via your email efforts. You need to incorporate personalization and smart content based on user behavior, and segment your lists. Otherwise, you fall into that interruption-based category of spam. Targeting your information builds up buyer trust.
• Marketing Automation: Building out a successful marketing automation platform is not something that takes a few hours. It takes weeks, months, and sometimes years. Think of all the messaging we've discussed. It all needs a place to live, to be shared from, to be monitored and tracked. We know of many industry folks using HubSpot, Marketo, InfusionSoft, and Pardot. As HubSpot Gold partners, we work with HubSpot, and we know its powerful capabilities. All platforms have similar capabilities, but since we're the most familiar with HubSpot, we'll start here. We use HubSpot to build out nurturing campaigns for each persona based upon their behavioral interests. Marketing automation allows you to focus on goals and track what is working and what is not (the latter allows you to reallocate time and dollars to things that are working in your marketing strategy). It allows you to set branching logic based upon buyer behavior and keep track of the folks who might not close today, but if you continue nurturing them, could convert within a few months.
• Analytics and tracking: All of this is pointless unless it leads to sales. Tracking and monitoring all the goals we've set for ourselves allows us to close the loop and tie in the ROI at the end of the year. This is the magic of inbound lead generation. Knowing what closed, how they found you, knowing what other touchpoints assisted in the sale, and repeating the successful strategies. Otherwise, why spend the money?
Now, let's bring this full circle. A child has the best chance of becoming a healthy adult if the entire community takes an active role in contributing to the rearing of the child. The same goes for the health of your inbound marketing and lead generation strategy. There are vital members of the village necessary to have a healthy and successful inbound lead gen strategy. You could bring these people in-house or hire an outside agency. Whichever you decide, be sure that you know and understand what villagers you need in order to grow your dealership in today's Buyer 2.0 sales environment.
Contributor: Lindsay Kelley, Prospect Builder


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Lake City, Fl – Car Accident At Main Blvd And Bascom Norris DrSheftall Law
Lake City, FL (March 25, 2020) – Around 5 p.m. this evening, a car accident that led to injuries took place at an intersection in Lake City.
This happened just a while away from the Jacksonville area at the intersection of Bascom Norris Drive and Main Boulevard.
Though police have not yet commented on the exact circumstances of the accident, it is believed that one vehicle lost control at the intersection, slamming into the other.
The extent of the injuries are not yet known but paramedics were present at the scene of the accident. They assisted those in need.
No further details have been released but the investigation into the collision continues.
Car Accidents in Florida
Intersections are known for being some of the most devastating types of accidents. This is due to the fact that drivers do not always pay close attention to the roads around them at intersections. In just one year's time in the entire U.S., over 2.5 million intersection accidents take place. Being injured in a Florida car accident can have a huge impact on your life, which is why you need to be prepared.
Our accident attorneys at Sheftall & Associates are here to assist you in your time of need after you have been harmed in a collision. You have a right to compensation for aspects like lost wages, medical bills, pain and suffering, and many other aspects. You should never have to stand alone after an accident that is not your fault. Please contact our accident attorneys at (905) 638-7712 for more information on your options.
Note: As a result of the secondary sources that were used to complete this post, the information included within has not been independently verified by our own staff and may include misinformation. If you read something that, to your knowledge, is incorrect, please contact us as soon as possible and we will correct the inaccuracy.
Disclaimer: As members of the local Jacksonville and broader Florida community, we hope everyone in our community is safe and protected. We cover the events included in this blog as a way to offer support to the victims in similar circumstances and to provide relief during these difficult times. This is not a solicitation for business, and this information should not be misconstrued as medical or legal advice. You should speak with a trained legal professional for more information regarding your situation.


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A new speedy way of breeding crops, such as wheat, has been developed by researchers from John Innes Centre, University of Queensland and University of Sydney.
ScienceDaily reports that the team uses a glasshouse or an artificial environment with enhanced lighting to create intense day-long regimes to speed up the search for better performing crops.
Using the technique, the team has achieved wheat generation from seed to seed in just 8 weeks. These results have appeared in the journal Nature Plants.
This means that it is now possible to grow as many as 6 generations of wheat every year. This is a threefold increase on the shuttle-breeding techniques currently used by breeders and researchers.
Ruth Bryant, Wheat Pathologist at RAGT Seeds Ltd, Essex, UK, said: "Breeders are always looking for ways to speed up the process of getting a variety to market so we are really interested in the concept of speed breeding. We are working closely with the researchers at the John Innes Centre to develop this method in a commercial setting."
The international team also prove that the speed breeding technique can be used for durum wheat, barley, pea, chickpea and canola.
Source: ScienceDaily


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November is National Novel Writing Month, and traditionally folks use the month to challenge themselves to write a 50,000-word novel. But there's more than one way to celebrate the month.
I launched into the challenge in November 2019 and sailed along for about a week before the train derailed. It was glorious for a while — composing 1,667 words a day was a snap. Before Nov. 1 I'd completed the first chapter of a novel, and over those first few days I added more than 11,000 words and five chapters. Next thing I knew, November was over and I had stopped writing the novel.
In the ensuing couple of years, I've learned a little more about how I write and why my brain does this to my stories. And for this November I have set somewhat more realistic goals and yet more ambitious goals than I have conjured in quite some time.
Not long ago I announced that I would release my now-long-awaited next novel, Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus, on Nov. 26. Just like clockwork, once I made the announcement I stopped writing the novel. Some days I think I should find a nice therapist and talk about this.
Anyway, with Nov. 1, 2021, coming up Monday, I'm getting those goals set in my mind.
My first more realistic and yet more ambitious goal is to finish the first draft by Nov. 26. That would be about 20,000 words worth of story.
My second goal for the month is to make a plan to finish the other two novels that I have started and set aside in recent years, completing them in the first few months of 2022.
My third goal for the month is to set some realistic and yet ambitious goals for my writing during the rest of 2022.
My wish, my desire, my ambitious goal is to complete not just those three novels but three more before my 70th birthday, now a mere 18 months away, and to keep writing at that pace for as many days as remain. Actually, my wish and desire is to write much more swiftly than that and to have fun making so many books that I laugh at the idea I thought it was realistic to write only six novels in a year and a half.
Friday, I sketched out a first draft of a book-release plan for 2022. The first, second and fourth novels are the currently unfinished symphonies.
March 13 – Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus
April – No Chance to Dream: A Comfort & Joy Mystery
May – Jeep Thompson and the Martian Alternative
July – The Girl, the Alien, and Me
September – Newly conceived novel, working title The First Travelers
November – Jeep Thompson and the World Jumpers
That schedule, and that pace, would give me time to release two or three more novels before that magic birthday in March 2023, so I have some wiggle room if I commit to only six novels. But my goal is to set an ambitious schedule and stick to it.
You may ask, if making announcements like this in the past has shifted my procrastination into overdrive, why am I announcing this? Hell, I don't know. Another topic for that therapist.


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New Restaurant In Works at Bank of America Plaza
The Chambers Group's Brooks Bailey is representing TIER REIT in bringing Charlotte's newest restaurant to the Bank of America Plaza in Charlotte, NC.
A fast-casual sushi concept will open at Bank of America Plaza in 2018.
The Indigo Road plans to open a 1,783-square-foot restaurant inspired by its restaurant O-Ku in South End. The restaurant is known for its Asian-focused cuisine with a heavy Japanese influence.
"We look forward to opening the doors to our newest concept in the Queen City," the Charleston, S.C.-based hospitality group said in a statement.
Further details were not immediately available.
Indigo Road also operates Oak Steakhouse in South Charlotte and has plans for an Italian concept in the revamped Atherton Mill project.
Brooks Bailey of The Chambers Group represented TIER REIT, the owner of Bank of America Plaza, in the transaction. Bill Diehl represented The Indigo Road.
That concept is the latest tenant announced as part of a $20 million renovation at Bank of America Plaza.
That project expanded and renovated the tower's lobby and improved its exterior facade. It also created four new street-level retail spaces.
Upscale seafood restaurant Eddie V's and fast-casual concept Devon &Blakely announced earlier this year they had signed deals for that 40-story office tower at the intersection of Trade and Tryon streets in uptown Charlotte.
Source and Credit: Jennifer Thomas, Charlotte Business Journal


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Jeff focuses on building and maintaining NXT Capital's relationships with private equity sponsors. He originates and structures cash flow loan transactions.
Jeff brings over 20 years of risk management discipline to NXT Capital. Prior to joining NXT Capital, Jeff was a Vice President in the GE Antares/Ares Capital Senior Secured Loan Program (SSLP) joint venture. While with the SSLP, Jeff's role included structuring senior secured unitranche solutions to support sponsors' acquisitions of new platforms or expansion of existing portfolio companies.
Jeff earned a B.A. in Finance and Statistics from Miami University of Ohio.


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Jersey polo shirt with short sleeves
Product details
This short-sleeved jersey polo shirt is a wardrobe essential for the warm season and beyond
Material and instruction care
100% cotton. Wash the garment at 30°c with mild soap. Avoid scrubbing and rinse gently. Wring out excess water and dry the garment flat
Worldwide free shipping over 500€
Battistoni flat shipping fees free of covid-19 and other charges
Shipments outside EU subject to custom duties upon delivery
Payment methods


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Simple Every Day Mortgage Saver - April 2016
Each day or so I go into my bank account (internet) and transfer the last three digits in my savings account into my home loan(If I have $356.75 in the bank I transfer the $6.75). I've only been doing this a couple of weeks and have paid an extra $30 off my mortgage - and I haven't missed the small amounts coming out of my savings account. Even if it's only done fortnightly, it will make a difference in the long run.
Contributed by Wendy Pigott
Contributed by Wendy Pigott


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Hawaiian students name two asteroids through ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi program at UH Hilo astronomy center
The collaboration across cultural leaders, astronomers, and UH Hilo's student cohort culminated in the selection of Hawaiian names for two major astronomical discoveries: Kamoʻoalewa and Kaʻepaokaʻāwela.
Hawaiʻi is the first place in the world to weave traditional indigenous practices into the process of officially naming astronomical discoveries, thanks to a unique educational program called A Hua He Inoa, a collaborative effort by ʻImiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaiʻi at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.
Hawaiian speaking students from throughout Hawaiʻi Island and Maui spent two days immersed in knowledge from ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi experts, education leaders and top research scientists from the state's astronomical observatories. Students peered into the world of scientific research, learned about the recent discovery of two unusual celestial bodies, ascended the summit of Maunakea and expanded their understanding of the vital relationship, and role, of tradition and culture in modern day science.
The names chosen are Kamoʻoalewa and Kaʻepaokaʻāwela.
"This notion of astronomers working with the local, indigenous community to name discoveries may seem novel to most," says Kaʻiu Kimura, executive director at ʻImiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaiʻi. "But if the research is in and from this place, that relationship should be acknowledged and honored. A Hua He Inoa is a critical step towards integrating indigenous perspectives and place-based scientific research."
One great example is the first inter-stellar object to be tracked through our solar system, named ʻOumuamua. Larry Kimura of Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikolani, College of Hawaiian Language at UH Hilo named the object which gained massive media attention worldwide and propelled the use of ʻolelo Hawaiʻi as part of the coverage.
The collaboration across cultural leaders, astronomers and UH Hilo's student cohort culminated in the selection of Hawaiian names for two major astronomical discoveries. These names will serve as the official names for 2016 HO3 (Kamoʻoalewa)—an asteroid that orbits the Sun like the Earth but in a slightly different orbit, and 2015 BZ509 (Kaʻepaokaʻāwela)—an asteroid near the orbit of Jupiter that moves in an opposite "retrograde" direction.
"I never thought I would be part of giving a heavenly body a Hawaiian name that would be globally recognized," says Kauakea Helekahi-Kaiwi, a senior at Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu School.
As the A Hua He Inoa program moves forward, ʻImiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaiʻi will work to continue it's goals of inspiring the community and extending the culture of Hawaiʻi and the immense value of indigenous practices out into the world.
Read the full story and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi version at ʻImiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaiʻi's website.