Tully Potter's two-volume exploration of the life and turbulent times of the violinist and composer, Adolf Busch, will soon be published by Toccata Press. In this extract, Busch and his colleagues in the quartet are confronted with the reality of life in Nazi Germany:
The Nazis had named Saturday, 1 April, as the first day on which they would enforce a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses (in Munich local thugs jumped the gun, beginning it at noon on Friday). The ban was to last from 10.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m.: Nazi cells were to appoint themselves ‘commissioners for the staff’ in Jewish firms, forbid dismissal of non-Jewish employees and demand the sacking of all Jewish colleagues. At 3.00 p.m. all employees of Jewish concerns were to leave the premises and demonstrate outside. Cameramen would tour every city, filming people who bought from Jewish stores. All such premises were picketed by stormtroopers and bore a placard with a yellow circle on a black background, reading: ‘Closed as a protest against the Jewish atrocity propaganda at home and abroad – the Jewish proprietor of this business is responsible for the safety of this placard, which must be prominently shown’. In Berlin Jews were denied access to the Stock Exchange, Prussian State Library and University; virtually all cafes and cabarets were closed and knots of people stood about, jeering or waiting for trouble to start. The Gestapo made their presence felt, calling at Jewish addresses and taking people away – just an intimidatory move at this stage. ‘Most of us stayed indoors that day,’ Berthold Goldschmidt said, ‘though people were not actually being assaulted in the street.’ Among those defying the boycott and visiting the few Jewish shops which had dared to open was Frau Julie Bonhoeffer, 91-year-old grandmother of the anti-Nazi pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer – she ‘ostentatiously walked through the SA cordon’ to shop at the Kaufhaus des Westens. Carl Flesch Jnr, then 22 and working as an unpaid civil servant or Referendar – until he was barred from entering his office that morning – walked through the Berlin Westend reflecting that as he had lost his job, he had all the time in the world on his hands. He later wrote:
I was amazed by the attitude of the thousands of ‘nice’-looking Germans who crowded the streets. There was no obvious fanaticism, but rather an atmosphere of harmless fun, like a bank holiday on Hampstead Heath. They pointed out to each other and their children gleefully, but usually without sounding in the least malicious, the various insulting graffiti on Jewish shops and the SA men in front of them stopping the occasional defiant customer from entering (although most of the establishments had prudently remained closed anyway). It was then I realised that, for the time being, every layer of the German nation had become infected and there was nothing one could do about it in the foreseeable future.
The atmosphere in Berlin that Saturday was the last straw for Busch and his colleagues, who had to hold their rehearsal at the height of the disturbances. ‘On the way to the church, they saw people smearing stores with swastikas’, said Lotte Busch, ‘and on the way back they saw the mob again.’ The effort of concentrating their minds on Haydn’s most elevated music was harrowing in the circumstances, but a reviewer concluded: ‘The Busch Quartet played the profound pieces […] with the beautiful combination of expression and objectivity that distinguishes its interpretations of classical music’. […] After the concert, the players were openly saying that they could no longer work in Germany. Members of the audience who had come backstage, many of them Jews, were tearfully pleading: ‘You must not leave us. Now we need you more than ever’. But the die was cast. […] Years later Gösta Andreasson reminisced to his opposite number in the Amadeus Quartet, Siegmund Nissel, that Busch called the others to his hotel room at 2.00 or 3.00 in the morning to make their final, agonising decision. Irene Serkin-Busch remembered that her father telegraphed to a few German concert organisations that very night from Berlin, to cancel imminent performances. And Maltschi Serkin, who was staying in the Riehen house, testified that
Frieda was a very impulsive person. Busch, on the other hand, was very quiet but when he was in a rage, he was like an element. He was so enraged that when Frieda saw him in that state, she just quietly packed the suitcases and took him home. If he had shown the rage that was in him, he would have ended up in a concentration camp.
On their way back to Basel, Adolf, Frieda and Rudi were waiting for a train connection at Frankfurt station when they ran into Gustav Havemann. This was the man who in 1932, with the composers Paul Graener and Max Trapp, had proposed forming a Musikkammer to embrace the whole profession, demanding that it should be politically and racially pure – which meant devoid of Communists and Jews. […] ‘The movement is not directed against artists such as Serkin’, he now tried to assure Busch who, with the memory of the anti-Semitic demonstration at the Düsseldorf sonata recital still fresh, angrily brushed him aside. […] At home in Riehen later that day, Adolf was examined by his physician, who diagnosed a severe depression and said he must on no account play in public for the time being. Next day he telegraphed to the organisers of concerts scheduled for Breslau, Darmstadt, Frankfurt and Bremen: ‘Impossible to come, sadly. Letter follows’. The letter, copies of which were sent to the press and interested parties such as HMV, read:
I am sorry that with my sudden telegraphic cancellation I necessarily placed you in a disagreeable situation. Because of the impression made on me by the actions of my Christian compatriots against German Jews, which are aimed at displacing Jews from their professional occupations and robbing them of their honour, I am at the end of my spiritual and physical strength, so that I find it necessary to break off my concert tour in Germany.
Adolf Busch: The Life of an Honest Musician by Tully Potter will be published shortly by Toccata Press as a two-volume set with two CDs of Busch's music, both as a performer and a composer. It is available from all good booksellers.


When Florence’s powerful patron and ruler Lorenzo de’ Medici was on his deathbed, he called for a monk to come and absolve him, but not just any monk. The man who came to his side was the religious extremist of his day, a man who would throw Florence into turmoil for the next few years, forcing people to give up everything they held dear and even to burn their most treasured possessions at his behest. His name was Girolamo Savonarola, and he was known as the mad friar of Florence.
There is nothing new about religious extremism. We have endured it throughout history and we continue to feel its effects today, not just in Muslim countries but all around us. Nor is it the sole product of the Muslim faith; religious extremists have come from other faiths too at different periods in our shared past. The solution to religious extremism is said to be democracy. Democracy promotes the need for religious tolerance and acceptance of our right to differ, but it takes time to instil. There is no magic recipe for it. You cannot implant it like a new organ in an ailing body and expect that it will take overnight. What then is religious extremism, and how does it arise?
Religious extremism means taking a set of beliefs to their very limit, and applying them. Those who do this commit themselves to promoting or carrying out purposely hurtful, violent or destructive acts against others.
Certainly in today’s world religious extremism is often about terrorist acts in the name of religion, but this hasn’t always been the case. At other times in history it was not technically about harming people but about redeeming them. You could say that it was seen as constructive extremism. It was, if you like, about imposing your views on others in a dictatorial way. The fact that this was also destructive, often only became clear with the perspective of time. History, as usual, eventually illuminates the truth because it provides us with that incredibly useful tool, hindsight. Even in present-day circumstances, with our so-called enlightened way of thinking, one day hindsight will reveal to us more than we can currently grasp about what is happening now.
Political psychologist Neil Kressel defines the mindset of the present-day religious extremist with the following characteristics:
“Idealisation of some past era combined with the belief that the world has gone awry
Declared certainty of the correctness of one’s religious vision
Complete unwillingness to compromise with those who disagree
Powerful denunciation of people with different lifestyles, especially when they involve forms of homosexuality or sexual liberality
Devaluation of events in this world and an intense focus on life after death
Willingness to assume the role of God’s ‘hit man’, defending the deity and his representatives against all perceived insults
Extreme veneration of some religious leader or leaders; Disconcerting lack of concern for earthly evidence, except of the sort sanctioned by the religious system
Routine acceptance of the desired ends as justification for unsavoury means
Adoption of numerous defensive methods for avoiding serious encounters with conflicting systems of belief and their adherents – Dehumanising imagery of non-believers and religious outgroups (most commonly the Jews) and
Strong preference for keeping women in traditional, subordinate roles.” (The mind of the religious extremist, Neil.J.Kressel, globalbreifing.org)
This certainly gives us an idea of what it’s like to be in the head of an extremist, but how does a person become a religious extremist in the first place?
There has been a good deal of talk in the media about this lately. It is widely said that people turn to faith as a solution to past and present problems, whether it is poverty, mental instability, the fallout of political strife or even just opportunism. If we take a look at the past of Florence’s crazed friar, Girolamo Savonarola, we find some interesting and revealing answers to this question.
As a young man, Savonarola was at first nothing like an extremist. He wasn’t even particularly religious. But his life was to take a course that would push him in that direction, satisfying a good number of the requisites for becoming a religious extremist. First, he suffered what is for most people the most disappointing experience of their life, rejection. When he was nineteen, he fell desperately in love with the girl next door. Whether she returned his love or not, is not certain. But in any case he wasn’t considered good enough for her, and his suit was refused; his dreams of domestic bliss and sexual fulfilment were ruined. At the time he was studying to be a physician, but as often happens in such cases, ambition failed in the face of disappointment, and he turned to the one thing he thought could give his life meaning. He joined the Dominican order of mendicant friars; he turned to faith to find a way forward.
He threw himself into it with a fervour marked by the degree of his disappointment. No task was too humble, no penitence too hard. He believed the hand of God was guiding him; he distanced himself from his family, and claimed he was visited by apocalyptic visions of hell. In a very short time he had become a shadow of his former self. His body became weak, his face gaunt, but his mind was driven to compensate. When he arrived in Florence in 1490, terrified by temptation, both his own (since he practised self flagellation on a daily basis) and that of others, he was frantically preaching about the dangers of sin. Before long the bonfires of the vanities were burning in the Piazza della Signoria, and people were throwing their best fur coats, their art and even their false teeth onto the flames in the hope that the fire that awaited them after death would somehow be avoided.
Happily, it didn’t last. Before long the Florentines came to their senses. Savonarola was imprisoned, tortured to extract a confession of guilt then hanged with it. That is not to say that he didn’t have a point to make. His principal claim was that the clergy of his time was immoral and corrupt. This was certainly true. By the fifteenth century the Catholic clergy would stop at nothing, even murder, to gain power. But, as ever, the solution did not lie in scare mongering. If only Savonarola’s life had been different, perhaps his message would have been less extreme, but then if his life had been different he would not have become a monk in the first place. Savonarola sought solace from rejection in the one thing he decided would never let him down, faith. But even then he feared the worst. Divine wrath kept him preaching. Fear had made him a persecutor of the people. Even children became his spies, terrified by the evils of his message. A moral comes to mind: never jilt a lover. Disappointment is a powerful incentive. If we could create a society where everyone had their place, I wonder if men like Savonarola would feel the need to make their point with the full force of divine retribution. Perhaps there would be no such thing.
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Buy your copy of Gioconda


Career Day Writing and Craft Activity
This Career Day Writing and Craft Activity has everything you need to give students a chance to write about what they want to be when they grow up. Students pick the profession, then complete the booklet about who they want to be, what they will need, and why they want to do that career. Students will also complete a diagram of what their career person might need to be good at their job. Listed below are the community workers I have in the product. Each community worker is two pages and then there is a four-page booklet (half pages) that goes with each community worker/community helper.
- Comes with a table of contents so you can find community helpers quickly
- Comes with editable ppt for you to add your own booklet titles
- CHECK OUT VIDEO FOR MORE DETAILS.
- police officer
- mail carrier
- trash collector
- business woman
- forest ranger
- life guard
- oil worker
- crossing guard
- truck driver
- make-up artist
- marine biologist
- football player
- train conductor
- race car driver
- military officer
- construction worker
- fashion designer
- soccer player
- hair dresser
- Sub Shop Owner
- dancer (Ballet & Regular)
- vice president
- art teacher
- scuba diver
- engineer (two different options)
- basketball player
- video gamer
- daycare provider
- ice cream shop owner
- cowgirl and cowboy
- zoo keeper
What others have to say: 📢
I think of all of my writing activities that we hung outside our classroom walls, this was a FAVORITE! But hear what others have to say... 🙂
My students loved doing these activities for career day. I loved that there were so many career choices available. In my class of 18 students, there was a career for every child's choice.
My students enjoyed putting this activity together. I liked that the space provided for my students to write was ample. There are many career options. My only suggestion would be to have a table of contents. I think this would make it easier to find the person for the selected career. I know it is suggested to print out the entire package and place them in a binder but would use up my allowance of copies for the month. Overall, the people are cute and the final student product makes for a great bulletin display. (I added table of contents - great suggestion)
Wow! There are so many careers available with this resource. Thank you for offering lots of characters. This package was a perfect accompaniment to our first grade Career Week project.
This was a very cute activity. Everything is laid out for you, very little work needed on your part! Would definitely recommend to fellow teachers!
QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS:
Email me at [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns about this product.
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Slate writer and meteorologist Eric Holthaus argues that, given his political constraints, President Obama has been largely successful in getting the ball rolling on dealing with climate change, even though there's a long, long way to go.
On Wednesday, as the president spoke in the Florida swamp, diplomats were gathering in Bangkok to discuss a possible global deal to phase out hydroflorocarbons (HFCs), one of the fastest growing contributors to climate change. This deal wouldn’t be possible without help from the Obama administration.
HFCs, which are used primarily as refrigerants in air conditioning, were phased in as a replacement for CFCs in the 1980s and 1990s in an attempt to stop the growth of the hole in the ozone layer. Since then, they’ve become a big problem in and of themselves—even though viable alternatives are readily available.
A pound of HFCs has up to 14,000 times the global warming potential as a pound of carbon dioxide. U.S. emissions of HFCs are the largest of any country in the world,and they’re rising—but they’re soon to get dwarfed by demand for cooling in places like India as the climate warms and the global middle class of people who can afford air conditioning expands. The proportion of humanity’s total impact on the climate by HFCs is projected to grow rapidly in the coming decades—and could amount to28 to 45 percent of all human-induced global warming by 2050 if the world cracks down on carbon dioxide in the meantime.
So what’s the good news? Air conditioning is a life-and-death issue in India, where its use is projected to grow at a whopping 20 percent per year for the foreseeable future. India had been opposing a transition to HFC alternatives to allow the greatest access to cooling possible. But a big breakthrough on HFCs came earlier this month when India unexpectedly submitted a plan for their global phase-out using the existing Montreal Protocol—the same treaty used to phase out CFCs decades ago. Lead U.S. climate diplomat Todd Stern claimed victory, crediting a bilateral meeting between Obama and Indian Prime Minister Modi in January. The U.S. and China had previously agreed to a similar deal on HFCs in 2013, and the Obama administration announced a voluntary deal with American cooling-intensive companies, like Coca-Cola, last fall.
Because the structure of this year’s first-ever global agreement on climate change is also voluntary—with each country effectively trying to peer-pressure others into greater cuts—it matters that the Obama administration is emerging as an effective negotiating force. India hasn’t yet announced its overall economy-wide goal for cutting carbon, but is rumored to be leaving the door open for more significant cuts should wealthier countries agree to fund them.
Considering Republicans refuse to even acknowledge climate change exists still, it's a victory. The alternative is a Republican administration that with either do nothing or in fact make things worse by increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and saying "God will sort it out."
There is a difference between the two parties, and climate change action is definitely one of those differences.


What is the bright white star in the sky?
Table of Contents
- What is the bright white star in the sky?
- What is the bright star high in the sky tonight?
- What is the bright star in the sky to the west?
- What does it mean when there's only one star in the sky?
- Where is Venus right now?
- Is Mars visible in the night sky tonight?
- Why is Venus so bright right now?
- Are Shooting stars rare?
- What does it mean when a star is super bright?
- Which is the brightest planet in the sky?
- Which is the second brightest star in the night sky?
- Which is the brightest object in the night sky?
- Where to look in the night sky to see stars?
What is the bright white star in the sky?
Why is Sirius so bright? Sirius is bright enough to dominate the night sky after sunset particularly if there are no planets around. It's very bright because: Sirius is a big blue-white star 25 times the mass of our Sun.
What is the bright star high in the sky tonight?
It's the star Sirius in the constellation Canis Major, brightest star in the sky. The bright planet Venus is also up before dawn now.
What is the bright star in the sky to the west?
Venus Venus can often be seen within a few hours after sunset or before sunrise as the brightest object in the sky (other than the moon). It looks like a very bright star. Venus is the brightest planet in the Solar System.
What does it mean when there's only one star in the sky?
Originally Answered: What is the meaning when you see a one brightest star of them all at night? In the Northern Hemisphere, it means that it is winter, as Sirius , the brightest star in the sky, is most visible in the winter. By the same token, if you are living in the Southern Hemisphere, it means that it is summer!
Where is Venus right now?
Venus is currently in the constellation of Virgo.
Is Mars visible in the night sky tonight?
Beta The Interactive Night Sky Map simulates the sky above Los Angeles on a date of your choice....Visible tonight, Aug 19 – .
|Mercury:||Until Thu 8:23 pm|
|Venus:||Until Thu 9:15 pm|
|Mars:||Until Thu 8:21 pm|
|Saturn:||Until Fri 4:52 am|
Why is Venus so bright right now?
How best we see Venus depends on its position relative to Earth and the Sun. ... Venus has an albedo of 0.7, which means that it reflects about 70 per cent of the sunlight that falls on it. So, that's why Venus is shining so brightly at the moment, and it makes for wonderful viewing in the evening sky.
Are Shooting stars rare?
Though folklore of many cultures describes shooting or falling stars as rare events, “they're hardly rare or even stars,” says Luhman, Penn State assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics. ... Larger objects are called asteroids, and smaller, planetary dust, Luhman explains.
What does it mean when a star is super bright?
A star's brightness also depends on its proximity to us. The more distant an object is, the dimmer it appears. Therefore, if two stars have the same level of brightness, but one is farther away, the closer star will appear brighter than the more distant star - even though they are equally bright!
Which is the brightest planet in the sky?
In their outward order from the sun, the five bright planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These planets actually do appear bright in our sky. They are typically as bright as – or brighter than – the brightest stars.
Which is the second brightest star in the night sky?
Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky, is high in the southwest, in the constellation of Carina, the Ship’s Keel, with the brightest star, Sirius, in Canis Major, hanging over the western horizon. Look northeast to see another bright star, Arcturus in the constellation of Bootes, the Herdsman.
Which is the brightest object in the night sky?
Although they are widely separated by 7 degrees, the two brightest objects in the night sky — the moon and Venus — still make for an eye-catching sight as they descend side-by-side in the April 26 west-northwest sky.
Where to look in the night sky to see stars?
To better see the cluster's stars, try placing the bright moon just outside the field of view of your binoculars (red circle).


Whoever said the Bible is irrelevant to the way people live today needs to take a fresh look at the “Minor Prophets” of the Old Testament. These twelve books may be short in length but they are major in message. They have something today’s world leaders and citizens need to hear — the proud and the humble, the good and the bad, the skeptic and the believer. The target of Obadiah’s message was primarily the people of Edom, and he gives it “all he’s got” in a little book consisting of a single chapter!
WHO WERE THE EDOMITES?
Nation of Edom
Edomites were descendants of Esau, one of two sons of Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 25:19-34). Esau was born around 2,000 BC and his descendants lived Southwest of the Dead Sea. Although the Edomites were relatives of the Israelites (who descended from Jacob, the twin brother of Esau), they did not treat the Israelites well. When Israel was traveling from Egypt to the Promised Land around 1400 BC the Edomites refused to allow passage through their territory (Numbers 20:14-21). This created significant strain in the relationship between the Israelites and the Edomites.
King David conquered Edom around 1,000 BC (2 Samuel 8:14). However, when Israel was attacked by the Babylonians in 586 BC the Edomites aided and abetted Babylon as it ruthlessly conquered God’s people and took them into Babylonian captivity for 70 years. The Lord was angry with Edom for its cruel treatment of their kinsmen in the flesh and promised that a day of reckoning was coming when Edom would be destroyed for their actions against Israel. He said, “Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever” (Obadiah verse 10). Other prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel and Amos joined with Obadiah in denouncing the Edomites, and promising the end of the nation. God said through Obadiah: “I will bring you down!” (verse 4). Other prophets were very specific in their predictions about what would happen to Edom. They wrote that:
• Edom would become a desolation (Isaiah 34:13) •
• It would be conquered by Israel (Ezekiel 25:14) •
• It would have a bloody history (Ezekiel 34:5-6; Isaiah 34:6-7) •
• Wild animals would inhabit the area (Isaiah 34:13-15) •
• Trade would cease (Isaiah 34:10; Ezekiel 35:7) •
• Spectators would be astonished (Jeremiah 49:17) •
• Edom would never be populated again (Jeremiah 49:18) •
In the sixth century BC the Nabateans expelled Edom from their rock fortresses and occupied their country. They were again conquered by the Maccabees around 150 BC in fulfillment of the prophecy of Ezekiel 25:14. At that time 20,000 Edomites were put to death! In the first century AD the remaining Edomites were absorbed by the Arabs and their identity was lost completely. Today there is not one person on earth who can trace his ancestry back to the Edomites. The promises of Jeremiah 49:18 have been fulfilled: Edom will never be populated again.
Higgins comments on the annihilation of ancient Edom: “Today the land stands deserted, a mute testimony to the sure Word of the Lord. Petra is a remarkable example of the literal fulfillment of this prophecy. This great ancient capital with its theatre seating 4000, its temples, its altars and its monuments, is now silent and alone, decaying with the passage of time.” (Higgins, David C. “The Edomites Considered Historically and Prophetically.” Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1960). The inspired word of the Lord through Malachi, the last Old Testament prophet, still grabs our attention and raises our eyebrows: “Esau (referring to the Edomites) I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert” (Malachi 1:2-3).
WHO WAS OBADIAH?
Obadiah the 6th Century Prophet
Ten people bore the name “Obadiah” in the Old Testament. The one who authored the book bearing his name received a “vision” sometime between the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem (586 BC) and Edom’s destruction by the Babylonians (553 BC). Almost nothing is known for certain about his background. According to “Jewish” tradition, Obadiah was a convert to Judaism who came from Edom, a descendant from Eliphaz, one of Job’s three “friends”. According to “Christian” tradition, Obadiah is said to have been born in Shechem and was the third captain of 50 men sent from king Ahaziah to bring Elijah to meet the king face to face (2 Kings 1:13-16). What we know for sure is that Obadiah was a prophet of God, a courageous preacher and a man of few words. His entire book covers only 21 verses. His name means “one who serves the Lord.” Come to think of it, that’s really all we need to know to make us attentive to his timeless message!
WHAT IS HIS PRACTICAL AND TIMELESS MESSAGE ?
Book of Obadiah
1. God Rules Over the Nations. God is not the God of the Israelites only; He is the God of all nations. The Edomites may have thought they were impregnable because they dwelt among the cliffs, high above the canyon floor, but God’s presence and power would bring them down from the cliffs where eagles soared. “Though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the stars, from there I will bring you down, declares the Lord” (Obadiah verse 4). It is true even today that the fate of nations is in the hand of God. He has determined “the allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26). Even rulers who do not know or honor the Lord are subject to His will. He makes kingdoms rise and He makes kingdoms fall. “The Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone He wishes” (Daniel 4:32).
2. Prideful Self-sufficiency Is a Delusion. A famous theologian once said that there is only one basic sin: pride. It is man’s determined insistence that he is master of his own fate and captain of his own soul that continually gets him in trouble. Mankind thinks that it deserves whatever it desires; that the world owes it whatever the “good life” has to offer; that no one has the right to criticize or pass judgment on its conduct, belief systems or pleasures. Any concept of the need for a Savior is foreign to the thinking of prideful people. As someone recently put it to me, “I may not be doing what God wants me to do, but when I get to the judgment I want to have my say!” Such arrogance will keep a person from reading his Bible, repenting of his sins or committing his life to Jesus Christ. It’s faulty thinking. Obadiah assured the Edomites that pride would be their downfall. “The pride of your heart has deceived you … You have no understanding” (verses 3 and 7).
3. It Matters How We Treat People. The Edomites and the Israelites were kinsfolk, and kinsfolk ought to “cover each other’s backs.” They ought to feel obligated to defend and protect members of the family even if they don’t do the same for non-family! How do we expect people to treat strangers with equity and kindness if they don’t care enough to be equitable and kind to their own family? God said: “Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever.” (verse 10). What follows is Obadiah’s eight “do nots” for family relationships:
• Do not gloat over the misfortune of your brother (verse 12) •
• Do not rejoice in his day of ruin (verse 12) •
• Do not boast in the day of distress (verse 12) •
• Do not enter the gate in the day of his calamity (verse 13) •
• Do not gloat over his disaster (verses 13) •
• Do not loot his wealth (verse 13) •
• Do not cut off his fugitives (verse 14) •
• Do not hand over his survivors (verse 14) •
Jesus put it positively when He said: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). Family members and neighbors, friend and foe alike must be treated with the love of Christ. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink” (Romans 12:20). It is by practicing love that Christians are identified in this world of violence, hatred, apathy, abusiveness and self-centeredness. “By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
4. Divine Punishment Is Fair, Just and Inevitable. “The day of the Lord is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head” (Obadiah verses 15-18). God does not exercise his wrath like a bully who abuses others. His anger is always just and fair. It is in proportion to one’s sins. Some sins are more serious than others; some have greater consequences. However, we can be assured of this one fact: God’s judgment against sinners is inevitable. “We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10). We dare not take the coming judgment lightly! “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!” (Hebrews 10:31).
5. “The Kingdom Is the Lord’s” Even Today. Obadiah announced the promise of God to His faithful people: “Saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau (that is, Edom), and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s” (verses 19-21). This is more than a promise of a return to Palestine following Babylonian captivity. The prophet Amos spoke of this very same promise to “possess the remnant of Edom” when the Lord would “raise up the booth (or tent) of David that had fallen” (Amos 9:11-12). Early Christians saw these promises fulfilled in the establishment of God’s spiritual kingdom, the church. James applied this prophecy to the salvation of Gentiles: “After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the Lord, who makes all these things known from old” (Acts 15:14-17). The coming of Christ’s Church and the salvation of Gentiles is the assurance that “the kingdom shall be the Lord’s” in our own day. You can inherit the kingdom-blessings Obadiah promised to God’s faithful people!
Have you entered the Lord’s kingdom (His church) through obedient faith? You do not need to wait till next Sunday to do that –– you can enter the kingdom by being “born of water and the Spirit” this very day (John 3:5)!


In a continuing series on painting frames, I would like to focus on a particular style: the tabernacle frame.
According to researchers at that National Gallery in Washington, the tabernacle frame grew out of devotional paintings. The architectural nature of the frame was meant to imitate the shape of a cathedral or church. As a result, the tabernacle frame was a portable religious site that could be put in a home or other private place of worship.
Like a church building, the make up of the frame consists of a plinth at the base and two columns surmounted by an entablature.
The earliest surviving examples of wooden tabernacle frames are from fifteenth-century Italy, where they were used in religious paintings, especially those featuring the Virgin and Christ Child.
(Some conservators, like those at the National Gallery in London, insist that Italian, pre-nineteenth-century frames should only be put on images with the Virgin and Christ Child.)
Though commissioned by collectors for older works, the tabernacle frame was rarely seen or used on contemporary paintings until the “Olympian painters” of Great Britain, especially Frederick Lord Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, began using them on their own paintings.
Leighton and Tadema separated the tabernacle frame from its religious context and used it to depict non-traditional scene. Both Leighton and Tadema often designed their own frames, and created unique approaches to the Greco-Roman architecture, especially Tadema, who chose Egyptian themes for many of his works and created frames to match.


Based on Alexandre Dumas, père’s classic 1844 novel, THE THREE MUSKETEERS is an operetta set in France and England in 1626. It recounts the adventures of a young man named d’Artagnan after he leaves home to become a Musketeer of the Guard during the reign of the French king Louis XIII. The three men of the title are his friends Athos, Porthos and Aramis.
Photo by Southern Light Opera Company
- Rehearsal Materials
- Cast List
- Brief History
In early 17th century France, the poor but virile d’Artagnan travels to Paris to join the Musketeers (the King’s bodyguard). He meets and falls in love with Lady Constance Bonacieux, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne. Meanwhile, Cardinal Richelieu learns that the Queen has given a diamond heart brooch, which was a present to her from the King, as a token of love to the Duke of Buckingham. Richelieu suggests that the King ask the Queen to wear it at a planned royal gala. Richelieu dispatches the Comte de Rochefort and Lady de Winter to London to recover the gem, which he plans to unveil at the gala in order to reveal that the Queen has been unfaithful.
The Queen asks her lady-in-waiting, Constance Bonacieux, to involve the Musketeers in the jewel’s speedy recovery so that she might foil the plot. But when the Musketeers reach London, they are too late: Lady de Winter has arrived first. D’Artagnan uses his seductive charms upon Lady de Winter and steals the bauble. After a rousing sword fight, the Musketeers kill de Rochefort and rush back to Paris just in time to bring the jewel to the gala. King Louis fastens it to the Queen’s shoulder just as he did when he first gave it to her.
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
Music by Rudolf Friml
Lyrics by Clifford Grey and P.G. Wodehouse
Book by William Anthony McGuire
Based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas, père
Such credits to the authors for all purposes shall be in type size equal to or greater than that of any other credits except for that of the star(s) above the title. In the programs, the credits shall appear on the title page thereof.
The title page of the program shall contain the following announcement in type size at least one-half the size of the authors’ credits:
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
is presented by arrangement with
TAMS-WITMARK MUSIC LIBRARY, INC.
560 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10022
There is currently no orchestration available for THE THREE MUSKETEERS.
1 Piano Conductor’s Score
1 Prompt Book for Director
22 Dialogue Parts
9 Vocal Parts
25 Chorus Parts
(In order of their appearance)
Conte de la Rochefort
Lady de Winter
Anne, Queen of France
M. de Treville
The Duke of Buckingham
Premiere Danseuse of Court
Patrick, valet to Buckingham
Ladies in Waiting
The King’s Attendant
THE THREE MUSKETEERS opened on Broadway at the Lyric Theatre, March 13, 1928 and played for 318 performances starring Dennis King as d’Artagnan, Douglass R. Dumbrille as Athos, Detmar Poppen as Porthos, Joseph Macaulay as Aramis, Clarence Derwent as Louis XIII of France, and Reginald Owen as Cardinal Richelieu. Dennis King also starred when the operetta was mounted in London’s West End in 1930 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where it played for 242 performances.
Find upcoming performances near you.
Organization City, State First Performance Last Performance


Chestnuts - Defined and Recipes
Chestnuts—The large ones obtainable at most Italian stores are the best suited for culinary purposes, the small ones seen at the fruit stalls being far too tedious. They should be first cut through the shell in the form of a cross, so as to strip the shell off easily, then placed in a baking pan, put into a slack oven till done; or they may be boiled till done, and then husked. Some people like to eat boiled chestnuts, the water being flavored with aniseed; when husked, made hot again in a little melted butter.
CHESTNUT FORCEMEAT—Chestnuts boiled and husked, pounded to a paste with butter, mixed with a little grated ham, breadcrumbs, minced onion, grated lemon rind, yolks of eggs, seasoned with salt and pepper; used to stuff poultry and suckling pigs.
DEVILLED CHESTNUTS —Boiled, peeled, fried brown in butter oil, taken up and sprinkled with salt and red pepper.
Purée OF CHESTNUTS — Boiled, peeled, pounded, then rubbed through a fine sieve.
CHESTNUT SOUP—A thin cream of chicken stock thickened with a purée of chestnuts, seasoned and served.


Could It Be Your Thyroid?
Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired? Could it be your thyroid?
Hypothyroidism is a huge problem. It is estimated that 1 in 50 women and 1 in 1,000 men have this condition. I think these estimates are low. The diagnosis of hypothyroidism is made by assessing the patient’s symptoms. Laboratory tests usually confirm the diagnosis (if the right tests are ordered). However, some people can still have a low-functioning thyroid even when tests are within normal limits.
Often the diagnosis of hypothyroid is missed, especially by doctors who rely only on the blood test for TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone). An elevated TSH indicates a low functioning thyroid, but the test can be normal and the patient still may have a low functioning thyroid.
Here are some things to think about if you think you may have hypothyroidism
What is important to understand is that the thyroid gland is not simply a rogue gland wreaking havoc out of nowhere. While thyroid disease does run in families, the expression of a low functioning thyroid can be caused or worsened by a poor diet, food allergies, adrenal overload (chronic stress), lack of exercise, pregnancy, gluten intolerance and many other triggering factors. Here are some things to do immediately to get on track.
- Attend my free webinar to learn about hypothyroidism diagnosis and treatment.
- Select foods that look like they come from the earth.
- Avoid non-food products that are nutrient negative—take nutrients away from the body—such as sodas, candy bars, cakes etc. However, an occasional treat is fine.
- Don’t take on too many projects until you feel better.
- Eat smaller meals throughout the day to maintain an even blood sugar.
- Cut out sugary drinks, especially sodas—they are killing you!
- Pay attention to your symptoms and write them down.
- Make an appointment with a doctor who will listen and help diagnose your condition.
- Do not start taking supplements for your thyroid unless your diagnosis is clear. Some forms of hypothyroidism will worsen with iodine supplements.
There are documented cases of people diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder when their primary diagnosis was actually hypothyroidism. Resolving hypothyroidism with either bio-identical hormones or nutritional support (borderline cases) might not solve all your problems. However, untreated hypothyroidism will make any other mental or physical problem exponentially worse.
Are you taking thyroid medication and still feeling lousy?
You may be on the wrong form of medication or have other contributing factors that have not been resolved.


Probate estate inventories, such as Martha Allen’s from Amanuensis Monday (6 December) are the legal record of person’s belongings made after their death; it was standard practice in many places to catalogue the deceased’s effects room-by-room during the late eighteenth and nineteenth-century, mostly to ensure an estate could cover its debts. As vernacular documents generated by the deceased’s own peers, Randolph County estate inventories provide a virtual snapshot of life in another time. These inventories can be used to theorize the way a person lived, what types of goods s/he owned and how household spaces were used.
However, using probate inventories is not always easy. While these records provide a plausible picture of how life was conducted at the time, as a primary resource they have problems that must be considered and taken into account. Such problems include a lack of standardised spelling and word usage (less common after about 1830) and “grouping” — the lumping together of items under one heading that might have been separate. For example, an inventory could list all bedding, curtains and other fabrics by each individual piece (or provide numbers for particular types, e.g., six sheets) or it could lump or group everything in a room together under the heading of “linen” or “fabric.” Martha Allen’s inventory does both; it lists “2 pitchers” but, elsewhere, lists only “carpets.” The plural indicates the presence of at least two carpets, but there could have been more.
Terminology can also be a problem. Sometimes it’s impossible to know what the appraiser meant because the word has come to have several diverse meanings.i “Tricks,” “box of tricks” and “box of contents” are entries that appear frequently in several Randolph County inventories, including Martha’s. Found in parlours, kitchens, bedrooms and in barns these are complete unknowns — the meaning has been lost. Another such word is “lot”; used in reference to books, food stuffs and linens, it obviously referred to a specific number but that number is unknown.ii Martha’s inventory has a “lot” of books and a “lot” of corn, but we have no way of knowing how many or how much that was. Did the term have a different meaning when applied to different items? Or did it just refer to multiples of an item in a given location?
Another problem with using inventories is the absence of expected items. This may or may not reflect ownership of the potential item in question; often, items that were already willed or part of other legacies, such as a widow’s thirds, were omitted by appraisers. Drawing conclusions about living standards and consumerism based on an absence — without thoroughly analysing the possible reasons for that absence — will result in skewed findings. Also, female clothing and accessories such as jewellery and shoes are almost never inventoried; as the only personal goods a woman could legally own after marriage, these would be excluded from her husband’s probate inventory.iii However, clothing and accessories were often handed down along female lines, these items could have been bequeathed before death and thus not subject to probate — hence their absence from Martha’s inventory.
Another important thing to remember when dealing with absences in probate records is the possibility of intentional concealment.iv Many inventories from Randolph County, although clearly made by an appraiser who surveyed the interior of the deceased’s home, record that the items listed were those “brought forward.” This may be tradition, or legalese, but it is certainly possible some household items not previously bequeathed were concealed or removed prior to inventory. Again, this could be the reason for the lack of bedding in Martha’s inventory.
Inventories also have absences due to the season in which they were made. Certain crops and tools specific to the sowing or harvesting of those crops likely fluctuated within households depending on the season.v It would be unlikely, for example, to find corn listed on an inventory taken in mid-June or to find dried meat listed in October, as corn was usually harvested in September and autumn was prime hunting and slaughtering season.
Beyond all this, Randolph County’s probate inventories also present a unique and somewhat frustrating challenge – only approximately one out of every thirty pre-1868 inventories is explicitly room-based. This lack of room-based inventories, however, does not constitute a complete and total loss in understanding the source material. A more in-depth survey of several inventories, where the contents are simply listed in straight columns without room designations, has resulted in the discovery of a recurring pattern of item listing that repeats over time and throughout these records. Observable as early as the 1790s and as late as the 1860s, this pattern is found in nine out of every ten inventories that are not explicitly room-based. The number of inventories that imply room function increases over time, whereas the number of explicitly room defined inventories decreases.
These implicitly room-based inventories typically begin with a catalogue of stock, tools and accoutrements (such as saws, hoes, saddles, etc.) and crops before moving on to the interior items. In almost every case the interior inventory begins in the kitchen before moving into other rooms on the same level, usually the dining room or parlour (or what can be construed from its contents as a “best space” for any refined items the deceased may have owned), with a change in room noted by a line break or, in some cases, with a small underscore. In this type of inventory, the movement of the appraiser from one room to the next can be noted by the change in the goods that are noted – from pots and pans, pantry and foodstuffs and ovens to “parlour chairs” and tea tables to bedsteads and featherbeds. It is thru an evaluation of objects, in conjunction with notations in the inventory itself, that these inventories can be seen as implicitly room-based and thus used to understand spatial use in Randolph County.
So how does all this relate to Martha Allen’s inventory? It serves as jumping off point for understanding what we see and don’t see. Also, by examining her husband’s inventory, we can see if there was a difference between her use of household space as a wife and her use of the same space as a widow. When John Allen died in 1858, his estate included, among other things, three featherbeds and bedsteads, three tables, eight chairs, a wardrobe, two chests, a trunk, two smoothing irons, seventeen pounds of iron, two sets of smithing tools, two plows, a hoe, a scythe, ten books, ten “stands of bees,” sixteen sheep and four bushels of wheat. Moreover, the arrangement of his household conformed to the prevailing notions about formal front space with all production-related items (pots, pans, churn, loom, spinning wheel, etc.) in a separate area of the house.
After those goods were auctioned, his wife, Martha, received only one book, two smoothing irons, a table, a chair, a cupboard, trunk and chest in addition to a year’s worth of foodstuffs, the now empty house and land. From the records, it appears that the money collected from the auction went towards his debts.
Eight years later, however, Martha’s inventory reveals quite a bit more — but also has some glaring absences such as bedding and bedsteads. She had a table with multiple chairs, five “lots” of books and a spinning wheel, tub, several baskets and a “box of contents.”vii The four columns from her inventory could represent four rooms … or not. Either way, based on the observable pattern of Randolph inventories being implicitly room-based, it appears Martha was combining her living areas. For an older widow, this makes practical sense. If so, her decision to relocate part of her household production appears to have been a conscious decision, but could also have been due to wartime interruptions of the traditional routine.
As for that elusive bedding … their absence does not mean Martha did not have any. As with any clothes, shoes, jewelry or other accessories, she may have bequeathed those items to others in her will. However, given that she died only a year after the end of the Civil War, she may have sold her bedstead to help pay back taxes or put food on the table. It’s also possible her bedding was in the chest, or included among the “box of contents.”


A timeline history of first aid, EMS, CPR and lifeguarding
1708 China’s Chinkiang Association for the Saving of Life was the earliest known organized lifesaving group.
1774 The Royal Humane Society founded to combat ignorance and superstition; investigate and discredit inadequate methods of recuscitating the apparently drowned.
Previous methods, not all of which were discredited, (some of which occasionally worked) included:
using bellows to put air into lungs,
rolling the drowned person on their front over a cask,
putting the drowned person across a horse that was set to a trot,
rubbing with coarse salt,
applying heat (sometimes in the form of hot coals or heated excrement),
tobacco smoke (or sage, rosemary, mint) forced up intestines,
ticking nostrils with a crow feather,
and suspension by the heels.
The first lifesaving societies had to overcome the superstition that it is unlucky to rescue and revive a drowned person.
1776 The Amsterdam Rescue Society was formed and placed fireplace bellows at intervals along Amsterdam’s canals, so people could resuscitate victims pulled from the water during/after drowning.
late 1700s the surgeon-in-chief for Napoleon’s Grand Army, Dominique Jean Larrey, became the first to try to save wounded during battles instead of waiting until the battle was finished
In 1789, the Massachusetts Humane Society began building refuge houses along the Massachusetts coast for shipwreck survivors.
1794 (From the American Red Cross text Life Saving and Water Safety): Artificial respiration “was considered impious and placed nearly upon a level with professing to raise the dead.”
1804 A lifebelt “the Seaman’s friend” invented by W. H. Mallison. It was rejected by the Royal Navy as it
took up too much room and the navy did not want sailors to swim, in case they decided to desert.
In 1807, the the Massachusetts Humane Society set up the nation’s first lifeboat station on Cape Cod.
1852 Congress passed a law that lifejackets, or a float or lifepreserver be required on river passenger steamboats for each passenger.
From a Coast guard website: “… a strong storm swept the East Coast in 1854. Many sailors died because there were not enough lifesaving stations and equipment had not been properly cared for. One town, in fact, used its lifeboat “alternately as a trough for mixing mortar and a tub for scalding hogs.”
1855 According to an Atlantic City museum website, the Atlantic City, New Jersey, city council “appointed William S. Cazier the first constable of the surf.” In those early years the constables donned bathing suits between the hours of eleven and one to be ready to respond to any emergency. With the opening of the Boardwalk in 1872, the first organized volunteer lifeguard service was formed. These brave souls had to pass the hat after each rescue. Not until 1892, did Atlantic City organize a paid beach patrol.”
But the Atlantic City, New Jersey beach patrol says they are the oldest beach patrol in the U.S. and date their start in 1884.
Their site has old beach patrol postcards at:
April 20, 1861, Clara Barton, the “Angel of the Battlefield,” began aid to servicemen in the U.S. Civil War.
Henry Dunant, a Swiss businessman, having witnessed the wounded left to die alone after the Battle of Solferino, (40,000 men were killed or wounded in a single day), wrote a booklet, A Memory of Solferino, published in 1862, in which he proposed that the States should “formulate some international principle, sanctioned by a convention, inviolate in character, which, once approved and ratified, might serve as the basis for societies for the relief of the wounded” and in which he appealed for relief societies to be formed in the peacetime with nurses who would be ready to care for the wounded in wartime. He also wanted these volunteers to be recognized and protected through an international agreement. Thus the “International Committee for Relief to the Wounded”, which later became the International Committee of the Red Cross, was created.
International feeling against the absence of care for war wounded, grew and the First Geneva Convention convened in 1864. The resulting Treaty of Geneva (“for the Amelioration of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces and Field’), thr first treaty of international humanitarian law, was signed by 12 European nations, but not by Great Britain, Saxony, Sweden, or the United States.
The treaty signers agreed that in future wars they would care for all sick and wounded military personnel, regardless of nationality. They would also recognize the neutrality of medical personnel, hospitals and ambulances identified by the emblem of a red cross on a white background.
This First Convention applied to wounded and sick members of the armed forces in the field.
The Second Convention applied to wounded, sick, and shipwrecked members of the armed forces at sea as well as shipwreck victims. The Third Convention applied to prisoners of the war and the Fourth Convention applied to civilians in times of war.
1862 Army Ambulance Corps.
1865 first US civilian ambulance services
1869 Bellevue hospital in New York is the first to actually put doctors on ambulances, along with supplies of bandages, tournquets, a quart of brandy, handcuffs and a straitjacket. Before then hearses were often used and the person deciding if the victim went to the hospital or the morgue was often a funeral director or mortician.
1870 New York City ambulances were dispatched via telegraph
1877 A ‘lifejacket’ made of cork is awarded a patent
1878 W.H. Rideing in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine described a New York City hospital ambulance ride: “A well-kept horse was quickly harnessed to the ambulance; and as the surgeon took his seat behind, having first put on a jaunty uniform cap with gold lettering, the driver sprang to the box…and with a sharp crack of the whip we rolled off the smooth asphalt of the courtyard and into the street…As we swept around corners and dashed over crossings, both doctor and driver kept up a sharp cry of warning to pedestrians.”
Clara Barton, who heard about the International Red Cross movement while in Europe after the Civil war, founded the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 1881.
Clara Barton also worked for United States ratification of the first Geneva Convention. On March 1, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the treaty. The Senate ratified it on March 16, 1882 and the United States became the 32nd nation to sign the document.
House Surgeon A.B. Miles wrote in the June 1885 edition of the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal about new horse drawn ambulances for the Charity Hospital, New Orleans, with “fourteen Resident Students charged with the special duty of Ambulance Surgeons.”
“This service was organized to meet a demand. … Since the erection of the Hospital in 1832, the sick and injured have been brought to the door in vehicles of every conceivable kind… Many patients suffered discomfort merely, while others sustained injuries prejudicial to their after-treatment. Some … must have succumbed to the delay and ill usage incident to such hap-hazard transportation.”
Ambulances could be dispatched within three minutes from a call and had “right of way over all vehicles except those of the fire department and the United States Mail…In answering calls, the ambulance corps move with all possible dispatch. The efficiency so far attained is due in a large measure to the competency of the staff of Resident Students of the Hospital, and the zeal with which they discharge their special duty… Each ambulance was stocked with antidotes and stimulants most serviceable in emergencies: Chloroform, sulphuric ether, whisky, brandy, carbolic acid, olive oil … hypodermic tablets and syringe, water…and one gallon of an oil which made a dressing quickly and easily applied in the emergency of burns and scalds…The surgical outfit included a complete pocket case of instruments … tourniquets, folding fracture box, long splints, wooden and tin splints (for extremity fractures), bandages, carbolized gauze, cotton padding, pillows, surgeon’s lint, sponges, tracheotomy tube, a catheter, pus pans, water buckets, etc.”
Read an article about the Point Reyes Lighthouse from the San Francisco Chronicle Sept. 25, 1887 “There is not, from Mexico to Oregon a more forbidding or dangerous coast line than that extending from Point Reyes to Tomales bay. It is made doubly dangerous by its proximity to the harbor of San Francisco, many a vessel having gone ashore under full sail believing that it was headed for the Golden Gate.” http://www.nps.gov/pore/historyculture/people_maritime_sfchroniclearticle.htm
1891 two members of the Amateur Swimming Association of Great Britain formed the Swimmers Life-Saving Society, later to become the Royal Life Saving Society.
1894 (From the American Red Cross text Life Saving and Water Safety):
” No one should employ the more spectacular forms of rescue, if less perilous methods may be used just as effectively.
Sinclair and Henry in their book on Swimming published as part of the Badminton Library in 1894 recount a tale of heroism which aptly proves a point. The tale is much too long to be quoted in full here but its substance is this: A boat load of mill workers were being ferried across the Clyde one evening. The boat was badly overloaded and had not proceeded twenty yards from the dock, when it listed suddenly and overturned. One James Lambert, a powerful swimmer by the record and a good waterman, found himself in the water gripped about by as many men and women as could lay hands in him while others held to them. With marvelous self-possession and cold courage he allowed himself to sink to the bottom with his burden and found the water to be about ten feet deep. Being quite unable to swim because of the manner in which he was held down he, nevertheless, contrived to get his feet down and shove diagonally to the surface and some few feet toward the dock before he sank again. Thus alternately driving off the bottom, getting a breath of air and sinking again he managed to near the dock where ropes and boathooks were used to relieve him of his burden. Upon checking it was found that he had brought in sixteen or seventeen of the unfortunates but he did not rest there. Plunging in again and yet once more he brought to shore first, two girls and then another girl and her young man, who were drowning together. Then, and this is the irony of it, he found himself clinging to the quay so spent that he would inevitably have sunk and drowned if an old and decrepit man had not seen him and, extending his cane to him, towed him along the quay to shallow water and helped him out. Thus the most spectacular rescue of all time would have ended tragically for the hero, if the old man had not used effectively, if not as spectacularly, the only means at hand commensurate with his strength and ability. The story points its own moral.”
1897 the first rescue can, made of sheet metal and pointed at both ends with an over-the-shoulder harness, replaces life rings towed by lifeguards. It slides faster through the water but the type of construction causes injuries.
1899 Pennysylvania miners form a group to “take up the study and practice of first aid.”
1903 English doctor E Sharpey Schafer invented a method of prone pressure artificial respiration.
1908 George Douglas Freeth established the first lifeguard training at Redondo Beach, California.
1910 First Aid training introduced as a national Red Cross program
1912 At the age of seven, LeRoy Columbo suffered an attack of spinal meningitis which cost him his hearing and the use of both legs. He tried swimming (and his three brothers worked with him) and within a year he was able to walk again.
He eventually became the first deaf lifeguard as well as earning the title “the World’s Greatest Lifeguard.” He saved 907 lives in a 40 year career, a record noted in the Guinness Book of World Records.
In 1923 he became the first deaf person to join Galveston’s elite “Surf Toboggan Club.” He qualified by swimming continuously for three hours with no stops or floating. And in 1923 he became a lifeguard for the city of Galveston.
LeRoy made his first rescue (of a drowning boy) at the age of 12. In 1928 he rescued two crewmen after a tugboat exploded in flames (this required swimming beneath burning oil).
LeRoy almost drowned 16 times during rescues.
He retired at 62 and continued to swim in the ocean daily until he died on July 12, 1974. Flags in Texas were flown at half staff upon his death and a plaque was erected on the Galveston beach he patrolled for forty years.
1912, the National YMCA Lifesaving Service was organized
1913 George Goss wrote a thesis at Springfield College which was eventually published as a lifesaving textbook in 1916. It was first promoted as “Water First Aid.”
1914 Former journalist Wilbert E Longfellow helped start Red Cross water safety instruction and the Red Cross Life Saving Corps to combat the climbing number of drownings. His main objective was to organize local volunteers into lifesaving corps.
His slogan: “everyone a swimmer, every swimmer a lifesaver.”
The lifesaving service required that a candidate be able to swim 50 feet.
1916 requirements for lifesavers:
“must be able to tow a person of their own weight ten yards by each of the following methods: (a) head carry, using two arms and swimming on back; (b) under-arm carry, using two hands and swimming on back; (c) cross-chest carry, using one arm and side stroke; (d) using breastroke, hands of rescued on shoulders.
They must be able to show in the water three methods of releasing themselves from people in peril of drowning when grasped by: (a) wrist hold), (b) front neck hold, (c) back hold.”
They are required to demonstrate both the Schafer and Silvester methods of performing artificial respiration, although the Schafer method is the one preferred. (No mouth to mouth contact in rescue breathing. In one style, people were put on their stomachs and their arms were raised overhead or their shoulders pulled up to get air into the lungs.)
1918 from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention):
“In 1918, 13 people drowned in rip currents in a single day at San Diego’s Ocean Beach, garnering local and national news attention. Beach attendance that day was estimated at 5,000. City officials cited inadequate lifeguard protection as a cause of the tragedy, and as a result, initiated a municipal lifeguard service. The ocean conditions have changed little since then. San Diego’s local leaders view the 17 miles of oceanfront shoreline, which include Ocean Beach, as a safely managed tourist attraction due to the presence of lifeguards. Despite an average estimated annual attendance of 15 million people and over 7,000 rescues at the major lifeguarded beaches, the average number of drownings in areas under lifeguard protection is between zero and one annually.”
Six cardiologists founded the American Heart Association in 1924.
When Duke Paoa Kahanamoku of Hawaii (1890 – 1968), the father of surfing, inventor of the rescue board, six time Olympic gold medalist and winner of the Olympic 100 meter race in 1912 and 1920, using a six-beat kick, with his size 13 feet, was asked who taught him the crawl stroke, he said “no one.” He had been swimming a stroke he saw older natives of his island swim. He kept his records until he was 34, when 20 year old Johnny Weissmuller (who eventually set 51 world records and became Tarzan of the movies) beat him in the 1924 Paris Olympics.
Kahanamoku became the first person inducted into both the swimming and surfing halls of fame. In 1925 he rescued eight people from a overturned fishing boat, using only a surfboard. Of the 29 people on board the Thelma when it overturned in very rough seas, only 12 were rescued.
Later he said:
“In that instant my knees went to tallow, for a mountain of solid green water curled down upon the vessel. Spume geysered up in all directions, and everything was exploding water for longer than you would believe. Then, before the next mammoth breaker could blot out the view again, it was obvious that the Thelma had capsized and thrown her passengers into the boiling sea. Neither I nor my pals were thinking heroics; we were simply running — me with a board, and the others to get their boards — and hoping we could save lives… I hit the water hard and flat with all the forward thrust I could generate, for those bobbing heads in the water could not remain long above the surface of that churning surge. Fully clothed persons have little chance in a wild sea like that, and even the several who were clinging to the slick hull of the overturned boat could not last long under the pounding… It was some surf to try and push through! But I gave it all I had, paddling until my arms begged for mercy. I fought each towering breaker that threatened to heave me clear back onto the beach, and some of the combers almost creamed me for good… Don’t ask me how I made it, for it was just one long nightmare of trying to shove through what looked like a low Niagara Falls. The prospects for picking up victims looked impossible. Arm-weary, I got into that area of screaming, gagging victims, and began grabbing at frantic hands, thrashing legs.”
1930 the first use of the motto of Royal Life Saving Society Canada:
Quemcunque Miserum Videris Hominem Scias…Whomsoever you see in distress, recognize in him a fellow man.
1933 Fins “Lifesaving and Swimming Propelling Device” patented by Louis de Corlieu.
1935 Danish Colonel Holger Neilson’s method of artificial respiration was easier to learn and perform and got better air exchange
1935 Santa Monica, California, lifeguard Pete Peterson builds an inflatable yellow rescue tube with a snap hook at one end and a 14 inch strap, line and harness at the other end. He also created paddle boards for lifeguards and was the first person to paddle from Catalina to the mainland. He won the Pacific Coast Surfing Championship 4 times out of ten.
Read more about Pete Peterson at:
1937 the Red Cross text for lifesavers, Life Saving and Water safety, is published, replacing a booklet, Life Saving Methods. The new text “an authoritative source of knowledge and information,” had no pictures of women rescuers. Requirements for lifeguard candidates: (as of copyright 1937, 1956). “A swimmer who wishes to undertake swimming rescue training must have reasonable water ability as a preliminary requirement. He should be able to make a shallow dive in good form, swim a quarter of a mile without resting or keep afloat by treading water and swimming in place for a period of ten minutes…He should, of course, be capable of making a surface dive and of swimming a short distance underwater.”
During WW ll, 1939 to 1945, the Red Cross started a national blood program that collected 13.3 million pints of blood for armed forces. After the war the Red Cross started the first nationwide civilian blood program.
1938 first auto seat belts
1940 the precursor to the bag valve mask: “Life-giving air is forced into the lungs of a patient by a hand-powered pump developed by a Swiss doctor, who expects it to be useful in treating soldiers after poison-gas attacks. The plunger pump forces air or oxygen through a tube leading to a mask held over the mouth of the patient.” quoted from Popular Science magazine, July 1940
August 2, 1943 at about 2 a.m. the Japanese destroyer Amagiri hit PT 109 and killed two of
John F. Kennedy’s crew. He helped rescue his crew members and by dawn they were floating on the bow.
That day they swam and helped each other swim to an island. Kennedy helped the man most injured, towing the sailor’s life vest with his teeth.
He had been on the first Harvard swim team to beat Yale. The Harvard Guide says “Too small to play intercollegiate football, he joined the swim team. He’s remembered by the coach as “a fine kid, frail and not too strong, but always giving it everything he had.”
In 1947 the U.S. drowning rate (5.2 per 100,000 people) was cut in half from that of 1914 (10.4 per 100,000 people).
The Colorado Mountain Club starts a technical climbing school with mountaineering first aid lessons.
1949 James Elam, an anesthesiologist, who had been reading historical accounts of new borns being resuscitated with mouth to mouth breathing, tried during a hospital emergency to inflate the lungs of a young boy and it worked.
1953 the first Australian lifesaving manual. Previous manuals were “heavily orientated to a military drill-type approach.”
A 1956 printing of American Red Cross Life Saving and Water Safety says, in part:
“Grappling irons should be considered not only as body recovery but as rescue devices, since the first few casts of the irons may bring a victim to the surface in water too deep for diving and in time to use artificial respiration successfully.”
1956 MedicAlert® is “a nonprofit membership organization founded in 1956,” as a information repository that “can connect to and provide critical medical information between patients, providers, payers, and first responders 24 hours a day anywhere in the world… The MedicAlert® repository uses Web service interfaces to support standard Personal Health Records (PHRs), including electronic drug prescriptions and for patient record interoperability.”
Dr. Peter Safar, known as the Father of CPR, says the seeds were sown for the A (airway) and B (breathing) steps of CPR during a two-day car trip in October 1956, returning from a medical convention and talking shop with Dr. James Elam (see 1949).
In the late 1950s Safar worked with Martin McMahon, chief of the Baltimore Fire Department ambulance service to design the first modern ambulance. At that time ill people were taken to hospitals in station wagons (or even hearses), with no care given on the way. Safar and McMahon designed an ambulance as we know it today, with a large compartment for a patient bed and seating for an attendant who could give oxygen and had equipment at hand to insert airways.
1957 the U.S. Military adopts mouth to mouth breathing
1958 the American Medical Assn endorses mouth to mouth breathing
In 1960 the Royal Lifesaving Society is the first to teach mouth-to-mouth, direct contact resuscitation instead of methods which use back pressure or arm lifts.
1960 Dr. Peter Safar approached Norwegian toymaker Asmund Laerdal to develop a realistic life-sized mannequin for teaching mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The manikin’s face was inspired by a death mask, owned by Laerdal, of a girl who drowned herself in the Seine River.
Check out the photos, including “documentation of resuscitation methods on volunteers who were sedated and paralyzed by drugs,”
Safar developed the first U.S. intensive care unit and paramedic ambulance service, and was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in medicine
He wrote to U.S. presidents with his opinion on world problems (as well as science), including the U.S. war with Iraq. He helped found Physicians for Social Responsibility and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
See Peter’s Laws for the Navigation of Life, quoted at the bottom of this page.
During a 1964 lifeguard competition at Huntington Beach, lifeguards Mike Henry and Pete Orth of Carpenteria, California, collided with the Huntington Beach pier after their dory went out of control on a ten foot wave. ABC television’s Wide World of Sports filmed this moment and replayed it over and over again as one of the ‘Great Moments’ of the year.
1964 Pete Peterson designs a rescue tube made from foam rubber hot dipped in a rubber coating. See also the original rescue tube, 1935.
1965 the first version of portable defibrillator, invented by Frank Pantridge (the “Father of Emergency Medicine”) was installed in a Belfast, Northern Ireland ambulance. (From Wikipedia) “It weighed 70 kg and operated from car batteries, but by 1968 he had designed an instrument weighing only 3 kg, incorporating a miniature capacitor manufactured for NASA.”
late 1960s to 1975During the Vietnam War, because of trained
medical corpsmen, rapid transportation and advanced trauma care, a wounded soldier had more chance of survival than a serious motor vehicle accident victim in California.
1965 more deaths from motor vehicle accidents than lost in the Korean war.
1966— Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society is written, advising more research on trauma. Some say it revolutionized the way we view and manage trauma in the US.
In 1967, a presidential commission on law enforcement recommended that a single phone number to be used across the country for fire, police and medical emergencies.
Jan. 10, 1967 a newspaper helicopter was used to transfer a prematurely delivered infant from one hospital to another in Illinois. The baby was held in a small box on the lap of a Sister from the Third Order of Saint Francis.
In 1968, A police station in Haleyville, Alabama is the first to use 9-1-1 as the three-digit number for fire, police and medical emergencies. The United Kingdom had first used a universal number (999) in 1937. In 1961 Australia used (111) and Canada used (999) in 1959. Supposedly 911 was chosen over 999 in the U.S. because it was easier/faster to dial on a rotary phone. In the late 70s a few other cities/counties had enhanced 911 systems. President Clinton signed Senate Bill 800 designating 911 as the nationwide number on October 16, 1999. At that time there were 20 different wireless numbers in different states.
1970 Military helicopters are used to move critically ill victims from remote areas to hospitals. Pilots included Vietnam veterans, a few of whom showed off their flying skills by flying under bridges and buzzing neighborhood swimming pools.
A 1982 printing of American Red Cross Lifesaving Rescue and Water Safety, says in part: “If a person is in danger of drowning only a short distance from shore and there is no rescue equipment of any kind available, the untrained swimmer may feel that is it necessary to attempt the rescue. In such cases, the rescuer should swim to a position behind the victim and make contact with the victim by seizing the person’s hair.”
Lifeguard certification cards (advanced lifesaving and water safety) featured a drawing of the silhouettes of a man dragging a buxom female victim through the water on her back by her hair.
1988 A National Park Service management policy states “the saving of human life will take precedence over all other management activities.”
1989 from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention):
“the Nassau County Commission decided to eliminate lifeguards on American Beach in order to save county expenses. Less than a year later on Memorial Day, 1990, five persons drowned and 20 others nearly drowned when rough ocean conditions and strong winds caused rip currents to form immediately offshore, making this one of the worst drowning episodes in Florida’s history. Shortly after this tragedy, local officials reestablished lifeguarding services. In the eight years since, no one has drowned.”
1989-2001 Baywatch soap opera
It wasn’t just an urban rumor. An article from the Consumer Product Safety Commission referencing hair entanglement, entrapment and disembowelment associated with spas:
1990 The Lancet reports that in 1990 worldwide death by drowning (504,000) was more common than death through war (502,000).
two Red Cross lifeguard recruitment posters
July 29, 1991 112 becomes the emergency number for the European Union, from Iceland to Turkey.
1992 American Red Cross booklet Waddles Presents Aquacktic Safety tells the tale of a duck character, Waddles, going to his first swim lesson. His instructor is a pink Flamingo named Miss Pink, and the lifeguard is a gorilla whose rescue tube is hanging on the wall, not with him as he sits in the stand.
1992 from the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control :
“Keawaula Beach at Kaena Point State Park is located at the westernmost point on the island of Oahu. The beach is exposed to high surf; a strong shore break; and a strong, often severe, current. The remote, pristine site attracts many surfers, sunbathers, swimmers, and waders. The combination of dangerous physical features and heavy use by patrons increases the risk for water-related injury and death. From 1985 to 1991, two drownings and 40 near-drownings occurred at Keawaula Beach. Although the State of Hawaii does not provide lifeguards, it elected to contract with the City and County of Honolulu to place lifeguards at Keawaula Beach beginning in January, 1992. Since then, no drownings have occurred at this beach.”
A 1994 study, one of the largest of it’s kind, found that less than 2 percent of New Yorkers with out-of-the-hospital heart attacks survived. Guy Lombardi, who started as one of the New York Fire Department’s (NYFD) first paramedics, went on to become a doctor and eventually a FDNY physician, is credited with using this research he co-authored as a catalyst for allowing not only paramedics, but also police officers, to be trained to use defibrillators.
1999 The Red Cross includes automated external defibrillator (AED) training in CPR courses.
In June, 1999, Chicago’s O’Hare Airport installed AEDs, located so that an AED was within one minute walking distance of anywhere in the airport. In the first ten months 14 cardiac arrests occurred and nine of the victims survived. That’s a 64% survival rate, compared to 3% – 4% with CPR alone.
2001 QuikClot, a granulated mineral coagulant was developed, used by the U.S. military to treat serious wounds.
Global positioning systems are first used in ambulances, sometimes leading them off course and causing them to arrive minutes or even hours late.
At the Labor Day, 2003, 2.38-mile Waikiki Roughwater Swim, less than 40 percent of the swimmers finished. “Of over 1,000 swimmers who started the race, a mere 356 finished. More than 600 were rescued by eight units of the Honolulu Fire Department, including its helicopter unit. The Coast Guard also joined in the rescue operation with a helicopter and boats and private boaters in the area pulled several swimmers out of the water,” according to Swim Info. One source put the cost for the Coast Guard alone at $31,000.
Read more at:
A summer of 2003 study of drowning in France found, (of 781 rescues followed by hospitalization or fatality),
44% in the ocean (56% of victims older than 45 years of age)
25% in swimming pools (61% in private pools)
15% in lakes (25% between the ages of 25 and 44)
12% in rivers (28% between the age of 25 and 44).
Of the 781 drownings, 41% were fatal.
from the Coast guard: in 2004, States and jurisdictions reported a total of 12,781,476 registered recreational boats compared to 12,794,616 in 2003. The 4,904 boating accidents reported in 2004 resulted in 676 fatalities, 3,363 injuries, and $35,038,306 in property damage.
.. Approximately seventy percent of all fatal boating accident victims drowned (484 out of 676). Approximately 90 percent of the victims who drowned were not wearing their personal flotation device (PFD or lifejacket). Overall, fatal accident data show approximately 431 lives could have been saved last year if boaters had worn their lifejackets.
Approximately 70% of all reported fatalities occurred on boats where the operator had not received boating safety instruction.
.. Alcohol was involved in approximately one-third of all boating fatalities in 2004.
In 2004, there were 3,308 unintentional fatal drownings in the United States, averaging nine people per day. This figure does not include the 676 fatalities, from drowning and other causes, due to boating-related incidents (CDC 2006; USCG 2006). For every child 14 years and younger who died from drowning in 2004, five received emergency department care for nonfatal submersion injuries. (CDC 2006).
Access Cardiosystems, Inc. issued a Worldwide Recall of its AEDs in November 2004 due to the “ON/OFF” button and the shock delivery ciruit failing to function as well as the AED possibly turning on suddenly.
Circa 2005 cell phones are used by EMTs/Paramedics in ambulances to transmit patient’s EKG readings more quickly to doctors in the emergency room, great except for dropped calls.
According to the Red Cross, in late 2006, “In Santa Clara County, for example, the average emergency response time from the call to 911 to arrival is about 7 minutes. (Times may vary due in part to traffic delays and the logistics of getting to victims in high-rise buildings.) “
For every minute that slips by without defibrillation, the victim’s chance of survival falls by about 10 percent. See also:Do AEDs work?
May 28, 2007 Heavy surf broke the usual sandbars at beaches in Florida and hundreds of swimmers were rescued at one beach between noon and 3 p.m., before the beach was closed.
In 2008 there were 50 drowning deaths in all of Australia, but in Bangladesh 50 children drowned each day of the year. This is not just due to the larger population in Bangladesh, the rate was 21 times higher there than in Australia. Drownings occur in natural bodies of water, in rice farming, where livestock are being watered in the family compound and in large cooking vessels.
June, 2009 The Lifesaving Society, Canada, found that in the most recent year in which data about drowning became available, “the annual drowning toll in Canada has spiked.” 433 had been recorded in 2004, up to 492 in 2005. Drowning remains the third leading cause of death among Canadians under 60 years of age and the second leading cause of death for children under the age of 10. Men are four times more likely to drown than women. 90% of people who drown while boating were found not wearing a lifejacket and alcohol was involved in about one third of the drowning deaths.
The World Conference on Drowning Prevention 2011 says that the global burden of drowning, in everyday life, recreation and disasters, is estimated to range from over 400,000 to 1 million people every year. ” Children, particularly those aged 1 to 4 years, carry the overwhelming burden of drowning in high, middle and low income countries.”
An April 2011 Red Cross survey found that about a third of adults do not realize that close supervision — staying within arm’s reach — is safer than putting floaties or water wings on a small child in a pool.
From an article in Aquatics International
“Tomas Lopez, 21, was dismissed for vacating his lifeguarding zone to save a man drowning in an unguarded area of the beach in Hallandale Beach, Fla. According to reports, Lopez made the rescue after he was approached by a beachgoer who pointed out a man struggling in the water nearly 1,500 feet south of his post. . . . Six guards quit over the episode, and the story was picked up in both national and international media. . .
“I have read three different news stories about this incident … and in each of them it is mentioned that Lopez secured backup at his beach before venturing out to make the save.”
2015 The American heart Assn. reports that laypersons should be trained in hands-only (compressions only, no rescue breathing) CPR, as well as full CPR.
2017 Cruise ship lines (Disney and Royal Caribbean) institute fleetwide lifeguarding of ship pools.
2017 Because of better sound insulation in cars, crashes involving drivers who didn’t hear sirens are becoming more common. Swedish ambulances are experimenting with technology to interrupt radio transmissions on the FM band with a warning that they are approaching, giving motorists more time to get out of the way.
A 2018 report from the Canadian Red Cross said that:
“Canadian Red Cross’ ongoing surveillance of unintentional water-related fatalities tracked 398 snowmobile-related deaths over a period of 20 years and found that snowmobile immersion deaths were largely preventable.
The major risk group for snowmobile immersion deaths was 15- to 44-year-old males, with the largest number of deaths occurring among 25- to 34-year-olds.
Snowmobiling immersion incidents occurred while riders were travelling on ice, going off-road or off bridges, and 59% of incidents occurred on lakes.
Alcohol was present or suspected for 58% of fatalities 15 years of age and older (blood alcohol content was above the legal limit for 37%, below the limit for 12%, and suspected for 9%).
Only 3% of people who died in snowmobiling incidents were properly wearing a flotation device such as a lifejacket or survival suit.
Other immersion deaths involving motor vehicles on ice include ATV’s and ice fishing using a road vehicle.
Among deaths from immersion while on ice, 46% resulted from open holes in the ice, and 42% from falling through thin ice.”
A report from July 30, 2018 In Africa, “After Malaria and malnutrition, drowning is the cause of more deaths than any other. Although a relatively rare occurrence, aircraft incidents involving fatalities make headline news across the world, yet an overturned canoe resulting in just as many deaths does not.”
Summer of 2019
From an article in Aquatics International:
Summer of 2019 “saw a slight increase in the number of children under 15 who fatally drowned in a U.S. pool or spa.
At least 150 children in that age bracket died in U.S. pools and spas, according to the USA Swimming Foundation and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which collaborate in CPSC’s Pool Safely campaign.
“Texas saw the most reported pool/spa drownings of children under 15, with 26 occurring this summer. Other states with a high number of incidents included Ohio (11), Florida (10), California (10), Pennsylvania (8), Arizona (7) and Georgia (7).”
The Los Angeles Times reported in 2022:
“Each year, there are about 3,960 fatal drownings in the United States, or about 11 drownings per day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fatal and nonfatal drownings in pools remain particularly high so far this year, according to a report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.”
The May 2022 U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report is at:
This chart from the report shows the percentages of drowning at public pools compared to homes:
see also: History of swimming section
Two thirds of drowning victims are good swimmers. Why you should wear a lifejacket.
Peter’s Laws for the Navigation of Life,
(Dr. Peter Safar, see 1950’s and 1960 above),
The Creed of the Sociopathic Obsessive Compulsive:
1. If anything can go wrong, fix it!
2. When given a choice, take both.
3. Multiple projects lead to multiple successes.
4. Start at the top and work your way up.
5. Do it by the book… but be the author.
6. When forced to compromise, ask for more.
7. If you can’t beat them, join them, and then beat them.
8. If it’s worth doing, it’s got to be done now!
9. If you can’t win, change the rules.
10. If you can’t change the rules, then ignore them.
11. Perfection is not optional.
12. When faced without a challenge, make one.
13. “No” simply means begin again at one level higher.
14. Don’t walk when you can run.
15. Bureaucracy is a challenge to be conquered with a righteous attitude, a tolerance for stupidity, and a bulldozer when necessary.
16. When in doubt, THINK!
17. Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing.
18. The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
19. The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live!
20. Death is not the enemy but occasionally needs help with timing
21: When on thin ice, dance.
22: It’s up to us to save the world


"Get ready, hug your body, arms out -- spin!," said Cindy Ross, an early childhood and family education teacher at Frazee Elementary School.
Ross isn't directing her Kinderquest -- 4-year-old -- students to play. It's part of the SMART curriculum launched at the school a few years ago.
SMART stands for Stimulating Maturity through Accelerated Readiness Training.
"It's for all kids across the board," said Frazee ECFE coordinator Karrie Schultz.
Schutlz said that SMART training is about stimulating a child's brain.
The aims of SMART are to reinforce children's natural body movements.
SMART started in the mid-1980s through A Chance to Grow, a non-profit agency based in Minneapolis. It was first offered as a summer program and then expanded to kindergarten children in Minneapolis Public Schools.
Minneapolis Public Schools found that a lot of children were struggling in first grade, even though they completed a full year of kindergarten.
An experiment of sending some students through the SMART curriculum showed on the surface that it paid off. While kids read well even if they didn't go through SMART training, A Chance to Grow found that students who went through the program kept reading at a high level throughout their early schooling years.
The children in the ECFE program go through several different exercises that mix together movement, coordination and learning.
"It looks to give each child success they can achieve," Schultz said.
Activities can range from controlled spinning within a circle, touching knees to your nose from a sit-up position or spending time in a dark room with one object lit up.
"It's not just physical," Schultz said. "It has a purpose."
The dark room helps the children learn letters and numbers. The teacher gathers the children in a small room, turns out the main light and the letters or numbers show up when an ultraviolet light is turned on.
"There's a lot of focusing going on and a lot of tension," Ross said.
The black light, Ross said, mimics the intensity that kids experience when watching television commercials.
Another aspect to the light room is using a spinning light -- something as simple as a battery-operated toy. The children concentrate on the spinning lights for several seconds at a time.
"When the eyes are dilating and constricting, it brings the intensity into focusing," Ross said. "That's my understanding of it.
"It's not to be used as a teaching tool, per se, but with them learning the alphabet, we find them retaining what they learn."
Children also trace out different patterns with their fingers. The patterns may be letters or just a shape.
"We're seeing if the eyes work together," Ross said. "It's helping them with pre-writing."
One part of the training just involves children stepping on different patterns on the floor, doing an action with their arms and saying something, all at the same time.
That exercise tries to get the children to use both sides of their brain.
"There's children who cannot cross the midline," Ross said. "And that's a whole brain connection issue."
She said that kids who cannot do that might need occupational therapy to help them overcome their limitations.
According to the Minnesota Learning Resource Center, which promotes the SMART program, children now don't have many opportunities to learn how their body's work as they are often sedentary.
The MLRC said that research indicated children between the ages of 2 and 4 spend four hours a day watching television.
That missed time can stunt a child developing his or her own coordination.
"If anyone misses any of these parts early in their development, this really helps them practice that," Ross said. "A lot of children who have not spent a lot of time on their tummy miss a lot of these actions.
"We think it helps them focus better. It brings them all together."
While it's not a miracle learning method, Ross said that many kids show some improvement going through the different steps.
A tough one for some of the kids is an exercise where they lie on the floor, and try to raise their arms and legs for 10 seconds. They repeat the cycle once.
"We always find one child or two that find it fairly difficult," Ross said.
By the end of a school year, though, Ross said that most of the children who have difficulty at first pick it up.
As with any aspect of the SMART program, not every child shows improvement.
"It's not going to work that way on every one of them, but a lot of them, it appears to make a difference," Ross said.
Schultz said that the program is simple to understand and some parts can be done at home.
"It's helpful to do it right away in the morning," she said.
Home activities can include riding a bike, tumbling, playing catch or jacks, kicking a ball and playing hopscotch.
"It's something that makes sense," Schultz said of SMART.
More information on SMART training is available on the Web at www.themlrc.org.


With the clean-up from Hurricane Sandy expected to drag on for many weeks, if not months, it’s humbling to realize how much we remain at the mercy of nature, despite our technological advances. The New York Stock Exchange was shuttered for 2 days: the longest such closure since 1888, the news channels have been saying. But what happened in 1888 that could have brought the city to its knees even more than Sandy?
March of 1888 was unusually mild for New York weather. Higher-than-usual temperatures attracted heavy rain storms in the first week of the month, drenching the city, and setting the stage for disaster beyond comprehension. On Sunday the 11th, an exceptionally powerful rain storm swept over New York. As night fell, the storm gathered force, and temperatures began to plummet. The raindrops froze, coating the city with ice. By Monday morning, New York, Brooklyn, and all the towns along the northeastern seaboard found themselves smothered under a blanket of thick, heavy snow.
Without the 24-hour stream of news coverage and Weather Channel updates to which we’re so accustomed today, the people of New York awoke relatively unaware of the situation their city was in. But the city’s infrastructure in 1888 was not what it is today: there was no subway system and no tunnels. Electrical wires, telegraph wires, and telephone cables all hung from poles above the street. The snow, which drifted in some places as high as 50 feet, had effectively knocked out every mode of transportation and communication the modern city possessed.
And the weather didn’t release its grip on the city quickly: temperatures in Central Park averaged 9 degrees farenheit on Tuesday March 13th. So the snow made no effort to melt. Train tracks remained useless. Wires snapped, cutting off wired communication. And most roads were so heavily inundated with snow that cars, including ambulances and fire trucks, could not get through. Fire burned unchecked, and unable to heat their homes, many people simply froze or starved to death.
Factories were unable to produce goods, since none of their employees could get to work. And the nation’s economy was temporarily held hostage as the New York Stock Exchange took 2 days to come back online. Many suburban New Yorkers were able to reach the city by ferry, but once there, decided it best to “leave well enough alone” and stay put. New York’s hotels, restaurants, and saloons soon became heavily crowded as people desperately searched for distractions from the wintery misery outside.
It took nearly a week for the snow to melt away. All told, more than 400 people died as a result of the storm’s wrath from Maryland to Maine. Nearly 200 of those deaths occurred in New York alone.
But lessons were learned from the “Great White Blizzard” of 1888. In earnest, cities began exploring better ways to construct their communication and transportation networks; their importance to the city’s existence had become painfully clear during the storm’s aftermath. The nation’s first subway train system opened in Boston in 1897, with New York’s system following suit in 1904. Electrical, telephone, and telegraph wires were buried beneath New York’s streets, to better protect them from future storms. And the tendency of late-19th-century man to boast of his superiority over Mother Nature was muted, even if only for a short while.
New York City was brought to its knees in 1888, and it wouldn’t see such significant weather-related damage until Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. It remains to be seen what lessons are taken away from this most recent disaster, and how it will shape New York’s future.