William Schraufnagel, Northern Illinois University
This article reads several unpublished poems written by Kenneth Burke as influenced by George Meredith's 1877 Essay on Comedy. It argues that critics have expected too much of Burke's comic criticism, as Meredith restricted comedy to a narrow social realm. Contrary to an understanding of Burke's poetry as "arhetorical," the poems reflect social awareness informed by Meredith. However, Burke's internalization of Meredith sometimes inclined Burke to the bitterness of satire.
Introduction: Limitations of Burke's Comic Criticism
One of Kenneth Burke's best-known critical orientations is the "comic frame" of motives, first articulated in his 1937 work Attitudes Toward History. The comic frame applies lessons learned from the dramatic art of comedy to the interpretation of history. Arnie J. Madsen describes it as an attitude midway between "euphemism" and "debunking," neither totally condemning, nor totally praising (170). Both self-corrective and charitable toward the errors of others, "[t]he comic attitude thus allows for transcendence and the transformation of losses into assets" (171). Scholars have applied Burke's comic frame to discourses as various as Gandhi, nineteenth century feminism, the cult of empire, nuclear weapons, cyberpunk fiction, and film.1
Although it may have originated as a stage art in ancient Greece, "comedy" in Burke is a specific mode of criticism. William H. Rueckert traces Burke's "comic criticism" from its late-1930s articulation in Attitudes Toward History through the last appendix to that book written in 1983. Pitted against the global tragedy of an impersonal, relentless drive toward high technology and the cult of empire, Burke, the word-man, offers "comic criticism." According to Rueckert, in comic criticism "symbolic verbal structures function as purgative-redemptive rituals of rebirth for those who enact them" (114). The critic accepts some, rejects others, and thereby adopts a properly socialized attitude, reborn in the light of social correction.
Rueckert admits, however, the difficulty of the term "comic." The evils of technology and empire never go away. Comedy responds to the "tragic" situation as a corrective. What can comedy do in the face of such an intractable opponent? Is there an inevitable or fixed "comic stance" for the critic to adopt? Rueckert breaks down the answer into two components: comedy allows us, first, to adapt to external circumstances and, second, to "contemplate [our need for order] with neo-stoic resignation" (129). The "order" which oppresses us from the outside also drives us "internally." Recognition of this fact allows us, in a way, to forgive ourselves and others for the inevitable victimization inherent in order. It may even provoke laughter.
Herbert W. Simons, for one, objects to the finality of the comic stance. Calling for "warrantable outrage," Simons insists, "Surely there must be thought and expression that proceeds beyond humble irony," a watchword for Burke's comic frame. Simons continues, assuming his audience must agree with him, "Yet there surely must be in some cases—not all—a stage beyond the sneer of primal outrage and the smile of comedy" (n.p.). This use of "must" raises the question. Why must there be something beyond comedy? Undoubtedly, Simons perceives the warrant for his own outrage, but in the process he obfuscates, rather than clarifies, the function of comedy. Simons regards some geopolitical tragedies as "beyond comedy": for instance, Adolf Hitler. But as we shall see, comedy was never intended to stretch its capacities to all of human existence. Another way of phrasing "beyond comedy" would be to acknowledge the limitations which make comedy possible.
Building on the work of Simons, Gregory Desilet and Edward A. Appel do a better job of showing how what they call the "filter of comic framing" (351) can provide a "warrant" for outrage. One can justifiably oppose those actions which de-humanize others only after recognizing the universal tendency to de-humanize others: "Burke still sees Hitler as within natural (human) boundaries rather than absolutely 'other,' as horribly and censurably mistaken rather than essentially vicious and evil" (352). Comedy reduces all of us to fools, Hitler included, but it does not thereby imply moral equivalence or passivity in the face of injustice.
The comic frame remains integral to Burke's stance as a critic and cannot be reduced to a simple formula such as "humble irony." The deep concern the comic frame draws from scholars suggests that it warrants further exploration.
One fact, not heretofore stressed by scholars, is that Burke did not invent the comic frame but learned it in high school from the British poet-novelist George Meredith. In a damaged letter from the "Burke-3" archive at Penn State, written possibly on September 14, 1917, Burke wrote to his friend Malcolm Cowley, "as Meredith pointed out in that essay of his on comedy which was once my Bible for a week or two, a cultured nation must invariably find its expression in comedy." Burke refers to Meredith's An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit, originally an address delivered at the London Institution on February 1, 1877, and published in the New Quarterly magazine in April 1877. Burke evidently read and absorbed this essay in high school (from which he graduated in 1915). Unpublished poems, also in the archive, from late 1915 demonstrate Meredith's influence on Burke and present an early expression of Burke's comic stance over two decades prior to its formulation as a critical mode.
By first examining Meredith's Essay on Comedy, followed by a close reading of Burke's 1915 poems, this study aims to reveal two aspects of a comic approach to criticism that have not yet been emphasized in the scholarship. First, comedy operates within a restricted domain under definite social conditions, the primary condition (in Meredith) being equality of the sexes; second, comedy originates in a social perspective. Burke's adoption of the comic stance internalized what Meredith calls the "comic spirit," and so Burke's version stresses self-criticism, but the solitary, romantic individual belongs to tragedy. These insights can help direct scholars' attention to better uses of the comic spirit in criticism.
George Meredith's Essay on Comedy
Meredith's essay shows explicit concern with the social conditions necessary for comedy, marked by anxiety over whether these have been achieved in England. Although Shakespeare shows characters "saturated with the comic spirit … creatures of the woods and wilds," Meredith's idea of the comic, as a social phenomenon, flourishes more precisely "in walled towns … grouped and toned to pursue a comic exhibition of the narrower world of society" (16–17). Here, Meredith's archetype of the comic poet is Molière at the royal court of Louis XIV in France.
The essence of the comic spirit as exemplified by Molière is to bring a "calm curious eye" (21) to the study of manners within a closed civilization. Such a society and such a poet are rarely to be found in any time or place. The archetypal comic activity seems to be a witty exchange between men and women as equals, as they approach each other: "[W]hen [men and women] draw together in social life their minds grow liker" (24). Meredith acknowledges the comic precursors Menander and Aristophanes in Greece, but implies that while they may have inspired hearty laughter with shrewd intellectual perception, their comic potential was limited by the inequality between sexes in their societies.
The possibility of comedy links directly to social conditions. Comedy illumines the social, but also takes its origins from an "assemblage of minds" (Meredith 76). Meredith expresses the interpersonal phenomenon of the comic spirit: "You may estimate your capacity for Comic perception by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them less: and more by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, and accepting the correction their image of you proposes" (72). To shy away from comic perception, according to Meredith, adopts an "anti-social position," of which Meredith significantly accuses the poet Lord Byron (76). A choice to enter society amounts to a choice to accept the world in comic tones.
Philosophically, Meredithian comedy represents "an interpretation of the general mind." Socially, "[t]he Comic poet is in the narrow field, or enclosed square, of the society he depicts; and he addresses the still narrower enclosure of men's intellects, with reference to the operation of the social world upon their characters" (79–80). This abstract, general mind, operating within a closed civilization, can be translated into a subjective feeling which Meredith equates with an explicit "class" ambition. To feel oneself the object of the comic gaze may sting, as one recognizes one's own Folly, but if one can transcend this momentary blow to one's ego, one will be rewarded with an apotheosis of health, good common sense, and elevated status:
[T]o feel [the comic spirit's] presence and to see it is your assurance that many sane and solid minds are with you … A perception of the comic spirit gives high fellowship. You become a citizen of the selecter [sic] world, the highest we know of … Look there for your unchallengeable upper class! You feel that you are one of this our civilized community, that you cannot escape from it, and would not if you could. Good hope sustains you; weariness does not overwhelm you; in isolation you see no charms for vanity; personal pride is greatly moderated. (84–85)
This promise of social advancement through laughter, through participation in the common mind, appealed greatly to the young Kenneth Burke, and quickly became for him an aesthetic ideal. Critics who wish to imitate Burke's model of self-chastisement should begin with Meredith as a starting point.
A curious dialectic between the individual and society pervades Meredith's essay on comedy. At first, individuals are lost in the wilderness, until they can manage to get themselves into the walled towns. Once they have gotten themselves into something called "society," comedy becomes possible: "A society of cultivated men and women is required, wherein ideas are current and the perceptions quick, that [the comic poet] may be provided with matter and an audience" (2). Clearly, the France of Louis XIV was Meredith's model, a mixture not only of the two sexes, but of occupations and classes: "A simply bourgeois circle will not furnish it, for the middle class must have the brilliant, flippant, independent upper for a spur and a pattern" (18). The comic spirit allows us all to live in Versailles as a mirror of society (not humanity), but it still requires the individual comic genius of Molière for its illumination.
The individual poet enters the social mise en scène at just the right moment to bring that "calm curious eye" to the study of manners. Following Meredith's digression through ancient Greek comedy, Molière's eye, or the eye of the comic poet writ large (a rare production indeed), vaporizes into an expression of the "general mind." A new individual, the auditor of Meredith's lecture, or its reader (including the young Kenneth Burke) appears at the end of the story as a beneficiary of comic chastisement, chosen to join the elect class of a spiritual Versailles.
Individuals escape into the confines of "society." A comic poet observes and immortalizes their foibles. The synthesis of society-plus-poet (actual dramatic comedy) provides the image of an abstracted comic "society," giving birth to the "spiritual" aspect of comedy. Now free to move on the winds across time and place, the comic spirit showers an ennobling "silvery laughter" (84) upon any willing disciple. Individuals come to society, and, transformed by an individual poet, an abstract sociality now comes to bless the wild individual once again with the spirit of society. The teenaged Kenneth Burke was one such wild, individual disciple. As an ambitious young poet, Burke internalized Meredith's dialectic of the individual and society, and attempted to capture the voices of both egoist and chastising social irony into individual poems.
By observing the transition from Meredith's theory of comedy into Burke's early poetry, we can see how Burke established an early foundation for his later, more explicit "comic criticism." Burke internalized the dialectic between individual and society at a very young age so that he was able to encompass, in a way, an internal check on his own egoism. The social origins of the comic theory, however, have been obscured. This has led critics to misinterpret the capabilities of comic criticism. If Burke tries to play both the comic poet (ala Molière) and the comic critic (ala Meredith), we must realize the social limitations that have made comedy possible in the first place. A great part of comic wisdom lies in this limitation. The comic poet or critic cannot, and should not, attempt to domesticate the entire tragic wilderness. Rather, the appropriate comic mode invites individuals into the "spiritualized" walled town of society, an invitation to a "higher civilization" as a relief from the general tragedy.
Established Criticism of Burke's Early Poetry
Critics have long recognized the element of "comedy" in Burke's poetry. Gerard Previn Meyer, John Ciardi, and Marianne Moore used the terms "satire" and "wit" to describe Burke's first poetry collection, Book of Moments (1955), and W. C. Blum called it "high comedy" (366). By 1981, Timothy W. Crusius elaborated this association into a theory of Burke's "comic" poetry, using Burke's well known "comic" criticism. In Crusius's view, comedy in the poems bemoans the victimizing forces of social order and represents human weakness in the image of Burke's poetic persona. Melissa Girard summarizes the poems' rhetorical effect as "subvert[ing] ideology through a process of communication" (144). The communication ironically "disrupts" conventional stability of meanings, especially through the pun.
A recent review of Burke's late poems by Gary Lenhart laments that "you don't discover much about [Burke's] thought through them" (23). A detailed look at Burke's earliest unpublished poems, written in 1915, challenges Lenhart's view. Read in the context of Burke's letters written to Malcolm Cowley at the time, and the influence of George Meredith, the poems very much illustrate Burke's process of thinking.
When the poems of Burke's final period were published posthumously in 2005, David Blakesley argued that "much of [Burke's writing] which remains to be published … may change the character of the narratives we tell about his emergence and the evolution of his thought" (xxi). Since then, a cache of documents known as "Burke-3" at the Pennsylvania State University library has become available on microfilm. This archive includes roughly one hundred poems written through 1920, when Burke's literary criticism began to appear in publication. Examination of the earliest poems in this archive shows a definite influence by George Meredith, and demonstrates how Burke internalized the "comic attitude" by applying Meredith's socially oriented chastisement to Burke's more individualistic impulses.
Not only does the archive help clarify the later development of comic criticism, but it changes the narrative regarding Burke's early poetic development. One major feature of this widely accepted narrative is that Burke as an "adolescent" was obsessed with aesthetic, romantic individualism, and only later (in the 1930s) adopted a "turn" towards rhetoric and social criticism. The poets generally thought to have been most influential on the young Burke are the French Symbolists.
The most detailed treatment of Kenneth Burke's earliest years is Jack Selzer's chapter "Burke among Others: The Early Poetry," in Kenneth Burke in Greenwich Village (1996). Selzer follows a tradition, set by Malcolm Cowley, of associating Burke's "adolescence" with the French poet Jules Laforgue, but this too, as the archive shows, is misleading. Selzer reads Burke's poetry primarily in terms of French Symbolism with Baudelaire as its godfather and Mallarmé its prime expositor. Quoting from Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement of 1899 (expanded in 1908), Ludwig Lewisohn's The Poets of Modern France (1918), and Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle (1931), Selzer constructs the image of an inward-focused, hyper-subjective, private, "arhetorical" poet, "personal and individual at the expense of the civic and political" (77). Selzer adopts the tone and stance of Wilson, hostile toward the Symbolists:
Aloof and radically alienated from contemporary life … the followers of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud after 1885 attempted to withdraw into an elitist realm of art … —like Swinburne, Pater, and Wilde in England—tended toward a radical aestheticism that expressed itself in an obsession with form and the determined pursuit of art above all. … that art could be an event in itself rather than a rhetorical statement about a worldly event … that ideal of arhetorical art. (71–72)
Selzer labels Burke's early poems as "personal and apolitical—far more aesthetic and Symbolist than the usual poetry of the Masses group" (77). Whereas artists associated with The Masses believed "art could be a lever for social change" (24), in Selzer's view—strongly indebted to Lewisohn (see Selzer 72)—the Symbolists seek only "to recreate … the speaker's inner condition … the inner consciousness of isolates" (74, 78). Removing a caricature of the isolated, adolescent Laforgue from his fixed position in scholarly opinion as the major influence on Burke's poetry restores the influence of George Meredith, and shows that Burke was always "socially-minded," from the earliest documents we possess.
Of the shreds of evidence concerning Kenneth Burke's high school years, we have, first of all, reading lists. Austin Warren, writing in 1932 (according to Selzer 206 n. 1, approved by Burke), listed "Meredith's Diana … Ibsen, Strindberg, Pinero, Shaw, Schnitzler, Sudermann, Hauptmann. Then came the Russians," Chekhov and Dostoevsky (227). Malcolm Cowley, from personal reminiscence, added Kipling, Stevenson, Hardy, Gissing, Conrad, Wilde, Mencken and Nathan, Congreve, "Huneker, Somerset Maugham, Laforgue (after we learned French)," and Flaubert (Exile's 20–22). Cowley came to identify Burke, as an adolescent, with Laforgue.
Writing in 1934, Cowley retroactively pictures Burke's "moonlit walks along Boulevard East … the crown of his days and moment when his adolescence flowered" (25), citing a letter from Burke written September 11, 1916, almost twenty years prior. At the end of these walks, around midnight, Cowley imagines, Burke would "question his face for new pimples, repeat a phrase from Laforgue and go to bed" (27). Thus began the legend linking Burke's poetic origins to Laforgue, an adolescent "phase" to be surmounted.
Armin Paul Frank, drawing on Cowley, claims that in Burke's earliest poems "the young poet puts on the 'Armour of Jules Laforgue': romantic irony, sometimes anticlimactically tagged on to the end of a poem in the traditional way of Heinrich Heine, but also, more Laforguean, incorporated into the immediate context of the high sentiment" (121). According to Cowley, Burke himself termed this effect a "tangent ending" (And I Worked 79). Cowley illustrates its operation at the conclusion of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and compares it to "a door that opened on a new landscape" (80) after the complete tour of a house.
Selzer combines this "tangent ending" with the "double mood" theorized by Yvor Winters (Selzer 78–79). Winters quotes Laforgue's poem "Complainte du Printemps" as an example of "two distinct and more or less opposed types of feeling" which cancel each other (Winters 65–67). Also called "moods," these "types of feeling" alternate between "romantic nostalgia … with no discernible object," and "immature irony" (67). Winters attributes the origin of this trend to Byron, but takes Laforgue as the prototypical instance.
Three decades before Frank, Winters clarifies the particular "double mood" he names "romantic irony": "the poet ridicules himself for a kind or degree of feeling which he can neither approve nor control … the act of confessing a state of moral insecurity" (70). Writing in the mid-1930s, Winters also links Joyce's Ulysses and Kenneth Burke's novel Towards a Better Life to this romantic irony. Ulysses is "adolescent as Laforgue is adolescent; it is ironic about feelings which are not worth the irony." Burke's novel, to Winters, offers "not even progression; we have merely a repetitious series of Laforguian [sic] antitheses" (72). The word "adolescent" dismisses the feeling (of unmotivated nostalgia) and the petty irony concerned with so worthless a matter.
Burke himself perpetuated this trope in his first critical essay of 1921, "The Armour of Jules Laforgue." Burke implies that Laforgue, as a human being or personality ("life"), was a kind of belated innocent. As a writer, however (Burke speculates), Laforgue felt some responsibility to "apologize" for his platitudinous emotions (9). What Winters calls a "cynical" rejection of an emotion "not worth having" (74), Burke portrays as a "metaphysical interest," common among "the sexually immature" (9). Burke represents Laforgue's sexual immaturity as a failure of aggressive instincts "paralyzed by the passive attitude of receiving outward impressions" (9). Burke asserts his own aggression by naming a fear of sexual passivity and casts this fear, in the poetic persona of Jules Laforgue, into the oblivion of not only an historical past but a kind of biological past. To banish this fear as a surmounted "adolescence" would enable Burke's passage into maturity.
Cowley, Frank, and Selzer have suggested Burke's early lyrics resemble Laforgue's, but Burke's criticism of the French poet could possibly, covertly, address a tendency in Burke's own earlier poetry projected onto Laforgue. Burke summarized in Laforgue's poetry a "tendency to incorporate various voices into a poem. Sometimes these voices are frankly labeled, like Echo, or Choir. At other times they simply exist as a tangent, a change in metre [sic] or stanza" (10). Laforgue's alternation of voices puts him "always one remove from his emotion" (9), but such "remove" does not cancel the emotion, nor is the emotion itself fruitless.
Let us translate the "tangent ending" into terms of Meredithian comedy. For Meredith, individual pride is subject to the social gaze of the comic spirit. The comic gaze does not bludgeon romantic individualism, but gently, lovingly chastises it in the invitation to a "higher fellowship" of society. The apology or "tangent" arises from a socially conscious bashfulness for a feeling which, however satisfying to the individual, remains socially out of place. These feelings, as Burke's poems in the next section illustrate, include such "romantic" or "tragic" tropes as soaring exaltation, wearied cynicism, sighing, tears, pains, music, the divine, love, moons, roses, and other forms of "high sentiment."
What Burke describes as Laforgue's "dilettantism" ("Armour" 9), concedes the poet's vulnerability to social irony. Moons and roses are played out. The poet, while "expressing" these romantic feelings, adopts a final irony or apology as a defense, by including it at the end of the poem. If Burke was and remains a belated romantic, he did and does contain his own critique of such romanticism, in a way consistent with his later "rhetorical" career. The "tangent ending" is an explicit social gesture or "pose," a smile at one's own expense like Meredith's ability "to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, and accept [. . .] the correction their image of you proposes" (72).
Compared to Rimbaud, Arthur Symons calls Laforgue "eternally grown up, mature to the point of self-negation" (Symbolist 111). A sensitive reader detects immense suffering beneath the cool, ironic façade, but Laforgue "will not permit himself, at any moment, the luxury of dropping the mask: not at any moment" (109-10). Tropes of self-ridicule, therefore, designate a complex social awareness, quite the opposite of the romantic solipsism they display to the unironic. Winters suggests that Byron initiated this pose, and that "Laforgue is not in every case [of this modern attitude] an influence" (65). It expresses insecurity, perhaps, but expresses it in a self-conscious rhetorical gesture. Winters's critique of this feature in Marianne Moore's poetry even accuses her of "a tendency to a rhetoric more complex than her matter" (71) as a symptom. Claims linking Burke or his poetry to Laforgue should not be used to support the notion that either Burke or Laforgue, in person or poetry, was ever "arhetorical" or univocal.
Furthermore—we have reason, from Cowley's own hand, to doubt his account in Exile's Return, published in 1934, that he and Burke had known Laforgue in high school:
At the end of a letter written the day after Thanksgiving, 1966, I asked [S.] Foster [Damon] a question. "Did you introduce me to Laforgue," I said, "or was I already Laforguing when I used to come out to Newton and drink tea in your room, in the spring of 1918? I remember your copy of Tender Buttons, but there is so much I forget." Foster waited a month, then answered frugally on a New Year's card. "Mal—" he said, using a nickname that everyone else has forgotten. "Yes, I remember showing you the poems of Jules Laforgue. We went over them together. Happy New Year to you both!" (And I Worked 35-36)
Cowley and Burke graduated high school in 1915. Cowley entered Harvard in the fall of 1915, but only gradually befriended Damon (And I Worked 37-43). Burke records having met Damon in a letter to Cowley of May 11, 1918. I am not sure how much French Burke knew at all in high school and throughout 1915, when a large number of now extant poems were written. I do know he was soaking in many authors—English, German/Austrian, Russian, Irish, and American—and this leads me to conclude that an over-emphasis on French Symbolists, primarily Baudelaire and Laforgue, has allowed scholars to obstruct a greater possible richness in Burke's poetry.2
Whether he encountered Laforgue directly in high school or absorbed a similar influence along other channels, Burke's poems from the earliest period do evince a "double mood" as described by Winters. Burke can have implicitly criticized, in 1921, his own earlier poetry through the substitute of Laforgue without ever having read Laforgue during the earlier period. Burke may have been only able to diagnose Laforgue's "adolescence" because he had already worked through it in his own poetry. Much can be added to Selzer's account by examining Burke's English influences as well as the French.
George Meredith's Influence on Burke's Early Poetry
Timothy Crusius establishes bathos as the primary rhetorical figure of Burke's poetry, and praises Burke's "comic genius for inclusiveness and mediation between opposing viewpoints." Crusius finds Burke's poetry a "comic meeting-place of equal, opposing ways of looking at the world, each 'tragically' perfected in its partial knowledge of the truth, but undergoing the comic process of gaining self-awareness … and hence tolerance" (18-9). On October 9, 1915, Burke wrote to Cowley, wondering whether some epigrams he planned to submit to the magazine Smart Set reflected more "the influence of Meredith or Mr. Hall's vaudeville shows." The abstractions of Burke's early poetry often turn on the comic perspective espoused by Meredith. Consider the following sonnet, sent to Cowley on October 5, 1915:
If I could view myself without a laugh,
If I could flee the roaringly pathetic
Self-introspectiveness my evil half
Imposes on me, showing how bathetic
It is for me to soar,— were not the staff
Of self-acquaintanceship so energetic.—
Did I not feel at times a strutting calf,
Or a forty-year old virgin's tired cosmetic:
Then stupidly I'd purr to my caress,—
At my own stupid blandishments I'd bow,—
I'd take the poor dear world beneath my wing,—
And be the wearied cynic of success.
What proud Byronic sniveling songs I'd sing!
But I would be less proud than I am now.
Burke's "evil half" imposes bathetic, ironical images of himself as a "strutting calf, / Or a forty-year old virgin's tired cosmetic." Mocking both the youth trying to appear old, and the aged trying to appear young, Burke admits his pride. Without the "self-acquaintanceship" which is really a self-chastisement, he would obey his own appeals, purr to his own caresses: in other words, retreat cynically like his image of Byron.
Meredith had written, "[Byron] had no strong comic sense, or he would not have taken an anti-social position, which is directly opposed to the comic" (76). The "laugh" here is Burke's irony aimed at himself. Laughing is pride, self-acquaintanceship, and Burke's complex rebellion against what he considers "Byronic," self-satisfying and anti-social poetry.3 The comic spirit in Meredith tends to subdue pride, but the young Burke obviously takes enormous pride in his comic irony.
Another poem, sent to Cowley on October 9, 1915, makes the Meredithian dialectic of the individual and society more blatant. But where Meredith's comedy can be described as a "calm, curious eye," and "an oblique light . . . followed by volleys of silvery laughter" (84), Burke's comedy has a more malicious edge in the quest to thwart not only Folly, but all tragedy. Burke in the letter calls this a "novelistic poem":
To A Sense of Humor
Aroint thee, wicked plague to sighing swains.
A pox on thee, thou blotter to our tears.
Thou idle anti-climax to our pains,
Leave us, and take with thee thy heartless jeers.
Thou tellest us the music of our lute,
Which we were pouring forth so soaringly,
Is but the wheezy pibroch, and to boot,
Thou addest that we played it roaringly.
We settle, to enthuse in the divine,
And hear a voice ring out from high Parnassus.
Thou tellest us, "Your ether is cheap wine.
The voice you hear's the chanting of some asses.
Thou snickerer, if we got rid of thee,
Then every one could have a tragedy.4
The use of "roaringly," as in the "Sonnet on Myself" quoted above, again shows Burke's contempt for loud profusions. His antagonism toward Byron in the previous poem expands to other "romantic" tropes: sighing, tears, pains, the divine Parnassus, and above all, the dignity of tragedy. Burke plays the cynic well before achieving success, as if defensively anticipating and warding off the possibility of failure. The idle, heartless snickerer of Burke's comedy (implied by antithesis to "tragedy") defensively misreads Meredith's "calm, curious eye."
One explanation of the difference between Meredith's comedy and Burke's early poetry may be that Burke began with the final product (the comic Muse) of Meredith's dialectic which had passed through several stages: from the wilderness, to society, to comic poetry, to general chastisement by the comic spirit. By internalizing Meredith's abstract sociality without himself patiently observing the manners of a closed, narrow society (as had Molière), Burke remains, in a way, an individual in quest of society. Meredithian comedy can hardly be considered a "heartless" jeer, which implies the young Burke has not yet been properly softened by social irony.
On the following page of the same letter, October 9, 1915, Burke includes a poem aimed at the idea of "love," with the comic spirit lying in wait:
Lamentations of a Latent Genius
I want to love.
I want to build me a goddess once.
I want to dress my love up in pretty similes,
Be enraptured like drunken Bacchantes swirling
on hillsides- and all that.
I want to weep poetic rivers, too.
I want to be sick unto death with love,
So sick that I must moan in agonized sonnets.
Just let me love,
And I'll see to the moons and the roses.
Ah, Fatal Sisters, grant me one really ethereal love.
I want to have a Beatrice.
I want to have a noble, ecstatic love.
Perhaps I could sell it to some magazine.
One of the most revealing lines of this poem, to name Burke's implicit antagonist, is "I want to weep poetic rivers, too." That "too" points a finger at all the anti-social poets, who purr at their own caresses, bow to their own blandishments, violently cloyed to the sighs and tears of divine Parnassus, a noble, tragic, ecstatic love entirely built of images from within, and sold to the nearest magazine.
The impulse to sell sets the young Burke apart; a mark of his self-acquaintanceship, not self-praise, but a kind of jealous anti-self which attempts to negate the British romantic tradition. Burke uses Meredith's concept of "comedy" as a lever to fight this battle (against, say, "Byronism"), but Burke may fall into what Meredith calls "Satire": "If you detect the ridicule, and your kindliness is chilled by it, you are slipping into the grasp of Satire" (Meredith 73). One may have to seek encouragement in the precursor, Meredith, to better detect the kindliness of the comic spirit.
That October, the British novelist Louis Wilkinson agreed to show two of the eighteen-year-old Kenneth Burke's poems to a recently formed poetry magazine called The Others. Wilkinson called the following poem "the one about music" (qtd. in Letter to Cowley 10/12/15), sent to Cowley by Burke in a hand-written letter of September 30, 1915:
Some would call music a prestidigitator,
Insinuating into them a change of mood,
And twisting their souls about a keyboard
As the labyrinth of a guilloche.
They are prestidigitators to themselves.
I am not tickled by a trill,
I do not choke at a dance of death,
Nor do I fling myself to syncopations.
Music, be it loud or soft,
Be it dainty wisps,
Or awful crashes,
Lends me no sentiment.
It bids me seek my own.
It is dark.
I am alone in my room,
Casting for a thought.
From somewhere cords are rising.
They come like recollection.
Raggy things, they become tender.
I am weeping at a fox trot.
As in the "Sonnet on Myself," Burke accuses those who allow themselves susceptibility to music as self-deceivers. Refusing to passively accept the sentimental "trick" of music, Burke undermines his own "Russian pride" at the end of the poem. Music takes its revenge on Burke in a grotesque return. The verbs "tickled," "choke," and "fling," in the first stanza, manifest bodily the musical forms of the trill, dance of death, and syncopation—or so the music would intend. "My own" initiates what Harold Bloom calls the Crossing of Solipsism involving emptiness and fullness, height and depth, and the Freudian tropes of isolation and repression (Wallace Stevens 403). The pathetic weeping at the end is a surcharge of the sublime, the return of the repressed.
The bathetic concluding line, "I am weeping at a fox trot," is fully aware of the earlier mood or attitude in the poetic persona's rejection of susceptibility to music. The bathetic weeper becomes a proto-Laforguean clown (even if Burke had not yet read Laforgue), Burke's "satirical presentation of himself, as he creates his most natural mask, his role of comic hero" (Crusius 23). The confrontation of moods or perspectives within the poem is the comic effect; Burke is the comic hero.
The other of the two poems Louis Wilkinson showed to The Others editor Alfred Kreymbourg (Selzer 63), was certainly written before October 5, 1915. Burke announces in that letter to Cowley that Wilkinson found the following poem "pretty good":
The Metropolitan Light as Seen from the Jersey Shore
I might liken you unto a jewel in the coronet of a sumptuous
In the coronet of a black-haired virgin as she lies upon a
Or unto the shapened soul of man, high, yet supported from
Or unto a motionless balloon of sickly diamonds, with one
hidden, striving ruby;
Or unto the Star of Bethlehem, alluring the Seven Sages on
Or an emblem of purity- even an emblem of purity weeping over
an evil city;
Or unto the spirit of evil which glitters over an evil
Or an anxious lantern my love has hung upon the sky to warn
me constantly against inconstancy.
So might I tempt my fancy.
But I will not deceive myself so happily.
To me you are nothing but a light- measured, calculated,
You are there to proclaim not man's genius, but man's
The cluster which includes Comedy includes business. Byronic suffering, moons and roses, as well as religious yearning, the divine, and Parnassus, fall on the antithetical other side of Tragedy. So, in a painfully complex way, does music. The fox trot may be the only trope in the poems quoted above which approaches anything near to synthesizing or reconciling comedy and tragedy. Burke regards the fox trot as somehow banal, or bathetic, and yet it makes him weep. There may be a kind of weeping that is not tragic. A desire for this reconciliation comes through in these early poems, perhaps in spite of Burke's snickerer.
Burke longs for the tranquility that Meredith promises from the comic spirit: "[T]he laughter directed by the Comic spirit is a harmless wine, conducing to sobriety in the degree that it enlivens. It enters you like fresh air into a study; as when one of the sudden contrasts of the comic idea floods the brain like reassuring daylight" (Meredith 88). The sense of unresolved tension, or even hostility, in the irony of Burke's early poetry indicates that he has not yet earned the increment of his influence by Meredith. It may be that he achieved it by the late 1930s, but that question is outside the scope of this analysis.
Conclusion: The Cost of Internalizing the Comic Spirit
Contemporary frustrations with the "comic frame" of criticism arise because they hope for too much. William H. Rueckert's treatment of comic criticism tends to elevate it into a grand, final stance against the threat of over-powering technology and order. Perhaps in spite of itself, it presents Burke as something of a tragic hero. Against this looming image of a total confrontation against a total menace, Herbert Simons and his followers insist upon "warrantable outrage" that is foreign to the comic spirit as originally posed by George Meredith.
By returning to Meredith, we can see what the young Kenneth Burke blocked or ignored in his initial absorption of the comic idea. Writing about his ideal comic poet, Meredith claimed, "Molière followed the Horatian precept, to observe the manners of his age and give his characters the colour befitting them at the time" (14). Upon graduation from high school, Burke had not yet had time to observe the manners of his age. In his zeal, he took the entire comic process upon, and into, himself. Burke imposed a self-inflicted chastisement, as if anticipating later errors.
As described above, critics (beginning with Malcolm Cowley) have taken Burke's own self-criticism (in part revealed through Burke's criticism of Jules Laforgue) as a literal statement of Burke's adolescence. Reading the early poems against George Meredith reveals a more complicated picture, of Burke as a self-chastising romantic. It should be no surprise that Burke eventually turned to drama as an ultimate metaphor for human relations. After all, it was in the actual stage drama that Molière was able to capture the comedy of manners which gave birth to Meredith's social ideal. While skipping over its patient elaboration (the observation and presentation of manners in his own age), Burke held to an internalized comic ideal, and so, in a way, doomed himself to eventually return to drama.
What, then, of "warrantable outrage"? George Meredith makes no pleas for the goodness of human nature. He does not "forgive" or "tolerate" humanity, as some interpretations of Burke's comic criticism might urge us to do. No one, Meredith claims, will doubt that "it is unwholesome for men and women to see themselves as they are, if they are no better than they should be" (12). One does not need the extreme example of Adolf Hitler to perceive human ugliness, and no one, least of all the comic poet, will desire that we tolerate or forgive human weakness.
The key to comic improvement, in Meredith's scheme, lies in what "should be." We should learn to detect the comic spirit in our own and others' lives; we should shrink from being the object of comic chastisement; we should seek to gain admission into that "higher fellowship" defined by a narrow circumference, where men and women, meeting and conversing on equal ground, exchange in witty banter and grow more like each other. The fact that such occasions are so rare may warrant outrage. But outrage, far from "transcending" comic tolerance, may in fact take our eyes away from the comic goal of a better society. Let us keep our attention fixed on that "higher fellowship," and its absence in so much of the world will be criticism enough.
1. See Carlson (1986, 1988); Kastely; Toker; Renegar and Dionisopoulos; and Renegar, Dionisopoulos, and Yunker.
2. Archival letters to Cowley suggest that Burke did not seriously take up the study of French until late 1915. The first French writers Burke mentions in the letters are Anatole France, with whom Burke "made a bad beginning," and Victor Cherbuliez, whose novel Burke had not yet read, on November 9, 1915. On November 29, 1915, he wrote, "Which is better- to talk Berlitz French fluently, to read French poetry naturally, or to be able to know what I mean by, say, the Eleatic school?" He felt himself on the verge of entering college for the first time, and anticipated what he would study and do.
3. A version of this poem, likely written earlier, appears in the archive typed and dated June 1, 1915, some four months before Burke sent it to Cowley in the form printed above. The earlier version contains "that" for "the" in Line 2; and the last word of Line 10 was "blush" instead of "bow." As Burke transcribed the poem in the letter to Cowley of October 5, 1915, he first wrote the word "blush" but crossed it out, and wrote the four lines printed above to conclude. The final five lines in the original corresponded with the earlier "blush" in Line 10: "At my own stupid blandishments I'd blush,– / And be the gentle cynic of success. / Then I could waste my talents, not just booze, / And never would I call my genius
mush gush. / But yet by that what Russian pride I'd lose." Without his self-imposed ridicule, Burke would waste his talents in praising his own genius; furthermore, the earlier version suggests a Russian influence behind this "self-acquaintanceship."
4. In transcribing Burke's poetry, I have maintained the spelling and punctuation from his archival documents. In the poem "To a Sense of Humor," he only puts the one solitary set of quotation marks.
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—. "The Metropolitan Light As Seen From The Jersey Shore." N.d. Burke-3 P0.6 Box 1, Folder No. 10. Kenneth Burke Papers. Rare Books and Manuscripts, Special Collections. The Pennsylvania State University Libraries.
—. "Some would call music a prestidigitator." In Letter to Malcolm Cowley. 30 September 1915. Burke-3 P4 Box 1, Folder No. 20. Kenneth Burke Papers. Rare Books and Manuscripts, Special Collections. The Pennsylvania State University Libraries.
—. "A Sonnet on Myself." 1 June 1915. Burke-3 P0.5 Box 1, Folder No. 4. Kenneth Burke Papers. Rare Books and Manuscripts, Special Collections. The Pennsylvania State University Libraries.
—. "To a Sense of Humor." In Letter to Malcolm Cowley. 9 October 1915. Burke-3 P4 Box 1, Folder No. 20. Kenneth Burke Papers. Rare Books and Manuscripts, Special Collections. The Pennsylvania State University Libraries.
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With the summer coming to a close I’ve been prepping my syllabi for classes this fall, and thought it might be a good time to reflect on the challenges and possibilities for including black newspapers in literature courses. Like many of us, I suspect, I don’t often have the luxury of teaching a course focused exclusively on the black press, but must instead find ways to work black newspapers into survey courses or seminars that mainly revolve around more familiar kinds of literary texts. One strategy in such cases is connecting black newspapers to other kinds of texts. For example, in a class on “African American Literature and the Media,” we spent a few weeks reading Richard Wright’s novel Native Son. White reporters and newspapers appear at critical moments in the text, and the media emerges as one of the novel’s major concerns. Indeed, real-life newspaper coverage of an alleged black murderer in Chicago inspired the basic outlines of Native Son’s plot. So alongside the novel we read contemporaneous articles from the Chicago Tribune and, most importantly, the Chicago Defender. For a paper assignment, students were asked to analyze newspaper reports in the same way they would a passage from the novel. They composed essays exploring the power of the press to shape events through language, and offered insightful comparisons between coverage in black and white newspapers. Native Son is particularly well suited to this kind of approach to teaching black newspapers, given its inspiration from real-world newspaper coverage, treatment of the media, and the fact that the Defender covered the events fictionalized in the novel. But such an approach could be adapted to a variety of other texts that regularly make their way onto literature syllabi. One could, for example, pick a particularly powerful theme from a novel, poem, play, etc., and then ask students to research that same theme in black newspapers. This kind of research assignment is, though, potentially limited to institutions with subscriptions to commercial databases, which were not available when and where I taught Native Son. In that case, I provided students with the relevant issues from the Defender and the Tribune. This deprived them of the opportunity to conduct their own research, but they were at least introduced to the pages of black newspapers.
Another successful way to work black newspapers into the literature classroom is, in my experience, to teach texts that appeared in the pages of the black press, and focus on that context in classroom discussions and essay assignments. For example, in a survey of African American literature before 1900 that I am teaching this coming fall, students will read the short story “Theresa – A Haytien Tale,” which originally appeared in 1828 in the pages of Freedom’s Journal. We will read the story itself, and then the four issues in which appeared. A possible essay topic could then ask students to connect particular themes in the story to concerns in the newspaper. Similarly, I will be teaching sketches from the Anglo-African Magazine in an upper-division course on the literature of the American Renaissance. Both of these choices are inspired by the Just Teach One: Early African American Print initiative, which provides not only the primary material for teaching these texts but also sample assignments, lesson plans, and teaching reflections. And one need not be teaching a course focused on African American literature in order to incorporate black newspapers. Frederick Douglass’s Paper serialized Charles Dickens’s Bleak House in its entirety, and a variety of black newspapers printed poetry from now-canonical figures from both sides of the Atlantic (e.g. Longfellow and Tennyson). Teaching these texts in their periodical context would not only introduce students to the archive of the black press, but also underscore how all kinds of literature circulated in the 19th –century.
Hopefully, this post has highlighted the ways in which black newspapers fit, with a bit of creativity, into a variety of kinds of literature classrooms. And in my experience, even the smallest introduction to the black press can be enough to inspire students to explore the archive of black newspapers outside of the classroom. Of course, such exploration is made far more challenging when black newspapers are trapped behind the massive paywalls of commercial databases, a fact that makes the work of expanding access to the black press all the more imperative.


Expertise: Integrated Pest Management
Integrated Pest Management: The Best Defense
Plants face a constant variety of fungal, bacterial and viral stresses, leading to a loss in productivity. How will the growers of the next green revolution address the challenges of pests and disease?
Today, pests and disease are responsible for 40% of crop losses globally. Most of these losses are caused by pathogenic fungi, reducing seed germination, sapping plant health, and lingering in the soil to affect subsequent crops. Compounding the problem, some fungi can produce mycotoxins, making the crop unfit for human or animal consumption.
Resistance and regulation
Traditional synthetic pesticides face many challenges, such as the tendency of pests to develop resistance, reducing efficacy. Another problem is the hazardous effect these chemicals can have on populations of essential beneficial bacteria and other living organisms in the environment, due to the non-biodegradable nature of the compounds. Finally, concerns for the safety of workers and consumers have led many countries to restrict or ban the usage of these chemicals.
An alternative to synthetic chemicals, biofungicides are naturally occurring compounds or organisms that suppress diseases. Because they are derived from natural sources, they are important in organic farming and many next-generation integrated pest management plans. From 2014 to 2020, the global biopesticide market has been projected to grow at an annual rate of 16%, while the synthetic pesticide market is only projected to grow at a rate of 6% annually.
Biofungicides typically fall into one of two categories:
- Plant extracts: Plants produce many bioactive compounds with antibiotic and antimicrobial properties. These naturally occurring compounds are an economical source of biocontrols. Some plant extracts have been found to contain compounds with antimicrobial properties such as phenolics and steroidal saponins. These have been shown to control plant pathogens such as the fungus Leptosphaeria.
- Beneficial microbes: A living example of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, many microbes are known to suppress crop pathogens, either by competing with them for resources or by attacking them directly. Microbial biofungicides can act via several different mechanisms:
- Competition: The beneficial microbe population out-competes the pathogen population, starving it of resources.|
- Mycoparasitism: The direct attack, infection, and destruction of a target pathogen by a beneficial microbe.
- Antibiosis: The secretion of compounds by beneficial microbes that suppress or kill pathogens. This is the source of many human antibiotics.
Metabolites produced by Trichoderma harzianum have been shown to engage in mycoparasitism against pathogenic fungi. The microbe penetrates resting spores and hyphae of some fungi. Trichoderma then grows in the hyphae of the host fungi, eventually killing the pathogen. Trichoderma spp. are also known to increase plant growth and stimulate plant defenses.
Another strategy in integrated pest management is the concept of induced resistance. When a plant is under attack from a disease, various chemical defense responses are initiated in the plant, similar to how our own immune systems respond to disease. Elicitors are compounds that activate these same natural plant defenses, a state known as induced resistance.
Elicitors are used preventatively. Just as vaccines take some time to produce a response in our bodies, elicitors take several days for their full effect to develop. This plateaus into a maintenance phase before the effects eventually wear off.
Studies have shown that selected strains of Bacillus can elicit an ISR response in tomatoes, providing significant protection from anthracnose and mosaic virus. During the trials, increased early-season growth and yield were also observed in the treated plants. Elsewhere, extensive research in both Puerto Rico and Kentucky found that a state of induced resistance protected plants against fungicide-resistant strains of Peronospora.
Natural elicitors and sustainability
Natural elicitors leave no synthetic residues and can be used in fields either alone or in combination with conventional chemicals. Natural elicitors in alternating applications with conventional fungicides have been shown to successfully reduce the need for chemical control, contributing to the development of sustainable agriculture.


It was on The Howdy Doody Show in 1947 that Buffalo Bob first asked children, “Say, kids, what time is it?” What time? It was, as Annenberg alumna Jo Holz (Ph.D. '81) writes in a new book, America’s time as a superpower with a booming post-war economy. But more specifically for the children in earshot of the question, it was their time, time to watch TV, and they knew exactly what to shout in reply: “It’s Howdy Doody time!”
In the years since, children’s television has emerged in a wide array of formats: puppet shows, variety shows, fast-paced educational shows, outer space and science fiction shows, cartoons, anthologies, scripted dramas, and more. In her book Kids’ TV Grows Up: The Path from Howdy Doody to SpongeBob (McFarland 2017), Holz takes a sociocultural look at the evolution of children’s television over seven decades.
“So what has driven the evolution of children’s television?” writes Holz. “This book suggests that there are patterns of change that mirror, not without distortion but in important ways, how our country, our society, and our culture have changed during that time. Perhaps most importantly, the changing content of these shows reflects fundamental shifts in the ways we think about children and childhood itself.”
It’s a story that begins in 1947, with the March 11 debut of Movies for Small Fry on the DuMont Television Network. At first, the program aired theatrical cartoons and other movies for children with a radio host providing an off-screen voice-over.
That swiftly grew into the Small Fry Club, offering membership cards and contests for viewers, and turned from a weekly program into a five evenings-a-week staple “for those families who were lucky enough to have a TV set at home,” Holz writes.
In the 1950s, Holz notes, most children’s shows aired in the late afternoon or early evening. But in the ’60s, stations began replacing kids’ programming in the afternoon with shows for stay-at-home moms, for which they could charge higher ad rates, and shifted their children’s shows to Saturday morning. From 1958 to 1968, the portion of network programming for kids that ran on Saturday mornings grew from about 25 percent to more than 50 percent.
In an interview in 2015, Holz said her memories of programs she watched as a child growing up in Boston, including The Howdy Doody Show, Ding Dong School, and The Pinky Lee Show, inspired her project. “I am an immigrant; I was born in Germany,” she said. “I came here when I was four years old and television played a huge role in my family in learning American culture and, really, socialization, language. One of the first things we got – and we were pretty poor when we first got here – was this big, honkin’ television. The television was on 24/7 in my household.”
Holz began work on the book during her two years as a professional-in-residence at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, starting in July 2014. Holz was formerly head of research at Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) and has worked in market research for Nielsen, Oxygen Media, and NBC.


Super Sleuthing to Save Citrus
UMD Professor Anne Simon and her startup Silvec Biologics work to unravel the unsolved mystery of a lethal plant disease
Anne Simon is on a mission to stop a silent killer—a relentless pathogen that wreaks havoc from the U.S. to Europe and beyond.
“There’s no cure, there’s no treatment, there’s nothing,” said Simon, a professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland. “It has decimated Florida and moved into the central regions of California. It’s all over southern Texas, and it’s all over Africa and China and India. I mean it’s just terrible.”
Simon is talking about huanglongbing (HLB), more commonly known as citrus greening, a lethal disease that relentlessly attacks plants, and more specifically citrus trees. Without a cure, HLB could spell the end of the citrus industry.
“We’re running out of time for these trees,” Simon warned. “We may only have another eight to 10 years before most citrus trees are infected worldwide.”
How can this citrus killer be stopped? For years, the answer has been a mystery. But, as a researcher who spent years as a science advisor for the hit television series “The X-Files,” Simon knows a thing or two about solving mysteries.
Four years ago, in her lab at UMD, Simon took her first step toward a potentially effective citrus greening solution when she discovered a symptomless virus-like agent that can deliver disease-fighting weapons directly into citrus trees.
“What we can do is attach something we want to our virus-like agent, our independent mobile RNA as we like to call it,” explained Simon, who is recognized around the world for her work in plant virology. “Once the RNA is in the plant, the plant has an immune system called RNA silencing and can chop it into pieces, and those little pieces could be directed against pathogens.”
Simon’s patent-pending discovery of the virus-like agent was licensed by UMD in 2019 to the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based startup Silvec Biologics. Led by Simon’s brother, Rafael Simon, a former chief operating officer with extensive venture capital experience, and fueled by further discoveries in Simon’s UMD lab and university support, Silvec Biologics aims to bring pathogen-fighting products to market within the next few years.
“We started with just one little room at IBBR with just one person and we’ve quickly grown in a couple of years to a 6,000-square-foot facility in Gaithersburg,” Simon said. “We have lots of ideas in different stages of working and I’m hoping we can successfully develop a product that works and will give the citrus industry hope.”
The aha! moment
For Simon, whose research focuses on small viruses in plants, the aha! moment that started it all came in 2017 when she discovered a strange version of a virus that was like nothing she’d ever seen.
“It did something that no virus like it had ever done before,” Simon explained. “It was able to move through citrus by itself and it didn’t have any symptoms, meaning that it could possibly be used as what we call a virus vector, to deliver small RNA into these plants.”
Simon immediately realized that this strange viral agent could be what scientists had been looking for—a vehicle that could deliver pathogen-killing weapons into infected citrus trees.
“I called up the USDA and I said, ‘I may have a vector for citrus greening—do you have any money left over for the citrus greening program because I need to get to work on this immediately,’” Simon recalled. “And they gave me a half-million dollars, and I got some people working on it and that’s when we were able to make some real progress.”
A path to stability
Citrus greening is spread by tiny insects called psyllids that inject the disease-causing HLB bacteria into the leaves of the tree. To fight the disease, Simon worked to develop a small RNA engineered to fight the citrus greening pathogen, one that could be delivered directly into the plant. The next challenge was stability—making sure the disease-fighting RNA would be stable and could keep working for the life of the tree.
“We know that viruses can be a solution,” Simon said, “but when you put stuff into viruses it’s not stable, the virus eventually kicks it out. And no one understood why that happens it just does.”
After three years and plenty of trial and error in the lab, the stability problem was solved; the proof was in the plants.
“We have citrus plants now that have the virus vector in them with these small RNAs,” Simon said. “It’s been about a year and a half since the infection, and they’re doing great, there are zero symptoms.” Simon believes that this strategy of using a symptomless virus vector to deliver stable, pathogen-targeted RNAs could work for other at-risk crops as well.
“This vector can infect citrus and also grapevine and tobacco and lots of different plants,” Simon said. “We know that in our laboratory host we can completely eliminate infections by very pathogenic viruses, so we’re working on additional versions of this, and we hope to have a solution for grapevine and citrus and cacao in the future.”
From “highs and lows” to “we can do this”
It’s been a long road, but Simon is energized by the possibilities ahead.
“When you’re going through this process you have highs and lows—there’s nothing that says just keep trying you’ll get it,” Simon explained. “You have investors, you don’t want to be leading people on and you’re giving hope to the industry, and you don’t want to be leading them on. But it is all working so far and now I’m at the point where I’m saying we can do this.”
Away from the lab, Simon still occasionally consults on entertainment and government projects, and she continues to enjoy some celebrity status for her work on all nine seasons of “The X-Files,” the 2016 X-Files miniseries and her 2001 book “The Real Science Behind the X-Files: Microbes, Meteorites and Mutants.” She even appears as a regular guest at X-Files conventions.
“I’ll be at an X-Files convention as one of the people who signs autographs and stuff,” Simon explained. “The fun thing is having long lines of people who say they’ve always wanted to meet you.”
In all aspects of her life, Simon is as passionate as ever about her work as a scientist. She never imagined launching a startup like Silvec Biologics, but she’s more than ready to take on the challenges ahead, grateful for the support and partnership UMD has provided throughout this process and eager to apply her extensive knowledge and experience in ways where she can make a real difference, in the citrus industry and beyond.
“I’ve developed all of this knowledge for 40 years, so isn’t it time that I start to give back?” Simon reflected. “Using all of this knowledge is really beneficial for society, for the university and for the state. If we can come up with a solution for some of these problems and if we can then help others also come up with solutions, I will be beyond happy about that.”


The old saying, “We are scraping at the bottom of the barrel,” seems about right when it comes to the current feed being used. With the 2014 harvest just on the horizon, many swine and poultry producers are finding the last of the 2013 grains being used in feed is of substantially lower quality. Even when stored in the best conditions, grains never improve quality during the storage period. Grain quality is either maintained or lost, taking with it the farm’s net returns. Corn, a key ingredient in swine and poultry diets, can represent close to 60 percent of the total feed.
“The quality of the grains stored depends on many different aspects and it starts in the field by choosing the hybrid to be planted, density of plants, tillage management and weather conditions,” said Guilherme Bromfman, Alltech’s North American mycotoxin management manager. “Post-harvest there are also key factors such as air management, insect control, moisture of grains, rodents, molds and weather conditions during storage.”
According to Bromfman, it is imperative that grains are stored under 13 percent moisture, however even if dried to that level, there is a risk for moisture absorption as the hygroscopic equilibrium of the corn fluctuates based on temperature and relative humidity. The movement of the moisture inside the silos generates “hot spots,” small areas with higher moisture and an increased incidence of molds, that through respiratory process elevates the temperature.
“When a higher mold incidence occurs there are two key challenges, first is the reduction of nutritional values and the other is a higher frequency of mycotoxins,” Bromfman said.
For both poultry and swine, a recent analysis of trials showed that mycotoxins reduced weight, increased feed conversion and had a reduction in net returns per animal.
“As we get closer to this time of the year where the last corn in the silos is used in the diets, it is crucial to have a complete mycotoxin management program in place,” Bromfman said. “Alltech’s broad detection mycotoxin laboratory analyzes feed contamination and manages potential risks in the feed mill and in production houses to minimize the impact low quality grain can have on livestock and poultry performance and profitability.
Put your feed to the test and see what your risk is with Alltech’s 37+TM mycotoxin analysis. 37+ assists detecting and addressing the risks caused by over 37 mycotoxins, giving you the ability to manage your mycotoxin challenge and reduce the effects it has on your animals’ performance and profitability. For more information on mycotoxins or 37+ visit knowmycotoxins.com or alltech.com/on-farm-support.


by Brent Blackwelder and Randall Hayes
June 18, 2012
We are two aging environmentalists with more than 80 years between us spent advocating for a cleaner planet and healthier economy. Even from our well-worn perch, what will be taking place at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil this week has the makings of a potential game changer.
The summit is the largest ever organized by the United Nations and is expected to draw more than 50,000 people from 190 countries, including 130 world leaders. The last time the UN organized a conference of this magnitude was 20 years ago in Rio de Janeiro – thus the conference nickname, Rio+20. Just as it did two decades ago, the UN is bringing together governments, international institutions and other major groups to consider a range of measures that will promote economic stability while restoring the delicate balance of the earth’s diverse ecosystems.
If anything, the stakes are even higher today.
We’ve seen the effects of the cumulative impact of over-consumption, over-reliance on fossil fuels and the unending push for material growth at any cost. At the same time, we are facing growing wealth disparity and increasing poverty across the globe. World economic and environmental policy can either come together to support an ecologically sensible future or pull further apart, threatening the health and wellbeing of our planet and all living beings for generations to come.
At this critical juncture, Rio+20 offers an important opportunity for action. We should start by recognizing that saving our planet is not only essential – it is absolutely doable. Our organization, Foundation Earth, reviewed more than a dozen scorecards that grade nations on major issues effecting sustainability. We found examples of countries that are excelling in critical areas:
- Germany leads the world with more than 20 percent of its electricity supplied by renewable resources such as wind power and solar. It is on a path to reach 100 percent renewable energy perhaps as soon as 2035, precipitating the shutdown of all the country’s nuclear power plants, generating hundreds of thousands of jobs and creating a model for a vibrant green economy.
- Ecuador became the first country to include a Rights to Nature provision in its constitution in 2008, giving people the legal authority to enforce the right of ecosystems to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.”
- And the Dominican Republic has strove since 2003 to increase the country’s forest cover, which is critical to ecosystem health, water supply and weather stabilization, from 32 percent to nearly 40 percent.
Rio+20 also offers a unique opportunity to learn from past mistakes – and vow not to repeat them. Notably, Brazil, the summit’s host country, is fast becoming a microcosm of what not to do as it follows in the footsteps of other nations whose rise to world economic prominence has been accompanied by an increase in degradation of the planet.
Brazil’s leaders seem determined to hinge the nation’s economic future on becoming a dominant player in world agriculture. To that end the country is poised to sacrifice the Amazon rainforest, the world’s greatest, through extensive industrial agricultural expansion of food and biofuel crops and massive dam building. The result will be catastrophic weather disruption in Latin America where the Amazon acts as its own rain-making machine and weather regulator.
In January Brazil’s new president Dilma Rousseff expedited plans for 20 major dams in the Amazon by removing protection of natural areas. The huge Belo Monte Dam will displace more than 20,000 indigenous people, inundate forests, ruin fisheries and release massive amounts of greenhouse gases. Brazil has now graduated to second place as the world’s second largest destroyer of rivers, after China.
The summit offers Brazil’s leaders the perfect opportunity to reverse course on recent actions to weaken the country’s Forest Code, which, among other things, gave landowners the right to significantly decrease rainforest preservation.
Again, this is not an insurmountable task. The U.S., once the world’s greatest river destroyer, is now a global leader in restoring free-flowing rivers. Since 1970 more than 250 rivers in the U.S. have been put off limits to damming and diversion and more than 1,000 dams have been removed to restore fisheries and water quality.
Of course, all these measures are simply pieces of a larger puzzle. Taken together they have the potential to spur critical action toward the creation of a global green economy. The first Rio summit in 1992 led to the implementation of the “Kyoto Protocol” on limiting greenhouse gases, a measure that has unfortunately not lived up to its initial promise. Let’s not squander the opportunity this time to ensure that 20 years from now our planet will be headed in the right direction and that Rio+20 will be a model of collective resolve in reaching our ultimate goal – an environmentally and economically sensible future.
ABOUT THE WRITERS
Brent Blackwelder is president emeritus of Friends of the Earth and founding chairman of American Rivers. Randy Hayes is the founder and former executive director of the Rainforest Action Network. They recently formed Foundation Earth, an advocacy think tank working for a sustainable economy, and just released “The Economic Rethink,” a report that grades the world’s nations on their progress toward sustainable economies.
This Press Release ran in the following papers:
Monday, June 18, 2012:
McClatchy D.C. website
Fort Worth Star Telegram
Kansas City Star
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Miami Herald (under “news” > “environment)
The Olympian (Wash.)
Lexington Herald Leader
Centre Daily (Penn.)
Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, Ga)
San Luis Obispo
Island Packet (Hilton Head Island and Bluffton, South Carolina)
Times Colonist (Vancouver)
Mississippi Sun Herald
I4U news (aggregator)
World News Network*
Thursday, June 21, 2012
*WNN: The World News (WN) Network was founded in 1995 and launched online in 1998, with the primary objective of being the most comprehensive, one-stop news resource on the Internet. Today, World News has over 130 million pages indexed covering Film, Sport, Entertainment, Science, Business, Health and every City on earth.
A global leader in online news, World News Network presents news from more than 1000 reputable sources including mainstream providers ( BBC, CNN, Reuters, Washington Post, etc) to more regional and localized sources ( The Independent,The New York Times), delivering unparalleled coverage on a vast range of subjects. This empowers our users by providing a wide variety of perspectives and different interpretations on breaking news events.


Today's topic at Denton HIgh School chess club was the King and Pawn vs. King draw and the Philidor's rook endgame. In each case, students tried the positions with partners then Dr. Root showed the correct patterns on the demonstration board. She also showed how the endgames are related to each other. This chess content is covered in People, Places, Checkmates: Teaching Social Studies with Chess. After learning these endgames, students had 15 minutes to play for fun.
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3rd Grade Math Terms
Students will hear many new terms in third grade math. While a lot of these will be familiar to them, they will also be learning quite a few new terms.
In algebra, they’ll explore symbols, operations, equations, and unknown quantities. They’ll learn the commutative property and the associative property. Some of these terms will be very important to know and use regularly, while others are simply meant to be introduced.
In geometry, they’ll learn the names of various shapes in more specific terms, like polygons, quadrilaterals, and parallelograms. They’ll study solid figures and learn the difference between a triangular prism, a cone, and a sphere. They’ll also learn about lines and angles, as well as slides, flips, and turns.
In measurement, they’ll need to know the US Customary System and all of its units of measurement. These include inches, feet, cups, quarts, pints, and pounds, just to name a few. The Metric System comes with its own terms, like centimeter, meter, gram, kilogram, and liter.
In the area of number sense, students will be expected to know terms like place value, digits, standard form, and expanded form. They’ll use regrouping in subtraction and learn to estimate and round.
There will be many new third grade math terms to learn in third grade, but the good news is that they build upon what students already know.


“A delinquent child may be passing down more than just used clothes to younger siblings”
- Bert O. Burraston in ‘Brothers in Deviance’
When we say boys will be boys, argues Burraston, we give lot of room to parents to overlook the bullying pattern of an older brother towards younger siblings. Recent studies conducted show that this is very likely that bullying among older siblings translates into aggression in younger ones, making them bullies or worse. In fact, researchers also suggested in their studies that juvenile delinquency and crime in older siblings would most likely translate into violence in his younger siblings before parents realize the extent of damage. Teenage boys would like to train their younger siblings, particularly brothers to make them partners in crime. The training may occur consciously or subconsciously, depending on the bond between the siblings.
Studies suggest that there are high chances that younger siblings would follow footsteps of a trouble maker older sibling. If the bond is strong between the siblings, then the younger one would do anything to please his older sibling – even committing a crime or getting into trouble. It is advised that parents follow a two-pronged approach while handling troubled teenagers – provide youth services to the older delinquent sibling and address risk of younger siblings getting influenced.
The Pittsburgh and Cambridge Longitudinal research stresses on the role of parents and older siblings in determining violent or delinquent behavior of a child. The study maintains that most important factor in youth crimes remains the criminal activities of the father – estimated 63% of juveniles are at risk of committing crime because of their fathers’ criminality. Another major factor for juvenile delinquency determined in this research is influence of an older sibling involved in crime. This effect is more pronounced in children who do not have parental supervision and are under the care of a delinquent older sibling. The chances are high that such children will end up being juvenile offenders themselves.
However, there are several other factors that cause delinquent behavior in a child. According to the research paper, variables such as gender, family structure, IQ level, social and financial background of family and generic or biological issues play significant roles in determining child’s inclination to violence and crime. These strategies or programs focused on family-based interventions, which could determine behavior of the youth offender.


Ahoy, a signal word originally used to call a ship, was once a standard way to greet others and was Alexander Graham Bell’s suggested greeting for answering the telephone.
Ahoy is a signal word used to call to a ship or boat. The word stems from the Middle English cry “Hoy!”, a greeting derived from the Dutch “Hoi”.
Seafarers used the word ‘ahoy’ in song well before the word’s first recorded use in print. The term was first referenced as a new nautical term in the 1751 novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett. In its early usage, ‘ahoy’ was used as both an exclamation and a way to get someone’s attention. By 1813, ‘ahoy’ was a widely used word in the English language, and the first half of the 19th Century brought the term (or a close variant) to neighboring languages. ‘Ahoy’ soon became a popular greeting outside of nautical situations.
While ‘ahoy’ fell out of the popular English lexicon for a time, the word later rose from obscurity as the sport of sailing grew in popularity. ‘Ahoy’ can still be heard used as a greeting, a warning, or to say farewell.
While ‘hello’ is the standard English language greeting today, the word has only been around since 1827. In its early days, ‘hello’ was used to attract attention or express surprise, as in, “Well, hello, what have we here?”
‘Hello’ didn’t become the standard greeting as we know it today until the arrival of the telephone. Thomas Edison urged people to say ‘hello’ when answering his phone.
Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born innovator credited with patenting the first commercial telephone, originally suggested ‘Ahoy-hoy’ as the standard greeting when answering the telephone. ‘Ahoy’ had been around at least 100 years longer than ‘hello’, and its nautical origins along with common usage as a greeting made it a strong candidate.
The de facto telephone greeting we know and use today was solidified after the first telephone books sanctioned ‘hello’ as the official greeting in their authoritative How To... sections. ‘Hello’ quickly eclipsed ‘ahoy’, but Bell insisted upon answering the phone with ‘ahoy’ for the rest of his life.
In pop culture, The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns also answers the telephone as Mr. Bell intended:


What is it?
Mammography is a low dose X-ray that is used to take images of the breasts. Doctors use it to diagnose breast disease in women. Mammography can detect changes in the breast up to 2 years before you or your physician can feel them. Your doctor will determine when you should begin having routine mammograms based on your family history of cancer. The American Cancer Society advises women 40 and older to have a mammogram performed annually since the risk of breast cancer increases as a woman gets older.
How do I prepare?
You shouldn’t schedule your mammogram the week before your period if your breasts are usually tender during this time. It is best to schedule the test one week after your period. If there’s a possibility that you are pregnant your doctor or the technologist must be informed prior to the test being conducted. Other preparations that you should make are:
- Do not wear deodorant, powder or lotion under your arms or on your breasts. They can appear on your mammogram as calcium spots.
- Tell your doctor and the technologist of any breast symptoms or problems that you have been experiencing.
You will be asked to remove all jewelry and clothing above the waist before the exam. A gown or loose fitting material that opens in the front will be provided.
How is the procedure performed?
You will stand in front of the X-ray machine, and the technologist will place your breast between two plastic/plexiglass plates. The plates press your breast as flat as possible for clear images to be taken. This compression will cause you to feel pressure on the breast. Let your technologist know if you are experiencing significant discomfort so the compression can be lessened.
The technologist will position your body and arm in a way that will help the images come out as clear as possible. The technologist will then go behind a glass shield to take the images. You will be asked to change positions slightly between images.
The process usually takes about 30 minutes. You will be asked to wait while the technologist views the images to see if more are needed.


This little graph shows the increase in human
numbers in the last few thousand years. In this case, the distance from 1,000
million to 7,600 million is 7.6 times the distance from zero to 1,000 million.
7.6 billion is demographers' mid projection. Graph curve is from Learning
Tools, KQED TV, San Francisco, a PBS educational tv station. Overpopulation
denialists right and left have asked about the source, so now you know. The
leader of the Task Force on Amphibian Decline living in Britain objected
calling the graph extreme and, "off the scale." But it isn't. It is simply
demographer's mid projection.
Usually when such a graph is drawn, a short
time scale is used. But an evolutionarily significant time scale can more
easily show relevant amounts of increase per unit of time.
The distance from 1,000 million to 7,600
million is 7.6 times the distance from zero to 1,000 million. The graph is an


The reality of open source is that it in fact predates commercial software, when computers became available around 1945 the primary mode of software development was extremely collaborative. People learned how to program working for computer manufacturers who didn’t see any benefit to the commercialization of the software. Why is it that today the commercial software industry dominates a landscape where open source software is equally capable?
The answer might be as simple as marketing. In fact, the term Open Source (OSI) was intended to be a marketing slogan that replaced the loosely termed “free software” movement.
Unfortunately, OSI does not have the deep pockets of a large commercial establishment. As Steve Yegge pointed out in a recent podcast, people don’t really care how good your product is – it’s only about the brand association they have made with it. This is why Kleenex is so popular or that New Coke failed despite the fact that it actually tasted better. Once consumers have accepted your brand it’s very difficult to break that connection.
Why is this a problem for Open Source?
Consumers have already made a connection with commercial software, they know who Microsoft is and accept the products offered by that brand. Apple is experiencing a resurgence primarily as a result of brand, consumers have accepted Mac as a high-end computer that “just works”.
Normally, brands can try to re-establish themselves by choosing new names. To some extent, the free software movement already attempted to do this by calling themselves Open Source. The problem is, open source has no visibility in the consumer marketplace because it is free by design. You won’t see any glossy ads in Wired for LInux or flashy TV promo spots for the latest version of Firefox. In many ways, it’s amazing that open source has made any inroads at all.
Just because something is good doesn’t mean that consumers will use it. You might have the best software in the world, but if it isn’t promoted properly your market will never materialize. Of course when you product is free then consumers have no reason to buy it, in which case the market for your product is somewhat difficult to define.
To some extent the Internet has been an equalizer in this regard, if you visit the Firefox homepage you will find that the product looks attractive and the site may even convince you to install the program. Unfortunately, things are still somewhat muddy for potential users of open source solutions since it’s unclear how you get the product when there is nothing to buy.
Maybe the only way open source can take a foothold is if users can be convinced that software is suppose to be free? Unfortunately, for this to happen it will take significant financial investment and an extensive advertising campaign – neither of which is something that free software can afford to do. So ultimately it may be that the only way free software can reach people is by making it something you pay for rather than give away.


My guess is that Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey wouldn't be too upset with advancements of today's library systems. Dewey was a pioneering influence in the development of libraries in America at the beginning of the 20th century. And yes, he is best known for the classification system that is used in most public and school libraries - know as the Dewey Decimal System.
But the decimal system was just one of a long list of Dewey's innovations. Dewey is also known for the creation of hanging vertical files and for founding the Library Bureau, a private company created "for the definite purpose of furnishing libraries with equipment and supplies of unvarying correctness and reliability."
Hmmm... sounds a little like what RFID aims to do - improve processes by applying a technology that delivers "unvarying correctness and reliability".
Leave it to RFID to handily replace a system that’s been in place for 135 years. RFID in libraries is not a new concept, but we wanted to dedicate today’s blog post to it for a few reasons.
The more well-known uses for RFID in libraries are for anti-theft measures and to reduce the amount of time required to perform circulation operations. The time savings are a result of the fact that information can be read from RFID tags much faster than from barcodes, and several books in a stack can be read at the same time. Using wireless technology, it becomes much easier and faster to update the inventory and identify the books that are misplaced.
Aside from the common and very useful deployments, there are many more uses of RFID in libraries. For example, people can find exactly where a book is, even if it’s on the wrong shelf or even in the wrong section. That’s a key element that sets RFID apart from the Dewey Decimal System. Sorry Mr. Dewey.
Another not-so-known benefit is that RFID can be used to track reference books which are used at the library instead of being taken out. Without RFID, the only way to know which items were being used frequently, was for a librarian to actually see the books in use and which ones were being left on tables; obviously not a precise method. Barcoding, Inc. has developed an RFID system that tells librarians how often books are taken from shelves, and how long they are off the shelf. With this system, seldom used reference materials can be kept in storage rooms, leaving the shelf space for the more popular books.
Barcodes, which are most commonly used today, can be replaced with RFID tags which last much longer. Remember when we took out a book from the school library and you wrote your name and date on a card that went in a pocket on the inside cover? I do. Those were replaced by barcodes, and now it may be time for them to retire. RFID tags last longer than barcodes because fewer things come into contact with them. Many are placed inside the cover or binding. Some RFID vendors claim approximately 100,000 transactions before a tag may need to be replaced.
You may be saying to yourself, is it really necessary to deploy RFID systems in libraries? I bet you remember (again, I do) looking for a book for a school project and finding the empty space on the shelf where it was supposed to be, and the librarian was certain that the book had not been taken out. You either had to look around on nearby shelves hoping it was close by, or come back the next day hoping it turned up and was put back in its place. Either way, the school project got completed and we somehow survived.
But, ask yourself this question. Can libraries afford not to implement an RFID system? As noted by consultant Karen Coyle, library circulation, the primary function where RFID can make a significant impact, is increasing, while library budgets are on the decline. As with most RFID projects, they can be easily integrated with a minimal up-front investment. They can provide a speedy ROI, helping control circulation costs that are on the rise.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather know that my hometown library is still around and doing well, event at the expense of the Dewey Decimal System.


The University of Central Florida literally “dodged a bullet” (or several) this week when student, James Seevakumaran, plotted a mass killing. To think of the tragedy that could have happen is quite scary. Luckily no one got hurt, and Seevakumaran ended up taking his own life.
It seems that school shootings are on the rise. From the Columbine High shooting to the killing of innocent children at Sandy Hook, and everything in between, it seems that it’s getting harder to protect people from such devastating events. While it is rare that school violence ends as tragically as it did at Virginia Tech and Lone Star College, it’s common for students- and parents- to worry about something happening to them.
While we may never understand what could drive a person to become so hateful and angry, one will still find themselves wondering why it happened. What influences did this person have that would cause them want to be violent with others? Sometimes, people who become violent are victims of teasing and bullying. They have reached a level of frustration that just causes them to snap and venture over to the dark side. Others may be acting out on behaviors that they’ve seen at home, on television, in video games, in movies, or on the streets. Some may feel isolated and rejected by family or friends, or life itself. While there is no way in stopping school violence completely, there are preventative measures we can take to lessen its occurrence.
For starters, guns should not be easily accessible to other individuals. If you think about it, most school violence is committed by children. They are not old enough to even legally obtain a gun, yet they still get their hands on them. If you are a gun owner, you should have your gun stored and locked away in a safe. Also, schools should offer more counseling services. Transitions in life can be quite stressful on a person, especially if you’re transitioning from teenager to adult. If you are bombarded with events that are impacting your life, a counselor or trusted adult should be there to help you. If you feel unsafe or a being bullied, there is always someone you can go and speak with to help you cope with things.


Kumbha Sankranti is also closely associated with Kumbh Mela which is considered to be biggest and the most auspicious religious gathering in the world.
Legends of Kumbha SankrantiKumbh Mela is being held since 629CE. King Harshavardhana was the ruler during this phase. Bhagavad Puran also makes a mention of Kumbha Sankranti which falls during the period of Kumbh Mela. Devotees take bath in River Ganges on the occasion of Kumbha Sankranti. Devotees ensure their presence in any of holy cities through which the Ganges passes. Ganges in Haridwar, Yamuna in Allahabad, Shipra in Ujjain and Godavari in Nasik are some of the places where devotees take bath on the occasion of Kumbha Sankranti.
Kumbh Sankranti Celebrations
The peace and tranquillity that one feels on bathing in the Ganges on Kumbha Sankranti is unmatched. Devotees get up early on Kumbha Sankranti and head to the bathing gaths to seek blessings from Goddess Ganga. After taking the holy bath, the devotees head to temples located on the banks of these ghats to pray to the Goddess Ganga for peace and happiness in their life.
Making offerings to cows is considered highly auspicious on Kumbha Sankranti. Devotees visiting the holy cities of Haridwar and Allahabad are seen making offerings to cows on the occasion of Kumbha Sankranti. Monks and devotees alike bathe in the holy rivers and seek solace for their present and future lives on Kumbha Sankranti.
The festivities in Eastern India on the occasion of Kumbha Sankranti are special. In the Malayalam Calendar, Kumbha Sankranti marks the beginning of Kumbha Masam. The festival is known as Masi Masam in the Malayalam Calendar. Kumbha Sankranti marks the beginning of Falgun Maas in West Bengal. The holy dip taken in rivers on this occasion is known as Sankramana Snana.
Bathing in the Ganges on Kumbha Sankranti
Bathing in the River Ganges is always considered to be auspicious. The significance of this bath increases multifold if it is taken on Kumbha Sankranti. The devotees who bathe in Ganges on Kumbha Sankranti are freed from the cycle of rebirths and attain Moksha on their demise from this world. Other holy rivers including Godavari, Shipra and Sangam hold equal significance on this day and devotees bathing in these rivers are blessed with a happy life thereafter. All sins which one might have committed are cleansed on Kumbha Sankranti.Kumbha Sankranti is an occasion for the devotees of Goddess Ganga to seek her blessings and lead a purposeful life.
इस आर्टिकल को हिंदी में पढ़ने के लिए यहां क्लिक करें