“‘But do you know that there are half a million more women than men in this happy country of ours?[…] Something like that, they say. So many odd women—no making a pair with them. The pessimists call them useless, lost, futile lives…I look upon them as a great reserve…’” (Gissing 44). Rhoda Nunn’s concern for the future of the “odd women,” who far outnumber the population of men and remain unmarried, is one of the many undercurrents found throughout George Gissing’s 1893 novel The Odd Women. Set in the overcrowded, industrial, and overwhelming late-Victorian London, Gissing’s pessimistic novel of decay and devolution investigates the anxieties facing Victorian society, brought about by overpopulation. The Odd Women portrays the plight of the New Woman within the context of this changing paradigm, as Gissing’s hysterical “odd women” negotiate their way through London in a deluge of people and technology. The tone of Gissing’s novel creates a pervasive sense of melancholic anxiety that is indicative of the late-Victorian devolution/degeneracy debates that dominated the 1890s. Noting this pervasive tone, Nicholas Shrimpton argues that the nineteenth century saw a series of philosophical and psychological waves of pessimism, which culminated in the pessimism at this time. He writes that
Christians, positivists, and Hegelians continued to insist that the world was essentially a good place, and that the pattern of history was progressive. Pessimists responded with a view of existence summed up by one of the aphorisms in Schopenhauer’s Parerga und Paralipomena of 1851: ‘No rose without a thorn. But many a thorn without a rose’…the contest between optimism and pessimism was a prominent feature of the intellectual life of the late nineteenth century. (42-43)
Gissing’s The Odd Women adds to this debate on pessimism and decay by setting the tone of the interaction between the disenfranchised “odd women” and the overpopulated and dehumanizing city of London. The goal of this project is to investigate the social and philosophical functions of Gissing’s novel and show that by addressing the anxieties of his day about the future place of the individual within the overpopulated, industrial city, his text contributed to the growing hysteria facing the late-Victorian period. By placing Gissing’s text within the context of the degeneration/devolution novels of the 1890s, I intend to show that Gissing’s novel allows him to draw on and contribute to the philosophical and intellectual debates of his time by illustrating the philosophical/psychological impact of the industrial city and its overpopulation on the individual.
In a New Historicist reading of Gissing’s The Odd Women, I intend to look at Gissing’s representation of overpopulation in order to show that the anxiety and “hysteria” seen in Gissing’s novel is an extension of the devolution and degeneracy debates of the 1890s. In looking at the way Gissing addresses the “population problem,” I intend to show, in a Malthusian vein, that the “odd women’s” misery is symptomatic of the miseries of overpopulation. In looking at the historical population statistics of Victorian England, I aim to show that Victorian Britain, spurred by the industrial and technological advances brought about by the Industrial Revolution, effectively avoided the Malthusian population “checks,” but that these very technological advances produced the misery seen in The Odd Women. By investigating the population “boom” of the mid-to-late Victorian period, I plan on showing that Gissing’s overpopulated and over-stimulated London is the genesis of the many social and industrial problems addressed in his novel.
The fin de siècle marked a turning point in Victorian society and was illustrated in a new trend in literature, which attempted to understand this social, economic, and industrial paradigm shift. Shrimpton argues that the pessimistic philosophies that began circulating in the mid-nineteenth century had spread to the literary discipline by the century’s end. In particular, Shrimpton writes that it was the “second wave” of pessimism, dominated by the Romantic movement, and exacerbated by Matthew Arnold, that was a driving force in the Victorian “anxieties” about technology, population, and, most importantly, the future. He writes that “[i]t was an economist rather than a poet, however, who provided the most influentially pessimistic statement of the Romantic period. Thomas Robert Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1793) was an empirical study of the way in which population outstrips food supply” (51). For Shrimpton, the authors of the 1890s caught on to this “climate” of pessimism and sought to express it in their works. He writes that “English writers in the late nineteenth century [and notes Gissing in particular] were feeling the effects of the third of the three great—and increasingly powerful—waves of modern philosophical pessimism” (49). The pessimism of which Shrimpton writes was illustrative of the artistic and literary Aesthetic movement, as artists turned to artistic disciplines in order to try to come to terms with the anxieties concerning social devolution and degeneration.
According to degeneration and devolution theorists and writers, late-nineteenth century civilization had evolved as far as possible and risked devolving back into its more “primitive” state. As early as 1880, Edwin Lankester attempted to place the “problem” of degeneration  in its connection to Darwinian evolution and the ability of humanity to adapt to the evolving environment. He writes that “[d]egeneration may be defined as a gradual change of the structure in which the organism becomes adapted to less varied and less complex conditions of life…” (3). For Lankester, the threat of degeneration lay in the possibility that humanity, having reached its pinnacle of “civilization,” could no longer adapt to changing environmental conditions; in this instance, environmental conditions were becoming more and more industrial, as an overpopulated society turned to technology in order to assuage the problems of population. In this way, the individual was becoming unable to “adapt” to the evolving conditions of life, thereby risking “devolving” into a more primitive state. Lankester writes that “[t]he traditional history of mankind furnishes us with notable examples of degeneration. High states of civilisation have decayed and given place to low and degenerate states. At one time it was a favourite doctrine that the savage races of mankind were degenerate descendants of the higher and civilised aces” (4). In a similar line, science fiction and science writer H.G. Wells takes Lankester’s concept further, as he notes the social ramifications of biological devolution of the individual. Using the metaphor of zoological species degradation to reinforce the anxieties facing human devolution, Wells writes that
[i]t has decided that in the past the great scroll of nature has been steadily unfolding to reveal a constantly richer harmony of forms and successively higher grades of being, and it assumes that this ‘evolution’ will continue with increasing velocity under the supervision of its extreme expression—man. This belief, as effective, progressive, and pleasing as transformation scenes at a pantomime, receives neither in the geological record nor in the studies of the phylogenetic embryologist any entirely satisfactory confirmation. (6)
For Wells, the threat of devolution and degeneration is clear: one species can only progress so far before it begins to regress on its evolutionary path of progress. And for Gissing’s late-Victorian world, this is seen in the overreliance on technology and industry in order to “survive” in the overpopulated and congested city. Wells writes that “…degradation may perhaps suffice to show that there is a good deal to be found in the work of biologists quite inharmonious with such phrases as ‘the progress of ages,’ and the ‘march of mind.’ The zoologist demonstrates that advance has been fitful and uncertain; rapid progress has often been followed by rapid extinction or degeneration” (12). For Lankester, Wells, and Gissing alike, this hysterical anxiety about the trajectory of mankind and mankind’s ability to survive (and thrive) in an overpopulated and industrial world dominated the aesthetics of the late nineteenth century. The various trends that marked the late-nineteenth century Aesthetic movement captured the hysterical pessimism of these debates on devolution and degeneracy and illustrated them through their various art forms.
The rise of the Aesthetic movement offered a new literary form in which to voice and illustrate the anxieties facing late-nineteenth century England, in particular, the pessimistic debates on devolution. Tracing the rise of “The Decadent Movement in Literature,” Arthur Symons  writes that
[t]he most representative literature of the day [for Symons, 1893]…is certainly not classic, nor has it any relation with that old antithesis of the Classic, the Romantic. After a fashion it is no doubt a decadence: an intense self-consciousness, a restless curiosity in research, an over-subtilizing refinement upon refinement, a spiritual and moral perversity. If what we call the classic is indeed the supreme art…then this representative literature of today, interesting, beautiful, novel as it is, is really a new and beautiful and interesting disease. (105)
This degenerate and “diseased” literature of which Symons writes is the aesthetic fulfillment of the degeneracy/devolution debates of which Wells and Lankester were warning, and one might add, predicting. This highly decadent, over-the-top literature relies, according to Symons, on “la nervose” and is a product of the “maladie fin de siècle”, which contributes to the hysteria of the collapse and devolution of society (105). This, as Joyce Carol Oates argues, is the “Aesthetics of Fear.” Though tracing the historical/aesthetic function of the role of horror and fear in literature, Oates writes that “[w]e can presume that the aesthetic fear is not an authentic fear but an artful simulation of what is crude, inchoate, nerve-driven and ungovernable in life; its evolutionary advantage must be the preparation for the authentic experience, unpredictable and always imminent” (176). This “diseased” and decadent literature of the late-nineteenth century is the fear-mongering fruition of the “pessimistic” debates on devolution (and, as will be pointed out later, the culmination of the late-Victorian debates on population, overcrowding, and, inherently, industrialization). Symons writes that
…this literature is certainly typical of a civilization grown over-luxurious, over-inquiring, too languid for the relief of action, too uncertain for any emphasis in opinion or in conduct. It reflects the moods, all the manners, of a sophisticated society: its very artificiality is a way of being true to nature: simplicity, sanity, proportion…how much do we possess them in our life, our surroundings, that we should look to find them in our literature—so evidently the literature of a decadence? (106)
This decadent literature highlights all of the social, political, and economic ills of the late nineteenth century. Studying the social, and one could further, devolutionary, effects of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Oates writes that “Stoker was dramatizing the clash of Darwinian evolutionary theory with traditional Christian-humanist sentiment…In the austere Darwinian model of our beleaguered Earth, the individual counts for virtually nothing; only the species matters, the replication of DNA” (184). For Oates, though she chooses not to call it such, Stoker’s novel is a “degeneracy” novel, illustrating and highlighting the anxieties of Stoker’s time, in this instance, the “progressive march,” of society. Though Oates attempts to place Stoker’s novel within a historical/theological context, if we eliminate any discussion of theology and investigate Stoker’s novel as a historical artifact, we begin to see the Aesthetic function of literature as an illustration of the social and cultural anxieties of its day. Similarly, this is the function of George Gissing’s The Odd Women.
From the very beginning of his novel, Gissing’s The Odd Women is illustrative of the degeneracy and devolutionary tone infiltrating society during of the 1890s. Robert Selig notes this tone throughout Gissing’s novel, noting that
[t]he first seven chapters and scattered later ones depict the sufferings of ‘The Odd Women’ [sic] with both sympathy and authentic social detail. The six Madden sisters provide the central examples of unfortunate single females. Their father has given them genteel educations but dies without leaving them a large enough income to support genteel ways. Within 10 years three have suffered early deaths, and three struggle on ill-paid and degrading work[…] (62)
This tone is the undercurrent for the entire novel and Gissing introduces the reader to it from the very beginning. The novel opens with an introduction to the Madden family, as Alice Madden remembers her mother while she speaks with her father, Dr. Madden, about the family’s precarious future. Gissing writes:
Mrs. Madden, having given birth to six daughters, had fulfilled her function in this wonderful world; for two years she had been resting in the old churchyard that looks upon the Severn sea…A sweet, calm, unpretending woman; admirable in the domesticities; in speech and thought distinguished by a native refinement, which in the most fastidious eyes would have established her claim to the title of a lady. She had known but little repose, and secret anxieties told upon her countenance long before the final collapse of health. (5-6)
What is interesting to note in Gissing’s description of the late Mrs. Madden is her temperament; in this way, the Maddens embody the “anxieties” of the future that we see in figures like Symons, Wells, and Lankester. Though the Maddens hail from the remote coastal town of Clevedon, it is clear that Mrs. Madden, described as a “sweet, calm” woman, lacks the evolutionary ability to “adapt” to her surroundings, even in the remote countryside, and therefore declines, devolves, and dies away. As if to reiterate the melancholic anxious tone of the novel and press his point further, by the end of the first chapter, after Dr. Madden has run an errand to escort home a family friend, Rhoda Nunn, news of the Doctor’s trip alters the Madden sisters’ futures irreparably. Gissing writes:
[…]Dr. Madden, driving back from Kingston Seymour, had been thrown from his vehicle, and lay insensible at a roadside cottage[…]For some time the doctor had been intending to buy a new horse; his faithful old roadster was very weak in the knees. As in other matters, so in this, postponement became fatality; the horse stumbled and fell, and its driver was flung head forward into the road. Some hours later they brought him to his home, and for a day or two there were hopes that he might rally. But the sufferer’s respite only permitted him to dictate and sign a brief will; this duty performed, Dr. Madden closed his lips forever. (10)
Dr. Madden’s death throws the family into a tailspin as sister after sister dies as they venture into the “maddening,” overwhelming city of London in an attempt to survive. Gissing chronicles the various sisters’ fates as they slowly dwindle in numbers. He writes that “Gertrude and Martha were dead; the former of consumption, the other drowned by the over-turning of a pleasure boat[…]Alice plied her domestic teaching; Virginia remained a ‘companion.’ Isabel, now aged twenty, taught in a Board School at Bridgwater, and Monica, just fifteen, was on the point of being apprenticed to a draper at Weston, where Virginia abode” (15). Once the sisters reach a point of “stability,” the struggle for survival catches up with them, overwhelming them in an age of overpopulation and over-industrialization. Gissing writes that “Isabel was soon worked into illness. Brain trouble came on, resulting in melancholia. A charitable institution ultimately received her, and there, at two-and-twenty, the poor hard-featured girl drowned herself in a bath” (emphasis added, 16). It is quickly obvious that life in the overcrowded, industrial, and “maddening” city has its effects on the individual. Gissing’s novel picks up with the three remaining sisters struggling, where their other sisters could not adapt (in a Malthusian and Darwinian sense), for survival. The fact that Gissing introduces the reader to an entire family, only to end up with over half of the family dead within the first two chapters sets up the tone for the entire novel. Throughout the novel, one begins to see how Gissing’s London affects the individual on an “organic” level.
As if anticipating the “pessimism” debates that marked the 1890s hysteria of devolution and degeneracy , Malthus’ 1798 essay on population examines the unstable trajectory of the future—and the theoretical warning in which Gissing and the Victorians, found themselves one century later: an overpopulated land plagued with dwindling resources (and over-industrialization as society worked, through machines, in order to survive). In language that anticipates the Darwinian struggle for survival, Malthus writes “[…]that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio” (4). For Malthus, population booms are contributed to by increased human industry that allows the population to increase unchecked; however, he argues that the natural resources available for humanity will always dictate the population trajectory. Malthus writes that “[t]he reason that the greater part of Europe is more populous now than it was in former times, is that the industry of the inhabitants has made these countries produce a greater quantity of human subsistence” (17). However, Malthus argues that no matter how many technological and industrial improvements society has made, there are only so many resources physically available in order to sustain a growing population. Similarly, this is the problem we see in Gissing’s London: an overpopulated city has turned to an overreliance on technology to attempt to meet the demands of survival (and Gissing shows us the “cost” of this overreliance throughout his novel). According to Malthus, and one could argue later, in Darwin, the scarcity of resources promotes competition among individuals in order to survive. For Malthus, this struggle for survival is rooted in the trajectory of population, which, when continued unchecked, outstrips all available resources, creating miserable living conditions. He writes that “[…]the superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice, the ample portion of these too bitter ingredients in the cup of human life and the continuance of the physical causes that seem to have produced them bear too convincing a testimony” (11). Thus, as sustenance dwindles, population numbers come in check due to the lack of available resources, essentially creating the “misery” that effectively puts a damper on population growth. The anxieties and hysterics that Malthus forewarns of are exactly part and parcel of the problem that Gissing’s “odd women,” and to a greater extent, the Victorians, faced in the late nineteenth century.
Late-Victorian Britain marked a turning point in British population growth, as economic and foreign affairs affected the population “boom” made possible by the advances of the Industrial Revolution. In a study of the population demographics of Victorian Britain, Robert Woods notes that “[…]the Victorian period was so important as a [population] turning point in England” (4). For Woods, this “turning point” was marked by a lower mortality rate and higher fertility rates. The implication, as Jeremy Black and Donald MacRaild suggest, is that increased technological and industrial advances allowed such a population boom and prevented the traditional Malthusian checks to population. Black and MacRaild write that Victorian Britain saw a population boom on the scale of which Malthus warned. They write that “[p]opulation grew dramatically in this period without famines[…]in other words, without the ‘positive checks’ on population which were seen as so vital by the Reverend Thomas Malthus[…]” (59). Black and MacRaild argue that the “checks” Malthus warned would produce misery and vice were relatively minimal, due to the technological and industrial gains that produced such a boom. Black and MacRaild state that though Malthus’s “prophesies of a population crisis never occurred,” this population boom clearly put a strain on the new urban-centered English societies (59). What is interesting is that Black and MacRaild focus on the “relief valve” of emigration as a way to help assuage the pressure resulting from the booming population in the absence of Malthusian population checks (59). Historical consensus indicates that the Victorian period marked a break with Malthusian population theory and altered the shape and geography of Britain, resulting in a new “debate” on the population trajectory of British society.
The population boom that dominated the Victorian period, made possible by the technological and industrial advances spurred by the Industrial Revolution, altered the very geography of Victorian society. Woods notes that population growth was spurred by an increasingly urban culture (27). Tracing The Population History of England in their seminal study, E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield claim that h, h,istorically London was the epicenter of all population booms and declines. They write that “[i]t was the very size and untypicality [sic] of London that made it seem advisable to make separate estimates of the numbers of ecclesiastical [population] events occurring there and to incorporate them explicitly in the estimated national totals of events[…]” (170). Similarly, Black and MacRaild note that the population growth that dominated Victorian Britain was overshadowed by that which was seen in London, specifically. They write that “[b]etween 1861 and 1911, it [London] burgeoned from 2.8 m[illion] to 4.5 m[illion] inhabitants. While much of this was due to net immigration, natural increase accounted for 85 per cent of all growth by the end of the century” (81). According to Wrigley and Schofield, London’s population “boom” began to take hold at the beginning of the nineteenth century when London comprised 3.6% of the entire total population of England (168). For Wrigley and Schofield, as for Woods, the nineteenth century marked a turning point in London’s population trends, which continued to grow exponentially throughout the rest of the century. Black and MacRaild write that the total population of England in the mid-nineteenth century was 17.93 million, booming to 29 million by the end of the century. While the urban population made up 50.2% of the total population of 17.93 million in 1851, by 1891, the urban population comprised 72% of the 29 million residents of England. Black and MacRaild, similar to Wrigley and Schofield, argue that London, due to its immense size, made up the majority of this “urban population” (80). While the traditional Malthusian checks to population increase were greatly reduced in the new highly-industrialized Victorian England, particularly in London the Victorian population boom produced an overtly new form of society, one that was just as miserable as Malthus’ “lower orders.” As Woods argues, overcrowding and dwindling resources did have an effect on London society. He writes that
[t]he crowding together of people affected disease patterns, especially those of infectious diseases; it created a more lethal sanitary environment; and it also led to new, higher and more concentrated levels of air pollution. These hazards were faced by all those living in cities, but there were other problems—those associated with poverty and type of employment, with housing and diet—whose effects were borne differentially depending on one’s social group or class. (27-28)
This is exactly the society that Gissing and his fellow Aesthetes attempt to illustrate in their late-Victorian novels.
The London that Gissing’s Madden sisters inhabit is crowded and over-stimulating, an indication of the overpopulation seen at the end of the nineteenth century. This overcrowding has a clearly visible effect on the individual. After the death of her father, Virginia Madden finds herself living in London with her sister Alice in a small, single-room apartment, struggling to survive. Gissing writes that
Virginia (about thirty-three) had[…]an unhealthy look, but the poverty, or vitiation, of her blood manifested itself in less unsightly forms[…]For she was rapidly ageing; her lax lips grew laxer, with emphasis of a characteristic one would rather not have perceived there; her eyes sank into deeper hollows; wrinkles extended their net-work; the flesh of her neck wore away. Her tall meagre body did not seem strong enough to hold itself upright. (14)
It is clear that the mix of the overpopulated London and lack of resources has taken a toll on Virginia’s health. As she sits down for lunch with her sister, we see the extent of their problem. Gissing writes:
[t]hey were preparing their mid-day meal, the substantial repast of the day. In a little saucepan on an oil cooking-stove was some plain rice, bubbling, as Alice stirred it. Virginia fetched from downstairs[…]bread, butter, cheese, a pot of preserve, and arranged the table[…]at which they were accustomed to eat. The rice being ready, it was turned out in two portions; made savoury with a little butter, pepper, and salt, it invited them to sit down. (17)
The Madden sisters at once illustrate the Malthusian population problems facing London at the end of the nineteenth century: an overpopulated, overcrowded city, struggling (in a Darwinian way) for resources and survival.
We see the full effect of the city on the individual when Virginia ventures out to buy a present for her other surviving sister, Monica. Gissing writes that
“[a] very long walk was before her. She wished to get as far as the Strand book-shops, not only for the sake of choice, but because this region pleased her and gave her a sense of holiday. Past Battersea Park, over Chelsea Bridge, then the weary stretch to Victoria Station, and the upward labour to Charing Cross. Five miles, at least, measured by pavement. But Virginia walked quickly[…]. (22)
Throughout her “quick walk,” the fast pace of London life takes a toll on Virginia. Gissing makes references to the “anxiety” and “clamorous life” that she finds throughout London. Ultimately, it is this “anxiety” that causes Virginia to turn back from her “holiday.” As she approaches the railroad in order to return home, Gissing writes that “[a]t the entrance [to Charing Cross Station] again she stopped. Her features were now working in the strangest way, as though a difficulty of breathing had assailed her. In her eyes was an eager, yet frightened look; her lips stood apart. Another quick movement, and she entered the station. She went straight to the door of the refreshment room…” (23). Virginia’s movements, like the technologically-driven London environment, become quicker and more mechanical, as she becomes “one” with the industrial, “maddening” city. In the refreshment room, Virginia seeks out solace and begins to establish a pattern and a means of coping with life in the overpopulated and over-stimulated London. Gissing writes that “[b]ending forward, she said to the barmaid in a voice just above a whisper: ‘Kindly give me a little brandy.’ Beads of perspiration were on her face, which had turned to a ghastly pallor. The barmaid, concluding that she was ill, served her promptly and with a sympathetic look” (23). It is clear that the cacophonous city has had an effect on Virginia. By the end of the novel, the extent of Virginia’s drinking problem is clear, as she strives to find a way to survive in London. After the “scandal” of Monica’s “affair,” we see Virginia alone in the room she shares with Alice and Monica, turning once again to gin and water for respite. Gissing writes that this was “[t]he last, the very last, of such enjoyment; so she assured herself[…]If she abstained from strong liquors for three or four days it was now a great triumph; yet worthless, for even in abstaining she knew that the hour of indulgence had only been postponed. A fit of unendurable depression soon drove her to the only resource which had immediate efficacy” (333). Invocative of the vice of which Malthus warned would envelop the working classes, overwhelmed by the overpopulated city and their struggle to survive there, Virginia turns to drink in order to calm her nerves. Gissing writes that
[h]er bottle was almost empty; she would finish it to-night[…]To sit comfortably at home, the bottle beside her and her novel on her lap, was an avoidance of the worst shame attaching to this vice[…]Brandy had first of all been her drink, as is generally the case with women of the educated classes. There are so many plausible excuses for taking a drop of brandy. But it cost too much. Whiskey she had tried, and did not like. Finally she had recourse to gin, which was palatable and very cheap. (333-334)
Virginia turns to alcohol to calm her nerves from the over-stimulation wrought by the crowded, fast-paced city. What is clear in Virginia’s alcoholism is that the overpopulated city has had an effect on her, biologically and psychologically.
Just like Virginia Madden, the few men who populate Gissing’s London are altered radically, essentially devolved, by the influences of the overpopulated city. The first man (of the few) we encounter in the novel is clearly altered by his surroundings. As Monica wanders in the park on her birthday, contemplating her precarious fate, her future husband, Edmund Widdowson, approaches her as she sits in the grass. Gissing writes that
[t]he gravity of his appearance and manner, the good-natured commonplace that fell from his lips, could not alarm her; a dialogue began, and went on for about half an hour. How old might he be?[…]His utterance fell short of perfect refinement, but seemed that of an educated man. And certainly his clothes were such as a gentleman wears. He had thin, hairy hands, unmarked by any effect of labour; the nails could not have been better cared for. (38)
Edmund’s appearance indicates, other than his class, that he is “soft” and not used to working with his hands, contrary to the industrial male laborer. The men who populate industrial London are effeminate and weak in this way. As Edmund “courts” Monica, he essentially stalks her, manipulating her through his fits of heightened emotions, effectually bullying her into a miserable marriage. Similarly, Mary Barfoot’s cousin, Everard, is portrayed just as effeminately. After returning to London from his journeys around the world, Everard dines at Mary’s house. Gissing writes that
[h]e had a tall, muscular frame, and a head of striking outline, with large nose, full lips, deep-set eyes, and prominent eyebrows. His hair was the richest tone of chestnut; his moustache and beard[…]inclined to redness. Excellent health manifested itself in the warm purity of his skin, in his cheerful aspect, and the lightness of his bearing[…]On sitting down, he at once abandoned himself to a posture of the completest [sic] ease, which his admirable proportions made graceful[…]he had a soft voice, and used it with all the discretion of good-breeding, so that at times it seemed to caress the ear. (88)
Though Everard appears physically healthy and masculine, one could argue that his healthy demeanor is derived from his time abroad and is undermined by his speech and mannerisms. Everard and Edmund are the inverted effete “new men” who counterbalance the populous “new women,” and who take up the traditional “masculine” roles in order to survive in an increasingly effeminate world.
The industrial late-Victorian city was overrun with people; however, the people who overran this city were predominantly women, as Gissing’s novel illustrates. This indicates a drastic shift in the population demographics that marked the Victorian population boom. Many factors contributed to the evolving demographic changes in the Victorian industrial city. Black and MacRaild state that “[t]hroughout the century, women outnumbered men. Industrial accidents and wars took a heavier toll on men and accentuated the statistical fact that live female births were anyway more numerous than male” (57). By the time Gissing’s novel appeared in 1893, the population ratio of women to men was 106 to 100 (Black and MacRaild 57). At heart in Gissing’s The Odd Women is the way these women view their function and place within this new, overpopulated, predominantly feminine world.
The state of marriage seen in The Odd Women is indicative of the predicament in which late-Victorian women found themselves: outnumbering men proportionately, women in the late-nineteenth century had to turn to other means in order to support themselves. Though one of the population checks for which Malthus advocates is the postponement of marriage, particularly among the “lower orders,” Gissing’s “odd women” do not have that luxury; instead, they are the very women left over after all of the “available” men and women have been “matched.” Poole writes that “[t]he theme of the novel is explicit. The ‘odd women’ are the unwanted, unmarried minority, being quietly crucified on the social fiat that a woman’s role is marriage and motherhood” (186). In lieu of marriage, Gissing’s “odd women” turn to other means in order to survive: education and the professional workforce. This alternative echoes one of Malthus’s positive checks to population growth; however, in Gissing’s novel, this alternative is not simply an alternative, but a means of survival. Emma Liggins writes that “[b]y the early 1890s the female desire for greater economic independence, produced by the lack of financial support available from fathers and the increasing surplus of single women, ensured that more women than ever before felt compelled to enter the labour market” (ix). This “viable solution” appears quite early in Gissing’s novel. When she visits the Madden sisters to “recruit” them, Rhoda Nunn lays out the new mode of survival for women in this overpopulated, industrial society. She states that
I went to Bristol to learn everything I could that would help me out of school-life. Shorthand, book-keeping, commercial correspondence—I had lessons in them all, and worked desperately for a year [responding to a job offer, Rhoda leaves Bath and moves to London]. It was a move towards London, and I couldn’t rest till I had come the whole way. My first engagement here was as a shorthand writer to the secretary of a company. But he soon wanted some one who could use a type-writer. That was a suggestion. I went to learn type-writing, and the lady who taught me [Mary Barfoot] asked me in the end to stay with her as an assistant. (27)
Rhoda’s practical education serves as a means of survival in the absence of marriage. As an assistant to Mary Barfoot, Rhoda’s career in life is to help train and educate the unmarried “odd women,” so they may survive outside the economic and social institution of marriage. She says that Ms. Barfoot “makes it her object to train young girls for work in offices, teaching them the things that I learnt in Bristol and type-writing as well” (27-28). Ms. Barfoot’s school, in training the “odd women” in the skill of typewriting, allows the unmatchable women to enter the workforce, attempting to support themselves in the absence of eligible bachelors. By taking up traditionally “masculine” white-collar careers, the “odd women” effectively invert their own gender paradigms and “devolve” in the social hierarchy of industrial London society. Outpaced and outstripped of resources, these “odd women” cling to whatever means for survival.
Gissing’s “odd women” negotiate their way through the increasingly industrial, overpopulated London in an attempt to survive in a period that witnessed a population boom on the scale of which Malthus had warned. Through looking at the “debates” surrounding the late-Victorian population boom, we can see how the Victorians themselves were concerned about the overpopulation of the industrial city, in particular, how the dwindling resources (in a Malthusian and Darwinian vein) available to urban residents occupied a special place in Victorian thought and created a sense of social “hysteria.” We see this in the devolutionary/degeneracy debates of the 1890s, as figures like Wells and Lankester debated the ability of mankind to survive life in an (overly-industrialized) overpopulated Victorian (mega) city. Gissing’s novel illustrates these anxieties circulating throughout late-Victorian society concerning futurity, population, sustenance, and cultural progress. While The Odd Women has conventionally been investigated through the feministic cultural work that it performs, when one looks at the philosophical history in which the novel is rooted, it is clear that Gissing’s novel is an approach to the “hysteria” facing late-Victorian England amidst the concerns about the overpopulation of the industrial city, and in particular, the individual’s ability to “adapt” (Darwinistically) to life in this overpopulated, over-industrialized city.
Black, Jeremy and Donald M. MacRaild. Nineteenth-Century Britain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print.
Bowler, Peter. “Malthus, Darwin, and the Concept of Struggle,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37:4 (Oct.-Dec. 1976): 631-650. JSTOR. Web. 21 March 2013.
Gissing, George. The Odd Women, reissue, Patricia Ingham, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, revised seventh edition. New York: Touchstone, 1999. Print.
Lankester, Edwin Ray. “Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism.” The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900, Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
Liggins, Emma. George Gissing, the Working Woman, and Urban Culture. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006. Print.
Malthus, Thomas. An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, m. Condorcet, and Other Writers. <220.127.116.11/books/Malthus/population/Malthus.pdf> Web. 3 September 2012.
Maltz, Diana. “Practical Aesthetics and Decadent Rationale in George Gissing,” Victorian Literature and Culture 28:1 (2000): 55-71. JSTOR. Web. 21 March 2013.
Nordau, Max. “Degeneration,” in Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology, Laura Otis, ed. Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “The Aesthetics of Fear,” Salmagundi 120 (Fall 1998): 176-185. JSTOR. Web. 21 March 2013.
Poole, Adrian. Gissing in Context. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975. Print.
Selig, Robert. George Gissing, revised edition. New York: Twayne Publishers, Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print.
Shrimpton, Nicholas. “‘Lane, you’re a perfect pessimist’: Pessimism and the English Fin de siècle,” The Yearbook of English Studies, From Decadent to Modernist: And Other Essays 37:1 (2007) 41-57. JSTOR. Web. 23 March 2013.
Spencer, Kathleen. “Purity and Danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic, and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis,” ELH 59:1 (Spring 1992): 197-225. JSTOR. Web. 23 March 2013.
Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time, 2: Disorientation, Stephen Barker, transl. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Print.
Symons, Arthur. “The Decadent Movement in Literature,” in The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900, Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
Walasek, Helen, ed. The Best of Punch Cartoons: 2,000 Humor Classics. New York: Overlook Press, 2009. Print.
Wells, H.G. “Zoological Retrogression,” in The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900, Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, eds. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
Woods, Robert. The Demography of Victorian England and Wales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Wrigley, E.A. and R.S. Shofield. The Population History of England 1541-1871: A reconstruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Print.
 Here, “devolution” and “degeneration” are interchangeable terms, as both concepts are interested in humanity’s evolutionary progress.
 We could posit that the “evolving environments” in which humanity now found itself was the overpopulated city, overrun with technology as mankind attempted to find his place in this new overpopulated landscape, in this instance, through the mediation of technology.
 The late-Victorian Aesthetic movement had many currents. Diana Maltz writes that Gissing participated in all forms of the Aesthetic movement, whether the Decadence of Gissing’s early formative years or the anti-Aestheticism, advocated by Walter Pater, in Gissing’s later texts, in particular, The Odd Women.
 It is interesting to note that Symons’ treatise on literary decadence was published in the same year as Gissing’s novel.
 Malthus’ voice sounds remarkably similar to the “doom-and-gloom” pessimists of the late nineteenth century. Very early in his Essay, he writes that “[i]t has been said that the great question is now at issue, whether man shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity towards illimitable, and hitherto unconceived [sic] improvement, or be condemned to perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery, and after every effort remain still at an immeasurable distance from the wished-for goal” (1).
 Peter Bowler makes the correlation between Malthus and Darwin in tracing the two types of struggle. He writes that “[…]the competition between the different individuals of the same species to see which of them shall survive and reproduce[…]” is the very root of the Darwinian, and one could claim, Malthusian, struggle for survival.
 Bowler writes that “[s]ince the supply of food can never be increased at the same rate as the population, the number of births must be artificially limited if misery is to be avoided. But Malthus classed birth control as a vice, and hence came to feel that the only solution lay in teaching the whole population the need for moral restraint” (642).
 Yet the industrial technologies that allowed the Victorian population boom exacerbated the very miseries of life in an overpopulated and over-industrialized world that we see in Gissing’s novel.’
 Widdowson’s audacity to approach a “lady” sitting alone in the park should be a marker for Victorian readers. This is indicative of an imbalance seen in Widdowson, one that is characteristic of his behavior and heightened emotions.
 Everard, who Gissing notes has spent his time traveling the world, in Egypt, Turkey, Spain, and Japan, lives a life of effeminate luxury, the very life denied to the Madden sisters.


art programs in schools
The children learn about and paint self-portraits. For ages 6 to 9. Plan 2 to 3 sessions.
Learning about self-portraits
Observing facial features
Planning use of the whole paper
Using large and small paint brushes
Painting wet paint over dry paint
self-portrait, head-and-shoulders portrait, background, outline
Students who study art are four times more likely to be recognized for their academic achievements and three times as likely to be awarded for their school attendance.
Music education and Art educations programs are mandatory in countries that rank consistently among the highest for math and science test scores, like Japan, the Netherlands, Hungary, Ireland and the UK.
The No Child Left Behind Act clearly mandates The Arts (music, art, foreign language, etc.) as a core academic subject.
Arts education budgets are among first things to be cut in austere economic times. Many schools are facing budget deficits and shortfalls. Schools are finding that they must cut art, music and sports programs in order to save money. School fundraisers can help schools make up the money shortfall that they need.


CMAST and NOAA Study Leatherback Sea Turtle for Protected Species Program
The Marine Health Program at NC State Center for Marine Sciences and Technology (CMAST) recently took part in 10 days of field work off the North Carolina coast to study leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) migratory patterns, movements, and health status.
This is the second year of the project, working with NOAA Fisheries researchers in the Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (AMAPPS).
Leatherback sea turtles weighing approximately 500 – 750 pounds were captured at sea off of Cape Lookout, using hoop nets deployed from small boats guided by an overhead spotter plane. Turtles spent about 15 minutes on an inflatable platform being measured and tagged (satellite, flipper, and microchip), having blood drawn (hematology, plasma chemistry analysis, blood gases, and NMR metabolomics), temperature recorded (leatherback sea turtles maintain an internal temperature warmer than their environment), fat thickness determined by ultrasound, and electrocardiogram (ECG) monitored. Thirteen turtles were captured this year, adding to the seven tagged and sampled last year.
Most of the turtles appeared to be in excellent health, and there were abundant cannonball jellies (Stomolophus meleagris) in the area as a food source, but one turtle had sustained recent (healing) propeller wounds on its shell, and another had a small recreational fishing hook and monofilament line that was removed from a flipper by the researchers.
Veterinary team members from NC State CVM CMAST and the NC Aquariums included Craig Harms, Michael Stoskopf, Emily Christiansen, Greg Scott, Heather Broadhurst, and Maria Serrano. Collaborators include Larisa Avens, Chris Sasso, Joanne Braun-McNeill, Annie Gorgone, Blake Price, Jamie Clark and Josh Summers of the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center; Heather Haas, Eric Matzen from the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center; and Samir Patel from the Coonamessett Farm Foundation.


Developing ‘Living’ Low-Cost Construction Material
Researchers Nima Rahbar and Suzanne Scarlata have received $692,386 from the National Science Foundation to improve and develop new functions for their Enzymatic Construction Material (ECM), a “living” low-cost, negative-emission construction material they created to address one of the largest contributors to climate change—concrete—by providing what they refer to as “a pathway to repair or even replace [traditional] concrete in the future.” Rahbar, associate professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering, and Scarlata, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, have already made their research available for commercial use through a start-up called Enzymatic, Inc. This new funding will also allow them to explore new avenues for ECM’s use, including repairing cracks in different types of glass, such as eyeglass lenses, cell phone screens, and car windshields; and develop a program to educate diverse populations of underprivileged girls—in Worcester and in Africa—about engineering and construction.
According to Statista, between 1995 and 2020 worldwide cement production jumped from 1.39 billion to 4.1 billion tons, making it the second-most widely used substance on Earth, next to water. In addition to their efforts to help mitigate the massive climate change impacts created by concrete, Rahbar and Scarlata plan to use the new funding to refine and optimize ECM and the processes to create it, and expand its use to different materials.
Biological enzymes are catalysts that drive chemical reactions. ECM is made through a process involving an enzyme known as carbonic anhydrase—found in all living cells—that has the unique ability to react with CO2 to rapidly remove the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. This reaction creates calcium carbonate crystals, which serve as ECM’s main ingredient. A sand slurry is also added, as well as a polymer, which holds the ECM together during its early stages, much like scaffolding does during the construction of a building. Through this process, ECM can “heal itself” and fix cracks or other imperfections that may develop over time, retaining its strength through as many as six self-healing cycles.
In addition, the grant will allow Rahbar and Scarlata to develop a program based on their lab work on ECM to educate and inspire underrepresented and underprivileged girls about engineering and construction—an industry where the gender gap is stark; according to OSHA, only 9 percent of construction workers in this country are women.
The researchers plan to partner with organizations in Worcester, including the local chapter of Girls Inc., to create summer programs and after-school programs in which girls will design a model building, make a mold for it using 3D printing, and build the structure out of ECM. Rahbar and Scarlata are also collaborating with the African University of Science and Technology to host visiting graduate students at WPI and conduct additional summer programs for this group.


Toothed medick – in-nefel il-komuni
The toothed medick or in-nefel il-komuni in Maltese is a very common plant and it is frequently found in various habitats. Its leaves are divided in three with yellow flowers and they appear between January and June.
Upon pollination, these develop into spirally-coiled ‘pods’ bearing hooked teeth along their outer margin; these remain attached to animals’ feathers or fur, aiding dispersal. Many other medicks are frequent in Malta, mostly differentiated by their pod shape.
The coastal or littoral medick (in-nefel tax-xtut) has similar spirally-coiled pods and is mostly coastal in distribution. The weedy disk medick (in-nefel il-lixx) bears discoid ufo-like spiral pods bearing no teeth, while the ciliate medick (in-nefel tat-tafal), which is found on clay slopes, has considerably larger and hairy pods, with short spines.


As the days pass and the days get colder, discussions surrounding staying healthy usually focus around trying to prevent the flu. While that’s important, it’s also very important to discuss pneumonia as another infection that is highly common among seniors.
Pneumonia is an infection that inflames the air sacs in one or both lungs. The air sacs may fill with fluid or pus (purulent material), causing cough with phlegm or pus, fever, chills, and difficulty breathing, according to Mayo Clinic.
As a loved one, it’s important to know the causes, symptoms and prevention for pneumonia just in case your family member starts to feel ill.
Causes of Pneumonia:
According to the American Lung Association, there are more than 30 different causes of pneumonia. It’s important to understand what causes this sickness because that can help to know how to treat it. While there are many causes, it’s typically one of these five reasons as to what causes pneumonia:
- Other infections agents, such as fungi
- Inhaling various chemical and environmental agents
Symptoms of Pneumonia:
As a family member or loved one, it’s helpful to know the signs and symptoms of pneumonia so you can be prepared if the time ever comes. While symptoms of pneumonia can be similar to the flu, these symptoms usually last longer.
- Shortness of breath
- Chest pain
- Green or yellow phlegm that comes up while coughing
- Feeling lethargic
Prevention of Pneumonia:
- Get the flu shot: The flu is the most common predecessor to pneumonia in elderly people. We recommend that seniors over the age off 65 get a flu shot each year as well as a pneumococcal vaccine that protects against pneumonia bacteria.
- Wash your hands: It’s important for seniors to keep their hands germ-free by washing them often. If you’re a caregiver, you should be washing them just as much, too.
- Exercise, rest and practice healthy eating habit: Make sure your loved ones are drinking lots of fluids and avoiding anything that might cause stress and weaken the immune system. They should eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Without proper nutrients, seniors can become malnourished and thus, have a harder time fighting off illness.
Keep in mind that prevention is much better than treatment. Seniors who are hospitalized for pneumonia are at a higher risk for long-term physical and mental problems. Now that you know the causes, symptoms and prevention of pneumonia, you can be prepared if your loved one falls ill. If you think they might have pneumonia, contact their doctor right away.


Fitness training balances five elements of good health. Make sure your routine includes aerobic fitness, strength training, core exercises, balance training, flexibility and stretching.By Mayo Clinic Staff
Whether you're a novice taking the first steps toward fitness or an exercise fanatic hoping to optimize your results, a well-rounded fitness training program is essential. Include these five elements to create a balanced routine.
Aerobic exercise, also known as cardio or endurance activity, is the cornerstone of most fitness training programs. Aerobic exercise causes you to breathe faster and more deeply, which maximizes the amount of oxygen in your blood. The better your aerobic fitness, the more efficiently your heart, lungs and blood vessels transport oxygen throughout your body — and the easier it is to complete routine physical tasks and rise to unexpected challenges, such as running to your car in the pouring rain.
Aerobic exercise includes any physical activity that uses large muscle groups and increases your heart rate. Try walking, jogging, biking, swimming, dancing, water aerobics — even leaf raking, snow shoveling and vacuuming.
For most healthy adults, the Department of Health and Human Services recommends that you get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous aerobic activity. You also can do a combination of moderate and vigorous activity. The guidelines suggest that you spread out this exercise during the course of a week.
Muscular fitness is another key component of a fitness training program. Strength training at least twice a week can help you increase bone strength and muscular fitness. It can also help you maintain muscle mass during a weight-loss program.
Most fitness centers offer various resistance machines, free weights and other tools for strength training. But you don't need to invest in a gym membership or expensive equipment to reap the benefits of strength training.
Hand-held weights or homemade weights — such as plastic soft drink bottles filled with water or sand — may work just as well. Resistance bands are another inexpensive option. Your own body weight counts, too. Try pushups, abdominal crunches and leg squats.
The muscles in your abdomen, lower back and pelvis — known as your core muscles — help protect your back and connect upper and lower body movements. Core strength is a key element of a well-rounded fitness training program.
Core exercises help train your muscles to brace the spine and enable you to use your upper and lower body muscles more effectively. So what counts as a core exercise? A core exercise is any exercise that uses the trunk of your body without support, such as abdominal crunches. You can also try various core exercises with a fitness ball.
Older adults in particular should include exercises to maintain or improve balance in their routine exercises. This is important because balance tends to deteriorate with age, which can lead to falls and fractures. However, anyone can benefit from balance training, as it can help stabilize your core muscles. Try standing on one leg for increasing periods of time to improve your overall stability. Activities such as tai chi can promote balance, too.
Flexibility is an important part of physical fitness. Some types of physical activity, such as dancing, require more flexibility than others. Stretching exercises are effective in increasing flexibility, and thereby can allow people to more easily do activities that require greater flexibility. Stretching also improves the range of motion of your joints and promotes better posture. Regular stretching can even help relieve stress. For this reason, stretching and flexibility activities are an appropriate part of a physical activity program.
Before you stretch, warm up by walking or doing a favorite exercise at low intensity for five to 10 minutes. Better yet, stretch after you exercise — when your muscles are warm and receptive to stretching. Ideally, you'll stretch whenever you exercise. If you don't exercise regularly, you might want to stretch at least three times a week after warming up to maintain flexibility. Activities such as yoga promote flexibility, too.
Whether you create your own fitness training program or enlist the help of a personal trainer, your overall exercise plan should include several elements. Aim to incorporate aerobic fitness, strength training, core exercises, balance training, and flexibility and stretching into your exercise plan. It isn't necessary to fit each of these elements into every fitness session, but factoring them into your regular routine can help you promote fitness for life.
July 25, 2014
- What type of physical activity is best? American Heart Association. http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/CardiacRehab/What-Type-of-Physical-Activity-Is-Best_UCM_307378_Article.jsp. Accessed June 9, 2014.
- Bushman BA, ed., et al. ACSM's Resources for the Personal Trainer. 4th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Wolters Kluwer Health Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2014:129.
- 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.health.gov/PAGUIDELINES/guidelines/default.aspx. Accessed June 9, 2014.
- Willardson JM. Core stability training: Applications to sports conditioning programs. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2007;21:979.
- Akuthota V, et al. Core stability exercise principles. Current Sports Medicine Reports. 2008;7:39.
- Warm up, cool down and be flexible. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00310. Accessed June 9, 2014.
- Micheo W, et al. Basic principles regarding strength, flexibility and stability exercises. PM&R. 2012;4:805.
- Morey MC. Physical activity and exercise in older adults. http://www.uptodate.com/home. Accessed June 9, 2014.


The Mnemonics* Of Meaning
(*a word or string which is intended to be easier to remember than the thing it stands for)
Buddhists remind themselves of the pattern of events with their oft-repeated chant “Om mani padme hum”; pronounced “Aum ma-ni pay-may hung” by Tibetans and Nepalese, and meaning:
Om: the jewel in the lotus : hum
As Peter Matthiessen explains it (The Snow Leopard, Picador, 1980):
Aum (signing on) is the awakening or beginning harmonic, the sound of all stillness and the sounds of all time; it is the fundamental harmonic that recalls to us the universe itself.
Ma-ni: The unchanging essence or diamantine core of all phenomena; the truth, represented as a diamond, jewel, or thunderbolt. It is sometimes represented in paintings as a blue orb or a radiant jewel, and sometimes as a source of lighting or fire.
Pay-may: “Enfolded in the heart of the lotus” (mani enfolded). The visible and everyday unfolding of events, petals or patterns thus revealing the essential core (mani) to our understanding. The core itself, or the realization of it, is nirvana (the ideal state of Buddhism). The lotus represents the implicate order of tessellated and annidated events, and the process of unfolding the passage of time to successive revelations.
At the core is the unchanging understanding.
Hung (signing off): “It is here, now.” A declamation of belief of the enchanter in the words. It also prefaces the “Om” or beginning of the new chant cycle, although in a long sequence of such short chants, all words follow their predecessors. This is the reminder mnemonic of implicate time; all events are present now, and forever repeated in their form.
We can choose from tribal chants, arts, and folk decoration many such mnemonic patterns, which in their evolution over the ages express very much the same world concept as does modern physics and biology. Such thoughtful and vivid beliefs come close to realizing the actual nature of the observed events around us, and are derived from a contemplation of such events, indicating a way of life and a philosophy rather than a dogma or set of measures.
Beliefs so evolved precede, and transcend, the emphasis on the individual, or the division of life into disciplines and categories. When we search for the roots of belief, or more specifically meaning, we come again and again to the one-ness underlying science, word, song, art, and pattern: “The jewel in the heart of the lotus”.
Thus we see that many world beliefs share an essential core, but we also see the drift from such nature-based and essentially universal systems towards personalized or humanoid gods, dogma, and fanaticism, and to symbols without meaning or use in our lives, or to our understanding of life. Many other world-concepts based on the analogies of rainbows, serpents, and songs cycles relate to aspects of the integrated world view, and are found in Amerindian and Australian tribal cultures.
Excerpt from ‘Permaculture, A Designer’s Manual’ by Bill Mollison, Tagari Publications, 1988


Concepts for relieving the terrible mass-fraction penalties of launching out of Earth’s gravity well by re-fueling spacecraft on-orbit have been proposed for decades (Reference 1). Certainly it makes theoretical sense to avoid carrying all needed mission propellants (as well as other vital fluids and/or gases) from liftoff to the final orbit by ‘topping off’ at an in-space ‘filling station.’ which is clearly analogous to the re-fueling of cars on an Interstate highway on a long auto trip.
Indeed, analogies have been drawn to the Pony Express in the 1880s and to steam engine trains before that. In those cases, the ‘fuel’ (feed and water for the ponies and wood and water for the engines) was generally available in situ at the way station; later, for coal-driven and then diesel trains, and finally, automobiles, the fuel was produced elsewhere and delivered to re-fueling locations.
This analogy is usually applied to concepts for on-orbit depots, wherein cryogenic or storable propellants are produced on the ground, transported by rocket-tankers to an orbital storage depot, where it is then available for transfer into upper stages and/ or orbital maneuvering vehicles (OMV). Two other concepts, ‘in-situ production’ (ideally, also, ‘on- demand’) of cryogenics at the depot, and ‘in-space re-fueling from the ground’ (analogous to ‘mid-air re-fueling of aircraft’) have also been proposed.
This paper will address the considerable technological, operational and economic challenges for all of these concepts at a very high, qualitative level, and also assesses the prospects of commercialization of such depot/re-fueling systems. In addition, we will discuss potential technology demonstrations or study projects that might help to focus the logical and cost-effective way forward to such an ‘in-space refueling system’ as part of future space infrastructures.
Read more: Prospects for In Space Re Fueling Young Bell
|This paper was first published as part of Space Commerce, The Inside Story, published by the Aerospace Technology Working Group (ATWG) and included on this site through the courtesy of ATWG, ISU and the individual authors.
Other extracts from this publication can be found here.


There are two ways to trace your slave ancestors-learn how the professionals do it and trace them yourself or hire someone to do all or part of it for you. Piecing together a family history doesn't happen in a day or a week, for some it becomes a life-long passion. It's possible that 30 year-old African-Americans could trace their family lines back to between 16 and 32 ancestors who were slaves in 1865. It shouldn't take a lifetime to identify only a few of your slave ancestors. In cases where ancestors became "free persons of color" before that date, the slave generation may not be found until decades earlier; this is more truein Virginia, Maryland and other border states. As you begin the journey back through four or five generations to the time of slavery, you need know what records to search to document each branch of your family tree. Take a look at the following pages to get an idea of how to get started.


New Social Studies Framework Aims to Guide Standards
A coalition of states and professional organizations has released a new social studies framework designed to offer states guidance when they revise their own academic standards.
The College, Career, and Civic Life Framework, dubbed “C3,” marks a major effort to represent the priorities of four of the social studies disciplines: geography, civics, economics, and history. The three-year project brought teachers and subject-matter specialists from 22 states together with college faculty members and representatives of 15 professional organizations in the social studies to craft an overarching set of guidelines that states can use as they write more detailed expectations for students.
Mindful of the political delicacy of specifying social studies content, the framework’s authors steer clear of subject-matter content, instead laying out an “inquiry arc” with four “dimensions” that span the disciplines: developing questions and planning inquiries; applying disciplinary concepts and tools; evaluating sources and using evidence; and communicating conclusions and taking informed action.
“The C3 framework focuses on inquiry skills and key concepts, and guides—not prescribes—the choice of curricular content necessary for a rigorous social studies program,” the document says. “Content is critically important to the disciplines within social studies and individual state leadership will be required to select appropriate and relevant content.”
The Silver Spring, Md.-based National Council for the Social Studies, which led the effort along with University of Kentucky associate professor Kathy Swan, published the document online last week.
Leaders of the initiative emphasized that the framework is not a set of standards or a curriculum. Those are better left to states and districts, which vary in what content they want to emphasize in the classroom, they said. Montana, for instance, requires instruction about the culture and history of Native Americans, while North Carolina teachers might spend more time discussing the Civil War, since key events unfolded there, said Susan Griffin, the executive director of the NCSS.
“It’s a framework for states to use when they are revising their social studies standards,” Ms. Griffin said. “It was designed at the conceptual level, so we didn’t get into curricular details. That’s up to states and districts.”
That choice came in for some sharp criticism.
“Nowhere in its 108 pages will you find Abraham Lincoln, the Declaration of Independence, Martin Luther King (or Martin Luther), a map of the United States, or the concept of supply and demand. You won’t find anything that you might think children should actually learn,” wrote Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based think tank, in a blog post.
Mr. Finn said he thought it unlikely that the framework would drive the field to build a solid core of social studies content.
“Sure, one could build good stuff on this framework,” he wrote, “But one could also build trash. Or nothing.”
Three years ago, when the project began, it included the distinct possibility of creating standards. But it didn’t take long for the participants to decide that it was best to restrict the project to a high-level guide because states’ needs—and the level of detail in their standards—varied so much, Ms. Griffin said.
Structuring the guidance around the four dimensions of an inquiry arc is meant to encourage teachers and students to look at important questions in social studies through the lens of four of its key content areas: civics, history, geography, and economics. The document notes that other social studies areas such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology would be useful additions, as well, but are not included in the C3 framework.
Some states, such as Kentucky, are already using the framework to write or update their own social studies standards.
Kentucky Using Document
Karen Kidwell, the director of the Kentucky Department of Education’s division of program standards, said teams of teacher leaders, district administrators, and higher education faculty members started discussions in February to update the state’s 2006 social studies standards. They’re drawing on ideas in the C3 framework, in addition to sets of standards from the national organizations in the social studies content areas.
The teams are beginning to draft standards, she said, and hope to have a set to present to the state board of education next year. But right now, they’re still hunkered down with stacks of materials, drawing ideas and guidance from all of them, she said. The standards will also incorporate the cross-disciplinary literacy expectations of the Common Core State Standards in English/language arts, she said.
The C3 framework itself describes the connections between its concepts and those common standards, which expect teachers of social studies and science to instruct students in literacy skills unique to their disciplines.
In 2010, the Council of Chief State School Officers, which co-led the common-standards initiative in math and English/language arts, hosted discussions that led to plans to devise a social studies framework. But the CCSSO pulled out of that role last year, citing a desire to focus its energy on helping states implement the math and English standards and to avoid the perception that it was involved in writing the social studies framework.
Vol. 33, Issue 05, Page 8Published in Print: September 25, 2013, as Social Studies Framework Is Guide for Standards


Several years ago I came across Harold Bloom’s Where Shall Wisdom Be Found and was immediately inspired to continue to search for similar examples of wisdom in art, literature, poetry, and other forms of human discourse. As a result, when I ran across the address of Dr. James at the dedication of the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Boston Common on Memorial Day, May 31, 1897 I knew I had found one such example. Shaw, of course, was the Commanding Officer of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment–the first black regiment organized in Massachusetts for the Union cause–and the subject of the 1989 movie Glory.
Being a career military professional, I was most impressed by James’ insight into human nature and his ability to overcome his own feelings of inadequacy and guilt from his inability to have participated in the war to abolish slavery. His brother Wilky James was an officer in the 54th Massachusetts and participated in the Quixotic–and poorly planned–direct charge on Fort Wagner in which half the regiment was decimated. Wilky suffered terrible injuries from the battle, which foreshortened his life. But William seemed to have taken some lessons from his brother’s experience and shared them on that day.
Here, then, is today’s wisdom from an excerpt of William James’ oration:
“It is hard to end a discourse like this without one word of moralizing; and two things must be distinguished in all events like those we are commemorating–the moral service of them on the one hand, and on the other the physical fortitude which they display. War has been much praised and celebrated among us of late as a school of manly virtue; but it is easy to exaggerate upon this point. Ages ago, war was the gory cradle of mankind, the grim-featured nurse that alone could train our savage progenitors into some semblance of social virtue, teach them to be faithful to one another, and force them to sink their selfishness in wider tribal ends. War still excels in this prerogative; and whether it be paid in years of service, in treasure, or in life-blood, the war tax is still the only tax that men ungrudgingly will pay. How could it be otherwise when the survivors of one successful massacre after another are the beings from whose loins we and all our contemporary races spring? Man is once for all a fighting animal; centuries of peaceful history could not breed the battle-instinct out of us; and military virtue least in need of reinforcement by reflection, least in need of orator’s or poet’s help.
What we really need the poet’s and orator’s help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head…the 54th. That lonely kind of valor (civic courage as we call it in peace times) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared, for the survival of the fittest has not bred it into the bone of human beings as it has bred military valor; and of the five hundred of us who could storm a battery side-by-side with others, perhaps not one would be found ready to risk his worldly fortunes all alone in resisting an enthroned abuse….The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks. Such nations have no need of wars to save them.”


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<small>DRAFT # 5: UPDATED 01.08.2000</small>
Simultaneous Measurements of Temperature
in the Upper Mesosphere with an Ebert-Fastie
Spectrometer and a VHF Meteor Radar on
Svalbard (78°N, 16°E)
K. P. Nielsen1, J. Röttger2 and F. Sigernes3
1 The University Courses on Svalbard and The University of Bergen, Norway.
2 The Max-Planck-Institute of Aeronomy, Germany.
3 The University Courses on Svalbard.
From the 14th of November to the 21st of November 1999 measurements of the upper mesospheric temperatures were performed. Both the SOUSY Svalbard Radar and a one meter focal length Ebert-Fastie spectrometer were used, the first measuring the decay of meteor echoes and the latter measuring the OH(6-2) rotational spectrum. Due to the differences in the height of the measurements the temperatures were compared on the background of the temperature profile according to the COSPAR International Reference Atmosphere and reasonable agreement was found. During good conditions for the optical measurements the rotational temperatures had a relative uncertainty of 2 Kelvin when one-hour averages were taken. A frequency analysis of these temperatures was performed, showing no signs of neither diurnal nor semi-diurnal variations. Suggesting that these are not present or weaker than 2 Kelvin in the OH-airglow layer over Svalbard in November.
Temperature profiles in the mesopause region at high polar latitudes of 80 degrees are fairly rare (Connor, 1993). The highest latitudes, where temperature profiles were measured in the past, are about 70 degrees (Lübken, 1999). We do not know of any direct comparisons of temperature measurements at such latitudes. The unique location of Svalbard at 80 degrees N, where many scientific observations of the middle and upper atmosphere are done (Bjørdal, 1998), would allow such observations and comparisons. For this purpose we have performed measurements of the upper mesospheric temperatures in the period of from the 14th to the 21st of November 1999. Both the SOUSY-Svalbard-Radar (Röttger, 2000) and an Ebert-Fastie spectrometer (Dick et al., 1970) were used.
Observations of tidal variations in the Mesosphere-Lower Thermosphere region over Svalbard have been done with the EISCAT Svalbard Radar (Aso et al., 1999 and Van Eyken et al. 1999). These were only of neutral winds not of temperatures, and only during summer. Winter observations of tides have been performed earlier with the Ebert-Fastie spectrometer (e.g. Myrabo and Deehr, 1984), but not in November. Myrabo and Deehr found a semi-diurnal tide with an amplitude of 3 Kelvin in December 1982.
The spectrometer is placed at the Auroral Station that is situated in Adventdalen, close to Longyearbyen on Svalbard. The radar is practically situated right next to the Auroral Station, as they are only a few kilometers apart. The radar can obtain temperatures through measurements of the echoes from trails of ionization resulting from ablating meteorites. These echoes decay by diffusion; as the diffusion co-efficient is a function of temperature and pressure, the temperature can be estimated. However, uncertainty remains, since these estimates require information of the pressure, which needs to be taken from a model (Hocking et al., 1999). The spectrometer measures the OH(6-2) rotational-vibrational spectrum; from its emissions the temperature was calculated by the aid of synthetic spectra. The emissions originate from the OH-airglow-layer that is situated at an average height of 87 km, while the meteor echoes occur at a variety of heights in the upper mesosphere and lower thermosphere. We present here initial comparisons. Further detailed analysis should follow as well as more joint observations.
The primary aim of our joint effort was to compare two methods of measuring the temperatures in the upper mesosphere. The temperatures were obtained using the SOUSY-Svalbard Radar (SSR) running in the meteor-radar-mode and the one-meter focal length Ebert-Fastie spectrometer measuring the airglow hydroxyl rotational temperature. As the SSR needs a significant number of meteor echoes in order to estimate the temperature, the campaign was carried out at the time of the Leonid meteor shower. Being a project of UNIS (the University Courses on Svalbard), the campaign was called UNILEO (UNIS and SOUSY observations around the Leonid shower).
Both the SSR and the spectrometer were set up to measure around zenith with fields of view of 4.5 and 5.0 degrees, respectively. The radar has the possibility to point its beam to the NE, SE, SW and NW with 5 degrees zenith angles and the spectrometer measures around the zenith direction. Where the spectrometer only measures the temperature as an average through the OH(6,2)-airglow layer (9km x 12km at 87 km), the SSR measures temperatures in whichever height incoming meteors ablate. The OH-airglow layer is, according to in-situ measurements made with rockets, situated around 87km with a thickness of 8km regardless of season or latitude (Baker and Stair 1988).
2.1 The Ebert-Fastie Spectrometer
The Ebert-Fastie spectrometer is one out of three spectrometers located at the Auroral Station in Adventdalen. The instrument has a scanning grating that scans through the first order wavelength range 8312 - 8745Å. The bandpass is 4.8Å and the field of view is approximately 5°. For a more detailed description of the spectrometer see Fastie (1952), Dick et al. (1970) and Sivjee et al. (1972). In order to derive the rotational temperatures of the measured OH(6,2)-band, it is necessary to produce the corresponding synthetic spectra. The basis for calculating these spectra is given by Herzberg (1950) with term values from Krassovsky (1962) and Einstein coefficients from Turnbull and Lowe (1989). The temperatures can then be derived since the upper populated energy states of the OH(6,2) band are distributed according to the Stefan-Boltzmann distribution. Recent work by Conner (1993) explains in detail how the parameters necessary for generating the synthetic spectra as a function of the rotational temperature can be calculated. The temperature is found by choosing the optimal fit between the measured and the synthetic spectrum through iteration, to minimize the least square error.
Fig. 1 shows a typical result of fitting a synthetic spectrum to the data obtained during the UNILEO campaign. In this case, a temperature of 204°K with a fit value of 0.95 was found. The fit value is defined as
where l is the least mean square difference between the measured and the synthetic spectrum. This is the same fit function that was used by Viereck (1988). A Fit=0.8 represents a relative uncertainty of approximately ± 2°K.
2.2 The SOUSY Svalbard radar
The SOUSY Svalbard Radar (SSR) of the Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie (MPAe) is an MST radar (Röttger, 2000). It uses the main basic components of the mobile SOUSY radar, which was constructed near Longyearbyen in summer 1998. It consists of a transmitter operating on 53.5 MHz at peak power of 150 kW (60 kW with 2.5 kW average power during this campaign), and a phased-array antenna system of 356 Yagi antennas (total 33 dBi gain and 4 degrees half-power beamwidth). Phase steering allows five beam pointing directions at zenith and 5 degrees zenith angle to NE, SE, SW and NW. Transmitter, radar control, receiver and digital signal processing units and auxiliary equipment is housed in three containers. For the meteor observations a 20-bit complementary code with 2 us baud length is used, corresponding to 300m range resolution.
The SSR was not originally conceived or optimized as meteor radar, but it detects meteors as any other MST radar. This can be used to get wind and temperature estimates, and some information about the entrance and ablation of meteorites in the lower thermosphere and upper mesosphere. For comparison with the OH spectrometer observations, around the Leonid meteor shower in November 1999, the SSR was operated in a special meteor radar mode with a short coherent integration sampling time of 28 ms and antenna beam directions fixed for longer periods. The system did not allow a faster data rate, which would have been a more suitable choice. The antenna beam direction was kept constant for about 1hour and then switched to the orthogonal direction for another hour. More than 4 days of meteor radar data were collected. We concentrate here on underdense echoes, where the echo amplitude decay can be used to deduce the diffusion coefficient and hence the temperature (e.g., Hocking, 1999). Using equation (4) of Hocking et al. (1997) we obtain the temperatures
, (K) (2)
where p is the pressure in Pascal and t1/2 the time at which the amplitude of the meteor echo has fallen to half its peak value. The pressure was taken from the CIRA 1986 model. For a geometric height of 84.8 km this is 48.5 Pa.
Fig. 2 shows an example of underdense meteor echoes observed in the evening before the Leonid shower maximum. These prove the exponential decay of the echoes. We use these kinds of echoes to determine decay time and diffusion coefficient and hence the temperature can be estimated using equation (2).
Fig. 3 shows the temperature estimates obtained from the spectrometer as a function of time throughout the campaign The time axis is day number in 1999. Each cross on the figure represents the mean temperature of one hour of measurements. As it can be seen the data is spread over a rather large temperature interval ranging over more than 50 K around an average value of 200-210°K, illustrating the large temperature variations of the upper mesosphere. The time of the Leonid meteor shower on the morning of the 18th of November is marked on the figure. The crosses with boxes represent data that have a fit function (equation (1)), which is better than 80%. These temperature estimates are compared with simultaneously deduced temperature estimates obtained from the radar.
As an initial attempt we have carefully screened the SSR observations on 18 November 1999, 0000 UT +-3 hours. The latter part of this period covers the Leonid shower when about three times as many meteor echoes were observed than usual. In total we found some 35 meteor echo events in the altitude range 82-90 km which fulfilled our criteria of sufficient signal-to-noise ratio and proper exponential decay. This relatively low rate of meteor events results from the fact that the antenna beam is just 4 degrees wide. However, it was possible to obtain estimates of the diffusion coefficient and the temperature, which we classified to cover height ranges 82-86 km and 86-90 km.
Fig. 4 shows the CIRA temperature profile and superimposed the temperature estimates for the given time period. The variance of measured temperatures is fairly broad for both instruments, due to measurement uncertainties and geophysical noise (probably due to shorter period gravity waves). The mean value, however, matches quite well with the model temperature profile.
There are some matters of uncertainty to the accuracy of the OH-rotational temperatures. Pendleton et al. 1989 questioned whether excited OH is in thermal equilibrium. They made spectral measurements of the (7,4)-band and came to the conclusion that for rotational levels above J´ = 5 this is not the case. In general whether excited OH is in thermal equilibrium or not is definitely a question of vibrational level, as the lifetime of the molecule decreases when the vibrational level increases. The collision frequency in this altitude of the atmosphere is of the order 104s-1, while the average lifetime of OH in vibrational state 6 is of the order 10-2-10-3s-1 (Turnbull and Lowe, 1989). Thus it is reliable that OH(v=6) is in thermal equilibrium for the lower rotational states. The temperature derived from the OH-airglow therefore is equal to the average temperature of the surrounding atmosphere with a standard error of below 10K. Another matter of uncertainty is the height and thickness of the airglow layer. Baker and Stair (1988) compared previous measurements of the layer made from rockets and found that the height is nearly constant regardless of latitude or season. Still this is the biggest problem with the OH-temperatures. In particular as only few measurements of the OH-height has been performed at high latitudes. As there are strong temperature gradients in this part of the mesopause region, and the airglow temperature results from the OH-layer 3 kilometers higher up, the observed difference between the temperatures could be natural. However, comparison of more measurements is needed to investigate this.
The temperature estimates obtained from the radar are quite sensitive to the time t1/2 and the pressure. Whereas p/t1/2 can be obtained with acceptable accuracy by choosing a significant amount of proper underdense meteor echoes, the pressure cannot directly be measured but has to be taken from a model. Hocking et al. (1999) have tried to untangle this problem of pressure dependence. The large variance of the data points, as we observe with the radar, is similar to observations at other locations (Chilson et al., 1996; Hocking et al., 1999). It partially results from influence of noise on the signal, inhomogeneity of the meteor trail during diffusion, or on the ionic composition of the ablating meteorite.
A comparison of the measured temperatures and the CIRA 1986 average temperatures for November was made (figure 4). As it can be seen the temperatures are made in different heights and the difference between them is corresponding fairly well with the gradient in the temperatures from the CIRA model. It is also seen that the mean OH rotational temperatures are more than 10K below the model temperatures.
A direct measure of the pressure can be carried out by using the temperatures from the spectrometer combined with the radar measurements of t1/2. The method may be a good candidate for improving model calculations. This should be performed later. These preliminary observations prove that useful information can be extracted from the meteor observations of the SSR. We think, however, that a special purpose meteor radar with wider beam and receiving interferometry would be an advisable improvement for such radar observations (Röttger, 2000). The combination with the OH spectrometer observations of temperature is a most useful improvement.
In figure 5 an example of a Lomb normalized periodogram of the OH rotational temperatures is shown. The spectrum has no peaks stronger than 5 Kelvin, which is only slightly more than the uncertainty of the temperatures (2 Kelvin). This indicates that no tides were present over Svalbard in November 1999, which had stronger amplitude than 2 Kelvin. This differs from the neutral wind measurements of Aso et al. (1999). Their measurements were done with the EISCAT Svalbard radar also located in Adventdalen. They found that the diurnal and semidiurnal tides were the dominating modes in the region between 90 km and 120 km height and of considerable strength. However their measurements were done in August, not November. Myrabo and Deehr (1984) found semi-diurnal variations of the temperatures in December with an amplitude of 3 Kelvin, which if they where present, just barely would have been detected from the OH rotational temperatures. Meaning that this does not contradict the present measurements. Also the results of the GSWM-98 (Hagan et al., 1999) are in agreement with the present measurements, as the amplitudes of both the diurnal and semi-diurnal tides in this are 1 Kelvin or weaker at OH-airglow heights over Svalbard.
<big>5. Concluding remarks</big>
The temperatures measured with the Ebert Fastie spectrometer and the SSR were in reasonably good agreement. The simultaneous measurements may give rise to later pressure measurements in the height of the airglow layer. We will look into this in the future. However, we have to be aware that such observations can yield reliable estimates only if long averages are possible. Another result of this campaign was that neither diurnal nor semi-diurnal variations of temperature were detected.
Fig. 1. The measured and synthetic spectra of the OH(6,2) band. Each line is marked and identified according to quantum state. The curve plotted with line color red is the synthetic, green the measured and yellow is the detected background spectra, respectively. The spectral lines plotted with blue color represents emissions caused by aurora.
Fig. 2. Underdense meteor echoes observed with the SOUSY-VHF-Radar on 17.11.1999 at altitudes 82.6 - 85.3 km. The antenna was pointing to NW at elevation 85°. The record covers 1.8 seconds. A single sample was obtained every 28 milliseconds. The pressure at 85 km height is according to the CIRA86 model 4.9 Pa. Thus the echo decay rate corresponds to a temperature of about 220 Kelvin (from equation (2)).
Fig. 3. Time series of airglow hydroxyl temperatures obtained by the Silver Bullet spectrometer at the Auroral Station in Adventdalen during the UNILEO campaign, 14-21 November 1999. Each point represents an hourly averaged temperature. Square and crossed symbols represent fit values above or below 80%, respectively.
Fig. 4. The zonal mean upper mesospheric temperatures in November at 80°N as a function of height according the COSPAR International Reference Atmosphere model from 1986 (CIRA 1986). On the figure the single meteor-radar temperature and the OH-rotational temperatures are marked. The error bar of the meteor temperature is 10° K. The temperatures from the spectrometer correspond to the spread of the temperatures throughout the campaign.
Fig. 5. A Lomb-Scargle analysis of the OH-rotational temperatures. The analysis is made of 1-hour average temperatures from the period between the 13th of November and the 30th of November 1999.
We appreciate the support of this campaign by the University Courses on Svalbard (UNIS).
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Aso, T., A. van Eyken, and P. J. S. Williams, EISCAT Svalbard Radar derived atmospheric tidal features in the lower thermosphere as compared with the numerical model ATM2, Adv. Upper Atmos. Res., 13, 48-56, 1999.
Baker, D. J and A. T. Stair, Jr., Rocket Measurements of the Altitude Distributions of the Hydroxyl Airglow, Physica Scripta. Vol. 37, 611-622, 1988.
Bjørdal, A., Research in Svalbard 1998, Norsk Polarinstitutt, Tromsø, 1998.
Chilson, P. B., P. Czechowsky, and G. Schmidt, A comparison of ambiploar diffusion coefficient in meteor trains using VHF radar and UV lidar, Geophys. Res. Lett., 23, 2745-2748, 1996.
Conner, J., An Investigation of the Dynamics of the Mesopause. Fabry-Perot Observations of Winds and Temperatures from Nightglow Emissions. Ph. d. thesis., Fairbanks, 1993.
Dick, K. A., G. G. Sivjee and H. M. Crosswhite, Aircraft Airglow Intensity Measurements: Variations in OH and OI (5577), Planet. Space Sci., Vol. 18, 887, 1970.
Fastie, W. G., A small plane grating monochromator, J. Opt. Soc. Am., Vol. 42, 641, 1952.
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Viereck, R., Effects of Gravity Waves on the Polar O2 & OH Airglow. Thesis work, Fairbanks 1988.


A tomb, a place where the dead goes to have a comfortable journey to the afterlife, is what ancient egyptians use to take the dead to the afterlife. The egyptians believed that the dead don’t just teleport to the afterlife, they need to have a journey to the afterlife. On the walls are hieroglyphics, enigmatic or incomprehensible symbols or writing, of what is going to happen in the journey to the afterlife. To make a tomb you can’t just chuck someone in a hole. You have to have a person to design the tomb to make it hard to find the actual dead body so tomb robbers can’t rob the tomb of it’s riches. But usually whoever creates the design robs the tomb anyway. A tomb can be as big as a classroom or even as big as 4 statues of libertys side by side. Kings/pharaohs usually get a tomb that is a pyramid. Poor people get tombs the are the ones with the bodies buried in sand and the priests or people close to the pharaohs or kings get a tomb in a temple.
What Different Types of Tombs are There?


Collecting together essays written by an international set of contributors, this book provides an important contribution to the emerging field of disability history. It explores changes in understandings of deformity and disability between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, and reveal the ways in which different societies have conceptualised the normal and the pathological.
Through a variety of case studies including: early modern birth defects, homosexuality, smallpox scarring, vaccination, orthopaedics, deaf education, eugenics, mental deficiency, and the experiences of psychologically scarred military veterans, this book provides new perspectives on the history of physical, sensory and intellectual anomaly.
Examining changes over five centuries, it charts how disability was delineated from other forms of deformity and disfigurement by a clearer medical perspective. Essays shed light on the experiences of oppressed minorities often hidden from mainstream history, but also demonstrate the importance of discourses of disability and deformity as key cultural signifiers which disclose broader systems of power and authority, citizenship and exclusion.
The diverse nature of the material in this book will make it relevant to scholars interested in cultural, literary, social and political, as well as medical, history.
|Publisher:||Taylor & Francis|
|Series:||Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine Series , #25|
|Product dimensions:||6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.56(d)|
Table of Contents
List of figures ix
Notes on contributors x
Introduction: approaching anomalous bodies David M. Turner 1
Part I Discipline and deformity: the medical and moral world of monstrosity 17
1 Representing physical difference: the materiality of the monstrous Kevin Stagg 19
2 'When a disease it selfe doth Cromwel it': the rhetoric of smallpox at the Restoration David E. Shuttleton 39
3 Plague Spots Hal Gladfelder 56
4 'Wonderful effects!!!' Graphic satires of vaccination in the first decade of the nineteenth century Suzanne Nunn 79
Part II Controlling disabled bodies: medicine, politics and policy 95
5 Disciplining disabled bodies: the development of orthopaedic medicine in Britain, c.1800-1939 Anne Borsay 97
6 Making deaf children talk: changes in educational policy towards the deaf in the French Third Republic François Buton 117
7 Eugenics, modernity and nationalism Ayça Alemdarogl u 126
8 'Human dregs at the bottom of our national vats': the interwar debate on sterilization of the mentally deficient Sharon Morris 142
9 'That bastard's following me!' Mentally ill Australian veterans struggling to maintain control Kristy Muir 161
10 Afterword - regulated bodies: disability studies and the controlling professions Sharon Snyder David Mitchell 175