President Declares National Emergency
Sydney Cooper, Editor-in-Chief|February 15, 2019
On February 15, 2019, President Donald Trump officially declared the United States to be in a state of national emergency due to the dissatisfaction with the funding Congress is providing him for barriers at the southern border.
When a national emergency is called by the President, this means that there is a situation beyond the ordinary which threatens the health or safety of citizens and which cannot be properly addressed by the use of other law. For Trump’s administration, this means building the wall.
Trump’s reasoning behind the need for a Southern Border wall is rooted in wanting to stop crime from entering the United States. He said, “We want to stop drugs from coming into our country. We want to stop criminals and gangs from coming into our country.”
According to CBS news chief correspondent Major Garrett, the President will announce he’s getting $8 billion for the border wall. These funds were previously asked for through Congress, however, Trump said the deal “wasn’t good enough.”
This move is almost certain to be met with a legal challenge. Congress is looking to overrule the President’s declaration through Congress or through the courts by the National Emergencies Act. This states that the House and the Senate can take up what is called a joint resolution of termination to end the emergency status if they believe the president is acting irresponsibly or the threat has dissipated.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Trump’s move sets a precedent that a future Democrat president could capitalize on, “If the president can declare an emergency on something he has created as an emergency, an illusion that he wants to convey, just think about what a president with different values can present to the American people.”
Few Republicans have commented on the national emergency, yet the ones that have spoken out are mostly criticizing the declaration.
Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky and an ally to the president on other issues, said a national emergency declaration of this sort ran counter to the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution.
Another known Trump ally, Senator Marco Rubio said in a statement, “We have a crisis at our southern border, but no crisis justifies violating the Constitution.”
At Highlands High School, there are differing perspectives on Trump declaring the national emergency.
Senior Kat Finseth said, “I have lost all faith in our system. Our democracy is based on the idea of separation of powers, and Congress has abdicated their authority and responsibility to check Donald Trump. Hopefully, the courts will strike this down.”
While Junior Will Russell said, “While this is not necessarily the preferred way of getting the funds, I believe this will is still an effective way of building the wall. He had given Congress a significant amount of time to allow for increased funding in a spending bill, but they did not allow the funds to be given. The use of emergency powers is an effective, lawful way of constructing the border wall.”
Over the next couple of days, Congress and the courts will be making decisions about the national emergency.


'Desperately needed': Man steals packages containing teen’s cancer medication
By Carla Wade and Nina Porciuncula
The mother of a child with a rare cancer is scrambling to replace his chemotherapy medicine after someone swiped it right off their front porch of their home.The sight is so familiar, it’s almost a suburban cliché. We've even given these common package thieves a catchy nickname: porch pirates. But this one is particularly sinister to Stacy Shavinsky.“It just happened that this time it wasn't a shirt or pair of shoes,” Shavinsky said. “It happened to be something that we desperately needed.”Her 14-year-old son, Gage, has a rare form of cancer called systemic mastocytosis.Insurance doesn't cover the total cost of $40,000 a month because it’s not typically given to someone his age."I had to do a lot of begging and pleading and I had to apply for financial assistance,” said Shavinsky. “We went to Salt Lake City and Los Angeles to get second opinions, so we have done a lot of work to make sure this medication would be beneficial for him."The alleged thief should be easy to identify. The individual is wearing a bright red plaid shirt and a Montreal Expos ball cap and is captured on their doorbell camera.But it’s the callous casualness of it all that really irked Shavinsky and the more than a thousand people who saw the video on Facebook and shared it. With a drink and fruit in hand, he strolls up the sidewalk and puts his food to the side on a table, exchanging it for two boxes on the porch before just walking away.Gage, who has been dealing with an infection due to a compromised immune system, said the medication was just starting to work for him.“I’m just sad. I know how much my mom worked for it,” he said. “And these pills are really helping me. I can really tell the difference. And just knowing that I'm going to have to wait to take them and the next couple of days. I'm going to feel really bad.’A crime map shows no other reported thefts in the area, even though Stacy said police told her there have been others. She believes most people decline to report it just because it’s so common."There's just no accountability,” she said. “When I talked to the police, they said there was an investigator in the neighborhood so he happened to stop by, but if I had called dispatch it would have been five or six hours before someone actually came out."She spent the day making arrangements with the pharmaceutical company to get it replaced but what she really wants is for the guy to be caught.“And there needs to be some sort of consequences for his actions.”The-CNN-Wire
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) —
The mother of a child with a rare cancer is scrambling to replace his chemotherapy medicine after someone swiped it right off their front porch of their home.
The sight is so familiar, it’s almost a suburban cliché. We've even given these common package thieves a catchy nickname: porch pirates. But this one is particularly sinister to Stacy Shavinsky.
“It just happened that this time it wasn't a shirt or pair of shoes,” Shavinsky said. “It happened to be something that we desperately needed.”
Her 14-year-old son, Gage, has a rare form of cancer called systemic mastocytosis.
Insurance doesn't cover the total cost of $40,000 a month because it’s not typically given to someone his age.
"I had to do a lot of begging and pleading and I had to apply for financial assistance,” said Shavinsky. “We went to Salt Lake City and Los Angeles to get second opinions, so we have done a lot of work to make sure this medication would be beneficial for him."
The alleged thief should be easy to identify. The individual is wearing a bright red plaid shirt and a Montreal Expos ball cap and is captured on their doorbell camera.
But it’s the callous casualness of it all that really irked Shavinsky and the more than a thousand people who saw the video on Facebook and shared it. With a drink and fruit in hand, he strolls up the sidewalk and puts his food to the side on a table, exchanging it for two boxes on the porch before just walking away.
Gage, who has been dealing with an infection due to a compromised immune system, said the medication was just starting to work for him.
“I’m just sad. I know how much my mom worked for it,” he said. “And these pills are really helping me. I can really tell the difference. And just knowing that I'm going to have to wait to take them and the next couple of days. I'm going to feel really bad.’
A crime map shows no other reported thefts in the area, even though Stacy said police told her there have been others. She believes most people decline to report it just because it’s so common.
"There's just no accountability,” she said. “When I talked to the police, they said there was an investigator in the neighborhood so he happened to stop by, but if I had called dispatch it would have been five or six hours before someone actually came out."
She spent the day making arrangements with the pharmaceutical company to get it replaced but what she really wants is for the guy to be caught.
“And there needs to be some sort of consequences for his actions.”


Yemen Tensions at the Tipping Point
Yemen could be edging toward civil war, particularly if the military gets involved in both sides of the conflict, says Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen, but the United States has limited ability to influence the outcome in a country that has been an ally in fighting terrorism.
Interview by Gregory Johnsen, Interviewee
Renewed fighting in Yemen’s capital between a powerful tribal group known as the al-Ahmar family and President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s forces has reportedly killed over one hundred people in the past week (al-Jazeera) and raised questions about whether the country is on the brink of civil war. The possibility looms large if the military gets involved in the conflict between the government and tribal forces, says Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen. While the United States has been a generous benefactor to Yemen over the years, the aid has fluctuated with the perceived terrorist threat, says Johnsen. Right now, Johnsen believes, "the United States doesn’t have a great deal of leverage or influence" in Yemen. There have been tensions for years between Yemen’s elite, who don’t want Saleh to appoint his son or anyone else to replace him, says Johnsen, but there is no clear successor to Saleh, who has been president since 1978. Johnsen says a transitional council should be set up, which would lead to elections if Saleh leaves. Johnsen says, "President Saleh will either be forced out, or will have to vacate the presidency. I don’t see him lasting out his term, which is to 2013." But he adds that in 1978, the CIA predicted Saleh would not last six months.
Yemen looks like pure chaos right now. Is that an exaggeration?
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It’s certainly a chaotic situation, but there is a structure to what’s taking place. The worrying development is that forces loyal to Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar [former general of the Yemen army, and half brother of Saleh], who had defected from the regime back in March, and forces loyal to the president were involved in clashes today. This is a significant escalation. Previously, what we’d seen in Sanaa was fighting between forces loyal to the president and forces loyal to a major tribal family--the family that leads the Hashid tribal confederation. That family is called the al-Ahmar family, although they bear no relation to Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar. If the military gets involved on both sides of the conflict, then we could have something that really drags Yemen into a civil war.
Right now, it’s not a civil war?
There’s a lot of fighting, but it would still be a stretch to call it a civil war. President Saleh is [probably] quite worried, which is why forces loyal to him have cracked down on protestors over the past couple of nights in the city of Taiz and have attempted to force peaceful protestors out of some of the squares that they’ve occupied for the past three months. So there has been escalation, and I think there will continue to be escalation as Saleh is increasingly seeing himself as being in a corner. It’s do or die time for Saleh, and he’s digging in his heels.
If the military gets involved, then we could have something that really drags Yemen into a civil war.
Why did he come under attack in recent weeks?
In recent years, there’s been growing tension among the elite circles within Yemen over the direction of the state, particularly who was going to succeed Saleh--whether it was going to be his eldest son Ahmad or one of his nephews. This led to fractures within the inner circle. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar has been someone who has protected Saleh for the past three decades. Essentially, the president was his back, and he was the president’s back. He was really the iron fist of Saleh’s rule, and in recent years, their relationship has led into some difficulties because of Saleh’s rumored attempts to install Ahmad as a potential successor as president.
Ahmar didn’t want Saleh’s son to replace him?
It’s unclear exactly what the general wanted. He’s someone who, previous to his defection, was very much behind the scenes in Yemen, much more of a kingmaker than a king. There’s also been a lot of tension between the other al-Ahmar family, [which] the president is now fighting. The tribal head of Hashid since 1960 had been Sheikh Abdullah al-Ahmar. He died in 2007 of cancer and after he died, his ten sons, especially Hamid, had been very active in challenging the president. There’s been a lot of tension between these two families, whereas previously, Sheikh Abdullah al-Ahmar had been seen as a close ally of the president, even though Sheikh Abdullah led Yemen’s largest opposition party. And once he died, his sons really started to pressure the president much more than they ever had previously. So this fighting that we’ve seen in the past week between the al-Ahmar family and forces loyal to the president has been building for quite some time. In fact in August 2009, Hamid al-Ahmar (YemenTimes) went on al-Jazeera, and said that he believed Saleh should be tried for crimes against the state.
The United States supplies enormous amounts of foreign aid and military equipment to Yemen, particularly since the 2009 al-Qaeda attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit. Is there anything else the United States can do right now?
The real question is not when or if Saleh leaves, but the manner in which he leaves the presidency. Is it something in which he drags the entire country into civil war in an attempt to hold onto power?
At the moment, the United States has been providing a lot of aid. But it is instructive to see how, over the past twenty years, the United States has doled out aid in Yemen. Yemen was on the UN Security Council in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. And after going back and forth on exactly what Yemen should do, eventually Yemen abstained and voted "no" to a number of resolutions, which infuriated not only Washington, but also Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. That had a severe impact on Yemen’s autonomy. So from 1990 until November 2001, much of the aid that the United States put into Yemen was only humanitarian food aid, and this was about $400,000 a year. After September 11, 2001, the United States started putting a great deal of aid into Yemen, particularly related to counterterrorism, which went up in ’01, ’02, ’03. Then, as the threat from al-Qaeda started to dwindle in 2004 and 2005, the U.S. money went away; in fact, in 2006, it got as low as $4.6 million. There was a resurgence of al-Qaeda in Yemen, particularly after an attack on the U.S. Embassy in late 2008. Since [then], the U.S. aid really increased to Yemen. Most figures have it at $300 million, with about $170 million for counterterrorism and about $130 million for development aid.
Does the United States have much influence over Yemen’s armed forces?
The United States doesn’t have a great deal of leverage or influence. A few months ago, it was a different story. The United States had tremendous political influence; that is, what the United States says matters a great deal to Yemen. Financially, the money that the United States puts into the country is dwarfed by Yemen’s neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia has a great deal of influence, not just from money that it puts into the country through the central government, but also through its tribal allies that it patronizes in Yemen.
We’re at a situation where Saleh has continued to refuse to sign the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-brokered deal that would see him step down in exchange for immunity and early elections. At this point, there are not a lot of very good options for outside powers. Saleh’s thinking seems to be that he will beat his domestic opponents, in effect clear the table, and then hold some sort of new elections for either himself, a family ally, or another close ally to assume the presidency. These are things he’s done in the past, but at this point, things in Yemen have fundamentally changed, so it would be very difficult for him to pull that off.
What are the U.S. options?
The options are not that extensive. No one wants to see any sort of a military involvement with U.S. troops on the ground. Most people who have spent time looking at Yemen realize that that would be disastrous. Targeted sanctions, as Washington has done with Syria, would give Saleh an incentive to stay and really fight until the end.
Why did Saleh pull out at the last minute after promising to sign that deal worked out by the GCC and backed by the United States?
I don’t think Saleh ever had any intention of signing the deal or stepping down. He thinks this is a crisis that he can weather, and something that he can withstand. The way he handled it is the way that he has often handled difficult situations in Yemen. He was up against the wall with the GCC under a lot of pressure from the regional and international communities. He had all the diplomatic representatives from the GCC sign the agreement, and then [he said], "I’m not going to sign it until the opposition actually comes here and signs in the presidential palace." The opposition, of course, had signed the deal the night before, as instructed by the GCC--and this was a last-minute condition that Saleh imposed. His attempt was to say, "It wasn’t me, the opposition was unwilling to compromise. I would have signed if they just came." That didn’t work, and then that night his troops started barricading and positioning weapons in their training school near the compound of the Sadeq al-Ahmar, the head of the Hashid tribe. The next morning, fighting broke out, and it has continued to escalate since then.
President Obama has said that Saleh should go (GulfNews). But what if he does? You seem to think he will, right, at some point?
At some point, Saleh will either be forced out, or will have to vacate the presidency. I don’t see him lasting out his term, which is to 2013. But people have made that prediction about Saleh before and have been proved very wrong. There is a very famous case that Saleh likes to bring up. Right after he came to the presidency, the CIA predicted that he wouldn’t last six months in power, and here he is thirty-two years later, and still the president of Yemen. The real question is not when or if Saleh leaves, but the manner in which he leaves the presidency. Is it something in which he drags the entire country into civil war in an attempt to hold onto power? And it appears that that’s where we’re headed, particularly with the fighting today between the First Armored Division and the Republican Guard and central security forces.
Is there a likely person to replace him as president?
Not necessarily. The U.S. Embassy has run these games for a number of years in which they try to come up with names of people who would eventually succeed Saleh, and every year they came up empty. The best option for Yemen would be some sort of a transitional council with a number of people representing different interests, so that they would be able to help Yemen maneuver from Saleh’s rule to a more democratically elected president. But this is going to take some time. I know there’s been a plan put out by Faisal Amin Abu Ras, Yemen’s former ambassador to Lebanon who resigned in the aftermath of one of the massacres of protestors back in March. He’s provided a lot of very interesting plans. Other people have talked about different variations of this. But if it becomes a bloody war, then all bets are off.
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‘Save Me the Plums’ Next Featured Selection for O’s Reading Room Book Club
Holland America Line and O, The Oprah Magazine have named food writer and restaurant critic Ruth Reichl’s “Save Me the Plums” as the next selection for O’s Reading Room, the line’s onboard book club. “Save Me the Plums” just released in April 2019 and is Reichl’s latest memoir, which chronicles her groundbreaking tenure as editor-in-chief at Gourmet Magazine.
Guests on all Holland America Line cruises will be able to read and discuss the selection as part of special onboard programming developed in partnership with O, The Oprah Magazine. Book club discussions are led by a member of the ship’s staff, and selections change periodically throughout the year. The latest O’s Reading Room selection is listed on Holland America Line’s website on the O, The Oprah Magazine page.
Read on below for some background on Ruth, as well as what you can expect to find in her newest book!
From the age of eight, Reichl adored Gourmet Magazine. She was introduced to the publication when her father sat her in front of piles of them in a used bookstore while he searched for first editions. She paged through them reading about exotic cuisines and travel, and began to experiment with cooking herself.
By the time she reached her fifties, Reichl had become a well-known restaurant critic for the New York Times and published author. Her first memoir, “Tender at the Bone,” had become a best seller, and yet she was surprised when she was approached by Conde Nast to run the magazine that had been her childhood inspiration.
Thus began a 10-year tenure as Gourmet’s Editor-in-Chief, during which she hobnobbed with the elite of New York Society, learned that she could manage a staff and a budget, and fell completely in love with her job while bringing it back to editorial glory. But then one day, the Newhouses decided to close shop without warning, leaving Reichl & her beloved staff blindsided.
What brought her out of her unemployed funk? She started cooking again … and that’s the story of “Save Me the Plums.”
Holland America Line and O, The Oprah Magazine Partnership
Holland America Line and O, The Oprah Magazine’s exclusive partnership unites the soul-stirring power of travel with O’s deep commitment to connection and personal growth. More than 300 Holland America Line cruises sailing in North America this year offer a variety of engaging activities developed with the magazine’s editors including meditation, exercise, healthy eating and more. Due to its popularity, all 15 ships in the fleet around the world feature O’s Reading Room.
Tags: O Magazine, O's Onboard Book Club, O's Reading Room
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Venezuela automotive
Currency and petrol price adjustments announced
February 18th 2016 | Venezuela | Fuel sources
The president, Nicolás Maduro, has announced a moderate devaluation of the bolívar and a petrol price increase. Adjustment measures do not go far enough to address deep distortions in the economy.
Revisions to the foreign-exchange system were probably the most important of all Mr Maduro's recent announcements. One of the three official exchange rates, the so-called Sicad, will be eliminated. Of the two remaining rates, the fixed official rate will be devalued by 37%, from Bs6.3:US$1 to Bs10:US$1. The second rate, the so-called Simadi, will apparently be allowed to float, although, despite similar claims in the past, the rate has been fixed around Bs200:US$1 for many months. Currently 93% of transactions are at the official fixed rate and 7% of transactions occur through the Simadi, implying a weighted average rate of Bs23:US$1. With the black-market rate at Bs1,000:US$1, and inflation expected to average over 500% in 2016, an adjustment of the bolívar on this scale will do little to address currency overvaluation.
The other main adjustment was in petrol prices, which have been raised for the first time since 1996—by over 1,000%, to Bs1/litre, for regular unleaded petrol, and by over 6,000%, to Bs6/litre, for premium unleaded. Although this is a huge increase, in US-dollar terms even premium unleaded will cost only 27 cents/litre, implying that it will remain among the cheapest in the world—on the back of continued costly subsidies—and that border smuggling will remain rife.
The announced measures are much too timid to stop the spread of deep economic distortions. On top of this, they were accompanied by a new strategy for the "Bolivarian economic agenda", which suggests that, far from tackling the deep disincentives to domestic output that are crippling the economy, the government will plump for more and more controls in the coming months, which will ultimately heighten the risk of hyperinflation.
Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit
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Sad State of Affairs
Wendy Vega
I’m a Democrat and I’m very afraid. As much as I like Bernie Sanders and want him to be president, I don’t think it will happen. Moreover, why do these old fellows want that job? They should be writing memoirs and playing golf, not solving world problems. Yech!
I dislike Hillary.
As much as I like Bernie, I dislike Hillary. Sure, it’d be great to have a woman as president. She might make good president, but I simply don’t trust her. I don’t like her morals or scruples. I need a shower after watching her debate. Of course, the debate is on at night, so I might need a shower anyway, but I attribute it to her nonetheless.
All the Republicans are buffoons and sandbox bullies, too. I picture them all in a sandbox, taking away shovels from each other and hurling insults. “You’re a bit pumpkin head!” “You're a big fat liar!” Christie is the biggest bully of all. Rubio is silly and Cruz is scary looking. If I had to look at Cruz for eight years, I’d move to Canada.
The fact that Trump won New Hampshire is so scary I can’t even believe it. This man is racist, insulting to everyone, hates immigrants, although I’m sure his family were immigrants at some point. He is still in the sandbox, to be sure. He may have a gorgeous family, money goes a long way, and his wife would make Jackie Kennedy ugly as a first lady, albeit foreign born, but the man covets his daughter. Moreover, he makes fun of the disabled and his hair. Oy.
I have an old friend that emigrated from Europe in the early 1950s. Yet, he hates immigrants. I’m like, but you are an immigrant! “We’ll we’re European. I’m talking about Hispanics,” he says. Still, European immigrants, the Germans, Irish and Polish, for example, were, in America, reviled, at one time or another. Now it’s the turn of Hispanics.
I love immigrants, as long as they are here for positive reasons. My grandparents came from Austria. They contributed to America.
Ben Carson should return to the operating room.
Ben Carson is a surgeon. He should return to his day job. He's too soft for this rat race. Go do good deeds where you can.
I don’t even remember the names of the other candidates. Oh yeah, Carly Florina; she screwed up the company she worked for, Hewlett Packard. Go home, Carly.
The fact so many ostensible voters love Trump has me worried about the state of the country. I lived in New York and Los Angeles, but there is so much in between. Last July, I visited Oklahoma City and it was like being on another planet. People were carrying openly, discussing sermons at Starbucks and talking about how Trump is wonderful.
Between coasts, there are people who love guns and bibles and Trump. I just don’t run into them very often.
Mike Bloomberg was the mayor of New York for twelve years. When he didn’t cotton to term limits, he overturned them and stayed an extra four years. Some wish remained mayor, today.
Mike Bloomberg was a good mayor, if a little fascist.
Mike Bloomberg is now pondering an Independent run for president. Mike is a no-nonsense businessperson that was good for New York City. He cut back on places where people could smoke, made more of the city park areas and clamped down on all sorts of things. Yes, he is a bit fascistic, at times, but maybe that’s what we need in the White House. He never would’ve let Congress roll all over him, as has Obama.
Granted, no one in Middle America knows much about Bloomberg, but if he gets into the race now they will. My only problem with Mike is that he might take votes away from the Democrats. I think he should get in as Republican. He has been a shape-shifter as far as political parties are concerned, so he can shift once more.
Remember the movie “Dave?” Kevin Kline was president and Charles Grodin came in and balanced the budget overnight? We need “Dave” in the White House. Absent that, we need Bloomberg. Yes, Bloomberg a Jew, but so is Bernie Sanders. Obama is Black and he won. I’d like to think we’ve gone beyond all that, though I know we haven’t.
Bloomberg is a grownup, ad adult. He gets petulant and cranky at times, but who doesn’t? Moreover, when I worked for ABC-TV, I put a mic on his butt three times. I’d love to say I touched the butt of a president; so far, no dice.
Wendy Vega ran the board for radio legends "Cousin Brucie" and Dan Ingram, at WABC-AM, and Zacherle at WPLJ-FM, all in New York City. At WNEW-AM, Jonathan Schwartz stole her lunch and she became great friends with the legend of radio legends, William B Williams. Then Vega moved to news, first WINS-AM 1010, in New York City, later television stations in Los Angeles. Today, she is a former television news editor replaced by a machine. She's a writer living near the train station in Larchmont, New York. Joan Rivers came from Larchmont, NY. Maybe the same fate will befall Vega as befell Rivers. Watch this space.
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DVD Review: “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (available today on DVD) should have been Ferris Bueller, the corrupt college years. Based on the exploits of successful blogger/author/self proclaimed asshole, Tucker Max, this film had the potential to be shocking, inventive and possibly endearing, especially with the hyper-charismatic Matt Czuchry as Max. Czuchry brings so much energy and commitment to the role that it’s a shame that more of the general public did not see the film. Lucky for him he landed a plum role in the new hit series, The Good Wife. Of course, it’s not Czuchry’s fault, nor is it the fault of his very talented co-stars, Geoff Stults (October Road) and Jesse Bradford (Flags of Our Fathers). Given the right material (i.e. a good script) all three capable actors could have come away from this film a little less soiled.
The thrown together plot involves Max dragging his two law school pals on a road trip/bachelor party in honor of his buddy, Dan (Stults). The third friend is the embittered Drew (Bradford) who unleashes a constant barrage of venom toward all women after walking in on his girlfriend giving a blowjob to a big rap star. Sounds fun already, huh? Their destination is a strip club where they can drink and grope the dancers without repercussions. As we eventually find out, this trip is all a ploy for Max to fulfill one his ultimate sexual fantasies.
Dan is the most straight-laced of the group and ends up lying to his understanding fiancé (Keri Lynn Pratt) to go on the trip. While at the club, Drew meets a stripper with a heart of gold (and a kid), Dan winds up in the drunk tank after pissing on a cop, and Tucker succeeds is insulting nearly every woman he comes in contact with.
Like I said, since the film is based on Max’s first person narratives, the screenwriters had a golden opportunity to craft a screenplay that resembled John Hughes genius film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, in which Matthew Broderick’s’ titular character broke the fourth wall and spoke directly to the audience throughout the movie. It was Broderick’s charm and these asides to the viewers that helped make Ferris less of an asshole when he took advantage of people, (especially his friends). Unfortunately, screenwriters Max and Nils Parker created a very conventional road trip movie we’ve seen hundred of times before. And despite one of the most disgusting screen jokes I’ve ever seen (in which Max literally shits his pants), there is nothing very original in this movie. Moreover the direction and camera work are so flat that there is nothing to keep you interested.
Some of you may read comparisons between I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and the Golden Globe winning The Hangover, which is also about a bachelor party gone awry. The comparisons stop with the words “bachelor party.” The Hangover is funny and its expertly executed; I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is not. Instead, it is a clichéd raunch-fest that lobs the plot points at you like waterlogged Nerf softballs. Will Dan’s finance forgive him in time for the wedding? Will Drew wind up with the stripper and revive his heart? Will Max manage to gain the forgiveness of his friends with some longwinded wedding speech? I think you know the answers.
Should you see this movie? I think you know the answer to that, too.
DVD Reviews, Film
DVD Reviews, Geoff Stults, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, Jesse Bradford, Matt Czuchry, Tucker Max
Scott Malchus
Scott Malchus is a writer, filmmaker and die hard Cleveland Indians fan. His memoir, “Basement Songs,” is available in paperback and Kindle. He wrote and directed the film “King's Highway." His family is heavily involved in fund raising to find a cure for cystic fibrosis. Scott Malchus is an employee of Cartoon Network and Turner Broadcasting. The opinions expressed on Popdose are his own and do not reflect those of his employer. Email: Malchus@popdose.com. Follow him @MrMalchus
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The Popdose Guide to Prince, Part Three


seychelles scops owl
Unlock thousands of full-length species accounts and hundreds of bird family overviews when you subscribe to Birds of the World. Its call which sounds like a rasping "whaugh" with various "tok tok" notes can be heard from a far distance and in particular in the darkness. The Bird Island, Home To Heaviest Tortoise And Famous For Birdlife. Each species account is written by leading ornithologists and provides detailed information on bird distribution, migration, habitat, diet, sounds, behavior, breeding, current population status, and conservation. The Bird Island, which is the … In 1959 it was rediscovered by French naturalist Phillippe Loustau-Lalanne in a mountainous cloud forest at an altitude of 200 meter above sea level on the island of Mahé. The Seychelles Scops Owl (Otus insularis) - also known as Bare-legged scops-owl or syer (in Creole) - is a rare scops owl which only occurs in the Morne Seychellois National Park on the Seychelles island of … locusts). In 2000 the first infrared photograph was shot of a female with her juvenile. The long grey legs are unfeathered. The underparts and the facial disc are rufous. It is also known as the Bare-legged Scops Owl. Denver W. Holt, Regan Berkley, Caroline Deppe, Paula L. Enríquez, Julie L. Petersen, José Luis Rangel Salazar, Kelley P. Segars, Kristin L. Wood, Guy M. Kirwan, and Jeffrey S. Marks, Ornithological Society Of The Middle East The Caucasus And Central Asia, RED DE OBSERVADORES DE AVES Y VIDA SILVESTRE DE CHILE. Information. It is mainly found in highland forests of Mahe, so it is rarely seen. Due to the lack of information about the population this species was long regarded as critically endangered by the IUCN. The Seychelles scops owl (Otus insularis), also known as bare-legged scops owl or syer (in Creole) is a rare scops owl species, which only occurs in the Morne Seychellois National Park on the Seychelles island of Mahé. Its plumage is rufous brown and exhibits black shaft streaks. The eyes are large and golden yellow. Sexual size dimorphism in the critically endangered Seychelles Scops Owl Otus insularis, SPECIES CONSERVATION ASSESSMENT & ACTION PLAN, ARKive - Photos and Information about the Seychelles Scops Owl, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seychelles_scops_owl&oldid=989436605, Articles with dead external links from May 2018, Articles with permanently dead external links, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 18 November 2020, at 23:50. Breeding in Indian ocean: Seychelles Islands; can be seen in 1 country. Description. Originally … Otus insularis (Seychelles Scops Owl) is a species of birds in the family typical owls. Distribution: Endemic to the Seychelles Archipelago. Originally present on most of the islands, but now only on Mahé. Its call which sounds like a rasping "whaugh" with various "tok tok" notes can be heard from a far distance and in particular in the darkness. The Seychelles scops-owl (Otus insularis), also known as Bare-legged scops-owl or syer (in Creole) is a rare scops owl species, which only occurs in the Morne Seychellois National Park on the Seychelles island of Mahé. Distribution: Endemic to the Seychelles Archipelago. Discover them all with Birds of the World. Due to the clearing of the mountainous cloud forests and introduced alien animals, like rats, cats, and barn owls the population had dropped so drastically that it was thought to be extinct by 1906. The Seychelles Scops Owl is a very small owl with tiny, barely visible ear-tufts. The Seychelles scops owl (Otus insularis), also known as bare-legged scops owl or syer (in Creole) is a rare scops owl species, which only occurs in the Morne … Its plumage is rufous brown and exhibits black shaft streaks. It can sometimes be heard calling from tall trees, its usual call sounds like a frog or the rasping noise of a big saw on wood, Seychelles Scops Owl © Herve Chelle Seychelles Scops Owl ~ Otus insularis Introduction. A survey by Nature Seychelles … The eyes are large and golden yellow. It reaches a length between 19 and 22 cm. The scops owl was thought to be extinct for many years and no one had seen a nest or egg nor knew what it ate, when these were discovered by Nature Seychelles team in 1999 and 2000. Reproduction is dioecious. It is listed as endangered by IUCN and in CITES Appendix II. Every bird has a story. An extensive multimedia section displays the latest photos, videos and audio selections from the Macaulay Library. Thanks to the new knowledge and the conservation efforts on Mahé this species was reclassified as endangered in 2004. Due to the discovery of further populations it was noticed by 2002 that the population was stable at about 318 individuals. Seychelles Scops Owl … Free, global bird ID and field guide app powered by your sightings and media. The wings are about 17 cm. It reaches a length of between 19 and 21 cm. Seychelles Scops Owl: English, United States: Seychelles Scops-Owl: French: … In 1999 the first nest was discovered but there was no breeding success. It reaches a length of between 19 and 21 cm. Its diet consists of geckos, tree frogs and insects. Its diet consists of geckos, tree frogs and insects (e.g. The ear tufts are very small. The scops owl or Syer is nocturnal which means it is active at night. The Seychelles Scops Owl is a very small owl with tiny, barely visible ear-tufts. The underparts and the facial disc are rufous. It is also known as the Bare-legged Scops Owl. The ear tufts are very small. The Seychelles scops owl (Otus insularis), also known as bare-legged scops owl or syer (in Creole) is a rare scops owl species, which only occurs in the Morne Seychellois National Park on the Seychelles … The wings are about 17 cm. (Browse free accounts on the home page.). It is found in the Afrotropics. Information. The wings are about 17 cm. Today the range consists of 159 territories which cover an area of 33 km². The long grey legs are unfeathered. The range of this bird when first described in 1880 were the Seychelles islands of Praslin, Mahé, and Silhouette Island. The Seychelles Scops Owl ( Otus insularis) - also known as Bare-legged scops-owl or syer (in Creole) - is a rare scops owl which only occurs in the Morne Seychellois National Park on the Seychelles island of Mahé. Seychelles Scops Owl bird information Values; Conservation status: EN - Endangered: … Seychelles Scops Owl (Otus insularis) bird calls and sounds on dibird.com. Explore Seychelles Scops-Owl Take Merlin with you in the field!
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seychelles scops owl 2020


Continental a Founding Partner and Exclusive Tyre Supplier to the New Extreme E Series
Series kicks off in spring 2021, travels around the world to five remote locations
Continental a founding partner and exclusive tyre supplier, providing special-purpose tyres for the ODYSSEY 21 electric racers
Formula 1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton launches his own team: X44
PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa, 14 October 2020 – The innovative new Extreme E all-electric off-road racing series is scheduled to make its much-anticipated debut in March 2021, and Continental is proudly a founding partner, premium sponsor and the exclusive tyre supplier to the global championship which was recently officially granted status as an FIA International Series.
Alejandro Agag, CEO of Extreme E, said: “All of us at Extreme E are delighted to have this seal of approval and be officially classified as an FIA International Series. We’ve been working hard towards this goal and the speed of recognition by the FIA gives us all a great confidence boost as we prepare to start our first season in 2021.”
The Extreme E series was founded by the same visionary team that established Formula E. From 2021, Continental will be equipping all the vehicles involved in the races with tyres for the diverse and extremely demanding conditions that they will encounter. In addition, Continental’s digital tyre monitoring platform, ContiConnect, will ensure digital connectivity, with sensors inside the tyres enabling pressures and temperatures to be constantly monitored.
The inaugural season will be staged across five diverse environments in some of the most remote regions of the world, from the desert to the Arctic and the Amazon to utilise its sporting platform to promote electrification, sustainability and equality. The first race is scheduled for March 2021.
Extreme E adopts a unique format, with each team comprising two drivers, which must include one male and one female, who both drive and share the co-driver’s navigation duties for the two race laps that make up the event. There’s a limit of up to five team members as mechanics or engineers. All of the Extreme E freight and logistics will travel by sea, using the repurposed and completely refurbished former Royal Mail Ship, the 7 000-ton St Helena, as a floating garage to reduce freight emissions by two thirds in comparison to air travel.
The organisers are gradually lifting the covers on the teams set to take professional motorsport in electric SUVs to the furthest corners of the planet. And, none other than six-time Formula 1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton has announced that his newly founded team X44 will be joining the fray.
“Extreme E really appealed to me because of its environmental focus,” says the motor racing icon, explaining his commitment to the series. And indeed, the hallmark of Extreme E is its choice of race venues in the immediate vicinity of endangered habitats. The series aims to put climate change on the radar of motorsport fans around the world, as well as politicians, local communities and authorities at the venues – and encourages a redoubling of efforts to restrict global warming to 1.5°C.
“Every single one of us has the power to make a difference,” says Hamilton. “It means so much to me that I can use my love of racing, together with my love for our planet, to have a positive impact. I feel incredibly proud to announce my new race team and confirm its entry into Extreme E.”
With the arrival of X44, eight of the Extreme E teams are now in place. “As the final preparations take shape, the tension is building,” says Sandra Roslan, who is in charge of the Extreme E project at Continental. “As founding partner and exclusive tyre supplier, we are of course thrilled that the organisers have been able to sign up Lewis Hamilton for this new and unique race series. His name is sure to play a big part in drawing global attention to the Extreme E series in its very first season.”
Lewis Hamilton’s X44 operation joins seven other teams that have already announced their involvement in Extreme E, including the famous US IndyCar teams Andretti Autosport and Chip Ganassi Racing, the Spanish QEV Technologies project, two-time Formula E champions Techeetah, and British-owned Veloce Racing, co-founded by current Formula E Champion Jean-Eric Vergne.
Two teams from Germany – ABT Sportsline and HWA RACELAB – will also be among the contenders. ABT Sportsline is one of the most successful German motorsport teams and in recent years has won three of the most important German series: the German Supertouring Championship, the DTM and the ADAC GT Masters. With eleven driver’s championships and more than 180 race wins as a Mercedes-AMG race team, HWA is the most successful DTM outfit of all time. Both teams also have experience of racing in Formula E.
As for who will be driving the ODYSSEY 21 cars for Lewis Hamilton’s team in the opening rounds of the Extreme E series, this is still to be decided. The names of most of the drivers for the other teams that have already confirmed their participation also remain a well-guarded secret.
The official virtual launch for Extreme E will take place on Tuesday 27 October 2020 at 14:00 GMT (16:00 in South Africa). Visit the website to register: www.extreme-e.com.
For more information on Continental Tyre SA, visit the website: www.continental-tyres.co.za or follow us on our social media channels: www.facebook.com/ContinentalSA and www.instagram.com/sa_continental
Continental - Extreme E - 1.jpg
Continental CrossContact Extreme E tyre.jpg


Zenobia of Palmyra – Great Warrior Queen Who Stood Up to a Roman Emperor
Zenobia | Herbert Gustave Schmalz [Public domain] (This is a guess by a German artist – no images of Zenobia exist except on coins.)
Zenobia was a queen of the Palmyrene Empire (modern Syria). She was called “The Pearl Necklace” in the history of the Syrian kingdom.
“Her face was dark and of a swarthy hue, her eyes were black and powerful beyond the usual…, her spirit divinely great, and her beauty incredible. So white were her teeth that many thought that she had pearls in place of teeth. Her voice was clear and like that of a man. Her sternness, when necessity demanded, was that of a tyrant, her clemency…that of a good emperor.”
These were the words of a Roman historian around 270 A.D. describing Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, the city of Tadmor in today’s Syria, and also the name for the empire she ruled.
There have been many queens who went to war. In my reading about amazing women and a recent focus on warrior queens, I discovered Zenobia. She was tremendously brave and a fierce fighter, meeting and – for a time – beating Roman emperor Aurelius (Lucius Domitius Aurelianus).
To Set the Stage:
Palmyra | James Gordon from Los Angeles, California, USA [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
It was the 3rd century of the Common Era. Zenobia, sometimes called Septimia or Bat-Zabbel, was born around 240 CE in the Palmyrene Empire in Syria. She married Odeanathius, ruler of the city of Palmyra (sometimes called Tadmose), and when he was assassinated, she became the regent for her young son Wahballat. Some said she had him killed, but it’s difficult to know.
Zenobia claimed that she was a Ptolemy (the last ruling dynasty of Egypt) and a direct descendant of Cleopatra. She certainly was ambitious, and in 269 she decided to conquer Egypt. Within a year, her general Zabdas has secured most of Egypt and at the same time, Zenobia with other troops had taken most of Syria, as far as the Black Sea, under her control. At this point, she truly had an empire. But it wasn’t to last long.
Zenobia’s Battles Against Aurelian
The Romans didn’t like having territory taken away from them. The emperor Aurelian was a skilled military leader, and he immediately took back much of Zenobia’s empire, reconquering Egypt first.
Zenobia met him in battle, riding on her horse. The battle resulted in a horrible slaughter of Zenobia’s troops, and they fley to Palmyra. Aurelian besieged the city, cutting off trade and travel.
During the siege, Aurelian seems to have something of a grudging admiration for Zenobia. He sent her a message asking her to surrender, telling her he would save her city if she agreed. She responded with defiance.
Finally, in desperation, Zenobia tried to escape from the city to get help from the Persians. She got through a city gate and rode on a female camel (supposed to be faster than horses) to the Euphrates River, where she was captured as she tried to board a boat.
Zenobia was brought before Aurelius as a captive. When she was confronted with her “treasonous” (to the Romans, anyway) actions, she said she was just a “simple woman” who had been misled by her advisors. Against advice, Aurelian decided not to kill her, but he took her to Rome as his captive. I’m sure he saw the political capital to be gained from showing off his beautiful prize to the Romans.
In Rome, she was supposedly shackled with gold chains and paraded through the streets of Rome in Aurelian’s triumphal procession. Later, he went back to Palmyra, sacked the city, and ended the Palmyrate empire forever.
What Happened to Zenobia
After the parade, there are several versions of events, depending on which Roman historian you read. The most likely but, for me, the least palatable, outcome was that she Zenobia was allowed to live in an estate near Rome. She was said to have married a Roman senator and lived (relatively) happy ever after.
Zenobia’s Legacy
Zenobia has become something of a symbol for other women adventurers. Lady Hester Stanhope was determined to go to the ruins of Palmyra in 1911, where she styled herself as Zenobia reborn. She expected to be hailed as another Zenobia and “was not disappointed.”
Zenobia still shows up in popular culture. I’m not sure how I feel about these commercializations; for example, see this Zenobia T shirt, and this toy, in revealing garments.
Most of my information comes from Zenobia of Palmyra, by Agnes Carr Vaughan (1967). Because there is little known about Zenobia, Vaughan says she used her “imagination liberally.” Much of her information comes from the Roman historian Pollio. So, I guess this is a 3rd hand source.
Grandma Gatewood – Intrepid Walker and Trailblazer
Emma Gatewood | Stratness [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
Emma Gatewood had lived a rough life. Born in 1887, she was married at 19. Her husband started beating her during their honeymoon and he beat her many times – sometimes almost to death – through 35 years of marriage and 11 children.
After her divorce in 1940, she was looking for something to keep fit. She saw an article about the Appalachian trail in a copy of National Geographic magazine (August 1949). So she decided to walk it.
Her story is an incredible one of determination and just plain toughness. Ben Montgomery tells Grandma Gatewood’s tale exceedingly well, so I’ll just give you the highlights.
How She Walked
National Geographic DVD about the Appalachian Trail
Emma started her walk on May 3, 1955, at the top of a mountain in Jasper, South Carolina. She was 67 years old and a great-grandmother! No one knew she was there except the taxi driver who brought her to the top of the mountain and her cousin Myrtle in Atlanta. She told her children she was going for a walk.
She had attempted the trail the year before (1954), starting in Maine, but she lost her way, broke her glasses, and ran out of food; she was ordered by Park Rangers to leave. She told no one about this aborted trip. This time she was determined to go the whole way.
She had no map, no sleeping bag, and no tent, and only a little money for food. She wore tennis shoes and carried a backpack with some essentials, including a shower curtain to use as a rain poncho. She had been preparing for her walk by walking, and she had gotten up to 10 miles a day by the time she started.
At the time she started, the official 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail was used mostly by day walkers or hikers; only a few men (and no women) had walked the entire trail. The trail was still in its infancy, still being developed, and only portions of it were marked. There were only a few shelters, and no one really knew much about it. So when Emma started walking, she was literally blazing a trail.
Her father had always told her, “Pick up your feet,” so that’s what she did. She just started walking. At the end of each day, she would start looking for a place to stay, asking politely. Sometimes she was refused, sometimes welcomed. When she was refused shelter, she slept on the trail. When she ran out of money, she would work for a few days. She would accept rides to nearby towns for food and a place to sleep, always requesting that she be returned to the trail where she left it. Most trail walkers today follow this requirement if they want to claim to have walked the entire trail.
The trail, from Mt. Oglethorpe in South Carolina to Mt. Katahdin in Main, held many dangers. There were mountains to climb, rivers with rapids to cross, and stretches of unmarked pasture land to get lost in. Many dangerous animals – mountain lions, black bears, and rattlesnakes to name a few – and people roamed around. (This was still the time of hillbillies and moonshiners.) Towns were few and far between.
When she began her trip in May, it was cold and snow was still on the mountains. Many days it rained and stormed. As she got further north, the hot summer sun beat down on her and the humidity brought out mosquitoes. And don’t forget the poison plants – dangerous to eat or to get close to. As Ben Montgomery said,
“There were a million heavenly things to see and a million spectacular ways to die.
But she was inspired by the beauty of the sights she had seen and her interactions with the kind people she met. She said,
“The forest is a quiet place and nature is beatiful. I don’t want to sit and rock. I want to do something.”
The Public Begins to Notice
In early June, near Roanoke, Virginia, Emma was approached by two Appalachian trail club members who wanted to tell her story. She was reluctant to let them publish anything about her because she still hadn’t told her family about her journey. She finally agreed to a picture and a story.
Word spread “like wood smoke” and soon she found that local reporters were joining her on her walk just to talk with her and get her story for their newspaper. She was welcomed in some towns and treated like a visiting dignitary, which annoyed her; she just wanted to keep moving.
Emma Gets Addicted to Walking
Grandma Gatewood didn’t stop with one more trip through the Appalachian Trail. She made the trip two more times, the third time completing her first attempted trip. Then she walked across the country, from Ohio to Portland, Oregon. And she did more trips, climbing six mountains in the Adirondack Range,
At age 71, she walked the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri to Portland, Oregon. Everywhere she went, reporters and crowds followed and she was asked to appear on television, including the Groucho Marx show. She said she was starting to feel like a “sideshow freak.”
Back at home, Emma set out to encourage hiking but working to establish hiking trails in Ohio. She often walked around her home in Ohio, where she would set off on walks on a whim, covering 20 miles in a day.
Her lifetime of walking counted up to 14,000 miles. In the spring of 1973, she bought a bus ticket and visited 48 states and 3 Canadian provinces. shortly after her return, on June 4, she collapsed and died. (As I reviewed my notes before writing this article, I thought I’d made an error in the date, assuming that she couldn’t have made such a long trip so shortly before her death. But she did.)
Honors and awards followed, including her 2012 induction into the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame. Emma (Grandma) Gatewood’s story was inspirational to me. She survived a brutal husband, had many children and grandchildren, and she was tough enough to start on her dream later in life. She never stopped walking and encouraging others to walk.
Pick up your feet, Jean!
Sources and more information
The quotes and most of the information in this article is from Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery. In 2018, the New York Times included Grandma Gatewood in their Overlooked series of people who should have had NYT obituaries.
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Disclosure: The books featured in my posts have links to Amazon.com, and I receive (a little) money if you buy a book from one of these links.
Ella Maillart – A Life-long Adventurer – Unconventional and Multi-Talented
It’s 1932. A woman with a bicycle is standing on a mountain looking at the eastern frontier of Russian Turkestan.
“…from the heights of the Celestial Mountains, I could [see], on a plain far away and further still to the east, the yellow dust of the Takla Makan desert. It was China, the fabulous country of which, since my childhood, I had dreamed.”
I almost cried to read these magical words – “China,” “Celestial Mountains.” Such a vision. but she couldn’t get to China. No visa could be had at that time and it was too dangerous. She explained,
“If I went on I should be arrested at the first Chinese village. Sadly I retraced my steps, turning my back on the limitless unknown that beckoned.”
But Ella Maillart was determined to get where she wanted to go. And there weren’t many places she didn’t go.
Ella Maillart at her home of Chandolin in 1992. Photo courtesy of NVP User:nvpswitzerland / CC license 3.0
Ella Maillart’s Early Life
Ella was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in February 1903. She was the only child of a wealthy fur trader and his Danish wife. A sickly child, she spent her time reading adventure books and maps and she dreamed of travel. Her adventurous life began with learning how to sail, and she and her friend Hermine de Saussure won their first sailing race at age 13. From there, she went on to many more adventures.
According to Brian Fagan*, by the age of 30, she had:
Taught French in a Welsh school
Competed in a sailing competition in the 1924 Olympics (the only woman in the race)
Acted on the stage in Paris
Captained the Swiss women’s field hockey team
Assisted at an archeological excavation in Crete
Studied film production in Moscow
Published a book about her walk through the Caucasus
Ridden a camel across the desert in what is today Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
Sailing turned to skiing and she competed for the Swiss in four world championships from 1930 to 1934. At the end of the trip above, when she was turned back at the Chinese border, she continued to travel alone back to Europe, through the southern Soviet republics, without permits and avoiding checkpoints where she could have been jailed – or worse.
The trip to Russia and her walks through the Caucasus whetted her appetite for the Far East. Her first books, Among Russian Youth (1932) and Turkestan Solo (1932).
Forbidden Journey
By 1935 Ella was back in Asia, ready to tackle China again. She and English journalist Peter Fleming (brother of James Bond creator Ian Fleming) went from Beijing to Kashgar and India, back to the place where she had stopped three years earlier.
In Forbidden Journey, she tells the story of this journey. It’s just about the best travel writing I have read in a long time.
Ella wanted to get “as far as possible from the world of luxury hotels and stream-lined expresses,” and by this time she was an experienced traveler. When she and Peter first talked of traveling, he told her she could come with him.
She stopped him and replied, “I beg your pardon. It’s my route and it’s I who will take you, if I can think of some way in which you can be useful to me.” She knew the dangers of travel and took precautions against them. She was appalled at Peter’s lack of planning and his refusal to get the vaccine against the typhus that was rampant in China at that time. Ella said her two biggest worries while traveling were toothache and appendicitis; she had had a tooth filled by Austrian sisters before her latest trip.
They walked most of the time, lived in traditional Chinese hogans, and ate local food, including “to-fu” and with food “served in little heaps in which nothing is whole and entire.” The visited Kumbum monastery in eastern Tibet, as had Alexandra David-Neel a few years before. Ella was charmed by the colors of the place and the holy men who looked like “perambulating tulips.” They ate Tsamba, a Tibetan food made from toasted barley meal and buttered tea (I know it sounds gross, but it seems to be the only drink in Tibet.)
In central Asia, they traveled in caravan – 250 camels, 30 horses, and 80 humans. Every night Peter would say, “Sixty li’s (measure of distance) nearer to London.” Ella felt the opposite. She said,
“I was so completely absorbed in the life of the trail, …the life of the beasts, of the elements, it was as though I had always been living it.”
In the mountains, Peter’s eyes suffered from the extreme light. He had neglected to bring along goggles even though she had told him to. Their interactions became curter and their bantering not as nice. Peter thought she was too serious, and she didn’t understand his British humor. She wanted to understand the “thousands of diverse lives that make up humanity,” and he just wanted to get back to England.
on June 4, 109 days after leafing Peking, they came to Sinkiang (now Xinjiang province) in northwest China, home to many ethnic groups, including the Uyghur people (Muslims that are currently being persecuted by the Chinese). Their travel became even more monotonous, and Ella recited poetry over and over to herself to keep on going. The most exasperating thing about the journey was fleas. She had to “engage in mortal combat” with them almost every night.
During their trek through this part of China, they were stopped often by soldiers who asked for their papers.
There’s much more in Ella’s story, but I’ll stop here in the hope that you will be interested in reading it. On September 12, at 17,000 feet, they ended their trip in Kashmir, in India.
Ella was sad to say goodbye to the “careless life of the trail” and head back to Europe, where “shadows of war” were hovering.
‘Suddenly I understood something. I felt now, with all the strength of my senses and intelligence, that Paris, France, Europe, the White Race, were nothing….The something that counted in and against all particularisms was the magnificent scene of things that we call the world.”
Ella’s Later Life
Peter Fleming went back to England, married actress Celia Johnson later in 1935. He continued to explore and write about his adventures, including Brazilian Adventures (still in print). He died in 1971 at age 64.
Ella Maillart continued to travel, including trips to Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iran. In 1939 she traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan, but this trip was cut short by the start of World War II. During the war she was in India studying Hundu philosophy. She returned to Tibet in 1986, then retired to her home in Chandolin, Switzerland, a virtual recluse after so many years of adventuring. She died at age 94 in March, 1997.
Journalist Simon Schreyer calls her
“an ardent traveller, a bride of the wind and a storyteller, like the world had not seen before.”
I agree. She lived life on her own terms, confident, at her own terms, and out loud.
Much information and all quotes are from Forbidden Journey
*Brian Fagan, From Stonehenge to Samarkand.
A complete biography is available on her website: http://www.ellamaillart.ch/bio_en.php
Helga Estby – Walked Across America To Save Her Family
Helga Estby (left) and her daughter Clara, 1897 in Minneapolis.| Unknown photographer [Public domain]
SPOKANE. Wash., May 4.(1896) -Mrs. H. Estby and her daughter, aged 18, leave tomorrow morning to walk to New York City. They are respectable, but will “rough it” as regular tramps and carry no baggage. Their object is to wear a new style garment, which they will exhibit when they reach New York. Mrs. Estby is the mother of eight children, all of whom are living with their father on a ranch near here, except the one going with her. The family is poor and the ranch is mortgaged. Mrs. Estby, seeing no other way of getting out, concluded to make the journey afoot.
What would you do for $250,000? That’s the equivalent today of the $10,000 promised to Helga Estby for walking across America in 1897 in an effort to get money to save her family farm. Helg’s story is amazing. Even if she only had one adventure, it was quite a big deal.
Helga’s Life Before Her Walk
Helga Estby had a tough life all around. She was born in Norway in 1860. Her father died, her mother remarried, and in 1871, when Helga was 11, they moved to Michigan. At sixteen she married Ole Estby, they had eight children, and they lived the first part of their married life in Minnesota. Their lives were like many pioneer families; the winters in Minnesota were brutal, they had to endure prairie fires, illnesses like diphtheria, hunger and the death of children.
In 1884, seeking an easier life, the Estbys moved to the area around Spokane, Washington. they bought a home in Spokane Falls and lived there with their six surviving children. But bad luck seemed to follow them. Helga was injured in a fall on a slippery street and injured her pelvis, requiring an operation. The family moved once again, to Mica Creek, about 25 miles southeast of Spokane, to a community with other Scandinavian immigrants.
Helga’s Desperate Wager
In April 1893, an economic depression hit the U.S. Ole couldn’t work because of a back injury, and they took out a loan on their property. But they couldn’t pay back the loan. They were in danger of losing their farm. In desperation, Helga somehow found a wealthy sponsor for a trip across America. She would receive $10,000 for making the trip with her 18-year old daughter Clara.
The conditions for the trip were specific: They had to work to get money, they were required to wear and publicize a new type of woman’s clothing (illustrated in the photo above), and they had to arrive by a specific date, no more than seven months later. They also had to get a signature from the governor of every state they passed through, to document their travels.
Helga’s family and neighbors were not happy about this trip. The trip was seen as irresponsible, unseemly for a woman, and even scandalous. They were advertising Ole’s inability to care for his family, and women in traditional communities should never seek publicity.
I wasn’t able to come up with a name for the mysterious sponsor. One source said it was a woman, and others said it was someone in New York. Being naturally suspicious of anonymity, I read of Helga and Clara’s adventures with increasing concern.
Helga and Clara’s Journey
Helga, 36, and Clara, 18, started on their 3,500-mile journey on May 5, 1896. They had to walk and decided to follow railroad tracks to keep from getting lost. They knew the tracks would take them into towns where they could buy things and find work. “Putting one foot in front of the other,” they set off, taking only a few things: a revolver, homemade pepper spray, and a curling iron for Clara.
They endured rain and sleet and were not welcomed in some of the towns because they were seen as “scandalous vagrants.” To cross the Blue Mountains, they had no blankets, boots or food. Averaging 27 miles a day, they were in Baker City, Oregon on May 24. In Boise, Idaho, they got their first signature.
In Park City, Utah, they found the Mormons more welcoming, and they got another signature. At this point, they picked up their new ankle-length bicycle skirts and continued.
Through Wyoming, where they were lost in forests and had adventures with mountain lions, they moved into Greely, Colorado. At this point, they needed new shoes (they wore out a total of 32 pairs of shoes on the journey). They were able to find shelter most nights and were often fed, especially as their story became known.
Somewhere after Park City, Helga and Clara started to gather more publicity. Railroad workers left jugs of water by the track for them, and they often received welcoming parties in the towns they visited. Clara injured her ankle and they had to rest for 10 days. This was a bad setback, putting their trip 10 days behind schedule.
William Jennings Bryan, c. 1896 | Copyright by Geo. H. Van Norman, Springfield, Mass. [Public domain]
Congressman William Jennings Bryan and his wife welcomed them in Lincoln, Nebraska. Bryan was in an election contest for the presidency against William McKinley of Ohio, so both he and the Estbys got publicity from the meeting.
In my research, I found an article Helga wrote while after her trip while she was stranded in New York trying to earn money to return home. The article in a Norwegian newspaper describes Helga’s experiences as a gold and silver miner She used an ordinary frying pan to pan for gold in Boise, Idaho and she was able to go down into a silver mine in Park City, Utah.
Helga and Clara arrived in Des Moines, Iowa on October 17. They bought new shoes and raincoats and headed to Chicago. The weather was turning to fall, which meant rains and cold nights. In Canton, Ohio, McKinley signed a letter for them. They quickly marched through Pennsylvania, fending off two attackers with their revolvers.
They continued trudging onward. Linda Lawrence Hunt, author of Bold Spirit, says, “Each new destination strengthened Helga’s sense of achievement” and her confidence.
The Sad Aftermath of The Journey
Finally, on December 23, 1896, they arrived in New York, at the agreed-upon location of the New York World magazine. The sponsor refused to pay, saying they had arrived late (only a few days, and mostly because of Clara’s injury). They had no money and had to work to survive. All the mother and daughter wanted was to go home. Finally, a wealthy railroad owner gave them a ticket to Minneapolis, but it took them until the spring of 1897 to get back home.
Things got worse. During the time they were stranded in New York, two of her children died of diphtheria. The family blamed her for not being there to care for them. (Yes, that’s irrational; she probably couldn’t have saved them, but it was her duty as they saw it.)
Helga had made extensive notes and kept a journal of her trip, and she hoped to write a book about it for money. She started writing, but couldn’t finish. I was able to find one magazine article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, that reproduced an article from an interview with Helga.
After Helga and Clara returned, the family farm was sold. They hadn’t saved it after all. Friends and neighbors turned their backs on the family and the family never talked of what had happened. When Helga died in 1942, a daughter burned all her notes.
It was only recently that one of Helga’s descendants found some material, which set Linda Hunt on a search for more, resulting in her book Bold Spirit.
Helga became a supporter of the women’s suffrage movement in later life. I think her journey made her think differently about women’s place in the world and how women can do anything they set out to do. She was brave, if naive, and I admired her courage.
Most of my information came from Bold Spirit. This article from HistoryLink was also a source.
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Helga died in Spokane in April 1942. Her obituary in the Spokane Daily Chronicle made no mention of her amazing trip across the U.S.
Filed Under: Women Adventurers Tagged With: famous walks, Helga Estby, women adventurers
Clara Brown – Determined Pioneer Who Held On to Hope
Clara Brown was a slave. No property, no expectations of life. But she happened to find a kind master who freed her when he died, and she started on two long journeys: one to find a place to live free, and the other to find her daughter. This is the inspiring story of a determined woman who was down, then up, then down again.
Clara’s Journey to Freedom
Clara (took the last name of Brown because that was the name of her master) was born into slavery about 1800. She lived with her mother on a plantation in Kentucky. When she was 18 she married Richard, another slave. They had four children, Richard, Margaret, Paulina Ann, and Eliza Jane. When the twins were 8 years old, Paulina Ann was drowned; Eliza Jane was devastated.
In 1836 she was sold to a different owner. This family, the Browns, were kind and loving to her. She was called “Auntie” by the children, and she spent 20 years with them.
When Clara’s owner, George Brown, died, he left her $300 in his will, and he gave her freedom. The catch was that she had to get out of Kentucky quickly so the slavers wouldn’t grab her and sell her back into slavery. She traveled to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where people were eagerly trying to get to Colorado, specifically Pike’s Peak. Gold had been discovered there, and a wagon train was being assembled.
They agreed to take Clara in exchange for her doing the cooking and washing. She wasn’t allowed to ride in a wagon so she walked the whole way, through a blizzard and a buffalo stampede, and she slept under a wagon.
Clara’s Life in Colorado
Detail of Central City, Colorado | Chamberlain, W. G. [Public domain]
When she arrived in Colorado, for a while she lived in Denver (called Cherry Creek at that time), then in 1859 she settled in Central City, northwest of Denver.
She bought a small cabin and started doing laundry. She saved every penny possible to buy shares in mining stocks and real estate. At one point she had 7 houses in Central City, 16 lots in Denver, and property in Georgetown and Boulder.
Her goodness and benevolence were evident during this time. Much of her money went to helping people. She helped found several churches in the area, Methodist and Catholic. A local newspaper commented on her home, which she had turned into a “hospital, a hotel and a general refuge for those who were sick or in poverty.”
In 1865, after the Civil War, she went back to Kentucky to look for her daughter. She didn’t find her but she did bring a group of freed slaves to Colorado. She paid for their train fare, found them places to live and jobs.
With all of her generosity and the trickery of some unscrupulous real estate speculators, by the time she was in her 80s her money was gone. She scraped together $1000 as a reward to anyone who could tell her about Eliza Jane. Her health went downhill.
Then in 1882 a friend from Denver wrote to say she had found Eliza Jane who was a widow living in Council Bluffs, Iowa. When asked about a sister who drowned, the woman said, Eliza Jane’s eyes filled with tears.
Clara’s health improved immediately! She quickly found money and took a train to Council Bluffs, where she recognized her long-lost daughter, saying her smile reminded her of Richard’s brown eyes. Accounts of their meeting said it was pouring rain and they slipped in the mud as they hugged. What a picture!
Eliza Jane came back with Clara to Denver and the last 3 1/2 years of her life were spent with her daughter.
When Clara died, the city of Denver and the state of Colorado were full of praise for this remarkable woman. She was named to the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame and there’s a permanent memorial chair in her honor at the Central City Opera House.
Clara’s story is one of determination and selflessness. She found her freedom but she never stopped thinking about her daughter and looking for her. It’s wonderful that her dream came true in time.
I used several sources for the information in this article, including Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson-Burton. Another interesting woman in this book is Charley Pankhurst, who lived her life as a man, drove a stage coach, but had secrets that weren’t discovered until after her death.
There is no adult biography of Clara Brown. One More Valley, One More Hill is a fictionalized biography for children (ages 8 and up).
Filed Under: Women Adventurers Tagged With: Clara Brown, Colorado pioneers


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CDRH Issues Final Q&A About FDASIA Appeals Process
We previously posted about CDRH’s guidance on the appeals process contained in the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA), and its issuance of a draft Q&A discussing section 517A. Section 517A imposed timeframes for appeal decisions that were shorter than those originally proposed by CDRH, and required CDRH to provide a “substantive summary” of the rationale for any “significant decision” being appealed.
On July 30, 2014, CDRH issued the final Q&A, with only two modifications:
Clinical hold decisions have been added to the list of significant decisions subject to the shorter review timeframes in 517A. Since clinical holds do have a substantial impact on the ability of a company to proceed with its product development, adding this to the list of significant decisions is likely non-controversial and appropriate.
Examples of non-significant decisions have been provided, including 510(k) requests for additional information, PMA major deficiency letters, refuse to accept letters, 522 orders, CLIA waiver decisions, Warning Letters, and responses to requests under section 513(g).
Otherwise, the draft and final guidance documents are the same. This means that the final Q&A still fails to answer the most critical question: when will the substantive summary be provided to the requester? As we noted in our prior post, under section 517A, the appeal must be filed within 30 days of the significant decision. If the substantive summary is provided beyond the 30 day timeframe, or even late in the timeframe, it will be of little to no use in preparation of the appeal, contrary to the apparent statutory intent. It is disappointing that the final guidance does not clearly state that the summary must be provided promptly so as to facilitate the timely preparation of an appeal that directly responds to FDA’s concerns.
Categories: Drug Development | Medical Devices


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48. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, The Warriors, Guest House Paradiso
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48. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, The Warriors, Guest House Paradisoby Toes In Video Production
In a week where we are told that the Lord’s prayer is not allowed to be played before movies at your local cinema, we talk about a movie whose existence is arguably due to a shed load of Prayer; we hunt down some WOORRREEEOOOORS, and invite them to COME OUT AND PLAAYEE-YAY!!! We meet Nicola in the hospital who gives us one of the funkiest tunes that we’ve played for a while, and we talk about one of the films that we are frankly ashamed to say was filmed on the Isle of Wight. Welcome to They Don’t Make ‘em Like They Used To.
Films discussed
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
Guest House Paradiso
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Business Commentary
Morals over money: Low-cost options for socially responsible investors
Lisa Kramer
Published July 9, 2018 Updated July 9, 2018
Do you keep your morals in mind when making investment decisions? If so, you’re not alone. Increasingly, investors are considering the broad social impact of their portfolio allocation decisions. And accordingly, a bevy of new financial products (and a mouthful of jargon) has emerged to cater to those ethically minded investing intentions.
Investing with one’s conscience has many labels. The concept of “socially responsible investing,” or SRI, may be familiar to some readers, with a goal of ensuring one’s portfolio excludes “sin stocks” from the tobacco, gambling and firearms industries. The fossil-fuel “divestment” or “divestiture” movement seeks to pressure large pensions and other managed funds to abandon their holdings in the so-called dirty-energy sector. And “ESG” investing aims to prioritize stocks that score high on environmental, social and governance criteria over those that don’t.
There is no regulatory body or widely agreed-upon set of principles that determines whether certain stocks or funds fit particular socially responsible criteria. This leaves financial institutions, fund managers and advisers free to use their own discretion when building a portfolio built around such goals, so investors must look under the hood to confirm that a fund’s definition of ethical aligns with their own. For instance, a prominent Canadian ETF in the SRI class, iShares Jantzi Social Index ETF, includes Suncor Energy Inc. among its top-10 holdings, which may not be ideal for investors who wish to exclude one of the world’s largest bitumen producers from their portfolio.
Fee-minded investors will be pleased to know there are low-cost financial products in the responsible investing space, especially for those able to invest in the United States. For instance, the Vanguard FTSE Social Index, a mutual fund that adheres to ESG principles, clocks in with a mere 0.2-per-cent expense ratio. And there are several others in the 1-per-cent-or-less range.
Fees aside, what about the claim that investing responsibly comes at a steep price in terms of lower returns or higher risk than a well-diversified broad-based index? That is a tired trope. While a grossly undiversified portfolio certainly can expose an investor to unpleasant surprises, one need not invest in the whole market to achieve both good diversification and returns commensurate with the amount of risk taken. In fact, funds that closely track a broad index, such as the S&P/TSX 60, will typically hold only a subset of the equities in the index, leaving plenty of scope for well-formulated SRI or ESG portfolios that are suitable for the responsibly minded yet conservative investor.
Furthermore, new tools are emerging for do-it-yourself investors who may seek to apply their ethical investment values in ways that aren’t met by existing financial products. For example, the website CrueltyFreeInvesting.org categorizes publicly traded U.S. stocks on the basis of whether they do or don’t exploit animals, taking into account whether the companies undertake practices that involve the harming or killing of animals. The website additionally identifies what it considers to be the 10 worst companies in terms of animal exploitation, featuring the world’s largest breeder of dogs for experiments, among others.
Whether your own moral compass gravitates to human rights, animal rights, green energy, or a combination of these and other progressive ideals, it’s no longer necessary to pick between your conscience and your pocketbook when choosing how to invest. May you sleep well at night and invest well, too.
Lisa Kramer is a professor of finance at the University of Toronto.
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