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[24 Apr 2007|07:34pm] |
Chillingworth continues to play mind games with Dimmesdale, making his revenge as terrible as possible. The minister often regards his doctor with distrust and even loathing, but because he can assign no rational basis to his feelings, he dismisses them and continues to suffer. Dimmesdale’s suffering, however, does inspire him to deliver some of his most powerful sermons, which focus on the topic of sin. His struggles allow him to empathize with human weakness, and he thus addresses “the whole human brotherhood in the heart’s native language.” Although the reverend deeply yearns to confess the truth of his sin to his parishioners, he cannot bring himself to do so. As a result, his self-probing keeps him up at night, and he even sees visions.
In one vision, he sees Hester and “little Pearl in her scarlet garb.” Hester points “her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her [motbosom, and then at the clergyman’s own breast.” The minister understands that he is delusional, but his psychological tumult leads him to assign great meaning to his delusions. Even the Bible offers him little support. Unable to unburden himself of the guilt deriving from his sin, he begins to believe that “the whole universe is false, . . . it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.” Dimmesdale begins to torture himself physically: he scourges himself with a whip, he fasts, and he holds extended vigils, during which he stays awake throughout the night meditating upon his sin. During one of these vigils, Dimmesdale seizes on an idea for what he believes may be a remedy to his pain. He decides to hold a vigil on the scaffold where, years before, Hester suffered for her sin.
Summary—Chapter XII: The Minister’s Vigil
Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold. The pain in his breast causes him to scream aloud, and he worries that everyone in the town will wake up and come to look at him. Fortunately for Dimmesdale, the few townspeople who heard the cry took it for a witch’s voice. As Dimmesdale stands upon the scaffold, his mind turns to absurd thoughts. He almost laughs when he sees Reverend Wilson, and in his delirium he thinks that he calls out to the older minister. But Wilson, coming from the deathbed of Governor Winthrop (the colony’s first governor), passes without noticing the penitent. Having come so close to being sighted, Dimmesdale begins to fantasize about what would happen if everyone in town were to witness their holy minister standing in the place of public shame.
Dimmesdale laughs aloud and is answered by a laugh from Pearl, whose presence he had not noticed. Hester and Pearl had also been at Winthrop’s deathbed because the talented seamstress had been asked to make the governor’s burial robe. Dimmesdale invites them to join him on the scaffold, which they do. The three hold hands, forming an “electric chain.” The minister feels energized and warmed by their presence. Pearl innocently asks, “Wilt thou stand here with Mother and me, tomorrow noontide?” but the minister replies, “Not now, child, but at another time.” When she presses him to name that time, he answers, “At the great judgment day.”
Suddenly, a meteor brightens the dark sky, momentarily illuminating their surroundings. When the minister looks up, he sees an “A” in the sky, marked out in dull red light. At the same time, Pearl points to a figure that stands in the distance and watches them. It is Chillingworth. Dimmesdale asks Hester who Chillingworth really is, because the man occasions in him what he calls “a nameless horror.” But Hester, sworn to secrecy, cannot reveal her husband’s identity. Pearl says that she knows, but when she speaks into the minister’s ear, she pronounces mere childish gibberish. Dimmesdale asks if she intends to mock him, and she replies that she is punishing him for his refusal to stand in public with her and her mother.
Chillingworth approaches and coaxes Dimmesdale down, saying that the minister must have sleepwalked his way up onto the scaffold. When Dimmesdale asks how Chillingworth knew where to find him, Chillingworth says that he, too, was making his way home from Winthrop’s deathbed.
Dimmesdale and Chillingworth return home. The following day, the minister preaches his most powerful sermon to date. After the sermon, the church sexton hands Dimmesdale a black glove that was found on the scaffold. The sexton recognized it as the minister’s, but concluded only that Satan must have been up to some mischief. The sexton then reveals another startling piece of information: he says that there has been report of a meteor falling last night in the shape of a letter “A.” The townspeople have interpreted it as having nothing to do with either Hester or Dimmesdale. Rather, they believe it to stand for “angel” and take it as a sign that Governor Winthrop has ascended to heaven.
Analysis—Chapters XI–XII
These chapters mark the apex of Dimmesdale’s spiritual and moral crisis. Dimmesdale has tried to invent for himself an alternate path to absolution, torturing himself both psychologically and physically. The nearly hysterical fear he feels when he imagines his congregation seeing him on the scaffold is a reminder that the minister has not only himself but also his flock to consider. His public disgrace could harden his followers, or even lead them astray. However, the events in these chapters suggest that Dimmesdale must publicly confront the truth about his past. He has a strong impulse to confess to his congregation, and, although he resists it, his attempts at private expiation begin to bring him closer to exposure.
The scaffold is an important symbol of the difference between Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s situations. It helps to establish an ironic contrast between her public torments and his inner anguish. Dimmesdale’s meeting with Hester and Pearl atop the scaffold echoes Hester’s public shaming seven years earlier. This time, however, no audience bears witness to the minister’s confession of sin. In fact, it is so dark outside that he is not even visible to Reverend Wilson when the latter walks past.
When Dimmesdale refuses Pearl’s request that he stand with her on the scaffold in broad daylight, she refuses to share what she knows about Chillingworth. Pearl thus makes a statement about the causal connection between Dimmesdale’s denial of his own guilt and his incomplete understanding of the world around him. As long as he hides the truth about himself, he can never discover the truths of others. Increasingly, Dimmesdale’s hallucinations seem more real than his daily encounters. His visions never wholly delude him, however, and he remains painfully aware of his reliance upon fictions.
The Puritan world of The Scarlet Letter survives through convenient fictions. In the communal mind of the townspeople, Hester is the epitome of sinfulness, the minister is the embodiment of piety, and Mistress Hibbins is the governor’s sister and thus cannot possibly be a witch, despite all clues to the contrary. Within this reductive system of thought, everyone fits into a category that enables him or her to be read as an illustrative example that reinforces a coherent order.
Yet, unlike his society, Dimmesdale recognizes that such categorizations can be fictions. In fact, it is his acute awareness of the dichotomy between his public image and his private self that leads him to new levels of insight, enabling his preaching to become ever more powerful and persuasive. Dimmesdale can speak of the ravages of sin because he lives them. He brings to his sermons sympathy for others and a strong sense of the daily terror to which a sinful life can lead. He understands that the worst consequence of sin is, practically speaking, separation from one’s fellow man, not separation from God. This more complicated definition of sin is one of the important themes of the novel.
Curiously, while Dimmesdale sees the dangers of formulaic reductions and distortions of reality, he does little to overturn them—either those he himself lives by or those upheld by his community. Much of his daily misery is caused by the willingness of those around him to play God, to stand in judgment, and, in the case of Chillingworth, to mete out punishment.
Although none of the characters explicitly challenges the Puritan order, several events within these chapters do offer an implicit rebuke. The structural juxtaposition of Governor Winthrop’s death with Dimmesdale’s crisis is significant. Winthrop was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its first governor. As one of the men responsible for the beginning of Puritan society, he would naturally have had to insist upon a strict adherence to Puritan ideals. His death signals the passing of an older order and suggests that the Massachusetts colony has existed long enough that a strict and literal observance of the rules is no longer necessary to ensure the colony’s survival. Perhaps someone like Hester no longer constitutes a threat to social stability in this no longer new—and thus no longer as fragile—community; perhaps the policing of others is no longer critical to the colony’s well-being.
Winthrop’s death and Dimmesdale’s guilt are jointly marked by the meteor’s “A”- shaped path. To faithful Puritans, signs, particularly natural ones, were of the utmost importance, and were read as symbols of divine will. Unlike those found in most literature, symbols in the Puritan sense do not signify in complicated or contradictory ways. Instead, they tend to serve, particularly for the characters in this novel, as reinforcements of things that are already “known.” The narrator makes a point of this by often juxtaposing his own, literary interpretations of signs—which tend to be more philosophical or metaphorical—with the Puritan community’s more “confident” or “concrete” interpretations. Here, as the narrator recognizes, the meteor physically and figuratively illuminates Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl, and it exposes their relationship to Chillingworth. Yet the Puritan characters see the event as definitive “proof” of their governor’s ascent to Heaven. While the characters’ more fixed symbolic interpretations provide the reader with little insight into the true nature of the celestial “A,” they nevertheless speak volumes about the minds from which they spring. Thus Dimmesdale reads the “A” in the sky as his own, divinely sent scarlet letter. His constant burden of guilt taints and controls the way he sees the world. So, too, does the community’s reading of the “A” as standing for “Angel” testify to its mindset. The townspeople see only what they want to see, a tendency that is reaffirmed the following morning when the sexton invents a story to prevent the discovery of Dimmesdale’s glove from seeming suspicious.
As we will see, the deliberate rereading of Hester’s scarlet letter that takes place in the following chapters will, like Dimmesdale’s glove, bring together this practice of stubborn misinterpretation with one of its consequences: the reduction of human beings to one-dimensional functionaries in an inflexible social order. Just as Dimmesdale must remain an example of piety—no matter how one has to stretch the facts—so, too, must Hester remain either a scapegoat or a negative example. She is not allowed to receive forgiveness.
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[06 Mar 2007|11:08am] |
Terms
• Voice: The acknowledged or unacknowledged source of words of the story.
• Wit: Quickness of intellect and talent for saying brillant things that surround and delight by their unexpectedness.
• Abstract: Not related to the conrete properties of an object.
o The words were sharp and rigid as he said them.
• Alliteration: the repetition of initial consonant sounds of any vowel sounds within a formal grouping, such as a poetic line or stanza, or in close proximity in prose.
o The pitter patter of the rain, Shelley sells sea shells at the sea shore.
• Allusion: A figure of speech that make brief, even casual reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object to create a resonance in the reader or to apply a symbolic meaning to the character or object of which the allusion consists.
o He was as tall as Paul Bunyon.
• Allegory: Narrative form in which characers and actions have meaning outside themselves; characeters are usually personifications of abstract qualities.
o Everyman has his own opinion.
• Anachronism: Use of historically inaccurate details in a text;
o A person in the 18th century using a computer.
• Anadiplosis: Repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the next clause.
o He was there, there in spirit.
• Analogy: comparison of two things athat are alike in some respects.
• Analytical: a style of written in which the subject is broken into its writing components and the components are subjected to detailed scrutiny.
• Ancedote: Chracter or force in a literary work that opposes the main character.
o
• Bildungsroman: a novel or story whose theme is the moral or psychological growth of the main character.
• Canon: The works of an author that have been accepted as authentic.
o The works of the pope are canons.
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[04 Feb 2007|02:20pm] |
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boys...why do we girls fall for them...we trust them and love them and they end up breaking our hearts. fortunately i am not in this situation but several of my friends are and i wish the male population would realize that we trust you with our hearts and that they are fragile. cuz i am so sick of guys breaking my friends hearts
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[11 Dec 2006|05:47pm] |
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so idk if anyone still reads this except when were bored in study hall and are leaving random comments but i guess i need to get this off my chest. so lately as everyone says its a really stressful time and i totally agree with everyone but i haven't been the most understanding of situations or the nicest to everyone. and looking back on the last few weeks i realize that its been all about me and thats not right. my friends dont want to hear about my troubles just as much i dont like telling people but for some reason ive been really whiney and im sorry if ive been mean to you or your sick of hearing about me... so in the spirit of christmas im gonna try to listen more and truly listen and not be mean to people thats my goal and hopefully i can accomplish it
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[07 Dec 2006|05:29pm] |
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hey so im sitting in study hall not motivated to do anyhting so i decided to start this note
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[21 Nov 2006|06:16pm] |
Es personas que fingen para cuidar. Necesitamos a más personas para ser agradable. Ellos podrían tener abierta la puerta y decir gracias. 2. soy insensato cuando hablo con yo mismo. no personaje de otra de da de le
3. Alguien muriéndose en mi familia es la tristeza más grande yo puedo imaginarme 4. Creo en presagios. Sí presagios pueden ser verdad probados en mis sueños. Los presagios no pueden ser encontrados en el plam de la mano
ni por pagadores de fortuna. 5.
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[05 Nov 2006|05:00am] |
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so im sitting here watching young and the restless and i thought id update. so i realized that this weekend ive been really hanging out by myself. and i idk y. and i felt bad that i didnt hang out with the people i was suppossed too. and i feel really bad. it was kinda nice to watch a movie by myself but it would have been fun to hang out with my friends too. then tonight i was suppossed to hang out with jennie and i didnt. i blame this partly on not having a phone. have u ever felt for some reason that no matter what u do isnt enough. i wish i was done with college applications and scholarships and all that stuff and had my grades undercontrol and not day by day.. uggg but other than that life is good and i guess i cant really complain
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[24 Oct 2006|04:58pm] |
VATICAN CITY (AP) - A French nun who provided education to pioneers on the American frontier and a Mexican bishop who fought anti-clerical policies in the 1920s were among four new saints named by the pope Sunday.
Also included in the new roll call of saints named by Pope Benedict XVI were two Italians: a nun who advocated public schooling for girls in late 17th century Italy and a priest who was a trailblazer for education of the deaf.
"The Church rejoices in the four new saints," Benedict told a crowd of several thousand people at the ceremony in St. Peter's Square. "May their example inspire us and their prayers obtain for us guidance and courage."
Ailing Chicago Cardinal Francis George was among those celebrating mass on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica. He and other Americans were there to honor Mother Theodore Guerin, one of the new saints, who established St. Mary-of-the-Woods College for women in Indiana in 1841.
Despite decades of poor health, Guerin, who was born in 1798, set out with a handful of fellow French nuns for Indiana, where they founded a simple log-cabin chapel. For years, she resisted a local bishop's opposition to her plans to establish a local community of nuns.
"Mother Theodore overcame many challenges and persevered in the work that the Lord has called her to do," the pope said in his homily.
Phil McCord, the American whose restored vision was judged by the Vatican to be the miracle necessary for Guerin's sainthood, called the ceremony "overwhelming."
McCord, a 60-year-old engineer who manages the campus of Guerin's order, recalled how he had faced a corneal transplant after damage from cataract surgery. He entered the chapel at the college, asked Guerin for help and his eyesight started to improve the next morning, said McCord, the son of a lay Baptist minister.
Members of Guerin's order, the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods, also attended to the ceremony. "I've been praying for this since I was in the third grade," said Sister Estelle Scully. "And now I'm 80."
Also named a saint was Mexican Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia, who risked his life to tend to the wounded during the Mexican revolution - sometimes disguised as a street vendor or a musician.
In 1921, he renovated a seminary in Jalapa, Mexico, but the government later seized the building. He succeeded in having the seminary operate clandestinely for 15 years in Mexico City. He died in 1938.
Benedict hailed Guizar Valencia for working tirelessly, even facing persecution, to ensure that seminarians were properly educated "according to the heart of Christ."
At least 25,000 people paraded past the remains of Guizar Valencia all night Saturday and into Sunday in Jalapa, the capital of the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.
"We hope that (the canonization) will help people believe more easily in this Mexican saint," said Isidro Quechuleno, a Jalapa farmer. "We really feel like he's ours and he's part of our religiosity."
Guizar Valencia was a great uncle of the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ order of priests whom the Vatican restricted from public ministry this year amid allegations Degollado sexually abused seminarians.
Filippo Smaldone, an Italian priest who lived from 1848-1923, gained sainthood for his education and assistance for the deaf. He also founded an order of nuns, the Congregation of the Salesian Sisters of the Sacred Hearts.
Rosa Venerini, who died in 1728, gained sainthood for founding the Congregation of the Holy Venerini Teachers and pushing to establish the first public schools for girls in Italy.
Sunday marked Benedict's first canonization ceremony in nearly a year.
His predecessor, John Paul II, led several canonization and beatification ceremonies yearly, but Benedict has taken a less visible approach. Ceremonies for beatification, the last formal step before sainthood, are now led by local prelates in the country where the candidate lived or worked.
But Benedict has championed the call for John Paul's sainthood.
A few weeks after John Paul's April 2, 2005, death, Benedict announced that he was putting John Paul on the fast track for possible sainthood by waiving the traditional five-year waiting period before the process can begin.
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea's former president, who won a Nobel Peace Prize as the architect of Seoul's engagement policy with North Korea in the 1990s, warned Saturday the communist nation could react to U.N. sanctions over its nuclear test with force.
Kim Dae-jung, whose "sunshine policy" led to a historic 2000 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, also called on President Bush to engage the North in dialogue as the only way to resolve the nuclear crisis.
"North Korea is making preparations of how to counter economic sanctions and it could repel them with military force," the 80-year-old Kim told The Associated Press in an interview at his home in the South Korean capital.
Kim stressed that sanctions would only push the North further into a corner and bolster the regime's domestic support by adding to its arguments that the U.S. and its allies are seeking to isolate and harm the North - already a mantra in the country's propaganda.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Moscow on Saturday as part of her tour to rally support for the U.N. sanctions, which aims to halt the North's weapons trade through cargo inspections and trade bans. Rice also traveled to Japan, South Korea and China.
The U.S. has encouraged South Korea to join an anti-proliferation initiative that seeks to stop weapons traffic by sea, which has gained new momentum with the U.N. resolution against the North. But Kim said Seoul was reluctant because the two Koreas disagree on the demarcation of their sea border, and fallout from searches of North Korean ships was unpredictable.
"North Korea could resist with force if its ships are inspected," Kim said, adding the North also could "make some trouble" on the land and sea frontiers separating the rival Koreas.
"We cannot know for sure now how this kind of small conflict could escalate in the future," he said.
On Friday, Kim Jong Il reportedly apologized for the Oct. 9 nuclear detonation and said he would not test any more bombs. However, Rice rejected the South Korean media reports Saturday, saying a Chinese delegation that met with the North Korean leader had told her no such thing when she was in Beijing the day before.
The summit between the two Kims six years ago led to unprecedented reconciliation between the Koreas. Projects to reconnect rail and road links severed for decades since the 1950-53 Korean War laid the foundation for Kim Dae-jung's dream of an "Iron Silk Road" linking South Korea to markets in Europe. Thousands of Koreans divided between the two countries have also met in reunions, and more than 1 million South Korean tourists have visited a North Korean mountain resort.
But the North's nuclear and missile programs have prevented warmer ties between the longtime foes, who remain technically at war because they have never signed a peace treaty. Kim blamed that failure on a breakdown in relations between Pyongyang and Washington - not from shortcomings in his "sunshine policy."
"The reason why the 'sunshine policy' could not be fully be completed and was not a full success was because of stalled U.S.-North Korean relations," Kim said.
The United States is skeptical about a pair of landmark inter-Korean projects - a tourism venture and joint economic zone in North Korea - that are symbols of hopes for the peninsula's reunification. U.S. officials have suggested the tourism project in particular serves to funnel badly needed hard currency to the North Korean regime.
Kim conceded that some changes could be made to the projects to ensure no money is diverted to weapons programs. North Korean workers at the industrial zone could be paid directly and payments for the Diamond Mountain tourism venture could be made with goods rather than cash, he said. He added that monitoring for Seoul's food aid to the North could also be strengthened when it resumes.
"The sunshine policy was a success but in implementing such details there can be changes along the way," Kim said.
Kim urged Bush to have direct dialogue with the North, saying past U.S. presidents have sought engagement with their former rivals, including China, the Soviet Union and Vietnam.
"If the United States is to succeed, then the United States has to learn from the past failures and successes of history. It must not repeat the mistakes of history," he said
MOSCOW (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday delivered a symbolic rebuke to Russia over shrinking press freedoms even as she courted President Vladimir Putin for help punishing Iran over its nuclear program.
Rice made a point of scheduling an interview with Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where a reporter critical of Russian policy in neighboring Chechnya had worked before her murder this month. Rice also met with the reporter's son.
Rice's one-day trip to Moscow followed talks in Asia last week over North Korea's nuclear test on Oct. 9. Russia voted for U.N. penalties against North Korea after the test, and the United States is seeking Russian cooperation for an upcoming vote on sanctions against Iran.
Yet even before Rice arrived in the Russian capital, her Russian counterpart said Moscow will not allow the Security Council to be used for punitive measures against Iran. Russia, however, was ready to discuss ways to pressure Iran into accepting broader international oversight of its nuclear program, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"Any measures of influence should encourage creating conditions for talks," Lavrov said in an interview with the Kuwaiti News Agency KUNA that was posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry Web site Saturday.
"We won't be able to support and will oppose any attempts to use the Security Council to punish Iran or use Iran's program in order to promote the ideas of regime change there," according to the interview Friday.
A draft resolution is expected to be introduced in the Security Council early this week, and diplomats have said they would seek limited penalties for Tehran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.
Rice's decision to meet with Novaya Gazeta editors and reporters was a reminder to Putin of the widening rift between Russia and the U.S. over what the Bush administration sees as a rollback of democratic gains under the Russian president.
She met privately with Putin later Saturday.
Previewing her message to the newspaper editors, Rice told reporters traveling with her that she wanted to speak to one of a shrinking number of "independent voices" in Russian media.
"The fate of journalists in Russia is a major concern," Rice said. "Anna Politkovskaya was a particularly well-known and well-respected journalist so I think it's important to note that."
Politkovskaya repeatedly had accused Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov's security forces of abducting, torturing and killing innocent people. Her newspaper posthumously published her last story that described alleged torture by the Kremlin-backed Chechen security services.
Politkovskaya, a sharp critic of Putin and the conduct of the Kremlin and of Russia's war in Chechnya, was found shot dead at her Moscow apartment building.
Since Putin's election more than six years ago, he has presided over what critics have called a steady rollback in press freedoms won since the Soviet Union's collapse. Top independent television stations have been shut down and print media are under growing pressure from officials.
Putin said the killers had done the Russian government no favor. The killing "inflicts much greater damage to the government than any of her writing," he said after the killing.
The media rights group Reporters Without Borders has called Putin one of the world's press freedom "predators."
Rice's last Asian stop was in Beijing, North Korea's traditional ally, where she met with a Chinese government envoy just back from a hastily arranged visit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Rice said the envoy, State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, told her nothing that confirmed news reports about conciliatory moves from the North.
"Councilor Tang did not tell me that Kim Jong Il either apologized for the test or said that he would never test again," Rice said, adding that she does not know the source of widely circulated South Korean media reports to the contrary.
"I don't know whether or not Kim Jong Il said any such thing. But the Chinese ... in a fairly thorough briefing to me about the talks, said nothing," that confirms it, Rice said.
Lavrov, in the Kuwaiti interview, urged the U.S. and North Korea to settle issues such as U.S.-imposed financial restrictions in order to clear the way for international talks to resume on the North's nuclear program.
"Both sides should show flexibility," he said.
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[19 Oct 2006|02:53am] |
o man so i thought i was really really never gonna watch one tree hill but as i finish watching the show i really really hate peytons brother he is the creepiest boy omg i hate that guy he really really bugs me...now i have to watch to see what happens even though i dont really like whats going on the show
so that was a pointless entry
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[08 Oct 2006|08:12pm] |
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so i havent updated in awhile and i really dont wanna go homework so id figure id update. So 1 week till homecoming. its kinda sad if you think about it cuz its our last hc but im excited cuz its always so much fun. its crazy to think that is almost here. and spirit week is gonna be a blast too. So idk where this update is going but all i know is that i wanna live senior year up and have no regrets. with that...
Time to go, this is goodbye she said,
does it ever get easier to live like this? And to kiss the cheek, I can't kiss you anymore, and I, I would honestly love you now,
but I would lovingly let you down...
Oh, I have the hardest time resisting you, and, oh, if you...
If you feel the same way,
then how can we be friends?
He's right you know, we can't go on like this.
And I try to give you everything
and if I fail, well then I fail, but at least I gave you something...
I can put my trust in giving up the heart that makes the difference,
and how can you afford to settle down?
When I, I would promise to love you now,
but I will lovingly let you down...
Oh, I have the hardest time resisting you, and, oh, if you...
If you feel the same way,
then how can we be friends?
He's right you know, we can't go on like this.
And I try to give you everything
and if I fail, well then I fail, but at least I gave you something...
It's better than silence,
give me one good reason.
(You know)
To leave this in silence,
you don't have a good reason.
If you feel the same way,
then how can we be friends?
He's right you know, we can't go on like this.
And I try to give you everything
and if I fail, well then I fail, but at least I gave you something...
It's better than silence, it's better than silence.
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[07 Sep 2006|10:43am] |
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hello so sorry that the only updates ive done are homework from studyhall. But im here to actually update. so since school has started i feel like all i do is homework, work out swim, play tennis then the weekend comes and its filled with football of all differnt levels hangin with the friends then more homework it seems that the majority of my life is filled with homework. when im not doing homework i feel like im constantly being harped on about college and applying and contacting swim coaches. i keep telling myself in a couple months all applications will be turned in, sat and act will be done(hopefully) and ill know whether or not ill be swimming. but i cant complain too much considering im finally a SENIOR!!! and life is good ya know even though theres soo much going on im happy. and i prolly wouldnt change it for the world.
wow sorry for the whole philosphical update lol
until next time
P.S. adry just told me the funniest news and everytime i think of it i laugh lol
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[07 Sep 2006|10:42am] |
The Costa del Sol stretches along just over 150 kilometres of Málaga province and is one of Spain's most popular tourist destinations. The area's mild climate is the root attraction that makes it possible to enjoy the beaches and a wide variety of outdoor activities year round.
Eastern Costa del Sol
This is the the 54 kilometre stretch of coast to the east of Malaga city (the capital of Málaga province). Though highly developed from a property point of view, it is not anything like the property development on the western Costa del Sol.
From Malaga eastwards there are cliffs of up to 200 meters where the Sierra Almijara joins the sea. This section ends at a place called Mara, on a coastal plain. It has an urban landscape surrounded by traditional agriculture.
Nerja is the most important urban centre on this end of the coast and has grown rapidly. Much of the eastern Costa del Sol's accommodation for tourists is found in Nerja, which is surrounded by tourist pueblos. This town also has one of this area's main tourist attractions - the Nerja Caves, a spectacular find that is open to the public and that hosts an annual music and dance festival within its famous caverns. At the foot of Nerja town a winding footpath joins several coves and there are some nice beaches to be found in this area.
Western Costa del Sol
This is the 100km of coastline that begins at Malaga city and stretches westward all the way to the border of Cádiz province. This part of the coast is highly developed in terms of both property and infrastructure and it attracts an important percentage of Spain's international tourism. Communications revolve around Malaga International Airport (8 km west of the city) and the N340 backbone coast highway. In the middle of the Costa the greatly improved district road from San Pedro de Alcantara inland to the historic town of Ronda is the most important inland connection.
10. The renaissance experienced the emergence of many distinctive personalities that glorified uniqueness. Individualism was one of the ways that people expressed themselves. It stressed personality uniqueness, genius, and full development of one’s capabilities and talents. Humanism also became the new way of learning. Renaissance humanists were skeptical of authority, conscious of the historical distance by separating themselves from the ancients. They sought effective and eloquent communication, both oral and written.
The secular movement was also a characteristic of the Renaissance. Secularism involved a basic concern with the material world instead of with the eternal world. The economic changes and rising of prosperity of Italian cities worked a fundamental change in the social and intellectual attitudes and values. During this time, thousands of pious paintings, sculptures, processions, and pilgrimages proved that there was a strong religious feeling.
11. Italians has a stung attachment to individual city states. In the fifteenth century five powers dominated the Italian peninsula: Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal States, and the kingdom of Naples. These major city-states controlled the smaller ones like Siena, Mantua, Ferrera, and Modena. During this time, if one major city state appeared to gain more power, the others would get together and fight against that state to establish a balance of power. The renaissance Italians invented the machinery of Modern Diplomacy.
13. Boccaccio was a writer during the Renaissance. HE wrote The Decameron. The story describes ambitious merchants, lecherous friars, and cuckolded husbands. Through these characters he showed a sensual and worldly society. Renaissance writers justified the accumulation and enjoyment of wealth with references to ancient authors. Dante was a writer during the Renaissance. HE wrote the Divine Comedy. In this he talked about hell, purgatory and paradise. He also wrote about the importance of clocks. Petrarch was a humanist. Some of his beliefs was the he was living in a new age. He considered the first two centuries of the Roman Empire to represent the peak in the development of humans. He believed that he was witnessing a new golden age of intellectual achievements-a rebirth or renaissance.
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6. The Hussites were followers of Jan Hus. They brought the ideas of Jon Wyclif to Bohemia. People of poverty in Prague found the teachings very appealing. Hus defended the transubstantiation, insisted that church authority rested on scripture, conscience, and tradition. The death of Jan Hus brought divisions between the bishops at Constance and the Czech clerics and people. Revolutions swept through Bohemia with Hussites, Czech nobles and people, insisting on clerical poverty and Communion under both species and German citizens remaining loyal to the Roman Church.
7. 1309 -1375 Popes lived in Avignon. 1377 Pope Gregory XI brought the papal court back to Rome. Urban VI was the next pope. His ways of reform were tactless, arrogant, and did things in a bullheaded manner. A group of cardinals got together and said the Urban himself was excommunicated. A new pope was elected, Clement VII. There were two popes Urban at Rome and the antipope Clement. This created the Great Schism. England sided with Urban. France, Scotland, Aragon, Castile, Portugal, and Italian city-states sided with Clement. The schism weakened religious faith of many Christians and gave rise to instability and religious excesses. The schism ended at the Conciliar Movement. Coulciarists believed that reform of the Church could be best achieved through periodic assemblies representing all Christian people. The pope derived his authority from entire Christian community.
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8.The population loss caused by the Black death and the diorders accompanying the 100 years warcreated a labor shortage. From this serfs disappeared. The decline of money power hurt the nobility.
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5. The Lollards were followers of John Wyclif. The term means "mumblers of prayer and psalms". For this they were criticized. The teaching allowed women to preach and to consecrate the Eucharist. Women played a significant role in the movement. They believed that every Chirstian free of mortal sin possessed lordship was seized on by peasants in England during a revolt in 1391 and used to justify their goals. HE also believed that the temporal power had no foundation in the scriptures ant the scriputres alone should be the standard of Christian belief and practice. He ewanted athe abolition of the veneration of saints, pilgrimages, pluralism, and absenteeism. Wyclif’s ideas were condemned by ecclesiastical authorities.
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Helping Out Third-World Countries
October, 2004
Americans have come to expect that their doctors will have all the equipment and supplies they need to treat whatever is ailing us. We have become comfortable with the fact that doctors will be prepared to care for us appropriately whenever we visit. However, in Third World countries around the globe, a trip to a doctor is a luxury that often doesn’t exist…even for the most severe cases of illness or injury.
Direct Relief International, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Barbara, Calif., supports more than 500 charitable health facilities and programs each year that are in need of a broad range of the basic medical resources that health professionals in the United States take for granted. In partnership with U.S. healthcare manufacturers, Direct Relief’s donations of medical equipment, medical supplies and pharmaceuticals can begin to address some of these needs.
Among the many, basic critical issues facing health facilities serving impoverished and isolated communities in the developing world is the lack of medical equipment. These facilities rarely have enough money to purchase even used equipment, not to mention medicines and other supplies. And when they are able to purchase equipment, it is typically outdated or in disrepair. Physicians and nurses typically make do with what they have, which is not always the safest method for treating the sick and injured.
Privately Supported
“Unlike many other humanitarian aid organizations, Direct Relief does not rely on funding from government grants,” says Direct Relief Chairman of the Board Nancy Schlosser. “We are privately supported by compassionate individuals and corporations that entrust their money and products to us for humanitarian purposes.”
Many contributors are involved in helping make Direct Relief a success, including Abbott Laboratories, Henry Schein Inc., Johnson & Johnson, McKesson Medical-Surgical, Midmark Corp., Miltex and Welch Allyn Inc. These organizations, and many others, believe that Direct Relief is a great program that takes advantage of a concentrated and focused effort of giving to get the maximum utility of donated products. They have also found that supplies and equipment are best used when sent to a single source, such as Direct Relief, so that the supply to any end recipient will be more consistent for the recipient agencies.
It is by word of mouth that contributors and other organizations continue to help Direct Relief’s efforts. For example, the Partnership for Quality Medical Donations (PQMD) is a membership organization that is involved in aligning companies that donate equipment and supplies with the organization that needs them. Having an established relationship with Direct Relief International, Conrad Person director of international programs and product giving for Johnson & Johnson and a founding member of PQMD recommended that PQMD consider Direct Relief’s practices as a model for other relief organizations. Based on that recommendation, PQMD featured Direct Relief’s partnership with Midmark in the first-ever Gold Standard Forum for Medical Donations in 2003.
“Direct Relief is one of the finest organizations I’ve ever worked with as well as one of the finest humanitarian agencies on the face of the planet,” says PQMD Executive Director James B. Russo. “They do many daring things for the good of many people. They have a devoted and professional staff led by a charismatic and genuine humanitarian Direct Relief President and CEO Thomas Tighe. His enthusiasm only serves to strengthen the attractiveness of the organization. Just walking in the place, you feel the electricity of the dedicated staff that makes Direct Relief such an energized and wonderful organization.”
Issues Surrounding Donated Equipment
Despite the need, few organizations focus on providing medical equipment to the developing world. This is due to several factors:
• The difficulty for organizations such as Direct Relief to secure donations of new equipment.
• The expense of properly refurbishing used equipment.
• Often-unreliable power sources.
• Difficulty with installation and ongoing maintenance and parts replacement.
• The care required to make donations consistent with World Health Organization guidelines for healthcare equipment donations.
Donating equipment is an expensive, high-hassle endeavor with several components, any one of which can render the donation worthless to the receiving facility. However, Direct Relief has stepped in to make this process as easy and efficient as possible and to encourage manufacturers and distributors that the cause is worthy.
According to Russo, the organization is one of only a few that works with donated medical equipment a daunting task. “Not only does the equipment have to be in good condition when it reaches the medical facility, but you have to be sure that they know how to use it; can fix it if it breaks down; make sure supplies are available if it uses consumables; and have the right hook-ups for overseas electrical outlets,” he says. “In short, donating equipment is much more difficult than donating medicines and supplies, yet Direct Relief is willing to take on all of these responsibilities to ensure the success of the equipment.”
In fact, Direct Relief International and the receipt partners indemnify the donor company from liability. What’s more, Direct Relief has a highly qualified biomedical equipment repair staff, and takes advantage of trained volunteers who handle basic, time-consuming tasks. Technicians spend a significant amount of time working on equipment so that it is in top-working condition when it leaves the Direct Relief facility.
The organization continues to pursue an equipment program because of the significant utilitarian value of medical equipment, which is different and more difficult to quantify than its wholesale financial value. Also, requests for equipment such as electronic, mechanical and hand instruments, have long been the most frequent and most urgent of all. Direct Relief believes that the durability of these products, the number of people who can benefit from them, and the fact that there are so few resources for healthcare facilities to obtain these life saving equipment, justify its efforts to provide them.
Although equipment manufacturers have been the key contributors in the past, distributors can get involved as well. Many have obsolete equipment in their inventory that needs to move. Distributors should be aware that by donating equipment to Direct Relief, they could benefit from tax write-offs, clear out older equipment, and help humanity in the process.
Long-standing Mission
For 55 years, Direct Relief International has specialized in supplying competent, knowledgeable healthcare providers throughout the world with the specific tools that are fundamental to their work. Together, with dedicated partners, these organizations share a commitment to provide healthcare to people in need without regard to political affiliation, religious belief, ethnic identity or ability to pay.
By ensuring that local health professionals who provide care in one-room rural clinics as well as large regional hospitals have durable equipment, Direct Relief International and its partners are equipping the health infrastructure of developing countries, and building capacity from the ground up.
“Direct Relief is a fine organization that has proven itself a viable and valuable contributor to our society,” says Jim Eiting, chairman and owner of Midmark Corp. “When it comes right down to it, shouldn’t our work be about helping others anyway?”
Information for this article was provided by Direct Relief International. For more information on Direct Relief or how to donate, call 805/964.4767 or visit www.directrelief.org.
http://mednews.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/5654.html
Once-a-day AIDS meds in Third World nations to be tested
By Michael Purdy
Sept. 8, 2005 — The public perception of AIDS treatment — a cocktail of many different pills taken several times a day and sometimes even in the middle of the night — has largely been erased in the United States thanks to advances in drug design and delivery.
Although textbook treatment guidelines still call for patients to take a few AIDS medications twice a day, many patients in industrialized countries now can keep sufficiently high medication levels in their bodies with once-daily doses.
Now researchers in an international collaborative that includes the Aids Clinical Trials Unit (ACTU) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have begun an ambitious new study to see if this treatment paradigm can be implemented in Third World countries.
Although the majority of participants in the new study will be in developing nations where AIDS infection rates are much higher than in the United States, nine U.S. AIDS treatment centers, including the Washington University ACTU, also are enrolling patients.
"The fewer times a day that AIDS patients have to remember to take their medicine, the better," says David Clifford, M.D., the Melba and Forest Seay Professor of Clinical Neuropharmacology in Neurology and director of the ACTU. "When patients miss scheduled doses, the virus jumps back very quickly and starts figuring out ways around the drugs. So we have to keep our foot on the virus and keep the virus nailed to the floor."
To ensure compliance, AIDS physicians will sometimes ask patients to find a friend or family member who will make sure they take their medicine, a technique called direct observation.
"If monitors have to watch patients take their medicine once-a-day, that's plausible," Clifford says. "If they have to go four times a day, that's hopeless."
In the early days of AIDS drugs, one of the first successful treatments required patients to take a dose every four hours. Current AIDS drugs either contain larger doses, take advantage of strategies that release the medication into the body more slowly or incorporate features into the medicine itself that slow its clearance from the body.
Researchers administering the study are seeking AIDS patients who either have not yet been treated with antiviral medications or have had less than a week of such treatments.
International sites for the trial include South Africa, Zimbabwe, Thailand, India, Malawi, Peru and Brazil.
Clifford says there is evidence for optimism that the once-daily dosing schedule can be successfully implemented in developing nations. But he notes that many different factors may affect the success of the new approach in these areas.
One concern is that the brief treatment of HIV-infected pregnant women with antivirals to block mother-to-child transmission may have created reserves of drug-resistant HIV in developing nations. Although such treatment plans prevent the passage of AIDS to the infant, they often are stopped after birth, leaving versions of the virus that have begun to figure out ways of evading the drug treatments freeing the virus to multiply in the mother.
Scientists also are planning to look for signs that genetic differences in other nations alter patients' responses to medications.
Economic feasibility also will be a concern. Many developing nations have large numbers of AIDS patients to treat but few resources. Also, the drugs that can be taken once daily tend to be among the most expensive treatments.
"This is the largest systematic trial of AIDS treatment to ever be conducted on a multinational stage," Clifford says. "It's really quite ambitious and exciting."
The study is administered by the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, an NIH-funded network of 35 U.S. AIDS treatment centers of which the Washington University ACTU is a member.
Washington University School of Medicine's full-time and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked third in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
Updated 11:45 PM January 7, 2005
Kellogg Eye Center
Physicians saving sight in Mongolia
By Laurel Thomas Gnagey
When two physicians from the Kellogg Eye Center returned from Mongolia in September, they left behind five digital cameras, a laptop computer and a number of people who were spared a life of blindness.
Drs. Susan Thoms and Theresa Nairus—both physicians in Kellogg's Livonia satellite office—along with three other eye specialists from the United States and Canada, went to the country to set up the CYBER-SIGHT program through ORBIS, an international organization that seeks to end preventable blindness in Third-World countries by the year 2020.
The team also went to train Mongolian physicians and health care professionals in the diagnosis and treatment of eye problems, while caring for several patients as they taught.
ORBIS estimates that 45 million people in the world are blind, and 135 million have low vision and are at risk of blindness. The organization's Web site says with proper care and treatment, 80 percent of those in the latter group would not have to lose their sight.
In its effort to end avoidable blindness, ORBIS connects ophthalmologists around the world with those in the United States who have more advanced training in the diagnosis of eye disease.
In general, physicians in Third-World countries don't have the same level of training as those in the United States, says Nairus, clinical instructor of comprehensive ophthalmology and cornea, external diseases, and refractive surgery, who, in addition to serving in Livonia, also practices at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Ann Arbor and at the Kellogg Milford office.
"They have no college education prior to attending medical school, and they study ophthalmology only for one year," she says. "They basically cut off three or four years of their training."
The computer equipment the team left will be used by local health care professionals who treat eye disease and injury. Through CYBER-SIGHT, physicians in Mongolia and the nearly two dozen other countries that now have the program can take a photo of a patient's eye, send it and their questions to a Web site, and hear back from a participating physician within 48 hours.
Thoms, who is a clinical assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual science, serves as a mentor for physicians who need her expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of cataracts. She says traveling to Mongolia allowed her to see what resources physicians there have available, which is important when serving as a mentor through
CYBER-SIGHT.
"You have to answer them in the framework of what their capabilities are," she says. In Mongolia they have limited equipment and expired anesthesia drugs that sometimes work and sometimes do not, and they reuse many items that we would not in this country, she says.
"But they do well with the resources they have," Thoms says. "They're trying, and they're eager to learn."
One thing they do not have yet is a donor bank for transplants, says Nairus, a cornea specialist at Kellogg. She had to take along three corneas donated by the Eye Bank Association of America so she could train physicians to perform a transplant. Of the 60 patients she saw during the three days, 30 were candidates for a cornea transplant.
"I had to be pretty picky about who could get the most use out of the cornea for the longest time," she says of the difficult process of choosing recipients. "I had one 16-year-old boy who showed up three days in a row, in a suit, hoping to be picked." He was not a good candidate because he lived too far away to receive the follow-up care a transplant would require.
"The sad thing is that if 30 people walked in here [Kellogg] today, they all would get a transplant."
One group she had to rule out was nomadic cattle breeders who make up 30 percent of the population. Because they roam around the desert, these Mongolians are susceptible to a disease called climactic droplet keratopathy, which is caused by damage from ultraviolet light exposure. Returning to that lifestyle after a transplant most likely would mean failure of the new cornea, Nairus says.
Of the three people chosen, one had waited seven years, one 12 and the other 20.
If she goes back again in the future, Nairus hopes the Mongolian physicians will have established a donor bank, which she was helping them begin to organize before she left.
Out of the 55 patients Thoms saw, 15 represented the best teaching cases and were chosen for surgery. This trip to Mongolia was her second. She went in 1997 through another organization.
"I wanted to see what had happened in seven years and if anything had changed," she says. Many of the facilities had been updated, but the need for help and expertise had not, she says. The 2.6 million citizens of the country, which is twice the geographic size of Texas, had not changed much either.
"It's a very grateful group of people," she says. "It's a very interesting place with friendly, hospitable people. I'd like to go back in a few years.
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[15 Nov 2005|04:38pm] |
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hello all!!! its been sooo long since iver updated its crazy!!! so not too mcuh is going on...sadly... but high school swim season started yesterday which i guess is exciting... i cant wait for christmas either i love the christmas time!!! its one of my favorite seasons....o and my birthday is in five days which is cool cuz then i can LEGALLY get into a R rated movie which is exciting to me
well im avoiding chemsitry hw so i should start on it
until next time
~Katie
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