text:
_'_ Alice's Restaurant _'_ is a 1969 American comedy film directed by Arthur Penn. It is an adaptation of the 1967 folk song “Alice's Restaurant Massacree”, originally written and sung by Arlo Guthrie. The film stars Guthrie as himself, with Pat Quinn as Alice Brock and James Broderick as Ray Brock. Penn, who resided in the story's setting of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, co-wrote the screenplay in 1967 with Venable Herndon after hearing the song, shortly after directing _Bonnie & Clyde_.[1]

_Alice's Restaurant_ was released on August 19, 1969, a few days after Guthrie appeared at the Woodstock Festival. A soundtrack album for the film was also released by United Artists Records. The soundtrack includes a studio version of the title song, which was originally divided into two parts (one for each album side); a 1998 CD reissue on the Rykodisc label presents this version of the song in full, and adds several bonus tracks to the original LP.

Plot

In 1965, Arlo Guthrie (as himself) has attempted to avoid the draft by attending college in Montana. His long hair and unorthodox approach to study gets him in trouble with local police as well as residents. He quits school, and subsequently hitchhikes back East. He first visits his father Woody Guthrie (Joseph Boley) in the hospital.

Arlo ultimately returns to his friends Ray (James Broderick) and Alice Brock (Pat Quinn) at their home, a deconsecrated church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts where they welcome friends and like-minded bohemian types to “crash”. Among these are Arlo's school friend Roger (Geoff Outlaw) and artist Shelley (Michael McClanathan), an ex-heroin addict who is in a motorcycle racing club. Alice is starting up a restaurant in nearby Stockbridge. Frustrated with Ray's lackadaisical attitude, she has an affair with Shelley, and ultimately leaves for New York to visit Arlo and Roger. Ray comes to take her home, saying he has invited a “few” friends for Thanksgiving.

The central point of the film is the story told in the song: After Thanksgiving dinner, Arlo and his friends decide to do Alice and Ray a favor by taking several months worth of garbage from their house to the town dump. After loading up a red VW microbus with the garbage, and “shovels, and rakes and other implements of destruction”, they head for the dump. Finding the dump closed for the holiday, they drive around and discover a pile of garbage that someone else had placed at the bottom of a short cliff. At that point, as mentioned in the song, “...we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw ours down.”

The next morning they receive a phone call from “Officer Obie” (Police Chief William Obanhein as himself), who asks them about the garbage. After admitting to littering, they agree to pick up the garbage and to meet him at the police officers' station. Loading up the red VW microbus, they head to the police station where they are immediately arrested.

As the song puts it, they are then driven to the quote scene of the crime unquote where the police are engaged in a hugely elaborate investigation. At the trial, Officer Obie is anxiously awaiting the chance to show the judge the 27 8x10 color glossy photos of the crime but the judge (James Hannon as himself) happens to be blind, using a seeing eye dog, and simply levies a $25 fine, orders them to pick up the garbage and then sets them free. The garbage is eventually taken to New York and placed on a barge. Meanwhile, Arlo has fallen in love with a beautiful Asian girl, Mari-chan (Tina Chen).

Later in the movie, Arlo is called up for the draft, in a surreal depiction of the bureaucracy at the New York City military induction center on Whitehall Street. He attempts twice to make himself unfit for induction, first by getting drunk the night before and performing the physical exams while hung over, then by acting like a homicidal maniac in front of the psychiatrist, but fails both times (the latter incident actually gets him praise). Because of Guthrie's criminal record for littering, he is first sent to the Group W bench (where convicts wait), then outright rejected as unfit for military service, not because of the littering incident, but because he makes a remark about the dubiousness of considering littering to be a problem when selecting candidates for armed conflict, making the officials suspicious of “his kind” and them to send his personal records to Washington, DC.

Upon returning to the church, Arlo finds Ray and members of the motorcycle club showing home movies of a recent race. Shelley enters, obviously high, and Ray beats him until he reveals his stash of heroin, concealed in some art he has been working on. Shelley roars off into the night on his motorcycle to his death; the next day, Woody dies. Ray and Alice have a hippie-style wedding in the church, and a drunken Ray proposes to sell the church and start a country commune instead, revealing that he blames himself for Shelley's death. The film ends with Alice standing alone in her bedraggled wedding gown on the church steps.

Cast

-   Arlo Guthrie as himself
-   Pat Quinn as Alice Brock
-   James Broderick as Ray Brock
-   Pete Seeger as himself
-   Lee Hays as himself – reverend at evangelical meeting
-   Michael McClanathan as Shelly
-   Geoff Outlaw as Roger Crowther
-   Tina Chen as Mari-chan
-   Kathleen Dabney as Karin
-   William Obanhein as himself – Officer Obie
-   James Hannon as himself – the blind judge
-   Seth Allen as Evangelist
-   Monroe Arnold as Bluegrass
-   Joseph Boley as Woody Guthrie
-   Vinnette Carroll as Draft Clerk
-   Sylvia Davis as Marjorie Guthrie
-   Simm Landres as Private Jacob / Jake
-   Eulalie Noble as Ruth
-   Louis Beachner as Dean
-   MacIntyre Dixon as First Deconsecration Minister
-   Arthur Pierce Middleton as Second Deconsecration Minister
-   Donald Marye as Funeral Director
-   Shelley Plimpton as Reenie
-   M. Emmet Walsh as Group W Sergeant

Cameos and special appearances

The real Alice Brock makes a number of cameo appearances in the film. In the scene where Ray and friends are installing insulation, she is wearing a brown turtleneck top and has her hair pulled into a ponytail. In the Thanksgiving dinner scene, she is wearing a bright pink blouse. In the wedding scene, she is wearing a Western-style dress.

Stockbridge police chief William Obanhein (“Officer Obie”) plays himself in the film, explaining to _Newsweek_ magazine that making himself look like a fool was preferable to having somebody else make him look like a fool.[2] Judge James E. Hannon, who presided over the littering trial, also appears as himself in the film.[3] Many of Guthrie's real-life associates in Stockbridge made appearances as extras, and Penn, who himself had a home in Stockbridge,[4] spent time living among them in an effort to grasp their lifestyle.[5] Guthrie and all of the extras were housed at the same hotel during filming of scenes outside Stockbridge, but Guthrie received star treatment; a limousine was provided for Guthrie each morning while the others had to find their own transportation for filming. This strained the relations between Guthrie and his friends for many years.[6] Much of the film was recorded in Stockbridge.[7]

The film also features the first credited film appearance of character actor M. Emmet Walsh, playing the Group W sergeant. (Walsh had previously appeared as an uncredited extra in _Midnight Cowboy_, released three months prior.) The film also features cameo appearances by American folksingers/songwriters Lee Hays (playing a reverend at an evangelical meeting) and Pete Seeger (playing himself).

Differences from real life

The original song “Alice's Restaurant Massacree” that formed the basis for the film's central plotline was, for the most part, a true story. However, other than this and the hippie wedding at the end of the film, most of the other events and characters in the film were fictional creations of the screenplay's writers. According to Guthrie on the DVD's audio commentary, the film used the names of real people but took numerous liberties with actual events. Richard Robbins, Guthrie's co-defendant in real-life, was replaced by the fictional Roger Crowther for the film (in the song, he remained anonymous); he later described almost all the additions to the story as “all fiction” and “complete bull.”[8] The subplots involving the Shelly character were completely fictional and not based on any real people or incidents in Guthrie's life;[9] his character's motorcycle club was loosely based on the Trinity Motorcycle Club (or, by a conflicting account, the Triangle Motorcycle Club), a real-life group of motorcyclists that associated with the Brocks and were alluded to in another Guthrie song, the “Motorcycle Song”.[10] The film also has Guthrie being forced to leave a Montana town after “creating a disturbance” – i.e., several town residents object to Guthrie's long hair and gang up to throw him through a plate glass window. This never happened, and Guthrie expresses regret that Montana got a “bad rap” in the film. In reality, during the time of the littering incident and trial, Guthrie was still enrolled in a Montana college, and was only in Stockbridge for the long Thanksgiving weekend (he would drop out of college at the end of the semester).[11]

Alice Brock has spoken very negatively of the film's portrayal of her.[12] She stated in a 2014 interview “That wasn't me. That was someone else's idea of me.”[13] Brock took particular offense at the film implying that she had slept with Guthrie (among others) and noted that she had never associated with heroin users.[14] She also noted that the song and film brought a large amount of unwanted publicity: “It just really impinged on your privacy. It's just amazing how brazen people can be when you're a supposed public figure (...) We sold the church at that point.”[15]

Reception

The film has a 63% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 19 reviews, with a weighted average of 6.19/10.[16] In 2009, _Politics Daily_ wrote that, “calling the 1969 film a comedy misses its _noir_ backbeat of betrayed romanticism, and thinking of it as a madcap autobiography misses its politics. This is a movie driven by the military draft and the Vietnam War”.[17]

Upon its initial release, _Newsweek_ called the film “the best of a number of remarkable new films which seem to question many of the traditional assumptions of establishment America.”[18]

When interviewed in 1971, the film's director, Arthur Penn, said of the film: “What I tried to deal with is the US's silence and how we can best respond to that silence. ... I wanted to show that the US is a country paralyzed by fear, that people were afraid of losing all they hold dear to them. It's the new generation that's trying to save everything”.[19]

In being offered the opinion that violence is not so important in the film, Penn replied: “_Alice's Restaurant_ is a film of potential transition because the characters know, in some way, what they are looking for. ... It's important to remember that the characters in _Alice's Restaurant_ are middle-class whites. They aren't poor or hungry or working class. They are not in the same boat as African Americans. But they're not militants either. In this respect the church dwellers are not particularly threatening. They find it easy to live there, even if most people can't afford such a luxury. From this point of view, this film depicts a very specific social class. It's a bourgeois film”.[20]

The final scene is not of a loving couple seeing off their guests, but of Alice standing alone looking into the distance, watching the guests leave, as if knowing that her future is in fact bleak with Ray.[21] Coincidentally, the real Alice and Ray finalized their divorce on the same day the wedding scene was filmed.[22] Arthur Penn has said that the final scene was intended as comment on the inevitable passing of the counterculture dream: “In fact, that last image of Alice on the church steps is intended to freeze time, to say that this paradise doesn’t exist any more, it can only endure in memory”.[23] Gene Siskel of the _Chicago Tribune_ listed _Alice's Restaurant_ as third best film of 1969.[24]

The film grossed $6,300,000[25] in the United States, making it the 23rd highest-grossing film of 1969.

Awards

-   Nominated for Academy Award for Best Director (1969) – Arthur Penn[26]
-   Nominated for Writers Guild of America Award for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen (1970) – Venable Herndon, Arthur Penn
-   Third Place – Laurel Awards – Golden Laurel for Comedy (1970)
-   Nominated for British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards – Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music (1971) – Arlo Guthrie

[1] Cummings, Paula (November 21, 2017). Interview: Arlo Guthrie Carries On Thanksgiving Traditions And Fulfills Family Legacy. _NYS Music_. Retrieved October 25, 2018.

[2] Zimmerman, Paul D. (September 29, 1969). “Alice's Restaurant's Children.” _Newsweek_, page 103.

[3] Doyle, Patrick (November 26, 2014). Arlo Guthrie looks back on 50 years of Alice's Restaurant . _Rolling Stone_. Retrieved November 29, 2014.

[4]

[5] Arlo Guthrie's Alice is alive, glad to be here. _The Wall Street Journal_ via the _Pittsburgh Post-Gazette_ (November 22, 2006). Retrieved September 8, 2017.

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9] Brown, Jane Roy (February 24, 2008). After Alice's restaurants. _The Boston Globe_. Retrieved October 24, 2015.

[10] Giuliano, Charles (March 27, 2014). Alice’s Restaurant Returns to the Berkshires. _Berkshire Fine Arts_. Retrieved October 24, 2015.

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/alices_restaurant

[17] James Grady, “Thanksgiving at Alice's Restaurant: The Guthries' American Dream Lives On”, Politics Daily, 25.11.2009.

[18]

[19]

[20] M. Chaiken and P. Cronin (eds), _Arthur Penn Interviews_. University Press of Mississippi, 1998, p. 65.

[21] M. Chaiken and P. Cronin (eds), _Arthur Penn Interviews_. University Press of Mississippi, 1998.

[22]

[23]

[24] Siskel and Ebert Top Ten Lists. Retrieved April 22, 2014.

[25]

[26] Awards Information for _Alice's Restaurant_. IMDb. Retrieved April 22, 2014.

title: Alice's Restaurant (film)

question: Summarize the details about the restaurant.

answer: The restaurant, alluded to by the title Alice's Restaurant, is a restaurant that the character Alice is starting up in nearby Stockbridge. However, no further details about the establishment is given, so it is possible that Alice abandons her plan in the course of the film.

question: Why did the real Alice and Ray divorce?


split: test

text:
Someday I want to be able to walk the earth, just like the greatest minds through history have. Think about it, Albert Einstein, Julius Caesar, Isaac Newton and in the future, me, Mike the fish. It will happen, i am fully convinced it will. I just need to find out how to get up there.

Some people might wonder why, but the answer is very simple... Fish, are not particulary smart. I have yet to meet a fish whom I can have an intellegent discussion with. It seems that noone possess a deeper mind, a more profound way of thinking. I have searched every corner of the Atlantic ocean for answers. I have talked to every kind of creature that exists in this otherwise marvelous place, only to be met with more questions. All they seem to care about is food and procreation, what about the big questions. What about the purpose of evolution. What about the fearful afterlife. To fish or not to fish?

To me it is obvious that I need to find a way to get up there, with the land-fauna, or at least that is what I call them. Although, I'm sure they have a more sophisticated name for themselves.
If you wonder how I know that they are smarter than fish, it is because I have seen it.   I have seen their faces, their tall and not very fine prospected faces. Most of them have have big goggles surrounding their small marble eyes. Some have this big plastic gadget in their mouth that produces bubbles every once in a while. I'm certain that the goggles and the bubble-gizmo is of external constructions and not a natural part of their body, however I do not know what their purpose is. At first, I believed that the mouth-device was used for them to breathe under water. To my surprise, I some time later found out that they can indeed breathe in this, to them, foreign realm.
I know because I have met a land-fauna who did not have a mouth-gizmo. It was somewhere in the southwest Atlantic, not too far from the shore. I was of course thrilled to see him, however as it seemed, unresponded. He was rather rude to me to be honest. I introduced myself but he did not respond. He just stared at me with his seemingly fearful eyes. His pale white face appeared to be apathetic to my presence. He was not moving a single limb, he was not responding to anything I did. He did not put an effort to communicate. Not even a single bubble. There was not much I could do, so I left.

I suppose land-faunas can be as dumb as fish.

I have a plan on how to reach the other realm. The only problem is that it is slightly, just slightly based on luck. The plan itself is rather simple, it does not require much of me. The plan is as follows:
1. Find the right land-fauna.
2. Get the land-fauna to pick me up.
3. Use land-faunas ship to travel to shore.
4. Find answers.

See it is very simple.

I have seen land-faunas use these lines with a shiny metal figure on the end of it. I reckon it is to give us fish opportunity to get to the upper realm. I need to search long enough and not give up. Tenacity is the key to success, is what my father used to say, he was great fish.

Right there! My fate has finally crossed the path of the right land-fauna. He is the one. His line is right over there. I swim ferociously to it, I will not miss this opportunity. I examine the metal figure thoroughly. It is quite sharp and the only way to grip it is with my mouth. The metal figure pierce through my jaw. The excruciating pain that ensues is beyond comprehension, however not in vain. The line is rising, it is working. We are going towards the surface. I try to ignore the pain as much as possible, I drown the taste of blood with the soothing thought of lifelong fulfillment. Slowly but surely we reach above the surface. There he is, the land-fauna in his rightful realm. Majestic. My head is dizzy and it is getting darker. It must be from the pain and the loss of blood. I just hope he hurries to get aid.

I will be greater than Mozart, Julius Caesar and Albert Einstein combined. I am Mike the fish, is the last thought before everything disappears.

title: [MF] Mike The Fish

question: What species is the narrator?

answer: Mike is a fish of some unspecified species.

question: What is Mike's biggest ambition?

answer: He wants to live on land and have conversations with intelligent beings.

question: Why is Mike smarter than other fish?

answer: There is not sufficient information to answer the question.

question: What does Mike find in the Southwest Atlantic?

answer: He finds an (impliedly) dead person floating in the water.

question: What are "land-faunas"?

answer: This is Mike's name for creatures (i.e. humans) that live on land.

question: What fate befalls Mike the Fish?

answer: He is caught by a fisherman and dies.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: This is a story about a fish who desires to live on land. The fish is intelligent, but naively gets captured by a fisherman and is killed.


text:
WE'VE UPDATED THIS ARTICLE WITH NEW PHOTOS AND VIDEOS OF THE EVE SPECTRUM THAT HAVE JUST BEEN RELEASED AS OF AUGUST 20TH, 2020. TAKE A LOOK.

"What's the best HDMI 2.1 monitor?" It's a question that I've received with increasing regularity over the past few weeks as next-generation consoles draw closer to release, and it's one that I've had no answer for - there simply aren't any monitors on the market that support the higher refresh rates and other gaming features offered by HDMI 2.1*. Apart from our best gaming TV pick, there aren't even that many TVs that support the new standard either! Today though, I can finally offer a recommendation, as Eve has just announced that its crowd-developed Spectrum gaming monitor will be one of the first to come with HDMI 2.1.

We've covered the Spectrum a couple of times since it was announced last October, but if you missed those articles, no hard feelings! To briefly recap, the Spectrum is a crowd-developed monitor, meaning its design and features were voted on by a community of interested enthusiasts. That's lead to the inclusion of unusual features for a 27-inch gaming monitor, like 100W USB-C pass-through charging and integer-ratio upscaling. The hardware inside is fascinating too, with Eve using the same Nano IPS panel technology that we loved in our current 'best gaming monitor' pick, the LG GL850, with improvements to important metrics like brightness, contrast, refresh rate and local dimming. The monitor is also set to be G-Sync compatible, so VRR is an option on a range of platforms. That could add up to an impressive gaming monitor, and HDMI 2.1 support only sweetens the deal.

Right now, the Spectrum is on pre-sale in three configurations: 2560x1440 at 144Hz ($389), 2560x1440 at 240Hz ($529) and 3840x2160 at 144Hz ($629). It's these latter two models that will support HDMI 2.1, with two of the future-proof ports each - so you could potentially have an Xbox Series X and a PS5 connected simultaneously.

The 4K 144Hz Spectrum model makes the most sense for next-gen, as it aligns most closely with the 4K 120Hz combination offered by many high-end TVs, but the 1440p 240Hz model could also come in handy if console game developers choose to support arbitrary resolutions and refresh rates. Of course, both AMD and Nvidia are expected to include HDMI 2.1 on their rumoured next-gen graphics cards as well, so you ought to be well covered for PC gaming too. (Of course, the monitor also includes DisplayPort 1.4, so you'll also be able to access these higher refresh rates and resolutions on current-gen cards.)

The remainder of the Eve Spectrum announcement is a little less exciting, but it's worth covering if you're interested in the monitor. First, the design has changed slightly, with the 1440p 240Hz and 4K 144Hz models gaining a much slimmer bottom bezel that looks a bit more modern - and should better suit vertical multi-monitor setups.

The order in which the monitors will be delivered is also changing, with the least popular model (the entry-level 1440p 144Hz one) slipping to the first quarter of next year, making the 1440p 240Hz and 4K 144Hz models the first to arrive in the last quarter of 2020. That should jive well with the next-gen consoles, both of which are set to appear in a similar time frame, but delays for both the Spectrum and the consoles are of course still possible given the ongoing human malware situation.

What do you think of the Spectrum? We're cautiously optimistic. The spec sheet looks good, but delivering a solid gaming monitor is certainly a challenge we don't see attempted by smaller companies very often, especially when there's so much bleeding-edge tech involved. Still, watching the continued development of this monitor has been fascinating, and we look forward to testing the Spectrum once it hits retail. Until then, stay tuned!

Update: August 20th

The Eve Spectrum is getting closer to reality, with a flood of new photos and videos being released today in the "Forging Ahead" update.

[spectrum]
While the monitor hasn't changed substantially since we've seen it last, the box on the back of the monitor that contains the advanced scaler capable of HDMI 2.1 connections has grown in size to ensure it is adequately cooled. More importantly, we have the first real-life photos of an early model, showing the monitor turned on and working.

You can see the Spectrum being assembled above, and how it looks in motion below.

It's an encouraging sign, given that Eve is a smaller company and developing a working, high-end monitor is a _lot_ trickier than slapping your name on a mouse pad or CPU cooler.

The firm says that the first measurements of the monitor will be published soon, with models going out for certification after that and the first few review samples sometime later. As soon as we have a unit in hand, we'll start sharing some early impressions of what remains a very promising monitor for fans of next-gen consoles or graphics.

question: Which is the best HDMI 2.1 monitor?

answer: The Eve Spectrum.

question: What is a crowd-developed monitor?

answer: A crowd-developed monitor means that its design and features were voted by a community of interested enthusiasts.

question: How much does the HDMI 2.1 monitor cost?

answer: The HDMI 2.1 monitor costs $529 and $629.

question: Which company is manufacturing the monitor?

answer: The company manufacturing the monitor is Eve.

question: Write a ~6 sentence summary.

answer:
Eve has come up with a crowd-developed Spectrum gaming monitor with HDMI 2.1. This means that you may now be able to have an Xbox Series X and a PS5 connected simultaneously.

The monitor is 27-inches in size and comes with 100W USB-C pass-through charging and integer-ratio upscaling. The Spectrum monitor with the HDMI 2.1 configurations comes at two prices; $529 and $629.

Delivering the solid gaming monitor is certainly a challenge for a small company like Eve. But everyone is cautiously optimistic about it.


text:
Back in 1980, Donald Trump strode alone down the hallway of the federal Organized Crime Strike Force office in Brooklyn.

He was there to be interviewed by the famously tough U.S. Attorney Michael Guadagno concerning possible dealings with labor racketeer John Cody.

The sight of anyone of means coming in for questioning without legal representation was rare enough to prompt an exclamation from another strike force prosecutor.

“What the f---?”

“He was in without a f---ing lawyer!” Guadagno is said to have replied.

Trump may have chosen to come solo on the advice of Roy Cohn, who was by then his lawyer and mentor. Or Trump may have been acting with a sense of his own infallibility. He seems to have been responsive to Guadagno’s questions and generally less impetuous and more considered than many of us might have imagined.

“I believe the guy, what can I tell you?” Guadagno is said to have remarked afterward.

Guadagno had almost certainly been aggressive in his questioning and Trump may have actually been telling the truth in insisting he had no corrupt dealings with Cody to obtain labor peace.

But that may have subsequently changed. Doubters would note that the Trump Tower construction site was the lone site that remained open during a citywide strike Cody called in 1982. And that a lady friend of Cody’s subsequently ended up with a Trump Tower penthouse, the only apartment there with its own swimming pool.

Guadagno would go on to become a state appellate court judge in New Jersey. He married a fellow strike force prosecutor, Kim McFadden Guadagno, who became New Jersey lieutenant governor.

And Trump became president of the United States.

Now, 38 years after that solitary stroll into the Brooklyn Strike Force office, Trump again faces questioning by the feds. This time it will be by special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigators.

Trump presently has a host of lawyers, but he very likely still harbors an impulse to go solo as he did in 1980.

If he did so, the whole country would exclaim, “What the f---?”

His base would be electrified, especially if he went so far as to tape it.

Talk about reality TV!

One complication is a change in the law. Trump can still lie all he wants about special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI. But if he lies to Mueller or the FBI, he risks being charged with a crime thanks to a precedent arising from a 1998 Supreme Court case involving another New York real estate company and another New York labor union official.

Prior to then, people who lied to the FBI could seek the protection of the Exculpatory No Doctrine, which held that the Fifth Amendment provision against self-incrimination precluded a person from being charged with a crime for falsely denying guilt when questioned by a federal investigator.

The union official in this landmark case was James Brogan. Federal investigators appeared unannounced at his home and asked if he had received any illegal cash from a particular real estate firm, JRD.

“Petitioner’s response was ‘no,’” court papers report. “At that point, the agents disclosed that a search of JRD headquarters had produced company records showing the contrary. They also told petitioner that lying to federal agents in the course of an investigation was a crime.”

Brogan was convicted and his appeal of _Brogan v. United States_ went all the way to the Supreme Court. The court’s decision summarized Brogan’s argument that in making it a crime to lie to the feds, the statute “places a ‘cornered suspect’ in the ‘cruel trilemma’ of admitting guilt, remaining silent, or falsely denying guilt.”

A majority of the justices did not buy it.

“An innocent person will not find himself in a similar quandary,” the court found, indicating that “the innocent person lacks even a ‘lemma.’”

The court added, “Even the honest and contrite guilty person will not regard the third prong of the ‘trilemma’ (the blatant lie) as an available option.”

While warning against what it termed “compassion inflation” in the law, the court ruled, “Whether or not the predicament of the wrongdoer run to ground tugs at the heart strings, neither the text nor the spirit of the Fifth Amendment confers a privilege to lie.”

As a result of that new case law, Martha Stewart later went to prison.

_Brogan v. United States_ also led to the recent cases against Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos.

“Violation: 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (False Statements),” their indictments both read.

In the absence of being able to cite the Exculpatory No Doctrine, both defendants pleaded guilty to making “materially false statements and omissions during an interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Flynn and Papadopoulos are both reportedly cooperating. The feds may now have more on Trump than they did in that long-ago encounter. And, in an investigation of this size and importance and where he is the ultimate target, the feds would not likely be seeking to talk with him unless they were nearing the end of at least a major portion of it. They will therefore likely already know the answers to whatever they ask. Any false replies could bring into play the change in the law since he strode solo into the Strike Force nearly four decades ago.

Yet, when speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Trump displayed some of the same bravado. He declared that he was looking forward to facing Mueller.

“I would love to do that,” he said. “I’d like to do it as soon as possible.”

He allowed that this time, the questioning will be “subject to my lawyers and all that.” He said they estimate it will come in “about two to three weeks.”

When the big moment arrives, his bravado will likely give way to surprising sobriety for a Trumpaholic who is so often inebriated with his sense of Trump. He may well be even more measured than he was back in 1980. He may even set a personal record for truthfulness with Mueller, outdoing his session with Guadagno.

Meanwhile, in circumstances that do not involve the feds and liability to 18 U.S.C. § 1001, Trump is free to continue breaking all presidential records for lying. He is sure to give vent to his impetuous self as he tweets smears and innuendo and falsehoods.

From the Oval Office, he speaks power to truth.

question: Do you think Trump had dealings with labor racketeer John Cody?

answer: Considering that the Trump Tower construction site stayed open after a strike called by Cody, and someone close to Cody ended up with a Trump Tower penthouse it seems likely that Trump had dealings with John Cody.

question: Why might Trump choose to face Mueller's questioning without a lawyer?

answer: If Trump chose to face Mueller's questioning without a lawyer it would be a national spectacle, especially if he could avoid making a scene. His voter base would be galvanized and entertained from the event.

question: What significance does Brogan v. United States have in regards to Mueller's investigation?

answer: Brogan v. United States removed the protection of the Exculpatory No Doctrine, so Trump can no longer legally lie to federal agents when being questioned.


text:
ELIZABETH BENEDICT is an American author best known for her fiction, her personal essays, as the editor of three anthologies, and for _The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers_. Her novels are: _Slow Dancing, The Beginner’s Book of Dreams, Safe Conduct, Almost_, and _The Practice of Deceit_. She lives in New York City and works as a college admissions consultant.[1][2][3][4][5]

Work

Fiction

Her first published short story, “Feasting,” was selected for the 1983 O. Henry Prize Short Story collection.[6] Her second story, “A Fifty Percent Chance,” published in _Seventeen_ magazine in 1982, earned a National Magazine Award.[7] Her first novel, _Slow Dancing_ (Alfred A. Knopf), was a finalist for the 1985 National Book Award[8] and the _LA Times_ Fiction Prize.[9] Her novel _Almost_, a _New York Times_ Notable Book of the Year, was selected as one of _Newsweek_{{'}}s Best Fiction of 2001.

Nonfiction

Benedict's _Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers_ (Story Press) was first published in 1996. A second edition, published in 2002, was updated to include the new role of the Internet and the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal in writing about sex in fiction The book was also published in the U.K., Germany and Australia[10][11][12][13]

Benedict teaches workshops on writing about sex in fiction at writers’ conferences and has appeared on radio shows discussing the issue in the U.S., UK, and Australia.[14][15][16]

_The Joy of Writing Sex_ led the _New York Observer_ to include Benedict on its panel on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, described in Francine Prose’s article, “New York Supergals Love That Naughty Prez” Benedict defended then-President Clinton's conduct, saying “Nobody is aggrieved here. Monica's not complaining, Hillary's not complaining. The only person who cares is Ken Starr.”[17][18][19] Benedict reaffirmed her defense of Clinton in a retrospective of the scandal on the _Slate_ podcast “Slow Burn,” in 2018.[20]

Benedict's book reviews, personal essays, and articles have appeared in _The New York Times_, _Los Angeles Times_, _Boston Globe_, _Salmagundi_, _Tin House_, _Daedalus_, _Harper's Bazaar_, _Esquire_, _Real Simple_, _Allure_, _The American Prospect_, and _The Rumpus_. Her short fiction has appeared in _Narrative Magazine_.[21]

Anthologies

Benedict is the editor of three anthologies. The first, _Mentors, Muses and Monsters: 30 Writers on the People who Changed Their Lives_ (2009, Free Press, Simon & Schuster), was inspired by an essay she wrote for _Tin House_ about her mentor at Barnard, Elizabeth Hardwick.[22] It includes essays by other Barnard alumnae Mary Gordon and Sigrid Nunez. Nunez's essay on Susan Sontag was the inspiration for her 2011 memoir about Sontag, _Sempre Susan_.[23]

Her second anthology, _What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts that Mattered Most_ (2013 Algonquin Books), was a _New York Times_ Bestseller.[24] Her third, _Me, My Hair and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession_ (2015, Algonquin Books) includes essays by Maria Hinojosa, Marita Golden, and Jane Smiley.

Themes

Growing up in New York City has been a noted theme of Benedict's fiction and nonfiction. About her second novel, _The Beginner's Book of Dreams_, _Kirkus Reviews_ wrote: “Benedict handles Manhattan life, in this case a young girl's exploration of semi-fraudulent Manhattan life, superbly—with the vibrancy of The World of Henry Orient (that underappreciated book by Nora Johnson) or with the emotional dislocations of the better work of John O'Hara and Richard Yates.”[25][Benedict at the 2019 Islander's Write Festival in Marthas Vineyard]

Benedict's personal essay, “Murder One: Mad Dog Taborsky and Me” was published in _Daedalus_ in 2008[26] and explored the effect of the murder of her mother's brother on her parents’ marriage and her own life. In 1960, Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky was the last man executed in the state of Connecticut until 2005, after being released from death row for the murder of Benedict's uncle. Once released, he committed a series of murders that terrorized central Connecticut in 1956 and 1957.

College essay coaching and teaching

Benedict is the founder and president of Don't Sweat the Essay, Inc., which focuses on coaching students for college and graduate school application essays. She has written frequently on the subject for _Huffington Post_.[27][28]

Benedict has been on the fiction faculty of the New York State Summer Writers Institute, at Skidmore College, since 1997[29]

Bibliography

-   _Slow Dancing_ (1985)
-   _The Beginner's Book of Dreams_ (1988)
-   _Safe Conduct_ (1993)
-   _The Joy of Writing Sex_ (1996, revised 2002)
-   _Almost_ (2001)
-   _The Practice of Deceit_ (2005)
-   _Mentors, Muses and Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives_ (Editor) (2009)
-   _What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Writers on the Gifts that Mattered Most_ (Editor) (2013)
-   '' Me, My Hair and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession'' (Editor) (2015)

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title: Elizabeth Benedict

question: What does the text say about education?

answer: Benedict has been working as a college admissions consult at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, at Skidmore College. She educates students for college and graduate application essays for Don't Sweat the Essay, Inc. She also teaches workshops on writing about sex fiction at writers' conferences.

question: What does the text say about Benedict's personal life?

answer: Benedict grew up in New York City, and currently lives there. Her mother's brother was murdered by Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky around 1960. This effected her parents' marriage and her own life.

question: Summarize everything that happened in the 1990s.

answer: In 1993, Benedict released Safe Conduct. In 1996, she released "Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers. Since 1997, she has been on the fiction faculty of the New York State Summer Writers Institute, at Skidmore College.

question: What does the text say about Benedict's failures?


text:
_For the character, see Yev Kassem._

“THE SOUP NAZI” is the sixth episode of the seventh season of _Seinfeld_, the 116th episode overall. It first aired November 2, 1995. It was written by Spike Feresten and was directed by Andy Ackerman.

A new soup kitchen opens, but the owner is extremely strict: so strict that he is nicknamed "The Soup Nazi". Meanwhile, Kramer is supposed to guard an item of Elaine's that is left on the street, but he is threatened by two "street toughs" who steal it.

“The Soup Nazi” is also the nickname of the title character played by Larry Thomas. The term "Nazi" is used as an exaggeration of the excessively strict regimentation he constantly demands of his patrons. The Soup Nazi's real name is Yev Kassem.

Plot

Jerry, George and Elaine go out to a new soup stand Kramer has been raving about; its owner is referred to as the "Soup Nazi" due to his temperament and insistence on a strict manner of behavior while ordering. Jerry explains the procedure for ordering which George accepts, but Elaine rejects. En route, Elaine notices a sidewalk furniture dealer with an armoire for sale and decides to stop and buy it. However, when she returns to her building with it, the building superintendent tells her there is no moving allowed on Sundays.

When Jerry and George get to the soup stand, George follows the procedure but notices that he did not get any bread with his soup order. Jerry tells him, “Just forget it. Let it go.” George doesn't listen, however, and his soup is confiscated by the cashier. The Soup Nazi yells at him, “NO SOUP FOR YOU!”

Over the past weeks, Jerry has been annoying George and Elaine with his open affection and baby talk (calling each other "Schmoopie") with his new girlfriend Sheila (Alexandra Wentworth). During another visit to the soup stand, when Sheila will not stop kissing Jerry in the line of customers, the Soup Nazi orders her out of the line, and Jerry is forced to pretend he does not know her. When George finds out, he admits his annoyance with their "baby talk" romantic behavior to Jerry. Jerry later tells Sheila he was just joking at the soup stand and makes up with her. When George finds out, he begins to act similarly with Susan to make a point. Susan misinterprets George's intentions and thinks that George is finally enjoying showing his feelings in public, continuing to act that way after Jerry again breaks up with Sheila.

Elaine, still awaiting the chance to move her new armoire upstairs, asks Kramer to guard the armoire on the street overnight. When he arrives, she goes to the soup stand to get him soup. While she is gone, two "street toughs" (Bob and Cedric in their first appearance) intimidate Kramer and steal the armoire. At the soup stand, Elaine ignores everyone's prior advice and antagonizes the Soup Nazi, who bans her for a year. She returns to her building to find Kramer without the armoire.

Later, Kramer, who has become friends with the Soup Nazi, tells him the story of the stolen armoire in passing, while Newman orders his soup following the Soup Nazi's rules as strictly as possible (and whom the Soup Nazi serves respectfully). The Soup Nazi offers Kramer an antique armoire he has in storage in his basement. Kramer gives the armoire to Elaine as a replacement for her stolen one. Elaine goes to thank the Soup Nazi for the armoire, but the Soup Nazi angrily declares that he never would have given it to Kramer if he knew it was for her; instead, he would have destroyed it. Offended, Elaine returns home, where she and Jerry subsequently discover the Soup Nazi's secret soup recipes, which have been left behind in a drawer of the old armoire. She returns to his shop, recipes in hand, and tells him, “You’re through, Soup Nazi. Pack it up. No more soup for you. NEXT!” Feeling ruined, the Soup Nazi decides to close his business, move to Argentina, and give away his remaining soup. The ending shows Jerry and Newman getting along, a rare occurrence. Newman alerts Jerry to Elaine's troublemaking at the soup stand. While Newman runs home to get a big soup pot, Jerry takes Newman's advice and hurries down to the soup stand himself. As Jerry starts running, his image is frozen.

Notes About Nothing

-   Future _Saturday Night Live_ cast member Ana Gasteyer was the woman expelled before Elaine came in and ruined the Soup Nazi.
-   Michael Michaud was an actor best known for the title character of Ricky in _Ricky 1_, a quirky spoof of _Rocky_ that faded into obscurity but then gained new notoriety on YouTube. In this episode, Michaud plays a man who is expelled by the Soup Nazi for saying his mother is a Spanish immigrant.
-   One year before the episode's airing, Thom Barry and Wayne Knight co-starred in _Space Jam_, though they did not share any scenes together.
-   During production for Season 8, Al Yeganeh, proprietor of Soup Kitchen International, encountered Jerry Seinfeld and several staffers at his West 55th Street shop. He chastised Jerry because he felt that the episode had ruined his life. Al angrily (and profanely) demanded that Jerry apologize. Jerry insincerely and sarcastically told Al, “I’m sorry.” Needless to say, apology not accepted: Al expelled Jerry and the others from his shop.

  Season Seven Episodes
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  _The Engagement_ | _The Postponement_ | _The Maestro_ | _The Wink_ | _The Hot Tub_ | _THE SOUP NAZI_ | _The Secret Code_ | _The Pool Guy_ | _The Sponge_ | _The Gum_ | _The Rye_ | _The Caddy_ | _The Seven_ | _The Cadillac, Part 1_ | _The Cadillac, Part 2_ | _The Shower Head_ | _The Doll_ | _The Friar's Club_ | _The Wig Master_ | _The Calzone_ | _The Bottle Deposit_ | _The Wait Out_ | _The Invitations_

question: What does the text say about Seinfeld?

question: What does the text say about comedy?


text:
GWENDOLYN ROSETTA CAPPS LIGHTNER (1925 - August 22, 1999) was a gospel pianist, arranger, and choir director and an influential figure within the Los Angeles gospel community. She was best known for her work as accompanist for Mahalia Jackson, and she was also a session musician for recordings by the Pilgrim Travelers, the Soul Stirrers, Brother Joe May, and Doris Akers. Lightner was also an active leader within the Baptist church for many years.[1][2] Bernice Johnson Reagon, scholar, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, and curator emeritus in the Division of Community Life and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History called Lightner “a brilliant exponent of classical gospel playing.”[3]

Early life and education

Gwendolyn Lightner was born in Brookport, Illinois in 1925, the fourth of six children, to parents Mase and Florence Capps.[4] She began playing piano when she was 8 and by the age of 10 she was playing for her church choir and for school activities.[5] After graduating from high school she attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, where she completed her classical training. Her move to Chicago in the early 1940s to attend the Lyon and Healy Academy of Music led to a growing interest in gospel music and her into contact with many of the city's most prominent gospel musicians (among them, Kenneth Morris, Sallie Martin, Roberta Martin, Emma Jackson, and Mahalia Jackson).[6][7] Kenneth Morris had begun using a new, improvisionaal style of piano accompaniment for gospel music that scholars call “the bounce,” and when Lightner heard it, she asked Morris to teach her how to play that way. This resulted in her creation of a sound that melded Morris' looser “bounce” style with the more classic style of gospel she grew up with.[8]

Career

Lightner was a member of the Emma L. Jackson Singers when the group received an invitation to perform from the minister of Grace Memorial church in Los Angeles. They toured Los Angeles for several weeks in 1946, and during that time Lightner made the decision to stay and manage Lillian Doty's Los Angeles Gospel Music Mart studio.[9][10] At the time of her arrival there was not a significant gospel music tradition in Los Angeles. Music in church services consisted primarily of traditional hymns. She was hired, together with James Earl Hines, a nationally known gospel singer and choir director, by the Reverend John L. Branham of St. Paul Baptist Church, himself a native of Chicago, who wanted to bring the midwest gospel sound into his church services.[11][12] In 1946, Lightner and Hines founded St. Paul Baptist Church's Echoes of Eden choir, which would go on to be credited with revolutionizing the Los Angeles gospel music scene. From 1947 to 1949, Lightner served as the choir's first pianist. Echoes of Eden, whose membership reached over 100 singer, made its Los Angeles radio debut in February 1947. The program, which broadcast from 10:30 to 11:30 p.m., would eventually be heard in seventeen states by a listening audience of one million people, one of the largest on the West Coast at the time.[13]

After St. Paul Baptist Church, Lightner went on to become choir director and pianist at Grace Memorial Church of God in Christ and Mount Moriah Baptist Church. [14] In 1956, she became the musical minister for the Bethany Missionary Baptist Church, where she would remain for the next 43 years. She also taught music at the Victory Baptist Day School for almost 30 years.[15]

Lightner was affiliated with a number of gospel groups in Los Angeles, including: the Rose of Sharon (1946-47) women's gospel trio, the J.Earle Hines Good will Singers (1947-49) and later the J. Earle Hines Goodwill Community Choir (1950s), the Sallie Martin Singers (1952-53), and the Voices of Hope community choir (1957-74).[16] She organized and co-directed Voices of Hope with Thurston G. Frazier, and the group would go on to become nationally known through many live concert appearances and two albums for Capitol Records (“We've Come This Far by Faith,” and “Walk on by Faith”).[17] Lightner would also play piano on other gospel recordings by the Pilgrim Travelers, the Soul Stirrers, and Brother Joe May (all for Specialty Records). She is perhaps best known as the pianist for Mahalia Jackson (1968-72), whom Lightner accompanied for several world tours and many television appearances.[18]

Lightner served as pianist for the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. for over fifty years.[19] She was also director of music for the Western Baptist State Convention and Congress of Christian Education.[20][21]

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title: Gwendolyn Rosetta Capps Lightner

question: What does the article say about Lightner's work with other singers?

answer: Lightner was a member of the Emma L. Jackson Singers and toured Los Angeles with them. She and gospel singer James Earl Hines were hired by the Reverend John L. Branham of St. Paul Baptist Church. Lightner and Hines founded the St. Paul Baptist Church's Echoes of Eden Choir. She was affiliated with the Rose of Sharon women's gospel trio, the J.Earle Hines Good will Singers and later the J. Earle Hines Goodwill Community Choir, the Sallie Martin Singers, and the Voices of Hope community choir. She also organized and co-directed Voices of Hope. She is best known as the pianist for Mahalia Jackson.

question: What does the article say about Lightner's romantic life?


text:
_Note: NPR's First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page._

[Camp Cope, How To Socialise & Make Friends]

Recent headlines out of Australia make burgeoning rock trio Camp Cope look like die-hard activists. At the end of 2017, bassist Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich wrote an essay on music industry discrimination for Australian publication _The Music_. On New Years Eve, singer and guitarist Georgia "Maq" McDonald called out Falls Festival for only booking nine women musicians. And the band pushed fellow festival acts to wear T-shirts about sexual assault prevention and has been encouraging musicians to spread the message.

During their three years together, Maq, Hellmrich and drummer Sarah Thompson haven't shied away from discussions or the backlash that arise from their actions, and watching those conversations take place gives fans around the world a secondhand thrill, as if real change feels within reach. Thanks to the impending release of the band's sophomore album, _How To Socialise & Make Friends_ (out March 2 on Run For Cover), we've only just begun to talk about Camp Cope in that context.

The innocuous title suggests a focus on awkward moments or menial triumphs, in the vein of Courtney Barnett. But from its opening, solitary bass line, the record walks confidently through difficult topics, often with an emotional tug felt in retrospect. "The Face of God" sees Maq grapple with unwanted advances in the bedroom and misplaced chagrin when her accusations aren't heard: "Somehow what happened to me was my fault / You can see it in the apologists / And hear it in the songs." Elsewhere, she confronts self-identity hurdles on "Sagan-Indiana," damage left by irresponsible men with "Animals & Real," and skewed relationship power dynamics in the title track.

These words come to life through the trio's slow-burning performance. Hellmrich guides songs with despondent bass tones; Thompson follows close behind by leaning into downbeats; Maq's voice, an instrument-turned-weapon that pokes holes in your heart with coarse howls, seemingly tears up her throat as it lurches out. These combine to give their rough, minimal rock a punk edge. Every unpolished moment stuns with turn-of-age earnestness and, thanks to matte production, gives the illusion of being delivered mid-diary entry.

Nowhere is that feeling conveyed as potently as the album's aptly titled "The Opener." Leaning on lived experiences, the trio tears through an anthem about undermining advice, misogynistic actions, and the excessive barriers they face in the music industry. "Tell me again how there just aren't that many girls in the music scene," Maq sings. "It's another all-male tour preaching equality / It's another straight cis man who knows more about this than me." Like the other tracks on the album, it isn't a roll call of injustices, but an opportunity to tell listeners that they aren't alone. It's what makes the song's lyrical equivalent of a middle finger — "See how far we've come not listening to you" — feel like a community resource.

The thrill of hearing Camp Cope fight the patriarchy on _How To Socialise & Make Friends_ isn't that they're taking names or refuse to let up (both positive actions, to be clear), but that they remain radical while keeping their sound casual in structure. Camp Cope want to normalize the fight for equality and have been trying to since long before the #MeToo movement showed its fangs. The only difference is that now they have a megaphone for it.

question: What makes the Camp Cope look like activists?

answer: Camp Cope's bassist, Kelly Hellmrich, had written an essay on discrimination in the music industry. On New Year's Eve, their singer and guitarist Georgia called out Falls Festival for only having nine women musicians. The band has also pushed for wearing t-shirts about sexual assault prevention.

question: Summarize the song 'The Opener'.

question: Summarize all about 'How to Socialise and Make Friends'.

answer: The title focuses on awkward moments or menial triumphs in the vein of Courtney Barnett. The song flows through different topics throughout, sometimes with an emotional tug in retrospect.


text:
MARY ANN ARMSTRONG (née NEWEY, 17 June 1838, Birmingham, England – 2 July 1910, Flemington, Australia), also known as MRS. C.C. ARMSTRONG, was a British botanical fern artist who lived and worked in New Zealand and Australia. She compiled and artistically arranged fern specimens for a number of Australasia's ferns albums, including a series of professional gift books “The South Pacific Fern Album”.[1] Armstrong participated in a number of international and intercolonial exhibitions, where her ferns received commendation and were gifted to dignitaries.[2]

Life

Armstrong was born in a family of William and Margaret Newey of Birmingham, England. When her mother died, in 1853, she emigrated with her father, brothers and stepsisters to Victoria. In 1858, she married Charles Clark Armstrong, a coach runner and storekeeper who was also a native of Birmingham, and in early 1860s the couple with their two sons relocated to New Zealand. They resided in Dunedin, New Zealand, for next two decades, where their remaining eleven children were born.[3]

In 1887 Armstrong and her husband moved to Melbourne, while their older son Charles Clark, Jr. remained in Dunedin.[4] After the sudden death of their daughter, Nellie, Mary Ann and her husband travelled to West Australia to care for their grandchildren. They eventually returned to the Melbourne area and settled with the family of their daughter Jennie. Mary Ann died in Flemington on 2 July 1910 and is buried in Melbourne General Cemetery.[5]

Art

Armstrong developed a keen interest in collecting and arranging fern specimens, being active from roughly the late 1870s to the 1890s. She artistically arranged and scientifically notated ferns in albums and framed some of the compositions into decorative, collage-like landscapes.[6] Her ornamental and handcrafted fern work reflects the domestic tradition of 19th century women's decorative arts, however unlike others examples of feminine tradition, Armstrong's botanical art was displayed at a series of international and intercolonial exhibitions between 1879 and 1889.[7]

She used botanical watercolors, miniature painting and needlework, as well as natural objects such as ferns, seaweeds, shells and seed for arranging her compositions. Another distinctive feature of Armstrong's works is their commercial success among the general public generated by the reputation she established through her commendable exhibition record. Her commercial fern work also capitalised on the popular appeal of the fern as a tourist icon and national symbol.[8] In the mid-to-late 1880s Mary Ann's fern albums entitled _New Zealand Fern_ existed in public institutions and private collections. Her later _South Pacific Fern Album_ (1889) represents the culmination of her career blending its botanical, aesthetic, and commercial aspects together with the burgeoning discourses of tourism and nationalism.[9][10] In addition to albums, Armstrong produced ferns mounted on postcards and paper goods with fern transfers selling them to local booksellers and fancy goods shops.

Nowadays Armstrong's albums can be found such institutions as the National Library of New Zealand, the Universities of Wellington[11] and Waikato, Australian National University Library,[12] the National Library of Australia,[13] and the State Libraries of New South Wales and Victoria,[14] as well as at Harvard,[15] the University of Georgia and UCLA.[16]

Exhibitions

-   1879 – International Exhibition, Sydney
-   1880–1881 – Melbourne International Exhibitions, Exhibition Building, Melbourne, VIC
-   1882 – New Zealand International Exhibition, Christchurch, NZ
-   1886 – Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London, England
-   1888 – Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne, VIC

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[4]  New Zealand Ferns|last=Books|first=Alembic Rare|website=Alembic Rare Books|access-date=15 November 2019}}

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title: Mary Ann Armstrong

question: List the named members of Mary Ann Armstrong's family.

answer: William newey (her father), Margaret Newey (her mother), Charles Clark Armstrong (her husband), Charles Clark, Jr. (her older son), Nellie (her daughter), Jennie (her daughter)

question: Name two of Mary Ann Armstrong's fern albums.

answer: New Zealand Fern, South Pacific Fern Album

question: Where can Mary Ann Armstrong's albums be viewed now?

answer: The National Library of New Zealand, the Universities of Wellington and Waikato, Australian National University Library, the National Library of Australia, the State Libraries of New South Wales and Victoria, Harvard, the University of Georgia, and UCLA

question: Describe Mary Ann Armstrong's artwork.

answer: Her artwork employs botanical watercolors, miniature painting, and needlework. She also incorporated natural objects like ferns, seaweeds, shells, and seeds.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: Mary Ann Armstrong was a British botanical fern artist who lived and worked in new Zealand and Australia. She is known for her compilations and arrangements of fern specimens.


text:
*Preface: I was reading a lot of Bukowski a the time.*

“What’s up?” She questioned me.

“Oh, you know, the usual,” I said without looking.

I felt a cold presence in her stare.

“Feeling happy?”

“Not yet, get over here.”

“No…you let go.”

Over the past fifteen years she gained a whole lot of weight. I was more attracted to her sister. I decided to call her sister that night. When we first met she was seeing this guy name Phil. I think they got married. Her name was Angela.

”Angela,” I said into the phone.

”Uh, who is this?”

“It’s Joe.” She was trying me.

“Oh, how are you?”

“Good. Listen, I need a good nut.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Does Phil give it to your hard? Does he fuck you good?”

“Not like he used to. How’s your marriage?”

“Your sister has seen better times.”

“So is that what you do? You just move on when you don’t feel like it anymore? When it’s not there?”

“Life is a constant game of recycling.”

“Recycled condoms and used-up memories,” she said.

“My brain has enough of those.”

She sighed heavily into the phone.

“Can I come over at 8?” I asked.

“Ok well I just have to do the dishes first.”

“Ok, I’ll come at 8. See you later.” I hung up.

My wife was standing in the kitchen staring at the empty jar of jelly.

”Did you ever wonder how much power goes into making a glass jar?” She asked.

“I never thought about it.” I said. I went to the fridge and grabbed the carton of orange juice. I finished it, drinking from the spout. “I’ll be back later, I need to get a few things from the store.”

She walked into the bathroom and locked the door.

Angela was waiting at 7:55pm. I was there five minutes early. She was wearing a nightgown. The sidewalk in front of her building had no crab grass growing out of it. The door-knob was tarnished. I saw her standing in the window looking down but I knocked anyway.

She opened the door.

“Hello Angela.”

“Hey Joe.”

I leaned in to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around me. I did her right there on the floor. We moved to the couch when she complained of back pain.

She lit a cigarette. She lit mine for me.

There was a painting on the wall.

“I don’t get that painting on the wall. What is that supposed to be?” I asked.

“It’s Schubert,” she said, “it’s about a girl who lost her shoes.”

“Lost her shoes that’s a hell of a thing to paint about,” I replied honestly.

“Well, you should get going. Phil will be home soon.”

”You were a great fuck, you know that?” I told her.

“I know.”

“Well, I’ll call you soon.”

“Yes, Joe.”

I walked back home. It was a short walk. When I got home my wife was asleep. I watched TV on the couch until I passed out.

title: [RF] Recycled Goods

question: Write a ~11 sentence summary.

answer:
The narrator chats to his wife. He feels a cold presence in her stare. She’s gained weight in the last 15 years. He is much more attracted to her sister, Angela, who is married to Phil. He decides to phone the sister.

He tells her he needs a good nut. She agrees. He asks whether Phil doesn’t do it for her. She says it’s not the same as it once was. He makes arrangements to come over at 8. He does her on the floor and leaves before Phil gets home.


text:
[]Credit: WNYC.org

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Gov. Chris Christie has been heavily criticized for the crisis in cross-Hudson train travel, due to his cancellation of the ARC tunnel five years ago and reluctance to support Amtrak’s proposed Gateway tunnel project. Far less attention has been given to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who until recently was all but silent on the potential transportation catastrophe facing tens of thousands of Manhattan workers who commute from New Jersey.

For years Cuomo barely acknowledged the decrepit existing train tunnels, whose potential shutdown for repairs would cripple rail travel into Manhattan, or the idea of building new tunnels. After train delays caused by decaying electrical equipment stoked commuters’ anger and prompted a letter from the U.S. Transportation Secretary last month, Cuomo finally acknowledged the importance of the Gateway project but firmly rejected calls for New York to help pay for it.

The prospects for a new tunnel are “not especially bright” if New York, New Jersey, and the Port Authority are expected to bear part of the estimated $15 billion cost, he told a TV station last week. “It’s not my tunnel!” he said to reporters during a press conference a few days later. “Why don’t you pay for it? It’s not my tunnel. It is an Amtrak tunnel that is used by Amtrak and by New Jersey Transit.”

Cuomo is technically correct, but he fails to mention the impact on New York, which sees some 400,000 workers commute from New Jersey every day. More than 20 percent of the people who cross the Hudson to go into Lower Manhattan take NJ Transit and Amtrak trains, and the figure exceeds 30 percent in Midtown Manhattan, according to NJ Transit data.

Commuters must also pay New York state and city taxes for every day they spend across the river.

Port Authority executive director Pat Foye — a Cuomo appointee — has said a disruption of the commute would have a “disastrous effect on the regional economy.”

In addition, whether Cuomo likes it or not, New York’s inability or refusal to contribute to trans-Hudson rail has played a role in the system’s current perilous state. Christie cited the lack of New York funding as one of the reasons he canceled the ARC tunnel in 2010, and he has said he won’t support Gateway unless New York and the federal government cover a “fair” share of the costs. Federal officials are now saying both states must participate if the project is to succeed.

“What’s really shocking is how much heat Christie has been taking for this, when nobody says this is actually New York’s fault as much as Christie’s,” said Philip Mark Plotch, a professor at Saint Peter’s University in Jersey City who has studied Cuomo’s transportation policies.

Plotch and other experts say Cuomo resists supporting Gateway because his constituents would not use it much, which minimizes political pressure to contribute, and because his state is focused on other very expensive transportation needs, including the MTA capital plan, the new Tappan Zee Bridge and a proposed new LaGuardia airport.

But New York state officials’ refusal to even acknowledge the trans-Hudson tunnel issue for years also stems from a failure to think regionally — on both sides of the river. It’s also the result of a historic rivalry that the Port Authority and other joint planning efforts were supposed to prevent from sabotaging infrastructural and economic growth.

Disputes over the region’s port, rail, and bridge needs and how to pay for them date back over a century. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was created in 1921 to address the problem of moving freight between ports in New York and rail lines in New Jersey, and was given sole authority to build bridges and tunnels within 25 miles of the Statue of Liberty. That eventually gave it a large and steady revenue base from tolls that it could use to maintain its facilities and build infrastructure that benefited both states.

Still, some structures remained out of the Port Authority’s hands. They include Amtrak’s trans-Hudson tunnels, which were built by a railroad company before the Port Authority was created, and transferred to the federal rail agency in 1976. Another such facility is the Tappan Zee Bridge, which crosses the Hudson further north. When it was built in 1955, New York sited the bridge just outside the Port Authority zone so that New York could keep the toll revenue.

Proposals to upgrade these two non-Port Authority facilities came into conflict in the 1990s and early 2000s, according to Plotch, who has written a new book about the bridge called “Politics Across the Hudson: The Tappan Zee Megaproject.”

New York wanted to address traffic congestion by creating its own rail service to Manhattan from Orange and Rockland counties, west of the Hudson, Plotch said. Trains there begin on a section of the Metro-North railroad that NJ Transit operates under contract, then cross the state border and continue on NJ Transit tracks down to the tunnels. Rather than collaborate with New Jersey to expand capacity by building new the ARC tunnels, Gov. George Pataki pursued a new Tappan Zee with a rail component, Plotch said.

“New York saw it as competition,” Plotch said of ARC. “They figured, okay, only one of these projects is going to get federal funding. Let’s hope it’s ours, not this New Jersey one. It was seen as a New Jersey project, the ARC project.”

“From New York’s perspective, you would think the ARC project is great, right? It brings in people. It helps the economy. There’s so many reasons why it’s important. But New York was afraid, if they said good things about it, they would have to help pay for it,” he said.

[related]New York’s MTA had originally been part of the planning process that led to ARC, along with NJ Transit and the Port Authority, which was eager to ameliorate the problem of insufficient trans-Hudson capacity. But during Pataki’s tenure the MTA dropped out and New York focused on the Tappan Zee.

Plotch notes that rail across the Tappan Zee would have carried just one-tenth the number of people as a new tunnel to Penn Station. When he interviewed a former aide to Gov. George Pataki for his book, he asked why the administration had not supported ARC rather than push for a new bridge.

“The aide said to me, ‘It’s New Jersey. Who cares?’” Plotch recalled.

Under Gov. Jon Corzine, New Jersey concluded it needed ARC badly enough that it went ahead with the $8.7 billion project without New York’s help. NJ Transit ran the project but the Port Authority agreed to kick in $3 billion. Martin Robins, the NJ Transit executive who oversaw ARC, says the Port Authority contributed because it recognized the need for more rail capacity, though some observers later claimed the ARC money was a quid pro quo for the billions that the agency would eventually spend on rebuilding the World Trade Center site.

Pataki’s proposed Tappan Zee rail line turned out to be far too expensive to be feasible, but the bridge had been neglected in the meantime and needed some $16 billion in repairs. In 2010, New York Gov. David Paterson suggested adding the Tappan Zee to the Port Authority as a way to regionalize the repair costs and toll revenues, reversing the state’s decision of 60 years earlier.

Christie, who had recently cancelled ARC and criticized New York for not contributing to the project, responded angrily to Paterson’s request. New York had wanted to keep the Tappan Zee toll revenues, so it was stuck with the maintenance costs, he said.

“I didn’t let them pick our pockets on ARC, I’m not letting New York pick New Jersey’s pockets on the Tappan Zee Bridge either,” Christie said.

“I can’t make this any clearer to New York than this: stop screwing with us. You’re not going to come and pick our pockets. New Jersey is not going to permit it any more,” he said.

Cuomo later revived the Tappan Zee replacement plan, leaving out the rail component, and construction is now under way. Neither state agreed to help with the other’s project and, as Plotch notes, the region now has neither Tappan Zee rail nor a new tunnel.

Cuomo continued to maintain New York’s silence on the need for new Hudson tunnels. As with the Pataki administration, acknowledging the tunnels’ importance would prompt demands that the state help fund Gateway, Plotch said.

With the end of the Obama administration approaching, Amtrak and the U.S. Transportation Department have been beating the drum ever louder for an agreement with the states that would allow Gateway to proceed. After last month’s train delays, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx sent a letter asking for a meeting with Cuomo and Christie.

Christie agreed to a meeting next Tuesday, which will include Senators Cory Booker and Robert Menendez (both D-NJ). Cuomo finally made a clear statement recognizing that new tunnels must be built, but refused to contribute funds and said, “There’s no reason to meet now” with Foxx.

“Everyone agrees that we needs the tunnels. I spoke to Gov. Christie about the tunnels after the secretary sent the letter. Gov. Christie and I both agree we need to repair those tunnels as quickly as possible,” Cuomo told a radio interviewer in late July. “The problem there is money. It’s about $12 billion. That’s a lot of money.”

“If the federal government, which heretofore has only offered about $3 billion, if the federal government can make a significant contribution, then let’s go. I mean, we have the shovels. We need it. We’ll make it a priority,” he said. “But we need the funding. And if we have a source of funding, we’ll go.”

question: Summarize the context of why Christie has been criticized.

answer: Gov. Christie was being heavily criticized for the crisis in cross-Hudson train travel due to his cancellation of the ARC tunnel five years ago and his reluctance to support Amtrak's proposed Gateway tunnel project. Christie said the lack of New York funding was one of the reasons he canceled the ARC tunnel in 2010, and he said he won't support Gateway unless New York and the federal government cover their share of costs. Some note that it was shocking that Christie was getting so much criticism because New York was also at fault.

question: What does the text say about Cuomo and the trans-Hudson rail?

answer: New York Governor Cuomo had been given less attention than Christie on his silence about the decrepit tunnels that could affect Manhattan workers' commute from New Jersey. This article states that Cuomo's refusal to contribute to trans-Hudson rail has played a role in its current perilous state and reflects a failure to think regionally. Lack of New York funding is one of the reasons why Christie canceled the ARC tunnel in 2010. Cuomo went on to say that it's not his tunnel, and hinted that he shouldn't have to pay for its reconstruction. Experts say that Cuomo won't support it because his constituents won't use it much and because New York is focused on other expensive transportation needs.

question: Summarize the context around "New York saw it as competition".

answer: Philip Mark Plotch, a professor who has studied Cuomo's transportation policies, say that New York saw the collaboration with New Jersey to build new ARC tunnels as competition. At the time, Gov. George Pataki decided to pursue a new Tappan Zee with a rail component. This would help New York address congestion. He says they figured that only one of these projects is going to get federal funding, and hoped it would be for the New York one. New York was afraid that if they said good things about the ARC project, they would have to help pay for it.

question: Summarize every mention of financial figures for a new tunnel.

answer: The prospects of a new tunnel are hindered if New York, New Jersey, and the Port Authority are expected to bear part of the estimated $15 billion cost. Cuomo believes that everyone agrees that they need the new tunnels, but that the main problem is money. He finds the nearly $12 billion amount to be a lot of money. He says that if the federal government can offer around $3 billion, then they would be able to go ahead with the project. They need a source of funding.

question: What does the text say about the Trump administration?


text:
WEST HAM is a district in East London, located east of Charing Cross in the west of the modern London Borough of Newham. The West Ham electoral ward covers part of the central area of that borough.

The area, which lies immediately to the north of the River Thames and east of the River Lea, was originally a manor in the county of Essex, then an ancient parish and ultimately a county borough. West Ham was an administrative unit, with largely consistent boundaries, from the 12th century to the formation of Newham in 1965.

History

Ham(me): Pre-partition origins & toponymy

West Ham appears to have been formed after a sub-division of the manor of ‘Hamme’, sometime in the 12th century,

A settlement in the area named Ham is first recorded as Hamme in an Anglo-Saxon charter of 958 and then in the 1086 Domesday Book as Hame. It is formed from Old English 'hamm' and means 'a dry area of land between rivers or marshland', referring to the location of the settlement within boundaries formed by the rivers Lea, Thames and Roding and their marshes.[1]

North Woolwich seems likely to have been removed from Ham in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest.

The earliest recorded use of West Ham, as distinct from East Ham, is in 1186 as Westhamma. The creation of Stratford Langthorne Abbey, and the building of Bow Bridge over the Lea will have increased the prosperity of the area.

The boundary between West and East Ham was drawn from the now lost Hamfrith Waste and Hamfrith Wood in the north (then the southernmost parts of Epping Forest which extended as far south as the Romford Road at that time), along Green Street down to the small, similarly lost, natural harbour known as Ham Creek.

[All Saint's Church, West Ham]

Urbanisation

West Ham underwent rapid growth from 1844 following the Metropolitan Building Act. The Act restricted dangerous and noxious industries from operating in the metropolitan area, the eastern boundary of which was the River Lea. Consequently, many of these activities were relocated to the other side of the river and to West Ham, then a parish in Essex centred on All Saints Church, West Ham. As a result, West Ham became one of Victorian Britain's major manufacturing centres for pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and processed foods. This rapid growth earned it the name “London over the border”.[2] The growth of the town was summarised by _The Times_ in 1886:

  _“Factory after factory was erected on the marshy wastes of Stratford and Plaistow, and it only required the construction at Canning Town of the Victoria and Albert Docks to make the once desolate parish of West Ham a manufacturing and commercial centre of the first importance and to bring upon it a teeming and an industrious population.”_[3]

Many workers lived in slum conditions close to where they worked, leading to periodic outbreaks of contagious diseases and severe poverty.

WW1 – West Ham Pals

In the First World War, the Mayor and Borough of West Ham raised a pals battalion of local volunteers, the _13th (Service) Battalion (West Ham)_ of the Essex Regiment. [Essex Regiment Cap Badge]

The _West Ham Pals_ were assigned to the 6th Infantry Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division and served on the Western Front.[4]

World War 2

The presence of the Royal Docks, the Stratford railway lands and other high value targets made the Borough of West Ham one of the areas of London worst effected by bombing during World War 2. There were officially 1186 civilians killed,[5] but this may have been around 500 higher due to the disputed death toll at South Hallsville School.[6]

Administrative history

Local Government – Ancient Parish

West Ham formed a large ancient parish of around in the Becontree hundred of Essex. The parish was made up of three wards: Church-street, Stratford-Langthorne, and Plaistow. The parish also included the hamlet of Upton.

[A map showing the wards of West Ham Civil Parish in 1867.]

Initial administrative response to urbanisation

In 1840 the parish was included in the Metropolitan Police District soon after the built-up area of London had encompassed much of West Ham.

It had become apparent that local government in the parish of West Ham was not adequate to meet the needs of the area which was divided between the parish vestry, highway board and the Havering and Dagenham Commissioners of Sewers. Problems centred on provision of adequate paving, water supply, fire fighting and control of development. In 1853 a group of ratepayers initiated moves to improve local administration. This led to a public enquiry by Charles Dickens' brother Alfred, a medical officer, who published a report in 1855 severely critical of conditions in the slum areas.[7]

Accordingly, the Public Health Act 1848 was applied to the parish, and a local board of health was formed in 1856. The board had 15 members: 12 elected and 3 nominated by the Commissioners of Sewers.[8]

West Ham was included in the London postal district, established in 1857, but in the statutory metropolitan area established in 1855 or the County of London established in 1889. Instead, administrative reform was undertaken in the area in much the same way as a large provincial town. A local board was formed in 1856 under the Public Health Act 1848.

In November 1878 the inhabitants of the parish decided to petition the privy council for a charter, incorporating the town as a municipal borough.[9] This was in reaction to proposals to enlarge the area governed by the Metropolitan Board of Works to include adjoining districts with a population of 50,000 or more: the primary aim of incorporation was to prevent the inclusion of West Ham in an enlarged London municipality.[10] This initial application was unsuccessful. However, encouraged by the 1883 incorporation of Croydon, a second petition was submitted in May 1885.[11] Following an inquiry in October 1885, a scheme for the creation of the borough and dissolution of the board of health was made in June and the charter was granted in July 1886.[12][13] A corporation consisting of a mayor, 12 aldermen and 36 councillors replaced the board, with the first elections held on 1 November.[14] The first mayor was John Meeson, head of a local lime burning and cement making firm, and a former chairman of West Ham Local Board.[15]

Local government – County Borough

In 1889 the borough was large enough in terms of population to become a county borough and was outside the area of responsibility of Essex County Council – though still formally within the county. At the time of the 1901 census it was the ninth most populous district in England with a population of 267,308.[4] From 1934 to 1965 it was surrounded by the County Borough of East Ham to the east, the municipal boroughs of Wanstead and Woodford and Leyton to the north, and the metropolitan boroughs of Poplar to the west with the Thames to the south with Greenwich on the far side.

[]
_West Ham within Essex in 1961_

Coat of arms

The coat of arms was granted by the College of Arms on 14 January 1887. The chevrons on the lower portion represent Stratford, taken from the device of Stratford Langthorne Abbey. At the top right, there are crossed hammers, representing the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company – the borough's main employer. The ship is representative of the Royal Docks, and the area's long association with the sea. The Latin motto “_Deo Confidimus_” at the base translates as “_In God We Trust_.”[16]

[Arms of the county borough corporation]
_Arms of the county borough corporation_

Formation of Newham and inclusion in Greater London

The omission of West Ham from the London-administered metropolitan area, which took in nearby places such as Greenwich and Woolwich, was first commented on in 1855 and West Ham Council later considered the case for inclusion in the County of London in 1895 and 1907.[17] The reluctance to proceed with amalgamation was largely explained by lack of perceived support, fear of financial disadvantage caused by increased rates, the detrimental effect of London planning laws on industry, and the desire to retain the independent civic institutions and privileges attached to county borough status.[18]

The Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London reviewed the local government arrangements of the _Greater London Conurbation_ and in 1965, under the terms of the London Government Act 1963, the county borough, and the County Borough of East Ham, were abolished and their former area was amalgamated with small parts of Barking and Woolwich to form the London Borough of Newham in Greater London.

Geography

The central West Ham area lies in the centre-west of the wider district; its twin focuses are All Saints' Parish Church and West Ham station. The west of the central area is bounded by the River Lea and is an industrial\post-industrial neighbourhood downstream of the London Olympic Park. The east it is mostly residential, consisting of Victorian terraced housing interspersed with higher density post-war social housing.

Bromley-by-Bow in Tower Hamlets lies to the west of the River Lea and in other directions lie neighbouring parts of the wider West Ham district: to the north and east the area bleeds into Stratford and Plaistow, with Canning Town to the south.

The area has been one of the most deprived in the country and as part of the New Deal for Communities programme it forms, with neighbouring Plaistow, a regeneration area.[19]

Ethnicity

In 1971, individuals of non-European origin comprised approximately 16% of the population of West Ham,[20] rising to approximately 30% by the 1991 census[21] and 65.5% in the 2011 census. In 2011 White British people comprising 19% of the ward's population with Other White individuals forming approximately 15% of the population.[22]

Transport

West Ham station on Manor Road is served by the London Underground Jubilee, Hammersmith and City and District tube lines; the National Rail c2c services; and from 2010 the Docklands Light Railway. Plaistow and Stratford stations are also close by.

Sport

The football club West Ham United F.C. is named after the area. Their nicknames, _the Irons_ and _the Hammers_ derive from their association with the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, whose workers formed Thames Ironworks F.C. West Ham United F.C. played at the Boleyn Ground in nearby Upton Park between 1904 and 2016. The West Ham Stadium, a football, greyhound racing and speedway stadium, operated between 1928 and 1972, with a capacity of 120,000. The street names of housing developed on the site of the former stadium pay homage to the speedway greats associated with West Ham, including Bluey Wilkinson and Jack Young. The West Ham Hammers team were involved in the top flight leagues 1929 to 1939, 1946 to 1955 and 1964 to 1971, winning the inaugural British League in 1965.[23]

While football is probably the main focus for the community, there is quite a lot of interest in other sports—with rugby being one of them. Next to West Ham station, on Holland Road, is the home of 3 rugby teams, all playing in Essex RFU leagues: Phantoms RFC, Kings Cross Steelers and East London RFC.

Notable people

-   Lennox Lewis, boxer and last undisputed world heavyweight champion
-   Leon Greene, opera singer and actor.
-   Allan Levene, information technology specialist[24]
-   Glen Murphy, actor, producer.
-   Colin Towns, composer and keyboardist
-   Joseph Lister, antiseptic surgeon[25]
-   Martin Peters, footballer and World Cup winner
-   Mark Noble, footballer
-   Alan Curbishley, footballer and football manager
-   Chris Hughton, footballer and football manager
-   Ted Fenton, footballer and football manager
-   Ernie Gregory, footballer
-   Christine Ohuruogu, athlete
-   Ronnie Irani, cricketer
-   David Essex, musician
-   Sol Campbell, footballer
-   Tony Cottee, footballer
-   Rob Lee, footballer
-   Gerard Manley Hopkins, poet
-   Leslie Bray (1895–1957), cricketer and officer in the British Army and Royal Air Force
-   Margaret Tyzack, actress

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4] Up the Hammers" The West Ham Battalion in the Great War 1914–1918, by Elliot Taylor and Barney Alston.

[5] Commonwealth War Graves site https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/4004016/WEST%20HAM,%20COUNTY%20BOROUGH/

[6] Daily Mirror article on the incident and the disputed death toll https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/blitz-bomb-killed-600-in-school-248302

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17] _Local administration and public services: Administrative bodies_, A History of the County of Essex: Volume 5 (1966), pp. 32–37. Date accessed: 7 December 2007.

[18]

[19] West Ham and Plaistow New Deal for Communities: All About NDC

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23] Speedway information on West Ham accessed 11 May 2007

[24]

[25]

title: West Ham

question: Summarize the history of West Ham.

answer: The district seems to have formed after a sub-division of the manor of 'Hamme'. The name was formed from Old English 'hamm' meaning a dry area of land between rivers or marshland. West Ham's earliest use recorded was in 1186 as Westhamma. The boundary between the West and East was drawn from the lost Hamfrith Waste and Hamfrith Wood.

question: What made West Ham an affected area during World War 2?

answer: West Ham included the Royal Docks, the Stratford railway lands, and other high-value targets making it an area for bombing.

question: List a few of the educational institutions present in the district.

answer: This information can't be found.

question: Summarize the ethnicity of West Ham.

answer: Individuals of non-European origin comprise approximately 65.5% of the population while the White British comprise 19%. Other White individuals form about 15% of the population.


text:
Warning: a scene where a girl loses some body parts may be revolting.

‘See here this is death.’ She pointed to a dark vaporous hole below us. Wisps of purple smoke circulated its edges before dissipating away.

‘Death is that?’ I asked. ‘I always thought that death was going to be a white room of infinite dimensions.’

’No one knows what death looks like beyond the hole. Death is this hole, but maybe there is a space beyond it that is white or red or green for that matter. No one has come back to tell about it.’
I looked into the black-purple void, squinting at it scrutinizingly. I felt a shiver at the center of my chest, as I looked on.

‘I’m cold,’ I said. I wondered if I was looking into a reflection of the emptiness inside of me, or as Virginia Woolf put it, a wedge-shaped core of darkness. It was an alluring darkness, however. If I looked closely enough, I could detect a dark whirl turning steadily at the center like the middle of a whirling body of water. I wanted to dip my face into the center and drink from it.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’

I realized that I had put my face inches away from the dark void.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. No, I didn’t mean to.’ I released a sigh of relief internally.

‘If you’re really curious about the void, just try dipping in a finger. Going all in with your face is more regrettable.’

‘Ok, you really mean? What will happen?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. It was just a suggestion. Don’t take it seriously.’

The void was beginning to grow on me, feeling almost too familiar or comfortable. When I looked into the hypnotic black-purple, and once I got past the fear, I felt a sense of reassurance. ‘Try it,’ a voice urged me in my head.

I took my left pointer finger and reached into the void, slipped it through the blackness until I could see that my finger was about half-way in. The darkness felt like a cool mist, not wet as I thought it would be. I let my finger dangle in the void for awhile until I was no longer sure whether it was still there or not. I took my finger out. A black mist was pouring out of the end of my finger from the middle joint, the lower half of my finger missing, or non-existent.

‘Oh!’ I exclaimed, observing my finger.

‘Hm, it seems like half of your finger has been lost in the void,’ she spoke matter-of-factly.

‘Yeah,’ I said. It hadn’t even hurt. I tried moving my finger. It bend easily from the knuckle. The strange purplish vapor continued to emit from the end of my shortened finger. I looked down the finger but couldn’t see past the mist. In a risky move, I used my right hand to grasp my finger, effectively trapping the mist. But then, I noticed that the mist began seeping through the back of my hand, fire from a tiny pore between two knuckles and then from other pores that opened up in the back of my hand until the vapor appeared to be seeping out freely.

‘Ahhh,’ I exclaimed, removing my hand from my finger. The palm of my hand looked my finger did, a black-purple mist covering the whole of the area where the mist had made contact with the skin. I wasn’t sure how much of my palm was left, as I couldn’t see through the mist. The back of my hand was covered in a misty swirl at certain points, so I was certain that most of my hand’s back still existed.
‘It doesn’t hurt?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. The only ameliorating fact was that I hadn’t felt any pain in the quick dissolving of my finger and palm.

‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Knowing that the black void couldn’t be removed, or at least, not easily by simply covering it with something else, I thought about the permanent consequences carrying such a void could have. I wouldn’t be able to touch most things.

There was a rock on the ground. I tried picking it up with my blackened palm. It vanished in the darkness. I tried merely pressing my palm onto the ground. A small, round crater was left when I removed my hand. I tried slipping my hand into a mitten. The void ate the cloth before it was even fully on.

From now on, I would have to be careful about what I touched, as there was no way of getting around the void in either hand. I wasn’t sure if I could write or type anymore.
I sat on the ground.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

’Please don’t try to do anything, since I’m going to do something dangerous,’ I said.

I clasped my hands together, the void in my right palm quickly transforming my left one into a similar dark mass. I let the darkness eat through the matter in both hands until they were gaseous masses.
I curled up my legs and grabbed each shoe with a hand each. Each foot disappeared and was replaced by a black mass that was climbing like a fire up my shins, consuming pants matter, bone, blood, vessel and everything. I felt the pounding in my chest grow stronger, although I suspected it was not from the sudden cutoff of a vital circulatory pathway rather than from an atavistic anxiety that was beginning to emerge now that a few of my limbs were gone.

My legs contained the energy of a firecracker, dissipating smoke into the night.

I put my fist, or the void left in its place, through my chest. It passed easily through. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t felt anything. Pushing the fist through my heart was painless enough; only, the throbbing heartbeat that I had felt through my body had stopped. I wondered if I would die soon now that my body had no pulse. I was still breathing, still sitting upright, still conscious. This wasn’t right. I had displaced my heart and still some magic was keeping me alive. Or was I alive?

I looked at her. Her expression hadn’t changed. Those dark pupils stared on curiously, or boredly, at the disembodied figure of myself, black vapors spewing out from its body at random openings.

‘Am I alive?’ I asked her.

‘As far as I can tell, but  as I don’t know the details of the void, I cannot say with certainty,’ she replied. Her answer was evasive as usual.

I sat there, unmoving. Nothing. I felt the same. I looked over the edge into the black void, the center turning steadily.

‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

‘I’m thinking,’ I started, ‘that the void looks awfully peaceful.’

There was a pause. ‘So you’re thinking about jumping?’

I looked at her. She seemed slightly concerned in her demeanor, which had shifted a little, odd for a girl who had little issue with taking me here in the first place.

‘Yeah. Well, there’s no reversal of this void, and the way I am now…’ My voice trailed off. The black-purple darkness in my chest emanated silently. ‘Maybe, this is my real heart,’ I thought. ‘Maybe my spirit runs on this darkness.’

I considered briefly trying to displace my head, too, but hesitated upon seeing the purple masses move toward me. Also, what if my body still survived, somehow functioning without head or heart, but my consciousness was displaced? Then, I would become nothing short of a mindless, mutilated body, either waiting itself out by the cliff for eternity or crawling around on the limbs that remained, perhaps even becoming a danger to others should they appear.

Overlooking the void, I thought about the simple move I could make; a quick exertion of strength from my elbows would send me toppling over right into the pit of the void. It wasn’t hard. I couldn’t be sure of the effect the void of have on me, if it would keep me alive somehow, or if I would finally disappear, body and mind, into the thick of its vapors. If she was right, after all, the void was death, so that much I could be sure of. Or could I? The void might’ve symbolized death to her knowledge, but she also didn’t know its contents beyond that, or if there is something other than it on the other side. ‘No one has come back to tell about it,’ she had said.

I sensed her a little closer behind me now. It was time.

‘Good-bye,’ I said. There was no reply. I half-wondered or fantasized whether she might grasp my arm and prevent me from going, though she showed no such display of emotion. Emotion was not our strong suit.

I leaned over, and with a swift push from my elbows, moved my body over the ledge, headfirst, falling rapidly, more rapidly than I—

title: [MF] Painless enough

question: Summarize the narrator's gradual immersion into the void.

answer: First, the narrator dips his finger into the void, which makes part of it vanish and be replaced by a strange vapor. He touches the vapor to his right hand, spreading it. He then lets the darkness eat through both of his hands. Then he lets it absorb his feet. He then lets it eat through his chest, through his heart. Finally, he rolls into the void, letting it consume him.

question: What does the story say about the true nature of what lies beyond the void?