Search
1000 results for “amruta”
-
"Samudra Mathana" scene from #Hindu lore. In the foreground is "Koorma" (turtle, Wishnu's 2nd incarnation) carrying the "Meru" mountain on his back as gods and demons tug on "Shesha" the serpent to churn the "Indoo" ocean for "amrita" (elixir). #ama
This portrait hangs at Adamaru Matha, #Udupi #India. Its odd dimension and narrow location made it hard to photograph, but several tries and some digital lifting produced decent result, I think. (Shot on Feb. 21, 2025)
PS: This Friday was (is) "Koorma Jayanthi", the birthday of Koorma.
-
Have you ever noticed how deeply our society has mangled the idea of autonomy until it barely resembles anything human. We are trained to imagine ourselves as tiny sovereign islands whose choices exist in perfect isolation, even though every choice we make bleeds outward into the lives, bodies, and emotional landscapes of the people around us. This distortion becomes most obvious when you look at how people react to being asked to include others in decisions that materially affect them. They treat that inclusion like a robbery of their freedom while pretending that the fallout they create is somehow weightless. It is a strange fucking equation where accountability feels like trespass but consequence does not. That reversal is not natural. It is manufactured. Once you see that pattern clearly, you see the fingerprints of imperial logic all over it. Empire teaches people to believe that their impacts are simply facts of life while the impacts they endure from others are violations. It builds a worldview where asserting your comfort is normal and absorbing the discomfort you cause is the responsibility of everyone else. Even in intimate settings like friendships and sexual relationships, people reproduce this same structure. They cling to a tiny imagined sphere of personal autonomy that somehow must override any harm, risk, or emotional turbulence that their habits create for the people tied to them. They do not call it domination, because domination becomes invisible when it is practiced in miniature. But the architecture is the same as the state. Autonomy in this society is an anemic little idea. It is important, but its actual scope is minuscule. Without collective reinforcement, it barely extends beyond the limits of your limbs. People act like it is this vast realm of unbounded license, but in reality, it is a fragile conceptual tool that only gains strength when held collectively. Autonomy means next to nothing alone but can reshape the world when connected, autonomy becomes powerful only through reciprocal recognition. When people defend autonomy as if it thrives in isolation, what they are actually defending is the right to ignore the relational web that makes meaningful freedom possible at all. They mistake solitude for sovereignty. This is why the refusal to let affected people participate in decisions about your habits is not neutrality. It is a small scale reenactment of the governing posture. It is the transformation of personal life into an arena where one person’s preferences become law and everyone else becomes subject to its effects without representation. People get defensive because they think the alternative is giving up their body or their agency to someone else. But the real alternative is mutual accountability, not subordination. It is the acknowledgment that freedom and consequence are siblings, and you cannot amputate one without mutilating the other. The irony is that this hyper individualist version of autonomy destroys the very thing it claims to protect. When you treat others as intruders the moment they engage with the consequences you create, you turn autonomy into a weaponized excuse to avoid responsibility. You reproduce the emotional logic of the state: my expansion is natural, your resistance is aggression. You dull yourself to the effects you produce while reacting violently to the idea that anyone else’s needs might intersect with your own. That is how empire sneaks into intimate life. It teaches people to feel righteous about impact and persecuted by accountability. Calling autonomy a shared delusion is not cynicism. It is clarity. Human autonomy has always been conditional, always intertwined with the collective arrangements that allow us to survive and express ourselves. Pretending otherwise only makes cooperation impossible and leaves people trapped inside tiny fictions of personal sovereignty that cannot withstand pressure from reality. When we admit that autonomy is constructed, relational, and fundamentally limited, we become able to actually use it. We can explore the psychological forces behind defensiveness. We can talk honestly about how to reshape habits that spill over onto the people we care about. We can stop mimicking the structures that dominate us. If we want liberation, we cannot replicate the same imperial logic that treats consequence as invisible and accountability as violation. We have to rebuild autonomy as a cooperative process, not a barricade. Because any model of freedom that depends on apathy toward those affected by it is not freedom. It is empire wearing the mask of the self.
#Anarchism #AntiAuthoritarian #PowerDynamics #TraumaInformed #Psychology #SocialDynamics #InterpersonalRelationships #AbolitionistPerspective #LeftistDiscussion #CollectiveCare #CommunityCare #Decolonize #CriticalTheory #SurveillanceCulture #HierarchyKills #Autonomy #LiberatoryPractice
-
Have you ever noticed how deeply our society has mangled the idea of autonomy until it barely resembles anything human. We are trained to imagine ourselves as tiny sovereign islands whose choices exist in perfect isolation, even though every choice we make bleeds outward into the lives, bodies, and emotional landscapes of the people around us. This distortion becomes most obvious when you look at how people react to being asked to include others in decisions that materially affect them. They treat that inclusion like a robbery of their freedom while pretending that the fallout they create is somehow weightless. It is a strange fucking equation where accountability feels like trespass but consequence does not. That reversal is not natural. It is manufactured. Once you see that pattern clearly, you see the fingerprints of imperial logic all over it. Empire teaches people to believe that their impacts are simply facts of life while the impacts they endure from others are violations. It builds a worldview where asserting your comfort is normal and absorbing the discomfort you cause is the responsibility of everyone else. Even in intimate settings like friendships and sexual relationships, people reproduce this same structure. They cling to a tiny imagined sphere of personal autonomy that somehow must override any harm, risk, or emotional turbulence that their habits create for the people tied to them. They do not call it domination, because domination becomes invisible when it is practiced in miniature. But the architecture is the same as the state. Autonomy in this society is an anemic little idea. It is important, but its actual scope is minuscule. Without collective reinforcement, it barely extends beyond the limits of your limbs. People act like it is this vast realm of unbounded license, but in reality, it is a fragile conceptual tool that only gains strength when held collectively. Autonomy means next to nothing alone but can reshape the world when connected, autonomy becomes powerful only through reciprocal recognition. When people defend autonomy as if it thrives in isolation, what they are actually defending is the right to ignore the relational web that makes meaningful freedom possible at all. They mistake solitude for sovereignty. This is why the refusal to let affected people participate in decisions about your habits is not neutrality. It is a small scale reenactment of the governing posture. It is the transformation of personal life into an arena where one person’s preferences become law and everyone else becomes subject to its effects without representation. People get defensive because they think the alternative is giving up their body or their agency to someone else. But the real alternative is mutual accountability, not subordination. It is the acknowledgment that freedom and consequence are siblings, and you cannot amputate one without mutilating the other. The irony is that this hyper individualist version of autonomy destroys the very thing it claims to protect. When you treat others as intruders the moment they engage with the consequences you create, you turn autonomy into a weaponized excuse to avoid responsibility. You reproduce the emotional logic of the state: my expansion is natural, your resistance is aggression. You dull yourself to the effects you produce while reacting violently to the idea that anyone else’s needs might intersect with your own. That is how empire sneaks into intimate life. It teaches people to feel righteous about impact and persecuted by accountability. Calling autonomy a shared delusion is not cynicism. It is clarity. Human autonomy has always been conditional, always intertwined with the collective arrangements that allow us to survive and express ourselves. Pretending otherwise only makes cooperation impossible and leaves people trapped inside tiny fictions of personal sovereignty that cannot withstand pressure from reality. When we admit that autonomy is constructed, relational, and fundamentally limited, we become able to actually use it. We can explore the psychological forces behind defensiveness. We can talk honestly about how to reshape habits that spill over onto the people we care about. We can stop mimicking the structures that dominate us. If we want liberation, we cannot replicate the same imperial logic that treats consequence as invisible and accountability as violation. We have to rebuild autonomy as a cooperative process, not a barricade. Because any model of freedom that depends on apathy toward those affected by it is not freedom. It is empire wearing the mask of the self.
#Anarchism #AntiAuthoritarian #PowerDynamics #TraumaInformed #Psychology #SocialDynamics #InterpersonalRelationships #AbolitionistPerspective #LeftistDiscussion #CollectiveCare #CommunityCare #Decolonize #CriticalTheory #SurveillanceCulture #HierarchyKills #Autonomy #LiberatoryPractice
-
Common gene in axolotls, mice and zebrafish may unlock human limb regrowth
Investigating a common gene in three very different species – axolotls, mice and zebrafish – scientists have discovered…
#NewsBeep #News #Health #Amputations #AU #Australia #Bone #Brain #Cancer #diabetes #Epidermis #Gene #genetherapy #Genes #Genetic #Heart #research #Skin #therapy #Vascular
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/622119/ -
Common gene in axolotls, mice and zebrafish may unlock human limb regrowth
Investigating a common gene in three very different species – axolotls, mice and zebrafish – scientists have discovered…
#NewsBeep #News #Health #Amputations #AU #Australia #Bone #Brain #Cancer #diabetes #Epidermis #Gene #genetherapy #Genes #Genetic #Heart #research #Skin #therapy #Vascular
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/622119/ -
“Labor Is Life” (U.S. Postal Service’s Labor Day Stamp, 1956, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).
Bakers, blacksmiths, boatmen, butchers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, cigarmakers, coal miners, factory workers, farmers, gardeners, gold miners, iron workers, masons, quarry workers, teamsters, tombstone carvers. These were just a few of the diverse job titles held by the laborers who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War.
Many returned to their same occupations after the war ended while others found new pathways for their life journeys. Far too many were never able to return to the arms of their loved ones and still rest in marked or unmarked graves far from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
In honor of Labor Day, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story is proud to present this abridged list of blue-collar men and boys who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry between August 1861 and January 1866, as well as the names of two of the women associated with the regiment who made their own unforgettable marks on the world.
* Auchmuty, Samuel S. (First Lieutenant, Company D): A native of Duncannon, Perry County and veteran of the Mexican-American War who was employed as a carpenter during the early 1860s, Samuel Auchmuty responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War by enrolling as a first lieutenant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on August 20, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed his work as a house carpenter and launched a successful contracting business that was responsible for building new business structures, churches, single-family homes, and schools, as well as renovating existing structures; he died in 1891, following a brief illness;
First Sergeant Christian S. Beard, circa 1863 (public domain).
* Beard, Christian Seiler (First Lieutenant, Company C): A twenty-seven-year-old, married carpenter residing in Williamsport, Lycoming County when President Abraham Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1865, Chistian S. Beard promptly enrolled for Civil War military service before that month was out as a private with Company D of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; after rising up through the ranks to become a first lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on Christmas Day, 1865, and returned home to his wife in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, where he continued to work as a carpenter; after having several children with his wife, he was widowed by her; remarried in 1884, he relocated with his wife and children to Pittsburgh, where he continued to work as a carpenter; ailing with heart and kidney disease, he died there on November 16, 1911 and was interred at that city’s Highwood Cemetery;
* Burke, Thomas (Sergeant, Company I): A first-generation American, Thomas Burke was a twenty-year-old cabinetmaker residing in Allentown at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on the day that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded (August 5, 1861), he was officially mustered in as a private; from that point on, he continued to work his way up the ranks, receiving a promotion to corporal on September 19, 1864 and then to sergeant on July 11, 1865; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865, he returned home to Lehigh County, where he married and began a family; sometime in early to mid-1871, he and his family migrated west to Iowa, settling in Anamosa, Jones County, where he was employed as a carpenter and contractor; he died at his home there on October 22, 1910 and was buried at that town’s Riverside Cemetery;
* Colvin, John Dorrance (Second Lieutenant, Company C): A native of Abington Township, Lackawanna County who was a farmer when he enlisted for Civil War military service on September 12, 1861, John D. Colvin transferred to the U.S. Army Signal Corps on October 13, 1863, and continued to serve with the Signal Corps for the duration of the war; employed as an engineer, post-war, he helped the Pacific Railroad to extend its service from Atchison, Kansas to Fort Kearney in Nebraska before returning home to Pennsylvania, where he married, began a family and resided with them in Olyphant and Carbondale before relocating with them to Parsons in Luzerne County, where he became a prominent civic leader and member of the school board; initially employed as a machinist, he went on to become superintendent of the Delaware & Hudson Coal company before taking a similar job with the Lehigh Valley Coal Company; the U.S. Postal Service’s postmaster of Parsons during the early 1890s, he died there on March 15, 1901 and was buried at the Hollenback Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre;
* Crownover, James (Sergeant, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old teamster residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Crownover rose up through the ranks of the 47th Pennsylvania from private to reach the rank of sergeant; wounded in the right shoulder and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he was marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, where he was held as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on November 25, 1864; during captivity, he was commissioned, but not mustered as a second lieutenant; given medical treatment before he was returned to active duty, he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he found work at a tannery near Blain, married, began a family and then relocated with them to East Huntingdon Township, Westmoreland County, where he worked as a teamster; relocating with them to Braddock in Allegheny County after the turn of the century, he worked at a local mill there; he died in Allegheny County on July 18, 1903 and was buried at the Monongahela Cemetery in Braddock Hills;
Jacob Daub, circa 1862-1865 (carte de visite, Cooley & Beckett Photographers, Savannah, Georgia and Beaufort and Hilton Head, South Carolina, public domain).
* Daub, Jacob and William J. (Drummer Boy, Company A): A German immigrant as a child, Jacob Daub emigrated with his parents and younger brother, William, circa 1852; after settling in Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where his father found work as a stone mason, Jacob grew up to become a cigarmaker, and also became the first of the two brothers to enlist in the American Civil War; after enrolling at the age of sixteen, he was classified as a field musician and assigned to Company A as its drummer boy; his nineteen-year-old brother, William, a carpenter by 1865, followed him into the war when he enlisted as a private with the same company in February of that year; after the war ended, both returned home to Northampton County, where they married, had children and went on to live long, full lives; William eventually died at the age of eighty in 1928, followed by Jacob, who passed away in 1936, roughly two months before his ninety-first birthday;
* Detweiler, Charles C. (Private, Company A): Berks County native Charles Detweiler enrolled for Civil War military service on September 16, 1862; a carpenter who later became a farmer, he served with Company A until he was severely injured in the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, October 19, 1864, when he sustained a musket ball wound to the middle of his thigh; treated at a Union Army hospital in Virginia before being transported to the Union’s Mower General Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he learned that the musket ball had damaged his femur and femoral arteries; following his wound-related death at Mower on March 12, 1865, he was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in Kutztown, Berks County;
* Diaz, John (Private, Company I): An immigrant from Spain’s Canary Islands, John Diaz emigrated sometime between 1862 and 1865 and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a cigarmaker; on January 25, 1865, at the age of nineteen, he enlisted with the Union Army at a recruiting depot in Norristown, Montgomery County and served as a private with Company I of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he resumed work as a cigarmaker in Philadelphia, eventually launching his own cigarmaking firm, which became a family business as his sons became old enough to work for him; sometime between 1906 and 1910, he relocated with his wife and several of his children to Camden County, New Jersey, where he died on September 5, 1915;
James Downs (circa 1880s, public domain).
* Downs, James (Corporal, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old tanner residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Downs was captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River; held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864, he received medical treatment and was subsequently returned to active duty; following his honorable discharge with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 25, 1865, he returned home, married, began a family and relocated with his family to Phillipsburg, New Jersey; suffering from heart and kidney disease, and possibly also from post-traumatic stress disorder, rather than “insane” as physicians at the Pennsylvania Memorial Home in Brookville, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania had diagnosed him, he fell from a window at that home and died at there on September 16, 1921; he was subsequently interred in the Veterans’ Circle of the Brookville Cemetery;
* Eagle, Augustus (Second Lieutenant, Company F): A German immigrant as a teenager, Augustus Eagle arrived in America on June 23, 1855, two years after his brother, Frederick Eagle, had emigrated and made a life for himself in Catasauqua, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania; both men married and began families there, with Fred employed as a laborer and Gus employed by the Crane Iron Works; when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, both men enrolled for military service on August 21, 1861 as privates with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; in 1862, Fred fell ill and was honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, but Gus continued to serve, rising up through the regiment’s enlisted and officers’ ranks; commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on September 11, 1864, upon completion of his three-year term of service; post-war, Fred became a successful baker with real estate and personal property valued at $4,200 (roughly $155,750 in 2023 dollars) and died in Catasauqua in 1885, while Gus owned a successful restaurant in Whitehall Township before operating the Fairview Hotel, which became a popular spot for political gatherings; after suffering a series of strokes in 1902, Gus died at his home on August 17 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;
* Eisenbraun, Alfred (Drummer Boy, Company B): A tobacco stripper and first-generation American from Allentown, Lehigh County, fifteen-year-old Alfred Eisenbraun became the second “man” from the 47th Pennsylvania to die when he succumbed to complications from typhoid fever at the Kalorama Eruptive Fever Hospital in Georgetown, District of Columbia on October 26, 1861; he still rests at the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home Cemetery in Washington, D.C.;
* Fink, Aaron (Corporal, Company B): A shoemaker and native of Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Aaron Fink, grew up, began a family and established a successful small shoemaking business, first in Allentown and then in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) in Carbon County; on August 20, 1861, he chose to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to help bring the American Civil War to a quick end when he enrolled for military service; shot in the right leg during the fighting at the Frampton Plantation during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, but died there from wound-related complications on November 5, 1862; initially buried near that hospital, his remains were later exhumed by Allentown undertaker Paul Balliet and returned to Pennsylvania for reinterment at that city’s Union-West End Cemetery;
* Fornwald, Reily M. (Corporal, Company G): Born in Heidelberg Township, Berks County, Reily Fornwald was raised there on his family’s farm near Stouchsberg; educated in his community’s common schools and then at Millersville State Normal School, he became a railroad worker before returning to farm life shortly before the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service at the age of twenty on September 11, 1862, he was wounded in the head and groin by an exploding artillery shell during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; stabilized on the battlefield before being transported to a field hospital for more advanced medical care, he spent four weeks recuperating before returning to active duty with his regiment; promoted to the rank of corporal on January 19, 1863, he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably discharged at Berryville, Virginia on September 18, 1864, upon expiration of his term of enlistment; after returning home, he spent four years operating a blast furnace for White & Ferguson in Robesonia, Berks County; he also married and began a family; sometime around 1870, he left that job to become an engine operator for Wright, Cook & Co. in Sheridan and then moved to a job as an engine operator for William M. Kauffman—a position he held for roughly a decade before securing employment as a shifting engineer with the Reading Railway Company at its yards in Reading; following his retirement in 1905, he and his wife settled in Robesonia, where he became involved in buying and selling real estate; following a severe fall in May 1925, during which he fractured a thigh bone, he died at the Homeopathic Hospital in Reading on June 1 and was buried at Robesonia’s Heidelberg Cemetery;
Captain Reuben Shatto Gardner, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1863 (public domain).
* Gardner, Reuben Shatto, John A. and Jacob S. R.: Natives of Perry County, Reuben Shatto Gardner and his brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner, began their work lives as laborers; among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861, Reuben was a twenty-five-year-old miller who resided in Newport, Perry County; after enlisting as a private with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20, he was honorably mustered out after completing his term of service; he then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a first sergeant with Company H of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; also enrolling with him that same day were his twenty-three-year-old and twenty-one-year-old brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner; John officially mustered in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg on September 18 (the day before Reuben arrived), while Jacob officially mustered in on September 19; both joined their brother’s company, entering at their respective ranks of corporal and private, but Jacob’s tenure was a short one; sickened by typhoid fever in late December 1861, he died at the 47th Pennsylvania’s regimental hospital at Camp Griffin, near Langley, Virginia on January 8, 1862; his remains were later returned to Perry County for burial at the Old Newport Cemetery; soldiering on, Reuben and John were transported with their regiment by ship to Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida and subsequently sent to South Carolina with their regiment and other Union troops; shot in the head and thigh during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, Reuben was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina for an extended period of time, and then returned to active duty with his regiment; meanwhile, John was assigned with H Company and the men from Companies D, F and K to garrison Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas; both brothers then continued to work their way up the regiment’s ranks, with John promoted to corporal on September 18, 1864 and Reuben ultimately commissioned as a captain and given command of Company H on February 16, 1865; both then returned home after honorably mustering out with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865; sometime around 1866 or 1867, Reuben and his wife migrated west, first to Elk River Station in Sherburne County, Minnesota and then to Stillwater, Washington County, before settling in the city of Minneapolis; through it all, he worked as a miller; Reuben and his family then relocated farther west, arriving in King County, Washington after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889; initially employed in the restaurant industry, Reuben later found work as a railroad conductor before prospecting for gold with son Edward in the western United States and British Columbia, Canada during the 1890s Gold Rush; employed as a U.S. Post Office clerk in charge of the money order and registry departments in Seattle from 1898 to 1902, Reuben died in Seattle at the age of sixty-eight on September 25, 1903 and was interred at that city’s Lakeview Cemetery; meanwhile, his brother John, who had resumed work as a fireman with the Pennsylvania Railroad after returning from the war, was widowed by his wife in 1872; after remarrying and welcoming the births of more children, he was severely injured on October 9, 1873 while working as a fireman on the Pacific Express for the Pennsylvania Railroad; unable to continue working as a fireman due to his amputated hand, he worked briefly as a railroad call messenger before launching his own transfer business in Harrisburg; after he was widowed by his ailing second wife, John was severely injured in a second accident in 1894 while loading his delivery wagon; still operating his business after the turn of the century, he remarried on January 3, 1900, but was widowed by his third wife when she died during a surgical procedure in 1911; he subsequently closed his business and relocated to the home of his daughter in the city of Reading, Berks County; four years later, he fell on an icy sidewalk and became bedfast; aged eighty and ailing from arteriosclerosis and lung congestion, he died at her home on February 20, 1918 and was buried at Reading’s Charles Evans Cemetery;
* Gethers, Bristor (Under-Cook, Company F): Born into slavery in South Carolina circa 1829, Bristor Gethers was married “by slave custom at Georgetown, S.C.” on the Pringle plantation in Georgetown sometime around 1847 to “Rachael Richardson” (alternate spelling “Rachel”); a field hand at the dawn of the Civil War, he was freed from chattel enslavement in 1862 by Union Army troops; he then enlisted as an “Under-Cook” with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in Beaufort, South Carolina on October 5, 1862, and traveled with the regiment until October 4, 1865, when he was honorably discharged in Charleston, South Carolina upon completion of his three-year term of enlistment; at that point, he returned to Beaufort and resumed life with his wife and their son, Peter; a farmer, Bristor was ultimately disabled by ailments that were directly attributable to his Union Army tenure; awarded a U.S. Civil War Soldiers’ Pension, he lived out his days with his wife on Horse Island, South Carolina, and died on Horse Island, South Carolina on June 24 or 25, 1894; he was then laid to rest at a graveyard on Parris Island on June 26 of that same year;
* Gilbert, Edwin (Captain, Company F): A native of Northampton County and a carpenter residing in Catasauqua, Lehigh County at the dawn of the American Civil War, Edwin Gilbert enrolled as a corporal on August 21, 1861; after rising up through his regiment’s officer ranks, he was ultimately commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on New Year’s Day, 1865, and then mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina of Christmas of that same year; resuming his life with his wife and children in Lehigh County after the war, he continued to work as a carpenter; after suffering a stroke in late December 1893, he died on January 2, 1894 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;
Mrs. Caroline Bost and Martin L. Guth celebrated the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday with fellow Grand Army of the Republic and ladies auxiliary members in February 1933 (public domain).
* Guth, Martin Luther (Corporal, Company K): A native of Lehigh County and son of a farmer, Martin L. Guth was a seventeen-year-old laborer and resident of Guthsville in Whitehall Township at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on September 26, 1862, he was officially mustered in as a corporal; he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably mustered out on October 1, 1865, upon expiration of his term of service; at some point during that service, he broke his leg—an injury that did not heal properly and plagued him for the remainer of his life; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he found work again as a laborer; married in 1883, he became the father of four children, one of whom was born in New Mexico and another who was born in California; he had moved his family west in search of work in the mining industry; documented as a “prospector” or “miner” records created in Nevada during that period, he was also documented on voter registration rolls of Butte City in Glenn County, California in August 1892; by 1900, he was living separately from his wife, who was residing in Bandon, Coos County, Oregon with their two children while he was residing at the Veterans’ Home of California in Yount Township, Napa County, California; subsequently admitted to the Mountain Branch of the network of U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Johnson City, Tennessee on February 11, 1912, his disabilities included an old compound fracture of his right leg with chronic ulceration, defective vision (right eye), chronic bronchitis, and arteriosclerosis; discharged on December 12, 1920, he was admitted to the U.S. National Soldiers’ Home in Leavenworth, Kansas on July 30, 1912, but discharged on September 29, 1913; by 1920, he was living alone on Fruitvale Avenue in the city of Oakland, California, but was remaining active with his local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic as he rose through the leadership ranks of chapter, state and national G.A.R. organizations; after a long, adventure-filled life, he died on October 11, 1935, at the age of ninety-one, at the veterans’ home in San Francisco and was interred at the San Francisco National Cemetery (also known as the Presidio Cemetery);
Lieutenant Charles A. Hackman, Company G, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).
* Hackman, Charles Abraham and Martin Henry (First Lieutenant and Sergeant, Company G): Natives of Rittersville, Lehigh County, Charles and Martin Hackman began their work lives as apprentices, with Charles employed by a carpenter and Martin employed by master coachmaker Jacob Graffin; members of the local militia unit known as the Allen Rifles, they were among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; both enlisted as privates with Company I of the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20 and were honorably mustered out in July after completing their service; Charles then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a sergeant with Company G of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; he then spent most of his early service in Virginia; meanwhile, his younger brother, Martin H. Hackman, who was employed as a coach trimmer in Lehigh County, re-enlisted for his own second tour of duty, as a private with Charles’ company, on January 8, 1862; working their way up the ranks, Charles was commissioned as a first lieutenant on June 18, 1863, while Martin was promoted to sergeant on April 26, 1864; Charles was then breveted as a captain on November 30, 1864 after having mustered out on November 5; Martin was then honorably discharged on January 8, 1865; initially employed, post-war, with the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad’s train car facility in Reading, Berks County, Charles was promoted to car inspector at the company’s Philadelphia facility in December 1866; he subsequently married, but had no children and was widowed in 1904; remarried, he remained in Philadelphia until the early 1900s, when he relocated to Allentown; Martin, who worked as a bricklayer in Allentown, did have children after marrying, but he, too, was widowed; also remarried, he became a manager at a rolling mill; ailing with pneumonia in early 1917, Charles was eighty-six years old when he died in Allentown on January 17; he was buried at Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery, while his brother Martin was buried at the Nisky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem, following his death in Bethlehem from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 14, 1921;
* Junker, George (Captain, Company K): A German immigrant as a young adult, George Junker emigrated sometime around the early 1850s and settled in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found employment as a marble worker and tombstone carver, and where he also joined the Allen Infantry, one of his adopted hometown’s three militia units; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, George enlisted with his fellow Allen Infantrymen, honorably completed his Three Months’ Service, and promptly began his own recruitment of men for an “all-German company” for the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; commissioned as a captain with the 47th Pennsylvania, he was placed in charge of his men who became known as Company K; mortally wounded by a Confederate rifle shot during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he died from his wounds the next day at the Union Army’s division hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina; his remains were returned to his family in Hazleton, Luzerne County for reburial at the Vine Street Cemetery;
* Kern, Samuel (Private, Company D): A native of Perry County who was employed as a farmer in Bloomfield, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, Samuel Kern was wounded and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he died from harsh treatment on June 12, 1864; buried somewhere on the grounds of that prison camp, his grave remains unidentified;
* Kosier, George (Captain, Company D): A native of Perry County and twenty-four-year-old carpenter residing in that county’s community of New Bloomfield at the dawn of the American Civil War, George Kosier became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for military service on April 20 as a corporal with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; joining him were his younger brothers, Jesse and William S. Kosier, aged nineteen and twenty-three, who were enrolled as privates with the same company; all three subsequently re-enlisted with their company at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida in 1863; sadly, Jesse fell ill with pleurisy and died at the Union Army’s Field Hospital in Sandy Hook, Maryland on August 1864; initially buried at a cemetery in Weverton, Maryland, his remains were later exhumed and reinterred at the Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Maryland; both George and William continued to serve with the regiment, with George continuing his rise up the ranks; commissioned as a captain, he was given command of Company D in early June 1865; both brothers were then honorably discharged with their regiment on Christmas Day, 1865; post-war, both men married and began families; William died in Pennsylvania sometime around 1879, but George went on to live a long full life; after settling in Ogle County, Illinois, where he was employed as a carpenter, he relocated with his family to Wright County, Iowa, where he built bridges; he died in Chicago on December 3, 1920 and was buried at that city’s Rosehill Cemetery;
Anna (Weiser) Leisenring (1851-1942) , circa 1914 (public domain).
* Leisenring, Annie (Weiser): The wife of Thomas B. Leisenring (Captain, Company G), Annie Leisenring was employed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a factory inspector after the American Civil War; she became well known through newspaper accounts of her inspection visits and also became widely respected for her efforts to improve child labor laws statewide;
* Lowrey, Thomas (Corporal, Company E): An Irish immigrant as a young adult, Thomas Lowrey emigrated sometime around the late 1840s or early 1850s and settled in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a miner, married and began a family; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, Thomas enlisted with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania on September 16, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a coal miner near Shenandoah, Schuylkill County, and where he resided with his wife and children; after witnessing the dawn of a new century, he died in Shenandoah on January 11, 1906;
This image of Julia (Kuenher) Minnich, circa 1860s, is being presented here through the generosity of Chris Sapp and his family, and is being used with Mr. Sapp’s permission. This image may not be reproduced, repurposed, or shared with other websites without the permission of Chris Sapp.
* Magill, Julia Ann (Kuehner Minnich): Widowed and the mother of a young son at the time that her husband, B Company’s Captain Edwin G. Minnich, was killed in battle during the American Civil War, Julia Ann (Kuehner) Minnich became a Union Army nurse at Harewood Hospital in Washington, D.C. during the war in order to keep a roof over her son’s head; she then spent the remainder of her life battling the U.S. Pension Bureau to receive and keep both the U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension and U.S. Civil War Nurse’s Pension that she was entitled to under federal law; forced to go on working into her later years by poverty, she finally found work as a cook at a hotel in South Bethlehem; she died sometime after 1906;
* Menner, Edward W. (Second Lieutenant, Company E): A first-generation American who was a native of Easton, Northampton County, Edward Menner was a sixteen-year-old carpenter when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 25, 1861; working his way up from private to second lieutenant before he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he was wounded in the left shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he secured employment as a hooker with the Bethlehem Iron Company (later known as Bethlehem Steel) on March 15, 1866; he married, begam a family and continued to work in the iron industry for much of his life; he died in Bethlehem on April 25, 1913 and was buried at that city’s Nisky Hill Cemetery;
* Miller, John Garber (Sergeant, Company D): A native of Ironville, Blair County, John G. Miller was a twenty-one-year-old laborer living in Duncannon, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861; captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864; returned to active duty with his regiment after receiving medical treatment, he continued to serve until he was honorably discharged with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he married, began a family and relocated with his family to Philipsburg, Centre County, Pennsylvania, where he was employed as a teamster; returning to Blair County with his family, he resided with them in Logan Township before relocating with them again to Coalport, Clearfield County; suffering from heart disease, he died in Coalport on February 16, 1921 and was interred at the Coalport Cemetery;
Captain Theodore Mink, Company I, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (circa 1870s-1880s, courtesy of Julian Burley; used with permission).
* Mink, Theodore (Captain, Company I): A native of Allentown, Lehigh County who was apprenticed as a coachmaker and then tried his hand as a whaler and blacksmith prior to the American Civil War, Thedore Mink became one of the “First Defenders” who responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital after the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; after honorably completing his Three Months’ Service in July, he re-enlisted on August 5 as a sergeant with Company I of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; after steadily working his way up through the ranks, he was commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on May 22, 1865; he continued to serve with his regiment until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he was hired as a laborer with a circus troupe operated by Mike Lipman before finding longtime employment in advertising and then as head of the circus wardrobe for the Forepaugh Circus before he was promoted to management with the circus; felled by pneumonia during late 1889, he died in Philadelphia on January 7, 1890 and was interred in Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery;
* Newman, Edward (Private, Company H): A German immigrant who left his homeland sometime around 1920, Edward Newman chose to settle in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a baker; after enlisting for Civil War military service in August 1862, he mustered in as a private with Company I of the 127th Pennsylvania Volunteers and fought in the Battle of Fredericksburg from December 11-15 of that year; honorably mustered out with his regiment in May 1863, he re-enlisted on October 23, 1863 for a second tour of duty—but as a private with a different regiment—Company H of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with the 47th Pennsylvania until he was officially mustered out in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he returned to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where he worked briefly as a baker; suffering from rheumatism that developed while the 47th Pennsylvania was stationed near Cedar Creek, Virginia during the fall of 1864, he was admitted to the network of U.S. Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at the Central Branch in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio on July 17, 1877; still unmarried and still living there in 1880, his health continued to decline; diagnosed with acute enteritis, he died there on January 22, 1886 and was buried at the Dayton National Cemetery;
Captain Daniel Oyster, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).
* Oyster, Daniel (Captain, Company C): A native of Sunbury, Northumberland County who was employed as a machinist, Daniel Oyster became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for Civil War military service on April 23 as a corporal with Company F of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; his brother, John Oyster, subsequently followed him into the service, enrolling as a private with his company on November 20, 1863; after rising up through the ranks to become captain of his company, Daniel was shot in his left shoulder near Berryville, Virginia on September 5, 1864 and then shot in his right shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19; successfully treated by Union Army surgeons for both wounds, he was awarded a veteran’s furlough in order to continue his recuperation and returned home to Sunbury; he then returned to duty and was honorably discharged with his company on Christmas Day, 1865; post-discharge, he and his brother, John, returned home to Sunbury; Daniel continued to reside with their aging mother and was initially employed as a policeman, but was then forced by a war-related decline in his health to take less-taxing work as a railroad postal agent; his brother John, who was married, lived nearby and worked as a fireman, but died in Sunbury on April 20, 1899; employed as a bookkeeper after the turn of the century, Daniel never married and was ultimately admitted to the Southern Branch of the U.S. National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Hampton, Virginia, where he died on August 5, 1922—exactly sixty-one years to the day after the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded; he was given a funeral with full military honors before being laid to rest in the officers’ section at the Arlington National Cemetery on August 11;
* Sauerwein, Thomas Franklin (First Sergeant, Company B): The son of a lock tender in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, Thomas Sauerwein was employed as a carpenter at the dawn of the American Civil War; following his enrollment for military service in Allentown, Lehigh County on August 20, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company B of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; from that point on, he steadily worked his way up the ranks of the regiment, ultimately being promoted to first sergeant on New Year’s Day, 1865; following his honorable discharge with his company on Christmas Day of that same year, he returned home to the Lehigh Valley, where he found work as a carpenter, married and began a family; by 1880, he had moved his family west to Williamsport in Lycoming County, where he had found work as a machinist; employed as a leather roller with a tanning factory, he was promoted to a position as a leather finisher after the turn of the century, while his two sons worked as leather rollers in the same industry; he died in Williamsport on July 29, 1912 and was buried at the East Wildwood Cemetery in Loyalsock;
* Slayer, Joseph (Private, Company E; also known as “Dead Eye Dick” and “E. J. McMeeser”): A native of Philadelphia, Joseph Slayer was a nineteen-year-old miner residing in Willliams Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service in Easton, Northampton County on September 9, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with his company, re-enlisting as a private with Company E, under the name of Joseph Slayer, at Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas on January 4, 1864; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he relocated to Zanesville, Ohio sometime after the war, where he joined the Grand Army of the Republic’s Hazlett Post No. 81; he may then have relocated briefly to St. Paul, Minnesota sometime around the 1870s or early 1880s, or may simply have had a child and grandchild living there, because newspaper reports of his death noted that he had been carrying a photograph of a toddler named Robert—a photo that had “To Grandpa” inscribed on it and indicated that the grandchild, Robert, was a resident of St. Paul in 1892; by the 1880s, Joseph had made it as far west as the Dakota Territory—but this was where his life’s journey took a strange twist; discarding the name he had used in the army (“Joseph Slayer”), he changed his name several times over the next several years, as if he were trying to shed his prior life and all of its associations; acquaintances he met in the southern part of the Dakota Territory during the early to mid-1880s knew him as “Dead Eye Dick” while others who met him after he had resettled in Bismarck, in the northern part of the Dakota Territory, knew him as “Eugene McMeeser” or “E. J. McMeeser” (alternate spelling: “McNeeser”); by the time that the federal government conducted its special census of Civil War veterans in June 1890, Joseph was so comfortable fusing parts of his old and new lives together that he was convincingly documented by an enumerator as “Eugene McMeeser,” a veteran who had served as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry from September 9, 1861 until January 11, 1866; in 1890, Joseph became a married man; documented as having rheumatism so severe that he was “at times confined at home,” he filed for a U.S. Civil War Pension from North Dakota on March 28, 1891—but he did so as “Joseph Slayer”—the name under which he had first enrolled for military service in Pennsylvania in 1861; ultimately awarded a pension—which would not have happened if federal officials had not been able to verify his identity and match it to his existing military service records, he was diagnosed with angina pectoris in 1904, but still managed to secure a U.S. patent for one of his inventions—a napkin holder; he died in Bismarck less than a month later, on January 12 or 13, 1905; found on the floor of his rented room, his death sparked a coroner’s inquest which revealed that he had been living under an assumed name; he was buried at Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Bismarck; the name “Joseph Slayer” was carved onto his military headstone;
* Snyder, Timothy (Corporal, Company C): A carpenter who was born in Rebuck, Northumberland County, Tim Snyder was employed as a carpenter and residing in the city of Sunbury in that county by the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service as a private in August 1861, he was wounded twice in combat, once during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (1862) and a second time, in the knee, during the Battle of Opequan, Virginia (1864), shortly after he had been promoted to the rank of corporal; he survived and returned to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a carpenter; after relocating to Schuylkill County, he settled in the community of Ashland; in 1870, he married Catharine Boyer and started a family with her; he continued to work as a carpenter in Schuylkill County until his untimely death in May 1889 and was laid to rest with military honors at the Brock Cemetery in Ashland; John Hartranft Snyder, his first son to survive infancy, grew up to become a co-founder of the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company, while his second son to survive infancy, Timothy Grant Snyder, became a corporal in the United States Marine Corps during the Spanish-American War; stationed on the USS Buffalo as it visited Port Said, Egypt, he also served aboard Admiral George Dewey’s flagship, the USS Olympia, in 1899;
Drummer Boy William Williamson, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Company A, circa 1863 (public domain).
* Williamson, William (Drummer, Company A): A farmer from Stockertown, Northampton County, William Williamson was documented by a mid-nineteenth-century federal census enumerator as an unmarried laborer who lived at the Easton home of Northampton County physician John Sandt, M.D.—an indication that William’s parents may have either died or were struggling so much financially during the 1850s and early 1860s that they had encouraged him to “leave the nest” and begin supporting himself, or had hired him out as an apprentice or indentured servant; like so many other young men from Northampton County, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for help to protect the nation’s capital from a likely invasion by Confederate States Army troops, he stepped forward, raised his hand, and stated the following:
I, William Williamson appointed a private in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States.
Later in life, William Williamson became a champion for an older woman who had been struggling to convince officials of the federal government that she was worthy enough to be awarded a U.S. Civil War Mother’s Pension, after her son had died in service to the nation as a Union Army soldier.
Post-war, William Williamson found work at a slate quarry, married, began a family in Belfast, Northampton County, and lived to witness the dawn of a new century. Following his death at the age of sixty in Plainfield Township on June 17, 1901, he was laid to rest at the Belfast Union Cemetery.
Sources:
- “A Badge from Admiral Dewey and Schuylkill County” (announcements of Timothy Grant Snyder’s service on Admiral Dewey’s flagship). Reading, Pennsylvania: Reading Eagle: October 3, 1899 and November 21, 1899.
- Baptismal, census, marriage, military, death, and burial records of the Snyder family. Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio, etc.: Snyder Family Archives, 1650-present; and in Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records (baptismal, marriage, death and burial records of various churches across Pennsylvania). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1776-1918.
- Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
- James Crownover, James Downs and Samuel Kern, et. al., in Camp Ford Prison Records. Tyler, Texas: The Smith County Historical Society, 1864.
- Civil War Muster Rolls, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, U.S. Army; Admissions Ledgers, U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers; federal burial ledgers, and national cemetery interment control forms, 1861-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of the Adjutant General (Record Group 94), U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
- U.S. Census Records, 1830-1930. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- U.S. Civil War Pension Records, 1862-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
#47thPennsylvania #47thPennsylvaniaInfantry #47thPennsylvaniaRegiment #47thPennsylvaniaVolunteers #47thRegimentPennsylvania #AlleghenyCounty #Allentown #America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #ArlingtonNationalCemetery #Army #Ashland #Baker #Beaufort #BerksCounty #Bethlehem #Bismarck #BlackHistory #Blacksmith #Blain #BlairCounty #Boatman #bricklayer #Brookville #Butcher #Cabinetmaker #California #CampFord #canal #CarbonCounty #Carpenter #Catasauqua #CentreCounty #CharlesEvansCemetery #Charleston #Chicago #Cigarmaker #Circus #CivilWar #ClearfieldCounty #coachTrimmer #coachmaker #Coalport #CommonwealthOfPennsylvania #DakotaTerritory #Dayton #Duncannon #Easton #Factory #Farmer #fireman #firemen #FirstDefenders #FloridaAndSouthCarolina #ForepaughCircus #FortJefferson #FortTaylor #FruitvaleAvenue #Germany #goldProspecting #GoldRush #Hampton #Harrisburg #HiltonHead #History #Illinois #Immigrants #Immigration #Infantry #inspector #Iowa #Ireland #Irish #Iron #JeffersonCounty #JohnsonCity #Kansas #KeyWest #LaborDay #LaborDayWeekend #Laborers #Leavenworth #LehighCounty #LehighValley #lockTender #Louisiana #LuzerneCounty #LycomingCounty #Machinist #Maryland #Masons #Miner #Minnesota #NapaValley #Nebraska #Nevada #NewJersey #NewMexico #NorthDakota #NorthamptonCounty #NorthumberlandCounty #Nurses #Oakland #Ohio #Oregon #PacificExpress #PennsylvaniaHistory #PennsylvaniaInTheCivilWar #PennsylvaniaRailroad #PerryCounty #Philadelphia #Phillipsburg #Pittsburgh #Pocotaligo #POW #prisonerOfWar #Quarry #railroad #ReadingRailroad #Rittersville #Robesonia #rollingMill #SanFrancisco #SchuylkillCounty #Seattle #Shenandoah #ShenandoahValley #Slavery #SouthCarolina #StPaul #Sunbury #tanner #tannery #Teamsters #Tennessee #Texas #TheUnionArmy #Tyler #USMilitaryAndTheUnionArmy #USPostOffice #veteran #VeteranVolunteers #veterans #Virginia #Washington #WestwardMigration #Whaler #Williamsport #Zanesville
-
You Can’t Fight City Hall! The thread about Lothian Road Public School
Preamble. The schools of the “School Board” era of public education (those built 1872-1918) hold a particular fascination for me, one most profound where they have been “deconsecrated” and are either no longer in use as schools or have disappeared entirely. This thread began as a couple of lines for my own notes about the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” but soon snowballed into an alphabetical deep-dive into each.
Before the Education (Scotland) Act 1872, which created the Edinburgh School Board and kick-started a building programme of new schools, the west end of the city was served by church-run schools on Cambridge Street by St John’s Episcopal Church and in halls behind the Lothian Road United Presbyterian Church (this latter building would much later become the Filmhouse cinema). They were joined in 1862 when the Free Church of Scotland established a school for 270 children on Riego Street as a mission of Free St Cuthbert’s and Free Greyfriars‘ churches.
The Riego Street School, a photograph taken in 1914 by J. R. Hamilton of the Edinburgh Photographic Society by which time it was in use as a mission hall. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.After its initial flurry of construction to replace the worst of the schools it had inherited and fill gaps in provision, the School Board turned its attention to the Lothian Road area and acquired a tiny, undeveloped plot extending to only a quarter of an acre at the junction of Grindlay and Cambridge Streets. This land was feud from The Grindlay Trust for £2046 (for whom Grindlay Street is named) who maintained the rights to final approval of any designs. This new Lothian Road Public School was proposed in tandem with Canonmills Public School and at 800 pupils was of a capacity but with a density of 0.77 pupils per metre square it would be the most congested school that the Board would build.
Comparison of the 1849 and 1893 OS Town Plans of Edinburgh for Lothian Road, move the slider to compare. These show in 1849 two small church schools (an Episcopal School in the top right and a United Presbyterian School middle bottom) and in 1893 the Lothian Road Public School in the centre of the image, to the right of the open street square. On the right of the 1893 map are the School Board Offices on Castle Terrace. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandPlans by the Board’s architect Robert Wilson were approved in March 1879 and generally followed the Collegiate Gothic styling then in favour, looking very much like a truncated version of its peer at Canonmills but raised to a height of three storeys to maximise the limited space available. An unusual deviation however was a French-style tower with louvred windows on the principal (western) façade adjoining the neighbouring tenement on Grindlay Street. The boys’ entrance was at its base, girls and infants having a separate entrance on Cambridge Street. The ground floor accommodated the infant department in a large central classroom (42 feet by 27 feet) with three smaller rooms leading off of it. The first and second floors were for the older pupils, again each following the same arrangement as the ground floor. To the rear of the school were two rather small playgrounds, one each for boys and girls.
Lothian Road Public School, looking towards the Castle. The striped globe-shaped objects in the middle distance below the Castle are on the roofline of the Synod Hall on Castle Terrace. City of Edinburgh Council Architectural Drawings and Photographs via Trove.Scot, DP 102382Construction began in late June 1879, the accepted estimate for construction being £5,891 19s 6d (c. £640k in 2026). A site accident on 15th August 1879 injured joiner Alexander Glass when a crane failed and dropped an iron beam on his foot, part of which had to be amputated at the Royal Infirmary as a result. After this, work proceeded steadily and the new school school opened on 6th September 1880, the school on Victoria Terrace (an older building inherited from the Heriot Trust) closing as a consequence. The total cost including purchasing the site came out at £7,333 17s (c. £795k in 2026). As built the capacity was 825 pupils (280 infants and 545 juveniles) with a staff comprising the headmaster, infant mistress, a first assistant teacher and eight assistant teachers. They were supported by a sewing mistress, a singing master and twelve pupil teachers (older children who were remaining in education beyond the mandatory leaving age and who helped in monitoring and conveying the lessons to younger children). The school soon proved to be one of the top performers (helped in a large part because of the socio-economic circumstances of its neighbourhood) and in 1882 the staff were given a 15 percent salary increase on account of reaching the first class tier of the Board’s ranking system.
From the very beginning Continuation Classes (evening school for adults) were part of the school’s offering, with Advanced Classes “for young men” in Latin, grammar and English composition; basic elementary subjects and also more vocational ones such as bookkeeping, shorthand and commercial geography. Architectural and mechanical drawing joined the syllabus in 1885 and by 1889 advanced level mechanics and mathematics were also being taught. In 1898 there were 350 enrolled for continuation schooling with an average attendance of 302. Technical classes in confectionery were started by the Master Bakers of Edinburgh and Leith in 1903 “with a view to raising the standard of fancy baking in the district.”
A street artist at work on the pavement island outside Lothian Road Public School in 1903, while a crowd looks on. The sign on the lamp post reads “Cars Stop“, indicating that this was a passenger platform for the city’s cable tramway.In 1887, 909 scholars from Lothian Road were presented for examination, suggesting the school was more than 10% over capacity, and before the Scotch Education Department reduced class sizes there were up to 1,000 learners crammed in. The school was a victim of its own success, having the highest attendance rate in the city meaning it was always full. A janitor’s house was added in 1889 at a cost of £223, an extra play shed for the boys in 1892 and new classrooms for drawing and cookery in 1893 at a cost of £1,000.
A fire in March 1891, the result of a fireplace in a classroom causing surrounding woodwork to overheat, proved to be “of a trifling nature” and was extinguished by the staff and janitor before the fire brigade could arrive. Headmaster George Robertson, who had been in charge since opening, died in March 1893. His newspaper obituary recalled him as “a man of a kindly and courteous disposition, which secured for him cordial relations with his staff” and one who had cut his educational teeth in some of the city’s poorest quarters. He had started his career in the school of the Chalmers Territorial Free Church in the West Port of which he was also in the congregation and a deacon (church civic officer). The teachers and a deputation of the schoolchildren attended his funeral at the Grange Cemetery.
Grave marker of George Robertson (1849-93), his infant son John (1875-76) and his wives Anne Mullay (1846-75) and Christina Barclay Robertson (1849-1918). Photo credit Charlie via Findagrave.comThe school was only sixteen years old when ominous clouds began to form on its horizon: in 1896 its site was mooted as one of a number of potential locations for a new civic music hall. The City Hall, as it was then known, was the result of a gift to the city by Andrew Usher (1826-98) who’s family had made a vast fortune in brewing that he had made even larger through perfecting the process of blending Scotch Whisky: revolutionising the product, the industry and a nation’s drinking habits. His endowment was worth £100,000 (about £12 million in 2026) and trustees invested it until an appropriate site could be found.
Barrels of Andrew Usher’s “OVG” (Old Vatted Glenlivet) blended whisky in one of his bonds at St Leonards. This was the first mass-market blended whisky.A longlist of twelve sites was initially proposed including Princes Street Gardens, Melville Street, Atholl Crescent, opposite St Giles Cathedral on the High Street, Castle Terrace, Chambers Street, Port Hopetoun Basin, the junction of George and Castle Streets and – most controversially – the Meadows. London architect Alfred Waterhouse was engaged to survey each and draw up a shortlist of five, with Atholl Crescent being the favoured option.
Batholomew map, 1898, showing some of the proposed locations for the Usher Hall. A site on Atholl Crescent, to the west of these, was first favoured before attention moved to the area between Lothian Road and Castle Terrace (to the left of the middle of the three plots highlighted above.) Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.Plans changed in 1900 however when the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland merged with the Free Church of Scotland and the former’s Synod Hall on Castle Terrace was now surplus to requirements. In an ironic twist, this large venue was actually first built as an entertainments hall but quickly failed as a commercial venture. The Town Council leapt at the chance to acquire it with a view that it might somehow be a good site for the hall, or might even be re-purposed as it.
The Synod Hall from West Princes Street Gardens. City of Edinburgh Council Architectural Drawings and Photographs via Trove.Scot SC2575722Matters proceeded slowly for the next few years while the Town Council tried to acquire further adjacent land; it spent £15,000 buying plots totalling 2,719 square yards, on top of the 2,327 of the hall. In 1903 the Town Clerk, Thomas Hunter, was asked report “on the whole muddle” and set out options for the potential use of the Synod Hall site. Things were getting complicated by the fact the successor United Free Church were apparently attempting to buy the building back and had verbally offered the Corporation £40,000 for it ( the latter having paid just £25,000 a few years earlier). Proponents of the Synod Hall site argued it would be a less expensive proposition than the alternatives and sited facing the Castle it made for an appropriately grand backdrop. Detractors were quick to point out that the new hall proposed for that site would have 2,400 seats, just 300 more than the building it was proposed to demolish and replace!
While matters remained unresolved, the idea of siting what would become The Usher Hall in the vicinity of Castle Terrace had by now crystallised in the minds of the Town Council and their gaze soon shifted to the side of the block that faced on to Lothian Road. If the site of Lothian Road School was combined with the neighbouring tenements and added to the Council’s existing landholding, this gave a combined site of 4,221 square yards without demolishing the Synod hall and in 1904 firm plans were put in front of the Town Council recommending securing the school property.
A complication remained however in that the local authority did not possess the school – it remained the property of the School Board which was independent from the Town Council. An informal approach to the Board had been rebuffed and there was an unwillingness to resort to powers of compulsory purchase. Unfortunately Lord Provost Sir Robert Cranston then went and put his foot in it by letting it be known that the school buildings had been condemned by the Scotch Education Department: the implication being they would thus be easy to acquire, He was rebuked in a most public manner by the Board in a statement published by the Evening News. The Lord Provost wrote to the Board’s chair, the redoubtable Flora Stevenson, to set the matter straight.
Advert taken out by the School Board in response to the Lord Provost’s assertions that Lothian Road School had been condemned by the Scotch Education Department. Edinburgh Evening News, 13th February 1905.A meeting was convened behind close doors between senior representatives from both sides and soon ironed things out. The Board let it be known they would give up the school for a “fair price” and sufficient land for a replacement school. They hoped to get ground at Lady Lawson Street, the site of the city’s cattle market which was to be relocated, however this was acquired instead by the Education Department for the College of Art.
Once again the scheme stalled, but for Lothian Road Public School it remained business as usual. On account of its central location it remained a favoured venue for a number of organisations. From 1906 to 1910 it was used by the Edinburgh Esperanto Society for meetings and lessons, the Board charging only a nominal rent so as to help encourage that language. A similar privilege was given to the Celtic Union who began Gaelic language evening classes, transferring them from the Outlook Tower on Castlehill whose facilities they had outgrown. It was the Union’s intention to prove there was a public appetite for the language in order that the Board might formally adopt them for its own programme. This plan quickly came to fruition and from 1908 these classes transferred to the School Board’s Continuation curriculum and were run from Gilmore Place Public School. (Coincidentally, this latter building remains in education use as an annexe of James Gillespie’s High School and has recently become a centre for its Gaelic Medium Education learning.)
On June 15th 1909 a meeting was held at the school by “a few far-sighted ladies and sympathetic mothers” which formed the committee to establish the Girl Guiding movement in the city. In July that year a concert was held by the senior pupils of the school to celebrate the attendance records of Janet Gray, Nettie Bee, Janet Taylor and Jane Bogue who all had achieved a perfect attendance record in their seven years at the school; a combined total of twenty-eight years without a day missed. The Board presented medals to the girls and commended the headmaster and his staff. The takings from the concert were to be “devoted to the purchase of pictures with which to adorn the walls” of the school.
An Edinburgh School Board perfect attendance medal first issued in 1908-09 to Robert McKinlay of London Street School. Picture via Lockdale’s Auctioneers and Valuers, sale lot from 2024.Time was running short for the school however. It was now fourteen years after Usher’s gift to the city (and twelve after his death) and pressure was mounting to finally get his hall built. Finally on March 21st 1910 a report was submitted to the Lord Provost’s Committee of the Town Council recommending that it should be built on the Lothian Road site that included the footprint of the school. This was approved and at a closed meeting the following day the School Board agreed to its sale for £8,500 plus a new site at the City Slaughterhouse (the Killin’ Hoose) at Fountainbridge, which was about to be relocated to Slateford. The Board were initially offered one and a quarter acres but stuck to their guns that they would not settle for less than two – in the end they accepted one and three-quarters plus two buildings to convert into a janitor’s house. This still left the Board an estimated deficit of £17,000 (about £1.7 million in 2026) for the replacement, however they felt “willing to do all in their power to further the important scheme“.
Edinburgh Evening News, 7th January 1905 Shaded properties were those to be acquired for the final Usher Hall scheme. The area outlined by the dotted and thick solid line was already possessed by the Town Council.Lothian Road Public School closed for the last time at the end of the summer term of 1910. Its brief thirty year life was the shortest of any of the Board’s schools and in that time it was estimated that 9,780 children had passed through its doors. Its Continuation Classes were removed to James Gillespie’s School when the new term started, the infant department to temporary huts at Ponton Street and the remaining 590 children were largely sent to the old West Fountainbridge School while their new home was completed. This building had been closed a few years previously (it had actually been condemned) and its lower floors had by then been converted into a central cooking centre for free and “penny dinners” for schools in the city centre. One can only imagine what the smells of boiling cabbage were like for children trying to learn about the kitchens’ coppers which had a capacity to cook 650 gallons in one go – 130 stones (or 826kg) of potatoes could be cooked per hour!
On Tuesday March 13th 1911, workmen of Messrs Neil Mcleod & Sons began working on building operations for the Usher Hall and that Friday the Edinburgh Evening News reported on “the passing of Lothian Road School“. Wooden hoardings been erected around the building and children were helping the teachers throughout the day to clear the school.
Although now the exigencies of modern educational equipment call for something more up to date [it] has never failed to satisfy the powers that be in the work of educating pupils and securing high attendance percentages.”
“The Passing of Lothian Road School”, Edinburgh Evening News, 17th March 1911On the 22nd of the month, the demolition gangs moved in and it was reported less than a month later that a workman by the name of Alexander Young had been seriously injured at work on demolition, having been standing on a second floor staircase when it collapsed beneath him and he suffered a fall of thirty five feet as a result.
During and before images of the demolition of Lothian Road Public School, view looking towards Grindlay Street. Move the slider to compare. Photographs probably taken by Francis M. Chrystal of the Edinburgh Photographic Society. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries. During and before images of the demolition of Lothian Road Public School, view looking towards Cambridge Street. Move the slider to compare. Photographs probably taken by Francis M. Chrystal of the Edinburgh Photographic Society. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.In December 1910 it had been decided that the replacement school should be called Tollcross Public School and that it should accommodate 800 children (300 infants and 500 juveniles). Tenders were advertised in May 1911 and it would open in September 1912.
Site of Tollcross School, before shown on 1906 Goad Fire Insurance map when it was the municipal slaughter houses and after shown on 1944 OS Town Plan. Move the slider to compare. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandDemolition at Lothian Road proceeded swiftly and groundworks were advanced to allow the laying of the memorial foundation stones on July 19th 1911. King George V and Queen Mary performed the honours at a grand public ceremony, each dropping a stone into place by the turning of the handle of a crane and tapping it gently with a ceremonial mallet.
The stage is set, quite literally, for the laying of the Usher Hall’s foundation stones, July 19th 1911. These are on the site of the former Lothian Road School, the steepled building on the right of the photo being St. Columba’s Gaelic Free Church. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.The Usher Hall finally opened on March 16th 1914, seventeen years and two hundred and eighty two days after the initial gift was made. By all accounts it has been a grand success, but its troubled gestation is just one of many examples of the city’s difficult (and ongoing) history of schemes to try and build public concert halls!
Bust of Andrew Usher, unveiled at the opening of the Usher Hall. Photograph by Francis Caird Inglis, 1914. Delays to the scheme meant that Usher was long dead by the time his gift was completed. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.The previous chapter of this series looked at the James Clark School.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
Filho mata mãe, amputa dedo dela para acessar celular e é pego durante velório
-
Deepika Padukone: Amrita Puri defends Deepika Padukone’s 8 hour shift demand, ‘She is being overly scrutinized’ | Hindi Movie News
Actress Amrita Puri has come out in support of Deepika Padukone’s demand for an 8-hour workday in Bollywood.…
#NewsBeep #News #Movies #Amrita #AmritaPuri #AU #Australia #DeepikaPadukone #Entertainment #Indiancinema #SandeepReddyVanga #uttarpradesh
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/665797/ -
Deepika Padukone: Amrita Puri defends Deepika Padukone’s 8 hour shift demand, ‘She is being overly scrutinized’ | Hindi Movie News
Actress Amrita Puri has come out in support of Deepika Padukone’s demand for an 8-hour workday in Bollywood.…
#NewsBeep #News #Movies #Amrita #AmritaPuri #AU #Australia #DeepikaPadukone #Entertainment #Indiancinema #SandeepReddyVanga #uttarpradesh
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/665797/ -
https://www.europesays.com/ie/480674/ Deepika Padukone: Amrita Puri defends Deepika Padukone’s 8 hour shift demand, ‘She is being overly scrutinized’ | Hindi Movie News #Amrita #AmritaPuri #DeepikaPadukone #Éire #Entertainment #IE #IndianCinema #Ireland #Movies #SandeepReddyVanga #UttarPradesh
-
qualche link di dicembre ’24, a proposito di genocidio
amputazioni in bambini
https://www.instagram.com/p/DDOkzyHsDeQ/a doctor speaks (eyewitness):
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDrBjXVMvpk/the zionists speak the truth only when they joyfully confess they want eradication, annihilation and genocide
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEDnTV7ukCaUigzbUj-4nYmrISDlvXGy6qbjV40/119mila, non 42000
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBx052FqlXl/a witness of a murder in cold blood
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEJF0vau5ry/it’s not the religion, it’s the occupation
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCquf5cIUJa/they denied medical supplies to save children who were dying
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCjVgIcIkxW/one year of genocide
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DC0V2XDC8qo/toddlers sniped twice
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDu05pRycza/an Haaretz article about idf atrocities
https://www.instagram.com/p/DEF2zBmPH9-/https://slowforward.net/2024/12/28/thats-the-kind-of-hanukkah-a-genocidal-state-believes-in/
https://slowforward.net/2024/12/29/secondo-natale-di-genocidio-pulizia-etnica-colonizzazione/
not the jews but the colonialist agenda
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEKnFcQMAYZ/27 dec 2024
abuses committed by the iof/idf at Kamal Adwan Hospital
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DENAVl8ovXw/29 dic 2024, quinto neonato ucciso dal freddo a Gaza
https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/mondo/2024/12/29/wafa-quinto-neonato-morto-per-il-gelo-a-gaza-grave-il-gemello_effd9213-921b-48d6-9ce2-2f8be46a987b.html30 dic 2024
il NYT sulla rimozione del numero delle vittime il 7 ottobre 2023
https://www.instagram.com/p/DEMZofRNHhL/[ Dr Mads Gilbert: https://x.com/KerryBurgess/status/1872609202235154449 ]
#genocide #genocidio #Palestine #Palestina #Gaza #children #ethniccleansing #murder #hospitals #massmurders #warcrimes #crimesagainsthumanity #occupation #settlers #WestBank #Jenin #Cisgiordania #deathtoll #bambini #bambiniuccisi #bombardments #bombardamenti #gunpoint #droni #drones #quadcopters #ai
#AI #bambini #bambiniuccisi #bombardamenti #bombardments #children #Cisgiordania #crimesagainsthumanity #deathtoll #drones #Droni #ethniccleansing #Gaza #genocide #genocidio #gunpoint #hospitals #ICC #icj #israelterroriststate #izrahell #Jenin #massmurders #murder #occupation #Palestina #Palestine #quadcopters #settlers #starvingcivilians #starvingpeople #warcrimes #WestBank #zionism
-
#WordWeavers 2026.03.03 —Introduce your MC without telling us their age, gender, job and who they are to others (e.g. friend, parent etc.).
[I write in 1st person. —RS] #microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory
My name? Bolt, Lightning Bolt. I use that name because: I. Fly. Fast. Maybe not the fastest in an all-out sprint through the sky, but just try following me in the city. At roof level, I can handle turbulence, eddies, and thermals like a sparrow. Near street level—through alleys, weaving through boulevard traffic, signs, lampposts, and sidewalk trees—you can't keep up with me. Spoilers. Nobody can.
Believe it or not, I didn't fledge until I was almost 11! I was afraid of falling! Since you lack wings like mine—aren't they fabulous!—I'll share that 11 years old was exceptionally late. Most fledglings fledge by age 3. I hated my therapist, which should have been a reason to fledge all by itself. I made up for all the flying I missed by being obsessed with finding my limits, by making all the boys compete against my perseverance and prowess (getting me lots of guy friends, oddly enough), and by becoming legendary at aerial stunts that threw my PE teachers and the principal into fits. I spent my first flight, all two hours of it, doing my best to stay in the air, only able to land with mother's help. But, by the time I'd lost my fear in the fascination of what I could do, so buoyed up by my sudden freedom, I didn't want to land at all. Mom wisely forced me down before my wings crumpled from exhaustion.
Getting shoved off a cliff by your uncle, and having to fly or die, really twists your brain!
I learned my wings can do things most day angels never try, like flying so close to someone that your feather gravity fields tangle together and provide erratic lift, making you think you'll collide. Their first tailspin or stall-out a few stories high sends most feathers into a molt; the wimps never go on to explore their possibilities! When I learned I could decompensate my own feathers and throw gravity gradients like eddies behind me, I learned I could both maintain lift and push or pull against trees and buildings, and with a good wind, rocket straight upward for a few stories against the side of a building or a tree. Gotta watch out for litter and trash flying in my wake. I'm hard to follow, naturally! Assuming you got close in the first place.
You ain't gonna.
Not that you have any chance of getting close me, since you live in two-dimensions. Looking at you, I have to tell myself: You. Aren't. Crippled. Your wings weren't amputated. Still. It must be sad to see birds soaring through the sky, or me with my glorious blue wings, only to realize your feet are stuck to the ground.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#Cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
-
Minerva Academy Expands with Amrita Group, Launches Second Residential Football Academy in India.
https://aliyesha.com/sub/articles/news/display/pb_minerva_academy_amrita_group
#MinervaAcademy #AmritaGroup #FootballAcademy #Bengaluru #YouthFootball #AIFF #Sports #IndiaFootball
Enjoy tracker free reading with us. #privacy #privacymatters
-
Wounded, recovered and back to war. Ukrainian soldiers are returning to battle after amputation
“Fighting with arms and legs is something anyone can do. Fighting without them — that’s a challenge”
-
2013 #RanaPlaza #Bangladesh Collapse 1,138 people killed; trapped in rubble some had to self-amputate their own limbs before they could be pulled free.
https://ranaplaza-solidarity.org/why-did-rana-plaza-collapse/ -
Russland: Anarchistische Kriegssaboteure vor Gericht
Alexy #Rozhkov zu 16 Jahren Haft verurteilt, Ruslan #Sidiki droht lebenslange Haft wegen „politischem #Terrorismus“
Vor dem #Militärgericht in #Jekaterinburg wurde Alexy Rozhkov gestern (20. Mai) wegen #Brandstiftung an einer #Rekrutierungsstelle zu 16 Jahren Haft verurteilt. Ebenfalls gestern stand Ruslan Sidiki vor dem Militärgericht in #Rjasan unter Anklage wegen der Zerstörung von Eisenbahnschienen, die zum Entgleisen von neunzehn Waggons mit #Düngemitteln geführt hatte. Sidiki wurde im November 2023 festgenommen und wird außerdem der versuchten Zerstörung von #Militärflugzeugen beschuldigt, wobei er in beiden Fällen ferngesteuerte GPS-gesteuerte #Drohnen eingesetzt haben soll.
Beide #Anarchisten geben die ihnen vorgeworfenen Taten zu, weisen jedoch die politische Anschuldigung des #Terrorismus zurück.
Rozhkov wurde zunächst wegen „Sachbeschädigung“ angeklagt, nachdem die Behörden erfolglos versucht hatten, ihn wegen „versuchten Mordes“ an einem Wachmann im Rekrutierungsbüro anzuklagen. Nachdem er aus Russland nach #Kirgisistan geflohen war, wurde er von den #Sicherheitsdiensten entführt und nach #Russland zurückgeschleppt.
„Ich habe einfach verstanden, dass man nicht gleichgültig bleiben kann“, sagte Rozhkov in einem Interview mit DOXA kurz vor seiner #Verhaftung und illegalen #Abschiebung. „Was jetzt passiert, ist unrechtmäßig, es ist illegal. Jeder Krieg bedeutet den Tod für normale Bürger.“ Er war der dritte Mensch in Russland, der nach dem vollständigen Einmarsch Russlands in die #Ukraine im März 2022 ein Rekrutierungsbüro in Brand gesetzt hat.
Sidiki seinerseits sagt, er habe keine anderen Mittel des Widerstands gesehen als direkte Aktionen. Die Zerstörung der #Eisenbahninfrastruktur, um den Transport von #Sprengstoff an die Grenze zur Ukraine zu stoppen, sei geplant gewesen, um sicherzustellen, dass bei der Beschädigung der militärischen Infrastruktur keine Menschen zu Schaden kommen.
„Ich bekenne mich teilweise schuldig“, sagte Sidiki vor #Gericht. "Ich erkenne die Tatsache der Ausbildung zu terroristischen Aktivitäten nicht an, ich hatte die Fähigkeiten bereits zuvor. Ich sehe keine terroristischen Absichten, da das Ziel #Sabotage war und nicht die #Einschüchterung der Bevölkerung. Ich gebe zu, die (dritte) Explosion vorbereitet zu haben. Die in meinem Haus gefundenen Komponenten sind Chemikalien, da ich mich für #Agrarchemie und #Pflanzenbau interessiere."
#Sabotageakte gegen die Eisenbahn in Russland sind häufiger geworden, wobei 2024 eine Rekordzahl von Brandstiftungen gegen die Eisenbahninfrastruktur verzeichnet wurde. Viele der Festgenommenen und Verurteilten sind junge Erwachsene oder Teenager. Der 16-jährige Pavel #Khazov wurde zu neun Jahren Haft verurteilt, der 17-jährige Space #Nevolainen zu sechs Jahren, weil sie wegen der #Brandstiftung an einem leeren Zugwaggon auf eine Liste von „Terroristen“ gesetzt worden waren.
#Mediazona berichtete über Fälle von dreizehn Minderjährigen, die wegen Brandstiftung an Relaiskästen für die Eisenbahn oder an militärischer Ausrüstung angeklagt wurden. Einige gaben an, dafür von einer unbekannten Person bezahlt worden zu sein. Pavel berichtete, dass er von einem Mann namens „Gustav“ dafür bezahlt wurde, den Zug anzuzünden, doch diese klare Zusammengehörigkeit der Minderjährigen qualifiziert sie in den Augen des Gesetzes dennoch als #Terroristen.
Dies sind eindeutige Anzeichen für politische #Schauprozesse, bei denen Sachbeschädigungen zu Terrorakten umgedeutet werden, um Unterstützung für den Krieg in der Ukraine zu mobilisieren und einen inneren Feind zu schaffen, gegen den die Russen kämpfen können, einen Feind, der von einem anderen, ausländischen Feind bezahlt wird. Im Fall von Ruslan Sidiki wird er nicht nur der Taten beschuldigt, die er begangen hat. Er wird beschuldigt, vom ukrainischen #Geheimdienst bezahlt worden zu sein; seine revolutionären Taten seien nur ein Tausch gegen die britische #Staatsbürgerschaft und Bargeld gewesen.
Berichte über Folter (CW)
Er hat „die Vorbereitung der (dritten) Explosion“ nur unter Folter durch die russischen Behörden zugegeben. Trotz einer Beschwerde wurde diese Gewalt bis heute nicht untersucht, während der Prozess gegen Sidiki weitergeht. Drei Wochen nach dem Angriff auf einen Militärflugplatz wurde er verhaftet und auf die Polizeiwache gebracht.Sidiki wurde an Sicherheitskräfte in Zivil übergeben, die von ihm ein Geständnis forderten, andernfalls würde er gefoltert, aus der Stadt gebracht und hingerichtet werden. Sie würden es so aussehen lassen, als habe er versucht zu fliehen, sagten sie ihm. „Als ich auf dem Boden lag, traten sie mir auf die Hände und Füße, sodass ich sie nicht bewegen konnte, obwohl ich mich nicht wehrte“, erinnerte sich Sidiki in Mediazona. „Dann sagte einer von ihnen zu jemandem: ‚Ruf an!‘“
In diesem Moment durchfuhr mich ein elektrischer Stromschlag, der meine Muskeln zusammenzog und unerträgliche Schmerzen verursachte. Ich schrie laut und schlug meinen Kopf auf den Boden, während einer von ihnen vor mir stand und mich mit seinem Handy filmte."
Sidiki wurde mit sexueller Gewalt und der Amputation von Gliedmaßen bedroht und während der Elektroschocks mit verwirrenden Fragen konfrontiert. „Meiner Meinung nach“, erinnert sich Sidiki, „war der Stromstoß aus ihrem #Foltergerät vergleichbar mit einer Rosette der Kategorie 220 Volt. Da ich als Elektriker arbeite, habe ich in meinem Leben schon öfter solche Spannungen erlebt und kann die Wirkung vergleichen.“
„Wie lange die #Folter genau gedauert hat, kann ich nicht sagen, da ich nach ein paar Schocks benommen war, aber ich kann sagen, dass es unerträglich schmerzhaft war.“
Ein Korrespondent von #Mediazona verfolgt Sidikis Fall, ebenso wie Solidarity Zone, da beide versuchen, trotz strenger Einschränkungen durch Richter Oleg #Shishov, der #Journalisten die Aufzeichnung der Verhandlung untersagt hat, aus dem Gerichtssaal zu berichten.
„Ich wurde in ein Auto gesetzt, in dem nur Leute mit Masken waren“, erinnert sich Sidiki. „Ich glaube, das war kein Zufall, und der Ermittler und der Anwalt fuhren in einem anderen Auto. Ich wurde zu Verstecken und Sabotageorten gebracht, wo ich, nachdem ich den #IVS verlassen hatte, sofort von maskierten Leuten im Kopf-, Brust- und Bauchbereich geschlagen wurde.“
„Außerdem hatten diese Leute einen #Elektroschocker in Form eines Schlagstocks, und die meiste Zeit wurde ich mit Stromschlägen traktiert, bis die Batterie leer war. Von diesem Elektroschocker sind Spuren in Form von Verbrennungen auf meinem Körper zurückgeblieben, auch meine Kleidung ist verbrannt.“
„Ich habe immer noch Angst um mein Leben und meine Gesundheit wegen dieser Leute, die mich nach meiner Festnahme gefoltert und geschlagen haben“, sagte Sidiki.
Die Anklage gegen Sidiki versucht, von seiner politischen Einstellung als Anarchist als Hauptmerkmal des ihm vorgeworfenen Terrorismus abzulenken. Anwohner und Freunde aus seiner Kindheit wurden vor Gericht gezerrt, um jemanden zu finden, der von Sidikis Handlungen negativ betroffen war. Der Zugführer reichte eine Beschwerde ein und forderte eine Entschädigung in Millionenhöhe.
Der #Anarchist räumte „trocken“ ein, dass dem Zugführer „moralischer Schaden“ zugefügt worden sei. Schließlich fuhr er nur einen Zug voller #Sprengstoff in ein Land, das von seinem eigenen Land angegriffen wurde.
Doch trotz der Vorwürfe, Sidiki sei vom ukrainischen Geheimdienst bezahlt worden, über die nur in den diskreditierten staatlichen Medien #TASS berichtet wurde, schienen seine Ziele persönlich und eher in der Politik begründet zu sein, die die Russische Föderation gerne ignorieren würde: Sabotage und direkte Aktionen gegen Autoritarismus.
„Das Dröhnen der Tu-22 und Tu-95 vor dem Fenster fiel mit den Angriffen auf die Ukraine zusammen, und das bestimmte meine Wahl des Ziels: den #Militärflugplatz #Dyagilevo, nur zehn Kilometer von meinem Zuhause entfernt. Ich lebte mit meiner 80-jährigen Großmutter zusammen und wusste, wie schwer es für alte und kranke Menschen im Winter ohne Heizung und Licht ist“, schreibt Sidiki laut Solidarity Zone.
„Während ich die Badewanne mit heißem Wasser füllte, dachte ich an diejenigen, denen tausend Kilometer entfernt aufgrund geopolitischer Ambitionen die grundlegendsten Lebensbedingungen vorenthalten wurden. Und gleichzeitig reden sie immer noch von “brüderlichen Völkern„ und davon, dass “Russland keine Zivilisten bekämpft".
„Anarchist zu sein bedeutet für mich, wenn möglich, zu helfen oder mich an Projekten in meiner Nähe zu beteiligen“, sagt er gegenüber Mediazona. „An Aktionen teilnehmen, deren Kern der Schutz der Rechte und Freiheiten der arbeitenden Bevölkerung ist. Wenn es die Umstände erlauben, deine Ideen den richtigen Leuten näherbringen. Neue Kenntnisse und Fähigkeiten erwerben, die es dir ermöglichen, das oben Genannte effektiver zu tun.“
„Als ich im Gefängnis war“, sagte Rozhkov in einem Interview vor seiner Verhaftung, "kam ein Anwalt vom Anarchistischen Schwarzen Kreuz zu mir. Mir wurde Hilfe angeboten. Wir stellten auch einige Fragen: Möchte ich Briefe, Hilfe, Überweisungen erhalten und den Fall öffentlich machen? Ich lehnte Unterstützung und Öffentlichkeit ab, aber ich beschloss, dass es schön wäre, Briefe von Menschen zu erhalten, die nicht gleichgültig sind, die Menschen wie uns in Gefangenschaft helfen. Die Briefe haben mir wirklich sehr geholfen ..."
“Wenn du das Leben von Gefangenen irgendwie aufhellen willst„, sagt Sidiki, “schreib Briefe, schick Postkarten, das bringt dich trotz aller Schwierigkeiten zum Lächeln".
Nachrichten an Ruslan Sidiki und Alexy Rozhkov sollten ins Russische übersetzt und entweder an Solidarity Zone oder an folgende Adressen geschickt werden:
620019, Russland, Jekaterinburg, Repina-Straße 4, SIZO-1, Rozhkov Alexey Igorevich 1997
125130, Moskau, st. Vyborgskaya, d. 20, SIZO-5, Sidiki Ruslan Kasemovich 1988
Quelle: Josie Ó Súileabháin via Russia: Anarchist war saboteurs on trial via freedomnews.co.uk
Übersetzung: Thomas Trueten [Nicht authorisiert]
#ABC #Antirepression #Knast #PoliticalPrisoners #FreeThemAll
-
Per i botti di Capodanno un morto e 238 feriti. Sessantotto sono minorenni.
A Milano feriti gravemente due 12enni. In ospedale un bimbo di 9 anni nel Casertano, a Taranto un 13enne, a Vieste un 17enne a cui è stata amputata la mano sinistra. -
Uomo ucciso dallo scoppio di un petardo a Roma: l’ordigno clandestino era stato acquistato dal figlio.
Un uomo di circa 60 anni è morto ad Acilia (Roma) a seguito dell’esplosione del petardo che gli è scoppiato in mano, amputandogli l’arto superiore.
-
https://www.wacoca.com/kpop/1507484/videos/2026-05-07/ Mia relapsed? Mia moved into the Devil’s playground & her new surroundings has worsen. ##addiction ##amputation ##childhood ##dysfunction ##essexCounty ##jail ##JerseyConcrete ##loveAtFirstSight ##NewJersey ##prison ##Quadair ##recovery ##rehab ##rehabilitation ##streetInterviews #Facility) #family #KPOP女性アイドルランキング #living #love #Memories #Mia #Moving #NEW #newark #Orange #Park #relationship #ミア（MIA） #韓国の女性メンバー人気No1は？
-
https://www.wacoca.com/kpop/1507484/videos/2026-05-07/ Mia relapsed? Mia moved into the Devil’s playground & her new surroundings has worsen. ##addiction ##amputation ##childhood ##dysfunction ##essexCounty ##jail ##JerseyConcrete ##loveAtFirstSight ##NewJersey ##prison ##Quadair ##recovery ##rehab ##rehabilitation ##streetInterviews #Facility) #family #KPOP女性アイドルランキング #living #love #Memories #Mia #Moving #NEW #newark #Orange #Park #relationship #ミア（MIA） #韓国の女性メンバー人気No1は？
-
Do you know how painful #gout is? Many people, most specially at work, dismisses gout and accuse the employee of faking it or lying. This is how painful: you want to amputate it than suffer for days. It's more painful than childbirth, kidney stones, getting stabbed, etc.
-
Do you know how painful #gout is?
Many people, most specially at work, dismisses gout and accuse the employee of faking it or lying.
This is how painful: you want to amputate it than suffer for days. It's more painful than childbirth, kidney stones, getting stabbed, etc.
-
If you look hard enough there is a lot of freely available #medical training material online.
Here is the entire #Military Clinical Readiness Curriculum from the #American Colleage of Surgeons.
Free to access & with a Ukrainian translation!
Topics covered inlcude:
* Airway and #Breathing
* Critical Care
* Head & Spine Injury
* Torso #Trauma
* Transfusion and #Resuscitation
* #Wounds, #Amputations & #FracturesLots there for field #medics too.
-
The Funeral of Handwriting: What We Lose When the Hand Stops Moving
In 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative dropped cursive instruction from its recommended curriculum. The decision arrived without ceremony. No public debate, no period of mourning, no recognition that a cognitive practice stretching back to the Sumerian reed stylus was being retired from American education. Forty-one states adopted the standards. Cursive, along with its slower sibling manuscript handwriting, began its institutional death.
The loss registers first in the brain. Karin James, a cognitive neuroscientist at Indiana University, published research in 2012 demonstrating that children who practiced letter formation by hand showed activation in the left fusiform gyrus, the reading circuit of the brain, that children who typed the same letters did not. The hand, moving across the page, recruits neural networks that the keyboard bypasses entirely. Virginia Berninger’s longitudinal studies at the University of Washington reinforced this finding: children who wrote by hand produced more words, generated ideas faster, and composed more complete sentences than those who typed. The hand thinks its way through language.
The argument here has nothing to do with sentiment about fountain pens and wax seals. The motor act of forming letters creates a proprioceptive feedback loop that anchors memory and comprehension in ways that tapping a glass screen cannot replicate. A 2014 study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, published in Psychological Science under the title “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard,” showed that students who took longhand notes outperformed laptop note-takers on conceptual questions, even when the laptop group had more recorded material. Speed worked against understanding. The hand’s slowness forced selection, compression, and interpretation in real time, while the keyboard encouraged transcription without cognition.
The cultural history tells a parallel story. In the nineteenth century, Platt Rogers Spencer developed the Spencerian method, a system of penmanship that became the standard American hand from the 1850s through the turn of the century. Spencer did not conceive of handwriting as a mechanical skill. He understood it as moral training. The discipline of forming graceful, consistent letterforms was a discipline of the self: patience, attention, proportion, restraint. When Austin Norman Palmer replaced Spencerian script with his own method around 1900, he stripped the moral philosophy but kept the premise that handwriting shaped character. Both men would have found the idea of abandoning handwriting instruction incomprehensible, the equivalent of canceling arithmetic because calculators exist.
The legal and institutional architecture of Western civilization was built on the handwritten document. Wills, contracts, treaties, confessions, correspondence, medical notes, field observations, laboratory records: for centuries, the handwritten text carried an evidentiary weight that print could not match. A signature functions as an assertion of identity and intention, a mark that forensic examiners can trace to a single human hand. The typed name carries no such specificity. As handwriting recedes from common practice, an entire system of authentication rooted in the irreducible individuality of the body recedes with it.
The counterargument writes itself: nobody needs cursive to function in a digital economy. Keyboards are faster. Screens are ubiquitous. Communication has moved to platforms where handwriting has no utility. All of this is true, and all of it misses the point. Efficiency has never been the right lens for evaluating a cognitive practice. Running is less efficient than driving; we do not therefore recommend the abolition of legs.
What is happening is a form of cognitive amputation performed in the name of convenience. The connection between the hand and the brain’s language centers, between the body and the act of composition, between the slow, resistant, physical work of making meaning and the frictionless digital surface that asks nothing of us but a tap, is being severed by policy and indifference. The children who will never learn cursive will still read and write. They will compose texts and emails and reports. What they will lack is the knowledge of what they are missing, which is the particular cruelty of amputation: the phantom limb aches, but only if you once had the limb.
A growing number of American states have passed legislation mandating cursive instruction, swimming against the Common Core current. Louisiana’s Act 300 in 2016 was among the earliest. These legislative acts respond to accumulating evidence that the hand’s retirement has consequences the brain cannot absorb on its own. The neuroscience keeps arriving, and it keeps pointing in the same direction: the hand and the mind developed together, over millennia, and separating them carries costs that no efficiency calculation can account for.
The funeral of handwriting is the funeral of a particular kind of thinking: slow, embodied, resistant to acceleration, irreducibly personal. Every word written by hand carries the tremor of the individual body, the pressure of the moment, the angle of fatigue or excitement or care. The keyboard produces uniform characters regardless of who strikes the keys. Uniformity offers comfort, and the comfort has a price measured in capacities we can no longer name.
#commonCore #composition #cursive #education #handwriting #institution #pen #penmanship #research #states -
The Funeral of Handwriting: What We Lose When the Hand Stops Moving
In 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative dropped cursive instruction from its recommended curriculum. The decision arrived without ceremony. No public debate, no period of mourning, no recognition that a cognitive practice stretching back to the Sumerian reed stylus was being retired from American education. Forty-one states adopted the standards. Cursive, along with its slower sibling manuscript handwriting, began its institutional death.
The loss registers first in the brain. Karin James, a cognitive neuroscientist at Indiana University, published research in 2012 demonstrating that children who practiced letter formation by hand showed activation in the left fusiform gyrus, the reading circuit of the brain, that children who typed the same letters did not. The hand, moving across the page, recruits neural networks that the keyboard bypasses entirely. Virginia Berninger’s longitudinal studies at the University of Washington reinforced this finding: children who wrote by hand produced more words, generated ideas faster, and composed more complete sentences than those who typed. The hand thinks its way through language.
The argument here has nothing to do with sentiment about fountain pens and wax seals. The motor act of forming letters creates a proprioceptive feedback loop that anchors memory and comprehension in ways that tapping a glass screen cannot replicate. A 2014 study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, published in Psychological Science under the title “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard,” showed that students who took longhand notes outperformed laptop note-takers on conceptual questions, even when the laptop group had more recorded material. Speed worked against understanding. The hand’s slowness forced selection, compression, and interpretation in real time, while the keyboard encouraged transcription without cognition.
The cultural history tells a parallel story. In the nineteenth century, Platt Rogers Spencer developed the Spencerian method, a system of penmanship that became the standard American hand from the 1850s through the turn of the century. Spencer did not conceive of handwriting as a mechanical skill. He understood it as moral training. The discipline of forming graceful, consistent letterforms was a discipline of the self: patience, attention, proportion, restraint. When Austin Norman Palmer replaced Spencerian script with his own method around 1900, he stripped the moral philosophy but kept the premise that handwriting shaped character. Both men would have found the idea of abandoning handwriting instruction incomprehensible, the equivalent of canceling arithmetic because calculators exist.
The legal and institutional architecture of Western civilization was built on the handwritten document. Wills, contracts, treaties, confessions, correspondence, medical notes, field observations, laboratory records: for centuries, the handwritten text carried an evidentiary weight that print could not match. A signature functions as an assertion of identity and intention, a mark that forensic examiners can trace to a single human hand. The typed name carries no such specificity. As handwriting recedes from common practice, an entire system of authentication rooted in the irreducible individuality of the body recedes with it.
The counterargument writes itself: nobody needs cursive to function in a digital economy. Keyboards are faster. Screens are ubiquitous. Communication has moved to platforms where handwriting has no utility. All of this is true, and all of it misses the point. Efficiency has never been the right lens for evaluating a cognitive practice. Running is less efficient than driving; we do not therefore recommend the abolition of legs.
What is happening is a form of cognitive amputation performed in the name of convenience. The connection between the hand and the brain’s language centers, between the body and the act of composition, between the slow, resistant, physical work of making meaning and the frictionless digital surface that asks nothing of us but a tap, is being severed by policy and indifference. The children who will never learn cursive will still read and write. They will compose texts and emails and reports. What they will lack is the knowledge of what they are missing, which is the particular cruelty of amputation: the phantom limb aches, but only if you once had the limb.
A growing number of American states have passed legislation mandating cursive instruction, swimming against the Common Core current. Louisiana’s Act 300 in 2016 was among the earliest. These legislative acts respond to accumulating evidence that the hand’s retirement has consequences the brain cannot absorb on its own. The neuroscience keeps arriving, and it keeps pointing in the same direction: the hand and the mind developed together, over millennia, and separating them carries costs that no efficiency calculation can account for.
The funeral of handwriting is the funeral of a particular kind of thinking: slow, embodied, resistant to acceleration, irreducibly personal. Every word written by hand carries the tremor of the individual body, the pressure of the moment, the angle of fatigue or excitement or care. The keyboard produces uniform characters regardless of who strikes the keys. Uniformity offers comfort, and the comfort has a price measured in capacities we can no longer name.
#commonCore #composition #cursive #education #handwriting #institution #pen #penmanship #research #states -
The Funeral of Handwriting: What We Lose When the Hand Stops Moving
In 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative dropped cursive instruction from its recommended curriculum. The decision arrived without ceremony. No public debate, no period of mourning, no recognition that a cognitive practice stretching back to the Sumerian reed stylus was being retired from American education. Forty-one states adopted the standards. Cursive, along with its slower sibling manuscript handwriting, began its institutional death.
The loss registers first in the brain. Karin James, a cognitive neuroscientist at Indiana University, published research in 2012 demonstrating that children who practiced letter formation by hand showed activation in the left fusiform gyrus, the reading circuit of the brain, that children who typed the same letters did not. The hand, moving across the page, recruits neural networks that the keyboard bypasses entirely. Virginia Berninger’s longitudinal studies at the University of Washington reinforced this finding: children who wrote by hand produced more words, generated ideas faster, and composed more complete sentences than those who typed. The hand thinks its way through language.
The argument here has nothing to do with sentiment about fountain pens and wax seals. The motor act of forming letters creates a proprioceptive feedback loop that anchors memory and comprehension in ways that tapping a glass screen cannot replicate. A 2014 study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, published in Psychological Science under the title “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard,” showed that students who took longhand notes outperformed laptop note-takers on conceptual questions, even when the laptop group had more recorded material. Speed worked against understanding. The hand’s slowness forced selection, compression, and interpretation in real time, while the keyboard encouraged transcription without cognition.
The cultural history tells a parallel story. In the nineteenth century, Platt Rogers Spencer developed the Spencerian method, a system of penmanship that became the standard American hand from the 1850s through the turn of the century. Spencer did not conceive of handwriting as a mechanical skill. He understood it as moral training. The discipline of forming graceful, consistent letterforms was a discipline of the self: patience, attention, proportion, restraint. When Austin Norman Palmer replaced Spencerian script with his own method around 1900, he stripped the moral philosophy but kept the premise that handwriting shaped character. Both men would have found the idea of abandoning handwriting instruction incomprehensible, the equivalent of canceling arithmetic because calculators exist.
The legal and institutional architecture of Western civilization was built on the handwritten document. Wills, contracts, treaties, confessions, correspondence, medical notes, field observations, laboratory records: for centuries, the handwritten text carried an evidentiary weight that print could not match. A signature functions as an assertion of identity and intention, a mark that forensic examiners can trace to a single human hand. The typed name carries no such specificity. As handwriting recedes from common practice, an entire system of authentication rooted in the irreducible individuality of the body recedes with it.
The counterargument writes itself: nobody needs cursive to function in a digital economy. Keyboards are faster. Screens are ubiquitous. Communication has moved to platforms where handwriting has no utility. All of this is true, and all of it misses the point. Efficiency has never been the right lens for evaluating a cognitive practice. Running is less efficient than driving; we do not therefore recommend the abolition of legs.
What is happening is a form of cognitive amputation performed in the name of convenience. The connection between the hand and the brain’s language centers, between the body and the act of composition, between the slow, resistant, physical work of making meaning and the frictionless digital surface that asks nothing of us but a tap, is being severed by policy and indifference. The children who will never learn cursive will still read and write. They will compose texts and emails and reports. What they will lack is the knowledge of what they are missing, which is the particular cruelty of amputation: the phantom limb aches, but only if you once had the limb.
A growing number of American states have passed legislation mandating cursive instruction, swimming against the Common Core current. Louisiana’s Act 300 in 2016 was among the earliest. These legislative acts respond to accumulating evidence that the hand’s retirement has consequences the brain cannot absorb on its own. The neuroscience keeps arriving, and it keeps pointing in the same direction: the hand and the mind developed together, over millennia, and separating them carries costs that no efficiency calculation can account for.
The funeral of handwriting is the funeral of a particular kind of thinking: slow, embodied, resistant to acceleration, irreducibly personal. Every word written by hand carries the tremor of the individual body, the pressure of the moment, the angle of fatigue or excitement or care. The keyboard produces uniform characters regardless of who strikes the keys. Uniformity offers comfort, and the comfort has a price measured in capacities we can no longer name.
#commonCore #composition #cursive #education #handwriting #institution #pen #penmanship #research #states -
The Funeral of Handwriting: What We Lose When the Hand Stops Moving
In 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative dropped cursive instruction from its recommended curriculum. The decision arrived without ceremony. No public debate, no period of mourning, no recognition that a cognitive practice stretching back to the Sumerian reed stylus was being retired from American education. Forty-one states adopted the standards. Cursive, along with its slower sibling manuscript handwriting, began its institutional death.
The loss registers first in the brain. Karin James, a cognitive neuroscientist at Indiana University, published research in 2012 demonstrating that children who practiced letter formation by hand showed activation in the left fusiform gyrus, the reading circuit of the brain, that children who typed the same letters did not. The hand, moving across the page, recruits neural networks that the keyboard bypasses entirely. Virginia Berninger’s longitudinal studies at the University of Washington reinforced this finding: children who wrote by hand produced more words, generated ideas faster, and composed more complete sentences than those who typed. The hand thinks its way through language.
The argument here has nothing to do with sentiment about fountain pens and wax seals. The motor act of forming letters creates a proprioceptive feedback loop that anchors memory and comprehension in ways that tapping a glass screen cannot replicate. A 2014 study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, published in Psychological Science under the title “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard,” showed that students who took longhand notes outperformed laptop note-takers on conceptual questions, even when the laptop group had more recorded material. Speed worked against understanding. The hand’s slowness forced selection, compression, and interpretation in real time, while the keyboard encouraged transcription without cognition.
The cultural history tells a parallel story. In the nineteenth century, Platt Rogers Spencer developed the Spencerian method, a system of penmanship that became the standard American hand from the 1850s through the turn of the century. Spencer did not conceive of handwriting as a mechanical skill. He understood it as moral training. The discipline of forming graceful, consistent letterforms was a discipline of the self: patience, attention, proportion, restraint. When Austin Norman Palmer replaced Spencerian script with his own method around 1900, he stripped the moral philosophy but kept the premise that handwriting shaped character. Both men would have found the idea of abandoning handwriting instruction incomprehensible, the equivalent of canceling arithmetic because calculators exist.
The legal and institutional architecture of Western civilization was built on the handwritten document. Wills, contracts, treaties, confessions, correspondence, medical notes, field observations, laboratory records: for centuries, the handwritten text carried an evidentiary weight that print could not match. A signature functions as an assertion of identity and intention, a mark that forensic examiners can trace to a single human hand. The typed name carries no such specificity. As handwriting recedes from common practice, an entire system of authentication rooted in the irreducible individuality of the body recedes with it.
The counterargument writes itself: nobody needs cursive to function in a digital economy. Keyboards are faster. Screens are ubiquitous. Communication has moved to platforms where handwriting has no utility. All of this is true, and all of it misses the point. Efficiency has never been the right lens for evaluating a cognitive practice. Running is less efficient than driving; we do not therefore recommend the abolition of legs.
What is happening is a form of cognitive amputation performed in the name of convenience. The connection between the hand and the brain’s language centers, between the body and the act of composition, between the slow, resistant, physical work of making meaning and the frictionless digital surface that asks nothing of us but a tap, is being severed by policy and indifference. The children who will never learn cursive will still read and write. They will compose texts and emails and reports. What they will lack is the knowledge of what they are missing, which is the particular cruelty of amputation: the phantom limb aches, but only if you once had the limb.
A growing number of American states have passed legislation mandating cursive instruction, swimming against the Common Core current. Louisiana’s Act 300 in 2016 was among the earliest. These legislative acts respond to accumulating evidence that the hand’s retirement has consequences the brain cannot absorb on its own. The neuroscience keeps arriving, and it keeps pointing in the same direction: the hand and the mind developed together, over millennia, and separating them carries costs that no efficiency calculation can account for.
The funeral of handwriting is the funeral of a particular kind of thinking: slow, embodied, resistant to acceleration, irreducibly personal. Every word written by hand carries the tremor of the individual body, the pressure of the moment, the angle of fatigue or excitement or care. The keyboard produces uniform characters regardless of who strikes the keys. Uniformity offers comfort, and the comfort has a price measured in capacities we can no longer name.
#commonCore #composition #cursive #education #handwriting #institution #pen #penmanship #research #states -
Sotis has found a place where the sun hits the sofa 🐈⬛😊
#catsofmastodon #fedicats #cat #cata #catsoffediverse #catsoffedi