Here are some general pointers (which I repeat may not apply to all Brazilian women):

1) There is a strong sense of family in Brazil. The extended family is also important. Married people or people in committed relationships do not go to “Boys Night Out” or “Girls Night Out” where they can flirt with other people. Men might play soccer with their buddies in the afternoon, women might have a coffee and shoppping with their female friends, but they do not go out at night and leave their partner alone at home. No strip clubs for men in committed relationships either. That is all a no no and even shocking for us Brazilians.

2) When it comes to engagement and weddings, Brazilian women are used to some different things. We do not require you spend thousands on a diamond ring. We do not have that tradition (see my post about engagement rings). We are happy with a simpler ring or just the wedding bands. Some of us though, after living in America and seeing so many De Beers ads, may want a diamond ring too.

3) Do not even think of having a dalliance with hookers and strippers just because it is your bachelor’s party. We consider that cheating and don’t be surprised if your fiance cancels the wedding if she finds it out. We do not even have the bachelor party tradition. Very few men celebrate that, while the bride’s friends do get together to get her presents for her new home. Sometimes men participate as well (a tradition that is also starting here).

4) Latin people in general are more emotional and more possessive, keep that in mind when you fight with her.

5) Women are raised to be feminine, to do female things (they may have piano and ballet lessons, not baseball or rough sports). Many are stil raised to get married and have babies as the first focus and their career as a secondary pursuit-a necessary evil. Women are encouraged to spend a lot of their time in their looks-body, clothes and hair. Staying attractive is sine qua non in a culture that judges people by how they look.

6) Even though racism is not as pervasive and divisionary as in the U.S.A., lighter skinned Brazilians look down on darker skinned Brazilians. They see darker Brazilians as belonging to the lower social classes.

7) Brazil still has a strong division of classes. Not only it is quite visible but there is little interaction between the classes (unless the “lower classes” are working for the “higher” ones). Sad but true.

Many middle class Brazilian girls were raised with maids. Therefore, they are not used to doing housework, which is seen as something beneath them. Working with your hands in Brazil is also associated with the lower classes.

Remember that Brazil had slavery just like the American South, and one of the consequences of slavery is that it can take several generations for their descendants to reach the same level of success in life that their former owners had. Therefore, Brazilians from African descent became part of the struggling poor in Brazil-they had a harder time getting education and better jobs. Fortunately this situation is slowly improving. Brazilian men and women oftentimes do not know how to fix things or are impractical dure to cheap labor and being catered to all their lives.

9) Brazilian women expect the man to be a gentleman. They like a man who opens doors, drives them places, changes their oil, etc. when it comes to practical things. But when it comes to decision making, Brazilian women are opinionated and are not shrinking violets. They expect you to respect them and share your decisions with them if part of a couple.

10) Never, under any circumstances, call your GF or wife the B word. Name calling in Brazil is considered extremely offensive, and a man should never call his wife names no matter how terrible the argument is. A wife, like a mother or a daughter, is sacred. American movies show a lot of cursing (the F word seems to be the most popular). Brazilians associate cursing with gangsters and lowlifes.

11) The mother in law thing. Many older women in Brazil are in dire economical situation due to widowhood, divorce, lack of opportunities, low paid jobs. The older generation of women did not usually work outside the home. Therefore, they expect their children to take care of them. Many of these mothers interfere in their childrens’ relationships and try to control their daughters or sons.

They are also often lonely and live vicariously through their offspring. They use guilt tactics to keep the children catering to their needs and see the children-in-law as the devil themselves. They take their kids’s side if they have problems with their spouses and sometimes destroy marriages with their interference. Not every mother in law is like that: the ones with careers, the ones in happy relationships and the ones with a life of their own. So beware of the dependant MIL!

12) You and her (or him, in case of an American woman with an American man) might have differences when it comes to how to use your time. Brazilians consider Sunday sacred. It is not a day to work, but a day to lounge around, go to the beach, have a barbecue by the pool, watch soccer or Formula One, visit with friends, go sightseeing, nap or watch movies and other leisure actitivities.

Saturday they might run errands, but never on Sundays! It is not only the Catholic influence but also the fact that in their minds, the work week is for work, while the weekend is for pleasure and rest. So if you like to tinker with your car, wash your car, rebuild the roof, clean the garage or mow the lawn on a Sunday you will find resistance. She will feel abandoned. In her mind, you should be with her and not ignoring her with “chores”. Not only that, she was raised seeing her Dad pay someone to do those things. The help works, the middle class and the upper middle class rests and plays.

13) Once you marry and have children with a Brazilian, you have to understand some cultural differences when it comes to being a couple. In Brazil, the focus is on the COUPLE. The children come second. You and your wife are the main unit, not you and your kids. Many American men and women turn their focus to the children after they are born , spending little alone time with their spouse.

Not spending enough alone time with your spouse, not romancing them and spending too much time on the kids can create resentment.

Brazil does not have the “Daddy and Daughter” culture. Children spend time with their parents together, not with only one parent. Telling your kids how much you love them, hugging and kissing them all the time and not doing the same with your spouse can create resentment. Brazilians want the romance to continue, no matter how long you have been married. They want to walk hand in hand, they want some PDA, they want to know they come first.

14) Finally the good stuff: because of the strong family sense and their natural warmth, Brazilian women are very loyal, family oriented, feminine looking and affectionate companions!

My name is Paul Z and Im a big fan of Latin Women. I have been testing some latin women dating sites for the last couple of months and I have chosen my favorite Latin Women DatingSite . If you want to hear more info about my experiences on that site, go to:
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Tags: American, Brazilian, Cupid, Dating, latin, Women

Latin Cupid – American men dating Brazilian women

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American Men dating Brazilian Women

Here are some general pointers (which I repeat may not apply to all Brazilian women):

See some examples here

4) Latin people in general are more emotional and more possessive, keep that in mind when you fight with her.

Not spending enough alone time with your spouse, not romancing them and spending too much time on the kids can create resentment.

14) Finally the good stuff: because of the strong family sense and their natural warmth, Brazilian women are very loyal, family oriented, feminine looking and affectionate companions!

Tags: American, Brazilian, Cupid, Dating, latin, Women

American Death Toll in Mexico’s Drug War Surges

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BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: SYNDICATED INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER. Sunday DEC 14, 2008 at 12:01 PM PST

From Brownsville Texas to San Diego California Mexican cities bordering American cities along the U.S. Mexican border are where Americans are being killed by assassinations and executions. Many Americans were kidnapped in the U.S. and taken to Mexico where they were murdered. Still other Americans were abducted and slain in Mexico while visiting, others where shot gangland style in country. Dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped, or held hostage, or killed by their captors in Mexico and many cases remain unsolved. Moreover, new cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom and Americans being killed continue to be reported.

38 year old American Carey McClintock was found dead Aug 31, 2008 in the dangerous Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The number of murders in Juarez has jumped from 300 in 2007 to roughly 1,500 this year more than five times as many as last year.

Due to the so-called drug war extortions, robberies, kidnappings and executions in Juarez these crimes have mushroomed unchecked, and many U.S. citizens are getting killed in that violence.

Of the few that the FBI reported as known kidnappings there were 30 U.S. citizens that have been kidnapped or disappeared, nine were later released, two found dead and 13 still missing .

The FBI now refuses to estimate the numbers of Americans being kidnapped or murdered in Mexico. These earlier reports were out dated and officials believe the real numbers are much greater. All 30 were Americans just from the San Diego area alone. How many other U.S. citizens are there? No one seems to know for sure. But there are others more from border cities like El Paso.

Carey was alone in a well known downtown Juarez tourist hotel. Two men where seen according to the bell boy forcing Carey from her room and it is believed she was taken to an unknown site where she was brutally beaten and then stabbed 37 times. Her bloody butchered lifeless body was found by police in an abandoned house on the out-shirts of town. Carey’s handbag, possible cell phone and all her personal possessions were found in her room at the hotel and Carey’s family wants to know what other things where found of Carey’s and what happen to them after the Juarez police took them into custody? We have asked the Juarez authorities for an accounting of them and to turn them over to us but so far no luck, according to Carey’s Father Stan McClintock.

In recent years over 500 girls and women have been killed in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City, Mexico. Most of the victims were young and poor and many were sexually assaulted prior to their deaths. If Carey was raped the police report does not indicate it.

The family was devastated to learn of Carey’s death and of course wanted to know what happened to Carey.

Carey’s Father and Mother Sheila along with sisters Cathleen and Colleen traveled to Juárez where they identified the mutilated body of Carey at the Juárez coroner’s morgue. As the police and coroner were poring over Carey’s murder scene, they knew that other Mexican drug cartel gunmen most likely were shooting down other victims with automatic weapons fire some where else in the city.

Carey’s family keeps attempting to find out the details of the murder and who was responsible. They first went to the Juárez Police Dept. and after being given the run around they were finely able to talk with the detectives charged with finding the killer or killers. The police said they had no suspects or even any leads. The detectives indicated that there were so many unsolved murders in Juárez that they held out little hope of ever finding out who did it. The family pleaded with the police to please keep them informed as the investigation went forward. After weeks of no word from anybody Mr. McClintock started contacting Mexican police again and the American Consulate General’s office in Juárez. Still Nothing! He than contacted the El Paso Police Dept. he was told that because the alleged crime took place in Mexico that the El Paso police could not open an investigation into his daughter murder.

When it became apparent that there was nothing really being done to find the killer of his daughter Mr. McClintock started investigating the matter himself.

According to Mr. McClintock some time after contacting the El Paso City Police he received an e-mail from El Paso Police Detective Jesus C Terrones. “Needless to say I am disappointed that no one is really looking for Carey’s murderer”, McClintock said. How do we ever get to the bottom of this if we have to rely on the Juarez Police Department I asked Terrones? I did think it was interesting that Torrones said the unit in Juarez assigned to this case was the best one they had. I guess meaning there best is not very good. He offered this in a phone conversation I had with him earlier this week”.

McClintock says the local police, El Paso County Sheriff, FBI, DEA, and Homeland Security all have refused to investigate his daughter’s horrible death or even look into it for that matter.

In direct contras on June 19, of the same year 2008, ICE was contacted by an aide to Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), chairman of the influential and powerful House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which has oversight responsibilities for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent department of ICE, FBI,CIA and others, he asked for ICE to help arrange the release of Mexican National Erika Posselt a relative of the congressman’s wife who had been kidnapped for ransom from a business she owns in Mexico.

“ she is not even a U.S. citizen, yet she gets the help she needed just because she is the relative of our El Paso Congressman, that is truly a shame” according to Donna Welch an El Paso native. McClintock could not agree more and must wonder the same thing.

Still more murders of Americans are known such as an 11-year-old from El Paso who was killed recently during a highway robbery on the Durango-Mazatlan road in Mexico. The boy, Rico Armando Bañuelas, was on a family trip to Mazatlan.

New cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom and American deaths continue to be reported. No one can be considered immune from these crimes on the basis of occupation, nationality, or other factors. Mexican criminals have been known to follow harass and kill U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, particularly in border areas including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Reynosa, Juarez, Mexicali, Tijuana and most all border towns.

23 year old American Kyle Mostello Belanger has been reported missing since last May and believed to have been kidnapped and is being held against his will for ransom in Juarez Mexico. The information has been forwarded to the Mexican Government and to the FBI and other U.S. agencies with no apparent follow-up investigations much less locating arresting and punishing his perpetrators.

Two more U.S. residents, Roberto Martinez and Ruth Sagredo Velasco, were killed in a barrage of at least 20 shots from AK-47 assault rifles fired at them as they drove in a Nov. 22 funeral procession for Sagredo’s sister.

Both Martinez and Sagredo were U.S. residents living in El Paso and working at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center there.

Mexican police recently discovered the bodies of a male and female believed to be Americans. The riddled bodies were found in a gray 2004 Kia Amanti also riddled with bullets at Boulevard Cuatro Siglos between Hermanos Escobar and Pérez Serna. Police said the car had U.S. plates.

The American couple were believed visiting in Juárez attending the funeral of the killed woman’s sister, who was also killed in a homicide only last week; Juarez police investigators told the El Paso Journal that the couple were obviously targeted.

Cmdr. Fernando Lozano Sandoval, of the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency, was shot in the Mexican city just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. He was one of three police officials shot in Juarez over two days, and the only one to survive.

Lozano, identified by the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office as a U.S. citizen, was taken to El Paso County’s Thomason Hospital, the only Level 1 trauma center within 280 miles.

Another U.S. woman slain in Juarez

A woman identified as Ana Lourdes Hernandez, 32 and a U.S. citizen was killed in a drive-by shooting in Juárez, officials said. She died after she was taken by ambulance to Thomason Hospital in El Paso at the request of her family, a Juárez police spokesman said.

A vehicle drove by, and several shots were fired at Hernandez as she stood outside a home in the Bellavista area west of downtown Juárez, police said.

Marisela Molinar, 48, and Jesús Martín Huerta Hiedra were fatally shot in her 2009 Dodge Journey at Juan Pablo II and Arizona boulevards in Juárez at about 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, Mexican authorities said.

They both suffered multiple gunshot wounds and Mexican investigators discovered 85 shell casings at the scene.

La Mesa California an American woman Libby Gianna Craig was among four people found shot to death in a canyon near Rosarito Beach in Baja California.

The 28-year-old was in an area known as Morro Canyon along with three Afro-American males, Mexican police identified as “Black Americans”. Early reports also said more bodies were found in a separate location at different points of Playas de Rosarito, reported some Mexican papers.

All the shootings were apparently deliberate and targeted. According to Rosarito police.

A member of a well-known Willacy County farming family was found shot to death in Guanajuato, Mexico, this year according to the online edition of Correo, the state newspaper. Paul Wetegrove, 46, whose family grows onions, sugar cane and cabbage outside Raymondville, was reportedly shot by a man who approached him in a red Dodge Caravan, Correo stated. There were four other men in the vehicle. A man at the office of the Wetegrove packing shed on Farm-to-Market 762 on Friday refused to comment on the published reports. He said that the family wanted its privacy at this time. “What’s happened?

American Sam Botner killed in Mexico. He was brutally murdered by six Mexican cops while he was arrested on August 27, 2008 at the penitentiary of San Jose del Cabo Mexico.

Earlier this year four Americans were shot and wounded as they were leaving the Arriba Chihuahua nightclub in the ProNaF tourist zone in the heart of city of Juárez.

This reporter believes the above Americans killed or wounded in Mexico in 2008 is but a few of many. We are awaiting the results of a freedom of information filing to try and determine how many Americans have been killed in Mexico just this year (2008) and who they are.

An alarming number of people have directly been killed in drug related violence in Mexico this year. Nearly 7,000 drug related deaths since January 2007. As previously reported in the Laguna Journal more people have died in Mexico than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Many of these deaths were Americans. This is all after more than 50,000 troops and federal police were deployed to Mexican cities, many along the border with the U.S.

Stan McClintock says he intents to continue his quest to find the killer or killers of his beloved Carey. He says he has some leads now and will investigate the matter no matter how long it may take to get to the bottom of it or where it may lead. He intents to pursue it with or without the American authorities help.

Editor’s note: The Laguna Journal/El Paso Journal will keep our readers up to date with the latest developments in the Carey McClintock case.

Michael Webster’s Syndicated Investigative Reports are read worldwide, in 100 or more U.S. outlets and in at least 136 countries and territories. He has published articles for MaximsNews, which is associated with MediaChannel.org and Globalvision News Network, global news and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 135 countries. Many of Mr. Webster’s articles are printed in six working languages: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. With ten more languages planed in the near future.

Mr. Webster is America’s leading authority on Venture Capital/Equity Funding. A trustee on some of the nations largest trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist, Business Consultant, Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Mr. Webster does investigative reports for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies.

America’s leading authority on Venture Capital/Equity Funding. A trustee on some of the nations largest trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist, Business Consultant, Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Investigative Reporter for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies.

Tags: American, Death, Drug, Mexico's, Surges, Toll

North American Architecture & Interesting Facts

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Atlanta is a very rapidly growing city, an impressive notion about Atlanta; however, is the ability to really keep “green” in mind. Although there isn’t much park space in Atlanta, trees are very important here, they’ve planted over 68,000 trees. When visiting Atlanta, a few things you may want to view are: The bank of America plaza, which is the 3rd tallest building in the US, the Atlanta aquarium, which is th elargest in the world, and one of many, many museums.

Austin isn’t really known for their buildings or parks, but rather the people who live there, Austinites are known to be people of the best personalities. Austin is really proud to honor small businesses and focuses on trying to keep large Company’s from taking over.

Boston was an early trend starter by being the first American city to open a public school, a college, and a subway system. Since then, with over 250,000 college students attending colleges of art, technology, music, fine arts, etc… Boston has become one of the main educational hubs in America.

Chicago has the world’s tallest skyline. Chicago has a vast amount of architectural style throughout the city; however, including high rise towers, low rise towers, and single family homes.

Dallas is a very diverse city; it isn’t a city you could categorize as having any specific style. Many city streets are mixed with older Victorian homes to newer modernized homes and everything in between. In the list of 20 worlds tallest Dallas comes in number fifteen.

Denver has a real sense of originality, a large portion of the city has been around since WWII, and therefore there are a lot of buildings made of brick. Even many of the newer homes being built in and around Denver are trying to recreate the feeling and appearance of old neighborhoods.

Houston something very unique and brilliantly planned about Houston is the fact that they’ve built tunnels and skywalks filled with shops and restaurants that connect from building to building. This was planned very well considering it saves people from walking in the extreme weather conditions of Houston.

Las Vegas is one of a kind! First of all it has the brightest skyline, but the buildings that make it up are what make this city a true gem. Brilliant architecture takes place here, mini cities, such as little Italy, little New York, etc… from all over are what makes up the biggest little city ever.

Los Angeles as the only major American city to be bisected by mountains, another interesting fact is that all of the neighborhoods that it’s divided into, many of them used to be individual towns until the growth of Los Angeles blended them all together. Los Angeles is known to have the most landmarks in one city alone.

Miami the cleanest city in the USA is known for much more than just that. Miami is worldly known for Finance, International trade, and Cruise Departures, not to mention the beautiful beaches. Another appealing thing would definitely be the diverse housing. Miami is home to many single and two-storey homes, as well as many high rise residential towers, and the infamous Coconut Grove where you would find beautiful historic homes and estates dating back as far as 1825. This is also where you would City Hall.

Minneapolis: Due to the great amount of water from lakes, rivers, creeks, and waterfalls to the arts and theatre aspect that Minneapolis is known for, it’s really no wonder why people from everywhere are calling Minneapolis one of the “coolest” places to live.

Nashville: What is there to say about the capital of Tennessee? Other than what it’s known for, which is Music; Nashville has a beautiful skyline of Downtown. It’s a short skyline with only a few glass skyscrapers towering over the shorter brick building, and overlooking the Cumberland River, makes this a truly distinctive looking city.

New York: Some of the nicknames given to New York are very fitting such as The Big Apple or The City That Never Sleeps, because it really is the big apple, a city made up of a vast amount of park space and beaches, nicely blended into one of the largest cities in the world, it’s incredible to find so many attributes in one place. New York is known worldwide for their skyscrapers, having more in the city than any other in the world. Most of the homes you will find here will be row homes made of brick and stone

Orange County: As the home of some of America’s most expensive neighborhoods, with so many tourist attractions, beaches, parks, and open spaces for outdoor recreation it’s no wonder that Orange County is a major tourist destination. Much of Orange County has kept it’s 1950’s image.

Philadelphia: Is in general, an older city, with most of it’s housing being of the 20th century or older. The most common type of housing found here would be the Row House. The buildings found in the downtown area and throughout the rest of Philadelphia are of all different construction, from log to brick, and steel & concrete buildings to glass & granite skyscrapers. Philadelphia is definitely a must see for historians.

Phoenix: Is a dessert city, it’s very brown from the land to the buildings, as lots of brick and stone are used here. A couple groups of people that frequent Phoenix would be those who golf, and those in the technology business, as it is a technical hub. Phoenix is home to many large company headquarters.

Portland:Some people would call Portland Volcano City due to the fact that it is locate don a volcano field and surrounded by volcanoes; you are able to see Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens from Portland. A truly unique feature in the design of the city is that you can find suburban neighborhoods and farm homes within the same city blocks as each other. One thing that they’ve focused on when planning out the city is making it pedestrian friendly, which they have been able to achieve by making narrower streets.

Raleigh: Is a very historic city, with buildings as old as 1923. Raleigh is a separated city, by which I mean it’s divided into parts as many cities are, but each part here is generalized. Old Raleigh is what it says it is, very historic, East and West Raleigh is suburban homes, North is newly built homes, South is home to few houses, and Southeast ahs some of everything from new developments to poor inner-city homes.

Sacramento: Is a much desired place to live. It has a very beautiful skyline, due to the different types and styles of buildings. All in one place you could find very modern glass and articulately designed buildings, old historic buildings, buildings made of stone, brick, and even bridges you see here stand out in a crowd. It’s truly magnificent to see such diversity all blended together in one place.

San Diego: Is a tourist haven; it sees much tourism every year, with so many tourist destinationsand the beauty of the city from beaches and even the beautiful weather. San Diego’s port also brings many tourists in on the cruise ships.

San Francsco: There are some things about San Francisco that don’t need to be mentioned because San Francisco has become very known for particular things. These would have to include The infamous Golden Gate Bridge, which you can view from most beaches, Cable cars are also a known means of transportation, and of course another famous viewpoint would be Nob Hill, one of the steepest known hills, and of course Fisherman’s Wharf. This is just to name a few, San Francisco has definitely made a name for itself.

Seattle: It’s a given that cities such as Seattle with it’s port is going to bring in much tourism, but something you may not know, is the residents of Seattle are generally quite laid back, some would blame this on the relaxing surroundings such as the ocean views and the large amount of trees and forest land. Seattle residents tend to spend a great deal of their free time drinking coffee or spending the day at a local park, whether they be cycling, jogging, or just enjoying a day outside.

Washington DC: Named after America’s first president, George Washington, this city has many monuments and buildings named after previous presidents, also it is home to many major banks headquarters and the three branches of US Governments centers are located here. It’s no wonder why many people refer to this city as a Political Place.

Calgary: People who live in Calgary, often known as Calgarians are very proud of where they’re from, and rightfully so. First of all Calgary is a very beautiful city with a high, high rise downtown and views of the Canadian Rockies from many parts of the city. If you’re lucky, once in awhile you can even see the northern Lights. A few other things that keep Calgarians proud is the fact that Calgary is the fastest growing city in Canada and noted as the cleanest city in the world, a little ironic due to the fact that it also plays a huge role in the oil industry. One thing about Calgary that some may not be too fond of is the weather, you can expect snow to fall at anytime of the year, snowfalls aren’t unheard of even in June. Calgary gets a lot of summer evening Thunderstorms and unexpected hailstorms which can sometimes be damaging.

Edmonton: Although Edmonton has a very long winter every year it’s become quite popular for outdoor activities. Golfing is a major sport here mostly because Edmonton has extended daylight so golfers are able to play longer into the evening. Also Edmonton has the highest area of parkland per capita in Canada with many great hiking and biking trails.

Montreal: Has a couple main notable characteristics, the most visible one would be the amount of historic buildings, Montreal is known world-wide for this. The second would be the underground city, which many don’t even know about. This is an incredible example of how to really utilize space. There are over 1600 shops, banks, museums, etc… you can also get around by using the underground transportation where you can travel by train or bus. This making Montreal truly a one of a kind city.

Ottawa: To those of you interested in Government may have traveled to Ottawa, it’s Parliament Hill is home to many landmark government buildings, not to mention the number of national museums, memorials, etc… Rideau Canal is a beautiful addition that goes through the city. Because Ottawa has extreme hot summers and extreme cold winters, Rideau Canal freezes so solid in the winter that it becomes a huge natural ice skating arena.

Toronto: Has got to be most popular for its diversity, from people to buildings. Toronto is the immigrant capital, with 49% of it’s population being born outside of Canada, the diversity expands onto buildings as well, there isn’t a particular architectural style in Toronto, there are buildings from the 1800’s – 2000’s and a mix with design as well, with glass and steel recently becoming the most popular, mainly with the increase of high-rise residential buildings. Toronto is often labeled as one of the most desirable places to live in the world; unfortunately it’s also one of the most expensive in Canada.

Vancouver: Is known world-wide for the fact that it’s a much desired place to live and travel. Also known as Hollywood North, the main reason that the filming industry has taken such a huge interest in Vancouver is due to the fact that there are mountains, ocean, flat lands, new development, old development, etc… you can create Vancouver to look like almost anywhere. Vancouver has one of the highest qualities of living in the world, but unfortunately also has unruly expensive real estate.

Victoria: Is a huge tourists destination, many of which whom arrive by cruise ships. Downtown Victoria is a well planned out area for tourists because it is all clustered together with bars, museums, theaters restaurants, and many annual events are held all within close proximity of each other.

For more Information on this topic visit www.buildwish.com a free Online Home & Garden Renovation & Design Directory in 100 Cities in North America. Featuring millions of Real Estate Classifieds, Helpful Articles, Contests, Virtual home tools, Qualified Trades, Forums, a moving center, free quotes for Insurance, Moving, Mortgages, Contractors, Find Foreclosures and Much More!

A Real Estate Agent & Interior Designer for 20 years. Writing articles about Real Estate & Home improvement.

Tags: American, Architecture, Facts, Interesting, North

China Versus American Military?

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now most people say we can win a war with chinafor me i doubt we can even invade there countrythe reason beingfirst there population is 3x of ourswe rank in the 300 to 400 million will theres is in the billions
no u say that suppior military strategy and technolgy can win it
but infact we cant
in ww2 normandy is a perfect example
german soldiers were better equipped and better trained and seen battle
USA had crappy weapons and bad armor and not that good training as to compare to the germans
wave after wave of men broke threw german lines on the beaches
show that even better trained men cant hold of wave of men charging at you
encluding if they got machine guns
now u say missles am i right?
they have missles to
now u fire missles kill couple millions they fire at you kill couple millions
now look who has the population to keep on fighting war
even tho america has better training out numbering a man 4 to 1 there is no way we could over come a force of that magnitude
bec china can keep drafting men there birth rate is way higher then ours
plus out econmy suck theres is rising more countries will take side with china and not come into the war
the reason be china is one of the world biggest trader plus most companies have factories there
that could affect all the worlds econmy
the usa wont use nukes will democrats are in the white house more diplomacy will try to take place
but in a even of a war china numbers and it current economy and technology and education going up china will soon be above america
if you can persuade me that USA can please enter it i would like to hear your arguments
this is for a paper
o yea all u military guy who answer this
yes the navy can hit a target in what 2 or 3 hours but can u while ur battling no it will take longer just to get there
so dont be saying o we can get to this place fast and take that person out
the world’s technolgy is up to date
they have missles to
dont u say we can invade china bec we cant unles u want to lose all the marines. beach invasion is impossible they have enough men to defend there land
sorry for my spelling im really tired
but please enter ur comments i need some counters to my paper

Tags: American, China, Military, Versus

Edgar Cayce, Famous American Psychic

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Edgar Cayce was born in 1877 and died in 1945. He is generally remembered as an American psychic who gave trance discourses on subjects like health and cures, astrology, reincarnation, and lost civilizations. While in trance, he could respond to virtually any question asked. His responses have come to be called “readings”.

Edgar Cayce gave over 14,000 “readings” between1901 and 1944. These are trance discourses which Cayce revealed while in a hypnotic or “sleeping” state. While “awake” he claimed generally not to remember what he had said while “asleep”.

The Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E), headquartered in Virginia Beach, is the major organization promoting interest in Cayce. Edgar Cayce Centers are now found in 25 other countries.

The readings are customarily divided into the following categories:

Health Readings……….9603 Life Readings…………1920 Business Readings………747 Dream Readings…………630 Other Readings…………954

EDGAR CAYCE ON ORIGIN AND DESTINY OF HUMANITY:

“All souls were created in the beginning, and are finding their way back to whence they came.” The Earth, with all its limitations, was created as a suitable arena for spiritual growth.

EDGAR CAYCE ON DUALITY:

According to Cayce, Atlantean society was divided into two long-lived political factions – a “good” faction called the “Sons of the Law of One,” and an “evil” faction called the “Sons of Belial.” According to the readings, a major source of turmoil was the Sons of Belial’s desire to exploit the Things, sub-humans with animal appendages and low intelligence, and the movements to protect and evolve them by the Sons of the Law of One.

EDGAR CAYCE ON UNIVERSAL LAWS:

Souls incarnated on the earth are subject to certain spiritual laws such as, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap” (karma) or “As ye judge (others), so shall ye be judged.” Properly regarded, such laws represent an aspect of God’s mercy whereby no matter what our circumstances, he has promised to guide us in our spiritual path.

EDGAR CAYCE ON JESUS AND CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS:

Jesus was a soul like us, who reincarnated through many lifetimes (and made many mistakes). “Christhood” is something which he achieved, and to which we also ought to aspire. Cayce accordingly calls Jesus our “elder brother.”

EDGAR CAYCE ON UNKNOWN LIFE OF JESUS:

Cayce presented narratives of Jesus’ previous incarnations, including a mysterious Atlantean figure called “Amilius” as well as the more familiar biblical figures of Adam, Enoch, Melchizedek, Joshua, Asaph, and Jeshua. Cayce describes Jesus as an Essene who traveled to India in his youth in order to study Eastern religions.

EDGAR CAYCE ON REINCARNATION AND PAST LIVES:

Edgar Cayce found that the concept of reincarnation was not incompatible with any religion, and actually merged perfectly with his own beliefs of what it meant to be a Christian. Eventually the subject of reincarnation was examined in extensive detail in over 1,900 Life Readings.

EDGAR CAYCE ON THE ATLANTIS:

The Cayce readings affirm the existence of Atlantis, a vast continent with an advanced technology whose refugees peopled ancient Egypt as well as pre-Columbian America.

EDGAR CAYCE ON EGYPT:

Next to biblical times, the most significant era for the “life readings” was a pre-dynastic Egyptian civilization consisting of Atlantean refugees. Cayce purported to have been an otherwise unknown pharoah named “Ra Ta” who built a spiritually-based healing center (the “Temple of Sacrifice”) and educational institution (the “Temple Beautiful”). His diagnostic readings and narratives about the past and future were supposed to be a continuation of his ancient work. This civilization also built monuments on the Giza plateau, including the Great Pyramid, and left records of Atlantis in a “hall of records” located somewhere beneath the Sphinx. These readings bear a close resemblance to books by AMORC founder H. Spencer Lewis.

He prophecized the Sphinx had been built in 10,500 BC and that survivors of Atlantis had concealed beneath it a “Hall of Records” containing all the wisdom of their lost civilization and the true history of the human race. Cayce prophesied that this Hall of Records would be rediscovered and opened between 1996 and 1998.

EDGAR CAYCE ON EARTH CHANGES:

Some Cayce readings allude to massive Earth changes – perhaps in conjunction with a pole shift – in the 1930s, 1960s, or 1990s. Cayce people have developed several creative ways of interpreting such passages, although some were disappointed with the failure of 1998 to bring either the rising of Atlantis, the sinking of California, or the Second Coming of Christ. Other predictions were about dramatic changes in the Earth’s surface in the period from 1958 to 1998 due to a tilting in the Earth’s rotational axis which would begin in 1936.

Mario is graduated in Biochemistry and Genetic Engineering (University Bachelor degree). He also owns a MBA in Pharmaceutical Affairs. Mario developed an expertise in nutrition and passion towards alternative medicines and ancient civilizations.

If you found these informations interesting, visit its blogs for more at:

=> http://famouspsychics.blogspot.com/

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American Food in American Literature

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The months between the cherries and the peaches

Are brimming cornucopias which spill

Fruits red and purple, somber-bloomed and black;

Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches

We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill

Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.

—Elinor Wylie1

I ate another apple pie and ice cream; that’s practically all I ate all the way across the country, I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course.

—Jack Kerouac2

In October of 1998, Jiao-Tong, the literary editor of the China Times in Taipei, Taiwan, invited me to write an essay on American food in American literature for presentation at the first International Conference on Food and Literature that was held in Taipei in May of 1999. I thought that I would find many secondary source books on this topic. After extensive searches of the net and communications with several professors of American literature at universities in the United States and Canada, I was quite surprised to find no book in print on the topic. Not only was there no book about it there was also no single article that directly addressed my topic. The absence of secondary sources explains why most of the references in this essay are to primary sources. The limitations on time and space for this writing further explain why I have limited my survey of American literature to novels, short stories and poetry. I have tried to make a representative selection among novelists, short story writers and poets including writers from almost two hundred years of American literature, both genders and a variety of ethnic groups. Because there are so many versions of primary works that I cite, I have limited those citations to author’s name, title of work and internal part such as verse, chapter, or section and omitted page numbers of the particular versions that I used. Less well-known works, collections and anthologies receive standard citation format.

To bring some order to this vast quantity of material, I have created three themes around which I can weave what I have found about American food in American literature: continuity and discontinuity; purity and impurity; and, abundance and scarcity. These three themes allow several important truths about the American experience through time to appear as preoccupations of its writers as well. For example, the great changes wrought on the land and the indigenous peoples were accompanied by profound and lasting attachments to European food habits. Also, the tremendous abundance of natural resources and artificial wealth in America has long coexisted with devastated land and utter poverty. The greatest American writers, such as Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway and Steinbeck, have repeatedly recognized and embodied these extremes in their plots and in their characters, much as they are embodied in the every day lives and personalities of Americans.

As an introductory frame for my presentation, I would like to offer some possible explanations for the lack of secondary sources. First, I think that most of the famous and popular American foods, such as pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers and ice cream are derivative from European foods. The pizza came from Italy. The hot dog is a version of the German sausage. Hamburgers are reformed meatballs joined with bread that is as old as agricultural civilization itself. And ice cream also has its counterparts in the cuisine of European nations. So the first reason for the lack of secondary sources is that most American foods are derivative and not original to America.

An ironic counterexample in this context is the Chinese fortune cookie. As a food item, it has very little nutrition, but as a part of the American idea of Chinese food it has become a necessity at American Chinese restaurants. However, I have asked several owners, waiters and waitresses in American Chinese restaurants whether Chinese fortune cookies came from China. All of them have told me that they did not. They were invented in America and most likely, according to this oral history, in San Francisco. This seems to me to be a credible history. San Francisco grew as a city on the money generated by high-risk professions such as whaling, shipping, gold mining and offshore ocean fishing. We can easily imagine an enterprising Chinese person noting how concerned the Americans in these professions were with their future good luck or bad luck, putting this understanding together with a well-established American liking for sweet desserts, and creating a sweet dessert that looked different and contained words of wisdom about the consumer’s fate.

Second, until the last few decades, American literature and literary criticism were dominated by males whose worldview connected food with women and put them both in the kitchen and out of sight. Most of the male writers whom I read for this essay used food and activities around food to highlight aspects of character or plot. They did not present food gathering and preparation, cooking, serving, eating, drinking and cleaning up as activities that substantially reinforced aspects of their main characters, most of whom are men, or as events that substantially advanced the plot, story-line or themes of their writing.

Indeed, a related topic could be included in this kind of study that has to do with care of the body generally. For example, it is extremely rare for any American writer to mention such bodily functions as excretion or urination. Different kinds of breathing are certainly associated with different kinds of emotional and physical conditions, such as fear, sorrow, fatigue, exertion or contemplation. But like food, other bodily processes are usually ignored, taken for granted or glossed. I mention this topic only in passing, and do not have the time or space here to dwell on it, but simply to point out that focusing on food as a topic in relation to literature is an important innovation that signifies a range of human activities whose presence or silence in literature would be an interesting expansion of this focus.

Third, as an American, I feel that most Americans take food for granted. We tend to view it as an unavoidable burden placed on our freedom of activity by the condition of having a physical body. We tend, especially in the last decade of the 20th century, to try to minimize as much as possible the time and energy required for all phases of life connected with physical nourishment of our bodies.    The growth, popularity and power of the fast food industry in America reflect this disdain for the necessities of physical nourishment.

After the Allied victory in World War II, the US experienced unprecedented prosperity while applications of new technology allowed older tasks to be done with increasing speed. The complete acceptance of free market competition, in an ideological, political and economic opposition to centralized, planned economies and societies, the tremendous success of rapid, large-scale mass production in support of military forces during the war, and the increasingly tense and complicated struggle between capitalism and communism began to change the values of American society from the slower, simpler values of agricultural life and rural living to the faster, more complicated values of industrial production and urban living. Speed began its emergence as a paramount American value. For example, in 1955, shortly before the experiences recorded in Kerouac’s On the Road, the two fast food companies that are now the largest in America—McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken—were founded. “By the early 1980s there were about 440 food franchising companies with a combined total of more than 70,000 retail outlets in the United States.”3 Americans from smaller, more congested living situations in Europe slowly adjusted to the scope of the American land and its resources. Size, especially bigness, became a common value in all areas of American life. With the advent of speed as a value, the American ideology for the remainder of the 20th century gained its primary outlines—the bigger the better, the faster the better. From automobiles to hamburgers, this ideology began increasingly to govern how Americans thought about everything they did. Both values play significant and signifying roles in the relationship between American food and American literature.

Besides the social environment of European derivation, male dominance and indifference toward food, there is the traditional character of the successful American writer. Most of America’s most famous writers were and continue to be male. Most of these male writers, such as Hawthorne, Twain, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Poe, and Miller, continually placed their leading characters, most of whom were males, in positions that required the creation of a stable and meaningful life. Like the first colonists, like the pioneers, like the immigrants, their characters are continually faced with challenges to their survival, their ability and their manhood where the latter is defined in terms of overt verbal and physical superiority rather than mutual, cooperative care or nurturing. An ironic counter-example is Ayn Rand, a female writer who totally accepted the values of competition, personal power and rugged individualism. Her powerful male characters, such as the nearly godlike architect in Atlas Shrugged, are faced with problems and situations that demand forceful, individual creation and production on large scales.

The fact that creation and production also consumed energy, resources, time and money was not a central concern until the beginnings of the environmental movement in the late 50’s and early 60’s. The fact that creation and production often resulted in the emotional and physical deprivation of less independent beings, such as children, animals, women, the poor, and members of minority ethnic groups was also not a central concern of American writers or critics until the late 50’s and early 60’s. The earlier writers felt driven to produce and reproduce the feelings, drives, imagery and characters of male-oriented, individualistic creation and production in their writings. As a consequence, many of the facts of life, such as eating, drinking, digesting, excreting and nurturing were consistently absent, implied, glossed or ignored.

These are at least four reasons why there is such a scarcity of secondary sources on the topic of American food in American literature. It is, in effect, a book waiting to be written.

Fortunately, however, there are many instances of food in American literature and they do show some interesting patterns and features. I have created three themes to focus these patterns and features: continuity and discontinuity; purity and impurity; and, abundance and scarcity. First I am going to briefly described the substance and justification of each theme and then proceed with the literary material that especially illustrates and is illuminated by each theme.

A. Continuity and Discontinuity. The first European colonists on the East Coast of America experienced several discontinuities and began creating others. From crowded European cities and farmlands they came to vast, sparsely inhabited forests, mountains and valleys. From the rigidly intolerant societies of many 16th and 17th century European countries they came to a land whose societies, those of the indigenous peoples, were completely strange and closed to them. From lives of poverty and scarcity they came to a land that gradually disclosed resources and riches beyond their wildest dreams. From old, settled areas in Europe that had long ago been tamed by the sword, the plow, the cross and the crown they came to wilderness that seemed indifferent to the grandeur and traditions of European civilization.

Within these discontinuities they also created discontinuities in the lives of the indigenous peoples, by war, trade and intermarriage. In the natural life cycles of the new land, they also began creating discontinuities by the invasive activities of logging, farming, mining, urbanization, hunting and fishing. The cultivation of extremes that have

become fixtures of American life began at this time. There were Americans who loved the wilderness and the indigenous ways and shed as many of their European ways as possible. There were Americans who loathed the wilderness and the native ways and strove either to change them or destroy them. These latter among the early colonists insisted on the continuation of European religions and languages, official protocols, social forms and manners and whatever foods they could make in the new world, such as bread, or have shipped from Europe without spoilage, such as tea.

The indigenous people fell before the larger and larger waves of Europeans most of whom firmly believed that the best Indian was a dead Indian. For example, it is estimated that in 1600 there were approximately 10,000,000 indigenous people living in many different groups, or tribes, across the American continent. By 1900, under an official US government policy of extermination, that total had fallen to approximately 500,000. The impact of the new inhabitants on the land has been no less powerful. In 1600, most of the land east of the Mississippi River and west of the Rocky Mountains was covered with mixed hardwood and deciduous forests. By 1990, less than 3% of the original trees remained standing.

Besides the clash of Europeans and indigenous peoples, the growing population of Americans cultivating land for crops, especially cotton and tobacco, sold to a growing population of consumers in Europe provided a market for human labor—slaves. The slave trade, initiated by the Dutch and pursued by almost every Western European country with seafaring expertise, created extreme discontinuities in many aspects of African life that are beyond the scope of this essay. But the importation of Africans as slaves created an entirely new stream of Americans, subjected for two hundred years to plantation conditions of near starvation, who invented and innovated with the meager edible material accessible to them. Their creativity has contributed many different kinds of distinctively American foods, such as chitlins, greens, and an entire range of foods centered in the bayou area of Louisiana known as Cajun food. Along with original contributions made by the indigenous peoples to the first colonists’ and pioneers’ diets such as corn, some of these food items that have lasted longer than the institution of slavery itself have also found places in American literature.

B. Purity and Impurity. The early colonists on the American East Coast brought with them a deep fear of hell and a deep desire to purify their lives of any elements that prevented the practice of true Christianity. True Christianity meant for them a literal reading of the bible and a literal construction of human social life around the teachings and tenets of the bible. Red, for them, was the color of the devil, the color of evil and the color of the indigenous people. Pure black and pure white were their colors of choice.

Those Americans who loved the wilderness, however, quickly adopted the use of multi-colored animal skins for clothing and natural dyes for coloring cloth or their skin. It was therefore no mere historical accident that the American cultural revolution of the 60’s adopted wildly colored clothing, vehicles, hair and language as an obvious and dramatic signifier against the dark suits, white shirts, dark ties and dark shoes of establishment figures. It was no historical accident that the beatniks and hippies both reached out for foods that differed greatly in flavor, color, smell, taste and texture from white bread, roast beef, boiled potatoes, oatmeal, milk and tea. It was also no historical accident that some of the most influential writers of this era, such as Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, found deep and lasting inspiration from the literature and the food of lands and peoples far beyond the American shores.

C. Abundance and Scarcity. From 1895 to 1915, approximately 23,000,000 immigrants moved from Europe to the United States. These people came from all parts of Europe. They left living conditions characterized by poverty, political turmoil and oppression and lack of any kind of opportunity for improvement. America was a land that promised to make their dreams of prosperity, wealth, abundance and freedom come true. Many of those immigrants made their fortunes in America then returned with them to their families in Europe. But many others stayed in America, had their families there and began contributing tastes, colors and flavors to an increasingly heterogeneous American scene. This period of intense migration saw the beginnings of neighborhoods in major cities, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. These were ethnic enclaves for Italians, Poles, Germans, Jews, as well as Blacks trying to find an alternative to the militarily defeated but still powerful racism of their former southern masters, or others whose strong sense of group identity always brought with it special foods that were amplified by the increasingly large scales of American life.

At the same time, the rapid growth of large-scale manufacturing, in factories employing tens of thousands of immigrants who were poorly paid and allowed only a minimal education beyond the background of their European origins, turned some of these neighborhoods into the first American slums and ghettos. Extremely low wages, non-existent social services, waves of unemployment and the increasing pressure of large families and new arrivals frequently put many of these new Americans on the edges of malnutrition, hunger and even starvation. Abundance and scarcity began to appear as poles of a socioeconomic oscillation driven not by such obvious institutions as slavery but by beliefs, prejudices and attitudes about the superiority and inferiority of different kinds of peoples coupled with firmly established patterns of access and lack of access to resources. The negative shock of World War I was followed by the positive euphoria of the roaring 20’s. That decade of unprecedented prosperity and national expansion was followed by the great depression of the 30’s. America was clearly moving into the vanguard of a world order whose extremes ranged from genocide to population explosion, from starvation to rotting surpluses and from worn feet in foul mud to toenail polish in satin slippers on polished marble.

A first glimpse of the theme of continuity and discontinuity can be seen by comparing the two citations at the beginning of this essay. Elinor Wylie lived from 1885 to 1928. Jack Kerouac lived from 1922 to 1969. Ripe fruit appears as an edible food from the tree in Wylie’s poem and as an ingredient of pie in Kerouac’s novel. Wylie’s cherries and peaches are closer to unprocessed nature than Kerouac’s baked apple pie. Wylie’s poem signifies the rootedness of the early European colonists in a land that provided ample foodstuffs. Kerouac’s novel signifies the restlessness of urban Americans for whom food had become an uninteresting necessity.

Wylie’s poem signifies abundance and therefore the value of bigness without the addition of speed that played such an important role in the life of Kerouac’s main character, Dean Moriarty.

In fact, Dean Moriarty was based on the real man, Neal Cassady. In 1964, I was living in Palo Alto, California, having dropped out of Stanford University to try my hand at writing fiction and poetry. I met a lovely young woman who was a first year student at Stanford and invited her to a party. The party was in a house in the east side of Palo Alto that was increasingly known as a suitable place for non-conformists and beatniks. The party featured many people whom neither my friend nor I knew along with much wine. It also featured some very unusual people. At one point during the party we were drinking wine in the small, brightly-lit kitchen. In a commotion of laughing, talking people, a young man with a brilliant smile and ringing laughter, whose feet seemed barely able to stay on the floor, floated and flew through the room while the man who had invited me to the party introduced him to me as Neal Cassady. He acknowledged me and disappeared out another door. I never saw him again but retain to this day the vivid impression of light and speed that he also seems to have given to Kerouac.

The continuity between Wylie’s poem and Kerouac’s novel is indicated by the American saying, “It’s as American as apple pie!” Another kind of continuity appears, moreover, when the verse after the one quoted above from Wylie’s poem is considered:

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones

There’s something in this richness that I hate.

I love the look, austere, immaculate,

Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.

There’s something in my very blood that owns

Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,

A thread of water, churned to milky spate

Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.4

Taken together, this verse and the one quoted at the beginning of this essay dramatically display all three themes. There is continuity and discontinuity between the doctrines of a European religious heritage, Puritanism, that emphasized great worldly achievements but as little worldly display as possible. One of Max Weber’s most important contributions to our understanding of the modern Protestant viewpoint is his clear delineation of the conflict in early Protestantism between acquiring great wealth to signify being in god’s favor and displaying only humility to the rest of the world without the material ostentation that the Pietists, the Puritans, the Luddites and many other Protestant groups found so distasteful in Catholicism.

Weber argues, convincingly, I think, that the “Puritan, like every rational type of asceticism, tried to enable a man [sic] to maintain and act upon his constant motives, especially those which it taught himself itself, against the emotions.”5 The goal of this action was to lead a certain kind of life “freed from all the temptations of the world and in all its details dictated by God’s will, and thus to be made certain of their own rebirth [in heaven after the last judgment] by external signs manifested in their daily conduct.”6 From the Bible as well as from all other religious literature, success in difficult tasks is a clear sign of God’s favor. For Protestants, such signs do not guarantee salvation but they are the closest to a guarantee that a Protestant can get. Indeed, that “God Himself blessed his chosen ones through the success of their labours was…undeniable…to the Puritans.”7 This doctrine that combined asceticism with success in worldly endeavors positioned Protestantism to be the driving religious force behind capitalism and the great creations and accumulations of material wealth that have occurred in modernity. But it is no less true that this combination can be a rhythm, an oscillation, a confusion or conflict. This combination clearly provides much of the historical substance for our themes of abundance and scarcity and purity and impurity.

A condensed example of the oscillation between abundance and the austerity of American Puritanism can be seen in a brief passage from the short story, The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether, by Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49). This passage also underlines the way in which food and the activities surrounding food have been treated by many of America’s greatest male writers—as unavoidable but uninteresting necessities, even in a fictional setting: “The table was superbly set out. It was loaded with plate, and more than loaded with delicacies. The profusion was absolutely barbaric. There were enough meats to have feasted the Anakim. Never, in all my life, had I witnessed so lavish, so wasteful an expenditure of the good things of life.”8

The tension between the narrator and his hosts in Poe’s tale is echoed by the tension between the narrator and the main character in On the Road. The quote from Jack Kerouac is part of the first-person narration of the novel by Sal Paradise, the supporting, secondary character that is based on Kerouac himself. For the duration of his cross-country hitchhiking trip, he lives on apple pie and ice cream. This diet reflects not only Sal’s poverty, but also clearly situates the novel in a continuous American tradition that de-emphasizes the bodily, physical or material world. A discontinuity, however, occurs between the naturalness of the fruits in Wylie’s poem and the impersonal, processed food that Sal Paradise ate. A further discontinuity appears in the fact that Sal is taking his food on the road, on the run, at high speed, while Wylie is painting a picture of humans relating to trees that by their nature cannot move from where they are.

Wylie’s poetic picture is drawn from her life in New England. Many of the first colonists stayed on or close to the coast because it allowed them to continue the seafaring lives and occupations they had practiced in Europe and because it provided an abundance of food. However, their Puritan ideology often resulted in lives that were lived as far from that abundance as Wylie’s “cold silver on a sky of slate.” Another American poetess, Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), was born in Massachusetts and raised by her grandparents in Nova Scotia, the eastern, seafaring Province of Canada. Her life partly overlapped Wylie’s and she also paints the spirit of that area specifically in terms of food but with an emphasis on the austerity of their diet:

From narrow provinces

of fish and bread and tea,

home of the long tides

where the bay leaves the sea

twice a day and takes

the herrings long rides,9

Moreover, the abundance that Wylie hates is also rejected by Kerouac in an off-hand, casual way as though the less time a man spent on something as mundane as food the better or higher quality a person he was. However, the oscillation between abundance and scarcity appears in Kerouac’s novel in the contrast between Sal Paradise and the main character of On the Road, Dean Moriarty.

“…but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn’t care one way or the other, ‘so long’s I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy,’ and ‘so long’s we can eat, son, y’ear me? I’m hungry, I’m starving, let’s eat right now!”—and off we’d rush to eat, whereof, as saith Ecclesiastes, ‘It is your portion in the sun.’” (Ch. 1 (italics in original))

It is also certainly worth noticing in passing that in both writers, differentiated by gender, by background, and by time, there is a strong connection between religion and food. This commonality and this continuity clearly occur in the traditional American feast days of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. All three feature unusually large and lengthy meals as well as strong connections with the Christian, Protestant backgrounds of the early American colonists, settlers and pioneers. As with the bodily functions mentioned before, bringing the topic of food and literature into the foreground also illuminates the strong presence of Judeo-Christianity in American life and literature. Again, this innovative topic proves to be a powerful lens for viewing a wide range of signifiers that occur repeatedly and pervasively in American literature.

Indeed, the theological basis of Wylie’s hatred of “this richness” is the Puritan soul struggling for release from all of its attachments, involvements, entanglements and preoccupations to, with and in the material world. Metaphysical battles are fought on empirical battlefields. In this case, the metaphysical battle between the ontological powers of good and evil is fought on the empirical battlefield of the relationship between a poetess and edible, natural fruit. The apple signifies the fall of man at the hand of woman. The hatred of “this richness” is therefore a self-hatred that drives the woman farther from impure nature and closer to the immaterial purity of the austere, unadorned Protestant soul. The continuity of the human body with nature is displaced by the discontinuity of the immaterial soul with the body. The abundance of human bodies and souls is displaced by the scarcity of the elect, those in Protestant doctrine chosen by God from the foundations of the world to survive the last judgment and live eternally in heaven.

Serious reflection on the relationship between food and literature brings us to a range of signifiers that underpins all literature, namely, religion. Why? Because writing originally served the purpose of passing on what is most valuable in the viewpoint and experience of the group. The most valuable possession of all is that which most certainly promotes the survival of the group. All human groups discovered long ago that humans are dependent on greater powers for survival. All humans need air, water, food, warmth and sleep. The fear of, respect for, worship of and sacrifice to the powers that govern life, both visible and invisible, is the ancient substance of all religions. The ancient truth and pervasive message of all religions is the dependency of humans on those powers, including the power of reproduction that is represented in ancestor worship. Religion embodies, ritualizes and carries forward that fundamental truth of human dependency. The denial of that dependency can lead to greatly innovative creativity and profoundly transformative spirituality as well as to self-destruction and madness. Humans can imagine absolute freedom but to try to live it, as Nietzsche showed, leads only to self-destruction and madness.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) struggled with madness all her life and eventually ended her life by committing suicide. The following poem opens with the kind of paean to natural abundance that we saw in Wylie’s poem and closes with a similar feeling of empty space and cold silver. The contrast between the terms “nothing” and “blackberries” in the first line signifies the tension between abundance and emptiness. This signifier in turn connects with the tension between purity and impurity through the signifier of nothingness as a desirable and advanced spiritual state and as the material condition of spiritual devotees on earth. In this poem, these themes are again carried by concrete, local wild food and abstract, created imagery that moves the reader away from an abundant present to an absent but implied purity above or beyond the physical earth:

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

I do not think the sea will appear at all.

The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.

I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,

Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.

The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.

One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,

Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me

To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space

Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.10

It is no accident, in this perspective, that Neal Cassady, the living person behind Kerouac’s character Dean Moriarty, died of a drug overdose on the hot, shining steel rails of a railroad track in central Mexico. The use of drugs in all groups has traditionally been associated with personal and group alignment to the greater powers for the purpose of amplifying the ability of the group to survive. Cut from their traditional moorings in religion, drugs have become a way to experiment with the physical, psychic and spiritual dimensions of absolute freedom. The fact that many drugs, such as LSD, cocaine, methamphetamine and opium, make the user feel that they need no food or other natural supports for their existence, shows precisely how they fit into the attempt to deny dependency and achieve absolute freedom. The discontinuity of the American experience in relation to older traditions, the abundance of material wealth and the usually unacknowledged background ideal of a pure, immaterial soul have worked together to produce in its literature characters like Dean Moriarty who make a life—and a death—of treading the edge between innovation and self-destruction.

Or, to condense our themes in the pithy and quintessentially American poetic language of William Carlos Williams: “the pure products of America go mad” (from “On The Road To The Mental Hospital”)

Apple pie and ice cream, moreover, also provide Kerouac with an opportunity to make a statement of value that clearly displays abundance as bigness: “I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer.” (Ch. 3) “Better,” “deeper,” “bigger,” and “richer,” work together to define a system of values that was both American—bigger is better—and Romantic—depth and richness.11

The theme of abundance can be found in all periods of American literature. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, Scarlet Letter, for example, a character who is the “father of the Custom House—the patriarch, not only of his little squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body of tide-waiters all over the United States—was a certain permanent Inspector.”12 The Custom-House was the official federal government office responsible for inspecting all cargo coming into the country by ship and determining what if any duties had to be paid. In the novel, this particular Custom-House is located on a wharf in the harbor of Salem, Massachusetts. In this particular character, Hawthorne signifies one of the most important aspects of the American diet that also repeatedly appears in its literature—the consumption of large quantities of meat. The Inspector had the unusual ability to remember in great detail

“the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat….to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster….it always satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher’s meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table. His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey under one’s very nostrils….A tenderloin of beef, a hindquarter of veal, a sparerib of pork, a particular chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps adorned his board…would be remembered….”13

The dominance of meat in the American diet can be seen in several ways. One is the following chart of specialty foods in the individual franchises of the top thirty fast-food companies in the US:

Type of Food Number of Franchises

Chicken 8,683

Hamburger/Hot Dog/Roast Beef 29,600

Pizza [usually served with a

meat topping] 11,593

Tacos [usually served with a

meat filler] 3,620

Seafood 2,630

Pancakes/Waffles [usually eaten

with bacon,

sausage or ham] 1,63014

Another view of this American food habit comes from considering the quantities of meat consumption and production in the United States. For example,

“Americans spend about 25 percent of their food budget on red meat. The per capita consumption of beef in the United States has increased steadily, while that of pork has declined….Only in Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina is per capita consumption higher than in the United States. The United States normally produces about 27 percent of the world’s meat.” (Ibid., (13) 190)

From the United States Chamber of Commerce, the source of these statistics in Compton’s Encyclopedia and from the 19th century work of Hawthorne, we can move to the late 20th century. In the late 1980’s, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, by a California writer, Fannie Flagg, was published. In the first section of the novel, a reproduction of an article from the weekly newspaper in her fictional southern US town of Weems, Flagg describes the basic menu of the newly opened Whistle Stop Cafe:

…the breakfast hours are from 5:30 to 7:30, and you can get eggs, grits, biscuits, bacon, sausage, ham and red-eye gravy, and coffee….

For lunch and supper you can have: fried chicken; pork chops and gravy; catfish, chicken and dumplings; or a barbecue plate; and your choice of three vegetables, biscuits or cornbread, and your drink and dessert….

…the vegetables are: creamed corn; fried green tomatoes; fried okra; collard or turnip greens; black-eyed peas; candied yams; butter beans or lima beans.15

Later in the novel, the items in a particular meal served to a customer are described as “fried chicken, black-eyed peas, turnip greens, fried green tomatoes, cornbread, and iced tea.”16

The fatness, abundance and purity of meat in the American diet have also been used by some writers as a counterfoil to other kinds of scarcity and impurity. Sylvia Plath uses the tradition of a large meat meal on Sunday, as a once a week special gathering for American families, that often features a large, oven-roasted turkey, to give stark contrast to another kind of oven:

Mary’s Song

The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat.

The fat

Sacrifices its opacity…

A window, holy gold.

The fire makes it precious,

The same fire

Melting the tallow heretics,

Ousting the Jews.

Their thick palls float

Over the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-out

Germany,

They do not die.

Grey birds obsess my heart,

Mouth ash, ash of eye.

They settle. On the high

Precipice

That emptied one man into space

The ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.

It is a heart,

This holocaust I walk in,

O golden child the world will kill and eat.17

One of America’s most gifted and enigmatic of contemporary poets, the Pulitzer Prize winner John Ashbery (1927-), turns America’s abundance into a counterfoil not of impurity but of scarcity as a lack of certainty:

Hardly anything grows here,

Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,

The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.

The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;

Birds darken the sky. Is it enough

That the dish of milk is set out at night,

That we think of him sometimes,

Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?18

Besides the prominence and priority of meat, the Plath poem and the lists from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café foreground an important continuity and discontinuity in American food. The important continuity stems from the fact that the early colonists and pioneers, trying to live in a strange land before it had been developed for agriculture, made their bread primarily from locally available grains, especially corn. Wheat and other related grains were too hard to grind by hand and required a heavy, complicated mill that the early settlers could not carry with them. Corn became a staple food as important to the early European colonizers as it already was to the indigenous people:

Young, ripe corn was eaten as roasting ears. In winter the husks of the kernels were soaked off with lye to make hominy. For breakfast and supper there was boiled corn-meal mush. Sometimes the mush was fried and served with butter or pork drippings. The most common dish, however, was hot corn bread. Baked on a hoe blade before the fire, this was called hoecake. Mixed with water into a stiff batter and covered with hot ashes, it was ash cake. From the Dutch oven it emerged as corn pone or corn loaf. Small cakes of corn pone were called corn dodgers.19

In the passage from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter both fish and turkey are mentioned along with pork and chicken. The fish and turkey were most likely caught and shot in their natural habitats. The pork and chicken were most likely raised and butchered in a domestic animal keep. This combination of wild and domestic meat began with the first colonists and continues to the present day. Indeed, the pioneers who traveled by foot, wagon and horse from the east westward on the American continent found a great abundance of wild game for meat. Still they tried to carry enough familiar, nutritious foodstuffs to last them for the journey to their new homestead and to carry them through periods when wild game was unavailable. A typical load for one adult traveling by oxen-drawn wagon westward was:

“…200 pounds of flour, 30 pounds of pilot bread, 75 pounds of bacon, 10 pounds of rice, 5 pounds of coffee, 2 pounds of tea, 25 pounds of sugar, half bushel of dried beans, one bushel dried fruit, 2 pounds of baking soda, 10 pounds salt, half a bushel of cornmeal. And it is well to have a half bushel of corn, parched and ground. A small keg of vinegar should also be taken.”20

In many rural or sparsely inhabited parts of America the mixing of wild and domestic meats continues to this day. In Alaska, for example, where I have lived for many years and which is one-third the area of the entire contiguous forty-eight states of the US, many people still rely on hunting for a large portion of their meat supply. John Haines, past Poet Laureate of the State of Alaska and Alaska’s best known poet, began homesteading near Fairbanks, Alaska in the 1950’s. I have known him personally for many years and read poetry with him on the stage of the Loussac Library in Anchorage in 1986. His poetry clearly reflects how the dependence on wild meat can crystallize the themes of abundance and purity in an identification with the predator:

If the Owl Calls Again

at dusk

from the island in the river,

and it’s not too cold,

I’ll wait for the moon

to rise,

then take wing and glide

to meet him

We will not speak,

but hooded against the frost

soar above

the alder flats, searching.

with tawny eyes

And then we’ll sit

in the shadowy spruce and

pick the bones

of careless mice,

while the long moon drifts

toward Asia

and the river mutters

in its icy bed.

And when morning climbs

the limbs

we’ll part without a sound,

fulfilled, floating

homeward as

the cold world awakens.21

Long before Haines or any other European settled in Alaska, however, the indigenous people had long lived on whatever meat animals they could kill and prepare. In fact, when the first French explorers met and spent time with the indigenous people in the north of what is now Canada, they were so impressed by the predominance of uncooked meat in their diets that they called them “Esquimeaux,” which is French for “eaters of raw meat.” Further down the coasts of Canada and Alaska, however, salmon run by the millions up the great rivers and are caught and used by the local people. These Americans now eat their salmon after it has been smoked or cooked, as told in the following poem, “Subsistence #2” by Andrew Hope, III (1949-), of Sitka, Alaska:

Dog salmon colors

Glistening

Evening sun

Incoming tide

Washing the beach

Dog salmon shine

Silver purple flash

Reaching

Lifting a big one

By the tail

Incoming tide

Washing the beach

Time to eat

Fried dog salmon

For dinner22

There are five kinds of salmon that migrate into Alaskan fresh waters and are used there for food. Each kind has its own name and some kinds have different names in different areas of Alaska. Thus, discontinuities through time in preparation—from raw to cooked—have occurred along with discontinuities in time among practices of naming the same foodstuff. Dog salmon are so-called because they were once used by the thousands to feed the many dogs upon which the indigenous Alaskan people relied for transportation during the long winters. This kind of salmon, however, is perfectly fit for human consumption and now that many indigenous people in Alaska travel only by motorized vehicles in all seasons, dog salmon have become a staple of human nutrition.

These discontinuities connect with the discontinuity signified by the meal ingredients in the first and second quotes from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café which is variation in regional foods. Grits, for example, is a kind of cereal or mush made from corn or wheat that is coarsely ground. Grits is considered by most Americans to be a food characteristic of the American South. Its public presence in northern cities is usually the result of southerners moving north and opening restaurants that feature American Southern cuisine. Other typical regional American foods are codfish associated with the northeastern seafood cuisine, key lime pie associated with the cuisine of the Florida Keys, tortillas and red beans associated with the southwest cuisine derived from America’s Hispanic heritage, and salmon associated with the northwest and Alaskan cuisines.

One of Alaska’s Native American poets, Charlie Blatchford, a Yupik Eskimo whom I knew personally and who is now deceased, stated the case for meat very simply in one of his few published poems:

Forgotten Words

Our language, of what I know,

has been prepared

with wisdom and grace.

The fine skin has been fleshed

and lies to one side.

The innards have carefully

been exposed.

Their sweet flesh

ready for feast.

Meat, the staple of life,

is consumed with satisfaction…

Sedating our need

for new words.23

In the hands of more contemporary poets who are not Native American, as Charlie Blatchford was, meat continues to signify substantial food and is often joined by a kind of substance that could serve as a separate topic alongside food—intoxicants such as alcohol and drugs. In Whitman, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg and many other writers, wine, beer and other kinds of mind-altering substances often accompany food and especially meat. This range of consumable signifiers has a history in all literatures that is as ancient, as interesting and as important as that of meat and other foods. Indeed, putting the light of interest on food has again brought into focus an important stream in the lives of all peoples that could well serve as a topic for extensive further research, discussion and writing. In many poets, the connection between meat and wine is briefly made, as in the fourth verse of “Asylum” by Herman Fong (1963-):

At meals they barely feed her,

give her the smallest cuts of meat,

mostly fat, and a few red drops of wine.24

A concentration on the details of ordinary life characterizes the style of many American writers, both older and younger. John Steinbeck, a Nobel laureate and one of the pre-eminent American literary voices of the 20th century, frequently drew for his characters and settings from the everyday lives of people in California. Some of his best and most popular writings, novels such as Cannery Row, Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men, and the short story collection, The Long Valley, feature characters and settings in coastal, southern and central California. Tortilla Flats features the lives of “paisanos” who lived near the central California coastal town of Monterey. According to Steinbeck, a paisano was a “mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican and assorted Caucasian bloods” (Ch. 1). The main character, Danny, and his friends hear about a ship that has been wrecked on the nearby coast. They go to the beach and salvage flotsam from the wreck then sell it. The sale puts five dollars into Danny’s possession, an unusually large amount of money:

The five dollars from the salvage had lain like fire in Danny’s pocket, but now he knew what to do with it. He and Pilon went to the market and bought seven pounds of hamburger and a bag of onions and bread and a big paper of candy. Pablo and Jesus Maria went to Torrelli’s for two gallons of wine, and not a drop did they drink on the way home, either. (Ch. 5)

Part of Steinbeck’s genius as a writer and one of the aspects of his stories that set them apart from other American writings is the deliberate use of food items and activities for characterization and plot development. Tortilla Flats provides an example of his style as well as continuing to demonstrate the importance of meat in the American diet across all geographic regions and ethnic groups:

Danny’s business was fairly direct. He went to the back door of a restaurant. “Got any old bread I can give my dog?” he asked the cook. And while that gullible man was wrapping up the food, Danny stole two slices of ham, four eggs, a lamb chop and a fly swatter.

“I will pay you sometime,” he said.

“No need to pay for scraps. I throw them away if you don’t take them.”

Danny felt better about the theft then. If that was the way they felt, on the surface he was guiltless. He went back to Torelli’s [the wine merchant], traded the four eggs, the lamb chop and the fly swatter for a water glass of grappa and retired toward the woods to cook his supper. (Ch.1)

The particular food item of onions appears in the first passage from Tortilla Flats as a small detail that signifies a range of regional foods in an American southwest first colonized by European settlers from Spain not from England. Between hamburger and onions are both the continuity of easily prepared and consumed meat and the discontinuity of regional American cuisines. Another great American literary voice, that of William Carlos Williams, also picked out this range of southwestern signifiers on his one and only trip to that part of America. Besides a fine ear for the peculiarities that distinguish American English from all other kinds of English, Williams also had a keen eye for the small details of place that brought the reader in close to the object of Williams’ writing. The following passage is from “The Desert Music” which was based on Williams’ trip to the American southwest and his sojourning in towns that, at that time, were far more Hispanic than Caucasian:

–paper flowers (para los santos)

baked red-clay utensils, daubed

with blue, silverware,

dried peppers, onions, print goods, children’s

clothing . the place deserted all but

for a few Indians squatted in the

booths, unnoticing (don’t you think it)

as though they slept there .25

The use of activities around food to develop plot and character is also part of the style of another American novelist who received a Nobel Prize for literature, William Faulkner (1897-1962). From the deserts and sparse valleys of the southwest to the lush forests, swamps and meadows of the deep south, American literature, like the perduring literature of every language, has consistently insisted that the physical place and its features are part of the story. In the following passage from Light in August, Faulkner uses Mrs. McEachern’s attempt to nourish Joe as a reflector for both characters:

He was lying so, on his back, his hands crossed on his breast like a tomb effigy, when he heard again feet on the cramped stairs….

Without turning his head the boy heard Mrs. McEachern toil slowly up the stairs. He heard her approach across the floor. He did not look, though after a time her shadow came and fell upon the wall where he could see it, and he saw that she was carrying something. It was a tray of food. She set the tray on the bed. He had not once looked at her. He had not moved. “Joe,” she said. He didn’t move. “Joe,” she said. She could see that his eyes were open. She did not touch him.

“I aint hungry,” he said.

She didn’t move. She stood, her hands folded into her apron. She didn’t seem to be looking at him, either. She seemed to be speaking to the wall beyond the bed. “I know what you think. It aint that. He never told me to bring it to you. It was me that thought to do it. He dont know. It aint any food he sent you.” He didn’t move. His was calm as a graven face, looking up at the steep pitch of the plank ceiling. “You haven’t eaten today. Sit up and eat. It wasn’t him that told me to bring it to you. He dont know it. I waited until he was gone and then I fixed it myself.”

He sat up then. While she watched him he rose from the bed and took the tray and carried it to the corner and turned it upside down, dumping the dishes and the food and all onto the floor. Then he returned to the bed, carrying the empty tray as though it were a monstrance and he the bearer, his surplice the cut down undergarment which had been bought for a man to wear. She was watching him now, though she had not moved. Her hands were still rolled into her apron. He got back into bed and lay again on his back, his eyes wide and still upon the ceiling. He could see her motionless shadow, shapeless, a little hunched. Then it went away. He did not look, but he could hear her kneel in the corner, gathering the broken dishes back into the tray. Then she left the room. It was quite still then.26

Faulkner lived and wrote in the Bible Belt. The Bible Belt signified the fact that most people in the south were fundamentalist Christian Protestants who girded themselves with the spirit of austerity and yearning for an otherworldly paradise of simplicity and peace articulated so strongly by New England writers such as Wylie and Bishop. Although food occurs frequently in Faulkner’s work, it is rarely ample, elaborate or wasted. Usually it serves to highlight the physical scarcity and tenuous moral condition of people who live on the edge of a society whose abundance seldom appears in his work:

And Judith. She lived alone now. Perhaps she had lived alone ever since that Christmas day last year and then year before last and then three years and then four years ago, since though Sutpen was gone now…she lived in anything but solitude, what with Ellen in bed in the shuttered room, requiring the unremitting attention of a child while she waited with that amazed and passive uncomprehension to die; and she (Judith) and Clytie making and keeping a kitchen garden of sorts to keep them alive; and Wash Jones, living in the abandoned and rotting fishing camp in the river bottom which Sutpen had built after the first woman—Ellen—entered his house and the last deer and bear hunter went out of it, where he now permitted Wash and his daughter and infant granddaughter to live, performing the heavy garden work and supplying Ellen and Judith and then Judith with fish and game now and then, even entering the house now, who until Sutpen went away, had never approached nearer than the scuppernong arbor behind the kitchen where on Sunday afternoons he and Sutpen would drink from the demi-john and the bucket of spring water which Wash fetched from almost a mile away….”27

Another indication of Faulkner’s genius is his ability to see in an event as ordinary as a young man ordering pie and coffee from a waitress with whom he secretly wants some kind of relationship the potential for fine, deep drama. Faulkner’s preference for scant food and small food items continues to display the themes of scarcity and purity that were inescapable in his social and historical environment. In the following passage, Faulkner describes Joe, the boy in the passage just presented, who has come to a restaurant to be served by the waitress, in terms that transparently bring into play the signifiers of purity as immaterial dimension and food as binding, burdensome material necessity:

He believed that the men at the back…were laughing at him. So he sat quite still on the stool, looking down, the dime clutched in his palm. He did not see the waitress until the two overlarge hands appeared upon the counter opposite him and into sight. He could see the figured pattern of her dress and the bib of an apron and the two bigknuckled hands lying on the edge of the counter as completely immobile as if they were something she had fetched in from the kitchen. “Coffee and pie,” he said.

Her voice sounded downcast, quite empty. “Lemon coconut chocolate.”

In proportion to the height from which her voice came, the hands could not be her hands at all. “Yes,” Joe said.

The hands did not move. The voice did not move. “Lemon coconut chocolate. Which kind.” To the others they must have looked quite strange. Facing one another across the dark, stained, greasecrusted and frictionsmooth counter, they must have looked a little like they were praying: the youth countryfaced, in clean Spartan clothing, with an awkwardness which invested him with a quality unworldly and innocent; and the woman opposite him, downcast, still, waiting, who because of her smallness partook likewise of that quality of his, of something beyond flesh. Her face was highboned, gaunt. The flesh was taut across her

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Tags: American, Food, Literature...

Top Ten Fantasy Baseball Sleeper Prospects For 2008 – American League

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In every fantasy baseball league, there’s always one guy who makes a surprise pick or two during the draft. He’s usually the guy who’s done his homework on Fantasy Baseball Sleeper Prospects. He’s the guy who reads Fantasy Baseball Dugout.

Fantasy Baseball Dugout is proud to present its 2008 Fantasy Baseball Sleeper Prospects. The criteria for qualifying as a sleeper prospect is that the player was not a regular for the 2007 season and that the season was his first in The Show. Most fantasy baseball sleeper players were September call-ups to The Bigs, but some you probably would not have heard of unless you were an avid minor league fan.

#1 — Joba Chamberlain, Starting Pitcher, New York Yankees.

Once a hefty 272 pound pitcher at D-II Nebraska-Kearney, Chamberlain lost weight and was simply dominating at every professional level in 2007. He’s an interesting guy–a Native American member of the Winnebago tribe.

A hamstring injury hampered Chamberlain and he did not make his pro debut until May. He then made it all look easy.

Chamberlain started at Hi-A Tampa where he went 4-0 with a 2.03 ERA and 51 strikeouts in 40 innings while holding hitters to a microscopic .181 average. He was promoted to AA Trenton where he went 4-2 in seven starts with a 3.35 ERA and a massive 66 K’s in 40 IP’s. After three appearances at AAA Scranton/Wilkes Barre where he fanned 18 in 8 innings, Chamberlain was promoted to the Yanks.

You would think that Chamberlain’s meteoric rise would have been too much to put up similar numbers with the Bronx Bombers. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Chamberlain worked out of the bullpen and appeared in 19 games. In 24 IP’s, he fanned 34 while walking just 6 and giving up 12 hits. Opponents were nearly invisible against Chamberlain at the plate with a .145 BA. Chamberlain’s ERA in the bigs: 0.38.

Chamberlain has the makings of a closer or a #1 starter. Manager Joe Girardi is going to be hard pressed to not move him quickly into that #1 starter role in 2008. Watch his status closely during Grapefruit League games. You could end up with a mid-round steal in Chamberlain.

Fantasy Baseball Dugout considers Chamberlain to be a top 20 pick among all pitchers in the 2008 fantasy baseball draft. He will win at least 15 games in pinstripes and will be a dominant strikeout machine with enormous upside potential in future years.

# 2 — Clay Bucholz, Starting Pitcher, Boston Red Sox

Bucholz is the best home grown pitcher from the Sox farm system since Roger Clemens. This guy is certainly no surprise given the fact that he tossed a no-no in just his second major league start last season against the Orioles. He likely would have made the Red Sox post-season roster had Boston not shut him down with a tired arm.

Bucholz was simply dominant in the minors last year and is another strikeout machine for leagues who take whiffs into account. Bucholz averaged 12.3 strikeouts per 9 IP last year in the minors with AA Portland and AAA Pawtucket.

All this despite the fact that Bucholz was not a full time pitcher until 2005 when he was picked in the first round supplemental draft by the Sox. Several teams stayed away from Bucholz because of an April 2004 theft arrest.

The right hander tops out at 95 MPH with his fastball and has a 12-6 curve to go along with an effective change. Most scouts would like to see him rely on his fastball more and it remains to be seen if he can hold up for an entire season as he pitched a career high 149 IP’s last year and was gassed at the end of the season.

Fantasy Baseball Dugout projects Bucholz as the # 4 starter this year for Boston behind Beckett, Matsuzaka, and Lester. He’ll get his chances to impress and will probably be the Sox # 2 man by next season.

# 3 — Jacoby Ellsbury, Outfielder, Boston Red Sox

Ellsbury is another guy who is already well known, yet still qualifies as a rookie. Ellsbury relieved a slumping Coco Crisp in the World Series last year and hit a sizzling .438 in the Fall Classic. This was after hitting .361 in September while playing for the injured Manny Ramirez. Not to mention, a Pawtucket record of a 25-game hitting streak.

Ellsbury hit .353 last year in just 116 AB’s. He won’t hit for much power, but is a force at the top of the lineup for a Red Sox team that will score a lot of runs. And, Ellsbury will help your all important stolen base totals. He swiped 9 in the Bigs last year and a total of 50 overall with his three clubs.

The ceiling is high for Ellsbury, but there’s no guarantee he will be with the club when the Sox break camp. While it is rumored that Boston is trying to move Crisp, Ellsbury may have to wait for a mid-season call up to break the starting lineup if the Red Sox can’t move Crisp.

# 4 — Ian Kennedy, Starting Pitcher, New York Yankees

Kennedy is another Yankee who benefited from exposure in a September call up. He started three games and had a sparkling 1.89 ERA while holding opponents to a .191 BA.

Kennedy rose through the Yank’s farm system like a torpedo last year moving from Hi A Tampa to AA Trenton to AAA Scranton/Wilkes Barre, before joining the pinstripers in September. His combined record was 13-3 with 178 strikeouts in 166 IP.

Kennedy’s best pitch is his changeup which has a nice run to it. He can hit 92 MPH, but is often criticized for a too slow curveball which can bottom out at a middle-schoolish 69.

Fantasy Baseball Dugout sees Kennedy as the # 5 starter in the Yankees rotation in a crowded pitching corpse that includes Wang, Petitte, Chamberlain, Hughes, and Mussina. Kennedy should win at least 12 games in 2008.

# 5 — Evan Longoria, third baseman, Tampa Bay Devil Rays

Another name you’ve heard of, but more likely because of its similarity to many men’s fantasy, and I’m not talking baseball at all here. Longoria was the third overall pick by the Devil Rays in 2006 out of a stellar All-American career with the Long Beach State Dirtbags.

Longoria, who played shortstop in college, is seen more as a third baseman in the Bigs. His lack of speed projects him better at the hot corner where he has soft hands and good body control that will likely push Akinori Otsuka over to second.

Longoria will get plenty of playing time for the Devil Rays and is the favorite to be the AL Rookie of the Year in 2008. Longoria is a .300+ guy with 30+ homers, even in his rookie campaign.

Last year, Longoria played at AA Montgomery and AAA Durham in one of the best farm systems in the MLB. He hit 26 homers while knocking in 97 RBI. Longoria also belted 29 doubles.

The knock on Longoria is that he can sometimes be too aggressive at the plate, sometimes chasing bad pitches. This led to 110 strikeouts last season.

# 6 — Brandon Wood, SS/3B, Los Angeles Angels

In 2005, Wood broke into the pro ranks with 43 home runs for High A Rancho Cucomonga. His season with the Quakes pinned Wood as a superstar, but his stats since, while good, have been a bit more pedestrian. He hit 23 homers and .272 BA at AAA Salt Lake last year.

Wood has power, but also strikes out a lot. He fanned 120 times at Salt Lake last year before getting 33 AB’s with the Angels. Critics site that Wood often tries to pull the ball too much which makes him susceptible to outside pitches.

The Angels still have Aybar, Figgins, and Izturis in the mix at shortstop, but none of these guys have the pop that Wood has. Expect Wood to be the Angels third baseman this season.

# 7 — Adam Miller, Starting Pitcher, Cleveland Indians

Miller has been dominant in the minor leagues, but has been injury prone so be sure to check his status before drafting him in March. He only pitched 65 innings last year at AAA Buffalo where he went 5-4, 4.82.

When he’s healthy, Miller can be lights out. He has hit 97 on the gun, although not as of late. Still, his slider is very impressive and clearly his best pitch. Miller has been more effective as he’s matured as a pitcher and not tried to blow his heater by everyone.

We see Miller as an eventual starter, but he’ll probably start 2008 in the Tribe’s bullpen or will battle the more experienced Aaron Laffey for the #5 starting job behind Sabathia, Carmona, Westbrook, and BallparkBob lookalike Paul Byrd. We’re thinking Laffey will earn the # 5 spot just to add a second southpaw to the Indians’ rotation.

# 8 — Daric Barton, first baseman, Oakland A’s

Barton was acquired from the Cardinals in 2004 in the Mark Mulder deal. After moving from catcher to first base, Barton had a streaky year in 2007 for AAA Sacramento where he hit .293 with 9 HR’s and 38 doubles.

He has no wheels and is not a power hitter despite weighing 205. Recently, he’s been getting more loft on his stroke, but he’s basically a line drive hitter of the Kevin Youklis mode.

A left-handed hitter, Barton will likely be the A’s starting first baseman this year unless Dan Johnson can beat him out which appears to be unlikely. He’s strong and hits the ball extremely hard so if Barton can pick up more of a homerun stroke, he could change his game and be a 20+ homerun hitter.

# 9 — Luke Hochevar, Starting Pitcher, Kansas City Royals

I know, picking a pitcher on the Royals is crazy, but this one is worth a look. Hochevar was the number one overall pick in the 2006 draft. His stats last year were, quite frankly, not impressive either–4.69 at AA Wichita and 5.12 at AAA Omaha.

But, that’s why we call them sleepers. Hochevar, 24, hits 95 with his fastball and has a late-breaking curve that can be devastating. He needs to work on his control and how well he does with his control will determine if he makes the big club in April.

Expect Hochevar to battle Kyle Davies for a spot in the Royals’ rotation behind Meche, Bannister, Greinke, and De La Rosa. Based on his less than impressive minor league stats, you’ll be able to pick up Hochevar in the late rounds and he could prove to be worth the gamble in large leagues.

# 10 — Jeff Clement, catcher, Seattle Mariners

Clement can flat out rake. But, there’s just one problem, the Mariners don’t have an opening behind the plate with Kenji Johjima there.

Clement broke Drew Henson’s national high school record with 75 career homeruns out of Iowa. Clement went on to play college ball at Southern Cal spurning the Twins offer in the 2002 draft.

The left handed hitting Clement stroked 20 dingers last year at AAA Tacoma with a .275 BA. He was streaky last year at Tacoma and his stats suffered from playing at cavernous Cheney Park in the Pacific Coast League. Clement slugged over 100 points higher while playing on the road.

With Johjima entrenched as the Mariners’ catcher, however, Clement will have to get his AB’s as a DH or when the M’s give Johjima a breather. Johjima hits righty so the left-handed hitting Clement should get some shots when the M’s face a bevy of right handed pitchers.

http://www.fantasybaseballdugout.com Anthony Wayne is an author for the Fantasy Baseball Dugout. Wayne has won his fantasy baseball league 13 out of the past 15 years thanks to his expert fantasy baseball insights.

Tags: 2008, American, Baseball, Fantasy, league, Prospects, Sleeper

Which American City Has The Best “beach Bum” Slacker Culture?

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Where would you best fit in with the locals if you could just hang out all day by the beach, have cookouts in the evening and where it stays mild to warm to hot all year long.

Tags: American, Beach, Best, City, Culture, Slacker

Palm Springs, San Diego and Santa Barbara American Indian Lawyer Breakdown of Indian Law, Tribal Law and Native American Law

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Tribal reservations of American Indian Tribes that were pushed aside as Europeans settled in America can be found in a number of areas in Southern California, notably in areas such as in or near the cities of the Coachella Valley such as Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Indio and Coachella as well as in or near Anza, Cabazon, Temecula, San Jacinto, El Cajon, Pala, in the counties of Riverside, San Diego as well as in Santa Ynez in the county of Santa Barbara.

Unless you have been practicing Indian Tribal Law for some years, it is difficult for most attorneys in the United States to know how Tribal Law works, much less to find useful resources to help explain this unique area of law.

Most tribes vest their legislative authority in a tribal council. Some tribes call it by a different name, but the council members are usually elected and for a specific number of years.

Most tribal constitutions call for there to be a tribal chairman who is alternatively sometimes called president or governor. Some tribes elect the tribal chairman by a vote of their council. Others elect the tribal chairman by the voting tribal members.

Tribal bylaws often state that it is the chairman’s duty to preside over the tribal council. The role or power of the tribal chairman differs from tribe to tribe.

Indian tribes also have a long history of tribal courts. Today, most tribal courts administer tribal codes passed by the tribal council and which have been approved at some time by the Secretary of the Interior.

Tribal court systems can by highly structured with tribal prosecutors and defense advocates. Others are made up of informal single judges who work only part-time. Many tribes elect their tribal judges, commonly for a fixed set of years.

Indian tribes also often have a tribal attorney who often has a large influence on tribal affairs, particularly in dealings with non-tribal parties. The tribal attorney has responsibility to the entire tribe, not to its individual members.

Some tribes are incorporated under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act. Some tribes have voted to reject application of that Act.

Indian Tribes have sovereignty which means the inherent right to govern themselves. Tribes, however, have no authority over non-members on non-Indian fee lands, and no criminal authority over non-Indians anywhere.

Tribal sovereignty acts as a shield against state law intrusion onto Indian country. States may not directly tax reservation land or reservation Indians. Tribes enjoy sovereign immunity from suit except for suits by the United States. A tribe does not waive its immunity by bringing an action on its own. A tribe may however waive its sovereign immunity by contract.

If you have an American Indian Tribal legal matter of any kind, we have the knowledge and resources to be your California American Indian Lawyers, and California Native American Attorneys. For this reason, be sure to hire a California law firm with American Indian law lawyers who can represent you from Palm Springs, Rancho Cucamonga, Orange County, San Luis Obispo, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, Corona del Mar, Anaheim, Irvine, La Jolla, El Cajon, San Bernardino, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Temecula, Palm Desert, Yorba Linda, Carlsbad, San Diego, Costa Mesa, Westminster, and Murrieta, to Indian Wells and La Quinta.

If you have an American Indian Tribal law legal matter of any kind, call the Law Offices of R. Sebastian Gibson, or visit our website at http://www.SebastianGibsonLaw.com and learn how we can assist you. You can also call us to speak directly to Sebastian Gibson on the phone about your legal matter.

The Sebastian Gibson Law Firm serves all of San Diego, Orange County, Palm Springs and Palm Desert, the Coastal Cities from La Jolla, Carlsbad and Del Mar to Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Irvine, Santa Ana and up to Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. We also serve the Inland Empire cities of Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Temecula, Riverside and San Bernardino and all the cities in the Coachella Valley and high desert, from La Quinta, Indio, and Coachella to Yucca Valley and Victorville.

Visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com if you have an American Indian Tribal law legal matter of any kind. We have the knowledge and resources to represent you as your California American Indian Lawyer and California Native American Attorney or your attorney in and around the cities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, San Diego, Orange County, Corona del Mar, Newport Beach, Santa Ana, Laguna Beach, Anaheim, Riverside, Chula Vista, Irvine, San Bernardino, Huntington Beach, Fontana, Moreno Valley, Oceanside, La Jolla, Del Mar, San Marcos, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Garden Grove, Palmdale, Long Beach, Corona, Yorba Linda, Escondido, Orange, Fullerton, Costa Mesa, Victorville, Carlsbad, Temecula, Murrieta, Mission Viejo, El Cajon, Vista, Westminster, Santa Monica, Malibu, Westwood, Hesperia, Buena Park, Indio, Coachella, Del Mar, Oxnard, Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Cambria and Santa Barbara.

Tags: American, Barbara, Breakdown, Diego, Indian, Lawyer, Native, Palm, Santa, Springs, Tribal

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