Category Archives: History

A new album from hip-hop artistsJason Chu,Alan ZandHumble the Poettackles Asian American historyand spotlights the Asian hip-hop community.

"Listening to this album is kind of like the reminder that were all in this together and were coming together as a united front," said Rapper Alan Z.

Hip-hop has always been a genre about empowerment and liberation for marginalized people, and it's long-inspired countless Asian American artists.

"Groups like Public Enemy, NWA all these people that were defining and that had something to say about the society around us," said Rukus Avenue CEO Sammy Chand.

"I felt understood, because a lot of these stories are people that are disenfranchised, people that are underdogs, outcasts," said Rapper Alan Z.

"It hit an emotion. I think I was an angry kid. I was confused. I was angry at the world," said audio engineer David Yungin Kim

"I think that is something that really identified with all of us immigrants, of course, right?" said Chand.

In 1979, Afro Filipino disco artist Joe Bataan debuted "Rap-o-Clap-o" now considered to be one of theearliest rap songs ever recordedand built off the cultural influences of New York City's hip-hop community and pioneers like DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash.

From the seventies and eighties onward, hip-hop grew with the success of artists like NWA, Run DMC and Public Enemy, inspiring a major wave of Asian American rappers, break dancers and producers entering the scene in the nineties. And artists like The Mountain Brothers, RhythmX and the rap duo of Key-Kool and DJ Rhettmatic contributed to the growing hip-hop culture.

"A lot of people go 'yo, why is there such a deep tie between Asian American communities and this Black and Brown art form.' And I think because so much of Asian American culture as we've been wrestling with identity for about 50 years, parallels the birth of hip-hop culture as it grew and it had its growing pains," said rapper Jason Chu.

Chu, an expert on the intersection of Asian American identity and hip-hop culture, says that the two communities developed at the same time building from the shared histories of racism and identity in the U.S.

"I think there's been such a parallel to where now, you have a ton of young, 15- to 25-year-old Asian Americans who literally grew up with hip-hop as the dominant voice of not just marginalized cultures, but of pop culture in their lifetime," Chu said.

"You got groups like 88rising here Far East Movement and Drunken Tiger from Korea, who I grew up listening to. That was the first person, first Korean that I related to, because it was a player in the hip-hop industry that looked like me," said Kim.

Today, the representation of Asian American artists is still growing in hip-hop, with labels like Rukus Avenue pioneering South Asian hip-hop both in the U.S. and internationally.

"We really had a lot to do with how young South Asians in this country also viewing themselves as potentially being artists. Not only was hip-hop conducive for us, but I think that that story itself was very unique to us. And I think that we needed the hip-hop forum for it," Chand said.

This story originally reported by Casey Mendoza on Newsy.com.

Continued here:

Hip-Hop history: Dropping the beat on AAPI artists - KATC Lafayette News

Editors note: The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Todays piece is by Jeffrey Miller, of Colorado State University.

(THE CONVERSATION) There are at least 350 shapes of pasta you can buy. Food blogger Dan Pashman apparently thought we could use one more.

Enter cascatelli which means waterfall in Italian the worlds newest pasta shape. Pashman developed the shape to hold a lot of sauce and be easily stabbed with a fork. To me, a food historian and former bistro chef, it looks like the love child of two lesser-known pastas, creste di galle and mafaldine.

While the history of this new shape has been heavily documented, including in a five-part podcast, the story behind how pasta got its shape is a bit murkier.

The noodle is born

Pasta is one of the oldest processed foods, dating back several thousand years to around 1100 B.C. For comparison, bread dates back to around 8000 B.C.

While it may seem like fighting words to an Italian, the first pasta that modern eaters would recognize probably came from China and could have been made out of a variety of starchy foods besides wheat, including rice, mung beans, tapioca and sweet potatoes. In fact, the earliest forms of pasta excavated in archaeological digs were made from millet, a grain that has been in use in East Asia much longer than rice or wheat.

Early Chinese cultures mostly grew soft wheat that was not well suited to making dried pastas, but made good fresh pasta.

More mystery surrounds which culture invented the first cut and dried noodles. Some say the Chinese; others say the Italians. The real answer is probably neither of them.

Triticum, or durum, wheat needed to make a sturdy dry pasta is Middle Eastern in origin, so it is likely that Arabs and others in the Middle East were producing and eating the earliest modern forms of dry pasta as little balls like acini de pepe and couscous before they became common in Italy.

These tiny forms of pasta kept well in hot climates and could be cooked using very little fuel, which was scarce in Arab dominions. Since they were dehydrated and sturdy, they were an ideal food for people traveling across the Middle East and northern Africa.

The earliest pasta shape was a simple sheet, which was treated more like bread dough. It probably didnt have the toothsome quality known as al dente associated with Italian pasta today, and would have been similar to unleavened matzo bread with sauce on it. The first mention of boiled pasta wasnt until the fifth century A.D., in the Jerusalem Talmud.

Most of the earliest forms of pasta that we consider to be the core of the Italian repertoire such as vermicelli and spaghetti were probably first developed by Arabs and didnt appear in Italy until the ninth or 10th centuries. These noodles became widespread once durum wheat had established itself in Sicily and regional food makers learned to work with the semolina flour it produced.

Italy and an explosion of shapes

Spaghetti, which means little strings, was easy to make and dry in the climates of Southern Italy.

In Italy, these thin noodles were initially cut from sheets using knives or wire cutters. Almost all the earliest shapes were probably formed by hand, which was a tedious process, so people worked on making their production more efficient as pasta gained importance in their diets.

What really sparked the explosion of pasta shapes was the invention of the extrusion press. Versions of an extruder had been experimented with since the 1300s, but it took the revolution in mechanics of the Renaissance to allow the machines to quickly mass-produce pasta, including shapes like elbow macaroni, rigatoni and tagliatelle.

Stiff pasta doughs made from semolina could be worked in large quantities by machines in volumes not possible by manual production. These doughs were then extruded through bronze dies that yielded the style of pasta familiar today. Bronze was hard enough to be durable but soft enough to be easily worked using pre-Industrial Revolution technologies.

The introduction of machinery powered by steam in the 1800s during the Industrial Revolution made the process of extruding noodles even more efficient. As factory-made pasta caught on with the public, manufacturers quickly added pastas of various shapes and sizes to their repertoire. Fantastic shapes like gemmeli, radiatori, wagon wheels and stuffable shells soon crowded the shelves.

America embraces the noodle

The U.S. was slow to adopt most of the wide variety of pasta shapes common in Italy.

Thats despite the fact that Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was a major proponent of pasta and even owned a pasta maker at his home in Monticello.

The earliest Italian immigrants to America came from the northern regions of the peninsula, but their overall numbers were small. The first documented pasta factory in America was established in Brooklyn in 1848, and by the time of the Civil War, macaroni, as it was mostly called then, was fairly common on American tables. Though Italian noodles were called macaroni, they were most often some form of flat noodle, like fettuccine.

American pasta consumption began to surge following the Great Arrival of nearly 4 million Italian immigrants to the U.S. from 1880 to 1920, most from Southern Italy. This is when most of the pasta dishes Americans are familiar with today such as spaghetti and meatballs, cheesy elbow macaroni and linguine with clam sauce became popular.

But it wasnt until the Italian food boom of the 1970s and 1980s that Americans became familiar with the cornucopia of pasta shapes, sizes, sauces and fillings that were common in Italy.

Today, Americans consider pasta one of their favorite foods which means theres probably always room for one more type.

And perhaps, given the comforting nature of pasta, the COVID-19 pandemic was an ideal moment for Dan Pashman to introduce cascatelli. A pasta shape that holds more of the rich sauces people crave like marinara and alfredo could not have come at a more opportune time.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/agnolotti-bucatini-and-the-innovative-new-cascatelli-a-brief-history-of-pasta-shapes-157747.

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A brief history of noodles and all their kinds - Escanaba Daily Press

It only took a year for FC Cincinnati to show it belonged to its hometown and knew how to follow Cincinnati sports traditions.

FCC entered the playoffs as a 3-seed in the USL hosting the Charleston Battery, the 6-seed, in the first round at Nippert Stadium. Sean Okoli, the eventual most valuable player and Golden Boot winner (top goal scorer), gave the Orange and Blue a 1-0 lead in the 19th minute.

Charleston didnt fear the favored club, however. The Battery beat FCC in the season opener and tied in their second meeting. Charleston tied the game just before the half and took the lead on a Zachary Prince goal in the 65th minute.

Thirty minutes later, the magical run was over. FCCs first season ended much like many Bengals and the Reds campaigns had with an upset in the postseason.

Not all fairy tales have a happy ending. This is the story of the first year of FC Cincinnati from five men who lived it.

The club had major league intentions from the start. Bringing in living legend John Harkes as head coach signified FCCs big plans.

He wanted to field a team that played an attractive style to fans. One stated goal for his first team: A home goal scored in every game.

AUSTIN BERRY, FC CINCINNATI DEFENDER: He was a perfect guy to do that job, especially in year one. Once they announced Harkesy, that was big news. Wasnt just a soccer club in Cincinnati. It was legit.

DAN MCNALLY, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS: Ill always feel he was the right man at the right time. (Harkes) played in the World Cup, played in England in the Premier League. Gave us instant credibility. Had connections with a lot of players. John was essential in those early weeks to get everything up and running.

Berry, the homegrown product of Summit Country Day, was the first signing. He had MLS experience in Chicago and Philadelphia. Although several players on the first roster played in the countrys top division, a lot of that experience was either on the bench or in limited spurts of playing time.

BERRY: It was a group of guys that just wanted to enjoy the game again. We were all at different points, from different places, coming from different teams.

JIMMY MCLAUGHLIN, FC CINCINNATI MIDFIELDER: I was kind of fed up with soccer. It was kind of my last chance. Give it one more try. See what happens.

OMAR CUMMINGS, FC CINCINNATI FORWARD: I was very lucky to go to Colorado when I was drafted. There werent any big money players. If you get drafted in LA like Kenney (Walker) was, have guys like David Beckham in the middle and Landon Donovan and all those guys in the middle, youre not going to play.

Before TQL Stadium and the facility in Milford, before Nippert Stadium, FC Cincinnatis first home was at Wall2Wall, an indoor soccer facility in Mason.

JOHN HARKES, HEAD COACH: A lot of humbling situations. We were still building and growing and make things work. Where are we practicing today? Indoor or outdoor?

MCLAUGHLIN: It was freezing. We were changing in the lobby. No locker rooms or anything.

CUMMINGS: Ill take Wall2Wall any day of the week than going outside and playing in the winter. Were driving to practice, sleet and snow and everything. Wall2Wall was great. (laughter)

BERRY: I had to call up my old high school and ask if we could use their field for a day because we needed a bigger field for open tryouts.

FCC were champions before they officially began their season. The club won the title at the IMG Suncoast Pro Classic in Bradenton, Florida, including a win over MLS side NYCFC.

HARKES: I could see early on they were a special group. Second week of preseason training. I could tell that early. The positivity from the group. They were great guys. They pushed each other.

CUMMINGS: The players met each other three weeks ago and you wind up winning a mini-competition.

MCNALLY: We really brought in a great roster. They were excellent professionals. Outstanding players at the USL level. The soccer side was the least of my concerns. It was almost set up the soccer and stadium side of the operation so we could really function well as a club.

McNally had one sticking point when the club moved to Nippert Stadium: The team would never play a game with American football lines or an endzone on the field.

There were plenty of little bumps in the road getting the first-year club up and running.

MCNALLY: I think I almost got arrested that first trip because we spent so long getting the equipment off the team van (at CVG Airport). The police were giving me a hard time. I didn't get arrested, to be fair.

HARKES: Somehow, we fell short in uniforms or training kits. We were like, "We forgot the other bag. What are we doing here?"

BERRY: We went to Bethlehem, and it was freezing. We didn't have any underclothes. We just have the jerseys and shorts. Drove up to the closest Dick's (Sporting Goods) and bought like 18 blue Nike undersleeve things.

It wasn't much warmer for the home opener six days later 39 degrees Fahrenheit at Nippert Stadium. That didn't keep the crowds away.

BERRY: We kept pestering Dan. "How many, how many are coming?" At Nippert, you never know. We were expecting for 4-5 thousand, trying to be on par with some of the better USL clubs.

CUMMINGS: First-time team, didnt know what to expect. Couple teams here before hadnt done so well. We were hoping to get the 7,000 mark in a few seasons.

BERRY: When I came out for the national anthem, it was like, Holy crap.

MCLAUGHLIN: I remember hearing them the Bailey march for the first time. None of us were expecting that. Walk out and its butterflies. Same level as an MLS crowd that I saw playing in Philly. Everything fell into place. That game was an opportunity for FCC to take over in the city and become a big player.

HARKES: I was looking around and I looked at my staff and I said, "Where are we?" (laughs) I think they thought, "The old man has lost his mind. You don't know where we are, coach?" "No, I'm asking because look at the crowd here, it's fantastic."

Nearly 15,000 were in attendance for the home opener against the Charlotte Independence. One of Harkes's goals scoring in every home game was fulfilled in the fifth minute when Sean Okoli netted a scissor kick.

CUMMINGS: I actually missed it. I didnt see it. Kids had to go to the bathroom or something. I was about five steps from seeing the field The roar that came out of the stadium was so unique. I got chills. The sound of it. That first one will always live with me.

HARKES: Sent reverberations through my body and mind. It was incredible. Whether at Wembley or the Rose bowl, all those emotional reactions, they lift you up. Doesnt matter if 12 or 15 or 80,000. Such a great surprise.

The USL attendance numbers made FCC a domestic anomaly, and the Crystal Palace game put the team on the map internationally. Over 35,000 people watched the friendly the most ever to watch a soccer game in Ohio.

HARKES: Talking to the club itself was just like, "Are we ready for this at this time?" And I'm like, "This city is ready to explode. We need to do this."

BERRY: People are always asking, "Did you play in the Crystal Palace game?" or "I was at that Crystal Palace game." It's always the Crystal Palace game.

MCNALLY: (Crystal Palace) had a great time. I was down at the hotel down with the Crystal Palace people. They partied pretty well to be fair. I've got some good stories about Crystal Palace down at OTR that weekend.

The party ended for FCC in the playoff opener, a 2-1 loss at Nippert.

MCNALLY: I think by the end of the season, and this is just my perception of it, we were just tired. It had been an unbelievable ride that year. And maybe the playoff was a game too many for us.

CUMMINGS: I think we should have done way better, honestly. It was almost like we didn't know it was going to be over.

Five years since their last game, the team lives on.

HARKES: We were just real. Had no egos at the time. Like we have all the answers. We were all in it together. Like, "Lets go!"Oral history of the FC Cincinnatis first year

MCLAUGHLIN: Crazy how close that group was and how often everyone still talks, and the lifelong relationships built from that.

BERRY: That first-year crew, they get a lot of credit for where this club is at now.

Originally posted here:

'This city is ready to explode': An oral history of FC Cincinnati's first year - WCPO

Starting in 1969, Trinidad, Colorado, a small city near the New Mexico border, was one of the few places in the world with a clinic providing gender confirmation surgery.

Trinidad became so well known for the procedure that going to Trinidad became a euphemism for gender confirmation surgery within parts of the trans community. Historian Martin Smith, who resides in Granby, borrowed that euphemism for the title of his latest book that delves into that particular pocket of Colorado history.

Since publishing the book, he has faced some criticism from the trans community over some of the stories he included. And a few weeks ago, Smith spoke on the phone with Soleil Hanberry-Lizzi, a burgeoning historian and intern with History Colorado. She confronted him with some of those concerns and the two had a constructive conversation.

The two of them joined Colorado Edition to discuss Smiths book, the history of Trinidad, and the reaction from some in the trans community.

Interview Highlights:These interview highlights have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Henry Zimmerman: Martin, let's start with you. In broad strokes, can you explain where the title of your book, Going to Trinidad comes from?

Martin Smith: Between 1969 and 2010, Trinidad, Colorado, a small remote former mining town, was the destination of choice for most transgender people seeking surgery. The reason is that there was a doctor there, a surgeon named Stanley Biber, who in 1969 began specializing in gender surgeries. And there simply aren't that many surgeons who do these surgeries, so wherever they are located tends to be the destination for those seeking surgery.

What can you tell us about how Dr. Biber and his clinic ended up in Trinidad?

Smith: Stanley Biber was a surgeon in a MASH unit during the Korean War, where he got very good at doing the sort of micro surgeries involved with lower body extremity injuries. There were a lot of landmine injuries.

After he got out of the army, he had an offer to open a clinic in Trinidad, Colorado, for the United Mine Workers, which was setting up a clinic for its workers at the Allen Mine down there. And Dr. Biber signed on as the general surgeon for Trinidad. He was the only surgeon in town at the time.

In 1969, he was approached by a colleague who was a social worker. At the end of their session, she asked if Stanley Biber would be willing to do her surgery. And he said, Sure, what do you got? He was a very confident surgeon. And she said, Well, I'm transsexual, which was the word she used at the time. He did enough research to think, Well, yeah, I could do this kind of surgery. And that began a career.

Word got around very quickly that he was not only a good surgeon, but compassionate and nonjudgmental. And at a time when many of the university clinics were shutting down their gender clinics, Stanley Biber suddenly was the last man standing. He was the guy that everybody went to for many, many decades.

Can you give us a bit of trans history context here in and help us understand the significance of genital reassignment surgeries, especially as they were seen in 1969?

Soleil Hanberry-Lizzi: It's definitely hard to talk about since it wasn't a universal thing. Chemical treatments what we think of today with testosterone and estrogen wasn't as common. I believe in the 1970s, 1980s, it started to come into a bit more prominent use. Quite a lot of work was being advanced in the struggle for LGBT rights by trans women, especially black trans women at the time.

Gender surgery is always a big step, especially genital reassignment surgery. It always takes any trans person a long time to come to this conclusion. It's not the end of a transition, but it certainly is a big part if that is what somebody wants.

Everybody in the trans community their experience is different. And so it's hard to say that this is the most common or that is the most common, especially when it's their genitals. They don't really want to talk about it with just anybody. People in the trans community dont go around asking, Have you gotten the surgery?

Smith: And I would build on that and say, there's a misconception, particularly among those outside the LGBT community people like me who grew up in a gender binary world that surgery is somehow the final stage of a transition. That's not the case at all. Surgery, I think, for most trans men and women was one option. But it's one of many, many options.

Back in the late '60s and '70s, when Biber started doing his surgeries in Trinidad, it was pretty uncommon. And like Soleil said, it was it was sort of done on the down low. You had to know somebody who knew somebody who knew a doctor who could refer you.

That's the case with Claudine Griggs, who is one of the primary characters in my book, Going to Trinidad. Griggs endocrinologist referred her to a nun in Orange County, California, who, after some conversation said, Oh, I think you probably need to see Dr. Biber in Trinidad. That was the way it was done back then.

Soleil, you have read Going to Trinidad. And I understand that, as you read through, there were a few things about it that bothered you in particular the story of Walt Heyer, a somewhat notorious figure in the trans community, who had the surgery with Dr. Biber but later de-transitioned. Can you tell us about your concerns?

Hanberry-Lizzi: I think my biggest concern is just the inclusion of Walt Heyer. He has a very complicated life story. We ultimately shouldn't shy away from people who de-transition. But what was mostly concerning is that he was a part of a far right-leaning, I would say, propaganda machine. My concern is that, while these transition narratives are necessary for our community, he has the potential to further radicalize people. But I do think Martin does a good job of discrediting his ideas.

Gender by itself is not so easily defined just by genitalia or voice or chromosomes. I wish he could have included more of a breadth of people and experiences in the book. Personally, as a trans person, I would have liked to see a bit more of the positive experiences.

Smith: Claudine Griggs, is one of two patient characters that I focus on in the book. Her story really represents about 97% of trans experiences, where surgery is chosen as an option and it's the right option, and the person who chose that option has absolutely no regrets. It was the right choice for them. 97% is a startlingly high figure, and I think we need to keep that in the forefront of our minds.

I included Walt Heyer in this book, not as a false equivalence you know, here's one success story and one story that's not a success but rather to include a point of view that represents 3-4% of experiences and to give some texture to the book.

There were more than 6,000 people who made the journey to Trinidad for this surgery during that four-decade period. But one of the early things I learned about trans men and women is that they're often reluctant to go back and revisit their lives before their transition.

Claudine Griggs had written an extraordinary memoir called Passage Through Trinidad, in which she chronicled in real time her experience while undergoing surgery in Trinidad with Stanley Biber. Walt Heyer did the same thing. As a historian and a journalist, I had access through those two characters to get all of their contemporaneous experiences before, during and after their time in Trinidad.

Hanberry-Lizzi: Not all trans people want to talk about their transition experience and even less want to talk about who the person was that they were beforehand.

I really don't want to put you on blast here, Martin. I'm honestly very impressed with the book. But history has not treated trans people fairly. And so it might be harder for historians to do this research and do these important pieces of writing simply because we don't always feel like we can trust the historical community.

I never want to say that a cis historian will never be able to write a true trans history. I think that's reductive and against the point of wider society's recognition of gender being a more complex thing. But it is especially important to recognize that if it's written by a cis historian, there's a good chance they're not getting the whole picture. Theres a good chance that it's very incomplete. I would say that is a limitation of the book.

Smith: I accept that as a reality. I went into this as a journalist. In Trinidad, I saw the opportunity to tell a story about real people, in a real place, at a really interesting period in our history, that might be accessible to people like me who grew up in a gender binary world and who were kind of mystified by the whole transgender journey and experience. That was my intention, because of the climate that we're in, with trans men and women being targeted and being demonized by people, policymakers and politicians. I think my point in trying to make the book accessible to a wider audience was to make it impossible to caricature trans men and women.

Hanberry-Lizzi: I do very much appreciate the fact that you were writing this book. Despite my quibbles, I think that it is incredibly important. No trans person transitions on a whim. It's painstaking and it takes time. You second-guess yourself all the time. But it is something that ultimately you come to a very firm decision on.

The history of trans people is something that is intense and can be incredibly transforming. I know it was for me. The trans experience, while it is an arduous one and oftentimes a bitter one, it is one that is ultimately overflowing with love for yourself and for others.

I do appreciate that this work is being done. It has its faults, but giving a broader audience an understanding of what we have to go through is something that can only be good for us.

I want to end on something that I think you were both getting at. Historically speaking, people who are disenfranchised often don't get to control their own stories. And it takes a lot of time for history to right its course and eventually move into the space where disenfranchised people can start to tell their own stories. Where do you think we're at now in terms of trans history being told authentically?

Hanbery-Lizzi: It is always going to be a very hard thing for us to fully untangle. Transgender and intersex people have always existed, but those words are relatively recent. There can be mislabeling. Historians overall have wronged these marginalized communities. And as much as I am thankful that historians are starting to show tans history the proper respect it deserves, the only way we're going to get these stories is if our community can trust the historians doing it. The easiest way to do that is to have another trans person lead it.

This conversation is part of KUNCs Colorado Edition for May 13. You can find the full episode here.

Original post:

Going To Trinidad: A Conversation About Colorado's Transgender History - KUNC

Who were the people of ancient 2014? Did they eat the same food as us? Were they really all about that bass? Did they know the secrets of iron? What were their favourite mindfulness apps? Did they hug their children? Which gods did they worship? What series of Line of Duty were they on? When did they first cross the landbridge to these islands, chasing wild boar? Many of these things we can never know for sure. Sadly, all we have left of the people of 2014 is the broken pottery, elk bones, iPhone 6s and Garth Brooks merchandise they left at their settlements and religious shrines. Oh, and theres also some Reeling in the Years footage.

Reeling in the Years(Sunday, RT One) is the best way to consume history. Getting the Reeling in the Years treatment makes the traumas of the olden days feel safe, appropriately soundtracked and compartmentalised. The people behind Reeling in the Years should really compile a daily montage called Reeling in the Day to make the horror of the 24-hour-news cycle (and of existence) easier to take. And if they could create a personalised Reeling in the Years, just for me, presenting all of my regular triumphs and humiliations to the sounds of Doja Cat and Jason Derulo, that would be great too.

Historians speak of a phenomenon called the Reelingintheyearsification of history, in which people spend time Zeliging in the backgrounds of press conferences in the hope they will turn up in a montage a decade later. Most journalism schools now teach students how to do a serious nod that saysI am witnessing history and am sufficiently humbled on the off chance that any events we attend are excavated by television archaeologists and put to a zippy soundtrack.

That all said, the lives of the ancient people of 2014 are fascinating. If the footage on Reeling in the Years is anything to go by, these crazed nonconformists live in a topsy-turvy world in which people frequently gather in big crowds and in which there is a Fine GaelTaoiseach, not a Fianna Filone. Their true leader, however, is a wizard named Michael D Higgins, and we watch him go to visit the queen of the Britons, thus cementing a beautiful new crosscultural relationship that would never again be soiled by nationalistic fervour.

The biggest celebrity in Ireland is, as ever, that scamp weather. And so on Reeling in the Years we always get to see the weather do its stuff. There is footage of people being appalled by the weathers behaviour. We all shake our fists together and yell Weather!!!. There are also several sportsball tournaments to witness, wherein sturdy gentlemen and ladies with sticks chase a mystical orb in order to win a large golden cup for the greater glory of an abstractly defined geographical area.

Elsewhere, as is tradition, newly elected politicians of 2014 are hoisted on to shoulders and bounced like large babies. By 2014, they were no longer being burped, however. They go on to demonstrate great political insight later in the episode by holding the nations water supply hostage, much like the Joker might do to Gotham City. This goes as well as you might expect.

There are lots of perplexing things about the people of 2014. Despite having a relatively advanced civilisation, they were unable to house all of their people. This seems odd and barbaric, but, of course, thats easy for me to say here in 2021, where everything is perfect.

Donald Trump existed in 2014. He dispatches one of his Trumplings (Don jnr) to buy the Doonbeg golf course and the townsfolk who come with it. The Trumpling appears onscreen, emitting a high-pitched metallic scream of distress to draw his father to him. His father appears, a radioactive, melted He-Man figure with attic insulation for hair, speaking like a malfunctioning Norman Vincent Peale audiobook on a waterlogged iPhone (6). Then local businesspeople tell the cameras how thrilled they are.

It must be said, theres very little activity that local businesspeople arent thrilled by. If Trump were pumping nuclear missiles into Earths crust to see what would happen, or building a huge death ray to destroy his enemythe sun, or just dumping vats of Trump ooze there, someone from a local chamber of commerce would tell an RT reporter how great it was going to be for the local shops.

The darkest period in our nations history also features. This is the moment in ancient 2014 when the willowy elites of Dublin realised that 400,000 of their fellow countrymen were interested in seeing the agricultural tunemonger Garth Brooks at the Croke Park sportsball arena, modelling big hats and yodelling. No! cried the Dubliners. No. Just no. They should like pesto and Orange is the New Black and true-crime podcasts not Brooks!

And so they did what Dubliners have done since the Battle of Clontarf:they ruined everyones fun. They banned Garth and built a big wall around the city. It was like that bit in a Zack Snyder film where everything goes into extreme slow motion and someone screams Noooo at the sky, except with red lemonade and Letters to the Editor.

Brexit was nothing compared with this culture war. Brother was set against brother. The plucky radical firebrand Michel Martin raised the issue in the Dil. (Where is he now?)The White House even released a statement (which read, I think: You all have lead poisoning. Please leave us alone.) People with cowboy hats and road frontage wept in the streets. People in corduroy jackets with eggshell-blue kitchen cupboards wrote broadsheet articles about what a Garth Brooks is, how to spot one in your garden and why the Lilt-suckling mountain people of Monaghan like them so much.

Garth Brooks himself chastised everyone by videolink from his home on the moon/in the United States/inside a horse. (I have no idea where crooning cowboys live.)He wasnt angry with us, he said; he was just disappointed. It truly was a Garth night of the soul.

Watching it all now in futuristic 2021, with our robot butlers, killer viruses, Furbies and Elon Musks, it feels as though the people of 2014 have much to teach us. They seem to have had many of the same hopes and dreams as we who have straighter spines and have seen the finale of Line of Duty. And though they are all long gone from the Earth, I feel a strong connection with them still. Also, for the record, I would love to see Garth Brooks live.

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The Reelingintheyearsification of Irish history ... so reassuring - The Irish Times

Lehigh baseball marked a historic 2021 season, winning the Patriot League regular season for the first time since 2006 and having a program record of three major awards handed out.

Junior first baseman Casey Rother was named Patriot League Player of the Year, junior pitcher Mason Black was named Patriot League Pitcher of the Year, and head coach Sean Leary was named Patriot League Coach of the year.

Rother finished second in the Patriot League batting .350 (48-for-137). He finished first in the league with five home runs. Rother was also third in the Patriot League with 29 RBIs, all while carrying a .518 slugging percentage and an on-base percentage of .441.

Black had a dominant season on the mound, finishing first in the Patriot League in earned run average (ERA) with a 2.25. Black had a historic season when it came to strikeouts, striking out 90 batters; the next best was teammate Matt Svanson with 57.

This was Learys third time taking home the Patriot League Coach of the Year Award and first since 2010.

Learys team had five First Team All-Patriot League selections including Matt Svanson, Sam Wurth, and Eric Cichocki as well as Rother and Black.

Luke Rettig, Adam Retzbach, and Joe Gorla also earned Second Team nods for their outstanding seasons.

The Mountain Hawks look to build off of their regular-season success in the Patriot League Semifinals on May 15 when they take on Navy at J. David Walker Field at 12 p.m.

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Baseball trio makes history with awards - The Brown and White

On the surface, everything was hunky-dory in the summer of 1929. The total wealth of the United States had almost doubled during the Roaring Twenties, fueled, in part, by stock market speculation eagerly undertaken by a wide swath of citizens ranging from Fifth Avenue dowagers to factory workers. One Midwestern woman, a farmer, made an overnight profit of $2,000 ($31,000 in todays dollars) betting on a car manufacturers stock.

When the bubble burst in spectacular fashion in October 1929, many economists, including John Kenneth Galbraith, author of The Great Crash 1929, blamed the worldwide, decade-long Great Depression that followed on all those reckless speculators. Most saw the banks as victims, not culprits.

The reality is more complex. Sure, without all that uncontrolled and irrational market speculation, the 1930s might be recalled simply as a period when the economy and prosperity stalled. But just whyand howcould those gamblers dominate the stock market? And why did a crisis in the markets become a systemic decade-long economic catastrophe during which unemployment skyrocketed to 25 percent and the cost of goods and services plunged? By 1933, dozen eggs cost only 13 cents, down from 50 cents in 1929. Banks failedbetween a third and half of all U.S. financial institutions collapsed, wiping out the lifetime savings of millions of Americans.

The familiar narrative of the Great Depression places banks among the institutions that suffered fallout from the crisis. In fact, in the eyes of such luminaries as Ben Bernanke, an economic historian and former head of the Federal Reserve, the crisis was all about the banksfrom the central bank (the Fed itself), down to the smallest savings institutions. Regarding the Great Depressionwe did it, Bernanke said in a 2002 speech, referring primarily to the Feds role. Were sorry.

Here are four ways banks "did it":

The runaway speculation that triggered the 1929 crash and the Great Depression that followed couldnt have taken place without the banks, which fueled the 1920s credit boom. New businessesmaking new products like automobiles, radios and refrigeratorsborrowed to support non-stop expansion in output. They kept borrowing and spending even as business inventories soared (300 percent between 1928 and 1929 alone) and Americans wages stagnated. The banks, ignoring the warnings signs, kept subsidizing them.

The banks also funded the speculation itself, providing the money that individual investors needed to buy stocks on margin. That Midwestern farmer might have borrowed up to 90 percent of the money she needed to make her overnight killing on the automobile stock, financed by her local bank. Bank lenders discounted or downplayed growing signs that Americans were overstretched. Farm incomes, in particular, plunged in the years leading up to 1929, and others found their wages stagnant. Their prosperity came solely from their stock market wealthwhich didnt last.

READ MORE: Why the Roaring Twenties Left Many Americans Poorer

People gathering in front of the New York Stock Exchange on October 29, 1929, checking the hysterical shrinkage of stock market prices.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

The Fed, which serves as Americas central bank, did try to rein things in, albeit too slowly and too late in the game. It sent warning letters to the banks to which the Fed itself provided credit, warning them to take their collective feet off the gas pedals. Banks, with their eyes firmly fixed on the easy profits to be earned by funding speculation, paid little attention. After all, wasnt it a virtuous cycle? The more investment profits their customers generated, the more money they would have to spend on new homes or consumer goods. Why worry? By the time the Fed slammed on the brakes by raising interest rates in 1929, it was too late to stem the crash, or the fallout on the banks.

WATCH: The 3-night event, 'The Titans That Built America,' premiering Memorial Day at 9/8c. Watch a preview now:

It sounds kind of geeky, but one of the ways that banks contribute to the health of the economyand help avoid catastrophes like the Great Depressionis to manage their cash reserves. Typically, banks hold onto only a small percentage of all the money depositors entrust to them, and lend out the rest in search of a profit; thats how they make their money. In ordinary times, banks count on the ability to borrow from other financial institutions, or from the Federal Reserve, to cover any unexpected shortfall in reserves if their customers start showing up in droves and demanding their deposits back. During the Depression, the pressure on those backup providers of capital proved unsustainable; moreover, large numbers of American banks hadnt joined the Federal Reserve system and so werent able to tap its reserves to avoid collapse.

It wasnt until the stock market crashed and fearful Americans flocked to banks to demand their cashso they could stow it under the mattress or use it to offset their massive stock market lossesthat banks realized what theyd done. They hadnt kept enough reserves on hand to address the growing risks associated with runaway credit and speculation.

Ironically, once banks started to try to correct their missteps, they made the problem worse. When banks sought to protect themselves, they stopped lending money. Businesses couldnt get access to capital, and closed their doors, throwing millions of Americans out of work. Those unemployed Americans couldnt keep spending, and the toxic downward spiral continued. As bank after bank collapsed, it wasnt just savings that were lost, but information: Surviving institutions had no way to gauge which companies or individuals were good credit risks.

READ MORE: What Caused the Stock Market Crash of 1929?

Shipment of gold coins, valued into six figures at the time, arriving from the depositors of the Empire Trust Co. It was part of the stream flowed back into the coffers of the Federal Reserve Bank during the stock market crisis.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

If banks led to the crash and the subsequent economic crisis that extended into the Great Depression, then they needed to be fixed in order for the economy to begin to recover. By 1933, the wave of bank failures was stemmed by the decision of the newly elected president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to declare a four-day banking holiday while Congress debated and passed the Emergency Banking Act, which formed the basis of the 1933 Banking Act, or Glass-Steagall Act. For their part, legislators required banks to join the Federal Reserve system and approved the creation of deposit insurance, so that future bank failures couldnt wreak havoc on family savings. They also took steps to curb speculation by banning commercial lenders from dabbling in the stock market. Even before Roosevelt signed the new measures into law, Americans began returning hoarded cash to surviving banks. The banking system had been saved, even though it would take years for the economy itself to climb out of the deep hole of the Depression.

Read this article:

How Bank Failures Contributed to the Great Depression - History

The TAKE with Rick Klein

The ouster of Rep. Liz Cheney might be the most visible manifestation of the Republican Party's embrace of former President Donald Trump's lies about the election.

Rep. Liz Cheney speaks to the media at the US Capitol in Washington, on May 12, 2021.

But his bigger triumph could be in rewriting the ugly history of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. On the very day Cheney was removed from leadership, a staggering array of Republicans cast doubt on what members of Congress themselves witnessed at the Capitol just four months ago.

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said he never saw proof that rioters were actually Trump supporters. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., took the opposite approach, arguing that "it was Trump supporters who lost their lives that day, not Trump supporters who were taking the lives of others" -- and saying a Capitol Police officer died that day of natural causes.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., hit a similar theme in calling the Capitol Police shooting of Ashli Babbitt as she tried to breach the House chamber an "execution," as ABC News' Katherine Faulders and Beatrice Peterson report.

Cue Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., who trumpeted the fact that "the House floor was never breached," and said it looked from video of that day that protesters behaved in an "orderly fashion."

"You would actually think it was a normal tourist visit," Clyde said.

Also Wednesday, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller told lawmakers he "reassessed" his previous judgment -- walking back a statement where he said "it's pretty much definitive" that the attempted insurrection wouldn't have happened without Trump's speech to protesters earlier on Jan. 6.

All of this comes is on top of what's become a mainstream -- though no less false Republican view -- that the election was "rigged" or otherwise stolen.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaks to reporters outside the White House after a meeting with President Joe Biden, May 12, 2021.

Preposterously, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said -- shortly after Cheney was ousted from leadership: "I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. That's all over with."

Cheney has said she would make it her mission not to let her party or the country forget Jan. 6. But many of her colleagues are well along in crafting their own Trumpian and patently false narratives of both the election and the subsequent attack on democracy.

The RUNDOWN with Averi Harper

Some Democrats have signaled a willingness to forgo party ideals in favor of making deals with Republicans to get legislation passed.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., told ABC News congressional correspondent Rachel Scott that he is backing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Its scope is far more limited than the sweeping changes proposed in H.R. 1, the For The People Act, which faces staunch Republican opposition. It's a break with party leadership that has pushed H.R. 1 and its reforms, which would be a major overhaul of the system.

"(The John Lewis Voting Rights Act) could be done bipartisan to start getting confidence back in our system," said Manchin.

ABC News' Rachel Scott talks with Sen. Joe Manchin in Washington, May 12, 2021.

Over the weekend, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn backed away from including "qualified immunity," or lowering the standards necessary to prosecute individual officers in civil court, in police reform legislation. The topic has been a sticking point in negotiations on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and most Democrats have framed the inclusion of qualified immunity in reform as nonnegotiable.

"If we don't get qualified immunity now, then we will come back and try to get it later," said Clyburn on CNN. "But I don't want to see us throw out a good bill because we can't get a perfect bill."

While the likelihood of Democrats completely abandoning bold ideas on hot-button issues like voting rights and police reform is unlikely, the wavering of both Manchin and Clyburn could indicate acceptance of what is attainable for Democrats while they boast slim majorities in both chambers of Congress.

The TIP with Meg Cunningham

After a contentious primary season and a nominating convention full of confusion, Virginia Republican State Sen. Amanda Chase is not backing down from her assertion that the process was rigged. Chase was one of four front-runners for the Virginia GOP's gubernatorial nomination, but fell short after a drive-through convention over the weekend.

"While we came up short in yesterday's rigged convention that allowed only 53k registered voters to choose our next Governor out of 1.9 million Virginians who voted for President Trump; God is still in control," she wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday. "While I will have more to say in the days ahead I'm spending the rest of the week at the beach with my hubby for a trip we planned months ago."

Republican gubernatorial candidate State Sen. Amanda Chase, places a yard sign during a drive through GOP Convention vote in Chesterfield, Va., May 8, 2021.

The Virginia GOP spent months quarreling over the format they'd use to determine their nominee, but ultimately settled on the drive-through convention, a process which former GOP Rep. Denver Riggleman asserts was used to oust him from his spot in Congress.

She'd previously suggested that the election was stolen by the state party when early returns were coming in, threatening to run as an independent if the results did not end in her favor, and raised questions about the counting process in a video posted to her Facebook page. For someone who dubbed herself "Trump in heels," once even saying that the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters were "justified" in their actions, she seems to be following the former president's lead when it comes to accepting the election results.

THE PLAYLIST

ABC News' "Start Here" podcast. Thursday morning's episode features ABC News Congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, who brings us up to speed on the state of the GOP after the ouster of Rep. Liz Cheney from leadership. ABC News' Anne Flaherty tells us what we need to know about the Pfizer vaccine and teenagers. And ABC News' Matt Gutman joins us from Israel as attacks on Palestinians grow in frequency and severity. http://apple.co/2HPocUL

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Download the ABC News app and select "The Note" as an item of interest to receive the day's sharpest political analysis.

The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights the key political moments of the day ahead. Please check back tomorrow for the latest.

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Trump's triumphs extend to GOP rewriting history of Nov. 3 and Jan. 6: The Note - ABC News

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas Theres a huge fight taking place in the Texas legislature over what should or shouldnt be taught in history and social studies classes.

Republican lawmakers in the house and the senate are trying to push through legislation that would keep teachers in public schools from teaching critical race theories.

Democrats and a number of educators say that the legislation, if passed, would be a white washing of history.

"I think that this critical race theory that the legislature is moving forward with is a bit extreme," president of the local American Federation of Teacher's Union Dr. Nancy Vera said.

"I think that nobodys going to tell anyone theyre racist because theyre White but we do have to recognize there are some people who are White supremacists.

"These Republicans, particularly the House Republicans, who have advanced their bill, their viewing this as youre teaching a version of history that suggests racism is ongoing and theres no way to curate and that all people are inherently racist," Texas A&M Kingsville Political Science Professor Dr. Travis Braidwood said.

"And then on the upside, you have Democrats, who are arguing that this is an educational process to tell children about long-standing discriminatory practices.

CCAFT union says that if the state passes these prohibitions on what can be taught in the classroom, she expects civil rights organizations to file a lawsuit over the matter.

For the latest updates on coronavirus in the Coastal Bend, click here.

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Rewriting history? There's a bill that could change what's taught in schools - KIIITV.com

AKRON, Ohio Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan and Zanesville-based sculptor Alan Cottrill joined city leaders Thursday to pull the tarp off Cottrills Rubber Worker sculpture, the showpiece of the nearly completed Main Street Phase 1 construction project in downtown Akron.

The 12-foot high, cast bronze statue depicts a rubber worker hand-wrapping a tire and is based on the image on the cover of the 1999 book Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron by David Giffels and Steve Love. The sculpture figure stands on two tiers of marble and is the centerpiece of a newly built roundabout at the intersection of Main and Mill Streets.

To provide historical context about the statue and Akrons rubber history, resident Miriam Ray and the Art x Love arts collective organized the Rubber Worker Stories & Statue Project. Across from the statue on the northeast corner of the roundabout is a plaza paved with commemorative bricks dedicated to Akrons rubber workers.

The plaza includes a kiosk for visitors to view and listen to archival footage and oral histories from rubber workers and their descendants.

For more than a century after Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich came to town in 1870, Akron was the rubber capital of the world. Its people worked in the rubber shops of Goodrich, Goodyear, Firestone, General, Seiberling, Mohawk and Sun. Workers lived in Goodyear Heights and Firestone Park, the neighborhoods fostered by their employers.

The statue was paid for by the city, Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiros office, Huntington Bank, PNC, FirstEnergy, Akron Childrens Hospital and the GPD Group.

Cleveland.coms Robin Goist contributed to this article.

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City of Akron unveils rubber worker statue downtown, honoring the history of the rubber industry - cleveland.com