Category Archives: History

The NBAs first Native American player took the court shortly after the league officially formed in 1949.

Others of Native American lineage to play in the NBA have included Bison Dele (1992-1999), Cherokee Parks (1996-2004), Ron Baker (2017-2019) and Kyrie Irving (2011-current).

With November being Native American Heritage Month, heres a guide to American Indians in basketball.

The first Native American to play in the NBA was Phil Jordon, a 6-foot-10 center who debuted during the 1956-1957 season with the New York Knicks.

Jordon -- whose father was of the Wailaki and the Nomlaki tribes, according to The Press Democrat-- spent seven seasons in the league. The California native averaged 10.9 points and 6.9 rebounds per game in his career, playing for the Knicks, Detroit Pistons, Cincinnati Royals and St. Louis Hawks.

Jordon infamously was unable to play against the Philadelphia Warriors on March 2, 1962, after falling ill, and the opponent he would have spent time defending, Wilt Chamberlain, went on to score 100 points in the game.

Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving's lineage traces to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota. His mother, Elizabeth Larson, was born into the tribe before she was adopted at a young age.

Irving first revealed he was a descendent of the tribe in 2016, joining a list of Native American NBA players that also includes former players like Bison Dele, Cherokee Parks and Ron Baker.

Irving, whose mother died when he was four, has embraced his lineage in recent years, both on and off the court.

He paid homage to his native culture by performing a cleansing ceremony in which he burned sage on the court before playing against his former team, the Boston Celtics, last December.

Kyrie and his sister Asia both joined the tribe at a naming ceremony in 2018.

"Blood couldn't make us any closer, and our journeys have been directed in so many different ways, but yet we are still standing here," Irving said in 2018 while visiting the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, per ESPN. "It shows how special and what it means to be a native of this country, and to be Native American."

Ryneldi Becenti became the first Native American to play in the WNBA when she debuted with the Phoenix Mercury in 1997 after signing as a free agent.

Becenti, also the first woman to be inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame, played two seasons at Arizona State, averaging 7.1 assists per game.

Tahnee Robinson was the first Native American player drafted into the WNBA, having been selected with the 31st pick of the 2011 draft by the Mercury. She was traded to the Connecticut Sun before playing overseas.

Angel Goodrich was drafted two years later with the 29th pick by the Tulsa Shock. She started 16 of the 31 games she played as a rookie, averaging 4.4 points and 2.9 assists, and spent three seasons in the league.

Shoni Schimmel became the most accomplished Native American player in WNBA history. The 5-foot-9 guard was drafted with the eighth overall pick by the Atlanta Dream in the 2014 draft and went on to become a two-time All-Star, being named MVP of the game as a rookie. Over four seasons in the league, Schimmel averaged 6.6 points while shooting 36.6 percent from the 3-point line. Schimmel and her sister Jude, while playing for Louisville, became the first Native Americans to play in a Final game. Schimmel's 387 career 3-pointers while at Louisville ranks fifth in NCAA Division I history.

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A look at the history of Native Americans in basketball - NBC Sports Chicago

Science, in practice, is a series of evolving processes informed by hypotheses and theories, with the hopeful endpoints of discovery and dissemination of knowledge to others. In a case study using taxonomythe field of organism classificationAndrew Hamilton and Quentin D. Wheeler argue that these processes need to be informed by precedents from the history of science, asking [w]hile there really is no question about the value of history of science in the humanities, what good is it for practicing scientists? What difference does it make at the lab-bench level?

Traditionally, taxonomy was centered around identifying similarities and differences between and among species, by looking at family trees and identifying clusters of similar organisms. For example, insects could be grouped based on the number of wings (if any), if their bodies were segmented or not, and if so, how many segments. Using these family trees, taxonomists could identify how closely related species were. These systems of classification, however, relied only on physical observation, and so relationships that might be only visible at the genetic level went undiscovered.

During the mid-20th century, the method of phenetics was developed, which utilized computers and algorithms to determine relatedness. A biologist would select the specimens of a group they wished to investigate, then select the characteristics of those specimens to be measured and analyzed. These data would then be translated into numbers that could be fed to algorithms that would calculate degrees of relatedness. The results could then be used to identify a previously unclassified specimen, or to create a map of potential evolutionary relationships.

Phenetics requires a number of steps that present the opportunity for unintentional errors. The selections of specimens, the characteristics chosen, and the algorithm(s) used all may influence the outcomes of a phenetic study, without any intent on the part of the researchers involved to obtain particular results.

Historians Hamilton and Wheeler then contrast phenetics with a current method of taxonomic research,DNA barcoding. In this approach, depending on the organism(s), biologists will sequence one or more genes that have little variation between individuals of the same species, but high variation between individuals of different species. By analyzing these sequences against known species, the relationship of the unknown individual to others can be made.

Neither DNA barcoding nor phenetics, the authors maintain, give attention to the underlying concepts of species, and the histories of populations that led to their differences. Our concern is that certain new molecular methods for doing taxonomy repeat a mistake from taxonomys recent past because they produce results that do not have a firm basis in underlying theory.

For instance, because barcoding looks at a small portion of the genes, (usually a sequence within a gene), it can lead to classification errors, and not describe the full range of diversity. The historians write at a time when advances in taxonomy are crucial to understanding and preserving biodiversity, it is of even greater important to heed Darwins advice that observations need appropriate theoretical context if they are to make sense.

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By: Andrew Hamilton and QuentinD. Wheeler

Isis, Vol. 99, No. 2 (June 2008), pp. 331-340

The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society

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Why the History of Science Should Matter to Scientists - JSTOR Daily

Ole Miss will enter Saturdays game with the ability to make some history - an undefeated home record in the balance.

If the Rebels can overcome Vanderbilt, it will secure the first undefeated home slate since 1992, which if I remember correctly was the year Bill Clinton was first elected President. Holy smokes, being a fan of the Rebels is tough.

Moreover, a ninth win for the season puts Ole Miss in rare air for the program. The win preserves the opportunity for a tenth and then a record setting eleventh victory in a bowl game potentially.

But play the games one at a time and all that - Vanderbilt comes into Oxford at 2-8 and winless in the SEC, so Ole Miss is clearly favored by five or more touchdowns depending on which betting service you like to use. Honestly, I think it would do Ole Miss fans some good to see a win like that against Vandy, because it doesnt happen that often.

Heres some stats for thought:

What Im getting at is if youve been an Ole Miss fan long enough, you know you can never count this game in the win column until its over. Vanderbilt might be down this year, but it also has nothing to lose at this point and spoiling the Rebels season might be just enough motivation to make Saturday more uncomfortable than it should be.

So, buy some dadgum tickets, get your butts in the seats, give this really good Ole Miss squad a home field advantage one last time in 2021 - they have clearly earned it.

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Rebels can make history with Vanderbilt coming to town - Red Cup Rebellion

For an outstanding chronicle of the early years of AIDS activism, look no further than Sarah Schulmans Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 19871993, which is also an exemplary model for telling a more complete story of a political movement. In writing Let the Record Show, published earlier this year, Schulman has orchestrated a peoples history of ACT UP New York. Her voice and those of a chorus of activists cohere in the book, which draws both on her experience as a veteran of the political-action group and from lengthy interviews she conducted with nearly 200 other members. The result is an expansive portrait of the people, principles, and campaigns that made ACT UP the most formidable political organization to emerge from the AIDS crisis.

The history of ACT UP, Schulman writes in the books introduction, is the story of a despised group of people, with no rights, facing a terminal disease for which there were no treatments. Abandoned by their families, government, and society, they joined together and forced our country to change against its will. These activists work savedand will continue to savecountless lives, she writes, even if many of them lost their own lives to AIDS: The dead and the living ultimately transformed the crisis.

As Schulman emphasizes, ACT UP was born out of dire emergency. From 1981, when the disease was first reported in the national press (though undiagnosed cases likely existed even earlier), to 1987, the year ACT UP was founded, thousands of Americans had died of AIDS-related complications. Their illness and death were shrouded in shame and sensational media coverage. Although by 1987 the modes of HIV transmission had been properly identifiedand the initial medical designation gay-related immune deficiency (GRID) had officially been changed to acquired immune deficiency syndromeAIDS was still widely believed to be a gay disease. It was commonly dubbed gay cancer and gay plague at a time when sexual minorities faced vicious forms of legal discrimination and extralegal violence.

Read: The disease of the century: reporting on the origin of AIDS

Amid a growing calamity, queer communities had to fend for themselves to ensure their survival. ACT UP was one such response, as Schulman puts it, simultaneously a place of decline and a place of defiance of loss. Unlike other AIDS organizations that preceded itfor instance, Gay Mens Health Crisis, largely a health and social-support serviceACT UP was, and continues to be, an altogether political entity. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, its motto declares, is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals, united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.

ACT UP had a radical organizational structure whereby power was distributed horizontally, not vertically. There was no hierarchy. There were no paid officials. There were no offices, Schulman writes in Let the Record Show. What held the group together, as she brilliantly captures, was a diffuse and democratic amalgamation of numerous committees, caucuses, and affinity groups, working independently on smaller campaigns and in unison on larger ones. This unique configuration enabled simultaneity of action, not consensus and also ensured that major decisions were made collectively at ACT UPs weekly Monday-night meetings at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York City (and later at Cooper Union to accommodate the growing attendance, which reached 500 to 800 people at the organizations height). Garance Franke-Ruta, one of the many activists we hear from in Let the Record Show, recalls these meetings: I experienced direct democracy in ACT UP in a way that is so rare in American life Everyone had a vote. And everyone was equal, and everyone had a voice.

The groups formative days come alive in Let the Record Show, which draws from the ACT UP Oral History Project, a collection of interviews with 187 members that Schulman and the activist and filmmaker Jim Hubbard conducted from 2001 to 2018. These voices relay the groups political history in personal terms. When I walked into the room at the Center it was like a religious experience, Moiss Agosto-Rosario says. Coming from not having people to talk to, to a bunch of fired-up people really wanting to make a difference, fighting for their lives literally. I could relate to them. Kendall Thomas remembers: The sex-positive, gay-affirmative, politically empowering force that was in that room and that [was] in the streets of New York or DC at ACT UP actionsI do feel it saved my life. And there was some great sex that came out of it, too. Recollections like these make palpable how ACT UP furnished not only a viable political space but also a vibrant communal culture. As Jim Eigo puts it, Ive always believed in community and ACT UP, during those two or three years of its height, is the most splendid enactment of the idea of community Ive ever been a part of.

The lifeblood of ACT UP was nonviolent civil disobedience, the means by which the group began to sharpen its principles and shape its identity. Imbued with desperation, rage, courage, and creativity, ACT UPs actions brought new dynamism to old repertoires of civil disobedience.

For instance, although die-ins and public funerals were not new forms of protest, ACT UP used them in highly evocative ways. At mass demonstrations, activists would stage a die-in by lying still on the ground, sometimes with cardboard cutouts of tombstones emblazoned with messages such as NEVER HAD A CHANCE. And as activists began to die in large numbers, ACT UP held several funeral processions both as acts of commemoration and to concretize the mass deaths the public refused to acknowledge. Haunting in their power to embody the unfolding tragedy, political funerals issued a striking indictment of the public: Here is a loved member of our family who has died; we want to show you. This is his bodyand you killed him, the interviewee Russell Pritchard says, remembering a political funeral for the fellow member Mark Lowe Fisher that the group carried out in the streets of New York.

Read: Creating the first visual history of queer life before Stonewall

ACT UPs feats were extraordinary, especially given its relatively small size. As Schulman amply documents, campaigns targeted the entire HIV/AIDS infrastructure: pharmaceutical companies, government health agencies, media outlets, and many other institutions and individuals holding the levers of power. Some of the campaigns recounted in Let the Record Show have since become legendary. For example, ACT UP disrupted the New York Stock Exchange, days later forcing the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome to slash the price of the anti-HIV drug AZT by 20 percent.

With mass demonstrations, the group seized control of the headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and then that of the National Institutes of Health, compelling the FDA to expedite the approval of experimental drugs and the NIH to adopt research protocols that activists helped design. ACT UP disrupted Sunday Mass at Saint Patricks Cathedral, calling out the Catholic Church and in particular Cardinal John OConnor, then the archbishop of New York, for their anti-abortion, anti-safe-sex, and anti-gay positions. No matter the person or institution, the groups position was, as the activist Maxine Wolfe recalls, If you do things that have public policy implications, I dont care where you are, Im going to come and get you, and you cant hide behind the church.

Let the Record Show documents lesser-known campaigns that were also significant to ACT UPs mission and success. The group championed the plight of homeless New Yorkers with HIV/AIDS and began a needle-exchange program in the city. It waged a four-year campaign that forced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to expand its definition of AIDS to include opportunistic infections that affected HIV-positive women. The latter was one of ACT UPs signal achievements, enabling women with AIDS to receive disability benefits and ensuring their inclusion in future clinical trials; Schulman offers an illuminating behind-the-scenes view of these different campaigns.

The book is a significant departure both from the popular perception of ACT UP as an exclusively white, gay, male organization, and from other well-known representations of the groupincluding the critically acclaimed documentary film How to Survive a Plague. Unlike many of these works, Schulmans book foregrounds women and people of color and their less-heralded but equally heroic work (the books first chapter, for instance, features members of ACT UPs Latino Caucus and a major action they carried out in Puerto Rico). Schulman writes that ACT UP was predominantly white and male. But its history has been whitened in ways that obstruct the complexity.

A through line in the book, in fact, is a crucial look at ACT UPs gender and racial dynamics. Schulman describes how privilege enjoyed by white male activists allowed ACT UP to enter the halls of power and negotiate with pharmaceutical executives and public-health officials in ways that women and people of color could not have done in 1980s America. She also lays bare the internal divisions that grew within ACT UPbetween activists working on the inside bargaining with the establishment and those on the outside staging direct actions; between those who wanted to focus the groups energies on drug treatment and those who wished to pursue a broader social-justice agendadivisions that would lead the group to split into two in 1992. (Because Let the Record Show centers only on the groups early years and on the mother ship, the New York chapter, its worth noting that ACT UP continues its work today and has several active chapters in the U.S. and worldwide.)

Let the Record Show documents a history thats now more than 30 years old, not to mention a legacy of resilience and heroism. But its written neither nostalgically nor triumphantly. Schulman writes as a witness to and a survivor of a catastrophe, clear-eyed and committed to remembering the dead. Interspersed throughout the book are more than a dozen moving vignettes titled Remembrance that pay homage to individual ACT UP members who died of AIDS. Schulman also writes with the intention to empower and guide todays activists with lessons learned from the early days of ACT UP. As such, Let the Record Show serves as both history and handbook of how a small coalition can achieve fundamental political change.

At the very outset of the book, Schulman states firmly that AIDS is not over. She reminds us that as of 2019, more than 700,000 people had died of AIDS-related illnesses in the United States, including about 16,000 in 2017 alone. Although the current reality of AIDS is beyond the purview of Let the Record Show, Schulman asks us to read the book being mindful of a crisis that continues to exact its toll today, and to look back at ACT UPs past with a renewed feeling of purpose and possibility for the future.

As someone whos lost friends and family to AIDS, I could not help but read Let the Record Show with a sense of personal anguish, knowing full well that many thousands diedand continue to diebecause of hatred, neglect, greed, and malfeasance, which transformed the epidemic into a disaster. There were a number of days while reading this book when my mind would trail off to remember not just my immediate kin but also kindred spirits such as Melvin Dixon, Essex Hemphill, Marlon Riggs, Assotto Saintvisionary artists who died of AIDS-related illnesses and profoundly shaped my sense of self as a Black gay man. There were other days, too, for different reasons, when the book in my hands would resonate with incredible force. As I was reading, my daily afternoon alarm would go off, reminding me to take my HIV medication, and I would be hyperaware of my aliveness and enormously grateful for the sacrifices and achievements of ACT UP.

Let the Record Show is not an easy read, given that it tells a story of incalculable suffering and loss; and yet its an invigorating work, for it also documents uncommon courage and defiance. Schulman has written a necessary book that expands our vision of AIDS activism and demands us to remember the living and the dead who made ACT UP an indispensable political and cultural force.

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Let the Record Show Is an Essential Book on AIDS Activism - The Atlantic

It's way too early to say whether Mac Jones is going to win the rookie of the year award, but the Patriots quarterback definitely feels like the front-runner right now and he only helped his cause during New England's 25-0 win over Atlanta on Thursday.

It would be fitting if Jones did end up winning, because New England's win over the Falcons allowed him to join a rare club that currently only includes two other players and both of those players also happened to win rookie of the year.

With the win over Atlanta, Jones has now gone 5-0 in road games this year, making him only the third rookie QB in NFL history to pull off that feat. The only other two quarterbacks to start 5-0 in road games were Ben Roethlisberger and Dak Prescott, who both started 6-0.

In 2004, Big Ben took over as the starter in Week 3 and ended up finishing with a 13-0 record, which included going 6-0 on the road. Roethlisberger probably could have gone 7-0, but the Steelers decided to rest him in their regular season finale against Buffalo. Thanks to his impressive performance, Big Ben ended up being voted rookie of the year.

As for Prescott, he became the Cowboys starter after Tony Romo went down with a preseason injury in 2016. Although Prescott lost his first start, which was at home, the Cowboys quarterback had six straight road wins to start his career before seeing the streak end in a Week 14 loss to the Giants. Like Roethlisberger, Prescott was also voted rookie of the year.

If Jones wants to break the record that's shared by Prescott and Big Ben, he'll have to win two more road games, which won't be easy. The next road game for the Patriots will come in Week 13 against the Bills. After a Week 14 bye, the Patriots will hit the road again to face the Colts. If the Patriots win both of those games, Jones will become the first QB to start 7-0 on the road as a rookie.

Although Jones hasn't single-handedly led the Patriots to each road win, he still has had a major impact on each game. The rookie has been the perfect game manager: He rarely makes mistakes and he's also able to come through with a big play whenever the Patriots need it. Against the Falcons, he played a nearly perfect first half, going, 14 of 15 for 136, which included a 19-yard TD to Nelson Agholor.

Jones seems to be getting better every week and he attributes that to the fact that the offense feels like a family to him.

"I think we have a great group of guys and early on, you're just trying to figure your way out with me in there and I'm trying to learn as best I can," Jones said after the win over the Falcons. "But these guys have all played tons of football and I trust everybody on our offense. I feel like I can play better to you know, help them too. They've done a great job all year staying positive, and we all believe in each other and that's the most important part. It's the best team sport there is and I think our offensive unit really has that family feel to it and we love each other and we play together and we play for each other so we just have to keep doing that."

If Jones can match Dak and Big Ben for the most road wins, the next question becomes, can he do the one thing that neither of them ended up doing, which is winning a Super Bowl. No QB in NFL history has ever led his team to a Super Bowl win in his rookie year and if Jones does that, most Patriots fans will likely be able to let go of the fact that the team let Tom Brady walk away.

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Patriots' Mac Jones becomes only the third rookie QB in NFL history to pull off this rare feat - CBSSports.com

The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre is showcasing a new live production this weekend that intertwines the history of the first Thanksgiving with a bit of satire.

The story ofTHE THANKSGIVING PLAY follows a team of terminally woke teaching artists who want to put on a show that honors Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month. It starts with a teacher, Logan, who recruits her yoga-teaching busker boyfriend, an elementary school history expert and an authentic actor from Los Angeles who is supposed to represent all Native Americans. Naturally, this plan is flawed and the comedy of the play within a play comes when good intentions collide with absurd assumptions.

As a comedy, the play creates a wonderful space to reflect upon-looking at you, fellow well-meaning white folks-our own disastrously failed attempts at bridging cultural divides between our friends and neighbors and consider how we can redouble our efforts and do better, says MCT Artistic Director, Brent Hazelton.

The show is written by Larissa FastHorse and directed by Milwaukee-based actor and director Laura Gordon. This is the first time the play will have live audiences, but it did have a successful virtual run last season.

The play has a preview night on Friday, Nov. 19 at 7:30 p.m. and opens on Saturday, Nov. 20 at 8 p.m. It runs through Dec. 19. For ticket inquiries, go to their website or call 414-291-7800.

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This Thanksgiving Play Comes With Sides of History and Satire - Milwaukee Magazine

Will it be gobble, gobble for U.S. stock-market investors during the Thanksgiving week or an overdose of tryptophan?

Thats the question that some may be considering as Wall Street completes the last full week of trading in November and gears up for a holiday period that is typically characterized by some of the lowest volumes of the year.

U.S. financial markets are closed on Thursday, Nov. 26 for the Thanksgiving holiday and beyond Thursdays closure, since 1992, stock exchanges have adhered to an abbreviated trading schedule the Friday after Thanksgiving in the U.S.

The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq will close at 1 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, while the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association recommends a 2 p.m. Eastern close for U.S. bond markets.

Against that backdrop, Thanksgiving has become synonymous with low-volume trading, which can sometimes lead to choppy action.

So how has the market performed in this scenerio? Not bad?

The folks at Bespoke Investment Group say that Thanksgiving week has lent itself to a modest gain for stocks dating back to 1945.

The researchers say that since that point, the entire week of Thanksgiving has averaged a 60 basis points, or 0.60 percentage point, advance for the S&P 500 SPX, -0.14%, with the best returns coming on Wednesday before the holiday and Black Friday, and the only decline on average on Monday, the start of the week.

Bespoke, however, says that more recently, gains have shifted to Mondays in Thanksgiving week, with small declines on Tuesday and rallies on the last two days of the session.

The prospects of gains may be heartening to investors considering the prospect of inflation fears and uncertainty about the leadership of the Federal Reserve, with President Biden expected to decide whether to extend Jerome Powells tenure as Fed chairman, which ends in Feburary or possible turn to Fed Gov. Lael Brainard.

Markets closed mostly lower on the Friday before Thanksgiving, with the S&P 500 SPX, -0.14% booking a gain of 0.4%, the Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.40% posting a weekly gain of 1.2% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.75% closing ending lower for a second week in a row, off 1.4%.

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Here's what history says about stock-market performance during the Thanksgiving week - MarketWatch

COEUR d'ALENE Elementary students took a step back in time for live history day.

Fernan STEM Academy fourth- and fifth-graders spent Wednesday learning about Idaho history and science, including a special visit from Coeur dAlene High School student volunteers.

I haven't worked with kids since I was a kid so it's fun that we started doing this, junior Ryan Robinson said. I think we should actually be able to do this every year because it's a great experience.

About 34 high schoolers from Birgid Niedenzus environment science classes volunteered to bring Idaho history and science themed activities to the elementary school.

The kids came up with the activities and we brought everything, Niedenzu said. It's also sort of a service project, and we're all about doing that anyway, to make our community, our environment better.

Niedenzu said that aside from learning about Idaho history and nature, she thought the activities would teach kids to take care of their environment.

Robinson taught the elementary kids about the pH levels of water, as well as oxygen and bugs, as they looked through buckets of lake water from Fernan Lake and capsules with different water bugs.

Sometimes theyre a little hyper, Robinson said. But other than that they just want to look at the bugs.

Fifth-grader Cooper Fordham said he enjoyed making Native American crafts and thought working with the high school students was exciting.

I think they did a good job, Cooper said. They knew exactly what to do.

To prepare for history day, the high schoolers spent the last week in class practicing the activities and getting everything together to prepare for teaching.

Theyre actually broadening their knowledge base, Niedenzu said. Every time they teach it they get better at it.

Rebecca Webb, a fourth grade teacher at Fernan STEM Academy, said the coolest part of the day was the collaboration with the high school students.

It's really good for some of our kids to see students who are at those higher levels who take their learning seriously and have their own areas of inquiry," Webb said. I think they look at them as role models."

With the mix of high school volunteers, Webb said it was especially inspirational for the students to see male role models. The majority of teachers in elementary school are women.

Students learned how to make soap, identify Idaho wildlife and water quality, painted walking sticks and more with the high school students. That followed a morning full of Idaho live history with their teachers.

Our kiddos got to just kind of experience things that people in the early days of our state settlement might have experienced, Webb said. I think we'd like it to become a tradition so that kids can experience things through their learning instead of just learning about things."

Webb said they have a philosophy that hands-on learning is the best way to learn.

If the kids are talking, collaborating, and hands on, they're absorbing a lot more and kind of internalizing a lot more of the studies, Webb said. Really visualizing all that is going to stick with them a lot more than if they just looked all of that up in a textbook.

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Helping hands and hands-on history - Coeur d'Alene Press

MIAMI When the Cuban socialite Elena Ruz Valds-Fauli was in her early 20s, she would often go to a show or a movie and have a late-night bite with friends at the restaurant El Carmelo in Havana. Her usual meal was an off-menu request: a turkey sandwich on medianoche bread, with cream cheese and strawberry preserves.

She had to explain the sandwich so many times that she asked the restaurants manager to put it on the menu to make it easier to order. At some point in the late 1920s or the early 30s (nobody remembers when), she returned to find her name in neon lights, with the sandwich on the menu for 25 cents.

It was quite a surprise for her, Margarita Ulacia, 82, of San Jos, Costa Rica, said about her mothers reaction to the sign. But she was delighted, and my grandmother was horrified.

A friend of Ms. Valds-Faulis even had a dream that the sandwich would become famous. And it did. When Cubans left the island after the Cuban revolution, the sandwich followed.

Nearly a century after the sandwich was invented, classic Cuban establishments like Versailles, La Carreta or Pinecrest Bakery still have a place for the Elena Ruz on their menus.

It became an icon of Cuba, said Antonio Bobo Llizo, the second-generation owner of Los Bobos Cafeteria in Doral, Fla. Its one of the sandwiches that my dad had to recreate and place on the menu.

At Mr. Llizos restaurant, chefs butter the medianoche bread a sweeter, softer sibling of Cuban bread, similar to brioche stuff the sandwich with thinly sliced turkey breast, Philadelphia cream cheese and Smuckers strawberry preserves, and then heat it.

Ms. Ulacia said that her mother, who died in 2011, probably didnt request butter on her sandwich. But chefs have found it helps brown the toasted Elena Ruz.

Despite its long-held fame, the sandwich is barely ordered anymore, Mr. Llizo said. Young Cubans are forgetting about the sandwich and its history. When his daughter brought little Elena Ruz sandwiches to her elementary school for a presentation on Ms. Valds-Fauli, most of the Cuban parents had never heard of it.

But Mr. Llizo and other restaurateurs wouldnt dare take it off the menu.

Not having it would kind of remove your Cuban card, said Daniel Figueredo, who serves a version of the sandwich at his restaurant Sanguich de Miami on Calle Ocho.

His Elena Ruthless is an adaptation of the original Elena Ruz, substituting homemade guava marmalade for the strawberry preserves and adding bacon to mix. Its on his secret menu because its a sloppy sandwich to prepare.

I believe traditions should be protected, Mr. Figueredo said. But I do believe that you have some parameters you can develop and have fun.

Michael Beltran, who was raised in a Cuban household and runs Ariete, Nav and Chugs Diner, agrees.

People need to stop getting into, Well thats how its supposed to be, he said. Cuban food is up in the air for interpretation. Interpret it all the ways.

In fact, there have been many interpretations of the Elena Ruz, something that her daughter takes issue with, at least when it comes to the origin of the dish.

Respect the form in which the sandwich was created, and if you do a variation, Ms. Ulacia said in Spanish, dont play with the name.

Recipe: Elena Ruz Sandwich

Susan Campbell Beachy contributed research.

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The History Behind the Elena Ruz, the Quintessential Cuban Sandwich - The New York Times

: a crude, rude cheapskate

This week I stumbled upon one of those language questions that send me down the rabbit hole for days: How do you translate the word into English?

Now, is a mighty fine word. It has more or less two definitions: , , , (a big, strong, fat, dim-witted person) and , (a greedy person, a cheapskate). More or less because the more people I asked, the more variations I got, although they all involved unpleasant, coarse and usually cheap people. Basically, you dont want to be called a .

To come up with the best translation, I thought I ought to find out where the word came from. Ha! Like this was going to be easy. I first discovered that it was claimed by Odessans as derived from the English word job. In this version, it appeared when the Odessa port was being built and managed by English speakers, and somehow job meaning work morphed into meaning a worker, which then morphed into a worker from the village, a boor, a rube.

This seemed like a big stretch to me, especially because I cant think why the hard j sound turned into zh and where that l came from.

Commentators on a language forum agreed. One person indignantly claimed it was a Ukrainian word that had appeared from Polish in the 15th century. Others supported this version. The problem is that none of these commentators apparently spoke Ukrainian or Polish. I have a bit of Ukrainian and about 15 words of Polish, most of them names of food. Not useful. But I did find the Polish word b, which means a crib, a manger, a trough for horses and cattle. The Russian cognate is a gutter, channel or furrow. Not feeling the cretin vibe here.

Another source gives the slang meaning of b as a blockhead, clod, or dimwit. I suppose a wooden trough could be a metaphor for a thick dimwit. But I cant find confirmation.

But any word of undetermined origin in Polish, Ukrainian, Odessan and Russian always makes me think of Yiddish. So, I checked in my Yiddish-English dictionary and found it: Zhlob or zhlub: an oaf, yokel, bumpkin; an ill-mannered person; a clumsy, graceless person. Great, right? Wrong. It came to Yiddish from the Slavic languages, not the other way around.

Yet another armchair etymologist maintained that , like the word (greedy person) and another handful of words such as (a cheapskate), all come from the verb , a dialectical form of (to squeeze, hold tightly, wring, reap) and (to be stingy). Now this sounds possible, if only because English words for being cheap are also connected to this image: penny-pincher, tight, tight-fisted.

But I still could not find anything more than speculation. So, I did what I always do when all else fails: Get out the Gorodin Dictionary of prison and camp language and slang.

And there it was.

In prison, Gorodin writes, was a prisoner who was not a member of a band and did not understand camp life. In other prisons and other times, it meant a villager, peasant worker; a cheap person; and a tall and strong man. It turns out that is also camp slang.

So, all these various definitions of in various camps left the camps when the men were released. These former prisoners brought their various understandings of with them and they now make up the modern definition of : a big, strong, cheap man who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Next question: whats the best translation? In my idiolect, Id call this kind of person a cretin, especially because being cheap or shortchanging someone is definitely cretinous behavior. But thats just me, and it's not always the best translation.

When the emphasis is on being cheap and greedy, there are lots of possibilities: - (Dont be a cheapskate buy your wife a fur coat). , (I might be a tightwad, but I dont owe anyone money). (He doesnt pay alimony she shouldnt have married that skinflint).

When the emphasis is more on coarseness, you can use lout, boor, pushy son-of-a-bitch, a rude jerk, etc.: - , (This kind of low-life thinks that he alone is the center of the universe, and hes not just open about it, hes in-your-face open about it). - , (Some a-hole parked his car on the tram tracks, which turned the end stop circle into a dead end).

And when the emphasis is more on stupidity, there is a long list of options to choose from: dimwit, numbskull, chowderhead, blockhead, etc.: (Any bonehead can get a higher education).

With ,the possibilities are endless.

Originally posted here:

The Short History of a Nasty Word - The Moscow Times